The Larion Senators e-3

by Rob Scott

  Steven watched and waited.

  Reinforcement clouds scudded north from the Blackstones and the moonlight went out. Steven stood at his post, turning periodically to chuckle at a joke one of the others made as they sat beside the fire. No one asked why he was there; they were content to leave him alone with his thoughts, even Gilmour.

  Something in Steven’s gut warned him. It felt like something slipping slightly off-centre again and again, until he was forced to stop and listen. They were coming. He had known that, but it wasn’t magic; rather, the sense that something had been left undone, the stove left on, or the ironing board left upright in the guest bedroom…

  He caught the flavour of a familiar smell, something tangy and unpleasant on the breeze, like over-ripe garbage: the stench of old melon rinds and rancid chicken fat, the pungent aroma of decay.

  Steven wrinkled his nose and peered beneath the trees. The figures came in as indistinct grey mist, as if a handful of moonbeams had broken free and gone exploring. The wraiths were taking shape now, and that too was as familiar as the odour of decaying meat and honeydew. He had been right.

  ‘Gabriel, Lahp,’ Steven said. ‘Ms…’ He thought of Myrna as he raised the tone of his voice slightly; she’d taught him to do that when he had forgotten a customer’s name. Better to let them fill in the blank, than to fumble around for five minutes and end up filing the transaction in the wrong account. She had always laughed at his attempts.

  He tried again, this time more directly. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know your name, Ms-’

  ‘Can you send me back?’ The woman’s reply resonated between his ears as the memory of her living form took shape enough for Steven to recall the young mother, travelling alone with her baby.

  Steven shrugged, then felt sorry for such an offhanded gesture. She regarded him with disdain: in her mind, this was entirely his fault. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound selfish, but I don’t… I guess I haven’t thought about whether I can send you back.’

  ‘Think about it now.’ She wasn’t pleased.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, ‘but I’m afraid that if I tried, I might only get you as far as the Fold, and I don’t want to leave you trapped in there.’

  ‘How did you get here?’

  Without thinking, Steven said, ‘Mark and I both came through-’ He interrupted himself. ‘That might work. We have one of the far portals here. You could try slipping through. Granted, it might drop you anywhere on Earth, but you don’t mind… I mean, at least it would get you back.’

  ‘Then you don’t know.’

  ‘No.’ Steven looked down. Despite everything he had achieved, and everything he had sacrificed, he couldn’t look her in the face. She was right: her death, her baby’s death: they were his responsibility. He didn’t know what she believed, whether she thought she might ascend to heaven and join the child there, or whether she just wanted to get back so that she could haunt the graveyard where her family had interred the bodies. He had sworn to be compassionate, but at that moment he just felt selfish. ‘I truly think the portal will take you back,’ he said.

  ‘That isn’t good enough for me, Steven Taylor.’ She slipped soundlessly beneath the pines, disappearing in a whirling cloud of dusty snow.

  Steven watched her go, frowning. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered.

  The wraith that had been Lahp came forward. Even in his ghostly form, the big Seron warrior still ambled awkwardly, as if carrying around that much muscle was difficult even after death.

  ‘Lahp.’ Steven smiled.

  ‘Lahp tak Sten.’ The big Malakasian touched Steven’s shoulder with one gossamer hand and he felt the icy chill on his skin, colder than the wintry night.

  ‘You don’t have to thank me, Lahp,’ Steven said. ‘You saved my life.’

  ‘Lahp tak Sten,’ the Seron repeated, billowing his facial features into a crooked smile.

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘Forest,’ Lahp said, gesturing over his shoulder as if the journey would take only a moment or two.

  ‘Right,’ Steven nodded, ‘the Northern Forest. I wish you well, Lahp. I may see you there before my work in Eldarn is done.’

  Lahp raised a translucent eyebrow. ‘Lahp hep Sten?’

  ‘No,’ Steven replied, ‘you’ve done enough, Lahp. Have a good journey.’

  Like the woman from Charleston, the Seron warrior seemed to turn inside out before he flitted silently northwards through the trees.

  Only Gabriel O’Reilly remained.

  ‘It’s good to see you again, Gabriel,’ Steven said. Behind him, the chatter around the campfire quieted to a whisper. His friends were listening in.

