“Let’s see where this goes.”
She squeezed into the gap and pulled herself up a rough slope, a cool breeze on her skin. She grunted as she climbed higher through narrow crevices until she saw an opening and emerged into a new tunnel.
“Nuria?” called Stone.
Nothing.
“Nuria?”
She shouted down at him. “Come up.”
Stone shoved the Map Maker into the gap. The oversized man struggled and wheezed but managed to use his elbows and forearms to steady himself. Stone kept behind him, nudging him upward with his shoulder and one hand, balancing himself with the other. The Map Maker’s clothes reeked of stale sweat and urine and seawater. Nuria’s hands thrust from above and dragged the Map Maker into a long tunnel. Stone emerged behind him.
Nuria led the way along the tunnel, toward a patch of light that grew larger. They passed the remains of a fire in a small alcove, several days old. There were small bones and blackened pots, worn sandals and a threadbare blanket. They walked on. Within minutes the three of them emerged amongst low grass and wildflowers, bathed in sunshine, rippled by the wind, stunned into silence. Strands of blonde hair flicked carelessly across Nuria’s face but she didn’t bother to brush them aside. Stone was equally speechless.
The Map Maker shouldered between them, sucked in his breath.
“I don’t believe it.”
There were pastures of long grass and sweeping valleys with swathes of colour, open scrubland, wooded hills and winding rivers; the impossible landscape stretched to the horizon and spread in every direction.
For a moment, they forgot all about the men they had encountered at the riverbank.
Then Nuria crouched, studied the ground.
“Fresh horse tracks,” she said, pointing. “They’re long gone.”
Stone nodded, glanced up at the grey clouds.
“It’s beyond anything I could have imagined,” said the Map Maker. “We did make it. We really did make it.”
He clapped them both on the back with his wrapped stumps and attempted to draw them close but Stone shrugged him off and took out his binoculars. He swept the terrain.
No city ruins. No blasted deserts. No parched rivers. No scorched mountains. No cratered and broken wastelands.
He lowered the binoculars, saying nothing. It was more terrifying than the man with the box of burning light; they appeared to be at the cusp of a world unscathed by the Cloud Wars.
His stomach churned.
“Is that a village?” said Nuria.
Stone raised his binoculars once more. Nestling on the outskirts of a forest was a settlement of primitive stone buildings with turf roofs. Smoke coiled from chimneys. Animals shuffled inside pens. There were no vehicles. Stone spied a procession of people trudging along rutted tracks. None of them resembled the warriors they had killed at the river. He watched them walk toward a more impressive building of stone with tall arched windows and a covered porch. A man in black stood beside open wooden doors, beckoning them inside. Stone lifted his gaze to the shaped roof of the building where a symbol was fixed to the apex.
It was constructed of solid stone; one tall vertical piece with one horizontal piece, near the top, the opposite to what they had seen on the bare-chested men.
“Looks like we’ve found your sign,” said Stone.
THREE
“Are you coming?” called Jeremy.
A low stone wall ringed the cottage and outbuildings. Twelve years old, he waited patiently beside a stout wooden gate. The herb garden was overgrown and tangled with unruly wildflowers swaying in the early morning wind, blowing in from the coast. The smell of mint and rosemary blended with seaweed and salt. The washed out sky was streaked with crimson coloured fissures and dotted with stretched leaden clouds. Misty rain began to fall. His straw coloured hair grew damp. He was acutely aware of his father’s stern gaze burning into his back.
“Quinn?”
There was urgency to his voice. He craned his neck and looked toward the workshop. It was a ramshackle structure of stone, wood and turf. The double doors were wide open and he could see inside where a fire blazed in a metal drum. The floor was littered with shavings, salvaged pieces of metal, lengths of timber and piles of boxes filled with rope, balls of twine, horseshoes, nails and tools. Quinn was hunched over a cluttered workbench.
