The Broken Isles (Legends of the Red Sun 4) (2 page)

‘We will be fine!’ the man laughed. His voice echoed for several seconds. ‘People once lived in the caves, though no longer. They were only defending what was theirs – or
protecting something that wasn’t.’

‘How do you know they’re not here any more?’

For a moment he paused to contemplate her question. ‘I hide in these caves sometimes,’ he replied. ‘I am not always a welcome person in my own community, because of my dealings
with your people.’

‘Because you make money from both of us?’

‘A man must make a living somehow,’ he replied, glaring at her.

*

The next room seemed even colder than the last. It was certainly smaller. Weirdly, there were tiny trinkets strewn along one side. Jeza brought the torch much closer, and could
see offerings, prayer beads, strange feathered items, metallic cups, and weird scrolls that had crumbled to dust. There were markings on the wall, too, vast paintings now, with a variety of
styles.

‘These don’t seem that old,’ Jeza said, crouching by the offerings.

‘They are not. When I first used this place as a shelter, I came across two women from a minor tribe, bringing items of honour to leave here. They were not the only ones.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they fear their gods, that is why.’

Gods?
Jeza could ask questions all day long. Nothing here seemed to make much sense.

‘Come and see this,’ the tribesman said, ‘and bring your light.’

On the wall was an enormous painting. It was rendered with a thick black ink that had stood the test of time. There was what appeared to be a bulbous abdomen and thorax.

‘These lines here are wings,’ he explained, pointing to one aspect of the picture, between the thorax and abdomen.

‘Is this its head?’

‘No, there is no head on this painting.’

Jeza stared at it, waiting for him to explain further, but he said no more. His tendency to give her limited information was frustrating.
Did he need more money?
she wondered.
Did he
need more time?

‘We are very close now,’ he said. ‘Over here.’

She stepped to follow him and could then see he was now crouching beside a dark pit. ‘It’s in here,’ he said.

She peered over with her torch. What lay in the pit astounded her.

Several feet long from tip to skull, it shimmered in the half-light; the bulbous abdomen was still there, as was the thorax – but there was most definitely a head. Rather, there had
been
a head at one point – now a huge skull lay at an awkward angle in its place. Mentally she began comparing it to other creatures she had seen, remains that had been sketched by her
own hand and others, in a vague attempt to speculate on family trees, at how these things had come to be in existence. What family was it from? What was its lineage? Were there any remnants of this
creature today; did it live on in other things?

But she drew a blank. Its presence stunned her.

Jeza shook her head in disbelief, and gave an incredulous laugh. ‘Go on then,’ she said. ‘Tell me more. What is it?’

After a pause, he said, ‘People from my tribe call it the Mourning Wasp.’

She breathed the name to herself, as if to confirm something so outrageous. ‘Morning as in the morning, or mourning as in grieving?’

‘The latter.’

‘It’s not a fake, is it?’

‘I may have an interesting reputation, but I do not deceive. What you see here is real.’

‘Tell me more.’

‘What would you like to know?’

‘How it came to be here.’

He eyed her for a moment, and he was impossible to read. His eyes reflected the light of the torch, almost startling her. ‘There are folk tales, dating back to the Age of Science, a period
where great beasts walked the earth, and monsters were constructed purely to see how far people could push their cultist-like powers. The wasps began a normal existence, but they were made massive
by science, yet still they bred true. After the experiments there were thousands of them, and they all fled – on their own. It was said with the skull they became more intelligent. Their
sentience, their solitary existence, their prolonged life and their awareness of dying out led them to be very miserable. Morose. Depressed. They lost much of their energy. It seemed they had no
purpose. They mourned for their independence from their form, and in their final days they grieved.’ He gestured to the remains of the Mourning Wasp. ‘This is the second specimen known,
but the best preserved.’

She regarded the remains of the wasp once again. Stubs remained where she assumed the wings would have met the creature’s thorax. The specimen was in incredible condition, though the arts
of palaeomancy were not exactly predictable.

‘You think you can do something with this?’ he asked.

Jeza scratched her chin. ‘I’ll need to bring the others here to help me take it back to the city. But I think I can, yes.’

