The Wasteland Soldier, Book 3, Drums Of War (TWS) (11 page)

The boy released him. Daniel’s face twitched with recognition.

“I know you.”

He turned in his bed.

Hands glided from the blackness and smothered his mouth and nose.

Daniel cried out, the sound muffled.

“Hold him.”

Jeremy placed his weight on Daniel’s weakly thrashing body. The single eye rolled and the tongue flopped around and the legs jerked and then there was stillness.

The hands calmly edged away.

“Now she has a reason to come back. Go to the barracks and raise the alarm. Get her away from Mosscar.”

NINE

The sky began to lighten.

It was the first morning of the festival and Quinn thought back to when she had missed it during childhood; a bout of spots had erupted across her body and itched like mad. She had grown weak, barely able to stand.
Her mother staunchly believed the sickness within Mosscar had found a path to their home and their daughter’s bed. Her father was not so convinced. He’d seen other children with this type of illness and they’d all recovered. He bought creams and tonics from the marketplace whilst her mother had prayed fervently at the Holy House, often leaving Quinn alone in the cottage to do so. The creams and tonics calmed the itchiness and reduced the burning fever and within a few weeks she was up and about and as strong as ever, but, as far as her mother was concerned, prayer had driven the illness from her eight year old daughter and freed her of the cursed things, though her arms and legs remained bitten with tiny scars that she still bore today.

“He answered my prayers and rushed to heal you, Annie. These marks will serve as a reminder of your selfishness in not thanking Him for His work.”

Even at that tender age, tunelessly singing every Reverence Morning, a wooden pew pressing into the back of her knees, the damp of the building causing her to shiver, Quinn had wondered why the Lord had made her ill in the first place, though she was already smart enough to keep such a question from her mother.
She had asked her father the question and he had meekly agreed that faith was both confusing and contradictory, though rewarding. She had no idea the meaning of the words he had used. A year later he was gone, his strong frame struck down by a rapid and brutal sickness that saw him repeatedly vomit blood. No one sat on his garden bench anymore. She’d allowed the wildflowers to claim it.

Reaching her ninth, with her father gone, Quinn began to think the Lord had a nasty streak about him. She cried until her mother beat the tears from her. She could still remember that beating. More than any other.

On a windy day, listening to the crash of the sea, she would smoke his pipe and close her eyes and taste that familiar tang. She supposed it was why she enjoyed sharing a smoke with Duggan. Her father had been a more cheerful man but the experience was as close as it was going to get. She was glad her father had not witnessed the war. The pointless deaths would have broken him. He had never understood the division between Ennpithia and Kiven. Nor had she. Quinn wondered why her thoughts were consumed with her dead parents and the war and the grim secrets the past held.

Memories tapped from behind doors. Scratched to get free.

She sat up.

It was time for answers and she would not find them in the distant past. It was only the recent past that concerned her now.

She’d camped on the edge of the forest and slept wrapped in a tarpaulin cover. She shook it free of rainwater and folded it away. The soil beneath her boots was moist from the overnight rain and a light mist drifted over the hill. She would have a mile and a half of open ground to cover before reaching Mosscar. She tied her horse, Blissful, to a tree and stroked her mane before reaching into her backpack and taking out a slim black scope. It was one of many illegal items she carried. One search through her pack would see her hang, though she was pretty confident of talking her way out of any situation.

She cleaned the scope with a cloth before crouching and raising it to her eye. The way ahead was patchy grassland with ruts and hollows. She scanned the farms to the east. There was the distant bleat of sheep and she could see men and women working the land. She swept her gaze toward the hills in the west. The wind blew in her face and rippled her tightly wound ropes of hair. There was no evidence of any roaming Shaylighters. She licked her lips. Boyd would have set up his wares by now and would already be collecting coin. She wondered how Stone and Nuria were working out. She was glad he’d hired them instead of Dobbs and Farrell.

