The zones determined basic technological limits, but the mere possibility of a particular technology working in a given zone did not necessarily imply that people could live there. A zone like Horsetown, where almost nothing of any complexity could be made to work, could only exist near the base, where there was a ready supply of the basic amenities. Air, water and heat were all to hand, with nothing needing to be pumped or transported in by anything other than the simplest of machines, and there was also the possibility of trade in goods and resources with outlying communities, such as the small hamlets they had already passed.
By the same token, while it was feasible for angels and other post-human entities to survive in zones further down Spearpoint from the Celestial Levels, they gained little advantage in doing so, and rather more pertinently preferred not to breathe the same air as lesser ‘prehuman’ mortals. They lived high up because no one else could, enjoying the possibility of flight in those silent currents where the sky was a deep blue at the zenith and the warm airs rising from Spearpoint’s lower levels made for ideal gliding conditions. Quillon could see them now: tiny specks orbiting the narrowing column, glowing like embers around a fire.
He thought again of the angel that had fallen down from those far reaches to crash onto one of Neon Heights’ ledges, and how the angel’s dying message had brought him to this desolate place.
Quillon did not know how long he had been staring at Spearpoint when Meroka sidled up alongside. He had not heard her approach; had in fact been completely unaware of any sounds or movements in his vicinity. He started slightly, gathering his composure.
‘Homesickness’s a bitch,’ Meroka observed.
‘You think I’m feeling homesick already?’
‘Don’t have to think, Cutter. See it in your face. You’re telling yourself, maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Maybe I should’ve stayed.’
Her tone niggled him. ‘Staying was never an option. I knew exactly what I was letting myself in for.’
‘All the same, you got a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye.’
‘If you say so.’ He turned away, irritated with himself for allowing her to get to him. ‘You’re such an expert on homesickness, Meroka. But you’d never admit to feeling it, would you?’
‘Shut up,’ she said.
‘Gladly. But I suggest you don’t begin a conversation unless you have some vague intention of continuing it.’
‘I said shut up. Something’s coming.’
He lowered his voice. ‘Something?’
‘Along the main trail.’ She nodded into darkness. ‘Go fetch your horse. Bring it back to the camp. Don’t make any noise doing it.’
The horse had not wandered far, encumbered by its rope. It walked back uncomplainingly. Meroka trudged out of the gloom with her own horse, its pale hide ghostly in the evening light. Only then did Quillon hear something that might have been the rumble of hooves and wheels, an engine’s howl, whooping and hollering carried on the night’s air.
With the horses tethered out of sight of the road, they crouched low by their bedding.
‘Who do you think it might be?’ Quillon asked in a whisper. ‘The people we’re supposed to be meeting?’
‘Too soon for that.’
‘Maybe the message got confused.’
‘It’s not them.’ By way of explanation, she added, ‘Too many horses, too many wheels.’
The rumble grew quieter and then louder, and sometimes fell away completely, but was always coming closer. The fragments of conversation almost resolved into something he could understand. The dialect had a guttural, harsh quality - words stripped down to single vowels and emotive grunts.
‘The horses spook, this turns nasty, you hide,’ Meroka said. ‘It’s safe, I fire three times.’
‘And if I don’t hear three shots?’
‘Been nice knowing you.’
He caught movement then: a glimmer of torchlight in the distance. Meroka crept slowly away from the camp, eventually pausing and crouching low, overlooking the main road where it was joined by the narrower trail of the pass. The trails were paths of shimmering mercury against the shadowed darkness of the surrounding terrain. He heard the click as she released the safety catch on one of her weapons. She would be visible against the purple skyline, but if she remained perfectly still she would be hard to distinguish from a rock or boulder.
Cautiously, before the horses and wagons were too close, he crept over to Meroka’s side and flattened himself against the ground. He had drawn out the angel gun again.
‘Not a good idea,’ she hissed.
‘I’m sticking with you. If you get shot, how long do you think I’ll last out here anyway?’
Meroka said nothing, leaving Quillon to draw his own conclusions about her likely answer. He lay very still, trying to ignore the hard stones digging into his chest. The rumble and clatter of the approaching procession grew louder, and with it came the lights of torches, casting a sullen, moving glow on the roadside. With the rumble and clatter came also the sharper overtone of buzzing, revving motors. He heard raucous, drunken laughter.
