Hardway

by David Pilling

  Benito made his fortune selling wine; Vulyan in the fishing trade.

  He still smells like it, Tamburlin thought sourly. The day Hardway falls into their plump little hands, we may as well pull the plug and let our island sink to the bottom of the sea.

  Tulgan was the one who really concerned him. The old gangster possessed a mind like a sword, hacking through complex problems with an efficiency that was both admirable and terrifying. Besides the snow in his hair, he showed few signs of advancing age. He was lean, fit and wiry, and put Tamburlin in mind of a dangerous hound, straining at the leash.

  Hardway needs a strong man in charge, he thought. Tulgan is a common criminal. Hardway may have started as a prison colony, but we left those ways behind centuries ago. If he took over, the city would degenerate into a sink of vice and corruption. Or he would sell it to the highest bidder, sacrificing our precious independence for a sack of gold.

  I cannot allow it to happen. Not while I have some strength left in these creaking joints.

  “When you are quite ready, sir,” Tulgan said politely. Tamburlin longed to thrust his hand into the gangster’s smirking maw and rip his tongue out.

  I should have dealt with Tulgan years ago. Damn my cowardice. I called it compromise, and sowed the seeds of our current plight.

  When he could trust himself to speak, Tamburlin drew himself up and tried to project his usual air of calm dignity. “First, thank you for attending this Council on short notice,” he said. “I know we were not due to meet for another fortnight. The present crisis demanded a change in routine.”

  “Vazul is gathering a fleet,” Tulgan said with a trace of impatience, “and the Grey Queen stirs in the East. We know all this. Rumours have been flying about the city for days.”

  “The question is,” the old gangster added, “what can we do about it? The situation has been brewing for a long time. How long can Hardway hope to survive, caught between two such powerful nations?”

  “We have survived long enough,” said Benito. “The last time the Old Kingdom sent a fleet against us, we sent it packing. I manned a ballista that day on Fort Alex. Gods above, how those ships burned! In my dreams I still watch them burn, like a host of distant candles.”

  Vulyan waved a plump fist. “That’s the stuff, brother,” he barked. “What have we got to fear? Let the whole world come against us in arms. We’ll send them to the ocean bed to join all the other fools who chose to pick a fight with us. Hardway still has strong walls, and strong people to guard them.”

  Tamburlin exchanged the briefest of glances with Tulgan. There weren’t many things they agreed on, but Benito and Vulyan’s competence was definitely one of them.

  He turned to Abbot Mankind. “Our brothers wish to meet aggression with aggression,” he said. “I imagine you say the opposite?”

  The wizened little monk politely bowed his head. “No sane person craves war, sir. War brings nothing but death and pain into the world. Young men die while old men sit and count the profits.”

  “Easy to say,” Benito snapped irritably. “Sometimes war cannot be avoided. We face a simple choice. Fight or be conquered.”

  “I say we negotiate,” said Tulgan. “Strike deals with Vazul and the Grey Queen. We don’t know why they are arming for war. Perhaps they mean to fight each other for control of the Narrow Seas. In which case, we can play one off against the other.”

  “What do you have in mind?” asked Tamburlin with a suspicious frown. The gangster was up to something. When was he not?

  Tulgan spread his hands. “Offer Hardway as a haven to both sides. Whoever offers the most gold can use our harbour to berth their ships. Even use the island as a base to launch an invasion. What do we care, so long as we get paid?”

  The eyes of the merchants lit up with greed. Tamburlin reluctantly admired Tulgan’s audacity. No doubt he had his own interests at heart—diverting the majority of the payments into his own purse, most likely—but it sounded reasonable.

  “Profits, profits,” muttered Abbot Mankind, shaking his head sadly. “What if we were to open our gates, only to find we have invited a fox into the coop? Vazul cannot be trusted. He murdered his own father. As for the Grey Queen, she keeps her secrets well hidden. Her predecessors were cruel and ruthless. They stopped at nothing to bring the whole of Calisse under their sway. To deal with either of these powers is madness.”

  “You are not a politician,” snapped Tulgan, stabbing a finger at him. “Sometimes I wonder why you were elected a City Father at all. What use is a monk who only thinks of peace and ignores reality? We have to make hard decisions.”

