Half Discovered Wings (8 page)

Caeles
shrugged. ‘I’m talking from experience. Have you ever travelled
this far before?’

‘
It
doesn’t matter if I have or not,’ Gabel growled. ‘I know the route.
We’ve been travelling in a straight line so far, it would be
ridiculous to change direction completely just because of a
stream.’

Caeles
shrugged again and brushed a hand through his hair, upper lip
raised on one side. ‘I heard you misjudged the distance to Pirene
by a whole day, before you signed me up for this merry chase. Can
you be sure you aren’t making a similar mistake?’

Gabel almost lunged at him, but the magus intervened. Gabel
was sure it had been the magus who’d told Caeles about his mistake
in the forest. Clearly the two of them had some sort of history
together, and thus far the two had made few attempts to work
closely with the factotum. All that was happening now was a
disintegration of their already flimsily-knit group, primarily due
to the inclusion of this new, pale-faced foreigner.

Eventually they took Gabel’s route, and walked until darkness
fell and they found a suitable place to rest. The trees there were
of a different type to those around Niu Correntia; these were
thinner and more widely spread, and finding a space large enough
for a fire wasn’t difficult.

Caeles had some hard cheese that he brought from Pirene, made
from goat’s milk, and he broke a corner from the block and had it
with his crust.

‘
How come you eat cheese and we eat dry bread?’ Gabel
asked.

From across
the fire, Caeles swallowed and tore some more crust from his roll.
He chewed with his mouth open.

‘
Because I brought cheese and you didn’t,’ he said simply.
‘Don’t ask me to share while you have good food. When you run out
you can have some of mine, if there’s any left.’

Before the
hunter could say anything further, Rowan asked, ‘Where is it you
come from?’

‘
A long way north. Another continent.’

‘
And how did you come to live in Pirene?’

He didn’t
answer right away, his eyes drifting elsewhere for just a second,
and then back again. ‘This was where I found myself after the
war.’

‘
The Conflict?’ Gabel scoffed, mouth full of food. ‘That would
mean you’re nearly two hundred years old, unless the war still
rages in some land far away from us.’

Caeles stood,
swallowed his food, then waved cavalierly at them as he walked out
into the trees. From over his shoulder he said, ‘The war pretty
much ended when the nuclear weapons hit.’

‘
What’s his problem?’ asked the hunter once Caeles was out of
earshot. He picked at the remains of his dry meal, flicking crumbs
out of the weave of the blanket. ‘He acts like a child.’

‘
He’s much older than he looks,’ said the magus. ‘In fact, he
is ancient; he’s seen twice what you have. He
has
seen the war, and he fought like
a cornered lynx. He has also, unfortunately, suffered twice your
pain.’

Gabel looked up, fingered what was left of his bread, and
then slipped it back into his satchel. ‘He doesn’t look as old as
that.’

‘
He’s very different from you or I. His outsides are the same:
they age, albeit slowly. However, his insides are not flesh and
organs. He is a cyborg, altered for the war.’

‘
I don’t understand,’ said Rowan. She had never known that such
things existed.

‘
There were many remarkable things created before our little
world rolled over and died. Caeles is one of them. Mister Gabel,
you must protect him, and he you. You’re here to support each
other. You must not be stubborn or proud. No more
arguments.’

The hunter
stood.

‘
I’ll try,’ he said, ‘but I can’t promise anything.’

~

Gabel stooped
and picked up another dry branch, putting it in his bundle. As he
moved he was careful not to kick the leaves – he had a strange
feeling that something was near, moving with them as they
travelled, monitoring them.

A figure
stepped out from the trees in front of him.

‘
Caeles.’

‘
Just wanted to talk,’ Caeles said, bending to pick up a small
dry branch. ‘We shouldn’t argue.’

Gabel stopped and looked at the ground for a second. ‘Yes,’
he said, conceding. As influenced by his frequent rages as he was,
he was still intelligent and practical enough to know when two men
would better serve themselves by putting aside their differences.
He had enough smarts to know that the more one man knows about
another, the more irrelevant those differences seem. ‘I was taken
aback when I heard you were a cyborg. I didn’t believe they existed
anymore. In fact, I was never sure they existed at all.’

