The Shepherd (The Aionach Saga Book 0)

by Staudt, J. C.

  The Shepherd

  J.C. Staudt

  Contents

  1. The Hounds

  2. The Clayhollows

  3. The Way to Tristol

  4. No Person Better

  5. The Railside

  6. Calistari's Crate

  7. These Don't Exist

  8. A Man Short

  9. The Cave

  10. Rills

  11. The Deal

  12. Riverbed

  13. The Starwinds

  14. Gambit

  15. Lottimer

  16. Dolls

  17. The Switch

  1

  The smell of meat over the campfires brought the hounds prowling.

  Toler Glaive sawed off another bit of gristle and tossed it over the sand, watching it land at the edge of the fire’s glow.

  “Don’t feed them! You’ll only make it worse.”

  Toler raised an eyebrow. “Have some charity, Blatcher. One of these nights they don’t get fed, they’ll come for you.”

  “Or you.” Blatcher’s face was a motley of orange and gray in the firelight, shadows dancing over ugly scars.

  Toler shook his head. “Wild things can smell fear. That makes you easier to smell.”

  A black shape loomed above the scrap and was gone.

  Blatcher grimaced, hugging himself as if the warmth had gone out of the night. “They’d never touch me. They know better. Mongrels, all of ‘em.”

  “Say what you will of the hounds,” Toler said, flinging them another scrap. “They’re loyal as any house dog.”

  “These hounds are no dogs, boy. They’re bred to hunt men.” It was Jakob Calistari, the cloth merchant whose shipping crate was the shepherds’ to guard for the next three months. His words came wet and muffled through a mouthful of food. He planted his considerable girth in an empty seat by the fire and began picking through the leavings on his plate. It was uncharacteristic of the merchant to grace the shepherds with his presence during dinner. “Loyalty’s one thing. Hunger is another,” Calistari said.

  “Speaking as an expert on the subject,” Blatcher muttered.

  The others laughed, garnering stares from crews around nearby fires. Calistari gave Blatcher a stare of his own, only he wasn’t laughing.

  “They aren’t dogs, that’s true enough,” said Toler. “But they’re feral. They don’t hunt men any more than you or I do, unless they’re starving. Which is why a token of goodwill is in order every now and then.” He glanced at the spot where his most recent token of goodwill had landed, and found it missing.

  “I still don’t like ‘em,” Blatcher said. “It’s unsettling, them being on our heels all the time. Staring at us from the dark, licking their lips. Those table scraps won’t keep ‘em filled for long. Who’s to say when it is they get good and hungry?”

  “They’re no bother as long as you show them a little kindness,” Toler said. “It’s the savages’ trained pets you’ve got to watch out for. They’re the dangerous ones.”

  “The nomads should keep them on leashes,” said Calistari. “That would stop them running away and prevent these kinds of infestations.”

  “It’s a little late for leashes, don’t you think? Strays have been ranging the foothills since before the Heat. Besides, they breed them big, and big things don’t take to leashes so easy.”

  “They do if you show them who’s in charge,” said Jakob. “I’ve got a kennel full of curs at home. They know when to beg and whom to follow.”

  “Your curs are scarce the size of bushcats,” Blatcher said, sparking another bout of laughter. “Try leashing a brace of these monsters in each hand and see where it gets you.”

  “Halfway over the Clayhollows, I should think,” said Toler.

  Men sputtered and hacked, stoking the fire with their drink. Toler took a long draught from his flask and felt it scald his throat, smiling at the revelry. The nights were cooler than the days, but they were never cold. The light-star made sure of that. Toler was warm and drunk, and that was the way he liked it.

  “What do you know of it, boy? How many times have you been north of these mountains?”

  Toler hated when the merchant called him boy. He was twenty-three. It didn’t matter how often he reminded the other shepherds of that; he was the youngest, and that meant he would be boy for as long as Jakob Calistari liked. “I’ve never been north of the Clayhollows. Vantanible doesn’t trade outside the Inner East anymore.”

