Alexis Carew: Books 1, 2, and 3

by J. A. Sutherland

  He started down the slope and realized that this was harder than going up. He had to go down backwards, so that his injured leg would drag instead of bunching up, and the angle was awkward. He considered standing and hopping, but the ground was too rough and he felt too weak and lightheaded. Bit by bit he made his way down the slope.

  His palm landed on something wet and sticky. That startled him and he jerked it back, crying out from the pain the movement sent through him. He eased himself a bit and looked at what he’d put his hand in.

  The beast hadn’t made it from under the varrenwood during the fall and had been crushed. He’d crawled into a pool of blood and viscera seeping out from beneath the tree.

  “I’ll make a rug of you,” Denholm promised the carcass. “A shite-weasel rug, and my family’ll wipe their feet on you for generations.”

  He closed his eyes, trying to calm his breathing. The wagon was within sight — almost within reach. Just another few meters. His arm gave out and he was suddenly flat on his back, head pointed down the slope. He knew he should go on — had to reach the wagon. For water, for the tablet that would call help. But he was so tired and it felt so good to close his eyes and rest again for just a moment.

  The sun was higher when he woke, warm on his skin, but he still found himself shivering. He judged the time from the slant of light through the forest canopy and took stock of his situation. He might make it after all — Lynelle would arrive soon if she’d left the homestead at dawn and he was certain she would have.

  He shifted his shoulders, they were stiff and aching, then froze. He’d heard something.

  He kept still, listening, and the sound came again. A snuffling exhale. He cracked his eyes open.

  Oh … hell.

  No more than three meters away was another of those damn beasts. It was hunched over the carcass of the first one, sniffing.

  A mate? Or some other sort of pairing?

  Not that it mattered. What mattered was that it was so close and Denholm had nothing to defend himself with. Even the flechette pistol, not that it would do any good, was lost somewhere on the other side of the varrenwood.

  Denholm stayed still, trying to go unnoticed.

  Smell your bloody friend, then go eat your fill of some nice horses and go away.

  The snuffling grew closer. Even with his eyes closed Denholm could feel the beast come nearer, still it was only with an effort of will that he kept himself from jumping when a great nose nudged the side of his head. Air moved over his head and neck as the beast sniffed at him. There was a large rock under his right hand — he thought he might be able to grasp and lift it, but what then? He couldn’t prop himself up on his broken left arm to gain any leverage for a swing.

  Better than going quietly to his dinner plate.

  “Denholm!”

  The call came from far away, down the slope along the path he’d used to bring the wagon up, but it was loud enough that the beast stopped sniffing at him and raised its head. Lynelle had come and knew nothing of the beasts. Denholm’s fingers tightened around the rock.

  “Denholm!”

  The beast snorted and shuffled away, farther down the slope. Denholm opened his eyes and saw it halfway between him and the wagon. Too far away to swing the rock — too far even to throw it if it was to be at all effective. Lynelle was closer now, he could see movement through the brush behind the wagon.

  “Denholm, love! Are ye there? Call out!”

  “Lynelle! Run!”

  He grasped the rock and leveraged himself up, spinning so that he faced down the slope. The movement sent waves of pain through his leg and arm, and his leg bent at a disturbing angle. Facing downslope he was able to remain upright and raised the rock to throw.

  “Run!”

  “Denholm, where are ye?”

  The beast was casting its head back and forth between the two sounds, as though unable to decide which was the greater threat — or perhaps which might be tastiest. It snarled and began bouncing on its forepaws in agitation.

  Denholm threw the rock just as Lynelle, leading her horse, came up the path into sight of the wagon and the half-eaten carcasses of the cart horses. The rock bounced off the beast’s hindquarter, but was ignored. The beast was fixated on Lynelle now, or perhaps her horse, which was larger and whinnying distress.

  The beast started down the slope, deceptively fast for its size.

  “Run!” Denholm cried. It was all he could think to do as he watched, helpless.

  Lynelle dropped her horse’s reins, which immediately spun and bolted down the path. She was carrying a rifle, one of the simpler, chemical propellant ones. She dashed toward the wagon, and its meager cover.

  Denholm searched the ground around him for another rock as the beast rushed down the slope and Lynelle raised the rifle to her shoulder. His world narrowed to the sound of the beast’s roaring as it charged, punctuated by the sharp cracks of Lynelle’s rifle firing. He thought he shouted again, hoping to draw the beast’s attention back, but perhaps he only screamed.

  The beast staggered once, then struck the wagon, knocking it aside and blocking Denholm’s view of Lynelle.

  Three more cracks sounded, close together, and the beast sank to the ground.

  “Lynelle!” Denholm got his right leg under him and tried to stand, but pain in his broken leg sent him back to the ground. “Lynelle!”

  “Aye, love.” She sounded out of breath. “A moment, then.” There were two more shots and Lynelle rounded the far corner of the wagon, rifle to her shoulder and still trained on the creature.

  Denholm closed his eyes and sank back.

