Fearsome Journeys (The New Solaris Book of Fantasy)

by Jonathan Strahan

  Elmo loomed fierce, as only a natural born first sergeant can. “Talk, runt. Straight. I’m fresh out of patience for witch-man talk-around.”

  He was displacing his irritation with Rusty, but scapegoating a sorcerer can become a less than profitable exercise.

  One-Eye had looked past the moment. He had seen something to make him nervous. “That woods mostly isn’t real. It’s the most persistent daylight illusion I’ve ever seen but from up close you can tell.” His old black face twisted. He was puzzled.

  The troops stayed quiet. Sorcery encountered in strange country never bodes well. It is a definite conversation stopper.

  One-Eye scowled at the Rip some more.

  Elmo prodded, “Any day now.”

  “Sometimes even sergeants need to be patient.”

  Certainly not their nature but this one let a few minutes glide. Then One-Eye sighed, sagged under the weight of the world. “I’m not strong enough to see inside. We have to go look.”

  Rusty barked, “We ain’t out here to go poking sticks in no hornet nests.”

  Elmo glowered. “That’s exactly why we’re here, moron. The name says it. Recon. We look. We poke. We find out.”

  And we might ought to get on with looking for our latest way out.

  For centuries the Company has found one. Always.

  This was the twentieth-something search but my first. I was ‘too valuable’ for grunt work. I had invited myself on the sneak and had stayed out of sight till it was too late for Elmo to send me back… and too late for me to admit that I had made a mistake.

  The view of the Rip, though, was amazing.

  Nervously, the squad helped One-Eye study the landscape. He became fixated on the Rip to our right. We stayed quiet. Nature did not. The crow posse across the way kept getting louder. The birds had a lot to debate. Closer by, buzzing insects scouted our potential as fodder.

  One-Eye announced, “I’m going to mess with the old girl’s wig and makeup.”

  “Meaning? Try some plain language.”

  “All right. What a grouch.” He frustrated Elmo by taking time to loose a curse that crisped every bloodsucker within fifty yards. Though selfishly motivated, that did move him a few slots down the communal shit list. “All them five hundred year oaks and ashes and chestnuts, hardly any of them are real.”

  Elmo cut to it. “Means somebody has something to hide. Saddle up, troops. We’re gonna take a peek.”

  WE WORKED MORE sideways than down. Come mid-afternoon we busted through some thorns and found a fine place to rest, a flat, wide, descending ledge that ran in the direction we were headed.

  Super genius Rusty announced, “It’s almost like a road.”

  Even the parliament of crows seemed to go quiet.

  One-Eye butchered the silence. “You don’t see what you don’t expect.”

  It was obvious once someone said it. This was a road cut into the wall of the Rip. It had been there for ages. It showed signs of use, though not recently.

  Elmo split the band. Rusty, Robin, and two others he sent upslope, to find a way back to camp. The rest of us went the other direction.

  I got everybody scowling by asking, “Who could be using this? Where could it go?”

  Elmo suggested, “How about you shut the fuck up?” He indicated the caucusing crows. “One of them just asked a dumbass question, too.”

  ‘Dumbass’ was the Croaker referent of the day.

  I am nothing if not unable to take a hint. “One-Eye, you saying all this nature is fake? The bug bites sure feel real.”

  “Seventy per cent. Just to hide the road.”

  Elmo signaled a halt.

  One tight turn under leaves turning golden had us facing an unexpected phantom bridge. It spanned the Rip where the massive collapses had filled the gap two thirds of the way.

  “Nobody do anything till I say it’s all right,” One-Eye ordered. “Including you, Croaker.” He babbled about lethal residual magic, the half-lives of curses, and the magnitude of the sorcery needed to drop the walls of the gorge.

  The more I stared the more real that bridge became.

  The top hundred feet was a complex of mutually supporting wooden beams perched on two massive stone piers. The taller pier rose two hundred feet from the scree. The worked blocks making it up fit so finely that mortar had not been necessary.

  Serious sorcery helped, surely, or time would have taken considerably bigger bites.

