“Drink it,” said a different voice. “The longer you wait the worse your head will hurt. The Corpsemaster’s naps aren’t the restful, healing kind.”
“Do tell,” I managed. My throat was so dry it came out in a rasp. I gave up on any plans for pugilistic retribution and drank.
The water was cold and clear. It tasted of peppermint and another herb I couldn’t name.
“I’m Piper. This is Lopside.”
I lowered the pitcher.
The sun wasn’t just hot and bright. It was far too hot, far too bright. And it was beaming down out of a sky so blue it appeared to have been freshly scrubbed and painted.
Hadn’t the sky been the color of old lead when I’d set foot in the Corpsemaster’s black carriage?
It was hot. Summer hot, dog days hot, not the milder early spring hot it should have been.
Chills made tiny footsteps up and down my spine. How long had I been in that damned carriage?
I mopped sweat. Felt my clothes stick to me. Hell, I was soaked.
My shadow was pooled and tiny at my feet, on cobblestones that made up a circle maybe twenty yards across. There were patterns set into the circle, formed by swoops and swirls of copper and lead that intersected and wove and parted and looped in ways that made my eyes water.
I thought at first the cobblestone circle was fenced at its perimeter. But as my eyes and head cleared, I could see that while the circle was bounded by a ring of waist-high stakes topped with ornaments of some kind. There was no fencing between them.
Beyond the circle was an endless plain of swaying green grass that flowed like a sea away in every direction. No trees. No walls. Not a hint of Rannit. Nothing but tall green grass rippling in the wind.
And no telltale sign of wagon-wheel ruts that might mark the long way home.
“What the Hell?”
Piper and Lopside snickered. “You all say that,” said Piper.
Piper was little more than a kid. His face still bore an enthusiastic crop of pimples. His Army uniform was too short at the ankles and the sleeves, which only accentuated his boyish appearance.
He wore plain Army dress blues. But the uniform, though familiar, wasn’t complete. His name wasn’t sewn over his chest. No unit identifier. There was no collar insignia, nothing to mark him as infantry or cavalry or sorcerer’s corps or Wagoner. He showed no sign of rank at all. The Sarge would have burst a vein at the sight of such a uniform.
“Would you mind waking your pal, Mr. Markhat?” asked the other man. “I’d rather not startle a halfdead, no disrespect intended, sir.”
Lopside was maybe my age. His uniform matched Piper’s, in that it didn’t tell me a damned thing.
“You didn’t seem to mind startling me.”
“Kids these days.” He rolled his eyes at Piper. “Maybe this will help. You’re a guest of the Corpsemaster. This place doesn’t have a name, because it doesn’t officially exist, but we call it the Battery. Everyone who comes here arrives asleep. You’ll leave the same way, get back home a few hours after you left. No, I don’t know where we are in relation to Rannit. No, I don’t know where the trees went. And no, I don’t know why it’s so damned hot. It’s been this way for eight months. You get used to it.”
I drank some more water.
“Fine. I’ll wake my friend. One question first.”
“I probably can’t answer it. But I’ll try.”
“You said everyone arrives asleep. Who is everyone? Who else comes here?”
“Can’t answer that.”
“Didn’t think so.” But it hadn’t hurt to try. I tossed him the pitcher and eased my way into the carriage.
“Evis,” I said. I poked him gently. “Wake up.”
He didn’t stir. He’d managed to cover his face in a fold of his cloak and I braced myself and yanked it back, exposing his pale face to the sun.
If Lopside hadn’t grabbed me by my belt and hauled me out of the carriage ass-first my career as a finder might have ended then and there, at the hands of a grumpy vampire.
“Evis,” I said, mopping blood off my cheek. “It’s me, dammit. Wake up.”
“Finder?” I kept my distance while Evis composed himself. “What the Hell?”
“Told you,” muttered Piper.
I sighed and grabbed the pitcher.
Chapter Three
Once Evis was shielded from the sun, we set out.
The cobblestone circle, Lopside explained, was just the point of arrival. Leading away from it was a cobblestone path that bore the same metallic swoops and turns as the circle. I learned quickly not to try and follow their meandering path, because that made one’s walk unsteady. Piper and Lopside were clear on the deadly consequences of stepping off the path.
The things lurking in the grass, they explained, were always hungry.
The path, like the circle, was lined with waist-high wooden stakes each painted a cheery white.
