Foreign Devils
Authors: John Hornor Jacobs
For Lily and Helen
Contents
From the journal of Livia Cornelius
– the Kalends of Quintilius, Flora Ludae, 2638
We outrode today, into the Hardscrabble, just Fisk and I. Father was whining and petulant and Carnelia sulked in the dry heat, but I remained adamant that neither pregnancy nor parentage would prevent me. Lupina, ever solicitous of my health since my not-so-delicate state was detected, nodded sagaciously as I waved off Father’s protestations and strapped the Hellfire shotgun to my leg.
Despite the heat, there was a breeze as we took our horses out, away from wagon train, the lictors and legionnaires, as they made their way east toward Dvergar Spur. We rode fast; Fisk knows the ways to lose any tagalongs that may follow.
As we rode, my mind remained clouded. The expected clarity of hardscrabble and horseback did nothing to brush away the dark skein of thoughts shadowing me.
I dreamed of Mother last night.
It was after Father put her aside and I took the
daemon
steamer to Salonica, where she had placed herself in voluntary exile in a villa there, entertaining gentleman suitors, until her family’s public shame around the Citlapol event could be either expunged, Imperially forgiven, or ignored. The suitors were well bred, but lesser men; laden with gifts in hopes of winning Octavia Messala’s hand – in hopes of winning her purse. Mother always had money, otherwise Father would have never been interested.
It had been a strange few months there. The island was lovely – mostly a fishing community – and at night boys would come to the villa with woven baskets of wild flowers, calling ‘Domina! Domina!’ and tossing sprigs of
nocteflorius
onto the stone steps. Lavender. Blue agapanthus. Seabloom and butcher’s heart. Until Mother would send out a slave with a few small coins to sprinkle about.
She wasn’t happy, my mother. But I never knew her to be. And, I think, this more than any other reason was why Father put her aside. He is a creature of jollity – the Citlapol event was just an excuse.
In the dream, we walked on the rocky bluff above the shore one day, standing in the wind-wracked trees there and watching the ships move like toys across the wide face of the Pelagus. I was fourteen and thirty-three all at once in the strange way that dreams have, possessed of both the innocence of my youth and the knowledge of the present.
‘You will marry,’ Mother said, looking out at the sea. ‘And soon, and it will be of your father’s choosing.’
I said nothing, locked in the dream, watching Mother.
‘You will marry,’ she said again, ‘And will not love him because how can you? We are strong, Livia. Women are the strength of the world; we bring life into it. We nuture life while our time passes and ease it into the grave when life is done.’ She turned away from the shore to look at me. ‘We are the stronger sex. Men are but mean and petty things and this is why they rule us. So we must be mean and petty, too, to survive.
‘You will never love your husband,’ she said. ‘But you must make him love you. You must be mean, and petty, and
make
him love you for your own safety’s sake.’
In the distance a bell tolled and I found myself struggling to escape. A horror settled on me, and I thrashed and writhed until I woke, steaming in the darkness of the tent and spent the rest of the night looking upon the sleeping face of Fisk.
And today we outrode against Father’s wishes.
‘There’s someone following us,’ Fisk said, looking back over his horse’s rump. A rare tenseness there, tightness in his shoulders, his legs, made more remarkable because of his accustomed calm.
‘Father sent legionnaires to hound us?’
Fisk shook his head and brought his horse alongside mine, so that our legs touched. Even astride a horse, I felt the raw, physicality of the man and thought of night, in our tent.
‘If he sent legionnaires to follow us, they are dead. That is a
vaettir
.’ He inclined his head toward the far horizon.
‘I have seen nothing,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Still. It’s there. We must circle back.’
‘Could we not hide? Wait for it.’
‘An ambush?’ He glanced at my stomach. ‘No.’
‘I am not an invalid, my love,’ I said, and pulled the shotgun from its holster.
‘Ia-damn,’ he said, and his face softened. ‘Don’t I know it. But there’s more than just us to think about.’
