The Wasteland Soldier, Book 3, Drums Of War (TWS) (9 page)

His pillow was untouched.

Wrapping a blanket around her thin frame, she went looking for him. She knew where he would be. He would be on the other side of the wall, slumped half-drunk in his chair, dirty boots and empty bottles discarded on the rug, the fire dwindling to almost nothing. She sighed, hesitated, glanced back at the empty bed, tempted to return. It was his last night and she really didn’t want another fight. Then she looked at the cross-stitch hanging from the bedroom wall, a beautiful piece of embroidery they had forgotten to notice for so long now, their names woven amongst trees and flowers and Holy crosses, a wedding gift, nearly seven years ago, the day of her thirteenth birthday.

She wasn’t giving up on him, on them.

The door creaked as she nudged it open. Her bare feet were sticky against the stone floor. She was right about his boots and about the empty bottles. She almost laughed to herself. His chair was angled toward the fire and all she could see was his arm dangling from it, a bottle of cheap wine loosely clutched between his fingers.

Shauna placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. He sighed.

“Why don’t you come to bed?”

She loosened the blanket; pert breasts and an untamed bush. He tilted the bottle to his lips. She watched his Adam’s apple bob as he gulped it down.

It was her turn to sigh. She sat beside the crackling fire and curled around his legs, leaning onto his thighs.

He drank, stroked her hair.

“Jeremy called me an inbred retard. Because I ain’t able to speak their tongue like he does. He’s the fucking retard, Shauna. He’s the cunt in deep shit. He let Quinn leave for Mosscar this afternoon.”

“What’s going to happen?” She looked up at him.

“Jeremy needs to find a reason for her to turn back. She can’t be up there, nosing around.”

Shauna shook her head. “Walk away from this.”

“I can’t.”

“You can, Brian. You can do whatever you want.”

“The beacon is finished. Everything is in place. I can’t walk away. Not now. Not after everything we’ve been through. We need the coin. You know I make next to nothing. When it’s done, we’re fucking rich.”

“You’ll make extra going to Touron looking after the horses.”

“And what will that do?” He glared at her. “Clear the rent we owe and fuck all else.”

“I can take on more cleaning jobs. We can work it out.”

He shook his head, buried his hand in her hair, and massaged her scalp. She moaned at his gentle touch.

“There are no more paying jobs in the village,” he said, taking his hand away. “You know that. People like us are just unlucky. We’ve done the sums, Shauna. Even a retard like me can do the sums. You know there’s no fucking way out of this. We need money. I have to do it.”

He scratched his ragged beard, picked up the bottle.

“I want to fucking do it.”

She knew it had always been about more than the coin. They had struggled for years. Now was no different to then.

“Anyway, what do you think would happen to us if we walked away now?”

She shivered.

“When will you be back from Touron?”

“Duggan has a hush-hush meeting with Governor Albury and then we escort the fucking Archbishop back here so the cunt can begin the Summer Blessings. It shouldn’t take too long.”

“What do you have to do whilst you’re there?”

“Just pass on news of the strangers to the emissary. Nothing else.”

“Why does he need to know about them?”

“No more questions, Shauna, I’m tired.”

She bit her lower lip. Peered into the flames.

“This is our last night.”

He didn’t answer. He made no move. She spread the blanket beside the fire. Her hands reached for him. His lust had never dimmed. Even when they learned their union within the Holy House would be a childless one.
He had always wanted her. Nothing stopped him. Not even the lack of coin or drink or food or decent clothing or anything nice other than the cross-stitch which they no longer looked at. Shauna had feared she would lose him to another woman, a fertile one, but his appetite for her refused to be sated. Until this plot, this horrible plan, had surfaced. Now, he hardly even looked at her. And when he did he could barely maintain himself and even when all that was present there was more chance of the moon falling from the sky than him finishing inside her.

She recoiled from him. He was cold, disinterested. She lay back on the blanket, propped on her elbows.

He drank some more. And still ignored her.

“Make sure you pack before I return. Only what we can carry. We have to move fast.”

She picked up the blanket, pulled it around her.

“I don’t want to leave Brix.”

“There’s no choice.”

“I’ve only ever been as far as Great Onglee.”

“Once it’s done, we can’t stay.”

“Why? Why do we have to go away?”

“Because the Churchmen will hunt us down. They’ll know the beacon was a signal.”

“What about Jeremy? What will he do? He has a family here, Brian, sisters and a father.”

