Foreign Devils (22 page)

‘Remarkable, though,’ Fisk said to Winfried. ‘For such a stout fellow to have such dainty—’

‘That’s enough of that,’ I said.

‘You could use a bit more meat on you, Mr Ilys,’ Winfried said and I
knew
she was trying not to laugh. ‘You look burly enough when clothed, but you’re white as a grub naked and could use some fattening before winter.’

‘The greenhorn now? Oh, damn this all to hell,’ I said, and walked from the waters. I used a rough wool blanket to towel off as gingerly as I could and dressed in fresh duds, not as trail-grimed. For the moment, due to the cold waters and cacique, I was relatively pain-free.

The night was mild and the cacique bladder was quite a bit lighter before I shut my eyes.

In the morning, it was overcast and a colder wind whipped down from the White’s skirts. It can get chilly even in summer on the plains.

‘Any sign of stretchers?’ I asked in a thick voice. I coughed into my sleeve, heavily. Black tracers swam in my vision and I felt like I was going to expire between the need to cough again and the apprehension of the pain each cough caused me. I was chilled to the bone now and no blanket or extra coat could warm me to my satisfaction.

‘None,’ Fisk replied. He looked haggard. I imagine he’d been up all night on watch. ‘The one you dropped must’ve scared them off.’

‘Must have ’em all out of sorts, what with—’ I hacked into my sleeve, each convulsion full of pain. ‘The marked up one.’

Fisk didn’t respond. Winfried went about camp, rolling blankets and feeding Buquo. Fisk rigged the travois to both Bess and the larger horse. When he was through, he said, ‘You want to go in the sling or on Bess?’

‘I’ll ride,’ I said. ‘Until I can’t ride any more.’

‘No need to break yourself over pride, Shoe. I can feel your fever from here,’ he said, holding out his hands like a man warming himself over a fire.

‘No,’ said I. ‘The travois is for the stretchers.’

Fisk pursed his lips but nodded.

It was harder to mount that morning, and in the end, Fisk had to help me up and tie me to the saddle once more.

‘Drink the cacique, Shoe,’ Fisk said, frowning. ‘As much as you can.’

‘Not much left,’ I said, raising the water bag.

‘Drink it.’

I did, though it didn’t leave me feeling much better. We started off and at some point I passed out either from the pain or the drink, I couldn’t tell you. When I woke, I was in the travois and the stretcher was trussed on Bess’ back. When Fisk heard my groans, he had Winfried slow Buquo and from on high, on the back of the draught horse, he looked down on me.

‘You were gone, pard. Hot as an ember to the touch. Like you’ve swallowed a
daemon
. Weren’t gonna stay on even when I tied you.’

I couldn’t respond. I was locked in some physical half-world where I had to cough but couldn’t. Where fire burned me but I was never consumed.

‘We’re almost there, Mr Ilys,’ Winfried said in a concerned tone. ‘I can see the smoke rising before us. We’ll be on a ferry to Porto Caldo within the hour. In two, we’ll have you in a barber or doctor’s care.’

‘You’re not gonna leave me behind, Fisk,’ I managed to get out.

Fisk was silent for a long while. ‘You’re deathly ill. You say the word and I’ll sit by your side and we’ll pick up the trail once you’re better.’ He sucked his teeth. ‘It’ll be colder than Brujateton by then, though, and no telling if Beleth will still be on the continent.’

‘Gods damn it, Fisk,’ I breathed. ‘That ain’t fair.’

I cursed then, cursed my luck. Cursed the
vaettir
. Cursed the non-existent gods. Cursed Beleth.

‘Go, damn you. Get that sonofabitch.’

‘I will keep you informed of the hunt, pard. And you can join us when you are better.’

‘Bah,’ I said.

We reached Porto Caldo before the afternoon was old and Fisk had Bess stabled and my person ensconced in a cheap quay-side hotel before dark. Porto Caldo is the small harbour on the Big Rill only an hour or so ride down-mountain from Hot Springs. Indeed, when I was young, Porto Caldo
was
Hot Springs, until they found silver in the Whites.

