by Ben Galley
‘Stuff us all into a shed,’ Merion interjected.
Lasp turned a darker shade of beetroot. ‘I gave you bed and board! I will not be interrupted, Master Hark,’ Lasp barked. His voice had gained an edge.
‘And I will not be cooped up in a fort, kept as a prisoner instead of walking east like the free soul I am, Brigadier General!’
Lasp had only one piece to play. ‘You are under military jurisdiction, Hark. If I find you attempting to escape the confines of my fort again, I shall have you put in the jail.’
Merion inwardly thanked his father for his tiresome lectures on the military. ‘As I’m not an enlisted man, and far too young to be so, and as I do not even belong to this country, I do not believe you have that right.’
Lasp just boiled on the spot. He had obviously not planned for such fierce resistance. Merion imagined that his men usually just quailed in his ample presence. To the Brigadier’s right, a slim man in a uniform stepped forwards to whisper in his ear.
‘Your speech, Sir, it’s almost time,’ were the words Merion caught. Lasp smoothed his hair back, baring his teeth in a strained smile.
‘If my men find you near the stables again …’ He wagged a finger.
‘Do not fear, General. They won’t,’ Merion promised him, and he meant it. He did not wait to be dismissed. He simply turned and walked out of the door, leaving Doggard wondering what to do with himself.
‘I want that boy followed, Major. That is your only duty tonight.’
Doggard drew himself up and saluted. ‘Yes, General,’ he replied, and swept from the lodge, leaving a blood-red Lasp to curse and moan about jumped-up lordlings and foreigners.
*
‘What did he want?’ asked Lurker, as Merion loomed out of the darkness, hands stuck firmly in his pockets.
‘To satisfy his own need to feel important.’
‘Sounds about right,’ his aunt said.
Merion pulled a wry face. ‘Though he did order us to stay within the confines of the fort for our own safety, and said if he found any of us near the stables again, we would be thrown into the jail.’
‘Ah,’ she added.
‘The key word being “if”, however,’ Merion smirked.
‘Boy’s got a point,’ Lurker sniffed.
Merion looked around their little torch-lit circle, even glancing at Rhin for the briefest of moments. ‘I say we take the chance. Lasp will be busy giving speeches and swaggering his fat arse about. We won’t get another.’
‘If you’re certain, Merion?’ Lilain looked at her nephew.
Merion’s voice was firm as a brick. ‘Absolutely,’ he replied.
Lilain nodded, thumping her crutch in the dirt. ‘Rhin? Lead the way,’ she said.
The faerie rattled his wings. ‘Right you are.’
Half-faded and just barely visible, Rhin led them down the main path that sliced the fort in two, heading for the northernmost corner. Lurker brought up the rear, sniffing quietly to himself, his boots occasionally scuffing the earth.
Rhin held them at a small crossroads as a group of soldiers passed. Two of them were dragging a drunken comrade, grumbling between themselves about how unamused the Brigadier would be in the morning, with a hangover as sharp as a fresh-cut lemon. They’re right about that, Merion thought, as they waited for them to pass.
With the coast clear, the four walked on. Soon they caught sight of the familiar angles of the stable, dimly lit by the torches staked along the path. Merion silently cheered to note that there was no movement, nor any lights burning nearby.
Rhin held up a hand, and the others waited by the path as the faerie crept forwards to investigate. Long minutes rolled painfully past. All they could do was stay quiet and peer into the shadows around them. None of them particularly fancied a few days in jail, and now that it had been declared the prize for failure, it made them even more nervous. Even Merion, so determined to see this fort behind him, could not help but clench his jaw tightly.
‘It’s clear,’ a hushed voice said, and the other three moved forward, deeper into the darkness and closer to freedom.
The stables were empty, save for a trio of horses idly wandering their pens and snuffling gently. A few fireflies flashed like lost stars here and there in the darkness. Merion kept close behind his aunt, who in turn, kept close behind Rhin.
‘Stop right there,’ hissed a voice, loud in the silence. A figure in uniform stepped out of the darkness, holding a rifle low. It was Doggard. ‘I see you didn’t listen to a word the general said.’
