Far Called Trilogy 01 - In Dark Service (22 page)

The steward returned to the cart. ‘It’ll take at least an hour or two to swap the rails out and re-test the line, sir. You might want to stretch your legs after you eat.’

Jacob groaned inside. Every hour lost was another hour for his son to be carried further and further away.
It feels like I’m losing him, Mary. God forgive me, but it feels like our chances of success are being stretched thinner and thinner
.
Every day we lose is another day for Carter to be worked to death by the slavers.

A stairwell close to their suite led down through second class, steerage and cargo. Jacob took the stairs to the doorway and climbed down from the halted carriages. The train had stopped in the grasslands of a wide valley. At least they were clear of the snow in the high passes. It had only been a few weeks ago when the plough at the front of the train had been running into drifts the engine car couldn’t cope with. All the passengers had been forced to disembark, shivering in the cold under as many layers as they carried, helping to clear a passage with shovels. At one point they had come up behind a goods train in front of them, and they’d had to clear its route and then dig their own train free too.

Fifty feet away from the halted train, Jacob could see the ruins of an overgrown village, little more than grassy mounds. A few mossy rocks to indicate people had once lived there, a light green patterning in the meadows indicating where streets had once run. Wild goats chewed brambles on the mounds, eyeing the resting train and its disembarking passengers with suspicion. It was at times like this that the immensity of the world shook Jacob. Good grazing land that had once supported families, long abandoned and swallowed up by the infinite for reasons that were dust now
. Will the land devour our cause without trace too? All this way, and we haven’t even crossed the border yet. Everything that’s left of me is slipping through my fingers, lost to the world, further and further away each day.

Jacob rubbed a hand through his dark curly hair, feeling his sweat from the sun. His legs creaked as he walked forward, ligaments cracking
. I’m getting old. And what I’m doing isn’t an old man’s game.
He decided to take a stroll before climbing back on board and headed for a copse of trees, five minutes from the ruins of the village. As he got closer, he saw the trees masked something older than the village’s remains. A stone circle, menhirs rising twelve feet high. The trees hid their ancient presence. Everywhere you went in Weyland, other nations too, similar stone circles could be found. Jacob pushed through the undergrowth to see if these stones matched the others he had come across.
Just the same.
Dark obsidian-like stone, polished enough to see your face reflected on its surface. Their bases lay overgrown with lichen, but above the reach of the grass, the rune-covered menhirs seemed invulnerable to the depredations of time, weather and nature.
But here’s something that doesn’t look familiar
. The grass inside the circle had been blackened and burnt, as if someone had reached down and stamped the circle’s interior with a giant branding iron. Jacob touched the ground. Warm, even in the glade’s shade.
Maybe travellers set up shelter here, recently?
Possibly the same rascals stealing rails off the track. These ancient circles were fey places. Jacob felt a cold shiver pass down his spine. That feeling only faded after he pushed his way out of the trees’ half-light. The sun floated hot in the sky. Fellow passengers from the train waded through the long grass, men and women dotted around the valley like farmers in a field. With a single glance back to the copse and what it concealed, Jacob cursed his superstitious hackles for a child’s fear and headed back to the train. There was something of a commotion sounding on the other side of his carriage as he arrived. Jacob slipped under a walkway joining two carriages to discover the argument’s source.
Aha
. Two train guards blocked the passage of an old man. He sported a scraggly white beard which could’ve nested robins in its growth. The stranger carried a stout walking staff, but he wasn’t using it to threaten the men, merely resting his chin against it while the guards manoeuvred themselves to stop the stranger reaching the carriage’s steps.

‘Back you, back,’ growled one of the guards.

‘Isn’t this man a passenger?’ asked Jacob.

‘Wants to be, Father, but without the botheration of paying,’ said the guard. ‘He came walking down from the side of the valley when he saw our train halted. Watched him with my own eyes. Just an old beggar.’

‘A beggar!’ said the old man, his voice filling the meadow. ‘Damn
you
for a rapscallion, sir. You are no better than a hell-hated foot-licker. Do you not recognise Sariel, the Prince of Players? I am a bard! A noble recounter of tales!’

‘Well, you can recount them to the next caravan you come across, friend. Guild rules – no panhandlers to ride on board and disturb
paying
passengers.’

