The Legion of Flame

  Clay followed her gaze, blinking at the sight of a trio of blazing stars. The light they cast was sufficient to illuminate the entire landscape even though most of it was still obscured by the haze. He shielded his eyes, blinking in the glare as he tried to estimate the height and size of the three suns but it proved impossible. He also could see no structure that might be holding them in place. His memory returned once more to the White’s lair and the crystals he had seen there, crystals that cast forth light and floated in mid air.

  “They ain’t suns,” he muttered softly.

  “Then what are they?”

  Clay looked down to see that Sigoral had climbed up to join them, face flushed with exertion and a depth of unease that seemed even greater than Loriabeth’s.

  “Mechanicals,” Clay told the Corvantine, deciding a full explanation would stretch the man’s credulity a touch too far. “Of a sort. Set to keep this forest alive. Plants need light to live after all.”

  “Mechanicals need engineers,” Sigoral said. “Meaning someone else must be down here.”

  “If so, they ain’t seen fit to greet us.” Clay took a final glance around and crouched to lever himself off the branch. “And we’d best move on if we’re aiming to find them.”

  “Which way?” Loriabeth asked.

  Clay paused to jerk his head at the plain beyond the forest. “Nothing behind ’cept a wall and we can’t go up. Seems going farther in is the only option.”

  • • •

  They spent a short while surveying the structure without identifying any way in. Here and there the stone was decorated with more carved script that provided no information or solution to their predicament. After an hour or so Clay called a halt and they started into the forest.

  He took the lead with Loriabeth on rear-guard and Sigoral in the middle. The forest floor proved a tricky surface to navigate, featuring too many roots and constricted avenues to allow for a decent pace. Birds chattered in the trees above as they moved, a continual medley of different calls, the volume of which stayed constant despite a human presence. When they stopped for a brief rest a small red-breasted bird landed on the ground at Clay’s feet, blinking the black beads of its eyes up at him in evident curiosity. Clay crouched and extended a hand to it. The bird hopped back a few inches but failed to fly away.

  “No fear of man,” Sigoral surmised as the bird darted closer to Clay’s hand and jabbed its beak into his palm. It hurt more than he expected and left him sucking a trickle of blood from his punctured skin.

  “So I see,” he muttered.

  “Why wouldn’t it fear us?” Loriabeth wondered.

  “I’d hazard that it’s never seen our kind before,” Sigoral said. “Nor have any of its kin for many generations.”

  “Sounds a little like Scribes, don’t he?” Clay commented to Loriabeth, drawing a curious frown from the Corvantine.

  “Who?”

  “A friend lost along the trail,” Loriabeth said in a tone that didn’t invite further inquiry. She straightened and scanned the surrounding trees with a critical eye. “If he’s right, it ain’t good, cuz.”

  “Yeah.” Clay flicked a drop of blood at the red-breasted bird, which finally took sufficient alarm to fly away. “Probably best if we try to move a mite quicker.”

  “Why?” Sigoral asked.

  “We know there’s Greens in here,” Loriabeth replied. “Stands to reason they also got no fear of us. Not that the others we’ve met had much either.”

  They covered another four miles before Clay noted that the light had begun to dim. He found a gap in the canopy and saw that the glare of the three suns had faded. “Think night’s about to fall,” he told the others. “Time we made camp.”

  Sigoral chose a resting spot, a huge tree with a matrix of roots thick enough to create a raised platform. It offered only a marginally improved view of their surroundings but was the sole near by spot with any vestige of defensibility. They sat close to the trunk and shared what food they had, amounting to a few strips of salted beef and some jaw-achingly-hard ship’s biscuits Sigoral had kept with him since disembarking the Superior.

  “Not like that,” he said as Clay came close to cracking a tooth on a corner of biscuit. “Soften it with water first.”

  He demonstrated, tipping a few drops from his canteen onto the biscuit. Clay tried a bite and found it chewable if hardly appetising. “I’m thinking we’re gonna have to do some hunting before long,” he said, swallowing a mouthful with some difficulty. “Plenty of birds about, and they won’t be tricky to catch.”