Fisk must’ve gone round to tithe at the crossroads college of the Mater, for two of the mother’s acolytes versed in bloodwork came by my room to examine me with cold hands and serious expressions. They made me drink a cloying honeyed concoction that would’ve had me swooning if I’d been able to stand upright, but merely obliterated all vestiges of consciousness. I passed out as the acolytes chanted over me and waved myrrh incense around the hotel room.

When I woke, the room was empty. My cough had eased and there was less pain in my chest. Maybe from the quality of the light or the sounds without the room, I knew days had passed. There was the clanging of a steamer’s bell, and the rough hollers of stevedores moving freight onto a barge, and the smell of cooking onions coming from downstairs and horseshit, river, and dead fish from the open window.

A note sat on the bedside table, along with a piece of parchment, some herbs, and a pitcher of water, a pitcher of wine. There were embers smouldering in the room’s small hearth, and a cast iron kettle above them, so someone had checked on me in my unconsciousness.

I picked up the note. It read:

2 Nones Sextilius, 2638

Shoe, my friend,

I’m sorry to have had to leave but there was nothing for it except to go. I waited until the Mater’s acolytes told me your internal wounds would not kill you and your fever had abated. I could not tarry here any longer.

I am bound south for New Damnation. I have taken a steamer and the Lomax woman accompanies me. I plan on buying a horse (or commandeering one) there and contacting Andrae to learn if he has any more information on Beleth.

Things in the larger world are deteriorating swiftly, my friend. Your predictions of war have proven true. As you already know, war has been declared by Mediera on Rume. News of the ambassador’s death travelled fast, and Mediera has withdrawn all its nationals from Rume and instituted a blockade in the Bay of Mageras. Now, there’ve been two naval skirmishes on the east coast of Occidentalia – both targeting munitions and silver bearing vessels. All of Rume’s legions are mustered and her navies roused into their most watchful and bellicose positions. I have this information from Hot Spring’s garrison commander who has it from on high – the information is, without a doubt, fresh from the commander’s bloody and cooling Quotidian.

The blockade in Mageras might be a boon to us in the hunt for Beleth – it will be that much more difficult for him to get off continent now. The other side of that denarius is that if he does gain passage, we will never reclaim him.

We have the two vaettir with us – heavily salted. Their flesh does not decompose at the rate of mortal flesh, yet it is fearfully malodorous nonetheless. Be glad you are not sitting atop this particular cargo.

Make haste, Shoe, in your recovery but do not hazard yourself. I know your
dvergar
blood gives you a resilience that lends an air of overconfidence. Rest until you are well. Once you are hale, come south immediately. I will leave word at garrisons and with Andrae as to my whereabouts.

I remain your friend,
Hieronymous Fiscelion Iullii

I pushed myself out of bed, drank heavily from the pitcher of wine, and then pulled on my trousers and buckled on my guns. My chest hurt, yes, but it was just a niggling pain now and I would not be separated long from the hunt. Gathering what little gear I had – my money pouch remained around my throat – I went downstairs to settle up with the hotel owner and find passage south for me and Bess.

NINETEEN

4 Ides of Sextilius, 2638 ex Ruma Immortalis

I was able to gain passage on a steamer barge downstream that afternoon, though it cost dear – a silver denarius dear – and I had to show the papers Cornelius had provided me and threaten to bring the portmaster before the captain of the barge, a stout, low-slung
daemon
-fired vessel called
Gemina
, would agree to my passage. It was the fourth day before the Ides of Sexitilius and I was six days behind Fisk.

The barge was very similar in layout to Maskelyne’s
Quiberon
, but without the rowmen slaves. It was possessed of a squat cabin for the captain, who was a dour man named Numask, on top of which sat the pilot’s roost. Trailing from those cabins were the crew mess and bunks, and a couple of staterooms that could be easily converted to more bunks. Beyond that was the domain of the engineer, a man whose name I never learned. In addition to the cabins, there was a large roofed cargo hold and livestock pen, on top of which extraneous passengers were allowed to make themselves a slow-moving camp, in the same manner as we had aboard the
Quiberon
. Captain Numask was kind enough to supply a rather moth-eaten canvas tent, but unlike the brusque Maskelyne, he did not allot any of his crew or servants to assist in its assembly on deck. So many hours into the night I struggled with the fabric and wood contraption and my aching chest proved a great detriment there.

