Far Called Trilogy 01 - In Dark Service (24 page)

Duncan had to hold back a snort of disturbed laughter.
Well, I’ve been trying to escape from the shadow of all that I was heir to. That much I’ve managed. And I’d trade it all back in a damned second, if I could.
The processed queue of slaves continued to shamble forwards, heading down the long corridor. They marched until they reached another armoured door, a house slave waiting with a small box, clicking the trigger on the device and counting each slave out. ‘Eight more. Keep on moving.’

Duncan ducked his head through the archway. Immediately the intense light blinded the young Weylander, his vision blurring with sudden exposure to sunlight. It was like stepping through a curtain of heat. The sun burned hot and prickly on his skin after so long in confinement. As Duncan’s sight returned, he saw that he stood on a platform docked to the outside of the warship’s hull, caged in by wire. It was some kind of aerial craft, a mobile cage. The deafening clamour of the warship’s jets kept her hovering in the sky, engines roaring, the smell of her exhaust overpowering. On either side of Duncan, similar platforms had docked, flying metal cages with an open pilot’s cockpit up front, their undersides a blur of turning rotors. The aerial pens filled with slaves, all of them prisoners offloaded from
The Primacy of the Sky
. Northhaven men and women, packed in tight inside the transporters.
Steers in a cattle truck
. Duncan pressed through the crowd to reach the craft’s side, trying to catch a glimpse of the landscape below. Squeezing through the rabble, Duncan’s heart hammered in his chest as he caught sight of… ‘Willow!’

His sister angled around, hearing his shout, then shoved her way through the scrum of bodies to throw herself into his arms. Duncan was overwhelmed with loathing for their captors as he caressed the scarred brand burnt into her shoulder.
Thank God. I never thought I would see you again.

‘Duncan! When I saw people jumping from the gantry back there, I was so—’

‘I’ll never jump, and nor will you. We’re still Landors. No brand on our skin’s going to change who we are.’

‘Thinking like that will get you killed,’ said Willow. ‘We need to keep our mouths shut and our heads down, until we learn what this means for us. Our name’s as useless to us as our family’s money this far from home.’

The metal deck under their sandals started to vibrate as the flying cage disengaged from the prodigious warship. With the rotors’ whine below growing louder, the transporter dipped from side to side, sending slaves sliding against each other. Only the density at which prisoners had been packed inside stopped Duncan and his sister tumbling to the floor. The two of them reached the craft’s mesh wall, clutching tight to the wire and trying to work out where they had ended up.

Duncan held onto Willow’s hand; so tight it began to go white. ‘You stay close to me. Whatever happens now.’

‘We’re going to end up on a slave block, probably sold to different owners.’ She sounded panicked at the notion of being separated from him.

His heart ached.
So powerless. Sweet saints, just keep us together, that’s all I ask. I can bear this as long as I’m around to protect her.
‘I think we’ve both got the same owner,’ said Duncan, feeling the brand on his arm. ‘And it’s that woman with the whip, the princess… Helrena Skar.’

‘The bitch! She nearly blinded Carter.’

‘Only after she pulled the two of us out from the skels’ execution cell. She was making the point in front of her people that saving us wasn’t an act of weakness.’

‘We’re not animals, Duncan.’

‘I figure we’ve been traded like beasts. But for what work, that’s the question? When the princess was talking to the slave master, I thought I heard her say something about a mine.’

‘A mine? I thought there was nothing left to dig out of the earth?’ said Willow. ‘Out in the Burn they use slaves for everything. Farming, working in mills, serving inside a house. It’s a sign of status; the more slaves you keep, the grander a warlord you are.’

‘We’ve been heading south, not over the ocean,’ said Duncan. ‘I always thought the southern nations were said to be more civilised than Weyland, not less.’ He grabbed the mesh and hauled himself higher, catching a glimpse of the vast warship rising away behind them. Then the transporter entered a bank of haze, nothing visible through the murk. Above, the sun was just visible as a blurry orb of light through the vapour. ‘We’re still flying high. Feel how light we are. And that sun! It’s like standing next to a blacksmith’s forge in the middle of the summer. My skin’s prickling, even in the fog.’

‘We’re off the map,’ said Willow. ‘The speed that vessel must have been travelling. How far have we come?’

