“There!” Lud called out.
Low on the horizon, a single lamp blazed: the running light of a skiff, a low-slung scout bike scudding the air between the mountains.
“A scout?” Sabine asked.
“They’ve seen us!” Kyra said. “We’re lucky they didn’t find us while were all unconscious in the shuttle. Come on!”
She and Crispin led the way, the others following, the injured man and his companions bringing up the rear. Long ago, whoever had blasted the face of the mountain had carved ramping terraces onto its broad face such that trucks and other mining equipment might make the climb or the long descent to the valley below. They switchbacked down the mountainside, descending level by level into the thickening trees. Despite the need for haste, their progress was slow, hampered as they were by the injured. Twice, the beam of the scout’s headlamp cut across their path. So close. They must have found the shuttle, surely, but they hadn’t spotted them yet. They must not have had thermal imaging, Crispin guessed, and he murmured a prayer of thanks to Mother Earth.
None of them spoke, save the occasional grunt of pain from Ored and the hissing calls for silence that came from his companions. The woods around them grew thicker, old growth ancient as the settlement of Delos. That was good. Beneath the trees they might escape detection. But escape and go where? They didn’t know where they were, and up here in the Redtines the nearest settlement could be anywhere. The mining camps moved as sites were spent, and in the mountains what villages there were were few and far between.
“We have to find one of the mining camps,” Kyra said softly when they stopped to shelter beneath the boughs of dark trees. “They’ll have a hard line to the Mining Guild centers in Meidua. They can reach your father.” Her eyes moved from Crispin to Sabine as she spoke. “If we keep going, we have to hit one of the mining roads eventually. They’re all over these hills.”
The sound of the scout skiff came closer, shaking the limbs and the very air about them. Reflexively, Crispin crouched, as if doing such a thing would hide them from their hunters. He bared his teeth. He didn’t like this hiding, cowering beneath the trees like a fox in the hunt. By rights, they should have torn that skiff out of the sky. He watched it go, continuing its low survey of the woods at the base of the plateau. It vanished around the curve of the mountain at their backs, and all was quiet at last.
When it was gone, Crispin said, “Where we crashed looked like it might have been an older site. This could have been a road.” He indicated the broad space beneath the trees. If there had been paving there in centuries past, it was long gone now and crumbled away.
“Forward, then.” Kyra said.
“That’s far enough!” A strange voice rang out, far too loud after all their hurried quietude.
They whirled, raising what weapons they had, turning to seek out the source of that voice. A shot rang out, not disruptor fire or a plasma arc burning in the gloom, but the harsh crack of gunfire. Crispin’s shield flickered, making him flinch.
“Mon dieu!” another voice exclaimed, then said something in a language Crispin did not understand.
Then the first voice said again, “Who are you people?”
“You shoot first?” Crispin asked, pushing past Kyra to stand between Sabine and the edge of the darkness. “Show yourselves!”
“We shoot first, he says … this is our land! Of course we shoot first!” “Your land!” Crispin snarled, still trying to find the source of the voice in the leaf-fringed gloom. “Your land?”
Sabine put a hand on his arm, urging caution. “Careful,” she breathed. “We don’t know how many of them there are.”
“We are on Marlowe land!” Kyra put in. “Do you pay service to House Marlowe?”
“To House Marlowe?” the first voice echoed, and Crispin thought he sensed a sneering quality to the words. “We pay taxes to House Marlowe, if that is your meaning! Who are you?”
“Who are you?” Sabine demanded, stepping around Crispin. She was shielded, but she was his little sister, and it felt wrong not to stand between her and whoever it was in the dark. “Are you the ones who shot us down?”
That was a mistake. She’d given away who they were plain enough if these people were their attackers, though surely their attackers would know them by their faces, their uniforms, and by the injured men in their company.
Crispin heard the strangers arguing in words he could not understand. That was strange. If they were foreigners, offworlders as they seemed with their strange accents and stranger tongue, then like as not they were mercenaries hired to do them in—for who else would come from beyond the farther suns to walk these mountains? Why were they here if not to hunt them? But they had said they paid taxes to House Marlowe. If that was so, they were not offworlders at all, but peasants. Locals.
