Straight Silver, page 19
There was no fething justice.
Feygor reached the next crest, a slope of loose rocks and ferns that bounded a deep dell where a thin stream splashed down its course under the dark trees. The trees, mountain ash, link-alder and some kind of spruce, creaked and moved their heads gently. A slight rise in the wind. Westerly. The scent of rain.
On one of the rocks lay a leaf, fresh, curled into a loop with the stalk stabbed through the blade of the leaf. Feygor picked it up. One of Ven’s waymarkers. All the scouts left marks like this to show the squad behind them they’d cleared and passed ahead. You wouldn’t notice them unless you knew to look. Ven and Jajjo would be half a kilometre ahead of them by now.
As the detail made their way up the fern trail behind him, Feygor pushed on, clambering up the tumble of rocks on the crest into a break in the trees where the sunlight could fall on him. The sky was tinged yellow, what he could see of it. Clouds chased, gathering. Rain definitely. Maybe even a summer storm.
Feygor knew the signs. Like Brostin – and like his mentor Rawne – Feygor was a city boy. But even if you grew up in a place like Tanith Attica, you were never far from forest. Feygor had got to know woodcraft and how to read the weather as a teenager, making the early morning runs out of Attica’s mercantile district into the Attican woods. You’d needed the skills in his trade. Skills to find a particular clearing at a particular time, skills to get home the long way round without getting lost. Skills to avoid the arbites and the excise men. The movers and shakers in Attica’s black market didn’t go much on excuses like ‘I got lost’ or ‘There was a sudden downpour and I ran late’.
Feygor sat down and waited as the members of the detail came up over the crest. Cuu, then Caff, then Gutes and Rerval. Brostin came back in the line, so that the betraying smell of his flamer’s fuel tanks would be minimised. Muril next, quiet as a feline. Feygor watched her move by, his gaze lingering once she’d gone past and afforded him a rear view.
Larkin was right in the tail. According to Brostin, Larkin had specifically requested this detail, which seemed odd to Feygor. Everyone knew that Larkin and Cuu were not exactly best buddies. Larks usually did his level best to find occupation as far away from Lijah Cuu as possible. Indeed, Cuu had seemed puzzled by Larkin’s inclusion. Puzzled. Almost annoyed.
But Larkin seemed strangely relaxed. That was good, in Murtan Feygor’s book. The last kind of crap he needed out here was Larks in one of his manic phases. He’d keep an eye on the sniper. He’d asked Piet Gutes to do the same.
Feygor got up and slithered back down the crest to join Larkin as he made the top.
‘Gonna be looking for shelter soon,’ Feygor said. ‘Wind’s up. Would be good to eat. Fancy your eye?’
Larkin shrugged. ‘Why not?’
‘Don’t go far.’ Feygor looked back down the trail. ‘Muril!’
She turned and made her way back to them.
‘Larks is on dinner duty. Buddy him up. Don’t get lost.’
‘Okay,’ she said. The order clearly pleased her. Half an hour poaching with Larkin wasn’t scout training with Ven, but it was better than nothing. Feygor knew she was itching to show her ability. Anything to get in her good books.
‘I saw some spoor down on the path,’ Larkin said. ‘Let’s try that way.’
The pair of them began to descend the slope the way they’d come.
Feygor moved ahead, catching up with the rest of the detail. Brostin had stopped to take a swig from his billy. Right at the front, coming up the next rise in the shadow of the trees, Cuu had paused too. He was staring back down the dell at the departing figure of Larkin.
Larkin knelt and checked the spoor. It was fresh. Some small animal, probably a grazer. He sat on a rock for a moment, exchanging his hot-shot ammunition clip for a low-volt pack.
‘What’s that?’ Muril asked.
‘You hunted before?’
She shook her head.
‘A hot-shot’ll mince anything smaller than a deer. We wanna eat. We don’t wanna paint the scenery with liquid animal.’
She smiled. She sat down and put her lasrifle on the earth beside her. Larkin had got used to seeing her with a long-las. It seemed odd for her to be carrying a standard Mark III carbine.
‘Miss it?’ he asked.
