My fear and outrage dulled. On my companions’ faces, I could see the deadening of expression. Trauma and exhaustion makes mutes of all. Samantha looked near death and she felt like a sack of wet corn, lumpy and inert. As we moved her, Sapientia would look at me, eyes wide and mouth tugged down in the corner, as if she could not believe this was happening. Which, I imagine, she couldn’t. Nor could I.
‘We must rest!’ I said, calling to Lina. ‘Even if the invaders are right on top of us, we can go no further.’
‘A little further!’ Lina called. ‘A wide cliff. Flat, with cover. Just a bit more.’ She scrambled up and over a jutting stone, shooting out half-above our heads.
All I could focus on was the weight of Samantha and the cliff ahead. She had stopped moving her legs and was not responsive.
Sapientia kept saying, ‘Please, Sam, please, Sam, pleasesampleasesamcomeoncomeon.’
Now, at this great remove, I cannot understand how between us we made it up to the stone. Sometimes we bury things we would not like to remember.
But what I do remember is the lifelessness of Samantha’s body as we laid her down. The dull, loose expression of her face, mouth askew. The jumble of her arms and stiffness of her legs. At some point, on our climb, she had died.
I collapsed and for what seemed like a long while looked up into the sky. Letting my chest fill and collapse with air. Observing the slow-moving clouds’ drift across the heavens.
The crackle of gunfire drew me from my reverie.
The sun was just breaking over the rim of the Eldvatch. I pushed myself up and looked over the edge of the cliff, into the valley below. The camp was gone, burning. Thousands of Medierans moved through the Grenthvar forests, killing indiscriminately. A thick clutch of them circled the smelt. From here, at this vantage, the Hellfire shots sounded like small rocks falling. The golden sun lit up the earth in garish colours, orange, ochre, blue, silver, red, white. The black pillars of smoke rose, hanging so close I felt as though I could reach out and touch them, push them, and topple the vault of heaven.
Below, a contingent of grey-clad soldiers moved up the incline, through the forest. An officer called to his men in espan, a soft, fluid string of sounds. He pointed at where we took cover above them, on the cliff. There was closer gunfire, and a hard spray of powdered rock stung my eyes. I ducked back down.
Livia set Fiscelion down on the rock face of the cliff and called to Lupina, who brought the rucksack. The dvergar woman took up the child, and the Ruman the bag. From it, she yanked clothing, a flask, a canteen. With just the raw strength of her hands, she ripped a tunic into strips, wetted it and began tending her husband’s wound.
‘They know we’re here,’ I said.
‘We have the high ground.’ Sumner worked the action on his carbine. ‘Shall we dissuade them from approaching?’
Lina, who had lost her rifle in the mad rush to escape, drew both of her six-guns. She simply nodded.
I groaned and pushed myself up into a crouch.
‘You’re shot, Shoe,’ Livia said. ‘Come here.’ Sapientia moved to assist her.
‘It’s stopped bleeding,’ I said. ‘And I can’t let these children have all the fun.’
Taking cover behind a boulder, Sumner slipped the muzzle of his carbine over it, sighted and fired.
‘The captain,’ I said. ‘Wait for him. Long mustachios, a little triangle of beard. A real fucking dandy.’
Sumner glanced at me, and even in our current situation, gave a tight, grim smile. ‘Aye, centurion, will do.’
‘I’ll be back,’ Lina said and slunk away, two pistols upraised and ready to fire.
‘Wait!’ I called, but she was gone.
I forced myself to follow. Behind me, the report of Hellfire blasted – Sumner firing again. Frantic Medieran voices sounded from below.
‘Got one!’ Sumner called. I liked this man. In the face of overwhelming odds, he was joyous. Not a typical Ruman trait. But then, he was from Occidentalia.
With much effort, I caught up with Lina along the rugged Eldvatch trail, before she disappeared. She moved faster than a running stream down the Eldvatch and was twice as cold, when the mood was on her.
She looked annoyed when I stopped her.
‘If you must,’ she said, the exasperation bubbling close to the surface, ‘take cover there, behind that tree. This is the only way to take the cliff. They must go through here.’