  ‘And you, too, Steven.’ Gabriel looked as he had when Steven first saw him, clad in his nineteenth-century bank manager’s uniform, complete with frilly shirt, braces and a belt buckle embossed with the letters B.I.S.

  ‘What happened?’

  Like the South Carolina woman and the Seron warrior, Gabriel’s voice echoed in Steven’s mind. ‘I fought the almor. It had been hunting Versen and Brexan. When the battle ended, I-’

  Steven cut him off, saying excitedly, ‘Versen’s alive?’

  Gabriel nodded. ‘He was when I last saw him, but he and Brexan were about to face a fierce-looking Seron, a killer.’

  ‘Brexan? Who’s that?’

  ‘A woman, a soldier from Malakasia; she was travelling with Versen. They were both drowning in the Ravenian Sea when I found them; Versen’s life had just about ebbed away when I arrived.’

  ‘When did this happen?’ Steven was anxious to hear the rest of the strange tale.

  ‘It was shortly after I led Mark Jenkins to the trapper’s cabin at the southern end of this valley.’

  Heartened by this news, Steven asked, ‘How did Nerak capture you again?’

  The wraith grimaced. ‘William Higgins.’

  Steven started. ‘The miner? But how is-? Oh, right… Nerak took him in 1870.’

  ‘Before opening the accounts at my bank – your bank as well, I suppose.’

  ‘You were pulled back into the Fold?’ Steven wasn’t sure how to ask what he wanted to know.

  ‘A small group of wraiths, led by William Higgins and working under Nerak’s orders, found me crossing Falkan and, yes, they dragged me back into their ranks. When Nerak finally reached me, I was powerless once again. But you set me free; you set us all free there in the glen beside the river.’

  ‘When I threw Nerak into the Fold.’

  ‘When you refused to cast us back into the Fold, Steven, that’s when it happened. You freed me – and Lahp and the woman.’

  Steven said, ‘We have a far portal here, Gabriel. You should try to go home. She should-’ He broke off and looked towards the trees, but the woman was gone. ‘She should try as well. I can’t guarantee anything, but I’d bet you can make it back.’

  ‘I’m staying with you.’ Gabriel took him by the forearm and again Steven felt the odd convection of cold and colder pressing through the Gore-tex of Howard’s old coat.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ he said, touched by Gabriel’s offer. ‘You’ve been trapped, enslaved for so long. Why don’t you-?’

  ‘That is exactly the reason why I don’t wish to return home, not yet.’ O’Reilly loomed over him, swelling for a moment with anger or pride, Steven couldn’t tell which, before shrinking back to his former size. ‘I’ll help you, Steven, and then we’ll go home together.’

  Steven gave up. ‘The evil that was controlling Nerak now has Mark.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Can you free him?’

  ‘No.’

  Steven sighed. ‘I had to ask.’

  ‘Have you seen him?’

  ‘No,’ Steven replied. ‘My guess is that he’s in Wellham Ridge, organising a force to come find us, or maybe to find the spell table.’

  ‘I will find him, Steven.’

  ‘Be careful, Gabriel.’

  ‘I will try to delay him, if po
ssible, and when this is done, we will go home together.’

  ‘Yes,’ Steven nodded, ‘you, me, Hannah and Mark.’

  ‘I look forward to it.’ Gabriel glanced beyond Steven’s shoulder to where Garec, Kellin and Gilmour were watching the interchange. Brand slept. Raising one ghostly-white hand, the former bank manager waved to them.

  ‘Farewell, Gabriel,’ Garec said quietly. ‘We will see you again, soon.’

  The wraith looked back at Steven for a moment, then faded into the flurries of snow tumbling along the riverbank.

  Mark Jenkins approached the barracks from a side street. Sheltered from view by a lumber cart that had stopped along the thoroughfare, he turned the corner, surprising the sentry posted outside.

  ‘Move along, Southie,’ the man warned. ‘There’s no need for you to be lingerin’ here.’

  ‘What did you call me?’ Mark growled. The soldier was a private, a conscripted grunt; Mark needed someone of higher rank, a colonel or a general at least.

