Far Called Trilogy 01 - In Dark Service (31 page)

‘Maybe being tortured gives you a new perspective on life. Losing a good man like Wiggins.’

‘No, it is more than that. A priest must witness the passing and share the sorrows of many of his people. It is as if you are forgetting who you are.’

No. Sadly, I think I’m just remembering.
‘My wife was my anchor, Khow. My son too.’

‘Perhaps that is why you want him back so greatly… why you need him.’

‘No, that’s love – that and the fact it’s the right thing to do.’

‘He will be your anchor again, manling. But you should remember your love more. Otherwise you will not be the one that reaches him. Not your boy’s father. It will be someone else entirely.’

Jacob grunted. ‘Did you ever consider the irony, that God created men so all-fired dangerous as yours, only to make you such pacifists?’

‘Why else would God cover us with spines and swell our barbs with neurotoxins, if not to teach us to live in peace with each other?’

‘Maybe it’s your females who are the fierce ones. Is there a Mrs Khow back home, waiting to brain you with a saucepan if you don’t return with Kerge?’

‘More than my son’s mother mourns his loss,’ said Khow. ‘Kerge is significant to our people – mathematically significant. He carries a golden mean.’

‘You are talking of prophecy?’

‘The weight of his presence is greater than anyone elses in our nation. It has always been so, from the moment of his birth. Kerge is the pivot around which we will swivel.’

‘Well, we’re following in his wake, right enough.’
And glad I am for it.

‘Your fate was bound to Kerge when you assisted him in Northhaven,’ said Khow. ‘And now I am bound to you as my son’s journey is bound to your child’s. Always has it been so around Kerge, from his very youngest years. He is a strange attractor.’

‘I don’t know about signs and portents, but I’ve had a bellyful of random chance, and of what people turn into when they follows their lusts.’

‘Those weapons are not yours,’ said the gask, indicating Jacob’s brace of pistols. ‘You should lay them aside.’

‘They’re my spines,’ said Jacob. ‘Maybe they’re how God is going to test me, too.’
And maybe I’m going to need to get real prickly again, real fast.

‘I can see the Weyland border flags,’ said Sheplar, calling from the front of the engine car. ‘But there are other eyes out there…’

Jacob moved to the window. His heart quickened inside his chest when he saw the mesa’s flat top lined with hundreds of mega-wolves, each the size of a warhorse and each bearing the tall silhouette of a rider. A vast echoing blast sounded as many of the figures raised curled horns to their mouths.
The signal to attack? How quickly can those monsters run? How fast can
we
travel if we drop our rear carriage?
Jacob bolted to the cab’s rear, grabbing a rifle leaned against the wall. ‘I don’t see any tree trunks cut down forward of us, and the rails look intact.’

Khow pushed aside Jacob’s rifle. ‘They do not mean to attack, look.’

All along the ridge top, dog-riders raised spears with their right hand, then dipped them down in unison, their mounts joining the coyote wailing coming from the riders’ throats. The twisted riders struck their weapons fast against large round shields; the rhythm rising and falling eerily; plaintive, mournful, an ear-splitting beat of spears against shields.

‘Are they saluting us?’ asked Sheplar.

Jacob clung suspiciously to his rifle. ‘They don’t even know who we are.’

‘Their song suggests otherwise,’ said Khow. ‘Can you not feel its power?’

He could. Jacob could see the truth in the gask’s words.
This inhuman hymn is for us; as little sense as that makes in the world.

‘Leave manling Wiggins’ body here,’ said Khow. ‘The dog-riders will bury him on the Weyland side of the border.’

‘They burn our people,’ said Jacob. ‘Mutilate our bodies.’

‘In the normal course of things, perhaps,’ said Khow. ‘But this is the way it is to be.’

Khow slowed the train to a halt, and Sheplar and Jacob pushed the antigravity stone out of the rear carriage, leaving it hovering to the side of the track, stone and corpse both as cold as ice. Khow came to join them as the dog-riders passed down a switchback path along the ridge, a slow funeral pace as mega-wolves picked their way down from the heights.

‘We can stay and see him buried,’ said Khow. ‘We will be safe among them.’

‘I’ve buried enough good men in my life,’ said Jacob. ‘And I can surely hear Wiggins up there in paradise, the old man laughing his arse off at all of this foolishness.’ Jacob laid his hand on the antigravity stone’s freezing surface. ‘See you around, Stumpy.’ He removed the constable’s silver badge from his pocket and pinned it across his belt’s brown leather. ‘Let’s go.’

