Sandrunners--A Draconis Memoria Short Story

by Anthony Ryan

  They were on the river now, the wagon’s cargo unloaded onto a large flat-bottomed barge the day before. The trading post’s owner, a man near as broad as Clatterstock but with a genuinely lustful leer to him, had grown angry when Wittler refused a contract to spend a week hunting Greens. “Going for Red, this trip,” he said. “Black if I can get it.”

  “My ass you is,” the trader replied. “You goin’ t’the Red Sands again. Didn’t lose enough good people last time, huh? Spoiled’ve got your scent now, Wittler. They won’t be best pleased t’see ya.”

  Ethelynne had noted how the trader’s fierceness dissipated and his face grew pale under Wittler’s silent and prolonged gaze. “Grateful if you’d have a care for our animals,” Wittler said eventually, tossing the trader a purse. “We’ll be needing the barge.”

  Brother Two found her at the prow of the barge as they came to the point where Wittler had chosen to moor up, a shallow cove where the canyon walls descended to a gentle slope. They had cleared the jungle four days back, the Greychurn now winding its way through high, curving walls of pinkish sandstone.

  “You wanna learn a thing, miss?” Brother Two said, putting an arm around her shoulders, light enough not to cause offence as he turned her towards the southern horizon. “See those peaks? Tell me what you see.”

  He held up a spyglass which she duly took and trained on the distant heights ahead. She stared at the peaks for a time, seeing only rock, though it was oddly coloured, mottled all over as if pock-marked. “What is that?” she asked.

  “Red Hive,” Brother Two said. “Their spit’s loaded with enough bile to eat the rock. Wait a mite longer and you’ll see.”

  She did and was soon rewarded by the sight of a dark shape emerging from one of the marks in the stone. It seemed tiny from this distance but she had seen enough of them in the pens to recognise the shape, and knew it was as big as a horse. She watched it crawl from the hole and onto a ledge, wings spreading to catch the warmth of the rising sun.

  She heard a metallic snick and turned to find Brother Two loading his long-rifle, sliding the cartridge into the chamber and working the lever to close it. “Just under a mile I reckon,” he said with a wink before raising the long-rifle and firing with only the barest pause to aim.

  The range left sufficient time for her to raise the spyglass and find the Red again to watch the bullet strike home, except it didn’t. She saw the Red flinch as the bullet smacked into its rocky perch, mouth gaping and head lowering in an instant threat posture. The beast was too far away to make out its eyes but Ethelynne had no doubt of its ability to discern the source of its distress.

  “You missed,” she told Brother Two, a somewhat redundant statement as the Red had now taken to the air, wings sweeping as it gained height, growing in size until it filled the lens of the spyglass.

  “Shitdammit!” Brother Two hissed, feverishly working to reload the long-rifle, cartridges scattering across the deck as he fumbled, swearing even louder.

  A high, peeling cry echoes along the canyons, the Red flattening its wings as it flew lower, less than two hundred feet away. The scream sounded again as it neared, mouth gaping to reveal rows of razor teeth, and its eyes... First time you gaze into the eyes of a wild one, you’ll know what hate looks like.

  Ethelynne tossed the spyglass aside and reached for the box on her belt, extracting the Black and thumbing the stopper free, raising it to her mouth...

  A single rifle shot sounded behind them, the drake’s scream choking off as it veered away twenty feet short of the barge. It twisted in the air, flailing wings raising water from the river, before colliding with the slope ahead. The drake slid down the rock and screamed again, the cry plaintive now, desperate. Its claws scrabbled on the sandstone until they found purchase and it began to scramble up, blood trailing across the rock, wings spreading in preparation to fly. Another rifle shot sounded and a cloud of blood erupted from the drake’s skull. It collapsed onto the slope, tail and wings twitching as it slid towards the water.

  Ethelynne’s gaze went to the starboard rail where Wittler stood, smoking long-rifle in hand. He turned to her and she saw judgement in his narrowed eyes, perhaps also disappointment, before they tracked to Brother Two. “And the purpose of this?” he asked.

  The younger Crawden blanched a little under the scrutiny but quickly rallied to offer a sheepish grin. “The young miss wanted to learn a thing...”

