The Misrule series Box Set

by Andy Graham

  “Dude, this is wrong and you know it.”

  One of the legionnaires, the skin-too-tight, eyes-always-staring steroid freak, brought the butt of his pistol down on the back of Nascimento’s neck. From one instant to the next he was lying on the floor, head spinning, staring at Baris Orr’s boots, acutely aware of his own breathing.

  “That’s why you didn’t get a gun, Nasc. That’s why you didn’t know. And by being the dick you are, you just blew your chance to stay one of us.” His voice was clipped and distant, as if he was reciting words he didn’t understand. Orr’s dusty boots were replaced in Nascimento’s vision by the rain-soaked ones of Brennan. Nascimento forced himself to his knees, fighting back the wave of nausea.

  “Former corporal Jamerson Nascimento is to be tried by a battlefield court for treason and disobedience—”

  “What are you chatting about, you slack-brained ballsack of sadism? There’s no such thing as a battlefield court.”

  “New leader, new rules,” Brennan replied. “You have been found guilty of treason. The punishment is death. Corporal Orr?”

  Lightning cracked. It cut a ragged semicircle of light out of the darkness at the cave mouth. Thunder roared down the tunnel, wind biting at the torch flames. “Sir.” Orr saluted, sweat teeming down his brow.

  “Shoot him.”

  27

  Corporal Orr's Disobedience

  Baris Orr aimed his pistol at Nascimento. “Stay down.”

  “Never.”

  A shudder ran through Orr’s body.

  “Been here before, haven’t you, Baris? Same words, different bullets, ’cept you’re gonna murder me this time, not Kayle.” Nascimento took Lukaz’s outstretched hand as the leader of the Hoyden pulled him up. “You’re about to run out of friends, dude. I’m the last one you got.”

  “You’re a dick, Nasc.”

  “And you’re stalling. Not got the balls, have you?” No one else mattered. Nothing else was important. Not the watching legionnaires or tribespeople. Not the throbbing lines of gwenium that painted the scene in a pulsing crimson. Nor the storm lashing at the cave mouth. Just one bullet.

  “Sir. Orr, sir. He’s disobeying you.” Malakan. A scratchy, rattish whine to go with his scratchy, rattish nose. “Told you we couldn’t trust him. Let me do it. Said I’d be better, didn’t I, sir? I won’t let you down. Sir. Sir?”

  “Let you down,” Brennan repeated, red sweat dripping down his forehead. “I let you down.” Again. So softly that Nascimento barely heard him.

  “Give the word, sir,” Malakan said. “I can do it. Gonna do it first time. Won’t mess up, no, sir. Watched the sun-fans just like you told me to. Won’t screw up this neither. Not me. I can—”

  “Stop.” A woman’s voice. Kaleyne. Graceful despite the blood smeared across her face. A woman who needed no wealth other than her own qualities. A fact that was lost on her grandson.

  “Sir, don’t trust her. She’s devious. Devious. She’ll trick you. What do you want, woman?”

  “Apart from a touch of respect? For you to stop.” The note of command stilled both the agitated Donian people and the storm whipping at the mountains. She seemed oblivious to the crushing grip of the steroid-freak legionnaire on her arm. “I have long been critical of Lukaz and his Hoyden. Their attempts to resurrect the Old Ways did not sit well with me. I wanted to move our people on from the history of blood feuds and violence that have held us back, those that have kept us in a future blinded by the past.”

  Wind snaked into the cave, swirling dust ahead of it. Kaleyne patted a stray hair that had escaped her steel-coloured bun. She was the calm in the centre of this storm. Her air of command made it and everyone caught in it listen to her: Malakan, his rattish nose twitching; Brennan, his forehead puckered by the V-shape; the steroid-freak legionnaire with the never-ending stare and his iron grip on her arm; most of all, the Donian people wrapped in their seething silence.

  Kaleyne twisted her hair back into place and directed her next sentence at the two former Rivermen. “Not so long ago, I told Rose Franklin that if you people from Ailan took any more of our peace from us, I would gladly embrace the Old Ways with the Hoyden and pay whatever price awaits me. Not lying down for tyrants and bullies is a tradition that deserves to poke a stick in the eye of progress.” The next sentence she spoke to Orr alone. “Anyone can choose a good life; not many can choose a good death. You did what you had to do, Baris.” She reached out her free hand as if she wanted to stroke his face. “And I would still take you as one of our own for that.”