  “Means we’d have to light a fire to cook ’em,” Loriabeth said. “Greens can smell smoke from miles away. There’s a chance they’ve already caught our scent anyways, but I’d still rather not send out an invite.”

  “We should sleep in the trees,” Sigoral said. “Tie ourselves to the branches.” He frowned as Clay and Loriabeth exchanged an amused glance.

  “Greens climb better than people,” Clay explained. “Tie yourself to a tree and you’ll just be offering up an easy kill.”

  “Then what do we do if they come for us?” Sigoral asked.

  “Shoot ’em,” Loriabeth said, patting the butt of one of her revolvers. “Right in the head, sailor boy. Anything else is a waste of ammo.”

  “I told you, I’m a marine.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  Sigoral glared at her, face reddening. “Quite a lot, actually.”

  “We’ll take turns on watch,” Clay said, seeing his cousin bristle and hoping to forestall an argument. “Two sleeping, one watching. I’ll go first.” He glanced up at the dimming sky through the web of branches. Pity they didn’t craft moons to go with the suns, he thought.

  • • •

  Sigoral woke him after a fitful doze that couldn’t have lasted more than a couple of hours, but even so the shadows had lengthened and the air grown decidedly cooler. “I heard more cries,” Sigoral reported as Clay shook Loriabeth awake. “They sounded a long way off, though.”

  “Let’s hope they stay there,” Clay said. He gulped water from his canteen, noting that it was now only a quarter full. “Gotta find a stream or something, soon,” he said. “Has to be water here, else how does everything grow?”

  The answer came a short while later. The rain arrived with no warning patter of droplets or change to the air, a heavy deluge falling unheralded from the sky with sufficient force to strip leaves from the trees. The ground turned to mud in an instant, forcing a halt as the three of them took shelter under the branches of a particularly broad tree Sigoral named as a yew.

  “They live for hundreds of years,” he commented, features bunched as rain-water streamed over his face. “From the size of it I’d estimate this one’s at least two centuries old.”

  “No clouds,” Loriabeth said, blinking as she peered up through the deluge. “So where’s this coming from?”

  Clay could fathom no explanation and the deluge stopped soon after, dwindling to nothing as quickly as it had arrived. They pressed on, slogging through mud and stumbling over slippery roots until the ground finally began to harden. He had hoped to be clear of the forest by the time the three suns faded but it was clear they would have to endure another night beneath the trees. Long, dark shadows had begun to merge and the atmosphere grew more chill with every passing second.

  “Nothing else for it,” he said, shrugging free of his pack. “Can’t get through this in the dark.”

  “Do Greens hunt at night?” Sigoral asked.

  “Depends on the pack,” Loriabeth said. “Some are day hunters, some aren’t. But any Green sees a damn sight better in the dark than we do.”

  They found another thickly rooted tree to huddle around, this one with a thinner trunk that enabled them to stay in sight of each other. The dark descended with an unnatural swiftness, reminding Clay that this was
n’t actually night, at least not as he had always understood it. The light of the false suns didn’t fade completely, retaining a slight glow that left glimmering pin-points of moisture on the leaves that seemed to shine like stars in the gloom.

  “Don’t s’pose you got any product about your person?” Loriabeth asked Clay in a chilled whisper.

  “There’s about a quarter of Black left in the flask the captain gave me,” he replied. “And the Blue heart-blood. But I ain’t touching either lest we got no other option.”

  “Are you sure about not lighting a fire?” Sigoral asked Loriabeth.

  “Light one if you want,” she replied. “But do it far away from me.”

  Sigoral grunted in frustration but stayed where he was. Clay could see a bead of moisture on the foresight of the Corvantine’s carbine barrel, shimmering a little as it trembled in his grasp.

  “I’m guessing you hail from warmer climes, huh, Lieutenant?” Clay asked him.

  “Takmarin’s Land,” Sigoral said. “A large island bordering Varestian waters. And yes, it does get very warm there in summer months, though it’s many years since I’ve seen it.”

