Slvasta dragged his boots through the feathery lingrass that grew lavishly between the trunks of the quasso trees, ripping the twiny blades apart. It was easier than picking his feet up; the lingrass came halfway up his shins. Dew slicked his stiff regiment-issue canvas garters; he knew that by midday that damp would be soaking his socks and rubbing his feet raw. An hour into the sweep, and he was bored and irked already.
‘Crud, Slvasta, why not just ring a bell to tell the Fallers we’re here?’ Corporal Jamenk chided.
‘This stuff is everywhere,’ Slvasta complained, as he carried on tearing the wispy strands apart. ‘I can’t help it.’
Jamenk drew an annoyed breath, but decided not to push it. Slvasta gave Ingmar a desperate look, but his friend wasn’t about to take his side in any dispute with the corporal.
Slvasta was peeved by the betrayal. The two of them had signed on with the regiment in Cham three months ago. Slvasta could have done it earlier, but he’d agreed to wait for Ingmar’s seventeenth birthday so they could do it together. Signing on was all he’d wanted to do since he was nine, and his father and uncle had vanished after a Fall. The regiment had never found the bodies, not in all the sweeps they made of the county during the following month. Even at school, everyone knew what that meant.
Two years later his mother had married Vikor; he was a decent man, and Slvasta now had two little half-brothers. But the loss of his father – the way he was taken – was a fire which burnt his very soul. He knew he would never be fulfilled, never be guided by the Skylords to the Giu nebula where the Heart of the Void waited, not until he had exorcized his demons. And that would only happen when he had his vengeance on the diabolical Fallers, smashing up every one of their eggs that plagued the world.
Joining the regiment was the first step in achieving that. Slvasta had dreams of rising up through the ranks until he was Bienvenido’s lord general, commanding troops across the globe. He would show the Fallers no mercy until the Forest which birthed them eventually realized it could never defeat him, and retreated from Bienvenido forever. Now that would be true fulfilment.
However, the reality of regimental life was altogether more mundane that he’d been expecting. Uniform to be painstakingly maintained. Horses to muck out. Food you wouldn’t even use as pigswill back home on the farm. Drill – endless drill, marching round the headquarters’ yard. Flamethrower practice against mannequins representing Fallers – now that was exciting, the two times he’d got to do it. Search exercises that were basically little more than camping trips out in the wilds beyond the county’s farmland.
Then finally, the beacon fires had been lit. There had been a Fall in the lands around Prerov, six hundred miles east along the Eastern Trans-Continental line, the main railway track that bisected the continent from west to east. The regiment had swung into action. They’d deployed their full strength of five hundred troops in less than three hours. Along with all their equipment and mods, they’d embarked the special train laid on for them. Half the town had come out to cheer them off.
He had spent most of the journey with his face pressed against the train carriage window, watching the beacon flames roaring away in their huge iron cage braziers. So big they took days to burn out. He could almost feel their heat every time the steam train raced past one, helping to raise his excitement and determination.
The bulky iron engine had finally pulled in to Prerov’s station along with several other troop trains. Eight regiments had been called out to help sweep the estimated Fall zone for eggs. It was the first time Slvasta had ever been outside his own county – his first time anywhere, really. The station was in the middle of the commercial district at the foot of the striking mountain town on the western end of the Guelp range. Slvasta stood on the platform and stared up at the regional capital in delight. Prerov was over two thousand years old. Humans and mods had spent generations hacking into the stony slopes, producing terrace after terrace cluttered with buildings that had whitewashed walls and red clay tile roofs. Most of them were shaded under huge tomfeather and flameyew trees growing in their courtyards. And, perched right at the top, without any trees close by, was the great observatory dome of the Watcher Guild, whose eternal vigil helped protect Bienvenido from Falls. He was desperate to climb the steep winding steps that knitted the terraces together and explore the ancient town, with its wealth and colour, and lots of well-to-do girls who would probably be appreciative of regiment troops risking their lives.
