Far Called Trilogy 01 - In Dark Service (21 page)

‘Open your mouth,’ commanded a tinny voice, echoing disembodied around his cell. Carter did as he was instructed. A small pipe rose up from the pool, snaking into his mouth and stopping an inch above his tongue. ‘Slave rations will be dispensed twice a day. Water, followed by nutrients. A sewage removal cycle will be triggered after each feed.’

‘Damn you to hell!’ Carter yelled, trying not to gag with the tube in his mouth. ‘Damn—’

He fell silent as the pressure on his chest increased, the warship’s extreme acceleration blurring his vision, the cries from hundreds of stored slaves smothered as a red mist descended over his vision.

Carter’s journey had truly begun.

Jacob waited for the green-uniformed conductor to fold down the train’s stairs, dropping them towards the platform. He listened to his bones creak from weeks of confinement on the train as he stepped down. The sign on the station platform read
Brinkdalen
, over halfway to the commercial airfields of Talekhard. The expedition had left the main line that followed the coast, heading southeast now into the nation’s wide heartland. A landscape of spectacular scenery, high mountains and chilled alpine lakes; lush meadows and pine forests as deep and endless as the ocean. Towns were further apart now, the train’s refuelling stops becoming infrequent. Some days, all Jacob saw outside were royal cavalry patrols protecting the rail guild’s investment in laying down tracks within the kingdom. Six or seven soldiers on horseback, their packs jangling as they cantered alongside between army staging posts. Any nation foolish enough to allow thieves to rip up its rails would soon discover how hard it was to prosper without trains running through their territory.

‘One hour,’ the conductor reminded Jacob as he stepped off the train. ‘Then we depart Brinkdalen.’

Jacob smiled in acknowledgement.
And you can set your clock by that
. Behind the pastor, Khow received a similar warning. Jacob felt for his wallet. It contained Weyland shillings, rather than the small fortune in platinum trading coins they had withdrawn from the House of Landor’s bank. Jacob was a thousand times richer now than he’d ever been, yet he had never felt poorer in anything that mattered. He glanced behind him. Their train ran three-storeys high. More like a ramshackle mobile township. Cabins mixed with exhaust manifolds and the windows of dining rooms, wooden viewing decks shaded by tarpaulin, long oak doors sliding open to expose cargo chambers. Animals driven off, goods rolled on, crane arms swinging over to pick up stacked bales, conductors trying to bring order to stevedores, porters and passengers moving in and out. A crowd of peddlers and merchants, trays of knives and matches and fruit and piping-hot chestnuts strapped to their chests, accosting passengers or attempting to board the train without paying. The whole train quivered on jet-black antigravity stones, the rail guild’s greatest secret. Big menhir-sized stones that buoyed the train’s carriages above the land, the train clutching the rails below with just a few curved clamps.

‘All this way and we’ve hardly even begun. It still seems like magic to me, Khow.’

‘Airflow acceleration, inducement and entrainment across an airfoil-shaped ramp with minimal drag,’ said Khow, ‘combined with magnetic levitation through superconduction. Such principles are known science, manling, not supernatural forces.’

‘And that’s different from magic, how? I never did understand your people,’ said Jacob. ‘Smartest men I ever met, and all you ever do is hide in the woods. Always seemed a contradiction to me. Simple lives and complex minds.’

‘To my people, our manner of existence seems the most intelligent way of living,’ said Khow, taking a deep breath of high clear air. He indicated the forest on the other side of the train. ‘I will return before the train’s departure.’

‘Do the trees ever reply?’

The gask tapped his ears, more like a bat’s than a Weylander’s. ‘In very subtle ways, if you know what to listen for.’

Jacob was hard pressed to tell whether the gask was pranking him or not. Major Alock’s troops were easy to spot as they dismounted from the military carriage coupled into the train. You just searched for caps raised a head higher than everyone else. The royal guardsmen kept themselves to themselves mostly; regarding, Jacob suspected, the two chests of coins they were minding and the civilian members of the party as a fool’s mission into the back of beyond. But then, they were pragmatic men. The troops had swapped the bright stiff uniforms of royal guardsmen for the practical khaki of the border riders they had once been. Green cloaks with grey edging that could be pulled over a crouched body as camouflage. Each soldier sported a modern Landsman-pattern sharpshooter’s rifle slung over his shoulder, its stock weighted down with the slim brass tube of a telescopic sight. Good for more than opening holes in paper targets, Jacob reckoned.