Jeremy wondered, lightly, if she had chosen this morning of all mornings to work in an effort to rile them. She knew it was Reverence Morning. Under law, all men, women and children, except servants, were required to forsake manual labour on Reverence Morning.
“Will you ever give up?” said Quinn.
Jeremy smiled at the sound of her voice, the words fast and punchy, funnelled through a narrow space. She had lived in Brix all her life but her accent was different to that of many of the villagers.
“Why should I?” He smiled pleasantly. “You’re my friend.”
There was a thirteen year deficit which meant she wasn’t the kind of friend that played games in the rutted village lanes or scampered across fields clutching stolen beer or trudged home from school sharing dreams and secrets and anxieties. He had done none of those things with Quinn and all of them with Clarissa. But Clarissa was dead and Quinn was still here; a shoulder to cry on, a voice of cold logic. And she had taught him how to fight. From an early age. She knew his father and she knew Jeremy needed to defend himself.
Quinn was the strongest woman in his life; determined, fearless and taking no nonsense from anyone. She stood toe to toe with bullies and killed bandits and thieves that preyed in the wilderness. But whenever he visited her, whenever he saw her, whenever he thought of her, and he thought of her a lot, his chest ached with the loss of Clarissa, Quinn’s niece, eleven years old, his best friend, gone, her body abandoned in the soil, six feet under.
“Daydreamer,” said Quinn.
She stepped from the workshop. She wore a woollen hat. Twisted ropes of blonde hair trailed from beneath it, like snakes writhing for attention. She strode across the garden, walking with purpose, carrying a long knife in her left hand. Her boots were scuffed, her clothes rumpled, her skin browned from a lifetime spent on the road. She was stocky, thick arms and thick legs, dark blue eyes with a large nose, flared nostrils and a curved upper lip. Jeremy straightened his back, smoothed his palms down his clothes.
“Will you come?”
“You know I won’t.”
“For me?”
“No.”
She dug at the stone wall with the tip of her blade.
“You used to come,” he said.
Villagers passed by. There were furtive glances.
“I know the Legend of Patriarch Albury and the Sins of Man word for word. It’s not for me, Jeremy.”
“Just pretend. I do. I know it all word for word as well. It’s only for an hour or two. Do it to stay out of trouble.”
“I’m staying out of trouble. I’m busy working.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m not going.”
“But what about the law?”
“Servants are excused.”
Jeremy fidgeted. Quinn could see the worry in his youthful face. He was growing up fast, too fast, standing there wearing his smartest woollen trousers and cleanest tunic, his hands scrubbed clean, his hair neatly combed. He was becoming a very handsome young man. He was already taller than her and his shoulders were broad. Clarissa would have loved him. She would have been his wife. She would have bore him beautiful children. Guilt gnawed at her. She should have been here. She should have been here for both of them. She should have been here for all of them.
“You don’t need to worry about me,” she said. She folded her arms as more villagers went by, some openly glaring at her. “I pay my taxes. That’s all they want. You’ll learn, Jeremy, that only laws involving coin are ever enforced. No one cares if I’m inside or not. It doesn’t matter. You need to stop worrying. Get your mind on figuring out what you want to
do with yourself when you finish school.”
Jeremy leaned across the gate.
“I already know what I want to do. I want to learn the way of the road. Working with you and Mr …”
“No, no, no,” she said, shaking her head. “That life is not for you. You have brains. Use them.”
He looked crushed.
“The Archbishop is coming to Brix,” he said, suddenly. “Is he coming because of you?”
“You know he usually travels this time of year,” she answered. “It’s the Summer Blessings. He’s not coming here because of me.” She nodded toward Jeremy’s father, Pretan. “He’s getting impatient. You should go. Everyone will be inside soon. He won’t want to be the last one.”
