Chris Wooding - Retribution Falls

Yortland. A frozen, hard and cruel place, but the only place on the continent of North Pandraca where the Coalition Navy held no sway, and Coalition laws didn’t apply. The only place left for the crew of the Ketty Jay to run to.

She took a sip of her cocoa.

I could stay here, she thought. I could walk out into that wilderness and never be seen again.

Behind her sat the Ketty Jay and her outflyers. Snow had settled on the Ketty Jay’s back and wings, several inches deep. Nearby, an elderly Yort was hammering at the struts of his craft, knocking off icicles. He looked strong despite his age, with a thick neck and huge shoulders. He was bundled up in heavy furs, only his bald and tattooed head exposed to the elements. His ears, lips and nose were pierced with rings and bone shards. Otherwise, there was nobody to be seen.

Besides the Ketty Jay there were a couple of Yort haulers and some small personal racers, which Jez had already examined and mentally criticised—a habit born from a life as a craftbuilder’s daughter. They were blockish, dark and ugly, built for efficiency, without a care for aesthetics. Typical Yort work. In such an excessively masculine society, owning a craft of elegant design was viewed at best as pointless, at worst as potential evidence of homosexuality. Not something to be taken lightly, since sodomy carried the death penalty out here. As a result, Yorts designed everything to suggest that the owner was so enormously virile, a woman would need armour-plated ovaries to survive a night with him.

Jez’s eyes unfocused as she stared out across the plain.

Get away from everyone, she thought. Maybe that’s best. Get away from everyone, before it’s too late.

But the loneliness. She couldn’t take the loneliness. What was the point in existence, if you were forever alone?

Scattered across the plateau was the settlement of Majduk Eyl. Yorts built mostly underground for insulation, and their dwellings were barely visible. All that could be seen from the pad were the shallow humps of their dome-shaped roofs, the doorways that thrust through the snow, the skylights sheltered by overhanging eaves. Smoke rose from three dozen chimneys, curling steadily up to join the clouds. A small figure, hooded and cloaked, was scattering grit from a sack over the slushy trails that ran between the dwellings.

The crew of the Ketty Jay were in one of those buildings. They were just another set of companions, like the ones before, and the ones before that. She kept herself aloof from them. It would make it hurt less when she had to leave.

Sooner or later, they’d notice something was different about her. The little things would begin to add up. The way her bullet wound had healed so fast, the way she never seemed to sleep, the way she never got tired. The way animals reacted to her.

Then she’d have to move on again, find a new crew. Keep going.

Going where? Doing what?

Anywhere. Anything. Just keep going.

She drank her cocoa. She only ate or drank these days because she liked the taste, not out of need. During the month of Swallow’s Reap, as an experiment, she’d gone without food or water for a week. Nothing happened except a vague, instinctive suspicion that something was missing in her daily routine. After that, she’d made sure to join the crew at mealtimes, and occasionally comment loudly on her hunger or thirst; but she ate little, because she wasn’t wasteful by nature.

The snow-hogs were inching across the ice-plain, shambling heaps of muscle and tusk and shaggy white fur. She could see a pair of predators tracking them, huge doglike things, a type of creature she didn’t recognise. They loped along hungrily, hoping for a chance at a straggler.

Here I am again, she reflected, as she scanned the landscape. A few years ago, she’d been a frequent visitor to the wild, icebound northern coast, part of a scientific expedition in search of the relics of a lost civilisation. It hadn’t been a conscious decision to stay away from Yortland, but it was only now that she realised she’d never been back since . . . well, since . . .

Her thoughts flickered away from the memory, but it was too late. A dreadful sensation washed over her, beginning at her nape and sweeping through her body. Her skin tightened, then relaxed; her muscles clenched and unclenched. The world flexed, just a fraction, and when it sprang back into shape, everything was different.

A strange twilight had fallen. Though it seemed darker, her vision had sharpened. It was as if she’d been looking at the world through a steamed-up pane of glass, and it had suddenly been removed. Details were thrust at her eyes; edges became stark as razors.

The herd of snow-hogs prickled with a faint purplish aura. Though they were several kloms away, she could count their teeth, and see the pupils of their rolling eyes. She sensed the path of the faint wind chasing along the plain; she could picture its route in her mind.

There was so much she was sensing, hearing, smelling. She could hardly breathe under the assault of information. It felt like she was being battered by an irresistible river. At any moment she’d lose her footing and be swept into oblivion.

One of the predators suddenly broke into a run. Its aura was deep crimson, and it left a slowly dispersing trail as it ran. Then suddenly she was with the predator, in the predator, its blood pumping hard, heart slamming, tongue-loll and tooth-sharp, all paws and look-see yes yes yes that one is weak, that one, and my kin-brother alongside and wary of the sharp sharp tusks of the mother but oh oh the hunger—

Jez gulped in a breath, like a drowning woman who had just broken the surface. Reality snapped into place: the world was once again as it had always been. Snow drifted down, undisturbed by her panic. She took a step back, disorientated, wanting to be away from that edge of the plateau. The mug had fallen from her hands and lay on the ground before her. Brown, steaming cocoa ate through the ice.

She began to tremble, helplessly, and not from the cold. She clutched herself and looked about. The Yort was nowhere to be seen. Nobody was there. Nobody had witnessed it.

Witnessed what? she demanded of herself. What’s happening to me?

A gust of wind blew from the north, and there was a sound on the wind, something she sensed rather than heard. Voices, raised in a cacophony, calling. A terrible, desperate longing swelled in her.

She looked to the north, and it was as if she could see past the mountains, past the sea, her vision carried on bird’s wings. She rushed onward, over icebergs and waves until there came fog and mist and a vast wall of churning grey.

She knew this place. It was the swirling cloud-cap they called the Wrack, which cloaked the north pole. The frontier than no one had ever returned from. Not alive, anyway.

There was something behind the cloud. A shape, an aircraft, black and vast, looming towards her. The voices.

Come with us.

She screwed her eyes shut and staggered away with a cry, stumbling towards the Ketty Jay. Her mind rung like a struck bell, resounding with the howling, the Wrack, and the terror of what lay beyond.

The bar was empty, but for the crew of the Ketty Jay and the bartender. The menfolk of the village were in the mines or out hunting; the women generally stayed out of sight. During the day, Frey and the others had the place to themselves.

Frey stared dejectedly at his picture. This time it was no handbill. He’d made the national broadsheets now.

‘It’s only on page ten!’ Malvery bellowed, giving him a thump on the shoulder. ‘It doesn’t even look like you! Besides, that issue’s a week old. Mark me, they’ll have forgotten about it by now.’

Frey took little comfort in that. It was true that he looked less and less like his picture, but that was mostly because the Frey in the picture was so happy and carefree. The real Frey was becoming less so by the day. His stubble had grown out to an untidy beard and his hair was getting beyond the control of a comb. His eyes were sunken and there were dark bags beneath them. In the two weeks since they’d fled Tarlock Cove he’d become ever more sullen and withdrawn.