The Heretic (Beyond the Wall Book 1) (2 page)

Jordi’s father appeared from the main room with a large sack in one hand and a loaf of fresh bread in the other. He pushed the loaf into Jordi’s hands.

‘Head for the forest,’ he whispered. ‘Stay low and don’t look back, no matter what you hear.’ His deep voice trembled. ‘I need to wake as many as I can.’

‘We should warn the preacher,’ Ishmael said.

‘There’s no time,’ their father said, shaking his head.

‘I’ll make time. We can’t leave him.’

‘Ishmael,’ their mother said, imploring. ‘You must listen to your father.’

But Ishmael didn’t listen. He turned and ran out the door. It was the last time Jordi would ever see his brother alive.

Breathless, Jordi ran. He kept his back hunched and his head low. He tried not to think about what was behind him, but as he dodged through the gate and into the fields, he glanced over his shoulder and back at the house. Dark shapes floated across the windows and he turned and ran harder.

He’d put his boots on the wrong feet, and his toes dug into the leather, scraping and biting. He hadn’t even had time to lace them. To his left, more shadows creased the moonlight.

It’s not possible! They were just in our cottage. They can’t have got to us that quickly.

No, the shadows to his left were familiar—Mr and Mrs Ingmarrson. Huddled and running, like him. Carrying sacks stuffed with whatever possessions they’d had time to grab. There were more beyond them, all stumbling for the forest. He searched for Ishmael but couldn’t see him.

He stared ahead, breaths coming in ragged gasps as the cold air scratched at his lungs. The tall grass whipped his fingers and tugged at his knees. The forest was still at least fifty metres away.

The crack of gunfire filled the air.

Jordi knew the sound. He’d heard it many times, emanating from deep within the forest when Vaarden and his friends from the Watch hunted in the early dawn. Jordi hunted too, but he had his own places to hunt and forage. Places Vaarden and the Watch would never go. In the spring—as no man or woman ventured into the forest in winter if they could avoid it—he’d take his slingshot to hunt grey weasel and tree jumpers. And he would sometimes hear that sound. But it had always been so distant, it had seemed little more than an echo on the wind.

This was different. Loud and hard like thunder overhead.

It terrified him.

The moonlight vanished each time it sounded, and a white, incandescent light seared the night sky. He felt something tiny hiss as it hurtled past him. Too fast almost to notice, like a summer firefly. But he knew what it was, and he whispered desperately to himself, tears blooming his eyes.

‘No,
please
.’

Immediately he felt ashamed, but he ran harder.

The trees were closer now, but under the tall grass the fields had been furrowed deep and were uneven and hard from the hoarfrost. He fought to keep his balance. Every time a foot hit the ground he felt it turn over.

The white light flashed again and again. The crack of thunder shattered the silence of the night.

Ish, where are you?

But he couldn’t look around. He just had to run. A scream shrilled to his left, but he forced himself to ignore it. He knew there were more running now, but he didn’t look—couldn’t just stop to count. He hoped as many as possible had been woken and were fleeing.

Make the trees and you can hide.

Another scream, followed by a wretched whimper. Somewhere, someone wailed.

Twenty metres. His lungs burned.

One after another, fireflies hissed past his ears.

Then his knee buckled on a ridged furrow and he fell. The ground rose up to meet him, and iron, frozen earth punched his face and tore his cheek. He rolled and pitched and dragged himself up.

Scrambling forward, he staggered and fell again. He glanced back. He couldn’t help himself. It was like something pulled his head round and drew his eyes. Dozens of dark shapes, threading their way through the grass, ducked low. Flashes exploded in front of them, bathing the field in brilliant white light for a split second each time. The brightness stung his eyes.

He turned, sucking in deep, panting breaths. He crawled and jumped and clawed, trying desperately to get up again and run at the same time.

The trees were so close.

The gnarled shapes within the forest appeared ghostly in the shadows cast by the searing white flashes. The swarm of fireflies splintered and tore away shards of bark.

Suddenly, he was inside.

He didn’t stop. The ground was flatter now, softer from the wet moss and brown leaves of the Gathering time. He’d reached the forest quicker than anyone else. No one in the village could run faster than him. He knew instinctively where to go, where the men wouldn’t find them. There was only one place they
could
go. He knew his father would follow, and that everyone else would too. Suddenly, Jordi was leading them all, saving them. As the screams from the field echoed in his ears, he led his people away.

He carried on running until his legs wouldn’t allow him to run anymore. His lungs collapsed, and he fought to haul in air. He crumpled onto the cool, wet ground and wept. He tried to stop himself, but he couldn’t.

It seemed a long time before he felt rough hands on his jacket. He panicked and turned, scrambling backwards.

They had him.
No!

He looked into the eyes of the face leaning over him, felt the hands clawing for him. Recognised the kindness and sorrow.

Papa.

‘No time to rest, little man.’

Jordi nodded and dragged himself up again. He glanced around. There were other figures in the shadows. Only a handful—ten or twelve maybe. He could hardly make out who they were.

‘I know where to go,’ Jordi whispered.

‘I know you do,’ his father said and hugged him tight. ‘So take us there.’

Jordi began to run again, ducking under branches and climbing over fallen trees. They all followed. He couldn’t remember how long they’d been running. It seemed like all night.

And still they ran.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

THE DREAM was always the same.

It began with Shepherd gazing down at a small boy, who stood in swirling dust on the outskirts of an unfamiliar border township. The place wore the desperate facade of every other feral backwater near the Wall, but behind the faded signage and weathered wood it was barren, recusant and hopeless. A lawless outpost on the edge of humanity’s conscience. Far enough from the Core to be considered
free
. Yet simmering beneath the illusion, there was something familiar about it. Something he could never quite catch, like clutching for a leaf in the wind.