  “Tender boy,” said Calistari, his eyes sharp in the firelight. “Thinks he’s wise beyond his years. Thinks he’s seen the wide Aionach, but he doesn’t know the half of it. Young punk.”

  “Go easy, Jakob. He was just giving us a laugh,” said Korley Frittock, a lithe middle-aged man whose blond hair was so pale it might’ve been half-gone to gray without the casual observer knowing the difference.

  The fireside fell silent, giving way to the insects’ shrills and the tinder’s crackling. Toler looked away, trapped under Jakob’s stare. Somewhere off in the darkness, the hounds were snarling over a morsel.

  Jakob must have felt responsible for the silence, because he was the one to break it. “Blasted things swarm like roaches every time we travel in the shadow of the mountains.” He frowned, tossing away a leftover bone like a peace offering. It bounced and skipped over the sand, landing too far past the light’s edge.

  “What’d you do that for?” said Blatcher.

  “What?” The merchant shrugged, innocent.

  “You don’t give ‘em the bones. You never give ‘em the bones.”

  “What's the harm? The boy can feed the beasts, but I can’t?”

  “Not if you count on getting a wink tonight. I thought you said you had dogs of your own. They’ll be warring over that bone halfway ‘til dawn.”

  Toler resisted the urge to point out that beasts as big as the hounds could chew through bones that size without batting an eye.

  “Excuse me,” Jakob said with disdain. “I’ve never spent a night in the kennel with them.”

  “Maybe you should - you’d learn a blasted thing or two.”

  Jakob inhaled through his nose. “It isn’t your place to lecture me, shepherd.” The word was an insult. Like boy.

  Blatcher was unscathed. “Right you are. I’m just your lookout. ‘Cept maybe from now on I won’t be lookin’ so hard.”

  The merchant’s eyes shone with something cruel when he smirked. “Maybe I’ll make sure you never work another Vantanible train again.”

  That one found its mark. Blatcher opened his mouth to speak, but a pile of clumsy syllables spilled out.

  Toler saw the streak of anger flash across the big man’s eyes. He came to his feet just as Blatcher did and clapped him about the trunk, one hand each on chest and spine. “Whoa there, big dway. Give it a rest.”

  “Coffer thinks he can…” Blatcher’s voice fell into a murmur of choice words about Jakob and various members of his family. The big man swayed in Toler’s grip, unsteady on his feet.

  Toler noted the green glass bottle next to Blatcher’s seat, the cork resting at the bottom in half an inch of booze. “Bedtime. Go have yourself a piss and clear your head.”

  Toler sent him off with a pat, too tipsy himself to have been of any help when Blatcher tripped over a spare firelog and stumbled on his way into the darkness. It was getting late, but Toler had no desire to pay attention to the hour. He’d sleep in the saddle tomorrow if he felt like it. Instead he retook his seat by the fire, leaning against his saddle and feeling the heat on his boots. It was his favorite thing in the world, this saddle; it was the last gift his dad had ever given him, though he’d only done so in death.

 
; “I swear, if the wasteland doesn’t make some men go mad,” Jakob said, chuckling. “There are worse things out there than hounds, anyway.” He searched for an ally, but none of the shepherds seemed to share his sentiment, and another silence followed. He cleared his throat.

  Stretched.

  Yawned.

  Toler could almost feel how badly the merchant longed for the safety of his tent. Jakob was only staying to make some small effort at poise. Rue the day when these shepherds no longer worked for him. None of them said it, but they were all thinking it. You don’t threaten a shepherd with his job - especially not one who’s good at it.

  Toler dug a hand into one of his saddlebags and pulled out a thick leatherbound tome, a third of its pages missing. Pages filled with important words he would never read. He'd read plenty in his life, but he had better uses for this drivel.

  Tearing off a new page, he ripped it into squares, produced a pouch and filled each square with a pinch from inside. He licked and rolled each one, felt the paper crinkle between his fingers, thin and perfect, and sniffed along its length. Tomorrow’s supply - if he didn’t smoke them all tonight. He yanked a half-burned branch from the fire and lit one with the ember, spitting away the loose leaves after the first drag.

