(http://www.wavcott.org.uk/CtA/GS&S.jpg)
This is the unfinished story for which I built a lot of the background, it was written on a by-episode basis for the A Call To Arms e-zine. Please note that several bits of background have changed since I wrote this; the current setting has fewer overt steampunk bits, the properties of Vampirism have changed too.
PART ONE
Captain Hannel Wekker surveyed the narrow valley that was laid out before him. A few steaming piles of battered iron scrap lay around the sides, a few more blue-uniformed corpses were piled along the valley floor. Other than that, the landscape hadn’t much changed since dusk yesterday. Or last week, for that matter. Ten days now they’d been coming. All day, every day. Blue coated soldiers, heavy dull metal cannon, and machines. Some tried to walk, others tried to drive, all of them were lying in twisted wrecks along Wekker’s valley. That said, the russet-coated defenders hadn’t fared well either.
“How many have we got left? Verton?”
“Well… we lost Makks, Lopprer, and Dainer on the left gun post – got hit by a steam shell. Then in terms of infantry we’re down about fifteen – basic infantry is, not counting the diehards…”
“A number! I. Need. A. God. Damned. NUMBER!”
“Twenty.”
“What! We had sixty this morning!”
“Twenty now, sir.”
“Dear gods. Twenty?”
A thought occurred to the Captain as he looked at his poor quivering subordinate.
“So how the hell did you survive? I’ve lost forty of the best defenders of Chaltary on this field, and I’m left with you. You, of all people.”
“Well sir, I was put in charge of that new steam-gun.”
“The steam cannon? The one in the west turret?”
“Yessir.”
“Gods, who the hell told you to man that thing? It needed someone who can actually shoot straight! I’ll kill them! Morons!”
“Um, no need sir. You see, the shell-firer already did.”
Wekker just stared at the hapless private. He couldn’t afford to lose good men; the enemy didn’t give a damn about the fact that they’d lost a thousand of their men and several cannon, not to mention eight or nine great trammechs – giant armoured machines of war powered by great steam-driven engines - that had pummelled away with shell-firers and steam cannon as they advanced up the valley. The loss of the five hundred of Wekker’s unit, though, would be a great stretch on the already battered army defending the mountain passes that protected Chaltary from its great neighbour to the North.
“So how did you survive? That turret looks somewhat destroyed to me.”
“Ah, well I wasn’t in it at the time sir.”
“Where WERE you at the time, private?”
“Well I saw the gun, sir. And it was a very good gun, what with all the steam devices and everything.”
“Indeed, and?”
“Well when the trammech started coming toward the turret, I thought; ‘Wouldn’t it be an awful shame if this gun were to get blown up? That would be a very bad thing, I’m sure.’ So I rescued it, sir.”
“Meaning you…”
“Picked it up, got out of the tower and hid behind that wall over yonder sir.”
“Verton…”
“Sir?”
The captain put his head in his hands.
“I’d shoot you if I thought there was anything intelligent to shoot. Get out, you blithering idiot.”
It was always like this. You saw ninety bold, bright faces of young bearded men ready to fight and die for their country, you told them how to win the battle, they did it and they died for it. The other ten men in the regiment would be the ones who lived, though. Men like Verton, who had he led a regiment of the Duke of Flintshire’s own guards would have hidden them behind a house to avoid them getting shot. Men like young Nummen, who had once defeated an ambush by setting up a tripwire in the wrong place, or Karter, a man who couldn’t spell “retreat” and was never likely to – or “orders”, “commands” or “strategy” for that matter – but somehow managed to survive simply by being too hard-bitten, maniacal, and leathery to actually die. The Mountain Diehards, they called them. Crazy bastards, cowards, idiots even, but when every other soldier was bleeding on the hillsides they’d still bloody well be there.
Wekker wasn’t sure if they would for much longer, though.
“Verton! Get everyone back up here!”
“Yessir!”
The captain watched the fast retreating figure, and sighed. They didn’t have a hope in seven hells if the enemy attacked again. His command post, a battered old Union trammech that had been hauled up to the end of the valley where it could guard the entrance of the narrow Pass of Vultures, had been hit several times in the fighting. He felt a little glow of pride that the extra armour cladding had held. Never scrap ANYTHING on a battlefield, old Sergeant Harkel had once said to him. He hadn’t been wrong.
As he strode out of the post to the two lines of ragged men he had left to him, he noticed a lone rider appearing over a rise in the depths of the narrow gulch. Another horseman followed, and another, until fifty or so men were approaching. The men were riding fast though not in a panicked way, and as they neared he could make out that they did not all seem to be soldiers. Most of them almost certainly were, wearing the russet coats of Flintshire men just as his own troops did. However, a few other figures looked more unusual. The captain of the cavalry wore a tricorne hat, and appeared to be a captain like himself (though, as a cavalry officer, a superior one for rank and class). With him rode a young man in a long white coat; he wore a sword and pistol, but did not seem to be a soldier. Accompanying this second was a third strange figure, the first who had broken clear of the ridge. He wore black, with a top hat that seemed strangely incongruous on a battlefield. Nevertheless, the two pistols he carried looked like business.
“Men, stand to attention!”
As Wekker vainly tried to make his remaining troops form something vaguely ordered, the men rode up to him. He finally recognised the captain with a start – no captain was this, though. Nicholas Von Wennedon, field marshal of the Chaltarian northern army, looked down at the hard-bitten captain who he had entrusted with the defence of the pass. Both men were thanking any god that might be listening that he hadn’t failed.
“Wekker, good news! I’ve brought some reinforcements for the valley.”
“If there’s good news, sir, does that mean there’s bad news?”
“There’s… unexpected news, put it that way. This fellow is Nathaniel, the third son of the Earl of Lynshire. He and his man can explain better than I.”
“The only place I can invite you to is the command post, sir. The fort…”
The four men looked down at where a wooden fort had once stood. The trammechs had reduced it to smoking timbers.
“Very well, Wekker. Lead on.”
Once they were inside the fort, the man in the dark coat took out a map and unrolled it across the small table. It showed all the land from the Union’s northern border and the rebel state there right down past its southern borders with Chaltary, then south still across Jamesland and to the Green Coast.
“This map,” began Nathanial Lynarm, “shows the world as we know it. Our little country sandwiched between Jamesland and the Union, the states of the green coast, all this you know. And, as you know, the Union would like the whole of this map coloured blue.”
Wondering where this was leading, Wekker leaned in towards the map. The Union were aggressive? That was no news, surely…
“The assault tactics of the Union have halted at their current borders. The difficult terrain off the plains stops their great trammechs and cannon being as effective, and prevents their cavalry manoeuvring.”
“And?”
“And, Captain Wekker, they are trying… different methods. Vampires – almost certainly coming as spies – have been seen in Lynn and Murrod. They’re trying to drive a political wedge between their enemies in order to defeat them, knowing they can’t win on the battlefield. And make no mistake, we can’t just retreat to Jamesland. If we lose the Violl River and the Russetcoat Passes, there’s nowhere their armies can be halted. The speed they moved thirty years ago when they conquered northern Chaltary… they could be in Jamestown in three weeks, even right through Jamesland and to Rhienne in a couple of months. And there’s no way without a natural defence that the sort of armaments and numbers they have can be beaten back.”
“So… how does this affect me, beyond being a pep talk about how I should defend this pass?”
“First incorrect assumption there, Wekker, is that I’m going to leave you defending this pass.” The Field marshal finally took his commanding role in the conversation. He stood and looked Hannel Wekker – who was already beginning to stutter at him – firmly in the eye.
“But… I’m being demoted?”
“Oh, no, no, no.” Von Wennedon smiled grimly. “I’ve been asked to provide someone for a little spying work of our own. We need men inside the Union who can unravel who their spies are – and know what their tactics are and how that affects us. And, may I say, you’re the best captain for tactics I’ve got.”
“I can’t leave the pass! We need it defended, surely?”
“Hannel, you’re a good captain. But you’re needed more elsewhere. You’d have been “needed” as a marshal or batallion leader by now if it wasn’t for the fact that the bloody nobles won’t let me promote commoners above the captaincy.”
Nathaniel bridled a bit at the slight on his class, and pursed his lips – but held his tongue, the general’s commanding aura keeping him in line. Wekker himself looked balefully at the nobleman.
“I don’t have a choice, do I sir?”
“There’s always a choice.” The black-coated man looked out from under his tall hat. The Captain was surprised to see that he had a freckled face and short but curly hair, contrary to the picture of a dark stranger one might have imagined.
“Simple choice,” he said, twirling a pistol round one finger, “You come, or I make you come.” He pointed the gun at Wekker.
“Don’t threaten my men, Pearson!” a dangerous light flashed in the Field Marshal’s eyes as he watched the manservant hurriedly lower the weapon.
“Don’t worry sir. I'm sure this... fellow... is just translating into language I can understand." He gave a salute, ever so slightly mocking. Nathaniel strode out the door and Pearson beckoned to Wekker to follow. Hannel gave his commander a wry smile. "By your leave…?”
Von Wennedon nodded.
And it was the nod, they said afterwards, that started everything that was to come.
PART TWO
A young man in a white coat - on a white horse, no less - rode up to the crest of a high, pine-forested ridge. In this place, the trees had been cleared to make a trackway for men and horses, and so a rider could look down into the valley below. The river, deep and fast-flowing, normally slashed down the centre of its valley. Here, though, it twisted and meandered, battering in at steep valley cliffs, then almost doubling back to sweep round and cut off a wide arc before coming back in; in this way it cut off a moderately sized area, with steep cliffs and jagged mountains to the back and the river curving round the front. The man in the white coat - had he not seen the sight many times before - would have been impressed by the natural defences of the place - and the small and bustling city that lay there, protected from the world.
"Murrod's probably grown since you were last here, Captain. More and more we're getting little villages springing up on the outward roads."
“It’s the capital and it’s safe; I wouldn’t expect anything less.” A second man spurred a chestnut stallion up to the ridge and looked down at the bizarre mix of stone, wood, and cracking plaster that, cobbled together in its own ramshackle but resilient way, made up the capital city of Chaltary.
“Nevertheless. Have you been into the Ducal quarter much?”
“Once, when I was sworn as a Captain. Other than that they don’t let the likes of me in there, as you probably well know.”
“I know – though I don’t like it as a system. The total shutting out of ordinary people really isn’t healthy for a lot of the nobles.”
Captain Wekker raised an eyebrow. “You talk about the nobles as if you aren’t one, yet you’re – you’re the son of the Duke of Lynshire! You’re Nathaniel, Viscount Von Tamberdall, for heaven’s sake.”
“Politics is a very mixed thing in Chaltary. The nobility is as spilt as the political ramblings of the commoners; the militarists, reformists and theocratists are all backed by different nobles.”
“The what-ists? Sorry, your worship. Forgive me, I’m no politician.”
At that, a third man – in black, with a tall hat and riding a small dark horse – emerged up the forest path, coming from the way they were facing. He beckoned to them to follow him, and from the vista that had shown them the valley they plunged back into the dark pinewood trackways.
“You may not be a politician now, Wekker, but by all the russet-coats in Chaltary you’ll need to become one. Spying isn’t just about sneaking round the enemy; or at least, not just the enemy you’re used to.”
“What other enemy is there? We only have two damn borders; Jamesland can’t attack us for fear the Union will murder them all, and the Union can’t seem to stop attacking us. Foreign policy is really rather simple as far as our troops are concerned.”
Nathaniel laughed darkly. “There are enemies to your war within as well as without. The Polismoot and the Council of State are both utterly riven with divisions and bickering. In general, the balance is maintained; we keep the military strong enough without it taking over, the people get a poor deal but not quite poor enough to cause revolts, and the church is happy enough not to cause a civil war without us actually giving much power to it.”
“But people might upset that balance?”
“Oh, yes…”
Nathaniel trailed off mid-sentence. “Hannel, dismount.”
The soldier glanced around him as he slid of the horse’s back. Something wasn’t right. He could not see at all far into the murky depths of the woods, but the hairs on the back of his neck were creeping up; a veteran’s instinct. He would have felt slightly shamed that Von Tamberdall had noticed something was wrong first, had he not been intently focused on his surroundings.
The crack of a twig, and Nathaniel spun round, gazing into the gloom.
“Who’s there? Who are you?”
“Nathaniel! Down!”
Captain Wekker leapt across, grabbing the viscount by his lapels and hauling them both rolling down the track. The horse that Von Tamberdall had been standing next to had a knife firmly embedded in one eye, and slumped to the floor. Wekker’s horse bolted.
Their adversary – or were there adversaries? – still remained hidden, and the two men readied what weaponry they had; Nathaniel a sabre and pistol, his companion the stout bayonet of a soldier. Glancing down the track, Hannel couldn’t see Pearson, their black-clad guide. Had he already been taken or killed?
“I commend you on your… resourcefulness, Captain.” A voice like a knife, smooth but cutting, echoed out of the depths of the forest. “It is a pity there are not more men like you capable of serving my cause; no matter, we make up for it.”
“Vampire.”
The viscount nodded. He had gone pale; the fear of the Other Kindred was strong across Chaltary – particularly among those who had not fought them before. Vampires made up a good half of the statesmen, spies, commanders, engineers, and diplomats that were the real brains of the union – with its vast numbers of slaves, huge ironworks, and impossibly large manpower being the body. The Other Kindred, as they preferred to be known, were stronger, faster, and quicker thinking than any ordinary human. Their powers of healing were such that you couldn’t be sure a rifle would stop one, let alone kill it. That was why they were so hated; vampirism just wasn’t quite fair.
