Chapter Twenty-Two

The Flatlands

‘This Boar person?’ Merry said as they snaked through a narrow path, bobbing between patches of thicket. ‘Who are they?’

‘He’s a Travelling Sword,’ said Kira. ‘Odd types. From all over the place. Vigilantes,’ she added. ‘They’re not for nor against Winter. They just look out for the guy under the bigger guy’s shoe. They’re cruel. Bodies show up sometimes. A Block tax collector who pressured too hard. A thief who robbed a pious man. A guy in a fight who hit the other guy too hard.’

They penetrated the forest deeper- the Erwood, Kira called it. The darkness set in, and the cold. Agloff’s eyes probed fuzzy patches of night. Trees were moonlit smears in his eyeline. Every now and then Kira stopped to point out upturned roots, or low-hanging branches, or raise her bow to the wails of insects, before always continuing. To Agloff, he was lost.

Pangs cut through his belly and his stomach tied itself in unsated knots. He was sure he had only had one meal in days, and the satchels of food lifted from Block Seventeen were dumped on a hillside somewhere, in Fort Wilder’s shadow.

‘Close?’ Oxford murmured eventually.

‘We’re close,’ Kira concurred.

Sure enough, she extended an arm to halt them at a juncture in the path. Agloff could just discern two great iron bars cleaving the ground, stretching distantly in parallel in both directions.

‘Railway tracks,’ Kira said. ‘But the trains an’t run here for years.’ Agloff conjured the image of metal behemoths carrying God knows what from here to there.

‘Get a light on them?’ Oxford said.

Kira shook her head. ‘We’re outside Erobo’s lands now. There’s gangs and sorts about these parts. Sorts who get their work from Winter.’

Oxford laughed. ‘Like you?’

‘Like me. I only do enough to survive, so I can fight back. But out here, there’s Kaden’s gang, Lynn and Lyra. It ain’t pretty.’

‘Who’s Kaden?’ Oxford said gruffly.

‘He has small army based out the Flatlands. He was a nuisance to Winter. Hit and runs here, skirmishes there.’ She sighed, lamenting the fact. ‘Now Winter pay him to run the railways for Winter, moving product from the Lake to Eden. Because it’s easy and pays well.’

Kira gestured them along the track, as the trees thinned into grassland. Through bands of cloud, the moonlight glimmered over the crests of the valley in vague slithers of silver.

‘Where we going?’ Merry said.

Kira pointed them to rocks over the most distant crest. Agloff could make out the lines of upturned ridges where wind had chiselled the structure.

‘He lives out there a-ways. That’s where I leave you, friends.’

Agloff scanned the way ahead. From Kira’s words he had imagined they would see the outline of carriages hobbling cross-country, or the whinnying of distant horses. But their absence was as striking as the thing itself.

‘Will Ariea be okay?’ Merry said. The jitter in her words betrayed her fear.

‘If what you say is true, then Jask will keep a hold on her until Agloff arrives.’

Agloff walked closer to Kira. ‘Alive?’

Kira thought. ‘Jask doesn’t need her alive to get you there. Just you to hope that she is. And he’s got that much.’ Agloff opened his mouth, but Kira continued. ‘That doesn’t mean the chance isn’t worth going for.’

‘I’m sorry Agloff.’ Oxford stepped forwards, passed him a grim look in the dark.

‘Why? Why are you sorry?’ He spoke with sudden freneticism.

‘She meant so much to you. Your best friend.’

Agloff laughed. ‘No, you don’t get to talk about Ariea like that. You don’t get to decide when she’s… dead.’ His chest rose and fell sharply. ‘You don’t get to give up on her. You owe her.’

Oxford swallowed. ‘I took care of you for four weeks, and not because I had to. I don’t owe you anything. My job was to deliver you to the Underground, and I’d say I did that. I’m entitled to be a realist, and my opinion is—’

‘Well, you’re here, aren’t you?’ Agloff sniped.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Why would you be here, if not for her? You chose to stay. You chose to “look after” us. Or sit in a corner for eight hours a day while she looked after us. I forget which.’

Oxford replied in calm. He did not rise to Agloff’s rage. ‘I’m allowed to grieve. Jask took a lot. I think that’s an understatement. Consider it a courtesy to her I’m coming with you.’

A second time, Agloff laughed. ‘A courtesy? It’s like you want her to be dead!’

With a lazy fist, Oxford swung. Agloff clutched at his cheek. He touched his lips and felt the bloody warmth beneath his fingertips. The others retreated, as if the world revolved around the two of them alone.

‘I know Winter,’ Oxford said. ‘And I’m coming, on my terms, for my reasons. I’m not doing this for you, so you don’t get to tell me otherwise.’

Agloff scowled, felt his brow pucker. ‘You’re selfish.’

