The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1) (11 page)

“Nope. Not that great,” Merrick said. “Be glad to switch with
you if you’re interested. We aren’t even allowed to shoot unless someone
crosses the road. Waste of ammo, Captain Robling says. He repeats it like it’s
his personal mantra. I don’t care, though. Anytime I get a clear shot on a
mutie, I’m taking it. Coffing
hate
muties.”

“You hate everything, Merrick,” said Trim. “It’s
well-established that you’re the biggest curmudgeon in the Scarred.”

“I speak with you,” said Kugh, holding up two fingers.

“You dways would hate everyone too if you had to report to a
crooked-nosed old windbag like Robling. You still have Captain Curran, the best
C.O. there is.”

“I speak,” said Coker, gesturing. The others agreed.

“Plus, I have the hottest coffing job in the service. I’m
that much closer to the light-star up in my birdhouse than you coffing
ground-pounders. Man, I’d probably get my dick chopped off
willingly
if
it got me on the ground again. What’s been going on in Mobile Ops?”

“The usual shitstorm,” Coker said, with something that
sounded like both pride and utter satisfaction. “We got called up for the grand
entrance of the big Vantanible train earlier today.”

“A caravan finally made it here?”

“Coff it, yeah,” Kugh cut in, raising his glass. “We’re
stocked up with foreign booze for a month.”

Merrick stared into his mug with abated desire. “Remind me I
need to try some of that before I leave tonight. How’d it go?”

“Mostly fine,” said Coker. “These dways over here can
probably tell you about that.” He tilted his head toward an adjacent table.
Four strangers sat huddled around the beer-stained utility spool, hard men in
rough shape, looking tired and dry from a long journey. They were wastelanders,
not merchants. That meant they were hired caravan protection. Shepherds.

Coffing
hate
shepherds
, Merrick thought. There
was something else about them he found curious. By the looks of their
wind-whipped skin and sand-crusted leathers, they’d been riding hard—not
slogging along beside some lethargic trade caravan.

The shepherd closest to the door wore an eyepatch; his saddle
was leaning against the wall beside him, taking up the space of another person
in the small, crowded room. The man looked to be no older than Merrick, and at
twenty-three Merrick was one of the youngest people he knew. Without thinking,
Merrick let himself stare at the strangers for a long time. The lone eye
flashed in his direction and caught him looking.

“Something I can do for you?” the man with the eyepatch
wanted to know. His voice was lucid but effortless; sure of itself, even in
inquiry.

Merrick stood and extended his hand. When the shepherd saw the
mark, he scowled and worked his jaw, as if to chew something that wasn’t there.

Merrick lowered his hand, but decided to introduce himself
anyway. “I’m Merrick. These are my buddies. This is Kugh, that’s Coker, and
that’s Trim.” His comrades tipped their proverbial hats.

“You’re scurred, are you?” said the one-eyed shepherd.

Merrick had heard every insult and slur that existed for the
Scarred Comrades—some through stories, others through his own experiences. They
got it most often from out-of-towners who didn’t know what was good for them.

Merrick sighed. “That’s very clever.”

“Oh. Did I hurt your feelings?”

“The Scarred don’t have any feelings. They make us throw them
away when they give us these.” He showed the mark again.

“That’s good. So you won’t mind…” The shepherd flicked a
leather strap at Merrick from beneath the table. It struck Merrick’s mug and
sent it clattering to the floor. Brew splashed onto his denim and pooled
around his shoes. The noise of the bar died away. The floor squeaked as Kugh
and Coker pushed their chairs aside.

Merrick felt his temperature swell until it was pounding
against his temples. Birch called to him from inside his tunic, silvered-steel
retribution. His fingertips burned, knuckles and joints aching with the heat. A
multitude of impulses flashed through him, revealing their terrible
possibilities. He took a deep breath and let his anger dissipate, his senses
retreating in upon themselves. He bound them and locked them away, choosing
serenity instead of rage. When he uncurled his fists, he could feel the
impressions his fingernails had left in his palms. “I’m going to pick up my mug,”
he said. “Then, I think you should buy us a round so we can put this behind
us.”