“You are, of course, surrounded. Nevertheless, your antics at the Pine Gulch last summer were amusing, Wekker. You showed that idiot Darroux quite well.”
That was one thing, thought Hannel, which the Vampires hadn’t got rid of; just as human strength and skill were increased, so too was the human propensity towards rivalry and backstabbing.
“And for that, I think I’ll give you a few seconds’ chance this time. As much as I’m not one to play with my food… see that tree down there? I think I should like to see you run.”
A sort of odd silence governed the dark trackway for a moment as the two men stood up. At last, too, their attackers came into view. Not big or burly men, any of them; sharp-featured and well trained, though. Four on either side of the two travellers.
Finally, the vampire stepped out. He was pale – so pale that even in the darkness his face barely looked shadowed – and he had wide eyes with hair of a sort of pallid red. Looking at him, you could see why the Other Kindred’s state was a curse, however much they affected pleasure in their skills and power. It was like watching a fire without a spark; there was no magic in him, or lust or joy. Even true malice was probably beyond him… he would kill you, true, but only for the intellectual or physical challenge.
“Well? I think I told you to run, Wekker.”
The captain gritted his teeth. He would not – his pride told him he could not – run for this monster. He was a soldier of Chaltary, and by the Gods he’d die that way. The silence grew louder and louder. The stares sharper. No-one moved.
Then, quite suddenly, everything happened. The crack of gunpowder eachoed through the woods, and the four men to Wekker’s right dropped down, clutching arms and chests that were already beginning to stain with blood. The Vampire looked around quickly, and then – realising far before his men did that whatever had killed four men that suddenly would not hesitate to do the same again – pulled his cloak around him and ran silently into the shadows once more.
His four remaining minions were hurriedly picking up their guns, but Wekker was too fast. Swinging his bayonet, he tore a red gash across the throat of the first before stepping forward to stab the second firmly in the gut. Nathaniel, startled and no hardened warrior, only looked on as the captain pulled his weapon back, ramming the butt of the gun into a man who had tried to attack him from behind. Finally, seeing the last man coming towards him, he pulled his pistol – but too late.
The troopers may not have been a match for a veteran like Wekker, but Nathaniel’s fencing and pistol-shooting classes had never prepared him for a real fight. In a second, the man had swung a heavy cavalry sabre, knocking the gold-encrusted gun onto the floor. He raised the weapon above his head, over the cowering man; Wekker was running, but he would surely not get there before his death. Then Nathaniel noticed something odd about his attacker’s chest; it had a knife-blade poking through the ribs. As he rolled aside and the man slumped forward, he saw a familiar freckled face peering down from beneath a black top hat. The man nonchalantly carried a duck-foot pistol in the other hand; the four splayed barrels, originally used for captains faced with mutiny at sea (and now illegal in ninety percent of urban areas this side of the Alpennine mountains), looking strangely quiet considering that he had just killed four men with them.
“Pearson!”
The small, dangerous man looked between his two charges.
“Let’s get to the city.”
PART THREE
“So the theocratists and the militarists have little power in the Polismoot, but their powerful spokespeople on the Council of State make them a major force. Conversely the reformists, despite having a good third of the members in the moot, rely on just one or two families for their support on the Council – the Balliols from west Flintshire, the Von Tamberdalls and the Islaynes from Lynshire, and the Wessans from Violland. About four-tenths of the nobles and about half the mootsmen are just moderates, though.”
Hannel did his best to follow Nathaniel’s brutally fast overview of his own country’s politics and factions whilst also half-walking, half-running down the twisting backstreets of Murrod.
“So do even the Dukes and Generals go to one faction or another?”
“The Generals are, like yourself and the troops, not allowed to vote. Incidentally, since my department doesn’t officially exist even if everyone knows it does, you’ll now be able to vote come an election, Captain. Ah, here we are.”
The white-coated young nobleman paused outside a rickety, battered wooden doorway. Along the street, every tall and thin house had boarded-up windows and rusting door-handles; the cobbles were rutted and broken along the back-lane that he had led them down. Nevertheless Nathaniel Von Tamberdall walked up to the old door and knocked. A spy-shutter opened quickly and then closed, before the rickety wood swung open to let the three men in, Nathaniel leading Wekker and the noble’s mysterious manservant, Pearson, following behind.
“Oster! We were attacked getting here. Vampire and some mercenaries, get Pearson to give you a report. Come on through, Wekker.”
The man who had opened the door scuttled away with Pearson, and the Captain was able to glance around the inside of the building for the first time. It was, in a word, beautiful. Elegant carvings adorned thin, fluted columns in a small entrance hall. A plaque on the wall told Wekker that he had entered “The Academy for Information and Intelligence”. The outside gave nothing away; from the dingiest backstreets of the city he had stepped into a building that had had as much beauty of design lavished on it as most palaces of great offices of state.
Nathaniel led his guest down a long marble corridor, pausing occasionally to introduce his guest to various figures he saw. The men were a total mixture; some were scarred soldiers, others efficient-looking young clerks or aged diplomats. Most were armed, all had a look of expertise and ruthless efficiency.
“All Chaltary’s spying work is done here. I’m one of the more senior administrators; not a spy myself, but I deal with collating the information and getting it to the foreign ministers and the army. Commander Karnel runs the whole place, you’ll meet him sometime maybe. That said, not all of what we do is spying by a long shout. Experimental weapons development, half our negotiations with other countries’ ministers, a lot of the administration for the army… this is the heart of our government, right where nobody would find it.”
“How big is this place?”
“It fills two entire blocks of houses, which are two blocks apart and connected by tunnels.”
“Crikey.”
“Good response. Right, here’s where you’ll be living.”
The room he showed Wekker would have been considered spartan by a noble or even a merchant, but to a man used to the cut and thrust of military marches it was more comfortable than many a bed from the past. The room was small, with a thin-mattressed but not uncomfortable bed, a small writing desk, and a wardrobe that turned out to contain three well-made and practical sets of civilian clothes – all already made to Wekker’s size.
“Wow. I mean… all these people. I’ve never talked to an engineer before or thought about doing so, except to ask for a gun that fires lightning so I can blow a few more enemies off the planet.” He gave a short, harsh laugh at the oddity of it all, then paused. “So what am I actually going to be doing here? You’ve never really told me.”
“Depends on what gets clearance from Karnel. Essentially our worries at the moment are relating to the fact that they seem to be expanding their spying service with more Vampires, and also that they’re clearly trying to work to eliminate more of their enemies to the north. We’ve never really had any contact with Nurreich or the Union’s Rebels since the land between us was totally under Union control, and the Papacy only tends to send hate messages south to us… but if we CAN help the Union’s other foes we need to try. Even if I could only send you, Pearson, and possibly an engineer or another soldier we could potentially wreak a lot of havoc where we’re not expected. On the other hand, if any of our spies get captured – particularly someone like you who knows all about our troop numbers along the russet-coat passes – then they could hit back at us very, very hard indeed. At the least they could find this place, and then we’d find it hellish to get anything done for fear of assassins.”
“So what shall I do for now?”
“I need to go and get Pearson’s report looked over and filed, we’ll get some guards out into the woods to pick up the Vampire’s assistants and see if we can recognise any of them. Feel free to wander around the place a bit; the experimental weaponry department’s on the left of the main corridor, or tactics and military planning is up the third set of stairs on your right.”
Nathaniel swept out. He was no fighter, as Hannel had found, but at what he did he was as good as anyone; loyal, efficient, and determined to do a good job. That seemed to be the ethos of this place. Captain Wekker liked it.
He decided to wander toward the tactics department, and so set off down the corridors. A loud banging noise behind him spun him round, though; a sign pointing to the Department for Research and Knowledge was shaking violently. When he had walked back down, Hannel discovered that unlike the wood-panelled doors that dominated the building, the Department only had a curtain. He gingerly began to push it aside, fearing the wrath of some aged professorial type surrounded by scribbling clerks.
“Come along in! We would have had a door, but I kept burning the damned things down. Are you new, sir?”
The room that the Captain looked into was unlike anywhere he had ever been before. Smoke and steam permeated the air and gave it an odd and unfamiliar weight; everywhere bar nowhere boilers and cogs and ratchets lay discarded in heaps. He peered through the haze to try and see the speaker.
Eventually he wandered further into the room, and saw who had addressed him; it was a young man, in a long green coat and thick leather gloves. He waved a heavily clad hand towards Hannel, who picked his way carefully across the metal heaps.
“Uhm… hello?”
The young man was not strongly or athletically built, but nevertheless made a surprisingly athletic jump as he swung himself over a large steam-pipe and strode over to the newcomer.
“I’m James – son of Earl Balliol; you’d be Hannel Wekker? Nathaniel’s been wanting to get a good soldier in the spies for a while now, didn’t think Von Wennedon would send one though. The man’s quite precious about his staff.”
He spoke with a bright tone though his voice was deep, and his face had hints of dark stubble under a mess of mouse-brown hair. The hazel eyes had rather a mad look about them, though not an unfriendly one.
“Anyhow, Captain, do come and look round. We’ve really got quite a collection of equipment here, as you can see.”
The two men stumbled along through workbenches, open books, boiling substances, and vials of mysterious powder. Finally Balliol noticed a shape in the smoky haze.
“Here! Is that you, Whatley?”
They came upon an elderly man tightening bolts on what appeared to be a large wooden barrel – large being an understatement; it had a door on one side, and could easily have fitted two men inside.
“It’s nearly finished! And it works ENTIRELY by pedal power!” The man turned the handle on the door, swung it open theatrically, and even managed not to look put out when the entire door-panel came off in his hand. “I haven’t fixed that bit yet. Not to worry. James, look, it’s totally watertight!”
“So it’s a boat?” The odd barrel didn’t seem to have much that would make it useful on land or sea; a small screw at the front, true, but you’d never get close enough to bore into a ship with it.
“Not so much a boat as, ehem, an under-boat.”
“What?”
James butted in whilst Whatley’s mind visibly floated away from the trivialities of humanity and back to his project. “It goes under the water, Captain.”
“But… it’ll float, surely? Or it’ll be too heavy and sink.”
“Not so. There’s a tank into which you can let water, or pump it out. The thing can do real damage too; you can screw into ships well below the waterline, and they’ve got a hold full of water before they know it.”
”You’ve tested it then?”
“Not yet. We’ll see. Now come along, there’s a ton more things to show you.”
“PAHAHAAAAAAAA!”
A strange noise – a laugh – cut through the thick air. Startled, Wekker pulled out a pistol and pointed it wildly into the smog, before noticing with slight embarrassment that Balliol, though unarmed, was simply wandering towards the source of the maniacal cackle.
“What the hell was that?”
“Josua Von Karlurden. Mad as a fruitcake. Good ideas about one time in a hundred, that said, and worth their weight in gold when they are good… Josua! Where you at?”
“I’ve done it! I’ve done it!”
A little man in glasses bounced over to them, and pointed at a sheet of paper.
”The energy of your sparks in boiling water! It doesn’t need aether at all! Look!”
James’ face knotted in concentration. “But you’ve added this constant, here” - he pointed to what as far as his guest (feeling more like a bewildered soldier by the minute) was concerned was a minute squiggle on about the fifth line of calculations down – “what does that mean?”
“Um… it seemed to be necessary. Not really sure.”
“But it’d have to be another receptor for the value of V, and V is a form of energy… So… dear gods, it looks right though. Might bugger the theory of Energies entirely, but it works.”
He handed the paper back, and continued with his tour of the strange complex of laboratories, whilst giving Hannel a long lecture on the theory of energies and how it HAD to be flawed, which the soldier didn’t understand at all but listened to on the grounds that it would be impolite not to.
“Now THIS is the real deal, Hannel. Your sort of invention.” James had finally returned to his own workbench, and was delving into the mass of piping thereon. What he pulled out was something that might’ve been a long, thick-barrelled, but for the large array of twisting piping that adorned one end.
“Heh, looks like some sort of steam rifle… right?”
The hazel eyes glittered slightly. “Half-right. I’d advise you to stand back whilst I demonstrate the other half.”
Steam guns were known for occasionally exploding anyhow; Wekker’s friend Captain Jaksen had lost a hand trying to shoot a Union officer once. Hannel got well out of the way.
As he watched, Balliol pressed several catches at the back. A hissing began to come out of the machine as the water inside began to get hotter and hotter, building up under pressure. Eventually, with a slightly worrying grin, the engineer tugged hard on the trigger. He was clearly no marksman, but that was not what Wekker was looking at.
The water droplets flew across the room in a long, hissing jet that would have scalded anything in their path. Between them, though, jumped flashes and sparks of iridescent light that lit up the faces of the two men. A gun that fired lightning.
“Wow.”
”I’m pretty pleased with it myself.” James’ voice was quieter, in awe of his own achievement. He looked up, to see a young and agile woman coming along and swinging herself over the top of a small Trammech, before sliding down the angled side to sit on a cannon barrel. She could only be half-seen through the fog, but she clearly had a wide mane of curly hair.
“James! Nathaniel voudrait voir toi et le capitane. Il est dans la salle de Karnel.”
“Merci, Magalie.”
The girl gave him a friendly nod, then walked away.
“That was Vertenne you were speaking, right?”
”Yep. She says that Nathaniel needs to see us… we’d better get going.”
“She from the Green Coast then?”
“No, Chaltarian as you or I. We just prefer talking Vertenne to each other, it’s a nicer language really. Smoother.”
