Bone Trail Read online

  Snatching the sack from the kith beside him, he seized the wyrmeling and was about to thrust it inside when he froze, his eyes wide and uncomprehending as the shaft of Thrace’s lance pierced his chest. At the same moment, Aseel’s blast of white-hot fire engulfed the kith beside him.

  As the whitewyrme and rider soared back into the night sky, the blazing kith stumbled from the highstack, illuminating its striped layers as he fell. Aseel turned and dived back down at the two remaining kith. One of them had slipped the spitbolt from his back; the other had seized a sidewinder. Both of them were taking aim.

  Thrace levelled her lance at the taller of the two and let out a high-pitched screech. The sharp point of her kinlance penetrated the man’s skull smooth and clean, like a hot spike through an ice crust. He dropped to his knees, then slumped forward, his body thrown into spasm as his sidewinder skudded harmlessly across the surface of the rock and disappeared over the edge.

  The remaining kith raised his spitbolt and fired as they swooped past. The bolt struck Thrace at the ­shoulder, glanc­ing harmlessly off the soulskin but knocking her off balance. With a cry, she fell from Aseel’s back and tumbled across the flat rock of the highstack before coming to rest beside the glowing vent, kinlance clutched in her hands.

  Overhead, the whitewyrme faltered in the air, tipping to one side and arcing round to dive again. Thrace leaped to her feet.

  The kith was reloading.

  He was heftily built, with broad shoulders, beard, beetle-brow, bad skin. His eyes were filled with panic and loathing, and his fingers trembled as he wound back the bow of the spitbolt. Thrace ran at him, her kinlance raised above her head. The kith lowered his weapon, bringing it down level with her chest. Thrace struck out with a raking kick and took the kith’s legs from under him. He went down hard, dropping his spitbolt and sprawling on the ground. With the kinlance gripped in both hands, Thrace brought it down hard. The needlesharp point tore through the knotted kerchief, missing his bull neck by a fraction, and pinned him to the ground.

  ‘Let me up,’ he squealed, squirming, kicking out, reaching up and fumbling at the knots of the kerchief. ‘You filthy little—’

  Thrace kicked him hard between the legs. He bucked and howled and grasped at himself.

  ‘Lie still,’ she told him. She hadn’t spoken in anything but wyrmetongue for so long that the words sounded strange and guttural to her.

  The kith whimpered softly, but stopped struggling.

  Behind her, Aseel had landed noiselessly, his eyes still glowing a fiery red and smoke twisting up from his ­nostrils. He folded his wings and moved swiftly to the glowing vent beside which the kith with the club lay. He was dead, the half-formed wyrmeling clutched in one outstretched hand. Aseel crouched down, prised the man’s clenched fingers apart and tenderly picked up the wyrmeling. It too was dead.

  Cradling the small lifeless wyrmeling to his breast, Aseel nuzzled it gently, his eyes amber-yellow and half-closed. He then carefully held the tiny corpse out over the glowing vent and, with a wind-rustle sigh, let it drop into the depths.

  When he looked back at Thrace and the kith, his eyes were glowing blood-red once more.

  Thrace tugged her kinlance from the ground releasing the kerchief and the kith, who remained motionless on the ground, staring back up at her. She levelled the point at his chest.

  ‘Wait,’ said Aseel, his voice soft and measured and full of sorrow. ‘First, I would have you question him . . .’

  He inclined his neck and looked at the dead kith at his feet, then over at the other dead kith sprawled near the edge of highstack. Below, flickering in the darkness, the third kith still burned.

  ‘I want to know where they have come from,’ Aseel said softly, and Thrace could sense the cold fury in his voice. ‘So I can go there and put an end to this.’

  Forty

  The silver coin flashed as it spun. Josiah snatched it from the air and thrust it into the front pocket of his breeches.

  Solomon Tallow smiled. ‘So the talk round the campfires is of rebellion?’ he said, and tousled the boy’s mess of tangled blond hair.

  Josiah nodded. ‘And the young merchant encourages it,’ he confirmed. ‘Says you’re too harsh on the sick folks . . .’

  ‘And you’re sure about that leg of his?’

  The boy nodded again. ‘Seen it with my own eyes,’ he said.

