Riding the Serpent's Back (4 page)

“You fled,” said Leeth, slowly. “Not from the law, but from your memories, from your conscience.”

“He left home as soon as he was old enough,” said Chi. “Couldn’t bear the sight of me: it just reminded him of what he was. My wife left soon afterwards. I had become impossible to live with, by then. The Embodiment had been in effective control of the city for a number of years already and I suddenly felt sick of life in perpetual opposition. I couldn’t bear what I had become. One night I got drunk, burned down my house and fled.”

Suddenly it was as if the Serpent’s Back had given a mighty lurch, but it had not: the upheaval took place entirely inside Leeth’s head. He stared hard at Chi. It was an old story, from maybe thirty years before, repeated by Church teachers to illustrate the shabby decline of the old order. They told of an atheist Senator with no respect for the sacred blood that flowed through his veins: he had murdered his son and covered it up for years before descending into drunkenness, ultimately to die in a house fire of his own causing.

His name had been Chichéne – on the Serpent’s Back it had been shortened and given the hard southern
ch
: the northern
she-shen
had become
kye
out here in the wilds.

“But...” said Leeth. “You died in that fire...”

Chi was shaking his head. “History is all lies,” he said. “I didn’t die. Money and loyalty are powerful tools – I used both to buy my freedom.”

“Your son,” said Leeth, finally recalling all of the details of Chichéne’s story. This man’s second son had gone on to be true to his ancient heritage, which could be traced back through both mother and father to the True Families.

Chi looked at him bleakly. “You’ve seen the posters,” he said. The young Minister from Tule, whose face leapt out from posters the length and breadth of the Rift...Chi’s reborn son was Lachlan Pas.

~

Ten days later they came to another settlement. They had left the jungle behind by then, and the hills through which they passed were blanketed with scrub and pasture, populated by the continually migrating pastoral families and their enormous herds of sheep, goats and mokes, being fattened for the northern trade.

The difference between this settlement and the last was marked: this town was young and friendly, set up by a loose commune of former travellers who had decided to try their hand at a little scavenge-mining. Coco Guderan, one of the leaders of the town, had even travelled with Chi back in the early days before she had chosen to settle down.

“This is how it should be,” said Chi, one time. “This is how it once was, too: common resources shared and utilised by the people on behalf of the people. In the Rift all the land is marked off and shared amongst the elite.”

“It’s an inevitable consequence of industrialisation,” argued Coco. “When everyone moves to the cities there’s nobody left to perpetuate the ancient land rights.”

“It’s the fault of the Church,” countered Chi. “They see an opportunity and take it. It’s the corruption of power.”

They stayed in the settlement for some time, doing casual work, enjoying the change from relentless travel. It was a peaceful time, a time when Leeth suddenly realised that the travellers were
us
and
we
rather than
them
and
they
. In a fit of belonging he allowed Jaryd to bleach his hair a harsh white-blonde, and he bought a patchwork kilt he had often admired on Cotoche. She had grown too large for it now, but it fitted Leeth well. For the first time since early adolescence he began to feel comfortable with the person he was, able to feel more open about how he felt he should look and sound.

Leeth was tending to his courser when Coco came looking for Chi. He took her up on Sky to look, and they soon spotted Chi and Cotoche racing horses madly through the swampy run-off from a recent storm. He took Sky in low, and Chi waved as they approached.

He and Cotoche rode across to join them when the courser had landed. “Bad news?” he said, reading Coco’s expression.

She nodded, then said, “I’ve just heard some news. Police squads are coming out from the Junction, maybe as soon as tomorrow. Coming to check us for registration of the workforce, they say.”

“Any names they’re after?”

The town leader nodded. “Just the one.”

~

In a short time they were on the trail again, their number down to fourteen as two families had decided to stay behind and work the mines.

“He’s taking this seriously,” Leeth said to Jaryd, who was riding ahead of him on Sky. The others were on horseback, having left the slower mokes and goats behind in their haste to make ground.

“You would too,” said Jaryd, twisting fingers deep in his beard. Leeth tried to ignore the rat-tails thrown back by the draught into his face. “You ask me, our leader left something behind when he put the brains back in the skull of that son of his.”

