by Oisin McGann
Daruth was puzzled by the second question, but it didn’t matter. He would not say a word from now until his death. The man waited for a reply and then shook his head with a resigned expression and opened his case, revealing an array of metal instruments and bottles of chemicals.
‘This is going to take some time.’
Advocate was a charity which campaigned for fair treatment for the countries that did business with Altima. Leynid Lefburoc explained as they drove, that because Altima was so much wealthier than their neighbours, the countries they called the Fringelands were kept in a subservient role, without any hope of achieving true independence. In Bartokhrin, farmers and other small businesses could lose everything at the whim of Altiman companies. The Bartokhrian government even had to tolerate Altiman bombing raids on suspected terrorist camps, their own people, because they still relied so much on the good will of Altima.
There were people in Altima who were outraged by what was going on in the Fringelands and they financed groups like Advocate to try and counteract the damage caused by their own country. Chamus listened quietly. His mother was a member of Advocate and talked about this quite a lot. His father couldn’t be a member because it would have cost him business with the military. His grandfather thought it was all nonsense, saying they were just after money and regularly argued about it with his mother.
Riadni did not say a word. To her it was like hearing someone congratulate themselves for offering a bandage to a person they had just slashed with a knife. The column carried food and medical supplies for the village of Yered – the village that had been attacked a few days before by the Altiman Air Force. She remembered seeing the planes dropping their bombs and how her concern then had stretched as far as having a good story to tell over supper. Now she was fearful of what they were going to see there and worried about the people she knew in the village. Despite her disdain for the well-meaning Altimans, she knew Yered would need all the help it could get; it was a poor village in an area where the farming was hard. A thought occurred to her. She nudged Chamus.
‘Your aeroplane is only a few miles from Yered.’
Chamus sat up.
‘Really? Then all I need is some fuel!’ He looked over at Leynid, ‘I’ll buy some off you. You can bill my family. Then we won’t be putting your convoy in danger.’
He paused, he had forgotten Riadni.
‘What will you do? They’ll still be after you, won’t they? You could come back to Victovia for a while, if you wanted …’
Now that he knew he was almost safe, he was worried about her. His plane only had a single seat, but she could always follow later. He knew his family would be happy to help her in return for what she had done. And besides, he still had to pay her the money he had promised her.
‘I don’t know what I’m going to do,’ she told him. ‘I want to go home, but I can’t.’
They fell silent for a while, watching the road as it rolled past them and under their wheels. Leynid and Paronig talked over the youngsters’ heads about what they had to do when they reached Yered, which would be in the next few hours. Chamus shot a couple of glances in Riadni’s direction, but she avoided his eyes. He felt bad that his problems were almost over, while hers were not, but was relieved to be so close to going home. And he would be flying again. The thought put a smile on his face.
He was not prepared for what he saw in Yered. The trucks descended a hill into the main street of the village. The first things that struck Chamus were the bloodstains. He had never actually seen large splashes of blood before, and the sight of the dried, brown-red marks on the walls and the ground brought him down to earth. There had obviously been attempts to cover it up in places, but the stains were still there on the adobe bricks, and where it had pooled on the ground, it soaked up through the blankets of dust that had been brushed over it. He morbidly wondered what it would be like to have a wound so bad you saw your own blood sprayed on the wall, to feel yourself being so terrifyingly damaged. Flail bombs had been dropped, explosives that blasted out shreds of nylon. A flail bomb was not intended to destroy, although it could smash through the roof of a building before detonating. It was designed to punish and to mark the victims for life, so that they would be recognised wherever they went. It left hundreds of shallow wounds, and the injured would carry the scars all over their bodies for the rest of their lives. According to Leynid, nine people had been killed from being close to the blasts, but dozens had been injured.