‘
They did. I was one of the first.’

‘
You must be over a hundred years old.’

‘
Around a hundred and sixty. It’s been a few decades since I
stopped counting.’ He put the branch on Gabel’s pile, then reached
to scratch the long scar running from his nose to his jaw. ‘Now I
want you to tell me more about this supposed mission you’re
on.’

‘
The old man’s told me little,’ Gabel said. ‘As far as I’m
concerned, the mission is to reach Hermeticia and cure
Rowan.’

‘
She’s sick? With what?’

‘
We don’t know. She gets tired and weak. She has trouble
remembering things. Sometimes her vision fades and, she told me
three days ago that she has brief delusions.’

‘
Amnesia. And what delusions?’

‘
She didn’t say. I don’t think even she knows.’

Caeles seemed
to think on this for a while, walking with Gabel and continuing to
pick up dry-looking twigs and branches. They walked in a wide
circle around the camp, not wanting to go too far away from the
light of the fire and become lost in the deep darkness of the
forest.

‘
So where’s this Hermeticia?’ Caeles then asked.

‘
To the west, in the centre of a great recess, which is a
crater from the war. They seclude themselves behind their wall of
rock and talk to no-one. Nobody leaves the city, as it’s a fine
one, and the people who enter rarely leave, through choice or
otherwise.’

‘
A crater to the west? D’you mean Shianti?’

‘
That’s its given name. Everyone outside the city calls it
Hermeticia, because of the nature of its inhabitants.’

‘
I get it,’ he replied. ‘Why d’you hope to find a cure for
Rowan there?’

‘
The doctors there are the best in the world, I’m told. They
have shamen and apothecaries. Someone in that city must be able to
save her.’

Caeles met his
gaze. ‘She doesn’t look as if she’ll last to Shianti. We have the
lake, and the Plains.’

‘
We will make it. And they’ll see how ill Rowan is. She may be
close to death by then. They will let her in, even if we have to
wait outside for her.’

‘
You wouldn’t fight to get in?’ asked Caeles. He seemed
surprised, standing still as the shifting beams of moonlight
drifted over him.

‘
What good would it do? You seem too ready to battle. Although
if you survived the war, you must be a great warrior.’

A gruff laugh.
‘I was called that once, by a general. She said: “You’re a warrior,
Caeles! Keep fighting. You’ll win this war for us.”’

The hunter glanced over, looked at this man with his curious
outfit, and the short-sword hanging heavily from his waist. Caeles
was nudging clods of earth with the toe of his boot, digging little
trenches and then filling them in again. Was this man truly a
survivor of the war, a cyborg? Had he killed, and would he have it
in him to kill again, if the situation demanded it? Gabel hoped so.
He sensed that they might need it.

He looked up
at a sharp rustle of branches to the left, and saw a few leaves
drift down to the ground.

‘
I think—’ he said, and then the attacker was upon him. A blade
struck him by the shoulder, piercing the flesh just above the
collarbone, in the soft spot on his neck where the muscle was. A
black-gloved hand flashed again, slashing upward across his chest.
Gabel felt hot blood leap from his veins, as if his body was
rejecting it, and then he was sprawled across the
ground.

There was blood on his hands, making them slippery on the
leaves. He slowly pushed himself away and up against a tree at the
very edge of the clearing. Upright he could breathe easier. He
pressed down on the chest wounds with his right hand, his left on
his neck. Blood oozed from between all his fingers.

Caeles had pulled the attacker away, shoved him back between
the trees, but the attacker’s heel dug into the dirt as he
crouched, leapt, and sailed over Caeles’ head to land a few metres
away. Gabel caught a glimpse of a wrist-mounted kukri knife,
bloodied and dark in the moonlight.

The attacker’s face was concealed under a strange all-body
cotton suit, which clung tightly to his figure. He was in no way
bulky, but athletic and lithe with narrow hips. His hair, the only
part of his body that wasn’t covered, flicked back and forth in the
wind, a greasy jet black. Over the eyes a thick leather belt was
strapped, drawn tightly over a mask.

