The Song of the Sycamore, page 32
The menace, the intolerance in her voice, told me that although she had decided to use my surprise presence, go with the flow, her pragmatism could easily adapt without me should I prove a hindrance. So I did as she ordered, keeping my mouth shut as we traipsed through the corpse-trees, finally accepting that I was lucky to be alive. But what hope could I find in this place?
I’d seen a graveforest before, from afar, during my first weeks in the war. Commander Childs had ensured his platoon gave it a wide berth, but now here I was in the heart of one, with no choice but to plod after an unhinged traitor. August Jakob had sacrificed a platoon of her own people, and as far as Command would be concerned, I was as dead as the rest of them. Could it be true? Could there be an artefact of the Salahbeem transmitting a signal from the graveforest, an artefact that had been on Urdezha for aeons? Was it really worth the deaths of so many?
Perhaps August’s confidence was well founded. If this thing was real, Command and the Scientists wouldn’t care about her methods of getting to it. The clansfolk August had fooled with promises of a glorious future would see their dreams, their children, their families slaughtered if the Scientists came to the Ayros Mountains. A Salahbeem relic was worth as much as an ether-growth. And here I was, a broken solider carrying unlikely tales of spending time among the clansfolk and surviving, only to be dragged into a graveforest by a madwoman like … like a soldier on a rope.
The Song of the Dead quietened with the approach of dawn, moans and wails falling to silence by the time the first rays of the sun limned the giant leaves high above. It was only then that I realised just how still and peaceful the forest had been during the night, despite the spirits. Animal noises moved in to fill the void: tapping and hooting overhead, roars and shrieks from the distance, echoing with danger that might lurk behind tree trunks so large they could have been hollowed out and used as houses.
We were following a stream. August hadn’t said a word for hours, and I had been smart enough to keep my mouth shut. When she stopped to refill her water canteens, I stared at the glass helmet.
I had to get it back. The tank was as fixed now as it ever would be outside a city; if I regained control of it, I could do away with this insane survivalist. I now knew that it was safest travelling at night; I could hide and defend myself during the day. I could be out of this graveforest in a day or two, avoiding Clan Ayros, and on my way back to Fort Icus. The medical facilities there would take care of me. Surely the doctors would decide I was unfit for duty and discharge me. Command would have questions about where I’d been and what I’d witnessed, but eventually they’d send me home, wouldn’t they? Back to Old Castle. To Eden. I had to get that helmet.
This was all I could think about as we continued following the stream and came to where the Ayros Mountains speared up through the forest floor to step the landscape with a series of rocky ledges. August found a cave, announcing that the sonar was detecting nothing inside, but, ‘Lessons learned and all of that, Old Castle.’
She switched on the tank’s energy shield and the arm cannon slid from its housing. August sent me in to investigate the cave while observing from the stream’s bank.
‘What do you see?’ Her voice buzzed from the plates of the tank themselves, distorting as it was amplified through Hanna’s modification.
There was no danger waiting inside. The cave was shallow, coming to a blind end after only a few yards, hiding nothing more interesting than dirt and cobwebs. ‘It’s empty,’ I said. The energy shield deactivated.
August decided that the cave would be our camp for the day. After she had positioned me facing the exit, standing sentry, she shrugged off her pack, laying it at the back of the cave along with the ether-cannon. She then shared a nutrition cake with me.
‘Reckon it’s time to see my city again, Old Castle,’ she said, feeding me my half. ‘After I deliver a little souvenir of the Gardeners, the Scientists will see that I get a nice retirement. Might even take up an archaeologist’s position. If I get bored with all my riches, see?’
She sounded happy, though you couldn’t tell from looking at her battered face. She was so confident about what she thought was making that signal, so arrogant in her power over me, that I began to hope she was being complacent.
‘Where’s home for you?’ I asked.
August eyed me suspiciously. ‘What the fuck do you care?’
‘Just … interested to know where you’re from.’
