Carter groaned but did as she ordered. There was a crack as the gun landed, striking a stone in the grass.
Another traitor.
‘How can you do this?’
She never took her eyes off Carter as she kicked the rifle away to her side. ‘Oh, but I’m late for what I was ordered to do. You’re lucky the emperor’s granddaughter is still missing. I should have already killed you, Carnehan. If the Rodalians hadn’t arrested us and thrown us in the poky together, you’d have met with an “accident” a long time ago. Plunging a knife through this old fool’s heart and cutting his throat in his sleep? That’s a bonus and my pleasure.’
‘If you shoot me, you’ll never find out why we were sent here.’
‘I don’t care,’ laughed Fetterman. ‘Trying to hire mercenaries from the clans to fight alongside you? Some secret treaty the pretender hopes to cut with these Nijumeti savages? Finding Lady Cassandra to use her as a hostage again? Whatever you’re travelling for dies tonight with you two idiots.’
‘They’ll hang you in Hadra-Hareer for this.’
‘No, they won’t,’ said Fetterman. She swivelled and kicked Sariel’s corpse. ‘I’ll tell them you ordered me to fly over the steppes until I ran out of fuel. Then you and the old devil set off into the north on your fools’ errand, leaving me to hike back to the nearest border fortress. Who would be surprised if they never lay eyes on the pair of you again? And the truth of the matter is that before long there’ll be nobody left in Rodal to even care. King Marcus has crushed the rebellion. His foreign allies will finish off the last of you left cowering inside Rodal, along with anyone unwise enough to stand by the pretender’s cause. Your father, your girl, the pretender and his court of traitors in exile. Everyone will be dead.’
‘You’ve got it all figured out.’
Fetterman jabbed her rifle at Carter. ‘Well, I know who here’s digging the grave big enough for two. Lift the spade out of your pack and get on with the job.’
Poor Sariel’s murdered. Of all the stupid ways to go.
The boastful old vagrant had survived a journey around half the world to save Carter and the other slaves taken by the Imperium. Saved Jacob Carnehan’s hide more than once. Only to be murdered in his sleep by an aviator turned spy, slain in the wilds by a royalist fanatic. Even the ageing rascal would have been hard-pressed to spin a tale of fame and distinction from this sorry fiasco. But outside the pages of cheap novels, wasn’t this how all outlaws ended their life? Not in a blaze of glory in some heroic last stand, surrounded by the piled bodies of their enemies. But shot in the back in a tavern. Jumped in an alley when drunk. Or the swift painful slice of a dagger across a sleeping throat. Carter crossed sadly to his pack and drew out the spade, a small army trenching tool that needed to be folded out to its full length. Its blade was muddy. He hadn’t had time to clean it after digging their fire pit.
Carter dug its blade into the chill hard ground, breaking the soil. ‘You never struck me as the religious type.’
‘This isn’t for your soul, pastor’s boy. It’s for mine. I don’t want vultures circling your bodies and warning every clansmen in the vicinity there are strangers in the steppes. I’d like a nice uneventful trek back to Rodal. Not a pursuit with me needing to ambush Nijumeti scouts every night.’
‘Wouldn’t want to put you to any bother,’ muttered Carter.
‘You won’t.’
Despite the cold, the work of digging the grave left Carter sweating. A good way to catch a fever. Maybe even sick enough to die.
But not before this turncoat puts a bullet in my heart
. All too soon Carter’s work was done. The hole was dug. He felt the warmth of the rising sun outside the trees.
My last day in the world
. ‘You going to leave a marker on our grave?’
‘What for? This is a big land. It will be centuries until someone wanders across your bones. And besides, I don’t think you’d like what I’d write anyway.’ Beula Fetterman raised her rifle and Carter waited to die.
As councils were wont to run, Jacob could tell this meeting was going to be fat with difficult discussions. They were gathered to mull over the news that the Rodalian town of Zimar had been seized by the massed forces of Vandia and Marcus’ royalists. Now they faced ground forces heading up the Pilgrim’s Way, seizing wind harbours along the key trade route as they advanced. Leapfrogging slowly towards the capital, village by village, mountain by mountain. He could smell the fear in the meeting chamber.
And fear and panic are worth a dozen legions to our enemy. Marcus and his allies will dig in properly around the capital. A siege. Look to starve us out. I don’t know where this imperial princeling Gyal learned the trade of war, but he’s not a complete idiot.