  “No family waiting back there? Wife and young ’uns, maybe?”

  “I enlisted as an Ensign of Marines at fourteen. It’s Takmarin custom to give third sons over to Imperial Service. My father wanted me to join the army but had a prideful insistence I be an officer. However, commissions fetch a high price and his miserliness outweighed his pride. The marines are the only branch of the service to appoint officers due to merit rather than purchase of commissions, so that was that.”

  “Coulda told him to stuff it,” Loriabeth commented. “Followed your own path.”

  “Respect for parental authority is a cornerstone of Corvantine society,” Sigoral replied, though his stiff tone sounded a little forced. “A lesson you Corporatists would do well to learn.”

  “We’re independents,” Loriabeth returned. “Anything we get is earned, and my folks never tried to push me down a path I didn’t choose.”

  “No, you all spend your lives grubbing for personal gain whilst unfortunates are left to perish in the gutter. I’ve sailed to enough corporate ports to know.”

  “Oh, fu . . .”

  Her riposte was cut off by a piercing and familiar shriek, louder and closer than the one they heard before. It was quickly followed by another, this one farther off to the right, then another to the left.

  “She’s gathering the pack,” Loriabeth whispered. Clay heard her shift into a crouch then the sound of iron sliding over leather as she drew her pistols.

  “And fixing our gaze,” he whispered in reply, drawing his own revolver and turning so that he and Loriabeth were back-to-back.

  “What do you mean?” Sigoral demanded, shuffling closer.

  “The noise is a diversion,” Loriabeth said. “For every one you hear there’s another you don’t. Reckon it’s time for you to light that fire.”

  “Won’t it draw them to us?”

  “They already know where we are, and we can’t shoot ’em if we can’t see ’em.”

  She kept watch as Sigoral and Clay moved about, gathering what fuel they could find on the forest floor. It amounted to a few bundles of twigs and fallen branches, which were swiftly snapped into smaller lengths and stacked close by.

  “Hurry up,” Loriabeth said as another trio of cries cut through the gloom, closer now.

  Sigoral produced a flint from his pocket and struck sparks onto the stacked wood, which failed to catch. “Need kindling,” he said. “Paper, something to catch the flame.”

  Loriabeth uttered a soft obscenity which was followed by the sound of a knife being drawn. “Here,” she said, tossing a thick length of hair at them. Sigoral tried again, the cascade of sparks catching the bunched hair immediately. He and Clay piled on more wood as the flames rose, bathing the surrounding trees in an orange glow.

  “They’d best turn up soon,” Clay said, drawing his revolver once more and taking up position at Loriabeth’s back. “This ain’t gonna last more than a few minutes.”

  “What’s your ammo like?” Loriabeth asked.

  “Thirty rounds,” Clay said.

  “Lieutenant?”

  “Six in the carbine, another forty-four in my bandolier.”

  “Me and Clay will fire first, you keep them off us when we reload. Remember what I said, gotta get ’em in the head.”

  They waited, eyes on the trees and the blackness beyond as the fire’s glow dwindled by the second.

  Clay had begun to debate the wisdom of retrieving more fuel for the fire when he caught a flicker of moving shadow. His gun hand snapped towards it instantly, arm straight and level as honed instinct kept the tremble from his grip. It’ll charge now, he knew. Once it knows it’s been seen.

  He exhaled, finger tensing on the trigger in expectation of the beast’s imminent rush. Instead the shadow he had seen paused for a second then shuffled closer. It was smaller than expected and for a moment he assumed he was seeing only the silhouette of the drake’s head, but then it came fully into the light, yellow eyes blinking in the fire’s glow. It was undeniably a Green, but unlike any he had seen before.

  “I thought they were bigger,” Sigoral said, training his carbine on the beast.

  “They are,” Clay replied, still staring at an animal that stood all of twelve inches at the shoulder and couldn’t have been more than a yard in length.

  The Green angled its head as it regarded him, a long pink tongue dangling from its open jaws as it hopped closer, issuing a short chirping cry.