It was time to focus or she would succumb to the same pain-ridden and agonising death that Clarissa had. Someone had lured her into this damned place. She had suspected Jeremy at first. Despite his polite, well mannered and honest nature he was still a young boy and young boys have lusts and needs and she wondered if he had attempted to force himself upon Clarissa … but none of that made any sense, the logic didn’t flow, and she had seen the devastation in him when he learned that Clarissa had contracted the sickness of the Ancients.

Pack slung over one shoulder, Quinn pocketed the scope and moved forward, half-crouched, slowly drawing a black pistol from the woollen fleece she wore. It was already warm and pockets of sweat were forming beneath her arms. She shrugged off the fleece and tied it around her waist. She instantly felt cooler in a sleeveless shirt. Pistol in her left hand she sprinted across the open ground. She spotted broken pieces of black asphalt, winking beneath thickened streaks of greenery. It was the outskirts of the city. She halted and reached into her pack for the piece of tech she had told Jeremy about.

The metal box was yellow and scratched. There was a single moulded handle, a circular dial and a switch. She had fixed a strap to it so it could be hung around her neck. She flicked the switch. There was a low buzz and a red light slowly began to glow. She had purchased the outlawed item for a hefty bag of coins. The man who sold her the device was unsure of its correct terminology but understood how to operate the unit and the potential it offered. He referred to it as a
noise box
. There was a detachable handle which he called the
tester
. Boyd had connected her with the man and he was a trusted dealer.

Boyd was shrewd and well connected. His business flourished in Ennpithia. He paid his levies to the landowners, taxes to Touron and made ample donations to the Holy House. He was friends with everyone and held no grudges yet beneath the hardworking, law abiding and charming veneer he had developed a deep knowledge of the whispering merchants, those who dabbled in the rarities from Kiven and places beyond the sea. He never bought or sold anything illegal himself, he was a devoted knee bender, but he could always funnel a person in the direction of someone who did.

She unclipped the tester: it was a cylindrical piece of metal with a mesh grill at one end and a curly black cord at its base that snaked into the noise box

She swept the tester before her but there was no sound. She hesitated. Had she switched it on correctly?
She glanced down at the red light and saw it was still aglow. Gun in one hand, tester in the other, noise box around her neck, Quinn took a deep breath and moved across the cracked and faded asphalt, boots echoing on the roads of the Ancients. Millions of souls had once pressed upon this very spot. Now there was only one. She glanced down at the large dial with its single black needle. There was a sequence of numbers and the dial was on zero. She stepped forward, the city rising around her, towering concrete and twisted metal engulfed by foliage. It was impossible to discern what any of the buildings might have been. Greenery climbed and curled, snaked, smothered and choked.

She swept the tester before her but there was no sudden flare of noise; that raw and metallic sound she was anticipating. Her eyes dropped to the dial on the noise box and she saw the needle had not budged. She shifted her direction and moved slowly east but still there was no angry burst of noise and the needle was dormant. Quinn swore and backed away. All Ennpithians feared the sickness that plagued Mosscar, and she had more reason than most to fear it, but now she was angry that the noise box was failing to detect any. Could the box be faulty? Had it become damaged? No, her contact had tested it in the northern reaches of the Black Region, where the red flags were placed, and he had assured her the noise box had screeched - repulsed by the disease that crawled through soil and stone.
Boyd trusted the man and that was good enough for Quinn. She retraced her steps. Still the needle refused to recognise any danger. She headed west. For ten minutes she roamed the outskirts of the diseased city – buildings that reached into the clouds, roads and tunnels and bridges – discoloured and smashed and slowly being absorbed by foliage. She waved the tester before her and the noise failed to materialise.

“What the fuck is this?”

She kicked her boot and it connected with something small that rattled along a street lined with identical sized buildings. The object came to a stop. Slowly, she looked around. The concrete buildings were half-wrapped in greenery but it was easy to see they resembled small houses. There was a short road beside each one with a mangled vehicle on many of them. The noise box hung silent around her neck. The red light glowed. A shiver went down her spine. She swallowed and stepped over ragged vines. The wind ached through the old structures and Quinn imagined souls crying at her. She whirled around, pointing her pistol at the nearest building, but there was no one there, there was no one anywhere.

