by Oisin McGann
Benyan bowed his head. The mission was a great honour and he was staggered that he was to receive the Blessing of the Martyrs. It was given only to truly dedicated members of the order. In the back of his mind, a disloyal voice reminded him that it was also only given to men who committed mortiphas, and ended up dying to complete their mission.
‘What are their names, Master?’
‘They are called Thomex, Kellen and Chamus Aranson.’
In the chilly darkness before dawn, Riadni rinsed the sleepiness from her face with cool water from the well bucket. She was sure she had packed everything she needed, but was reluctant to leave in case she had forgotten something. She had never run away before and she was not about to leave now and come back because she had gone without her water bottle or a spare pair of shoes. This had to be for good. A sudden thought occurred to her and she crept back into the house, running her fingers along the familiar adobe walls as she climbed the stairs to her room. She would bring the new dress her mother had laid out on the bed for her. The thought of her mother nearly made her cry. Mama would be heartbroken. Riadni held the dress up and admired the fine fabric and her mother’s delicate needlework once more. She wanted Benyan to see her in that dress. Folding it carefully, she put it in her satchel, and then slipped out of the room and down the stairs.
At the bottom of the stairs was the cupboard where her father kept the family’s guns. In a moment of sheer nerve, Riadni found the hidden key, opened the locked doors and pulled a flintlock pistol from its mountings. There was a bag of ammunition and a horn full of powder with the gun and she put all three in her bag. If she were to join the Hadram Cassal, she would need her own weapon.
Rumbler was waiting for her outside, his saddlebags already full to bursting. She tied her satchel on top of the bags and looked around her, wondering if there was anything else she had forgotten. The horse stood watching her, his breathing and the shifting of his hooves against the ground the only sounds in the quiet yard. Riadni hesitated, half wishing someone would come out and catch her before she could go, persuade her that there was still something worth staying for. Then she remembered her father’s last words to her and she took hold of Rumbler’s reins and led him as silently as she could from the yard, out and down the road, until she was sure nobody would hear.
Bringing Rumbler to a halt, she put her foot in its stirrup, vaulted into the saddle and set him off down the road at a steady trot. Her father and brothers would track her, she was sure of that, and they would expect her to make straight for the Hadram Cassal camp. Instead, she headed west, the opposite direction, and lost the horse’s tracks in the dust of the busy main road. Where the road forded the river, she turned into the shallow water and waded upstream, coming out into the grassland that swept up towards the mountains and the flat, square shape of Sleeping Hill. She would take a route that would lead her far from her family’s farm. It was still dark in the early morning, but she would make sure it took her most of the day to reach the camp that was to be her new home.
The five elders led Benyan Akhna up the face of a steep slope in almost total darkness. It was a hard climb. He was the youngest by decades, and yet he found it hard to keep up. Sometimes he could only follow by listening when they disappeared into the darkness above him. Eventually, he came out on the top of the hill and found them waiting, standing in a semicircle to receive him. Lakrem Elbeth held a mask in his hands, carved entirely from a single piece of stone. There were no holes for nose or mouth, but in the place of eyes, there were two purple pieces of crystal, glinting in the dim light of the half-moon.
‘Pray with us, Benyan,’ Elbeth said, and they all turned towards the east.
All six knelt, bowed their heads and covered their eyes, each becoming deeply immersed in his own prayer. They stayed that way until the sky brightened with the dawn and the first glimpse of the sun showed over the ragged edge of the horizon.
‘Now we will begin,’ the Hadram Cassal leader told the boy. ‘The ceremony will take some time and there will be times when you will feel fear and doubt. Put these from your mind and welcome the power of the martyrs into your soul. These are your personal belongings?’
Benyan nodded and handed over his bag.
‘You will change your clothes too. Take off your old things and Jasker here will give you a new set.’