  Tallow tossed him another coin. ‘Well, keep up the good work, y’hear?’

  ‘I shall, Mr Tallow, sir,’ Josiah promised earnestly.

  Tallow stood up from his campfire and stretched expansively, then patted his stomach. ‘Be sure to thank that mother of yours for the stew,’ he told the boy, who was gathering up the iron pot and ladle at the gang­master’s feet.

  Josiah looked up and smiled. ‘I sure will, Mr Tallow, sir,’ he said. ‘And you can trust me with that other business too,’ he added before slipping away into the dark.

  In front of Tallow, the settlers’ campfires twinkled in the blackness like stars. They illuminated the settlers’ haggard faces, which were creased with worry and ­hollowed out by exhaustion. The mood was quiet, sombre; so different from the high spirits of ten days earlier when they’d set forth from the new stockade. Back then there had been laughter and excited chatter. And songs. Call and response, and rousing choruses, with fiddle players and tin-whistle pipers accompanying their swooping harmonies.

  This mood had lasted for most of the first day and into the second. But by the third day of trekking through the scorch-hot bone-dry badlands, the songs and chatter had fallen silent. And on that third day, the first of the settlers fell sick.

  He was a strapping young farmer, tall and heftily built, and the last person anyone would have thought might have succumbed to illness. Yet succumb he did. Blinding headaches and numbing weariness, followed by nosebleeds that would not let up. His wife had pleaded with Solomon Tallow to wait up a while, said that she couldn’t cope on her own with the four kids. But Solomon Tallow had held firm.

  ‘We must press on or our water’ll run out,’ he said, and the woman’s tears did nothing to weaken his resolve.

  The man died the following day and was hastily buried in a shallow grave, a wooden post with the name Jed carved into the wood marking the spot. On that same day, half a dozen more of the settlers went down with the same sickness. And the day after that, forty or so more. Same symptoms. Same outcome. A line of posts was left in the wake of the column of greywyrmes that picked their way across the badlands towards the shimmering blue outline of the high country peaks.

  The posts were not the only sign of the harshness of the trail through the badlands. It had been travelled by others. Their skeletons littered the cracked rock, the bones stripped clean by carrionwyrmes and bleached white by the elements. The remnants of oxen and mules; men, women and children, and babies, their small toothless skulls gurning and gruesome. The bone trail. There were upturned wagons and broken carts. Backpacks and empty watergourds. And sometimes, ordered piles of belongings; trunks and crates all roped together, that families must have left to lighten their load, intending to return and collect them – but failing to do so.

  Thomas Hughes & Family

  Harlan Bridges

  FALLOWFOOT

  The letters that had been painted so neatly and clearly were cracked and peeling.

  Each time the settlers passed such forlorn remains, they clustered closer to the flanks of the great greywyrmes that trudged indomitably on through the heat. Those who had gone before them, the settlers knew, had died when their beasts of burden had perished. At least they had these huge creatures to haul their ever more ­precious gourds of water, no matter how sick and weak the settlers themselves became. If only the gangmaster would slacken the pace a bit . . .

  Fear and discontentment began to smoulder. And once it had caught a hold, it spread through the convoy like a
bushfire. The settlers wanted to have time at least to bury their dead with dignity and due respect. And they wanted answers for this strange and malevolent sickness that was striking so many of them down. And on this, the tenth evening, when the column had come to a halt for the night – the hobbled greywyrmes creating an outer ring and the settlers inside the circle; setting up camp, making fires and setting stewpots upon them – the talk of some kind of rebellion was rife.

  Josiah had listened attentively, like he always did, in the shadows, out of the light of the campfires, and reported what he’d heard back to the gangmaster.

  Solomon Tallow strode over to the nearest campfire and stopped in front of Nathaniel Lint the Younger, who was sitting picking miserably at a flame-charred side of squabwyrme. The young merchant’s right leg was ­bandaged, a cloud of flies buzzing round it. The binding was stained dark, and a putrid stench hung in the air.

  Nathaniel spat out a lump of gristle and tossed aside the stripped bone he’d been gnawing. He looked up at Tallow, his eyes beseeching.

