A Town Called Dust: The Territory 1 (4 page)

There was a knock on Lynn’s bedroom door: two short raps on the wood and then the door swung open. That was the way her father entered a room, confidently, without waiting for a response. Lynn spun to face the door, hiding the wooden sword behind her back as her father, Colonel Alfred Hermannsburg, strode into the room.

Alfred Hermannsburg was a tall man, wide shouldered, but lean at the waist like a precariously balancing pyramid. He was dressed in his formal uniform, a light green shirt and tie, stiff green jacket decorated with a golden rising sun pin, lengths of colored ribbon above the breast pocket and a red sash across the chest. He wore a sword at his belt. His light beard had been recently trimmed. A single eyebrow lifted above his green eyes as he looked at his suspiciously positioned daughter. Lynn edged slowly toward the bed, squeezing the wooden hilt of the sword behind her back and hoping she could somehow dispose of it without being seen as if she were one of those traveling magicians.

For a moment there was no sound but the repetitive
whomp
of the fan turning overhead. It rotated slowly, the grinding of its crankshaft and the clicking of its gears faint through the ceiling. It was doing little but churn the already stuffy air. Colonel Hermannsburg moved over and grasped the chain that hung from the fan, pulling it down with a firm yank. There was a loud click from somewhere above and the mechanical sounds died away. The fan began to slow to a stop.

“I told you not to waste energy,” he said. “The whole city is on restrictions.” He paused for a moment and then held out his hand. “The sword, Lynn.”

Lynn, safely on the other side of the bed, collapsed to the ground in an impressive faint. She rose again, the sword hidden from view at her feet, as innocent as a flower. Her father had not moved.

“The sword, Lynn,” he said again.

Lynn’s shoulders sank forward and her lips billowed out with a forceful sigh. She bent over, collected the wooden sword, walked to her father and placed it in his hand.

“This is the third one I’ve taken away this month, kitten,” he said. “Where do you keep getting them?”

“I make them myself.”

Colonel Hermannsburg looked at the hilt of the sword; it was engraved with the anvil symbol of a Digger blacksmith.

“Don’t lie, Lynn, it is unbecoming. Do you have any more?”

Lynn retrieved another of the wooden swords from beneath her bed and reluctantly handed it to her father.

“The training yard will run out if you keep taking them,” he said.

“I usually put them back,” Lynn answered, sitting, deflated, on her bed.

Lynn felt the mattress sink under his weight as her father sat beside her. She slid toward him, letting herself fall against him, resting her head on his broad chest. He put his arm around her and she inhaled the familiar smell of him, his natural musk mixed with sweat and dust.

“Ms Apple told me you gave up on your work, and that you’ve been arguing with her again.”

“The things she makes me do are so boring, Father,” Lynn said.

“And what would you rather be doing?”

Lynn looked at the wooden sword in her father’s hand.

“I’m sorry, kitten,” he said, “but Ms Apple’s right. You know girls aren’t allowed to be Diggers.”

Lynn lifted her head. “What else am I going to be?” she asked. “I want to be a Digger like you, a colonel.”

“I don’t doubt you could be, Lynn. You probably have the will to be the general.” Colonel Hermannsburg eyed his daughter with stern affection. “But I’m afraid I don’t dictate the law.”

“I’m nearly sixteen,” Lynn said. “I’m going to have to choose soon.”

“I know,” Colonel Hermannsburg said, squeezing his daughter in close to him. “You’re growing up too fast for my liking too.” He paused for a moment and then continued, “I had a visit from the High Priestess yesterday, kitten. She thinks you would do well in the Sisters. She’d like to meet you herself.”

Lynn pulled away and looked at her father coolly. “No,” she said, verging on tears. “Don’t you make me join the Sisters. I won’t.”

“I’m sorry you’re not a boy, Lynn, but if you were then you wouldn’t be you. Besides, I’m glad I have both a son and a daughter.”

“You don’t have a son.”

“Now, Lynn,” Colonel Hermannsburg said. “We’ve been through this. I’ve adopted Melbourne as my son, which makes him your brother. He’s a Hermannsburg now.”

