The Thousand Emperors (28 page)
‘Look there,’ she said, pointing towards the nearest peak. ‘The foothills are only six kilometres or so from where you’ve landed, and that’s where you’ll find
the entrance to Maxwell’s prison. There’s a transceiver amongst your cold-weather gear – plant it where it tells you to if you can’t see any sign of the Ambassador, then
come back. If he shows himself, the transceiver will let us know.’
‘And the Sandoz guarding this place won’t know about it?’
‘If you manage to prove that Ambassador Sachs is making some kind of secret deal with Javier Maxwell, no one’s going to care one way or the other. I don’t think getting there
and back should take you more than a couple of hours.’
‘And if this doesn’t work?’
‘Then we’ll have to think of something else. There’s a storm front closing in on the mountains – don’t tarry, because you really don’t want to get caught in
it.’
‘I’d better get going,’ he said.
She nodded, the hunger in her eyes reminding him he wasn’t the only one fighting for his survival.
‘Good luck,’ she said, and vanished.
Luc clambered through to the back of the flier, found the cold-weather gear and pulled it on, stepping outside as soon as he was ready. Even with the protection of the gear, a cold deeper than
any he had experienced before sucked the heat from the few exposed patches of his face.
He started walking, ice and snow crunching under his heavy boots. Before long it began to sleet, a thick wet slush that stung when it struck any of his exposed skin. He adjusted the sunglasses
he’d found amongst the cold-weather gear to cut down the glare from the snow.
Cresting a low hill, he continued down the other side, and when he finally stopped to take a breath and look back the way he’d come, the flier was nothing more than a stark black dot
against the horizon. He’d already gone a lot farther than he’d realized. Distances were hard to judge in such a nearly featureless landscape.
He made his way down the other side of the hill and then up another, and then another, and another. Eventually he came to one that was slightly distinguishable from the rest by virtue of being
capped with a lump of half-eroded granite only partly covered in snow. By the time he reached its peak, his legs had gone from aching to half-numb, but when he looked ahead, he could see what
appeared to be a hangar cut into the side of a steep ridge several kilometres away.
Coming to a halt, he rested with his hands on his knees, taking a minute to recover his breath before using his sunglasses to zoom in on the cavern. There, he could see a flier parked near the
mouth of the hangar.
He ran an analysis and got an immediate positive result. It was the Ambassador’s flier, all right – and he hadn’t left yet.
Luc had what he needed. Turning back, he saw dark thunder-heads to the north, sweeping in across the snowy wastes, and remembered de Almeida’s warning. The wind had already started to pick
up, a thin, eerie whine that carved patterns in the ice and snow all around.
And there was something else, just barely audible over the rising howl of the wind. A faint hum, coming closer . . .
He made his way over to the granite stub rising from the peak of the hill and pressed himself into a shadowed indent. As he listened the humming got louder, then started to fade as the source of
the sound moved away from him. Luc waited for a good half-minute before cautiously leaning out to take a look around.
He saw a mechant, already at the base of the hill and on its way towards the rock hangar. Breathing a sigh of relief that it hadn’t seen him, he made his way back the way he’d come
as fast as his tired legs could carry him.
The storm, however, was coming in faster than he had imagined possible. The wind kept rising in pitch until it sounded eerily like the scream of an injured animal. He picked up the pace, very
nearly breathless by the time he crested another hill.
He transmitted the data he’d recorded and waited a minute until she came back.
Her voice broke up into static.
He waited for her to respond, but all he could hear was the terrible howl of the wind.
Still nothing.
He felt tendrils of panic reach out from his spine and wrap themselves around his chest, gently squeezing his heart. He tried again to contact de Almeida, but again heard only silence. It
wasn’t outside the bounds of possibility that the storm was causing some kind of signal interference. At least, he hoped that was all it was.
He kept moving, but the storm was coming down fast and it was getting harder to see where he was going. He tried to use the tracking signal from the flier to keep him headed in the right
direction, but it failed to respond, as if it wasn’t there any more.
