The Stealers' War (54 page)

‘No thanks needed.’

‘Yes,’ said Apolleon, his mind obviously still grinding his schemes and plots as he bore Alexamir’s weight forward. ‘I think we can make this work. Nobody in the Imperium knew of Gyal and Helrena’s marriage plans. We can hang the expedition’s failure on Gyal; blame the house’s enemies for their decision to appoint Gyal as commander and exclude the princess from the chain of command. The punishment fleet had only victories under its belt when Helrena left for the empire. Gyal ignored her counsel to return with the fleet’s mission achieved. Without her steadying ballast, Baron Machus and Prince Gyal, in their blind arrogance and hubris, allowed a bunch of blue-skinned savages to overrun the expeditionary force with nothing more than horses and sabres during a surprise attack. This defeat will break our enemies and clear a path to the throne.’

Nothing changes, even when everything does.
A thought occurred to Cassandra. ‘Is Paetro safe?’

‘He took a spear in the leg, but it will take more than a few wild nomads to kill him,’ said Duncan. ‘He’s in the sickbay, cursing the medics for not letting him search for you.’

Cassandra was glad that Paetro was one soul she wouldn’t have on her conscience. ‘So are you not staying behind in Weyland?’

‘No,’ said Duncan. ‘I’m going home with you.’

Up in the sky, the large steel mass of the
Dark Moon
grew larger as the vessel homed in on Apolleon. Cassandra tried not to let her doubts overwhelm her.
Perhaps it’s better this way. If we had stayed, Kani Yargul’s followers would have tried to gut Alexamir and me both.
‘What will home be?’

‘Whatever we make it.’

Cassandra nodded.
As long as I’m with Alexamir, I can live with whatever we make it.

AFTERMATH

King Marcus lounged in the royal train’s drawing room coach, the top floor of his three-storey car walled with walnut wooden panelling, carved crests and intricate heraldry that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a cathedral. His desk was covered with plans and blueprints for Arcadia’s forthcoming redevelopment. Marcus rose from the leather-lined couch built into the wall and moved behind his desk, reminding himself of his rewards for enduring all of this. It was astounding what could be done to the capital with modern building materials, with architectural plans provided by the Imperium.
At last, a capital worthy of Weyland’s status.
Long boulevards flanked by buildings as large as mountains, cathedrals of light and science leading to a central forum that could contain a million citizens. The capital’s canals would be redesigned with a main channel leading to his grand new airfield and skyguard stadium – a canal wide enough to accommodate his massive new ironclads, a fleet of warships to dominate the Lancean Ocean. King Marcus imagined the pride which would swell his doltish subjects’ hearts as they saw the steel citadels floating past on their way to new victories. As much warmth as the king could feel, with this cursed cold making his nose dribble. A fever no doubt given to him by one of the many sweaty sons of the soil whose presence had been foisted on him at the last station. If he wasn’t careful, Weyland’s monarch would end up early inside the giant gold sarcophagus he had marked for his final resting place.

Despite the warmth and relative luxury of the royal train, the king loathed this manner of travelling.
Slow. Traditional. Boringly conventional
. Intended to be seen by as many of his subjects as possible in every town and village. If the people knew what was best for them, then they would insist on travelling by fast, efficient skyguard merchant air-wing planes and relegate the Guild of Rails to shipping bushels of corn and cages of cattle. It was no wonder Marcus’ tedious brother had made so many royal progresses around the kingdom by train, subject to the whims of the long guilds. A fine, royal steer for display at the endless prefecture shows.
And now, I’m the prize bull on show so the ill-educated masses may gawk at a king’s grandness.
But there was only so much monarch to go around.
So I must be rationed. My time. So valuable. So wasted.

Marcus gazed out of the viewing galleries, a clear crystal stretch of reinforced glass. The train was rounding a corner, forests to the right and the last frost-topped peaks of the Sharps Mountains on the left. There were no other cars in this train but those reserved for the king: a dining coach, another wagon for the kitchen, the sleeping coach for the king and queen, a coach with servant sleeping compartments, a coach with bathing compartments. Their royal blue liveries contrasted with the modern camouflage pattern of the train’s military cars: an artillery wagon with wheel-gun turrets, connected to Marcus’ royal guardsmen’s wagon and four more similarly armoured railcars at the rear sporting anti-aircraft turrets on their roofs.
My brother never bothered with anything more than a single fighting car to see off bandits. How lucky the old bore died before the assembly’s renegades tore our land apart and left me to pick up the pieces.

The train’s head steward, an aquiline-nosed fop in a starched blue uniform came up the spiral staircase bearing a hot toddy along with his supercilious manner.
What’s the man’s name? Burton, that’s it.

‘Your drink, sire. As requested, I ensured the dining car provided extra sugar and lemon.’

