Ironshield Read online

  “South’s got a hefty reward on your head, Jim,” said Matthew. “Goddamn Appeasers talk about honor and rules, then turn around and recruit those they can’t draft with coin instead. It’s not your fault.”

  “Right,” James said. “Sure.” He drifted over to the covered bodies and lifted the sheets. They’d been shot clean through the backs of their heads. No doubt taken by surprise, same as James and Matthew. The two soldiers wore nothing but their underclothes and surprised expressions on what remained of their faces.

  James closed their eyes, then walked to the dead imposters and searched the stolen uniforms until he found the soldiers’ tags. Once he reached Quarrystone, he’d be sure their families were informed. He wondered if they’d think it worthwhile, that their loved ones died so the Ironshield could live. Was there any amount of good he could do for their cause that would balance the scale? James didn’t think so. And that means it is my fault, no matter what anyone says. His hands tightened around the metal tags. I’ve got debts I can never pay. That doesn’t mean I won’t try. “Let’s keep moving,” he said.

  “It’s dark,” Matthew replied. “We should wait, maybe get some sleep.”

  “Why?” James looked to Na’Tet. “Think our guide isn’t up to the task?”

  Na’Tet shuffled. “Darkness would not stop Na’Tet from serving the will of the Iron Gods…”

  “Excellent!” James said with a grin he didn’t feel. “So, go get our horses. We’ll lead these ones as spares and pick up the pace.”

  “’Tet can navigate in the dark, Jim, but the horses can’t. Waiting until morning won’t kill us.”

  “No, but it might kill more men like them,” James said with a gesture at the dead Industrialists. “So we keep moving, Kaizer. Understand?”

  Matthew looked on the verge of arguing further, but deflated with a sigh instead. “Of course, Commander. I’ll get the horses.”

  “Na’Tet can—"

  “I’ve got it, ‘Tet,” Matthew called over his shoulder, already walking through the brush, his back stiff.

  James watched his friend disappear into the trees with a touch of regret. In his cell beneath the Senate House, he’d never thought he’d see Matthew again. James had expected to die among strangers, the most familiar face that of the damnable Samuel Mutton, who’d betrayed everything Heinrich Edstein ever stood for. But now that James was free, and about to be re-united with his army, he couldn’t feel any relief or elation. All James felt was tired.

  He found a trenching tool among the mercenaries’ possessions -no doubt taken off the two dead enlisted men- and took it over to the stripped bodies. James started digging in silence. By the time Matthew reappeared with the horses in tow, James was pushing earth over a shallow double grave.

  Matthew took another shovel and went to the bodies of the mercenaries.

  “Leave them,” James snarled.

  Matthew winced. But he put the shovel down and climbed into his saddle. With James taking the lead, they rode onward.

  *

  The car took Samuel to a small dockyard, where he and the driver boarded a two-man motor craft that had been left waiting for them and proceeded upriver. Larger boats to the front and rear carried armed men who, despite their civilian garb, were clearly soldiers. Of course, they’d have to be cautious. Leanne Mutton wasn’t the only Industrialist in Southern lands, and it had already been made clear that information was crossing enemy lines.

  Samuel found himself gripping his revolver, looking out over the sides of the boat at the river’s inky water, rippling as it was displaced by the vessels.

  Samuel’s driver remained as silent now as he had in the car. Samuel didn’t know if the man was simply taciturn by nature or if he’d been instructed to stay quiet for fear of asking the wrong questions. In case it was the latter, Samuel maintained the mutual silence.

  Soon enough, they were past the lights of Edinville proper, stone canal walls and dockyards giving way to sodden beaches of dark earth and oversaturated foliage. Soon after, a light blinked from a treeline to portside. Three blinks, evenly spaced and repeating.

  Samuel’s silent boatman steered their vessel in that direction, and the light winked out of existence.

  A pair of men in camouflaged fatigues met them once the boat came ashore. Directions were passed along, and the men stripped off their disguising garments to reveal clothes identical to Samuel’s and his guide’s. The two soldiers saluted before climbing onto the boat and pushing off into the river.

  “Godspeed, and good luck,” one of them called as they drifted across the water.

  Samuel’s guide led him through the trees.

  Birds called at intervals, and the guide replied with whistles of his own. These added precautions, rather than easing Samuel’s mind, put him all the more on edge. More secrecy, more hiding.

  Can’t be much worse than what you’re keeping from her, he told himself. True, he hadn’t lied to Leanne, not exactly. But his wife wouldn’t see it that way, not when she learned what Samuel was about to do.

  It could turn out that he’d asked his wife for the best advice on how to kill their marriage.

  As he followed his silent escort through the forest, Samuel’s boots squelching in the mud and dragging sticky, muddy leaves, he occupied his mind trying to spot the sentries making bird calls from the trees.

  Whoever they were, they did their job well. Samuel knew Davids had never wanted to go through with a plan like this one, but clearly the president had made sure to prepare for it all the same.

