Caulie turned her eyes to the cliffs. If she couldn’t figure something out, they would be at the mercy of—
The enemy shelling stopped. The rain of stones and boulders continued for another minute before settling on the mountain terrace’s floor. She hadn’t noticed the dust, but it enveloped the entire battalion like a morning fog.
“Is it over?”
Caulie shook her head grimly. If the earlier pattern was being followed, the wizard had finished his warm-up and was about to unleash his real attack. He would know this new tactic was working—he’d hear it in the disjointed Haphan counter-barrage. By the wizard’s judgment, his impossibly precise judgment, it would be time for the killing stroke.
There. Lightning from the abyss below the mountain.
The sky tore open with the scream of incoming shells. Caulie shuddered beneath the detonations, her eyes closed, her ears trained on the rhythms. She understood its message:
When careless youth believes it has a future,
It tricks itself with hope. Hear this:
A young maiden is nearby.
This is a time of courtship, and
Every other suitor must be killed.
Caulie blanched. “Captain Nance! Get up here now!”
Whether the captain heard or not, she didn’t climb the ladder. Caulie watched as the woman ran from Tachba to Tachba, shouting in their ears, trying to restore order. It didn’t work—many of them were still deaf from Caulie’s song. Her message was now only obstructing their ability to control the artillerymen. Infuriating! Caulie waved her glowing staff and the song splintered apart. In less than a minute, Captain Nance’s orders would be heard again. Caulie didn’t think they had that long.
Tachba demographics had perhaps sixteen disposable, violent young men for each woman of age. Courtship among the Tachba was a competition, as with any race or species, but the Pollution made the escalation into bloodshed both trivial and inevitable. Strangers, longtime friends, and even siblings easily killed each other, their adolescent impulses amplified by rivers of hormones. They knew they were mad when they did it, but the madness also contained a seeming truth: that it was natural to clear out the other suitors. The other suitors understood, and forgiveness was as common as violence. Whether you fell or they fell, it didn’t matter. It was all part of the giant dance of life.
Below Caulie, the men who were circling slowed to a stop. They beheld the activity of the gun crews with bewildered faces that shifted slowly into smiles. Under Haphan law, most Tachba males were already in the trenches when adulthood struck, and those specific passions were sublimated into the war. To Caulie, these Tachba’s expressions were not those of men facing twenty years of trench life with almost zero chance of survival. You didn’t get that giddy, tomorrowless excitement from boots on the eternal front.
The violence began with a chorus of shouts. The smiling Tachba sprinted for the guns. They fell on the gun crews with knives and boot swords. The crews broke away from the guns to defend themselves, only to immediately succumb to the wizard’s song.
The battalion tore itself to pieces. The air rent with screams. Blood-covered fists buried blades in stomachs or hacked at limbs. Bodies littered the ground.
Captain Nance’s shrill orders did nothing to impede the chaos. The lower Haphan officers at the forward command post broke discipline and sprinted toward HQ. The Tachba in their bloodlust did not differentiate between the uniforms, and the Haphans were so slow and clumsy compared to the Polluted. They were swept up into the air, kicking like children, and dashed on the rocks. Caulie saw one young Haphan woman simply cut in half by a tremendous sweep of a trench knife.
Captain Nance disappeared in the struggle of bodies but emerged again, swung by her feet. She died when her skull finally collapsed after being battered, over and over, against the wooden legs of Caulie’s platform. Caulie watched, transfixed. The staff slipped from her nerveless fingers.
All at once, the enemy barrage ceased. The cliffs turned quiet, and the wizard’s message of passion and youthful joy disappeared—but it made no difference. The violence had its own inertia. Now it was just the men and their natures.
At the edge of the ring of spotlights surrounding the viewing platform, Caulie saw a disruption in the crowded melee. It was a small wedge of Tachba soldiers, moving quickly and keeping tight order. They pushed away attackers without letting themselves become absorbed by the fighting.
At the front of the flying wedge was Grampharic. Behind him were the rest of her squad.
They secured the base of the ladder and Grampharic motioned for her to climb down. It wasn’t bravery but remorse that impelled her to the ladder, down the rungs, and into Grampharic’s arms.
“How are you immune?” Caulie asked.
“Just unlucky, I guess!” He smiled, glancing around. “If you have to go, this is the best way. What a feeling! I had forgotten-meh the rush of emotion, and how a pretty girl can drive a man insane. Not many of those at the front, your own self excluded of course—”
“Please, the shortest answers you can make. Where is Shanter?”
Her squad backed toward her bunker. They received no special attention from the mass of brawlers, but it was still slow going.
“Shanter was the one that saved us. Too clever by half, that one—” Grampharic noticed her face. “Ah yes, brevity. He ordered us into the bunker on your authority. Kept us in there, shooting my rifle into the rock. It damped the messages that Pretty Polly was sending. Fucking nearly broke my eardrums too.”
“It stopped the wizard’s song?” Caulie asked.
They arrived at the bunker. Shanter stood beside the entrance and she flooded with relief, even when he turned to them with all the grace of an old man. She saw him speak but couldn’t hear his voice.
