by Rob Scott
No matter how many trucks rumbled by en route to the freight terminals, they were always uncomfortably aware that any one could have flattened them both to jelly. Now, in his dream, Steven saw in the small circular mirror a massive, eighteen-wheeled beast lumbering towards them. It was a heavy-bodied semi, something prehistoric and clumsy, dragging an open trailer with slat sides. A northerly wind carried the aroma of foetid onions, rotten vegetables bound via Fed-Ex to ports unknown: somewhere, eye-wateringly rank onions had some value. The truck driver, hugging the right shoulder, gave no sign that he saw the two cyclists.
‘We’re getting buzzed,’ Steven shouted.
‘What’s that smell?’
‘Mark!’ he shouted again, louder this time. The rumble of the truck’s engine was deafening; it was too close. In the tiny mirror, the grille and twin headlights looked like the maniacal grin of a homicidal creature bent on running them down. As if to terrorise them further, the driver pressed down on the monster’s air horn. Steven felt the blast tickle the hairs on the back of his neck. His eyes blurred with the foul stench of decomposing onions and he screamed at Mark as he pulled off the road and into a clump of dry chaparral, ‘Mark! Bail out, Mark!’
Mark gave no sign that he heard, and Steven watched in horror as the great truck bore down on his friend. At the last second, he turned away, closed his eyes and screamed.
The magic woke him. It was at his fingertips, ready for battle, ready to blast the vegetable truck to scrap metal. Instead, Steven rolled onto his back and released the spell into Gilmour’s chest. The Larion Senator’s new body, the young Malakasian with the crooked teeth, bent nose and bloody wrist, was looming over him, a short knife drawn and poised to strike. The others slept on beside the fire.
‘No!’ Steven screamed as the magic crashed into Gilmour, shattering his bones and crushing his organs. It was as if the Malakasian soldier had been hit by a lumbering truck loaded to the brink with rotten vegetables, onions or pepperweed…
Gilmour was thrown back, his body turning a lazy half-somersault in the firelight. One foot smashed through a wooden gate near the vegetable storage bins and the impact flipped his body back over itself and his head thudded hard against a support beam. Something cracked, his skull or his neck, and his body finally tumbled to rest inside one of the larger bins along the far wall.
Garec and the others were on their feet.
‘Steven,’ Garec cried, ‘what did you do?’
Steven was breathing hard, the magic still coursing through his veins, invigorating and charging him for another attack. He stared at Garec, his eyes wide in disbelief.
‘You killed him,’ Garec said, hustling towards the vegetable bin.
‘Don’t!’ Steven finally managed.
‘But-’
‘It’s not Gilmour!’
‘What?’ Garec looked at him as if he had gone mad.
‘It’s not him, Garec.’ Steven repeated. ‘It’s Mark, or sent from Mark, anyway. It’s not Gilmour.’
Garec moved back into the firelight and knelt beside Steven.
‘Get me some water, will you?’ Steven held his head in his hands. ‘That was too close.’
Kellin brought a water-filled wineskin and Steven drank deeply before emptying the rest over his head, trying to calm down enough to explain.
‘How do you…’ Brand ventured.
‘It was the things he said, what he did,’ Steven said at last. ‘He mentioned onions today, twice, even after Garec had told him it was pepperweed. Gilmour wouldn’t have done that; he wouldn’t have thought of onions first, like I did.’
‘That’s it?’ Brand was incredulous. ‘Rutters, Steven, you killed him over a reference to onions? We do have onions in Eldarn, you know that!’
‘There was more. He said “God” twice. Not “gods”, but “God”, singular. Gilmour doesn’t do that. A singular god is our God, not your gods of the Northern Forest.’
‘That’s still pretty thin.’ Garec was looking back and forth between Steven and the storage bin as if expecting Gilmour to heave his broken form from the dirty floor like Harren Bonn had done in the spell chamber at Sandcliff Palace.