  “Is it an infant?” Sigoral wondered.

  Clay’s gaze tracked the Green from head to tail, finding numerous scars and wrinkles to its scaly hide. This was clearly an animal with many years behind it, and yet he had seen new-born Greens of far greater size. “I don’t think so,” he said.

  The Green chirped again, bouncing on its stumpy legs and swishing its tail from side to side in puppyish animation.

  “Looks like he wants to play,” Sigoral observed.

  “She,” Loriabeth corrected. “And tiddler or not, it’s still a Green.”

  “It probably doesn’t even know what we are.”

  “Knew enough to hunt us.” Loriabeth turned to her front, bringing both pistols level with her shoulders. “Just shoot it, Clay. Sooner we start this party, sooner it’s over.”

  Clay trained his revolver on the beast’s head, then hesitated as it continued to stare up at him in wide-eyed fascination. “Not so sure about that, cuz,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at her. “Could be, we leave them alone, they’ll . . .”

  His words ended in a scream as the diminutive Green leapt forward in a blur and clamped its jaws on his leg, crunching through flesh and bone as it bit deep.

  CHAPTER 22

  Lizanne

  “Take ten steps into the tunnel, then stop,” Tinkerer said, pushing the grate open and moving aside. “Do not turn around.”

  Lizanne followed his instructions, counting off the required steps and coming to a halt. She resisted the impulse to turn on hearing the rattle of a reattached lock followed by the rapid clicks that told of a scrambled combination. “If you kill me,” he said, moving past her, “you will be trapped here and Melina will kill you when she comes to check on me.”

  “Duly noted,” Lizanne said. She followed him to the main chamber where he made his workshop. He paused to light a small oil-lamp of ingenious design, featuring a convex lens to magnify its glow. He moved wordlessly to the passage that led to his sleeping chamber and knelt next to the cot. Lizanne watched as he slid aside a panel on the plain wooden box that formed the cot’s base, then reached inside. There was a loud clunk as he turned a hidden lever. Tinkerer stood back as the cot raised itself up to a thirty-degree angle, Lizanne hearing the rattle of chains somewhere in th
e walls.

  “Very clever,” she complimented him as he shined the beam of his lantern into the revealed hole, illuminating a steep flight of rough-hewn stone steps. “I must confess I detected no sign of this.”

  Tinkerer merely glanced at her, his pale, finely made features registering neither gratitude nor scorn for her praise. “You first,” he said, keeping the beam of his lantern on the steps.

  She hesitated. Slight as Tinkerer was, she recalled Melina’s trepidation and found the prospect of turning her back on him for a second time decidedly unappealing. “You were right,” she said, moving closer and meeting his gaze. “About how dangerous I am.”

  “If I wished harm to you it would already have happened,” he replied and she took some comfort from the fact that his voice was free of the discordant note of dishonesty she had detected a few moments before.

  “Very well,” she said, inclining her head and proceeding down the steps. It proved a short climb, her feet finding a level surface after a dozen steps, Tinkerer’s lamp revealing a broad tunnel as he followed her down. He passed her and moved on in silence, Lizanne following for several long moments until they came to a wide circular chamber. She drew up sharply as the lamplight flickered over the unmistakable sight of a corpse. She had only a brief glimpse before the beam moved away, but it was long enough to make out the bare bones and rags of a soul long dead.

  “What is this place?” she demanded, stopping at the chamber entrance, one hand clasping the knife at the small of her back.

  “The Artisan’s Refuge,” he replied. “Or so it was named to me eighteen years ago.”

  He stood in the centre of the chamber, turning slowly so the beam of the lantern tracked over the walls. Lizanne’s unease deepened as the light illuminated more bodies, each one more desiccated than its neighbour. She counted fourteen before Tinkerer’s light stopped on one particular corpse. It appeared older than the others, the clothing rotted away and the bones dark with age. Lizanne moved closer, still clutching the knife, and saw a rusted iron manacle on the skeleton’s ankle. A length of thick chain traced from the manacle to a heavy bracket set into the wall.