Far Called Trilogy 01 - In Dark Service (75 page)

Weylanders came forward, men and women alike in a long line, rifles and clips passed among those who hadn’t already taken weapons.

‘Form two lines around the standing stones,’ barked Jacob. ‘Anyone with Vandian armour up front. Unarmoured folk as the rear line. Best seven shots up on the slopes to act as snipers. Find large, hard boulders to shelter behind. Open fire at three hundred yards and closer. Any target further than that will be wasted ammunition.’

A cough sounded. Carter turned around. It was Sheplar Lesh. He stood beside the Vandian woman who had flown his father to the sky mines. The Rodalian pilot bowed towards Carter. ‘With a kind wind, my debt to you and the raid’s survivors will be paid by the day’s end. My name and honour restored.’

Carter glanced around at the poisonous billowing clouds rolling down the volcano’s slopes. ‘There doesn’t seem too much chance of a kind wind today. But I reckon your name was carved on a Rodalian temple stone the moment you left. You’ve got no debts to me that haven’t been paid a hundred fold by bringing my father to me alive.’

The female pilot passed Willow a spare pistol to go along with her newly acquired rifle. ‘Save the last bullet for yourself.’ She looked at Carter. ‘And if she can’t do it,
you
should. Those aren’t legion soldiers mustering out there. That’s the secret police’s flagship that went down on the plain.’

Carter watched the two aviators weaving through the storm of hot dust, taking position behind a cluster of rocks. He felt Willow squeeze his hand tight
. I can’t. Don’t ask me to do that
. ‘I don’t know if—’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Willow. ‘Just being here’s enough. Alongside you.’

He stared at the stone circle for a second, Sariel and the two gasks like penitent priests attending a human sacrifice, lost among the swirling dust. It seemed a crazy hope. Passing through the stones. ‘You were freed, Willow, you’re not even a slave, and you still came back for me…’

‘It’s like your father said back in the fever room. I guess I didn’t have any choice in the matter, either.’

Maybe not having any choice was the most important part of living free. Carter looked at the Vandian rifle in his hands. More use to him as a crutch. He didn’t want to fight. He barely felt strong enough to raise a gun, let alone absorb its recoil along his shattered ribs. He was sick of battle. But right now, at this moment, there wasn’t an enemy he wouldn’t face or a number he wouldn’t take on to keep Willow out of the empire’s hands. ‘That rock over there looks large enough to shelter the both of us.’

His father’s voice cut through the storm with a power of its own. ‘The Vandians are coming to take you for slaves. But you’re standing here to take your freedom.’

‘He’s right!’ shouted Owen. ‘When the empire’s pet raiders captured you, they were scooping up carpenters and butchers and farmers, scared and surprised and raw. But they’re advancing on survivors today, survivors who’ve eaten and lived on rock, who are armed and steeled. Let every Weylander here send the emperor back a hundred of his own and count it a bargain ill-met. We’ve lived through hell. Today we’ll give it back to them!’

Ragged yells and cheers echoed down the line.

‘
For Weyland!
’

‘
For the true king!
’

Carter pulled his rifle tight against his aching shoulder and stole a glance at Willow. ‘No. For you.’

He sighted the weapon. Vandian soldiers hopped between boulders, covering each other as they zigzagged ever closer.
Near enough
. Empty casings showered out of the side of the unfamiliar weapon as Carter opened up, its chatter lost among an outbreak of rifle-fire all around the circle. Hot casings jounced off his survival suit from the ejection port of Willow’s gun as she swivelled it left and right. Vandians dived down ahead. Bullets whipped and whistled off rocks around them, geysers of powder across the boulders mirroring the eruption fountaining above, sharp stone splinters filling the air. His Vandian rifle was better at absorbing recoil than any firearm from Weyland. It only felt like every second shot was shattering Carter’s ribs.

Duncan blundered through the smoke. How long had he been out cold? The wreckage of his helo lay behind him, bodies scattered around the vehicle’s twisted rotors, what was left of its fuselage on fire – either from the crash or magma and hot ash igniting the fuel tanks. The helo was one of many. Entire squadrons were stretched out broken and smoking across the dead zone.
It’s lived up to its name today
. The landscape looked as though an entire legion had decided to camp here and use their aircraft as bonfires. Cassandra wasn’t inside what remained of Duncan’s troop transporter, not one of the broken bodies. He had already checked for her. Ahead, he found Paetro, turning over fragments of wing and aluminium fuselage.