Lynn said nothing. Colonel Hermannsburg smiled at his daughter. He rose from the bed and cut at the air with the wooden sword. Lynn felt the light movement of air on her face and heard the sword’s thick
swoosh
through the air, but it was nothing like the metallic ring of a real sword.

“Who have you been practicing with?” Colonel Hermannsburg asked.

“Nobody, I’ve just been practicing the movements you showed me.”

“I suppose I must blame myself for your love of swords. Perhaps I treated you too much like a son, but there’s not much we can do about that now, is there?”

Lynn didn’t answer.

“Come on, then,” her father said as he tossed Lynn the second wooden training sword. Lynn managed to catch it even though it bounced clumsily off her fingers and a quick dart of pain flew up her arm from the needle wound. Lynn was annoyed that her finger continued to sting when there was little more than a tiny red mark to show for it. She preferred it when she had proper bruises to show off.

She stood in front of her father and gave the sword a quick twirl around her arm. She had seen Melbourne do that in the training yard and had decided that if he could do it, so could she. She had dedicated herself from that moment to learning it. It was like her father had once said: if you’re no good with a sword, at least look like you know what you’re doing. A little fear can cause some enemies to make big mistakes.

Her father laughed at her flourish. “Attack then, sword dancer,” he said.

Lynn swept the wooden blade toward her father’s unarmed side and he batted the attack playfully away. She struck again, this time with a straight lunge, and again her father parried. Lynn moved quickly, just like he had taught her. Short, sharp attacks at first, nothing that would overbalance or overcommit her, but a constant stream of strikes and feints that forced her father to defend himself. Lynn imagined the great ringing as their steel blades clashed.

Colonel Hermannsburg blocked two or three more of these strikes before he found his opening. Lynn thrust forward. Her eyes went wide in a brief moment of panic as she felt the sole of her light slipper give way beneath her leading foot. She looked down to see that her foot had landed on a discarded dress that glided easily across the polished floor of her bedroom. As her foot slid away her weight went too far backward. She recovered as quickly as she could but she was not fast enough. Her father sidestepped and Lynn felt his wooden sword against her neck. He slapped the flat of his blade against her bare skin, hard enough to hear the
thwack
but light enough that his daughter would not be hurt.

“A swordsman must always watch their feet,” he said with a smile, “but a master swordsman will always watch his opponent’s feet too.”

Lynn felt the wood of her father’s sword move against her neck as she breathed.

“Do you yield?” her father said.

“I yield,” Lynn said.

As Colonel Hermannsburg pulled the sword away from his daughter’s throat, smiling at her, Lynn leaped into action. Just as she felt the wood leave her flesh she moved her sword upward in a smooth arc, stepping back as she did. Her wooden blade connected with her father’s fingers, a little harder than she had intended. She heard a meaty crack and her father dropped his sword.

Lynn felt her insides cool and her breath stick as she saw Colonel Hermannsburg’s playful expression dissolve. He rubbed his fingers and then curled them in and out experimentally. He reached out with his other hand and grabbed the blade of Lynn’s wooden sword, tearing it from her grip. Lynn felt the hilt of the sword pull from her palm. In that moment she realized just how easy her father had been on her in their mock duel. He surely had enough strength to snap her wooden toy across his knee.

Lynn looked up at her father. His face was not typically angry—most would have said he looked emotionless—but Lynn had seen the softness around his eyes vanish. When he spoke he did not yell, but Lynn considered his quiet tone to be much worse.

“When you yield,” her father said, “the battle is done. A Digger must have honor.”

Lynn wanted to clasp her hands over her eyes. Maybe she could physically push back the tears that threatened to come. But it was no good. She couldn’t hold them. Her lip quivered. Her father’s rigid stare made Ms Apple’s shouts and lectures taste like sugar pie. As Lynn spoke she felt ashamed, both of the way her words came in stuttered spurts and of what she had done to her father.

“I’m…sorry…Father,” she said, reaching out for his hand. “Is your hand okay?”