  Calistari stood and left at his first chance, letting the silence follow him to his tent. Toler could tell he still felt like a fool doing it.

  “I swear, if the wasteland doesn’t make some men assholes,” Korley Frittock whispered.

  The others sniggered.

  They could call it the wasteland if they wanted. Toler Glaive called it paradise.

  2

  Morning cut a prismatic slash through barren sky, and the heat rose. They were on the western route bound for Tristol, hugging the foothills south of the Clayhollows. After Tristol was Rills, and then every small town along the way to Lottimer City at the tip of the Amber Coast, where they could soak in as much of the Horned Gulf’s caustic seawater as they pleased while riding the shoreline toward home again. Toler breathed. Nothing like a day in the scrubs.

  The caravan started off, the coil of flatbeds unfurling into a neat line. Their loads were still heavy with goods from Unterberg, and they clambered for position like slow giants. No coachman wanted to be first, and none wanted to be last. The flatbed in front was most vulnerable to bandits and savages, while the unlucky crew in last place had the hounds and the dust from everyone ahead of them to deal with.

  “Who’s in the mood for a song?” Toler shouted over his shoulder. He took a long pull at his flask. He’d been awake for fifteen minutes and was finding sobriety uninspiring.

  “Anyone fixing to sing should do it in his head, I say, lest he catch a standing ovation in the shape of my hand.”

  Toler smirked. “I’ll sing one just for you, Blatcher.”

  Blatcher sidled up to him. “Not if you’ve got a mind to live this day through, you won’t.”

  The burly man was much easier to look at with his face covered against the dust. His eyes were a bright pale blue, cold and razor-sharp. Not the sort of eyes you wanted looking at you, but still a better effect than the whole face at once. How his pug nose managed to hold up the neckcloth, Toler couldn’t guess.

  “Alright, alright.” Toler held up his hands. “I’ll make a brand-new song and dedicate it to you.”

  “You’re testing me, boy.” There it was again. Calistari had gotten the shepherds saying it now, a bad habit Toler would never break them of. Most shepherds hated most merchants, but that didn’t stop them from kissing ass when they needed to.

  Toler’s eyes rested on Blatcher’s thick jaw, veiled beneath his neckcloth. His hand twitched, flexing and unflexing. Blatcher may have been ugly, but he was strong, and good in a fight. Now wasn’t the time to be playing grab-ass, no matter how much the dway was pissing him off.

  Today they would cross between the mountains and the edge of the Skeletonwood, where they’d emerge onto open scrubland. Nomad territory. As the caravan departed, the hounds swept in like sleuths to investigate the campsite. The hounds had formed a whole new tier in the ecosystem; an intermediary between human and buzzard. Whenever the trade caravans didn’t leave enough food behind, the hounds ate the buzzards. Toler didn’t know what they’d do if they ran out of buzzards.

  The hounds were dog-like in name more than in form; they had long forelegs, thick meaty shoulders, pinback ears, and broad snouts that gave way to jutting fangs. They had the tiniest stubs of tails or no tails at all, and mangy, mottled fur run through with half a dozen shades of gray and brown. Where dogs had paws, the hounds had slender, graceful feet, with talons like carnivorous birds.

  The sight of slavering beasts the size of horses gave newer shepherds like Korley Frittock a start, but Toler liked them. Maybe that was because part of him felt like he and the hounds had something in common. He’d run off from his life too, in a manner of speaking.

  Shepherding had been in him since he was young, and even as a boy he knew it was only a matter of opportunity. That opportunity came when his sister-in-law disappeared three years past. Toler had pledged to help his brother find her, for good or ill. Falling in with a passing caravan had appeared to be a means of keeping his promise, but he’d been planning to leave home that way all along. The route they were on now would take them through Bradsleigh, but the only way Toler would stay in his hometown for more than a couple days anymore was if they carried him there in a box.

  “Think we’ll get a visit from the nomads?” Korley asked him.