Gradually his eyes picked out the salient details. There were riders at the front, white- and grey-armoured men astride massive, burly horses that were also armoured, their muscular forms almost hidden behind a cunning arrangement of jointed and quilted plates, with animal bones nailed and tied on to the armour for effect. The riders wore metal masks covering the upper parts of their faces, the masks’ empty eye sockets and exposed teeth either resembling skulls, or actually fashioned from them. Behind the riders, flanked on either side both by horsemen and men driving powered vehicles, came a trundling array of huge wagons, each of which was pulled by at least two horses, sometimes as many as six. Most of the wagons consisted of a wide platform, railed on four sides, with a tent or wooden hut in the middle. Thuggish-looking guards stood on the balconies, carrying various forms of weaponry. There were guards with pikes and swords, others with pistols, rifles and small machine guns, while some of the larger wagons sported artillery pieces at their corners, swivel-mounted cannon or brutish weapons with multiple barrel clusters, shields and double-handed grips for their operators. Some of the riders held pennanted staffs, while flags and banners trailed from the tents and huts on the backs of the wagons. The torches - some of them carried by the horsemen, some attached to the wagons - cast a wavering orange light over the entire spectacle. The tricycles and quadcycles accompanying the procession were ramshackle in appearance, seemingly welded together from the salvaged parts of older wrecks. They had skeletal chassis with machine guns, spikes and ramming devices bolted onto the frames. They bounced along quickly, apparently incapable of slowing down to keep pace with the horses and wagons. They were constantly having to swerve off the main track, making S-bends and loops, suspension jinking the vehicles high into the air, their riders only just managing to stay in their seats. As the procession neared it seemed inconceivable to Quillon that Meroka and he would avoid detection.
‘Skullboys,’ she said.
‘The Skullboys I wasn’t supposed to meet.’
‘Kind of hoped we wouldn’t cross paths.’ She had the gun before her, held low to the ground just in front of her face. ‘Lie still and shut up, we’ll be all right. Seems they’re in a hurry to get somewhere. Skullboys only look for trouble when they’re in a fighting mood.’
‘What kind of mood is this?’
‘Shut up.’
The head of the procession gradually drew level with their position. With all the noise and spectacle, Quillon wondered how long it would be before one or both of their horses made a sound. The Skullboys were making a decent enough racket of their own, perhaps enough to drown out the horses, but the guards standing at the corners of the heavy wagons looked sober, vigilant and alert. Quillon thought it unlikely that night-vision technology would work here, but he still felt luminously bright, a warm human smudge against the cooling ground.
Yet the procession kept p
assing, and the horses remained quiet enough not to be heard. Dozens of wagons rumbled past, each seemingly larger than the last, until even the combined muscle of multiple horses proved insufficient and the wagons had to be hitched to traction engines: black behemoths of whirling metal flywheels and gushing ghost-white steam. Behind the traction engines came wagons holding metal cages as large as small houses. There were people in the cages, glimpsed in dismal huddles between the bars. Men and women, tied together and shackled, wearing little more than rags.
‘Prisoners,’ Meroka whispered, as if they could have been anything else. ‘Skullboys buy ’em from villages and towns along the way, or sometimes just take ‘em without asking.’
‘Have they done anything wrong?’
‘Some of ’em. Not all.’ She paused. ‘Some just didn’t get out the way fast enough.’
‘What will happen to them now?’
‘Nothing good.’
‘You can tell me, Meroka. I’d rather know the risks.’
She drew an audible breath as the procession continued to pass, almost blanketed in dust and steam. ‘Some of ’em, the women mostly, they’ll be sold on as slaves, or used by the Skullboys themselves.’
‘Why are they like this?’
‘Mostly they’re pissed off and surly for the sake of it. Anyone who gets kicked out of the respectable communities around here - your murderers, rapists, thieves - there’s a good chance they’ll end up being recruited into the Skulls. They might only be borderline psychotic to start with, but by the time they’ve been force-fed the same drugs that the rest of ’em are on, they start drooling and snarling like they were born to it.’
‘What drugs are we talking about here?’
‘Not your common or garden antizonals, Cutter. Skulls need to cross between zones to do their dirty business, but they can’t get hold of the good stuff. So they improvise. Brew up their own replacements, or take what the vorgs will give them in return for victims. Over time, it all messes with their heads. Turns them a little cranky. And that’s before you factor in all the other shit they put into themselves.’
‘You mentioned the vorgs back at Fray’s place. Who are they?’
‘What are they, you mean. Carnivorgs. Fucked-up, biomechanical machines. But you don’t have to worry about them.’
‘Just like I didn’t need to worry about the Skullboys?’
‘Skullboys make a point of being mobile. Vorgs don’t. They can’t get this deep into the zone.’
The line of caged wagons was almost past now. Smaller vehicles brought up the rear, pulled by more teams of horses. Quillon started to relax, daring to believe that they would remain undetected. The maximum noise and fury had moved on, and their own horses had retained enough dim cunning to keep quiet. Then he noticed the last and smallest of the cages - half the size of any that had passed so far, and containing what he first took to be only one prisoner, a young woman standing up at the bars, wearing a tattered dress or gown with the sleeves torn away. Her arms were very thin, yet knotted with hard muscle. She was either bald or her hair had been shaved almost to the scalp. She was not alone, for at the woman’s side was a child of indeterminate sex, a boy or girl clothed in rags, face hidden behind a wild thicket of dirty black hair. No more than four or five years old at the most, Quillon judged, and he doubted that the mother - if she was indeed the child’s parent - was more than fifteen.
‘What will happen to them?’ he asked, meaning the woman.
‘Most likely end up as slaves.’
‘This is barbaric.’
