The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1) (14 page)

“Thanks Ros. Keep ‘em looking sharp back there, eh?” Hastle
said.

Raith nodded to the young man in thanks, and Rostand clopped
back down the line. Assured that all was in order, Raith bellowed the call to
action and waved a huge muscled arm. Animals stutter-stepped into stride,
vehicles creaked into motion, and the column began to move. Scattered cheers
and applause rang listless through the hangar, sucked away into the howling
desert winds and drowned out by the noise of the convoy.

From his high seat, Raith picked out the form of his sister
and her sons. She was holding a billowing synthtex hood-scarf to her face, her deep
blue eyes pooling with tears. Raith didn’t know whether she was crying because
of the wind or because he was leaving. But when his eyes met hers, the sudden
and inexorable burden of his task fell on him like a heavy weight. Salvaging
raw materials was, after all, a distant second to the priority of getting his
people home safe.

Raith watched the hangar’s shadow slip by underneath him with
some reluctance. When the shadow fell away, Infernal’s blinding white heat
washed over him. Sweat beaded around his hairline and the wind spat sand into
his eyes until it became hard to see. The desert panorama spread wider and
wider until they reached the top of the shallow rise where Decylum’s retaining
walls ended and the wind abated. Raith looked back as the sand-colored hangar
doors were rolling to a close behind them. Now Decylum was hidden again, nothing
but another dust-swept fragment in the landscape.

Raith was swaying on Beguli’s back so much it was starting to
make him nauseous again, but he took a gulp of water from his canteen and
dismissed the feeling. He turned to his old friend. When Hastle noticed Raith
staring at him, he looked back with a quizzical expression.

“You’re even redder than usual,” Raith said.

“Just wait a few hours,” said Hastle. “When you’re the color
of a roasted tomato and your skin is peeling like old tape, you’ll be wishing
you’d had my complexion to start with.”

Raith smiled. “You’re probably right. I wouldn’t know the
first thing about what it’s like up here after a few days of hard living.”

“You will soon.”

“I know I’ve told you this before, but I always wonder what it
would’ve been like if I’d left Decylum with you all those years ago. Sometimes
I feel like I should have.”

Hastle wiped his bald head with his hood-scarf. “How could
you? You were just a kid.”

“I was fourteen. That isn’t so young.”

“In the line of work I was in, you might as well have been an
infant. Building skyscrapers is no work for a teenage kid.”

“Taking them apart is no work for old men, either.”

“Then what are we doing here?”

“Speak for yourself,” said Raith. “You’ve got
clothing
that’s older than me.”

Hastle laughed. “I do, at that. But you know I could never have
let an old man like you come out here by yourself. Not a reason in all the Aionach
could’ve kept me home.”

“And I thank you for it. You’re as loyal a councilor as a
Head could ever ask for.”

“A councilor—not a friend?”

“A friend too,” Raith said. “Although… I don’t think we’ve
spoken this much outside a council meeting in years.”

Hastle was wounded. “I won’t make excuses for that. I guess
that happens when you start a family. By the time Imogen and I had Jeela, we
had so little time for anything besides the kids—”

“It’s okay, Hastle,” Raith said. “You don’t need to make
excuses. I’ve always known family was important to you.”

Hastle shrugged. “Ours got so big so fast, it was hard to
keep up. Before we knew it, we’d had nine of them. Once the grandkids started
coming, well… time just seems to tunnel away from you at that point. Did you
know my twentieth grandchild was born last night?”

Raith shook his head. “No, did Zeke and his wife have their
little one? I hadn’t heard. Congratulations.”

“Thank you. You know, it’s like that with family. Things are
always happening. Time goes by, and you just… lose sight of it all…” Hastle’s
voice fell off.

Raith sometimes got the impression that Hastle and others in
Decylum felt sorry for him. He didn’t need their pity because he’d chosen not
to have a family of his own. He’d chosen his path, and he was content with it.
The gift was his life’s work; that, and now governing Decylum and caring for
its people. There was no room in that life for anything else. Even if he could’ve
made room, his time for all that had come and gone. Even so, he understood what
Hastle meant. He would enjoy the time with his old friend while the journey
lasted, and be content when things went back to normal after they returned.
Their conversation dwindled as the light-star’s heat intensified.