‘Oh, you want to be friends now?’ She shoved more cake into my mouth. ‘No such thing on the wasteland.’
August ate the rest of the cake herself. She lifted the helmet to do so, but didn’t take it off. If she did, and made the mistake of forgetting to lock the tank into position first, the plates would free up and I could make a grab for it. But she wasn’t that stupid.
‘Listen,’ I said after August had given me a drink. ‘Can you let me out of this thing? I’ve been wearing it all night. Just let me stretch my legs, have a good scratch.’
August gave me a quirked smile. ‘Stretch your legs, eh?’
‘At least let me wash in the stream. Nature does come calling, you know. I’ve had to answer it more than once.’ I tried to return her smile.
‘Do you honestly believe you could survive this graveforest without me?’
‘What?’
‘You haven’t seen what’s lurking in this place.’ August went to the back of the cave, rummaged around in her pack and returned with the canteen filled with jenkem. ‘Besides, what do you think will happen if you step out of that nice warm magic field? The pain will come back, that’s what, and it’ll be agony. But even if you were in tip-top condition, you shouldn’t fancy your chances in a fight against me.’ She studied the canteen. ‘I might be a cunt, Old Castle, but don’t ever mistake me for an idiot. You can shit and piss in that thing all day long. I’m not letting you out.’
‘Fuck you!’ I spat.
‘Yeah, yeah.’ August placed the mask over my face. ‘Fuck you, too.’
Chapter Fifty-Five
I didn’t know what August got up to while I slept during the day, but on occasion her voice cut through my nightmares. One time I heard her whispering words of magic, casting spells; another, she was talking to the voice in the signal, which she believed came from some relic of the Salahbeem: ‘Yeah, I know – you’re the Shepherd of the Dead. Don’t worry, I’m coming to find you.’
When the jenkem wore off, night was falling. My position hadn’t changed; I still stood sentry just inside the cave’s entrance, facing out at the stream. In the fading light, I could see a corpse beside the running water – one of the monstrous spiders August had warned me about. She really hadn’t exaggerated; its carcass easily matched the size of a bear. Eight hairy, armoured legs were curled up against its body.
‘Big fucker tried to sneak up on us,’ August said, sliding past me into the open. She tapped the glass helmet. ‘Good job I’ve got sonar.’
She fed me a nutrition cake and a tablet of atropine. I gave up hope as I washed it down with water from her canteen. Whether at the mercy of this lunatic or free, I wasn’t going to survive the graveforest. It would’ve been easier to have died with my platoon.
The Song of the Dead rose as we set out for another night’s march. This time, I didn’t bother trying to decipher the cries and wails. I’d be among them soon enough; I’d find out then. Let this forest throw whatever it would at me. As long as it was strong enough to devour August Jakob, too, I’d settle for that.
The soft ground, earthy, thick with mulch, rose and fell before us, and we weaved between giant roots that emerged from the forest like the petrified tentacles of giant sea beasts. Any one of these corpse-trees would have towered over the largest building in any city on Urdezha. Just one of their leaves could have served as an umbrella for two in a rainstorm.
I fell asleep at some point and dreamed that I was searching for Eden. Her weeping accompanied the voices of the dead, and I simply could not find her. I ran through the darkness, searching from tree to tree, but Eden didn’t show herself until I became entangled in the thick sticky threads of a colossal spiderweb. While I begged her to release me before I became a meal for the unseen monster that had spun the web, she said nothing as she warmed her hands on the flames rising from the burning letters I had written her; the letters she hadn’t replied to.
The tank jolted me awake with a mental command from August that told me something was wrong.
The survivalist was crouching, predator-like, drawing us slowly into a thicket of ferns. She held a finger to her lips and then pointed. A small distance from the other side of the thicket, a dark figure paced in a clearing. Clouds were filling the sky and ether-light was sporadic, but I could see the figure was broader than any human, taller than a wastelander by at least a head. Behind it, the forest appeared to have been gathered up and fashioned into a wall that stretched between corpse-trees on the other side of the clearing. The instincts of a soldier warned me that many pairs of eyes were staring out of it.