  “The young miss is not your concern,” Wittler told him, each word spoken with considerable precision. He jerked his head at the dead drake on the slope. “Three cartridges to take this thing down and we ain’t got time to harvest a single drop.”

  “Any cost can come from our share, cap’n,” Brother One said, moving between Wittler and Brother Two. His stance was respectful, but also firmly defensive. “Besides, there’ll still be blood in the heart for when we make our way back. Ain’t a total loss.”

  “You let me assess the profit and loss for this company, Craw.” Wittler’s gaze narrowed further, his face showing none of the affable surety Ethelynne had become accustomed to. “Your brother’s here because you vouched for him. Best if he doesn’t give me further cause to regret deferring to your judgement.”

  “He surely won’t, cap’n. My word on it.” The Elder Crawden took hold of his brother’s arm and led him to the stern, pausing to offer a respectful nod to Ethelynne. Wittler lingered a moment, his gaze now free of judgement and a certain warmth returning to his voice. “Careful with that, Miss Ethy.” He pointed to the unstoppered vial of Black in her hand. “We’ll need every drop before long.”

  She watched him return to the tiller, calling to Clatterstock to make ready with the anchor. As the barge drew closer to the bank Ethelynne’s gaze was drawn again to the Red. It had stopped twitching now, its precious blood flowing thick enough to leave a dark stain in the river.

  * * *

  She drank half the remaining Green on reaching the Badlands, staggering a little as the effects took hold. Green was second only to Red as the Ironship Syndicate’s most valued export, a greatly prized medicine among the unblessed, curing infection better than any physic human hands could concoct. But for a Blood-blessed it was both panacea and ultimate tonic, banishing her exhaustion and filling strained muscles and nerves with renewed vigour. Ethelynne drew breath as she straightened from a sagging crouch, deep and long, the air sweet despite the lingering tang of the Red Sands. She cast a final glance at the rusty desert, experiencing a momentary satisfaction at its emptiness before her newly keen eyes picked out a plume of gunsmoke rising less than a mile away.

  What are the odds he’d miss three times? There was no boom from the rifle, the distance was too great for that, just the whine of the bullet as she threw herself flat. It impacted on one of the narrow conical tors twenty feet ahead, chalky rock exploding into a pale white powder.

  Ethelynne surged to her feet and sprinted forward, faster than any unblessed could ever run, the confused, jagged maze of the Badlands closing in around her. She kept running, pace only slightly slowed, hurdling boulders and leaping to bound from the surrounding rock, hurling herself onwards, following the marks left by Wittler’s charcoal. The lessons in Green had always been her greatest joy back at the Academy, outperforming all the other students as she raced around the cavernous gymnasium. There was no exhilaration now, just the fear and her thudding heart, and the lesson learned long ago. Red for the fire...

  * * *

  “Never been so cold my whole life,” Brother Two said, handsome face drawn in misery as he shuffled closer to the glowing circle Ethelynne had conjured in the sand. “Thought the wind over the southern seas was the coldest thing a man could feel, but it’s got nothing on this.”

  “You’ve sailed the southern seas?” Ethelynne asked.

  “Surely, Miss Ethy. Sailor on a Blue-hunter for more’n six years. Think Reds’re big, wait’ll you see a Blue...”

  “Quiet,” Wittler said, voice soft as he rose to a crouch
, eyes scanning the darkened dunes beyond their camp. Ethelynne noted he had drawn his six-shooter. A double-snick came from her right and she turned to see Bluesilk similarly crouched, a pistol in each hand. They had cleared the Badlands the day before, Wittler leading the way through the twisted labyrinth of chalk and granite. He set a punishing pace, pausing only to check his ancient map and scratch a black mark on one of the conical tors with a stick of charcoal.

  “Don’t wanna lose your way in here,” Clatterstock said, sweating more profusely than the others though he showed no sign of slowing. “’Specially if the Spoiled come callin’.”

  Ethelynne had been obliged to take her first taste of Green in order to keep up, just enough to make her legs move at a decent pace, though even then she found the going hard. It took almost a full day to traverse the Badlands, whereupon Wittler allowed a pause to survey the vast redness of the Sands.

