Colony worlds, p.8
Colony Worlds, page 8
Everyone hated seekers, often including the warband charged with protecting them, and Aderic knew he needed to put distance between himself and this seeker. He’d been borderline mutant at his birth-check and his father had moved the family from the Forests District to the Shadows District, in case it developed further.
The muzzle now deforming his face would guarantee his death, but having never seen a seeker, and knowing he could easily slip into the Shadows if he needed to run, the ever-curious Aderic, lay on the splintering boards to watch. The seeker would be the one riding a saddled horse. If his father ever found out Aderic had delayed, he would beat the boy senseless to ensure he understood: remaining hidden was a matter of life and death.
His father met the riders at their gate. They spread around him in a curve. Mother, he knew, would watch out for him from inside their shack. Patrick, his perfectly formed younger brother, stood behind a verandah post where he’d been practising with his sword.
The lead rider, a young angular-featured woman, introduced herself as Ethyl of the Stones. Aderic had never seen a Stones District person. He wondered if her sharp, bony features were typical of the district. Compared to Ethyl, the seeker’s ordinariness disappointed Aderic.
Ethyl dismounted, her long blonde braid sliding off her pony’s rump behind her.
“Calder of the Shadows?”
His father nodded.
“Your son is approaching adulthood. The seeker needs to check the potential mutation recorded at birth.”
“He’s away fighting uplanders,” father said, his voice proud; a creditable lie, doomed to failure. To the mix of smells, Aderic added his own fear, knowing he’d stayed well past the time for a clean exit, yet he loved listening to his father’s creative uses of truth.
“Who recruited him?” Ethyl asked.
“Doane of the Wastelands,” his father said, naming the general most likely to become the next Charismatic. “Who but the waster would accept him?”
Aderic grinned at his father’s embellishment. That would make them think. Doane’s fame rested on recruiting borderline mutants, like the down-covered people of the Icelands.
When the seeker pulled an oblong artefact from her bag and looked down at the device, Aderic felt panic rising. Go now, he thought, while the seeker is checking Doane’s recruits. But if he ran, as his parents had instructed, the seeker, not finding him in the lists, would assume his absence mean his potential mutation had developed. She might have his father neutered, or execute both parents to prevent further mutant births. A vicious seeker, fearing revenge, might also execute his siblings. His parents would’ve been better off killing him the moment they knew. Instead, they had sacrificed their lives to keep him hidden.
“We have no record of his recruitment.”
It wasn’t unknown for seekers to lie, using their position to rid themselves of people they didn’t like. Most warband members couldn’t tell if the artefact was working. Would Ethyl of the Stones question the seeker, or order a search based on her finding that Doane hadn’t recruited him? Whatever happened next would be Ethyl’s decision.
If he fled now, he still had a chance, but he delayed. His throat constricted as he contemplated the alternative, sacrificing himself to lessen their punishment. About to make his presence known, he saw a flash over his father’s head, like a startled bird taking sudden flight. With a light thud, a spear appeared in the seeker’s chest. Slowly she lay back on her pony, the artefact dropping from relaxed fingers, shattered on a rock.
“You bloody idiot Patrick,” Aderic moaned to himself.
As Patrick jumped off the verandah and raced away alongside the house, father spun, sprinted up the short path, and bounding up the verandah stairs raced through the open door. The door slammed shut.
Stunned at first, Ethyl’s granite-like features cracked in a travesty of a smile when the seeker toppled sideways off her pony and hit the ground head first, one foot caught in the stirrup. The rider next to the seeker cut the strap and let her drop. Ethyl signalled, and a rider on the end of the line trotted after Patrick.
Aderic memorised Ethyl’s face, vowing to kill her.
The rider returned a minute later, wiping his blade. Aderic, smelling blood, knew his perfectly formed little brother was dead. He cursed Ethyl, Pat’s stupidity and his own for delaying as he ran down the loft, jumped to the floor, and slipped out between the back doors, hoping no one glanced his way. He kept the barn between himself and Ethyl’s warband while he jogged towards the Shadows. The smell of blood was suddenly strong. He glanced to the side as he ran and wished he hadn’t. Patrick lay face up in the dirt a hundred strides away. Aderic stumbled, recovered, and ran on. Poor foolish Patrick, ten years old and the only imperfection he had was the gash across his throat.