“It’s fine,” he said. “Come, we need to go to the oath-taking. Are you ready?”

Lynn wasn’t ready but she said, “Yes.”

Steven Square was used for most ceremonial occasions within the city of Alice, and today it was filling with a crowd. The square was just outside the walls of Government House, the lavish residence of the Administrator, his wife and, Lynn thought with a mixture of envy and disgust, Bren. On the other side of the square, its steeple looming over them like an all-seeing watchtower, was the Cathedral of the Church of Glorious God the Redeemer, seat of the High Priestess of the Sisters. Lynn always hated being in the square; she felt trapped between the Administrator on one side and the Sisters on the other. She sat in the front row of chairs before the makeshift stage where her father and foster brother waited along with a number of other young men who were about to be inducted as Diggers.

Lynn looked up at Melbourne. At eighteen, he wouldn’t have looked out of place carved from white marble. He was a golden boy: strong, fast, intelligent and disgustingly handsome. Lynn watched his angular face survey the gathering crowd. He smiled, showing his unnaturally white teeth, and waved. Lynn rolled her eyes and looked away.

Melbourne had spent the best part of the last four years at the Academy, training to be a Digger, a protector of the Territory, doing precisely what Lynn had wanted to do all her life. She had dreamed of being a Digger since she had first ridden around on the back of her father’s dog, swinging a rattle as though she were battling a horde of ghouls. Melbourne had only been back for a week and already the sight of him was grating on Lynn’s nerves, especially the way he wore his hair in that pretentious ponytail, the fashion with all recent Academy graduates. Grudgingly, though, Lynn had to admit that Melbourne had earned his place among the Diggers. During his time at the Academy he had been the youngest ever winner of the Academy’s running, swimming, shooting, wrestling, fencing, horse riding and—embarrassingly enough—sewing competitions. He had graduated top of his class.

If she was honest, Lynn wasn’t really surprised that her father had taken Melbourne under his wing. Alfred Hermannsburg was a famous Digger. He had worked his way up the ranks as a member of the Fence Guard and then as a lieutenant in the Reactionary Regiment, and then he had been made a captain in command of a unit of Rangers, those Diggers who braved long patrols out beyond the ghoul-proof fence. He was now a colonel, and sat on the Council of the Central Territory as Chief Military Advisor. Now, as the crowd chattered excitedly, he stood and moved forward, positioning himself behind a cone-shaped microphone and nodding to a young servant, who moved briskly across the platform. He knelt beside the whirler box at the base of the microphone and began feverishly turning the crank handle. Snaps, pops and hisses began to feed out from large speakers at either side of the stage. Colonel Hermannsburg held up his hands and a hush spread over the crowd in front of him like ripples across a pond.

“People of Alice,” Colonel Hermannsburg boomed. He was using his military voice, Lynn thought. She always found it a little intimidating, but at the same time she wondered whether the awestruck people around her knew he called her “kitten” and let her ride around on his back. “I thank you all for coming today,” he continued, his voice amplified across the square, “and extend a special welcome to the friends and families of these young men as we celebrate their taking of the oath to join the Diggers, the great defenders of the Territory.”

Clapping and cheering rose from the crowd. Lynn could feel how contagious the excitement was—she almost caught it—but it drained away when she realized she would never be allowed to take that oath.

“These brave young men have answered the call to serve and protect the Central Territory,” Colonel Hermannsburg said. “They may see battle with our great enemy the ghoul, but all of us see battle in our time, and not every battle is fought with a sword. As the Administrator has said, we must all remain vigilant about the danger we face in this world, and as the Sisters remind us, we must do this with great faith in God the Redeemer. Praise be to the Pure.”

“Praise be to the Pure,” the crowd intoned as one.  

“I would like to invite General Connor onto the stage to take the oaths.”