“He says it wasn’t the sounds,” Grampharic relayed. “It was the vibrations in the stone. It didn’t come through the ears, la, but up through the legs.”
Shanter spoke again, and the squad jumped into action. They moved past the bunker and farther into the dark, taking the shortest possible route out of the chaos. Caulie watched the violence continue behind them. This was her outcome. Her battle against the enemy wizard was over, and this was the result.
If Shanter could walk, and if Grampharic’s squad was moving away from the danger, and if they would carry her no matter what she wanted, and since everything else she’d attempted had ended in complete and utter failure . . . well then, her work here was done, wasn’t it? The Forty-First Field Artillery, Front East, had erased itself from existence, and it had done so despite everything she’d tried. She gave herself permission to surrender.
Caulie closed her eyes and let the tears come.
The Sorceress
With the foregoing in mind, please remember the true danger of the Tachba. It is not in their violence, which can be managed. Their true danger is when they are docile, for docility breeds introspection. Where you find patience, you also find craft: questions, thoughts, and excuses in layers like shale and equally as slippery. They will talk you to distraction and lead you in circles. If you simply keep them fighting, they will give you no surprises.
General Sec Tawarna, in a letter to his daughter Jephesandra
To Her Imperial Majesty, from Lady Jephesandra
Juniper, I have observed protocol in my public requests. I have swallowed my pride and endured humiliation in your public replies. I cannot answer for my father, my family, and how we might make your authority over the Stone House families tenuous.
When you ask what might be found in a daggie notebook, I can’t help but perceive a delaying tactic. You will not be diminished if you approve a polite request from the loyal opposition. Or simply consider me a humble student with a simple petition—your quick approval would only enhance your reputation as a patron of academe. I had forgotten how fun it is to joust with you, that and other things, but I am sincerely begging your attention. I may be aware of urgencies that have not yet rea
ched your ears.
Find my answers below and then approve my request like the good little figurehead you are.
Daggie notebooks are unremarkable slate slabs, which explains how they were overlooked by Tachba looters and how they can weather a thousand years in a bog and still function. Haphan archaeologists learned the trick of opening the notebooks shortly after Landing Day, but the notebooks seemed to contain nothing but glassy sheets of mica. For eighty years the notebooks were considered too fragile to handle, and then it was discovered that the stored symbols and images are only unlocked by a certain kind of touch: the sheets are powered by the minor friction and body heat of a fingertip.
Several concepts in Pollution science derive from daggie memory glass texts. Deferred men are the “blood-fed” Tachba who mature at a slower rate. Obtained men are Tachba whose bodies were augmented by pieces of cadaver. Wizards are the necromancers who understood enough of the Pollution to manipulate it at will.
Yes, the last years of the daggie colony sound like a fairy tale. The daggies that survived the longest were reportedly great wizards and sorceresses who could “enthrall the Polluted humans.” It stands to reason, doesn’t it? A fast-breeding race of engineered soldiers like the Tachba would need a control mechanism, otherwise they would be nothing but a threat to the Antecessors. The control mechanism has to be there still, buried in their brutalized minds, some insight that we’re missing.
Modern Tachba have their trench pantheon, the gods and spirits who orchestrate the chaos of the eternal front. We know the pantheon is simple superstition, but why is it so real to the Tachba? Because the pantheon is an echo of the Antecessors who once controlled them. Ouphao’an was a living, palpable deity who dominated thousands the same way. We need to learn what she knew, while we still have time to use it.
Chapter 28
When Caulie woke in the middle of the night, the world was pitch dark and freezing. Of course it was freezing; she had been cold ever since the panther had opened its mouth on that first day on the eternal front. Worse, the air itself seemed thin. Stars flickered in front of her eyes as she struggled for breath. The only thing keeping her from existential terror was that she was still being carried. Those arms around her meant she wasn’t alone.
“Where?”
“Safe,” Shanter whispered back. He was as out of breath as she was, but with a much better excuse.
“Not the front?”
“I’m leading Grampharic’s squad. A brisk walk in the mountains, la.” After more labored breathing, Shanter asked, “Can you stand? Can you walk on your own?”
She said, perhaps a little unwillingly, “Yes.”
“Makes no difference!” He laughed with a wheeze. “You would fall to your death in seconds.” She tried to look out of her swaddling but he shook her back into place before she got more than a peek. “The last thing you want to do is see where you are. Don’t the Haphans have a fear of falling?”
“That, and a fear of landing.”
“A potent mix.”
From the whistling wind and the remote breaths of the other men, Caulie placed them atop a mountain peak.
An hour later, after a sharp turn and a tight squeeze that resulted in a new bruise on Caulie’s ankle, the path grew quieter. The sound of wind faded, and the squad’s noisy breathing seemed to echo.
Caulie’s vision still did not adjust. She was mystified by how the Tachba were able to navigate at all. Add it to the list of mystifying things, she thought. The men were moving in lockstep—seven of them breathing individually but walking as one man. She was obviously dreaming. Hell, with this total, nullifying darkness, her eyes could have well been closed and she might have been sleeping. For once, she didn’t question or challenge it. She let their steady pace rock her through the night.