‘My movement hasn’t been impaired. Yet.’ I pulled my horse away from his and wheeled it about. ‘And I am a match for you or anyone atop a horse.’
He stared at me, breathing softly. ‘Don’t I know it,’ he said again.
‘Then let us take care of this creature, shall we, you and I?’
He looked about. ‘There. Ride there,’ he said, looking at an outcrop of dark rocks pushing through the hardscrabble. ‘Slowly. Like we were out on a picnic, or some dalliance.’
I raised my eyebrow. ‘Are we not?’
‘I don’t think we’ll have time for the little death since we’re doing this for the big one.’
‘We shall see.’
We reached the rocky outcrop – cartographers will no doubt name the place The Fingers or some other nonsense in the future, since the rocks
did
look much like gnarled fingers jutting through the earth’s surface – and dismounted. The horses were nervous, nickering and stamping as Fisk hobbled them. I untied our woollen army issue blankets, water and food.
‘How long until he reaches us?’ I asked.
Fisk pulled his carbine and fed Hellfire rounds into it. ‘Moments. He could be here already.’
‘Then there’s not much time to waste,’ I said, and found a smooth spot and spread the blankets out on top of it. I lay my shotgun within easy reach. ‘Come, my love. Let us give the
vaettir
bait enough to set it to salivating,’ I said, patting the blankets.
He came and sat by me, holding his rifle in his hands. After a moment, he unbuckled his gun belt and withdrew the pistols, checking the rounds.
The rocks circled us, dark, crooked pillars and looming shapes. Fisk scanned them, eyes narrowed. I leaned in to kiss him, but he drew his head away.
‘Love, I can’t see,’ he said.
‘Then, we must do this without kisses,’ I said, and pushed him back, straddling him.
He resisted, but only for a moment. And never let go of his gun.
It was when it was over, sweat discolouring both of our clothes, that the screeching came and Fisk jerked his gun upright and began firing as I rolled away, shotgun in hand. A shadow lanced overhead, like some deathly fast carrion bird, and instinctively I led it and fired, feeling the boom and sinking feeling that accompanies
daemonic
Hellfire.
The shadow plummeted to the ground and writhed, scratching and hissing. The stretcher whipped about and Fisk was up and firing but not before it dashed up the sheer face of one of the black fingers and launched itself up and over, out of sight.
Fisk moved to where it had fallen.
‘Blood,’ he said and turned to me. A small smile gave the barest crease to his craggy features. ‘You winged it. A fine shot, if not a killing one. The Ia-damned thing will be burning with silver for a while.’
‘How do you know it wasn’t you who hit it?’
‘It wasn’t.’
‘Come, love,’ I said, withdrawing Hellfire rounds from my bandolier and reloading the shotgun. I set it down and unpinned my hair.
‘Let us lure him back again,’ I said.
Foreign Devils
Kalends of Quintilius, 2638 ex Ruma Immortalis
To get to Fort Brust from New Damnation you take the Big Rill downstream until it doglegs south and then you’re hoofing it overland for the next two hundred miles through hardscrabble until you hit the Smokeys, what my kin call the Eldvatch. Dry land there, for mile upon countless mile, full of bramblewrack, gulleys, cracked ground sundered from the heat. Nothing for hot, waterless days and bone-cracking cold nights until the Smokeys appear like a pall of blue smoke hanging in a long unbroken line from the northern horizon to the southern rim of the earth.
Cornelius, hanging tongue a-loll, torso half-out of the carriage’s window, said, ‘Dwarf! My eyes have dimmed due to lack of spirits! How far till the Dvergar Spur?’ The senator had been complaining it was too hot to drink in the mid-day heat for the last week. He was right and most of us – legionnaires, lictors, outriders, servants, slaves, secretaries, and family members – had agreed with him. Yet he continued to gripe.
‘Day, sir. Maybe two, most like,’ I said.