  They emerged into a large, open clearing after maybe three-quarters of an hour’s trudging. Having done his best to keep track of where they were going, Samuel was almost certain he’d been led on a purposefully circuitous route.

  His guide strode to a large object nestled against the treeline and pulled back the tarp covering it.

  Samuel had known what to expect, but the prospect of getting into this particular vehicle still made him gulp.

  “This’ll get us north by daybreak, Sir,” his guide said. They were the first words the man had spoken.

  Samuel nodded, and approached the vehicle. Who knows, he thought. Maybe we’ll crash and avoid this whole mess altogether.

  **

  After the first few hours of riding, James brought his horse to a slower trot before the poor beast could twist an ankle on some unseen rock or root.

  Na’Tet drifted ahead without a word, and soon they were weaving this way and that in the dark, with just the faintest moonlight to guide them through clearings and along narrow hill paths.

  James snagged himself on more than a few low-hanging branches, and from the curses he heard to the rear, so did Matthew. By the time dawn’s red light crested over the far horizon, they’d entered a large swathe of wild fields dotted with clumps of brush and trees. A footpath wove through this wide vale, winding toward the far-off hills that surrounded Quarrystone.

  This was the northern edge of Flemmingwood. To the south, trees clumped together, large and thick.

  The trio hadn’t ridden under open air for long when they saw movement ahead.

  “Damn,” Matthew pulled the rifle he’d lifted off a mercenary corpse from his shoulder and chambered a round. “More bounty hunters, I’ll bet.”

  “Calm, Holy Kaizer,” Na’Tet said. The tribesman dropped from the saddle and walked forward, hands held high.

  At the head of the approaching group, two riders galloped forward, their patched robes flowing. The pair flanked Na’Tet, ululating and raising spears.

  Matthew cracked a shot off into the sky. The riders stopped short and looked to him. They too, James saw, were copper-skinned tribesmen.

  When the newcomers saw Matthew and James, they practically dove out of their saddles, casting their spears aside and dropping to hands and knees. The spears were tarnished steel tied together with wire. Old pipes served as shafts, jagged pieces of sheet metal as blades. Not just tribesmen, but K’Tani. Na’Tet’s tribe. An
d they seemed ready to kill him.

  “Well?” Matthew called. “Talk.”

  “Snowbird is honored to meet you, Holy Speakers,” said one, not raising his head. As some tribesmen were prone to do, he opted for the Arkenian equivalent of his name rather than speaking it in his own tongue.

  “As is River Eagle,” said the other.

  Their procession caught up. Older men, along with women and children, flanked by more warriors of Snowbird and River Eagle’s age. Everyone but the young warriors walked on foot. They dragged something along with them, a wooden cart. On it sat the ugliest thing James had ever seen. A crude amalgamation of industrial junk made to look like a squatting man, not dissimilar to the little figure Na’Tet carried. Upon seeing James and Matthew, most of these people dropped to hands and knees as well. Others, seeing Na’Tet, let out angry shouts and picked up rocks.

  “Stop,” Matthew commanded.

  “Holy One, let us kill this heretic in your honor,” Snowbird said, peering up without rising. “If you need a guide, bestow the honor upon someone more worthy.”

  What did Na’Tet do? The K’Tani were pariahs in the eyes of the other tribes. What would possess them to turn so vehemently against one of their own? James shuddered to think that Na’Tet’s level of religious devotion was lacking by K’Tani standards. If he was a heretic, James didn’t want to meet a true devotee.

  “Get up,” Matthew growled. “I’m too tired for this nonsense. Where are you headed?”

  “We take this gift back to our village, so we may burn a tribute to the iron gods.”

  “Lovely,” Matthew said with a top-to-bottom look at the scrap sculpture. “Have you seen anyone else on the way here? Any white men in the hills?”

  Snowbird shook his head. They’d stood as Matthew commanded, but continued to duck their heads in nervous bows. The tribesmen’s horses stamped impatiently, nickering at James and Matthew’s beasts in challenge.

  “No one?”

  “Not for many days. People from the Great Camp venture into the wilds, sometimes.”

  “Good. You can be on your way.”

  “The heretic, Holy One, he is not to be trusted,” River Eagle protested. “Let us K’Tani burn him with the tribute, to atone for his shame.”

  “’Tet stays with us. You go. End of discussion.”

  The pair of warriors bowed, clasping their hands above their heads. "Thousand apologies if we have angered the Holy Speakers."

  Matthew grumbled, then drew his belt knife. Snowbird and River Eagle visibly tensed. They relaxed a moment later and bared their necks as Matthew approached.

  "Matt..." James nudged his horse after his friend.

  Matthew took tresses of his long hair and cut them free. He proffered the hairs to the tribesmen.

  Snowbird and River Eagle looked at the offering in disbelief.

  "Take it and leave us be. Don't tell anyone, not even other white men, that you saw us. Especially white men," Matthew emphasized.

  He and Na’Tet mounted back up, and the three of them rode on.

  James looked back and saw the whole group of K’Tani on hands and knees, bowing in their direction.

