Thief of the Ancients

by Mike Wild

  Weaving to dodge the tumbling descent of yet more stones, Kali began to work her way across the hillside once more, at last spotting Horse rearing against his tether, horns and armour plating deployed to deflect falling rubble. She moved to him quickly, slapped his side solidly and whispered calming words in his ears, and, though his nostrils still flared and he bucked slightly beneath her, the bamfcat no longer fought her. One thing was for sure, though – she had to get him out of there. Kali quickly untied his tether and led him away from the quake. At least that was her intent. The problem was, there didn’t seem to be any away to get to. What Kali had thought to be a phenomenon specific to the hills was actually affecting an area much wider.

  Exactly how much became clear as soon as she and Horse topped the next ridge.

  When she had ridden up into the hills with Slack the previous evening, she had left below her a town lying peacefully in the savannah and forest lands east of Andon. Solnos was positioned beyond a sun-bleached but solid wooden bridge, the river meandering gently around its northern outskirts, and at the other end of town a grassy escarpment rose to the south before sloping away in the direction of Fayence. The town itself was a little smaller than Kalten, without defensive walls because none had ever been needed, and its buildings were one or two-storey affairs, constructed of blindingly white plastered bricks over a wooden framework. The buildings were centred around two squares, each strung with bunting and paper lanterns, one lined with shops selling everything from food to farming implements to bolts of silk, the other home to the town’s well and church, a twin-turreted and bell-towered affair that was rurally typical of the Final Faith. The Faith’s ‘missionary’ presence in such an otherwise idyllic spot had been the only thing that had stopped Kali musing on the possibility of opening a second Here There Be Flagons in the town, but it had been something she’d remained willing to consider should the Faith ever be kicked out on their arses, as they thoroughly deserved.

  Now, it was likely she never could. Solnos was turning rapidly to ruin.

  Where only the previous afternoon children had been laughing and playing in the streets, their parents sampling the exotic fare of the town’s communal dining plaza, all had degenerated into chaos.

  The white buildings were now criss-crossed with a growing number of cracks, each widening by the second as the buildings were shaken to their foundations. Many of the inhabitants of the town were racing in and out of the buildings, desperately gathering valuables or loved ones, or rushing in panic about the streets, trying to understand what was happening to them. The destruction wasn’t limited to the buildings, either – even those who had safely evacuated their homes could not escape the effects of the quake, as they found themselves fleeing dark, jagged rents in the streets themselves, bunting and lanterns falling and fluttering about them like dying birds.

  It was utter calamity and confusion. The people of Solnos hadn’t the slightest clue what was hitting them. But Kali did. From her vantage point on the hillside, she could see it, even if she couldn’t quite yet take it in.

  “Okay,” she said with a levity she didn’t feel, “that’s a new one.”

  To the west of the town, in the midst of its farmlands, massive machines were drilling out of the valley floor. There were three of them in all, emerging one after the other, the first already risen to the height of the ridge on which Kali stood, filling the sky and dwarfing her with its mass. The machines resembled, of all things, giant fir cones. The comparison was hardly apt, however, because these were not the products of some unbelievably huge, nightmare tree, but things of metal which spouted steam as they rose. Things which crackled with electrical energy. Things which Kali had no doubt had been manufactured, which only served to make them all the more staggering.

  She could only stand stunned beside Horse as the second and third machines rose to join the first, churning slowly out of the ground with a deafening crunching of substrata and roots, carrying with them great scoops of soil, shrub, and even whole trees, sloughing from their sides in lethal downpours. Rising ever higher, they inevitably became visible to the town beyond the ridge, and Kali’s gaze flicked to the people of Solnos, who as one had momentarily forgotten their immediate concerns to stop and point, or scream.

  As one, the massive machines had begun to turn slowly on their vertical as well as horizontal axis so their pointed peaks would eventually face towards the ground. As they did this they emitted a siren sound that reminded Kali of the last, desperate calls of some dying leviathan, or of some impossibly loud and haunting foghorn, blaring endlessly into the night. The sound drowned out everything, even the clatter of the crumbling hills.