‘Was I supposed to? Forgive me, all I heard was a buffoon blowing off steam,’ Merion muttered, his tone darker than the shadows.
‘He is the superior officer of this fort …’ the major began, but it was obvious from his own tone that the words were just mechanical. Any passion they had previously held was now gone, and the major could hear it in his own voice. He began to chuckle.
‘Maker, you’re a stubborn little fellow,’ he said.
‘These are stubborn times,’ Merion replied, searching Doggard’s eyes for the hint of a chance. ‘All I want, all we want, is to be back on the road, heading east. We have no interest in the war, or going anywhere near it, I assure you.’
‘Please, Major,’ Lilain spoke up. ‘I can see you’re a reasonable man. That’s rare in these parts. All you have to do is say you didn’t see us.’
Doggard wrestled with himself. ‘Lasp’ll have my guts for bootlaces.’
It was Lurker’s turn. ‘If losin’ a handful of refugees is more important to him than havin’ his men fit for war, then that should tell you all you need to know, Major,’ he said, rather poetically for a man of few words. ‘From one soldier to another, that ain’t right,’ he added.
Doggard looked at the man and met the dim glint of his eyes under the dark shadow of his hat. Lurker nodded, as if affirming some silent question. The major made an exasperated sound. ‘For Maker’s sake,’ he grunted. ‘Go, and go now. It better be something important, Hark, whatever it is that’s taking you east.’
‘Revenge,’ hissed the boy.
Doggard seemed a little taken aback, as did Lurker and Lilain for that matter, but the major nodded all the same. ‘At least that’s a reason I can understand,’ he replied grimly, and waved his rifle at them. ‘Go, before I change my mind.’
‘You’re a good man, Doggard,’ Lilain told him as she hobbled forwards.
The major stepped back into the shadows. ‘Don’t know what good it’ll do me.’
Without another word, they rushed to the door set into the wooden walls. Rhin had already been at the lock with a steel dagger, and it lay in the dust.
‘That was too close,’ he said, as they joined him.
One by one, they slipped through the doorway and out into the night. The desert was dark even with the starlight, a rolling, jagged rug of dust and rocks. Despite its monochrome bareness, the wind’s chill, and the howls and cries that floated to them on the breeze, no sight was more welcome, save maybe an ocean and a waiting steamer.
Merion hovered by the door as Rhin wedged it shut behind them. When he was done, he found Merion looking down at him, working his lips, unsure of what to say.
‘Good work,’ the boy finally muttered, before turning away.
Rhin bowed, gave him a smile, and followed the others.
Merion took a breath of the night air. ‘And here we go again,’ he whispered.
*
The morning sun came quick and fierce, scorching the earth as soon as it had hauled its weight above the horizon. Out on the meandering road, there was no shelter but for their hats.
The ground buzzed with heat and insects. A few dun desert birds flitted about from rock to rock, from cactus to sagebrush, catching mosquitos on the wing. Their songs were as drab as their feathers, but somehow this pinch of life helped to alleviate the monotony of walking and sweating, reminding them that life was indeed possible in this desert.
And sweat they did. By no
on, their tongues were lumps of sand in their mouths, and sweat dripped down their brows in buckets. Lilain felt it the hardest. Several times her sweaty hands had slipped from the crutch, and she had pitched into the sand. Rhin was the only one who escaped the heat, sitting half in, half out of one of Lurker’s larger pockets. Rhin doubted that Merion would have suffered to carry him in his bag.
The rough road traipsed through the desert as if it were in no hurry to get anywhere. It was a complete contrast to the railroad, which carved its own straight path through the rocks and hills, never more than a mile or two away from the wandering road. Once or twice, locomotives rattled past, heading towards the frontier, their carriage windows filled with grim-eyed soldiers and Cathayan workers. The four stayed low and watchful as the trains rattled on. The war with the Buffalo Snake was clearly more important than a few escaped refugees.