As it happened, the regiment didn’t even spend one night billeted in town. A squadron of Marines had arrived from Varlan, the capital, as soon as the beacons were lit. Smart tough men in their imposing midnight-black uniforms, they’d quickly claimed the authority of the Captain and started organizing the regiments. It was important to get the sweeps underway as soon as possible, before the eggs had time to ensnare anyone. So an hour after the train pulled in, Corporal Jamenk’s squad, which comprised just Slvasta and Ingmar, had been assigned to sweep the whole Romnaz valley. Slvasta had been proud of the responsibility – it was a huge area. Until Captain Tamlyan had sneeringly pointed out that they were on the very fringe of the estimated Fall zone; it was an assignment to keep the new recruits and an untried corporal out of the way and out of trouble.
A convoy of farm carts had taken them and eleven other squads out of Prerov, the humans rattling round in the back while the regiment’s mods trotted alongside. The farmland immediately outside the regional capital was like an extended garden, with the fields and meadows and groves immaculately tended by mods and their human owners. Lovely villas sat in the middle of each estate, larger and grander than any of the houses back in Cham. Streams and canals were meshed together, providing excellent irrigation and drainage. Pump houses clattered away, puffing smoke into the blazing sapphire sky as the engines spun big iron flywheels, maintaining the all-important water levels. It was the only noise the troops could hear. No one else was on the broad road with its guardian rows of tolmarc trees. The villages they passed through had sentries – the old men and stout women; the younger, able, men were in the local regiment reserve, out helping to sweep.
On the second day, the farms were larger, and less arable. Cattle, sheep and ostriches roamed across bigger and bigger meadows. Abandoned quarries disfigured the land. Slvasta was amazed at how much ore, sand and rock had been dug out in the past. The hills to the south grew steeper – precursors to the distant Algory mountains. Active quarries were still and silent, their mod workforces penned up in corrals while their wranglers waited for the sweeps to finish and give the all-clear. Forests began to dominate the rolling landscape, most of them with big square areas eaten out of them where logging operations were felling timber. Farms were further and further apart, and most buildings were made from wood rather than stone.
Trees lined both sides of every public road on Bienvenido, forming leafy avenues the whole world over. It was a law dating back to Captain Iain, who ruled seven hundred years after Landing, so travellers could always see the route ahead. Here, they were just icepalm saplings, the hope of a road to come rather than a definitive path. The convoy began to split up, with carts rolling off at junctions down tracks marked by even smaller saplings. As the sweltering afternoon stretched out interminably, Jamenk’s squad rattled on until they finally left the sentinel trees behind. All that marked the way to Romnaz valley now was a couple of wheel ruts in the ground. Their driver dropped them off at the head of the valley. The last village they’d passed was half a day behind them.
‘I’ll pick you up back here in eight days,’ he told them. So their sweep began.
*
The squad’s equipment and supplies were carried by a regimental horse-mod and a pair of dwarf-mods. Slvasta was never entirely comfortable around the creatures. They were different from most of Bienvenido’s native animals, which bolstered his suspicions. He just found the whole thing weird – the way their embryos could be moulded by skilled adaptors into any form. In their neut form t
hey were simple six-legged beasts half the size of a terrestrial horse, but fatter. Six odd lumps along their back were vestigial limbs which the adaptors could coax out in the various mods if they were needed. He simply didn’t see how that could be natural.
For the mod-horse that carried the bulk of the squad’s kit, adaptors had produced something not dissimilar to a basic neut, but larger and with stronger legs. More subtle internal changes gave them colossal stamina; they weren’t fast, but they could carry a load for days at a time. And the simple thoughts in their brain could be easily controlled with ’pathed instructions.
The mod-dwarfs were loosely modelled on a humanoid form. With four legs and four arms kept in vestigial form, they were bipedal, though clumsy with it. Their heads came up to Slvasta’s elbow. Jamenk had given them the flamethrower cylinder backpacks to carry. If they did find any Fallers, the mod-dwarfs could hand over the weapons quickly. In an emergency they could even fire them – though Slvasta wasn’t entirely convinced about how good their aim was.