‘Then he told me to take a nap.’ Steven shook his head. ‘It was too much; that’s just not a phrase Gilmour uses. Taking naps, as if they’re tangible, you know, as if they come in a carry-case, that’s one of our sayings as well. It had to be Mark.’
Kellin drew her sword. ‘Is he here?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Steven said. ‘And there was something else. Did you see the wound on his wrist? It wasn’t right; it was a fake. I mean, it was ugly and bloody, but it wasn’t full of pus and dripping with all that stinking infected shit like the others.’
‘What others?’ Brand asked.
‘I caught a glimpse of Malagon’s when we were on the Prince Marek, only for a moment, but it was an unholy mess. Then there was a dead security guard in the bank lobby; the cops had covered him with a blanket but I had a chance to get a look at him. And finally, I saw Bellan’s. She’d been wearing gloves, but I saw where Nerak had forcibly entered her body, when she reached up to hit me with the hickory staff, just for a moment. So I’ve seen enough to know that the wound on this guy’s wrist was bullshit.’
‘So he’s not here?’ Kellin still wasn’t convinced. She stood facing the vegetable bin, brandishing her sword.
‘No,’ Steven said, ‘if he had been here, that wound would have been real. That was a decoy, just something to throw us off long enough for him to kill me.’
‘Demonpiss,’ Brand whispered.
‘How did he know all that about me?’ Garec asked.
‘You and Mark have spent a lot of time together,’ Steven explained. ‘He didn’t say anything earth-shattering, did he? He didn’t mention anything from your youth.’
‘So what do we do now?’ Brand asked. ‘He obviously knows where we are.’
‘Maybe not,’ Garec said. ‘Maybe he sent out a whole company of those things, each armed with just enough information to lull us into a false sense of security. He’s not stupid. Of course he would check all the farms in the area.’
‘Farms, caves, lean-tos, everything,’ Steven agreed.
‘So there could be others,’ Kellin said. ‘How will we know if the real Gilmour comes back?’
Steven looked to Garec. ‘You need to think of something only Gilmour would know, something he would never have shared with Mark. When he gets here-’
‘If he gets here,’ Kellin interrupted, still unconvinced.
‘When he gets here, we’ll ask him.’
‘We can’t stay here,’ Brand said. ‘We’ll post a watch for the rest of the night, but at first light, we need to move north.’
‘Agreed,’ Garec said. ‘I’ll take the first watch.’
‘What do we do with… well, whatever it was over there?’ Kellin motioned towards the bin where the soldier’s body had fallen.
‘Leave him,’ Brand said. ‘It can’t smell any worse in here.’
Garec smirked. ‘It might improve things, actually.’
Hoyt ducked into the stable as a soldier passed, her gilded black uniform glinting in the torchlight. The main road running south from Pellia to the Welstar Palace encampment was dotted on both sides by merchants’ homes and ranches. The farm houses, while similar in size and grandeur to the homes of shipping magnates or industrial executives, were easy to spot, for they were invariably flanked by barns or stables and had a patchwork of fenced-in fields. This was an expensive area and those who owned property here were all in business with the Malakasian military. Supplying goods to Welstar Palace was lucrative enough; supplying the Welstar encampment and shipping goods to other regions of Eldarn would put Pellia’s largest companies amongst the wealthiest in the land, rich and powerful enough to rival even the massive export companies of Falkan.
This is where Hoyt chose to hunt.
He could hear animals in the night: sheep bleating, cows lowing, horses nicke
ring and pulling at mangers of hay. This district south of the city was redolent with the scents of manure, winter hay, wood-smoke and the faint tang of burned blood: there was a slaughterhouse somewhere further along the road. Hoyt was wondering why shipping and industry tycoons would choose to live alongside smelly farms and noisy animals when it struck him that these were the smells of silver, great piles of silver. The fancy carriages, the elaborate stained-glass windows, the houses built of brick or stone: they all screamed out I have sold myself to Prince Malagon, and this is what I have reaped.
