The Stealers' War (25 page)

‘I need to do something to help,’ said Willow. ‘I really do. Come, then. The people are always glad to see you. It helps lift their spirits.’

‘For the life of me, I don’t know why,’ said Owen. ‘I half-expect to be met with thrown rocks every time I walk Hadra-Hareer’s wells and chambers. And not just from the locals. Our people. I lost the north the war in Weyland. I lost them their parliament, their homes and in many cases their family’s freedom. Sometimes I think it might have been better if I’d never escaped from Vandia. If I had stayed a slave inside the sky mines.’

‘No,’ said Willow. ‘You fought for us in Weyland, just like you helped keep us alive on the mining station. You think if you’d perished inside the Imperium things would be better in Weyland? Tell that to all the betrayed citizens sold into slavery just to keep Bad Marcus in Vandian gold. Tell that to everyone working as serfs in the fields and factories owned by Marcus’ friends. Your brothers died in the mines. Did their deaths make Weyland a better land? Your family was murdered by Marcus when he stole your father’s throne. Did their burial improve Weyland one whit? There’s only a single grave that will make us better. Your uncle’s . . .’

‘You sound like old man Carnehan when you speak like that. Filled with hatred and revenge.’

Willow shivered at the thought. ‘He’s not wrong about everything.’

‘Even if we did the impossible, even if the north wins, what I would be king of ? Half a land. A nation rent asunder. Things can never go back to the way they were. Too much blood has been spilled. Families set against families. Brother against sister. Friend against friend. These hatreds will last generations. I fear they will outlast us all.’

You might be speaking about my family. How can I forgive Duncan and my father for their crimes? And if I can’t forgive my own brother and father, how can anyone else?
‘It won’t be easy.’

‘That much is true. I understand that you have moved your lodgings to the Shades Chamber?’

Willow nodded. ‘It’s where I’m expected to find room for the people still coming in on the Pilgrim’s Way. I need to understand how everyone is rubbing along with the Rodalians and each other.’

‘That place’s atmosphere is not what I would describe as particularly conducive to a woman carrying a baby.’

‘There are worse areas.’
But there are better ones, too.
The Golden Well was one of the Rodalian capital’s wealthiest quarters, and from what Willow saw in the corridors beyond the council chamber, it looked set to grow wealthier still. Workers passed her pulling handcarts filled with metal stripped from the storm-crashed Vandian warship, hauling salvage to blacksmiths to be melted down into bars and trading coins. A fortune in steel and aluminium and other metals. Soon there would be nothing left of the destroyed vessel. Traders passing along Rodal’s caravan routes would find prices for their ingots greatly depressed for many years, she suspected.

Willow and Owen reached the circular atrium of the well itself, carved out of the mountain’s core. Unlike the buildings clinging to Hareer’s peak, the well was buried deep enough inside the rock to have shrugged off every Vandian shell during their raid against the capital. Ninety storeys of delicate pale-stoned buildings, balconies and terraces circled the open space, mirror stacks glowing with light from outside. The void Willow stood over was crisscrossed by hundreds of wooden gantries and stone bridges, filled with humanity’s hum, the splash of waterfalls and rain-filled aqueducts. A cloud of butterflies left the vines and trailing flowers hanging in front of Willow and fluttered down the open passage toward the council chamber. Unlike Northhaven’s butterflies, these insects were granite grey and marbled with thin lines of bright crimson, emerald and purple. Where they settled on the rock walls they looked like a living mosaic. Every well inside the capital had four lifts at the cardinal points of the compass, as well as dozens of staircases for those that wished to walk up or down a few storeys. Willow and Owen were closest to the Golden Well’s southern lift. They strolled around the balconied level until they reached the gate and its keepers, joining a crowd of locals milling around for the lift’s arrival.

They waited ten minutes, then the lift’s wrought-iron doors were pulled back by the keepers to reveal a wooden-panelled room as large a church hall. The crowd shuffled forward to join a couple of hundred Rodalians inside. The gates shut and the lift descended, stopping at every level. It might have been quicker to use one of the well’s spiral staircases, but Willow had tried that once, finding herself out of breath after descending a mere six storeys. Even without the baby’s extra weight, she suspected the descents and climbs of Rodal’s subterranean streets might prove too much for her feet. At the bottom of the well, Willow and Owen entered the passage leading across to the Drain. Long enough to warrant the cost of a trip in a yak-pulled open wagon, at least as far as Willow was concerned. Although it was a tunnel, the passage always put Willow in mind of the largest bridges crossing Arcadia’s canals – the same mix of ramshackle homes, stores, trades and taverns lining the route. Similar smells and hawkers’ cries, even if these dwellings were carved into mountain stone.

