The Incorruptibles (7 page)

TEN

We gathered by the river in the half-light of dawn, the legionaries huddled in thick woollen paenulae with the hoods drawn over their heads, the cloaks’ lead-weighted hems stirring in the wind. They clutched stock carbines in nervous fingers and the wind whipping down off the mountains sent their plumed breath skirling into the early morning mists. The lictors – always prouder than the soldiers, made haughty by their vaunted position closer to the patrician class and their religious ordination – held their fasces high, showing the silver axes bound with holly fronds. One carried a carmine brag-rag mounted on a pole, legion-style.

They’d brought over the wagon in the night, loading it and a couple of draft horses onto a raft made from planks and cleverly inflated auroch bladders and manoeuvred her in the dark across the Big Rill with paddles and poles. I harnessed the horses to the wagon and told the soldiers to climb aboard. The quartet of lictors could ride, and I indicated for them to find mounts. We had enough to spare.

‘First sign of trouble,’ Fisk said to the legionaries as a group, ‘you boys bail out of that wagon.’

Half of them blinked and stared stupidly, not understanding.

Fisk snapped his fingers, a bright, hard sound even with the wind.

‘Understood? We see one sign of stretchers, you hit the ground and flip this wagon on its side. Got me?’

There was a muttered assent and nodding of heads. Fisk looked at me and then the soldiers in the wagon, indicating they were my charge now.

Gnaeus sat on his charger, carbine in hand, chatting with the ladies of the
Cornelian
. Hard to tell if he was already drunk or if he’d just stayed that way all night.

‘You’ll see, Isabelle. You’ll witness these brute animals. They’re great stupid woolly creatures, and they stay grouped together even when they’re being slaughtered.’ He waved clumsily at the dark plains.

The fine-featured Medieran girl listened to Gnaeus, nodding. She had a long neck and a fine figure, and sat the horse well, decked in suede riding leathers, nicely cut, and a dainty riding cabassette perched atop her beautiful, dark curls.

She was certainly easy on the eyes.

‘Brutish beasts that match the brutish inhabitants of these colonies.’ Gnaeus turned slowly and looked at Fisk. ‘These protectorates are filled with the most base and aberrant of all men, Isabelle. Remember that! Always keep this in mind. They’ll have at you in a trice if you give them an opportunity.’

‘Have at me?’ She smiled and hid a giggle behind a gloved hand.

‘They’re scurrilous, randy dogs. They’ll hump their own mothers given half the chance.’

I’ve spent the last ten years with Fisk. Seen him called everything. He’s like stone, he is. But I could see in the set of his jaw, the cant of his shoulders, the muscle popping in his cheek, that he was exercising vast restraint.

Any other man. Any other …

Fisk is my partner, but I have no illusions on the destination of his immortal soul. He’s damned as surely as the sun rises, as sure as the grass continues to grow. He loves the Hellfire. He loves his gun. He’s a hard, unyielding man, with a long memory and impervious to regret. But there’s kindness there, too, under all that. There’s love and remorse. He’s destined for perdition’s flames, but there’s good in him too. I believe that, otherwise I wouldn’t have ridden with him these past long years. At least that’s my view.

Banty moved his horse closer to the Medieran lass. The beasts chuffed their heads and champed in the dust. Isabelle greeted Banty, with a dazzling smile that suffused her face with a radiance to match the rising sun.

And looking at Banty now, I thought how little difference there was between him and Fisk except for the years and experience of hardship. Banty could almost have been his son, his younger brother.

He’d be as hard, too, recalcitrant and cold. If he lived that long.

The legionaries in the wagon had donned thick Tueton tunics – some more than one – and dyed leather britches. Some had focales twisted around their necks to preserve them from the cold mountain wind; others had their sagum wrapped tight around their bodies. From their belts hung longknives and pistols and utility aprons – no longer wearing lappets, instead, stained cloth hung from the belt in front – useful for wiping hands and cleaning blades during long marches or bloodwork. Only Banty bestride his horse was decked out in full Ruman uniform, although his Imperial blue jacket was devoid of phalerae. Even his boots were gleaming – he sure had dudded himself up.

Gnaeus noticed Isabelle’s smile and kneed his great charger forward, between Banty and the girl.

Banty, showing some sense for once, tipped his hat and moved his horse away.

Gnaeus beamed. He pulled a silver flask from a pocket and drank, his carbine held loosely in hand.