‘But Livia said they’ve been spotted! Like a line of blued-gunmetal, she says.’ He held his hand up to shield his eyes. Beyond the senator in the window of the large, draft-horse-drawn carriage, I could see where Carnelia and Lupina, the slave-attendant, sat cooling themselves with enamelled Tchinee fans decorated in dancing
daemon
motifs. Carnelia stared off into the hardscrabble, lips pursed in a sour expression, a book held loosely in one hand.
‘Big enough to be visible thirty or forty miles away, sir.’
Cornelius cast his hot, busy gaze around, looking for something else to complain about. ‘Where are my son and daughter?’ he said. ‘Where’s my legate?’ He’d been calling Fisk ‘his legate’ for the month. It was a hollow title, conveying Fisk a high rank – a rank high enough for someone wed to Cornelius’ daughter – without any of the bellicose responsibilities that rank is heir to. No prefect or tribune would take orders from Fisk without umbrage, Fisk never having worked through the offices of any legion, never shared a tent with a conturbium of soldiers, or blooded himself in battle alongside other members of a cohort. While Fisk never complained, it rankled him, I could tell. I might not know much, but I know Fisk well enough that he’ll accept but one bridle, and the one who holds that rein sat a saddle with him – Livia.
‘They should be back soon, sir. Fisk took Livia out yonder, to ride,’ I said. ‘And Secundus, he rides there, chatting with the men.’
Cornelius looked a tad peeved at my near use of Secundus’ name: they’d had a row recently regarding it. With Secundus’ elder brother Gnaeus’ bodily integument now burnt and mixed with gambel ash, scattered on the winds of the White Mountains like pollen and dander, Cornelius wanted Secundus to take a new name – Livius. ‘You and Livia will make a brace of Cornelians! No need for you to bear the name of a second son any more!’ Cornelius had exclaimed in his boredom during the journey to Fort Brust. Both Livia and Secundus had answered him with outraged silence. When Cornelius pressed the matter, Secundus said, ‘My sister and I aren’t quail. I had an older brother and he took pre-eminence, Father. As it was and ever should be. But now he’s gone, joining our Cornelian ancestors at Ia’s great triniculum, I shall remember and honour him and simply remain Secundus.’ Cornelius huffed, more at being thwarted in his hasty decisions than the obstinacy of his son.
Cornelius fell into blessed silence, looking back at our train of wagons. He squinted his eyes at his son who rode beside dusty legionnaires marching – now slowed with the weight of silver-threaded gladii and pilum in addition to their Hellfire carbines and pistols; the lictors in an adjacent carriage, holly fasces pricked with silver spikes; the munitions vardo riding a distance behind ringed with armed junior engineers warily watching Engineer Valerus, who scowled and watched them back with a demeanour soured either by the journey or his vocation, it was hard to tell; the slave vardo, where the Cornelian slaves and servants indulged in sleep and the rare occurrence of indolence; the chow buck weighted down with sacks of beans and rice and corn, casks of salt pork and garum, wax-sealed ceramic jars full of pickled ackra and longbean; a passel of sutlers willing to sell almost anything to the marching legionnaires; a rolling smithy; finally, the draft-drawn waterwagon that rode higher on its springs with every evening.
I don’t know a lot of former consuls, but judging from Cornelius’ wagon train, and my experiences on his boat, they don’t travel light.
In the evening, the sun lowering in the west, Fisk and Livia returned, dusty and parched.
Pulling his horse by the senator’s wagon, Fisk said, ‘Encountered a stretcher today, sir.’
Cornelius sat upright. ‘And?’ He looked at Livia, then the horses.
‘Winged it,’ Fisk said. ‘Or, Livia did.’
‘This is interesting!’ Cornelius said. ‘Do you think we could break this dreary baggage train and have a little hunt?’
Fisk shook his head. ‘There’s always the chance there are more
vaettir
out there. But there are no guarantees in the Hardscrabble.’
Cornelius harrumphed. ‘My legate, there are no guarantees in
life.
And we are expected at Fort Brust,’ he said and called a halt. ‘I need a drink. We’ll camp here.’