  “Peasant.” Malakan sneered. “Superstitious p—”

  From nowhere, one of Kaleyne’s hair clips was in her hand. It looked vaguely like an apple-corer. That was all Nascimento saw of it before Kaleyne buried it in the eye of the steroid freak clutching her arm. His soul-curdling scream triggered thirty seconds of chaos. Donian pushed. Legionnaires pulled. Boots scuffed on rock. Shouting. Yelling. Bawling. Steroid was scrabbling at the red welling between his fingers. New recruits aimed their snub-nosed pistols but were reluctant to fire without Brennan’s order, or possibly were reluctant to see what the first shot would lead to. The rancid taste of sulphur and sweat and fear was heavy in the storm-thick air.

  “Stop!” Brennan yelled.

  Both sides froze midstruggle. The captain had his revolver muzzle pressed into Kaleyne’s forehead. Her skin wrinkled and pale from the pressure. The captain’s eyes darted around the room.

  “You’re in trouble now. Big trouble.” Malakan said in a sing-song voice. “That was a mistake. Oh yes. That was a mistake. Mistake. Run out of chances now, bitch.”

  Kaleyne’s smile didn’t reach her stone-cold green eyes. “The only mistake I made was trusting you Unsung. And you” — her gaze slid to Malakan — “you had as many chances and as much love as your brothers and your sister. At some point you stopped seeing that because it was easier to wallow in self-pity than climb out and swim against the tide.”

  Private Malakan spat in his grandmother’s face. “Sir! Shoot her,” he shouted over a wave of snarls and threats.

  “Sister? I had a sister,” Brennan whispered. “Randall killed her. I need to kill him. Kill someone. Balance. Symmetry. It’s important.” His wild eyes focused on Kaleyne as her gaze once more fell on Baris Orr. The faintest of smiles touched her lips, and then—

  The skin on Brennan’s finger paled as the trigger bit into it. A flash and smell of cordite. A shower of blood exploded through the hair on the back of Kaleyne’s head. And, as if each limb was being unplugged one at a time, they collapsed in sequence. Kaleyne hit the floor with a thump, dust speckling her face. The shoving stopped. The only sound the whimpering of the legionnaire trying to stem the blood flowing from his eye socket. The apple-core hair clip poked out from his fingers.

  “You will never leave here alive,” Lukaz said into the silence.

  “None of you,” Karaan added.

  “You will die last, Malakan,” Eleyka, the last of the Elders. “You will beg to be burnt over a slow fire before we have finished with you. Your death will be so terrible no one will dare repeat it.”

  Malakan’s eyes darted around the cave. The panic and fear that had blanketed the Donian only moments ago had coalesced into a palpable, choking hate. Lukaz advanced on Brennan, scarred hands extended like claws. Two legionnaires thrust their guns into his chest.

  “Sister?” Brennan whispered, gaze fixed on nothing.

  The graveyard silence was broken by the low moan of the blinded legionnaire. “It hurts. My gods. It hurts so much. My eye. Someone help me.”

  “I am a healer. I can stop the pain,” the bonesetter said in a strangled voice.

  “Do it.” The momentary indecision Brennan had shown was replaced by something bordering on suicidal.

  The bonesetter knelt behind the legionnaire, her knees giving out two large pops from under her brown robes as she squatted. She cradled the man’s head in her hands, taking care not to squash his earlobes. Hi
s blood ran over her arms. And with a sudden twisting motion she jerked his head left and right. His neck bones snapped like dry twigs. His back arched, muscles in his arms clenching into cords. As his corpse sank back to the ground with a hissing of escaping air, the bonesetter spat in his good eye. “Told you I could stop the pain.”

  Brennan’s pistol flared again. The woman slumped over the legionnaire, a wet patch spreading through her robes. “Enough of this,” he shouted. “Any more of anything from anyone and you all die. Get the rest of the unit. Seal the cave entrance. Radio this in.”

  “What of him, sir?” Malakan asked, pointing to Nascimento. Orr still had his revolver trained on the big man.

  “Why is he not dead, Corporal?” Brennan shouted. He was frantic, verging on tears.

