The Misrule series Box Set

by Andy Graham

  Unusually, it was true. And, for once, Brennan was looking forwards to a mission with minimal bloodshed.

  Malakan staggered to his feet, only to walk into the butt of Nascimento’s rifle as he bent down to wipe a blade of grass off his boot. “Sorry, dude,” he muttered to the dazed private. “Didn’t see you there. You’re so scrawny I can barely see you front on let alone sideways. Maybe join a gym, no? You could start off by trying to squat your membership card.”

  “If those are your orders, prove it,” Kaleyne said.

  “Ma’am?”

  Orr again hiding behind the formality. But hiding what? The other legionnaires were getting twitchy. And these men and women were as predictable as a fox in a hen coop. Maybe just storming the place would have been easier, after all. There would have been bloodshed, but Brennan had a twisting feeling in his gut that was inevitable.

  “If you are leading these people, Baris Orr, then our tradition dictates that you lay your arms down. As you did when you came here not six months ago under Captain Aalok’s command.”

  Orr’s eyes slid past the assembled legionnaires, over the gathering crowd of tribespeople, many of whom were carrying the rocks they used as weapons, past the men and women up on the palisade and their spears, rifles and bows, to Brennan.

  Baris Orr is watching me. Kaleyne. Malakan and Nascimento. The Donian. My men. Lena’s here, too. Not Lena, her ghost. The entire world is watching me. Brennan heard Kaleyne’s voice through a fog of whispers: “Trust is the one tradition that should never change, Baris.”

  Brennan’s vision blurred in a grease of dirty memories, chief amongst those was Randall Soulier’s hands on and in Brennan’s sister. He was trying to compartmentalise them as he did with everything else. It wasn’t working. Those memories were bubbling up against his skin. Voices filtered through the muck and he heard his own voice.

  “When we get to the Angel City, Corporal Orr is going to assume command,” Brennan said over the retreating thrum of the chopper rotors. Men shrugged and grumbled but none wanted to openly question the two most casually and efficiently violent men in the unit. To the corporal, Brennan added, “Do whatever you have to do to get us into the cave system. Without their cooperation, things will get difficult.”

  “Why?” A bead of sweat dripped out from under Orr’s helmet, tipped back to expose the front of his widow’s peak.

  From anyone else, the question would have earned a reprimand, a punishment for disobeying a direct order. This was different. Orr didn’t do disobedience and Brennan’s hands still hurt from administering his last dose of discipline. That woman would now be lucky to see straight, let alone walk straight for the foreseeable future. She would find her life outside of the legions even harder with no pension and a dishonourable discharge hanging over her head.

  “Because you have the best chance of earning their trust,” Brennan said. “You’re the only man here I trust.”

  “Me?”

  Brennan read people well and this was obvious. Orr was immune to insults but vulnerable to praise. Time to turn the screw. “Do you remember Kayle? The Donian warrior who thought he was a gunslinger? You and he had a run-in in the Bridged Quarter of Tye. Not many men could have bested him.”

  “What of it?” Orr’s eye twitched.

  “You gave him a choice, stand down or die. What did he choose? What did you do, Orr?”

  Orr’s hands drifted to his belt. Kayle’s big irons were slung low there. The bullets in the shell belt glinting dark red in the setting sun through the chopper windows. No answer was needed.

  “That’s why I trust you to do what needs to be done,” Brennan said.

  The greasy memories cleared. Orr was still watching Brennan, still clutching the big irons. Make a decision, Legionnaire. Do whatever you have to do before this gets nasty.

  As if he had heard him, Orr saluted Kaleyne, and laid his rifle at her feet. Nascimento’s followed. Then Brennan’s and, as if that was the trigger, the grumbles of the rest of the legionnaires turned to a rush of movement as they all complied. All except,

  “I ain’t doing that,” Malakan said. “They’ll trick you and treat you when you least expect it!”

  Brennan took a step forwards, fists clenched, before he knew what he was doing. Orr was there first. “Yes, you are, Pretty Boy.”

  “Make me. You gonna beat me up?”