‘Sort of,’ she admitted. ‘But I want to be a scout. I really want to make that grade. And that means packing in my beloved long-las for a standard Mark III. Besides, I get the hat as compensation.’
She was referring to the soft, black wool cap she was wearing. Standard kit order for troopers was the ceramite helmet for line duties, and a choice of black beret or forage cap otherwise. Unless you were a scout, or a trainee scout like Muril. Then you got to wear the wool cap for all duties. It didn’t obstruct movement or vision like a helmet, and there was no danger of it clinking against your weapon during a crawl. The caps were the mark of the First’s elite, one of those subtle but crucial uniform differences that lent prestige. If she made scout, she’d get to wear the matt-black speciality badge on the brim. No Verghast had done that. No woman, either.
Larkin smiled. Whatever standard kit order said about headwear, the First was extraordinarily lax about it. Many went bare-headed. Berets were common under fire. He’d once heard Corbec tell Hark that more Ghosts had used their hard-bowls as buckets than had worn them in combat. Here was this girl keen to win the right to wear a hat she’d probably never use anyway.
Except, of course, on parade. That’s where it would matter. That’s where Sehra Muril in a scout cap would be a fething big deal.
‘What’s funny?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ he said.
He got up and practised sighting his long-las into the trees.
‘You don’t think I’ll make it?’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘You made marksman. I know this. If any of you hivers ever make scout, it’ll be one of you girls.’
‘Mkvenner doesn’t seem keen on the idea,’ she muttered. ‘When the colonel told me he’d put me in this detail to shadow Ven, I got really excited. I mean, Ven’s the real deal. Him or Mkoll. The very best. I thought this was it. The big step forward. But he only seems interested in Jajjo.’
‘Jajjo’s okay.’
‘Sure. But Jajjo’s getting all the attention. Who did Ven call up just now? Me? I don’t think so. Did I do something wrong? Or am I fooling myself? Or does Ven have a thing?’
‘A thing?’
‘About girls.’
Larkin lowered his weapon and squinted over at her. ‘We all have a thing about girls.’
Muril laughed. ‘But really…’
Larkin raised his weapon again. Distantly, through the trees, he could see the members of nineteen detail skirting up the next slope under a bank of spruce.
‘It ever occur to you,’ he said softly, ‘that Ven’s taking time with Jajjo because Jajjo’s the one who needs the work?’
‘Gak!’ she said. A broad smile spread across her slender face. ‘That’s a way of looking at it that hadn’t occurred to me.’
‘You gotta see all the angles…’ Larkin said. His voice had dropped to a hush. He let the las float in his hands, the aim fluid. He coasted the muzzle around. He wasn’t blinking. Through the sight, he saw the distant figures, crossing in and out of the leaf-cover. He waited for the scope to lock. The read-out lit up in his eye. Target-fix. Four hundred and seventy two metres. The back of Feygor’s head. Coast. Target-fix. Four seventy-nine and half. Brostin’s promethium tanks. Coast.
Four eighty-one. Target-fix. Lijah Cuu. Side of the skull. Adjusted for cross-wind. Tracking.
‘What are you doing?’ Muril asked.
Larkin had stopped breathing. The long-las felt weightless. The target-fix rune was flashing steady now. His right index finger slowly tightened on the trigger. Lijah Cuu stopped and turned to speak to Gutes. The horizontal of Larkin’s cross hairs made a bar across Cuu’s eyes. The vertical almost followed the line of the trademark scar. Right there. Right now. Kill-shot.
Larkin lowered the gun, breathed out and snapped the safety.
‘Just getting my eye in,’ he said.
Heqta Jajjo couldn’t get the gakking leaf to bend. Every time he looped it, it sprang back, and when he’d finally got the stalk pushed through the leaf, it tore.
‘Problem?’ said a voice.
Jajjo looked up. Mkvenner was standing over him.
‘Gak, you made me jump.’
‘That’s a good thing because I’m a scout. And it’s a bad thing because that’s what you want to be too.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry. Be better. What’s the problem?’
‘You told me to leave a sign here. I can’t get it to make the shape.’