  ‘I said move along.’ The sentry, a broad-shouldered man with two days’ stubble and a weary, hungover look about him, rested a hand on his dagger, clearly a warning.

  ‘Do you know it was 1619 when the first slave ship arrived in Virginia? Did you know that? Of course you didn’t. 1619. Astonishing really, that only twelve years separated the establishment of the first real settlement in the American colonies and the oppression of African slaves in the west. Twelve years, and I have to stand here now and listen to that kind of bullshit from you, you inbred lump of stinking pigshit.’ Mark spoke a mixture of English and Eldarni Common, but the bleary-eyed private deciphered enough of the rant to understand the arrogant South Coaster was being less than respectful.

  ‘Ruttin’ horsecock,’ the guard growled, but as he shoved the man away, Mark took him through a moist, filthy sore he opened on the soldier’s wrist.

  Mark felt himself being sucked through a dank, cramped canal as he invaded the sentry’s body. He felt suddenly nauseous as two hundred and seventy-five Twinmoons of emotions, memories, hopes and failures washed over him all at once and he thought he might vomit right there on the street. He wanted to collapse into the mud and rest for a few hours. He felt the soldier dying, falling away, and tried to accompany him, to slip past the presence, that creature of smoke and steam that had taken him in the forest four days earlier only to crush his will and press him into submission.

  Not you! the voice thundered inside his head, their head. Let him go; we have what we need from this one.

  Mark watched his own body collapse to the plank walkway outside the Malakasian Army barracks. He watched himself strip off the jacket Steven had stolen from Howard’s closet, watched himself check the pocket for Lessek’s key and finally watched himself remove his gloves and slip them onto his new hands, his pale, white Malakasian hands, the left one dripping a malign mixture of pus and blood. Mark wiped it on his favourite red sweater.

  Let’s go, he heard himself say. We need to find the commanding officer. Where is he? The dead soldier’s memories merged with his own; vertigo gripped his guts with a talon. He needed to throw up.

  Upstairs. She’s upstairs. The guard’s recollections provided the answer.

  A she? A colonel? A general?

  I don’t know if there are any generals left over here except for General Oaklen. Major Tavon is in charge of the battalion here in the South. She’s the senior officer here.

  Mark kicked open the barracks door. A soldier, a lieutenant by his uniform, was crossing the foyer. He looked irritated when he saw the private. ‘And where do you think you’re going, Stark?’ he shouted. ‘You’re on duty until the end of the dinner aven. Do I need to remind you-?’

  ‘Eat shit,’ Mark said, and hit him in the throat; his strength was unfathomable. The officer’s neck snapped, cracking audibly a moment before he sprawled in a clumsy pile of limbs.

  Why? Mark tried to speak, to think his outrage, but the creature of smoke and steam pressed him back against the walls of darkness. Mark’s throat closed, his eyes bulged and he felt something inside himself rupture. The pain was instantaneous and unbearable.

  I’ll take what I need from you when I need it. The voice was terrifying, that of a monstrous god capable of torturing him for all eternity. Until then, keep still.

  Mark screamed; nothing came out. He tried to weep, to call for his mother, his father, anyone at all, but nothing changed. No thoughts breached the shallow well of his own mind. He forgot things the moment he dredged them up from his memory. There was no hope, no comfort; there was not even the relative relief that might come from an anguished cry or a desperate scream. There was only the realisation that he was trapped, frozen inside a stone slab.

  Mark took the stairs three at a time and kicked open the door to Major Tavon’s private office. Tearing free from its hinges, it crashed across the room, upsetting a table strewn with maps of southern Falkan and the Blackstone Mountains.

  Major Tavon, a thin, grey-haired woman of about four hundred and fifty Twinmoons, sat behind her desk, her feet propped up, a goblet of wine in one hand and a finger corkscrewing so far up her nose that Mark thought she might be trying to scratch an itch in her sinuses.

  ‘Good day, Major,’ Mark said.

  Major Tavon spilled her wine as she hurriedly wiped her finger on her trousers. She looked aghast for a moment, and then flew into a rage. ‘Stark! You great, stupid horsecock! What in the name of all things unholy do you think you’re doing? I swear to all the gods of the Northern Forest, I will have you wiping the backside of every flatulent cavalry horse from here to Pellia for this interruption!’