“You think they’d really send squads from across the Burn Plain just for Chi?” The Junction was a sprawling trading settlement on the mainland, the Embodiment’s largest stronghold to the south of the Rift.

“Think on it, boy,” said Jaryd. “Pas is a minister in both Church and city government. His face is on all those posters telling us what is and what ain’t. In his own eyes he’s an abomination, a blasphemous creation! He despises what he is, and where he’s from. And if he’s found out his daddy isn’t as dead as he thought he was then he won’t settle until he’s found him, I tell you. You don’t believe me, then you ask Chi what happened to his wife, what happened to the entire family of that servant woman who carried him for nine months, and what’s almost certainly happened to
her
if he ever found her!”

“He’s killed them?”

Jaryd nodded. “Chi’s the only one left who can expose him – what if he decides to come out of exile and stir up some opposition again? He could easily do it, there are people just waiting for it. Lachlan Pas is
scared
of him, I tell you. People like him only know one way to deal with opposition like Chi.”

“So Chi just runs away?”

Jaryd sighed, as if it was hopeless to argue any more. “Chi doesn’t know what to do,” he said. “He’s had, I guess, twenty years down here. Twenty years of freedom, of having responsibility only for the people he chooses to be around. After the life he’d had you can see how good that must have seemed. He’s started his life again, I tell you. Reborn, if you like. And then, about a year ago, it leaked out that he was still alive, and now it’s all thrown back in his face. You watch him closely, boy, and you try and see if he’s really up to all this again. Ask me and I tell you, he just doesn’t want any of it, just wants to keep it in the past like he has all these years. He tells me so many times: he’s done his bit, he’s not going back.”

Jaryd spread his arms, held them stiff like Sky’s outstretched wings. “He’s not running, boy, he’s soaring like the eagle, and he just wants to keep on flying, you hear?”

~

Several weeks later, things had settled a little.

They found a routine, with the sun rising at their shoulders and setting up ahead. They covered maybe seventy or eighty leaps in a good day, fifteen when the going became harder again. They’d left the scrub behind and now even the grassland could only establish itself where the rock-breaking roots of some of the Burn Plain’s specialist plants had created drifts of thin soil; everywhere else there was only bare, smooth basalt. The land was young now, barely thirty years old. They were still about a thousand leaps short of the Michtlan Ridge, yet earthquake activity was almost constant and they had to pick their course carefully to avoid the volcanoes and deep rifts of this precarious new world. Whenever he was not flying, Leeth kept expecting the land to suddenly open up beneath the group’s feet and swallow them all without trace.

When Leeth learnt to master his fear, he began to find it exhilarating simply to be in such a place and he lived for much of the time on an excess of adrenalin. As the terrain became ever more hostile, their progress slowed, but Chi stuck relentlessly to his westward course.

One day, incredibly, they came to another incipient settlement. It looked as though it was going to be a mining town: the prefabricated building units lay stacked up where they had been hauled in by courser and moke, the main forms of long range transport across the Serpent’s Back – the steam-power revolution was yet to cross the Burn Plain on any scale. All that had been constructed were a few low buildings and a small rock pyramid with a wooden temple at its squared-off summit.

Arguments erupted in what remained of Chi’s group when the settlement was first sighted.

“We should turn back,” said Bean, looking old and tired all of a sudden. “We’ve never been so far west before. It’s crazy. There’s nothing for us here.”

Sunshine Chopal thought it might be worth sending scouts out to the settlement to test the response.

“But it’s a Church town!” cried Bean. “We can see that from here!”

Chi just stared ahead, his eyes following the course of the sun. It was probably then that Leeth first began to understand what might be happening in Chi’s mind.

“I’ll do it,” Leeth said quickly. “I’ll go into town and see what they’re like. Maybe they’ll welcome some casual labour. Maybe we can trade for food and water.” That last was the winning point: apart from the acrid, discoloured Burn Plain mizzle, there had been no real rain since that downpour back at Coco Guderan’s settlement. Without most of the pack animals they were limited in what could be carried – Leeth knew how low their supplies had become.

He went down the next morning, riding a horse leant to him by Karlas Herckle.