  "What's their problem with you?" James asked Na’Tet, who'd remained silent throughout the interaction. "You sleep with the chief's daughter or something?"

  Na’Tet shook his head. It didn't seem like the tribesman would say anything beyond that. But, after a while, he spoke.

  "They are right to hate Na’Tet. He is... I am a heretic."

  James cocked an eyebrow, turning in the saddle to face the copper-skinned man. "You seem pretty devoted to me."

  "Yes, but maybe Na’Tet is too devoted." Na'Tet said, returning to the third person. "Na’Tet reaches too high. So his people shun him, to keep themselves safe should the iron gods be angered by his ambition."

  "Care to elaborate a bit? You've lost me."

  "Leave him be, Jim," Matthew interjected. He sounded exasperated. “’Tet’s entitled to his own burdens, same as we are.”

  “Doesn’t mean we don’t deserve to know why the man guiding us through the wilderness is hated by his own. That situation could have cost you and I a lot more than a few hairs.”

  “But it didn’t,” Matthew snapped. “And right now, the last things I want to dwell on are ‘Tet’s family squabbles. Or our own, for that matter. All I care about is getting you to Ironshield before something happens. We don’t want an amateur in the cockpit when the South makes its next move.”

  “An amateur? But I have the saber.” James trotted his horse up beside Matthew’s. “How would someone else even operate Ironshield?”

  Matthew’s eyes shifted. He looked at the pommel of his saddle, sheepish. “Now, you can’t be angry,” Matthew began. “We didn’t know if Kolms would be able to spring you.”

  “You made a new saber? Or did you just rip out the ignition cradle and put in a new one? Matt, that was my father’s Warsuit!”

  "No, and no. The ignition cradle is still there, and you have the only blade that fits it, but... Jim, we couldn't pin all our bets on Theodore Kolms’ plan. There were just too many variables, and we need Ironshield operational."

  "What the hell did you do to my machine?"

  "I just jury-rigged an extra lever into the cockpit. Just in case we couldn't free you. What else was I supposed to do?"

  "Maybe you could all have had a little faith in your own damned plan!" James could picture it now, some last-minute weld job, a piece of newly cut steel jutting between his pedals, completely at odds with the rest of Ironshield's design. True, most of the cockpit would have to have been rebuilt from scratch anyway, after Graytop. But the image of the ignition cradle sitting empty and useless while someone else used a makeshift lever in place of Ironshield's saber made James' blood boil.

  "I'll fix it as soon as I have the chance," Matt said. "For what it's worth, I never doubted you."

  James touched the handle of his saber. His anger cooled, replaced with shame. "Maybe that's the problem," he said. "Maybe you all should have doubted me more. I lost to Redstripe, I betrayed the War Codes. I... I feel like I'm single-handedly losing this war. And now Theodore is in prison. A damn good general, and his Warsuit, lost for one useless runt."

  "Don't call yourself that!" Matthew's voice was stern. "Kolms knew what he was putting on the line. He knew it, and he did it anyway, because he believed in James Edstein. He believed in the Ironshield."

  James scoffed. "I wonder if his daughter will be so understanding." Tessa Kolms had already stopped speaking to James months before his capture, after he'd told her she was too young to be trailing after him. He'd never thought he'd see such a small woman become so fierce. He could only imagine how livid she'd be with him now.

  Matthew put a hand on James' shoulder. He thought about shrugging it off but didn't.

  "I'll always tell you letting that one go was the worst mistake you ever made, Jim," Matthew said. "You were an idiot to turn Tess away, but she'd be an idiot to blame you. For that, or for what her dad did. I don't agree with how you went about things, but that doesn't make you responsible for this war. You did what you always do, in love and in battle. And that was what you believed to be right."

  James' guard went down. He leaned over and ruffled his friend's hair. "Thanks, Matt. It's good to be back."

  ***

  Propellers ripped in a continuous, nearly deafening drone. Samuel, wearing his Striker Crimson mask as a guard against strong winds, willed himself to look over the side once more.

  Far beneath the aircraft's canvas wings and trailing fumes, the world rolled by, its colors muted in the pre-dawn gray. Clouds drifted under them, momentarily blocking Samuel's view of hills, rivers, and fields. He thought he recognized the bends of the Garut Pass ten or twenty minutes ago, when he'd last conquered his anxiety and gazed down, but couldn't be sure. If they had passed over that gauntlet of Northern forts, the Industrialists either hadn't spotted them, or lacked the firepower to strike fr
om the ground.

  "How much longer?" Samuel yelled out the question to compete with the rotors and howling wind.

  "What?" His guide shouted back from the pilot's seat. Apparently, there was no vehicle Samuel's chaperone couldn't operate.

  "How much lo—" Something shot by, scraping the side of the plane with a burst of bright sparks.

  Samuel darted a glance down in time to see the flash of guns firing at them from the ground.

  Those weren't just field guns, he realized, watching large, blocky objects move about as they fired. Warsuits.