Livia sat mounted beside Isabelle on a grey gelding, sensibly dressed in a thick furred vest with high collar, burnished grey riding skirt, and a fine pistol at her waist. Her sister, Carnelia, was similarly arrayed – and yawning.

Fisk drew near Gnaeus and Secundus. He held himself tight, his shoulders high and his reinless hand free but ready, near his six-guns. His hat was pulled down low on his brow, so that it was hard to see his eyes and, I imagine, whatever emotions lived there. Fisk was doing a job he really didn’t want to do, but damned if he wasn’t going to do it to the best of his ability.

‘Mr Gnaeus, Shoestring sighted the auroch about two hours ride from here. Should still be in that area. But we need to get moving. And there’s a stream to ford.’

Gnaeus, hearing Fisk, scowled, his face twisting in disgust as though, unbuttoning to piss, he’d discovered a leech in his britches. His expressions warred between sourness at Fisk’s presence and excitement of the hunt – not that it was going to be much of one, unless you counted what was most likely hunting
us
. Auroch are big, stupid creatures; Mr Gnaeus was right on that count. It’s a wonder they’ve lasted as long as they have.

I kicked Bess into a trot, and headed east. A lictor lost control of his mount; it wheeled and reared, and he hit the ground in a cloud of dust. Gnaeus snarled, ‘You. Get on the wagon with the legionaries.’

Blushing a deep crimson, the man dusted himself off and climbed among the men in the wagon.

I’ve been at the head, rear, and middle of a string of horses in my time, and they make a terrible ruckus. But once you get going, all those horses moving together, the wagon creaking, it’s a feeling like no other. All this life, Ia-given life, moving together with a single purpose. Damn shame, sometimes, when all that life comes together to take life. I’d hate to be a part of an army on the hoof, carrying damnation with them. I figure it would feel wonderful and terrible all at once.

Just as the sun crested the horizon, sending pink and purple streamers into the sky, Fisk rode over and matched Bess’s pace.

‘You think that Gnaeus will get up to his antics?’

‘If he doesn’t, Banty will.’

He spat. ‘Shit.’

‘Mr Bantam showed me some of his shooting yesterday on the plains.’

‘How’s that?’

‘He bagged some quail.’ I kept an eye on the horizon as we talked. ‘He drew faster than shit through a goose. Missed his first shot, though.’

Fisk looked at me close, checking I wasn’t pulling his leg. Then he nodded. ‘Think he’ll cause trouble?’

‘Well, the boy’s aggrieved, that’s for damn sure. You snipped his prick a few notches when you backhanded him. He ain’t gonna forget that anytime soon.’

‘And Gnaeus. Damnation.’

I waited, letting that last bit hang. ‘Hell, Fisk. We’ve been in far worse spots than this.’

He looked at Miss Livia, and then away, quick-like. ‘Yeah. I reckon so.’

‘Maybe there are some complications.’ The woman. The
vaettir
. The Cornelians. ‘Not much we can do other than cut and run. That what you want to do?’ I already knew the answer.

He glared at me. ‘You can be cruel, Shoe, when you have a mind. But I’ve always known that about you.’

‘Not cruel. Just trying to get you to buck up, pard.’

He spat again. ‘That right?’

I grinned. ‘That’s right.’

Secundus reined in, dropping back to us. ‘Everything all right?’

Fisk nodded. ‘Gonna ride our backtrail for a bit. Shoe, you watch the women and wagon.’ He turned his horse. ‘Mr Secundus, I’d be much obliged to you if you would …’ The black turned again underneath him, ready for movement. ‘If you’d do your best to restrain your brother. At least during the hunt.’

‘I’ll do what I can.’

Fisk paused for a moment, his gaze flicking toward the women, and I could have swore he was about to say, ‘And look after Miss Livia,’ but he shut his mouth and rode west, back toward the mountains.

‘He’s a strange man, that Mr Fisk.’ Secundus’ words suggested puzzlement, rather than condemnation.

‘I once knew a man who had one of those intestinal eels from far Tchinee. Rode with him for a year. Been a lascar in his youth and fallen overboard in eel-infested waters. Didn’t look like nothing was wrong with him, either, having that eel living in his belly. At night, after the fire had died down and he started to snoring, that eel would get curious, stick its head out of the man’s mouth, and chitter at whoever noticed it.’

Secundus said, ‘You’re joking, surely.’

I smiled. ‘Not about this. Saw it myself.’

‘What happened to the man?’