The mountains’ killing winds weren’t going to be summoned to such devastating effect a second time.
Nima Tash arrived in the chamber with a grim face, sitting with the head of the army to her left and the chief of the skyguard to her right. ‘We are to wait for Prince Owen?’
I’ve had enough of his defeatism; whining complaints born of privilege.
‘We are not,’ said Jacob.
‘Let us make a start of this. We have just received worrying intelligence from our scout wing,’ announced Skyguard Marshal Samden Stol. ‘They have discovered mercenary carriers in the air, circling the territory captured by the royalists and their allies. Flying high above Zimar, at the very edge of their operating ceiling. Many of the aircraft are skel carriers.’
At last.
‘Seems like they want every dog they’ve got thrown into this fight.’
‘You sound happy about this?’ said Nima Tash.
Jacob could hardly deny it. ‘I’m always happy when my enemy does something I expect, Madam Speaker. It makes my life easier.’
‘Harder to locate the joy in such news for me,’ grumbled the head of the Rodalian army. Land Master Namdak Galasang pushed his slablike hands across the table as though he planned to topple a mountain on the Imperium’s legions. ‘With the skels’ arrival, the invaders’ aerial forces have an advantage of speed, armament
and
numbers. We have always relied on command of the skies to keep Rodal safe from those that would breach the peace of the Lanca.’
‘It is true,’ said Samden Stol. ‘Our army’s ranks are adequate to defeat bandits and hunt down nomad raiders, but the Walls of the World face north towards the Nijumeti horde. Our fortresses and garrisons are fixed the wrong way for this war.’
‘We have what we have,’ said Nima. ‘We must fight with that.’
‘There have been many reports filtering in from the north,’ said the land master. ‘Unusual activity. The clans have not been fighting each other with much enthusiasm of late. This new Krul of Kruls has imposed an order of a sort on the Nijumeti. You know what that means . . .’
‘That the border fortresses will be earning their substantial upkeep again soon enough,’ sighed Nima.
‘We cannot strip our garrisons up there and march a relief force down through the valleys of the Mask Heights. Every soldier and pilot will be needed at Chalhand and Dalranga when a full horde is formed and led against us.’
Jacob stared at the politician. ‘How likely are the nomads to open up a second front?’
‘They are true opportunists like all bandits,’ said Nima. ‘They see a weakly defended caravan and they ride down on it.’
And currently we’re looking like the caravan with its escort too light on swords.
This wasn’t news Jacob needed. Sadly, it wasn’t likely to be the last bad account he’d receive this day. ‘Has the plane flying Carter and Sariel up north returned to your border fortresses?’
‘There has been no report of it landing yet,’ said the sky marshal.
Overdue, then. Overdue in a land overrun by savages with bad intentions.
Could he trust Sariel to keep Carter safe? Could he trust anybody other than himself anymore?
‘But the scout wing did report one additional detail that will no doubt be of some personal interest to you,’ continued Samden Stol. His tired old eyes fixed on Jacob. ‘One of the carriers above Zimar is well known to us.’
‘Known to you?’
‘A notorious pirate who plagues the trade routes of the Lancean Ocean. The
Plunderbird
.’
Jacob grunted. ‘So, what do you want me to say?’
‘That the pirate captain of the
Plunderbird
is your brother!’
‘The commander of that carrier is a
privateer
,’ said Jacob. ‘Black Barnaby sells his forces to whoever pays the best and can write a letter of marque for licensed pillage. Barnaby may be my blood, but Prince Gyal can pay his crew enough imperial gold to make every fighter on the carrier consider Gyal their best and truest brother.’
Nima spoke sadly. ‘This will strike against the morale of our defenders. Look, they will say, even General Carnehan’s own family fights against us.’
‘And how many families in Weyland have been split down the middle by the civil war?’ said Jacob. ‘You do know who Owen’s uncle is?’
‘Don’t you feel anything?’ demanded the Speaker of the Winds.
‘I buried a wife and a town full of friends because of the people advancing on this city,’ growled Jacob. ‘I buried a good few more fighting to rescue Carter and Northhaven’s young. Since Bad Marcus dissolved the national assembly and launched his damn coup, all I’ve been doing is watching good people being put down in the soil. You want to know
what
I feel? That up to now there have been too many graves dug for exactly the wrong kind of folks.’
‘My people aren’t here to die for yours,’ said Nima.