‘Me? I got us out the Underground when you were sick. But we went to Wilder because you wanted to go. And because you wanted to go, this arsehole took us Wishbone.’ He gestured Kira, ‘and, because of you, Ariea…’ Oxford stopped his thought. ‘I’m not the selfish one.’

Kira unsheathed her knife from her hip and held it to Oxford’s throat. Its blade caught fractures of moonlight. He grimaced. ‘Insult me again. I dare you. This arsehole saved your life. I’d say I made up.’ She spat on Oxford’s shoe.

‘I lost Alice three weeks ago. I get to be angry.’ He turned to Agloff then, eyes ferocious. ‘You think you know? You know nothing. You can think you love her, like that. You can fantasise and dream, but you don’t know what it is. The boredom. The commitment. The way you adore them, stare at them. Waking up is the worst thing in the world because every day I have to remember she’s not here. Maybe you’ll feel the same one day.

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‘But this ain’t some story, where we put our shitty differences aside and go and save the girl. I can’t just— I can’t. Not for you. Not for you.’ His voice fell to a deathly quiet. The roughness of his features seemed to regress into some childlike state. His lip trembled and he rubbed his eyes by the base of his palms.

Guilt washed over Agloff like the tides, but he was too angry to focus on it. He didn’t get to feel bad about this.

‘We’re here now,’ Agloff said eventually, searching himself for a moment of calm. ‘I blame myself for what we went through every day and I know you hate me—’

‘I do.’

‘But Ariea isn’t me. So believe she’s dead when you’ve seen it,’ Agloff said coolly. He wore the mask of his convictions. ‘Or clearly she deserves better than you. When it’s over, you don’t ever have to see me again, but do this for her.’ Agloff reached a bloody hand through the night to Oxford. He saw the glint of thought in the man’s eyes. Then he took it. Agloff felt the fury in Oxford’s grip, the will to crush his hand between the spread of their fingers. But the operative stifled himself, then nodded brusquely.

Agloff heard what Oxford said, he did. But for now, it was unhelpful. He had a lifetime to mourn his failures. He knew what he was going to do now: find Ariea; kill Jask. The thoughts were married to each other, like sides of a coin. Singular in their nature.

Kira then waved a hand up in the direction of the tracks. Agloff guessed it was several miles to the large rock, but that was enough, he thought. He could manage that. By the last wave, when the land keeled upwards to the crest on which the rock rested, night was paling into dawn. The outline of their destination became clear. Agloff spied caverns and tunnels running along channels of carved rock. He imagined people could live inside this place, fortified by its height and acres of surrounding flats.

‘He will meet us,’ Kira said as they stepped into the rock’s shadow. It was wide and flat, but such was its size that it still stood taller than any structure Agloff had seen.

Merry raised an eyebrow. ‘How does he know we’re coming?’

‘Runners,’ Kira said. ‘We message through runners, mainly children lifted from Winter. I sent word soon as I saw your tracks in the forest.’

‘Isn’t that risky?’ Merry replied. ‘If Winter is after the children?’

‘Winter never fret over one child, friend. It’s not worth the effort for vagrants. A good runner goes about their job hard and fast. Plus, you underestimate how good they are at it. Just here.’ She pointed to an opening under one of the wind-carved ridges that snaked the length of the rock and nodded them closer.

‘I see you there,’ a heavy voice spoke. He emerged from shadow, hooded in a leathered poncho. He was lit by the glow of a torch he bore in one hand, and the shimmer of a longsword in the other. ‘Kira.’

‘Chen,’ she acknowledged. Her voice turned to the others: ‘This is where I leave you. Make them hurt.’ She turned to Agloff, held his wrist a moment. ‘May you find that girl.’ She passed the man call Chen a terse nod and turned with a stooped walk back the other way. Content she was, to not exchange pleasantries with the man she now entrusted them. Agloff’s eyes hung on Kira a moment, sad that he had not told her thank you.

‘Inside,’ Chen said. ‘Name’s Baldrick Chen.’

His cargo obeyed. They were in a sand-coloured room, carved by wind, or ancient settlers perhaps. The ceiling sloped at a great angle from a narrow bunk at one end, to cupboards at the other. It was comfortable, thought Agloff. Chen had prepared a plate of food for each of them. The pelt of a lion was splayed on the floor for them to sit. Its head was mounted on the wall across from them, glazed eyes staring through the opening into the valley.

Chen drew back his hood. He was aged and ringed scars pock-marked his leathered cheeks. Setting the torch on its mounting, his giant frame groaned, joints cracking as he lowered onto his bunk.

Agloff and the others sat across the furs, shovelling fistfuls of food into their mouth. Such was his determination to reach Ariea, the thought had almost escaped Agloff that this road led to Eron as much as her. Almost. An uneasy feeling told him he could escape with only one or the other. In which case, the calculation was academic.

*

‘Time t’move,’ Chen ordered.

Agloff’s eyes strained wide from his first sleep in forever and gathered himself to his feet. Chen didn’t wait for them to ready themselves. He stooped from his homestead and into the light of day.