Undressing while the old men turned away to respect his modesty, he pulled on the Altiman-style underwear, vest, slacks and shoes that they gave him. Jasker, the smallest of the elders, had started a fire with some kindling and sacrificial oil and now he threw Benyan’s things on it one by one. His mother’s silk scarf, his father’s prized wristwatch, even his Shanneyan books, Benyan watched numbly as all his most precious possessions were tossed into the flames. It was as if his whole life were being wiped away. While the fire burned, the other men sat him down and groomed him for the task ahead. They trimmed his hair, cleaned and clipped his nails and scrubbed the exposed skin of his neck and hands with a pumice stone. The cloth used to wipe off the rubbed skin was thrown into the fire along with the hair and nail clippings. Then, he was handed a shirt, which he pulled on and buttoned up with trembling fingers. Elbeth looked him up and down and nodded to himself.
‘You are ready.’
He motioned to Benyan to lie down on a short slope facing the sunrise and the men crouched around him. Jasker had taken some ashes from the fire and mixed them in a small bowl with some of the sacrificial oil. Elbeth knelt by his head, taking some of the mixture on his fingers, drew lines on Benyan’s face, each line tracing a path from the edges of his face in towards his eyes. When this was done, Elbeth wiped his hands and picked up the stone mask, which he laid over Benyan’s face. Benyan suffered a moment of claustrophobia as he felt his face covered. Then the first rays of the sun shone through the purple crystals into his eyes. He could hear the men chanting a prayer in a language he did not understand, but one he recognised from the ancient teachings his father had practised. It was comforting to hear the old sounds again.
Then something streamed down the path of the sunlight and into his eyes. He went rigid with shock as shrieks filled his head. He tried to pull the mask away, but the elders were holding his arms and legs, and Elbeth was pressing the cold stone ever harder against his face, gripping the sides of his head. Memories of pain and torture that were not his swept through him. He screamed and thrashed, but the men were strong and held him fast. As fear crushed the breath out of him, he thought of Riadni and how she had made him think of a life beyond the Hadram Cassal and the shrieks grew louder and the pain more intense. The purple light was carrying something with it, as if it were pulling something alive from the bright sky and injecting it into his being. Suddenly he had a feeling of falling backwards, and of other minds filling the space between himself and his senses. They flooded into him and around him and embraced him and it felt good to be part of them. Shanna was offering him glory and heaven the spirits told him. He could join them in paradise once he had completed one small task. He laughed and welcomed them, throwing off the cares that had weighed heavy on him all his life. He was ready to do whatever they asked. No price was too great for the chance to serve Shanna. Nothing would stop him from joining her in paradise.
Benyan was sprawled on the ground and the sun was high in the sky when he awoke. He squinted up at it, realising the mask was gone from his face. Stretching his limbs, he found an energy and strength that he had never known before. There were other minds entwined with his and he felt them move in time with him, as if his body and that of another shared the same space. Elbeth sat cross-legged before him. Benyan sprang to his feet and stood to attention. Elbeth smiled up at him.
‘You have the Blessing of the Martyrs upon you,’ he said softly. ‘Now it is time for you to begin your task. You have memorised the photograph of Thomex Aranson. You will go to his home in Victovia. You will wait until his son and grandson are there with him and you will kill them all. There are men at the bottom of t
he hill, waiting to take you to the border of Altima. They have all the other things that you will need. Are you ready Benyan Akhna?’
‘Yes, Master.’
Elbeth stood up and clasped the boy’s hands between his. Benyan felt caught in the man’s gaze like prey that had locked eyes with its hunter. His eyes dropped submissively as he bowed to his leader. In the silence between them, he could hear the voices of the dead, whispering promises and prayers and uttering curses on their enemies…and he knew he would be their servant until he took his place with them in paradise.