  One-Eye said, “There are no booby trap spells.”

  Elmo said, “I don’t like it. It’s too damned convenient.”

  I grumbled, “So some villain four hundred years back built a bridge just to lure the Black Company into a trap?”

  One-Eye argued, “If it was convenient we would’ve found it a long time ago. We’d be five hundred miles east of here, now.”

  Whittle volunteered to go over first. If he found no trouble we would set a cold camp on the other side.

  WE MEANT TO give Whittle a forty yard lead, keeping him within bowshot, but at twenty yards he began to fade.

  The crows got all raucous again.

  “The illusion is old,” One-Eye said. “It’s getting patchy.”

  WE FOUND A shack twenty yards beyond the end of the bridge. Inside there was firewood cut for cooking and split for heating, with tinder and kindling. Elmo nixed a fire. Grumble grumble. Mountain nights got chilly, but no need to attract the attention of the people who stored the wood.

  It rained enthusiastically all night. The roof leaked only a little.

  Come morning Elmo sent three guys back to report. I made myself scarce and deaf so none of them would be me.

  Elmo told me later, “You are so lucky you count as an officer. I’d beat you bloody if you were a grunt.”

  We ate a nasty cold breakfast. One-Eye gave the shack a going-over. All he found was a coin so corroded its provenance could not be determined. Elmo announced, “Now we scout. Croaker, how about you wait here for whoever the lieutenant sends.” Phrasing a suggestion but sounding all officious. One-Eye, Whittle, and Zeb the archer nodded.

  Selfish bastards. They just wanted to make sure I did not get killed and leave them to self-medicate when they caught the crabs or came up with a dose of the clap.

  One-Eye grumbled, “There’s that stubborn look, Elmo. He gets that look, somebody is about to come down with the drizzling shits.”

  “Screw it, then,” Elmo said.

  I smirked. I got my way, I did, without a word of argument.

  WE WALKED A ways. The road was hidden by leaves and brush and faded spells. While you were on it, though, there was no missing it.

  Some of the crows stuck with us. They never shut up.

  “A secret bridge and a secret road,” I mused. “Used, but not much.”

  “It’s old,” One-Eye said. “Way old.”

  The world is filthy with old things. Many of them are deadly.

  The road did not have that smell.

  It was on no modern map. Were it, we would have been long gone.

  The road inclined upward for a mile, then began a gentle descent. We encountered our first obstacle after eight or nine miles. Deadwood had clogged a culvert during the night. Run-off had overtopped the road and washed away some fill.

  Elmo said, “This won’t be hard to fix. Pray there’s nothing worse.”

  The road was wide enough to carry everything we had.

  The crows shrieked, scattered. I jumped like somebody had slammed me with a hot iron spike. I squawked, “Spread out! Get down! Get under something and don’t move. Don’t even breathe.”

  I took my own advice.

  I had just stopped twitching when I heard the scream that had set me off repeated.

  It was not audible. It was inside my head, a paean of agony, rage and hatred. It approached unsteadily but should pass to the south.

  “Taken!” I breathed. One of the Lady’s enslaved sorcerers. Whisper has been after us forever, carrying a bushel of grudges.
This airborne sack of pain, grief, and hate, though, was not one I recognized.

  Taken are hard to kill. Whisper was harder than most. Yet death is the only escape for the Taken.

  Each was once a massively wicked sorcerer who fell prey to the Lady. They never forgot who and what they were but could do little to resist. They were the most damned of the damned.

  This latest reeked of aggravated despair and self-loathing.

  The scream faded. One-Eye called, “Allee-allee-in-free!”

  Elmo observed, “Must be a new one.”

  One-Eye bobbed his head. That stupid black hat flopped off. I said, “She wasn’t hunting.”

  “She?”

  “Felt that way. It don’t matter. Taken is Taken. Elmo, we’ve hiked far enough.” I was not used to all this walking. And the farther we went the farther I would have to walk back, uphill all the way.

  “We’ll stay here. We’ll work on the road while we wait.”

