The Incorruptibles

by John Hornor Jacobs

  Another pass, this time a blond blur, and a second lictor, his skull suddenly raw and exposed, tilted and fell.

  I looked no longer, but launched my boots into Bess’s haunches, hoping to Hell and praying to Ia that her sure feet would make the next twenty paces to the wagon before the stretchers took my scalp. Secundus was there before me, and, as I neared, he fired at something behind me, so close I could feel the wind of the bullet and the heat of Hell passing. For once I was glad of the sensation.

  ‘Arms! Get your damned guns ready!’ I nearly fell off Bess and found my feet next to a terrified legionary. Never knew his name.

  ‘Anything that moves, shoot it.’

  ‘What about them lictors? Mister Cornelius?’

  ‘They’re dead. Got that? You see it move, bust it with that Ia-damned holemaker.’

  A moment of distaste curdled the man’s face as he looked at me and realized a dwarf was giving him orders. But this look of disgust turned to one of surprise as the stampede of auroch swept past us and he was drawn upwards, a knife glinting like the flash of sun on water. For a moment I thought the man was hopping up to see beyond the wagon, but when he fell his gun fell with him and his head was bloody and raw. He was screaming like a scalded dog.

  Livia shoved Isabelle and Carnelia back against the axle of the wagon, and hefted her shotgun. Secundus stood nearby, and for a moment I thought it strange that both Secundus and Livia seemed dead set on protecting the young Medieran girl, even above their own blood, Carnelia. But then another shadow passed above and I felt something snatch at my head, followed by an excruciating pain as a hunk of my hair was ripped bodily from my skull. My dvergar blood saved me from being scalped by dint of my short stature. Banty, eyes wild, fired into the swirling, churning dust of the plains.

  ‘Ia-dammit,’ Banty said in the same tone as Fisk might.

  Another legionary was lifted up, hair flying, and came down with his throat cut and without his scalp.

  The wagon shuddered and rocked as the auroch thundered past us. The animals pressed in close, all around – if you got caught in them, you’d be pulped as fast as a stretcher could take your scalp. The legionaries began busting loose Hellfire in earnest, making it hard to think with the after-images of daemons scenting the air with brimstone. Arrows thunked into wood and horseflesh and auroch hide. The horses screamed in near-human voices, and the auroch lowed and trumpeted their panic and anger. The soldiers fired wildly, and more aurochs slumped and fell, making a little circle of destruction with us smack-dab in the centre.

  In a flash, Fisk and his big black leapt into the circle, and he was firing his carbine. But not wildly. Gnaeus, the young lordling, was draped across Fisk’s saddle-horn. His head was crimson and a great flap of scalp hung down, dripping blood.

  Fisk dismounted, and I ran to him and helped the patrician boy off the black. He was as heavy and ungainly as a sack of oats. I dragged him into the lee of the wagon, and Carnelia gave a short screech as she saw him.

  Fisk stood tall, his grey hat still perched on his head like a beacon. Maybe the remaining legionaries took strength from his presence, I don’t know. But he fired, and fired again. He paused, ignoring the rushing tide of aurochs, took aim and fired again. The oppressive weight and despair of Hellfire hung in the air.

  And then Miss Livia was rushing toward him, yelling, ‘Get down, Fisk!’

  He dropped to a knee, tucking his head down, and she brought the shotgun up and let go with both barrels as a shadow passed overhead.

  There was a terrible screech – almost too high to hear, but the ear-pressure felt like diving too deep in a river, mixed with the cacophony of bees – and a wild thrashing thing fell, slamming into the wagon, bouncing off the wheel and landing in front of a dazed Secundus.

  A vaettir.

  It thrashed and whipped about like a fish plucked from the sea, its brown hair making a mess of its face. It ripped at its chest and shoulder with clawed hands and spat jagged and unfathomable curses from bloodless lips framing a saw-toothed maw. Secundus stepped forward and shot it again, once, and the spasms ceased. It stilled.

  The stampede thinned, and the aurochs passed and the world was silent.

  The dust swirled and settled. Beyond the ring of dead aurochs and horses and strewn bodies of lascars, thirty or forty paces distant, stood four vaettir. From their hands dangled bloody scalps. They stood like statues, or the bare bones of trees husked by fire.