By the time the train started rattling towards Talekhard again, the antigravity stone with Wiggins’ remains had been roped to two riders, pulling him sedately towards the border while the beasts formed up into a double line behind, the constable’s very own cavalry cortege. As the mounts came forward, they began a hyena-like chattering between each other. At a distance, you could almost mistake it for laughter.

When the ground rose up to strike Anna’s transporter, it was as though the whole weight of the station had been picked up by a gargantuan hand and thrown full-pelt at Carter. There was a quickly stilled crack of splintering rotors; a screeching explosion of breaking metal, and then Carter was thrown sideways as the whole craft rolled over and over. A fleeting collision with Kerge’s body, before the rockface slammed into Carter, spitting him out to spin away from the velocity of the crash while a burning pain stabbed at his side. As Carter came to a stop he nearly passed out, but the burning hot rain scouring his face was enough to hold him back from unconsciousness. He tried to get to his feet, and was nearly failed by his body. Carter was gripped by a sudden desire to go to sleep, the heavy weight of tiredness ambushing him. Moaning in pain, he forced himself to his feet, rising up as though these were his first tentative steps. Their transporter had split into three sections. Anna Kurtain was in the open cockpit, struggling at an angle to release her belt and fall sideways. The young gask pulled himself away from the rock a couple of yards in front of Carter, moving to Owen who lay still. But of Duncan Landor there was no sign. It was as if the surface had swallowed the heir to Hawkland Park. Duncan couldn’t have been thrown into the sky, could he? The transporter had crash-landed near the centre of the station’s topside, too far from the edge to toss a man into the void. Carter stumbled towards the gask and Owen. He reached Owen a couple of seconds after Kerge, the gask turning the body over to inspect the man.

‘He is alive,’ gasped Kerge, ‘although bleeding badly from a scalp wound.’

‘Looks worse than it actually is,’ said Carter, gently pulling back the matted hair. He glanced towards the nearest air vent, a door in its side leading down into the station’s tunnelled-out heart. ‘Are you up to heaving him out of this storm?’

The two of them levered Owen up onto Kerge’s shoulder. The gask shuffled forward with the man’s weight; Kerge limped badly himself, but he did the job without complaint. A hardy, noble young man for sure; however many twists in the spiral separated his people from the Weylander’s. You couldn’t ask for better man at your side. Carter crossed to Anna, beating at her belt, the locking mechanism holding her into the pilot’s seat and jammed by the crash. She was dangling off the floor, looking fairly trim for someone who had rammed them into the station with just two dying rotors left working.

‘I can see where the clasp is bent,’ said Anna, rubbing burning ash-fall from her dark curls. ‘Grab that sensor spike and use it to lever the metal up.’ The sensor spike had spilled from the cargo onto the station’s dark basalt surface. Carter scooped it up and returned to the cockpit.

‘I get to save you, after all,’ rasped Carter.

‘You’ve not done it
yet
, Northhaven. Belt’s bent inside. Push the spike through the lock without impaling me, then twist it up to free the release.’

He located the bent lever behind the central disc, steadying it with one hand while he pushed the tip of the sensor spike in. It was just narrow enough to slip through the mechanism, but would it hold when he tried to spring Anna? The pilot wrinkled her nose in disgust as a black wash flowed over Carter’s sandals.

‘You’ve not just soiled your trousers, Northhaven?’

‘Not unless I’m leaking engine fuel,’ said Carter.

‘That’s what I was afraid of. Doing it fast would be good. Before some chunk of magma hot enough to put a match to the stove lands by your toes.’

He ignored the lancing pain in his arm as he applied pressure to the spike, sweating like a pig in the fierce haze of volcano dust. With a clack, the lever bent back into shape and Carter caught the slave woman as she fell out of her seat.

‘
Now
you’ve saved me.’ She stood up, leaning against the upended cockpit. You, me, Kerge and Owen, where’s…?’

Her question was answered by a moan from the other side of the fragmented craft. Duncan Landor lay trapped underneath the middle section of the aerial platform, pushing vainly against the weight of metal. A large boulder off to the man’s side held up enough of the craft to have stopped it from crushing him to death – a lucky rock. Without it, Duncan’s body would be paste. Duncan’s legs and lower chest were pinned under the mangled metal, only his head and arms free as he struggled to lift the wreckage.