The
Gemina
had far fewer lascars. Those it did have were
libertini
and in general a sorry lot, idle and profane, indolent. They lolled about near the swing-stages on the fore deck, gambling, smoking, and cursing. From what I could tell, the main cargo of the ship was silver pigs and there was a heavily armed cadre of fierce-looking men, clad in the black and gold livery of the Tempus Union – a militarized delivery company out of Encantata – all speaking Brawley, guarding the precious stuff.

Once erected, mine was not the only tent on the roof of the
Gemina
. There was a pair of hard-faced female
pistoleros
escorting what looked like an extravagantly rich sweetboy and, curiously, a clutch of
dvergar
tradesmen, maybe five all told. Judging from their garb and features, they looked to be of the eastern Eldvatch clans. Like me, they had pitched their tents far down-wind of the
Gemina
’s sulphurous stacks. They regarded me warily and did not respond to my greetings given in our natural tongue. It was a large vessel, and there was ample room on the warehouse roof and much space between our tents.

After I tended Bess in the livestock hold, I returned up deck to my tent to have a dinner of hard-tack. One of the Tempus Union guards watched me with a baleful glare, as if at any moment I would make an attempt to steal a silver pig twice my own weight. I stared back at him, blatantly, too tired to do anything else. An evil smiled crept across his face, like oil on water. I did not linger about on the lower deck long enough to discover the cause of the man’s mirth.

It was too easy to compare the comfort of the
Quiberon
to the dearth of it here on the
Gemina
. Indeed, as I half reclined outside my tent and smoked and watched the stars wheel overhead, the Whites pass by in a ghostly, luminous march, always aware of the thrum and shiver of the
daemon
-driven paddle-wheel, I allowed myself a short pig’s wallow in self-pity. My cacique gone, my tabac pouch near empty, and once again alone beneath the vault of heaven.

And war was coming.

I might’ve fallen asleep. I don’t know. It was late at night and a considerable time from the first hour. The
Gemina
was quiet except for the thrum of its
daemon
within and the occasional nicker of horses below me. We were anchored near the eastern shore, since night travel was perilous on the Big Rill even for the
daemon
-fired; the paddlewheel was still and all was silent. If there were Tempus Union guards alert and on guard below on the deck, I could not discern them.

When I rose to enter my tent to find what warmth and comfort my blankets and sleeping roll would provide, quite chilled from the easterly mountain wind, the moon was fat and white as a grub burrowing into the field of night above me, casting the
Gemina
, the Big Rill gurgling around us, the scrub-brush and bramblewrack on the shore, the gambel trees beyond in a sickly-strange, washed-out half-light.

Standing slowly, I shook the blood back into my feet, and stretched out the kinks in my back. A habit of old, I scanned the shorelines. The path of the Big Rill, in this part of the Hardscrabble Territories, was a snaking one, and the banks of the river to the west were eroded and quite high, twenty and even thirty feet above the surface of the water. There were many outcroppings of boulders and granite promontories, scrubbed with pine standing dark and narrow like spears pointing toward the sky.

I was about to turn away when something made me stop.

On the pine-wreathed promontory, far to the west, something came from the trees.

For a moment, I doubted my eyes, since I had been slumbering only a short while ago. There it was, a
vaettir
coming from the woods to stand openly on the promontory’s peak. I thought maybe it was simply a man out in the forests at night. But the moonlight showed it as if it stood in the rays of an invisible sun, starkly visible. Its massive frame, in proportion to everything around it, gave me no doubt that it was a stretcher.

And it watched me.

Gynth,
the stretcher had said.
We are kin.

Even from that great distance, I knew this. There was a shiver of recognition within me, something that went beyond predator and prey, something that went beyond hunter and the hunted.

It had saved me once, but still I thought of weapons. I had my knife in my boot, the silver one that slew Agrippina and put The Crimson Man back in his
daemon
hand. Slowly, I eased my Hellfire from their holsters and held them, waiting.

The
vaettir
was a half-mile away and I had a river between us.

It moved, almost faster than the eye could perceive. Leaping from the promontory’s peak, scrabbling from rock to rock like some possessed goat traversing a mountain-side, arcing through the air, landing in a crouch and surveying its position and then launching itself in the air again, downward, ever downward, until it stood on the rocky shore of the river.