  In a moment Lynelle was beside him. He could hear her calling for help on her tablet, arranging for the colony’s single antigrav hauler to come for him and winced at the cost. Still he didn’t object — he could tell well enough that he needed to get to the medical facilities in Landing as quickly as possible.

  “You’re a right mess, love.” Lynelle smoothed the hair back from his forehead.

  “I told you to run,” Denholm whispered.

  “Aye, and I did, love. Straight to that wagon for a steadier shot.”

  “I meant away.” Even to his ears his voice sounded petulant, but he found himself drifting and unable to focus. He opened his eyes and saw Lynelle adding a second patch to the one she’d already placed on his arm. He thought to tell her not to, that he could bear the pain and the drug patches from their medical kit were too dear to replace, but his mouth wouldn’t form the words and his eyelids were so very heavy.

  He felt her lips on his forehead.

  “Aye, love, but y’ve got t’be specific with the Scots, you know? Thought you’d’ve learned that by now.”

  Thirteen

  Denholm came awake grudgingly. His body ached, every bit of it, and the bed was so soft.

  Awareness came back that, if he was in a bed, he couldn’t also be in some shite-weasel’s gullet, which let him remember the last events. Lynelle must have got him back to Landing and the doctor. He opened his eyes.

  True enough, he was in a well-lit room in a well-made home. Bright sunshine shone through the white curtains over the window. The softness of the bed was matched by the softness of the comforter over him and the pillows beneath his head. For a moment, he closed his eyes again, thinking to go back to sleep for just a bit, but then there was movement in the room and a soft hand stroked his forehead.

  “Awake, love?”

  Denholm started to speak, but his throat was dry and he had to wait for Lynelle to ease a cup of water to his lips. He drank, swished a bit around his mouth, and swallowed.

  “So I’m not dead, then?”

  “No thanks to yourself, to be leavin’ yer gun so far away,” Lynelle said. She sat on the edge of the bed and took his hand. The one not bound to his chest beneath the bedclothes. “The arm’ll heal fine and you’ll ache for a time. Y’had a wee bug o’ some sort to boot, but that’s done.” She hesitated. “The leg’s the worst of it.”<
br />
  Denholm winced at the memory of things grinding together inside his leg.

  “It was splintered bad, love, so y’ave eight centimeters and a bit o’ printed bone t’ replace it.”

  Denholm sighed. That was better than he’d feared, at least. His leg would ache with the weather, no getting around that, but eight centimeters of printed plastic grafted in there was better than losing the leg. The prosthetics the colony could produce were crude things and sending back to the Core for a modern one would be ruinously expensive.

  “How long has it been? Who’s watching the stock?” he asked, suddenly, realizing that with Lynelle there with him there’d be no one to take care of the homestead.

  “Hush,” Lynelle said, stroking his forehead again. “The Mylins’ eldest is staying there to look after things, he’s a steady lad.”

  Denholm nodded. Their neighbors’ eldest lad was steady, not, perhaps, the brightest, though he’d never say that to Sewall or Elora, but he was a good, steady lad.

  “How long?” he asked again.

  “Almost a fortnight.” Lynelle squeezed his hand. “The bug were a bad one, but they’ve a vaccine now the doctor’s sent out to all the homesteads.”

  Denholm closed his eyes, weary. A fortnight would explain why he felt so weak, but to have been down so long would have other effects, as well.

  “T’ doctor’s thinking that bug’s tied to the bearcats,” Lynelle continued. “A bit o’ parasite that don’t affect them but ‘as a taste fer humans somehow.”

  “Bearcats?” Denholm frowned. “I told you to call them shite-weasels — I remember that, don’t I?” Vague images of the ride from the logging camp to Landing were coming back. “I told someone …”

  Lynelle shook her head.

  “No use, love. Once t’images o’ that beastie went out, it were all bearcat.” She paused. “Doctor Purdue did name the fever after you, though.”

  “What?”

  “The Carew Ague … has a bit o’ a ring.”

  Denholm grimaced. “He didn’t, really?”

  Lynelle nodded. “Afraid so, love.”

  “The indentures?” he asked, wanting to change the subject.

  “Still here in Landing,” Lynelle said.

  Denholm winced. That would mean more cost, housing and feeding them here in Landing for a week or more. That on top of the doctor’s fees and the lost work.

  “They seem … acceptable,” Lynelle continued.

  Denholm shifted in the bed, easing himself more upright. His head spun for a moment, but then settled. Lynelle placed a hand on his chest.

  “Lay back, love, yer still not fit.”

  “I need to see to the indentures,” Denholm said, “and we need to get them back to the —”

  He swung his legs off the bed and sat up, then the world spun and darkened.

  “Ease back, now,” Lynette said, “doctor said it’s three days more he’ll see you abed.”

  Denholm managed to sit and even rise the next day, but it was the day after that before he had the strength to leave his room. Not the three days the doctor wanted, but more than Denholm could wish.