Sheplar Lesh climbed down the folding steps, tripped and stumbled forward into the crowd of peddlers, his fingers ending up in one of the boxes of steaming hot chestnuts. Withdrawing it with a yelp, he flapped it in pain and sent a pile of folded journals flying into the air from a stationer’s tray.

Wiggins landed on the platform behind Jacob. ‘You tell me how a fellow that can find and hug the only updraft in the whole prefecture, soar on it like a hawk, becomes the clumsiest fool I ever did meet on the ground?’

‘Gills maketh the fish and eyes of night maketh the owl,’ quoted Jacob.

‘That they do,’ said Wiggins. ‘But I’ve a feeling that when it comes to the kind of scum who trade in human flesh, your good book ain’t going to mean a whole lot more than kindling.’

‘For the slavers we have Benner Landor’s money.’

‘I saw that woodland magic of the gasks back in Northhaven just the same as you: who’s alive, who’s dead, and where’s Auntie Mabel out a-walking today. But still, I don’t know… this pursuit. You’ve got to wonder if Khow knows what he’s talking about? Every piece of common sense inside me says that we should be sailing across the ocean to the slave markets of the Burn, not pushing south.’

‘Four points in the compass, old man. If one direction don’t work out. We can try the others in a few years’ time.’

‘You figure I’ve got a few years left in me?’

‘At least.’

‘How you doing, Sheplar?’ Wiggins called out as the pilot advanced on them, shaking and blowing on his wounded hand.

Sheplar pointed to the snow-tipped peaks in the distance. ‘I see mountains, but this land still feels flat to me.’

‘Nothing ever feels like home,’ said Jacob.

‘Perhaps if I was in the air…’

‘Don’t worry, we’ll be at Talekhard soon enough. We’ll be relying on you to find us a merchant carrier whose propellers won’t drop off while we’re in the air.’ Jacob indicated the soldiers disembarking across the platform. ‘Your nation would have needed to strip out every border squadron in the skyguard to lift these man-mountains. And as good as I know your people are behind a kite, even you’ve got to admit, your flying wings are short on range.’

‘The winds are only strong to carry us home,’ said Sheplar. ‘That’s carved on the temple walls. I never understood what it meant until I found myself riding a train so far from Rodal.’

Jacob cast his eyes over the town, locating the tip of the radiomen’s guild near the centre. ‘Let’s head to the radiomen’s hold. Might as well make a show of getting our “mysterious updates” on the slavers’ position.’

‘You know,’ said Wiggins, ‘your “secret” source is really scratching at Major Alock.’

‘You think the guardsmen would follow us if they knew we were chasing nothing more than wood magic? Hell, the king would probably have asked if Arcadia’s most secure head hospital had four spare cots with a sea view.’

‘Hell, Pastor, we’re crazy enough to be far-called. The king’s mad enough to back us, and the major’s mad enough to follow us…’

‘I’m not mad yet,’ said Jacob. ‘So far, I’m just mildly irked.’

‘You think I’ll be alive when you lose your temper?’

‘I surely do hope so, Constable.’

Sergeant Nix peeled off from the milling troops and walked towards them. The only one in the company who had been anything other than taciturn towards the civilian members of the expedition. The sergeant looked a long lost twin for Wiggins – including his height, but what the man lacked in stature, he made up for in orneryness. Two people wide and, despite his age, fit enough to drag a plough behind him. A midget among giants, he must have turned mean just to survive among the royal guardsmen. The sergeant adjusted the angle of his bush hat against the sun, a gap-toothed grin directed towards Jacob. ‘You know, I’m sure we’ve met before, Pastor. Just can’t place the where and when of it.’

Jacob shrugged. ‘Unlike Constable Wiggins, I’ve never ridden with the cavalry on the eastern frontier.’

Wiggins just laughed. ‘And you sure ain’t spent any time sitting on Northhaven’s pews, or any other church, unless it be the house of the holy hangover.’

‘You got that much right, Stumpy.’

‘Well, Sergeant.’

‘Well, Constable.’

‘That over there is the Railway Hotel and those windows on the ground floor belong to the Railway Tavern.’

‘And that sounds like a plan.’

‘An hour only,’ said Jacob. ‘Otherwise you had better hope that the local mounted police are hiring.’

‘An hour?’ said Wiggins. ‘Hell, I thought I had a few years left just now.’