Tonight, Hoyt planned on some reaping of his own. He had been out the last few evenings, and had acquired mostly copper, mixed with a few silver Mareks, mostly from lazy tavern owners, and once, a ship’s captain who’d returned to his cabin drunk and slept like the dead. But to Hoyt, stealing from the hard-working people of Pellia was wrong. Granted, he thought, hidden behind the stable wall, Churn and I used to fleece most of Southport, regardless of whose silver it was; that never mattered to us. But things had changed. Hoyt had seen too much ever to steal from the common people of Eldarn again. That sort of robbery left him feeling hollow. Tonight would be different.
These people, the whole rotten district, deserved to be stripped of every penny they had made from shipping food, weapons, clothing – anything at all – to that gods-forsaken army.
The farmhouse across the road from the stables was a grand, two-storey edifice, with multiple brick chimneys, a stained-glass atrium, a slate roof, and a side entrance for servants. Smoke billowed from three chimneys, but the only windows illuminated this late at night were the upstairs corner rooms, front and back, on the north side. Hoyt waited until the soldier was out of sight, then, patting a curious plough horse gently on the nose, he slipped into the shadow of a tree by the road.
In through the servants’ entrance, down the main hall and out the back, he thought, now focused intently on the upstairs windows, watching for a candle flicker or a moving shadow. The silver will be in the office; all these places have an office, some private sanctum for the master of the house to gaze out over his domain, rutting stuffed-shirt horsecocks, all of ’em.
He crouched another moment. Then it’s either out the same way, or through the back entrance and into the fields. Two means of escape, and both of them away from the main route downstairs and out the front door. Perfect.
When he was certain there was no movement behind the windows, Hoyt crept into the street. For a moment, he was exposed: a dark figure moving warily into the farmyard. The frozen road and snowy fields were a stark, moonlit backdrop against which Hoyt was suddenly conspicuous. The stables and the lone linden tree provided the only cover between the farmhouse and a stone wall marking the property line, but that was three hundred paces to the northeast.
Hoyt was halfway across the farmyard and nearly beneath the sheltered overhang of the servants’ recessed entryway when he heard wagons on the road. He had an instant to make his decision – hide beside the farmhouse or scurry back to the stables? With the wagons still out of sight in the darkness, Hoyt turned and fled across the road, running low to the ground, trying to look like a farm dog, or maybe a fox out for a late-night hunt. He tumbled to a stop beside the linden tree, then crept back inside the stables.
‘Well, that wasn’t exactly how I had planned it, was it?’ he whispered to the old plough horse. ‘But still, better to be in here with you then over there if the whole household woke up to see what rutting fools are driving south at this aven.’ He brushed snow and mud from his tunic, wiped his face on his cloak and peeked out the stable door. ‘Who do you suppose it is?’ Hoyt asked the horse, keeping his face in the shadows.
The wagons came slowly into focus, massive slatted wooden carts emerging from the darkness. They were covered with canvas, and hauled along by teams of horses or oxen. Wooden axles squeaked, and Hoyt flashed back to the forest of ghosts and the platoons of Seron warriors harvesting the bark. They had been driving similar wagons, hauling shipments of bark through the Great Pragan Range, north to Treven and the Welstar-bound barges.
These carts – twelve of them – looked the same. Each was guarded by a squad of Seron warriors, not like the harvesters, staring vacuously into space, but real Seron killers, snarling, angry beasts that would tear Hoyt to pieces in a heartbeat if they found him huddled in the stables.
‘Holy rutting Pragans,’ Hoyt whispered, ‘it’s more bark; it has to be. But how-? Why are they bringing it from the north? There’s nothing between here and the sea, no forests, nothing but the city.’ He ducked back inside, found a corner in an empty stall and curled up in his cloak. He had seen enough; there was no reason to risk capture, either from the road or from the farmhouse, where, he was certain, the entire family would be awake, their noses pressed against the windows by now.
With his forehead on his knees, Hoyt sat listening to the creak and clatter of the wagons fading along the road. A quarter of an aven later, cold and tired, he considered returning to the Wayfarer. He badly wanted to sneak into his room, and maybe slip into bed beside Hannah. Let her warm you up? You think she’d be willing again? Maybe just once?
