The Wasteland Soldier, Book 3, Drums Of War (TWS) (39 page)

Stone’s foot remained against the accelerator.

“If we can stop the Metal Spears they won’t need to,” said Boyd, head turned. “Besides, the choice isn’t ours.”

“All those lives in the hands of a few men,” sighed Quinn. “What has happened to Ennpithia, Benny?”

Boyd righted himself in his seat, held on as the buggy crashed over rocky ground.

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s always been this way.”

Duggan eased the man onto a bunk and tossed a blanket over him. The Map Maker’s eyes were wide open, unblinking, and he was muttering to himself, words inaudible.
Duggan passed a hand across the man’s face but there was no response. He appeared catatonic.
He’d seen this kind of reaction during the civil war, when the fighting grew bloody and bitter and men hacked at men to stay alive, no longer fighting for any noble cause or religious doctrine, fighting only to breathe for a few seconds longer. But the Map Maker was no soldier and no veteran of the battlefield.

“Crazy man.”

He shrugged, walked to the door, and hesitated, absorbing the weight of the cross on his armour, knowing it was a symbol of what he fought for, of who he was as a man. He turned back, rummaged for a cloth, dipped it into a basin of water and wiped the sweat from the man’s face. He turned him onto his back and draped the damp cloth across his forehead and adjusted the blanket so he was properly covered.

“You’re a curious man,” he said.

The Map Maker’s lips continued to move, the words silent.

“I’ll pray for you.”

As he made the sign of the cross one of his men called from outside. Duggan hurriedly climbed a ladder onto the battlement. He was handed a telescope. He lifted it to his eye and scanned the horizon, wind blowing in his face.

Flames roared into the black night. There were maybe thirty or forty Shaylighters gathered around a carefully built funeral pyre, several miles out. He could make out two or three bodies engulfed in raging yellow fire. He shifted his gaze and saw a long line of horsemen in deep rows, impossible to count. The warriors looked even more ferocious in the reflection of the wild flames; faces daubed with war paint, bare-chests marked with the inverted cross, long knotted hair trailing from their scalps, bristling with spears and axes and slingshot carbines. A man with a long face rode along the line, a curved sword at his waist, his fist clenched.

Duggan lowered the telescope. “Get everyone from the Holy House.”

TWENTY NINE

The scrubland turned from black to grey as the first pieces of dawn scratched at the day.

Stone switched off the headlamps and glanced at the dashboard. A quarter of the black energy remained. Nuria watched the landscape brighten. She felt sick inside. It was still too much to comprehend that the Cleric was here, in Ennpithia, with a stack of
Metal Spears
at his disposal.
It had to be a bluff. Or something. She glanced at Stone and saw his face creased with the same worries as her own. They had been born into a world scarred by Metal Spears. They understood the bleak power they wielded. The kiss seemed a lifetime ago.

The engine had a distinctive snarl and the tyres kicked up clouds of dust. The buggy was very visible in the exposed wilderness. The Marshals knew they were coming. They had passed at least two signal outposts, half-concealed in the dirt, no doubt forwarding messages with a sequence of flags and lights. The vehicle jolted over a bump in the road and Boyd flicked open his eyes, unaware he’d been asleep for the past hour. He saw Quinn staring, the bald and featureless land reflected in her red rimmed eyes; her world had collapsed, the pain looked unbearable.

The sun rose and blazed over the wasteland in long streaks. This was the eastern frontier of Ennpithia.

There were no trees and no undergrowth. There were no meadows filled with flowers and no gorges covered in vegetation.

There were no scattered farms, no animals, no villages and no hamlets. There were no voices and no songs, no prayers and no decrees.

There was no green. There was no blue.

But there were rusted cars with shattered windshields and flattened roofs, half-buried in the parched ground. There were twisted steel pylons, metal limbs gnarled and discoloured, toppled flat across the earth. There were low walls of brick coated with dust, outlines of what were once buildings; a village or a town or even a city. There were ravines, like slash wounds. There were ragged craters filled with blackened rubble. And there were towers, eerie markers dotted against the horizon, strung along the Place of Bridges. The wind coursed through the land, rattling and tossing pieces of a long forgotten past. Stone narrowed his eyes, wishing he had goggles. There was no respite from the wind; summer or winter, it punished them, spiralling down from the torn sky, howling mercilessly into their very bones.

It blamed them for everything.

