~ DAVID ~
As David walked through the Mettywood, rifle slung over his shoulder, there was only one thought on his mind: the sooner we get proper roads, the better. The terrain in the Mettywood was uneven at the best of times, narrow and patched with hills, every second step a jutting rock or a gnarled old tree root sticking out of the dirt. An attempt had been made to drive a cart through, pulled by the hardiest horses from Hultry’s stables, but it had barely got beyond the treeline. The only way through was to walk.
It made questionable the decision to set up a homestead on the far side. David had never actually made it to the other side of the Mettywood, but he’d seen the maps. When the trees ended, there were miles of heath. There was a river, a couple of pools, and then eventually the foothills of a looming mountain. And there was the Aster farm. Goulden Aster was the patriarch; he was old money, wealthy enough to afford himself a parcel of land, but either the money ended there or Aster fancied a pastoral life.
They were only passing through the Aster farm today. A path had been beaten through the dirt by the heavy boots of the Captain Mannam’s Constabulary, investigating the death of one of Aster’s farmhands, so it was easy enough to find the way there. And anyway, it was the only real landmark west of the Mettywood.
This was Lieutenant Jackson’s mission, really. He’d found David in his office late yesterday. “We sent out the drones the other day,” he said. “Only short-range things, but they’ve given us a good overview of the valley.” Before David had had the chance to ask why Lieutenant Jackson had felt the need to report that he’d done the basics of his job, Jackson had produced from a satchel on his back a set of aerial photographs.
“These your maps?” David grunted.
“The basis of them,” said Jackson. “But have a look at this.” He pressed a finger on one of the photographs.
“Those are trees,” said David. “What about it?”
Jackson looked at him. “Does nothing strike you as odd about these?”
“No.”
“They’re growing in a pattern. I think they were planted deliberately in that pattern.”
David laughed. “By who? Don’t forget, before us no man had set foot on Essegena.”
“That we know of,” said Jackson.
“Is it not more likely that you’re just seeing things? Pareidolia?”
“I did wonder that,” Jackson agreed. “But then there’s this.” He reached into his satchel once more, this time taking from it a sheet of cellulose paper. There was an image drawn onto it, a circle, surrounded by flailing arms. David had absorbed enough history to recognise it as the symbol of the heretic Nameth, one of the ancient Gods. Nameth’s wheel was found on ancient monuments all over Belaboras.
Jackson placed the cellulose paper over his photograph. And the symbol was unmistakeable. Trees grew in a circle that aligned perfectly with the wheel, and on the point and vertex of every flail. Within the circle, the ground was completely clear of trees.
David’s face must have been a book. Jackson grinned. “Still think it’s pareidolia, sir?”
“It must be a coincidence,” David spluttered.
“I intend to find out either way. My men are going to see these trees for ourselves, up close.”
Naturally, David had come along. He thought of the wooden figure, locked away in Captain Mannam’s vault. Maybe somebody else had been here, long ago. Was that even possible?
The Aster farm was hard to miss. The last gasps of the Mettywood gave way to a long flat, green prairie with barely a hint of trees as far as the eye could see. Towards the horizon, hills rose up covered in yellowed foliage, and beyond them the blue shadow of those tall mountains soaring towards the sky as if they meant to pierce the heavens. In the middle of all this was a cabin of hewn logs and sod, and around it uneven fenceposts. A solitary tree grew in the midst of this plain, dark and shrivelled with only a handful of leaves at the end of its wizened branches; the whole farmstead seemed to have been built around this tree.
Lieutenant Jackson had the group pause at the farm for a rest, while he spoke with Goulden Aster. David took the opportunity to look around—and the view looking back down at the valley was nothing to be sniffed at, it had to be said. The ground here was high enough that one could see over the tops of the Mettywood’s trees, to the glimmering water of the Clearwater and the busy city beyond.
Aster’s green-haired daughters brought milk and cakes for the soldiers to share. Some of the soldiers responded by trying to flirt with the eldest daughter, who had daubed her pale skin with yellow powder, while her sisters cowered behind her skirts. David judged the soldiers silently. He didn’t intercede, though; they were Jackson’s command, not his.