Wind stirred the leafless treetops. Other than that, Commander Brynd Lathraea could hear nothing to cause concern, nothing out of the ordinary. Snow was settling deep in the
Wych Forest.

Still, at least this is better than being in Villiren.

Just a few miles to the north, most of that city was now little more than a war-shattered pile of rubble. Each day since the fighting, soldiers had been discovering dozens and dozens of dead
bodies, which were to be burned on pyres. His orders had been strict: this necessary evil was to continue until every citizen’s soul had been freed. It was a messy business, but then the war
had left a lot of mess behind. Entering through gates into this world, the Okun had made their way across the water aiming straight for Villiren, focused on the city’s destruction. Brynd
organized Villiren’s defence and, though he could declare the operation a success, it didn’t much feel like a victory when so many thousands of Empire civilians had been torn apart.

After that Brynd often preferred to be out here, to talk to the crows and run his hand along damp bark, rather than having to apologize to families for carrying their dead kin through the
streets.

But he was not here to relax; he was here for business. A figure could be discerned nearby, beside her waxed canvas tent, lifting a flask to her mouth.

‘Drinking on the job, sergeant?’ he called out.

Sergeant Beale, one of the few surviving Third Dragoons, Wolf Brigade, dropped the flask. She peered around while grasping frantically for her sword. When her eyes settled on him, she
didn’t relax at all – in fact, she seemed even more agitated. This was no surprise: Brynd was used to people’s reaction. He was an albino and his eyes were the colour of the sun.
He was lean, with day-old stubble and a few inches of silvery white hair. His coal-black uniform, without armour, was immaculately clean and a sabre hung by his side. ‘I’m sorry,
commander,’ Beale spluttered. ‘I swear I didn’t hear a thing. In fact, I haven’t for days. And I don’t drink on the job – honestly. Well, just enough to keep
warm, sir, since I’m not getting much exercise.’

Brynd reached down, sniffed the flask, then screwed the cap back on before tossing it back to Beale. ‘A waste of good vodka.’ He looked around the forest, before staring intently at
her. ‘So you say you’ve seen nothing at all, sergeant?’

‘No, sir.’ Beale looked scruffy after five days in the mud and snow with little access to clean water. ‘A garuda whizzed by during yesterday afternoon, and I’ve circuited
this part of the forest every hour, but all I’ve located is some ruins, sir.’

Brynd strode casually over to her shelter and tapped the rope holding it between the trees. ‘That’s good work, putting this together. It’s held up well enough considering
there’s little canopy cover.’

Beale said nothing, simply nodded.

Brynd continued to assess his surroundings, each individual trunk, clearings, the skeletal tree line, as if hoping to discern something. ‘Five days and absolutely nothing, you
say?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Good,’ he replied mysteriously.

She frowned. ‘Does this mean that I am to be relieved, sir?’

‘No,’ he replied. ‘Not yet. A small unit of soldiers will be arriving within the hour with . . . someone who might cause alarm upon first sight.’

‘I’ve heard of a giant in the ranks,’ Beale offered.

‘She’s not that big, if that’s what you’re thinking, but yes, it’s her. What you may or may not see is to remain strictly within this forest, do you
understand?’

Beale gave a quick nod, and that was that.

‘How is the rebuilding of Villiren?’ she enquired.

Brynd once again scrutinized their surroundings, like a paranoid man. ‘It has begun, but you’re better off out here.’ He indicated the wilderness. ‘This is where the real
world is to be found, with trees and earth, not searching the veiled comments of businessmen for a kernel of truth.’

Brynd reached into his pocket, then unfolded a map, his breath clouding in the late afternoon chill. The sun was sliding over the horizon; the sky turning to the colour of dried blood.

‘Do you, uh, have any duties you require of me, commander?’ Beale asked, impatient and nervous in his presence.

‘Do you mean,’ he replied light-heartedly, ‘what am I, the commander of your army, still doing here so late in the day?’

‘I wouldn’t presume—’

‘It would be a fair question,’ Brynd said. ‘This is an issue of utmost secrecy and I can trust few people these days. However, a better question would have been why
you
were sent here in the first place.’