Flamethrowers were supposedly a fool-proof method of dealing with Fallers. They could cover themselves with much stronger protective teekay shells than most humans; bullets didn’t always get through. Even so, Slvasta felt reasonably confident that the carbine he carried on a sling would give any Faller a pretty hard time of it. If the weapon worked, that is; they jammed all too often in practice firings.
The mist began to lift, long tendrils winding up lazily into the sky, where they vanished amid the delicate indigo twigwebs of the quasso trees. Bright beams of sunlight filtered down past the blue-green leaves, dappling the lingrass. The sky above became very blue again, with no clouds.
Slvasta took his tunic jacket off, and ’pathed a mod-dwarf. The dumb creature trudged over and took the jacket from him.
‘Did you ask permission to do that?’ Jamenk asked. ‘Regiment uniform will resist an eggsumption.’
Slvasta didn’t let his contempt for the corporal show through his teekay shell; he was too used to the idiot’s insecurities for that. Jamenk had been a corporal for four months; he was twenty-two with all the maturity of a twelve-year-old. The youngest son of the Aguri family, who owned some land in the county, which was why he was in the regiment in the first place; he wasn’t going to inherit anything. And also why he’d got a promotion while better men languished in the ranks.
‘Sorry, corporal,’ Slvasta said in a strictly level voice. ‘It’s getting warm. I was worried the jacket might slow down my reactions when we come across the eggs.’ And he was mighty dubious about the jacket being resistant to eggsumption; it was just ordinary tweed soaked in mythas herb juice.
‘All right,’ Jamenk said. ‘But nothing else, okay?’
‘Yes, corporal.’ Slvasta made sure he didn’t look at Ingmar. They’d both smirk. No telling how Jamenk would react to that. Half the time he wanted to be their friend; the rest of the day was spent trying to lord it over them. Inconsistency: another sign of a truly bad NCO.
After another half-hour the mist had vanished altogether. Jamenk and Ingmar had both taken off their jackets. Plenty of sunlight was filtering down through the trees, heating the still air underneath. Even the bussalores had stopped rushing round as the heat built. Thankfully the lingrass was shorter here, or it would be exhausting work just to walk.
Jamenk unrolled the map Captain Tamlyan had given them, then closed his eyes. Somewhere high above, his mod-bird was gliding on the thermals, keen eyes scouring the bedraggled tree canopy that smothered the rumpled valley – a view which skilled ex-sight could borrow. Slvasta wondered why the regiment didn’t give all of them a mod-bird and train them to see through it; the ungainly things had excellent eyesight and actually did most of the searching during a sweep. But it was a status thing, of course. Officers and NCOs only, distinguishing them from the ordinary troops. That would be one of a very, very long list of things Slvasta was going to change when he was lord general of the regiments.
‘I can see where they’ve been logging,’ Jamenk said, his eyes tight shut. ‘Another couple of klicks.’
The track was easy enough to follow. It wasn’t used much, but there must have been some traffic. Trees had been chopped down where there were particularly dense clusters. A couple of streams they’d crossed had been forded by trunks laid across the bed. According to the Prerov mayor’s office, the Romnaz valley was claimed by the Shilo family, who were foresters by trade.
Jamenk nodded in satisfaction and rolled his map up. ‘Come on.’
The mods began plodding forwards again. Slvasta started to follow the corporal. He knew he should be looking round for any sign of a Fallen egg. Smaller trees broken, strange tears in the canopy of larger forests, long furrows in the ground, dead fish in ponds. But none of that was going to be visible in this wild forest. It was impossible to see twenty metres on either side of the track. He just kept trudging on, remembering to take regular sips of water from his canteen. The air was horribly humid, but he was sweating hard. It was important to keep hydrated. That was one of the few things he remembered his father telling him when they were out in their smallholding’s fields.
‘This has been used recently,’ Ingmar said. He was looking at the track as it passed across a runnel.
