Lightning Tracks

by A. A. Kinsela

  The old man’s iron glare turned on Cal. ‘What did you say his name was?’

  ‘Cal,’ Pan replied.

  The man examined Cal’s face, squinting as if trying to find something recognisable in his features.

  ‘You’re thin, boy. How long have you been on the run?’

  ‘About two weeks, sir,’ Cal replied.

  The man grunted then turned his attention to Cal’s feet, and with a sickening jolt, Cal remembered that he still wore his Arai boots. They were unmarked and caked with dry mud, but their subtle style would not escape an informed audience, and there was no doubt in Cal’s mind that this man was very well informed.

  ‘Tell me, Cal. What were you doing in Deadman’s Stretch?’

  A bead of sweat trickled down Cal’s spine. ‘Travelling to Auremos, sir.’

  ‘And why did you leave your home?’

  ‘The Arai ki...’ Cal’s voice faded as he tried to get the words out. He cleared his throat. ‘They killed my family.’

  The man nodded. ‘Thank you, scouts. That will be all.’

  He gestured to a door and Cal sidled into the small room. A Korelian woman with wild blonde hair and dressed in Bandála grey was standing at a work bench mixing a dark, sticky substance in a bowl. The shelves behind her were full of ceramic medicine pots, dried herbs, and well-used books. A leather satchel containing surgeon’s tools hung from a hook behind the door. As Cal stepped into her workroom, she looked up, ran her keen emerald gaze over him and, like the old man, her stare rested on his boots.

  Cal heard the lock turn, and he backed up until both of them were in clear sight.

  ‘Let’s start with introductions,’ the old man said. ‘Cal, this is Xanthe. I’m sure you’ve heard of her.’

  Cal tensed. Xanthe was a name he knew well. She was an infamous Arai defector and an expert on poisons. The king had issued a death edict against her twenty years ago, but no Arai had ever come close to catching her, let alone killing her.

  ‘My name,’ the old man said, ‘is Valerius.’

  Cal’s mind raced. Valerius. He recognised that name too. Valerius was a dangerous Korelian prefect who had been banished right after King Thanos came to power.

  ‘You said you’ve been on the run for two weeks,’ Valerius said. ‘But judging from your boots and the way you hold yourself, it’s clear you’re no ordinary runner.’

  Cal took an unsteady step back.

  ‘I know what you are, Cal,’ Valerius continued, ‘and I’m guessing you came here in the hope that you could trade information about the Arai for asylum. Am I correct?’

  ‘I...’ Cal had to will his tongue to move. ‘I’m here to defect.’

  ‘Who was your captain?’ Xanthe asked as she wiped her hands on a rag.

  Just thinking the name made Cal want to crush something. ‘Roan.’

  Valerius and Xanthe exchanged a glance, as if this was precisely what they’d expected to hear. Xanthe unlocked the door and called to someone outside.

  Panic gripped Cal, and he spoke fast. ‘I’ll tell you anything you want. Training camp locations, codes, recruit numbers, postings, trade—’

  Valerius held up a hand. ‘That won’t be necessary.’

  ‘What?’ Cal breathed. This information was his currency. It was all he had to trade for his life. How could they not want it?

  The lock clicked and the door opened again. Cal trembled as a Bandála soldier stepped into the room. He’d tried to do the right thing and protect Artemis by misleading the two Arai soldiers, but that choice had cost him his family, and now the decision to offer the enemy his knowledge would cost him his life.

  Would they kill him here, in Xanthe’s workroom, with poison? Or drag him into the plaza and slit him open for all to see?

  ‘Cal?’

  He lifted his gaze beyond the grey uniform to the brown hair and familiar green eyes.

  ‘Artemis,’ he gasped.

  She threw her arms around him. ‘I can’t believe you came, Cal. I’m so glad you’re here.’

  ‘You made it,’ he said, and stepped back. ‘You...actually made it.’

  Valerius and Xanthe watched in wary silence. Artemis followed Cal’s gaze and wiped tears from the corners of her eyes.

  ‘Don’t worry. I told them everything.’

  Cal swallowed. ‘Ev...everything?’