  Whittle reserved his opinion, as did Zeb. One-Eye did not. Elmo paid no attention. One-Eye is always whining about something.

  A FEW RIDERS caught up next morning. They said the Company was on the move. The enemy had not yet noticed.

  Elmo told the riders to take over fixing the road. He and his crack team would go find the next obstacle.

  The dick.

  Our corvine escort never rematerialized. We heard nary a caw.

  THE MOON WAS near full in a cloudless sky. The screaming Taken passed again, unseen but strongly felt. I could not get back to sleep. I imagined ghosts slinking through the moonlight. I heard things not there sneaking toward me. I had caught more from that Taken than just a scream.

  We found another little bridge next morning. It spanned a steep run where the rushing water was barely a yard wide. One rough-hewn replacement plank had not yet begun to gray.

  We smelled smoke soon afterward. Lots of smoke, wood and something with a sulfurous note.

  I guessed, “There’s a village ahead.”

  Whittle volunteered to scout. Elmo sent One-Eye instead. One-Eye could make himself invisible. He could use birds and animals to spy, given time to prepare them. No breeze stirred a leaf while he was gone, which explained why the smoke hung around.

  One-Eye reported. “There are a hundred homesteads scattered around a valley. Motte and timber bailey, in the middle, town around it. Wooden blockhouse where the road leaves the woods. It isn’t manned. People are in the fields but they’re not working. They’re watching the sky.”

  A FARMING COMMUNITY hidden in the mountains? Sketchy. Whittle guessed, “Dey’s maybe bein’ religious crazies.”

  The cleared ground was a mile wide and several long. The road dropped in near the north end. It wandered the open ground beside a modest river. The river had been dammed in three places, creating one large and two small pools. The large one served watermills on either bank, a flour mill and another, its purpose less obvious. As reported, a blockhouse guarded our approach.

  Elmo pointed. “There. In the woods. Tailings piles.”

  He might know. He supposedly ran away from some mines when he was thirteen. But we all lie about who we used to be.

  One-Eye was right about the people. They were bothered.

  Elmo suggested, “Let’s don’t let them know we’re here.”

  We kept a rotating one-man watch.

  THE MOON WAS full. I had the watch. Whittle would relieve me. Shifting moon shadows had me spooked. I squeaked like a little girl when Whittle got there.

  “Gods damn! Do you have to sneak?”

  “Yes.” Of course he did. The locals had sent four youths to the blockhouse come sunset.

  I had eavesdropped and had learned two things. The boys were not alert and I could not understand a word they said.

  I whispered, “Other than those kids coming out nothing’s… Shit!” The Taken was coming. I sprawled on my belly, bit my lip, wrestled my dread. All that pain and hatred passed directly overhead, fifty feet up, illuminated by the moon.

  “Weird,” I breathed once it was gone. “I didn’t see a carpet, just a lot of flapping cloth.” Maybe scarlet cloth. Hard to tell colors by moonlight.

  “No carpet,” Whittle agreed. Taken use flying carpets.

  Petals of cloth whipping in a violent updraft, like leaping black flames, crowned the bailey in the moonlight.

  The boys in the blockhouse wailed.

  I whispered, “Think they know something they don’t like?”

  Screaming came from the valley.

  “Gots me a ’spicion.”

  The night puked One-Eye, shaking. He said nothing. Not much needed saying. Something ugly was going on yonder.

  The bailey produced what sounded like a god’s liquid fart, then violet and darker lightning. We missed some of the show because it was in indigos too dark to see.

  “Something awful is happening,” I blurted.

  Whittle chuckled. “Mought be blessed to spell him quiet.”

  One-Eye tapped my lips. “Shut the fuck up.”

  I bobbed my head. I was now inspired. My precious ass’s fine health could benefit from an extended silence.

  Purple lightning pranced among the rooftops of the town skirting the motte. Something did something weird to something. There was a flash and a roar that left us too deaf to hear one another whine, “What the hell?”