Ingmar was a skinny youth whose limbs seemed to belong to someone even taller, with glasses that had the thickest lenses Slvasta had ever known. They made his eyes implausibly large, showing up the milky stains in his irises. In another ten years, Ingmar was going to be using his ex-sight alone – just like his father before him, who’d been eye-blind for the last eleven years.
He shouldn’t be able to qualify for the regiment, either, Slvasta thought guiltily. But Ingmar had been so desperate to prove himself capable of living independently from his family, and the recruiting sergeant was always keen for new troops.
‘It’s a cart track,’ Slvasta pointed out reasonably. ‘The Shilos use it to get in and out of the valley.’
‘I know that,’ Ingmar said defensively. ‘I mean this cart was here in the last couple of days.’ He pointed at some wheel ruts in a patch of damp ground. The lingrass had been crushed into the mud. ‘See? The breaks are fresh.’
‘Well that’s good,’ Slvasta said. ‘It means they’re still around.’
Ingmar gave the ruts another glance. ‘Nobody moves round after a Fall. All the farms and villages wait for the all-clear.’
Slvasta threw his arms wide and gestured at the immense forest. ‘Because anyone living here is really going to know what’s going on, right?’
Ingmar ducked his head.
‘There aren’t any beacons out here,’ Slvasta persisted. ‘The Shilos won’t even know there’s been a Fall.’
‘Okay,’ Ingmar said sullenly.
‘Come on, you two,’ Jamenk said. ‘You’re arguing about crud. We can ask the Shilos if they came in or out when we get to the croft.’
‘Yes, corporal,’ Ingmar said. He stood up, not looking at Slvasta.
After a minute of silent walking, Slvasta used a private ’path to say a very direct and humble: ‘Sorry,’ to his friend. Before they’d signed up, they would sometimes spend days on end squabbling about the most ridiculous things as they learned about the world: Did Skylords drop Fallers? Was there an outside to this universe like the first ships claimed, and if so where was it? Why was maize yellow? Would Asja kiss either of them? Was rust a disease from space? Would Paulette kiss either of them? How could coal possibly be squashed wood? What gave every nebula its own shape when stars were all the same? Mynea was a great kisser – oh no she wasn’t – yeah, how do you know? Why do tatus flies always go for blond hair to spawn in? Crud like that. It didn’t mean anything, and Ingmar with his logical brain won most disputes anyway; Slvasta just got in a whole lot of fun from trying to ruin his friend’s argument.
He sighed. Life in the regiment was a fast lesson in growing up.
‘It’s okay,’ Ingmar ’path spoke back, equally direct, so Jamenk couldn�
��t sense their conversation. ‘I just didn’t understand, that’s all.’
‘Understand what?’
‘If they were leaving the valley, going to town for supplies or something, then we would have known, either passed them or that last village would have told us they’d driven out of the valley. If they were coming in, then why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why come in? The whole county knows there was a Fall; surely they would have stayed in the village until the Marines announced the all-clear.’
Slvasta grinned at his friend. ‘Because they really believe this squad is going to make the valley safe for them.’
‘Oh. Yeah,’ Ingmar’s expression was sheepish. ‘You have a point there.’
‘I always do.’
‘So can’t you tell which way the cart was going?’
‘No not really. It was just luck I saw that rut.’
‘Do you think they train Marines to read a trail properly?’ Slvasta asked wistfully. He’d been awestruck by the Marines back in Prerov. They were smart and decisive and overloaded with genuine authority; no screw-ups in their ranks. And those black uniforms had looked amazingly cool. When they walked down a street, girls didn’t even bother glancing at anyone wearing a regimental uniform. Marines were the toughest troops on Bienvenido, responsible directly to the Captain himself. Slvasta desperately wanted to ask how you joined. But even he knew he should wait until he had a couple of successful egg hunts under his belt. Maybe even axed one open himself.
‘Not that again?’ Ingmar moaned.
‘Why not? Don’t you have any ambition?’
The Abyss Beyond Dreams Page 17