  ‘I dressed the wound like you said,’ he began, a tearful whine colouring his voice, ‘but it’s begun to fester, Solomon. Don’t reckon I can make it much further . . .’ The merchant stuck out his chin, attempting to look ­resolute and brave. ‘Best thing is if I take me a gourd or two, and a greywyrme, and head back to the stockade – get me some medicine and rest it up . . .’

  Tallow looked down at him contemptuously. ‘Happen we’re going to have to amputate,’ he pronounced solemnly, pulling his broadblade gutting knife from his belt. He reached down and ran the back of the knife along the merchant’s leg, some way north of the knee; tutted sympathetically. ‘But it’ll have to be chopped off high enough to ensure all the infection is removed.’

  He reversed the knife and cut through the soiled bandage. The binding fell away to reveal the rotting slab of wyrmemeat that Nathaniel had concealed beneath, to give the impression of putrefaction. Tallow skewered it and tossed it into the fire.

  ‘Looks like you just made a miracle recovery,’ he said, fixing Lint with a dead-eyed stare.

  The merchant recoiled and sat staring miserably into the firelight as Solomon climbed to his feet. The gangmaster looked round at the settlers’ faces staring back at him from the other campfires, hope-filled and longing to be reassured. He wiped his hands on his breeches, then raised them as he addressed the camp.

  ‘I’m sore aware of the sickness that has come among you,’ he announced, his voice deep and bluff. ‘It is un­fortunate,’ he added, and pretended not to notice the outraged muttering that greeted the inadequacy of his description, ‘but it ain’t catching. Wealdsickness. That’s what it’s called. It’s caused by the thin air up here. Course, it affects ox and mules and such, as y’all know. But it can also afflict folks. Some worse than others. There ain’t no rhyme nor reason to it.’ He paused. ‘Nor no cure.’

  The settlers exchanged glances, aghast, wondering afresh what they had let themselves in for.

  ‘However,’ Solomon went on, ‘the good news is that we’re about to enter the high country, so if you ain’t yet fallen sick already, you’re unlikely to do so.’ He rubbed a hand over his stubbled scalp. ‘And by journey’s end tomorrow, we hit the first of the lakes. Clean fresh water and a full day to rest up and recover.’

  For the first time in days, a buzz of excited conver­sation spread through the camp.

  Solomon turned to the young merchant huddled by the campfire. The gangmaster’s dark eyes were hard and humourless.

  ‘Fetch the pitcher,’ he said gruffly. ‘That’s if you’ve finished with your malingering.’

  Nathaniel flinched, but got to his feet and threaded his way through the constellation of yellow flickering campfires to Tallow’s greywyrme. It was standing ­tethered to the others, its head lowered, eyes half-shut and great grey flanks rising and falling like a pair of immense bellows.

  Reaching up, Nathaniel tugged on the creature’s reins, bringing its neck lower, and he clambered up into the saddle. Then, leaning back, he closed his fingers round the stoppered vessel strapped securely in place behind the broad saddle. He fumbled at the buckles as he untied the leather straps, and lifted the brass pitcher by the handle on its side.

  The pitcher was half-full, judging by its weight and the way the precious flameoil it contained sloshed around when Nathaniel tilted it. Maker alone knew how much such a quantity of flameoil would fetch back on the plains, he thought. With this pitcher, together with the others locked securely away in Tallow’s quarters back at the new stockade, he’d be able to pay his father back a hundred times over and still be a wealthy man. ­Assuming, that is, he did not have to share the proceeds with anyone else.

  Nathaniel sighed unhappily. How was he to escape from Solomon Tallow?

  Twice he’d tried. Twice he’d failed.

  On the first day of the journey, he’d attempted to slip away in the hustle and bustle and high spirits, but although Solomon had appeared not to notice the young merchant hanging back at the rear of the column, and Nathaniel had turned away and begun heading towards the new stockade, he hadn’t got far. Tallow had sent his henchmen after him and dragged Nathaniel back to the head of the wyrmetrain, amid much laughter and amusement from the settlers.

  Now, for four days, he’d faked a leg injury, hoping the gangmaster would let him leave. But all to no avail. Nathaniel was beginning to consider himself jinxed. Either that, or Tallow was some kind of mindreader.

