The Wasteland Soldier, Book 3, Drums Of War (TWS) (41 page)

He leapt from the tyre pile, catching the wire on the way down, snagging his fleece and ripping flesh. He hit the ground with a thud. The tremor was subsiding. He winced, gripped his arm, wet with blood. His nose wrinkled at the smell of black energy, old and stale.

He was tormented by the vision of the missile, trailing fire as it surged through the clouds. He had known all manner of weapons his entire life but had never witnessed such a shocking thing. His father had told him during childhood of how great a race of people the Ancients were and how they had constructed a tremendous machine with interlocking parts, each functioning to perfection. Wide-eyed, freckle faced, he’d looked around the shanty town they lived in, placed in the middle of a desert wasteland, wondering where the Ancients were now. He’d asked that very question and was told that men needed to mend machines that were not broken. Deeply confused, he’d fallen asleep in his father’s lap, his sister curled against him. A month later childhood abruptly ended and he’d learned that evolution was a uniform and a sword blade.

Stone reckoned the Ancients were dumb fucks.

Touron’s streets were crowded with Marshals and Churchmen, suppressing panic among the thousands of citizens. The stories of the Shaylighter numbers had spread like wildfire but now the whispering and gossiping had turned to the events in Kiven. Rumours had spread of a man known as the Engineer, possibly orchestrating a terrible plot against Ennpithia and during the sacred period of the Summer Blessings, the most Holy of times.
Was the land tilting into war for a second time? Surely not, surely not. Men recalled the battles they had fought a decade before; women dwelled on the husbands and sons who had not returned. The Holy Men called for calm, called for devotion; townspeople prayed, long and hard, but some slipped away and drank and whored.

Governor Albury visited the ailing Archbishop. He held his cold hand and listened as the bloodless lips shifted slowly up and down. He’d come for advice and wisdom but the Archbishop spouted hate for the Kiven and the Shaylighters and damned them all to the infernal fires of the Below.

Albury listened; patiently, respectfully, and then reassured the Archbishop he would pray for Ennpithia.

“I will pray for peace,” he said.

“No,” croaked the Archbishop. “Pray for victory.”

He left the fledging hospital feeling worse than when he’d arrived. It was located within the grounds of the great Holy House of Touron, staffed by volunteers and orphaned children.
Unfortunately, the hospital achieved little, beyond dressing minor wounds. His people possessed a meagre understanding of medicine and healing. It was an art that continued to elude them. The Archbishop’s bile had turned his stomach cold. He left the hospital with an even heavier burden upon his shoulders.

He rode back to the compound with his bodyguards. Hundreds of townspeople had gathered and were kneeling in the dirt, wailing toward the clouds.
He was escorted through a gaggle of Holy Men and informed that signals had been sent from the Place of Bridges; Ennpithia was under attack. He’d thought those flags would have never been used during his rule. He asked to be left alone to contemplate the development and disappeared toward his private chapel.
He locked the door, took a drink of water and wiped his hands over his face.
The Albury’s.
He snorted. There was no one to turn to, no one to seek clear advice from. His advisors were trapped in the past, chained to an old way of thinking, only willing to solve matters of state head on. Radical thinking was required.

He looked at the altar of crosses, made the sign, but then exited into another chamber.

It was poky and windowless. He lit candles, closed the door behind him, felt the tension in his shoulders relax. There were tools hanging from iron pegs and workbenches sprinkled with wood shavings. He took down an apron. This was his
true
private chapel where he could think on the problems at hand.
The chair he was working on was almost finished; it required only sanding down and buffing at the edges. He looked around at the bookcase and table, both half finished, and opted to continue with the bookcase. He secured a piece of wood in a vice and marked where it needed to be cut. He fetched a saw. His brow glistened as he worked, grinding a path through the wood.