With the seeker’s murder avenged, and the unconfirmed mutant gone the warband had no reason to bother his parents. They might search the house and barn before they left, but Patrick was proof his parents didn’t breed mutants. Fools maybe, but not mutants.
Aderic, reaching the mouth of a long deep valley, paused behind a large boulder to steady his breathing and listen, but the blood thumping in ears made it difficult. While he waited for his heart to settle, he checked the valley, planning his escape. He knew every valley around home intimately. This one had four shallow caves and the oddly shaped deep one, a builder relic, smoothly cylindrical, flawlessly formed like his brother ... had been. Tears threatened, and he suppressed them with an angry snort. He could cry later, if he survived, but as he started moving, his sensitive nostrils picked up the fragrant smell of burning pine.
“No,” he screamed, jumping from behind the boulder, staring with horror at the black plume rising over his home. The barn was ablaze, the riders circling the twin buildings. He saw a burning figure fall through the doorway and ran towards the house, falling to his knees when the roof collapsed with a roar spewing fire skywards.
On his knees, he pounded the rocks with his fists until they bled. They’re all dead thanks to me. With bloody hands, he grabbed his muzzle, tried to wrench it off his face, which caused him to topple, cracking his ribs on a large rock. Through the pain, he sought the long blonde braid of warband leader Ethyl of the Stones, but his blurred vision failed to identify her.
Long after the riders had left, he buried his brother and searched the smouldering ruins for his parents, finding their charred remains together on the verandah. They were holding hands. He buried them as they were, next to Patrick’s mound, and erected three stone cairns. For several minutes he stood mute over the graves, unable to find the words he needed to express his depth of horror and grief. In the end, he could only manage two words: “I’m sorry.”
Darkness covered the Shadows as Aderic trudged up the valley to the cylindrical Builder cave. He sat in the cave’s mouth, poked his small fire, and scanned the heavens, wanting a target for his rage against fate, but Severne’s Eye was absent. His thought turned inwards, narrowing to a single burning point; he would find and kill Ethyl of the Stones. It wasn’t possible yet. He was sixteen, a muzzle faced orphan, in a land where mutations were unacceptable, and anyone hiding their face only advertised they had something to hide. Too many people eagerly ripped away masks or hoods, leaving scant alternatives to ending up dead.
His knowledge of geography showed his best option was up. East and west of the narrow Shadows District were limitless oceans. North, the more arable lands of the Forests District, and Lakes Districts were increasingly more populated and beyond them lay the Icelands District. South and up were the uplands which he’d heard were mostly empty, but the sheer escarpment, known as the Break, would probably stop him reaching them. If he had any other choice, he’d take it.
* * *
Aderic’s seventeenth birthday passed unremarked in the year it took him to reach the Break. He stared at the escarpment, a coast-to-coast barrier fifty miles long and a mile high, with the uplander’s fortified wall running the entire length of the cloud obscured top. Tiny figures on ledges, ladders, platforms and in caves crawled all over the cliff face, a veritable ant’s nest of troops. Even miles away, he knew the Break would thwart him. He had focused on reaching it alive, not on climbing it and should have realised it would be teeming with troops preparing for the annual offensive on the uplander’s wall. He spent several frustrating seasons dodging troops to survey the entire base and found both ends of the enormous cliff face extending into their respective seas; the uplands were truly up. Fifty miles without a climbable section free of troops.
He became expert at choosing where they would camp, allowing him to find a position nearby so he could watch and learn unseen. Stealing from them kept him fed while he listened for any news involving tragic family deaths or a seeker’s murder. He often speculated on Ethyl’s whereabouts. Was she with the troops or a warband, protecting a seeker and killing innocent families, while recruiting able non-mutants for the coming offensive.