Eventually, Lieutenant Jackson emerged from Aster’s cottage. He had two farmhands with him, both in grubby overalls. One was a man, thickly built, with deep brown skin and short hair in tight coils around his head. The other was a pale-skinned woman with a long neck and a squashed-in face, her ears crimson beneath dirty blonde hair. “This is Oparne,” said Jackson, indicating first the man, then the woman. “And Murtannet. They know this side of the Mettywood better than anyone, so they’re going to accompany us today.”
“What, are we not capable of looking after ourselves?” asked Jim Kilbirnie.
Jackson wasn’t open to discussion. “You can wait here for us if you don’t like my decisions. You won’t get paid, of course.”
And that was that. There were a few murmurs, but Jackson blew the whistle that he wore on a chain around his neck, and the squad fell into a tight column, two wide. And off they went, to a man, into the wilderness. Soon, even Goulden Aster’s farm was a distant memory, lost over the horizon.
“We’ve never mapped out this far,” Jackson whispered, as they passed the rotten husk of a fallen tree. “This is new country.”
“Isn’t it all?” David mused.
The closer they came to the tall mountains, the more the ground seemed to harshen. Steep escarpments replaced the easy ground of the Aster farm. Exposed rock poked upwards, and narrow streams weaved their way between. Half of the heath seemed to be given over to putrid peat. Even the sky seemed to get darker. The clouds cast shadows on the mountain face, mottling its surface with terrifying shapes.
“By my reckoning we should be getting near by now,” said Lieutenant Jackson, dropping back to talk to David. “The trees are starting to come back.”
He was right. Much of the land between here and the Mettywood had been almost devoid of trees, and there were never more than two or three in one place. But up on the slopes and foothills, they were far more numerous. Curiously, many of them had lichen-stained slabs of rock around their trunks. Closer inspection revealed the dead and decaying remnants of a bed of wild roses, wilted and black, in the shadow of one tree. There were no flowers living here at all. The bog had suffocated them at the stem.
The uneven terrain necessitated that Jackson’s squad abandon the organised column they’d walked in since Hultry’s place. The soldiers had spread out, still keeping in each other’s eyeshot but steadily fanning wider. Jackson hadn’t told them the reason for this mission. As far as they were concerned, it was no different to the other mapping expeditions. The reason for this, Jackson said, was to prevent them from forming their own preconceptions. If there was any evidence of civilisation to be found, anything that didn’t belong, it would be quickly apparent—but if the soldiers were actively looking for it, they’d probably start to see every little thing they passed as an artifice.
“Hey, what the fuck?” The cry came from Ty Craddock, a burly redhead who was near to where the trees were at their thickest.
“What is it?” Jackson ran towards Craddock. David did his best to keep pace, but it was a struggle to run fast and also keep his footing. Other soldiers reached Craddock first, gathering around him so David could see nothing but their backs.
“Is this somebody’s idea of a joke?” Craddock sounded angry.
“The farmers think they’re funny. Doing shit like this.” Jim Kilbirnie rounded on Oparne and Murtannet, the two farmhands backing away slowly.
“This isn’t our doing,” Murtannet protested.
Oparne nodded frantically. “We don’t ever go this far. This is way beyond the boundaries.”
Kilbirnie didn’t seem placated. “Bullshit. This is all you.”
David rushed to get between the two farmhands and the soldiers, before somebody came to blows. “Easy,” he said, pushing Kilbirnie back with his hand. “What’s the fuss?”
Lieutenant Jackson turned to David. “You should really see this for yourself, Captain.”
Ty Craddock was stood beside a flat slab of rock. On top of it, surrounded by moss, was an animal’s tail. The fur was black and white, still fresh, and the bone had been severed neatly. There wasn’t so much as a drop of blood around it. “This has been cut,” said David.
“Aye,” Jackson nodded, “but by who?”
“I told you, it was those farmers.” Kilbirnie had gone red in the face.
