Far Called Trilogy 01 - In Dark Service (11 page)

Carter looked at Wiggins. ‘I know where the raiders are going to be heading, Constable, and I know your daughter’s kid is down at the school with my folks. And right now, we’re what you’ve got.’

‘Damn your soul, Carter.’

‘Damn the bandits’, first.’

‘Wait in line,’ sighed the high sheriff. He beckoned the gang over, young toughs spilling over each other to reach the front of the guardhouse. ‘Raise your right hands. Higher, there, boys. You’re not asking your mother for an extra helping of stew. Do you swear to obey, uphold and maintain the statutes of King Marcus and the lawfully constituted Assembly of Weyland, to keep the charter of the Lanca, protect the Northern Prefecture of Weyland and obey lawful orders from its duly elected officers – that would be me, you little arseholes – its magistrates and courts, and execute your powers and duties honestly, faithfully and diligently without fear of or favour to any person and with malice or ill-will toward none ’cept those flying, thieving bastards up there?’

Eager assent roared back towards the high sheriff.

‘Then you are hereby deputed by the Royal District Police as special constables and extraordinary regulators, saving this young fool here—’ he pointed at Carter ‘—who is deputed as acting cadet leader, on account of this lunacy being his idea. I have just four orders for you. First one is to stay alive. Second one is to make sure any locals coming up the slope stay alive. Third is that when we torch the yellow signal fire on top of this keep, you light on back to the gate before it shuts. Final one, and I reckon this is going to be the most popular, you see a bandit, you make the son-of-a-bitch a
dead
bandit. Are they four orders you can carry out?’

Carter nodded as the men cheered.

The high sheriff indicated the guardhouse inside the keep. ‘Then fill your boots.’

Carter followed Wiggins and his constables into the room as the mob began to empty the racks of rifles and shelves of pistols, holsters, bandoleers, knives and swords. ‘I still got time to run over to the gaol,’ grumbled Wiggins. ‘In case that bunch outside isn’t wild enough for your tastes. Maybe add a few knifers and highwaymen to your crew.’

‘Just doing what needs to be done, Constable.’

‘Reckon that’s what Mary Carnehan’s going to say when she comes after me for letting you idiots loose outside the wall.’ The constable passed Carter a lever-action repeating rifle along with a satchel of bullets. Seven shells for the chamber and a brass trigger latch set into the front of its stock to eject spent cartridges and load the next shot. Carter read the legend engraved on the barrel.
Landsman Weapons Works
of Arcadia
,
Weyland
, all the way up from the capital
. Finest gunmaker in the nation, maybe the whole damn league.

‘You’re not in a duel, Carter. You drop your sabre out there, ain’t no bandit going to be bowing to impress his friends and let you pick it up for a second try. You see a raider, you put one in their stump.’ He thumped his chest hard. ‘No trick shots, no hesitating. Put one in the centre of the body; then even if you pull high, low, left or right, you’re going to hit something.’

‘Is that why the other constables call you Stumpy?’ asked Carter, loading the rifle. ‘I always thought it was because you were shy of a few inches.’

‘Man’s got to be called something. I don’t draw my gun often, but when I have to do it, the villain goes down and ain’t much for getting up again. That’s the art of it.’

Carter glanced around the guardhouse. The mob hadn’t left enough weapons inside the room to ambush a pilgrimage of nuns. The town’s rowdies had cleaned the keep clear out. Would the travellers and merchants in town for market thank the gang or curse the ruffians for taking their expensive weapons?
Guess that’ll depend on how we do down in the new town.

‘I’m not afraid of bandits,’ announced Carter. ‘Not with a chance to pay them back a slice for all of this.’

Wiggins stepped out after the boy, gazing with weary eyes at the wild mob loading up and eager to be at the raiders. ‘That’s what I’m afraid of. Only two types that fall that way… the foolish and the dead.’

Cater levered a charge into the rifle’s breech. ‘You’ve sat through enough of my father’s sermons to know there’s a third sort. The
righteous
.’

Carter glanced around at the faces in the mob standing in front of the battlement, looking at him for a lead.
This must be what being born a Landor is like
. Maybe after all this was over, the Carnehan name would shine for something other than a hell-fire sermon and probity among the pews in Northhaven.