Most conversations were uninformative campfire yarns until the night he overheard a discussion on uplander shipmasters.
“They’re pretty stupid,” said one man. “They happily trade with us.”
“Makes ‘em greedy, not stupid,” another said.
“I’m not just talking cargo. For a reasonable fare, they’ll take passengers. I heard we’ve had them transport hundreds of infiltrators to the uplands; that’s what’s stupid? This’ll be year we take the uplands.”
Aderic hoped not, instantly deciding to abandon climbing and find a ship.
* * *
As he trudged along the beach, Aderic visualised the ship, relying on his father’s drawings. A sudden memory of his father explaining the drawing tripped him and he fell to his knees in the sand. His sobs soon became a wail, cursing his cowardice in not fronting Stone Ethyl before Patrick speared the seeker. When darkness overtook him, he realised the result would’ve been worse. He’d be dead as well, for after killing him, Ethyl would’ve killed his family for breeding and then harbouring a mutant. He slept where he lay, dreaming of revenge.
In daylight he climbed the dunes, but the land offered little in either direction, except low bushes struggling to survive in stony red dirt; their berries tasted foul. This stretch of coast was a flat, waterless waste, more barren than the foothills at home. The last water he’d had was two days ago and unless he found a river soon, he couldn’t chance continuing. He was about to turn back when he spotted a sail poking above the distant headland. Slowly, the ship emerged, sitting on the ocean, like a just landed seagull with wings still unfolded.
Aderic dropped to the ground to watch. The ship appeared to have stopped. He tried lining up a bush edge with the ship’s bow, but the breeze kept moving the leaves. He broke off a strong twig, pruned off the leaves, jammed it into the red soil and lined it up with the ship. It was moving inland, its white sails shrinking, akin to the gull folding its wings. He watched until it disappeared behind a rocky protrusion into what he supposed was a cove. They would have water, but they were further along this wretched coast and if they left before he got there, he wouldn’t survive the return journey to the Break.
It took him all afternoon to reach the headland; a hard, thirsty walk. The ship floated in a small bay. He watched a smaller craft come to the beach, a rowing boat he knew from his late father’s description, a man powered craft using oars. Tears soaked his muzzle at the memory of his father’s teachings, and guilt at causing his death incited determination to survive and return to kill Ethyl. He watched avidly as an uplander drank from a cup he’d filled at a small barrel. Water Aderic hoped, noting the barrel’s location.
The pile on the beach grew smaller, two uplanders transferring the stacked boxes to the rowing boat, which they rowed to the ship and unloaded with help from two aboard. As dusk approached loading stopped and the two uplanders on the beach lit a fire. Aderic estimated one trip would finish the job, and he needed to be aboard when they left, but he’d been scrounging a living from the army. He had nothing to trade for his passage except his knife and nobody in their right mind ever parted with their knife.
Night came and he started shaking with cold, hunger, and thirst. Aderic licked cracked lips, cursing his muzzle for giving him long ones. Once the fire-lit figures were still, he carefully picked his way down the slope towards their dying fire, hurrying past the stacked cargo to the barrel. He found the cup before lifting barrel lid, but to his consternation saw it was almost empty. To fill the cup, he tilted the barrel, and the lid fell off, landing on his foot with a dull thud. He bit his tongue to stop from screaming and held his breath. One uplander stirred, turning over, but neither woke. A small sip confirmed it was water and he emptied the cup, swirling the water around his mouth, letting it leak over his lips and trickle down his parched throat.
Though far from quenched, Aderic’s thirst decreased to bearable, and he moved on to the sleeping uplanders, nudging the nearest with his good foot. As the man came awake, Aderic gave him a quick glimpse of a snarling profile. The startled eyes bulged, and Aderic smelt the man shit himself.
“Wake your mate,” Aderic said, waving his knife in the man’s face.
“What’s that smell?” his partner said, still half asleep. No answer brought him fully awake and soon after, fully aware of his changed circumstances.
“You have rope?” Aderic asked, his knife scraping the first man’s cheek.
