The Stealers' War (31 page)

Fetterman marched ahead of them as if she knew the way. Like Carter and Sariel, she was weighed down with a heavy backpack. Food and supplies. Warm blankets against the incongruously cold nights. Every now and then she glanced surreptitiously behind her to place Carter and Sariel in her wake.
If any one of us here understands where we are going, it’s Sariel
.

Carter couldn’t blame the old trickster for not wanting to converse with Fetterman.
Try being locked up in a cell with her for weeks in HadraHareer
. She glanced crossly back at him. Carter whistled and made a gesture towards the given compass point.

Carter raised his voice. ‘Quicker for you if you’d headed back to the mountains.’

‘And wouldn’t you like to see me murdered!’ shouted Fetterman. ‘A lone target for the Nijumeti raiders.’

‘I’d feel right sorry for the first nomad that came across her,’ muttered Carter. ‘Especially if they tried to seize her for a saddle-wife.’

‘She reminds me of my seventh wife,’ said Sariel. ‘Who flaunted her beauty but hid her scolding tongue until we had circled the maypole together in front of a priest. What was her name, again? Ah, yes. Shalne Ardeni.’

‘How did matters end between you and her?’

‘I tricked Shalne into divorcing me for a marriage to the Sultan of Utorcore,’ said Sariel. ‘The sultan was a merciless tyrant, and the unexpected disturbance served by his new bride saved many hundreds of thousands of innocents from war and prosecution by his army. Their union is why I shall never journey to Utorcore again.’

‘I sure wish we could come across one of those circles of standing stones and shortcut
this
journey,’ said Carter.

‘Such risks must be saved for voyages far longer than this one,’ noted Sariel. Worryingly, it sounded like the crafty old fox had something in mind beyond merely crossing the steppes.

‘The stealers would track us down?’

‘Soon enough their allies would,’ said Sariel. ‘We are well within range of the Vandians operating out of Weyland.’

Carter grunted. ‘I remember.’ On their first night camping in the steppes, shivering in the cold with no fire to act as a signal to the nomads, they had seen a Vandian patrol ship scorching through the night, passing high and distant. What it was doing this far north, Carter couldn’t say.
No damn good, that much is certain
. ‘You think they were scouting for slaves for their skels to raid?’

‘It is possible.’

‘I never came across any Nijumeti inside the sky mines,’ said Carter. ‘I got the impression the Vandians wanted their slaves with a certain level of book-learning.’

‘For the sky mines, perhaps,’ said Sariel. ‘Having barbarians accidentally blowing up the emperor’s precious mines because they think a fuse is black magic is hardly profitable. But there are slaves from many nations and races throughout the empire. Vandians prefer not to break their backs by tilling the soil, labouring in mills or busying themselves with the drudgery of keeping a home.’

‘So what do the locals do instead?’

‘Feel superior to the slaves. You might say that is one of the slave force’s main draws as far as the Imperium’s celestial caste is concerned.’

Carter was puzzled. ‘But don’t the castes at the bottom of the heap get bored with idleness?’

‘Some work. But it is difficult to find a job when the next worker wears chains and is made to toil for free. Many jobs that are available pay so little that they would make almost no difference to you or your family’s life. The pointlessness of not taking labour may rot away your soul, but accepting it often makes you feel like a dupe when you see your friends and neighbours living just the same as you without its burdens. For the idle masses, there are the constant distractions of the arena and games and feasts. There are also players and a variety of diversions on the public kino screens. Lotteries. Competitions. Gambling – both legal and illegal. Sin and crime are regulated close to legality inside Vandia. Luckily for the rulers there is always a healthy pool of slave fighters to die in the arenas, too.’

‘How can the lower castes afford to survive if unemployment is their lot?’

