Old Broken Road

by Alexander, K. M.

  “Hold up!” I shouted at Tin, who was staring upwards at the clouds, eyes wide behind his mask, searching for the source of the impossible sound. I couldn’t blame him, but the ox that pulled the gearwain was spooking. If Tin lost control, we could lose the whole column.

  Another undulation and tearing sound boomed through the sky. The gearwain rattled.

  Panic had started to crawl its way through the company. The lead ox moaned in fear. A bad sign. Oxen aren’t the smartest creatures. If we could keep the lead in control, the others would follow. If we lost him, however….

  I stood and tried to shout to the column behind the wain. My voice was drowned out by the noise.

  “HOLD UP!”

  I waved my arms.

  The gearwain kept rolling as the sound moved across the sky. I could hear a few screams, tiny in comparison to the titanic sound that echoed around us. I could see the column screaming, but couldn’t hear their voices. These were horns from heaven, or the territory splitting in two, or the Firsts returning to re-Align the world.

  Turning, I pulled Tin from his seat, sat him down atop a pair of barrels, and took hold of the reins. As I pulled back, another ripple of noise crashed around me. It vibrated up the reins. It quivered through me and settled in my belly, hammering around in some alien pattern. The ox fought me. I leaned back, pressing both feet into the buckboard and feeling pain ripple up from my right knee.

  The animal slowed as I seized control.

  Then the sound stopped.

  Mid-wave, it just ceased.

  Silence fell, it flooded the emptiness, as vast as the sound had been. After a few moments a few oxen bellowed. Sound eventually began to dribble back into the world, wind hissing against the pine branches, the warble of a wren from the bushes, the hum of cicadas, and eventually the distant calls of crickets.

  “Carter’s cross,” I heard Samantha curse.

  “What was—” Tin began, his voice full of terrified awe.

  As the caravan slowed to a stop, a cold trickle of sweat ran down my spine.

  SEVEN

  WHEN I FINALLY PUSHED MYSELF UPWARD, I guessed I had slept maybe an hour—two if I was lucky. I felt foggy from the lack of real sleep. Sometime earlier in the night—heart pounding—I awoke gasping and hadn’t been able to sleep since. I barely remembered the dream. Something about hooded figures among shadowed ruins, yellow demonic faces peering from fallen monuments. A man in red. Coyotes.

  It was still early. The sun hadn’t broken the horizon, and the sky was still the bruised purple of pre-dawn. A thick gray early morning fog was slipping quietly into the camp as the air chilled. The caravan smelled of sweaty oxen, Taft’s hastily prepared pork shoulder from the previous night, and whiskey.

  Some of the crew lingered near the fire at the center of our laager, their bodies silhouetted from the orange glow, engaging in hushed discussion. Others were sitting up huddled beneath their tarpaulins, knees drawn close to their chest, shadowed lumps in the darkness.

  Rough night for all of us, apparently.

  I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and scratched at the thickening beard on my cheek. I needed a shave. I wondered if Hannah had found fresh water during her scouting the previous night, or if I needed to open a canteen. If it was the latter, I’d skip shaving. Shame to waste fresh water.

  You couldn’t call the silence over the laager calm. Tensions still ran high, but the silence was preferable to the chaos that had erupted after the noise died away.

  You couldn’t blame them for their panic. It was frightening.

  “It’s angels blowing the trumpets of the second coming!” one wain driver said.

  “No, it’s the Firsts! The stars are right again and they are returning to devour the world! It’s the Aligning all over!” shouted another.

  “You’re all wrong,” said Chance Shaler. “It’s a Victory weapon being tested beyond the wall. My dad said they had something like that. They’re coming for the Territories!”

  The more rational members of the party tried to play it off as a natural occurrence; thunder, but that explanation was somehow worse than the others. Nothing natural sounds like that.

  I didn’t know what to think.

  Pulling my gun-belt close, I double-checked that the Judge still rested in the leather. The cold metal touched my fingertips and my thumb played over the hammer. At once I felt my nerves ease. With it I felt safer. I felt in control.

  Pushing myself off the ground with a grunt, I strapped my belt around my waist, letting the holster slap against my thigh as I limped closer to the central fire.