‘Welcome to the real world, Cutter. You want to stand up and make a point, you’re more’n welcome. Just give me time to get away first.’
‘You mean, what’s done is done, we just stand by and accept it?’
‘Skullboys are everywhere, Cutter. They own the Outzone. You piss off one lot of ’em, word soon gets around. Fine if you don’t plan on coming back too often. Me, I’ve got a living to make.’
The procession was ending, the last few wagons and riders roaring and rattling into the night, the whooping cries gradually fading. But he could still see the woman and child in the cage. She seemed to be looking almost directly at him, as if she had seen something in the darkness. He flinched, telling himself it was no more than coincidence, and then the woman turned slowly away to face the direction of travel, drawing the child closer to her side. As the woman presented her back to him, he made out a large scar or birthmark on the back of her skull, reaching almost all the way from the crown to the nape.
He wanted desperately to act, but he knew it was senseless; that Meroka was right. How ludicrous he must seem to her now, he thought: fresh from the city, stung with bruising indignation at the inhumanity he had only now begun to take notice of. But it had been out there all along, not just for years or decades but for millennia. A grinding toll of cruelty and injustice, going on, ceaselessly, for every waking moment of his life.
‘I know it’s hard,’ Meroka said eventually, when the clamour of the Skullboy caravan had all but faded, ‘but you get used to it. It’s get used to it or go insane. I already made my choice.’
‘I can’t blame you for that.’ They had stood up from the ground and put their guns away.
‘It’s not that I don’t care. But there are lots of them and not many of us.’ Long silences stretched between each sentence, Meroka assembling the words with obvious effort. ‘If everyone in Spearpoint got together, made an army ... came down here, maybe that would make a difference. And that’s likely, right? Swarm’ll forgive us before that happens.’
‘What’s Swarm?’
‘Just one more thing you don’t need to worry about, Cutter.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was the horses, not the lightening sky, that eventually roused him to alertness. They were whinnying, and in the still-present darkness he could hear Meroka cursing and muttering as she tried to quieten the animals. He divested himself of the blanket and stood up, shivering slightly, for the air had cooled and he had been tolerably warm under the covering. He felt light-headed, as if he had rushed to his feet too quickly. The horses were still upset about something. He looked in the direction of the road, but there was no sign of anyone else coming along it, and certainly no audible indication of another Skullboy caravan.
Still unsteady on his feet, the light-headedness persisting, he made his way to the commotion. Meroka was a shape in the dark, one hand on the muzzle of each horse, trying to settle them. Their eyes and teeth flashed white and wild and terrified. Their ears were flattened back.
‘Something’s got ’em riled, Cutter.’ She was out of breath with the effort of restraining the animals, which were still thrashing and kicking against her grip.
‘That much I surmised.’ He took hold of his own horse and laid a hand on the sweat-sheened column of its neck. He could feel its pulse, like an overwound clock. ‘Did you see or hear anything?’
‘Been as quiet as a crypt all night. Then they start this shit.’
At the back of his mind the truth was already forming, although he was reluctant to give it room. ‘How do you feel, Meroka?’
‘Like I’ve been up all night, and the day before.’
‘I mean, apart from that.’
She turned to look at him, her face little more than a featureless oval. ‘Why you asking?’
‘Because I’m not feeling well myself. Either that food I ate was bad, or else ...’ He halted, still holding the horse, and used his other hand to tug up his sleeve, exposing enough of his forearm to read his watches. The dials and hands glowed feeble blue-green. It was hard to read them, with the agitated horse jerking its head up and down. He concentrated until he could be certain. The watches were beginning to show different times, the minute hands no longer winding around in perfect lockstep. The cumulative difference between the fastest and slowest watch was already a quarter of an hour.
‘Something wrong?’
‘I checked the synchronisation before I s
lept. The watches were all keeping good time. Now they’re drifting.’
‘So what’re you saying?’
It was hard to come out with the words. He almost felt that by voicing his suspicion he was in danger of concretising it into reality. ‘My symptoms match those of zone sickness. My watches are telling me something’s happening. And our horses aren’t happy. Animals sense these things sooner than people or machines.’
‘Could just be a squall.’
‘Yes. It could just be a squall.’ But he thought about Fray’s suspicion that there was something big coming down the line.
More than a squall, for certain.
‘I think we’re in trouble,’ he said. ‘I need to gauge the change-vector and issue us both a dose of antizonals.’
But even as he spoke, some fight seemed to go out of the horses. They stopped kicking the ground and yanking their heads, their eyes narrowing and their ears pricking forwards. They snorted and snuffled, letting the humans know that while they were in no way placated, whatever had stirred them up appeared to have passed, for now.
Quillon still felt light-headed and unsteady, but even that was beginning to ease. He released his horse, letting it wander off, then adjusted his watches back into synchronisation, as near as he could judge it. He would monitor them carefully from now on.
‘You were saying?’
‘Maybe it was a squall after all.’
‘Squalls happen. I feel all right. What about you?’
‘Whatever it was seems to be passing.’