‘Think of the Imperium as a pyramid,’ said Sariel. ‘At the very top is the celestial caste controlling the great houses, enjoying the wealth and power of gods made mortal. Scheming against each other occupies most of their time. Then there are the educated middle castes: scientists, soldiers, manufactory masters, engineers, secret police, surgeons and the like. Advancing through the many graduations of caste or just avoiding slipping into the lower castes for themselves and their children is enough to keep them busy. Then there is the great teeming mass of the lower castes, penned up in the rabble towers; fed and watered by the Gratis Imperium, the benevolent grace of the Emperor Jaelis. Vandia’s citizenry are made slaves through living dependent on their masters’ whims. Be caught speaking out against the wrong person or in favour of the wrong cause and watch your family starve on punishment rations. Below the lower castes, there are many millions of captured slaves or tribute workers sent by the Imperium’s subjected neighbours, as well as mercenaries attracted by the legions’ pay. In reality, the difference between a slave and a lowercaste citizen is an accident of birth. Everyone perfectly balanced on top of everyone else. The hostility and envy of the rest of the world against the Imperium acts as glue. There is always the bone of hope, false hope, but hope nevertheless, to dangle in front of the masses. Even a slave may be freed and made a citizen should they please their master or mistress sufficiently.’

Carter shook his head. ‘It sounds . . . insane.’

‘Speaking honestly, it is certainly an unnatural state of affairs,’ shrugged Sariel. ‘A state only preserved by the immense wealth of ores bled from their stratovolcano. The riches of the world, traded for the world’s science, power and industry; remade as the steel bones of the whole terrible structure. But the Imperium is a pyramid, and a pyramid is the most stable of constructions. All the weight of it pushing down and squeezing into itself.’

‘Into
people
.’

‘People made Vandia,’ said Sariel, sadly. ‘You can’t hang what they chose to make on me or mine. You can’t even blame the stealers. They didn’t build Vandia. The stealers found a rotten fruit and burrowed into it. That’s what maggots are for.’

‘And what are you for, Sariel, truly?’

‘Free wine and the forbearance of great princes. Long life. Good counsel and open borders and intelligent conversation.’

‘I’d like the real answer one day.’

‘One day I might just give it to you,’ said Sariel. ‘In the interim, you’ll need to settle for helping me frustrate the ambitions of the maggots before they gnaw away the last of the fruit.’

Ahead of them, Beula Fetterman stopped by the brow of a low foothill. She dropped down to one knee and pointed at the sky behind them.
An aircraft
. A dark triangle drifted across the sky. As the plane grew closer Carter could hear the engine’s drone. Distant at first, a mosquito hum, then louder as it continued its flight many miles to their west.

‘That looks small,’ said Carter. ‘A two-person flying wing.’

‘Can’t be Rodalian,’ said Fetterman, sounding confused. ‘We’re beyond fuel range of the mountains.’

A pity you didn’t realize that earlier
, thought Carter, but he kept his criticism to himself. It didn’t take much to make the pilot explode, leaving a dour, lingering mood over the party for hours.

‘Doesn’t look up to much from this distance,’ said Carter, watching the plane dip and wobble through the air.
Even the wrecks flown by the skel slavers are faster and more durable than that. It’s certainly not Vandian.
‘How the heck did it fly this far out?’

‘Perhaps someone is refuelling it locally,’ said Sariel, darkly.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ snorted Fetterman. ‘Who is there to do that in the grasslands? The only things the steppes hold are savages on horseback and a painful death. The Nijumeti would sooner pour oil over you and roast you over a fire-pit than sell fuel to you, even if they had stolen a few fuel barrels from a caravan. No, that plane is launched from a merchant carrier . . . it’s a ground-to-air trading shuttle.’

‘Then why can we not see the carrier?’ asked Sariel, pointing to the clear sky. ‘And why, with so little trade, would a merchant carrier bother to launch a landing plane over the steppes?’

Fetterman’s features creased dismissively. ‘They’re picking up fresh water from one of the rivers. It’s easy to run low on water when you try to cross the length of the Arak-natikh.’

‘So it is,’ said Sariel, but his doubtful tone of voice left much hanging in the wind. The aircraft passed out of sight fast enough, leaving the three travellers to march on for the rest of the day. That night they found a small copse of trees, a thin orchard, in the lee of one of the low hills and made their camp inside for its windbreak. Carter was careful to dig out a small, deep fire pit to conceal the light of their camp, and when it was done, he fashioned a stake out of a fallen branch and cooked the meat of a hare they had trapped the day before. It didn’t take much to cook the stringy meat, which was good, as he kept the fire low to ensure a weak, wispy smoke.

Fetterman gnawed on her share of the meal. ‘Do you know where you’re going, old man?’

‘I know where I’ve been,’ said Sariel, ‘which tends to equate to more or less the same thing.’