  “Enough,” said Tamburlin, raising a withered hand for silence. “There is no point in arguing. The Abbot raises a valid point. Neither of the forces that threaten us can be trusted. Therefore we cannot safely bargain with them.”

  Tulgan sneered, and Benito and Vulyan looked disappointed. For a moment Tamburlin feared he might have to use his authority to overrule their wishes. He lacked the strength for such a confrontation.

  Abbot Mankind rescued him. “If I could beg your indulgence,” he said in his quiet voice, stepping closer to the edge of the world map.

  The map was a mosaic, made up of thousands of tiny painted stones. It was a stunningly beautiful piece of work, though the name of the artist who created it was long forgotten.

  “Carry on,” said Tamburlin in response to the Abbot’s enquiring look.

  While the others watched in pensive silence, Abbot Mankind drew back his long sleeves, exposing large, delicate hands and slender forearms, and started to trace a pattern in the air.

  Tamburlin’s mouth went dry, and the hairs rose on the back of his neck. “Sorcery,” he muttered.

  It was a capital offence to practise the dark arts on Hardway, but the monks of the Celestial Sphere had always stood slightly outside of the law. By and large, they were allowed to do whatever they pleased inside the walls of their mysterious abbey, so long as it had no impact on the world outside.

  “No sorcery,” the abbot assured him, “just a trick of the mind.”

  Tamburlin’s unease was relieved a little when he saw Tulgan’s ghastly pallor. The lord of Hardway’s underworld often boasted of fearing nothing, either in this world or the next. He was frightened now, though doing his best not to show it: jaw and fists clenched; eyes wide as they watched the movements of the Abbot’s hands.

  A circle of white light formed on a section of the mosaic, hundreds of miles north-east of Hardway, beyond the northernmost limits of Calisse, and the badlands beyond. Elsewhere the world map was exquisitely detailed, but here it showed only a few scattered towns, surrounded by vast stretches of nothing. The artist had used his considerable imagination to fill in some of the gaps, painted rugged stretches of mountains, dark forests, tumbling waterfalls, and other such dramatic scenery. Here and there, probably to alleviate boredom, he had drawn fearsome dragons, griffons and manticores, even a slightly cross-eyed cave troll.

  The circle of light had appeared over one of the mountain ranges. It intensified until even Tamburlin’s old eyes could see something forming inside the circle.

  He knew what it was, and hated what he knew. “Brother Abbot,” he said hurriedly, “we are not here to discuss old stories. Why are you showing us this?”

  Tamburlin tried to keep the severity out of his voice. The Abbot was a friend, and his only ally among the City Fathers. Still, he was annoyed. The vision in the light was not something he cared to think of even at the best of times.

  Drifting out of the distant and long-buried past, from the ancient days of his early childhood, Tamburlin thought he heard his mother’s voice, trying to bully him into eating his supper.

  “Good boys should eat their greens; else the Old Treason shall take them…”

  To the young Tamburlin, the Old Treason was a vague threat, something his mother kept in reserve to make him behave. According to her whim, it was either a child-eating monster, a malignant fairy dwelling a
t the bottom of their duck pond, or a great bird with leathery wings that would fly down and pluck him from his bed at night.

  He gave an involuntary shudder. There was something much darker lurking at the roots of the story: something much worse than a silly tale used to frighten children into obedience.

  The Old Treason always came at night. Everyone knew that. It began in darkness, and ended in darkness, and the world screamed.

  “I don’t want to see that…thing,” snarled Vulyan, shading his eyes with the back of his hand. “Take it away. Make it stop.”

  “My apologies.” The Abbot made another complex movement with his hands, and the outline of the pyramid inside the circle of light slowly faded until it was barely visible.

  “There really is nothing to be afraid of,” he added. “The temple exists. I have seen it, and so have my fellow monks. Nothing but a pile of old stone. There are no evil spirits except those we conjure inside our heads.”

  “The temple is a myth,” snapped Tulgan. “Next you will be telling us the Relics of the First are kept inside on an altar.”