“The sickness is deeper in the city,” she muttered. She nodded and lowered her weapon.

There was a faint tremble in her hand.

She ignored it, kept walking.

There was nothing here for a child beyond morbid curiosity in the past and Clarissa had never shown even the slightest interest in the Before. Why, Clarissa? It made no sense. It made no sense at all.

Had Clarissa walked down that very street and felt the ghostly reach of the past as she had?

It still made no sense.

Quinn suddenly raised her pistol. She could hear the rush of horses.

“Shaylighters.”

She moved. Sweeping the tester in a wide arc, the box silent, the needle still, she sprinted into the city’s arms of death. She dropped behind a square building with a curved roof where foliage surged through a gaping hole. Quinn reconnected the tester to the box and took out her scope. Back against the wall, she pushed herself slowly upward and began to scan the landscape. The riders were growing close, coming from the southeast. She edged along the wall and found herself next to a twisted iron gate, brown with rust. Vines curled around it. She peered through and saw a wide flight of concrete steps leading into blackness. The horses were nearly upon her but still she could not seem them. It couldn’t be Shaylighters. She would have heard the whoops and cries from them by now as they thundered across the scrubland.

Then three riders crested a hill and she let out a sigh of relief. It was Jeremy with two Churchmen.

Anger flared. What was the stupid boy doing in bringing them here? She knew he was worried about her but she was loaded down with illegal weapons and tech. The Churchmen would take her away in chains. She fumed. His childish, over protective nature had landed her in a terrible mess. Rapidly, she slipped off the noise box and her pack and placed them out of sight. She set her pistol and scope on top and jogged clear of Mosscar. The horses reared as she emerged from the ruins, waving her arms, and Jeremy scrambled down from his saddle, face pale, windblown.

“I need to talk to you,” he said, catching his breath.

She was furious with him. “Why did you come here?”

The two soldiers climbed from their horses. Neither of them asked what she was doing out here but they had rode all night with Jeremy and now found a spot to relieve themselves.

“Something terrible has happened.”

She saw it in his eyes. She was all that was left now.

“Go back to Brix,” she said. Her voice was hollow. Her hands dangled loose against her hips.

“I don’t know what happened. I went to see him last night and he wasn’t breathing and …”

“Quinn.” It was one of the Churchmen, emerging from the brush. “You should come back home with us. You need to take care of things.”

She looked at him blankly. His horse whined as he climbed onto it. “You shouldn’t be near this place.”

“I can go where I want. No law says I can’t put a foot in Mosscar.”

The second soldier appeared, wiping his palms on his trousers. He clutched the reins of his horse and swung onto the saddle. He remained silent whilst his companion spoke.

“Your niece went in there and look what happened to her. Hasn’t there been enough tragedy in your family?”

“We’d all hate to lose you, Quinn,” said the second soldier, finally opening his mouth.

She turned on Jeremy.

“Why did you bring them?” she whispered

“I had no choice. They wanted to escort me. Please. Daniel is dead. You need to come home.”

“He’s right, Quinn.” It was the first soldier again. The horses were snorting, growing impatient. “I can’t make you come back but I really hope you do.”

She squinted at them.

“Thank you for telling me about Daniel. You can all go now. I’m staying here.”

The Churchmen shrugged.

“Jeremy, ride back with us.”

“No, you have to take her with us. This place will kill her.”

“She isn’t breaking any law,” said the second soldier.

“Make her come back. You can’t leave her out here.”

The first soldier shook his head. “People grieve in different ways, son. Get your horse.”

“Quinn?” said Jeremy, tears in his eyes. “I’m begging you. He looks so sad. He’s all alone in the cottage. Don’t go in there. Please, Quinn. I feel terrible. I was supposed to take care of him and now he’s dead and I let you down. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”