His family were all dead and had died in rapid succession through illness. He was the last in line of a wealthy and influential family who had heard the Word of the Lord and carved Ennpithia from rock with bare hands to rule for centuries. Boyd knew of the pretence. It had been his suggestion. The deaths were concealed; the burials had been without fanfare or ceremony. Boyd maintained the lies through the villages; the people of Featherun believed the Albury’s to be visiting Brix, the people of Brix believed them to be visiting Great Onglee, and so on. A travelling merchant with such an honest reputation as Boyd was beyond reproach. And if there were suspicions then they were never raised publicly. It was important to maintain law and order. Death in authority brought fear and fear brought unrest and chaos.

Albury set down the saw and thought of his spymaster approaching the Place of Bridges with Stone and the two women.
He wondered where they would fit in once this crisis had been averted. And he was confident it would be. His shoulders felt lighter, his stomach less distressed. He picked up the saw, shook free the loose shavings clinging to its jagged teeth, and likened it to Stone; a working tool, nothing more. He was a blunt man but a resourceful one and possibly a critical one in this new world. He appeared to need the woman and the woman needed him and there was a bond between the two of them, that much was obvious. Once this had passed, he would ensure a place for them both in Touron.

He took off the apron, blew out the candles, returned to the chapel and muttered a short prayer.

It was then an advisor rushed in, unannounced.

“Governor Albury, sir,” he said, breathing laboured. “There’s something in the sky.”

By the time Albury reached the courtyard, the missile had long passed, streaking through the sky with a terrifying roar, trailing fire and fumes.

His people had been stunned into silence. He craned his neck but it had disappeared into the clouds.

THIRTY ONE

Duggan walked the battlements of the village barracks. His men were pale and sickly looking; bows in their hands, quivers of arrows strapped to their backs, short swords hanging from their belts.

“Kill one then kill another,” he said. “Stick them your sword, cut them down with your arrows. Kill one then kill another and keep killing the faithless bastards until they piss themselves and run back to Mosscar. We’re Ennpithians. We’re not sinners. They outnumber us but we are stronger because the Lord is with us.”

But it wouldn’t be enough and he knew it.

Duggan walked among the villagers. His people were pale and sickly looking; men, women and children with no armour and only crude weapons.

“This is your bloody village, your home. Don’t let the bastards take it away from you. Remember Great Onglee. Kill one then kill another. Strangle them, jump up and down on them, hit them with whatever you can. The Lord is our master. His Light will shine strong and protect us.”

But it wouldn’t be enough and he knew it.

Today, Brix would fall and the Holy House would be destroyed. The oldest building in Ennpithia would die. From the ashes had come hope and hope had begun in Ennpithia within the Holy House of Brix. But now it was destined to fall and its people with it.

“By nightfall,” said Duggan. “We’ll eat and drink and that long haired scum will be running for the hills.”

But it wouldn’t be enough and they knew all it.

He wiped a hand across his beard and glanced at the beacon on the hillside. The damn thing was mocking him and that bastard Brian was still breathing. He’d hang him once this was all over or perhaps turn him over to the villagers and see him torn apart like Pretan. Duggan reflected ruefully on a murder by the mob.
It had happened once before when he was young, a long time ago, but none of that was important now. They would all die at the end of a Shaylighter spear today. As would he. No one would see the sun fall this evening. He wondered what fate had befallen the villages of Lower Fallon and Boxmere and Hallington. The Shaylighters were no longer bandits or common thieves. They were a mobile army and had already invaded and taken half of Ennpithia. No longer were they on the verge of war; it had come swift and bloody and with shocking brutality.

“The Lord is watching you,” shouted Duggan, as the wind blew across the barracks. “He will protect you. He will protect you because you are good people who work hard and give thanks.”

Father Devon stood on the steps of the Holy House, sadness in his eyes. He had prayed for peace but once more his beautiful land was blighted by war.

Confused by the Lord’s plan, he leaned forward and placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder. She smiled at him. She was incredibly resolute. Her father had been murdered before her eyes but it had not touched her in any visible way. She had gained two sisters who were wary of her strange appearance. He could not rationalise the gift she possessed. Last night, he had taken a blade to his hand and asked her to stop the flow of blood. She had sealed the wound effortlessly and his palm had shown unbroken.

“The Lord has sent us a miracle,” he’d told her. “Tomorrow, you will save many lives. You might even save our land.”