  Orr’s face moved, exposing a row of sharp teeth. In anyone else it could have been a smile. In Orr it made him look hungry. “Nope. I’ll discharge you. As ranking officer I have the right.” This time, there was no surreptitious look towards Brennan. “I’ll hand you back over to the Donian. They can do with you as they will and we won’t intervene. Unless” — and at this Orr’s smile became the leer of someone who enjoyed fighting just that little too much to be healthy — “they sentence you to a round on the Dawn Rock. In which case, I will insist on the guest right of being first in line.”

  Malakan’s defiant face let him down a little by paling but, to his credit, he stood his ground. With a salute that was pure starch, Malakan laid down his arms and stood in line.

  A wind whipped up, pulling with it the smells of the forest that unbalanced Brennan. Wrapped in that stench was the threat of rain. The Donian seemed to notice, too, looking at the stars that were creeping out for the night, before returning their attention to the silent confrontation before them.

  “And what of those?” Kaleyne gestured to Kayle’s revolvers slung low on Orr’s hip.

  “These?” the question seemed aimed at himself. Orr drew them in a fluid motion. Large, heavy and well-looked after, they had roses engraved onto the wooden butts in delicate filigree patterns. It was that odd mix of beauty and death, which was so common in weaponry down the ages, as if the former would make the latter more palatable. “They belonged to Kayle. I was looking after them. It was supposed to be respectful.”

  “Theft is rarely respectful, Baris. I’m not sure I want to ask how you came by them.”

  “I killed him.” His tone was so formal he might as well have bowed. There was a collective in-rush of breath as the Donian waited for Kaleyne’s reaction. “I didn’t want to. I gave him the choice. I told him to stay down, to kneel—”

  “That is no choice to give a warrior from any country, Baris Orr. You, of all the people we have welcomed here, someone we would have given a home in a heartbeat, should understand that.”

  Orr made to lay the weapons down and she hissed at him. “Don’t you dare lay them there amongst your Ailan filth.”

  A young boy ran forwards. He took the weapons off Orr and tottered away, struggling to hold big irons the size of his forearms, terrified of dropping them.

  “I opened his eyes,” Orr said. “In your way, so he could watch for the End Times.”

  “In which case” — Kaleyne’s voice was that of the summer frost that kills flowers in the meadow — “I will accept you into the city. We have heat and a hearth.”

  “And we seek meat and water.” Orr finished the traditional Donian greeting.

  “Captain Aalok taught you well. Let’s hope your promise of peace is genuine. That man defecated more decency than most of you people.” She stalked off, her cloak billowing out behind her.

  “Making friends, dude. Still making friends,” Nascimento said as he followed Kaleyne.

  Orr waited until the last of the legionnaires had left. Raindrops threw up spits of dust around them. “Good work, Orr,” Brennan whispered to him.

  “Do whatever I have to do to get us in, sir. That’s what you ordered.”

  “Yes, Orr. Good work.” There was, however, something about Orr’s formality that now troubled Brennan.

  The log was uncomfortable. Full of knots and ridges that stuck into Nascimento’s arse. It was going to rain. His trademark impish grin was off. He’d even suspended his constant hunt for the next wisecrack. About half the Unsung were sitting around the fire in the centre of the Angel City. It was more of a small town than a
city, to be fair. Maybe little towns compensated for their size just like little people did. Old Squat and Ugly, Baris Orr, was here, he of the Little Name and Little Mercy. He was chatting to Brennan behind a tree and looked for all the world like a boy being scolded by his gran. The steroid freak with his staring eyes was listening to Brennan, too. The One Who Shouts Loudest, Shoots First and Cries Hardest had been taken to the Donian bonesetter to deal with the rash from the flowers. Word was the bonesetter had advised against using the anaesthetic in the legionnaire’s first aid kit. The woman had said it was a potentially fatal combination with the flower toxin. No one had thought to ask her if she knew what anaesthetic the legionnaires used. Given the look in the woman’s eyes, Nascimento had a feeling she didn’t know and didn’t care. The One Who Shouts Loudest, Shoots First and Cries Hardest hadn’t been too happy as his once-white now-red vest was stripped off him. The bonesetter had peeled chunks of skin off in the process. None too gently, either. Brennan hadn’t seemed too concerned. Old Stoney Face seemed a little distracted, to tell the truth. Had been since a bad-tempered conversation over his crackly radio some thirty minutes back. All Nasc had caught of the convo was static and swear words.