The aviator grunted unhappily. ‘Saints preserve me. Just give me an honest answer. How much longer until we reach where we need to be?’

‘I’d imagine a week more,’ said Sariel. ‘But then, I understand the clans embrace a free, roaming lifestyle. It is probably why they are known as
nomads
. A moving target is always hard to hit.’

‘And why did Prince Owen order me to fly you here?’

‘Because General Carnehan asked him to,’ said Sariel.

‘But what are
we
doing here?’ she barked, increasingly frustrated.

‘Oh, eating a rabbit supper for the large part. Enjoying the bracing night and a wide vista of stars.’

Carter sure did enjoy seeing someone else driven to irritation by the wandering vagrant’s manners.
Makes a change from me
.

‘Why are you seeking out the nomads?’

‘Because they’re here.’

‘You are not answering me. You’re cracked. What makes you think the Nijumeti won’t just scalp you and stake you out on the grass over the first ant hill they find?’

‘The clans tend to respect those touched by madness,’ said Sariel. ‘I recommend the condition. Leaving your sanity behind is one of the most liberating experiences.’

‘Damn you, how is this journey to aid the rebellion?’

‘When you have a sickness,’ said Sariel, slowly, as though talking to a child, ‘it behoves you to treat the root cause of the disease rather than just rub salve on the wounds.’

‘You’re talking in riddles.’

Sariel examined the hare meat on the end of his stake. ‘A philosopher is someone who can fatten a plump riddle out of the thinnest of answers.’

‘Philosophy will not win an inch of ground in our war!’ spat Fetterman.

‘That depends on which war,’ said Sariel, before adding pointedly, ‘and perhaps which side you are on.’

The aviator stood up angrily from the comfort of the fire and grabbed up her rifle from the grass. ‘I’ll take first watch. May the night’s cold freeze some sense into your addled brain before sunrise.’ She stalked out of the trees.

‘Miss Fetterman might be more bearable company with the answers to some of those questions,’ said Carter.

‘And my seventh wife might have made the Sultan of Utorcore very happy,’ said Sariel, throwing his canvas groundsheet over the damp ground to make his bed. He lay down, coughed and drew the wool blanket around him. ‘But I’m still not inclined to go back to discover the truth of the matter.’

When sleep found Carter, it was a shallow, worry-filled affair. Not for himself or what might go wrong on their journey, but for his family’s fate back in Rodal. If the Vandians felt free enough to spend time scouting the steppes for more victims, what did that say about their control over Rodal?
Maybe Willow and my father are already dead or prisoners in some cramped, stinking cage awaiting shipment to the slave markets of the Imperium?
Carter drifted uneasily into slumber, the hardness of the ground and bite of the cold air flowing through the trees holding off a restful sleep. He tried not to focus too hard on how long he remained in that anxious state, just the thought of it enough to hold a deep sleep away. At last, an unhappy grey unconsciousness claimed Carter. How long he was out he could not say. It was a strange gurgling noise that awoke him. His eyes fluttered open. Carter struggled to make sense of what he could see from the fire pit’s embers and moonlight falling through the fine canopy, dawn’s first gleaming hanging close.
Is that?
A silhouette stood over Sariel’s sleeping blanket. A female form . . . Beula Fetterman, and as she moved away from the blanket on the ground, Carter saw the dagger plunged into the old trickster’s chest, so deep only the hilt was left visible. All weariness vanished. Carter kicked off his blanket and lunged for the rifle by his side, but he was too slow. The aviator had her own rifle raised straight toward him.

‘Not another inch towards the gun,’ ordered Fetterman. ‘I want you alive long enough to dig this doddering fool’s grave.’

She’s gone insane.
Cold stung Carter’s face. ‘Just because Sariel wouldn’t tell you where we’re heading to or why we’re going there?’

‘No,’ she sneered. ‘Just because we are far enough away from the border that your bodies won’t be found by anyone from the Lanca.’

‘We’re your
mission
.’

‘Yes, you are. In a manner of speaking, but never the pretender’s mission. I take my orders from the royalist army. They sent me to Rodal to bring Lady Cassandra back to King Marcus. He wanted the return of the Vandian emperor’s granddaughter as a gift to keep the Imperium happy. Lean over slowly, just enough to pick up your rifle by the tip of its barrel and toss it over here in front of me.’