  He could hear him now. His bunch of wyrmehandlers had gathered round the gangmaster’s campfire, each holding small bottles containing flameoil tapped from the greywyrmes in their charge. Tallow was laughing and joshing with them, keeping spirits up in that easy way he had, his voice hearty and bluff, yet with an undertone of menace.

  Nathaniel trembled. Maybe, just maybe, he thought, it would be third time lucky.

  Climbing down and setting the sloshing pitcher beside the recumbent greywyrme, Nathaniel slung a watergourd over one shoulder and a pack of supplies he’d gathered for his escape over the other. It grieved him to leave the flameoil, but it was heavy and the likelihood of his completing the ten-day hike with it were slim. Besides, there was flameoil enough back at the stockade. He snatched a last look round the encampment of ­settlers, grateful that he wasn’t one of them, then slipped between two of the resting greywyrmes and out into the darkness beyond.

  Far to the east, the first creamy blush of moonrise was lightening the sky. Nathaniel Lint set off towards it at a brisk pace. He hadn’t noticed the tousle-headed boy watching his every move.

  ‘You did like I asked?’ Tallow said, and smiled as the boy, Josiah, handed him the heavy brass pitcher.

  ‘I soured his watergourd with rock salt,’ Josiah affirmed, ‘and replaced his dried provisions with half-rotten wyrmemeat – wrapped up in rockthyme to hide the smell,’ he added proudly.

  ‘Good lad,’ the gangmaster replied, unstoppering the pitcher and watching closely as the wyrmehandlers emptied the contents of their bottles into it, one by one.

  He looked back at the boy, and when he spoke, his voice loud and sonorous, it was for the benefit of his wyrmehandlers as much as for Josiah.

  ‘You see, lad, I couldn’t allow a pampered whelp like Nathaniel Lint to stay behind and spread discord at the settlement. I thought he was going to be useful up here,’ he said, and shrugged. ‘But I was wrong, and I soon saw his little game – aiming to recruit a gang himself and ­challenge my authority.’

  His dark eyes raked the faces of the wyrmehandlers lined up before him.

  ‘Times are changing,’ he announced. ‘We don’t need rich merchants from the plains pulling our strings. No. It’s weald-hardened kith such as us will determine the future of the high country.’

  Tallow’s voice rose, so that the camp at large could benefit from his wisdom.

  ‘A future where good
honest folk can stake out a place for themselves and benefit from the protection of them kith that guided ’em there.’

  He turned back to the boy.

  ‘You see, Josiah,’ he said, his voice suddenly low and confidential.

  The last wyrmehandler emptied the two fingers of flameoil his greywyrme had produced in the last day or so into the pitcher and stepped away to respect the gangmaster’s privacy.

  ‘I ain’t a brutal man,’ Tallow said. ‘I could have slit the whelp’s throat and had done with him when he first started acting up. But such bloodshed would only have upset the good folks around us. No, it’s better this way . . . Nice and quiet. And no fuss.’

  Tallow smiled as he reached into his waistcoat. He drew out a silver coin and tossed it to the boy.

  ‘Now, I don’t suppose that mother of yours has got any more of that delicious stew?’ he said.

  Forty-One

  ‘Where have you come from?’ Thrace demanded, the point of her kinlance levelled at the man’s heart.

  He was a tough-looking one, this kith. Scowl-faced and stocky, with small, frightened-looking dark eyes and bunched fists. Even though he was lying on his back, he looked like a fighter who didn’t know he was beat.

  ‘You move and you die,’ Thrace said, and she twitched her kinlance to emphasize the point. ‘Where have you come from?’

  The guttural human words seemed to choke in her throat, and beside her she noticed Aseel flinch at the sound of them. He braced his shoulders, flexed his neck, and his blood-red gaze hardened as curdled smoke ­trickled from his flared nostrils.

  The kith stared up at the wyrmekin girl standing over him. She was the first of her kind he’d encountered. Dark-eyed, clear-skinned; lithe in the suit of white she wore, that clung to her body like a second skin. She was beautiful, he had to admit, just about the most beautiful creature he’d ever laid eyes on, but terrifying for all that, with her harsh expression and black lance and that great whitewyrme of hers by her side, hissing and steaming like some liquor still about to blow.