The Iron Ship (62 page)

Boskovin’s face fell at the suggestion that he would force Tuvacs. An understanding that this was not a game but a genuine rejection pierced the fug of wine. “My boy, I, I, I am sorry.” He backed up, bumping into the whiskey cabinet and making the bottles clink. “I am not that kind of man. I would never dream of it. I...”

Tuvacs released Boskovin’s hand. “Don’t worry about it. Good night, boss.” He pushed past quickly, before the wine could reassert its influence over his master, and jumped down from the boxcar.

Tuvacs crossed the camp with as much dignity as he could summon. His legs trembled and had to be forced on.

In his haste he had left his coat behind. He had his belt in one hand, but did not think to stop to replace it. He walked mechanically onwards, holding his trousers up. The night chilled him, but he could not go back. In his need for space he headed away from the boxcar and went straight for the edge of the camp. The tents of the workers and their framed canvas barracks were all at the centre, gathered around the silver engine at its platform. An isolated, gruff command from a gang boss disturbed the night, ordering a straggler to bed. The silver engine coughed a loud cloud of steam. Total silence was coming, creeping into the camp, sleep in its wake.

The men’s quarters gave way to storage tents and stacks of rails and lumber. By these stores the camp blacksmith sat alone outside his odd cart-cum-tent, lit redly by the light of the portable forge inside. His eyes followed Tuvacs as he walked past, but he said nothing.

Past the last stack of supplies, he emerged into a circle of empty ground. The pressure of the glimmer-rich sands beyond gripped his head. Still he found it favourable to the confines of the camp, and struggled up a low dune to the north. The ground was soft atop, and the weavers of the web had set their peg and wire patterns up there for the ease of it. He stepped up to it, and after a moment’s thought went over the first line. Rags of cloud choked off the light of the moons and stars, leaving only the Twin. Far larger than Tuvacs had ever seen it before, even though more than half of it had now sunk past the limits of the Earth. He watched a while, seeking the odd light he had seen before, but it did not come again.

The pounding in his head grew worse. That strange draw he had felt in Railhead returned to him, encouraged by his memory of it that day he had met Suala. He took a step forward. There was only one wire between him and the desert. Witchlight played out there, whisking over faraway dunes. This was not the involuntary draw he had felt before, but alloyed with a reckless impulse all of his own, and he was compelled to obey.

“Hey Tuvacs! Tuvacs, man! What the hells has got into you? Best stop right there.”

Tuvacs was grabbed. Julion had him, his face creased with worry.

“Step over that and they’ll never see you again. Are you insane?”

Tuvacs shivered.

“Where’s your coat? What’s happened to you?”

He glanced down at Tuvacs’ belt brushing against his leg.

“Ah right. No. Let me guess. Boskovin. He was on the wine earlier tonight, never a good sign. Did he put the moves on you?”

“Yes.”

“Shit.” Julion ran his hand over his hair. The moons fought their way free of the clouds, lighting Julion’s face in their combined pinkish glow. “Did he hurt you?”

“No, I don’t think he could. He’s not capable and I would not let him.”

Julion nodded with relief. “That’s something. He’s a good man but lonely. Lonely men are desperate. Drunk lonely ones the worst. Puts a demon into a man’s cock that can’t always be silenced.”

“I’m alright. Just a bit shook up. I’ve had that happen to me a couple of times before. But when I turned him down he backed off. He was ashamed of himself, I told him not to be.”

“You
are
a pretty boy.”

“In the gleaner clans, they didn’t always ask. Tuparrillio—my foster father—he taught me how to fight them off, for me and my sister’s sake.”

“You have a sister? You don’t talk about her.”

“I had to leave her behind, so I don’t like to.”

Julion looked out over the desert, his lips twisted. “I hope you didn’t hurt his feelings too much, he’ll be really fucking sheepish come the morning.”

“Are you and him...?”

“Me? Ha!” Julion smiled widely at the idea. “No! I mean, I don’t care. He and I have had our tumbles in the past. In tastes I’m like the blueskins. Man, woman, doesn’t make any difference to me. There’s pleasure in all flesh. I don’t hold old Mather in any special kind of affection. But I do owe him. I hate to see him get hurt.”

“You don’t respect him much.”

“There’s not much to respect! Look, he’s been good to me. He and I have been running together for a good number of years. But I get annoyed with him...” Reluctance halted him.

