by Col Buchanan
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Seech
The Dreamer Tabor Seech wheeled high above the Shield with his wingtips flexing delicately against the air, scenting smoke and blood from the killing grounds far below. Hunger brewed in his stomach.
It was a thrill to fly with the thunderhawk like this, to wear her body as his own. For a short time Tabor lingered there, experiencing it all through the distorted senses of the bird of prey.
Sudden weightlessness in his belly, as the hawk swooped downwards after one of her companions, giving chase with tilts of her wings. Below them, even now in the darkness, other birds flocked in their hundreds above the rich pickings on the Shield, the corpses scattered around the fallen wall.
Let her hunt. Let her eat.
With a sigh of release, Tabor Seech forced his own eyes open and broke the connection between them. At once he found himself returned to his earthbound body.
The Dreamer sat in darkness facing the only window of his room, which filled his eyes with the distant fires on the Shield.
A wall fallen already. Mokabi would be full of himself tonight, full of the manifest destiny of his creed. Never mind how the wall was nearly a ruin before he’d got here.
This news might please the old general too: this plan of Coya Zeziké to recruit the Contrarè of the Windrush in defence of Khos. For it was clear that Mokabi hoped those imperial forces tied up in central Khos remained that way, while he took the city for himself.
Seech yawned and stretched his spine against the back of the chair, thinking of Shard and how close she was now, right on the other side of the Shield. Close enough for him to kill her, if he wished it.
But not yet. Not like that. Seech fully intended to give his ex-lover a fighting chance here, however slim. Let Shard head off into the Windrush with Coya if she wanted to delay their reckoning a while longer. And let that fat fool Mokabi wait until morning before he gave him the news.
It’s the very least I can do for her.
*
In the morning, rising shamefully late by the standards of the military camp surrounding him – though Seech cared nothing for what these people thought of his relaxed sleeping habits, nor anything else for that matter – the Dreamer sought out General Mokabi, intending to deliver his report from the night before.
But the general was long gone, explained his attendants, departed for a quarry to the south of the camp for reasons unknown. Would he like a zel for the ride down, they asked him, and Seech had said no, firmly, for he hated to ride.
Instead he had taken off on foot, marching through Camp Liberty for the southern road and taking in the morning sights of the imperial encampment, its buildings clustered within earthworks and four squat forts between the two coastlines of the Lansway.
It was strange to walk freely amongst the mortal enemies of his people like this. Most of all to be amongst members of the Mannian order itself, the white-garbed priests with their pierced faces and entitled ways, and the warrior Acolytes made anonymous by their masks, watching him with open hostility as he went by, until he blew up his cloak and saw fear and wonder in their eyes.
Leaving the camp through the southern checkpoint, Tabor Seech strode along the wide military road that had first brought him here, his cloak of thin strips billowing behind him in spectacular fashion in an otherwise windless day, aided by the same glyph he maintained to instil his dreadlocks with seeming life. Smiling beatifically, he relished the startled stares of soldiers and civilians alike as he passed them by, the growls and whines of leashed hunting dogs and the crowds of mercenaries parting at the sight of him.
Seech was thrilled to the ends of his toes by the figure he cut through them all, his cloak snapping like an angry creature of the sea.
All across the open ground of the Lansway ranged tents and the smoking camp fires of Mokabi’s mercenary army, half of them gone now to the action of the Shield. The Dreamer passed pens of mammoots, great wooden corrals with sharpened poles pointing inwards. Elsewhere lay fields of newly arrived birds-of-war floating against their tethers.
He came to a side road leading to the western coastline. A slight breeze was blowing now across the flats of the two seas on either side of the Lansway, chilling his flesh. Tabor took the dirt track while he willed to life a glyph which warmed him as he walked and needed little effort to maintain. Birds rose in alarm at his passing, though he barely noticed them now, for he had bedded down with his thoughts at last, orderly and precise monologues of things he was working on, and still needed to do. Neither did he notice the tranquil silence until it was interrupted by an explosion somewhere just ahead.
Tabor peered along the dirt road, seeing smoke rising above a small rise of ground. There was something in the air over there – small skyboats circling.
Rounding a pile of earth and rubble loosely covered in weeds, the Dreamer looked down upon a deep quarry like an amphitheatre in the ground. He widened his eyes in genuine surprise.
Down on the floor of the quarry, a section of a mammoth wall had been built across its width, nearly half as tall and thick as the walls of the Shield themselves. An oily column of smoke rose from a heap of burning wreckage at the foot of the wall.
He found General Mokabi at the rim of the stone pit clad in his ridiculously elaborate armour. On the morning after his forces had taken Kharnost’s Wall, the general sat here instead in a field chair beneath a sagging canvas roof, angry at something and taking it out on his gathered officers, while his official biographer, perched nearby, scribbled down the occasional word.
One look at Seech approaching across the gritty rim of the quarry caused Mokabi’s scowl to deepen even further.
‘I hope it’s good news you bring me, Dreamer. I’ve no patience for your provocations right now. None at all.’
Seech allowed his gusting cloak to deflate around him, and feigned a frown.