‘It must be a thousand miles to the next town,’ said Jacob. ‘You can’t just leave him out here.’

‘He walked here well enough in the first place, didn’t he? With the berries on the bushes and the mushrooms in the forests, he’s probably feasting fine every night. And rules are rules.’

‘What about the traditions of salt and roof?’

‘Father, the guild of rails only has one commodity to sell.
Passage
. If I let him on board free, I figure I’ll owe a refund to the other three thousand souls on our train. This is the express to Talekhard, not a mercy mission.’

‘How much?’ sighed Jacob.

‘We haven’t stopped at a guild station, Father, and our other passengers still have their sense of smell…’

‘If the train master asks, I’ll vouch that he got on at Brinkdalen. You can split the ticket money between you and pay for a couple of nosegays.’ Jacob jingled his wallet. ‘We’re still in Weyland, gentlemen, these shillings of mine are tested pure by the national mint.’

‘The old fool rides steerage, and your silence, or it’ll be my job.’

‘Steerage and meals, and my discretion can be thrown in for free.’

‘Done. You’ve more money than sense, Father.’

‘For once, I think you’re right. I’m having a cathedral raised back home, boys. I’m feeling flush.’

‘Ah, sweet charity,’ smiled the old man, pumping Jacob’s hand. ‘You will surely end up sitting on one of the synod’s golden thrones for your kindness.’

‘I believe I’ve been punished enough already, Mister Sariel. Up the steps with you, old fellow, before one of the guild’s journeymen catches you and decides your ticket’s invalid.’

‘You have a fine deep tenor, Father. A northerner I would say, Northhaven perhaps?’

A bard’s ear for detail at least.
‘Of late, I have been. You visited the town?’

‘Why, of course,’ Sariel enthused. He climbed up before Jacob, taking the side door into the cargo level. ‘Northhaven’s like a second home to me.’

Was like a first one to me.
‘You can’t have visited recently. All the way out here, you must have been hiking for a good few years.’

‘No indeed, Your Grace, I was carried here a short time ago by a giant eagle. Wild Pohierax, a monarch among birds who has reason to remember me kindly. Pohierax bore me most of the distance, calling to his friend the moon as we flew.’

‘Just Father Carnehan, if you please. No “Your Graces”. I’m not an archbishop yet.’

‘Are you not? A disgrace, Your Grace, if not a travesty! God is surely weeping over that cruel offence. Tell me, good sir, where does this train of ours travel?’

‘Talekhard’s the end of the line.’ Jacob glanced around the cargo chamber. The oil lamps hanging from the ceiling weren’t burning, but there was enough natural light slanting in from ventilation slats. Bundles of sacks marked with merchants’ crests lay piled around the space, a maze of crates to navigate and the passengers’ racked luggage sitting safe behind a locked cage. Things could be worse for the tramp; it could have been a livestock wagon he bedded down in.

‘Ah, the great free port of Talekhard, the town that goes to sleep every night to a lullaby sung by a thousand rotors.’

‘You know your geography, Mister Sariel. But I guess you don’t have much calling to use aircraft, not with your feathered friend Pohierax.’

‘Ah, it must be said that my acquaintance with matters geographical is no accident. I shall share with you a confidence, Your Grace.’ Sariel stopped amongst the crates. ‘I was not always a bard. Once, many years ago, I served as the royal mapmaker to King Butembo. I was a cartographer without equal. The king had married a thousand wives and, sadly, he dismissed me after we quarrelled over which of them was the most beautiful… Yakini or Nabila. It was an impossible choice.’

‘Never choose between beauties, Mister Sariel.’

‘Will they really bring me food, do you think?’

‘With what I’ve just paid for your passage, they had surely better.’

Jacob left the tramp brushing down the cargo netting and rearranging crates and bales to make himself a cot. Jacob returned outside, content to sit on the grassy mounds and watch the rail being removed from behind the train and bolted down in front. After an hour or so of peace, he returned to his cabin. The steward arrived back with water and fruit, clearing away the dishes. Wiggins had finally relented and joined in the game of cards with the other two.

‘They’ve finished swapping the rails,’ said Jacob. ‘We’ll be moving soon.’