Chamus sat in the back of the car, gazing out at the barges on the canal, their diesel motors farting smoke out of their sterns, the exhausts puffing in time with the water spat from the engines’ cooling systems. It was half-past five on a Saturday, the sun had barely risen, and yet they were stuck in traffic. They were on their way to the airfield where Aranson Air had its base, his mother accompanying his father out to a test flight, Chamus on his way to do some flying in his own plane. He was itching to get to the airfield, but the traffic jam wasn’t going anywhere. They had caught up on a column of military vehicles going in the same direction along the canal road and there seemed to be a glut of traffic all the way to the aerodrome. The airfield was situated near one of the major ramps down off the Victovia plateau into Bartokhrin, and Chamus was willing to bet that this was where they were all heading.
‘Honestly,’ his mother griped, ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. What can they be doing with all these trucks?’
‘Something to do with tackling the Hadram Cassal, I’d wager,’ Kellen replied, his elbow leaning on the sill of his open window. ‘Can’t see them moving all this lot into the Fringelands without causing a fuss, though.’
Chamus rolled his eyes. Typical of his father to refer to a possible war as ‘a fuss’. It often seemed to Chamus that his father lived in slow motion when he wasn’t flying. He was unhurried and infuriatingly careful in everything he did. He was not impatient as they waited for the traffic to get moving, because he had left an hour spare to reach the airfield and get ready. The prototype, high-altitude reconnaissance plane would be prepped and waiting for him when he got there; it certainly wasn’t going anywhere without him. To his son’s amazement, Kellen turned off the ignition and leaned back in his seat, arms behind his head. His wife, Nita, opened her bag and took out a book on gardening, turning the pages slowly as she enjoyed the practical tips on how to deal with greenfly. Chamus flopped back in the seat and moaned. Nita peered round at him, giving him that look that she had, over the top of her glasses.
‘The sky will still be there when you get to the airfield, Cham,’ she said to him. ‘If you’re tired of being cooped up in the car, you could always go for a walk up the canal. I don’t think we’ll be moving for a while.’
‘I could walk all the way and be there before you at this rate.’
‘Why don’t I come with you, then, and we’ll do just that. Your father can catch up. Kellen?’
Kellen nodded and waved at them to go ahead. He turned on the radio and found his favourite jazz station. There weren’t many cars around with radios, and he jumped at the chance to use it whenever he could. He turned it up, so that the soldiers in the trucks around them could listen with envy. A lively, big-band number followed Chamus and his mother down the road.
There were a lot of medical services trucks – with the big red cross in a white circle marked over their olive drab paintwork – more than a normal army column would have warranted, but there were also half-tracks, armoured troop carriers and jeeps too. There must have been two hundred vehicles on that section of the road.
‘It’s as if they’re getting ready for a disaster,’ Nita muttered. ‘I wonder if they’ve heard about some huge terrorist threat.’
‘I don’t know,’ Chamus thought aloud, remembering the mysterious conversation between his grandfather and the two men. ‘I think they’re heading out to the Fringelands. Couldn’t they just be looking for the terrorists?’
‘Bartokhrin’s not about to let all this in,’ his mother shook her head. ‘They’ve reacted badly enough to our bombers’ strikes. If this is seen coming down the ramp, there’ll be uproar. No, it’s got to be for some kind of emergency, I think. But don’t ask me what.’
‘Hey, mister!’ Chamus called up to one of the soldiers in the back of a covered lorry. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Just setting up base at the aerodrome, lad,’ the man shouted back. ‘Providing support for the medics, that’s all we know. They don’t tell us much, and we can tell even less.’
‘Let’s walk faster, Mum,’ Chamus said, ‘the more of these lads that show up, the less room I’m going to have to take off.’
It took half an hour to reach the airfield and when they did, they found vehicles filing in through the security gate, one by one. Chamus and Nita showed their passes, shared a few words with the policeman on guard, whom they knew well, and walked through, making their way to the group of hangars owned by Aranson Air. Thomex was already there, with some of his design engineers. The aircraft that Kellen was to fly sat just inside the open door of the biggest hangar. Outside the smallest, Chamus’s plane was being given the once-over by a mechanic.
‘Where is he, then?’ Thomex asked Nita.
‘Lost amongst some trucks, a couple of miles behind us,’ she answered. ‘What’s going on, Thomex? Do you know?’
