Foreign Devils (34 page)

Beyond the Pons Milletus, you enter the market and main residential areas of Harbour Town. There’s natural rise there, where the ocean, possibly in the dim mists of history, was higher, washing away the shore and leaving a small cliff upon which the wealthy could build their homes. The most desirable domiciles in all of Harbour Town were there, in a tidy clot of red-roofed villas and luxurious shops and sylvan parks so that they might enjoy the breeze from the Bay of Mageras and view the sun’s light shattering into millions of shards on the sea without the smell of shite or goat stew steaming with spices or
daemon
-fired stacks to bother them. Below them, much like in Passaseugo, the more plebeian classes lived, wooden tenements standing steaming, lantern light pouring oily smoke into the air and casting pale yellow onto the cobblestones.

A fleeting, niggling awareness. A motion at the edge of my vision. Like a bird, even, flapping above.

I turned to look, into the night, upward. There was not enough star or moonlight to lighten things. But something paced me, on the rooftops. Something fast. Something ruffling with speed.

I did not have to strain too hard to think what it might be. I touched a palm to Hellfire sitting at my waist.

It could be an errant stretcher (which was very doubtful, since Harbour Town had been settled for a long, long time) or, all the gods and numen forgive, one that Beleth had suborned into his service by some infernal means.

I pulled my guns, looking into the sky. The skyline. The roofs.

There was noise and a dog barking into an alley. Beyond that, stillness. Nothing.

I watched, and waited, half-hunched over in the middle of a Harbour Town street, peering into the night for something that wasn’t there. After a long while, I holstered my guns, and trotted to catch up with the rider I tailed.

But it was full night now and the streets were dark. We did not go to the Bluffs, where the rich lived. We did not go toward the bay, where more piers and wharves stood against the tide, and fishing boats moored, knocking hollowly in the surge.
Daemonlights
were unshuttered at intersections, tended by the crossroad college bullyboys as part of their sacred duty to Ia. The
dvergar
rider kept his head down and continued on, never looking back. And I followed.

Past the soft hills of the Higalle, where the homes and architecture took on an easier look, more wood and plaster, less Rumanesque stone. The streets were lined in trees, no gambles here, since the Whites were far to the west. Here stood live oaks dripping with moss and catching the
daemonlight
in ghostly grey-green streamers. Beyond that through Brawleyville and its warrens, where the lower-bloods of the Galls, the stevedores and labourers and craftsmen made their home.

And then the streets turned to dirt and gravel and the lights fell away and it was dark, with only hearthfires and small lanterns in homes casting light. I was panting from the exertions of the day. The
dvergar
rider’s donkey was slow but steady and I had spent a day beneath a bush, without food, chasing someone who quite possibly had nothing to do with Beleth. I don’t know what drew me onward. We had entered the outskirts of Harbour Town, where tenements and shacks gave way to farms, and little clusters of daub-and-wattle huts like most homesteaders and sodbusters lived in here in the Territories. In Harbour Town, they called it Tinkers Heath, sometimes, if they called it anything at all. It was a scattered
dvergar
settlement, since
dvergar
don’t like to cluster together too close in cities. Their houses are too easy to raid and burn, and a dispersion of the populace makes most menaces troublesome for the interlopers.

The rider turned down a lane, braced by small farmsteads, to a cluster of small outbuildings. One was brightly lit, with a sprig of holly on the door.

From the interior, I heard many voices, most of them male and deep, and all speaking in
Dvergar
, my mother’s tongue. There was the scent of wood-smoke on the air, even in the warmth of summer, and a faint hint of roasting meat.

I stopped in a yellow pool of light from a kreosote lantern. A figure appeared silhouetted in the doorway. A
dvergar
woman, who gestured hurriedly for me to enter, calling softly in my mother’s tongue.

‘Come, now. Come. It’s about to begin.’

I entered the low-slung building. It was a cottage, really, mud-brick with a low ceiling and a great pot with some sort of stew being stirred by a young
dvergar
girl over the woodfire, her ruddy face beading with sweat. The room was one of those countless sodbuster meeting rooms – half bar, half communal hall – with long, rough-hewn tables with matching benches, lanterns, and a counter serving as a bar at the far end of the room. The tables were filled with twenty or thirty
dvergar
men and women, all sombre, all serious, yet a certain electric expectation filled the room. An excitement. I could see it writ large in their faces, bright eyes, alert gazes. Many made note of me, and looked me up and down brazenly, whispering to their companions. I bore the only human – or in
Dvergar,
svietch
, meaning ‘short-lived’ – blood in the building. All the rest were native to Occidentalia.