Something was very, very wrong. If he couldn’t find his way back to the flier before the storm really hit, he was in serious trouble.
He relied on his memory to guide him back the way he had come, but after another ten minutes the light was almost gone. The wind whipped thin skeins of snow into his eyes, half-blinding him.
Before long it got to the point where he could hardly make any headway at all against the wind.
‘Zelia!’ he yelled into the maelstrom. ‘Goddammit, Zelia, where the hell are you?’
He wondered if her subterfuge had been discovered, and she had decided to cut him loose rather than admit responsibility for bringing him back to Vanaheim against Father Cheng’s wishes.
Whatever the reason, if he could get back to the flier he could at least get the hell out of there.
By now, the mountain peaks had disappeared behind flurries of ice and snow raised up by the wind, and he had to fight for each step he took. A part of him wanted to lay down and rest, to be done
with it all.
But if he did that, he knew, he’d never get up again. So he pushed on regardless, leaning into the wind, face numb, teeth gritted. The sky had turned almost completely black.
An eternity passed before he stumbled down a steep incline to where he’d left the flier. It wasn’t there.
Looking around wildly, he squinted in the freezing dark. Maybe he was in the wrong place.
Again, he tried to pick up the flier’s tracking signal, but still got no answer.
He turned, and looked back up the slope of the hill he’d just descended. There had been a rockslide some time in the recent past that had scattered a couple of large, distinctive boulders
nearby, and he remembered seeing them when he’d disembarked from the flier. He was definitely in the right place.
The wind wrapped itself around him, as if trying to carry him off. He screamed his fury and frustration into a black and turbulent sky, but the words were lost amid the tumult.
There was still one other option open to him. He could head back the way he’d come, make his way to that rock hangar and see if he could find some way inside Javier Maxwell’s prison.
It was probably his one chance at staying alive.
He trudged back up the slope he’d just descended, every muscle in his body protesting at the ordeal he was putting them through. His footprints had been almost entirely obscured by the
storm. Sometimes the outline of the mountains became briefly visible, allowing him to confirm he was still heading the right way and hadn’t got turned around.
It’s easy
, he told himself.
Just put one foot in front of the other, and repeat. Couldn’t be simpler.
An eternity passed in this way, until his legs felt as stiff and unyielding as frozen rock.
He almost cried with relief when he found his way back to the granite-topped hill, and tried not to think about the many kilometres he still had to go before he reached the hangar. The ridge he
was ultimately headed for was, by now, almost entirely invisible amidst the storm.
The night surged around him, howling and tugging at his shoulders like some predator determined to torture him before making its kill.
At some point, he came to the realization he had no idea which direction he was headed in. He turned around, trying to see his tracks in the snow, but the storm had become so vicious they were
obscured in seconds.
Picking a direction, he started walking. It became harder and harder to maintain any sense of time. He might have been walking for an hour, or a whole day.
He became aware that he had collapsed to his knees in the snow, but couldn’t recall just when he had come to a halt.
Forcing himself upright, he managed a few more feeble steps before feeling his legs give way beneath him once more. He collapsed, tipping forward onto the snow, the breath rattling in his
throat.
Lights flickered through the darkened haze around him. To his astonishment, Luc saw that the storm was starting to clear. The stars were revealing themselves, one by one, between drawn-out wisps
of snow and cloud.
Some of the stars broke away from the firmament and dipped down towards him, so that he could see they were attached to a dark outline that blocked out part of the sky. But before he could work
out what it was, his thoughts had faded into darkness.
The journey to the well, the old man told Jacob, was likely to take the better part of a day, and quite possibly longer if the weather turned for the worse. For this reason
they left not long after dawn the following morning, with Jacob once again hidden beneath a carpet in the back of Kulic’s horse-drawn cart.
At one point, as Kulic guided the cart out of the village, cajoling his horse with whistles and muttered grunts, he drew to a halt by the roadside in order to exchange a few words with a fellow
villager. That proved to be the high point of what was otherwise a cold and desperately uncomfortable journey, marked by spine-jarring jolts and bumps that did little to improve Jacob’s mood.