Brian snorted, got to his feet, brushed past her. He paced the gloomy room dotted with odds of furniture and little else.

“I don’t care what Jeremy’s going to do. At the moment the smarmy little bastard needs to worry about Quinn.”

“There’s nothing to worry about. The sickness will kill her.”

“Yeah,” said Brian. “That’s right. How could I forget?”

He was tired, half-drunk and edgy and Shauna knew she should have gone back to bed and left him to dwell on the decisions he had made and how nothing in their lives would ever be the same again since he had made them. How had they both found themselves in this? No. Why had
Brian
put them in this? He should have never listened to Jeremy about a lucrative way of making extra coin and gaining revenge against the Holy House. It was stupid. What did he think it would involve? Shovelling manure? Chopping wood? Brian was right; there was no paying work left in Brix, not honest paying work anyway.

“If we stay we hang.” He stared at her. “Once it’s over we’ll go far from this miserable village to a place where we can have nice things like our friends have and no longer worry about how much things cost.”

“What’s the point of nice things if we’ll never see our friends again? I like it here, Brian.”

“We’ll have a decent house to live in. You want that, don’t you?”

“We have a decent house now,” she said, tiredness fuelling the defiance in her voice. “We just don’t have …”

“A decent house?” He slammed his open hand against the wall. His nostrils flared. ”It’s a fucking hovel. We live in shit, Shauna. Shit, shit and more fucking shit.” He took a deep breath. “I hate it. I hate this house. I hate Brix. What has it ever done for us? Tell me. Tell me.”

He threw the bottle.

“I hate them for what they’ve done to us.”

“This is what it’s all about, isn’t it?”

He came to her, gently placed his hand against her flat stomach.

“Empty,” he whispered. “All their sermons and prayers and words. It’s a big fucking lie, Shauna, a big lie.”

He pushed the blanket from her shoulders, looked down at her bare skin. She gasped as he grabbed her and roughly pushed her to his chair. He fumbled with his trousers and pounded against her, thrusts of anger, ruthless and near brutal, the sweat pouring from his face, dripping onto her back. She stared at his dirty boots and empty bottles askew on the floor. He grunted loudly, unable to spill his seed. He kept driving into her until her knees buckled and then he pushed her against the floor and he was above her and his weight was against her and her legs were wrapped around him and her nails were digging into him and still he could not finish.

He rolled off her, exhausted, panting heavily.

Shauna could see the blackness in his eyes as he lay staring at the ceiling.

SEVEN

Stone opened his eyes.

It was shortly after dawn and the mild air resonated with the clump of horses and the rumble of wagons.
He eased into an upright position, head throbbing. He saw Nuria watching the convoy, leaning her hip against the open doorway of the barn, arms folded, head tilted to one side, wind lightly tossing her blonde hair. The property belonged to Boyd. He owned a piece of land on the outskirts of the village with several outbuildings and stables. His house was wood and stone with a moss covered thatched roof. Stone pushed himself onto his feet, licked his dry lips. Nuria heard him cough and glanced over her shoulder. He saw the dark, half-circles below her eyes. He washed his hands through his shoulder length hair, scratched his beard and stepped gingerly toward her.

Sal Munton was straining his lungs inside the prison wagon, damning every man and woman who had ever crossed him and cursing their families and loved ones with all manner of plagues. His shackled gang of thieves were less belligerent. A girl of no more than six years old was deeply distressed. Duggan, riding at the front of a column of armoured Churchmen, appeared untroubled by her choking sobs. The sun glinted off his iron helmet as he trotted past, glaring at them.

Nuria said, “Do you really believe Quinn’s niece was murdered?”

“I don’t know but something’s off about it.”

After Boyd had invited them onto his land, introducing them to his wife and children, they had discussed at length the dead child, Clarissa. They talked with Boyd’s staff, two men who maintained the property during his absence, but they knew little of the girl who had chosen to wander into a city stricken with a sickness left behind by the Ancients. Nuria pointed out that Quinn would have no doubt spoken with the locals already and there was little to be accomplished by poking their noses into the matter here.

“Quinn seems more than capable of dealing with whatever happened,” said Nuria.

“I’m not convinced.”

He wasn’t. He was far from convinced. A feeling was lingering inside and he didn’t like it. It was more than the pressing gloom of the Holy House and the down trodden vulnerability of the villagers.

“Quinn believes she was murdered.”

“What if she’s wrong?”

“Then no harm done.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“A child doesn’t knowingly wander into a city of death. Something else must have happened.”