‘Where is she?’ called Duncan.

‘Not here,’ said Petro.

Duncan turned back towards the forward half of the warship, crew climbing out of rents along the severed remains of the once mighty vessel. All of this, for one high-caste fool’s obsession with an ancient outlaw who must have been close to dying of old age? He hoped that Apolleon lay impaled on a girder in the wrecked bridge for this. He prayed that Helrena didn’t. He was torn between searching through the damaged vessel’s wreckage for the princess and combing the battle­field for her young daughter. ‘Would Cassandra have gone back inside the ship? Looking for her mother, maybe?’

Paetro shook his head. ‘If she’s not trapped below the wreckage, the young Highness will follow her duty. She can hear where that is, even over this eruption. Same as it ever was. Just follow the sound of cannons.’

There weren’t any cannons. But with the random barrage of burning rocks falling, neither side needed artillery. Duncan stared at the distant standing stones; a rattle of gunfire exchanged not so far from where he used to conceal the sky mine’s seismic recorders. He could barely see the battle, a driving wind of hot ash obscuring the plains, beating against the visor of his mask. The smell of sulphur was nearly overwhelming, even through its filters. ‘This is madness!’

Paetro levered up a broken wing, checking below. ‘Whatever mutiny broke out on the station, those workers are grounded down here now, same as us. Nowhere left to go, nothing left to live for. They’ll fight to the last, I can tell you. I would do the same.’

‘Willow and Hesia?’

Paetro placed a hand on Duncan’s shoulder. ‘Trust they’re on one of the birds in the air heading for clear sky.’

Duncan couldn’t be sure where his sister was, but he knew who was making a last stand in the lee of the volcano.
Carter Carnehan
. This mess had his signature all over it. Carter’s father had showed up and his son had seized the munitions ship, trying to make a break for it using the fresh eruption as cover, just like he had before. Except this time, he’d incited most of the station to follow him, only to discover there was a reason nobody tried to fly during a full blow. And now here they all were, grounded and surrounded with nowhere left to go except towards a mass execution for mutiny. Yes, Carter would be over there somewhere. Duncan had never met anyone so eager to die. And if he got Willow killed, Duncan would slip the noose around the wild man’s neck himself and ask to pull down the lever for the hatch in the hangman’s platform.

Paetro unshouldered his rifle and checked its clip. ‘I gave that girl’s father a promise in blood I’d keep her safe. Let’s not make me a liar this day.’

Above them the slopes of the stratovolcano shuddered after each explosion, discharges echoing across the plains, huge rocky masses driven out at inconceivable pressures. Residual clouds of gas even thicker than the current smoke cloaking the dead zone began to spill down. The two of them followed the sound of gunfire, lost and muffled amid the billowing murk.

Jacob ducked behind the boulder as bullets scoured its surface, shots coming from at least two directions. Owen dived close behind him. He heard a hissing sound as rolls of poisonous gas spread out from the slopes, heating and cooling by turns as clouds crept across the ground. It blotted out the sight of the shower of burning rubble falling around them, but not its sound… a clattering rain of pebbles. The pastor could only tell front and rear from the whistle of bullets coming at him.

‘I remember stories from my father about his campaigns – the fog of war,’ Owen gasped. ‘I don’t think he meant this.’

‘Give me a savage northern nomad clan any day,’ said Jacob. ‘The imperium’s men are too well armed and trained.’

‘I think I’d settle for the hinterlands of Rodal over the dead zone, too,’ said Owen. He slid his rifle’s bayonet out of its clasp under the weapon, thrusting it down onto the barrel. Not as accurate now with the extra weight, but damned if the exiled noble could sight on what they were shooting at anyway.

Jacob put a return volley into the choking clouds. What was it the officers told the young men back in Northhaven’s territorial regiment – any fool can hold a rifle? No shortage of fools here. Ironically, it was probably only the eruption that had allowed them to last this long. When a man’s field of vision was reduced to a couple of yards, there wasn’t much chance to bring trained marksmanship into play or to signal disciplined manoeuvres. Just the basic savageries of attack and defence. Hack and shoot, bayonet and sword. But even in this murk, the Vandians’ superior numbers were beginning to tell. Miners left dead around the rocks, wounded people pulled moaning to the rear, teams hauling crates of clips through the defence line, tossing ammunition to the beleaguered defenders. There was a cry to his left, a charging Vandian left impaled on the bayonet below Kassina’s rifle. She kicked the attacker off her blade, sending the corpse tumbling to join another soldier she had shot through the oxygen mask. As good as her word to the throne’s true heir. Kassina ducked back below the boulder, another miner shooting in her place while she reloaded her rifle.
Too few of us, too many of them. If they decide to press the attack…