‘Here’s how it is,’ said Carter. ‘The bandits have got a map of North­haven. Must have, to hit the brewery, drop all their incendiaries on the new town, and leave the old town untouched to corral the rest of us. But out there are
our
streets, right? We’ve been running them and slipping past constables and angry fathers for years, unlike those sky-born locusts. And a map doesn’t mean much when you are at eye level and the place is filled with smoke.’

‘So how do we play it?’ someone at the back called.

‘Those of you who’ve put your time in with the territorials, remember what we were taught about guerrilla warfare. We move out in small groups of four or five; split up, keep to cover, keep leaping and hopping, and cut up the bandits wherever we make contact.’

‘I heard they’re twisted,’ said one of the men. ‘People coming from the outskirts talking about how they’re green-scaled dragons walking on two legs.’

‘Well, that’s good to know in advance. I’ve watched caravans containing people of all shapes and sizes roll on through the town over the years, all friendly, and I’ve smiled back at every one. I don’t care how many twists on the spiral they’re removed from a Weylander, but when they arrive burning and stealing, me and Mister Landsman here—’ Carter pulled out the rifle ‘—we’ve got a point to take up with them about that.’

The crowd cheered and rattled the weaponry cleared out of the guardhouse.

‘Don’t see too many of their planes overhead now,’ said one of the irregulars.

‘No matter. We don’t bunch up, keep moving, they’ll have nothing to dive-bomb,’ said Carter. ‘We’ll fan out and head for Wallace Hill. Every bank, metal smith, and jeweller in the new town runs along that road. If I wanted to get rich on a raid, that’s where I’d go. Got to figure these bandits are at least that smart.’

‘Ain’t smarter than me!’

‘If that was true, fool, you’d be up on that battlement with old Wiggins and his constables,’ laughed Carter. ‘Well, let’s see if we’re for taking some pain, or giving some out.’

They jeered good-heartedly and split into groups, cousins with cousins, friends with friends. Three men that Carter knew, Joah, Eshean and Caleb, attached themselves to him. Eshean, the largest of the three, slapped a short-sword against his palm. ‘Maybe if we take some skulls, the mayor’ll let us stuff them and mount them next to the stags he’s got up in the town assembly?’

Joah kicked the man in the shins. ‘Hell, Eshean, since you’ve been working in the abattoir, all you think about is carving meat.’

Carter looked at the stragglers still struggling up the slope, panting and frightened and desperate. The people were coming in with faces and clothes blackened by soot, fires spreading and fewer and fewer left to fight the blazes.
Won’t be much left of Northhaven outside its battlements when this is over.
‘We’re doing it for them, not the mayor’s hunting trophies.’

‘Is it true, Carter, that your folks went down into the new town to bring up the school?’ asked Caleb.

Carter had been trying not to think about that. What might happen to his mother and father if the bandits came across them before… still, at least Adella was safe. This early, she would still be in bed in her parents’ house near the centre of town. Trying to ignore all the banging and shouting in the streets outside, thinking the racket was market week starting, rather than a bandit raid.
That’d be her all right.

‘Yeah, that’s what they’re doing, Caleb.’

‘That’s some beans they got,’ said Caleb. ‘No disrespect to your father, but he caught me taking a catapult to a squirrel in a tree once. You’d have thought I was trying to assassinate King Marcus, the talking he gave me. That’s some beans, though.’

‘Where do you figure they’ll be coming up with the school?’ asked Joah.

‘Where there’s smoke to throw off the bandits’ aim. Other side of the brewery, Prospect Hill.’

Joah stared at Carter through a thick, cheap pair of spectacles, his eyes made owlish holes by the distortion of the lenses. ‘That’s the other side of the banks and jewellers.’

‘I know.’

‘Then if we raise some hell, we’ll cover their escape on the way up too.’

‘Ought to be due some luck today,’ said Carter.
We must be owed it by now.

The four men kept to the narrow passages between buildings, sprint­ing through smoke and skirting the worst of the destruction. Carter’s clothes were only going to be fit for giving to the charcoal burners to wear by the time he was done here. The stink of the devastation would stay with him quite a while, he suspected, frequenting his nostrils long after the fires had died away.
The scent of market week.
It was eerily quiet as they ran, only the sound of crackling timbers and the occasional complaint from birds abandoning rooftop nests for the safety of the sky. Getting to Wallace Hill and finding the street relatively unscathed, Carter selected an antique shop midway up the road. The door had been left banging open; its owners fled for the old town. They checked inside, climbed upstairs and unlatched windows on the second storey, a storeroom, waiting by the wall to see if the bandits were going to follow Carter’s predictions. Carter stared up. He could hear the distant drone of the bandits’ carrier circling Northhaven, that big ugly vulture the size of a city.

