Iron Angel

And it began to rain.

Gently at first, then with increasing vigor, the rain came down. Fat black drops of water churned up the desert floor, rattled against their iron shelter. Rachel covered her nose and mouth. The water stank, like-?

When she heard Trench screaming, she knew it wasn’t water at all.

12

THE ROAD TO PANDEMERIA

After a while Jack Caulker began to hate the fog. It was damp, oppressive, gloomy, miserable, confusing, tiresome, frustrating, and endless. He passed the time by thinking up more and more ways in which it annoyed him. How had Anchor managed to live within this gloom all of his life? Caulker had begun to despise the big man, too. Anchor remained in high spirits, humming merrily as they marched across the Deadsands, a perpetual grin on his big black face.

Was the bastard even human?

The wet grey murk blanketed everything but fifty yards of ground around them, and made navigation through this wasteland treacherous. Twice already Caulker had been forced to retrace their footsteps to avoid pools of slipsand.

South of the caravan trail, the landscape dipped gently into a vast wet basin where poisoned water bubbled up through the sand in places. The whole area had been polluted by Cinderbark Wood: Deepgate’s chemists’ most hideous creation. Caulker planned to avoid the wretched place if at all possible. Besides, the majority of clean springs were all on the northern side of the trail-each fed, it was said, by a subterranean river that flowed deep underground from MountBlackthrone itself. On this route, all they had to worry about were Spine patrols and those occasional bands of Heshette raiders who came down from the north to prey on pilgrims.

Having witnessed Anchor’s combat skills in the Widow’s Hook, a few temple skull-faces and heathen goat- fuckers would be the least of Caulker’s worries. So when he heard riders approaching from the north, the cutthroat felt somewhat relieved. Some wanton slaughter might at least alleviate his boredom.

John Anchor called out to the riders before they could even see them-an action that did not disturb Caulker as much as the big man’s reasons for doing so. Had the giant kept his mouth shut, the Heshette might easily have ridden past the two travelers in the fog. But Anchor’s halloo made the horsemen change course at once. Sensible enough, Caulker thought at first, for the giant needed souls to feed the god whose airship he dragged around.

Except, as Caulker soon discovered, the Adamantine Man had not summoned these raiders to slay or rob them. His real reason for giving them his position beggared belief.

Six ragged warriors appeared out of the fog, clothed in sand-coloured gabardines and head scarves. They rode scrawny horses covered with tribal fetishes, the bones and feathers denoting their clan and their rank within it, and carried a motley assortment of weapons: mainly daggers and clubs, although a couple of men waved longer, curved blades.

“Bara aresh,” cried the leading rider. “This is a bone road. You will halt and pay a toll, or you will bleed.” He stopped himself when he caught sight of Anchor’s massive harness and the rope rising at a steep angle from his back. His thin horse reared, fetishes clicking in its mane. The rider controlled the beast easily, never taking his gaze from Anchor. He raised his dagger. “Corras?” he snapped. “Arramon?”

“I not understand this speech,” Anchor said. “You speak the language of the Seven, the New Gods? This I know.”

“Your gods,” the Heshette warrior said. “Not mine.”

The giant beamed. “I understand. Tell me, friend, where is the chained city? My guide…” He shrugged apologetically and gestured towards Caulker. “He is good man, but confused by the fog, I think. We walk forward and then later we walk back. Always forward and back. Is better to walk forward all of the time.”

Caulker’s brows rose. Anchor stopped to ask for directions? From these fucking savages? Had he no sense of the way of the world? That the Heshette had only asked for a toll was miraculous enough. Normally they just cut travelers’ throats and took everything.

The warrior’s dark eyes regarded the stranger through the slit in his head scarf.

“Northwest,” he said, pointing. “For two leagues, then the trail turns south and then west again. Why do you want to go there?” He glanced at the big man’s rope again. “There is nothing left but flames and poison.”

Anchor grinned. “I am…how you say? A traveler.”

“A traveler?”

“From the Riot Coast. You know of it? Good blue lobster and fishbeer. Best in all Pandemeria.”

The mounted warrior let out his laughter suddenly and freely. Behind him, his men joined in. “No, my friend,” he said. “I don’t know your homeland. But you are free to travel here in ours.” He sheathed his dagger, then cinched the reins around a knot tied in his mount’s mane, and dismounted. “You must share bread with us, and tell us, please, what this queer rope is.”

“Rope?” Anchor glanced behind him. “Ah, yes. Sometimes I forget. I show you after we eat. Is only a small thing.”

And so Caulker found himself squatting beside a dung campfire close to the caravan trail to share a feast of flatbread, camel milk, and goat meat with a group of savages. The horseman who had first addressed them-a tall, lean man named Harranel Ramnir-turned out to be their leader. In the clipped accent of the southern tribes, he introduced his men to Anchor and Caulker.

Caulker made a point of forgetting their names at once.

Under their head scarves Ramnir’s savages all looked the same: hard, tanned faces and ragged beards. At first their uneasy gazes kept returning to the giant’s rope, but as he did not seem inclined to speak about it, they did not press him. Soon the fire settled and the smell of roasted meat filled the air. Each of the Heshette had been pocked or scarred in some way by the poisons and diseases Deepgate’s military had used against the tribes, as they explained to John Anchor when the big man asked about their wounds.

“For three decades they warred with us,” Ramnir said. He was about ten years older than his men, with a thin black beard, a long nose, and intense dark eyes. “We are Mer-Heshette from south of the bone road.” He pointed with the piece of flatbread he was chewing. “The chained folk poisoned the springs, and drove us north into the nomad and Blood Heshette lands where there is little grazing. Bad years. Many families destroyed. Those of us who survived the poisons starved when our herds died.”

“It is an evil way to make war,” Anchor said, shaking his head. His deep voice was full of sadness. “Too cruel.”

A necessary way to make war, thought Caulker, as he ripped another piece of meat from a bone and chewed it slowly. Take out the women and children, and the savages couldn’t breed. These people preyed on civilians, after all, Deepgaters and Sandporters alike.

Watching them now, he felt nothing but disgust. He lifted his cup of camel’s milk and drained it, hoping it might wash away the foul taste in his mouth.

“Once we have a war on the RiotCoast,” Anchor said. “Many years ago now, before the Mesmerists come to Pandemeria. Brownslough is the land to the north of us-a lot of mud and coal. We trade with them, fine, but they have only land around them. Trade is not enough. They want our ports in Herrul and Oxos. So they come with an army.” He slammed his hands together, making the rope on his back quiver. “Brownslough people not cruel, just stupid. On the RiotCoast our babies crawl, then learn to fight, and then to walk. You understand? Big mistake for Brownslough. They learn a hard lesson, then go back north, and we trade with them again. All good.”

“So many lands…” Ramnir said wistfully. “I didn’t know the world was so large. We Heshette have become so insular, so focused on the destruction of the chained city and those who persecute us. They say there was a time when our people wandered far across the world, yet now our hate won’t let us look beyond the current conflict. If we opened our eyes, we’d see there’s nothing left here.”

“Hate is poison,” the giant said. “How many are you? All of your people together?”

The horseman sighed. “Less than a hundred and fifty tribes left now. Perhaps six thousand people.”