I moved to the tree she’d pointed out. She took position behind a tumble of gambel deadfall.
The mountainside was quiet. Trees creaked around us in the breeze. I watched Lina’s breath slow, and my chest relaxed in sympathy. In the distance, a crackle of far-off gunfire.
I caught a hint of movement, and I sighted down my pistol as quickly as I was able. Bark exploded near where I took cover. A storm of bullets churned the tree into splinters.
Hunching down, I heard, rather than saw, Lina’s returning fire. Many shots in quick succession.
Fluid shouts in espan, urgent and angry. I reached around the tree and fired downslope without even looking.
Ears ringing, we waited. Silence descended upon the mountain.
There was a movement. I followed it with my eyes, but it was too fast. Illva stood over me. His sword dripped blood. In his hand, something that at first struck me as unrecognisable. But when he dropped it at my feet, I realised it was the Medieran captain’s head.
Gynth appeared behind him. ‘You can come out,’ he said. ‘The eldest have taken the intruders.’
‘All of them?’ I asked.
Gynth shook his head. ‘In the Grenthvar, no. On this mountain-side, yes.’ He gestured back to the cliff. ‘Come. Even Illva and Ellva cannot stop bundles and bundles of those that invade.’
‘Thousands. Of invaders,’ I said.
‘Those as well,’ Gynth said.
When we rejoined those that waited on the cliff, Sumner said, ‘I have never seen the like.’ He stared in open awe at Illva and Ellva.
‘Nor will you ever again, most like,’ Gynth said. ‘We must go, and the company of the eldest will end.’
‘Come on, then,’ Lina said. ‘Follow me and we will be underground within the hour.’
Livia and Fisk rose. He looked weak and she distressed. Lupina carried Fiscelion, who was remarkably quiet. The lad was wave-born and had been on the move most of his life. Footfalls and movement, gunfire and infernal warfare – a constant state.
I touched Ellva’s hand. She turned her head to look at me like a mother would a child. Staring up at her was a strange experience – I am a man, but I remember tugging at my mother’s apron, so long ago. And now, I did it once more.
‘Samantha,’ I said, gesturing to my friend and companion, now fallen. ‘We cannot bury her.’ I pointed to the peak, far above. ‘Would you put her there? On high? It is the least she deserves.’
Ellva made no verbal response, but seemed to understand my request. In her great hands, she took up Samantha Decius’ body. The vaettir gave a single nod. Then she said something in a language I could not understand.
‘She says, remember the furrow,’ Gynth said. ‘No invader will ever rest easy here.’
The two alabaster vaettir turned and, gaining speed, flowed up the mountainside, out of sight.
‘Did she just tell us to leave and not come back?’ Fisk asked.
‘That’s what it sounded like, my love,’ Livia said.
Fisk stood, walked to the edge of the cliff and stared down at the Grenthvar valley. Finally, he said, ‘Ia-damn it all to Hell,’ and walked over to where the box that held the daemon hand sat on a rock face. He picked it up with his unburned, good hand. Wincing.
‘I think we’ve got something to take care of,’ he said.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Don’t Think Her Sex Really Fuckin’
Matters Any More, Old One
SIX DAYS UNDERGROUND, through winding passages and chambers nightmarish and beautiful, by turns. Much of the experience –
especially the squalling of Fiscelion – I’ve tamped deep within me, stuffed into the unused and unvisited parts of my soul. It seems that travel suits the lad, but darkness does not.
Lina led us firmly through passages I would never have dreamed existed, the only illumination available to us a small daemonlight of Sapientia’s that was puny against the titanic weight of the mountain’s dark. But it was enough to keep us sane, at least.
Dvergar have an affinity with the stone, the mountain – we sprang from it, bursting onto the earth like seeds coming to fruition. But I am half-Ruman. And have never relished long, dim periods below ground. Gynth too withdrew into himself and seemed to shrink while underground, becoming timid and smaller. There was no demarcation of night or day, and when we rested he would sit, pull up his knees, wrap his great arms around them and cover his face, remaining absolutely still and quiet until Lina called for us to move on. Had he not responded, at the end of our rests, we might have forgotten him.