  ‘We know you’re a tracker, and that your captain is one of the king’s elite guard,’ Xanthe said, then added in a quiet voice, ‘We also know what happened on the solstice mission.’

  Cal felt as though the floor had dropped away. He scuttled back. They would certainly spike his head now.

  ‘What we don’t know,’ Xanthe continued, ‘is what has happened since Artemis left Roan’s training camp, and why you, Cal, decided to leave the Arai.’

  Cal looked at Artemis, searching for signs that she was acting under duress.

  She must have guessed what he was thinking, because she said, ‘They didn’t force me to tell them anything, Cal. I wanted them to know about you – about everyone from our training camp – in case anybody else turned up at Auremos.’

  She was talking to him the way he’d been taught to speak to horses – softly, gently, so as not to spook them. He realised then that his whole body was taut, ready to fight the instant Xanthe or Valerius approached. He unclenched his fists, relaxed his shoulders, and straightened his knees.

  ‘That’s better,’ Valerius said. ‘Now. Will you tell us what happened to you?’

  Cal told them how the king had ordered him to track Artemis, and how he’d made the decision to desert. Then he explained how he got rid of the two Arai soldiers at the gorge. After that, he stopped.

  ‘Were you there when they came for your family?’ Valerius asked.

  Cal nodded.

  ‘How did you survive?’

  Roan’s words echoed in Cal’s ears, causing his pulse to pound with rage. ‘Things are about to change. Soon, a new sun will rise, a dark sun that will chase away all shadows.’

  Valerius cleared his throat, raised his eyebrows.

  Cal blinked, shook the memory from his head, and said, ‘I, ah, escaped. I came straight here.’

  Artemis frowned, but didn’t say anything.

  ‘What do you think, Xanthe?’ Valerius asked.

  She studied Cal, her stare sharp. ‘I’m not sure,’ she replied. ‘He’s hard to read. But we know his history, and Artemis trusts him. That’s enough for me.’

  ‘I agree. Artemis, take Cal to the eastern quarter and keep him out of trouble. We’ll do a full debrief tomorrow.’

  ‘You mean, you’re not...’ Cal rubbed the back of his neck. ‘You’re not going to put my head on a stake?’

  ‘Not today, Cal,’ Valerius replied.

  ‘Oh. Thank you, sir.’

  As Artemis and Cal turned to leave, Xanthe said, ‘Just a minute, Cal.’

  He froze, still unsettled that this legendary traitor knew him by name.

  ‘Did Thanos say why he chose you to find Artemis? It seems strange to me that he wouldn’t send his own trackers.’

  Cal nodded. ‘He mentioned something about his trackers being away on another assignment. That’s why he sent me. Because he didn’t have anyone else.’

  Xanthe and Valerius looked stunned. Cal hoped he hadn’t said anything wrong.

  ‘The trackers have already been dispatched,’ Valerius said, turning to Xanthe. ‘Thanos knows where he is. He’s no longer safe. You have to leave right now.’

  Xanthe snatched up a bow and sheath of arrows and swung them over her shoulder then swooped out of the room.

  ‘Who’s not safe?’ Cal asked.

  Valerius jabbed a thumb towards the door. ‘Both of you leave. Now.’

  Cal followed Artemis through the council chamber, expecting to be seized at any moment. As soon as they were outside, Artemis hugged him.

  ‘I thought I’d never see you again, Cal. Are you really alright?’

  He pulled back an
d studied her face. He still couldn’t believe he was free.

  ‘Did that just happen? I thought they were going to kill me.’

  ‘We’re safe. Completely. I promise.’ She leaned in and whispered, ‘As long as we keep our tattoos hidden.’

  He glanced over his shoulder and murmured, ‘Did you tell them about the king’s horse? That you stole it?’

  She smirked. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Gods, if you’re ever caught, Thanos will have your head. You should’ve seen him. He was furious.’

  She sniffed and raised her chin. ‘He’d better get used to it. That horse won’t be the last thing he loses. Come on. There’s so much stuff I want to show you. Wait till you see the bathhouse. It’s amazing!’

  Cal followed her across the plaza, a hundred baffling questions flying through his mind, but he didn’t dare ask a single one with so many people around. He’d just have to wait until they were alone.