‘Far-called,’ agreed Duncan, ‘that’s what we are.’

‘Well, they must be every bit as rich down south as the records suggest,’ said Willow. ‘The size of that warship. The cost of producing such a monster would bankrupt the kingdom, even if we had the science to put one together…’

‘If you’d told me you’d seen that steel monster before we were taken, I’d have called you a liar.’

Below them the haze turned thinner for a second, allowing Duncan to catch sight of a dark, cracked landscape as empty and featureless as a desert. The ground lay in shadow as it pushed up towards a fiery red surface, all steam and fury, the outline of a lake of immense size… a reservoir filled with undulating magma rather than water.

Duncan whistled in amazement. ‘What the hell was that?’

Willow pulled back from the transporter’s mesh side, shocked by what she had seen. ‘I think it was a volcano.’

Duncan felt a moment of doubt.
Have we travelled east across the ocean after all?
‘That’s the way I’ve heard the Burn described down there… empty and barren. Pools of fire as big as lakes.’

‘It can’t be the Burn,’ said Willow. ‘We’ve travelled thousands of times further than an ocean crossing. That’s what those pits of liquid we were imprisoned inside were for, I think. To cushion the pressure of extreme acceleration. The speeds we’ve been travelling at, we could have navigated half the world.’

Duncan fought to hold down his misery. The terrible realisation that they would never see the fields and forests of home again.
I have to keep strong, for Willow if no one else
. Wrapped inside the haze the transporter suddenly banked. A wall of rock climbed up to meet them, the craft’s engines roaring as the pilot gunned the rotors and sent them diving below the ledge. Duncan’s first thought was that this was a mountain peak, spearing into the clouds, but they kept flying. He was mistaken. This was something far more bizarre.
We’re passing underneath it!
Duncan noted the rock had been studded with the black oblongs of antigravity stones. This was a vast chunk of ground, kept aloft high above the land by artificial means, a castle in the sky. What bizarre manner of people had taken the Weylanders as their property? Warships that could power across the sky at crushing velocities, a nation which could keep an island of rock hovering above the ground for its amusement? The transporter followed the curve of the stone, twisting and slowing, hovering in the air for a second, then launching forward towards a hangar cut into the rock’s side. Skids unfolded from the bottom of the craft. It touched down on a flat bare surface, a cavern lit by crackling electrical lights. Other transporters settled next to theirs, the whole hangar filling with a squadron of mobile slave pens. Wind from the craft stilled as their propellers slowed to a halt. A group of slaves appeared at one of the hangar’s cave-like entrances; a man in front, old and wizened and holding a walking stick. Duncan was struck by the slave’s appearance, like a biblical prophet, a saint come to lead them to a promised land.
Except
, a voice whispered inside him,
you know this place will be the opposite of that
.

The old slave’s tired voice boomed out, echoed and repeated by speakers around the hangar. ‘My name is Thomas Gale. This is where your new life begins. Follow me to the assembly hall and I will tell you how to survive here.’

At the rear of the transporter, its bow swivelled down onto the rock floor, becoming a ramp. Northhaven’s stunned and disoriented masses followed the other slaves into a rock-hewn tunnel, unadorned except for circular lights flickering and casting a wan illumination over the gloom. They were led into the assembly hall, a high-ceilinged chamber cut out of stone, its floor flat and smooth. Thomas Gale waited at the far end, raised on a granite platform. When he spoke, his voice carried over the heads of hundreds of prisoners gathered in front of him. ‘You are the property of Princess Helrena Skar and the mining of rocks similar to this one is how you will fulfil your duty to the Vandian Imperium that has enslaved you. This rock you stand inside is Station Forty-three. It’s mined-out, but acts as our base of operations. This will be your home until you die. Such rocks are ejected during the eruptions of the stratovolcano, the monster you will have glimpsed below on your flight over here. Your work is to capture ore-bearing rocks, stabilise them, mine them, and when they are mined out, send their remains to the ground below. How effectively you do this will determine if you are fed, and how well. It is hard, dangerous work. Later on today, experienced slaves will be transported here to begin your training in everything that you need to survive in the sky mines. Those who complete their training satisfactorily will eat. Learn well. Learn fast. Questions?’

‘Where are the guards?’ someone shouted out. Duncan tried to locate the voice, but it was impossible inside the echoing cavern. It had sounded suspiciously like Carter Carnehan.

