The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1)

by J. C. Staudt

  “Come now… let’s be reasonable,” said Brother Froderic. He started to say something else.

  “I am reasonable,” the savage roared, “and I am doing you a favor by visiting this forsaken slagheap again. Your trading is poor. You choose not to offer me weapons or food, and everything else you offer, I take from the merchants as easily as I wipe the sweat from my brow. And now I come to find that when I lend you something of value, you return it worse for the wear.” He gestured toward the slaves and narrowed his eyes at Brother Froderic. “If only your walls were not so well-guarded, your gates not buried so far within the borders of the city. The shadow of my tribe would descend on you, and I would ravage your sacred halls and paint them with the blood of your Cypriests. Then you would pay what I asked. Not for your perversions, but for your lives. Ain gueir duon singurien go calgoar ias muir.”

  The priests exchanged a glance as if they understood, but neither spoke against him.

  “Lethari,” said Brother Soleil, “we are but simple, cloistered men. We have no great riches. It is difficult enough to find the resources you require as it stands.”

  “Then learn to have more respect for things that do not belong to you. You have three days to feed and clean them. We leave for Sai Calgoar after that. If you have not returned them to the same condition they were in when I gave them to you, I will double the price next time.”

  “Your prices are outrageous,” said Brother Froderic. “You said you would bring us a new pair of slaves today. You pride yourself on being a man of your word, don’t you? Keep your word, Lethari.”

  When Lethari tilted his head, Bastille heard the bones in his neck crack. He gave Brother Froderic a long look. Without blinking, he hoisted the blade off his back and severed the priest’s head with a single smooth stroke. It thumped on the hardpan, rolling to a stop where Bastille could see the eyes looking down the tunnel at her. The murrhod’s chains rattled when Brother Froderic’s body slumped over, spurting blood from the neck. Brother Soleil let out a cry and scrambled backward, dropping his chain and tossing away the woolen ponchos.

  “I always keep my word,” Lethari said. “Now get out of my sight before I keep it again.”

  Bastille clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle the scream that was climbing up her throat. The gore didn’t bother her; it was the sudden sense of danger that made her panic. Brother Soleil careened down the tunnel past her, muttering to himself. Again he didn’t appear to have seen her, or else he was too afraid to care. There was a trembling in Bastille’s chest as she considered how likely it was that this Lethari and his savages would pursue the high priest down the tunnel. But when they took the slaves by the chains and turned back the way they had come, she let out a sigh. The light of their torches went with them, leaving Sister Bastille in near darkness.

  She waited until the last sounds faded before she lit her candle. Brother Froderic’s body lay in an awkward heap, the head resting near his legs. Fresh blood was still dripping, and while the ground had drunk its fill, the stain was spreading across the wool of his prosaics. She looked down the corridor both ways before snatching the necklace off Brother Froderic’s corpse.

  She held up the symbol in the candlelight, suspended from its simple leather thong. An iron star, caked with rust, rays of sunlight cut from the hole near its center, another hole bored into each of its three points. The secret key of the Esteemed bore no resemblance to any of the Order’s insignia. It had been fashioned by those who had gone before—the architects of the basilica. With this, she could escape the tunnels and get back inside. If she could do so without being seen, all the better.

  Snuffing her candle, she followed Brother Soleil back down the passage. The outer door was still open, so she put her back to the wall and peeked in at the cages. The torch sat in the sconce, its flame a meager wisp. Everything else was still the way it had been when she left, except that the shiny new door at the other entrance was hanging open. Had she closed it behind her when she entered the room? She couldn’t remember.

  She took her time moving along the cages, searching either side of the room for Brother Soleil. He was long gone, probably already in the basilica by now, finding someplace to be alone so he could calm himself down and decide on his next move. Brother Froderic would be missed, sooner rather than later. The absence of one of the Greatly Esteemed for more than a few days would not go unnoticed. Brother Soleil was in a bad predicament, though his position of power within the Order gave him an advantage where predicaments were concerned.