James eventually led Hannel to a large double-door, somewhere on the top floor of the building. The white-painted door was carved with the royal emblems of Chaltary – two boars, with crossed spears between them.
”This is Commander Karnel’s meeting room. There’s obviously something important going on… let’s see.”
He knocked carefully. Both doors swung open, and at last Hannel Wekker stepped through to see the man who would decide his fate…
PART FOUR
Commander Kurt Karnel was the antithesis of his organisation. The most subtle, clever, efficient part of Chaltary’s government was led by a fat, noisy, unstable beaureaucrat. That said, he had a few skills that enabled him to do the job. The main one was, of course, that of delegation.
The round table around which Hannel Wekker, his latest emplpyee, was ushered to sit contained some of the brightest minds and toughest fighters in the nation. The Commander wasn’t among them, but – as James Balliol had explained while he and Wekker were getting to the meeting - he had “a damn fine knack for spotting them.”
“Here, you go and sit near Kaia over there.” Balliol pointed out a woman of around thirty with reddish hair, who was flanked on one side by a huge man, probably of northern descent and wearing a heavy fur coat. Hannel walked over, neither confident nor showing nerves, and took his place. He gazed around the table; James was across from him, talking to a strange hooded figure who looked far too small to be at a grown-up’s meeting, Nathaniel was on one side of Karnel, and on Karnel’s other side was a very recognisable figure. He had heard of Olander Von Darhell many times, and even seen him once. The woodsman and leader was a legend down the redcoat passes… it almost took something away that he had been in the pay of the government all along, but his reputation secured awe enough.
Finally his gaze wandered round to the giant sitting two seats from him. The fur-coated man looked uneasy – and with the sort of unease that was unlikely to go away in a hurry. He gazed at each other person there with a steady, piercing glance of the sort done as much to unnerve as to genuinely discover. That was one thing that was concerning Hannel about the man. The other thing about the man that was conerncing were the three openly carried pistols and the only-just-concealed riaxa – a long-barrelled rifle with a barrel that could also be slotted quickly onto the head of a sizeable axe – slung across his back. Hannel, on the other hand, had left his only pistol in his room.
“Olaf’s not that dangerous really. Or rather he IS, but only if you happen to be trying to attack him.”
Despite sitting next to her, Wekker only then really noticed the woman referred to as Kaia. She wore a loose skirt of faded but once-rich material, and then a hide jacket more suited to a woodsman. Her reddish hair fell loose down over her shoulders and down her back, and she had a clear-featured face.
“I certainly wouldn’t want to be trying to go for him myself…”
“Ssh, Karnel’s about to speak.”
The two watched as the overweight Commander rose to stand.
“Gentlemen.” Kaia stiffened a little. “We have come here to discuss matters, I say, of great importance. You all know that Vampires have been seen more and more spying around the city. However, I also have figures from spies across the union. The number of Vampires is not just increasing here…” he paused for effect. “It is increasing everywhere.”
Everyone in the room, of course, knew of Kahlenbach’s Legion. The creation of four thousand Vampires by an old deranged magician forced into it by the small Vampiric cabal that was even then pressing towards uniting the principalities of what would one day be the Union was folklore – if folklore that was part of a deadly reality. Since Kahlenbach’s own death, though, no new Vampires had been created. The accidental creations that had been created before him and his four thousand were all that there were… the secret, the terrible secret of their creation had been lost. More vampires? The looks that were gliding around the room spoke volumes, and volumes of fear at that.
“It seems as if someone, then, or something, is making the Union more Vampires. We need to send some men to the union to attempt to investigate this, led by Lonner. I also propose to send-”
“Have we managed to bring any Vampires in, sir?” A voice rang out across the table, though Hannel could not see from where.
“Until now we have been unable to attempt the capture of such a beast. However, one blew its cover following Nathaniel and Captain Wekker back through the forests.”
“You’ve captured it?” The speaker was a man to the right of Balliol; he was bearded and looked old, and had a heavy book on the table in front of him.
“Yes, Lonner, we’ve captured it… Bring it in!”
The pale figure was roughly shoved into the room. The vampire looked weak and thin in the brightly lit room, particularly with the dark mass of Pearson on one side and a bull-chested, reddish skinned man (who looked oddly like a picture Hannel had seen once of the mysterious nomads of the great plains) upon the other.
The man who had just spoken looked carefully at the prisoner. The vampire was tightly bound, hand and foot; the dark eyes were like tunnels into nothingness. He was pushed down into a seat opposite Karnel, and the man opened his book and spoke.
“Vampire, you have been brought here because you were trespassing on land that belongs to our nation, and for trying to kill one of our own. We may be willing to release you, if you share what you know with us. How came you to Murrod?”
“I will say nothing,” replied the pale figure, “while I am bound here like an animal.” His voice sounded softer and smoother than it had in the forests; weakness but pride sounded jointly in each syllable.
“We cannot unbind you while you remain a danger. Tell us what you know, and then we shall unbind you.”
“Just kill me, Chaltarian. It will help you not. If I told you all you wish to know it would not help you.”
“Perhaps we do not wish to kill you. Why do you not wish to tell us what you know, even with your life in the balance?”
“Because…” the vampire paused for a few seconds, glancing around at the faces enraptured by the exchange. “Because you have done to me just what my people would have done to you. The Union is the pinnacle of scientific achievement, has greater armies, mightier factories… so if you cannot beat them in courtesy, you match them in nothing. And if you match them in nothing, why should I tell you what I know? My life is small in the world.”
The man looked up from the vampire and over to the commander. “I doubt we can get him to talk, sir. Torture doesn’t work on Vampires, and assuming we won’t uncage him-”
“Why not release him?” Karnel looked over at the vampire. “He looks half emaciated, and we’ve got enough fighters in this room to take him down if he tries anything. And we need that information.”
”I wouldn’t advise it, sir.” Olander spoke for the first time, and all heads turned his way. “He’s not going to necessarily be honest anyway, and he only needs a few seconds to kill one of us; and who here can we afford to lose? Take Lonner - nobody else knows half what he does about Vampires, and most of that is in his head.”
“Objection heard, Von Darhell, and overruled. We NEED to hear what the Vampire has to say, and that must come above personal considerations.”
Hannel Wekker was feeling the loss of his pistol even more, as he watched Pearson tentatively begin to unbind the captive. Loose vampires in enclosed rooms were not usually his personal idea of a good start for a meeting. Stiffening with slight fear. He patted his leg where there would normally have been a pistol holster. Nothing there, of course.
However, before he could bring his hands up onto the table again in despair, he felt a second hand touch his, softer and smoother. The gentle grip was not just the first time a woman had held his hand in about seven years, though; between his own hand and Kaia’s (for it was Kaia’s) rested the extremely comforting barrel of an army-standard flintlock pistol. He flicked his glance sideways momentarily, and the eyes of the two spies met. She quietly drew a second pistol from a leg-holster that had been hidden by her long skirt, and then both of them turned their eyes back to the vampire-shaped elephant in the room.
“I thank you, commander, for loosening my bonds.” The vampire bowed his head to Karnel.
“Very… well.” Karnel was clearly nervous about his own decision. “Let’s get on with this, shall we?”
Lonner began to speak once more. “I have,” he addressed the Chaltarians first, “been doing much research into the origins of the vampires. I believe I have ascertained how they might – not definitely, but might – be being created. I have not written it down yet, as I want confirmation of my theory first.” He turned to the vampire, who was resting back against the old oak chair. “We believe you have been created after Kahlenbach’s Legion, vampire. All we really need to know is how.”
“So…” the vampire looked up. “What do you wish to ask me, then?”
Lonner took a deep breath. “What do you know about the work of the scholar Kalaris of Galath?”
And as he uttered the name, everything changed.
The Vampire did not do what could be called a leap; he did not bound across the room… he almost flowed up and over the table, all darkness and accuracy and deadliness. No-one could have reacted; no-one could have stopped him. He was, after all, something other than human.
And Hannel Wekker pulled Kaia’s pistol from below the table and fired it, and a decade of fighting on the hardest frontier in the known world did not stop the Vampire. And Kaia, too, veteran of tracking so many Vampires in the mountains of Chaltary, could not stop the Vampire. And so the Vampire continued, on, and on, and on…
… and stopped.
It had eight bullets through it, two being through the head and two and a wooden bolt through the heart.
Lonner’s throat was simply not there any more. The remnants of his beard were thick with still-running blood, and his head lolled back, lifeless against the chair with the vampire sprawled over him. The latter’s body was not bleeding much; a little thin and watery blood leaked out, but nothing like a human corpse. A few chairs were strewn across that side of the room, and James Balliol – white with shock – hauled the vampiric corpse over onto the floor.
Slowly, slowly, Wekker lowered the gun. Nobody spoke.
Nathaniel Von Tamberdall looked around the room, and then at his superior. The commander was in total shock at the terrifying results of his own decision to free the Vampire… and Lonner would be due at the Polismoot at seven! The Union’s spies would know something was afoot if he was not there. Had the Vampire let himself be captured? No matter. Action was needed.
Hannel looked on as orders snapped out of the young man. Nathaniel’s weakness in fighting and running was more than balanced by his ruthless efficiency in organisation. The bodies were swiftly taken away, along with the shocked commander, leaving the Lynshireman in charge.
“Lonner was going to go to the Polismoot this evening, the Union’s spies will know about this soon. We can’t hesitate, even with this… loss.
I want two teams going in to the Union: one will go up the coast to the great cities and try and work on finding anything we can out about Vampire creation. The other I’m sending to Nurreich to see if we can open communications there.”
The Lynshire noble of course did not have the authority on paper to order this. He did not have the right… but he had authority of a different sort, and beyond his years. Nobody naysaid him, and everybody listened intently.
“Kaia, you can go with Olaf to Nurreich. Take Huar too.” He nodded to the man with the deep coloured plains-skin. “Lonner was going to be going to the cities… but who can lead his team?”
“I can go.” James stood up, volunteering himself.
“No. You’re too…”
“Too what? Young? You’re only a couple of years my senior; don’t open your own weaknesses. I’m not needed for anything that’s going on here much, and you need someone with academic knowledge to try and work on finding out what Lonner was on about.”
“Ti’ak is going anyway, so…”
“But Ti’ak can hardly talk to any Union academics we find. He’s rather noticeable in public – no offence.” He glanced at the hooded figure, who – face still shrouded – slowly nodded his (or her, it was impossible to tell) head in agreement. Nathaniel pursed his lips.
”I don’t like it, but I can’t see a way of not letting you go. Very well. Hannel?”
“Sir?”
The Lynshire noble jerked his head at the young engineer.
“He hasn’t got a bloody clue which end of a normal weapon is which, look out for him.”
A short time later, four horses rode south from Murrod, before taking the east road to the coast. One horse carried a man who had killed more people in his lifetime than many military regiments had in their entire history, another was carrying a backpack with more books in it than the average library, a third wasn’t even carrying a human being. And the fourth horseman, riding into the apocalypse? His name was Hannel Wekker.
PART FIVE
Tarrala, Nurreich, Chaltary, Lorralin. Names on a map. But behind each of those names is a story, yes; a thousand stories. A thousand lives, yes, ten thousand lives in ten thousand lifetimes. And of course behind each name there is another opportunity for somewhere else to attack, should you happen to be in the business of conquering the world.
General Saye was, as it happened, in exactly that business. As he strode through the corridors of the Union’s Ruling Council, he thought about that. That they were the corridors of power that he strode through, only because he was the power inside them. Vampires scuttled out of the way of the flame-haired human. Humans didn’t even dare to be seen.
You wouldn’t have known that he was coming for a stern tribunal rebuke, really.
The leaders of the Union were mostly Vampires – three humans who most people regarded as scarier than the vampires anyway were sat at the table, but that was only if you applied the term “human” purely biologically. Saye’s cavalry commander, Jones, was a vampire and he was arguably more human than any of them. He’d even been known to not eat enemies who lost if they’d fought well enough. Nobody paid much attention to Jones.
”Saye. Your conduct in recent months has been brought to our attention.”
“Really, sir?”
“Yes, Saye. Really. It appears that your actions in pursuing the war against Chaltary have been, shall we say… needlessly wasteful. We are also concerned that it appears agents working under your command have been sighted abroad – agents you did not think to tell us about.”
The others around the table exchanged glances. The head of the council, Lunthar Seklan, was not known for speaking out much against Saye. Those who knew of Saye’s activities suddenly shrunk in their chairs a little.
“Needlessly, sir? The Chaltarians cannot take much more punishment, as you know.”
“We have not got much more to give them! A quarter of our steel is going into unspecified projects of yours, we have lost ten thousand men in this last war alone! What are you aiming for, Saye? Who do you serve?”
Saye considered his answer. He could tell the man that he served the Union and the Union alone, which would be a barefaced lie. Not that he served any OTHER government, of course. But the primary loyalty of Dagalin Saye was to the man who was in his opinion the greatest military mind on the planet – to Dagalin Saye, in other words.
“We all serve ourselves in the modern world, sir.”
He stood up to his full height, dominating the room. Eyes aglow, he looked over those in front of him. There was no way he would be opposed, once they knew what he knew. But was it time enough? Well, it would have to be.
“Sit down, Saye, and explain yourself.” Even as he said it though, the Vampire - older than any of the rest - suddenly sounded tired. And then the General knew he had won. The smile that suddenly spread across his face would have warmed the heart of anyone, until they looked into his eyes. And woe betide anyone who did look into his eyes, for there the fires of ambition burned so strongly they would roast souls.