Jeremy’s father was tall, narrow and white haired, shoulders hunched against the light rain, looking older than his forty odd years. His wife had died giving birth to the twins and the loss had aged him considerably, tempering all but the man’s anger. He was fiddling with his clothing, growing more frustrated, as the entire population of the village trotted along the dirt path toward the imposing stone building. But Jeremy wasn’t finished talking with Quinn. Damn his father. She was more important. He would take his time. In truth, he would take more than his time.
“He can wait,” he said.
He had turned twelve which meant Touron law recognised him as a man and he could leave school and was free to march into the world and his miserable father was unable to prevent him. He was sprouting into manhood and had towered upward to draw level with Pretan’s slate grey eyes. No more would he sob beneath his blankets. No more would he soil himself. He glared icily at the nightmare whose seed he had spawned from and all he saw was a pathetic and wrinkled husk.
Jeremy flicked his eyes toward his twin sisters as they gossiped and kicked at the dirt, content with the delay.
“Is it because of Daniel?” he asked, turning his attention back to Quinn.
“You ask too many questions.” She smiled, wryly. “He takes a lot of looking after but it’s not just him.”
“Then what is it? I’m getting worried they will take you away and punish you.”
“I claim the status of Daniel’s servant.” She stared at the building. “If they ask that’s what I’ll tell them. Servants are excused from Reverence Morning. You should go, stop worrying about me.”
“I’ll stop worrying.” Jeremy nodded. “I’ll try.”
As he turned to leave, she called to him.
“I’m going to find out.” She twirled the knife. “Trust me, Jeremy. We have to know what happened. I know it upsets you to talk about her but Clarissa was very special.”
His stomach gurgled at the mention of his best friend’s name. She saw the distress in his eyes.
“The sickness took her. That’s what happened.”
“I know the sickness took her.” Quinn hesitated, knowing what victims of sickness looked like; their hair fell out, their bowels loosened, they were covered in blisters and gripped by fever.
“But what was she doing up there? Everyone knows Mosscar is a plague city. She knew it but still went up there.”
Her hand moved in a flash and the knife flew from her grip, slamming into a wooden post at the end of the garden.
“It doesn’t make any sense. Why did she go there?”
Jeremy stared at the knife embedded in the wood, vibrating angrily. He shook his head.
“I don’t know.” His eyes became moist. “I knew something was troubling her but she wouldn’t tell me. She wouldn’t tell anyone.”
He looked back at his father.
“I should go.”
Quinn watched him fondly as he trotted back to his family. She was determined to root out the truth; they all needed an answer. Pretan raised his hand to his son but Jeremy grabbed his wrist. The old hand trembled and hovered inches from Jeremy’s face. Quinn held her breath. Jeremy forced his father’s hand down and then shoved him back, releasing his grip at the same time. He went to his twin sisters, placed his arms around their shoulders and confidently guided them toward the building. Pretan bent his neck and looked at her; dead eyes in a dead face, a curious sneer on his coarse lips. Quinn was unflinching against his harsh gaze and he folded quickly. He mingled with the last of the stragglers, hastily making his way inside.
Deacon Rush, all in black, closed the doors. Quinn knew Father Devon would be preparing to deliver His Words. She playfully wondered why he didn’t invoke some magic to alter the weather. The past few months had been more miserable than ever and surely she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the tremors were becoming more frequent.
There was silence through the village. Quinn smiled. The servants were supposed to work but many chose to idle and smoke and chat during the Reverence Morning period.
She looked at the stone building, the mighty Holy House, and her skin pimpled as thousands upon thousands of years of history judged her, still clinging inexorably to the soil despite the toxic bile released by mankind through the centuries - the thrust of a blade, the blast of a cannon, the hiss of the Metal Spears during the final war of the Ancients. The rain fell and the clouds drifted and the Holy House defied all. Quinn could hear the muffled oration of Father Devon. It was impossible to discern the old man’s words from this distance but they had been imprinted upon her since childhood. He would no doubt open with the Statements of Damnation which he mixed with the Sins of Man before closing with the Legend of Patriarch Albury. He no longer vented about the Scourge of the Non-Believers. He had obviously grown tired of that one.