“How about this,” said the patch-eyed shepherd. “You hit the
bricks so I don’t have to look at you anymore.”

 Merrick covered an eye with his hand. “Why don’t you just turn
left? You won’t even know I’m here.”

His friends chuckled.

The shepherd stared. His eye was a spike the color of cold
iron. When he spoke, his voice ran along the edge of a precipice. “That won’t
take care of the smell, will it?”

Trim was on his feet now, which got the other shepherds to
theirs. Kugh and Coker moved in to rub chests and make threats.

Where in the Aionach is Colvin?
Merrick thought. The
bouncer should’ve gotten involved in this by now. In a way, Merrick was glad
for his absence.
The fewer reliable witnesses, the better
.

“Hi, I’m Kaylene.” Merrick heard the woman mumbling to
herself as she careened across the room. She flung herself into the shepherd’s
lap and threw her arms around his neck. “I like your… hair,” she said.

The shepherd cringed away at first, startled. Then he must
have seen the look on Merrick’s face. “Hi there,” he said with silvery
precision. He looked into Kaylene’s eyes with an inviting smile, sinister as
flame. “Can I have a
big
hug?”

Kaylene obliged him.

The shepherd squeezed her tight. His eyes met Merrick’s, and
his smile eased into a thin red stroke. “We’re gonna have a good time, aren’t
we?” he whispered, loud enough for Merrick to hear.

“Kaylene,” Merrick said.

She twisted around to look at him and stuck out her bottom
lip.

“Kaylene, why don’t I walk you home? Come on, let’s go. Come
with me.”

“You’re mean to me,” she said, clinging to the patch-eyed
shepherd.

“He
is
mean to you, isn’t he?” The shepherd placed a
hand halfway up her thigh. The other was resting below her hip.

Kaylene was close to tears, deep within the emotional whims
of her inebriation. “Yes.”

“You’d rather stay with me, wouldn’t you?” The shepherd was
whispering into her ear now, brushing the hair away from her reddening face.

“Yes,” she said again, nodding like she was trying to hold
back tears.

Merrick’s blood began to drum in his temples again, rising,
beating against his bones and throbbing across his skin. He scanned the room
and found the empty niche where the bouncer usually stood. All those terrible
possibilities came back to him, all the ways he could cause this shepherd pain.
The anger mounting inside him felt as real as anything he could touch, and he
knew he was reaching a place there was no coming back from.

Then something happened within him that he didn’t understand.
It was like an electrical current that wrapped itself around his mind and took dominion
there, extending somewhere out beyond his control. It made his hair stand on
end and snatched away his sense of discretion.
Why am I getting so mad about
this? What do I care about Kaylene, or what happens to her? She’s not my
responsibility. I’m not her bodyguard. It’s like she wants to be taken
advantage of, the way she acts sometimes
.

Merrick knew the wisdom of turning and walking away, of
leaving the situation behind. He was on thin ice with the Commissar as it was.
These shepherds, who had come off the wastes to stir up trouble, wouldn’t think
twice about having their way with some nameless barfly. Kaylene was a grown woman
who was free to make her own decisions. But it wasn’t just Kaylene. Merrick
would’ve stuck his neck out for anyone there if they were in real danger.

Every ounce of restraint Merrick possessed wasn’t enough to
hold him back now. He began to burn, but this time the sensation of heat was
palpable and agonizing. He smelled the raw stench of melting skin, saw wisps of
smoke rising from his hands. His fingertips were glowing with the white-orange
of hot coals, as if a light were shining through them from the other side.

Before he could process what was happening, Merrick’s
fingernails began to peel from their tethers. They were curling up and
withering like little pieces of paper. The rage and the fear boiled over. He
lunged at the shepherd and dug his smoldering hands into the man’s throat.

CHAPTER 11

Kept to Stay

“A horse,” a woman’s voice shouted.

When they saw that the man leading the horse was not one of
their own, the voices fell to murmurs that echoed along the cavern walls and
reached Daxin’s ears in an indiscernible jumble. So there
were
other
people down here. A lot more, by the sounds of it.