Jackson shook his head calmly. “That’s just baseless speculation.”
Scrumpy Cochrane, at the edge of the group, was ashen-faced. “This is no farmer’s doing,” he said, sombre. “This is an omen. There’s something on this here mountain doesn’t want us to pry.”
“What sort of something? You mean like a bear?”
Scrumpy looked at David like he was simple. “No bear. This is the ancient mark of a witch-shade.”
The name was ominous, but a couple of the other soldiers laughed. “They don’t exist,” said Betha Whindle. “Just scary stories to tell kids.”
“They exist. I’ve seen them.” Scrumpy shook his head. “We shouldn’t go no further. The witch-shade won’t harm us if we turn back here.”
“Let’s not jump to spooks,” said Lieutenant Jackson. “More likely some poor critter died and got eaten. The tail’s all that’s left. Come on, we keep moving.”
Scrumpy grumbled a bit, but fell in with the rest of them. He held back a bit, along with a couple of others with anxious faces, and David noticed that his eyes kept darting towards every shadow.
Soon enough they came to a steep bit, the mountain presenting them with a near-impassable wall of rock. They all gathered at the base.
“That’s as far as we’re going, I should think,” said David. “You’re not getting up there without gear.”
A low whistle sounded from somewhere up high. It rang around the trees, and all looked at one another, suddenly uncertain. “The witch-shade,” said Scrumpy, and this time nobody rushed to mock him.
“Whatever it is, we’ll find it.” Lieutenant Jackson began to clamber up the rock face, using jutting out bits of stone and nearby tree branches as handholds. Twice he nearly lost his grip. He had a fair way to fall. Higher up, the branches became flimsier.
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“Come on, Lieutenant, let’s call it there,” David called. “Bring some gear tomorrow and have a proper search.”
“No,” said Jackson, chancing a look down. “I’m just about there—”
As he spoke, he swung his arm towards the top. Swung, and missed. It was over in an instant. Before anybody had a chance to react, Lieutenant Jackson was back on the ground with the rest of them. He lay still. His leg was bent at a horrible angle, the bone poking out of the skin. At first he didn’t seem to realise. He examined his hands, the palms grazed and bleeding, then lifted himself to stand. As soon as he put weight on his leg, he noticed his mistake. He cried out and crumpled back to the floor.
David was quick to assume command; he sent the two farmhands back to their farm, with instructions to bring whatever they could find to carry Jackson back down to the valley. As they ran off, he sat with Jackson, who’d gone quite white. It looked a nasty break. “Don’t try to stand again,” said David. “It’ll only make it worse.”
It was getting dark when the farmhands returned, carrying with them a makeshift stretcher. Jackson’s soldiers—Scrumpy in particular—were beginning to get agitated. “We need to move,” Scrumpy kept saying. “The witch-shade won’t warn us away again.” Matters weren’t helped by the long shadows that the falling dusk was casting, nor by the continued low whistling. It was probably just a bird’s call, David reasoned, but it did nothing to dispel the idea of a malevolent spirit warning them away.
In the end, he was grateful to be walking back towards the well-lit safety of the valley with the others, once Lieutenant Jackson was loaded up. They left Jackson at Aster’s farm, with a couple of guards for company, rather than risk taking him further than they needed to. No longer bogged down by the Lieutenant, they reached the valley easy enough. David sent Sergeant Tunnock to the hospital to call for help, then—yawning—retired for the night.
He didn’t get to sleep for several hours after that. Whenever he closed his eyes, he thought back to the darkening woods, and Scrumpy’s spectral witch-shade.
A week later, David returned from a mid-morning walk among the bergamots and winter jasmine of the riverbank to find a soldier in his office. It wasn’t one of his. This man wore the deep green jacket with gold-yellow flaunches of the Constabulary. He’d taken the liberty of sitting in David’s seat, his mud-coated boots resting on David’s desk as he played with David’s crystal decanter. He didn’t even have the decency to wipe the smug look off his face when he saw David enter.
“Can I help you?”