Caleb opened the chamber on his rifle and rolled it nervously. ‘Handed me an Accuracy Armoury 54 calibre, what you got?’

‘Stag and Robinson percussion system,’ said Joah.

Eshean brushed the soot off his pistol. ‘An old Emory five shot. Good sword with it, though.’

‘Landsman repeater,’ said Carter.

‘Hell, that’s a guild boy for you,’ laughed Caleb. ‘Even gets the best rifle.’

Carter kept a watchful eye on the deserted street below. ‘Guild of
Librarians
. Stuck out in the hills, where a tramp banging on the gate is the highlight of the day.’

‘Soft, easy work,’ said Caleb. ‘Good salary and pension. There’s me hauling luggage up at the Grand Hotel, dressed like an admiral but sweating like a sailor. Eshean swinging a blade all day to carve steaks off cattle and Joah lugging a mason’s level and trowel around, mixing mortar with his dad.’

‘I like being a stone mason,’ said Joah. ‘At least I do in the summer. Feet get as cold as chunks of ice in the winter, no matter how many socks you pull on.’

‘Well,’ said Caleb, ‘there it is. Getting into a guild isn’t to be sniffed at. You’re the top of the heap, Carter.’

‘It’s a small heap.’

‘Yeah, I figured you for itchy feet,’ said Caleb. ‘But you don’t need to travel much further than the custom gate for a wild time today, pastor’s boy.’

By the window, clutching his pistol and short-sword, Eshean started shaking softly, tears rolling down his cheeks.

Carter leant forward. ‘Are you—?’

‘He’s okay,’ said Caleb, spinning the chamber on his rifle.

‘He was sweet on Amy Pickerell,’ explained Joah. ‘Her house took a bomb right through the roof. Just matchwood left.’

‘Never did tell her,’ said Eshean. ‘Never will now. I don’t even want to think on the waste of it.’

‘That’s too bad,’ said Carter.

Caleb shrugged. ‘Got a town full of “too bad” now.’

And something else moving out there. Carter raised a finger to his lips and whispered. ‘Four raiders coming up the hill. Three in front. One of them’s riding something ugly as hell.’

The something in question resembled a salamander so large it could have swallowed a pony. Four big stocky legs, its body undulating as it moved. Panniers hung off a saddle that began at the nape of the lizard’s neck and ended by its tail. Its rider and the raiders on foot were twisted lizard-snouted men, just like the refugees had claimed, muscular tails emerging from dark leather uniforms. Carter marked the one riding the beast as their officer. He sported a bicorn hat shading his face. A pole with three triangular standards fluttering from it stood strapped to his back, similar to the multi-coloured streamers tied to the wings of the bandits’ fighters. They were all carrying rifles except the officer, who sported a belt hung with a brace of pistols and a sword, just the same as if he’d been serving with the king’s cavalry.
The damn nerve of them! Raiders swaggering up the hill as though they were born in Northhaven.

‘Man,’ whispered Caleb, ‘and I thought the gasks were ugly.’

‘Your sister’s a leatherneck.’

‘No, that was the last girl you stepped out with.’

‘Saints, if that’s what the men look like, I’d hate to see the women.’

‘Hold it down,’ ordered Carter.

Caleb gently pulled the hammer back on his rifle, a soft click inside the storeroom. ‘I’ll take the rider.’

‘Wait a second.’

Outside, the bandit officer dismounted, all four raiders checking the door on the goldsmith opposite. Finding it locked, one of them booted open the door, an explosion of splinters as wood collapsed inwards.

‘Four guns here and four of them in the street,’ said Caleb, ‘and you want us to sit on our backsides?’

‘I do. Hold off until they come out loaded with all that they can carry,’ whispered Carter. ‘Hands too full of silver to be reaching for iron.’

‘That’s cold, no better than a bushwhacking.’

Carter remembered the old constable’s words. ‘We’re not going down there to challenge them to a duel! They come out loaded with silver, we give them lead.’ He raised his rifle and hugged its stock tight against his shoulder to absorb the recoil. ‘Gun them down when they come out.’