  What in the pits of Kerberos were these things? The style of their construction and the runes Kali could make out carved into their eaves were dwarven, and the devastation they’d caused upon emerging suggested they had lain underground for millennia. Their history and reasons for construction were only two of the questions that intrigued her, though. What had brought them to the surface? Who or what controlled them? And why?

  No, Kali mentally kicked herself. Honestly, sometimes... The question she should be asking was, what could she do to help the people below?

  Kali turned her attention back to the west of town, to the farmlands. There, a number of Solnossians, little more than dots from her vantage point, were scurrying across the fields, their tools abandoned. Kali had no doubt that when these most unexpected of crops had emerged from the ground, the farmers had been as staggered and transfixed as their neighbours in town and now that they had collected themselves to flee, reaching safety appeared to be almost impossible.

  The fields were nothing less than a disaster zone, subsiding not only into the three gaping pits that the machines had created but into rents in the ground like those that had split the streets of Solnos. Even as she watched, Kali saw two of the fleeing figures sucked into oblivion, clawing desperately for purchase as they went, and she knew that things were only going to get worse. Beneath all of them was the subterranean expanse that she had only just escaped, and if Quinking’s Depths collapsed further, Solnos might as well say goodbye to anything or anyone this side of the ridge.

  Kali mounted Horse and spurred him down the hillside towards the fleeing figures. She frowned, the fleeing men and women were some distance apart, and to aid them all she and Horse would have to perform some pretty fancy manoeuvring.

  With a “hyahh!” she drove the bamfcat toward the nearest group, shouting at them to raise their arms as she leaned sideways to scoop the first of them up. The man arced up onto Horse’s back, landing with a thud in the saddle, and Kali repeated the rescue with a second farmer and a third. She could carry no more behind her for the time being and reined Horse away from the landslips and to the safety of a patch of stable ground.

  Kali had no choice but to ignore their pleas about rescuing husbands, wives or brothers and wasted no time, turning Horse again and scanning the fields for those in the most immediate danger.

  One group of five or six – in the chaos it was difficult to tell – were struggling, their escape route cut off by a fresh fissure. Attempting to backtrack, they were once more caught in the middle of the subsidence.

  Another “hyaah!” sent Horse hammering towards them and, almost as if he had read her mind, the bamfcat deployed more of his natural armaments. The extra horns which had just sprang from Horse’s body were, for once, meant neither as defensive or offensive appendages but provided hand and footholds for the group of farmers it would otherwise have been impossible to carry. Quite what the farmers made of the great armoured beast as it pounded towards them she’d never know, but as they staggered back before his fearsome sight, Kali had to indicate as best she could what they should do. Thankfully, in their desperation, the men and women seemed quick learners, and as Horse galloped into their midst, they leapt for and clung to the armoured protrusions.

  “Hang on!” Kali shouted and, wondering vaguely if there was some kind of obscur
e world record for the number of farmers dangling from a bamfcat, she quickly reined Horse around once more, riding him into a jump across the fissure that had earlier stymied the farmers’ flight.

  The bamfcat roared triumphantly as they arced over the collapse, and, as they thudded down on the other side Kali, too, let out a whoop. But it wasn’t over yet.

  “My girl!” One of the women pleaded as Kali dropped them off with the others. “Please, she was frightened, she ran, I couldn’t reach her...”

  “Where?” Kali said, already turning Horse.

  “She ran beneath one of those things. Lord of All, please, you have to help her!”

  Kali stared back into the chaos, seeing no sign of the girl but spotting instead another group of stranded victims, whose escape route was blocked by fallen trees. They were attempting to hack through the barrier of vegetation but their going was slow and all the while, behind them, the ground broken by the machines was growing ever larger.

  Kali swallowed. She had no choice but to ride to help these people, and all she could do was hope she’d spot the youngster on route – the problem being, if she did, what the hells was she going to do then?