The three bandits reached the bottom of the cave and turned
back toward Daxin, who was still hobbling down the last few steps, his mare’s
reins in one hand and his shotgun in the other. The figures huddling in the
dark moved forward to greet the three returned men. One of them, a woman,
wrapped Cutlass in a long embrace.

Daxin stopped at the bottom of the last dirt step and rested
his tender foot on a patch of stone. He could make out little more than shapes
at first, but his eyes began to adjust in the sliver of daylight that was hovering
along the outside edge of the cave. Women and old men shuffled forward and
peered out at him, the outside light only reaching far enough to give him a
faint impression of their dirt-smudged faces.

“Don’t hurt anybody,” Cutlass said. “Please just take your
water and go. It’s over this way.”

“Wait a minute,” Daxin said, halting him.
This is why
they’re starving. These men aren’t just fending for themselves. They’re trying
to feed a village.

“Please, sir…” Cutlass said, imploring him.

“How many of you live down here?” Daxin asked.

“Thirty or so, last count.”

“When’s the last time you ate?”

“Been awhile.”

Daxin wasn’t a sympathetic man, but something about these people
gave him pause. He had to find out more about them. Who they were, where they
had come from. Besides, he needed somewhere out of the daylight where he could recover
from his wounds. This place might be just what he needed. “Listen to me,” he
said. “I can help you. I know I’m a stranger to you, but there are things I can
teach you. I learned how to live in the scrubs when I was just a boy. I can
show you.”

No one spoke.

“I didn’t come here looking for a fight,” Daxin said. “I was
crossing the Bones on my way up north, and I got caught up by some dways who
were looking to make trouble. I’ve only got this thing so I can defend myself,
not because I want to do violence. I need a place to rest, and if you’ll have
me, I can pay you back by teaching you to survive out here. Once you know what
I know, it’ll keep you fed until… well, for as long as you need.”

“If that’s the truth, give us back our weapons and lay yours
on the ground,” shouted the potbellied archer with the long red-silver beard.

“Now hold on,” Daxin said. “You can have your weapons back, but
if you want my help, this gun stays mine, and so do the rest of my things.
That’s the terms.”

“There’s no need to go to such extremes, Duffy,” Cutlass told
the potbellied man.

“I want a look at his fancy gun. Maybe I’ll have myself a
piece of him, too,” said the shaved man with the crooked teeth.

“Quiet down, Eivan,” Cutlass said.

“Sure, you can have a go at me if you like,” Daxin said.
“Maybe you’ll live, and you might get a few new toys and a good meal or two out
of my supplies. Or, you can trust me, and I can help you live well for a long
time to come.”

The shaved man and the potbellied bowman whispered to one
another.

Cutlass ignored them, looking embarrassed. “Fair enough,
traveler. We’ll listen. If you can get along with us, you can stay. But if you have
a mind to make one bit of trouble, you might as well be on your way now.”

“Fine by me,” Daxin said, extending his hand. “The name’s…
Luther. Luther Sicarus.”

“Well met, Luther. I’m Biyo,” said Cutlass. “We call this
place Dryhollow Split. These two fellows who were with me are Eivan and Duffy.
I’ll introduce you around to the rest of us soon enough. Our water is bad and
we have little else to offer, but if you can really help us as you claim, we’ll
be in your debt.”

As his first two acts of good will, Daxin holstered his gun
and returned the men’s weapons. The dirty looks Eivan and Duffy were giving him
dampened any sense of relief he might have felt. But if nothing else, being
murdered in his sleep was a more comfortable way to go than heat stroke and
infection. His wounds would fester and spoil on the surface if he tried to push
himself any harder. The way he saw it, he and these people had no choice but to
trust each other now.

The throng disbanded as the tension in the cave dissipated,
and Biyo gave Daxin the grand tour. The cave was one huge ovular room whose
rock formations split it into various smaller compartments. Its overall size
was greater even than the lecture halls Daxin’s grandfather had shown him as a
young man during their visit to the derelict university in Pleck’s Mill. The
school had been defunct for many years at the time, but the roofless stone
buildings stood triumphant, nestled in the rolling countryside that sloped
toward the eastern shores of the Horned Gulf. Grandpa Weilan had told tales of
generations of Glaives before him who had attended the university, proud
ancestors who had come during the time of the Aionach’s most prosperous age to
study economics and business and engineering.

