by Col Buchanan
‘Look at how Erēs does it all without effort!’ he would say with his lopsided grin. ‘We should be copying her ways and using them to our advantage, I tell you, so we can farm without much of this drudgery and without depleting the land too. We can allow nature to do half the work for us instead of always wrestling her, always trying to dominate and exploit!’
Scorn was the reply to such fervour, of course, though as scorn goes it was gentle enough, for it was generally accepted that diplomacy was never going to be Cole’s strong point in life. And so, for those early years, many of their neighbours saw only a growing eyesore around the couple’s homestead, a wildness of growth when they were used to straight lines and clear separations of crops. A man too lazy to cut down weeds.
In truth she had barely believed them herself, these things Cole spoke of. But for Reese, her husband’s need to follow his own path in life according to his inner vision – his wildly unbounded soul – had always been the great attraction. The reason she knew him to be the love of her life.
So Reese had supported her husband’s efforts despite her own doubts on the matter, raising their only child Nico by herself much of the time while he laboured to create his unkempt paradise. And over the years, Cole had proven the truth of his own words.
Here it was, all around her in the beating rain. What had once been bare and treeless farmland of tilled fields and stone walls, now a bountiful forest garden, thriving in such natural balance that it hardly needed tending at all, would carry on thriving in a hundred years’ time whether anyone worked on it or not.
Cole, a man drawn to wilderness like herself, had created a vibrant pocket of wilful nature around their very home. Though not entirely wild, of course, for they had bellies to feed and a living to earn.
A cultivated wildness then, much as the rest of the Free Ports were said to be.
All of this bounty when people went hungry in the city and across the whole Free Ports. It remained the greatest irony of this war, how people went hungry while the islands produced an abundance of crops all year round. Yet the democras needed to defend itself, and so it needed black powder, which was supplied solely by the Alhazii Caliphate in return for the majority of their harvests.
‘There you are,’ came a voice from behind, and Reese swung about in alarm, shocked at the sound of another human voice. But it was only Los, her lover, hurrying along the trail with a coat over his head, frowning in that bemused way of his.
‘What are you doing out here, woman?’ he asked as though she was mad. ‘You’ll catch your death!’ And indeed as he spoke his breaths were spurts of steam in the drizzle, and she felt the cold on her skin at last, and clutched her arms about her sodden shawl. She realized that she was shivering.
In the shadows of the forest Los glanced about as though for wolves or Mannians – a man of the city even now.
‘Boon,’ she told him. ‘I thought I saw Boon out here.’
‘The dog? But the dog’s dead, remember? Nico told you he buried him in the city.’
‘Oh.’
‘I think all that hazii weed’s making you crazy,’ he quipped, placing a hand on her arm, but she flinched clear of his touch.
‘It’s the death of my son that’s making me crazy. The weed’s about the only thing stopping me from losing it.’ Panting, she turned away and looked about her one last time.
Boon wasn’t here.
Nothing was here but the wild farm and her own stubborn memories.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Return of the King
Stiffly the old general climbed the steps to the upper deck of the warwagon, his knees having grown stiff in the chill air flowing over the deck. His suit of armour still felt too heavy on him, even though it was mostly decorative, splendidly so, a replacement for his old warsuit that no longer fitted his spreading bulk. Too long out of the field, Mokabi knew. Too many years growing soft and living the pampered life of a retired Archgeneral.
On the open deck, Mokabi ignored the movements of his bodyguards and the glances of those already there, and turned instinctively to the north. His gaze swept along the road that carried his army along the Lansway, that narrow bridge of land connecting the southern continent with the island of Khos – a bridge that would take them all the way to Camp Liberty, and beyond that to the siege of Bar-Khos.
Across the creaking deck, Mokabi approached the forward crenellations, where one of his officers was squinting through an eyeglass fixed to a stand.