“I will explain everything soon enough. However, to do so may require something of a… demonstration. Gentlemen, I have ordered carriages and guards to take us to the facilities. If you would?”
Uncertain, they followed. Following was, to General Saye’s mind, a good place for them to be. When you had too many people trying to lead, THAT was when problems arose.
“Saye.”
”Yes, sir?”
The Vampire spoke in almost hushed tones, mindful that those around them did not hear the conversation.
“Whatever it is you’ve done… be sure you know what you are doing. For progress, for the Union… will it help us?”
“More than you can possibly imagine.”
Finally, slowly, Seklan smiled.
“As much as we pretend to be a nation beyond faith, I have faith today. And my faith is in you. Don’t let me down.”
“We shall see if you feel let down.”
They had come to a huge steel doorway. The heavy padlocks and bars that secured it spoke of dread and secrets; he could feel several of the council approving already. But now he needed to show them his great plan, his secret. Now where was that brother of his?
”Morgan! Let us in!”
Morgan Saye pulled a lever, and the padlock sprang open. The gates swung back on their hinges, and the council entered into a yard of pipes and gleaming metal. Guards were posted along the walls, guns and swords flashing. Steel lined everything. Steam billowed from funnels
And there, amid the guns, swords, and steam, was what they had come to see. Or was it who? Then again, was it what? It was not something they had not seen before, but it was something they had not realised was possible to create again.
A pale face. Two reddish eyes. Sunken cheeks. A look like seeing tunnels dipping away into eternity.
Vampire.
Seklan breathed out.
“Impossible…”
And that was when Daglan Saye laughed. He had made the impossible possible, broken the laws, laid nations to waste. This was his hour, and his glory would spread to the furthest corners of the world. And nothing, now, could prevent it…
PART SIX
The regiments filed past. Blue coats fluttered in the morning breeze, muskets shone with the gleam of inexperience. They were all so green, these new recruits. That, of course, was no problem; Saye was only planning to use them as a meat-shield anyway.
The rebel line was just as shaky, wearing tattered civilian clothes and clutching rust-covered, ancient blunderbusses. The barricades that they had put up were not poorly made, though. On the other hand, how was any barricade going to be enough when one’s opponent could simply block the street with men until he had cannon in place to deal with it?
This particular battlefield was Gharion, the northernmost port of the Union. The long-rebelling island of Hiran lay to the north, and the rebels and Union had tossed Gharion between them until the town was mostly ruins, rubble, old barricades and shattered cannon. The Union’s commanders found it hard to bring their weight of numbers fully to bear in the ruins, and so most of the time the rebels could hang on.
That was most of the time, of course. This was now, with Daglan Saye and a hundred thousand men standing outside. An unbeaten general with an unbeatable army; it was just the sort of thing to raise morale. The enemy’s.
Daglan looked over the city, bearing the plain blue banner of the Union, Morgan rode up next to him as did Jones.
”Sir. Should I dismount my men? We won’t be able to use horses against those barricades.”
Saye gave his cavalry commander a sharp look.
”You dismount when I say and not before. Get back to your troops; I probably won’t need them anyway.”
“Are you sure? We’ve often failed to take this place before by whiskers.”
If the first look had been sharp, this one was a sabre through the ribs.
“Yes, sir.”
Jones rode away.
Daglan turned his attention to his brother.
“Your men will take the left, I’ll take the right. As much as I’d like to throw Jones in with the first wave, we’ll leave him out.”
“Yep.”
They watched for a minute more as the artillery were being hauled past. The main reason for the Union’s expansion had been its technological superiority, coupled with ruthless control of every manufactory or foundry. The cannon were not exceptionally well made or powerful; it was simple numbers that made the difference. The only truly elite soldiers that the Union bothered to train were its Vampiric officers, the elite Rifle Guards (the only troops in the army to use rifled muskets), and the cavalry.
The cavalry… Daglan looked over towards Jones, who was still retreating fast. That vampire… had ideas. That was the thing. He had ideas, true, but he was human and he was bloody well going to. But vampires didn’t have ideas! They weren’t meant to think! He almost seemed to actually care about his men, too. Weird.
He was a good cavalryman and led his men well, that was true. It was just… weird. And Daglan didn’t like anything weird. At least, not if he hadn’t designed it firstly.
He shook himself. All that was irrelevant; there was a battle to be won.
Morgan stood with his troops, watching the recruits rush past towards the barricades. The enemy had been doing a good job thus far; they may not have had power or guns, but they damn well had balls.
Unlike his brother, Morgan had been brought up through the infantry; he had a coarser view of the world, if a less twisted one, than Daglan. At the bottom of it all was an infantryman’s loyalty. It takes a lot to be a good infantryman; it takes hellish courage, rock solid nerves, and pure, simple knowledge that Dolce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori…
“Go! Onward, Union! Blue banners forward!”
The hooded eyes of young men who had marched many miles to be here passed under the young officer’s impassive eyes. Some more men hauled a small cannon into place, ready to bombard the barricade when the word was given.
And then, suddenly, a shout.
Morgan swung round to face it, and suddenly saw twenty rebels emerging from a building – and straight into his guards. He grimaced as one frantically stabbed a bayonet through a rifleman, then passed the blue standard to another guardsman.
“Sir?” The man seemed startled by the honour.
“Get on! Wave the bloody thing!”
Drawing his sabre, Morgan ducked into the melee. He moved like a dancer, ducking and diving. It only took half an inch of blade to kill someone; use more, and you risked getting your blade stuck. And a stuck blade was worse than no blade at all… the grunt of a slumping body, the crack of a musket-ball in the distance formed the music, and Morgan Saye pirouetted round to leave a thin red line across the throat of another rebel. Scum.
Another two of his guards fell; these rebels were good fighters. Screaming blindly, one rushed at Morgan only to find that he was a metre to the side of them and that where he had been was a fast-moving blade.
At last, though, one went for him who seemed to know what they were doing. His guards were still tied up with battling others from the surprise attack, and his first feints were soundly blocked. A challenge… block, feint, parry, feint, block, swing but to no avail and just about block the next swipe. Gritting his teeth, the Union leader pressed in for the attack. He finally got his foe through the doorway of the building the attack had originated from; in the closed room (the stairway had long since fallen in, and the windows were small) there could be no possibility of this one escaping.
Jones looked down at the battle. Daglan’s men were bombarding the barricades, but on Morgan’s side… something was wrong. The infantry had more or less halted, and the guns were half in place but silent still! The banner still fluttered, but…
“Telescope, Marius.”
The cavalryman handed his leader the long scope, through which he looked down and suddenly saw the desperate struggle over the flag. Damn!
Vampires, as Saye knew, didn’t really think; they just re-enacted whatever they knew how to do with ruthless efficiency. Jones knew that too… but at times like this, it didn’t quite seem to work out like that. He’d feel a tugging pain in his chest, wince a little… and an idea would come. It wasn’t right; it shouldn’t happen. But it did.
“Marius, get everyone dismounted. We’re going in there.”
”But our orders, sir…”
“I’d rather win the battle than lose it by doing what we were told. Now do as I say!”
The vampiric aura of command still worked. Marius called back to the other men, and they prepared to move in.
Jones looked at the buildings. Many of them had the roves blown off, top floors open to the air. Even the central capitol had. And that tower… by Morgan…
Jones felt the pain again.
Morgan’s opponent was still being evasive. He’d had several near misses himself even, no matter now though. Finally, he twisted round and dealt a sharp kick to his opponent’s leg. The rebel’s hat fell off, and as the fighter lay suddenly sprawled across the floor a mass of black hair tumbled out. The girl stared up at him, eyes like burning coals.
Outside, he suddenly heard a familiar voice.
”Get the cannons into the towers! Start the bombardment!”
Morgan sighed inwardly. Well, at least they’d win a bit easier. He looked back at his victim, and hesitated for a second. In that second, the girl had suddenly rolled out and knocked him to the floor in turn. Grabbing both her sabre and his, she advanced on him.
The cracks of musket were suddenly joined by the rumble of cannonfire. As the black hair swung round and the rebel looked out the door, a guard barrelled into the room and shot her in the shoulder.
”Are you alright, sir?”
“Yes, yes, I’m alright. Just take a look at that girl for me, would you?”
“Sir?” The man knelt down towards the now-prone female.
Morgan had no hesitation; he pulled a pistol and emptied the barrel into the man’s back. One thing it was never good to do was let your men know you’d been matched, let alone beaten. He strode out into the light – or what would have been light if the air hadn’t been filled with powder-smoke.
“Come on then! Let’s WIN this thing!”
And so the barricades fell, as they were always going to, and Daglan Saye re-took the port as he was always going to, and Jones wasn’t even mentioned, as he was never going to be. That was how the Union worked.
Morgan never went back after the battle – never went back to note that the rebel, somehow, managed to mysteriously disappear again. But that was irrelevant, of course. One person could do nothing against the Union… and they’d won. Right?
Sitting around a campfire on a wooded hilltop somewhere in Violland, Hannel read through his instructions again. Nathaniel’s genius as a manager was perhaps best exemplified by the fact that he had single-handedly rewritten their entire mission statement in under two hours before sending them off at high speed.
The horses were tethered nearby, and Ti’ak – who had never yet removed his shrouding hood - was settling down to build a fire. The four men were to go to Great Lynn, from which they could take a small boat up the coast and land somewhere not far from the main cities of the Union, the sprawling metropolis of the coast where their factories were located. From there, their aim was to try and get what information they could about technological and military developments – if possible, trying to find where the main research facilities of the Union were. Despite the fact that estimates showed the place must be the size of a small town, the Chaltarians had never yet located it.
“Ti’ak.”
“Yes, captain?”
“Why DO you wear that hood all the time?”
“Necessity, captain.”
“Yes, but… why is it necessary?”
“Isn’t it his place to decide that?” Balliol, ever a staunch friend of Ti’ak, had seen off more than one traveller they had met who enquired about the hood.
“No, James. He’s right. Mr. Pearson, could you do a brief check that we are not being watched?”
Pearson snuck into the shadows, wandering around the camp before eventually returning with a nod. He glanced around with some suspicion still, though.
“Very well…” a mottled, leathery hand shot out from Ti’ak’s robe and was lifted to his hood…
“Wait!” Pearson pulled out his duck-foot pistol, pointed it upwards, and fired a round into the trees. “Forgot that time the Union had men hiding in the branches. Woops.”
As it happened, a small bundle of fur fell with a muted squeak and hit the floor.
“Ah well. I don’t like squirrels much either.”
Ti’ak’s face was flat, and leathery; wide beetle-black eyes looked over at Hannel from a face that might have belonged to a Homonculous from the Books of Jupiter.
“I am a Grenlach, captain. My people live in the furthest west, far from here, but I am condemned to wander the world. The Grenlachs have an… odd response to those not deemed normal. They banish them.”
“Sounds pretty good, half the time we burn them over here.” Despite Hannel’s nonchalant comment, he looked at the strange, short being with weird fascination. A different type of… thing… altogether. Strange. Even though Ti’ak has already proved a useful and interesting companion, it was hard to battle an age-old revulsion for the unknown and stay calm.
“I know what you are thinking, and you are not the first to have thought it. Do not worry – or at least, try not to.” The Grenlach swept his hood back up, shading the alien features once more.
“So why do you fight our wars?”
Ti’ak shrugged .
“Safety. They accept me, and so I work for them. It is not perfect, but it works. What about yourself, Captain? Why do you fight your wars?”
“My duty.” Hannel bridled a little at being asked why he – a captain of no little experience – would fight a war. It seemed, obvious, surely?
“Not all your countrymen are warriors, though. And not all fight as ferociously as you do, on the front lines. Most officers are glad of the chance to sit in a command post, whereas you… seem to have relished solo leadership, from what I’ve heard.”
“True. Very true. But then, duty is a strange thing for folk who don’t know what it really means…”
“I talk about my duty, others talk about theirs. But what they often mean is some ideal – a bright sky in the morning, banners at their back, riding out to meet the enemy. Or maybe dying in battle on the seas for that same flag. It’s a fire in them – I’ve seen it, seen it so many times. And they die. They always die.
I haven’t died, yet, because my duty’s not to any funny ideas. Don’t hold with them. My duty’s… well, I’ll tell you about it.
I once had that fire. I once had the same dream every young man has, of a girl and a musket and a world that would fall down at my feet. And the first part seemed to be working, so why not the second? Why not, I thought?
Her name was Ira. She was a rag of a girl, thin and bony and hair like smoke on the wind. But she was my little rag of a girl… and so life when I was seventeen seemed like it would last for eternities in that odd sort of perfection. I joined the army too, marched off for my first few months out on the front lines. Thinking I’d be back and seeing her soon.
I trained hard, I marched out like the hundreds of blue-eyed bearded young men on the front, and then I was pitched into a hell nobody had dared to tell us existed. The men I’d trained with were shot with volley after volley of heavy lead, young faces gutted by sabre strokes… and we won. That wasn’t the sight of defeat; that was the price of victory.
I could handle that, though. All of it. I fought like a bloody devil, trying to get revenge, trying to win glory for my country over their country. One man down with a bullet, preferably the officer, then run in with a bayonet and as long as you were there fast enough they couldn’t plug theirs in. Catch ‘em in the woods and they didn’t stand a chance.
But I couldn’t be lucky forever. One time a Vampire came on the field, first time I’d seen one. Carrying a fancy pistol, too… and he pointed it straight at me and that should’ve been my time up.