There were bits of junk strewn about the camp—backpacks,
duffel bags, blankets, pots, utensils; even a few tarps and an old sentyle tent
or two. Calling it a village, Daxin now realized, was an exaggeration. The rear
wall looked like a honeycomb, with rounded crevices woven into the rock from
floor to ceiling. Ladders of pale wood leaned against them as if they were bunk
beds.

“You have bad water,” Daxin said, when Biyo had brought him
to the dark, shallow pool at the back of the cave. He shook off the finger he’d
dipped for a taste. “Don’t suppose anyone here is a sandcipher.”

Biyo smiled. “That would make things easier, wouldn’t it?
Unfortunately, no. No sandciphers around here. The water bubbles up through
that little opening at the back there, and gathers in the pool up here. It
refills whenever we take from it, but it keeps coming up foul. Doesn’t smell
quite right, doesn’t taste quite right, and it makes us sick.”

“It refills itself?” Daxin asked.

Biyo nodded.

“That would mean you’re about level with the water table.
Have you searched the terrain around here?”

“Fairly thoroughly, but it’s slow going,” Biyo admitted. “The
pool is shallow—just a finger’s depth in the middle, where it’s deepest. So we
have to scoop the water out a little at a time. At first we were drinking it
straight, but it made us so sick that now we have to boil it first. Still
tastes pretty bad, even after. We have people working full time just to make sure
there’s enough to drink down here, so it isn’t often we have enough extra to
send up top with our explorers. Nobody ever gets too far.”

“How long has… what do you call this place again?”

“Dryhollow Split.”

“Dryhollow Split. How long have you all been here?”

“Two months, maybe a little longer. There were more of us at
first.” Biyo gulped. “I’ll spare you the details of… what we’ve had to do to
stay alive.”

“I can tell it hasn’t been easy for you. Where are you from,
anyway?”

“We’re exiles from Unterberg.”

A few seconds passed before Daxin replied. “And you haven’t
tried digging, I’m guessing?”

“Huh?”

“The opening there. Have you tried digging any deeper?”

“Oh. No, we don’t have the tools.”

“Then we’ll start there. I have a pickaxe and a couple of
shovels in my pack. Let’s get those out and put your dways to work. The deeper
we can make the pool, the easier it’ll be to pull water out. We might be able
to get it flowing in a little faster, too.”

“Fair enough.”

Daxin showed the men where to concentrate their digging, and
soon the cave walls were alive with the clatter of steel and iron. As the light
died around the edges of the cave, torches were lit and wedged into notches
along the walls. A cookfire was set near the entrance, and when the last of
Daxin’s three bushcats was skinned and added to the pot along with a few of his
herbs and flavoring salts, the faint smell of savory meat filled the cave. The
night cooled, and dinner was served amidst the sounds of laughter and music.
The people of Dryhollow Split seemed to be in better spirits already. They had
hope now, and Daxin was eager to prove their hopes well-founded, if for no
other reason than to ease his guilt.

After supper, Biyo led Daxin to a small alcove, where a
ragged blanket and a lumpy pillow awaited him. A woman stood at the opening in
a faded blue dress. She was as thin as the others, with dark, flowing hair that
fell past her shoulders.

“We made up this spot for you, when you get tired. Ellicia
here can help if you’ve got pains or your wounds need tending. She’s sort of
our nurse and doctor around here. I’ll be close by too, if you need anything
else.” Biyo left them and returned to the group, where someone was picking out
the beginnings of a song on an old guitar.

“Thank you for helping us,” Ellicia said. Her face was
hard-lined with the stresses of hunger, but she had a warm voice. “We heard you
talking with Biyo, but he didn’t ask where you’re from, or how you came across
all these lovely dents and bruises.”

“You wouldn’t believe what I had to do to catch those
bushcats,” Daxin said, allowing himself a smile.