A man broached a small cask of beer, began passing out pewter cups full of the brown, rich ale. I found one in my hand and the woman who had beckoned me in took my elbow and said, in dvergar, ‘Come brother, sit. It will begin shortly.’

I scanned the crowd for the rider, curious if he’d marked me. Many people stared, some with open curiosity, some maybe harbouring suspicion or fear, I could not tell. I made my way to a table near the back, away from the fire, with room to sit. I drank quietly and listened to the talk.

‘They’ll call for us to take arms, now,’ an older woman sitting at the table said. She had a craggy, unforgiving face that had seen two centuries of hardship, at the least. She knew the land before the Rumans and Medierans came. ‘And I’ll take up the blade, my brothers and sisters,’ she said nodding.

‘Praverta, we have no idea why we’ve been called tonight,’ a younger man said. He had a wide beard and a rather thin narrow face for a dwarf. ‘I think you’re wishing for blood rather than wanting to preserve it.’

‘Ruman blood I’ll take,’ she said, holding out one grizzled hand palm down over the table and lowering it in a strange slow-motion movement, as if she was slamming her hand down. But with such deliberation it had a terrible finality to it. ‘If Neruda would but call to action.’

‘There’s more to motion than just motion,’ the man said. ‘It must have direction.’

‘Don’t quote Viquesco to me, pup,’ Praverta said, narrowing her eyes. They were shrouded in heavy brows and wrinkled lids. ‘He might be here to spread Neruda’s good words but his are always “wait, watch, and be ready”.’ She sniffed with disdain. ‘I remember Wickerware. I remember Tapestry. It always ends in blood. Either ours, or theirs. This time, I would it be theirs.’

A moment then of awkward silence. I thought of when a man named Bert reminisced so loudly about his rapine of Tapestry and its women. I thought about the
thwock
of the lead ball impacting his cheek, his jaw. How blood poured from his lips and teeth flew.

I thought about my wife Illina, whom I spent almost a human lifetime with.

Praverta, obviously the fiercest at my table, looked at me and said, ‘So what brings you to us,
dimidius
?’ A
dimidius
is, according to the Rumans, a thing of halves. Like me. It was a double insult, truly. The name, and using the speech of Latinum, rather than
Dvergar
, which I had been obviously following.

You can live your whole life on the outside and when you find yourself among those who should be your own, you’ll still be on the outside looking in.

I said in
dvergar,
‘Matve Praverta, I come as a leaf blown on the wind.’ An old phrase, and an innocuous one.

‘I don’t like the look of this one,’ she said to the others, her lips puckering into a wrinkled, sucking hole. ‘He’s got the look of informer about him.’

‘Too much
svietch
blood,’ the younger man said.

‘There’s more of Rume about him than
gynth
,’ another woman chimed in.

This was getting out of hand.

‘I have spoken with Neruda,’ I said, the
dvergar
words coming easily. And the lie. But I tempered it with truth. I can be eloquent when I want. ‘I have seen him. He too is …’ I twisted my face around the word. ‘
Dimidius
. But you would hang on his every word and follow him yet not trust me? Your mettle is soft and your wine watered.’

Praverta pursed her lips and sniffed. She didn’t like me tossing Neruda’s parentage in her teeth. ‘You will be watched, half-man,’ she said, simply, and then fell silent, except for the slurping of her beer.

We waited. A man brought around clay bowls of soup and I gave him a copper sestersius for the effort and he smiled, while the rest of my table-mates looked furious. Eventually, the woman who had greeted me at the door called for silence and said, ‘My brothers and sisters of the mountains – my
vaettir! –
we have come together to hear the words of wise Neruda.’

There was a murmur but it died down after a moment and she went on. ‘But there is news now, and one of our
vaettir
is here to convey the words of Neruda. I shall let him speak.’

