Merion gulped.
ASHA
28th June, 1867
O
dd eyes—one blue, one green, mismatched and gleaming—blinked in the hot sunshine, taking stock of the fort that sat like a fat slug on the distant hill.
Gavisham produced a handkerchief and mopped his sweaty brow. This country was hotter than he cared to think about. He had grown far too used to the gloom and rain of London’s bosom. Even her summers were pale, sickly cousins to the mighty heat of the wild west.
How did Suffrous handle this?
he inwardly muttered.
Gavisham made his way towards Fort Kenaday and the town that clung to its tall wooden walls like a twisted cluster of limpets. A single column of black smoke rose from a corner of the walls, drifting into the empty blue sky. There had been trouble, then, perhaps the day before. Gavisham could make out people milling around the fort, barely the size of ants at that distance, just black spots on the red and yellow sand.
Gavisham had seen worse since his time on the frontier—a handful of days at most. Fell Falls, though he had only seen it from a hilltop, had been a burnt-out gash in the ground. Annihilated, would be the word. Even the railroad had been prised up from its roots and scattered across the sand. The towns between here and there had fared little better.
These Shohari were vicious creatures. Wild beasts turn that way, when they are consistently poked and prodded into a corner. And now it looked as though their ferocity had reached Kenaday. In truth, the manservant could not have cared less. It was far from his business.
Gavisham idly surveyed the long-limbed bodies he came across lying in the sand, curled in odd positions and already beginning to stink in the sun. Vultures scattered, making off with their ragged bleeding scraps, as he picked a slow and ponderous path. The bald-headed birds squawked harshly, cursing the strange-eyed traveller for ruining their mealtime. Gavisham watched them awkwardly hop and flap, their bones too big for their bodies.
The sound of hammers and toil grew loud as he approached the fort. Shirtless men hacked away at the burnt section of wall, pausing only to wipe the sweat away and kick the splinters down the hill. Gavisham had seen the wounds of war before, and these were different. The fire was concentrated on one spot on the walls. Only magick fire could be controlled like that. These Shohari shamans were smart—perhaps not so vicious after all.
A dozen soldiers stood in a thick clump at the open gate. Gavisham brought his hands out of his coat pockets, adjusted his tie, and then held his hands out, open and empty.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said, as he approached.
They had already levelled their rifles at him. War has a habit of breeding suspicion, dark notions copulating like rats.
‘What’s your business here?’ challenged one of them, a major by his uniform, with a flash of red hair on his head.
‘Safety, if there’s any on offer, Sirs,’ Gavisham replied, taking off his bowler hat and stowing it under his arm. ‘It’s not safe out in the desert.’
‘You came from the west?’ asked the major.
‘That I have. From Elken,’ Gavisham said.
‘Elken was razed to the ground a week ago. And you don’t sound like you’re from ’round here,’ one of the other soldiers said, snorting, a fat-faced man with big ears.
Gavisham flashed one of his trademark smiles, a gold tooth in the corner of his mouth. ‘Empire born and bred, indeed, but I came out here to seek out a friend of mine. Make sure he’s safe.’
The major with the fiery red hair stepped forward. ‘Who’s your friend?’ he asked, trying to decide which coloured eye to stare into. He had never seen such a thing. They were quite off-putting, to say the least.
‘A young man, barely more than a boy in fact. Empire-born just like me. His father’s sent me to look after him, what with the war and all,’ Gavisham replied, almost conversationally, and then added a ‘Sir’ to sweeten the deal.
‘And does he have a name, or is he just “boy”?’ asked big-ears. Gavisham turned and fixed him with a sickly sweet smile, disguising the hard look in his incongruous eyes.
‘Tonmerion Harlequin Hark,’ he replied.
‘Well, that’s a mouthful,’ laughed one of the other soldiers.
‘You Empires and your na—’
‘That’s enough!’ snapped the major, and they fell silent.
Rifles were lowered and the men stepped aside as the major beckoned forward. ‘I think you’d better see the Brigadier General. He’ll want a word with you, about the boy.’
Gavisham tilted his head to one side. ‘Is he in trouble?’
The major scratched his head. ‘He will be. Follow me,’ he said, stepping inside the shadow of the walls and resting his long rifle against his shoulder.