The rolling paved road seemed a long way below them from up here, for the warwagon was a mammoth affair, each of its eight wheels taller than a zel, its height more than a two-storey house. Like a wooden fort rolling across the land.
To the left of him, the Sargassi sea washed against the rocky shore of the Lansway in ribbons of froth, bearing the flotsam and jetsam of a recent storm. To his right swelled the greater body of the Midèrēs, its deep waters made brazen for a moment by a low sun peeking through the clouds.
It was early winter in the southern continent, a season of rain and winds and mud, and indeed coals in a nearby brazier hissed with a few spits of rain.
A poor day for his historic return to the Shield, Mokabi reflected. No doubt his biographer could spice it up a little, adding some sunshine and the songs of forthcoming victory rising from a hundred thousand throats leading the way, casting heroes of all of them. But still, the general’s good mood receded in those moments of dreary rain, watching his army trudging in weariness along the road between the two seas.
A quarter of a million mercenaries had so far answered his call, more by far than he had been expecting; drawn here from every corner of the known world by the promise of gold and booty. More people than lived in all of Khos. Just feeding them was going to consume a good portion of his wealth, and Mokabi possessed much of the spoils of the southern continent; a mountain of coins lay in the armoured vault in the belly of this rolling fort.
But they had come, and he could hardly complain now at their numbers or their expense. What did it matter so long as the city fell?
‘Quite a sight, Fenetti, eh?’ he quipped to the old officer peering through the eyeglass near him, the man’s nose tattooed with three stripes of rank.
‘Reminds me of when we first arrived here with the Fourth Army.’
‘Better than that, man. Look at them!’
Far ahead, a coastline spread away on either side into the haze. It was the island of Khos, breadbasket of the Free Ports here at their easternmost limits, that chain of islands standing alone in defiance of the Empire now that all nations around them had fallen.
Without Khos, how long could the Free Ports survive, surrounded and with only the Alhazii Caliphate to openly trade with? Not long, his strategos had surmised, unless the Caliphate chose to weigh in on the side of the Free Ports at last, which no one considered likely. The Caliph preferred to remain neutral in this war, enjoying his monopoly with the Isles of Sky and all the profits – and protection – that came with it. No, with the fall of Khos the rest of the Free Ports would soon follow, and Mokabi wholly intended for the glory to be his alone.
Over the tramp of the army’s boots he heard cannon fire in the distance now. Fenetti the officer straightened from the eyeglass.
‘I see them.’
Mouth agape and one eye shut tightly, General Mokabi peered through the eyeglass and adjusted the focus to his poorer vision.
There, quivering and shaking to the movements of the wagon, the low buildings of Camp Liberty surrounded by earthworks and tents, and beyond them the Shield itself. Through the haze he saw first the ruins of the old walls which Mokabi himself had long ago taken, and then past them, wreathed in smoke, the first of the four surviving walls: a cliff of black stone spanning the entire width of the Lansway.
A decade had passed since he had first seen those defences with his own eyes, back when he had expected them to fall after a brief and bloody siege. Yet the Imperial Fourth Army still assaulted them even now, a
n army he had once led here himself.
Two years into the siege, bogged down in a campaign that seemed to be making little further headway against the surviving walls of the Shield, Mokabi had found himself unexpectedly ousted from his position through machinations back in the capital. Without warning he’d been forced to step down as Archgeneral in whispered disgrace, relinquishing the reins on a loyal army he had planned to do much more with, including trying for the throne. Even with his colossal successes in conquering the southern continent, the general’s reputation had been tarnished by his failure to take Bar-Khos in the end. The man who could not be beaten in the field, who never failed at conquest, had been trumped after all by the Empire’s most despised enemies, the Free Ports.
Now, at long last, he had a chance to redeem what was otherwise a glorious career.