The soldier smirked. “I thought you Captains were supposed to be good time-keepers,” he said. “Yet I’ve been here twenty minutes. It’s atrocious, really.”
“I am a senior officer,” David barked. “So I don’t need to explain myself to the likes of you. Now get your feet off my desk and put my things back where you found them. Go on, quickly now, or I’ll be having words with the Lord Constable.”
The soldier did as he was bid, albeit lazily, and stood. “The Lord Constable sent me to fetch you. He wants a word.”
“Does he now?” Probably about that wooden figure, David thought. Mannam must have figured out where it came from. He bit back the urge to act excited. The very existence of the carved idol was between him and Captain Mannam. He had to maintain the façade of fury—and fury that he did still genuinely feel—in front of Mannam’s soldier. “What’s your name?”
“Colne, sir.”
“Is that so?” David walked with purpose towards Colne, taking care to never break eye contact. At the last moment, just as Colne began to back away, David suddenly pivoted, and sat down in his recently-vacated chair. He didn’t look up at Colne. “You can tell the Lord Constable that I will be with him shortly.”
“Sir.”
David counted the hollow echoes of Colne’s steps on the floor. It took the regular man fifteen steps to get from desk to door, he knew. When he counted fourteen, he spoke again: “Oh, and you can also tell the Lord Constable that if any more of his messengers see fit to disrespect me, they won’t be returning to him with both legs unbroken.”
“No need to have a temper, sir,” Colne retorted, in a horrid silky voice. “You could be struck off for threatening a subordinate.”
David said nothing back. Colne was right. His position gave him carte blanche to threaten and apply any punishment from the Soldiers’ Code—but it wasn’t legal to break a man’s legs, and it hadn’t been for well over a thousand years. He waited until Colne’s footsteps had faded to nothing, then beat his fists on his desk. Ten solid punches. Just enough to let out the worst of it. Calm himself.
Why did Mannam have to send such a dickhead?
David allowed himself a coffee and a breather before he went to speak to Mannam, and because he felt it wise to do at least some work, he sent one of his soldiers up to Plateau Watch with a letter asking Lieutenant Bennett for a situation update. And then he cursed the inefficiencies of Essegena’s infrastructure. They’d been here months now, and still there was no hint of a functional radio system. How hard could it be to stick some antennae up?
A red-lipped woman greeted David at the door to the Constable’s half-built tower. “The Lord Constable’s waiting for you, Captain,” she said, derisive.
David shook his head. “I have obligations. I can’t just be at Mannam’s beck and call all day.”
The woman shrugged. “This way.”
She led David through to a dimly-lit room, where Captain Mannam stood with his back against a door. A sign above the door marked it as the place for ‘Questioning’. David frowned. Surely Mannam wasn’t about to involve him in Constabulary business.
Mannam certainly was. “I’m glad you could make it, Captain Clifford,” he said. “Time-wasters and funny men are the curse of the honest investigator.”
“That’s not a dig at me for not coming straight away, I hope?”
Mannam shook his head. “Of course not. You’re a busy man, same as me. If my soldiers have been giving you lip, I’d be happy to discipline them. No, I’ve had a man confess to killing Edmote Wenderwind.”
“That’s the man they found in Hultry’s stables, right?”
Mannam nodded. “His body desecrated. A vile thing.”
“And you say you’ve had a confession?”
“There’s a man in the interrogation room who tells me he killed Wenderwind. The problem is, nothing else he’s said is true. People who treat a serious investigation like it’s just a joke really rile me up. You might want to sit in.”
“It’s not really my job to do Constabulary work—”
“Oh, by the Lightness,” Mannam muttered, hands covering his face. “I’m not asking you to do Constabulary work. Just sit in. The man’s story might amuse you.”
“Fine.”
Mannam opened the door, and David followed him into the interrogation room. It was lit only by a bright halogen panel in the ceiling, and the wooden walls had been painted a solid black. One of Mannam’s Constabulary guards stood just inside. He didn’t acknowledge Mannam’s entry, his attention fixed firmly on the desk in the middle of the room.