‘Then you had better decide what you will die for,’ said Jacob. ‘Because when Vandia and the southern army tighten the noose around your necks, they’ll deserve an answer to that.’
Off to their side the large doors of the chamber drew open, sentries standing aside, and Prince Owen stalked inside the chamber. Jacob noted the strange look on his face.
Something else to worry about, I reckon.
‘What is it?’ asked Jacob.
Prince Owen took his seat as though the weight of city rested on his shoulders. The nobleman could hardly meet Jacob’s gaze. After a long pause he spoke. ‘Willow Landor has been snatched from HadraHareer. She was ambushed inside her rooms last night. Anna Kurtain was with Willow at the time and tried to fight off their attackers, but they overpowered her.’
Jacob drew his breath in slowly, so as not to show what he felt. What he wanted to scream and shout. He managed a single word, hissed out like a dagger being drawn. ‘Who?’
‘Agents of my uncle, presumably. This was no random robbery. Nothing of value was taken from Willow’s lodgings. Anna was left unconscious but alive. Only Willow was kidnapped. The usurper would be a fool if his spies hadn’t been sent to enter the city disguised as refugees. And whatever else my uncle is, the man is no fool.’
No, that would be me. For listening to you. For allowing thousands of Weylanders inside the city to eat our food and prove a burden on our supplies
. ‘Did Miss Kurtain see who the raiders were, how many?’
‘Two men, she thinks. One of them a large Rodalian. They left something odd behind.’
‘What?’
Owen slid a pistol across to Jacob, old and blood-stained. ‘This was abandoned on the table in Willow’s lodgings, no rounds in the cylinder, only a single bullet found upright next to the gun.’
‘Is it a threat?’ asked Nima Tash. ‘That if we try to chase the raiders down they will put a bullet in Willow?’
‘No,’ said Jacob, a fury rose inside him.
The gun I left for Nix so he could finish his life. One bullet inside the chamber to put an end to his miserable existence.
‘It’s a message for me.’
Owen looked confused. ‘What does it mean?’
‘That if you want a job done right you really need to rely on yourself.’
I should have killed Nix. After he murdered Wiggins I should have just throttled his thick neck until his eyes bulged. That’s what I get for allowing Nix to blow his own brains out. Justice should never be served poetic. Just direct and fast.
‘We will send a pursuit from the city after her,’ announced Namdak Galasang.
Jacob tried to bite down on his frustration.
Too late. Far too late.
‘And fight our way straight through the siege lines? The chances are she’s already in the Vandians’ hands or a prisoner with the royalist army by now.’
‘I promised Willow safe protection here,’ said Owen. ‘She saved my life inside the sky mines. We cannot simply do nothing.’
And I promised my son I would keep Willow out of harm’s way here. Bad Marcus has made liars of us both. The king wants to twist a dagger in my gut every way he can.
‘Have the radio guild send word to your towns to be on the lookout for Miss Landor and her abductors. One of them is likely to be a short, ugly Weylander of around fifty years. A scar down the middle of his face. He goes by the name of Nix or Nocks. I’m sure he uses many other names, too. If he hasn’t already run into the southern army’s siege lines inside Rodal, he’ll be heading to Weyland by the fastest, most direct route possible.’
‘Will this Nix murder Willow?’ asked Owen.
‘Nix kills people like other men light up their pipe. He’s the dirtiest of the usurper’s pit-dogs. But no, Willow’s not dead yet. Not with her annulled marriage made to an ally of Bad Marcus. I reckon Viscount Wallingbeck wants to collect on his heir. But after that . . .’
Dear Lord, don’t let them use Willow against me. Don’t let them build a gallows for her next to a siege tower, just to give me another worry to think about besides beating them. Willow doesn’t deserve it. Carter doesn’t deserve to go through what we did after his mother’s death.
‘This is my fault,’ said Owen.
No, I reckon this is mine, and more my fault than I can let you know
. ‘We’ll fix the blame after we fix Nix and his raiders. And give Gyal and the usurper something to worry about besides the cost to the Imperium of paying for mercenaries.’
‘And how are we to do that?’
‘I have a plan,’ said Jacob.
He had got the Speaker of the Wind’s attention. ‘How do you suggest our defence proceeds?’
How I always intended it to proceed.
Jacob leaned forward. ‘By doing the one thing Bad Marcus and the Imperium’s killers will never expect us to do.’