  The Abbot nodded. “Just as you say, brother. The relics also exist. They can be found inside the temple that has housed them for six thousand years.”

  He clapped his thin hands together, and the light instantly winked out. “Think of it, brothers,” he said earnestly, ignoring Tulgan’s snorts of derision, “the Relics of the First, in our keeping! None would dare to attack Hardway then. The city would no longer be a nuisance, poised between two powerful and warlike nations, but a shrine. A place of pilgrimage. People would travel from all ends of the earth to see the precious objects housed here.”

  “Possibly,” Tamburlin said uneasily, “but irrelevant. They are not in our keeping. The temple you claim exists is hundreds of miles to the north of here, across the bounds of the Narrow Sea, in the middle of a strange land few have ever dared to visit. Fewer still have returned.”

  “How long,” snarled Tulgan, baring his yellow teeth, “how long has your secretive little sect known of this, Abbot?”

  Abbot Mankind faced the gangster, who loomed over by him a clear foot, without fear. “We have many secrets, true,” he said with a shrug, “and are required to keep them if we wish to remain on Hardway. One of my predecessors discovered the temple, some thirty years ago. The Gods granted him a vision of the mountain in one of his dreams.”

  “A murka-influenced dream, no doubt,” sneered Tulgan. Tamburlin raised his hand again for silence.

  “The Abbot has shown us this image for a reason,” he said.

  The old man turned to the abbot. “Very well, let us say the temple and the relics are real, and can be found somewhere in the wilds of the north country. How does this benefit us? It would take weeks, if not months, to reach the location, and there is no guarantee that any expedition would return. There are all sorts of unknown dangers to be considered. Meanwhile our enemies close in around us. The Relics of the First are of little use to a city of dust and ashes.”

  Abbot Mankind’s eyes were usually placid, veiling his innermost thoughts and feelings, but now Tamburlin noticed they shone with something like holy zeal.

  “The relics are not just bits of old wood and leather,” the monk whispered. “They have power. Oh my brothers, you talk of sorcery in voices full of fear, but you have never seen it. Not real sorcery, the power bestowed by the Gods to their creation, power which flows from the blood and the bone. With the relics in our keeping, we could reduce any invasion fleet to so much floating timber. It would take a second, no more! Not that it would come to that. No devout man would dare to lift his hand against us.”

  “Vazul would dare,” said Tulgan. “He believes in nothing but himself. As for the Grey Queen, who knows?”

  An uncomfortable silence followed. The rain was getting worse, with a distant rumble of thunder rolling in from the sea to the north. Tamburlin shifted his weight on his stick, wincing as the joints in his knees cracked.

  “A storm in the north,” he murmured, wiping the drip from the end of his red nose. “If I was a savage instead of a civilised man, I might take it for a portent.”

  Tulgan stared at him in disbelief. “You surely don’t mean to take all this moon-chat of relics and temples seriously?” he demanded. “An old children’s story? How is any of it going to help us?”

  “Hear, hear,” chorused Benito and Vulyan.

  “I offer a hope, nothing more,” the Abbot said with a shrug. “You are quite right, sir. It would take many months for the relics to be found and brought back to Hardway. Yet if we can hold out against our enemies for long enough…”

  His wizened face crinkled, like the skin of an over-ripe peach, as he treated his brothers to a smile. “I am no military man. However, I believe our walls are strong, and our people.”

  “Damned right,” shouted Benito, who looked relieved to be back on firmer ground. “Most sensible thing you’ve said today, brother.”

  It fell to Tamburlin to make a decision. This was only proper, but still he felt the weight of duty and responsibility weighing down on his aged shoulders.

  Abbot Mankind says he has offered a hope, he thought. So he has, and more. Here is not just hope, but opportunity: an opportunity to weaken Tulgan and rid Hardway of some undesirables.

  “We have time to send an expedition north,” he said, in a firm, decisive voice that brooked no argument. “The Narrow Sea is yet clear of enemy ships. Tulgan, you will pick some of your best men for the task. It is high time Rollo saw something of the wider world.”

  Before I am forced to hang him for his crimes, he added silently.