But… but it wasn’t, because someone jumped in the way. Bright-faced youngster, without a beard. By the time I’d realised I was still alive our own cavalry were getting down there, and I was safe. But only because someone had died for me… and…
…it was her. I saw her hair spill out with the blood on my lap, and Ira was dead, and all my dreams? Suddenly, brutally, ripped to shreds. I knelt there for an hour or two, then walked back to camp at dusk. It’s as clear in my mind today as it was back then. The reek of blood wouldn’t come out of my nostrils.
And so you ask me why I fight. I fight because it’s too late for me. Everything I wanted went away so, so long ago. And maybe if I fight it means the army needs one less recruit, if I command my men well there’s one less body out on a battlefield that didn’t need to be. Maybe one day the Flintshiremen won’t need to learn to shoot a gun from the age of seven. But now there’s a war, and if I’m fighting there’s one mad bastard somewhere that isn’t doing and he can go on being a mad bastard and that’s all I hang on to somewhere in my head. That’s all."
Hannel Wekker sat, with his eyes shut. For a moment, the scene was frozen in time.
“What a lovely story,” Pearson remarked drily. Pulling a second, thin-barrelled pistol from a histherto concealed pocket, he lazily pointed it above his head. Shortly afterwards, a second muffled squeak was heard somewhere up in the trees.
“So why do you fight, Pearson?” Balliol challenged the dark-coated man.
Pearson shrugged. “Boredom?”
PART EIGHT
Under cover of darkness, four figures slipped by hidden routes into the city of Great Lynn. The main port of Chaltary, Lynn was a vital power centre and was full of ruthless intrigue, often buried under a mountain of knife-fighting sailors.
The Judge’s Sword was a particularly dingy example of the sort of tavern that covered the city. They had knives buried in every wall and some of the customers, tankards battered with long years of being pounded into someone’s head, and of course the almost mandatory backroom for intrigue and secret meetings. It was in one such room that Hannel Wekker and his three companions sat that evening.
“You’ll be on a small ship, a merchant vessel. It’s a sailing rig, no fancy steam-power, and no weapons so if you’re attacked there won’t be much you can do. Nevertheless, there’s no way of getting through by force.”
“Very well. We can deal with that.”
The naval officer coughed.
”There is one… complication you might wish to know about, Mister Wekker.”
Hannel had never quite got used to being a Mister. He kept his temptation to growl “captain” at the man in check, though, and simply leaned back in the slightly rickety chair provided.
“And that would be?”
“Me.”
By the time the figure had stepped out of the shadows, Hannel was already on his feet with a pistol pointed straight at them.
”Whilst your efforts arre commendable, I can assure you are unnecessary.”
The speaker was young and female, and around Balliol’s height (a hand shorter than Wekker). She could not have been more than seventeen, and had fine silver-blonde hair pinned up out of her face. She wore a typical lady’s dress, made of fine green material and laced at the back.
“Put the gun down, Hannel. She’s only a girl.”
Slowly, the gun was lowered.
“I’ve seen girls who can pick the eye from a man at seventy paces.”
“And that’s likely here, is it?”
Ti’ak, for once, agreed with Hannel.
“Look at her, James. Her dress is normal for a lady, but worn over hose rather than petticoats; she needs to be able to move quickly. She also wears her hair up, so it won’t be in her way, and with two pins. One is a usual hairpin, but the other goes the length of her hairdo and has a big enough end to hold comfortably in a relatively small hand – note that she does have small hands – and the pin must be at least long enough to use as a dagger.”
The newcomer and the officer watched the debate with interest. As Ti’ak shared his analysis, her face broke into a wry smile.
“Very perceptive, sir. However, my… precautions were nothing to do with the four of you. My name Katja Ussia Yravka; I am Ussotian, from far north of Union.”
The officer butted in, his thin moustache quivering.
“Excuse her, her Chaltarian’s not perfect. She was sent here to get out of a spot of dynastic trouble some four years back; the Ussotians aren’t terribly forgiving when it comes to family. Now we’ve finally been told she can get back home, we’re hoping to get her to the rebels on Hiran, and from some contacts there back homewards.”
“So she’ll be on our ship?”
“And under your protection; the ship will go to Hiran first and then attempt to drop you off a little way north of the factory belt around Quilot.”
“But the Union navy will be far more likely to go for us coming from Hiran.”
“That’ll be your issue and the captain’s. These are my orders, which I am relaying to you. Understood?”
Hannel saw the look in the man’s face. He’d seen it before; it was the look when officers told their men to march out on a clear blue morning and do something wholly, desperately stupid. He’d learned to hate that look, but it hadn’t killed him yet. He glanced up at the northerner, who clearly had no idea. With any luck, she’d stay having no idea for the rest of her life. The question was how long that’d be…
“Understood.”
“Good. Now follow me.”
The six figures ducked and weaved around dingy backstreets and dark alleys, mostly without incident (though the city had one less potential thief afterwards; pickpocketing Pearson was in the order of things Not To Do along with jumping off cliffs and swimming with sharks whilst wearing a costume made of raw meat).
A small ship sat low in the water; the wood creaked and groaned as the waves lapped at the side. The shadows around the small jetty were almost solid; an army could have sat in them and nobody would have seen a thing.
The ship had eight sailors, and the captain, whose name was Kuther Ikkel. The four spies and their northern companion had a cabin between the four of them, though Ikkel quickly decided that Lady Yravka could have his cabin instead. In the (comparative) quiet of city life at night the ship was a hive of bustle, with the sailors getting ready to slip out of port at first light.
Later in the night, they retrieved their horses from the inn and began to stow their baggage. The Ussotian looked on and accepted the offers of help from the sailors, her face still pale in the darkness. She was quiet, and seemed wary of the boat due to some previous seasickness despite the naval officer repeatedly reassuring her.
The first tendrils of light appeared from the east; the sails were unfurled, and at last all was ready. James said farewell to the horses, patting each on the nose in an almost comical ritual, and finally walked up the gangplank; only Hannel and Katja remained.
“I can assure you,” the officer said, leading her to the gangplank. “There’s nothing to worry abo-”
It was not, perhaps, the set of last words he might have chosen.
Ducking the second bullet that clattered onto the cobbles, Hannel roared out a warning.
“Run! Get the boat moving!”
A man armed with some ort of heavy club appeared from round a side-street, then another, then a third. Whoever it was, someone did not want them to go, and had found them at last. If the boat started, there was a possibility Hannel would be unable to get to it. On the other hand, if it didn’t they could well be swamped.
”Cut that bloody rope! Captain!”
The voice of military command cut through the air. Ikkel whisked an old sabre out and hacked quickly through the ropes, ducking a bullet that put a hole in the sail as it billowed out from the southeasterly wind.
The first of the men on the ground reached Hannel just in time to receive a heavy kick in the chest. Watching him reeling, Hannel finally picked out the position of the sniper as a bullet smashed into the ground an inch short of Lady Yravka. Lady… Hell!
Realising he had forgotten his charge, and also noticing a seventh man run onto the scene, Hannel finally decided to employ the secondmost of all military strategies; retreat.
Firing a pistol into the face of the next man, Hannel Wekker grabbed the wrist of the girl, who had just slashed her hairpin with lethal accuracy across a man’s jugular vein.
“I can’t make that jump, Wekker! You’ll have to leave me!”
“Shut up and run!”
Ignoring his charge’s protestations, he pulled her towards the edge of the docks. The ship was finally slipping away, though he could see that one sailor seemed to be hurt. Now how to get there? The jump was doable, but was widening by the second.
“Stop!”
Finally, Katja Yravka made the man who had pulled her this far turn to face her.
”I can’t get there. I have some money, I can reason with these men. Please.”
The decision was quite simple; Hannel could leave her and happily get on with his mission. On the other hand…
“No.”
Grabbing her around the waist, he picked the girl up and began to run as hard as he could. Every one of his muscles screaming the impossibility at him, he shut his eyes… three… two…
He jumped.
It seemed like an eternity in which two figures were suspended in midair, hanging over the murky waters on an invisible thread.
Then a tight bundle of two people thudded down, just onto the deck.
The ship slipped away into the fog of dawn.
The wind whistled past the sails of the ship as she flew over the waves. Hannel Wekker stood on the deck, with the spray of the ocean flicking into his beard and his hat barely staying on.
The ship was named the Eleanor; she was a fast, light vessel, and was well-rigged to make the best of any weather. It was for these qualities that her captain, Kuther Ikkel, had been picked as the man to take both an important political pawn and a small band of spies up the coast.
The pawn in question was currently being seasick, which ill became the slender and graceful form of Katja Yravka, Heir of the Boyar Yravka and the Ducal Country of Jussilia. Chaltary had been an odd place to send her for safe-keeping, considering how far south of her home it was, but there was nowhere else outside the reach of Ussotian spies – and the former Tsar had no wish to see his niece alive. Nevertheless, in the five years she had been in Chaltary the Union (the great nation that split the southern nations from the northern ones and the principalities to its west) had finally set its mind to domination of the waves, having been finally halted at great mountainous land borders.
The result of this was that though they had passed the Chaltarian border only a day ago they had already had to dodge several enemy patrols.
“Steamship ahoy! Turn to port!”
“Darned seaman’s jargon.” Hannel stalked down the deck to take a look at the ship they were rapidly tacking away from. It was, like most of the Union’s ships, a large grey metal pig of a vessel. The deck was closed over most of it, and the sides bristled with cannon.
A flare shot up from the other ship.
“They seem to be signalling, Captain!”
“Relax,” Ikkel called. “No metal pig’s going to outrun the Eleanor.”
“She is a fine vessel.” The croaking voice of Ti’ak, who was clearly an experienced sailor, could just be heard from up in the rigging.
”Give me a gun and some dry land, myself, but as long as she gets us to where we want to go.”
“Ah! Ever the cry of the landsman, Wekker.” The hooded grenlach dropped to the deck. “The seaman is oftentimes heard to call for wood beneath his feet on land, too.”
“That’d be why they spend so much time on the floorboards of taverns, then.”
“Taverns, indeed; the one place where just about every race, profession, and species seem able to meet on even terms. Truthfully, they are miracles of human diplomacy.”
“Diplomacy of the sort that involves tearing men’s ears off with your teeth?”
“Undoubtedly. Are we pulling away from that ship now?”
Hannel looked; the steamship didn’t seem to have moved into the chase, but as he looked it sent up a second flare. It took the trained eye of a marksman, but Hannel could just about make out a second boat, further off. He couldn’t see much of it, though puffs of steam were certainly visible. The prow seemed to be pointed in their direction, too.
“Ti’ak, how fast do you think that boat’s going?”
“Hum… not too slowly by the look of it. James?”
Balliol pulled out a piece of paper and, with the aid of a sextant and spyglass, began making some calculations.
“That can’t be right. Ships don’t go that fast.”
“There’s a second,” barked Hannel, “and I think they’re gaining on us already!”
The Lynshireman looked up, wide-eyed. “Their engines must be hugely powerful… Never heard of anything going that fast…”
“Now you have,” called Kuther as he joined them on the starboard side of the ship, “and I don’t think any of us are going to like it!”
It was just six minutes before the two vessels were within cannon range of the Eleanor.
“How do they go so fast?” Balliol was squinting at the engines of the ships through a spyglass. “It’s really incredible – never seen anything like it!”
Pearson, who had just emerged from below decks, stepped up and laid a hand on his shoulder.
“And you never will again unless we can think how to stop them.”
The four spies were all on deck now, watching the great metal vessels chase them down. They had few cannon, but from what they could see through the deck-covers there were men and boarding planks aplenty.
“How were they so close? Ships like this wouldn’t be in a regular patrol, surely?” Hannel looked sharply at Kuther.
“We must be fairly close to land; I suspect if it wasn’t for the fog over thataway, we’d be able to see it. We need to try and get the five of you safely there, but I can’t see any way out.”
“We close to land. Does that mean that we launch smaller boats, we can try and slip past them?” Katja’s fear had at last overcome the ruthless fury of her upset stomach.
“We don’t have any; the rowing boat’s got holes in. Besides, you’d probably get blown out of the water.”
Hannel looked at him slowly. “Unless the distraction was big enough.”
“But it doesn’t matter, we haven’t GOT a boat!”
“No, true.” Hannel pointed to the other side of the enemy ship’s deck. “But they do.”
The three cannon on either side of the Eleanor made no difference at all to the metal hulls of the fast steamships. The small union cannon provided a far nastier salvo in return, killing three sailors on one side of the ship and destroying a cannon on the other.
The four spies and Katja prepared quietly for their plan of escape – or at least, moderately quietly.
“I have never been more certain that I am about to die.”
“Oh, relax. There are more important worries here. I don’t know if my top hat will stay on.”
“I’m an engineer not a fighter! I have my life, not my hat, to be concerned with!”
“Hey!” Pearson stepped to the hatch. “I like my hat!”
The hatch opened just as the first of the boarding planks smashed down onto the Eleanor’s decks.
The first four union soldiers went down to Pearson’s duckfoot pistol. The second four union soldiers went down to Pearson’s other duckfoot pistol. Hannel knew Pearson enough by now not to bother shooting until all four regular pistols had been discharged as well.
Taken aback, the soldiers briefly halted as five armed figures rushed at them. Shots rattled through the air, but with the closed deck of the enemy ship once they were under the roof it was impossible to snipe them from above.