“What?”

“He’s the world’s worst businessman!” Julion said. “There’s a fucking fortune to be made out here. Finding glimmer, supplying tools, timber for the sleepers, finding crews to lay the rails, supplying the miners with food. And iron! Iron! Do you know how much iron they get through here? The residual glimmer in the sand corrodes it, needs replacing
constantly
. And what has he got us doing? Flogging booze at night.”

“It makes a profit,” said Tuvacs.

“Oh aye, it’s a tidy income, sure enough, if you’re a
grocer
. It’s not the fortune he was counting on. This is my third adventure with him, the man’s hopeless. From the look on your face you’re surprised by this, but think about it. We turn up here to sell tools, see the market is in mass supply, he makes noises about it, but he’s already looking at buying boxcars to sell hooch from. He buys a full team of dogs, that’s not including the small fortune he dropped on Rusanina and her lovers, and starts talking about selling them within days of arriving. And then, because it would make sense, mind, he doesn’t sell them. Do you know how much a Sorkosian team leader costs?”

Tuvacs shook his head.

“There’s probably only two hundred, say two hundred and fifty of them in the entire Hundred. Maybe that’ll give you an idea. So, anyways, full team of dogs, and a fucking talking princess of the dogs no less, what’s he do with them? Has us dragging them about, selling water for pennies. He doesn’t rent them out in winter, he doesn’t use them for the long range supply runs he intended. And we’ve still got to feed the fuckers.”

“I didn’t realise. He seemed... Well, he seemed like—”

“He knew what he was doing? Yeah. He takes a lot of people in. His bluster is convincing, his energy carries him through the first stages. He’s had plenty of experience of travel, and does have some good ideas, but he just has too many at once. Do you know what I mean? He never knows which to pursue. Any one of the things he had in mind here might have worked. Hells, selling booze is kind of working. None of us is starving, are we? But it’s just like Ocerzerkiya all over again. He has his idea, puts it into play, gets distracted and never sees the damn thing through to the end. Fortunes promised never appear, while the money he gets from his family disappears.”

“He’s a decent man, and he has been good to me—”

“Apart from tonight.”

“A misunderstanding,” said Tuvacs. “I said he was embarrassed. Maybe I looked like I was interested.”

“Maybe, but put enough wine in him and he’s ready to try whether they do or not. Why do you think he’s out here, man of means like that? The Boskovins are not a poor family, major merchants they are.”

“Why is he here?”

“Because his family want him out of sight, out of mind. He’s embarrassed? No my friend, he is an
embarrassment
. This kind of thing,” he gestured at Tuvacs’ crotch, “not the done thing in Karsa, oh no. We’re not Amarands, so they say. Well, fuck them. Boskovin is a decent man, and worth looking out for, because that man has a big heart, indiscretions aside. But I will tell you this without any shade of dogshit to it, not a one of us will ever get rich off him or his schemes, no matter what he says.”

“What did he do for you?”

“It’s a long story,” said Julion. “And it makes me look like a prick, but if you come back down to the camp with me, maybe I’ll tell you.”

Tuvacs made no move. He faced the desert.

“Do you see the lights, out over the dunes there?”

“Yes. Everybody does.”

“What about the lights on the Twin?”

Julion looked perplexed. “No light there, my friend. Listen, this isn’t my first time out east. It’s best not to look into the desert. I’m not surprised you’re seeing things, it’s easy to see stuff that’s not there. I’m pretty sure every bastard in camp has probably said that to you.”

“They have. If that’s so, what’re you doing up here?”

“Same as you, needed some space. Went to see the dogs. Rusanina gave me her ‘piss off’ look, so I came up here. There’s something about it, isn’t there? Alluring, that’s the posh word.” He shivered. “I could do with a drink before bed, it’s fucking colder than Frozma’s tits out here. Care to join me?”

Tuvacs nodded.

Julion held out an arm, showing that Tuvacs should go first. It was the very last thing he ever did.

He jerked. Shock forced his eyes wide. A black wave of blood welled over his lips. He grabbed at Tuvacs’ shirt, dragging Tuvacs down. Lying by the dying man, Tuvacs saw the gory head of a dart protruding from his chest, a long shaft fletched with black feathers emerged from his back, quivering in time to his dying heartbeat. Three shakes, each harder than the last, then Julion sighed, and his glassy eyes stared heavenward.