‘Do you ever think I’m the wrong man?’ asked the prince, rocking on the taxi wagon’s open bench, six passengers squeezed on either side of them. ‘Perhaps it would be better if Carnehan wore the crown like the warlord from the Burn my uncle claims he once was. Father Carnehan will put the torch to our land if it means beating Bad Marcus. He’d happily sacrifice every citizen in the country to kill the usurper and still call it a victory. Perhaps that’s what the war demands.’

Willow watched a child at the end of the bench, arguing with her brother until her mother cuffed the child’s head. ‘He’s only leading the assembly’s army, not the country. The peace will need something different. It will need someone who cares for more than crushing Bad Marcus.’

‘Everything seemed simpler when we were the empire’s slaves. We had our quotas. We knew what we needed to do to survive. To be fed. We understood that attempting to escape meant death and collective executions. But now? Over the border, half our own countrymen would hang us as soon as look at us.
This
is where my cause has led us.’

Willow could see Prince Owen was still deeply worried about Anna Kurtain. Anna had only just survived the fall of Midsburg and many of her wounds would never heal.
You gave Owen the strength to survive in the mines, Anna. He needs you now, as much as I need Carter for any of this to make sense. To bear what we must do to survive
. ‘You’re a good man, Owen.’

‘May I yet be good enough,’ said the prince, ‘to meet these times.’

The wagon halted inside the Drain. An aptly-named maze of caverns. Always damp and running with water from the lake filling the mesa top above this section of the capital. She rarely saw a local without a warm jacket here. They passed on foot through its chambers and entered the passage to the Shades Chamber, a second wagon ride down a merchant-lined tunnel, emerging at the chamber’s lowest level. Another well, but the floor of this one was filled with labourers. Many emerged from low, long side chambers where mushroom rice was cultivated. Willow had little appetite for it, herself. Too chewy and smoky for her taste. The remainder of the people were builders. They were extending the capital from this well, tunnelling out.

She stared up for a second, the rise of levels narrowing up to a distant termination point. The light here restricted for the crop chambers. She suddenly felt dizzy. Prince Owen reached out to steady Willow and she returned her gaze to the ground. To recover, she watched the workers on the far side of the chamber, excavating a new well inside the canyon deeps below the South Rim. This project had been grinding on for the best part of a century and many of the Weylanders given refuge inside Rodal laboured inside the excavations and mines. Paying for their keep with the only coin they had . . . their labour. Out on the farms of Havenharl, willing travellers thanked hosts for food and board by chopping wood and helping plough fields. Here, the same tradition went hand-in-hand with a pickaxe and shovel. There were women and older children directing rubble-filled mine carts into the tunnels, scattered across the rails alongside the male Weylanders.
We’re a proud people, even beaten and hiding from the southern army. Nobody wants to feel they’re accepting charity by sheltering here
. Willow and Owen’s appearance was quickly followed by a gathering crowd. Weylanders wanting to know of missing relatives and friends; requests to move lodgings closer to their kin; people pressing for news of the war beyond the border; word of whether Hadra-Hareer would be attacked again; requests for extra rations and a doctor’s attentions; worries and pleas and concerns and offers to take up arms and fight. Willow tried to comfort the crowd. She tried to reassure and help them . . . not feel overwhelmed by the cacophony of cries and demands.

Too busy to notice the grin of triumph on the squat, scar-faced man hidden hanging at the back of the mob of refugees. But then, Nocks needed not to be noticed to quietly trail the quarry back to her quarters.
Willowy Willow. You and me are going to have a proper reunion real soon.