The first person Riadni recognised was the doctor from Kemsemet, his clothes rumpled and stained, his face showing the strain of days and nights of gruelling surgery. Clearly exhausted, he waved them through to where they could park, and then greeted Leynid with a tired smile. One by one and then in small groups, other people came out of their homes to look at the trucks. Many appeared lost or dazed; others aimed hostile stares at the Altiman vehicles. Every building in the village had been hit and few of the inhabitants had escaped injury. There was hardly a single person without a bloody bandage or even untreated, open wounds.
‘Stay in the truck,’ Paronig told them. ‘Stay low. We’ll set up the tents and come to get you when it’s safe.’
Leynid was already talking to the doctor and the chieftain of the village. They were discussing what needed to be done first. Riadni strained her ears to listen. She knew people here and wanted to know what had happened to them. Turning to aim a hurtful comment at Chamus, she saw him staring out the window in shock at the ravaged street. Leynid was unwrapping one child’s dirty bandage to examine the crisscrossing wounds on his face. Other medical workers were mingling among the rest of the injured to assess the worst cases. Paronig was directing his men to form a perimeter around the trucks as aid workers started to unload sacks and boxes.
‘I know what this is like,’ Chamus said in a hoarse voice. ‘I know what this is like.’
And he told her, in broken snatches, about the day his class had died. Riadni listened without a word. She knew he was ashamed of what he saw through the window, that he was trying to explain why the aeroplanes had come here, but that he also needed to tell her about his own loss. Mostly though, he was talking because the situation was so big and so brutal that there was no way to make sense of it and she felt it too. She put a tentative hand on his shoulder as he finished his story.
‘This is just going to keep going, isn’t it?’ he looked around at her. ‘Look at them all. There’s lads out there my age, and all they’re going to be thinking is who to make pay for all this. I know what this is like.’
Darkness fell, and Paronig eventually came to lead them to one of the large tents where supper was being prepared for the aid workers. They were careful not to let the two youngsters be seen. They joined in the meal, which was eaten in Bartokhrian style, with lots of meat and rice and spices. The tone was quite lively considering how they had spent the last few hours and Paronig and his men even shared the occasional dirty joke. Chamus was shocked at first, but then realised that this was only the second time he had seen such a situation. These people lived with it everyday.
‘Tomorrow,’ Leynid told them, ‘Paronig will take you to your plane. He’ll make sure it’s safe and help you fuel it up. Riadni, you can stay with us for a while if you want. As you can see, we have a few Bartokhrian women in our group, and in normal dress and better make-up we can keep you hidden. We could do with another pair of hands to help out.’
Riadni smiled shyly and thanked her. The prospect of spending time with Leynid and being among these people was the best thing she had heard in some time. Chamus was relieved too. A glance at Paronig confirmed that the sooner this young Altiman was gone, the better. Chamus wondered how he was going to be able to pay Riadni, but they would figure something out.
Leynid tore up some bread and smeared it in a garlic and tomato sauce on her plate. Chamus watched how everyone ate, using their fingers, with no cutlery, which was practical for this kind of food, but messy. The meat and wide array of marinate
d vegetables were easy to handle, but the rice was tricky. There was no butter or cheese, Leynid told him that Bartokhrians did not eat them because they could not digest anything made from milk or cream. There were a lot of strong spices, such as ginger, coriander and chilli, which were used as flavouring and preservatives, especially in the summer. The smells were rich and varied.
‘We’ve been hearing of an outbreak around Yered and Kemsemet,’ Leynid said to Riadni. ‘Do you know exactly where it is?’
‘What do you mean? Like a disease?’
‘Yes, some highly contagious bug that’s going around.’
‘I haven’t heard anything about it,’ Riadni frowned, ‘and it’s the kind of news that would get around quick enough. Where have you heard about it?’
‘Just rumours, really. A doctor in Victovia told me about it. I said I’d check it out,’ Leynid shrugged, biting into a pork rib. ‘The doctor here didn’t know anything about it either.’
‘I heard rumours like that,’ Chamus put in, ‘about a disease that causes bleeding and vomiting and all sorts of other stuff …’ he looked at Riadni, ‘kind of like the one we were talking about before.’