Into the daylight they slogged, and the ground passed beneath
them.

CHAPTER 14

Escort Services

“What in Infernal’s name did you
do
?” The
patch-eyed shepherd was the embodiment of disbelief. Except that he wasn’t
patch-eyed anymore; his eyepatch lay in a heap on the asphalt, and he was
looking at Merrick with two dark and very healthy-looking eyes.

“What did I do… what are you talking about?” Merrick was
sitting in the street outside the Boiler Yard, holding his hands against his
abdomen. His fingertips were bubbling, bleeding, and oozing fluid into the
fabric of his tunic.

“My eye,” the shepherd shouted, still in gleeful hysterics.
“My coffing eye, you little bastard. Look at it.” He leaned over and brought
his face close to Merrick’s, pulling his eyelid open.

Merrick couldn’t see much in the faint torchlight, aside from
an eye that appeared perfectly functional to him. The other shepherds and
Merrick’s comrades were standing around them. Colvin, the hulking bouncer, had
come rushing from the lavatory when the fight started. With the help of the
other patrons, he’d broken them up and thrown them out. Kaylene had escaped the
bouncer’s grasp, but she was safer inside than with these wastelanders anyway.

“Yeah, so what?” Merrick said, groaning in pain. “You’re not
really blind. That was the sneakiest eyepatch disguise ever. Great job.”

“No, you coffing idiot. I
am
blind. I was. The second
you touched my throat, I felt something. It was like some kind of weird painful
orgasm going through me. I blacked out, and the next thing I knew there was
light coming in around my eyepatch. The whole time your hands were around my
neck, I kept feeling that rush, until you let go. I can see again.”

“So you’re some kind of sexual degenerate now? My hands are
melting, and you’re getting off on it? What are you trying to pull, some
bullshit practical joke?”

“Toler, are you being serious? You can coffing see outta that
eye?” one of the shepherd’s companions asked him. They were searching Toler’s
face, incredulous.

“Serious as daylight,” Toler said. He blinked, winked a few
times with each eye, then crouched beside Merrick. “I’m telling you, soldier, I
was completely blind in this eye ten minutes ago. Then you touched me with
your… magic, or whatever, and not only can I see now, but…” he paused to draw a
small skinning knife from his belt.

Kugh and Coker came forward, but the other shepherds stood in
the way.

Toler caught the starlight on the blade and examined his
reflection in the steel’s mirror sheen.

When Merrick saw the shepherd looking at himself through his
previously-damaged eye, he started to believe him. He almost
wanted
to
believe him.

The shepherd put his knife away and looked at Merrick like a
man deciding whether an off-smelling meal is safe to eat. Merrick hardly
noticed that the others were watching him in much the same way.

He pulled his hands away from his tunic, wincing when the skin
stuck to the fabric. He turned them over to see what had become of them. His
fingernails were gone, and at the tip of each finger was a tiny circle of black
skin. From there, the flesh was blistered and weeping down to the first knuckle.
What is this? What did I do?
He glanced up at Toler. “I have no idea
what just happened. How long have you—had you—been blind?”

The shepherd’s brow was furrowed, his mouth open. “Since
about a week ago.”

“You were completely blind?”

“Completely, in that eye.”

“What—what…”

Toler shrugged. “I don’t know any better than you do. You
sure nothing like this has ever happened before?”

“You mean have I ever burned my own fingernails off? What do
you think? I’m not a masochist.”

“Okay, keep your pants on. Just making sure. You’ve got a
talent, is what I think.”

“I’m really… tired,” Merrick said. He yawned. Suddenly he
felt as if he hadn’t slept in days. His head began to swim with visions,
replaying moments half-concealed beyond the drab fog of memory, like a reel of
film chugging behind a smudged lens.