He hated everything about Darwin he had so far encountered; the early years of his life had been spent in Sandoz combat-temples amidst wild and tropical forests and, despite his training, he had
never quite shaken his distaste for the cold and damp.
But what made it all so much worse was that the rag under which he was forced to hide for the first leg of their journey stank of shit and hay, while the only refreshment Kulic had to offer was
a sealed clay jug of nearly intolerable home-brewed beer, alongside hard, unleavened bread that Jacob was forced to chew with grim determination before it became even vaguely digestible.
Jacob finally emerged from beneath the blanket an hour out of the village, but soon draped it back over his shoulders when it began to rain, a freezing drizzle that shrouded the hills and forest
around them in shades of grey. Kulic had given him some of his father’s cast-offs – a rough woollen shirt and a pair of patched cotton trousers, along with a broad dark coat that swept
against his ankles. Underneath it all he still wore his one-piece combat suit.
Kulic guided the horses along a dirt path that cut through the woods and ran roughly parallel with the course of a stream intermittently visible through the trees. Before long it became clear
they were headed inland, towards a valley beyond which a Coalition city could be seen in all its shining technological splendour.
They stopped late that afternoon so they could both take a leak. When Jacob returned from the woods, he saw Kulic rummaging around in the rear of the cart, as if searching for something. As
Jacob watched from amongst the trees, the old man glanced around with a furtive expression.
Jacob waited to see what the old man was up to, and watched as Kulic turned back to the cart, lifting out the case Jacob had earlier retrieved from his ship. Holding it carefully, Kulic turned
it this way and that, as if trying to work out how to open it.
Jacob stepped out from his hiding place and quickly slipped up behind the old man without making a sound. Kulic was pressing dirty fingernails against the surface of the case, apparently trying
to prise it open.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ asked Jacob, from directly behind him.
Kulic let out a cry of shock, and span around to regard Jacob with an expression of terror. ‘I’m sorry, I . . .’ his mouth trembled, the case still gripped in his shaking
hands. ‘I was just . . . just curious.’
‘Curious about what?’ said Jacob, coming closer, so the old man was forced up against the side of the cart. Kulic’s mouth trembled with fear.
‘I . . . I just wanted to know what was inside.’
Jacob stared at him in silence for several long seconds, then reached down to take the case from Kulic’s grasp without breaking eye contact.
‘It’s lucky you have no idea how to open this,’ Jacob said quietly. ‘It would have killed you even faster than I could. Now get back on that horse and let’s be on
our way.’
Kulic regarded him in much the same way a rabbit might a snake with its jaws fully extended. He swallowed and slid past Jacob, pulling himself back onto his ageing nag.
Jacob stared at the back of the old man’s head, then climbed into the back of the cart. The case was unharmed, of course. It would open only in response to Jacob’s unique genetic
signature. He kept a hold on the case as Kulic snapped the reins, and they began to move forward once more.
The sky reddened as the evening deepened, and the first stars began to show themselves before they next spoke.
‘You asked me to tell you about life in the Tian Di,’ Jacob said, calling over to Kulic as the cart juddered and bounced beneath him. ‘Why don’t you repay the favour, and
tell me something more about the people in the cities?’
A minute or so passed before Kulic responded. ‘I said they came to visit us from time to time, in disguise.’
‘You said,’ Jacob commented, ‘they didn’t appear to be human.’
‘They came to us in disguise as animals.’
Jacob smiled to himself. ‘Animals?’
‘You think I’m naive and foolish,’ said Kulic, his tone defensive, ‘but I’m not. We know how powerful the people in those cities are, and how lucky we are that they
permit us to live our lives the way we choose; we know they can take any form they wish. One of Bruehl’s disciples came back with stories of multi-legged things that flew and crawled, of tiny
darting machines that spoke with the voices of men.’ Kulic’s tone had become hushed, full of wonder and fear.