  Hannah, Taft and Samantha looked up as I approached. Hannah extended a bottle of whiskey, jiggling it slightly.

  I took it, and sat down on a log next to Taft. When a caravan rests at laager, the wains are pulled into a circle. Tarpaulins are usually extended inward from the wains, overlapping to form a circle around the central core. At the center, however, a space is always left open for the fire. It makes a nice mobile lodge, and keeps the heat in and the smoke out.

  “Trouble sleeping?” asked Samantha. She sat to my right and reached a hand out to rub my back. It was a friendly gesture, but I found myself wishing it was more than that. I could really use someone to lay next to at night. I had lost track of how long it had been.

  “Yeah,” I said. I considered mentioning the dreams, but I decided to keep them to myself, at least for now. Last thing I wanted them to see was fear.

  I took a long pull from the bottle. The liquor rushed down my throat, burning as it went and shocking me out of my grogginess.

  I choked, and Hannah laughed.

  “Easy, boss,” she said. “It ain’t your vermouth.”

  “Shame,” I said, clearing my throat.

  “Right night to start,” said Taft, extending a massive hand towards me.

  I passed the bottle to her, and the group sat in silence for a moment as Taft took two long chugs. Two large bubbles traveled up from the neck to the base.

  Hannah yawned and took the bottle back from Taft. “I had a hell of a night. Fell right to sleep, but it was a fitful rest. Screwed up dreams,” she said, smacking her lips and yawning. “Weird faces. Ruins. Creepy shit. Even if I could get settled down, my dreams kept dragging me away from any rest.”

  Frowning, my eyes flicked up towards the scout. Dreams, and much like mine. Knowing that she was having similar dreams was unnerving.

  “I feel like I walked fifteen miles in my sleep,” Hannah added.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Samantha catch my reaction. I met her concerned look and paused for a moment before turning back to Hannah. “I’m sure it’s just shock after experiencing what we—” I paused, losing my words for a moment. “Experiencing what we experienced. It’s bound to shake all of us, mess us up in the head.”

  Telling her I had the same dreams would only further increase the tension, and right now it was thicker than the strange autumn heat. I hated lying, but the last thing I needed was my crew losing their nerve over snaps in the brush, or jumping whenever an ox started.

  “Right,” said Samantha, drawing out the word. I could feel her eyes watching me but refused to meet them.

  “You know back in Lovat, when the King Tide comes in and Level Two floods? There’s those deep thrums that sound throughout the city?”

  Hannah, Taft and Samantha all nodded.

  “It’s loud as hell, and scary if you don’t know what they are. I’d wager that noise is like the King Tide, just a natural occurrence, like thunder. Some fluke meeting of winds from the north and the south working against these clouds and this unusual heat,” I said, trying to sound cheerful.

  “There was nothing natural about that sound,” Taft said, her voice slurred. She had hit the bottle immediately after the sound had ceased hours earlier, and clearly she hadn’t stopped since.

  “I agree with her,” said Samantha. “That was weird, Wal. Very weird, and very wrong. Thunder rolls like a wave, and even the
King Tide has a pattern. That sound, it was random, it had no pattern, just that undulating moaning metal….” She shuddered.

  “I don’t believe in coincidence,” Taft said. “We’re on the damned Broken Road, Hannah starts spotting shadowy gargoyles on the hills, and then that noise? It’s not right. Not natural.”

  “We’re making a lot of assumptions here,” I said, though my voice sounded weak in my ears.

  “Think it’s Victory? Maybe the Firsts?” asked Hannah, looking over at Taft. “I’ve read prophecies. I’ve heard the Deeper evangelists on the street corners.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I started, taking a deep breath before I tried to find an explanation. “Before we start going there, maybe we should pull it in a little.”

  “What do you mean?” Samantha asked.

  “Well…” I breathed. “Maybe someone is trying to scare us.”

  “It certainly worked,” Samantha said flatly. She crossed her arms across her chest and stared into the flickering flames.