“A talent that must take a lot out of you,” Toler said.
“Dways, let’s get this man home.” He gestured to the other shepherds, who
hoisted Merrick to his feet.

Kugh and Coker gave their dissent and took over for the
shepherds. Merrick felt himself being shifted from one set of shoulders to another.
As hard as he tried, he couldn’t keep his eyes open. His fatigue was so
overwhelming it made him wonder if he’d been drugged.
Did Flan put something
in my brew? Did somebody else? No, no way. I took two sips before that prick
knocked the mug out of my hand
.

“We’ll take it from here,” Kugh said. They began to guide
Merrick down Harpin Avenue, toward the pile of debris and the crumbling footbridge.

“We’d like to come along. Wouldn’t we boys?” Toler said.

Merrick imagined the other shepherds nodding and following
Toler like ducklings, since he heard no response but the scuffing of soles on the
pavement.

“We don’t need you to come along,” Kugh insisted.

“I didn’t ask,” said Toler.

Kugh grunted.

Merrick overcame the weight of his eyelids long enough to see
Toler lean over and swipe his eyepatch off the pavement. They made their way
toward home while Trim kept an extra eye on the shepherds. Merrick found
himself being dragged along more than walking under his own power. The sounds
of the nighttime city came to him like passing dreams, the buzzing of insects
and the hooting of owls, the sound of bats’ wings overhead and the whispering
of a stray cat’s footsteps. Somewhere a dog was barking, and a woman’s
tobacco-stained voice slurred profanities from a high-rise apartment. When they
had rounded the corner and were out of view of the Boiler Yard’s warm glow,
Merrick heard the metallic scrape of a striker behind him and the hiss of a
torch coming to life.

“It’s a good thing we came after all,” Toler said, walking
past them and stopping at the next corner. “You would’ve been feeling your way
around in the dark without us.”

“This isn’t the scrubs,” he heard Kugh say. “We can find our
way home without you, and we don’t need a light.”

“Don’t be ungrateful,” came Toler’s glib reply. “Taking
people where they need to go is what we do for a living. We’re providing our
services to you free of charge.”

“People usually
pay
you to bug the shit out of ‘em?”
said Trim, in one of his rare ripostes.

“Which way?” Toler called out, ignoring him.

None of Merrick’s comrades responded.

“Fine. I’ll wait.”

The men’s footsteps fell over every variation of asphalt, concrete,
rubble, and bare dust as they traversed the city streets, making their way
toward the barracks. Merrick wanted to sleep, but every sound and every step
jolted him awake again. Kugh kept telling him they were almost there, but they
never seemed to get any closer. Fragments of memory continued to cloud his
thoughts, mingling with visions he no longer knew were real. They draped
themselves over him, trapped him beneath their undulating folds; suffocated him
with their weight. They were almost too washed out to see, like a tapestry
whose color has dulled with age.

No room for weaklings in this world
, Merrick’s father
used to say, after he’d finished making a bloody mess of his son. He would sit
against the peeling cinder block wall and wipe the froth from his mouth with
the back of his hand, where the skin on his knuckles was split and red.
The Aionach
won’t go easy on you. Why should I?
he’d say.
Hard luck needs a hard
will. Ask your whore mother about that if you ever find her. Better yet, tell
her what leaving us with less than nothing did to you. She’ll never know about
the hard times like we do.
If the zoom high was running out, Merrick’s
father would begin to cry then. Loud, heaving sobs that shook him and wetted
the worn linoleum. If he was still doped up, he would lay on the bare spotted
mattress and stare up at the ceiling, his lungs rasping with each slow, shallow
breath.