  Bastille had a mind to leave the doors the way they were, but she was more worried about the nomads getting in than she was about tampering with the scene of the crime. She made sure the outer door was secure, then pushed the inner door closed—making sure it latched this time—before she ascended the spiral staircase.

  She considered climbing the ladder and exiting the labyrinth through the trapdoor above, but if Brother Soleil had gone that way he might still be in the room beyond. Instead, she fled down the corridor the way she’d come, as brisk as she could manage while keeping her candle lit. She reached the end without so much as hearing another soul in the tunnels, and came to the hatch that led to the walk-in freezer.

  Producing the key from within her robes, she studied the circular indentation in the wall. There were four small bumps—three squares and a circle. She held the talisman in front of the indentation and pressed it into place. A perfect fit. She twisted. The entire mechanism rotated. The stone turned in its bearings with only the slightest sound. There was a click, and the door at the top of the stairs flipped open.

  The inset rotated back into place, and Bastille withdrew the key and tucked it away before hopping over the lowest step and climbing the stairs to the freezer. She waited for the door to close behind her. When it didn’t, she pulled on the carcass again. Sure enough, the hatch slid back into place. She said a prayer in the dark before she opened the freezer door, hoping no one had come back to begin preparing the morning meal yet. Thank the Mouth, she thought, when she emerged and found the larder empty.

  Bastille had no idea what time it was, but strong rays of daylight were flooding in through the windows at the front of the kitchen, glinting off the old steel sink. When she passed by, her eyes came to rest on the Cypriest. He wasn’t standing way up on the parapet, looking out over the city in unyielding devotion, as the Cypriests were meant to. Father Kassic was standing just outside the window, watching her through dull spiritless eyes.

  CHAPTER 16

  Like Nomads

  Daxin leaned against a tree in the heat of the afternoon, his injured foot resting on a high root. Behind him on the ground lay the large, flat rock he’d located a few minutes earlier. Eight other men stood, sat or kneeled around him, silent and hanging on his every word. Not because they regarded him with any great respect or dignity, but because they were hungry.

  “My granddad told me they used to bend the younger trees and rig them up like springs,” said Daxin. “That was back when you could find a nice green sapling with some flexibility in it. Since all the wood around here is dead, our options are a little more limited these days. So instead, we’re going to use something heavy to crush our game. It’s called a deadfall, and it does exactly what it sounds like; it falls, and something gets dead. One of the simplest and most versatile deadfalls you can make is the figure four. It’s very simple to put together and it takes very little time once you’re familiar with it. All you need is your kill weight, a strong branch, and something sharp to cut it with.”

  Daxin opened his folding knife and began to notch the three sticks he’d already cut. When he finished, he held up the pieces, turning to let everyone see. Then he continued his demonstration. “The pieces go together like this. The notches hold the structure in place until the little thing comes along and pushes on the trigger piece, here.” He laid them out and fitted them together to demonstrate how they interlocked.

  “I’ll set this up using the rock over here
and show you how it works in a second. In the meantime, I want everyone to look around and find their own pieces. You’re going to need to set a lot of these traps and keep checking them every day, so by the time we’re done today I want each of you to have made two of your own. Your kill weight can be a flat stone like this one, a heavy log, or anything you can prop up with the figure four. You want the weight of it to be at least five times the weight of whatever game you’re trying to take. When you find your pieces, stay where you are and I’ll come around to help you.” He searched their faces to see if they understood, and found the average to be satisfactory.

  The men dispersed, covering ground as fast as their hungry eyes would let them. From time to time, Daxin heard the snap of a dry branch or the thud of a stone as the men picked through the landscape, looking for the perfect components. In the days since his arrival, they’d worked to deepen the well at the back of the cave; slow going with only a single pickaxe, but the men took to it in shifts so there was almost always someone hacking away at it during the daylight hours. The water was still coming up tainted, so they had to boil everything they used. But at least they could pull what they needed in a few minutes, rather than having to dredge it up inch by inch over the course of a few hours.