Out in the clouds came a sound to make a man doubt his sanity. A deep, lingering screech that shook Jacob’s heart in his chest and made his spine run cold – something which had no place among this burning hellscape. Quite unlike the muffled yells of dying miners and shot Vandian soldiers lost in the volcanic outgassing. Some
thing
was hunting out there. The supernatural noise came again and Jacob had to resist the urge to flee with every fibre of his being. He glanced around. He had lost sight of Carter and Willow. Jacob had lost sight of everything apart from this boulder, its neighbour, Owen, and the fierce spray of gunfire breaking against their position.

‘Is that sound the thing Sariel talked about?’ asked Owen.

‘Unless you got mountain lions living up on the slopes with sore throats from all this smoke…’

‘Demons don’t exist,’ said Owen, sounding as though he was trying to convince himself. ‘Stealers are just a Bible tale.’

Jacob slipped out the Vandian short-sword he’d commandeered, laying the steel against a ridge in the boulder. He would have preferred a heavy cavalry sabre, long and sharp, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. ‘Said the man praying for a sorcerous portal to open to carry him home.’

‘Say a prayer of exorcism,’ pleaded Owen.

There are never any atheists sheltering behind the shield line
. ‘The Lord bless our aim when we stand against darkness.’ The last line from the text came unbidden to Jacob.
And let us never slip into the darkness ourselves
. He heard a mortal bellow. Charging men, figures sprinting through the black mist. Angry cries and unrestrained shooting to comfort their rush against death and the defenders’ return fire. Dozens of Vandians appeared as though they had materialised inside the smoke, screaming a battle charge and rushing the defensive line. Jacob raised his rifle and aimed bursts at as many soldiers as he could sight down on. More attackers appeared behind the first line, and his juddering rifle clicked empty in protest. Damn the fancy machine weapon. It practically vomited ammunition. A Vandian came crashing over the boulder and the short-sword was in Jacob’s hand as he plunged through the man’s visor. His first foe had a comrade behind, raising a rifle to shoot, but the soldier went down in a burst of fire. Carter and Willow appeared through the fog, and from the smoking rifle barrel, it was Jacob’s son who had just saved his life. Carter and Willow dived behind the boulder, Jacob using the spare second to slap a fresh clip into his rifle. Below their feet the ground began to shake again, a roaring from beyond the clouds signalling the sky mines would receive a fresh bounty soon.
They can keep it
. Within the smoke Jacob could hear semi-molten rocks detonating around the plains like a thunder god’s wrath. If one of those landed on top of the standing stones, the Vandians wouldn’t need to assault the position. They could retreat to the shelter of their crashed warship and return to scrape away the rebellious workers’ remains after the eruption died away.

‘Pull back towards the stones,’ Jacob told his son. ‘Wait for the portal to open.’

‘I’m not leaving you here!’

‘And I haven’t travelled all the way to the empire to leave your body for the crows,’ spat Jacob.

Carter stayed firmly put. ‘Do you see any crows flying through this?’

A second wave of Vandians broke through the thick mist, even more soldiers than before, rifles blazing as they sprinted forward, razor-edged bayonets extended and levelled at their rebellious slaves. All of the defenders opened up, but there were too many attackers and too few Weylanders. Soldiers breached the line, leaping over the boulders, thrusting steel into sky miners’ chests and heads. Jacob drove his rifle butt forward, smashing it into the visor of the closest Vandian… then abandoned the weapon – it was far too unwieldy to bring to bear in close-quarters combat. Both pistols were in his hands, soldiers spilling down as he walked his guns around the attacking mob, a bullet apiece at close range. Time always seemed to slow for his pistols, unnatural clarity, wounds appearing, soldiers doubling up, each spinning arc of lead with a blood-spattered home that seemed to call it in. Then his guns fell silent, their smoke lost in the eruption. Time’s tread resumed. Bodies lay littered around Owen, Willow and Carter. Around Jacob, a larger mound of corpses. He saw the look of shock on his son’s face before he noticed Owen had been wounded in his side – a Vandian bayonet wound from the size and speed of its staining blood. Owen slid down the boulder clutching his side.