‘Bloody army,’ he scowled, as if that was all the explanation she needed.
She regarded the sleek scout plane that sat with its canopy open, awaiting its pilot. The air force was poised to buy the design if the test went well, which would mean big things for their small company.
‘It’s an insidious-looking thing,’ she said, nodding at it. ‘What’s the weather report like?’
‘Excellent,’ Thomex spun his wheelchair around to look down the airstrip. ‘Wind is five knots at the most. Visibility is near perfect and we’re expecting clear skies all afternoon.’
He turned to Chamus: ‘Your bird’s ready if you want to take her up, Cham.’
‘I’ll wait for Dad. I want to see him take off,’ Chamus shrugged.
Thomex nodded and swivelled to look at the gate, where the military vehicles were still rolling in.
‘Bloody army,’ he grunted again.
Nita saw two of the engineers testing the controls on the prototype and went over to interrogate them. Chamus knew how seriously she took his father’s test flights and that the two unfortunate men were in for a grilling.
It was peaceful out there in that huge, open airfield. There were no aircraft engines to be heard and a sound he first took to be the wind across his ears now became clearer and he recognised the whispering voices once more.
‘Damn the quiet,’ his grandfather murmured to himself, ‘always got to make yourselves heard in the quiet, haven’t you?’
Chamus stared down at him.
‘You hear them too?’ he blurted out, before he could stop himself.
His grandfather gave him a piercing glare.
‘What do you hear, lad?’ he asked, as if he already knew the answer.
‘I’m not sure,’ Chamus said hesitantly. ‘It’s like a whispering; it’s very soft. I thought maybe my eardrums had been damaged. It’s like listening to lots of different voices all talking at once, but none loud enough to hear on its own.’
Thomex smiled bitterly and looked away.
‘There’s nothing wrong with your hearing, Cham. I thought the same when it first started happening to me. But it’s got louder over the years and now I know it’s not some buzzing in my ears from too many hours behind the engines. I’m not sure what it is, but I think more people hear that sound than want to admit … and I think it means something, but I can’t work out what. When did you start hearing it, then?’
‘After the … the sireniser at the hangar. When my hearing came back.’
His grandfather nodded.
‘Mine started after
I got shot down. And I didn’t damage my ears, I can tell you. I think it has something to do with trauma. It’s a curse too, stops you from concentrating, stops you thinking straight. Gets you all tense, too. I can’t stand the quiet now. I need noise all the time, and I always have to be doing something, or I get all wound up inside.’
Chamus knelt by his grandfather’s wheelchair.
‘That’s it, that’s exactly it,’ he agreed excitedly. ‘What do you think it is, Grandad? You must have some idea.’
‘I don’t know, Cham, but it drives me mad. It’s like bein’ haunted by your own personal ghosts.’
His voice was so harsh when he said it that Chamus stood up again. He looked to where his mother was questioning the two engineers, who were glancing around for some reason to seek shelter.
‘I think I will go now, Grandad, if that’s okay,’ he told the old man, ‘I could use a bit of noise.’
His grandfather was in a world of his own. Chamus walked towards his mother and the two men. He waved to her as he drew close and when she turned to him, the men hurried around to the far side of the aeroplane. He told her he was going up and went inside to get his things. When he came out, carrying his kit and wearing his parachute, Nita was talking to the mechanic who had checked his biplane over.
‘… and you’ve greased all the rocker-box housings?’
‘Yes, ma’am. I always do, you know that.’
‘And checked the oil?’
‘Ma’am …’
‘Sorry, sorry,’ she held up her hands. ‘You know what I’m like when he’s flying, Josek.’
‘That I do, ma’am,’ the mechanic smiled across at the two engineers by the scout plane. She could have been talking about her son doing a solo in the primitive biplane or her husband doing a test flight in a state-of-the-art, but experimental monoplane. It didn’t matter. Nita Aranson did not like either of them taking chances unless she was sure she had done everything she could to make sure they came back down safely.