  I had no response. I was out of my element. Cougars? No problem. The occasional bandit? Easy. This? I read the clouds, study the road, fix wagons, make sure everyone arrives to their destination safe. I don’t thwart monsters… at least, I’m not trying to make a habit out of it.

  A silence fell around the fire and we all took turns taking swigs.

  Finally Taft drawled. “Look, we’re all tired. We’re obviously upset. It’s a good couple hours before sunrise. Maybe we should try to get some more sleep? The sooner we can get off this damn road and into Lovat, the better.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Samantha, rising and disappearing into the shadows.

  “See you in a few hours,” said Hannah.

  Taft gave me a drunken salute before half-falling towards her bedroll.

  I continued to stare into the fire, a solitary figure in the middle of the laager. Sixteen souls. Sixteen people looking to me for leadership. It weighed around my neck.

  I repeated my rules to myself:

  Keep a distance between yourself and other travelers.

  Never stop moving.

  Trust no one but your Company.

  Rest only for short periods of time.

  Never rest in the same place.

  Rest.

  I needed rest.

  For the next few hours of early morning, I existed in a state between sleep and waking, not quite cognizant but also not getting any rest. An uneasy, restless limbo.

  When I finally rose, I felt even worse than I had earlier that morning. The camp looked much the same. The sky was brighter now, a moldy blue instead of a deep purple. A lone figure was stoking the central fire, one of Shaler’s wain drivers, a dimanian fellow named Rousseau. I could smell bacon sizzling and beans simmering from the direction of Taft’s chuckwain. It baffled me that anyone could drink that much and still have the faculties to prepare a meal before I was even alert.

  For the second time that morning, and with a heady feeling of déjà vu, I pushed myself up and pulled my gun belt on. I scratched my cheek, yawned, stretched my arms and felt my spine pop. My right knee cracked along with it, a churlish reminder of the past and of the fact that I wasn’t a young man anymore. I grunted.

  Groggy or not, the lightened sky made things seem better. My stomach growled. I needed about a gallon of coffee and a pile of beans, eggs, and bacon.

  The camp was waking around me. Roaders were rolling their bedrolls. A few were laughing and joking as they brushed their teeth with canteen water.

  I sought out Taft.

  “Morning,” I said, sleepily sliding into an empty chair at a folding table. Taft set up a few tables around her chuckwain every morning, noon, and evening.

  “Makes it feel like home,” she would say as she spread gingham tablecloths. I was always impressed by what she kept in her wain. Changes of clothes, crates of all shapes and sizes, tables, chairs, and enough food to feed our small troop for months if need be.

  “You’d be surprised what I keep in here,” she would say with a wry grin.

  This morning, my greeting got no response. Instead, Taft’s wide face peeked around the corner of her wain. She was not grinning. Her face wore the serious expression of someone heavily hungover. She said nothing as she slid a plate of breakfast before me.

  I dug into it, eager to fill the pit in my stomach. Three fried eggs, bacon, cheese grits, a hefty helping of pinto beans in a tomato sauce, and of course, one of Taft’s enormous biscuits. As always, everything tasted incredible.

  The food was a nice escape. I tend to think better with a full belly. I was glad to have a proper chuck. Wensem and I had only hired a few other chuckwains before, and usually the results were disappointing. Their cooking tended to be bland or lazy, their coffee always terrible. Taft was different. Her skill with the griddle was second to none. She could make a mint with a cart in Lovat, and both Wensem and I knew it. The food she had prepared coming east was fantastic, and I was glad when she accepted our offer to return with Bell Caravans when we headed west.

  A real hot breakfast goes a hell of a lot farther than three-week-old, weevil-infested hardtack soaked in burned coffee.

  Wensem strode up. He was naked, a wet towel draped around his neck and shaving cream suds dripping off his crooked chin. Maero don’t go for modesty the way humans, dimanians, or dauger do. Don’t see a need for it. The idea of a standard of modesty was bizarre to them. After years on the trail with him, I was used to it, but I doubted Samantha or the Shalers would be.

  “You should wear pants when we laager,” I said around a mouthful of biscuit. “These are east-territory people. They don’t know many maero. Shaler’s crew gets all awkward when you stroll past in the morning.”