I hadn’t taken much notice of the door behind the counter where the ale had been served. From it came a burly
dvergar
with a neatly groomed facial hair – waxed moustache and tapering blond beard – and blaring white teeth and blue eyes. We’re a dark race, normally, if fair skinned, and he was one of the
vanmer
– a product of two
dvergar
with blue-eyed, blond-headed blood far back in the roots of their family veins. It was a mark of purity, the
vanmer
claimed, and favour of the gods. Usually, though, they were just pretty boys and women pursued by countless suitors. Give me a dusky lass, like my Illina, and I’ll be happy.

He came and stood in front of the assembled there, raising his hands to quiet the growing murmur.

‘Hail, kindred,’ he said. He used the word
gynth
. ‘I come with news from the father of
vaettir
,’ he said, not naming Neruda outright. ‘There have been some efforts by the Rumans to take our father captive, to silence his voice, to still his busy hands. In Passaseugo, they raided his workshop. In Wickerware, they stormed our father’s house in hopes of finding him in bed, but he was gone.’

The murmur of the crowd rose and fell with his words. The anticipation thrumming through those gathered was near palpable. Yet they kept their agitation under control. It was the quietest outrage I’ve ever felt.

Praverta said, loudly, ‘So, what are we to do? Are we to just go back to our labours?’

The
vanmer
man shook his head. ‘No. I bear a message for you all from Neruda himself. He says, “Every stone waits for the chisel to bring out its inner being in sculpture. Every piece of wood holds a tool within it, dormant, waiting to be carved and brought into the world. Every pig of iron or steel contains within it the blade, unforged. So too does time contain the moment we have waited for. That moment must present itself, make itself manifest. You will know it when it arrives”.’ As he spoke, many in the crowd grumbled and stirred. Praverta, her rheumy old eyes bright, cursed under her breath. “Continue with your labours. Forge weapons, store food. When the time comes, you will know it by its imperative. Each of you will know it because it will be mirrored inside of you”.’

The
vanmer
fell silent and bowed his head in a bit of theatrics I found distasteful. ‘And then what?’ A man called from a nearby table. ‘We’ll “know” this moment. This I can accept. And then what?’

‘Do what you need to do, my brethren, to survive and no more. Listen to me! Of this Neruda has been perfectly clear.
Vaettir
are for independence in Occidentalia! Not for revenge. When the moment is ripe, you will know when to move. To come east to the Eldvatch. The
vaettir
will find you there.’

‘Why not go now?’ A woman bellowed, outrage filling her voice. ‘I’ve served these masters all my life! I would go to be with my kin!’

‘Aye!’ another man called. There was a chorus of agreement. ‘We could make our stand against the Rumans! We could take to our hills and warrens! Take to the Eldvatch where they’d never find us!’

The blond man shook his head. ‘Store food. Forge weapons. Soon Rume will have more than a passel of
dvergar
with swords and arrows to contend with. War is declared. If you, our people, begin abandoning cities – their masters, their owners – in droves, Rume will send legions before we are ready!’

‘They sent a century! And we defeated them!’ the florid man called in response, his voice hoarse. ‘We will defeat any they send!’

‘You did not witness the battle, my friend,’ the blond man said softly, a pained look on his face. ‘We lost far more than we gained. Neruda …’ He paused, the words failing on his tongue. ‘He is a great man, a leader, a thinker. He is no general, though, and our people were slaughtered. We lost four
dvergar
for every Ruman legionnaire that fell. We have no Hellfire.’ He shook his head and made a chopping with his hand. ‘No. We cannot match them, might to might. We must be clever. We must be wily.’ He paused. ‘We must be …
vaettir.’

The room fell silent, thinking on this. The silence drew out.

Finally the man said, ‘When the Medierans move, all people will know. You will know. Bring your weapons and food – especially your food – east. When there’s war, farms and fields and granaries will burn. Rumans, Medierans, and
Dvergar
will starve alike. Yet we are prepared. Are we not?’

There was a murmur of assent, though half-hearted. In the general demeanour of all those assembled, there was a scarlet streak, a lust for blood, as if they wished this messenger would have told them to take up their knives and swords and cleavers and rush into the streets of Harbour Town and begin cutting down the first Ruman citizens and soldiers they saw. It was madness. They could not withstand the might of Rume, or the fierceness of its legionnaires and lascars and vigiles. They could not withstand Ruman Hellfire.