  “No sign, cap’n,” Bluesilk said, sweeping her eyeglass across the dunes. “Maybe they’ll leave us be this trip.” Ethelynne detected a note of forced optimism in gun-hand’s voice, something Wittler evidently saw no need to succour.

  “They’ll be along,” he said. “Spoiled don’t forget a scent, nor turn from a feud when there’s still blood to be settled.”

  Ethelynne watched him sniff the air now, seeing a grim acceptance settle on his face. She caught it then; an acrid stain on the easterly wind, redolent of corrupted flesh and stale blood. They drink it like wine, Clatterstock had told her back on the wagon. Untreated, undiluted. And somehow, they stay alive. They was here long before us, so I guess they had time to learn many a thing. Never learned to fear though. Must’ve left near a score lyin’ on the sands last trip, but still they kept on comin’.

  Wittler briefly scanned the camp, checking to ensure they had all drawn weapons, then moved to Ethelynne’s side. “Well, here’s where you earn your share, Miss Ethy,” he told her in a whisper. “You remember what I told you?”

  She nodded, finding she had to swallow before she could voice a response. “The arrows.”

  “That’s right. You leave the killing to us. But keep those arrows off.” He paused to peer deeper into the dark and she fancied she saw a smile play on his lips. “Need us some light too, if you could oblige.”

  She reached for her box and extracted the Red and the Black, surprised to find her hands weren’t shaking. She removed the stoppers from both vials and drank, Red and Black mingling on her tongue in bitter concord before she swallowed it down, feeling the power building inside, a fierce intoxicating rush. “How far out?” she asked Wittler, raising herself up.

  “Thirty yards should do it.”

  She sought out a patch of sand at the specified range and concentrated. Some Blood-blessed were given to theatrics when utilising their talents, their hands describing elaborate gestures as they intoned cryptic phrases in ancient languages. But that was all farce. The only tools a Blood-blessed needed were a disciplined mind and a decade or more of practice.

  Ethelynne summoned the Red, feeling the power surge and the air between her and the patch of sand thicken with heat. She had taken a large gulp and the results were immediate, the sand taking on a fierce glow. She stood and turned in a slow circle, the glow spreading and following her gaze until the camp sat surrounded by a ring of melting iron, the dunes beyond lit by a soft yellow light. She heard Brother Two give a low whistle of admiration and forced the resultant smile from her lips. Emotion is the enemy of focus, Madame Bondersil had said more times than Ethelynne could count.

  For a second nothing happened, the newly lit desert silent and empty, then came a faint hiss of something small and fast cutting the air. Ethelynne instantly switched to the Black, instinct finding the arrow before her eyes did. Black for the push. She caught it a foot short of her chest, watching it quiver as she held it in place. The head was fashioned from crudely shaped iron, the shaft a length of whittled bone and the fletching a ragged tail of dried grass. She blinked and broke it in two, letting it fall to the sand as a great hiss rose from the surrounding dunes.

  “Best hunker down!” Wittler called to her but she ignored him, moving to the centre of the camp and raising her gaze skyward. The arrows fell in a black hail, perhaps a hundred arcing down out of the dark. She let them get within ten feet before unleashing the Black, sending out a single pulse of power, the arrows scattered and shredded like chaff.

  “Hoo-yah!” Brother Two whooped. “How’d ya like that, y’stinky bastards?”

  She saw them then, low black shapes beyond the circle’s glow to the south, scattering dust as they charged, the light catching on spearpoints and hatchet blades. The Crawdens’ long-rifles fired simultaneously, two shapes falling, the others coming on without pause. Bluesilk began to fire when they reached the circle, standing and blazing away with both pistols, more shapes twisting and falling, the rest leaping the circle amid a chorus of inhuman snarls. Ethelynne could see their faces now, dark and scaly with spines protruding from forehead and jaw, their eyes bright yellow, slitted and full of hate, just like the Red back at the river.

  “Guard Miss Ethy!” Wittler yelled, rushing to Ethelynne’s side and loosing off a rapid salvo with his revolver, two Spoiled falling dead as they reached the edge of the camp. The rest of the company followed suit, Bluesilk crouching as she replaced the cylinders in her pistols with a swiftness that seemed incredible, the Crawdens blasting away with their revolvers whilst Clatterstock emptied his repeating carbine with practised efficiency.