Ellicia waited a beat for him to continue. When he didn’t, she
lowered her eyes, and something in her face saddened. “Will you let me dress
your wounds?” she asked.

“I couldn’t thank you enough. I was hoping there was someone
here who could.” Daxin could see in the gentle green pools of her eyes that
he’d hurt her somehow. But he couldn’t let himself be so forthcoming; not yet.
Not until he knew for sure.

They hardly spoke after that, except when Ellicia told him to
remove his leather coat and tunic so she could clean the spear wound in his
side. She moved on to the wound in his arm, cleansing it with boiled water,
then scrubbing it with an antiseptic derived from some scrubland plant. She dressed
each wound with a strip of cloth. When she had finished, she turned her
attention to his ankle. “This looks bad. The bone needs to be reset. It’s going
to hurt.”

Torchlight reflected in Ellicia’s eyes as she spoke, and
Daxin had to look away to keep from losing himself in them. He decided he had
to be on his way as soon as he’d taught these refugees how to survive.
If I
stay here any longer than that, I’m liable to forget my errand altogether
,
he told himself.

Across the cave, Duffy and Eivan were speaking to one
another in hushed tones. Daxin knew that by aiding Dryhollow Split, he was
helping Duffy and Eivan too. Even if the two men didn’t like him, they’d be
fools to stop him from improving their quality of life. Daxin fingered the
empty loop that had held his skinning knife, and thought of his brother.
These
people don’t have much longer to live if they don’t learn to fend for
themselves. But if Toler tracks me here, he and Vantanible’s men will have a
field day with them
.

“You spend too much time brooding over your ancient
rivalries,” Toler had said.

They had been standing in the foyer of the Glaive estate
while the blinding light of the long morning streamed in through the skylights
above. The house’s steep slate roof and its two top-floor entrances were the
only portion of the structure that peeked above ground. Every generation of
Glaives since the early years of the Heat had called the sprawling underground manor
their home.

“The Vantanibles have done nothing but oppress us and take
advantage of us,” Daxin had said. “How can you
work
for them?” It was
the hundredth time he’d said it, but he spoke as if this were the time he would
finally convince Toler it was true.

“They take advantage because it’s the only option you leave them,”
Toler had said, defiance in his voice.

Sometimes Daxin wanted to laugh that he and his brother were
so alike. But he had been too angry to be amused at Toler’s stubbornness.
Complaining
about your brother’s disposition is like resenting him for his hair color
, Daxin
had told himself.
You both got it from the same place, and a mother’s womb
doesn’t offer refunds
. “You don’t know what you’re saying,” Daxin had said.

“I know all the same stories as you, Dax. I could recite them
from memory. You and Grandpa Weilan have been poisoning me against the
Vantanibles ever since I was old enough to cry. You’re wrong about them.
Whatever happened back in those days, the Vantanibles today aren’t the same people
who hurt your ancestors’ feelings.”

“
My
ancestors? Did you really just say that? How can
you turn against your own flesh and blood?”

“I’m not turning against you. I’m trying to make you see that
your idea of them is unfair. The bad blood you’re holding onto is a stain. It’s
like this disease you’re carrying around that’s eating away at you. And it’s
all because you’re too nearsighted to forgive anyone.”

“I can forgive, Toler. But some things are too terrible to
forgive.”

Toler shook his head and sighed. “If you say so, Dax. But the
things you’re talking about happened before I was born. Before
you
were
born. The world is different now, and for Infernal’s sake I hope you learn to
live in it. You’re wrong about the Vantanibles. I’ll show you you’re wrong.”
Toler had swung the door wide and grabbed his saddle before he stormed out into the
daylight.

“Where are you going?” If Daxin could have asked the question
and accused his brother of betrayal at the same time, it would have sounded
exactly as it had then.

“Unterberg,” Toler had replied. “I have to see her.”

Daxin hollered as the pain shot up his leg like a shock.
Gritting his teeth, he gripped the tattered gray blanket beneath him as Ellicia
tried to roll his ankle back into place, her palm against the ball of his foot.
The movements were small, but each one pierced him like a thousand needles.
Cold as the nighttime cave was, he was soaked in sweat.