Ven hunkered down and plucked a fresh leaf from a nearby clump of beythorn. ‘You’re trying too hard. It’s just a twist. It has to look casual.’
Mkvenner made a perfect loop and set it on a crop of white stone.
Jajjo sighed.
‘You’ll get it,’ said Mkvenner, almost encouragingly.
‘You think we’re wasting our time, don’t you?’ said Jajjo.
‘Why?’
‘Because we’re not fit. Not fit for scouting.’ Jajjo didn’t have to qualify the ‘we’re’. They both knew he meant ‘Verghastites’.
‘If that’s what you think, then the only thing I’m wasting is my effort. Take the point.’
‘Only if–’
‘Take the point, Jajjo. Show me you can work terrain.’
Jajjo picked up his Mark III, and advanced, head low. They’d reached a long, curved valley of pine wood with a steeply tilted rake that was thick with last year’s needles. The wind was up now, and the trees swayed and shushed over him.
The air was cold. The sunlight had died off and plunged the forest floor into twilight. Jajjo tried to make as little sound as possible. His foot cracked a piece of dead bark, and he looked back guiltily towards the place where he’d left Mkvenner.
The scout had gone. How the gak did he do that?
Jajjo worked the cover all the way down to a thick copse of link-alder. Halfway down, he knocked his rifle-stock against a sapling. Then he realised he hadn’t draped himself with his camo-cape properly. Gak on a flakboard, was there anything else he could get wrong?
The sound of the wind in the trees was mesmeric now. Like a sea, Jajjo thought. His family had come from Imjahive originally, down in the archipelago, one of Verghast’s tropical cities. He knew what the sea sounded like. He’d missed it when his family had moved to Vervunhive, the year he turned six.
Jajjo stole past the copse, and crossed a spread of swishing ferns. The first spots of rain started to come down, smacking hard impacts into the leaves of the ground cover. Jajjo tried to stick to the shadows. Through the stand of pines ahead, there seemed to be something, he couldn’t tell what. He switched cover, making short runs between trees, the way he’d been taught in scout preparation. Now the sounds he made were being masked by the gathering rainstorm and wind. He kept his Mark III tucked up under his right armpit, barrel down, so it wouldn’t catch on anything.
The rain got heavier. The drops beat down like a non-stop drum roll on the leaves. The temperature immediately rose by a few degrees, lifting skeins of mist from the ground and choking his nose with a damp, mulchy reek.
Jajjo reached the pine stand, and slid through the trees. What the hell was that up there? There was definitely some sort of clearing. A break in the trees. He could tell that simply from the light.
He got down in the ferns and crawled for the last twenty metres to the edge of the clearing, pushing his weapon in front of him. He raised his head, and saw, through the rain, what lay beyond.
‘Gak!’ he stammered. He turned to rise and work back, but Mkvenner was crouched right behind him.
‘Good work,’ said Mkvenner quietly. ‘Look what you found…’
It wasn’t on any of the maps. Mainly because it was old, and the maps were new. Ven and Jajjo back-tracked to meet the detail, and led them forward.
It was a house. A big house. A retreat. Rerval described it as a manse, and the name stuck. Derelict and overgrown, it occupied a cleared stretch of hillside within the forest, facing west. Lime-washed grey stone, black slate. Two storeys and maybe an attic. Blind windows looked out across an unkempt garden from the front. There was a weed-choked path leading to the front porch, and the signs of an old wall and gate in the overgrown hedges. Gutes and Caffran circled round the rear and found a single-storey wing extending from the back, and a clutch of outbuildings clogged against the back garden wall around a paved yard. Beyond that, a wild garden and lawn stretched up hill to the edge of the pine woods. There was an old wall at the top of the lawn, against which sat several more dilapidated outhouses.
The rain was torrential now.
‘Let’s check it,’ Feygor said.
They split. Feygor, Gutes, Cuu and Brostin to the front door; Caffran, Rerval, Jajjo and Mkvenner to the back.
‘Armed,’ Feygor said on the front steps. The dripping Ghosts with him nodded. Gutes and Cuu dropped in either side of the big, old doors. Paint was flaking off the panels. Feygor peeked in through ground floor windows, but saw nothing except dust and shadows.