“You are from the ship that fell?” the first voice—whom Crispin assumed was their leader—asked. His tone lightened, “We were coming to see what had happened!”
“We have injured men!” Sabine said. “Can you help?” “Help you?” the man said. “Who are you?”
Now was the time for bold decisions. The skiff might circle round once more, or more would come and search these woods, and they had to get away. If these really were locals and not offworlders at all, then they ought to be of help. And even if they did not—if they attacked instead— then a few plebeians out for a night-time hunt in Marlowe forests would be no threat to four uninjured peltasts armed and armored, led by Captain Kyra and the son of their lord. If it came to a fight, Crispin felt sure they could win, and so he said, clear and proud as if he’d pronounced the words upon the steps before the Great Keep of Devil’s Rest. “I am House Marlowe.”
Silence then. Silence and the wind through the trees.
Whispers. Whispers in a language Crispin did not understand. “House Marlowe?” the stranger said. “You expect me to believe this thing? Do you think that we are all fools?” He laughed, and several men laughed with him, the noise of it ringing from the trees all round such that Crispin knew and all his companions with him that they were well and truly surrounded. “Everyone knows the archon is old!”
“I am his son!” Crispin said, and turning back he said, “This is my sister, Sabine.” He did not introduce the captain or the soldiers. “We’ve been attacked. Shot down with no way to contact our father. If you aid us, there will be ample reward.”
“Reward?” the man said. “What good is your reward?”
Crispin blinked. He didn’t know what to say to that. What good is money? What sort of idiot question was that? Sabine was having none of it, either, and stepped forward. “Messers, if you are indeed loyal to our house, you must help us, the law—”
“The laws of men mean little to me, ma cherie,” the stranger said.
He paused, and Crispin thought the man was looking them over from his hidden perch. “Ooh, but you are palatine! This is plain enough! The Lord does not make women such as you every day.”
The Lord? Crispin thought. What lord was that? Not his father, surely.
“Have a care how you address my sister, peasant!”
“Peasant?” the fellow said, “And here I thought you were seeking help, yes? And he says peasant. Peasant, peasant, peasant.” The sound of something heavy falling to the ground came from just off the path ahead, and the crunching of leaves and the breaking of twigs heralded the tramp of feet. The man—when he emerged from the darkness—was shorter than Crispin expected. His skin was tanned and sun-leathered, his black hair and pointed beard were shot through already with silver, though Crispin guessed the fellow had not counted so much as two score of years. He wore a simple cotton shirt: rough-spun and undyed, with a deep neck and loose sleeves tied down at the wrists. Over one shoulder he carried an old-fashioned cape gun, its combination barrel broad and flat and gleaming in what scant light there was beneath Delos’ moonless sky. “You are fortunate I answer to a higher law than yours, my lord—and that it was we who found you and not the
se men who want your blood, mm?”
Given a clear target now, Crispin drew his sword and leveled the gleaming blade at the man. “Who are you?” The blue light of the liquid metal blade illuminated the surrounding trees, and at a distance Crispin could see the shapes of men and women and of horses, too. A dozen of them. How had the beasts stayed quiet this whole time?
To his credit, what terror the man might have felt on seeing so dangerous a weapon so close to his eyes was confined to the raising of his eyebrows. Without taking the gun from his shoulder he showed his hands. “Peace, lordship. Je m’appelle … eh—my name is…I am Jean-Louis Albé. These are my cousins. My family. We are only villagers. We do not know who it is hunts you.”
“Villagers?” Kyra said, ever the pragmatist. “Is your village far? These men are wounded.”
Jean-Louis looked past Crispin to the others. “Not far, no. But tell your master to lower his sword or my family will leave you here.”
A hand touched Crispin’s shoulder, and he relaxed, letting the weapon fall to his side. He knew Sabine’s hand, and the pace of her gentle breathing. “Will you help us?”