  Someone shoved a stick into the flames. It sent up an arch of gold and crimson sparks that beat back the dampness in the air. Nascimento’d been at this fire before, of course. The star-flies had been here last time, too, dancing around the edge of the smoke. They had a good life, twenty-four hours of bingeing on food and sex with the occasional fight for some variety. The same old spit-dog still had a spring in its crooked step as it turned the carcass over the fire. Last time, the Donian had roasted a wolf for the legionnaires. The symbolism hadn’t been lost on them. This time, the welcoming meal had stretched to a stringy ferret.

  “This is crap, dude,” he said, grimacing as he accepted a plate of food. He wasn’t sure if the meat was floating in the sea of grease, or eating itself alive as an alternative to drowning.

  “What?” Orr replied, taking a seat on the log. How he managed to get so much rage into just one word escaped Nascimento. Practice, he reckoned. That, natural born talent and a large dose of not-giving-a-fuck.

  “This.” Nascimento gestured at the gathering. A drop of rain landed in his outstretched hand. A young boy brought out the gut-stripper to pass around the Unsung. Brennan emerged from behind a tree where he’d been talking to a few legionnaires to forbid it. The V-groove in Brennan’s forehead looked to be splitting his head in two.

  “What about ‘this’?” Orr asked.

  “The fire and the people are all the same as last time, but not. It’s wrong. Almost as wrong as when you pick up a chick only to find out the curves are being supported by modern-clothing engineering. You know the type: she takes her top off and the cleavage goes south.”

  “You’ve thought that analogy through, I take it?”

  “Happened enough times.”

  Orr shrugged, his anger seeming to ease a shade. “I’ve had a few where it all went east and west, too.”

  Nascimento lay down his plate of ferret with exaggerated care, just as he had last time when Orr and Lukaz had faced off, and took in a long breath. “I do believe you cracked a joke, Corporal Orr. A good one, too.” He wiped the grease off his hand and held it out, keeping one eye on the roasting ferret, just in case it decided to make a break for it. Dodgy it may be, but food was food. With the hint of a grin, Orr shook. The gentle pitter-patter of raindrops hitting tree leaves competed with the sizzle and pop of firewood. “What’s up? You’re cracking jokes, not making snide comments and even shook my hand. Something’s bothering you.”

  Orr released his grip and spat into the fire. The phlegm hissed black on a log. “Nothing.”

  “Whatever, dude. Here if you need me and all that touchy-feely crap.” Nascimento picked up his plate and resumed eating. The meat was fatty and full of gristle, like trying to chew a piece of soft plastic. He spat it on the floor. “Reckon we’re going to see your old buddy Lukaz? Think he’s probably had time to recover from the beat down you gave him around the Dawn Rock by now. We could do with something like that in the cities: behave responsibly or you got to fight Baris Orr on a patch of dust around a big old rock. You—”

  “You done?”

  Nascimento tossed the remains of his sinewy meal into the fire. The meat had soured. Just like this fucking legion. “Yeah, dude. I’m done.”

  “Dick.”

  “Easy with the language. Don’t start something you don’t want me to finish.”

  “I’ll ruin you with one hand, Nasc.”

  “The hand your mother taught you to jerk off with?”

  Orr smiled, malevolently. “I’ll break your face worst, Nasc. Not gonna pull any more women when you look like a goat’s arsehole.”

  “The fuck you will.”

  “Not gonna talk about it, Nasc. All that posturing and posing and preening’s for losers. You want it, you stand up. We’ll skip the Dawn Rock and get to it right here. What’s wrong, Nasty, afraid?”

  “Don’t call me that, Orr.”

  “Or what? You gonna call me bucket-head?”

  Nascimento’s sudden laugh split the clearing. An owl screeched in the cloud-covered night, swooped down and disappeared again, Nascimento’s meal clutched in its claws. “Bastard bird,” he snapped. “Hope you choke on it.” To Orr he said, “Time was we’d have to be pulled apart by now. I’m not gonna fight you, though. You’re the closest thing I’ve got to a friend right now in this shit-shower of excuses that think they’re legionnaires.” A toothy grin spread across his face. “When it hits, and I got a feeling it’s gonna hit big and hard, you’re gonna need my help.”