‘Falkrik’s Bane,’ she mumbled, chewing on a mouthful of rice.
‘Right.’
‘The Falkrik House thing?’ Leynid paused, the rib halfway to her mouth. ‘That wasn’t a disease, that was radiation sickness.’
‘What’s that?’ Chamus asked.
‘Most elements release these kinds of invisible rays,’ Leynid explained, ‘but they tend to be pretty weak. You can’t see them or feel them and they have no effect on anything. But some materials, when they’re in their pure state, give off so much of this stuff that it can damage your body’s cells. In strong doses it can even kill you. And you wouldn’t even know it was happening until it was too late. They were working with one of those elements at Falkrik. They called it radium, got it from the mines nearby in this black crystalline stuff called pitchblende. They were refining it, trying to come up with ways of using these rays. You see they pass through almost anything – metal, stone, you name it. Problem was, the geologists didn’t know the dangers. They were some of the first to experiment with radiation, and they died before anyone even knew that it could kill. They were using radium, but there are other kinds too, even stronger ones. One scientist thinks he’s found a way to take photos of a person’s skeleton … while it’s still inside them.’
There was silence at the table, even people at the other tables had stopped to listen. There were openly sceptical expressions on some of the faces.
‘Well,’ she said, offhandedly, ‘that’s what I’ve read anyway.’
Chamus was ready to dismiss the whole idea as the kind of story he read in science fiction novels, like shooting people up to the moon, or monsters flying down from other planets. But he could not help thinking of the conversation he had overheard while in the railway room.
‘Could this radiation stuff be used as a weapon?’ he asked. ‘I think the Hadram Cassal could be connected with it somehow.’
‘Not really,’ she snorted. ‘You could leave it where it would just sit unprotected and poison everything and everyone around it, but who’d do that? It would be as dangerous to the person carrying it as it would be for their target. You’d have to be mad.’
There was another long silence. Chamus was gazing into empty space. Everyone else exchanged troubled looks.
‘My God,’ Leynid whispered, ‘if the Hadram Cassal ever got hold of it …’
‘Would it make the people around them sick?’ Riadni burst out. ‘I mean, if they were near a village, or a farm, or something?’
Paronig looked up sharply, his eyes narrowing, and then he leaned towards her.
‘Are they camped near here?’
She clammed up, sure she had already said too much.
‘Miss Mocranen,’ he pressed, ‘are they camped near your family’s farm?’
She did not say another word, but Paronig did not take his eyes off her for the rest of the meal. He was one of the first to leave the tent. Riadni and Chamus watched him hurry away. Riadni had the uneasy feeling that she had just dug herself even deeper into trouble.
After supper, everyone retired to where they were to sleep, Chamus bunking down with the off-duty guards in the back of one of the trucks, Riadni in the Bartokhrian women’s tent. Chamus felt a little nervous with these men; they were rough and mean and had little time to be babysitting a lost boy. But they were willing to talk and he found out more about them as they chatted and joked and gambled on knucklebones late into the night. They were Altiman-trained, Bartokhrian soldiers, loaned to Advocate to guard the column of trucks, and they were proud of their role. Each man was an experienced fighter and they would all be needed if a group such as the Hadram Cassal, or any one of the dozen other rebel gangs, tried to take the valuable supplies by force. They did not wear uniforms, dressing instead in the same practical clothes as the terrorists themselves. Every one of them was armed to the teeth with revolvers, automatic pistols, semiautomatic rifles, machine guns, bandoliers and belts full of ammunition, knives, swords and any number of other weapons.
Tough as they were, they all paid careful respect to Paronig, who sat apart from the main bunch and leaned back against the wall of the truck with his eyes closed. Chamus had noticed that he only mixed with the other men part of the time. He had spent most of the afternoon at Leynid’s side. Despite the way she mocked him and Paronig’s cold stares in return, Chamus suspected there was a closeness between them that they did not let show.