‘Ah yes,’ smiled Thomas Gale. ‘Thoughts of escape. I remember those. The stratovolcano we hover above is nearly seventeen miles high and four hundred miles in width. You will find a further thousand miles of dead zone surrounds us; where life is rendered impossible by poison gas venting from the volcano, pyroclastic flows and the rain of fire and rubble. Beyond the dead zone you will find two hundred thousand miles of the Vandian motherland. On foot, even unaccosted, you will die of old age before you are ever clear of the imperium. Beyond the empire lie countless thousands of countries that are completely dependent on the imperium for the metals and resources that sustain their civilisations. In all those endless miles, the penalty for aiding—’ he tapped the brand burnt on his shoulder ‘—an escaped slave is execution. The rewards for handing in escaped slaves are substantial… dead or alive.’ He gazed across the mob. ‘Do not misunderstand me. There
are
legions of heavily armed Vandians patrolling the sky mines’ perimeter. But they are stationed on the edge of the dead zone to shoot local thieves attempting to steal residual ore-falls. The legions of Vandia will happily kill you if they discover you trying to escape, but it’s a lot less effort to simply halt food and water supplies to disobedient slaves. You require two gallons of water a day merely to survive here. So you need to learn your place… the imperium has a caste system. All slaves are part of the fourth caste,
hostile
. Each caste has three levels – lower, middle and upper. You all start your service as
lower-hostile
. I’m
middle-hostile
.
Upper-hostiles
are the favoured house slaves you see trotting behind a Vandian. Work hard and survive and you might one day be promoted to middle-hostile. Anyone in a higher caste can order anyone in a lower caste demoted or executed without any more justification than their say-so, so never piss off a Vandian.’ His voice grew serious. ‘Those are the imperium’s rules. Here in the sky mines, on this station, we slaves have our own rules. If you steal another slave’s clothes or possessions, you’ll be beaten to within an inch of your life. If you steal another miner’s food or water, you’ll be thrown off the rock. Any slave who tries to murder or rape a fellow slave, likewise. Trust me, the stations that don’t have those rules aren’t places you want to land up. Follow the maintenance staff to a dormitory. If you have kin or friends among you, you can arrange to swap bunks to be with them. Having something to live for will help keep you alive. And staying alive will help us meet our quotas.’

‘Sounds like there’s not much apart from working hard and obeying orders that won’t see us executed,’ whispered Willow.

‘It’s a good thing our old man’s not here,’ said Duncan. ‘He might get ideas about rearranging the common law for the tenant farmers.’

Willow glared at him. ‘Don’t you dare make light of this. The way these Vandians keep slaves is pure evil. Their nation has so much, yet they treat people like chattels. As backward as the league may be in comparison to these people’s science, our frigates carry orders to chase slavers across every point of the compass rather than let them ply their trade in sight of our shores. You ask yourself, who are the barbarians and which is the civilised nation?’

The meeting chamber emptied, the prisoners marched out a hundred at a time, green-shirted slaves leading Duncan and Willow through the warren of stone corridors – identical; each new passage only differentiated by the numbers painted on its walls. Duncan made sure his sister stayed close to his side at all times, as though taking his eyes off Willow for a second might cause her to disappear
. No, it makes sense for families to be kept together. Less likely to run. More likely to look out for each other and work for these pigs. It’s the ones with no one and nothing to live for that were throwing themselves to their deaths back on that warship.

‘So, I guess these passages used to be mine tunnels,’ said Duncan. ‘They look like the works that our old man financed that time on the border of Rodal. Do you remember? Up in the mountains…’

‘Hard to forget,’ said Willow. ‘It was the only time the house lost serious money on a venture.’

Duncan nodded. People had lived in the world for so long there were no minerals left to mine, no fresh seams of resources to be found anywhere. No metals, no oil, no coal anywhere near the kingdom. These sky mines were a far cry from what Duncan had experienced in the Rodalian hinterlands. Engineers begging their sceptical father for more money and extra time to dig further and deeper, despite the fact that the tunnels and shafts were already at a depth where the additional gravity was like having to carry twice your natural weight with every step. Miners emerging exhausted and empty handed with nothing to show for their labours except the shovels and picks that they had gone down with.