Beale remained silently annoyed with herself.

‘It’s all right – you just take orders and get on with it, I know. There’s a lot to be said for soldiers like you, and that spirit will get you far in the
army.’

Beale nodded.

‘In an hour’s time, about fifty soldiers will descend on this woodland. They’ll take the main track through to those ruins you mentioned.’

‘Sir.’

‘You’ll say nothing about what you may witness, nothing about what occurs here.’

‘Indeed, sir. Though . . . what will be occurring, so I know not to look?’

‘You can look,’ he said, ‘though I’m not entirely sure what to expect myself.’

‘Bleak times,’ Beale said.

‘You don’t know the half of it. Were you there in Villiren from the start?’

‘I’m afraid to say I was.’

‘You’re a brave woman.’

‘Lucky, I’d say,’ Beale added.

‘Lucky?’ Brynd gave a short laugh that emitted a cloud of his breath. Beale visibly shivered: the temperatures were plummeting as night approached. ‘Luck would have had you
elsewhere in the first place. But, by Bohr, a lot of good men and women were just hacked apart like nothing I’ve ever seen.’

‘What was the death toll in the end?’ Beale asked.

‘The official estimate now stands at a little over one hundred and twenty-five thousand who died in or just after combat . . .’

‘Shit . . .’ Beale shook her head in disbelief. ‘Pardon my language, sir.’

He waved her apology away. ‘Though some of those deaths might be due to the cold weather and lack of food in the aftermath.’

‘You’ll see the place made good again, won’t you, commander?’

The albino gave a shrug. ‘We can but try. However, I’m not entirely sure that those events – that huge loss of life – weren’t the beginning of something bigger.
There are millions scattered across the Jamur Empire—’

‘Don’t you mean Urtican?’

‘No,’ he said and looked at her with intensity. ‘The Jamur lineage has been reinstated for the foreseeable future. Empress Rika is safe and placed in senior command once
again.’

‘But . . . I don’t understand.’

‘That’s the least of your worries tonight, sergeant,’ he said, and walked away. ‘As you were – and remember to forget what happens later.’

Brynd wondered again what the former Emperor Urtica must have thought upon receiving his letter in Villjamur via garuda all that time ago, effectively annexing the city of Villiren from the
Empire and taking what was left of the armed forces to support Jamur Rika. Brynd had received nothing in return, no indication that their declaration had even been read.

*

Later on in the night a torch flickered, moving between the branches; one, two, three of them now, all leading a small band of figures through the forest. Among the gathered
silhouettes came Artemisia, a figure who towered over the others by at least a foot, and she moved with a fluid gait. At the front of the group walked Brynd, and he peered back to assess their
progress.

He was surrounded by members of his Night Guard, the elite regiment that he led. More soldiers shuffled into line at the back, about two dozen archers with their bows poking up over their
shoulders.

The group headed towards Sergeant Beale’s post. She stepped out onto the path with her hand on her sword, and saluted Brynd.

‘At ease, sergeant,’ he called, his voice absorbed by the black, dead forest. ‘You can fall in line with us at the rear now. We’ve scouts skimming around the edge of the
forest.’

‘Am I relieved of duty?’

Brynd considered this for a moment before he called out, ‘Are you any good with a bow?’

‘As good as any,’ she replied.

‘Good.’ Brynd turned behind and gave some sharp orders. A bow was brought forward, along with a quiver full of arrows; he slung them towards Beale, and ordered her to fall in with
the archers at the back of their unit.

They reached a clearing, the location of one of the ruins that littered the Wych Forest. Crumbling masonry of once-immense structures sprawled across each other, which was nothing new in the
Boreal Archipelago, but here there was a key difference: none of these ruins was covered by moss or lichen like the adjacent deadwood – the smooth, pale stone remained blemish-free. This
particular ruin seemed to have once been a kind of cathedral, with huge arches facing directly north. Little of the walls remained, but at the other end – opposite the slightly curved remains
of the apse – lay a fully intact arch. It must have stood twenty feet high and, on closer inspection, its surface was remarkably smooth, like new – as if time had not touched it.