  Orr armed the sweat off his forehead, leaving a dusty print across the tip of his widow’s peak. “Orders, Nasc. Nothing personal.” There was a slight quiver in his voice not seen in the hand aiming the pistol.

  “Just do it, dude. I’m bored. Here, I’ll make it easy for you.” Nascimento held up both clenched fists, middle finger extended on each. “Aim between these and you should hit.”

  “Don’t you know what you have to do, Corporal?” The veins on the side of Brennan’s neck were bulging. Malakan’s nose twitching. The Donian were circling like a murder of crows or a gorge of fisher gulls hovering over their prey.

  “I know exactly what I need to do, sir.” Orr pulled the trigger. The gunshot lit the cavern an ugly orange.

  Nascimento’s eyes were wide, his dark skin splattered with blood. “Dude,” he gasped. Brennan slumped to his knees, blood streaming from a hole in his chest. “You shot Brennan.”

  The muzzle flared again. Captain Brennan fell face down into the dust, the last word in his mouth, “Lena.”

  As Private Malakan screamed, the circling Donian pounced. A hurricane of violence that the rudderless legionnaires were powerless to stop.

  The cave was littered with weapons, bits of clothes and bodies. One of the stone thrones had been overturned, the Left Hook of Judgement. It had crushed a legionnaire. A puddle was leaking out from underneath, making dark lines in the dust. The flattened man looked like something out of a cartoon — hands and feet poking out from under the massive lump of rock. The only difference being, once they picked this throne up, the legionnaire wasn’t going to spring back up again, fully inflated and with birds tweeting around his head. For the life of him, Nascimento had no idea how he had managed to push the throne over. That was a blur. “Guess Old Nasty’s still kicking around upstairs,” he muttered and tapped his temple.

  The rest of the fight was an all-too-vivid memory, all of its brutal glory lit by the crimson light pulsing from the thin seams of gwenium. The shoving mess of bodies, sweaty faces and bared teeth, had barely left enough space to think, let alone fire the snub-nosed pistols the Unsung had smuggled in. One Unsung had shot one of his colleagues in a wild-eyed panic. Another fled as soon as the first spatter of blood had hit the floor. Nascimento had a feeling he knew who the runner was.

  Nascimento was jostled by a man with moon-coloured skin and said, “Guess they, we . . .” He struggled to organise his thoughts and settled on the safe option. “Guess the Unsung didn’t realise how vicious you people can be.”

  “It’s our nature,” Lukaz replied. “You people from Ailan train to fight; we train not to.”

  “And the bodies?” Nascimento pointed.

  The dead legionnaires — apart from the one who had been flattened by the throne, he was going to have to wait a while — had been carried out of the cave and dumped in a heap. Brennan was at the bottom. The dead tribespeople were laid in a line just inside the entrance, bathed in the moonlight. Kaleyne, her hair hiding the hole in the back of her skull. The bonesetter. Two of the Hoyden, their scars gleaming in the firelight. A child who could not have been more than sixteen and had fought like a demon risen. The wild-haired man who would never hold his baby.

  “Shouldn’t they be covered?” Nascimento asked, turning one of the snub-nosed pistols over in his hands. They were the same make that the VP had used to murder his mother. That man had an eye for detail that was bordering on self-flagellation.

  “Not our way,” Lukaz replied.

  “At least close their eyes, then. Freaking me out.”

  “Their eyes are open to watch for the End Times.” Lukaz’s jaw worked soundlessly. A twist of veins on his forehead pulsated close to bursting.

  Tough kid, Nascimento thought. Seen a lot of violence, not much death, though. That changed the game.

  Lukaz pointed at the dead girl. A tumble of black hair clouded a face that had the bluish tinge of death. “She . . .”

  “Too young to die,” Nascimento finished. “All of them were, even Kaleyne. I’m sorry, dude. Sorry to have been part of this.”

  Lukaz knuckled tears away from his eyes. Tears of rage and frustration, disbelief and sorrow.

  “We lost him.” A slurring, out-of-breath voice, sounded along the cavern. Orr skidded to a halt in front of the two men. “Malakan gave us the slip and fled into the woods. We got the rest of the Unsung tied up good and tight, though.”

  “So it was him that ran,” Nascimento said.

  “Spineless, ball-less, gutless, lily-livered . . .”

  “Dick?” Nascimento suggested when Orr faltered.

  Orr’s sneer snapped back across his face. “Yeah, dick.”