‘What’s your name, soldier?’ Gavisham asked casually as they walked. His quick eyes noted the barricades, the scorched patches in the dust, and the broken arrows littering the parade ground. A few cloth-wrapped bundles lay in a pile against a far wall. A few women and men knelt beside them, scratching cog-like symbols in the dirt.
Maker’s Workers
, Gavisham inwardly snorted. Religion was a velvet rope that tied the hands behind the back. A pair of silk-lined blinkers for the eyes. Poison laced in sugar. That’s how he saw it. All the fawning and the guilt. No, he had no religion save blood, and that suited him just fine. He pitied those who searched for gods and makers in the sky.
Is there not enough in this earth to occupy them?
‘Major Doggard,’ grunted the man. Something was worrying this soldier, Gavisham could see it in the angle of his neck, and the slits of his eyes. He knew more about Merion than he was letting on.
‘I’m Gavisham, Arrid Gavisham.’
‘Mhm,’ muttered Doggard, shaking his hand firmly.
In the centre of the fort was a lodge made of stacked logs and wooden slats nailed and hammered together. The door was open, and Gavisham could hear shouting emanating from inside. He sucked at his gold tooth thoughtfully. The shouting grew to deafening heights as the two men trod the steps and entered the relative cool of the lodge. It took a moment for their eyes to adjust after the bright sunlight.
War turns people into different things. Some men it turns to cowardice. Some men it hardens, turning them inwards, pilfering their emotions. Some men it turns to madness—not a raving lunacy, mind, but a maddening desperation that pollutes, twisting decisions and topping them to the brim with resentment. Desperate like the fingers of a man clinging to a cliff. Fingers which are slowly, yet inexorably peeling away. Men like that only know how to do one thing, and that is to howl at the top of their lungs. Gavisham found himself sandwiched between both the hardened and the maddened: Doggard, the former, and this rotund general, the latter.
The general was pacing to and fro behind a desk that played sea level to a mountain range of documents and reports. In front of him was a messengerman, clutching a crumpled letter in his hands. His chin was firmly affixed to his chest, as though if he looked at the floor long enough, the general might just get bored and stop shouting at him.
But the general showed no sign of that. Ignoring Doggard and the newcomer completely, he continued to rant and rave, bellowing at the top of his lungs. His chubby face was already a crimson, and was gradually slipping to violet.
‘And you tell that sergeant of yours that I don’t care how many men he needs! He holds that crossroads or he dies doing it, do you hear me? I won’t have this fort put in danger because of his stupidity and ineptitude! Seventeen men!
Seventeen
men he has! How many more does it take to hold a scrap of road against these worthless desert rats.’
The messengerman dared to pipe up. ‘But Sir …’ He got no further than that.
‘No buts! Put a bullet in them and they die like everybody else! You tell him that, you hear me?’
It’s hard to put a bullet in something when it can melt metal to liquid in mid-air
, Gavisham thought to himself. The train to Wyoming had fed him many such stories. He had listened to the soldiers nattering fearfully as he feigned sleep and ignorance.
‘The railwraiths, Sir …’ the messengerman tried one last time.
‘I will not hear that nonsense! The Shohari and those blasted abominations
cannot
be in league with each other! The next man to spout such ridiculous notions will be hanged. From the fort gates! Now go, before I make you the first!’ shrieked the brigadier general.
Gavisham had taken an instant dislike to this man. He had seen many of his kind in the past, sending man after man to their needless deaths, all because of pride and desperation. But this was not his fight, and so he pasted a smile onto his face as Doggard stepped forwards to introduce him.
‘Brigadier General, Sir,’ said the major.
The general barely spared them a glance as he continued to circle his desk. ‘What is it now, Doggard? Can’t you see I’m busy trying to win a war?’
Doggard held back a sigh. ‘Yes, Sir, of course. But this man has just arrived at the fort and …’
The general’s head snapped round so he could glare at the newcomer with his pig eyes.
‘Another ungrateful refugee, is it? He can go in the shed with all the rest.’
‘No, Sir. He’s here looking for Merion Hark. This is Arrid Gavisham. Mr Gavisham, this is Brigadier General Lasp.’
The boy’s name stirred an extra shade of cherry in Lasp’s cheeks. He ignored the hand that Gavisham extended, placing his sweaty palms on the desk instead and eyeballed him from under equally sweaty brows.
The general hissed between gritted teeth. ‘That
ingrate
? That darned bastard who defied my orders? What could you possibly want with him?’