  Elmo arrived. Whittle used sign to explain the nothing we knew. Elmo grunted. He waited. We waited. Hearing returned. The boys in the blockhouse caterwauled. The night reeked of Taken rage and despair.

  “OVERTURNED ANTHILL OVER there,” Zeb explained. There was just enough light to show it.

  The kids from the blockhouse headed home at an uninspired pace.

  There was no sign of the Taken.

  Elmo looked rough. He had not gotten much sleep. “Damn! There’s a thousand people out there. Maybe even two thousand. And half of them got split tails. That’s gonna mean trouble.”

  Few of our not-so-nice brothers had seen a woman lately. Though Elmo did not favor men he did own an abiding conviction of the innate wickedness of women. He knew all the ills of the world could be traced to the ear-whisperings of evil-minded females.

  I sometimes remind him that his mother was probably a woman. He says that proves his point.

  “WHAT’S THAT?” ZEB asked. “What the hell is that?”

  ‘That’ was the Taken blossoming atop the bailey.

  I was right about the scarlet, only it was a deeper red still, like cardinal. Once the bloody petals settled I could not distinguish her from the other figures on the stronghold’s catwalk lookout.

  The internal screams had been nominal before the bloom. Now they promised headaches.

  A long column of mules began to emerge from the town around the artificial hill. They headed our way.

  Elmo decided, “Time to go, troops!”

  It was. Oh, it was.

  The Taken blossomed again, took to the air. How did the mules endure her?

  So. We had a Taken headed west on a road where the Company was strung out for miles, supposedly making a miracle escape.

  “We need to warn them,” Elmo announced, like that was something only he would realize. “Move faster!” He set a ferocious pace. It was soon evident that the Company doctor could not keep up.

  Elmo and I went back a long way. He did not let sentiment hamstring him. “You’re still moving faster than she is. Keep plugging.” Smug ass saw a teachable moment. Croaker would learn about pushing in where he was neither wanted nor needed.

  I dawdled, alone, revisiting my arsenal of obscenities, till I felt the Taken gaining.

  SNAPPER’S PATROL PICKED me up. Seven riders with eight horses. Timely. The strain of trying to keep the Taken out had exhausted me.

  Her sad history kept leaking over. I had my time as a prisoner of the Lady to thank. That lovely horror had burrowed never healed channels into my mind. To the grand good fortune of the world she never found anything useful there.r />
  I observed, “Elmo isn’t a complete dickhead.”

  The nearest horseman snorted. Elmo was a sergeant. That made him a dick by definition.

  Soon we ran into other Company people. They were not withdrawing. They were preparing hiding places.

  The hell? What about the wagons and artillery and animals? Even if you hid up every other trace you would still have the reek of animals and unwashed men hanging in air that would not stir.

  I asked. My companions shrugged. Nobody cared but me.

  THE SHACK HAD become a clinic. My medicine wagon was cunningly hidden in the woods behind. I had patients waiting, and the lieutenant. He did not care that I was tired and hungry.

  “I’m considering lopping off one of your feet so you can’t pull this shit. You pick.”

  “There wasn’t anybody who couldn’t get along without me…” Dumbass Croaker, arguing with the boss.

  “There are now. See me when you’re caught up.”

  Little actually required my attention. Ticks were the big issue. That was an educational matter, really. The same for blisters, common because nobody had decent footwear anymore.

  I wrapped up, washed up, went to see the lieutenant for my reaming.

  He and his staff were watching limping men appear over the Rip, on the bridge. This Company flight was no precision manoeuvre.

  He will let slide lesser things situationally. His recollection of them is eidetic, however. They ripen. They come back. He looked at me like he was reviewing every indiscretion of mine across the last two decades. “Are the Annals up to date?”

  I am Company historian as well as lead physician.

  “Up to the day before I went on patrol.”

  “There’s a shitstorm coming. We’ll talk job obligation afterward.”

  “I reckon. We are in a narrow passage. Whisper behind us and this new Taken on the road ahead.”

  “Not a Taken, Croaker. But definitely new to us.”