  Fisk, closest to the creatures, took aim, paused, and then lowered his rifle. He went to the downed stretcher, whipping out his longknife.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ I asked.

  His face was dark, unlike I’d ever seen before. He didn’t even glance at me.

  He knelt on the vaettir’s arm and hacked at it hard, three, four times – before the thing fell away. It was so much larger than his own, spanning fifteen or twenty inches. The stump spurted blood, once, twice; then the blood pulsed weakly before stopping altogether. I had the distinct impression that, though grievously wounded, the thing was not dead. After Fisk cut the hand free he turned, walked to the edge of the circle, and faced the watching vaettir.

  He raised the severed hand above his head.

  It was an angry silhouette he made, the set of his jaw and the cant of his shoulders. It was fury, pure and simple.

  Livia, still holding the shotgun, reached out with one tremulous hand, touched Fisk’s shoulder and looked into his dark face.

  He ignored her.

  Finally, he threw the severed hand into the dust and spat on it.

  The vaettir watched, implacable and cold.

  And then, as one, they made a noise between a scream of rage and a dirge – a terrible feeling distilled into one sound, ineffable, cruel, miserable. Like birds they turned, hair and clothing flapping like wings, and disappeared into the tall shoal grasses and the still-swirling dust.

  We loaded the dead, wounded, and as much auroch meat as we could onto the wagon.

  When Fisk ordered the remaining legionaries to port the haunches of auroch he’d butchered, bloody and raw, over to the wagon-bed, Secundus held up a hand and asked, ‘Do you really think this necessary?’

  ‘Your pa still gonna want his feast?’

  Secundus looked over at the bound figure of the fallen vaettir and remained silent. The lascar continued to load the meat.

  Fisk dealt with the vaettir himself. He bound it again, at the elbows, at the ankles, at the knees. He tied it to his horse and he gagged it, stuffing a dirty shirt halfway down its throat. Then he wrapped its jaw with rope.

  Short on horses now, I hitched Bess to the wagon braces and we hied homeward, back to the Cornelian. A damned long ride, accompanied by the bleats of the injured and the agitation of the horses. The womenfolk rode two to a horse whilst Secundus transported his scalped brother. Fisk was beyond reckoning, filled with an intense fury, his body taut, his face pained and fierce, his gun ready to hand, his eyes always roving. The poor legionaries looked as though they’d never leave the safety of the boat again. Who’d blame them. I’d be lying if I told you the Cornelian wasn’t a welcome sight when it came into view.

  It was a brilliant afternoon, sun-filled and temperate, marred only by the moans of dying men.

  ELEVEN

  ‘He wants us to what?’ Fisk asked. It had been three days since the stampede and vaettir attack. His leg had healed up some, but his disposition was still on the mend.

  Cimbri’s moustache twitched, and he snatched the cheroot out of his mouth, jabbing the smoking cherry at Fisk. ‘He wants you,’ he jabbed again, ‘Shoestring,’ and then he pointed the burning tip toward the horses where Banty was brushing them down, ‘and yon Mr Bantam, to be present at the feast to regale the assembled with the tale of the stampede and the capture of the vaettir.’

  Fisk cursed.

  ‘Surely you’re
joking, Cimbri.’ I normally don’t get too involved with legion matters. Cimbri, technically, was in command of the scouts, since we’d signed up for the job with his boss, the Dux Marcellus out of New Damnation, and had both blooded the contract. Cimbri also had authority over Banty and the twenty or so legionaries left on the Cornelian. Captain Skraeling, a good chap with an easy riverman’s disposition, commanded the lascars, and the Senator had direct command over his lictors. However, Senator Cornelius, with proconsular imperium, was really in charge of us all.

  Cimbri looked at me closely, down the length of that long Ruman nose that disappeared into his massive and expressive whiskers.

  ‘What do you think, Mr Ilys? Do I look like I’m kidding?’

  Now that he mentioned it, no.

  He shook his head again, looked off at the mountains gleaming in the morning light, and gave a sigh. He turned back to Fisk, glanced back and forth between us as though we were miscreant schoolboys, and spoke under his breath. ‘Mr Cornelius … he’s been affected. That bear got more than his leg, if you understand what I’m saying.’

  ‘Shithouse rat is what you’re saying.’

  ‘No, not that bad, Mr Fisk. Just …’ He popped his cheroot back in his mouth and clamped it in his teeth. ‘Fey. Addled a tad. Childish.’