It paused then, staring at me.

Its eyes were like black pools glittering with moonlight, and there was a strange discoloration about its face – its eyes and mouth were dark, bruised even. The creature’s mouth hung open – its matching rows of razored teeth visible even from this distance – but the most curious thing was that it was dressed like some revenant vorduluk recently having pulled itself from the earth. Its clawed hands were dirty and it was dressed in what looked more like a shroud wrapping than a woman’s nightgown. About its shoulders was the skin of a wolf, possibly, or a bear -- but uncured, and a mantle of gore and grime streaked away from its shoulders.

The elf looked at me, unblinking. Only the width of the Big Rill stood between us now. My six-guns would never reach it from this distance.

Gynth,
it had said.

Behind me I heard a heavy footfall. ‘Hello,
dwarf
, fancy meeting you up here,’ a voice said to my rear, rough and cold, making me want to turn but I dare not let my attention wander from the
vaettir
. An inch of skin squarely between my shoulder-blades began to itch.

The stretcher moved his gaze to whoever was standing behind me. I turned as fast as I could, backed away, holding one pistol on each.

The newcomer was the Tempus guard I had encountered below-decks. His grin stretched wider now, and his eyes were blacked to glittering onyx.
Daemon
held. Possessed. One of Beleth’s little leave-behinds.

‘Rend your flesh, I will,’ the possessed man said, crouching, his arms out, fingers splayed like claws. In a flash, I saw how similar the possessed and the
vaettir
were.

Falling backward, I fired; the boom of my Hellfire six-guns tremendous in the still night. There was movement and I smelled the heavy scents of hellfire and sulphur. I was dimly aware of movement off to my right. The
vaettir
I had come to think of as Gynth raced toward the still surface of the Big Rill, arms and legs a blur. It ran over the surface of the water.

They move like light on water, I’ve said before, but I always meant that metaphorically. I did not know it was true.

In seconds, Gynth had crossed the Big Rill and with a thud he was on the deck and standing over me, blocking my view of the
daemon
held guard.

Gynth gave a great screech that descended into a bellow. It sent all my hairs standing on end.

The Tempus guard took a step back at the sound – there were yells and exclamations of alarm from below – and then the
vaettir
was airborne, great clawed hands held out. Gynth snatched up the guard like a doll and whipped him about in his hands.

The possessed guard thrashed and ripped like a shark plucked from the sea in the stretcher’s grip, but he was no match for the
vaettir
’s inhuman strength. As they rose into the air over the deck, almost faster than the eye could follow, the elf twisted his great hands and one of the guard’s arms distorted and I heard a distinct
pop
as the ball-joint was ripped from its socket. Before landing, the
vaettir
gave the man’s head another quick swipe, nearly taking it off. The stretcher let the guard fall and then, at the very edge of the
Gemina
’s roof, he landed lightly on his feet and launched himself into the air again. When he landed on the surface of the Big Rill, he was already running, silvering a wake behind him.

The
Gemina
was coming to life around me, roused by my gunfire. Cries of alarm sounded and yellow kreosote lanterns and
daemonlights
were unbanked.

I approached the crumpled body of the Tempus guard, guns still out and trained on his form.

There was life in him still. The right side of his face was a ruined, bloody mess where the
vaettir
had swiped him with that terrible hand. The rest of his face was unmarred and his remaining eye fixed on me with malevolent glee.

From his chest pumped blood, black and shining in the moonlight.

From a bullet wound.

I raised my eyes from the dying thing to the far shore. The
vaettir
stood there, one hand upraised and a curious expression on its face.
Gynth. We are kin,
it had said. Thoughts of Neruda in the
Plaza de Monstruó
. Thoughts of hundreds of
dvergar
voices calling out in outrage and anger.

‘I’m sorry I said your mouth looks like an arsehole,’ I whispered to the thing. As I did, it turned and bounded back up the cliff, to the promontory’s peak, and disappeared into the woods.

It was then the cries of the other Tempus guards filled the air and the bright, high-pitched voice of the sweetboy cried, ‘Murderer! Here! Murderer!’