In the farmhouse windows candles had appeared and Hoyt could see shadows moving about.
‘I’ll give them this much,’ he whispered to the horse, ‘they’re certainly early risers.’ He pulled his hood up, patted the old horse a final time and slipped outside, trying not to think about Hannah. As he hurried towards the stone wall, he said to himself, ‘Let’s see if the neighbours are still asleep.’
WELLHAM RIDGE
Wellham Ridge, while playing host to the largest infantry battalion along the northern Blackstones, was a comparatively small town. Mud streets, most quite narrow, intersected in a muck-and-sludge cobweb separating the residential outskirts from the commercial centre. One cobblestone street, an avenue running west from the common towards the river, delineated the town’s lone affluent district, where half-timbered stone buildings with slate roofs, flower gardens and well-pruned trees lined the thoroughfare. Most housed businesses – mining and assay offices, a textile shop, a dairy, a grain wholesaler – and there were several prosperous-looking inns catering to merchants, officers of the occupation army, and the few wealthy travellers still moving in or out of Orindale. Much of Wellham Ridge, including its one cobblestone boulevard, lay in a great flood plain spilling north from Meyers’ Vale. It was a damp region, especially here along the river, and the Twinmoons had been hard on the town, judging by the sinking, cracking and sagging foundations, even amongst the most expensive properties.
Fine horses, leather tack and livery polished despite the season, clip-clopped along the street, while pedestrians walked on wooden walkways on either side of the cobbled road. The sun was out. It hadn’t made more than a cursory appearance in days and Garec sat on the wooden sidewalk enjoying the relative warmth. Steven and Brand had gone inside to secure lodgings for the night. Garec, content to wait, turned his face to the sky, closed his eyes and breathed deeply of the moment’s grace.
‘Tired?’ Kellin stepped in front of him, blocking the light.
Garec opened his eyes. ‘You’re in my sun.’
‘Sorry,’ she said and stepped aside.
‘No, I’m not too tired. I’m just enjoying the heat.’ He gestured towards the worn planks next to him. ‘There’s plenty; have a seat.’
Kellin shrugged off her cloak and folded it into a square cushion. Sitting as close as their packs allowed, she reached over, hesitated, her outstretched hand hanging in the space between them, and finally placed it gently between his shoulder blades.
Garec turned his thoughts inwards, trying to focus his mind’s eye on the place where her fingers came in contact with the heavy folds of his cloak. He found them, five tiny spots, islands of gentle pressure. The sun on his face and Kellin’s hand resting softly on his back: this was the best he had felt in Twinmoons.
‘You should do that more often,’ he said, unconcerned that he might bl
ush in the face of the gods.
‘I’m not doing anything.’ Kellin didn’t remove her hand.
‘You have no idea.’
‘It’s been a hard road for you.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘I can’t imagine it’s been easy for you, either.’
‘No, I suppose not.’ Kellin pressed harder, wanting him to feel her touch. ‘You’re a legend in Falkan; did you know that?’
‘It’s nonsense,’ Garec said.
‘You’re the greatest bowman in Eldarn.’
‘I’m inhuman; I hate myself for it. I regret every shaft I’ve ever fired, every one.’ He leaned into her, trying to slip his shoulder under her arm.
‘Hopefully, we’ll soon see an end to all this.’ She didn’t sound convinced, but it was something to divert the conversation from Garec’s self-loathing.
‘We?’
His response surprised her. Kellin wrapped her arm around him, resting her chin on his shoulder and whispered, ‘You know what I meant… I meant we, as in we, us, Eldarn will soon see an end to this struggle.’ She nibbled his ear; it was simply too close to leave alone.
‘Oh, that “we”. That’s disappointing. I like the other “we” better.’ Garec turned his head far enough to kiss her. Her mouth was soft, moist and sweet. He might have stayed there, sitting in the sun, tasting those lips for the rest of the Twinmoon, had they not been interrupted by a throaty, guttural cough behind them.