Hannel kicked savagely at a man, flicking his bayonet left and right to clear a path across the crowded deck. From the other two gangplanks men were still advancing; suddenly on this one, a retreat became the order of the day.
“Take THAT!”
With all the fighting ability of a five year old, Balliol did his best to help push through the enemy soldiers. Panicking, he rushed forward, only to find the pistol barrel of an officer in his face.
“Do not move. Drop your weapons.”
”But I’m not carrying any.”
“Silence!”
It was a rather futile request, as Ti’ak and Hannel were fighting viciously at close quarters nearby and Pearson had just bodily thrown a man overboard.
Suddenly, a red line appeared across the officer’s throat. The hand had moved so fast it was barely visible.
“Katja!”
She glanced back at him, grabbed his wrist and finally pulled him over to where the lifeboat sat, leaning over the edge of the deck.
The five of them leapt into the boat, Hannel slashing at the knots that tied it to the vessel.
Ropes whooshing over pulleys, the rowboat sped down the side of the ship…
…and stopped.
There was one rope left, tying them to the side of the ship. The boat had beun to hang down dangerously, and seven of the union’s soldiers peered down – then began to point their guns.
”Imgoingtodieimgoingtodie” Balliol shook in fear as he watched the guns level.
It was Pearson’s face that was the whitest though; he removed his old black top hat and took a look at it.
“They… they…”
Suddenly, his jaw became set in a grim line.
“YOU SHOT MY HAT!”
Hannel never found out where Pearson kept his third duckfoot pistol; he shot straight through the rope and three of the men fell dead.
The boat splashed into the water, and Hannel Wekker and James Balliol began to pull hard on the oars.
“I LIKE MY HAT!”
Cannonfire kept going behind them, but with the sailors selling their lives dearly to a group of Union marines who had probably never seen a real battle the diversion was working. Slowly but surely, they pulled away from the splintering cracks and cries that marked the end of the Eleanor.
It was eight hours later that the tiny boat went ashore – or, rather, was tossed up a cliff into what appeared to be some sort of cave. Gritting his teeth, Hannel leapt out of the boat as it reached the wide hole and hauled it inwards. He could just about see moonlight somewhere above him; as long as they could last until dawn, they’d have a fair chance of finding their way out. He glanced back at the four groaning figures behind him, then stared into the blackness.
“Is anyone there?”
Hannel’s voice only echoed back at him.
“We should get the lady up onto something dry.”
Balliol’s voice, as he hauled Katja onto his shoulders and staggered up into the cave. It was hardly a soft welcome… but they were in the Union, and their tasks had only just begun.
PART TEN
The light shone down through a narrow blow-hole above them – it was perhaps just a little too small for a man to squeeze through.
“How on earth are we going to get through there?”
“I was about to ask you the same question, Captain.”
Three figures – a dark-clad man with a hole in his hat, a young mousey-haired noble with a ragged green coat, and a slender young woman – were still slumped on the floor. Hannel Wekker, as a former army captain, was far too wary to give in to his exhaustion, and the grenlach Ti’ak seemed to need little sleep.
“We could try shooting into the roof, but there’s no guarantee that’ll do anything, and even Pearson doesn’t have an infinite amount of powder handy.”
“We could use our coats as rope and try to squeeze it?”
“Good jackets might do it, but these are standard peasant issue, there’s no chance of doing it without them ripping.”
“Damn… damn!”
Furiously, Hannel kicked at a rock, which bounced down the cave and out to sea. The boat was certainly no longer seaworthy, so there was no chance of escape that way either. Damn!
Bleary-eyed, Balliol struggled out of a turbulent dream-world.
“Wha… ah.” Snapping into focus, he flicked his eyes around the magnitude of their problems.
“Ah indeed. Any ideas?”
Silence.
“No, you wouldn’t have, would you?” Hannel was in a savage mood. “All you seem to be able to do since I found you is try and get yourself killed. I’m stuck in the middle of a hostile country, in a cave I can’t get out of, surrounded by people who have no idea how to help me! S’damnation!”
“Pass me your knife, captain.”
“What in hell? No!”
Balliol looked calm and strangely focused – it was a look Hannel had never seen on him, and it was strangely frightening.
“Hannel, pass the damn knife. There’s a good chap.”
Mesmerised, Hannel felt his hands move and pass the knife. Becalmed – or possibly simply shocked - he sat back and watched as the engineer set to work. Occasionally asking Ti’ak to hand him one thing or another, a seemingly infinite stream of tools appeared from the young noble’s pockets as he first disassembled the boat then began bolting the parts bac
By this time Pearson and Katja were awake, and like Hannel they stood back and watched the work unfold – for there was nothing else to do. In times to come Hannel would often think of that strange morning. They were in a slow peril then, but afterwards looking back it felt like the last moments of safety.
Eventually the planks began to take shape, wedged between rocks and fastened until they led up towards the ceiling. It was a miracle that the planks were braced and balanced well enough – or perhaps just genius. Engineers. What would you do without them?
“Right, that should get you up there, you’ll just have to use rocks as hammers I’m afraid.”
Slowly, agonisingly, Hannel and Pearson chipped away at the rock. It was close to dusk before, finally, a black-coated man appeared into the fading light and scrambled up a short steep slope to the clifftop. One after another, five figures slipped up and out. On enemy soil at last.
Looking around them, the clifftop was fairly bare, but swooped down to a bay with a small town at the bottom. From the cliffs, the land broke into rough and forested hills inland with roads making dark, straight gashes across the landscape.
They walked towards the outskirts of the town, quietly and carefully. A small inn of some sort sat on the road, with a stable facing it.
“Okay. Balliol, Katja, and Ti’ak stay here, Pearson and I can go and get the horses. And Pearson?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t mark anyone.”
The two fighters disappeared into the gloom, leaving three figures in a small stand of trees far from home.
“Ti’ak.”
“Yes?”
“I’m really rather scared.”
“It’s not unnatural. I have walked all the way from my homeland in my life, and half the people I met spent most of their time scared out of their wits.”
”The Captain isn’t. Pearson isn’t. You aren’t. I don’t think you are either…” he looked glumly over at the pale face of the Ussotian noblewoman.
She shrugged.
“I have spend my life with people trying to kill me. The two people closest to me are friends – less by far I have to fear than in some poisoned court. Besides, if it was not for you we would be stuck in cave now starving us to death.”
The grenlach shifted back and leaned against a tree.
“There’s a wonderful sort of simplicity that comes from constantly running for your life, I find.”
Carefully and quietly whispering to them, Hannel began to lead three horses out of the stable. They trotted out into the moonlight, and Hannel turned a corner... straight into a stable-hand.
Hannel mustered his fairly rough grasp of Warinese and addressed the man.
“Now, I don’t want any trouble”
…At which point the man promptly slumped forward.
“I told you not to mark anyone!” Hannel hissed, still wary of anyone else appearing.
“I didn’t leave a mark!”
The door of the inn opened. A Warinese voice crcked out like a whip;
“What’s going on out there?”
The Chaltarians looked at each other.
“What are you doing with those horses? Stop!”
The two men swung up into their saddles, and spurred the horses on into the night, the cries of the innkeeper ringing behind them. And then, a minute or so later, hooves ringing behind them.
Leading the third horse, Hannel headed for the stand of trees. He heard what sounded like the crack of a gun behind him, but kept going. Quickly pulling the horses to a halt, he let Ti’ak climb on in front of him and Balliol clamber onto the second horse with Katja in front.
Suddenly, he realised he could no longer hear the pursuit. He turned to Pearson, black coasted on a black horse.
”What happened to the pursuers?”
“What pursuers?”
“I told you not to mark anyone!”
“Woops.”
Balliol turned to Ti’ak.
“You were saying?”
In the distance, the sounds of shouting and cries could be heard.
”Let’s go.”
The five of them rode together up the coast at night, and hid in forests by day. It was a difficult journey past sandy bays and rugged cliffs, but they managed bit by bit to get towards their destination. And, one cold evening, of the sort where the biting wind left bitter tastes in the mouth, there it was.
Vast and black, the metropolis of the coast suddenly sat like a vast overfed slug beneath them. Factory smoke poured into the sky. Hovels of workers, lean-tos and tents, clustered like ants around the darkened giants that, foreboding, dominated the land around.
It was to be the most peaceable sight the five of them were to have for a long time.
Dagalin Saye was in a position of more power than ever. Which wasn’t to say he’d gained any new titles. Titles attracted bullets. All he’d managed to gain was respect. A knock came at the door of his office. It was panelled in bone, and was larger than that of even the head of the Union council.
That head was the man (at least, he had once been a man) who knocked on the door.
”Come in, Lunthar.”
“I have managed to strike a deal with the Ussotians for more steel. The Papacy are still refusing to cut their supply lines to Nurreich though.”
“Damnation. Nurreich’s defenders are all paranoid, there’s no way they can win but taking the city by force would be immensely difficult. Take a seat.”
Deferentially, Lunthar Seklan sat down.
“How difficult would it be? We outnumber them twenty to one as it is, and taking a few troops from elsewhere we could improve that.”
“That’s the trouble, Lunthar. What has worked before will not necessarily work in Nurreich. We shall need to be more… imaginative.”
“A task I prefer to delegate, as you know.”
Lunthar had risen to the top of the Vampiric pack not by imagination – for Vampires essentially had none. Rather, he had got there by accepting his lack of imagination and finding those who could deal with such things for him. Dagalin Saye had shot up the ranks under his watchful eye… and now he delegated more and more to the flame-haired human.
The tail was wagging the dog, that much was clear. The tail would very much have like to dispense with the dog altogether, but that would be for another time. Once his Vampires outnumbered those of the Council, he might be more ready. Particularly if he had a strong natural border at his back – say, the future military-governed province of Chaltary…
“Indeed, indeed.”
“What of the Project?”
“I have fifty now – no, forty-nine, one let himself be captured to ensure that the Chaltarians lost a lead on how we were doing it.”
“You think the Chaltarians know?”
“One did. He is dead. As for the others, it would be impossible for them to get spies past the front line. Our navy only recently blew a ship of theirs out of the water, and our armies are far too well entrenched across the Violl and in the passes to sneak anyone past.”
In one such pass, a Union sentry was standing on guard. There was little to guard from; the Chaltarians were dug in and would hardly sally out to attack such a powerful opponent. Von Wennedon’s army sat in Trammech shells and hurriedly built turrets, waiting for each assault. It was slowly but surely expending the strength of both armies, but the Union had numbers to keep throwing in and the fear of brutal discipline to keep men on the field.
The sentry was surprised to see a woman of thirty or so wandering out of the forests not far from him.
“Halt! Who goes there?”
She wore a rough brown dress, and red hair spilled down her back
“Only me, don’t worry.”
Unsure how to react, the man lowered his gun. The woman walked up to him, smiling enigmatically.
“Uhm… and who are you?”
She gently laid a hand on his shoulder, and pointed up to the mountains.
“I live just there. Do you see?”
He strained his eyes at the trees.
”Where?”
A surprisingly strong arm clamped around his neck. A hand covered his mouth. Struggling, he tried to get away but, having let the woman get behind him, there was little he could do. He wasn’t feeling too bad, though – his windpipe wasn’t restricted. Not… feeling… too… bad…
His body went limp. Kaia beckoned to her two companions, who, both carrying large barrels and flaming brands, snuck out of the forest.
“We’ve not got long until the next guard comes. We need to be quick.”
The larger of the two men prodded at the prone man with his foot.
”Dead?”
“Unconcious. I only cut the blood off from his head for a few seconds. And no, Huar, you cannot take his scalp.”
The shorter man, who was sallow-skinned, withdrew his free hand from the knife at his belt.
“Really? This mission sucks.”
“Don’t be silly. I planned it, it’s going to be fun.”
Three figures slipped into the camp. It was not long after dawn, and most of the world was still slumbering. Not for much longer.
”Remember, there are five powder stores; I’ll do one side, Huar the other, Olaf… the one in the middle and both barrels next to the officer’s quarters if you please. The first one you do will need about a three minute fuse, the other only a one minute. Go!”
Hurrying in the gathering light, she turned away from her accomplices. Noticing two sentries standing guarding the first ammunition hut, she stayed in the shadows. Picking up a stone from the ground, she threw it as hard as she could. Two tents down somebody shouted as the missile tore through the canvas, and one guard went to investigate. A few thumb-jabs to the back of the neck had the other sleeping like a baby. One fuse set and lit.
Over the other side of the camp, Huar was already dancing through the shadows, keeping his profile almost invisible. Not even bothering to deal with the sentries, he went to the back of the depot. He lit the fuse, shot it through the window with an old crossbow-pistol, and had thrown it in and was away by the time they came – all too late – to investigate the noise.
In the centre of the camp, just behind the officers’ mess, Olaf had two guns pointed at him.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?”
“I bring… wine?”
He was a good fighter, but a bad liar.
“Put that axe down and stand up. You’re being taken to see the officer in charge.”
Olaf lowered the axe. He then rolled away from the offending gun barrels, taking out one man’s legs, and shot the other. He then tossed the flaming brand onto the two barrels and was into the shadows and out of range by the time the powder caught.
Screams, explosions, and lots of shouting.
Nobody noticed three figures sneaking their way into Union territory. Later, leaning against a tree a mile into the Union border, Kaia watched the dampened smoke still rising.
Dagalin Saye lay back in his chair.
“So as I say, there’s no way they’re going to find out. No way at all.”