‘I would have thought to find you in good spirits today, yet here you are, sweating in your fury. Kharnost’s Wall is yours, man, or have you not heard yet?’
Too angry for humour, Mokabi barked his reply. ‘That was yesterday, against a wall that was barely standing. This is today with three strong ramparts still in our way. The real work begins now, if only these fools would realize it.’
The officers around him looked to their feet, or stared morosely down at the fire still burning at the base of the wall.
‘Surely it’s only a matter of time with the men you have now?’
‘Of course it is,’ snarled Mokabi, tossing the cup of water in his hands to the ground. ‘But time is money and the clock is ticking. These mercenaries do not come cheap.’
Absently, the Dreamer observed the white-cloaked Acolytes loosely standing guard around the general’s position. There had been a handful of assassinations over the previous week, Tabor had heard. A few high-ranking priests and even the general of the Fourth Army permanently stationed here. No one seemed to know how the killings had been achieved so silently and without raising the alarm, a fact which seemed to be making people all the more paranoid.
It was as though the Khosians had recruited their very own Diplomats.
Movement caught his eye. Tabor spotted a soldier standing nearby on the rim of the quarry, waving a yellow flag over his head, and he craned his head back. One of the small skuds circling above had fired its thruster tubes on full, and was now heading for the quarry.
He watched, fascinated, as tiny figures hurried along the rail of the skyboat’s deck, even as the front half of its canopy suddenly deflated with a dull pop and the boat began to fall; slowly at first, but picking up speed as the nose dropped and the thrusters burned hard.
Two figures launched themselves from the plummeting vessel, then a third. Their arms and legs waved frantically as they fell, before parachutes opened and yanked them almost to a stop. Slowly the figures drifted downwards as the skud sped in a collision course straight for the wall.
A boot scraped against grit. Seech taking a step fo
rward.
The explosion roared with such intensity that Seech held an arm before his face at the sudden rush of dust and air that enveloped him on the rim. Peeking over the top of his arm, he saw debris and smoke rising in a great fountain that bloomed at its top like the cap of a mushroom. The rock beneath his feet trembled.
He coughed, clearing his lungs. When the black smoke finally subsided he saw that the wall still stood unharmed. The boat had missed it by several lengths of its hull.
There was a clatter behind him as Mokabi kicked his chair away, then roared down at the quarry and the men now landing heavily against the ground, silk sheets burying them like shrouds. Seech thought he heard the crack of breaking legs.
‘The wall!’ screamed the general down at them, his fury echoed by the confines of the quarry. ‘You were meant to hit the bloody wall!’
*
In the end, a red-faced Mokabi rounded on him in disgust.
‘You can see I’m busy here, Dreamer. What is it now?’
‘You asked for some good news. I may have some.’
‘Then tell me it, don’t make me ask.’
‘Coya Zeziké has arrived in Bar-Khos. He intends to travel to the Windrush to rally the Contrarè against the Expeditionary Force in the north.’
Surprise on the general’s face. A quick evaluation of what it meant to him.
‘And why would you think this good news to me?’
‘Come now. We are both grown men here. I know only too well what this means to you.’
The general looked about quickly, his tongue dabbing at his thin lips. Nearby, Mokabi’s biographer turned his head as he feigned an interest in the remaining skuds.
Mokabi took a step closer to the Dreamer, and inclined an ear towards him.
‘If the tribes harry Sparus and Romano hard enough,’ said Seech, ‘it might buy you some more time here.’
His words caused Mokabi to stare in calculation.
‘Coya Zeziké, you say?’
‘There’s more. Their Dreamer accompanies him. Someone I happen to know very well.’
‘The Contrarè bitch is here? Tell me she won’t hamper our efforts?’
‘Not yet. She intends to go with him. No telling how long they will be gone.’
‘You can deal with her when she returns?’
‘Of course. She’s outmatched. I can finish her like—’ and Seech snapped his fingers decisively.
‘Then do it now, if it is so easy.’
‘No. Not yet.’
Displeased, Mokabi’s round face began to darken once more. He took a step closer. ‘With the fortune you’re making out of this, you can damn well do what I’m paying you for. Kill that Dreamer of theirs before she causes us trouble.’
The snakedreads writhing around Seech’s bemused expression rose up like cobras flaring to strike.
‘Clear your head,’ Seech snapped back at the general loud enough to be overheard; a clear warning shot. ‘You don’t get to say what I do or what I don’t do. You get to ask. Now move on.’
There, a fire roaring again under Mokabi’s backside. It was so easy to make this man lose his temper.
Tabor would not confront his old lover just yet. There was no rush, after all.
Three years had passed since their last encounter with one another, when Shard had returned from the deep desert still alive, remarkably, to expose Seech for what he had done. Three years since his disgraced flight from the Academy of Salina and his exile from the Free Ports, seeking refuge in the Alhazii city of Zanzahar, where Dreamers had existed secretly for a thousand years and more.
Since those days, Shard had been hunting Tabor within the Black Dream itself, where both knew she held the edge. With relentless patience, she had hounded his work there and that of his rook assistants, until they were forced to operate under the densest of cloaks hampered by second-guessing and paranoia. On a handful of occasions they had engaged in skirmishes, and Shard had won the better of him every time.