For years he had tried to delude himself that it was just a dream; he was never one for superstition. But eventually he’d come to believe it was more than that.

The small boy was him.

This time it was no different. Behind a bowed wooden fence around a dry grass field, a stallion cantered in the wind, its mane pitching and flowing. The blazing sun beat down hard and hot. The boy’s willowy legs bore ragged shorts, and a flailing, striped t-shirt hung off his bony shoulders. The t-shirt had once belonged to someone he cherished, and it still carried their familiar scent, suffusing it with an intangible sadness and guilt. He held his hands over his eyes to shield them from the sun and dirt, and studied the horse as it moved gracefully across the cracked earth. The stallion continued its games for a while, kicking up dust and stone, and then it stopped, dropped its long head to the arid grass, and began to search out something to chew. As it did, the boy could feel its big black eyes watching him.

All he wanted was to ride that horse. The desire made him heedless of the danger. Someone had already told him, he knew, that it was way too big for him. He couldn’t remember who. It was an angry animal, he’d been told. Unwilling and stubborn.

Kindred spirits shared an understanding.

There always had to be a loser.

He moved carefully towards the beast, all the time whispering to it and hunkering low. When he reached it, on tiptoes, he leaned in and stroked its neck, feathered his cheek with its rough hair. Its skin was warm, and he could feel the huge animal’s sonorous heart pumping blood through its powerful body.

Slowly, using the fence, he climbed. Then, in one swift movement, he slid onto the stallion’s back and grabbed its mane in two drawn fists, knuckles white. Startled, the animal began to gallop and buck. It thundered around the field, the boy holding on with all the strength his scraggy arms could muster. For seemingly endless seconds, the sweetness of fear and pride tingled in the boy’s heart. But he couldn’t hold on forever; the stallion was too strong. After only scant seconds, he was thrown.

He was always thrown.

Shepherd’s eyes flicked open.

Disoriented, he glanced quickly around. His face was damp from sweat and he was panting. His mouth was dry; blood throbbed in his head. His eyes gradually adjusted to the muted light cast by the stars, which seeped through the sole window. Just above him, slid between two straps on the underside of the roof of his bunk, was his hunting knife—an arm’s length away as he slept. The tension bled from his muscles as his mind cleared and he remembered where he was: within the comfortable familiarity of his quarters aboard Soteria. His home.

He pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes and rubbed away the sweat and tiredness. Then he swung his legs over the edge of the bunk, reached for the tin cup on the table beside him and tipped back the desalinated water in one long swallow. It was cool and soothing on the back of his throat.

He could hear the gentle hum of the ion drives—Soteria was still hurtling through the tunnel. Shepherd glanced at the readout on the wall above his small corner desk. He’d been asleep for an hour. Enough time left before breach to sleep more, and he needed it, but he would never drift off again. He never did once he woke from the dream.

The tunnels always left him stale and tired, and the dream only came to him within them. As if something deep within those subspace passageways was an unknown catalyst for the nightmares of the human subconscious. He pulled on a jacket from the chair at his desk and shambled to the cockpit, craving a mug of hotleaf.

The airlock door to the cockpit wheezed as it slid open, breaking its airtight seal. Shepherd stood in the doorway for a moment and watched the stars blur into a wash of white and blue as Soteria pushed through the tunnel. The desolate emptiness beyond the tunnels was as foreign and malignant to him as whatever lay beyond the Wall. He had no desire to explore either. Some things should remain forbidden. Humanity didn’t
need
to know everything. He didn’t need the Second Concession to see that.

The preachers whispered from the shadows that there had once been a single planet with human life on it, and that life then had been truly free. Maybe it
had
been that way once, before the tunnels had been mapped, and before the Second Cataclysm, but Shepherd wondered how cramped that place must have felt. All of humanity shoehorned onto one, tiny planet. The very concept was foreign to him; the tunnels had become such an entrenched facet of humanity’s existence that to imagine a time before them was virtually impossible.

As Shepherd settled into his chair, he scanned the instrument panel. The cockpit was bathed in that familiar pastel glow that radiated from the streaks of blue and white on the tunnel’s rim. The swirling iridescence soothed him. He saw no sense in wasting the ship’s energy—and, truth be known, he’d come to appreciate the softness of the light—so the only other illumination came from the flickering displays.

Although each system ticked within acceptable limits, Shepherd felt a fresh bud of anxiety forming. The tunnel stresses on Soteria’s hull were considerable, and once they were out of subspace—and after the systems had cycled through the processes to acclimate to Herse's system—they would still need to punch through Herse's upper atmosphere. Soteria was limping towards a long overdue recondition, and Shepherd could ill afford complications.

He leaned over to the nav system. A single destination was recorded alongside the tunnel breach co-ordinates, and a holographic projection of the system unfurled and hovered above the panel with the sublight route traced in red. The Herse system was made up of three gas and ice giants and a clutch of diminutive moons, all of which slowly cycled through their relative orbits within the display. The township of Herse, on the far side of the only habitable rock in the system, was in the thrall of a gaseous mass of whorled chestnut and crimson—which made dusk the only beautiful thing about the place.

Shepherd pulled up the Customs Tunnel Licence, almost subconsciously, to check his authorisations. Every licence he’d ever applied for would still be stored within the system, if he cared to look, but they would all be stripped of the tunnel breach co-ordinates and therefore useless for navigation. Which was precisely the intention—to control access to superluminal travel and restrict free movement of citizens. Any tampering with the nav system, Shepherd knew well enough, would result in immediate banishment beyond the Wall—the Third Concession.