  They were riding beside Calistari’s flatbed, the blue painted steel shipping crate half-rusted and bearing the notorious VANTANIBLE, INC. logo on either side. Thick-treaded sand tires squealed on ancient axles, the line of identical flatbeds stretching out before and after them, one to a merchant. Goods from all over traveled with them - fabrics, liquor, tobacco, scrap metal, weapons, candles, oil, tea, coffee, spices, grains, canned goods. If it would last the trip and survive the heat, chances were Vantanible, Inc. traded it.

  “Hope so. Been itching for a fight,” Toler replied, searching the hills.

  “You’re a coffing lunatic.”

  “Nah, not me. You do this long enough, it gets so you look for something to break up the monotony. Shipping west is easier than east anyway - I’ll take Clays over Salts any day. Salt Nomads are tricky. They know the open desert better than anyone. Their favorite thing to do is ride after you and let you think you’re getting away. They do it so well you won't even realize they're funneling you into a catch, over a dune or into a ravine somewhere. Clay Nomads, on the other hand... they don’t fool around with fancy tricks. They’ll send their hounds after you and then run you down sidelong on foot. In country like this, all a train can do against an attack like that is brace itself. Can you imagine trying to run from that? Running a loaded flatbed on four horses… that’d be a laugh, huh?”

  “Never seen one go faster than I can walk,” Korley said.

  “S’right. These monstrosities could never handle a two-ton load at a gallop.”

  “How you figure we’d do if there was an attack?”

  “With this lot?” Toler glanced around, pantomiming an assessment he’d already made. “We’d be in the ground in fifteen minutes flat.”

  “You’re frightening him,” said Blatcher, seeing Korley’s worried look. He leaned in. “Besides... the Clays don’t bury their enemies. They relieve them of their arms and legs and let the hounds wrestle over what's left. They say the hounds don’t get fed unless there’s human flesh to be had.”

  Korley went white as noontime.

  “You’re awful gullible for an old dway, Korley,” said Toler.

  “You’re pulling my leg?”

  “Not as hard as the nomads will.”

  Dead trees wore away over the hillsides until they were specks in the distance behind. The caravan hit the open country with the Clayhollows jutting up into the blue on their right. Daylight flooded a clear sky, the light-star pulling
on their shadows. Hounds zigzagged along behind them, sniffing at every distraction but always keeping pace.

  “Anybody who doesn’t like sweating should be in another line of work,” Blatcher was saying.

  Infernal was the reason for all their sweat; it was the reason Toler had grown up in a world without progress. Blatcher was right; as soon as the light-star got high enough to snatch away the mountain shade, they’d be sweating out every word.

  While the others talked, Toler had been working on draining his flask. He’d lost the thrust of the conversation, but he didn’t mind. He was busy trying to picture the way Reylenn had looked naked, soft blonde hair giving way to the curve of her breasts, slender hips swaying as she moved toward him on long shy legs.

  “You do something to me that I’ve never felt before,” she had told him, after.

  “I get that a lot,” he’d said. It was a lie, of course. He hadn’t wanted to admit he was feeling the same things she was.

  She’d hit him on the arm and rolled over, pouting, and he’d pulled her into him and tickled her until she was laughing so hard he had to cover her mouth with his so no one would hear.

  Twelve weeks had never sounded like such a painfully long time.

  “Can’t think of a line of work in the Aionach that isn’t earned with sweat,” said Andover Mays, a dark-skinned veteran who made rare occasion of speaking.

  Blatcher’s neckcloth pulled at his cheeks when he smiled. “How ‘bout merchantry?”

  The other shepherds chuckled.

  Jakob Calistari shot them a long look from his seat on the flatbed, a sheen of sweat glistening on his jowls over a layer of ointment. He had fair skin that would’ve burned in the daylight, so he was continually smearing himself with a white lotion made to block the heat. Whenever he worked up a good lather, it looked like he was oozing butter.

  Calistari didn’t have to come on the trade routes if he didn’t want to - he was wealthy enough that he could've sent his underlings in his stead and stayed at home in Unterberg, the below-world settlement where Vantanible, Inc. was headquartered. Vantanible’s presence in Unterberg made it one of the largest trade centers in the Inner East. When an established merchant like Calistari took his own trips, it was because he had reason to keep a close eye on his goods.