In a moment of weakness it had crossed his mind to flee with the girl but the Lord had gifted her to Ennpithia and he knew it was right to stand shoulder to shoulder with his parishioners. His life’s work had been vindicated. For years doubt had crept in and he had clung to the forbidden diary in the hope that He would rise again and walk amongst them to heal this broken and fractured world and root out the sin. He had been fooled by the words of the Map Maker. He had seen the severed hands and believed he was the Second Coming. But the man had performed no miracles. He saw the way Shauna trailed after him, transfixed, but she was a child lost in pain, broken by men, abandoned by her neighbours for her husband’s crimes, and if the Map Maker’s spell was in manipulating women then he was certainly no Holy warrior.

Father Devon ruffled the girl’s hair.

“We should go to the barracks. They will need us there the most. You will have to heal the soldiers.”

“What are we going to do?” said Shauna.

The Map Maker sat on the edge of the bed, shaking his head. Equipment and clothes were scattered across empty bunks. Dust drifted down from the roof as men clattered overhead.

“We? There’s no
we
, Shauna. I came here to … mend the people of our world, to put them back together. I was called here before I knew Ennpithia even existed but it was the Shaylighters that called me. And they want only bloodshed. What have I achieved, Shauna? Nothing. I’ve failed in everything.”

She leaned against the wall, listening to his sad and empty voice. He helped her forget, for the narrowest of moments. She thought it would be better now they were dead but, in a perverse way, it seemed worse.
She had been robbed of confronting them, exposing their vile and heinous crimes to the village; their brutal deaths were hazed in suspicion. Were they killed for abducting children and handing them over to Pretan? Or for partnering with Rush and carrying out his dirty work? Or both? Or were their deaths link to rumoured debts owed in Touron? Shauna knew the doubts would linger and the gossips would mutter and there would be veiled suggestions that she had got what she deserved.

“You know what I am.” He nodded, glumly. Then snorted. “I’m one of the faithless bastards.”

“I don’t care about any of that,” she said. “I just know I feel safe when you’re around. I don’t know what it is about you.”

He thought of Sadie, back in Dessan; she’d whispered the same words to him as he’d laboured sweating against her, planting his seed.

“But I’m no spiritual leader.” He got to his feet. “I’m not the man on the cross, walking amongst you spreading miracles. I’m a charlatan, a fool for listening to Father Devon. He wanted
me to be some stupid … I don’t know what … a symbol for your people. He wanted substance for all his belief and service to the Holy House. I’m no one, Shauna, no one.”

“You’re Harron.”

“That isn’t my name.”

“Then what is? The Map Maker? That’s a title. Not a name. And that isn’t you. Not anymore.”

He took a step back.

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

“No.”

“You need to stand up and be counted.

“No.”

But Shauna could see he wasn’t listening. He looked past her. She turned but no one was there.

“She’s here.”

“What?”

“Lannast.”

There is fire in your belly, my son. You were brave to try and destroy me. Maybe all is not lost.

“What do you want?” he said, wearily.

“I didn’t say anything. Are you …?”

She cut herself short and looked around once more. There was still only the two of them present.

“What is it? You were like this before. Can you see something?”

“Her name is Lannast. She claims to be my mother.”

Accept me into your heart, Harron. Today you take your rightful place at the head of our people. We will slaughter the Ennpithians and burn the Holy House of Brix, shattering it brick by brick with fire. Many of my warriors have forgotten the old path. They have rejected us but they will remember the way of the Cailleach when you rise amongst them

“Why can’t you see her?” he said. “She’s right next to you and her voice, Shauna; her voice is in my head.”

Shauna stood by his side. “What can I do? Tell me what to do.”

He shook his head. “Make her go away. Please, Shauna, make her go.”

Stop blubbering, my son.

Shauna straightened her back, stiffened her shoulders. “Get out, you bitch. Leave him alone.”

She vented hatred for every injustice in the world, despising the men who had betrayed her, despising the women who shamed her. She had uncovered a lost soul in the Map Maker, a man with the heart of a child, a rare curiosity in a hard world; he was everything Brian was not, he was everything most men were not. She would stand with him, fight with him and together they would kick out this evil spirit.