  Tulgan’s lugubrious face turned an ugly shade of red. For a moment Tamburlin dared to hope he was about to suffer a fatal seizure.

  “Out of the question,” Tulgan rasped. “I need Rollo here at my side. He is indispensable.”

  “He is a disgusting murderer who should have been strung up years since,” Tamburlin retorted, “and would have done without your protection. Either he goes, or I have him arrested. Never fear, he will not lack for company. I want six of his comrades on the expedition. The Tickler, for one, and Strongarm.”

  Six more of your killers, Tulgan, Tamburlin thought bitterly The men who shield you, who perform your grubby little murders for you, who help to hold this city in terror of your name.

  Tamburlin felt light-headed. He hadn’t acted so decisively in years. No one, he was willing to wager, had ever dared to confront Tulgan so openly.

  Benito and Vulyan, he noticed, were watching Tulgan closely, waiting for his reaction. To Tamburlin’s delight, Tulgan did nothing but grind his teeth and ball his fists in impotent rage.

  The old gangster was powerless. If he walked out of the Circle, he forfeited his place on the Council. If he struck Tamburlin, he forfeited his hand: the person of the Grand Father was inviolate. If he cursed and railed and threatened, he would eventually run out of breath.

  Powerless, for now. Tulgan would not forget, and was incapable of forgiveness.

  Tamburlin felt the sap rising in his withered veins as he carried on, regardless of Tulgan’s furious glares. “Twelve of the city garrison shall also go,” he declared, “led by Captain Storn.”

  It was a pity to weaken the garrison, especially with war looming, but he had to provide a counterbalance to Tulgan’s villains. Twelve honest soldiers should be enough.

  As for Captain Storn, he was an efficient officer, and a good man: that was the trouble. Jonas Storn was intensely devout, and spent his leisure hours standing on a ladder in Preacher’s Corner in the plaza, warning the people to mend their ways if they wished to avoid an eternity of hellfire. He was becoming an embarrassment. Sooner or later some pimp or cutpurse was bound to take offence and stick a knife in him.

  “A devout man for a holy mission,” Abbot Mankind said piously. “It is well.”

  Tamburlin risked a grin. He thought the Abbot would approve of his choice.

  “There remains the ques
tion,” he continued, “of organising the city’s defences. I understand General Dusek is doing a fine job of whipping our garrison into shape. He will have work enough. Custom decrees that every able-bodied man and woman on Hardway shall do military service in time of war.”

  Tulgan found his voice. “You intend to allow that…freak…to continue making a fool of us all?” he hissed.

  Tamburlin inwardly quailed at the menace in the old gangster’s voice, but forced himself to stand firm.

  “I do,” he replied stoutly. “The people love him, and he has a certain style. When the Dragon and the Grey Queen come to swallow up our little island, they will find the Raggedy General waiting for them.”

  * * * *

  As I drift through and between the three planes of existence, each mirroring the last, I occasionally catch a glimpse of the void. The place that existed before even the physical realm of man. The infinite chasm beyond The World Apparent, with its endless dimensions and crushing, incalculable vastness. The contemplation of which would drive even the immortal minds of gods, themselves as young and minuscule as man's basest desires, to eternal despair.

  I shy away from such terrifying glimpses, not just through a healthy fear, but through a sense of preservation. To know the limits of one's own consciousness is to resist the temptation to discover the ancient alien horrors that dwell in the abyss, beyond the physical plane and its spiritual parallels.

  In stark contrast to the void is the life of man, by its very nature trivial and temporary, even fleeting. Yet his life is governed by powerful things: love and hate, hunger and greed, honour and pride. Emotions so powerful they drive him to incredible acts of strength and heroism, and despicable crimes of brutality and murder. So stark is the heart of man that he unknowingly created the Celestial Sphere and the searing caverns of Hell.

  Man’s feelings are so utter they must manifest themselves, just as his vices and virtues became demons and gods. The World Apparent is roamed by the shades of his grief, wraiths born of his loneliness, even sprites thrown into being by his moments of joy. Thus he dictates the course of events in the physical plane, known to gods, demons and man as The World Apparent. A world of chaos.