And there sat Oparne, the farmhand from the Aster farm. His overalls were stained with dirt, his eyes bloodshot and puffy. He’d been staring at the wall when David entered, but perked up immediately. As he turned, David noticed a bloody welt on his neck, bright and weeping. The blood had seeped into Oparne’s collar.
“Is he alright?”
The Lord Constable shrugged. “He’s not going to die, if that’s what you mean. He had the wound when he got here—self-inflicted, if you’ll believe him.”
David frowned. “You make it sound like you don’t believe him.”
“All he’s done is spin a lie. I can’t abide a liar.” Mannam pulled out two narrow metal chairs across from Oparne, sitting on one and beckoning David to join him. “Tell Captain Clifford your story.”
Oparne looked from Mannam to David and back again, with saucers for eyes. He sighed, rubbed his bleeding neck, winced as he did so. “I killed Wenderwind,” he said. “Killed him, strung him up, scratched that shit into his chest.”
David glanced at Mannam, sat stoic on his chair. “You realise this is a very serious crime?”
Oparne nodded enthusiastically. “Lock me up, Captain. Ten years in the cells, then ship me back to the Hive. It’s what I deserve.”
Mannam shook his head. “That’s not how this works. You’ll go to the stake for this, to burn.”
To burn? Burning was an ancient punishment. David tried to think of an instance in his lifetime—but he came up blank. “You’d burn a man for this?”
“It’s the standard punishment,” said Mannam. “I can fetch the statute books if you’d prefer? They’re quite plain. For killings motivated by religion, the culprit must burn.”
Oparne beat a fist on the table, prompting the guard on the door to spring into a defensive position. “This had nothing to do with religion,” he yelled.
“Wenderwind joined the Church of Lightness, and two weeks later he turns up dead with Castan’s fucking Spiral on his chest—and you’re telling me that had nothing to do with religion?” Much as Oparne had yelled loudly, Mannam was matching him for volume. “I bet you thought you’d get off easy if you came clean. Did Wenderwind’s friends give you that cut on your neck? Vigilante justice? You figured next time they’d kill you, so you’d come to us and let the dear old Lord Constable keep you safe behind an armed guard.”
“No,” said Oparne, recoiling. “No, I swear, none of that’s true.”
Mannam snarled. “What, then?”
Oparne glared back at Mannam, breathing heavily. “I told you—”
“No, you spun a fancy tale about evil spirits,” said Mannam gruffly. “I’ve asked you kindly and now I’ll ask you in not such a kind manner to take your head out of your arse. This is the real world. And a man is dead at your hand.”
Oparne was crying. David hadn’t spotted when the tears began, but the man’s eyes were puffy now, and quite damp. The Lord Constable appeared not to have noticed.
“Give me a few minutes with the man, Lord Constable,” said David. “Take a break.”
Mannam considered it for a few seconds. “I think I will,” he said, nodding. “This is doing my heart no favours.” He rose ponderously, coughing loudly into his hand, and wiped the almost-chartreuse phlegm onto his trousers. As he reached the door, he paused for a moment to look back at David. “Don’t expect any straight answers from this one, Captain, I well know his ilk.” And then, watched by all in the room, Lord Constable Mannam left.
Oparne’s eyes flicked slowly from the door to David. “He doesn’t believe me. Nobody believes me. But I tell you, it’s true—every word of it.”
“Tell me the whole story,” said David. “From the beginning.”
Oparne picked at his bloody collar and winced. “We were all of us up at Deadshrike.”
“Deadshrike?”
“The Aster farm,” explained Oparne. Deadshrike was a pretty stark name for it, David thought.
He nodded. “And when you say ‘we’..?” He let the question hang in the air.
“The six of us up at Deadshrike,” said Oparne. “We were all assigned farms to work, when we got here. So it’s me, and Wenderwind, and Sal Murtannet.” He counted the names on his fingers. “Absalom and Swift too—oh, and Molly Bradshaw.”
David frowned. “The General’s daughter?”
“I don’t know,” said Oparne. “Probably? She said her dad wanted her to be a soldier, but her dad’s a prick.”