“Oui,” the villager said. He nodded as he did so, so Crispin assumed that meant yes. “But not because you order it. It is the right thing to do.” He drew back, slinging the cape gun over his shoulder. “Renaud! Give the wounded man your horse. Or is there still enough room to ride double?”
“There are nine of us!” Lud said.
“And eleven of us makes a proper score, but we do not have enough horses for us all and, uh … there is little room.” By the light of Crispin’s sword they could see the deer carcasses draped over the hindquarters of many of the horses. They had indeed been hunting. Hunting their lord father’s deer. “Have you others who need to ride? The lady, perhaps?”
Sabine brushed this off. “The lady,” she said, “can walk.”
“As you wish,” Jean-Louis said simply. “Renaud! Where is that horse! Rapidement!”
The man turned to find his cousin, but as he moved to go, Crispin caught his arm. “Why are you helping us?”
Unthinking, the plebeian touched a strange necklace he wore depicting a man nailed to a cross. His fingers lingered there as he answered, saying, “Because your men are hurt … and because if it were us that needed help, seigneur, I hope that you would give it.” As they spoke three men—two peltasts and one of the villagers—struggled to lift Ored into the saddle; no small feat with his missing leg. And in a smaller voice, almost beneath hearing, Jean-Louis added, “And because the Lord God commands His children to help those in need.”
God?
Some missing piece fell into place for Crispin, and he said, “You’re adorators?” By the fey light of his sword, Jean-Louis and the others seemed now pale as specters in the gloom, as if they were but reflections in dark water, monstrous as the Cielcin xenobites who drank the blood of worlds. The cultists lived deep in the mountains on a reservation granted them by the vicereine and by Imperial decree. They were the worshippers of an ancient god—that much Crispin knew. In the city they said the adorators wed their brothers and sisters. That they drank blood and poisoned wells and water mains. That they lured children to their deaths.
His sword was still in his hand, and he said, “Is this a trick, cultist?” “Crispin, stop!” Sabine said, “What’s gotten into you?
He was dimly aware that everyone around him had stopped to look at him. “Do you know who these pagans are?” Crispin said, not looking at his sister.
“Pagans!” Jean-Louis almost laughed, “My lord, you do not know the meaning of the word. Whatever stories you have heard, by God, I swear we mean you no harm.”
The word pagans seemed to catch up to Sabine, who brightened, “You’re from the Museum Catholic reserve!” She put a forceful hand on Crispin’s arm, “Crispin, put the sword down. They aren’t dangerous. They have an Imperial grant.”
He knew she was right. Many of the old religions and their communities enjoyed Imperial protection throughout the Empire, living exhibitions of mankind as she was before the Mericanii, before the destruction of Old Earth and rise of the Holy Terran Chantry. Crispin knew some of their names: the Theravada Buddhists, the Shinto, the Cid Arthurian cult that held sway within the Imperial Legions, the various Hindu sects, these Catholics, and even here and there an isolated pocket of the Mazdayasna practiced in the far-flung Principalities of Jadd.
“Besides, Lord Marlowe,” Jean-Louis said, “if you do not wish for our help, well … we may part ways here and now.”
Crispin looked to his sister, to Kyra standing not far off. He turned to Lud, still helmeted and stoic; to Van with his broken arm and Ored with his missing leg. He clenched his jaw. At any moment the skiff might wheel once more overhead, or an attack might fall from above. They had no backup, no way to contact Meidua. Nothing. Without datasphere access, they were lost. He could feel his teeth grinding, a noise like the creaking of old sailing ships in one of mother’s operas carrying through his jaw.
At last he cleared his throat and said, “Lead the way.”
Chapter 6
The Hidden Village
Just how long the old village had stood upon the mountainside none could say. The reserve of St. Maximus had been granted to the Museum Catholics thousands of years ago, Sabine said, but even she was not quite sure when. It might have been before even House Kephalos was given the Duchy of Delos for a fief, in those ages when House Ormund had ruled the planet. And yet the village did not feel ancient. The light of the rising sun cast silver shadows over the green-dark shapes of trees and the red face of the mountains. The peaked roofs and steeples of the buildings carved deep black channels in the misty morning, and as their little van came upon the entrance to the vale over which that ancient pile presided, a bell began to toll the fifth hour of the day.