‘Going in,’ he said over his micro-bead.
‘Read you,’ crackled Caffran.
Feygor nodded. Brostin stepped up and put his shoulder into the doors. It took two shoves, but the wood splintered and the doors swung open.
Gutes and Cuu, lasrifles aimed, screwed in behind him.
The hallway was dark and the air was stale. Mildew. Old carpets. Damp. They edged into the gloom, making out a staircase and several doors off the hall on the ground floor. Water dripped from the ceiling and the stairwell. Feygor crept inside, his rifle at a hunting tilt.
He snapped his fingers and he, Gutes and Cuu turned on lamp-packs. They slung them from the bayonet lugs of their weapons and played them around the hall. The spots of light revealed a lacquered sideboard with cobweb-strung candle stands, a massive gilt-edged mirror that threw their inquisitive lights back at them. A coatstand, hung with a single, lonely raincoat. An embroidered rug. Dried flowers in a dedemican vase. A console table with a brass letter rack.
Cuu tried the wall switch. The big chandelier remained dark. ‘No power,’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ Feygor smiled, ‘but it’s a roof.’
The rain pelted down. Thunder rolled. Feygor worked his way over to the left hand door off the hall.
Brostin hand-cranked the feeder reservoir of his flamer’s broom, and clicked the lighter flint. There was a wet cough, and then a hiss as the flamer came to life. Brostin had it turned right down, so that just a cone of blue-heat sizzled around the nozzle. The hiss of the burner filled the air. They could all smell promethium.
Brostin edged his way over to Feygor, using the barely-lit flamer like a lamp. ‘After you,’ he said.
Feygor opened the inner door and pushed it wide, keeping his back to the doorpost. Brostin went in, revving the flamer up into little, quick flares of hot yellow flame.
‘Dining room,’ he said. Feygor prowled in, sliding his lamp beam off the walls. Old oil paintings, grim faces. Vases and porcelain. A long, dark-varnished table lined by twenty chairs. A single plate at one setting, decorated with a pair of fruit stones, and a small paring knife.
Feygor went back out into the hall. Gutes and Cuu had opened the room on the other side. Some kind of sitting room, with armchairs and sofas covered in dust sheets. A big fireplace with a basket of logs. More cobwebs.
Feygor moved through the space to another door at the end. He pushed it open, aiming his lamp and gun through the slit. A small room, lined with empty shelves. Dust. A library? A study? He edged inside, covered by Gutes. There was a desk and a captain’s chair on brass castors. Racks and hooks on the walls that had once held something. He swung his beam right.
Framed by his light-beam, the monster loomed out of the darkness, its lips pulled back from its huge teeth, its clawed paws raised to strike.
‘Holy feth!’ squeaked Feygor and shot it.
He hit it in the belly and there was a loud burst of fur and dust. Gutes, startled by the sudden shot, rolled round through the doorway and blasted off a burst himself.
‘Stop! Stop!’ Feygor shouted over Gute’s fire. The monster continued to snarl at them. The micro-bead link went wild.
‘Who’s shooting?’ That was Caffran.
‘Confirm contact! Confirm contact!’ Jajjo.
‘Feygor? Sign back.’ Ven.
Feygor was laughing, his giggles rolling flat and dry from his voice box. ‘Relax. No contact.’
Gutes was sniggering with relief too.
‘What the feth?’ said Brostin, shouldering in through the door and raising his flamer. He gunned the torch and the flare lit up the room. The huge beast in the corner was starkly lit, poised on its plinth, paws raised to strike. Sawdust dribbled from its shot-open gut, and the flames reflected in its glass eyes.
‘Feth!’ said Brostin. ‘Are you trigger-happy or what?’
‘I thought it was a real fething thing!’ Feygor protested and chortled. ‘Took me by surprise.’
‘Well,’ said Brostin, ‘you pair sure killed it.’
Feygor walked over to the stuffed trophy. It was quite a beast. Raised on its hind legs, three metres tall, covered in black fur and sporting teeth the length of his fingers.
‘What the feth is it?’ asked Piet Gutes.