Paying for a private suite on the train had proved a good investment of Benner’s money… spacious enough to accommodate all four travellers, and not part of the military carriage. Jacob sat on the sofa’s upholstered leather in the first of three connected cabins. In front of him stood a small fold-out table. The cabin had been converted to its daytime configuration, beds tucked away behind the oak panelling. Situated on the train’s third storey, their cabin’s window was high enough to peer over the endless forests passing by. Sheplar and Khow played cards, a gask game with rules that seemed too complicated for common pattern minds to comprehend. But the Rodalian pilot would nod and smile, repeating each new explanation of play and expansion of the rule-set as if he had known them all along and was only having to be reminded.

A knock at their door sounded and Jacob slid it open. A cabin steward stood waiting in his blue-and-gold uniform behind a cart with four covered meals. Their tickets to Talekhard included food from the dining car, to be taken in the restaurant carriage or served in their cabin. Jacob was glad for it, now. Railway lines stretched across millions of miles. Too long to provision for even a small part of the journey with a single delivery; so the trains took on supplies as they rolled, favouring local dishes. It was said the rail guild’s chefs ran the best kitchens in the world, and what they’d served to date hadn’t made a lie of that boast. It was the same young man who’d served them all week. Every time Jacob saw the apprentice steward, he had to stop himself from wincing.
Could’ve been Carter here working the guild routes in safety, if Mary and I hadn’t tried to hold on to him so damn tight.

‘Good afternoon, Father,’ chirped the boy, oblivious to Jacob’s grief. He pushed the cart inside and went over to their four large cardboard tickets, hooked to the wall, punching them with an extra hole to indicate another meal delivered. He glanced down at the folding table in front of the window where Wiggins had his pistol in pieces, the constable meticulously cleaning each piece.

‘You preparing for Dog-rider Pass, sir?’

‘What’s that, son? You fixing to run a whippet race down the corridors to liven up our journey?’

‘No race, sir, though things might get livelier than anyone cares for. Before we reach Talekhard, the line leaves the country to bypass the highest peaks. We cut through a corner of the Kingdom of Ivah. That’s bandit territory.’

‘And these bandits ride dogs?’ asked Jacob.

‘Mega-wolves as big as horses, Father, but that’s not why they’re called dog-riders. The bandits are like your friend here—’ He indicated Khow. ‘But even more twists on the spiral removed from us. Fur, long snouts and red eyes. Their faces look like dogs if you squint at them right. Not the friendly kind, though. They’re cannibals and they’d have all of us for a meal quick enough, if they could.’

‘Do soldiers patrol the railway line in Ivah?’ asked Khow.

‘The Queen of Ivah’s dragoons perform that service, sir. Although the land’s sparsely populated, more bandits than villagers. We should be fine. A train of our length is usually left alone…’

Wiggins pushed a brush through his gun’s rotating cylinder. ‘My daughter once owned a terrier, black as the space between the stars. A right sweet little fellow he was.’

‘If there’s one thing the dog-riders aren’t, it’s sweet,’ said the steward, lifting the lids off their meals. ‘They’re bloody savages. But they’re smart enough to know that sentry ports on a carriage means we’re running with a barracks car in the train. They don’t like guns. Their tribes don’t have the art of metal working – spears and clubs tipped with flint are all they have to attack travellers with.’

‘Not that I’m complaining, mind, given how good this tastes. But how come your food always smells of corn chowder?’ asked the constable.

‘The hot plates are part of the engine car, sir. Everything from the kitchen smells of oil.’

‘That’ll be why, then.’

Halfway through serving, their steward spilled a splash of gravy as the train began braking hard.

‘Next stop is a day away?’ said Jacob.
We don’t need delays
.

Sheplar Lesh opened the compartment’s window and leaned out, the sound of the train’s engines dwindling to a sigh as it slowed. ‘Signal flags are being raised over the lead car.’

Their steward abandoned the meal cart and poked his head out too, reading the pennons. ‘Says there’s a rail missing ahead. We’ll need to stop, then take out one of the rails behind us to replace it.’

‘Missing?’ said Jacob.

‘Stolen,’ said the steward. ‘Some traveller caravan riding around with bootleg trade metals in the back of their wagon, I’d guess.’

‘Fools if they are,’ said Wiggins. ‘If they’re caught, the guild mark will be placed on their heads. Nobody willing to trade with them or their descendants for as long as there’s earth to roll over and air to breath. Might as well sign up with a gang of outlaws now.’