The spaces in the earth and under the mountain are never silent: whispers come to you, the metallic fall of dashing water like voices from some dim past; the clatter of rocks echoing; the susurrus of panting breath that you can’t differentiate from your companion or some imagined shadowy creature pacing you. Imagination blossoms, fruits, and then rots.
Once, when I thought I might never see light again, Lina beckoned us all to climb an ancient stair carved from the living stone of the Eldvatch itself. We rose on weary legs, each step a misery. A breath of air touched our faces, full of the scents of life – sweetgrass and sage, shoal and beast. We emerged on a mountainside, under the stars and the moon as bright as a noon sun. Below us, hundreds of shifting, golden lights. They flickered like summer insects.
I found myself on my stomach, on a ledge, looking down the open face of the mountain toward the town. Lina eased herself down beside me.
‘Tapestry,’ she said.
‘I know it well,’ I said, remembering. ‘Your mother was born here. I lived here for fifty years.’
‘You were a wagoneer, then,’ Lina said, softly. She wasn’t asking. She’d had the stories from her mother – Edwina. Edwina’d been a hellion, ready to scrap at any provocation, and gave Illina and I no end of trouble. Of the seven children we’d had – Brisea, Vrinbror, Svin, Calliothir, Givae, Druin, and Edwina – it was her I thought on the most. Fast to anger, quick to love. It was as if all of the contradictions of the Hardscrabble had become distilled into the body of one dvergar girl.
I hoped she was still alive.
‘Where is Edwina, now?’ I asked.
‘She married and moved out Saltlick way,’ Lina said. ‘“Gettin’ a mite crowded ’round here, missy,” she said. “There’s good trapping in the Illvatch down there and I mean to take a mess of furs come winter”.’ Lina smiled, thoughtfully. ‘That was twenty years ago.’
‘I hope the vaettir will give them time to remove themselves,’ I said.
‘I think so,’ Lina said. ‘They are inscrutable, but I’ve come to think they will be fair.’
‘It is all we can hope,’ I said, thinking. The timbre of Lina’s voice, her hands, her hair. I recalled other hands, long ago, working a shuttle, threading the course of our lives. And then those hands grew still. ‘Your grandmother worked the looms.’
‘Look there,’ Lina said, pointing. She had nimble, yet stout fingers, my granddaughter. I could see my history there, writ in her flesh.
I looked where she pointed. Past the downward slope and in an open V where the gambels split to offer a view of the lights below, Tapestry shone. On the nearest side, in a scraggly milo field that seemed grey rather than amber in the faint light of stars, a Medieran patrol moved. Around them bounded their infernal dogs of war – daemon-gripped men and women. I breathed thanks to the numen and old gods that they were too far away to sense us.
‘And there’s smoke,’ she said. I’d thought it might be issue from any town, anywhere. But Lina’s eyes were sharper than my old ones. ‘Tapestry burns.’
You have times of despair in your life. But hearing it in someone you love is the worst. Would that I could change it for her. But it’s a monster of a world and all we can do is keep from joining its baseness, its depravity.
We went back below ground, to the darkness.
If it had not been for Sapientia and her daemonlight, I might have gone mad.
We all might have.
We crawled out of the earth fifteen miles north of Wickerware, like babes, blinking in the bright light of day. Lina had tried to keep us underground until nightfall, so our eyes might adjust. But Fiscelion began crying once more, and no teat, no food, no soft words, nor rocking could stop him. He was indomitable, implacable. Outraged.
‘Fuck it.’ Lina shrugged. ‘Let’s go. We’ll be blind as bats,’ she said. ‘Anything but this.’ She looked at Livia. ‘Sorry.’
The lad stopped crying in the daylight, as if shocked by the sun. Lupina clutched him tight to her breast. It was a hazy, white day, hot and windy. On the air, there was the faintest scent of salt. And rot.
We’d travelled through the guts of the Smokeys, circumventing the towns of Dvergar and Tapestry, to come almost to the end of Occidentalia.
‘Wickerware,’ Lupina said, with an air of familiarity. ‘There are marshes around the town. They are what stink of rotten vegetables and sewage.’