“In the boat.”
“Fetch it,” he told the partner.
The partner scrambled towards the boat. Aderic slammed his knife-butt into the first man’s temple and dashed across the sand, catching his partner as he reached for the rope. When the man straightened, he found Aderic’s knife at his throat.
“Get in,” Aderic said. “Take me to the ship. I’ll be sitting behind you. Any wrong move and I’ll bite your head off,” he said, snapping a muzzle full of teeth together. It hurt his lips, but it was effective.
“How many on your ship?”
“Five,” the man gurgled.
“Including you and your mate?”
“Yes.”
Four he could handle, he hoped. As the oars dipped in the starlight, he promised himself he’d be back for Ethyl of the Stones, when he was better prepared.
3 Wylie
Most mornings found standing at the eating room window before breakfast, listening to the river. The gurgling sound it made rushing over the rocks was familiar and made him feel homesick. When he tried to think about home: Deep ... something: Water, River, Lake; Deep ... his head ached. This river was pretty, not like the Goddess room of twinkling lights. They were exciting pretty; the river was soothing pretty. It calmed him.
The bell rang twice. Acolytes and unders, short for under servers, filed into the eating room behind him. The only sound was the slap, slap, slap of sandaled footsteps, the scrape of the long stools adjusting as they sat and the tap and clatter of bowls and spoons. Ser Clive did not allow talking at meal times. Wylie waited as always for his friend Sherlock to tap him on the shoulder and lead him to his seat. He liked breakfast. Porridge with honey and a big glass of milk. Sherlock said the milk came from their goats. He liked it now but it had tasted strange at first.
Wylie had thought Abbey life good until he refused to empty Ser Clive’s night can. He wasn’t sure why, but he couldn’t. As soon as he smelled it, he shook until his teeth rattled. He stood by the server’s cot, shaking until an under server said he could leave. He shook so hard once he woke in bed without knowing how, but since then they didn’t make him empty night cans and life returned to normal.
Behind his back, he heard server Clive tell Sherlock, “It would have been his job. How did a bloody shit-can pauper, whelp such a strong candidate son?”
“According to his file Ser Clive, his mother was a strong candidate.”
“She must have been ugly or stupid to oathe the town’s shit collector.”
Wylie didn’t understand his tremors over the night cans as he had no problem with anything else they asked of him, and they asked plenty. He pulled the plough, weeded the vegetables, carried milk buckets to the kitchen, and piles of wood into the other rooms to keep unders warm. If they needed beds or tables moved, or the carts loaded or unloaded they called for Wylie. He was the biggest bloke in the Abbey.
But Wylie had the strange feeling he didn’t belong. Despite his differently coloured eyes, as his fellow acolytes and under servers had, he had no robe. Acolytes had white robes, under servers had brown and Ser Clive had a black robe. Two others besides him had no robe, and he had tried to befriend them but one stared at him without blinking or answering and the other attacked him. Wylie thumped him good and hadn’t seen him since.
“Work time, Wylie lad,” Sherlock said. He liked his friend calling him lad. Sherlock was his age with dark curly hair, one blue eye and one gold. He could have been a warrior if he’d taken the test.
As Wylie pulled the weeds between rows of cabbages, he continued to wonder why he didn’t get a robe after his test. He thought it unfair he didn’t have a green robe or a Goddess sword. Wylie rubbed a hand over his bald head and felt his scar before he asked Sherlock,
His friend gave him a strange, sad expression. “I’m sorry Wylie, but your test didn’t work, which is why Our Lady sent you here; here friends help each other. I have told you this before; please try to remember.”
Wylie promised he would try but he had trouble remembering long ago things. He’d even forgotten where home was, and what its name was. He looked up at the sky. “Please dear Lady, take me home,” he prayed.
* * *
He was out collecting wood the day he decided he’d go home. He hefted a log onto the cart, making it a full load so Sherlock didn’t get into trouble, then walked off in the opposite direction of the Abbey, hoping the path took him home.
“Hey Wylie, where are you going?” Sherlock asked.