‘Just a little bit longer, now, Father,’ said the steward. ‘One of the passengers stumbled across the missing rail in the meadows up ahead. Damnedest thing. It’d been ripped out and cast aside. Train master has ordered it to be re-laid behind us before we leave.’

‘Ha,’ snorted Wiggins, flipping a card down on the folding table. ‘Couple of young bucks must have stolen it; probably caught hell when their caravan chief discovered what they had done. Tossed the rail quick and rolled off at a gallop before the next patrol turned up. What do you think, Pastor?’

‘I was wondering whether flying by giant eagle would be quicker than passage on an aircraft.’

‘Depends on what kind of bull you’re feeding it.’

‘That was my line of thinking too.’

Jacob opened his bleary eyes, a couple of seconds to remember where he was, blinking away the sleep and placing his position in the world. A first-class compartment on the express to Talekhard. He felt a pang of disappointment. For a confused second, he had thought himself at home in the rectory. Mary by his side, Carter down the corridor and all that had happened a bad dream. Her presence had seemed so vivid.
Hell, I guess this must be the bad dream, then. And I’m still living it.
If the light outside was any guide, it was early morning. Apart from Khow, the others still lay asleep in their connecting cabins. The gask, though, was sitting on the floor cross-legged, his mind lost to meditation and the calculations running through his mind.
We’ve stopped; the train’s halted again?
Jacob asked Khow if he knew why they had halted, but the gask just shook his head. When the gask was like this, Jacob could have cut off one of his fingers and the twisted man would be hard-pressed to notice. He stuck his head out of the compartment’s window. Thick dark-green forest. And a smell… a foul one that Jacob recognised. A lot like the ravening of Northhaven.

‘Get up, Khow,’ said Jacob. ‘I think something’s happening. Better wake the others’

They soon discovered the reason for their off-schedule halt. Major Alock turned up outside the compartment, his eyes serious slits under a kepi – the circular-topped cap’s peak throwing his granite jaw into shadow. Alock’s khaki uniform appeared as crisp as if the creases had been beaten flat with a hot sabre edge. The officer’s news was enough to wake Wiggins and Sheplar quick enough. They dressed fast, all four of them emerging into the cold morning air.
And there it is
. Another train sat in a siding to their right, three carriages long, a smoke-damaged engine car trailing a single carriage, another flatbed truck loaded with rails and equipment at the rear. Beyond lay the forest, every tree facing the siding with a blackened body tied to its trunk, the smoking remains of a bonfire by the feet of each carcass. The major’s troops filtered out warily across the treeline, checking the corpses. The dead soldiers wore a grey uniform Jacob didn’t recognise.

Jacob addressed the major. ‘A track maintenance train?’

Major Alock nodded grimly. ‘Those soldiers are crossbowmen from Ivah. Tree-stake burnings… I understand this particular execution is a dog-rider speciality.’

Jacob turned his nostrils in disgust from the evil stench of burning.
Too close to the smell of the devastation at Northhaven.
‘We’re travelling through Ivah, then?’

‘Have been all night. This attack creates a problem for us.’ The officer indicated the train’s staff swarming over the damaged locomot­ive. ‘The train master has examined the bodies and the rail guild’s men are missing, it’s only the military escort accounted for among these casualties.’

Wiggins came up behind them, overhearing the exchange. ‘This is foreign soil, Major. Sure as hell ain’t our fight. Ivah isn’t even a league member and we can’t be more than a day from rolling back across the Weyland border.’

‘The train master has made his request officially, Constable. The guild would no more leave their people behind than the regiment would consider abandoning its own.’

‘Your job is guarding our two moneyboxes and going after Northhaven’s missing, not this,’ said Wiggins.

‘There’s a reason why the rail guild won’t run a full service across Ivah, and,’ said the major, pointing to the half-wrecked train, ‘it’s
this
. If you can’t protect the guild’s trains, then services don’t run through your country.’ He picked up a discarded crossbow from the grass. ‘No trains mean no goods moved around. No goods means less industry. No trains mean commerce slowing to the crawl of a wagon. If I ignore a formal guild request for military aid, then
this
toy is all the next major of the royal guards is going to have to defend the king. You want to try and keep the peace with no ammunition for your pistol, Constable?’