  A second later, the dilemma became stark reality, a scream managing to make itself heard over the strange wailing of the machines. Kali stared hard and spotted a small figure struggling on the edge of the pit in the shadow of the first of them, and cursed. There was no way she could reach both the girl and the others in time, and for a moment she reined Horse’s nose left and right, left and right, tortured by the decision to save the lives of a whole group or of one, however young. Thankfully, it was a decision she didn’t have to make, the sound of further heavy hoofbeats signalling the arrival of a second horse by her side.

  “You take the girl!” Its flame-haired rider shouted from her solid white mount. “I’ll fetch Treave and the others!”

  There was no time to think about who the woman was or where she had appeared from. Once more Kali booted Horse’s flanks and steered him towards the girl. But if her chances of success had been precarious so far, they had just gotten a lot worse.

  Kali found herself weaving Horse through the masses of soil that poured from the machine hanging above the girl in a deadly rain, at one point even having to turn him abruptly as a tree crashed back to the ground directly in their path. It was a close run thing with far too many near misses and, the further in she rode, the thicker the falls became, leaving Kali with no choice but to ignore the painful hammering of falling detritus on Horse’s hide and on her own, far less protected flesh. At last, though, she reached the girl and scooped the dishevelled, but miraculously unhurt, child up behind her, turning Horse for the return trip.

  But again, she cursed. What seemed like a whole field by itself was falling in a solid curtain that would be impossible to pass without being crushed. Nevertheless, Kali spurred Horse on, leaning forward as she did to whisper in his ear, “If ever there was a time for you to do your thing, my friend, it’s right now.”

  Horse was of the same mind, galloping straight ahead. One moment the bamfcat, Kali and the girl were heading into the roaring soilfall and the next they were heading away from it, on the other side.

  Kali kept Horse at a gallop until they had reached the waiting farmers, slowed him to a trot, and stopped beside the anxious mother to swing her daughter down into her arms. She dismissed the woman’s thanks, but not ungraciously, being more concerned with the fate of the one who had come to aid her in the rescue attempt. She stared back into the disaster area, a hopeless mass of uncontrollable landslides now, and bit her lip. Long, long seconds went by but then, bursting through a cloud of debris, a white, if somewhat soil-stained, horse appeared at full gallop. The farmers she had rescued clung to her saddle in much the same way Kali’s had clung to Horse’s horns, and a moment later they were with their own.

  Kali watched the woman dismount, nodding modestly as the farmers thanked her for what she had done, but seemingly more interested in tending to the welfare of the animal she had ridden. Kali dismounted Horse and walked to the white horse, casually palming between its gravestone teeth one of the bacon lardons she kept for sentimental reasons, and then, without a word, the two women stood side by side to stare up at the strange, rotating machines which had come to dominate the whole sky.

  All three of them now fully inverted – or perhaps the right way up, who was to tell? – their rotation appeared to be speeding up. The sound of their sirens faded to be replaced by a strange and very deep thrumming that seemed to be produced by the rotating eaves. The faster the machine turned, the more intrusive and painful the thrumming became, and all in the fields were forced to press their hands to their ears to block it out. The painful effects seemed to last no more than a minute, however, although both bamfcat and horse snorted in protest a little longer. As the animals calmed, Kali guessed the thrumming had passed beneath the range of anything’s hearing, leaving the machines to rotate in apparent silence.

  Kali glanced at the woman beside her. She still stared up at the machines with narrowed eyes and a steely set to her jaw, as if these things were an affront to her. There was also the same determination on her face that she felt herself – to find out just what these bastards were and what they would do next.

  “Hells of a morning,” Kali said.

  “Not exactly what I expected when I got out of bed,” the woman said.

  “Kali Hooper.”

  “Gabriella DeZantez.”