Gavisham kept his smile polite as he spoke. ‘That little bastard, as you so deftly put it, General, is of great importance.’
‘Oh,
is
he now?’ spat Lasp. ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Gavisman, but I have more important things to do than concern myself with some escaped refugee.’
Gavisham did not bother to correct him. Instead he folded his arms. ‘Escaped, you say? He was here?’
‘Oh, he was here alright, as I ordered him to be. But that bastard thought he knew better.’
‘Where is he now?’
Lasp thumped a fist on the table. ‘Probably dead in the desert with the vultures picking at him, with a purple arrow through his neck, him and those friends of his. That’s what they deserve, after I brought them into my fort, fed them, kept them safe from the Shoh …’
‘When did he leave?’ Gavisham cut across him.
Behind him, Doggard winced, curling inward. Lasp was not a man who was fond of being interrupted. It was a known fact that he detested it. He pushed himself up from his desk and marched around to stand in front of Gavisham, glaring daggers at the man. Gavisham stared right back, letting Lasp momentarily befuddle himself as he noticed the different colours of his eyes. It never failed.
‘Listen here, Gavisman, I don’t know who you think you are, and I don’t care to know. In
this
fort, I am in charge, and you will respect that, or find yourself in the stocks. Or outside the walls, fresh meat for those bastard Shohari, do you understand me?’ Lasp growled, spittle decorating his lower lip. ‘Or was that too fast for you?’
Gavisham flashed another smile before he struck, fast as a rattlesnake. His fist caught the general square in his bulging stomach and sent him reeling backwards against his desk, wheezing like a locomotive.
The soldiers in the room were too stunned to react. A few brought their rifles to bear, unsure of what to do, but Doggard held up a hand before dragging the Empire man back. Gavisham let him. He had already made his point, and made it well.
‘The name is Gavisham,’ he hissed, as Doggard held his arms back. Lasp clutched his belly and sagged against his desk.
‘How … dare … you …’ he gasped, utterly winded. Gavisham’s fist had caught him in the kidney, somehow reaching it through all the fat.
Gavisham’s voice was as coarse as flint. ‘I dare because I don’t answer to you. I’m here on official Empire business, at the request of the boy’s father. So if you don’t tell me when he left, and tell me right now, I’ll swing more than just a fist at you.’
Doggard and the other soldiers were wide-eyed. Part of them still clung to their oaths as soldiers and the chain of command; part of them were enjoying this immensely. It left them frozen yet bemused.
‘Week ago, maybe more,’ choked Lasp, his pig eyes sharpening their daggers to needles. ‘Now get out of my fort, before I have you shot.’
‘You’d better do what he said,’ Doggard whispered in Gavisham’s ear. ‘Before he shoots you himself.’ Doggard would not have put it past the general.
Gavisham nodded and let the major lead him out of the lodge. He could not resist but flash a smile at the furious Lasp before the door was slammed.
Doggard led him a winding path through the fort’s buildings, silent all the way. Gavisham could tell the man was waiting to say something, and so he waited patiently as he slyly slid a hand into his long coat and slipped something into his palm, then to his lips.
Just a drop, just in case
.
Within a few minutes, they had reached the northern wall, where the fortifications narrowed to a point and where a stable sat quietly in their shadow. A few horses snuffled at their hay bales, paying the two men no heed.
Doggard stopped beside the wall and ran a hand through his fiery hair, blowing out a sigh. ‘Never seen that before, that’s for sure. You Empire types are all mad.’
Gavisham winked. ‘You say that as if you’ve had some prior experience.’
‘The boy, Merion, he had the same sort of fire in him,’ Doggard replied, looking around furtively. There was nobody in sight. ‘He gave Lasp a tongue-lashing the night he escaped. I thought the general was going to explode. Didn’t go as far as to hit him though.’
‘Men like Lasp are poisonous. Need to be taught a lesson.’
Doggard took a deep breath. ‘I’ve been hearing that a lot lately,’ he said, meeting the man’s odd eyes.
‘Did you want to tell me something?’
Doggard nodded, leading Gavisham along the walls to where a small door was hidden in the tree-trunks of the walls. The major pointed to it. ‘This is where I let him go, him and his aunt, and another man. Big prospector type. Ex-slave by the look of his scars,’ Doggard said, pointing a finger to his neck.