The pastures stretched as far beyond the rock, as they had before. The railway tracks marked their path, rising and falling with the land. Agloff could just make out the patterned smear of more woodland several miles hence.

‘Heading Winterward, Kira mentioned? Consider me intrigued,’ he called back as the others dozily trudged after him.

‘Consider it private,’ Oxford snapped eventually.

Merry cut in. ‘Kira didn’t tell you?’

‘Only where you were headed. Weren’t curious ‘till I seen yous. Strange types you are, and all. Not the usual sorts who cross the Flatlands. You Wishbone’s bastards?’

‘We’re our own bastards.’

Chen smirked. ‘True enough. It’s not my job to know.’

Agloff walked alongside him. ‘Are you taking us all the way to Winter?’

‘No,’ he grunted. ‘I’m dropping you near the outskirts. You can follow these tracks all the way to Eden but there’s an old town there I’ll drop you. Someone else will get you in.’

Oxford tilted his head. ‘Why the cloak and dagger?’

‘Knowledge divided, lad. Keeps Winter off our tail.’ He pointed to the crest of a boar sewn onto his sleeve. ‘Kira told you about us?’

There was a collective nod.

‘Aye, then you know it’s better I don’t take you the whole way. I can’t say who you are or why you’re going if I don’t know. Likewise, you, me. Consider it a working relationship.’

Time whittled by. Agloff’s attention focused on the growing smear of trees, and the rolling outline of snow-kissed mountains behind it. Chen said he roamed between Eden and the Flatlands. Some days he’d cover tens of miles of territory, others he stayed at one town for weeks on end. Then he’d receive word of a target, a ‘poor bastard’ as he put it, who had wronged some other folk.

‘The blackest crimes deserve swiftest justice,’ he said, ‘lest a town couldn’t punish the sins of its own’.

At last, the tracks punched into the woodland. According to Chen, the far edge of the flatlands marked Winterland’s borders. But they wouldn’t know it. Nature had reclaimed much here. Felled branches and overhanging bushes peppered their path. The trees were thinner than the Erwood, spindly things that Agloff thought might fall at a gust of wind.

They passed a sign marked, “Churchtown welcomes you.” and Chen said it’s where they were going. Evergreen trees guarded their approach, illuminated in ripe shades by the midday sun.

Then the treeline thinned into a vast clearing, and a dirt track sprouted alongside the tracks, blended into asphalt. On either side, clutches of smaller boxy buildings were overrun by nature. Each had been boarded and abandoned for posterity. They filed through and Agloff was caught by the strangeness of this place. It was a patch of broken paradise. The flag of Winter hung tamely from one of the larger buildings.

‘Winter cut this place up for logging,’ Chen said. ‘Wood here’d go all over.’

‘Why abandon it then?’ asked Oxford.

‘Winter’d let the families o’ workers stay here. There was a school right there,’ and he pointed at a wide shack of wooden slats. ‘These kids didn’t have to go Eden and paid the price, ‘cos a few years ago fever struck. Whole place was…’ His voice tapered into a whimper.

‘Evacuated?’ Merry said.

Chen swallowed.

‘Exterminated.’ He paused. ‘This town was bad apples.’

‘I’m surprised fever is about if Jask has a vaccine,’ surmised Oxford.

‘Rare though it is, it’s not unheard of. Towns always slip through the net, ‘specially if the kids are spared a trip to Eden.’

Merry looked confused. ‘But someone still lives here presumably?’

Nodding, Chen hoisted an arm forwards at a strange-looking building. It was an intersection of two oblongs, meshed into a cross-shape. ‘Father Lore Wenderson. Odd sod but go along with him.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s a priest, the last of a dead religion. You’d be pressed to find another of those churches whole Colony.’

‘How is a priest getting us in to Eden?’ Agloff said it with a kind of urgency.

‘Ah, appearances deceive. But he knows someone who does.’

Oxford spat, ‘How many escorts do we need?’

‘Knowledge, and responsibility, divided,’ Chen repeated. ‘It’s for your own good. No one ‘cept yourselves will know exactly where yer come from, or exactly where yer going. Makes you harder to track. Getting people into the centre of Eden unheard is no easy business.’

Rolling his eyes, Oxford said, ‘Seems safe enough. I thought we’d have seen pilgrims by now, no?’

‘Winter aren’t manned enough to send patrols out this far. They spread themselves all over. Lore is a stop-off before Eden only.’ Chen’s steps hollered over the stone pathway up to the door of the church and stopped under the overhang of its arch.

‘Then who’s taking us in?’

‘The web calls him the Wolf,’ he said.

‘He got a name?’

‘Abbadiah Thawn.’

That name. Agloff’s brain was sucked of all thoughts, and he could only stare blankly as Baldrick Chen’s fist rang thrice on the door to the church.