“… and despite all his advancements Man succumbed to the temptation of the Demon; he turned himself inside out and showed himself as a diseased thing of foulness; cowardly and sick with greed and forever looking inward for adulation from others. And whilst Man looked inward the Demon seized the opportunity and the world of the Before was extinguished and our Lord judged Man vain and He punished Man. Yet in those times of horror and darkness the Lord relented and He fought the Demons we had invited upon His very soil. His Son bled for us. His Son died for our sins. The Lord opened His arms and His heart and His love flowed and He delivered us into the Age of Light and we bathed in His magnificent Light and offered our devotion, our loyalty and our very lives to Him; our Lord, our Maker.”
Father Devon composed himself.
“And once more will the day come that He will send His Son to us and He will come from the sea a mortal and walk among us. He will judge us and He will mend the world we have broken.”
Quinn’s mouth drew tight. The Holy House had resisted every assault. What would it take to stamp the place from the surface of the land? Daniel, her brother, had failed miserably in attempting to reduce it to ash. She furthered her gaze over its long arched windows and a sombre expression fell upon her face. The house had lied to them. It had promised to keep them safe. But it had betrayed them all.
Plucking her knife from the wooden post, Quinn tossed it repeatedly, catching it each time by the handle, before slipping it into the knife belt worn across her chest. She was annoyed at her outburst, especially with Jeremy around. He had already endured far too much anger from adults in his young life. It was good he was spending more time with Deacon Rush. Though she despised all men of the cloth he was a young man with a more balanced viewpoint, seeing both sides of the same Holy coin.
It was then she heard the crunch of heavy boots and the clank of armour and weapons. She saw a column of Churchmen soldiers march from the army barracks. The men wore metal helmets and studded tunics adorned with a large cross. Each man was fully armed; a bow, leather quiver bristling with arrows and a sheathed sword. Captain Duggan led the men. Quinn stood her ground as they struck a path toward her cottage. Was Jeremy right? Were they finally coming for her? Was this her time of reckoning? The Captain stopped and began to issue orders. The Churchmen dispersed, barely acknowledging her. Once his men were deployed around the village, Duggan greeted her.
“Morning, Quinn.”
> “Captain.”
He propped himself against her garden wall, took out his pipe. “Do you mind?”
“I could do with a break.”
“A break? Have you been sinning by working on Reverence Morning?”
“I have,” she said. “And I thought you were coming to take me away.”
“This is nothing to do with you.” He winked. “But one day I will take you away, Quinn, I can promise you that.”
Chuckling, she fetched herbs from the garden, pinching them between finger and thumb.
“There are some very clean and comfortable boarding houses in Touron.”
“Is that another name for whorehouse?”
He laughed. She drew her own pipe, filled it.
“Anyway, you’re really not my type.”
Smoke curled around his coarse lips. His face was crunched, scarred and weather beaten, his body stocky, muscular, hard; the perennial soldier, witness to all kinds of madness across the land.
“Sal Munton?” she asked.
“It was winter the last time his gang looted,” said Duggan, puffing. “I thought they’d turned over a new leaf or something but last week a merchant was robbed near Great Onglee. Had all his spices and coins taken. They broke his arm and crushed his hand. Vicious little bastards.”
“So they’ve started again?”
“Seems that way.” His dark eyes scanned the land. “Did I tell you Ossie is fat again?”
Quinn, straddling the wall, shook her head.
“What am I supposed to do?” he grumbled. “That’s number eight.”
“You’re supposed to ram it up something that won’t give you babies. Won’t one of your men oblige?”
Duggan rubbed his jaw, smoked. Quinn couldn’t imagine herself stuck in one place doing the same thing over and over again like his wife. It would be better to put a noose around her neck.
The Wasteland Soldier, Book 3, Drums Of War (TWS) Page 3