Human skulls watched from atop each stake. Fresh white skulls, so new they gleamed. Each skull bore an equally preserved pair of bright blue eyes, and every set of eyes in every gleaming skull followed you as you passed.
“Twenty-two thousand, eight hundred and six,” said Lopside as we walked.
Evis was faster to catch on than I.
“How long did it take you to count them?”
“A month. We get bored sometimes.”
Skulls. They were talking about the skulls. Twenty-odd thousand.
I moved my ass to the center of the path.
“How much farther?” Evis’s voice was strained. Even beneath yards of black silk, I imagined that impossible sun was bright enough to nearly blind him.
“Not much.” I heard a far-off shout, and Lopside waved us to a halt.
“They got the oh-threes ready a day early,” he said.
I was about to ask him what the Hell he meant when something louder and sharper than thunder split the air.
Bam. Bam. Bam.
The blasts were so loud I felt them in my chest, felt them rattle my teeth.
Unseen things in the grass made waves on its surface as they fled. Piper laughed.
“Reckon they got the mixture just right that time.”
“Shut your mouth,” Lopside spoke. “Let’s make sure they’re done.”
Smoke billowed up in the distance. The blasts faded, and the smoke dispersed, blowing over us in gouts.
It stank. It was strange, but not entirely alien. I realized I’d smelled something like it, once before.
“Cannon,” said Evis softly. “Remember that smell from Werewilk, Markhat? Same thing.”
“Ours are better,” said Piper. “They’re still using a two-to-one ratio of—”
“I said shut your mouth,” snapped Lopside. “No talking out here.”
Piper reddened and fell silent.
Evis pulled back enough silk to let me see his dark lenses. “Well. This should prove interesting, after all.”
A horn blew ahead of us, then again, and again.
“All clear.” Lopside motioned us forward. “Keep walking. Stay on the path. When you get to the painted red line, close your eyes and take one more step.”
“You’re not coming?”
“Orders. Get moving. He doesn’t like to wait.”
Evis was already in motion. I shrugged and caught up.
“You know what’s going on?”
“Not entirely,” he whispered. “But I’ve heard rumors. It seems Avalante’s research into mundane projectile weapons has been resumed by the Corpsemaster.”
There was nothing around us but a prairie. Ahead was just more of the same, cut only by the curving path we followed.
“It’s flatter than ogre-stomped. And empty.”
“I suspect not.” We walked on a bit in silence, and there it was—a thick red line of paint directly ahead.
And nothing on the far side of it but weeds.
Evis paused. I looked back but Piper and Lopside were hoofing it toward the carriage.
Evis and I were privy to a few of the Corpsemaster’s most intimate secrets. I knew the location of the house he called home. We both knew of the army of the dead he kept hidden in plain sight across Rannit.
Knowing such secrets doesn’t help either Evis or I sleep soundly.
Because if we were to both vanish suddenly, say after being eaten by whatever lurked amid those tall grasses, the Corpsemaster could sleep more soundly.
“I’ll go first, if you wish.”
“Bah. You’d just snatch up all the good beer. Better we go together, don’t you think?”
Evis laughed and nodded. We made our way to the painted red line. Evis threw his hood back and grimaced at the sun, and I loosened my collar and pushed down my hat.
We stepped across at the same time. I’ll have to ask Evis if he closed his eyes, like Lopside suggested. I know I damned well didn’t.
There was a flash, and a sensation of falling, and then the sneaky sun swung around so that it shone not in my face, but on my back.
And then there was noise. And men. And wagons and horses and the fall of hammers and the smell of wood burning.
Hell, we had just stepped into the midst of a bustling work camp. A line of canvas Army field tents stretched off as far as I could see. Stables and barns followed it. Tall, brick smokestacks attached to tin-roofed sheds dotted the landscape haphazardly. The stink of a nearby outhouse filled my nose. Men ambled, marched or idled by the hundreds.
All of them had just appeared from nowhere.
I turned around.
The cobblestone path was gone. Behind us was a smaller circle, twin to the big one we’d left behind, ringed by a thick band of bright red paint.
Beyond it was sand. Red sand, red rocks, shadows that fell long and dark over a wasteland the color of rust.
My head began to pound anew.
Evis pulled his hood back over his face.
“Hurrah. We’re not dead.”
“Not yet.”