“Get out, cunt.” She was shaking. “Is she gone?”

“She’s gone. It worked. Your anger drove her away. How is that possible?”

“I don’t know. But what I do know is your name. And it’s Harron. Not the Map Maker.”

“What about your husband?”

“Brian betrayed me. I don’t want to be near him. I just want to be near you. I believe in you.”

“But I’m no miracle worker.”

He walked to the doorway.

“Look at Father Devon, with the girl, the healer; he already has his new miracle. He doesn’t need me. And what kind of a man is he? Why isn’t he racing to Touron with the girl to help the Archbishop? He wants the Archbishop to die so he can take control of all the Holy Houses. He’s no different from the rest of them.”

“I don’t care about Father Devon or the Archbishop. I care about you, Harron.”

“Stop using that name.”

“It’s your name. I won’t stop using it.”

“I don’t want to be one of them.”

“Does it matter what the blood in you is? Does it? I was raped. By two men. They poured their filth into me. I might end up fat with their babies. That’s real life, Harron. Whether you’re one of them or one of us or no one – it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t fucking matter.”

She began to cry.

“People listen to you. You don’t realise it, do you? You talk and people stop and they listen.”

“What can I do?”

“You told me you came to Ennpithia to mend everyone. In an hour we’ll all dead at the hands of the Shaylighters.”

She wiped the tears from her eyes. “Mend us.”

Adina ran to him as he emerged through the undergrowth.

A blood soaked shirt was wrapped around his shoulder. He loosened the straps of the ribbed body armour and winced as he carefully removed it. There were two angry bruises on his scarred chest, the impact of the bullets from the sniper rifle. He’d assumed, correctly, that Stone had goaded him onto the bridge to take him down with Rondo’s rifle. He wondered, briefly, who had pulled the trigger.

“The men are chasing Stone into the junkyard,” he said. “He’ll try to lose them and double back for the missiles.”

“Omar, something is wrong with the battery. Baltan cannot launch the other missiles.”

“What?”

He stamped toward the scientist,

“I’m trying to fix it,” said Baltan. He was hunched over the control panel. “There’s a fault with the communication. It was the tremor. It rocked the vehicle. The circuitry has been damaged. I need to re-establish a link.”

Omar narrowed his eyes.

“You have one minute to repair this.”

He slammed his open hand against the flatbed of the truck, gritting his teeth as pain lanced through his arm.

“One minute, Baltan.”

Adina saw blood trickle from beneath the wrapped shirt.

“We have to cauterise that wound, Omar.”

“There is no time.” He aimed Stone’s revolver at Baltan. “You will work fast now, Baltan.”

“Omar, you’re losing too much blood.”

“It will not matter unless the missiles are … this is what we have been working toward.”

Baltan was no soldier, no fighter. He was a man in his twenties, far happier with his nose in papers or sifting through pieces of Ancient tech. He gulped as the firearm was levelled at him. Sixty seconds to live. Perspiration thickened his brow. He had not enrolled in the League for this. He believed in the project of Restoration but not in the violence that seemed to taint this third of the Alliance. There were ugly pockets of the world where men died for nothing but he was not prepared to be sucked deeper into such a bleak hole. Progress was the answer. Progress was the path to redemption for mankind.

“I can’t do it in that time.”

“Fifty seconds.”

“Let him work, Omar.”

“Forty seconds.”

“But, Omar, please, I want it to work but I cannot function under such duress.”

Omar cocked the revolver. “Thirty seconds.”

Baltan frantically uncoupled the last of the cabling.

“Twenty seconds.”

He removed the panel. Reached into his tool bag, extracted a pair of tweezers.

“Ten seconds.”

His hands were shaking violently. He dropped the tweezers.

“Zero.”

Omar squeezed the trigger. The hammer fell. The weapon clicked empty. He chuckled.

“Work faster,” he said, patting Baltan on the back. “We must hurry.”

Adina shook her head at him. “There is no time for games.” She eased him down and slowly removed the shirt. His skin flapped open where the steel ball had torn through his shoulder.