He drew himself up nearer the security chief.
‘Paronig?’
‘Yes?’
‘Have you ever fought the Hadram Cassal?’
‘Yes.’
Chamus waited for the war story he was sure must come, but Paronig continued to sit back with his eyes shut. Chamus tried again.
‘Do you know much about them?’
‘Some.’
‘Do you know much about the Haunted?’
Paronig opened his eyes.
‘In the Hadram Cassal they are called the Blessed.’
‘One of them nearly killed me once,’ Chamus thought this might get his attention, ‘in Victovia.’
‘If he had been trying to kill you,’ Paronig said, ‘you would be dead.’
He looked as if he was going to sit back and close his eyes again, but then he went on.
‘People who die violently are often held to the Earth until they find peace. You may have heard this, whether you believed it or not. In Bartokhrin, we believe it. These spirits are tormented by the violence of their deaths, and they crave the chance to impose that torment on others, even though this is not how they will achieve their peace. Their hate and anger holds them to the Earth, but it also gives them power. Some people have a natural sensitivity to them; they can pick up a feeling or a voice, or another person’s dreams and they are vulnerable to these ghosts. They can be used by them.
‘But the Hadram Cassal have perfected a ceremony that vastly increases this sensitivity. It draws these ghosts out of the air and implants them in the person. After the ceremony, the Blessed must be kept alone in darkness for several hours to cement the bond. The person is bestowed with supernatural powers and senses, but in return he becomes a vessel for the hate and vengeance of these spirits. It is called the Blessing of the Martyrs. Once they take hold of him, he is already dead, because his powers are drawn from the trauma of their last moments on Earth and before long he will have to release it. He can carry that fatal moment with him for some time, but the ghosts always, always demand their revenge and they do not recognise friends or enemies. They just want others to relive their deaths.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Chamus said. ‘How do they control them then? Why aren’t they going around killing the first people they see?’
‘The Cassal discovered a way to imprint targets in the minds of the Blessed. They would be given a personal item, s
omething that belonged to the target. It could be a piece of clothing or jewellery. Drawings or photographs of the target are the best, taken by someone who loves them; it leaves a powerful imprint. The target stays in the mind of the Blessed and often it is the only thing he has left after the ghosts take over. His will sets the ghosts on the target, and they release their death upon that person and everyone around them.’
Chamus went cold. The photograph that went missing from his locker … He shook his head. It was too far-fetched, the whole thing – the ghosts, the mystic ceremony – it was rubbish. But he had seen it. He had lived through it. No, he decided, you could read too much into these things. There was a simpler, more scientific explanation. There had to be.
‘Sounds like a load of superstition to me,’ he said. ‘How do you know so much about it?’
‘My brother is a priest in the Hadram Cassal,’ Paronig replied.
Chamus waited to be told he had been the butt of a joke. When the security chief calmly returned his stare, he turned away and crawled back to his spot at the front of the truck. Laying his head down, using his rolled-up jacket as a pillow, he pulled his blanket up around him and fell into a troubled sleep.
Paronig woke him before dawn and Chamus quickly packed up his stuff. They climbed down from the back of the truck and made their way to another one, where Leynid and Riadni were standing, waiting with three other men. Riadni would lead them to the aeroplane and then come back.
‘Have a good flight,’ Leynid said simply and gave him a hug.
Paronig started up the lorry and swung it around, stopping it long enough for the other two to climb into the cab and the soldiers to jump in the back. Then they waved to Leynid and drove away.
Riadni knew the area well and a mile out of the village, they turned off the main road and onto a track that led up through the fields. The main crop growing around them was tobacco for the Altima market, which was almost ready for harvest, but there were no workers in the fields that morning. It would be a few weeks yet before the crop was fully ripe. So the land was deserted as the sun rose and the rumbling engine of the lorry and the creak and crunch of its passage on the track were the only sounds to be heard in the open country.