“It’s not our problem.”

She walked away from him.

“I like making things our problem.”

“Well, where were you in Tamnica?” she shouted. “Where were you when I was being raped? Did you make that your problem?”

She shook her head.

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Look, maybe we should just focus on the job we’re being paid to do.”

He looked crushed. “You’ve been crying again.”

“I’m not sleeping much.”

He said nothing.

“It’s always there.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I close my eyes and it’s always there.”

She looked at the scar down his face.

“And it’s always there for you. That bastard took a whip to you and they almost killed you in isolation.”

He still said nothing. Those months alone haunted him.

“I see their all their faces, Stone. The Warden, Captain Niklas, Cathy. I can hear their voices and I can still smell the cells and taste the rank food.”

“The bastards are dead now.”

She shivered.

“Then why am I still afraid?”

He wanted desperately to find the right words but lacked them. He had met her down the barrel of a gun, finger on the trigger, only a whisper from pushing her violently out of this world, putting her in the dirt like so many before. But he had hesitated. Something in her eyes had stopped him.

His thick fingers curled around her slender wrist. He pushed up her sleeve. She lowered her eyes to the symbols branded into her pale skin.

“You’re stronger than that,” he said. “You always have been. I know you always will be.”

She lifted head. A tear rolled from her eye. He smudged it with his thumb.

“Never again,” he said.

“You can’t promise that.”

“I can.”

He lowered his eyes. “What you asked me yesterday … about stopping … sort of … of finding a place … you know, a place where you belong.”

“Forget what I said yesterday.”

“No, it’s important. It’s just … I wouldn’t know how to stop. Not like Emil and the Map Maker. Some follow a path that runs in a circle. I don’t know how to do that.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“But when I’m …” He cleared his throat. Took a moment. Tried again. “When I’m around you I feel like I belong.”

Nuria bit her lip. “That’s enough for me.”

He took her hands between his. She felt the roughness, the warmth.

“Me too.”

She breathed deeply. “There’s something wrong here, isn’t there?”

He nodded.

“Where is Mosscar?” she asked.

Stone smiled.

There were footsteps. It was Boyd. “Good morning.”

Stone let her hands drop. She tugged down her sleeve.

“Are you ready?”

He led them into a large building that buzzed with activity. They had expected a simple wagon with tied down boxes but Boyd’s travelling shop was packed into a rusted truck with metal plates welded across its giant tyres. It would be drawn by six horses. A man was busy harnessing them and a second man was loading onboard the last of Boyd’s merchandise.
Stone circled the vehicle, noting how the engine had been stripped out to provide less weight to pull. He imagined it was the same throughout. Anything unused would have been removed. He had seen this method utilised numerous times on Gallen once vehicles had exhausted their precious black energy.

The back doors were wide open. Inside it was crammed with boxes, sacks, crates, folding tables, stacks of wooden trays, buckets and bedding. A metal ladder led to a hatch in the roof. He stepped back and looked up; the edge of the roof was ringed with iron spikes jutting downward, ideal for repelling attackers, and metal panels formed a defensive wall, providing adequate cover.

“Impressive.”

“Quinn usually rides up there,” said Boyd.

Stone put one boot onto the back of the truck.

“What about the law forbidding the use of things from the past?”

“I make healthy donations to the Holy House,” said Boyd, pressing his lips against the cross around his neck.

“I’m sure you do.”

“They understand that if I was unable to trade then I would be unable to make any further donations.”

Nuria curled her lip. “Laws are laws until important men need to subvert them.”

Boyd stared at her, but failed to muster a reply.

Holding the crossbow she climbed onto the front of the truck. She unbuckled her sword and placed it at her feet. Only the seating remained of the cabin. There was no roof or doors or windshield or dashboard. The back doors slammed shut and she heard a bar drop into place. Her body was tired but her thoughts were sharp and her heart lifted as she thought of the tender moment she had shared with Stone. Her life was bereft of tender moments.

She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms as Boyd picked up the reins.

“I’m not a corrupt man,” he said. “I want you to know that.”

“I’m sure you’re not.”

The road out of Brix was heavily rutted and the horses laboured uphill for the first hour, struggling to gather any speed. Nuria looked behind her as the hatch creaked open and Stone appeared on the roof, binoculars around his neck, crossbow beside him.

The truck bounced and jolted from side to side. Nuria was thinking she could walk quicker but Boyd seemed unperturbed and she recalled Quinn’s words about how the man knew what he was doing. The track began to fade and the ground levelled out and soon the horses were galloping across open countryside and the vehicle was powering forward.