But it would hardly matter in the end. It was in the Great Dream, the waking world, where Tabor would finally defeat his ex-lover, for Tabor was the stronger Dreamer by far. Knowing the truth of this, Shard had grown skilled in the art of cloaking herself, so much so that she had cloaked the entire Painted Mountain from his powers, making it impossible to seek her out; impossible, that was, until he had struck upon the idea of luring her here to the Shield and into the open.
‘The Lord Protector,’ said Mokabi stiffly. ‘I’m assuming you’re maintaining your vigil on him?’
‘Yes, though I must turn the screws slowly. It’s something of an art to make a man lose his mind, especially a man like Creed.’
‘Well keep at it. I don’t want Bearcoat turning up on the Shield and rallying the Khosians into some heroic last-stand defence here.’
‘I rather suspect they do not need the Lord Protector for that.’
‘No,’ answered Mokabi, looking to the north. ‘Perhaps not.’
Another explosion erupted from the floor of the quarry, causing them both to flinch; another boat strike, without them even noticing. Together they looked down and saw the newest crash site on the far side of the wall, debris falling around a smoking crater. Another miss.
‘Seems this tactic of yours may need a few adjustments,’ Seech mocked.
‘Then maybe it’s time you shut that trap of yours and proved your worth.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning what can you do for me here, eh? All this gold I’m flinging your way and what have you shown for it? Your rooks run security on our communications while you run a number on Creed. Is this it?’
So there it was, Mokabi’s ignorance writ large. As though miracles came at the drop of a hat to Dreamers, as though these abilities didn’t take years in the making and colossal efforts of will and courage in the face of looming insanity.
As though Tabor Seech really gave a damn whether the Shield fell or did not.
‘What would you suggest – I shake the walls from their foundations?’
‘Why not – can you do such a thing?’
He almost laughed, but another part of his mind was already thinking it through with sudden interest. Shaking the walls themselves was out of the question, even for him. But a small portion of a wall, enough to cause a breach perhaps?
Could it be done?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Other Side
Long before dawn the old farlander awoke in a bed that was not his own, pressed against the smooth body of another.
It was Shin, he recalled, the attractive ship’s medico with her subtle traces of his homeland, Honshu. On feeling the touch of her limbs against his own he pictured the highlights of the previous evening, and it came to Ash that he might be sixty-two years of age and dying, but he was not entirely out of the dance just yet.
He would have smiled, but the pain that had wakened him pinched his head even further when he tried to. Ash stretched out a bare arm and fumbled amongst his pile of clothes until he reached the pouch of dulce leaves, pulling out a wad of them to shove into his mouth. With a sigh he inhaled through his nose and chewed them fiercely, his head relaxing against the pillow as the headache slowly diminished.
When he finally rose to dress in the dim light of the lantern they had forgotten to snuff out, Shin groaned and rolled onto her back into the heat of the space he had just vacated. The blanket snared around the calf of her leg and his eyes took in the caramel tone of her skin. Suddenly, Ash felt a longing for the women of his homeland, as dark as most women here were pale.
Trying not to waken her, he bent and gently kissed her exposed leg. Shin moaned again and stirred beneath the clinging blanket, forming in his mind more flashbacks of the previous night.
He left before he was tempted to climb back into bed with her.
Rain was drumming against the outer hull as he made his way back to his cabin, where Kosh was snoring fitfully on the top bunk beneath a heavy covering of blankets. Two d
ays had passed without incident since they had made it through the storm.
‘Ash?’ croaked Kosh’s throaty voice from the bundle of blankets. ‘What time is it?’
‘Nearly dawn. They’ll be ringing the watch bell soon.’
His old friend groaned. He had gone drinking with the galley crew the previous evening, against Ash’s warnings.
‘Hangover?’
‘Hangover barely describes it. I haven’t felt this bad since landing in Bardo Falls.’
His old friend spoke of a time and a city long gone now, when the fleet of exiles from Honshu had first arrived in the Midèrēs, stopping first at a port city in Markesh that would later be razed to the ground by the Empire, and where many of the exiles had tried to drink themselves to death in the first week of landfall.
‘I told you to watch out for that potcheen of theirs.’
‘Never again,’ rasped Kosh, sounding his age. ‘Never, ever, again.’ And blankets stirred as he raised a hand to his covered head. ‘You were out gallivanting again I take it. Well I’m glad one of us is having a pleasant journey.’
Ash scoffed at his friend’s misery this morning. Sure enough, he had warned Kosh about the foul home-brewed potcheen some of the crew were prone to drinking, but Kosh had waved him off and proclaimed in a long list all the champions he had drunk beneath the table over the years, including Ash himself.
‘I can leave the bucket by the bed if you need it.’
Kosh groaned even louder. ‘Just leave me be. Leave me in peace, will you?’
*
On the open deck of the Falcon the rain had cleared from the chill pre-dawn air; a passing shower, it seemed, here on the southern side of the Aradèrēs, the Broken Spine of the World. The mountains lay behind them now, their peaks soaring high into a tarry sky while the ship sped across the highlands that bordered the northern Hush.