After watering their horses, Fisk and Livia joined us in the massive praetorium tent that the proconsul’s wagon transformed into at every nightfall. Somehow, the tent-raising had fallen to me to organize and the slaves and legionnaires balked, sometimes, at taking their orders from me, due to my mixed blood. I may be small, but my voice is loud and with Cornelius’ favour, my workers managed to swallow their pride at being commanded by one of my stature and
dvergar
blood. Rumans are one thing, but even their slaves are proud.
First, the hardscrabble ground was cleared and raked, and smooth pine planks were laid down on the dirt. The praetorium tent was unrolled over the planking, legionnaires straining against the weight of the tent and the ash struts and supports themselves were raised with a great heave and ho and clamour as finally the main tent pole, some twenty feet high, was erected at the centre while thick hemp ropes were drawn taut and secured to iron spikes driven deep into the earth by sledgehammer, lines creaking like gambels on the heights.
Daemon
lanterns were unveiled, casting flickering yellow pools of light inside the dim interior. Then, a portable parquet floor was unlimbered from its crate from one of the wagons and assembled in its interlocking pattern – a clever
dvergar-
made artifice – and a makeshift triniculum and meeting area established. Wicker divans, chairs, and folding tables were set up while the braziers and sleeping areas were arranged for Fisk and Livia, Carnelia, Secundus, and Cornelius himself. Cilus, the chief lictor, cast blessings about the place while Rubus, Cornelius’ chief secretary, began placing maps of the known world, the empire, the protectorate, and the Hardscrabble Territories on the meeting table so that Cornelius, at his leisure, might peruse matters of state. Along with the map went a Knightboard and many decks of cards so that the senator might gamble or game, as he was wont to do, or use the Knightboard figures as markers on the maps, indicating troop or flotilla movements.
Outside the tent, the legionnaires, their labours just beginning, formed a square perimeter, and began the process of establishing a Ruman military camp on the march – smaller than a permanent camp, yes, but still a considerable labour unto itself with makeshift cook and mess tent, latrines, and tent-dwellings for each contubernium. The soldiers, men of the thirteenth returning to Fort Brust, sang marching and work songs as they went about their duties –
Mighty guns of the great thirteenth! Riches and death, victory and grief! Balls of silver and sharpened teeth! Mighty guns of the great thirteenth!
There being only a complement of one hundred and twenty eight legionnaires with us – sixteen contubernium sent as escort for a legate reporting to Marcellus and now returning as ours – only sixteen tents were needed plus three more; one for the two optios, one for the lictors, and one for the slaves. The sutlers and waggoneers, the waterwagon and engineer vardos, brought their charges within the perimeter and set up rolling camp, sleeping bags laid out underneath the wagons – except in the case of the engineers, who disappeared inside the lacquered vardo and were not seen again until morning.
Inside the senator’s tent, the sounds of legionnaires fell away as Lupina and two of her junior household slaves bustled about. Cornelius washed his face in a bowl of water, cleared his nostrils like a cornicen blowing assembly, then paced and fretted until the
dvergar
woman poured him a tall whiskey in a cut crystal tumbler and lit his cigar.
‘Ahh, that’s better,’ Cornelius said, sitting down upon one of the wicker travel-chairs before his desk, beads of water caught in his whiskers and blue smoke collected around his head.
Cornelius propped his artificial leg on the desk. The thing was intricate; wrought from his own severed legbone, gold and silver filigree danced down its length, and on one side there was a neat little ceremonial skean and on the other, a small silver flask. I’d never seen that particular drinking container tarnished. The leg ended in fur and long hinged claws – the paw of the bear that took his foot. ‘Daughters! My legate! Attend me!’
Carnelia sulked into the common area of the tent. ‘Yes, Tata?’
‘Not you, Carnelia. I’ve been looking at your face all day. You may go.’ He waved his hand, and slurped some whiskey, sighing again.
Rumans fascinate me by what they’re able to ignore, in this case his youngest daughter’s look of outrage.
‘Secundus! Livia! My legate!’