It had been Mokabi’s devising, this newest grand scheme to take the island of Khos once and for all. His idea alone to land an Expeditionary Force on the far coast of the island, with the intention of taking Bar-Khos from its weaker northern side, while Mokabi himself led his own forces against the city from the south, smashing it in between the two before the onset of winter made travel and siege a logistical nightmare.
But of course, Sparus the Little Eagle – present Archgeneral of Mann and commander of the Expeditionary Force – had made his usual mess of things in his invasion of the island, even worse than Mokabi had been anticipating. Now, by all accounts, the present Archgeneral was holed up in the floating city of Tume vying for control of his forces with General Romano, young contender for the Empire’s throne.
It was clear the Expeditionary Force was stalled entirely, and here in the south Mokabi himself was weeks late arriving at the party, having tarried in Sheaf for as long as he could get away with it. This having been his plan all along, to arrive late; for unlike Sparus, Mokabi had no fear of winter’s onset. He had a paved Mannian military road to take his army all the way to the siege, never mind how bad the conditions became.
The general had supposed from the onset that any Expeditionary Force would be unable to take the city alone. All along, Mokabi had anticipated their slaughter as they threw themselves upon the lesser northern walls of Bar-Khos, and had intended to postpone his own assault until both sides had weakened themselves against each other. With the defenders adequately thinned, Mokabi would then storm Bar-Khos and without delay this time, taking the city for himself. And all would see that it was he who had finally conquered the Shield; that he had never been beaten in his ambitions, merely delayed.
Yet with the death of the Holy Matriarch during the Khosian campaign, this venture had become more than a simple matter of pride.
Back in the capital of Q’os they still mourned the death of Sasheen. Flags of white flew across the great city even as the plots and scheming were accelerated by all who wished to fill the now empty throne. Pointless posturing, all of it, for Mokabi’s best strategos were now clear on this – the throne of the Empire would be decided here, at Bar-Khos.
Whoever took the city was certain to become the next Patriarch of the Holy Mannian Empire.
Mokabi fully intended to be the one.
Just then the old general inclined his head to the side, thinking his ears were deceiving him. For he thought he heard the sounds of battle coming from Camp Liberty ahead, clashes of shields, gunshots, the roar of thousands of throats.
But then he saw the huge banners waving from the distant camp, bearing what seemed to be his own personal motif of a lion, and he heard the sound of his name carried by their ragged voices.
Mokabi realized that it was only his beloved Fourth Army, raising a din in celebration at his return.
‘Well they remember you, at least,’ Fenetti the officer remarked.
‘Aye. Some of the old dogs are still around.’
Excited, feeling the enormity of the moment, General Mokabi peered through the rain over the swaying bulks of the wagon’s mammoots and their drivers, taking in the host of fighters squeezed along the confines of the road all the way to the far camp.
In a warmth of satisfaction, he took in the lines of Seration hill skirmishers with their slings and their composite bows. The chain-mailed heavy infantry of the Private Military Companies. The Pathian light cavalry flying streamers from their lances. Longshanks from the Untamed Plateau. Painted wild men and women from the High Pash. Feathered banghori fanatics from the far east walking in step to the wails of their bagpipes, having travelled all this way along the Spice Road . . .
And behind him, in the wake of the rumbling warwagon, the line stretched back south as far as he could see. Amongst them, dwarfing them, rumbled the great wagons carrying the components of the siege towers, drawn by more lines of war mammoots, their long trunks snaking through the air, pointing to the waves of birds-of-war flying overhead.
They scented blood, these men and women on the road to Bar-Khos. Just as Mokabi himself scented blood. They knew that with their numbers the city was ripe for the plucking, and that they could be made rich from the spoils of booty and slaves. It was what he had promised them. It was what they were going to have.
This time, Bar-Khos was destined to fall.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Cities Burning
Down in the hold of a fast skud, Shard the Dreamer and her rook assistant sat alone amongst crates of cargo on a sheet of stained tarpaulin, wrapped in shadows cast by the blue light of the algae lamps they had brought with them all the way from the Academy.