  ‘He’s a lush. Get him off the booze and he’ll dry out.’

  Cimbri blinked. ‘Ia’s blood, man, how the hell do I do that? He’s an Ia-damned proconsular emissary of the Ia-damned Ruman Empire. He’s got his lictors who would just love to chop me into little pieces and his private engineer who would love to feed me to that great fucking daemon bound in the engine room.’

  Spit dribbled down his chin, and I started to worry some about his mental state.

  ‘So get your arses presentable, and get over to the Ia-damned riverboat before dark. If you’re not there, I’ll have a contubernium crucify your arses. Understood?’

  Understood.

  Shaven heads were suddenly quite fashionable among the Cornelian’s male passengers. Lictors, lascars, and legionaries were all shorn, their craniums glistening, oiled and unmarred except for a few nicks and scrapes from razors.

  A pall hung over the ship, despite the impending celebration. It had been a lark, and a boring one, steaming upriver and shooting at seagulls in the Cornelian’s wake. But now men had died and the darkness held rumours of vaettir bearing human scalps. We had buried the dead in shallow graves within sight of the Big Rill, and the men of the fifth – while accustomed to death – never let it pass so easily as to be unaffected by it. The Hardscrabble Territories had blooded the men of the fifth and the Cornelian.

  Before, the Cornelian, twinkling merrily with daemonlight on the waters of the river, had seemed brilliant and proud, a marvellous bit of Ruman engineering and cunning, a beacon in the darkness of the Hardscrabble Territories. But now the boat – even illuminated like a great, three-tiered birthday cake – looked small and huddled. The light shone to keep the shoal beasties and stretchers at bay. It was a frontier home – a grand and ornate one, but a frontier home nonetheless – with lanterns hanging from hooks and simple wards scratched in paint above the doorways and windows in hopes of pushing back the night.

  Cimbri met us at the rear boarding mechanism, grunted when he saw us, and then pointed inside at the daemonlight-filled confines of the boat. We could hear the chatter from the stateroom already. Cimbri followed us like a mother goose shepherding her brood.

  When we walked in, all eyes turned to us, ladies and gents all, but my eyes were drawn to the vaettir. It was sitting upright in the centre of an elaborately patterned parquet flooring – maybe it had once been a dance-floor – etched with winding and intricate scorch marks radiating in circular patterns outward from where it sat. Chains fastened the creature’s one good wrist to the floor. Manacles bound its feet. It held its handless arm still in its lap. A trellis-work of holly caged it.

  The stretcher watched Fisk with the intensity of a viper drawn to strike. Its eyes never left him.

  Fisk glanced at the two bald legionaries hefting shotguns on either side of the vaettir and then knelt and touched the scorched marks on the floor.

  He looked to me and said, ‘Molten silver. The engineer’s bound it like a daemon.’

  Strange.

  Fisk rose, looked at the creature whose lidded eyes met his steadily, and then spat on the thing. He turned away and went to the banquet table. His shoulders looked tight and his hands, I noticed, were balled at his sides.

  For a moment, the vaettir remained absolutely still, more still than any human or dvergar could manage – the stillness of statuary. And then its eyes shifted in their sockets, so very slowly, like massive gears sliding and locking into place, and it was staring at me.

  I felt a pressure beating at my ears, my cheeks flushed with blood. But the sensation quickly passed and then I was taking in the thing’s features. Long hair and skin as pale and unmarked as alabaster. Large almond-shaped eyes, tapering slightly at the edges like the Tchinee but bigger in proportion to its face. Long slender neck and pointed ears. Bloodless lips. It was beautiful, really. But beautiful like a big cat or the sleek finned shark, perfectly grown for killing.

  It did not love me.

  I tore my gaze away from its face and looked at its body. Its clothes were simple and almost elegant, except for the bloodstains. The tunic was cut to provide ease of movement, and the leggings were loose and reminded me of the garments of an acrobat. It was barefooted and the pads of its feet were snarls of callouses, rough and weathered.

  It had small, high breasts and I realized, with a start, that this was a female vaettir. Bizarre, but my heart hammered in my chest and I felt uncomfortable and embarrassed all at once, remembering our fireside chat with Banty.