When the buggy shook Stone assumed one or more of the tyres had burst. He wrestled with the wheel as the vehicle rocked from side to side. He could hear Boyd shouting. Nuria held on tight as he slammed his grubby boot against the brake and they skidded down the road, grinding to a stop in a shower of rock and dust. The buggy was vibrating. The ground was trembling. His eyes flicked to the rear-view mirror. A black line began to snake toward them, catapulting chunks of rock into the air. He saw with horror as a rusted car disappeared. He stamped on the accelerator, the wheels spun and the buggy surged forward. Behind them, the roadway of packed earth disappeared into a yawning chasm.

His scuffed knuckles turned white. Voices shouted at him but there was only the road ahead and keeping everyone alive. The buggy began to tip. The wheels were lifting off the road. There were tears in the land all around them. Stone eased off the accelerator and the left side slammed down hard against the roadway. He suddenly swerved as a sinkhole opened ahead. The buggy juddered across rough ground. He was lifted from his seat and tossed abruptly back into it.
Was this the Cleric? Had the bastard got the weapons working?
He looked at the sky. There were no
Metal Spears
, only clouds. It was another tremor.

Nuria clung to the door, breathing hard. She looked at Stone, his face pure concentration as he manoeuvred around the cracks, skilfully handling the lightweight buggy. The tremor showed no sign of abating. Black lines splintered, like a shattering windshield; vehicles and bricks were swallowed into darkness. She saw another sinkhole begin to open before them, wreathed in clouds of dust. It was too late to turn or brake; they were going too fast. She heard Stone shout. The buggy lurched forward and left the ground and her stomach folded over and over until the vehicle crashed down hard.

There was a loud screech as he spun the wheel and forced it back onto the road.

“It’s behind us again,” gasped Boyd.

Stone’s eyes went to the mirror. He pushed down on the accelerator.

There was a grinding crunch followed by a succession of bangs. The tyres had shredded.

He lunged at Nuria, pulled her close.

“Hold on.”

The buggy flipped over, skated on its side, the rough terrain gouging the metal with ear-piercing shrieks. The ground convulsed. Ravines erupted in all directions. The buggy shuddered to a halt. The four of them clambered from the wreckage, no broken bones, only cuts and bruises. Stone led the way. He tasted fear. It was palpable. This was an enemy he couldn’t outwit or beat with his fists or put down in a hail of bullets. They ran. All of them. Hard. Cheeks puffing, lungs burning, weaving and tumbling and falling from side to side. He realised his left hand was wrapped around Nuria’s right and he was dragging her along. The ground rocked, tilted. They could hardly keep on their feet.

Boyd was trailing behind. He was the slowest of them. His face blazed red and poured with sweat.

“Come on,” shouted Quinn.

The soil howled as it was ruptured, the noise near deafening. A sinkhole opened up behind them and the buggy slipped from view in a shower of dust.

“Boyd!”

Stone heard the cry against the roar of the tremor. He whirled around and saw only Quinn, bent over, screaming. They ran back. As they reached the sinkhole they saw Boyd clinging on, eyes wide with fear, skin shockingly pale.

“Don’t let go,” cried Boyd.

Quinn gritted her teeth as she held onto him, both hands clasped around his left arm. His right hand clawed and flailed to gain hold against the edge of the sinkhole but the soil was crumbling between his fingers.

“Save me Lord, please.”

Quinn gasped. “Too heavy.” Her boots were sliding into the dirt.

The soil gave way and she pitched into the sinkhole. Stone sprang forward. His long arm curled around her waist, grabbing her at the last moment. Nuria skidded onto the ground and thrust her arms toward Boyd. Stone grunted as he held onto Quinn, dragging her back, pulling up Boyd at the same time. Nuria barked against clenched teeth as she pulled at the merchant’s right arm. The four of them tumbled back, collapsing against the shaking dirt.

“Move,” shouted Stone. He coughed. “Move.”

He snatched Nuria’s hand. Boyd stumbled alongside them. His palms were bleeding.

There was a terrible wrenching sound as a steel pylon somersaulted. Long pieces of rusted metal snapped free and flew at them. They ducked, throwing themselves into the dirt.

The pylon jammed into the soil, and then all at once the tremor stopped and there was silence except for the wind.

Stone lifted his head; the metal pylon was now upside down, swaying.

He took a deep breath.

There was the rush of boots and the jangle of weapons. Shadows fell across them. It was the Marshals.

“That was a rough one,” said a voice.

Stone realised he was still holding Nuria’s hand.

Omar peered through the binoculars. The lines around his eyes became more pronounced.

“Rondo is dead,” he whispered.

His men bristled angrily.

“Soon,” he said.