Their flasks were almost empty before Lurker found them a lake. Lori, he had called it, and it was cold and fresh. They spent an hour there, maybe longer, washing the sweat from their skin and clothes, drinking their fill of lake water, and eyeing the halo of vultures they had collected, The birds had been circling since noon, hoping for a little morsel by sunset. They soared high above on the rising afternoon heat, winged blotches against the empty sky.
The landscape seemed lost for creativity, had barely changed since they had left the fort—or even Fell Falls for that matter. The sand was perhaps yellower, and there were more plants, but the desert remained as bare as a beggar’s plate, and as devilishly hot as always. By the time the sun was beginning to slip away towards tomorrow, Merion was praying for something four-legged, saddled and lost.
*
That night, they made camp in a ring of boulders at the foot of a scrubby hill, where the fire could crackle quietly to itself without attracting too much attention. Lurker had led them on a winding path on and off the road, to confuse their tracks, but a fire is a beacon, one that should be kept out of sight. There were other things in this desert besides Lasp’s soldiers—more dangerous things.
Lilain knew this, and sat at the edge of the firelight cleaning their only two guns. They had managed to break down Long Tom II, as Lilain had affectionately dubbed her new, or rather stolen, rifle, and stow it in Lurker’s pack shortly before being taken in to Fort Kenaday. The Mistress, the pistol that had taken the lives of the Serpeds, had been hidden in his coat. Lurker had commandeered it after losing that cannon of his to the sheriffsmen of Fell Falls. The forfeiture clearly still irked him—it was obvious in the way he stared at the gleaming gunmetal in Lilain’s deft fingers, and in the way he kept taking short sips from his flask. It was not lake water he was drinking.
Rhin sat beside the letter, sharpening his sword and knives on a tiny whetstone. His pointed ears twitched every time a howl or a screech rang out in the darkness.
Merion was oblivious to it all: the cleaning, the staring, and the night-noises. He just stared at a sliver of dried jackalope meat pinched between his finger and thumb, counting the days in his head. It must have been the hundredth time that week he had totted them up, and every time the total pulled the knot in his stomach a little tighter. Fifteen days.
Fifteen days since he had sent Castor Serped to his well-deserved grave.
Fifteen days for the news to reach London.
Fifteen more days for greedy hands to strengthen their hold over his father’s estate.
The realisation had struck Merion the morning after the fire, while they were rooting through the Serped train that Rhin had stolen for the Wit, finding nothing but a few forgotten coins. As the others had cursed and muttered, he had perched on the edge of the driver’s cabin, his legs dangling over the tracks, sullen and still reeling from the events of the night before.
Calidae had said ‘we’ when he left her to the fire. ‘Everything we worked for’, she had said. He had known then, even in the middle of the surging fire, that ‘we’ meant more than just the Serpeds. Her words had bounced around Merion’s head for a week before he recalled the name that Castor had spat at him in the cargo hold.
Dizali. The Bulldog’s successor. That name had been turned over and over in his mind, like a sword in a forge. Even now, staring at the jackalope meat, he wanted to mutter that name to the fire and see how it tasted. Bitter, he imagined.
‘What’s on your mind, Nephew?’ Lilain interrupted his brooding.
‘Nothing,’ Merion lied.
His aunt was hardly convinced. ‘People only say nothing when there’s something to spit out. You’ve been staring at that meat for almost ten minutes,’ she said.
‘I was miles away,’ he mumbled, hoping that would placate her. Several thousand miles east, to be exact.
‘Mmm,’ she hummed, not convinced. ‘So what’s your plan, then, Nephew?’ she asked. She was determined to get an answer tonight. His sullen mood held no protection in the desert, it seemed.
Merion shrugged. ‘Same as before. Head east. Work or barter our way to the coast, then somehow get on a ship heading for the Empire.’ It sounded so easy when it tumbled out of his mouth.
‘And where does this revenge part come in?’ rumbled Lurker, not looking up from his flask. Lilain flashed him a look, as if he had stolen her next question.
The young Hark rolled his eyes. ‘I knew there would be questions about that,’ he muttered.