  A lull descended as the Spoiled drew back, lingering in the shadows beyond the diminishing glow of the circle, the air now filled with their guttural snarls. Ethelynne scanned the surrounding sands, snaring the intermittent arrows launched by the Spoiled and snapping them before they could reach the company, the Black diminishing with every catch. The chorus of snarls increased in pitch, building by the second, a discordant but definite cadence becoming discernible among the babble, almost like a chant.

  “Shit,” she heard Clatterstock growl. “Death song.”

  “If you got anything left, Miss Ethy,” Wittler said. “Now would be about the time.”

  She reached for the vial of Black once more, drinking deep, leaving only one last drop. “You need to be quick,” she said. “I won’t be able to hold them all for long.”

  The snarling chant rose to a crescendo and the Spoiled came surging from the dark, yellow eyes gleaming and malformed lips drawn back from wicked sharp teeth. She stopped them ten feet short, summoning the Black to snare each one, some caught in mid-air with club raised.

  “Aimed shots!” Wittler said, raising his pistol.

  It took maybe five minutes but it seemed an age, Ethelynne feeling the Black ebb away like water from a leaky cistern as the Sandrunners methodically put a bullet into each and every frozen Spoiled. When it was done, and she had let them fall, they counted eighty-six bodies on the sand.

  “Looks like we bagged us a whole tribe, cap’n,” Brother One said, drawing his knife and crouching beside a body. “Ironship pays cash-money for every Spoiled head.”

  “Leave it,” Wittler told him, casting a disinterested gaze over the corpses before turning to the south. “Got us a White to find.”

  * * *

  She used up the Green before getting clear of the Badlands, feeling the last of it drain away as she leapt to propel herself onward with a shove against one of the tors, landing hard on suddenly weak legs. She fell face first and lay still for a time, willing herself to move, but finding only the strength to keep breathing. “Black...” she murmured, lips dry against the stony ground. “Black for the push... Red for... Red...”

  Her eyes were already half-closed when she heard it, echoing through the Badlands, rich and vibrant in its utter madness. “You know what I saw, Miss Ethy!” Wittler screamed, voice growing louder with every word. “You know what it showed me! I ain’t gonna burn! You hear me, girl? I AIN’T GONNA BURN!”

  Ethelynne abandoned all pretence of focus a
nd let the terror seep into her, filling her with a single desperate urge; stay alive.

  She yelled with the effort of raising herself up, wept as she gained her feet, stumbling on and voicing curses so foul she didn’t realise she knew them, regaining focus, mind fixed on a single goal. There’ll still be blood in the heart...

  * * *

  Ethelynne had been hearing or reading about the Crater all her life, the centre of the Red Sands, site of a calamity great enough to turn an iron-rich mountain range into a desert and, some said, provide a birthing ground for the fabled White Drake. In the event she found it a disappointment, just a circular gouge in the red wastes about sixty feet wide and ten deep. No great colony of Whites nursing nests full of precious eggs, no treasure to reward their perilous quest.

  “You, uh, sure this is it, cap’n?” Clatterstock ventured after they had clambered down the steep but not unassailable wall to the Crater floor.

  Wittler ignored him, eyes locked on the ground as he roamed about.

  “I mean to say,” the harvester went on. “The map is plenty old. Could be there’s other craters to the south...”

  Wittler stopped and held up a hand, waving him to silence, eyes now fixed on something next to his boot. Abruptly he went to his haunches and began to scrape away at the sand with his hands, Ethelynne hearing a laugh of unalloyed triumphed as the dust rose around him. After several minutes digging he rose and stood back, the others coming to his side to peer down at his find. It was maybe six feet in length, longer and broader than either a Red or a Black, and more bulbous, perhaps to accommodate a larger brain.

  “Contractors,” Wittler said in a formal tone. “I give you the skull of the White Drake.”

  It took a full day to dig it out. They had no spades and were obliged to rely on hands and knives to scrape away the soil, but by nightfall they had revealed a complete skeleton some thirty feet long, sixty including the tail. It snaked around the body in a tight protective arc of revealed vertebrae, and there, nestled, between its two great forearms, a single white egg.