“Always the ray of sunshine.”
A dozen armed men trotted toward us. The one in the lead slowed and met my gaze. He had a pair of vertical silver pips on the front of his cap, barely big enough so see.
“Mr. Markhat. Mr. Prestley. Welcome to the Battery. Come this way.”
The man was bellowing. Bellowing, but smiling. I bellowed right back.
“Says who?”
He frowned. “The Corpsemaster. That good enough for you?”
I sighed. “Sorry. We’ve been knocked out and sent on a hike and the sun keeps changing places. It’s not been a good morning.”
A wagon rolled up behind the troops eyeing Evis and me. I didn’t even notice at first it was being driven by a corpse.
The ponies whinnied and stamped their feet, looking back over their shoulders nervously.
“Well, you won’t be walking anymore. Get on.”
He turned and dismissed his detail. They faded into the milling crowd with obvious relief on their faces.
“I’ll come along, give you the two penny tour.” He stuck his hand out. “Call me Rafe.”
I shook his hand. He was still shouting. I began to wonder if the man was partially deaf. If so, he was getting an early start. He was probably ten years my junior.
“I’m Markhat. You knew that. This is my friend Evis. He’s a deaf mute.”
“I am nothing of the sort.” Evis shook Rafe’s hand as well. “Just Rafe? No rank?”
Rafe shrugged. “Orders. We don’t talk rank with outsiders.” He climbed aboard the wagon, sliding right up to the corpse without any sign of hesitation before turning around and motioning Evis and I into the bed of the wagon. “You probably have questions.”
We clambered aboard. The dead man stank, but there wasn’t a fly to be seen.
The corpse snapped his reins, and we rolled forward, winding our way between men and mounts and stacks of lumber and wafts of odd-smelling smokes.
“So this is where the Corpsemaster is building his cannons.”
I hadn’t phrased it as a question.
Rafe nodded. He was sun burnt and peeling. His hair was sticking out in shaggy red clumps beneath his cap. The skin on the backs of his hands was pocked with tiny burns. “Has been for ten months. How’s the weather back home? Storms been bad this spring?”
“No worse than usual. You haven’t been back?”
“Nobody goes back, unless it’s in a bag. But the pay. Oh, the pay.” Rafe grinned.
Evis leaned forward. “So, the cannons? They are operational?”
“You’ll see for yourself. But yes. We can blow the shit out of ten-foot thick walls from a mile away. Knock down infantry by the hundreds with one shot. In another month, we’ll have the big aught-eights ready to ship back home.” He waited for a response, obviously under the impression that either Evis or I had any idea what a big aught-eight might be. “An aught-seven can put a hundred pound shell nearly six miles. We figure the eights can do nine.”
Rafe raised his hands at our blank faces. “Sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself. Look. You know how cannons work?”
“A thick iron tube is packed with a powder that explodes when lit by a spark. This propels an iron sphere out of the tube at great speed.” Evis looked at Rafe over the tops of his dark glasses. “Is that correct?”
Rafe nodded and grinned. “That’s exactly how the first cannon, the old Henry, worked, Mr. Prestley. Were you on the halfdead—er, the Avalante team—working on them, during the War?”
“I was not,” replied Evis. “But I’ve read their reports.”
“Then you know about the problems they faced. The unstable powder. The balls that got stuck and cracked the cannon bodies. Misfires. Duds.”
Evis nodded, with a sideways glance at me. Whoever Rafe was, one thing was clear—the boy liked his cannons.
Rafe waved his hands. “We’ve fixed all that. No more random explosions. Well, hardly ever. No more cracked shafts. And the rounds—Mr. Prestley, we have explosive rounds now. Timed rounds. We can penetrate walls or burst them in the air over troops or…”
Rafe went on, describing in intricate, enthusiastic detail a brand new method of slaughter. I couldn’t follow all of it. There was talk of trajectory calculators and paper fuses and friction primers, delivered in a throaty bellow that got hoarser as Rafe grew more animated.
I shrugged at Evis and quit trying to follow Rafe’s running description of Parrot guns and howitzers.
I watched the camp instead.
Everywhere I looked, there was more of it. More and more of the structures were brick. The largest brick buildings were set apart from other structures and flanked by thick mounds of sand. I spotted a couple of suspicious building-sized holes in the ground, also flanked by mounds and heaps of rubble that had been left where they fell.