It was all David could do to stifle his laughter. That sounded like General Bradshaw alright—but what sort of soldier would he be to laugh at Oparne? Instead, he returned to his questions. “And was she involved? Or any of the others?”
“Involved?”
“In the death of Edmote Wenderwind.”
Oparne shook his head. “I swear as none of them saw him. If they had it would have been them that killed him. Wenderwind vanished, you see? There’s this great tree right in the middle of Deadshrike—a horrible thing, all dead and twisted—and about three weeks after we got to Deadshrike this thing was glowing. Bright as the stars themselves, coming from the middle of this tree. Well, I ain’t ever seen anything of the like. None of us had, but we realised we couldn’t hide in the wood-shed all night. Mistress Aster—that’s Pereneth, the Master’s wife—is very particular about us eating at a set time. So Wenderwind went out to look at the tree closer.”
“And then what?”
“The light disappeared. We figured someone had left a lantern up in the tree for a joke, and we didn’t think nothing when Wenderwind never showed for supper. He doesn’t like garlic, see, and Mistress Aster is over-eager on the garlic. Sometimes he doesn’t come to eat. But he never missed a day on the fields, not once. We knew something was up. But Sal reckoned he’d just decided to do a runner—she’s like that, is Sal, always thinking of what people might do. She said people change their minds all the time. Wenderwind had probably had enough of farming. Master Aster reported him as missing, and that was that.” Oparne stopped, catching his breath. “But that isn’t true. I saw him, Captain. That light in the tree—I swear to you on the Good Mother’s name it took the shape of a man and killed Edmote Wenderwind.”
“Are you saying he was killed by a light?”
“A ghost, more’n like. I know you don’t believe me. But I tell you, it’s true. I went to him, while the others were at their supper, and I’ve never seen a man so afraid. Blood everywhere. And the air... It was like lead, so heavy I thought I might suffocate. There was nothing I could do for Wenderwind. Man was dead when I got to him, and we both knew it.”
David straightened up in his seat and rested his arms on the desk. “If Edmote Wenderwind was killed by a ghost, why did you say you killed him? A man can only die once, surely.”
Oparne shook his head. “That’s what you’re not getting, Captain. Wenderwind came back.”
“So he wasn’t dead,” said David.
“I tell you, that man was dead,” Oparne insisted. “I saw him die. His body vanished. Perhaps it was a witch-shade or something that took him, I don’t know. But he came back.” Oparne’s voice suddenly dropped to a low timbre. “What else do you do, when what’s dead doesn’t stay dead?”
“I go to bed,” said David. “Because clearly I’m overtired and imagining things.”
“You wouldn’t be so glib if you saw it,” Oparne hissed. “I took a scythe to his throat, then I carried him down to the stables and hung him up.”
“And the symbol you carved into his chest? That was overkill, surely.”
“The spiral was to invoke Castan’s protection,” said Oparne. “So the Gods don’t bring him back again. I tell you, Captain, it was not Edmote Wenderwind that came back to Deadshrike. It was something else in his body.” He gestured to his bloodied throat. “I saw the light in the tree again last night. From my window. When I woke up, I was bleeding. There’s something unnatural on this planet, Captain, and it’s coming for me. So lock me up if you have to, ship me off back to the Hive, anything.”
David regarded Oparne for a few seconds. The man’s tale was preposterous, it had to be said—but he certainly seemed convinced of it. Perhaps evil entities did roam Essegena. Or perhaps Oparne had lost his mind. Either way, there was no doubt in David’s mind that Oparne’s was the hand that had slain Edmote Wenderwind.
Lord Constable Mannam was waiting just outside the interrogation room, sipping on a glass of water. “My apologies, Captain Clifford. I shouldn’t have let the bastard get to me.”
“He’s guilty,” said David. “Mad too, probably. It’s not my job to tell you how you should sentence your prisoners, Lord Constable, but if I were you I’d throw him in a cell and let him rot there for a while.”
“A very decisive judgement,” Mannam observed. “You’d better not start gunning for my job, Captain Clifford.”