PART TWELVE
The fact that the huge city of Oris had sewers was not a sign that the place had effective sanitation by any means. The huge, belching guts of the place were brick-lined archways to carry factory sludge out to the sea. Soot, polluted water, any unwanted outputs of the Union’s industries; there were faeces everywhere as well, but that was the case in most of the streets too.
Oris contained all of the Union’s most powerful industries; it was the industrial powerhouse that churned out the weapons and trammechs that fed the Union war machine. Here beneath the poverty and engines, five lost souls trod a sewerside path in search of hidden secrets. It made sense that the Union’s research facilities would need to be near their production lines – but where?
“Essentially, the people who know where the Union does its research can be divided into three groups. There are the people who do the research, the people who commission the research, and the people who have to clean and feed the other two groups.”
“You’ve forgotten a group.”
“Yes?” Ti’ak, the first speaker, looked over at Pearson.
“The people who have to kill the other two. Political assassinations are serious business in every country I’ve ever been to.”
“I suspect hired assassins would be harder to find than any of the others, though, surely.”
“Not if you know where to look.” As usual it was hard to see Pearson’s expression in the shade of the sewer, but the tone of voice was layered with a subtle grin.
“And I take it you do?” Hannel looked sharply at the dark-coated man. They were holed up in a dank sewer, sitting on the side paving and discussing how to go about the next stage of their mission. It would not be easy. Their number included one academic traveller, one engineer totally inexperienced at fighting, a man very good at shooting but equally bad at tact and delicacy, an army captain, and a noblewoman from a totally different country altogether.
”Is the sky blue? Do the Union want to shoot their enemies? Do I have a gun in my pocket?”
“It’s pretty much smog yellow here, they’d just as soon stab them… okay, good point.”
Ti’ak coughed, and the two men turned back to him.
“We should probably split up. We need to make sure there’s one fluent Warinese speaker in each group.”
Hannel stood up, wincing at the reek of the sewage that flowed just a metre from where they were.
“If Pearson has contacts, he should take on the job of finding them. Ti’ak should go with him, a Grenlach is less likely to be spotted in the underworld. The remaining three of us will deal with trying to find food sellers, record keepers, anything that might give us a lead.”
An hour later, two figures – one hooded, one in a top hat – stepped into a small alehouse in the shanty towns. It was tucked away in a side-street, unusually a genuine house not one of the piles of mechanical wreckage or spare wooden beams that most people lived in. It came from before the Union, even; this was the Barrel, and those who went in were either brave, stupid, or innocent and with a lifespan to be measured in minutes.
The top-hatted figure walked in, ducking low. A sharp twang was heard, then a groan. Ti’ak halted, peering into the gloom to see if his companion was even alive. Then the familiar voice came back; the groan had been exasperation rather than pain.
”Mort? An automatic crossbow? Really?”
“I know, dear chap, I was feeling uninspired. Come in and have a drink, and take care to observe the barfight that should be imminently starting at the far end of the room. I think it should be rather enjoyable.”
“Come on in, Ti’ak. This is the Barrel.”
”Ooh! You’ve got a friend, Pearson?”
Stepping into the gloom, Ti’ak jumped as the door – apparently rickety from the outside – was slammed shut on pneumatic pumps attached to metal panelling. The smoky room was long and thin, with the bar running along its length. Before the Grenlach could observe much more, two sparkling eyes appeared over the bar, staring down at him through horn-rimmed spectacles.
“Hello, dear fellow. I’m Mort Turanne, and I appear to be the barman here. I don’t advise ordering drinks unless you wish to get very drunk indeed, since Grenlach alcohol tolerance is as a coefficient only sixty one point four percent of that of a grown human. Oh, and about half the barstools are booby trapped. Most aren’t deadly, or not as far as I remember, but it’s always fun to play a game with new customers.”
Hat retrieved, Pearson returned to the bar. He gingerly pulled the bolt out.
“Welcoming as ever, Mort.”
“Absolutely, my dear Pearson. And I’m sure you have an awful lot to do, considering you never found the bar quite enough of an adventure, but do stay to watch the argument.”
Mort, a short man with a mane of thinning white hair, pointed down to the other end of the room. There a vague mountain of humanity (or probably humanity) could be seen standing over a much smaller figure. The raised voices were muffled through the haze of pipe-smoke and chatter – Ti’ak kept picking out more shady figures drinking or talking in various corners – but the body language was definitely aggressive.
“I advise ducking.”
A barstool whistled across the room, hitting one of the other customers, who stood up in a fairly angry fashion. Punches were being landed, and the fight now included four or five people. Mort, watching in an amused fashion, turned what appeared at first sight to be a beer tap. The somewhat unexpected result was that the floor of the part of the room the fighters were in dropped out of sight with a crunching of gear wheels. Almost more concerning was the fact that the remaining customers didn’t even bat an eyelid.
Pearson wandered over.
“I hate to tell you this, Mort, but I think they’ve broken a window.”
“I saw. I mean… really! Just can’t seem to get the custom these days we used to since you went gallivanting off south.”
Stepping gingerly out of the bar area, Mort joined Pearson and peered into the pit. The fighters, having ceased their arguments in favour of blind terror, stared back.
“As your friendly barman, I would like to inform you that you broke the rules of the bar, namely the one about breaking the bar in question. Unfortunately, this has led to it being quite necessary for me to eject you from the Barrel. When you find your way out of the sewers, don’t hesitate to call back.”
Mort kicked a particular slat of wood on the barfront. The floor – with stools still attached, presumably nailed down – began to swing upwards, with the far wall of the pit opening into what was, indeed, a sewer. Once the six wailing fighters (or rather, five fighters and one “innocent” drinker) had been deposited, it returned to floor level.
“It’s a pity it was that end of the bar, the other end has a neat modification so they have to climb out whilst having eggs fired at them from an automatic musket. Now, old friend. What brings you back to the Barrel?”
Whilst Pearson grinned a lot, that day was one of very few times when Ti’ak saw him smile – not a smirk or grimace, but with genuine warmth.
“Hah. It’s good to see you again, Mort Turanne.”
Hannel Wekker’s grasp of Warinese was at best poor. Not for the first time, he was finding himself forced to play second fiddle to a man not much over half his age; a fact that was beginning to get on his nerves.
“No, she is not a whore. No, we are not criminals. What? What do you mean, are we from the circus again?”
James Balliol, the young man in question, was very glad his companions couldn’t understand the full content of the conversation he was having with the little desk-bound man in front of them.
Defeated, he turned to leave. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the man, who ran what of an archive of paper the eclectic tax office had, turn and wander back into his office. The tax office mostly levied sales taxes, which were done on a city-by-city basis to support the army. The army, unlike in Chaltarian towns, was in firm evidence here and two guards stood outside and watched, narrow-eyed, as the three spies slunk out again.
Shouts could be heard from down the street; not an unusual sound, but these sounded particularly… harsh. The sound of human voices lashed against the buildings and echoed down the street.
And then they saw them, a mob of people, shouting and screeching. Some carried lumps of wood, others stones, and they were running towards the tax office. The poor unemployed workers were rioting, driven by their starvation. A few had lit their torches, and a rioting mass of starvation and flame poured towards them.
The three of them, and the few other people on the narrow street, were shoved to one side in the sheer mass of people. James gripped Katja’s wrist, less out of practicality than a desperate bid to make sure something he knew was still nearby.
“Come on, we need to get out of here?”
”Where is the Captain?”
“I don’t know, Kat. But come on. Please.”
He’d never called her Kat before, but suddenly, in the swirl or fear and fire, it seemed desperately natural, they tried to make their way back through the crowds, but it was like walking against a river in full flow.
And then, from the shouting, came the shots. Riots often happened in the desperation these formerly rural poor were shoved into, in the life where work got you a pittance and unemployment death. The response was similarly formulaic; no mercy, but lead bullets for retribution.
First the crack of one musket. Then another, then another, as the anger and fear turned to just fear and flight. The fires were cast down, the people running like rats. The troops rushed after the fleeing men, a few firing indiscriminately in their charge.
Hannel ducked out of sight. Finding shadows in the buildings was not far different to the trees of the russet-coat passes; the aim was just to make yourself a less obvious target. He’d long since lost sight of the others, but surviving was the first thing. Always surviving.
James and Katja were running for their lives. They ducked into a side street, and turned left, then right, then right, barely looking as boots pounded behind them and the
“It’s a dead end.”
There were still boots on the ground behind them. The two of them looked at one another as the men rushed at them. James, at last, breathed out.
“I’m sorry.”
It was all he had time to say before the first soldier caught up with them. James turned round, but too slowly; the soldier rammed the butt of his musket under James’ ribcage, winding him, and then shoved him into the arms of a second man. He advanced on Katja.
“Ooh, she’s got a hairpin! Look out!”
The young Ussotian shook her hair loose and gripped the pommel of her hairpin tight. Snickering, the soldier advanced on her. She whisked the pin through the air, coming within a finger’s breadth of his wrist, but they were cornered, he had no other distractions, and she only got one swipe before he smashed the butt of his gun into the side of her head and kicked her sprawling onto the floor.
An officer walked up into the street.
“Take the man, that coat looks like it might have some money to back him.”
He had a broad face, with a slightly rubbery quality, and wide shoulders. Looking down at the slumped figure of what had once been a noblewoman, an almost mischevious smile played across his face.
“And the girl.” He grabbed her hair, dragging her up to her feet, and shoved her into the grip of another man. “She looks rather pretty.”
Pearson, having had a few figures pointed out to him, wandered off into the smoke of the Barrel in search of information. Ti’ak wondered a little how many men wandered off in search of information with a four barrelled pistol in one hand, but kept his thoughts to himself. Keeping his thoughts closed was something the Grenlach had always been fairly good at in his long travels across the continent of Sarpedonia, switching from one band of travellers to another, just barely staying alive.
“You look somewhat discomfited, little sir.”
Mort Turanne looked carefully at the stocky figure in front of him. Ti’ak looked a little huddled, pulling the folds of his dark cloak around him a little tighter.
“I am a scholar at heart… it is easy to grow weary of danger when your heart does not seek it. I have travelled from the Grenlach lands to here, and the violence I have seen… it hurts to see it, let alone have to keep running from it.”
“How poetic. So, Grenlach, what do you think of me?”
“You’re a dangerous man. And you enjoy it. Your glasses are horn-rimmed and the lenses are well-made; you must probably have more than enough money to live comfortably somewhere other than among the underworld of Oris. I can therefore conclude that you enjoy their company and the lifestyle.”
“True enough. We’re not good men, people like Pearson and I. We’re often the ones who have to clear up the mess they leave behind them, though…
Surviving in this world’s more about holding your nerve than any special skills. I mean, you must have adventured a lot already. What was the most successful thing you did?”
“Ran away, very fast.”
“And the next most successful?”
“Ran away, slightly less fast.”
Mort sighed.
“You can keep running away from things, but that’s not always an option. Time to teach you Mort’s first rule of adventuring; when in doubt, set it on fire.”
“But I’m not good at setting things on fire! Scholar, remember? My only fighting training was in the militia back home, and you can’t even get our weaponry here!”
Mort only raised an eyebrow, barely reacting.
“I’m a scholar too at heart. Just because you’re a better man than me – sorry, better being – doesn’t mean you can’t be dangerous. You’ll just end up as dead weight when you most need to be pulling your weight otherwise. What you need to learn is how to use your brain to be effective in a fight.”
“How does that work? Headbutting?”
“No! You need to use things that don’t rely on your muscle strength, dexterity, or accuracy. Fire being the perfect example. Use your powers of observation, find your opponents’ weaknesses. There’s hardly a man alive who could fight me in this pub, not because I’m strong but because I’ve prepared the ground.”
Ti’ak said nothing, but looked – as far as the flat, shadowed face could be seen – distinctly uncomfortable. He… just hadn’t been involved, those other times. Then he’d found Nathaniel von Tamberdall, a man who didn’t let little things like legality or nationality or species get in the way of doing his job, and suddenly he’d had… home, of a sort. Almost, even, had friends… and then he’d volunteered for this, rashly but wanting to repay that trust.
A new face ducked into the room, and Pearson wandered over to talk to him. He’d already been listening intently to various shady figures, and threatened a few. This man looked a little more… streetwise, though. Focused, too.
At last, Pearson strode towards the bar. He looked almost agitated.
“There’s been a food riot in the middle of the city. Apparently bloody Balliol’s got himself dragged away. No idea what’s happened to Hannel. On the other hand, I know where we need to go. Turns out the guy with no legs had to have them amputated after finding and trying to rob the place.”
Ti’ak, had he been human, would have gulped. His ears, nevertheless, flicked back nervously.
“What will we do about the others?”
“I don’t know, but we’ve got a job to do here. And all getting back alive isn’t actually necessarily part of it.”
“We can’t leave them behind!”
Pearson looked almost grim.
“You can’t start caring, Ti’ak. Do the job. Have fun doing it if you can, crack some jokes with friends while you have them. But for god’s sake don’t start caring. We get the information, we get it back home. That’s it.”
“Pearson…”
“Stay here if you need to. We can’t storm a court building, Ti’ak. I’ll try and find Hannel and see what we can find, quick reconnaissance. We’ll get back to you with whatever we see and then see if we want to go in further. That’s what’s important.”
Mort laid a hand on Ti’ak’s shoulder.
”Let him.”
Pearson exhaled, done being serious.
“Now to do what I do best.”
He grinned at last, pulled a pistol from a pocket and tossed it up in the air, firing off a tripwire on the ceiling that sent a javelin whistling just above his head. Catching the gun, he ducked out of the door once more.