  I turned back to the banquet table, but I could still feel her presence behind me. There were quite a few new faces and suddenly I was the only one in front of the stretcher’s cage, being watched by far too many people, both human and indigene. I made a bow as best I could and Carnelia laughed, making a mean, petty sound. She was patrician, after all. Livia glared at her, and the laugh died.

  ‘Mr Ilys, please sit here, with me, at a place of honour.’ Miss Livia, beaming and beautiful, patted an empty seat. She was decked out in a carmine dress with an open bodice displaying her feminine features to great effect. Her hair was up but two delicate curls descended to frame her face. At her neck was a bright jewel on a chain. Fisk sat on her far side, his hat gone and his hair as wild as a brake of bramblewrack. His face was as red as Livia’s dress.

  The table was full but I couldn’t see Gnaeus anywhere – I imagined he was soaking his scalp in alcohol and acetum under the attentions of chambermaids. Mr Cornelius, however, reclined at the head of table on a wide chair with massive padded arms, his face as crimson as a carnation, his leg propped up and wrapped in fresh bandages, white as yarrow petals. The Hardscrabble Territories had certainly not been kind to the Cornelian family so far.

  Everyone remained silent until Cornelius said, ‘Well, for fuck’s sake, people. Pour drinks. This is a celebration.’

  Carnelia laughed at her father’s proclamation. Other men, unknown to me, added rough guffaws and reached for decanters of spirits on the table.

  But it was hard for me to smile with the vaettir watching. I wanted to ask if a cloth could be thrown over its cage. But Cornelius viewed it as a trophy, this stretcher.

  Livia took a crystal glass in her hand, filled it with red liquid from a decanter, and handed it to me. As it took the light from the table-lanterns, it glowed. I took a closer look at the lanterns.

  Ia-damn. Daemonwork, even at the dinner table.

  ‘Mr Fisk,’ Cornelius said, his voice sounding thick and liquor-smoothed, like a skipping stone worn perfectly round by the flow of the river. ‘We’re all looking forward to hearing your version of the incid
ent at the auroch hunt. Indeed, after drink and confections, we will feast on the spoils.’

  ‘Spoils? I imagine they are that,’ said Fisk, and accepted the glass from Livia. He took a big gulp. ‘We lost enough men getting that bit of auroch flesh. It cost dear.’ He took another swallow. I raised my own glass to my lips and tasted it. It was warm and spicy, comforting as a blazing beach-fire surrounded by drunken ladies from the southern lands. ‘I hope your cook oiled the meat, and well. We slather auroch cuts with lard or oil. Ain’t got much fat on them, normally.’

  I heard a small titter down the table and saw Isabelle cover her mouth. Banty smiled, pouring some of the claret into her glass. He leaned into her, close. Smiling. Whispering.

  He was a handsome lad, I’ll give him that. And his equite parents taught him table manners at least, if none of the other kind.

  Miss Livia, in a voice loud and carrying, said, ‘Mr Fisk, Mr Ilys.’ She swept an elegant arm down the table toward some of the unknown gentlemen. ‘I’d like to present you with Captain August Skraeling of the Cornelian and Mr Samwell Kliment, his pilot. Beyond them sits Carnelia Cornelius, my sister, and Isabelle Modeci Santelli Diegal of Mediera, whom you’ve met but not officially. And of course Mr Titus Bantam, whom you all know.’

  She sipped her own claret and motioned past me. ‘You also have the acquaintance of Gaius Cimbri and Paterna Corianus, second in command, I believe. And there, at the end of the table, opposite my father, is Mr Linneus Gaius Beleth.’ The engineer seemed totally uninterested in the proceedings and remained speaking to his companion. Livia continued, ‘Seated next to him, his junior engineer, Samantha Decius.’ Another strangely humdrum name – a colonist like the rest of us, then.

  She was a big girl, with a moon face and ruddy cheeks. Bright carrot-top. Eyes green and intelligent, if a little wary. I imagine anyone who’s apprenticed herself to learn the summoning and binding of the infernal better be smart. Better be calm. Better be wary.

  ‘And of course, last but not least, is my brother Gaius Secundus Cornelius, and my pater Gnaeus Saturnalius Cornelius, Senator of Rume, former consul, emissary and acting governor of the western Imperial Protectorate, ambassador to Mediera, hero of the Cantaline Rebellion, and laurelled champion of Rume.’