  Orr, a man who believed that you fought for everything, even the right not to fight, snorted and held out a fist.

  Nascimento’s grin got wider. “You sure? You know I always win.”

  “On three.”

  The two men’s version of paper-scissors-stone had a free-shot penalty. Three rounds later, Nascimento was rubbing his arm. Some of the Donian villagers set down the rocks they had been toying with and started playing the game amongst each other. One had even persuaded a shy legionnaire to play.

  “Shy? How can you be in the Unsung and shy?” Nascimento whispered to Orr as a distant roll of thunder broke amongst the mountains. “Shouldn’t Brennan have burnt that out of him with a hot poker by now?”

  The pair watched the penalties being handed out and a growing number of people trying to shake the numbness out of their hands when the free shots hit the mark. As the storm clouds swallowed the stars, one by one, the atmosphere around the fire crept up from glacial to icy. “You know we’re not here as peacekeepers or to assist in any dodgy research this time, don’t you?” Orr asked.

  Nascimento nodded, a hard ball forming in the pit of his stomach. “You gonna betray us like you did last time?”

  “What I did under the mountain last time, taking that red rock, sending that monster into a frenzy, that . . . that was a mistake. Not going to happen again. I only did it because . . . someone I know is sick.”

  “Get a quack.”

  “This kind of sickness needs an undertaker rather than a doctor.” Orr’s words were flat and lifeless.

  Nasc let him talk, curious to see where this was going. It was unlike Orr to use sentences when syllables would do. Especially when those sentences didn’t involve swearing or threats to break stuff.

  “David Prothero pulled some strings, made some promises, money and contacts, that could have helped a dead-end situation. Helped my friend. I— He . . .”

  A yelp cut the air. The shy kid’s winning streak had come to a bruising end. Blood dripped from his nostrils, outlining his teeth in scarlet.

  “‘I, he?’ What ‘I, he?’”

  “Nothing, Nasc. Forget it.”

  Nowhere. Orr was going nowhere. He usually grunted more sense than this. “Last time we were here you turned into Baris the Bard and now we got ourselves Orr th
e Obscure. What’s going on, dude?”

  “Nothing. Forget it. You’re right. Things are gonna get messy but we got to follow orders.” He stared at Nascimento with eyes of dust. “The orders have got to make sense. We’re legionnaires, Nasc. That’s what we do: follow orders. That’s the way it works. Soldiers listen to superiors. Kids listen to teachers. Patients listen to doctors. That way the world gets better.”

  The wind stirred the clouds in the night sky into tangles. It brought with it the smell of sulphur. A splatter of raindrops, icy and hard, cut across Nascimento’s face. Maybe he should move under cover. The heartwood tree closest to the fire was wrapped in a tight-fitting metal fence. The shiny black welding that had been fresh the last time the men were here was now scuffed and dull. Under that tree stood a shape. Its tufty hair was turned into a shadowy crown of thorns and roses by the flickering firelight.

  Nascimento nudged Orr in the ribs. “Someone’s watching us.”

  “Brooke?”

  “Dude, you really reckon she survived that Monster-under-the-Mountain?”

  “We did.”

  “True. She’d survive just to spite us. But, nope, whoever’s watching us isn’t Brooke. She’s got bigger shoulders and smaller hips than this guy. Not a good look. Still now sure how she and Franklin could have got it on. Frigid meets Fervent,” he added. “Must have been the frostiest fuck since time began.”

  “Where’s the guy watching me?”

  “On your six.”

  “Let’s go introduce ourselves then.” Orr stood, his hand twitching for his missing baton on his belt as he pivoted through 180 degrees.

  The shape detached itself from the tree. Its hair turned white as the firelight hit it. Across the man’s bare chest and arms, angry red lines glistened red, an elaborate latticework of scars: letters, numbers, runes, symbols and shapes. The redness was all the more pronounced for the unnatural pallor of his skin.

  “Lukaz.”

  “Baris,” Orr’s previous opponent replied. “You and your legionnaire friends here to fight us again?”