A tremendous lowing shattered the silence. Dogs in the camp began howling and barking madly.

The air rippled and cracked, a twist in the shape of the world, and a huge shape materialised from nowhere. A giant possessed of too many limbs, jet black skin scored with bright, swirling, luminescent patterns in pale golds, greens and pink. A head as large as a cart swung over Tuvacs, six legs pawed at the ground. Tuvacs rolled to the side, under the web. The creature reared up over him, and he saw a rider. The thing on the back was as black-skinned as his mount and decorated in the same patterns of light, hard to distinguish from the creature it road. Eight feet tall, four arms, a blocky head. Yellow eyes burned down at him without seeing. The riding beast set its rear four limbs into the ground and pawed at the air with the fore pair, showing four-toed feet, and then it was away, trampling the ironweb to shreds. The night bulged, and more of the creatures followed, leaping from shimmers in the air. Screams broke out in the camp. Gunshots snapped sharply.

Tuvacs crawled to see into the camp. The huge riders were among his people, smashing men down with oversized clubs, their mounts bursting through shacks and tents. Blue streaks from glimmer bullets crisscrossed the night. He saw a monster fall from its saddle, shot through the head. But very few of the people below had firearms, and all of the guards had drunk their fill that night at his boxcar.

“Modalmen,” he whispered.

Dogs snarled and barked. They leapt at the creatures in defence of their masters, but the great drays were as puppies to the raiders. Canine yelps intermingled with men’s screams. Tuvacs shrank back into the sand, lying flat. He did not know what to do, or where to go. The shouts of the giants were terrible, a musical roaring as harsh as thunder. There were perhaps a dozen of them, far fewer than the men below, but they were ogres amid children.

With his heart in his mouth, he backed away. His foot snagged on the ruined iron web. It flexed under his foot. On the other side was only sand, grey and black and blood-dark in the moons’ light.

A modalman tossed a flaming ball into the boxcar. Glass shattered, and it was burning. Tents ignited, one by one. Fire was everywhere, the modalmen rode round and around, their giant mounts stamping the camp to flinders. Their destruction done, they corralled the workers below, flinging nets and lariats, snaring men as if they were livestock. A man was snatched up carelessly by a rider. He squealed shrilly as his arm broke in the monster’s massive fist. The modalman shouted and discarded the worker, driving his spear through his ruined prize.

Showing his back was an invitation to die like Julion, a dart through his heart. Staying even worse.

Tuvacs backed away, stepped over the web, and fled.

In the silence of the Black Sands the screams quietened, but never died. Frantic looks back showed a pillar of light and smoke scarring the dark.

Tuvacs ran. Panting came from behind him, the gallop of feet thumping into sand. Tuvacs gritted his teeth and ran faster than he ever had in his life. The cold air scorched his lungs; sand slid treacherously around his feet. The sanctuary of a dune was ahead.

Something barged into him from behind, knocking him face first into the sand. He spat grit from his mouth. A heavy paw pressed down between his shoulder blades.

“Stop! Stop, Tuvacs. Why run? Is I, Rusanina.”

Tuvacs rolled over, and let out a noise halfway between a sob and a laugh.

“You get on back. I carry.”

“I will hurt you,” said Tuvacs.

“Sit near front. I be fine for short time. If not, no matter. We die if we stay.”

“Run! Leave me here.”

“Then you die. Get onto my back!” she swallowed between each faltering word. This was the most Tuvacs had ever heard her speak.

He grabbed a handful of fur and clambered gracelessly onto her back. He had never ridden anything before. The ground was a worrying distance away.

“Sit still!” she growled.

Wetness soaked his leg. He felt with his hand, bringing it back before his eyes. It was dark with blood.

“You’re bleeding,” he said.

“I run. I run, or we die.”

She broke into a gallop from a standing start, sand spraying from her feet. The firelight of the burning camp retreated behind them. Howls and screaming chased them across the sand.

Rusanina crested the dune and cantered down the other side and made for a gap between two rounded crags half-swallowed by the desert.

From the corner of Tuvacs’ eye, he saw movement so swift he had no time to call out.

A heavy body slammed into Tuvacs’ side knocking him from the dog’s back. He caught a flash of moonlight on teeth. Rusanina snarled savagely. He struck sand with his head. Bright points of light shattered his vision into a falling mosaic, and he felt himself tumbling upwards and away.