‘Will there be Medierans there?’ Sapientia asked.
‘We were there not three weeks ago,’ Livia said. ‘An old codger kept watch on the wharf.’
‘Medieran?’ I asked.
‘He definitely had enough rum to drink in an empty town to make me think he had a passing acquaintance with them,’ Livia said.
I nodded. ‘Lina and I should go in, by night, and look around.’
‘It’s six ides. Tomorrow is seven. Tenebrae said he would be here then,’ Livia said.
‘Well, we can dick around here for a day, or go in and see what we can see,’ I said. ‘We start a fire, burn down a warehouse, the smoke will still be coming on the morrow.’
‘And whatever Medierans that might be in the area will be coming as well,’ Fisk said. His arm had healed, some, but it was awful to behold – a swamp of blisters and pustules. The skin had melted and at any moment could slough away. When it fully healed – if it fully healed – it would seem as though it had been sculpted of clay by inexpert hands. I’d seen this before: smelt injuries, hotel fires, faulty daemonlight lanterns, misfires of six-guns where the summoned imp swarmed the pistolero, charring him to a crisp.
‘I’ll come, too,’ Sapientia said. At my frown she put her hands on her waist. ‘I’ve lost all my supplies. If this town is empty, I would see if I can find some replacements, Shoe.’
‘It’s dangerous—’ I began.
‘I raise devils, man. Don’t lecture me on danger,’ Sapientia said.
‘And me,’ Gynth said.
‘We can’t go in there with your titanic arse swinging all about,’ I said. ‘If there are any citizens remaining, they’ll immediately shit themselves if they don’t start shooting.’
Sapientia looked up at the vaettir. ‘Come with us, partway,’ she said. ‘If we are in danger, it wouldn’t hurt to have you nearby.’
‘We’ll all come,’ Livia said. ‘Stretching our party out like pearls on a string is not wise.’
‘Agreed,’ Fisk said. ‘You three, go in. If there are Medierans there, two dvergar and a worker won’t seem too amiss. A stretcher, a Ruman legate, Lupina toting around a squalling babe, and the rest of our motley crew might seem out of place. We’ll wait at the edge of town.’
At nightfall we moved, finding the southern road into Wickerware. The land was soft here, and flatter down from the tail of the Eldvatch. Cold springs and run-off from the heights wetted the Smokeys’ skirts and poured into the lowlands to stagnate into brackish marsh. The mountains were rounder here, too, worn down by the movements of the winds blowing in from the Bay of Mageras, and from a distance
looked like some crocodile’s tail dipping under the surface of the earth.
Wickerware was an ancient dvergar town, without the ordered lines of a Ruman outpost, nor the messy, sprawling disorder of a town of Medieran ancestry. Dvergar are fond of braids, circles. The curve of sky, the arc of a stone’s throw. Wickerware – from the dvergar, vrika, for weave – was a round nest, streets in intersecting circles leading to a town market that also served as a meeting place, a forum, a heart. The village’s form reflected its major product – baskets.
The town had seen some destructive force – buildings husked by fire, broken wheels and collapsed wagons in side streets and alleys. The streets were empty, no home fires cast smoke into the night sky, no lanterns glowed in the dark. A pack of wild dogs barked as we moved toward the market where all side roads led, and we took a recursive path, Lina leading, with Sapientia close on her arse. I brought up the rear.
Livia had described where they’d found the old codger when they had come ashore. I was familiar with that part of the town – indeed, there are very few places in the Hardscrabble and Occidentalia that I have not been to at least once. In this case, it was near what was once a tavern, and I must admit near such locales, I have a more fluent familiarity.
It was called Rubi’s Confidence, and we approached down a narrow street marked with the signs that read ‘Selvedge Ln’. Lina held up her hand in a fist to indicate we should stop. She pointed to the rooftops.
Something – or somethings – moved there.
Shadows shifted, grew long. The dark blue sky, made milky with stars and just beginning to become obscured by clouds as rain pushed east off the Bay of Mageras, found hunched shapes running on all fours up gables and down shingled roofs.
Infernal Machines Page 29