  The villagers had also shown Daxin the ravine on the far side of the cave, which was below grade and hidden from view to the south. It was well-placed to buffer them from the wind, and thus kept them shielded from the storms that would’ve swept thick clouds of dust into the cave otherwise. The ravine was also where they harvested most of the wood and other material they used for cooking and torch-making. Daxin had despaired when he saw the swath of trees that had been cut whole or pushed over, leaving a graveyard of stumps and cratered root systems through the ravine.

  “You won’t hide yourselves very well if you just come outside and cut down the closest tree. Anyone who happens to stumble into this canyon is gonna know someone lives here. If you want to stay out of sight, take your branches from the standing trees and use the trunks of the ones that have already fallen. Any experienced ranger is going to find you unless you leave absolutely no trace, but at least do yourselves the favor of not making it easy for some half-wit band of wastelanders to figure out you’re here.”

  With their water and fuel situations remedied, Daxin had moved on to showing them the finer points of catching enough food to feed thirty people without breaking a sweat. They were learning fast, and he was confident in their ability to rise to the occasion. Hunger was a fine motivator, if nothing else.

  “Okay, gather around here and let me show you how this works.” Daxin lowered himself onto his hands and knees, taking extra time and care to mind his ankle in the process. “The bait will go right on the tip of the trigger here. We set the mechanism like so, to hold up the rock.” Daxin finished setting the device and grabbed a stick off the ground next to him. Biyo helped him to his feet.

  “So now the little dway comes along, finds the tasty treat we’ve put there, and—” He touched his stick to the trigger. The joint dislodged and went spinning end over end. The rock slammed to the dirt and sent up a spray of dust.

  “Wham. You have your game. Or in this case, your stick.”

  Two or three of the men clapped. Others grunted their approval or fidgeted, anxious to try their hand at it.

  “Now you’ll want to spread out when you find your deadfalls and trigger pieces. It doesn’t do us much good to have ten traps right next to each other. We want to cover as large an area as possible. There are groundhogs, hares, bushcats, buzzards, sagebirds, lizards, wild dogs, foxes, rats—”

  “And rat-men,” Eivan blurted out, shaking his fists. “I’m gonna catch me a rat-man.”

  There was scattered, uncomfortable laughter among the men. They were probably used to Eivan’s outbursts, but Daxin was caught off guard. Eivan was staring at him, wide-eyed, relishing the attention. The half-crazed look on his face made him appear more ludicrous than frightening. Daxin waited for the chatter to die down before he responded.

  “If you’ve got murrhods around here, then… first of all, I’m surprised. And secondly, they’re probably not going to be dumb enough to take your bait. More than likely, they’ll pick up whatever little critter has already set off your trap and carry it away. Murrhods aren’t animals, you know. Matter of fact, they’re smarter than a lot of people I’ve met. Present company excluded, of course.”

  Duffy was scrutinizing him. “You’ve seen murrhods above-world before?”

  “Oh no, not out here in the scrubs. The Salt Nomads keep them as slaves, though. So sure, if you’re the kind of person who spends a lot of time with nomads, you’ll see murrhods from time to time. Anyway, there’s lots of other stuff you can catch in the bush. If you want to catch something bigger, we just scale up our weights and the thickness of our trigger pieces, and change the bait to suit our game. Simple as that.” Daxin paused again to let the information sink in, then bade them begin.

  As they dispersed again, Daxin let himself down into a seated position, stretching his injured leg out in front of him. The ankle was improving, though it was still aching and throbbing constantly. He skewered a scrap of jerky with the trigger piece, then smeared a dab of honey on the end before lifting the stone and resetting the mechanism. A trap this size would yield something the size of a hare or a bushcat.