A stiffly pompous fool, for sure. But at least Burton never made the same error twice. ‘Look out there, Burton. It looks abandoned, pristine. Apart from the guild’s rails you wouldn’t know people had ever touched the world.’

‘Quite so, Your Majesty.’

‘They’ll know it’s been changed before I am done. I will leave an empire to rival Vandia standing in the centre of the three oceans.’

‘More travelling for us, then, sire.’

‘Sadly, so. This fools’ circus for the people is the price of my victory. But then neutrality also has a price,’ said the king. ‘Rodal will pay it first. Then the rest of the Lanca. The nations of the league abandoned me when I most needed them. It was left to distant allies like the Vandians to aid us. I shall show the league how a fire is best beaten out as soon as it starts. They’ll burn like Weyland burned.’

‘False friends are like leaves in autumn, sire. They are to be found everywhere.’ The retainer bowed and left the chamber.

Marcus had barely reengaged with the distractions of a properly grandiose Arcadia when he was almost slung from his chair by the force of the braking locomotive. He didn’t have to wait long for an explanation. Burton reappeared at a scurry, his face flushed and looking suitably contrite.

‘What is the meaning of this, man?’

‘Word from the engine master, sire. We are turning back towards the station at Sethune.’

‘In the name of the saints, why?’

‘The signals compartment has received a warning, Your Majesty. There seems to be some confusion in the territory ahead of us. Colonel Garland of your Royal Guardsmen feels it prudent to return to a town with a serviceable skyguard field.’

‘Damn his eyes for an old woman. The war is won! This interminable circuit of the north is my victory progress.’

‘The reports being received
are
rather confused, sire,’ said Burton apologetically. He raised a penitent eyebrow. ‘Possibly an outbreak of banditry. This is a somewhat remote location, as you so wisely observed.’

‘Get out!’ barked the king. ‘Tell the signals officer to clarify exactly what this delay is about or I will have someone’s head on a pike.’

Burton trotted away and Marcus returned bad-tempered to his plans. The king was still examining the blueprints when the train began to slide backwards.
A city of splendours. Splendours without end.

Up ahead on the line, Sad Makar ruefully observed the massive train retreating back towards the Sharps Mountains. The flat bones of his forehead gave him a slab-like look. Ferocious, even by the standards of the steppes. The wind blew and his left eye watered as was its wont. He patted his dark brown stallion’s flanks and gazed morosely at the party of Nijumeti warriors busying themselves levering up iron rails from the wooden sleepers.

‘There’s a pointless contraption,’ chortled a nomad. ‘Why build a wagon that can only roll on metal? Wouldn’t it be of far more use if it could sneak its way through the forests and climb up mountain slopes?’

‘Weyland’s sorcerers aren’t powerful enough to build such things,’ noted a second nomad. ‘Not like those Vandians we chopped.’

Sad Makar shrugged. ‘I told you that this fortune in metal lines was used for something.’

One of the largest warriors, Trofim of the Twelve Scars, stopped working and wiped the sweat off his blue face. ‘They are used for something. For keeping our blacksmiths happy!’

‘Do you think they’ll return and ask for the rails back?’ asked another warrior.

‘If they do, we’ll bargain,’ said Makar.

‘Bargain?’

‘Aye.’ Makar patted his sabre’s pommel. ‘Steel for iron.’

Trofim of the Twelve Scars grinned. ‘Now there’s a thing. Not a week inside Weyland and Makar’s already become a lily-livered merchant.’

‘Same old trade,’ said Sad Makar.
Same old trade.
He left his horse with his men and threaded his way through the trees to the clearing where the two prisoners were being held; more notables fleeing from the first province the nomads had crushed after coming over the mountains. Sad Makar had only captured the pair half an hour ago, or their fate would already have been settled. That savage opening battle had lost them Kani Yargul, but for Sad Makar, this was not a thing to be mourned for long. The great warrior had died well and led his people beyond the mountainous Rodalian walls which had penned them in for countless centuries. Yargul’s immortality in the riders’ songs was guaranteed; a legend to rivals the gods. The longevity of their new prisoners, though, that would likely fall far short of immortality. The two Weylanders were still tied to the tree trunks with rope, a tree apiece, the first prisoner a short ugly manservant, the other a woman of quality, a local noble. Fair of countenance but mean of heart, if he was any judge; and with five wives, he probably was such. The guard he had posted over them looked bored, leaning against a spear.

‘Following the rails south must not seem such a good idea now?’ ‘Ransom me,’ implored the woman. ‘I am Lady Leyla of Northhaven, worth my weight in gold to you as a hostage – I have a king’s favour.’

‘Raiding for hostages and saddlewives is what we do when we’re bored. Do I look bored to you?’ Sad Makar had the whole world laid out before him. This land was ridiculously rich. Iron rails left on the ground like the ashes from last night’s fire. So many silver coins in the pockets of those they killed that it was hard to steal enough horses to carry it all away.