  I had expected a joke, or that he’d complain about me giving orders again, but instead, he made a grunt. I looked up.

  “What’s up?” I asked. Wensem’s face was drawn and serious, his long eyebrows were furrowed. He wasn’t concerned unless there was something to be concerned about.

  He breathed out heavily as he sat in the chair opposite me. “Problems. Ivari Tin is missing.”

  My appetite disappeared.

  “What do you mean, missing?”

  “He’s not in his bedroll. Not at the camp. Hannah went to fetch him for breakfast and he was gone.”

  “He ran off?” I asked. I was worried a few of the company would follow suit and head back to Meyer's Falls.

  “Doubt it. Boots, bedroll, rucksack, they’re all here—he’s not. Only thing missing is that scattergun he fancied.”

  “Maybe he’s hunting,” I said.

  Wensem frowned even deeper. “Who goes hunting naked?”

  “Carter’s cross,” I threw my fork down onto my plate with a clatter. “You sure he’s not out taking a crap or something?”

  Wensem shook his head sadly. “I’m sure. I circled the laager a few times and didn’t see a sign of him. He’s missing, Wal.”

  “By the Firsts,” I swore, pushing my breakfast away from me and rising from the table.

  Taft’s face poked around the chuckwain.“I hear him right? Ivari is missing?”

  I ignored her question. “Wensem, gather everyone up. Shaler, her boys, the twins, Sam, everyone. We’ll find him. We have to find him.”

  Twenty minutes later, the caravan—minus Tin—was gathered. Even Shaler had emerged from her prairiewain to hear my announcement. There were deep circles under everyone’s eyes. Unkempt hair. Shoulders slumped. Eyes unfocused. The signs of exhaustion were there.

  Wensem was the last to join, standing in the back next to the twins. He had pulled on a pair of brown pants held up by suspenders but neglected a shirt. In the early morning light his skin looked even paler than normal.

  “Bad news,” I began, letting the words sink in. “We’re missing a roader. Our gearwain driver, Ivari Tin, isn’t at camp. Everything’s here except his shotgun.”

  Gasps.

  Hushed whispers.

  I waited.


  “Has anyone seen him? Can anyone remember the last time they saw him?”

  “I saw him last night,” said one of Shaler’s crew.

  “I saw him at supper,” said Rousseau, a thin dimanian with two large curving horns that sprouted from his forehead.

  “Anyone spot him after supper?” I asked, knowing the answer from the eyes that gazed back at me.

  Silence.

  “Okay. We have a roader missing and we’re going to look for him. We’ll find him. Tin missing means we’re down to fifteen, so we’ll split into three parties. Wensem will lead one, myself another, and Hannah the third.”

  “I scouted around the laager this morning. He’s not near the camp. Not at any of the designated latrine sites,” added Wensem.

  “So he fled, you mean?” said Margret Shaler sourly. “Ran from the noise we heard yesterday.”

  “Now Maggie, we don’t know that either,” said Taft.

  I could see Shaler’s jaw clench and her fists ball at Taft’s use of “Maggie.”

  “No—” I began, slipping in to try and stop an explosion from Shaler. I was interrupted by Wensem.

  “I think he’s gone. If he ran off he would've taken his gear. As it stands he’s not dressed. Left everything behind but his scattergun. Boots, bedroll, rucksack, letters, all of his belongings are here.”

  “Maybe he killed himself,” snickered one of the Lytle twins. The laugh caught in this throat as Wensem smacked him across the head.

  “Enough of that!” I ordered, before Shaler could complain. “This is one of our own we’re talking about. Let’s show him some respect.”

  “Look, it’s clear he couldn’t hack it. A bit of thunder and he flees—back to Meyer's Falls! I’ve heard similar stories,” said Shaler with a sneer. I wanted to slap her. “We don’t have time to waste looking, especially for a greenhorn dauger gone truant.”

  “He left his boots, lady!” said Hannah, her voice heated. “You don’t hike any trail, broken or not, without your boots! You don’t wander east, west, north or—Carter’s bloody cross—south, naked! You expect us to just leave him? You know what? Screw you, lady.”