  Biyo had remained nearby since they left the cave that morning, and he was there to help Daxin to his feet again. Together they made their way over to the kill weight Biyo had selected.

  “If these things work, we’ll be eating better than we have since we left Unterberg,” Biyo said cheerfully.

  “They do work. I’ll have you trapping like nomads and eating like the Emperor of New Kettering before the week’s done.”

  “I’ll be forever grateful if you do. Until now, we’ve eaten only what was slow enough to catch. There will always be a special place in my heart for turtle, but a man can only stomach so much of it.”

  “That sounds really good right now, actually. I haven’t had turtle in a long time.”

  “That’s because you’ve been busy catching all the fast food and leaving the turtles for us.”

  “That’s all about to change,” said Daxin.

  The two men sat down on the log Biyo had designated and watched the others build their traps. The temperature was rising as the light-star hoisted itself toward midmorning. Infernal was rising further to the south each day now as the short year cycle drew nearer.

  “Your trap is too close to mine,” Daxin said, after they’d spent a moment catching their breath. “We need to roll this log away, down the hill to where those two trees are.”

  “And by that, you mean I need to roll it,” Biyo said.

  “Hey… foot.” Daxin pointed. He couldn’t help but grin. “I’ll provide moral support.”

  “Fair enough. Dick. Now get up so I can push this thing.”

  Daxin hopped up and let Biyo have at it. The log made one full rotation, but the knot on the far end stopped it from rolling any further. Before long, Biyo decided it would be easier to drag it the rest of the way. They finished setting Biyo’s trap and plopped down for a drink of water and another rest.

  “So… what do you think of Ellicia?” Biyo asked, as they sat with their backs against the trunk of a white tree. It was an awkward question, both in timing and execution; Biyo spoke into the silence as if he’d been anxious for the chance to bring it up.

  “I’m married, is what I think,” Daxin said. Biyo’s probing annoyed him for reasons he couldn’t put his finger on.

  “Oh, didn’t realize. Sorry.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “She’s really taken a shine to you, you know.”

  Good for her, Daxin wanted to say, but didn’t. A twinge of something like excitement ran through him, but he pushed it down. “What are we, in grade school? Whispering about secret crushes and unrequited feelings?”

  “It’s hardly a secr
et,” said Biyo. “You two are pretty obvious, actually. To the point of being disgusting.”

  “Oh come on, it’s not that bad. All we ever do is talk.”

  “For hours and hours.”

  “So what? I can barely move. How else am I gonna pass the time? Half the time I’m talking about my wife, anyway, or she’s dressing my wounds.”

  “Whatever you say, traveler. Just be careful. She’s been through some stuff.”

  Daxin gave no reply. It doesn’t matter how I feel about her, he reminded himself. Not as long as there’s a chance Vicky’s still out there somewhere. Love is love, no matter the cost.

  It took the two of them nearly three hours to hobble around and help each man finish his trap, resting and watering at frequent intervals along the way. Daxin rode at first, but the pain made the ordeal of mounting and dismounting too rigorous, so after a short while he contented himself with walking. Biyo seemed to enjoy harassing him, and he made good use of every opportunity to remind Daxin that he was a gimp and a cripple.

  “So what’s Unterberg like?” Daxin asked him during one of their lulls. “Never been there myself, though I hear it’s the best place for trade in the Inner East.”

  “Oh, Unterberg is great. Lots going on all the time, lots of traders coming through. If you can get a place in one of the below-world quarters, it stays cool most of the long year. Too bad the mayor is such a rich asshole. You kinda remind me of him, now I think about it. And not the rich part.”

  Daxin resented the comparison, but at least he knew Biyo felt the same way about Nichel Vantanible that he did. “Yeah, well. Arrogance is the vinegar that masks the rust of inadequacy, as they say.”

  Biyo frowned. “Whatever that means. I think Vantanible just likes calling himself the mayor because it makes him sound like less of a dictator.”