  Kali studied her more closely. With her bone structure and fiery red hair she looked like a younger version of the Anointed Lord, Katherine Makennon. Kali didn’t usually notice such things but it was also clear to her that the hair had been cut by her own hand rather than the prissy fingers of the primpers and preeners who’d begun to appear in the cities. She could tell immediately that Gabriella was different, like herself having little time for people’s expectations or normal conventions. Her attitude was reflected in her clothing, too, the woman dressed for practicality rather than fashion, in a dusty surplice and working trews. Unfortunately it was the surplice of the Order of the Swords of Dawn, the Final Faith’s warrior elite, bearing the faded crossed circle of the church. Kali had no idea what had caused Gabriella to end up as she was in a backwater such as this but she knew instinctively that she liked her. Which made it all that more of a shock when, with no preamble at all, the woman’s next words were, “As the Enlightened One of the town of Solnos, I am placing you under arrest.”

  “What?” Kali protested. “Why?”

  Gabriella DeZantez turned to face her directly for the first time, and Kali started slightly. Gabriella’s eyes were unlike any she had ever seen, one a clear sapphire blue, the other a striking almond flecked with gold.

  “I should have thought that was obvious,” she said.

  Kali surveyed the devastation. “You mean this? I had nothing to do with this.”

  “There is evidence to the contrary.”

  “Evidence? What evidence? Now wait one farking minute!”

  But before she could argue her case further Gabriella DeZantez quickly unsheathed her twin blades, whirled them full circle and slammed their hilts into her temples.

  Kali dropped to the ground like a stone.

  “Treave, Maltus, bring her,” the Enlightened One said as she strode by two of the farmers in the direction of what was left of the town. “As the Overseer has decreed, this ‘Kali Hooper’ must answer for her crimes.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  FOR THE LAST hour the archer’s aim had been unwavering, the tip of the arrow pointing precisely where it had pointed when his wait had begun. It had not moved a hair’s breadth in any direction. In the hands of any normal bowman, the strain of holding it so would have long ago become too intense. The bow would have begun to shake and skew, the shaft unstable and tremulous between two crooked fingers of the right. The nock of the arrow would, by now, have begun to buck spastically on the bowstring, and the strain would have t
ransformed the tendons of the arms into agonising webs of red hot wire. Under such circumstances the bow would have to have been relaxed, lowered, and the trembling, cramped limbs exercised and massaged. The intended target of the bow might, as a result, have been lost.

  In the hands of this archer, there was no such concern. The bow remained steadfast and its aim true. Everything was perfectly still, the only sounds in the flue where he hid the subtle creaking of wood and his soft, measured breathing. His concentration was sublime. Where others’ gaze would have long ago started to wander, their vision to blur and lose focus, his blue eyes remained focused and alert, waiting for the moment – the one, fleeting moment – that he knew would eventually come.

  Man and weapon were the best there were.

  It was why the bow was called Suresight.

  And why the archer went by the name of Slowhand.

  The moment arrived. A small flicker of shadows betrayed motion some twenty yards outside the flue, framed in the one inch square formed by four bars of the iron grille through which his arrow was aimed. Despite the imminent arrival of his target, Slowhand’s breathing remained calm. All that changed was that he smiled.

  Smiled because this was not the first time in the last few days he’d waited for the perfect shot, and depending on how things went it might not be the last. For the last thing Slowhand intended was to kill the man whose shadow approached – that would be far too easy. He did not want Querilous Fitch to die quite yet.

  Oh, Querilous Fitch. Slowhand so much wanted the psychic manipulator to suffer. He wanted him to suffer in the same way the corpse-like bastard had made Jenna suffer, stripping from his sister everything that had made her who and what she was. It might have been Slowhand himself who had given the order to fire upon her airship, and consequently end her life in a flaming crash, but in truth it had been Fitch who’d ended it long before. Independence, spirit, freedom of will: Fitch had taken them all until Jenna was nothing more than a puppet of the Final Filth. Slowhand did not have the abilities that Fitch possessed, of course – to literally stick his filthy little fingers in unspeakable pies – but he had his own, and so far they were working just fine.