Stone lowered his binoculars and signalled to Nuria that there was no immediate threat, the rooftop providing a much greater vantage point. He could hear Boyd talking with her but he couldn’t make out what was being said. Boyd spoke. Nuria listened. The horses continued to steer the heavy load across deserted fields. He glimpsed streams and brooks, footpaths and wooden bridges. On the sloping hills he spotted scattered farms where men tended the land with their children. Early morning wreaths of mist dissipated and the sun shredded the lazy white clouds. It rose high and grew strong and the three of them wound scarves around their scalps for protection.

They joined a fresh track, climbing south-west. The hills dropped and the trees thinned out. Then Boyd angled the truck west and surged along the Ennpithian coastline, hooves thundering.
Stone and Nuria saw the sea for the first time that morning, shiny and glistening beneath the red scarred blue sky. Nuria looked back at him and he nodded. It was a stunning view and hard to believe it was the same sea they had feared dying in a few nights ago. Boyd smiled broadly, delighted with the look that had passed between his new escorts.

“It’s one of my favourite spots in Ennpithia,” he called out. “It’s a beautiful view.”

Stone tasted salt on his rough lips. He fished out his water canteen. Hot wind blasted his face as he drank.

It was hard to imagine that such a world as this one existed but he was unable to deny the swathes of greenery, the dense forests, the colours in the meadows and the pastures, the stillness of the lakes, the flow of the rivers, the sweep of the valleys and hills, stretching in every direction, bleeding against the sky. He had been born upon rock and sand - his mouth always dry, his freckled back always burnt, his head always filled with adventure - and the harsh challenge of hacking out a life in the wastelands had been the words and worries of men and women much older and much wiser. He had been a child of the ones who had come before and the ones before them and right back through the centuries and as a child he had grown up with the stories that had travelled the corridors of time; the future had been robbed from them, the world was not how it should have been, the Ancients had melted its beauty with fire and hate and now there was only ash for his generation and the generations to come. But he had been a shirtless child running with his sister, his hand wrapped protectively around hers, and past and future did not exist until they collided, ruthlessly, when the men in uniforms arrived. He had never seen the ash until that day and had spent the rest of his life drowning in it. But here, in Ennpithia, Stone saw no ash. There was only Mosscar and Mosscar was that inexorable link to the Before and it was this contradiction that hammered at his thoughts. Because if Mosscar stood then where was the rest of the civilisation that had fallen?

And with the unexpected revival of childhood memories, stained ugly with brutality, darkness surged toward him and attempted to blacken his soul. His eyes focused on Nuria. There had been women before her, ones he’d sweated and laboured against, especially after fighting and killing and drinking, but he had not cared for them and doubted they had cared much for him. Nuria was more than that and his feelings for her galvanised him, strengthened him to suffocate pieces of the darkness. She steadied his breath. She unclenched his fists. She was the whisper in the night that stopped him tumbling into the abyss. The singers and storytellers would call it love but he wasn’t sure he even understood love; his thoughts were cushioned against hers and he watched for her, waited for her; was that love? The coldness had begun to splinter and shafts of light had penetrated. He had walked the wastelands and marked his path and it had been one of blood and corpses but now she was peering in and he was peering out and he knew there was a chance of something more and something better.

That was what he knew. That was all he knew. And Stone considered it to be quite a lot.

Late in the afternoon, Nuria spotted five riders with painted chests and long knotted hair.

“Shaylighters,” said Boyd.

Axes and spears hung from their saddles. Stone kept his binoculars trained on them as they shadowed the truck across the plains.

“No Essamon,” he called out.

Nuria gave the thumbs up.

For an hour, the warriors mirrored their movement. Then they galloped away into the hills and disappeared.

“That happens a lot,” said Boyd. “They have a few sniffs and decide whether to come after us or not.”

It was dark when they approached the village of Great Onglee. The Shaylighters had not returned. The track into the village was muddy and the way ahead was lit by torches glowing in watchtowers. There were clusters of wooden huts and mud huts and stone houses with thatched roofs. Churchmen soldiers in iron helmets and leather armour with tunics adorned by the cross recognised Boyd’s vehicle and waved it through. The portly merchant slowed the horses to a canter and they trotted along mostly deserted lanes toward a brightly lit estate with high walls, located on the southern fringe of the village. They rode through open gates and Stone and Nuria saw a large house with scattered outbuildings.