‘Sweet saints.’ Anna’s breath sucked in. ‘That’s a hell of an umbrella you’ve found yourself, man.’

‘I’ll swap it for the bunkroom below.’

‘We need to find a strong length of metal, lever the debris off,’ said Carter.

Anna shook her head. ‘Not even if you were a circus strongman, Northhaven. That transporter’s made from reinforced steel. We’d need a hydraulic shaft jack to lift it – there’ll be one of those in the mining stores.’

Carter looked at the pool of fuel spreading in the pelting rain of burning rubble. It was only a matter of time before the inevitable happened.

‘I’ll break off the corner of the boulder, make enough room to slide him across, then pull him out.’

‘That boulder is all that’s holding up a couple of tonnes of metal. If it crumbles…’

‘So go inside. Find that shaft jack and bring some extra hands back with you.’

Anna shook her head angrily, but ran for the air vent anyway, calling out. ‘I’ll bring some buckets of water too, to douse the flames leaping across your crazy head.’

Carter knelt by Duncan and began striking the boulder near the ground, the sharp metal sensor spike clattering against the rock.

‘Why?’ moaned Duncan. ‘Back at Rake’s Field you would have run me through.’

‘You were the one who called me out, remember? Besides, this might be the end of you, yet. You could end up flatter than a daisy in a flower press, wouldn’t that be a cheery sight?’

‘Maybe that’ll make you happy. Take off, you fool. You’re just tickling the rock. And those sparks are likely to cook us both in this lake of fuel.’

‘Damned if I will.’

Duncan’s tone became more urgent. ‘Why?’

‘Because it’s going to annoy you to owe me something,’ said Carter. ‘And because any one of us that dies in this hell is a victory for the Vandians. I’ll be damned if I’ll give their empire anything they don’t take at the point of a gun.’

Cracks began to finger out from the section of stone Carter was attacking. There was an angry creaking from the platform, as if the wreckage was moaning.

‘Trying to get inside your mind is worse than understanding a damn woman’s.’

Raising the spike with both hands, Carter brought it crashing down against the boulder. ‘I’m real simple to understand. Get out of my way or get flattened. If I’ve a motto, that’s it. One day soon these Vandians are going to find out they didn’t take a slave. They just bought a whole mess of trouble and shipped it home.’

‘They’re probably regretting it already. You’re going to get us all killed, you son-of-a-bitch.’

‘The Vandians first, Duncan. Them first.’

Duncan yelled as the boulder began crumbling while the weight pressing in on him shifted; but the wreckage held in place as the boulder’s side fell away. Carter grabbed the largest loose piece and pitched it behind him, reaching in for any other chunks of chipped-off rubble he could dislodge and remove. He worked as fast as he could, blinking away hot, dusty sweat from his eyes. Carter tossed every lump of rock he could find, ignoring the warm puddle of incendiary liquid pooling across his knees.

‘Damn!’ yelled Duncan as the sound they had dreaded hearing began crackling on the other side of the debris. ‘Don’t let me burn, God, please…’

Carter’s heart sank. Scarce seconds left. He grabbed Duncan’s arm and started to pull him free, the man crying out in agony. ‘What, and have Benner Landor pissed at me for letting the heir to Hawkland Park crisp up on some mined-out rock?’

Both of them screamed as Carter dragged Duncan clear of the wreckage, inch by inch: Duncan’s teeth clenched in pain while Carter yelled in rage at the fiery rubble raining down on them, at the broken transporter, at the Vandians and every slave in the sky mines who had goddamn ears to hear. Flames leapt up the edges of the broken craft as Carter dragged Duncan backwards and out of the tangled mess. A noisy fart cracked from Duncan as Carter heaved the young landowner wobbling up to his feet, bearing the man’s weight against his shoulder. ‘Hell, Mister Hawkland Park, I thought that was the volcano!’

‘This is going to go up like blasting powder,’ growled Duncan, the two of them limping towards the air vent.

‘You’re not wrong. Still, better out than in.’

They nearly collided with Anna, a gang of men hauling mining gear up the steps as they popped the air vent’s door. The second it unlocked, what was left of the fuel tanks met the flames behind Carter, spinning steel wreckage peppering the landscape as a flower of fire reduced the crashed transporter to fragments.