Miss Livia appeared, still wearing her riding leathers, a sawn-off Hellfire blunderbuss strapped to her hip. Life in the Hardscrabble Territories had been kind to her, if not clean. There was a rime of sweat-lined dust on her collar and she was wiping her hands on a dirty towel as she approached, but her face was bright, if tanned, and her eyes shone with fierce intelligence. The child she carried in her stomach was just beginning to alter her slim figure after three months, but, if anything, her pregnant state had increased her activity, as if she wanted to do and see everything she could before the child came into the world.
Fisk followed after Livia, his grey hat removed and his hair wet from his post-trail ablutions. My friend and partner for more than ten years now, but life, rank and marriage had been drawing us apart. Before Livia he was pained, and incomplete – there’s no other way to say it. The meanness of the trail, the loss of his family, the necessities of living on this wide expanse of harsh earth – all had coarsened him. Wounded him. Once, it seemed, wounded him irrevocably. Yet. There came Livia. Now, Fisk was, if not whole – some things cannot be healed – at least content.
‘What of the trail, children? Will there be stretchers?’ Cornelius asked as Secundus emerged from his quarters – a partition, really, of the command tent. ‘What awaits us?’
Fisk pulled out a wicker seat for his wife, dusted his trousers with his hands, and sat down. Cornelius snapped his fingers at Lupina, motioning for her to be free with the whiskey. Lupina poured a dram or two for Fisk, who cupped the tumbler in his hands and breathed the fumes deeply before sipping. Livia motioned Lupina away. ‘I must see to the legionnaires.’
Fisk swallowed a measure of whiskey, and said, ‘Tomorrow we go north, a few miles to get around that gulch, and then east again. We should hit the spur by evening of the following night, barring any other gulleys or sundered earth. Or stretchers.’ He glanced at me. I knew the look.
‘In your opinion,’ Cornelius asked, his voice excited. ‘What are the chances we’ll encounter
vaettir
?’ Patricians. Sometimes they don’t even have the sense to be afraid.
‘Not something I’m willing to speculate on, sir. They are always around. Or never. You just can’t know.’
‘I would not have thought they would be found so far east.’
I stepped forward. ‘We are still in the Hardscrabble Territories. The
vaettir
travel fast, as you all know. Time was, they were seen in the thousand-acre wood. We are not so far east yet to be out of their territory.’
Cornelius glanced at me, sniffed, no doubt slightly perturbed that I had the temerity to pipe up during his first drink, yet Fisk and I were the experts in these lands.
‘It shouldn’t be much longer, Father,’ Secundus said. He caught Lupina’s eye and removed a crystal tumbler from a tray. She hustled around the table to pour him a measure. ‘If our maps are correct, after we manoeuvre around this gulch it’s a straight shot to the Dvergar spur.’
Cornelius harrumphed. ‘For years I told Gallius that we’d need a mechanized baggage train line south! Years! He was too intent on scratching all of the taxes he could out of the protectorate and spending all his free time whoring in Novorum.’
‘Gallius?’ Fisk asked, eyebrows raised.
‘Oh,’ Cornelius said, beginning to smile. Secundus joined him. ‘A little nickname for Rutilius.’
‘The commander at Fort Brust?’
‘The same.’ Cornelius’ smile had taken on monumental proportions.
‘I imagine there’s some shared history between you,’ Fisk said, noncommittal.
‘An unfortunate matter.’ Cornelius’ smile grew predatory. ‘When we were both legates during Nerva’s governorship in Gall, he became smitten with a dancing girl in one of the theatres there.’
Fisk stared, sipping. ‘That doesn’t quite explain that particular nickname.’
‘A Gallish girl, she had flaxen hair and was quite thin and he spent a fortune on her, lavished her with gifts, attended every performance where she pantomimed Loumdima’s capitulation to Aemilianus’ army.’
‘I’d think they’d prefer
Our Heavenly War
, what with all the Rumans getting bloodied in that one,’ Fisk suggested.
‘No, the Gallish people do not bear us much umbrage for the events of a thousand years ago. However,’ he chuckled. ‘They take their revenge in smaller ways.’