  The indentures, those men and women who’d come to Dalthus to work, not as shareholders, on these later ships, were much as he’d expected. There were no criminals or debt-indentures in the first lot, that had been part of the settlers’ contract with the shipping agency, just men and women looking for a fresh start but without the means to pay their own transport to a new system, much less buy shares in the colony.

  Part of what he and Lynelle had paid for their shares would go toward the transport costs of the forty people who faced him now, having spent the last week since they’d left the transports in tents on a field near Landing instead of being moved along via the colony’s hauler to their new homes.

  What must they think of that? And of me?

  Denholm wore a brace on his leg, and would for the next two weeks, as well as use a cane for two more after that, until the new bone was fully healed and he regained his strength.

  He wondered what he should say to them.

  “Welcome,” he said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to meet you when you landed.” He gestured to his leg. “But it was break a few bones or be eaten, and I chose the former.” He waited while the polite chuckles died down. “What happened to me should be a lesson to you, though. You’re all here by choice and signed the charter — that you understand we’re a new colony and the risks of that. The hardships.”

  He shook his head.

  “You’ll be mightily tired of potatoes and yams before this first year’s through.

  “It will be hard work. Harder than some of you have ever done, I know it’s been so for me since we landed. But I promise you this. I’ll be doing that work beside you and eating those potatoes with you — both of us,” he continued, wrapping an arm around Lynelle’s shoulder, “Lynelle and I.”

  “Together we’ll make it through the first years, hard as they may be, and together we’ll make something of this world that we can all be proud of. Something for ourselves and something for our families … our children and our children’s children, whenever they may come.”

  Part Four

  Dalthus

  Planetfall plus 2.5 years

  Fourteen

  The farmhouse’s kitchen was redolent with the scent of fresh cut wood — the particular, distinct scent of freshly cut varrenwood, as that was what most of room was built of. Floors, cabinets, walls, and the sturdy, rough-hewn table Denholm sat at all showed the peculiar grain of what had quickly become Dalthus’ primary export back to the Core Worlds. The new farmhouse had gone up quickly once he felt he could spare the work of what never seemed to be enough hands from other tasks. It was small, tiny by Core World standards, but enough, Denholm thought, for the two of them for some time.

  A kitchen and larder took up fully half the ground floor — it was amazing how much more space the simple preparation of food took without most modern devices — with dining and sitting rooms taking the rest. A pair of bedrooms and a bath upstairs completed the small house.

  The sound of saws and hammers coming through the hazy panes of hand-poured glass in the window drew a small smile from him. The farm had grown in the two years since he’d brought the first indentured hands back from Landing, and they were busy at building a new barracks before the arrival of the next indenture ship at the colony — he’d be adding to his hands to work even more lands — and it amused him that those debtors and criminals would soon find themselves living in a building of wood those in the Core paid such ridiculous sums for.

  More than the barracks, now, there was a small village starting in the bend of the river only a kilometer away. The population there was a combination of indentures with families and a few original colonists who had too few shares to take land of their own. Many of those had stayed in the original settlement after landing, but were now using their shares to start businesses near the more major holdings, betting on growth.

  Denholm frowned as a half-heard rumble drew his attention from his tablet and the holding’s accounts. The rumble grew gradually louder, but not so loud that it could drown out the shouts from outside. He set his tablet down and rose, making his way to the doorway.

  A ship’s boat was settling to the ground in the yard between house and the barracks buildings. Those working on the new barracks had set aside their tools to gather at the edge of the yard and stare at the new arrival.

  “Denholm, love!” Lynelle’s voice cut above the sound of the boat’s engine as it settled to the ground, sending chickens scurrying for shelter. Denholm winced as she came around the house’s corner, a bundle of linens she’d been retrieving from the wash lines over her arm. “It’s twice I’ve asked ye to put down a pad for landing a distance from the house.”

  “Yes, the twice before one’s landed here these two years past.” He moved to meet her and took half the load to place on the house’s porch. “That’s a good bit of time
and material to lay down for use once a year.”

  “It’s you’ll be keening complaints when there’s no eggs these next mornings, what with the chickens terrified again.”

  Denholm took her half of the load to set down and kissed her cheek.

  “I’ll settle for a bit of bacon and make no complaint of it.”

  Lynelle poked him in the midriff, eliciting an uf of air.

  “Bacon’ll undo the benefits, love.”

  Denholm grimaced. He’d thought he was in decent physical shape when they’d left New London, but there was no doubt the two years since landing on Dalthus had had an effect. The never-ending hard work and limited diet had seen to it that they all, holder and indenture alike, had not a bit of extra fat by this time. The first six months after the indentures arrived had been the most difficult and they’d all, as Denholm had predicted, been heartily sick of potatoes and sweet potatoes, augmented by the supplies they’d brought with them, by the time the first grains and greens had been ready for harvest. A few months later the chicken population reached the point where Denholm felt they could spare more than a few eggs and even the occasional low producer for the indentures’ pot.

  Now the household and the indentures managed their own poultry separately and there were eggs aplenty along with a full bird every few days.

  The pigs, on the other hand …

  “I’ll have bacon before the year’s out,” Denholm said. “Regular and proper.”