‘We were outriding the far reaches of the Big Empty. All our meat was gone, we’d been living on hardtack for a month, and it was bitter cold. Foot of snow. So we stoked the fire high, gave Jimbo an extra ration of whiskey, and waited for him to sleep.’

‘And …’

‘Eel peeks its head out around midnight. Starts a’chittering away. We grab it, pull it out. It’s screaming at us like an infant, but vicious and hateful.’ I shook my head. ‘I’ll swear on my mother’s life it was cursing us.’

‘I find this hard to believe, Mr Ilys.’

‘Believe what you will. There’s strange like Mr Fisk. And then there’s
strange
.’

‘But what happened?’

‘Jimson died before daybreak. We cut up the eel and cooked it. Tasted just like you’d think. Like bile and shit.’

‘That’s vile.’

‘Yep.’ I scanned the horizon again, and then looked back along the length of the hunting party. ‘Moral of the story? Don’t go swimming in far Tchinee.’

‘I’ll remember that.’

‘Could you do me a great service, Mr Secundus?’

‘What do you need? I will help if I can.’

‘Rejoin your brother and sisters. Keep that Hellfire at the ready. Don’t drink any of your brother’s whiskey. And watch the plains.’

‘You’re worried about the possibility of indigenes?’

Had to admit it. ‘Yep. That’s a hand I wouldn’t bet against.’

‘A certainty, then?’

I looked at the young patrician. He was good looking, honest, lively. A face as wholesome and open as the plains – before either man or
dvergar
came along and befouled them.

‘If there’s anything I’m sure of, Mr Secundus, trouble is waiting. Just don’t know where it’s gonna come from.’

‘I’ll stay alert.’

‘My thanks, sir. And, please, if you would, have a word with Miss Livia.’

He raised his eyebrows.

I liked the lad, but he just confirmed that these Ia-damned patricians didn’t seem to understand the nature of the stretchers. If we were in the deepest tracts of Aegypt, they’d watch out for the lion. But they couldn’t seem to understand that these indigenes were a thousand times more dangerous.

Or maybe he
did
understand. Maybe.

I stopped my mule and waited for the highborns to come abreast me so that I might speak to Livia.

As they neared, I heard Gnaeus say, ‘If this hunt comes up short, I’ll have the surly one crucified.’

‘I’m sure you’ll find something to shoot, brother.’ Carnelia looked tired in the morning light, as though she’d rather be sleeping. There was no giggling now. Her vitriol was all by rote. ‘You wear your bloodlust like father wears his toga – messily, and stained with red.’

‘Ia’s beard, Carnelia, I need to have you bridled just to shut your mouth. But that might lower morale on the ship. The fellows would miss their fellator.’

‘That again?’ Carnelia laughed. ‘You’d know more about cocks than I, brother. I am but a lowly, cunning daughter, but you’re a great
cunnus
of a Cornelian.’

Secundus snorted, checked himself, and looked at his brother, who was glaring about, looking for someone to shoot. His gaze fastened on me.

‘Ah, the dwarf is here,’ he said. ‘Tell me, half-man, how far to the sport?’

‘When I scouted yesterday, the auroch were not more than two miles from this point. But the herd could have moved since then.’ I scratched my cheek. ‘Or come closer. Never know.’

Gnaeus sat silent, looking at me as though I was some dung served up steaming on a platter. He sucked his teeth and put his free hand on his hip.

‘You see his lack of deference?’ he said. ‘These colonists have no respect for their betters.’ He shifted in his saddle, and his eyes became little pebbles in his face. ‘Tell me,
dvergar
, is it true your kind rut in the mud?’

It was an old joke, and a poor one.
Dvergar
have always been close to the earth, children of the mountain, children of the stone. We work metal, we dig mines. And great brutes like this Gnaeus love our ore while ridiculing us for getting it.

In a lightly accented musical voice, Isabelle said, ‘Is that necessary, Gnaeus? Does he deserve such scorn?’

‘He deserves whatever I see fit to give, Isabelle. I am Ruman.’

She lowered her head so that her face was hidden and said, ‘Pardon this observation, but, if your issue is his manners, it seems he has more than a Ruman, if your treatment of him is any indication of the general demeanour of Rumans.’

Blood rushed to the highborn lad’s face, and veins stood out in his neck. ‘Are you intimating that we have not treated you well, Isabelle?’

Carnelia erupted into peals of laughter. Forced laughter, intended to goad.