Caeles had his wakizashi drawn, and the silver blade struck
the attacker’s own as they met. There was a flurry of polished
metal. The figure jumped back.

‘
Who are you?’ Caeles cried, but the attacker only looked hard
at him before turning to Gabel, his chest heaving deeply. Lank hair
hung over where the eyes would have been, and yet the attacker had
seemed to know Gabel’s exact position without the need of
conventional sight.

Caeles recognised the man as a Scathac ninja: a nomad
warrior, a masterless and subordinate-free condottiere, a nomad,
one who apparently had them tagged as adversaries. The Scathac
walked toward them, the blood on the curved blades
dripping.

‘
This is your end,’ he said, and the voice was strange and
synthetic; Caeles could see the square shape of a voice-temper
beneath the mask that covered his mouth.

‘
Wait,’ said Gabel, holding up a palm, but the attacker jumped,
and at once a cotton-sheathed foot was on Gabel’s chest, pinning
him down like a mouse under a cat. The attacker slashed with the
kukri across the hunter’s chest, and blood flew in a perfect, thin
arc from the new wound.

The Scathac appeared suddenly before Caeles, pulling two
short knives from somewhere and coming down hard. Caeles blocked
the daggers with his sword and pushed him away. He swung and hit
nothing but air, and then felt himself knocked to the floor from
behind; the weapon slipped from his hands; the attacker fell upon
him, kneeling on his chest with the blade raised high—

There was a click, and Gabel aimed his cocked pistol.
Turning, the man froze, saw the pistol somehow through the mask and
leather strap, and then leapt into the treetops, tearing over the
branches and into the distant darkness.

A shower of
leaves settled around them.

‘
Who d’you suppose that was?’ asked Caeles.

‘
I don’t know,’ breathed Gabel, standing and clutching his
wounds. ‘But we seem to have made an enemy already.’

*

Six

SHIVERS

Judging by the width of the river, which grew steadily wider
as it approached the great lake Lual, the party was still weeks
away from the town of São Jantuo. Weeks away, and the winds that
bowled through the forest were becoming colder.

Around them the bark of the trees became defensive against
the cold and pulled itself closer to the trunks. Barely a leaf
still clung to a branch and, underfoot, a vast palette of fallen
foliage crunched as they moved. Frost became almost a daily thing;
winter was well on its way.

Gabel cursed himself for not buying warmer garments in
Pirene. He had underestimated not only the distance between Pirene
and São Jantuo, but the turn of the planet as well; the cold season
was coming too soon, and it had caught him unawares. Rowan was
suffering as a result. Gabel had given her his leather jacket,
frayed and torn though it was, and it seemed to help. He walked
beside her now, wearing two shirts, and tried not to imagine Rowan
as Bethany, mauled in that same jacket by William
Teague.

‘
Are you warm enough?’ he asked, by way of distracting
himself.

‘
As warm as you, I think,’ she replied hesitantly. ‘You
shouldn’t have given me your coat if you only had a shirt to
exchange it for.’

But she didn’t
offer to give it back, and he didn’t expect her to.

‘
We’re on this journey to keep you alive, Rowan. It wouldn’t
help to have you fall to the weather before we got to
Hermeticia.’

She felt his arm go around her shoulders, and they walked
together. ‘What happened to you and Caeles the other
night?’

‘
I already told you. We were attacked by a
stranger.’

‘
Was it one of the
Caballeros
?’

‘
No,’ he replied curtly. ‘Just a stranger.’

Her
questions, which Gabel had hoped he would get used to, were
beginning to grate. She was curious about a world she had never
truly inhabited, only subsisted on the border of, and naturally
wanted to know more about everything they encountered.
Unsurprisingly Rowan absorbed details from conversations she
overheard, and then brought them up later for clarification. She
asked about Hermeticia and the huge crater that housed its
inhabitants; about the Conflict and the cybernetic soldiers, of
which Caeles was one; and about the
Caballeros de la Muerte
, who Gabel
refused to speak of at all.