The clouds parted and I gained a clearer view of the figure in the ether-light.
Its face, almost human, was turned to the sky, eyes closed as though listening to the Song of the Dead. Its body was covered in grey hair, apart from the exposed pads of its dark chest and round belly. It stopped pacing, leaning forwards to rest the knuckles of its big hands on the ground. Its arms were long and powerful. The boulder of its head sloped back; the nostrils of its flat nose sniffed the air.
‘An ape settlement,’ August whispered to me. ‘They’re territorial, not like trolls. And they know we’re here.’
I remembered the violent tumult of apes and trolls fighting, and shivered. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Respect their territory. One thing I learned from the wasteland, Old Castle – it takes an animal to know one.’
My heart skipped as August removed the glass helmet. She grinned at me, and my hopes sank as I realised she had put the tank in lockdown first.
‘Don’t go anywhere,’ she said, taking two nutrition cakes from her pack and walking out of the ferns.
August took slow, deliberate steps into the clearing, her face aimed at the ground. The ape stirred, grunted and punched a big fist on the earth. Kill her, I thought. Rip her limb from limb. I should’ve shouted it, startled the ape into attacking, but I was too fearful of the same fate. The ape rose to its full imposing height as August laid the cakes on the ground with cautious movements. When the ape grunted again, the survivalist walked backwards ponderously, head bowed, until she was out of the clearing and in the ferns with me.
‘That should appease them for a while,’ she said, putting the helmet on. ‘But let’s not outstay our welcome.’
We moved on, giving the primitive settlement a wide berth. The clouds closed in, but I could still see the shape of the ape guard, back to resting on its knuckles. I could feel its eyes upon me. I wondered how many other city soldiers had ever seen apes, seen the inside of a graveforest. How many astounding memories were now dust on the wasteland?
Soon after, the clouds released a downpour of sleet, icy like the breath of the dead following the sound of their Songs. Freezing droplets drummed on the canopy above, falling as rain to soak my hair and run down my neck before evaporating in the magic field beneath the plates. I thought of asking August to activate the tank’s shield but decided she probably wouldn’t.
August stopped every now and then, scanning the area with the ether-cannon in her hand. Obviously, the sonar had picked up something moving through the night and her augmented vision was searching the darkness for it. But no new surprises revealed themselves and she continued on.
The rest of the night passed uneventfully. Dawn chased away the dead and the sleet turned to gentle snow. The graveforest broke to allow for a grove of trees strong and sturdy but much smaller than corpse-trees. Sycamores. Their branches were barren. The sodden ground was covered in their leaves, dead and brown, and fallen seeds had rotted to delicate skeletons like insect wings. The snow was trying its hardest to cover them up.
August led us further into the grove until she found shelter from the weather beneath one of the larger trees with wide branches. After she had fed and watered me, a look of curiosity spread across her face as she bent to pick up a single sycamore seed.
‘Funny,’ she said, studying the seed. ‘It was an old story that first got me thinking the Gardeners were behind this signal.’
‘What story?’
‘The Shepherd and the Sycamore.’ She let the seed go and it fell spinning to the ground.
I knew the story she meant. A cautionary tale told to children. I hadn’t heard it for years, and the mention of it confused me for a moment. But when I went over the story’s details, I started to laugh with a sad huffing sound. I am the Shepherd of the Dead, the voice in the signal claimed.
‘What’s so funny?’ August demanded.
‘You think it’s the Shepherd from the story? You think you’ve found the gateway to heaven?’ My laughing increased. ‘You’re as stupid as the clansfolk.’
‘You think so?’ Rather than showing offence at my words, August shook her head pityingly. ‘The truth is, Old Castle, I couldn’t say what the Salahbeem have left behind. But if you believe the clansfolk are so very different from the rest of us, then you need enlightening.’