  Chapter 11: The lie of the land

  Nick prodded Felix’s horse with his heels. A swarm of flies drifted off its flanks but the horse itself didn’t budge. He nudged it again. It still didn’t stir. He kicked and kicked and kicked. Nothing happened. He glanced around. Ahead was a nice flat stretch of track shaded by the occasional ghost gum and dotted with ant hills baking in the heat. King parrots nibbled on bush berries, and a pair of wallabies eyed the horse as if trying to work out if it was one of their giant kin or a predator that would swallow them whole.

  Nick checked the stirrups, the reins, the saddle. They were all okay.

  But the horse’s tail was up, and it wasn’t going anywhere until it had finished pooing.

  Nick sighed and rested his chin in his hand. Judging from his shadow, he guessed it was mid-afternoon. He’d snuck out an hour before dawn and stolen the horse. By now he must have travelled fifty kilometres or more. He wondered how much farther it was to Auremos. He didn’t want to be alone if Xanthe, with her knives and arrows, caught up with him. A few witnesses might be a good investment. So far, though, he hadn’t seen a single person. He’d seen signs of people – tree trunks stripped of their bark, flattened spinifex trails, smoke rising from the horizon – and he was aware of being watched. Once or twice he spotted movement in his peripheral vision, but when he turned his head no one was there. At one point, he’d felt all the hairs on his neck and arms prickle, as if someone had breathed a curse on him. Now all he felt was the sweltering late summer heat and the damp sweat patches on his clothes.

  As soon as the horse had finished, it bolted. Nick almost lost balance and grabbed onto the saddle. He got a grip on the reins, wrenched them to one side. The horse slowed, skidded to a halt, wheeled in a fretful circle. Then it reared.

  ‘No! Wait, wait, wait! Whoa!’

  Nick slammed onto the ground and stars shot across his vision. For several minutes he lay still, waiting for his pounding headache to settle to a dull throb. A goanna scrambled up a coolabah tree and watched from a safe height as he moved one arm, then the other. Blinking the sparks from his eyes, he staggered upright and brushed leaves off his shirt. He’d swiped a whole outfit from Felix – riding trousers that reeked of horse, a long-sleeved shirt, a leather vest, and knee-high boots with thick buckles. He’d decided to lace the vest high enough to hide his Arai tattoo. He still wore his necklace with the star engraving, but he kept that hidden too, just in case.

  He tracked the horse through the spinifex to a rocky overhang where it was busy stripping a wild cherry tree of its fruit. It stopped munching to glare at him.

  ‘Alright. We’ll stop here. I’m knackered too.’

  He loosened the horse’s girdle then pulled dry biscuits and shrivelled nuts from one of the saddlebags, his shoulders slumping at the sight of the meagre supplies. He snatched some wild cherries before the horse could snap at his fingers.

  Stashed in the second saddlebag were a few pieces of thick paper and a heavy cloth parcel bound with string. David had taught Nick to read Korelian when he was young, and he could still understand most of it if he concentrated hard enough. After careful scrutiny, he worked out that two of the papers were permits for travel and trade.

  The third was a large map. Nick unfolded the crackling paper and found an outline of the south-east Australian coastline. But it wasn’t quite the same. A thin strip of land like a pointing finger joined Tasmania to the mainland. A gnarled mountain range and roped river system divided the map into three countries. East of the mountains and south of the rivers was Korelios. Yándemar covered everything to the north and west. Wedged between Korelios, Yándemar and the coast was a small area called ‘The Highlands’.

  Mía had never told him his full history, but she’d given him hints, and in his desperation to understand his past, he had tucked these nuggets of information away in his mind. Drawing them together, though, was like trying to work out the image on a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle using only a dozen random fragments. He knew that his mother had once been an Arai, and that both his parents had been killed by the Arai. His gaze strayed back to the country called Korelios. He spoke Korelian. So did David and Xanthe. So had Mía. Did that mean they were all from Korelios?

  No, that didn’t make sense. They were from this country. From Yándemar. They were Yándi – David had said so. Maybe Korelian was the main language spoken here.