* * *
The next time Caulie opened her eyes, she found herself in warmth and light. She lay in a bed that was much too big and piled with blankets. She was nestled between ragged sheets so threadbare the packed straw poked through.
Light shone lazily through a single unadorned window near the ceiling above the bed. The walls were whitewashed but chalky, the kind you shouldn’t lean against. The bed, a single chair, and a small writing table were all hewn from thick wooden slabs and were held together by simple peg-in-hole construction methods. They looked like they would come apart easily and need only a mallet to rebuild; they could take a beating, and judging by their dents and scratches, they had taken several. The last clue was a small fireplace with an opening a little bigger than a pair of wine bottles side-by-side that was radiating heat from a handful of banked embers. The fireplace was lined with river rock and stood on a base of broad flagstone. So much stone and so little fire, Caulie thought.
From these details, Caulie knew what kind of house this was, and felt a profound sense of relief. Unlike at the front, nothing here would break at her touch. She could try all day and not leave a mark of her existence, except perhaps in smudged whitewash. Best of all, the room was filled with the heavy sort of stillness that was almost a sound in itself, and it made the farmyard noises through the window—running children, wood tapping on wood, shuffling and squeaks from a baxxaxx pen, the languid slow chop of a shovel—seem far away.
She hoped Shanter was nearby. But then, what was the rush? This was the first time she’d had any privacy since entering the panther, and only now did she remember how much she craved it . . . but still, she hoped Shanter was nearby.
Her body protested at the mere thought of getting out of bed, so she closed her eyes. Using the sounds that seeped through the window and under the door, she imagined the reality of the house and the people living in it. It was at capacity, based on the number of feet pounding the timber, and the continuous barrage of crashes, slams, and exclamations. The shouts were adult while the laughter, teasing, and screams came from children. This was a Tachba household, and a thriving one at that.
“You have to wake up eventually,” said a hoarse, quiet voice above her.
She smiled and opened her eyes. Shanter stood beside the bed, out of uniform and dressed like a farmer. His face was tilted down toward her and she guessed it had taken him a while to move it into that position. How long had he been standing there? She could understand someone moving quietly on the timber floor, but the door was a surprise—it looked heavier than a tree itself, and if it were so exquisitely and noiselessly balanced, well, clearly this house would outlast them all.
At first Shanter seemed concerned for her, but his frown evaporated under her smile. She said, “I’m awake. How long was I asleep?”
“Three days.”
She bolted upright and immediately regretted it—her back gave an angry spasm and her legs cramped. She felt as if her every joint and muscle had been chewed into liquid before being spat into a mixing bowl for further abuse. What had she done to earn that? She’d been carried through the mountains while sleeping. Meanwhile, a Tacchie with a broken neck had carried her and was now sneaking into people’s rooms to make them feel lazy and guilty. That seemed especially unfair, but then again, she didn’t have the Pollution running things for her . . .
“So I’ll just say ow,” she said. She tried to stretch a little. “Did it follow us?”
“Yes, or no. The boys say there is something large in the forest but no one has seen it directly. It might be anything.” He lifted a hand; it seemed to be his new shrug. “The only thing the house can agree upon is that it arrived on our heels. It wasn’t here before we came.”
“And where are we—?” The blankets fell away and she saw herself. She was in some kind of showy, short sleeping gown. It was clearly made for someone shorter than her and much more full of moxie.
“I didn’t pick that,” he said immediately.
“No harm, no harm.” She bullied the embarrassment out of her face. “Is there more of it, I hope, somewhere nearby?”
That finally started his smile. He turned to what Caulie had thought was wood siding
on the wall near the door. In fact, it was a recessed cupboard, and after some digging he pulled out a heavy linen shirt and a patched peasant skirt.
“We’re country folk now,” she observed.
Shanter waved another shrug. “Just clothes. We’re still in service, aren’t we? La, we’ll never be out of service, though we die and come back.” He paused. “Grampharic and the men keep asking what I saw on the other side.”
“The other side of the rope? What did you see?”
He pressed the clothes against her and she took them.
“Which I am afraid I never got that far, Caulie. I never saw the dead land, the ancestors, or even the fire that is supposed to light the way. I always knew it was nonsense. For the longest time on that gallows, my life felt like a feather on my lips, waiting for me to breathe it off . . . but I never did. I had no breath to spare, so I lingered in my body the whole time I swung.” He lightened that last utterance with a grin, something only a Tachba would do. “Strictly speaking, I was mostly in my throat. Everything was about my throat and the air. I felt very attached to the air. Simply couldn’t get enough of it.”
“I . . .” What could she say? Beyond a doubt, it was all her fault. “It was because of me. If you had never met me, you would have never been on that gallows.”
He was puzzled. “Caulie, you’re embarrassed? No, you look guilty to the bone. You silly Haphan girl, let your guilt wash away. Pretty Polly has seen to it: my hanging happened to someone else, someone we don’t know or care about. All I have is a stiff neck.”
He crossed back to the door and stepped through. The door was superlatively quiet. As it swung closed again, he told her, “Get dressed. You must meet my family; there are traditions to observe.”
“Your family, Shanter?”
What the Thunder Said Page 23