The female tried to summon the kind of gaze that would melt the heart of fools. Unfortunately for her, Sad Makar was not one of them. ‘No. You look handsome and strong. Strong enough to know my true worth.’

‘Oh,
that
I’m sure I do appreciate.’

‘Keep her as a slave?’ asked the rider, in steppes dialect so the prisoners would not understand.

Sad Makar shook his head and answered in the same tongue. ‘There is something of the serpent about this one. She would promise you honey while gleefully slipping you poisoned beer. I have no wish to wake up in the morning and find my manhood removed. I think we shall do this king she speaks of a little favour by not returning her.’

Wisely, the rider standing guard didn’t even bother asking about the fate of the short ugly one.

Sad Makar switched to the common tongue. ‘Will you not beg for your life too, scar-face?’

‘Nix ain’t begged yet,’ growled the ill-favoured dog. ‘Reckon it’s not the time to start now.’

‘Our way is to test you with fire.’

He spat down onto the forest floor. ‘Ain’t died yet, either.’

The old dog had a defiant courage, Sad Makar gave him that. But the flames would tease out the coward in the bravest of warriors.

‘They speak well enough,’ said the guard, packing kindling around the prisoners’ boots.

Sad Makar picked up a burning branch from last night’s cooking pit and blew on it, appreciating the red glow that came out of the wood. ‘Speaking well is easy when you are standing on grass. Let us judge the quality of their words when they are twisting on the pyre.’

Sad Makar called out to his warriors beyond the trees to take a break. He knew they would work like slow surly serfs for the rest of the day if they didn’t get to wager their stolen coins on which of their two prisoners would perish first.

Willow watched from under her comfortable sheets as Sheplar and Kerge left the large apartment. Now that the siege had ended and any enemies still inside Rodal were filling shallow war graves down in the valleys, the Speaker of the Winds had given Willow lodgings in the peaks of Hadra, a high view of clear skies from her narrow windows. Cries from the cot alongside Willow’s bed reminded her that it would be the newborn baby’s feeding time again soon enough.

‘Should I pass the little ’un across to you?’ asked Carter. ‘In a minute,’ said Willow, still spooning at the bowl of warm rice and pork that Sheplar and the gask had brought with them. ‘If I don’t eat first, I don’t think my milk is going to be much more wholesome than soup water on the third boil.’

‘Have you thought what you’re going to call her?’

‘I’ve got a name,’ said Willow. ‘Mary.’

Carter nodded, seemingly finding it hard to speak. ‘Something good can come out of any act, however bad, however foul.’

Willow rested back in bed on the pillows. ‘Yes, it can. I’m so very tired of war and fighting, Carter. She’s all that matters to me now.’

Carter lifted her empty food tray off the sheets, placing it by the sideboard. ‘Me, too. But I don’t think the civil war will last much longer. The Nijumeti are riding down on Marcus and the south. They’ll be following the gold of the caravan routes all the way across the border to Ortheris, but not before they’ve looted every royalist estate and lifted every southern mill owner’s wage box during their gallop across the nation.’

‘Then the royalists will be clamouring for their troops to pull back and protect their acres,’ said Willow.

‘I don’t think that many southern soldiers will be returning home,’ said Carter. ‘Not according to my father, at any rate. Marcus’ Vandian allies are dead or fled. Half the king’s forces were smashed against Rodal and left for crow food up in the mountains. The Assembly’s armies have been ordered out of hiding to cut the royalist supply lines. And now the north has its own skyguard worthy of the name. We won’t be fighting our way down to the capital now – more like helping chase the nomads south and clearing up after the slaughter.’

‘Apart from corpses, what will be left after this bloody horrible war ends?’

‘You, me and her,’ said Carter.

Those words felt as warm to Willow as her rest-bed. ‘Do you think victory will heal your father?’

Carter briefly looked pained. ‘I’m really not sure. But the south’s final defeat and Marcus’ execution for high treason is all that our enemies have left to surrender, now. But, if that’s not enough for him . . . ?’

‘It’ll have to be.’ But even as Willow voiced the sentiment, she wasn’t sure if she believed it. The gentle pacifist pastor Willow had grown up with had long gone, and she didn’t ever see him returning. ‘There’s a lot of work to do, for everybody. Northhaven is half wrecked,’ said Willow. ‘I saw the town from the air when your uncle rescued me.’

‘My uncle the air pirate,’ laughed Carter.

‘
Privateer
,’ corrected Willow, mimicking Barnaby’s voice as best she could.

‘Privateer, then. Well, if things ever get too boring rebuilding Northhaven, maybe I can sign up as aircrew and go raiding across the Lancean Ocean.’

‘How about you stay behind and look after the child and
I
sign up? I think your uncle would accept my sabre.’