  He turned back to the map. Nestled in the western foothills of a mountain range, within the Yándemar borders, Nick found a dot entitled Auremos. He wondered how far he still had to go, and what answers he’d find once he arrived.

  With a sigh, he tossed the map aside and unwrapped the cloth parcel. Inside was a slender piece of steel moulded into a curve like the mud guard on a bicycle wheel, except it was only about as long as his hand, and it had two circular grooves at either end. He shook out the cloth and a pair of small steel discs clunked into his lap. When he fitted them into the grooves they stuck like magnets. He prised them out again and examined the instrument. It had scratches across its outer surface, as if a cat had clawed at it. He guessed it could be a headband. It was about the right shape. He glanced about, making sure no one was looking, not even the horse, then he raised the steel plate to his forehead.

  As soon as the metal touched his skin, it clamped to his temples. Pain exploded across his skull and flashes of brilliant white light blinded him. A shrieking sound pierced his ears. He scrabbled about for the magnetic discs. He found one and snapped it into one of the plate’s grooves. Groping through the leaves, his fingers closed around the second disc and he clicked it into the other groove. The plate fell away. His sight and hearing returned in a rush and his head whirled with the sudden release. He doubled over, dry retching and shaking, then collapsed onto his back, wincing with every beat of his pulse.

  Chapter 12: Commander Julian

  Cal trudged through the deserted streets of the eastern quarter, trying to stay alert through the grogginess of exhaustion. Auremos was quiet, the predawn lull in activity giving it the appearance of rest. Like the unsettled wilderness around Cal’s old Arai mountain training camp, the city was intensely alert at this hour – arched and taut as if in anticipation, though of what Cal had no idea. It was the time of night when the gods, if they even existed, had the power, and vulnerability, to step out of the shadows.

  The huntress constellation hung low in the west, indicating that it was an hour till sunrise. Cal didn’t know why the Bandála bothered to station him on the wall at night. There were plenty of Korelian soldiers with far better eyesight than his, but he’d still been rostered onto the night watch. Perhaps it was Valerius’ idea, so that he could be observed while he was at a disadvantage. His tracker skills were the result of years of specialised training, and he’d worked hard at it to compensate for his lack of natural ability in other military skills. In Auremos, though, he was forced to keep his skills hidden, which rendered him next to useless. He hated it.

  A bird flapped into the night, as if shrugged off its perch.

  ‘Ah, Cal.
There you are.’

  The quiet voice rose from an alley behind Cal. He spun around as a soldier stepped into view. Above the man’s head, the crescent moon sailed like a broken halo, or a curved sabre about to strike. In the dim light, Cal identified a biting gaze and a strong, upright posture that spoke of authority.

  ‘I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Commander Julian. I would like to discuss something with you.’

  Cal had gone to great lengths to ensure that the Bandála recruits believed he was nothing more than a clumsy runaway slave. Only Valerius, Xanthe and Artemis knew the truth about him. The fact that Julian knew his name made Cal nervous.

  In the distance, a bell tolled.

  ‘I have to get to the aqueducts, sir. I’m late for my shift.’

  Julian smiled. ‘Nice try. You were posted to the night watch on the northern wall, which ended thirty minutes ago.’

  The commander knew where and when Cal was posted. Why would that interest him? Cal considered his options. He was wearing the Bandála uniform, and while he wasn’t yet a member of the Bandála, Valerius had instructed him to behave like a recruit so that no one would suspect his true identity. He decided he should see what Julian wanted.

  Julian drew a deep breath as if inhaling the shadows and said, ‘There’s been a recent spate of thefts in your neighbourhood. Have you noticed anything?’

  The commander also knew where Cal lived.

  ‘No, sir. Nothing.’

  Cal couldn’t see Julian’s expression in the darkness, but the commander’s stillness told Cal that his lie hadn’t been believed. Julian unlatched the door of a guard house behind him then stood aside and motioned for Cal to enter. Cal took in the single lit candle propped on the bloodwood table, the dry straw scattered across the stones, and the lone chair sitting in the middle of the room. Instantly comprehending, he recoiled. Julian caught his arm, pressed a knife into his ribs, steered him into the guard house, and tossed him towards the chair.