There was something deeper beneath the surface, a place
beyond dream that Merrick couldn’t reach.
I know what I am and where I come
from. I’ve lived in Belmond all my life, born and bred.
He thought he
remembered everything about himself, knew exactly who he was. A curious boy,
but not bright. Part of the smallest class to come through the doors of White
Birch Primary School since its re-opening. An acned youth with no mother and a
junkie for a father. A lost boy, looking for whatever trouble he could find,
throwing rocks at muties from the top of the highest building he and his
buddies could climb to, laughing whenever a stone found its mark. A dropout
whose resentment toward the city south and its residents had been ingrained
over years of listening to his father’s blame-shifting and scapegoating. A
young man standing in front of a dusty grave, without direction, obligation, or
a living parent. A Scarred Comrade, one of the youngest members of the last
strong generation in the failing humanity of an ill-fated world. A fat soldier
in Pilot Wax’s army.

Yes, that was it—he was a fat, sedentary slug in Pilot Wax’s
gang of lackeys. With a body that was betraying itself, killing him before he
was dead; sloughing its skin off like old bread dough. What else could it be
but some bizarre twist of fate that had left him decomposing before his own
eyes, while the miracle of regenerative healing came to despicable men like
Toler, the wasteland shepherd? If Infernal was cruel, the whims of destiny were
all the more terrible.

Coker groaned, struggling under Merrick’s weight. “Wake up,
coff it. We’re almost at the barracks.”

When Merrick opened his eyes, they were standing in front of
the familiar cast-stone building, three off-white stories of cramped dorms and
piss-stained bathrooms. Wide enough to cover several city blocks, the barracks
had simple four-paned windows with gray-green weather stains dripping from
beneath the sills. A wrought iron fence was set on a low stone colonnade,
surrounding the building except where the wide gate arched across the pavement,
its decorative monogram reading MAIE—The Ministry’s Army of the Inner East.

“Is that Corporal Bouchard you’re carrying? What’d he go and
get himself into?” asked one of the guards when they reached the gate. “Ain’t
none ‘a you been gone longer than two hours, and he’s already stumblin’ drunk.”
The guard was Keller Henderthwaite, a lanky, goose-necked fellow with a deep
baritone that misrepresented his meager build. He and Merrick had gone through
ingress training together.

“He’s not drunk, he’s just tired,” Kugh said. “Open the
coffing gate.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that one before.” Keller pointed at the
shepherds. “Who are these dways?”

“Nobody,” Coker said, “just some tumbleweeds who followed us
home.”

“Well, tell ‘em to get the coff outta here. This ain’t no
tourist attraction.”

“Thanks, we’re gonna get going,” Toler said, giving them a
wave. He held up the torch, as if letting them have a better look at him would
nullify any threat he might pose.

As the shepherds shrank away into the night, Merrick thought
he heard Toler say something about coming back later. In a louder voice, the
shepherd said, “Take care of yourself, soldier. Rest up.”

When the shepherds were gone, the guards opened the gate. After
closing it behind them, the guards began to circle the new arrivals, giving
them the once-over. As Kugh and Coker carried Merrick into the dim pools of light
cast by the oil lamps overhead, one of the guards saw Merrick’s bloodied hands
and made a face.

“So he’s
tired
, you say… tired from gettin’ in a
fight?”

Merrick knew what would happen to him if word of the
evening’s actual events reached Pilot Wax or Captain Robling. He held his
breath, hoping one of his friends had a good excuse lined up.

“Yeah, he got into a fight,” Kugh admitted. “The coffin’ dway
provoked him.”

“Doesn’t matter who provoked who. You can’t fight with
civilians.”

“Give it a rest, Henderthwaite. Quit being so uptight. It’s
not that bad. We’ll take him to the infirmary and get him fixed up. He’s fine,
besides his hands. Gave that shepherd a solid ass-kicking, too. Kinda. Bouchard’ll
be good to go after he gets some sleep. Won’t miss a minute of work.”

“Fine, take him in. But I’ll have to make a report.”

“Coff it, you’re such a Mouther,” Coker said.

“Just doing my job,” said Keller.

“I didn’t know being a little snitch
was
a job.”

“Alright, back off, Coker,” said one of the other guards.

“If Bouchard takes any shit for this, Henderthwaite, I
swear…”

The voices faded out, along with every other sound, and
Merrick fell into the deepest sleep he’d ever known.