‘Do you blame us? We don’t hear a peep out of you for almost two weeks, and then you go sayin’ something like that? It worries me, Nephew,’ Lilain told him, as she rubbed her hands on a scrap of cloth. ‘I have to ask. I’m your aunt.’ Rhin was looking on intently now. The boy could feel his stare from the corner of his eye.
Merion took a breath. ‘Prime Lord Dizali,’ he replied.
‘What’s one of those?’ asked Lurker.
‘My father’s successor, and the man behind the Serpeds’ treachery.’
‘How can you be so sure?’ Lilain asked.
‘You were there, Aunt Lilain, when Castor said his name. I’m sure of it. He means to take my estate from me,’ Merion stated, in a voice as cold as the night air around them.
For a while, nobody said anything. Rhin just scraped his whetstone along his sword and cleared his throat.
Lilain stared up at the dusty stars. ‘I’ll ask again. What’s your plan?’
‘Go to London. Expose Dizali for the worm he is.’
‘He’s a Prime Lord.’
‘And I’m the heir to a Prime Lord’s estate. Your point?’
Lilain narrowed her eyes at him, and Merion felt as though he was back in her grimy kitchen, being told off for eavesdropping. It felt like such a long time ago.
‘My point, Nephew, is that he has the ear of the queen, and is a very powerful man. My point is that you are a boy, and he is a Prime Lord. My point is that you have no other plan besides sailing to London and marchin’ up his steps.’
Merion glowered at the sand between his legs. She was right, and that was what cut deep. He knew he had nothing besides his anger and … bloodrushing. He had known this as soon as Dizali’s name had first crept into his head. But he refused to let that hold him back, and he said as much.
Lilain shook her head and held her tongue, not pushing him any further tonight. The road was long, and travelling it in irksome silence would make it even longer. She changed the subject, and looked at Lurker. ‘How far are we from Nebraskar?’
Lurker hummed, looking off towards the dark of the distant hills that cut a jagged horizon from the starry sky. ‘Two, three days of solid walkin’, maybe more,’ he said, then paused, sniffing the night air. He muttered something to himself and hauled himself up from the dust. The others watched him as he trudged out into the darkness. ‘Too much drinkin’,’ he added gruffly, before disappearing into the night.
‘He alright?’ Rhin asked. He had been quiet until now.
Lilain nodded, peering after him. ‘He’s run out of blood. Hasn’t rushed in almost a week. That’s longer than he normally goes
without.’
‘And don’t you have any?’
‘Not a drop, and you know that, Nephew.’
‘What’ll happen?’ Rhin was curious now.
Lilain worked her lips. ‘Possibly nothing. He might just drink through it. Then again, he might not take too kindly to it, and get sick. I’ve seen that happen before. It’s called withdrawal, and it’s more in the mind than the body.’ Lilain’s voice told them the prospect weighed heavy on her.
‘Am I going to—?’ Merion began, but his aunt shook her head.
‘You’ve only been rushing for a month, Nephew. You’ll be fine.’
Merion stared into the night, trying to spy Lurker in the shadows, but the fire had stolen his night vision, and the desert was black and empty. ‘What about Jake?’ he suggested.
Lilain shook her head once more.
‘Shades have to be taken from specific places, where the blood is purest: heart, liver, brain—anywhere that involves either a scalpel or a long needle, and I don’t have either. It would kill the bird to try. If Lurker let me, that is. He loves that bird something strange.’
‘Where is that magpie, anyway?’
‘Scoutin’, probably. He wanders off for days on end. Always comes back, though. Always has,’ Lilain explained. Noting Merion’s worried look, she carried on. ‘There may be a few letters in Cheyenne. If we’re lucky.’
‘Good,’ Merion replied. ‘We’d better hurry then.’
There was something selfish hiding in his words, and it stung him. He was worried for Lurker, of course, but the prospect of tasting blood again made his tongue run around the backs of his teeth and the saliva flow. He met his aunt’s eyes then, as he wondered what the next few days would hold, and saw the curiosity in them. The boy felt his cheeks grow hot, and he turned so his back was to the fire and he could stare at the stars.
‘Goodnight, Nephew,’ she said to him.
‘Goodnight,’ Merion whispered.
Chapter V