Duncan watched Paetro tossing a smoke grenade into the centre of the clearing, crimson smoke billowing into the air. He had lost count of how many days the four survivors from the abortive attack on Hadra-Hareer had trekked through the cold, dry alpine woodland along the canyon-tops, their numbers swelled to an unlucky thirteen now by fellow stragglers – house guardsmen, legionaries and a crashed helo pilot. Hiding within forests where trees still slowly reached back for the sky after feeling the hurricane’s wrath. Forests that bowed like slaves before the wind and only rose after its wild majesty had passed. Avoiding locals who would happily toss any invader caught alive off the nearest cliff; surviving on dwindling pack rations while singularly failing to trap local game. Now they’d spotted a pair of transport helos low in the air as opposed to regular flights of Rodalian flying wings hunting Vandians, the cover of the trees that had helped them survive the mountain clans’ revenge was suddenly a hindrance to their rescue.

See the smoke
, willed Duncan, the two Vandian craft flying out of sight, the sound of their rotors’ drone dwindling. Slowly the hum grew fainter. Duncan’s heart sank. But then the noise changed pitch.
Is it coming back
? The drone transformed into a circling twin-rotored helo, making a lazy circuit in the air as it checked out the soldiers screaming and leaping in the clearing below. Satisfied these were friendlies, the hovering helo came down, a storm of needle-thin leaves whipping around Duncan’s boots. They retreated to the clearing’s edge; barely large enough to accommodate the helo without its rotors clipping the tree-line. Its wheels jounced on the ground and a hatch pulled back revealing two soldiers, one leaning against a heavy mounted electric rifle in case this was an ambush, the other soldier happily familiar. Duncan had never been so glad to see Mandus Talia’s face, the radioman seemingly diminished without a heavy communications pack strapped to his back. His normally dour features cracked into a smile. Whether from seeing his comrades alive or joy at his own survival, Duncan couldn’t say. They ran for the helo, Mandus pulling Duncan inside as the other soldiers practically threw themselves into the safety of the rescuers’ aircraft.

‘I told them you were alive!’ exclaimed Mandus. ‘I sprinted like a madman towards that ruined keep you disappeared into, but I was caught by the hurricane. Met a rock in the air which dented my skull. When I woke, I was stretched out up high in the branches of a tree. Still had a working radio, though, to call in our beetles to lift me out.’

‘You always did have the luck of a devil,’ said Paetro. ‘It’s damnable good to see your ugly mug alive. Anyone else from the company? What was the butcher’s bill from the raid?’

Mandus sadly shook his head. His hands and face carried hundreds of thin barely healed cuts; the gale had sandblasted the soldier and left him looking as if he’d spent a week as the guest of an imperial torturer. ‘The company is gone, everyone dead. That demon wind ripped us apart.
The Caller
was destroyed, lost almost every helo in the first wave and many of the troops riding with them. Our squadrons’ second wave watched the forward birds falling out of the air and a few helos turned back in time. Add a few soldiers on the ground who managed to find cracks and crevices to crawl into and wait out the hurricane. Only five in twenty of those who set out for Hadra-Hareer made it back to tell of it.’

‘I’ve been through my share of bad battles before,’ said Paetro. ‘Never a rout, though. That’s a first for me.’

Maybe a first for Vandia, too
, thought Duncan. ‘Prince Gyal’s final parting victory has been blown away.’

‘He isn’t happy,’ said Mandus. ‘Spitting blood is what I hear.’

‘Just not his own,’ said Duncan.

‘It’s the Imperium’s honour, though, lad,’ said Paetro. ‘There’ll be enough blame for this fiasco for
everyone
to share.’

Duncan resisted the urge to smile. Prince Gyal was the commander of the punishment fleet. His head was the one on the executioner’s block. How he had fought to grab that prize from Helrena. Treated her little better than a common legionary, excluding her from all military counsels.
You wanted the glory, my prince. Now you are going to take it, every last drop of it, and won’t the taste be bitter in your mouth
.

‘There’s going to be a second assault,’ coughed Mandus. ‘Different tactics. A ground attack.’

‘Ground attack? We
were
on the ground and look at us now. Isn’t that the definition of madness?’ complained Duncan. ‘Repeating the same action and expecting a different result?’

Paetro grunted. ‘I doubt that the prince wants to return to Vandia and explain to the emperor how the slave revolt’s dishonour was followed up by the drubbing of his punishment fleet. Gyal doesn’t have much of a choice in the matter now. Either Hadra-Hareer falls or he does. So it’s back to the camp at Northhaven and polish our swords for a second try.’