He continued to watch. The Map Maker was not among them. Nor was the one-eyed mutant, Emil, who had saved his life in the Southern Desert, forcing him to live as a deformed freak, like her, his beautiful skin pebbled and disgusting. He would bury Ennpithia into history and take his new vehicles and his new men into the Black Region. They would cross into Gallen and he would become Warlord over all. He had no love for the Kiven city. He did not care for the League or the Society or the Ministry. He suspected she knew. But like a woman she chose not to. She was weaker than he had anticipated. He had seen only strength when she colluded with him to murder her husband and Nichols and Cooperman. He would think on her later once his work here was complete.

“You have a new scar,” he said.

His men listened, saying nothing, as Omar continued to train his binoculars across the Place of Bridges, observing the two men and two women who had survived the tremor.

“Nuria, you appear wearier than I remember. You followed a monster. You should have followed a ruler.”

He swept the binoculars onto Stone once more.

Nuria studied the towers. They stretched north and south, along a winding canyon. There were two for every bridge. But there were also towers where there was no bridge and that puzzled her. A palisade wall ringed each one, circling a stable, quarters and a storehouse and she could make out a ballista on the roof. Commander Eddis was in charge of the Place of Bridges. The man was in his fifties, balding, a tidy beard of grey, lined skin deeply browned, a broad and solid face. His tunic bore the cross of the Holy House and a row of symbols with ribbons. Nuria assumed he was a decorated man.

Boyd, once his breathing had levelled out, presented a document to the man, penned by Albury.

“I thought you were a merchant, Mr Boyd,” said Eddis. “Not a bloody errand boy for Touron.”

He chuckled. He had an even, friendly and no-nonsense tone. He was a soldier. His world was men and hard work and the battlefield. He took them through an open gate where the ground was scattered with straw. They saw wooden benches and stacks of wicker baskets and several outbuildings. He ordered one of his men to fetch water and the four of them readily gulped it down from leather skins. Then Eddis led them into the tower. The climb was steep, the air musty and gloomy, lit by wall torches that flickered. Boots scraped against the stone steps. They followed the commander onto the roof where two Marshals manned the ballista Nuria had seen from below. The men were grim-faced beneath their helmets.

“How many bridges are there?” said Stone.

“Eleven. We used to have seventeen.”

“That’s why you have towers and no bridges at certain points,” said Nuria.

“That’s correct, miss. The ones on their own are where the bridges used to be. They’re still manned, though we’re a bit depleted now, naturally, with four hundred men in Touron.”

“Did the tremors take down the six bridges?” asked Stone.

“We lost the first bridge during the war. It was in the final days. The Kiven were retreating.” He pointed along the canyon, hesitated for a moment. “We were chasing them down but they’d mined the bridge. A lot of men died that day. The other five bridges collapsed through the years. The tremors can get pretty aggressive this side of Ennpithia, as well you know.”

He swept his arm forward.

“Anyway, down to business. This is Abigail, the shortest bridge of the lot.”

“Abigail?” said Nuria, with a half-smile.

“We named each one, miss. Abigail was my mother’s name. The Lord keeps her soul now.”

Boyd crossed himself but Eddis did not. The cross was on his armour but not around his neck.

Stone and Nuria walked to the edge of the tower. The land had splintered horribly, its rugged sides as lovers torn from an embrace. The drop had to be a thousand feet or more. The bridges were shaped from the rock, nature was the constructor here, and they stretched and curved across the canyon. There was something captivating about them as they held sway over Ennpithia and Kiven, pushing them apart like squabbling siblings and drawing them back together when it was time to make up; though there was something eerie, too, how they stood always alone, exposed, blasted by wind, drilled by rain, remembered and forgotten in the same breath.

The crossings were marked with two or three towers, though the number of soldiers milling about was now heavily depleted.
Stone glanced south, in the direction of the sea. The land was stapled to the sky and the canyon disappeared against a mountain range on the horizon.

Stone said, “Where’s the rat run?”

“At the base of this tower,” said Eddis. “But it’ll take three hours to navigate. Not enough time because the cocky bastards are here already.”

“What? Where?”

Eddis gestured to one of his men. The Marshal handed them telescopes. Across the bridge they saw broken ground and a handful of ruined buildings with pitted walls and gnarled undergrowth.

Beyond lay a range of low hills, dotted with dead looking trees, surrounded by open plains.

They could not see any vehicles or men.

“Nothing,” grumbled Stone.

“There,” said Nuria. “They’re using camouflage netting.”

Stone narrowed his vision and looked again. He spotted the shape of a pickup truck with a weapon mounted on the flatbed.