“I have to do something.”
Ti’ak looked at Mort, who put his head on one side, as if weighing him up. Then he reached under the counter, and produced a rather unusual weapon. It had a thick stock, with some sort of rotating chamber inside, but at the front it elongated into a long groove with a horn bow resting at the end.
“A Chukonua.”
He handed the repeating crossbow to Ti’ak, who looked at it in a sort of wonder. The traditional weapon of the Grenlach militia had found its way to this inn… and in an odd sort of way, as he cradled the stock, it reminded him of home.
“How...”
The innkeeper allowed himself to wink at the Grenlach.
“Go get ‘em.”
PART FOURTEEN
The courtroom was panelled in dark hardwood, an imposing statement of the power of the Union’s state. Dagalin Saye was not terribly used to the justice system – he had evaded it at times in his earlier career but never seen it first hand – but this opportunity seemed too good too miss if the reports were true. He’d had to leave the siege behind, but he doubted anyone would notice, let alone complain about the technical dereliction of duty.
He ducked out into the sunlight, and headed across to the prison on the other side of the square.
The siege lines were tightening around Nurreich. The tiny country was in itself a fortress, built in the centre of a steep-sided mountain range. It was just cut off by a single river valley from the rolling mountains of the Draklands; the valley and the plain on the other side were both massed with troops.
It was possibly, thought Alicar, one of the largest siege lines in history. Or at least, in the history he knew of. The Vampire was nevertheless one of Kahlenbach’s Legion, and had seen a fair few sieges since his creation.
He stalked through the camp, noting with a faint approval the deference, the bowing, the scurrying out of his path.
“Where is the General?”
”We don’t know, sir. He hasn’t been seen in some days.”
“He left?”
“On his own, sir. Went northwest up the road.”
“How strange. I would have thought I might have met him on the way then. No explanation at all?”
“Nothing. Wrote all the officers notes on what they needed to do, then went.”
“And you have no ideas on why?”
He sounded so human, thought the officer. So damned human. He’d been commanded Alicar before, one of the cleverer Vampires he’d come across. He liked to mask his lack of understanding of human brains with conversation; he lacked inspiration, but he was good at teasing it out of those around him in a way that rarely betrayed that it hadn’t been his all along. And he hadn’t spent much time playing politics, he’d gone for the army and now was governing the defeated province that had once been the Axiosan kingdom. He knew a few things about power, did Alicar.
“No, sir. No word, nothing.”
“Curious. Nevertheless, to business. I have brought as many militiamen as I can spare. I will take command of the siege for the time being. I want an errand runner as soon as possible, with a fast horse. The time has come to make a move, gentlemen.”
He meant it, and the officer knew it. However, the officer only knew one way in which he meant it. Alicar knew several.
Kaia gritted her teeth, and pulled the cannon-spike free. Dangerous work, but the walls had to hold. But it was all very odd indeed. You have an enemy, you think they can make Vampires at will. You find their largest army, it is entirely lacking in anything remotely of the night whatsoever. What is that about?
Nevertheless, they were here so they may as well be useful. Olaf walked over to where bodies of the four guards were lying in a neat pile, and looked down from the escarpment where the cannons were sat back down to the main Union camp.
“Get down! Down!”
The there of them huddled behind a cannon, and watched as a figure strode through the camp by torchlight. Men hurried out of their tents in rank and file; orders were being barked.
“Who is that?”
The plainsman stared, hawk-eyed.
”Vampire. Senior, old one. You can tell by the coat, he’s got medals and a lot of class.”
Kaia looked up.
“What does he look like?”
“Longish hair tied back, high hat, tapered jaw…”
”Wears a coat with slight tails? Carries pistols with gold butts?”
“Aye. You know him?”
She bit her lip.
“The beast that destroyed Axiosa? The thing that killed my father and my brother? The best holder of grudges in the known world? Oh, yes… I know Alicar.”
Then, suddenly, she grinned. Huar and Olaf looked at her quizzically, but she quickly explained.
"If the guard we killed was right and that was General Saye that left recently without warning, he's just caught him on a dereliction of duty. Which is exactly the charge on which Saye managed to take control of the Axiosa campaign from him. Alicar held a grudge against my family for an entire human lifetime for what we did at Jungra. I think he can spare half a decade for Dagalin Saye."
Dagalin brushed past, glancing to one side. There was a figure, hooded and cloaked, standing in the shadows. How interesting. It looked very like an escape attempt.
For a moment, he considered finding out, or telling the gate guards. That said, they looked pretty scrawny, and they could do with the initiative test. Instead, he plucked a dart from the lower lining of his coat, and after passing the guards he surreptitiously slotted it into a slim tube that was concealed in an inner pocket. That would be sufficient. He strode up the steps into the tower over the prison entrance. The room had a couple of grilles in the floor from where the duty captain could look down on the two guards below.
He stood over the guard captain, tall and pale. The square-jawed man looked up at him, and blinked in surprise.
“You know who I am.”
The man looked up. He went pale. Then a little paler.
”Yessir.”
“Three things, then. Firstly, I want to see the werewolf you apparently have cooped up here. Don’t bother denying it. Secondly, your prison is a tip and the security is terrible. And thirdly… now, what was the third thing?”
There was a quiet whoosh of air, a rattling gurgle, and then the thud of a dead body below them. And then another. Footsteps pattered off into the prison courtyard.
“Ah yes,” he said brightly. “That was it.”
Ti’ak scuttled along through the courtyard, and then through into the cells. There were relatively few holding cells, and judging by the noise the newer prisoners (that is, the ones still loudly complaining) were through a door to the left.
He put the crossbow down, and fumbled around for lockpicks. Picking locks was a skill that Ti’ak had learned relatively recently; he had rarely considered the idea of fighting, but escaping had definitely seemed worth preparing for.
Nevertheless, a tension rake worked from either side of a lock.
He worked fast, trying desperately to get through the door before another guard came. He had shot three men already, and was feeling quite sick about the fact. But now was not the time for sickness. His mind, like a cord being pulled taut, focused in on his work. The clicking of the tools was all he could hear, the rest of the world just a bowstring waiting to be loosed…
And then, suddenly, a cold feeling broke the tension. Grenlachs feel pain very differently to humans, but nevertheless the sensation was agony. Fire and ice seemed to be spreading through his body. The long knife slid out from his back again, and Ti’ak slumped to his knees. The voice of Dagalin Saye forced its way into the Grenlach’s crippled mind.
“It’s important, I’ve always felt, to take precautions. There are only about a hundred Grenlachs within the Union, and yet somehow I always seem to have the right poison on me. Funny thing, isn’t it?”
”Damn,” thought Ti’ak, as his vision rapidly grew blurry and his head spun from the loss of blood. Unconsciousness too him a moment too quickly; had he remained awake a moment longer, he would have seen the human’s lips frame the words “Mort Turanne”.
Morgan Saye watched as another load of prisoners were marched through the tunnels. They had nearly five hundred held down here now; Kahlenbach’s legion had been a mere hundred and twenty. Dagalin wanted to create enough vampires to rule the world, and the machinery below him would let him do exactly that.
Loyalty was the key to Morgan’s mind. He had bee brought up knowing nothing but the need to do his duty, and to make sure nobody got in the way. The young man was tough, reliable, and with only one true virtue, just as his brother had intended.
“What’s wrong?”
“There was a Grenlach trying to break some people out of prison. Mort sent him.”
“Mort?”
“Aye. I don’t know what game he thinks he’s playing, but I’m sure as sure that the weapon he was carrying had been modified by that man. I’ll need to stay in town longer than I’d thought and investigate.”
”You know best, brother.”
Even when he didn’t.
They were pulled forward, step by step.
“I don’t care,” the young guard had said when the prison commandant complained. “They’re all coming down, money or no money.”
And so they did; Bailliol, Katja, and a hundred or more others in rags or clothes or whatever they had been pulled off the street in. From the prison, a shaft led down underground; it swiftly widened into a high, long cave. There were galleries looking down on the entrance way; if anyone had run the troops above them could have picked them off like fish in a barrel.
“Where are we going?”
“What’s happening?”
“It’s dark!”
“Why are they taking us down here?”
The questions, whispered in undertones, rippled back and forth down the line.
No escape, plenty of light so no shadows to slip into. But this was not simply another prison. None of them knew what it was, though an idea was beginning to form in one of their minds.
”Katja. What if this is-”
“You! No talking!”
A guard crunched a sturdy club into the back of the young engineer’s head. So Katja never got the warning.
And it was a long time afterwards, when this story was written down, that someone looked at it and wondered what might have happened if its central players had known a little more or whispered a little quieter. Perhaps, in some other universe, they did, and maybe things turned out a little better or a little worse. Maybe somewhere out there a reality existed where after it was all over the protagonists were able to sit down together and discuss the same question.
Not in this one.
PART SIXTEEN
The main underground hall was a mass of glittering glass and shining metal, lit by oil lamps hung from the walls. The lights danced across strange gas-filled pumps and the air was heavy with sweat and fear pouring from the prisoners who stood in line. The soldiers were nervous, too; jittery, fingers stroking their triggers gently.
“This is the facility.” A single voice, commanding, harsh against the humming and hissing of the machines around him. “As a formality Jones, the vampire standing behind you with ten riflemen and two steam-guns, will order his men to kill you if you attempt to escape. I advise you not to do so, because what we are going to do here today is for the benefit of both yourselves and your country. You will leave here fairly shortly, and will be given the opportunity to do great service to the Union’s goals of modernisation and progress.”
Morgan said the word “progress” as the priests of Jupiter might say “salvation” or a captain might cry “land ho!” It was the end, the end of all ends, and all the means to get there were nothing more than processes.
Katja strained to make him out through the haze of steam. He was standing on a balcony, well away from the machines (and thus presumably any potential danger from them). He was a well-built young man, with broad shoulders, close-cropped dark hair, and a fine beard. Their captor did not seem overly harsh, and his voice was enticingly bold.
A glance at Bailliol told her that he was barely conscious. He would be no help to anyone now, surely... The Grenlach was gone, Hannel and Pearson gone. Her wits were all she had.
She looked up again at Morgan, who wore the look of a job well done. The prisoners were a little calmer, the machinery was ready, and he was about to create an army that would let his brother conquer any nation they pleased.
And then, across the hall from the narrow prison entrance, doors slammed shut and shouting began. The main doorway erupted with gunfire.
Dagalin Saye had a few mobile prison carts which he kept in various major cities. One of them currently contained Mort Turanne. The old man had looked… well, unsurprised was really the only word. He must have known Saye was coming, and the general was a little unnerved that he hadn’t even set any new traps for him to find. The old man hadn’t spoken, either, as Saye pushed one of his less useful guards through the door of the already deserted Barrel to take the crossbow bolt for him then strode in to arrest its barman.
A runner came up to him. Black uniform. That meant the facility.
”Sir. Shooting. Two men, broken in. Morgan sent me to tell you.”
“Damnit. Get on the prison cart, man. Ride, damn you all! Ride!”
He and his four remaining horseman bodyguards spurred onwards, hooves pounding on the dirt. What the hell was this about? Was the old man in the back of the cart simply playing at some game, or was he genuinely determined to bring down his old protégé? If so, why? Dagalin knew he had more than enough contingencies to deal with it, but the fact that he couldn’t work out why… that was the devil of it.
On the other hand, he reflected, it might be good to have to wrestle with the devil of it. Keep things lively, at least.
They reached the barracks soon enough, and the General simply ordered everyone to go in via the main door. Best not to let them know about the Prison entrance, good to keep a few things up one’s sleeve. The units at the barracks here were particularly loyal – always worth paying a few men a little extra at times. Contingency plans. Saye was good at contingency plans.
Once the men had been seen off, Saye relaxed for a moment. It had been an odd day, a very odd day. Mort was still quiet in the back of the cart, two men could hardly hold off a battalion… things would be all right. Staying on top, Dagalin knew, was harder than getting there. He’d won this little bout, apparently with his old mentor as the opponent. How curious that Mort should oppose him now.
“Dagalin Saye, you are hereby under arrest by orders of the Council, for dereliction of duty!”
Vampires couldn’t innovate, but they could certainly copy. Alicar remembered hearing the same words – with a name change – shouted to him by the very man he was now arresting.
“Alicar? What the hell are you on about?”
“Exactly as I say. Step into the prison cart, please. I have a guard of eighty cavalrymen here to ensure you do as I say.”
“And if I refuse?”
“The remainder of the southern army is waiting outside the town. Oh yes, lifted a siege in order to remove the general and take control. Whose idea might that have been, I wonder? Strange how the wheels turn, Saye.”
“You moved… you pulled the siege lines… I’d say I couldn’t believe you did that if I didn’t know you were a bloody idiot. We have an important situation at vital facilities which I have to deal with. Get stuffed and you can play politics when I’m ready.”
In a flash, Alicar signalled and more musket barrels than Saye could count were pointed at him.
”I would dearly like to rip your throat out, Saye, but am informed you have… protection against that particular threat. Nevertheless, enough bullets will do the trick. In the cart.”
Dagalin Saye was dumbfounded. Alicar was practically being smart. Was this Mort as well? The barracks had just been cleared, or he’d have had tens of men out here with better bloody muskets than Alicar’s dratted dragoons. And they’d pulled up a whole siege line!
The next instinct that kicked in was self-preservation. Saye scribbled a shorthand note and slipped it to one of his guards with orders, then motioned to a nervous and confused prison guard to open the cart.
He walked into the darkness.