  “Good to have you back, Baris.”

  “Enjoy it while you can.” Orr’s face darkened, his eyes clouding. “Should have told you before, I guess. But I got—”

  “Lukaz! Baris!” A breathless woman sprinted into the cavern, dust and leaves stuck in her short dreadlocks.

  Orr shook his head, the stiffness leaving his shoulders. Nascimento wasn’t sure if he looked annoyed or relieved.

  “Unsung. Far side of the woods. Big clearing. Only place big enough to land that many choppers.” Her words came in ragged gasps, the muscles on the sides of her neck straining.

  “‘That many’ choppers?” Nasc and Orr said in unison.

  “How many choppers does ‘that many’ mean?” Nascimento asked, sharing a worried look with Orr.

  “Our scout stopped counting at ten.”

  “The VP’s brought the whole fucking legion.” Nasc ran a hand across the top of his head. “How long?”

  “They got to land and set up some kind of outpost,” Orr said.

  “There’s a big hilly patch between them and us. Should slow them down a little,” the woman was bent double, hands on her knees. Her back arched as she sucked in air. Under the loose-fitting shirt Nascimento could just about make out the roundness of her breasts. She straightened up and gave him a look that was both coy and challenging. “Depends how quickly you legionnaires can march. But I reckon we have twelve hours.”

  “Why not just land closer or parachute in?” Nascimento asked. “In fact, why didn’t we do that instead of hiking through that bloody forest?”

  “The Angel City is perched on a plateau, sandwiched between sheer cliffs and a sheer drop.”

  “I saw that, thanks.”

  She winked at him. It stirred up a familiar feeling in the pit of his belly, just about where his six-pack became his groin. She didn’t have the curves he went for, had a bit too much shoulder and was too stringy in the leg. But there was an obvious bite to her and sharp teeth that promised all kinds of fun. Never ‘been’ to Donia, he thought with a grin. Maybe Ray Franklin was onto something with Brooke, after all.

  “The plateau and the mountains do odd things to the wind,” said the woman who Nascimento would later find out was called Mayka. “We call it the Devil’s Breath. Bit like a riptide, it can pick a chopper out of the air and slam it into the stone in a second.”

  “Right, then.” Nascimento was suddenly thankful for the long trek through the woods. “What do we do?”

  Orr was staring out of the cave. The storm had abated as the fight ende
d and the wet rocks outside were washed in moonshine. “Hills?”

  “One biggish one, we call it the Lion’s Crest on account of the flowers that grow there. It’s visible from the landing site. It’s the obvious way to come if they don’t want to get tangled up in the forest.”

  “How big’s this Lion’s Crest?” Orr asked.

  “Five-hundred-metre sprint to the top or thereabouts,” Lukaz said.

  “You know it?”

  “Of course.” The gwenium seams were pulsing more quickly now. Light rippled across Lukaz’s skin in red waves.

  “Get as many of your Hoyden as you can. I got an idea.” Orr started for the cave entrance. Lukaz followed behind him, already shouting orders at a kid with only a few scars across his arms that were still red and fresh.

  “Whoa there, dude!” Nascimento grabbed his arm. “Just what are you thinking? You going to let Uncle Jamerson in on this plan?”

  “Nasc, listen. It makes sense for us to split up. We have a better idea how the Unsung work than the tribes do. This way we maximise our chances. I’ll stall them as long as possible, while you help here.” He grabbed Nasc’s wrist, the one that was holding Orr’s arm. “You know I’m right.”

  Orr had never had the puffed-up swagger of the brash and arrogant, men in skin-tight T-shirts with skulls and lions emblazoned on the front, strutting around with their arms held away from their sides as if they were carrying carpets. Unlike those men, and occasionally women, Orr didn’t brag about violence, he just got on with it. He didn’t watch sport. He played it. He didn’t even watch the porn that escaped the government filters, he just fucked. In place of the swagger and verbal platitudes to a life without compromise, Orr had always exuded a lazy contempt for anything that breathed, a slouching aggression that was all the more potent for his laid-back attitude. Now, with Lukaz and the Donian rallying around him, Orr was . . . Nascimento wasn’t sure what Orr was. In anyone else he’d have called it hopeful. Just that Baris Orr didn’t do hope. “Why are you doing this, dude? Why the change of heart?”