Morning.
Crispin could not remember the last time he’d passed a whole night without sleep. Had it been that trip to Euclid with young Lord Albans? He remembered a beautiful, white-haired Durantine girl. What was her name? They hadn’t slept all night, except together. Only the mechanical necessity of walking kept him from keeling over and dozing where he fell. They must have walked for miles. More than once Crispin had thought about demanding that one of the peasants give up his horse, but Sabine had offered no complaint, and so—not to be outdone by his little sister— he held his silence.
The road they followed had never been paved, and the lamp-posts that marked its track were topped with great canvas fans that kept them charged. They creaked as the company passed below them, crossing a step-bridge over a narrow rill that bordered a great field where wheat stood ripening towards autumn.
“Crispin, look!” Sabine pointed to where great earthen terraces rose from the floor of the narrow vale and up the red cliff to where the village of St. Maximus proper sat upon a spur of the mountain at its back. Whoever it was built the town far back in the deeps of time Crispin could not guess, but those ancient builders had raised a wall of stone white as the mountain atop which Devil’s Rest stood. What had prompted them to wall their village in? This was not the Golden Age of Earth, when knights wore suits of hammered steel and fought dragons for the sake of queens. But he supposed that Devil’s Rest had its encircling walls as well.
Even from a distance, Crispin could see the shape of a white stone building rising above the low roofs of houses and shops, with the bell tower to one side. It had the look of a Chantry sanctum, though it had neither dome nor the encircling minarets he expected from such buildings. It did not look like the home of a cult of cannibals. It looked like a country resort town for wealthier peasants, charming in its small, bucolic way. Charming enough that for a moment he almost forgot the horror of the previous night.
Almost.
“Jean! Back so soon?” a woman called from the window of a low house as they approached the open gates in the town wall. “The hunting was good then?” Crispin wondered if the woman was his wife; they lo
oked of an age, though with the plebs it was anyone’s guess. They aged so quickly.
“Just fine, Jacqui!” he said, and added something in his strange language. Only then did she see Crispin and the others standing among the horses, and her tanned face went pale as the blood left it. “Is Léon still in the house?”
“Oui!”
“Have him run ahead to the rectory and tell Abbé Laurent we’re back with guests. And tell him to tell no one else.”
The woman nodded slowly, brown eyes tracking over the company. Her eyes settled at last on Crispin. “Mère de Dieu.” The adorator remembered herself a moment later and curtsied at her windowsill. She did not look up as she said, “Lord Marlowe.”
Crispin just stood there. He was too tired to respond. Too tired. The woman was still curtsying, had not raised her eyes. Sabine nudged him, and remembering himself he said, “Please stand, woman. Thank you.” He raised a hand, and she rose.
A boy came to the window then, eyes wide as he clutched his mother’s skirts. Crispin decided that Jean-Louis and the woman must not be married after all: the boy looked so unlike the man, with pale eyes and curly hair.
“Léon!” Jean-Louis said, “Run to the rectory and fetch the abbé— there’s a good lad!” Seeing the hunter standing at his window, the boy brightened at once, nodded and vanished. In his absence, the hunter leaned towards Crispin and said, “We do not want the whole village turning up to watch you. Best to keep this all our little secret, no?”
Crispin glanced to Kyra and his sister, then nodded his agreement. “How many of you are there in the village?” Kyra asked, ever the pragmatist, pausing only a moment in helping Ored down from his horse.
“Counting the farmers around the valley?” Jean-Louis asked, “Perhaps two thousands? Maybe?” He looked to Jacqui for agreement.
“We were lucky you found us,” Sabine said. “We should radio Devil’s Rest at once, get support in and get out of here before whoever is hunting us finds us.”
The Lesser Devil Page 4