She rested the ether-cannon against the trunk of the sycamore, took off her cloak and shrugged off her pack. ‘The difference between wastelanders and citizens is Scientists. Sure, the clansfolk have their priests, but they can only use the ambient magic that ether releases into the air, in the ground, or from the crystals they steal from us. It takes a Scientist to understand how ether itself can be altered, its magic distributed to fuel technology, see? We all began as clansfolk, Old Castle, rising from the ashes of the Ether Wars, just … some of us were lucky enough to find ether-growths.’
There were tears on my face, but I was neither laughing nor crying as August brought the canteen of jenkem to me and I once again breathed in its foul vapour. I welcomed intoxication this time.
While I succumbed, August folded her cloak and placed it on the ground at the base of the tree. She sat on it and rested her back against the trunk, finding shelter from the snow beneath big, leafless branches while leaving me out in the falling white flakes. She exaggerated the noise of getting comfortable as she laid the ether-cannon across her lap.
‘We’re close, Old Castle,’ she said, tapping the glass helmet. ‘The signal is getting stronger and stronger. Maybe tonight we’ll get to see if your platoon’s sacrifice was worth it. You’d better spend the night praying that it was. Won’t be much point in keeping you around if I’m wrong.’
Chapter Fifty-Six
‘Heads up, Old Castle.’ August’s warning cut through my nightmares. ‘We’ve got visitors.’
I was shooting before my eyes were open. The grove was a blur of snow and sycamore trees. Dirty brown shapes raced around me, shattering the air with bestial roars. Sunlight dazzled my eyes. My arm cannon pumped shot after shot as the tank spun and weaved.
August spat a curse. ‘Fucking trolls!’
Still in the grip of jenkem, the world spinning around me, my head whipped from side to side and sickness churned in my gut. With no way to control my movements, no way to predict which twist or turn the tank would take next, I shouted and shouted for mercy until I vomited.
The whumps of August’s ether-cannon came from somewhere close by. The rush of air displaced by magical energy threatened to steal what breath I could get into my lungs. Every time my arm bucked, another foe died. The mental strain August was under must have been immense, but she kept the tank’s cannon, and her own, blasting away at whatever the sonar was detecting.
I couldn’t tell how many trolls surrounded us, but my orientation had improved enough to see that they were tall as apes but thinner, standing more upright on long legs. Covered in shaggy green-brown hair, they charged into the clearing, reaching with clawed hands on muscular arms. Pointed ears stood erect on top of their elongated heads. Their roars came from yawning muzzles filled with sharp teeth, sounding similar to bears but higher pitched, somehow more intelligent.
I caught sight of August orbiting me with her cannon, her movements in sync with mine. And bodies toppled dead around us.
I spun to face a charging troll. A blast of ether sent it crashing into a few of its fellow monsters. Another emerged from my right, too fast and close for the tank to adjust position, but August was equal to the attack. My right arm shot out, grabbed the troll by the throat. The tank whined and its boots dug into the snowy ground as it lifted its captive into the air. Shaggy hair crisped and smoked in the tank’s shield. The cannon on my left arm continued to fire, twisting the real arm inside to painful angles, while the fingers of my right gauntlet squeezed and pierced skin. Blood poured. The troll shook its head from side to side, turning black eyes as wide as saucers to the sky and releasing a bellow.
The neck snapped. A blood-red tongue lolled. The corpse dropped to the ground, spraying blood.
The stream of trolls charging from the graveforest seemed never-ending. No matter how many August put down, two replaced every casualty. At this rate, the tank’s ether crystal would run low on magic and there would be no respite in which it could regenerate. But the survivalist kept fighting, a lethal animal barely uttering a sound through her concentration, and I could do nothing but bend to the will of her mental commands. Blood sullied the pure whiteness of snow. The air reeked of death.