A new silence fell across the onlookers, something that felt like more than just the absence of sound, as if the crowd had drawn a collective breath and was holding it. A man began walking up the steps to the platform. Despite the heat of the day he was dressed in full armor that shone a deep jade green. A long green cape emblazoned with a golden rising sun, the symbol of the Diggers, flowed off his shoulders. He wore a crimson beret angled on his shaved head. A scar ran across his face, from the top of his forehead over his right eye and down until it was lost in the beard at the edge of his mouth. He took the stairs two at a time. A scabbard hung from his waist, and in the silence that had fallen over the yard the light click of it tapping against his armored legs could be heard with every step.

As General Connor approached, Lynn’s father snapped up a salute which the general returned before the two men grabbed each other’s forearms. They spoke in low voices, away from the microphone so the crowd could not hear, but Lynn was close enough to make out what was being said.

“It’s good to see you, Alfred.”

“And you, Wentworth. Thank you for doing this, I know you don’t make a habit of taking new oaths yourself.”

The general looked at Melbourne. “Not at all, Al,” he said. “The Training Master tells me Melbourne is the finest graduate we’ve had in many years. Better than you, they say, maybe even better than me.”

Lynn looked at Melbourne. She saw the smile on his face. She didn’t believe it. Melbourne wasn’t better than her father at anything.

“I’m afraid we will need to be quick, though,” the general said. “We must ride out.”

“You’re not going to stay for the evening?”

“There’s no time. I’m leaving on a patrol out to the fence.”

“You always did like to do things yourself, didn’t you?” Colonel Hermannsburg said, smiling.

“You know me,” the general said, “I don’t care for staying behind a desk.”

Lynn had been looking at Melbourne, watching his expression change from a smile to flat-faced worry. She realized he was nervous. For all his gallant exterior, Melbourne was actually nervous.

“Come, then,” General Connor said, turning to face the crowd and raising his voice so that all could hear him. It was clear he didn’t need to stand near the microphone for the speakers to throw his voice across the yard. “Let’s do this. Take a knee, boys.”

Melbourne and the twelve or so other young men on stage did as they were told, kneeling before the general and the crowd that watched them.

“Repeat after me,” the general said, and then cleared his throat gruffly. “Before the sight of the people of Alice and under the eyes of God the Redeemer, by the will of the Ancestors, I, say your name, do solemnly declare that I will give myself to the service of the Territory and protect her from all enemies, both foreign and domestic, and shall live within the will of the Administrator and the code of the Church until such time as I am released from duty by the spilling of my blood.”

Melbourne raised his head. The speakers hissed and gave a loud pop. He joined the others as each of them repeated the oath loudly, clearly and without fault, inserting their own name as they pledged to serve.

Wentworth Connor smiled as he drew his sword from the scabbard at his waist. “Then, as Commander of the Army of the Central Territory, having the authority under the rule of the Administrator and the blessing of the High Priestess, I accept your oaths and grant you the rank of Trooper. Welcome to the Diggers.”

The yard exploded with cheers. The servant beneath the microphone stopped winding the crank handle and collapsed into an exhausted heap on the platform. Colonel Hermannsburg smiled and placed his hand on Melbourne’s shoulder. Lynn listened carefully to try to make out what he was saying over the noise.

“You will learn quickly enough that there are no long goodbyes for a Digger,” he said. “You must go now and protect the Territory.”

“Thank you,” Melbourne said, “for everything. I wish my mother could have been here.”

Colonel Hermannsburg smiled. “I’m sure she is looking down on you with the Ancestors.”

“Come,” said General Wentworth Connor. “You will ride with me.”

“Thank you, sir,” Melbourne said.

Melbourne made his way down the stairs. Lynn realized the crowd was still clapping. Melbourne approached her. He looked bigger now that he was a real Digger. He bent and kissed her gently on the forehead.

“I know you don’t love me, Lynn,” he whispered, “but I will try to make you proud.”

She didn’t reply as he turned and walked to join the general. The spot on her forehead still tingled from his kiss. She felt her eyes growing warm, like she was going to cry, which was ridiculous. She didn’t want Melbourne around anyway.

Lynn looked up as she felt her father’s hand on her back.

“Just us now, kitten,” he said.

Lynn sniffed. “Good,” she said, but she knew it didn’t sound convincing.