Policemen in tin hats stopped him at the perimeter fence. Leeth nodded at them and forced himself to smile, as if he was genuinely pleased to meet some fellow humans out in the wilderness.

Slowly, two of them levelled their muskets. Leeth abandoned his attempt to look friendly. “What’s wrong?” he demanded. “I—”

A man seized his arm and hauled him down from his saddle. Leeth sprawled on the bare rock floor of the encampment.

Reluctantly, he got to his feet. With a flick of his head, one of the policemen indicated that Leeth should enter one of the buildings.

“You can’t do this!” Leeth kept saying, in his most petulant tone. “Let me go!”

A senior officer sat at a desk. He was a small man in green police uniform, with the bronze necklet of a Church votary. A long ceremonial dagger lay conspicuously beside him on the table. With a brief gesture he made the policemen release Leeth and go to stand by the door.

Immediately Leeth was on the offensive. “What’s this all about? What way is this to treat a person?” With more courage than he had expected to find he leaned forward, resting his knuckles on the man’s desk so that he loomed over him. “I warn you now,” he said. “I am a student of the Embodied College of Khalaham. I am of True Blood – Truer than anyone else in this room, I dare say – and my father sits on the Senate at Laisan. When he learns of my treatment...”

The officer raised both hands and Leeth stopped, fearful that he had overplayed his hand. 

“Please,” the man said, and Leeth knew his petulant outburst had convinced him. He had plenty of experience at the spoilt rich brat role, after all. “My men are over-cautious. This is brigand country. Dangerous for a young...
man
...on his own, no? True blood alone will not protect us from the sort of people who live down here in the Dependent Territories.”

Leeth shrugged and smiled, as if taking the words as praise for his bravery and not a slight at his ragged, androgynous appearance. “I can cope,” he said. “I haven’t had any trouble yet. Until I met your men, that is.”

“I apologise,” said the officer smoothly. “On my own behalf, and on behalf of the True Church.”

Leeth put a hand obediently across his chest, as any devout young coward would do in that position.

“May I ask a few questions before you depart?”

Leeth nodded.

“As I say: this is dangerous territory for the lone traveller. Why are you here?” There was a menacing edge to his voice which Leeth tried hard to ignore.

Leeth shrugged again. “Because it’s here,” he said, as if only considering the reason for his trip for the first time now. “I’ve travelled the entire length of the Territories. I suppose I want to see how close I can get to the Michtlan Ridge. Foolish, I know, but...”

He knew the man despised his brash posturing almost as much as the snobbery he had affected, but he seemed convinced by the act.

“We’re looking for one man in particular,” the officer added then. “A dangerous criminal.” He pulled a sheet of paper from a tray on his desk and turned it over to face Leeth. A printed picture leapt into animated, Charmed life: a younger and plumper Chi, his hair short and unadorned. The image was talking animatedly, but there was no sound. “Have you seen him on your travels?”

Leeth shook his head, a helpless, goofy smile plastered across his face. The police officer gave him a long, contemptuous stare, then replaced the poster upside down in his tray and dismissed him with a brief gesture to the guards.

~

Leeth took a circuitous route back to where he had left the rest of the travellers. When he found them it was clear from their faces that they had been arguing. When he told them what had happened the situation became rapidly worse.

Jaryd and Bean wanted to stay and fight – it was a Church town and this time there weren’t many guards – but most of the others wanted to turn back, fearful of conflict, fearful of the backlash that was inevitable if they inflicted any serious damage.

“We could make ground, lose ourselves in the hills,” said Cotoche, through her tears. “They’re northerners – they’d never find us out here.”

Finally, Chi joined the argument. “I’m going on,” he said. “All the way to the Michtlan Ridge.” In his stubborn refusal to deviate Leeth saw clearly Chi’s resentment at this intrusion into the life he had led peacefully for so long. That they should chase him out here was not just a personal thing, it illustrated a larger truth: the inevitability that the outside world would try to extend its grip in territories that had always been free. The police squad on Chi’s trail was a small-scale representation of the Embodiment’s plans for stamping its authority on all the disorganised communities of the Serpent’s Back.