It was quiet in the cramped space of the hold, though hardly silent. They could hear the thruster tubes of the small skyship burning on either side of the hull and the occasional scuffle of footsteps on the deck above their heads. On the floor lay a small open, padded case, next to a clear glass jar partly filled with sand, its lid removed.
‘Careful,’ Shard whispered to her young assistant, watching closely.
Before him, the sandworm wriggled on the end of a dangling thread like an over-sized maggot, its body glistening white in the soft glow of the algae lamps, plump and probing upwards towards the shaking fingers of the young rook, who held the thread aloft, impatiently, between their nervous stares.
‘You okay?’ she asked, for his pupils were dilating fast, his forehead clammy.
‘I think I touched it,’ young Blame admitted. He glanced at her with widened eyes, offered a snort of disbelief. He was swaying a little. ‘It works fast.’
‘Yes,’ she said frowning, deeply unimpressed by his carelessness. ‘Which is why I told you to wear gloves.’
Shard was relying on the young rook to help her through this, to be her anchor while she sped through the initial, debilitating rush. Now the man might be more of a hindrance than a help.
‘Sorry. I thought you were exaggerating.’
The Dreamer sighed, expelling what annoyance she could. He was all she had right now, this last remaining rook who had only just joined her team. They both had to find a way to work together, just as they’d both found a way into the same bed.
For a long moment Shard studied him, feeling a thrill of memory at their previous nights of reckless play, charged with the recent deaths of the other rooks and the heightened danger of their circumstances – both headed to siege and war.
‘I suppose you’re wondering what you’ve gotten yourself into with all this,’ she remarked, which were kinder words than those in her mind: this is the last time I choose a rook because I want to sleep with him.
‘Actually, I’m wondering how much longer I have to hold on to this worm.’
The sandworm’s mouth was getting close to his fingers now. Clumsily, he unwound more thread for it to climb. Sweat beaded his forehead, dripped past shadowed eyes. ‘How long will these effects last, you think?’
‘Brief contact by skin? I’d say you have a few days of interesting times ahead of you.’
‘A few days!’
‘Maybe less.’
He chewed it over with his teeth.
; ‘Stronger than moon dust, you said?’
‘Stronger than anything. It will blow your mind.’
He was starting to experience The Fear, she could see, but he was practised enough in narcotics to gain a grip on it, and to calm himself. Together they gazed at the worm again.
Tiny quills adorned the creature’s sides and around its probing mouth, and Shard recalled the slimy bitter sensation that came from putting one of these things in her mouth.
‘I really don’t think you should do this,’ he said once more.
‘Can you hold it together or not?’
He considered her question, nodded his head in a judder.
‘Then shut up and get ready.’
With care Shard plucked the end of the glistening thread from his fingers, held the worm up in the light so that she could study it more closely.
‘This is how we cracked the bindee code of the Great Dream,’ she said almost to herself, and in her mind’s eye a leaning mud tower stood in a deep desert oasis.
‘To become Dreamers, you mean?’ he rasped. ‘Is this the only worm you have?’
Eagerness in his questions. Perhaps Blame nurtured ambitions beyond the limited realm of rookery. She nodded.
‘Seech brought a dozen back with him from the deep desert, though he had to leave them at the Academy when he fled. They died off, wouldn’t reproduce. This is the last one that still lives.’
A fine dust was blowing through her mind, stirred by the remembered winds of the Alhazii deep desert six hundred laqs to the east, where the two star student rooks of the Salina Academy had ventured three years earlier on an expedition gone tragically wrong, almost killing themselves in pursuit of rumours of magic in the sands, of shamans who could Dream.
A desperate time, an almost hopeless one, before they had finally struck upon the solitary oasis of Zini, where they had discovered the obliterating juice of the sandworms and the pool of liquid from which the glimmersuits were born. Before Seech had betrayed them all and left her for dead.