  ‘Do shut up, you irritating old bitch,’ Mark said as he leaned on the woman’s desk. ‘I need a battalion, just for a few days.’

  ‘A what? A what? You’re done, Stark! Life as you know it is over!’ She was still screaming when Private Stark fell dead on the floor of her office.

  Lieutenant Blackford, Major Tavon’s personal assistant, burst into the room, flanked by two soldiers brandishing short swords. He skidded to a stop when he saw the major calmly tugging a pair of worn leather gloves onto her hands. ‘Major? Are you all right?’ he asked breathlessly.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she said coolly. ‘Nothing to worry about at all, Lieutenant.’ She knelt beside Private Stark’s body, took something from the pocket of a brightly coloured tunic he had been carrying and secreted it inside her own tunic. ‘Would you have the men dispose of this, please?’ She kicked at the body.

  The young officer was dumbstruck. ‘Uh, yes ma’am,’ he murmured, wondering what was going on.

  ‘Oh, and Kranst is dead, too. You’ll find him downstairs.’

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘And I almost forgot.’ Major Tavon smiled. ‘Out front there is a young man, a South Coaster, in a red tunic. Please see to it that the bodies are incinerated out back, down near the stream. Get some of the others to help you, and be quick about it. We need to get word to Hershaw and Denne; I require an infantry battalion. I want the captains in Wellham Ridge and prepared to march south as soon as possible.’

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘Within two days, three at the most, understood?’ Major Tavon righted her goblet, refilled it and gulped down the wine with a flourish. ‘Lieutenant?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am?’ Blackford was still staring at Stark’s body.

  ‘Do you understand?’

  An innate sense of self-preservation slapped Blackford hard across the face. He blinked several times and nodded yes.

  ‘Good. I am going to write two despatches. I need riders ready to take them north; I want them gone within the aven. One is to the garrison commander at Traver’s Notch, the other to the ranking officer at Capehill; there is to be a Resistance attack on Capehill within the Moon, and I want our forces prepared for the insurrectionists, should they still be in the city when the attack comes.’

  ‘But Major, how could-?’ Glancing at Stark’s body, Blackford decided not to a
sk anything else. ‘I will make the preparations, ma’am.’

  ‘Excellent. I will be at the tavern on the corner. Tell me when it is done.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ Blackford snapped to attention as Major Tavon left the room. When she was gone, he asked aloud, ‘Still in the city when the attack comes? I wonder what that means-’ He looked again at the dead body and hurried to do his commanding officer’s bidding.

  PREPARATIONS

  Steven rolled over. It had grown colder overnight; a little snow continued to fall in the river valley, but the bulk of the storm had passed them by. He longed for the comforting red glow of his bedside clock and squinted in the hope of making out the hands on Howard’s old wristwatch. No luck. A few embers still burned in the campfire; Steven poked the remaining coals to life with a stick and leaned over to see what time it was at home. Ten-thirty. Well, that’s no help, is it?

  When the end of the twig caught fire, its glow brightened the meagre shelter they had constructed. Though little more than a few stacked trunks and a roof of interlocking boughs, the lean-to gave Steven the illusion of safety and comfort. Warmed by the firelight, it felt more like a cave than a stack of firewood. He gently urged the rest of the twig into flames. Adding a log and a bit of magic, he rekindled the small fire Brand had built before retiring for the night.

  The glow reflected twin diamond glints in Kellin’s eyes; she was awake.

  ‘Good morning,’ Steven whispered, checking to see if he had roused the others as well.

  Kellin nodded and forced a smile.

  ‘I don’t know what aven it is.’ He tried to shrug nonchalantly, but came off looking as though he had a tic.

  ‘Pre-dawn,’ Kellin whispered back. She reached for her overtunic. Without her cloak, Kellin was like the rest of them: too thin, and marked with a map of pink scar tissue, in her case across her arms and hands. Her body was like Brand’s, hard from too many Twinmoons of rationed food, forced marches and guerrilla warfare. With her overtunic and cloak on, the lean, wiry warrior reverted to the cold, frumpy woman who had joined them in Traver’s Notch.

  ‘You should go back to sleep,’ Steven said quietly. ‘We don’t need to get started yet.’