Chris Wooding - Retribution Falls

A minute later he was creeping through the bracken, edging his way closer to the landing pad to get a better look. He just wanted to know what all the fuss was about.

The craft rested on the tarmac, bathed in its own harsh light. Though the cargo ramp was down, it still had its thrusters running and the aerium engines fired up. Evidently it wasn’t staying for long.

When he’d got as close as he dared, Frey squatted down to watch. The wind rustled the bracken around him. The craft had a name painted on its underside: the Moment of Silence. He’d never heard of it.

The Sentinels had organised themselves as though they expected an attack, guarding the route between the craft and the door of the building, which stood open. They were dressed in grey, high-collared cassocks of the same cut that all the Awakeners wore. They carried rifles and wore twinned daggers at their waists. The Cipher was emblazoned in black on their breasts: a complex design of small, linked circles.

Sentinels, Crake had explained, were not true Awakeners. They lacked the skill or the intelligence to be ordained into the mysteries of the order. That was why they only wore the Cipher on their breast, not tattooed on their foreheads. They devoted themselves to the cause in other ways, as protectors of the faith. They were not known to be especially well trained or deadly, but they were disciplined. Frey resolved to treat them with the same respect he gave anyone carrying a weapon capable of putting a hole in him.

Everyone was on the alert. Something important was happening.

There was movement by the house, and several Sentinels emerged. They were carrying a large, iron-bound chest between them, straining under its weight. The chest was a work of art, lacquered in dark red and closed with a clasp fashioned in the shape of a wolf’s head. Frey was suddenly very keen to find out what was inside.

The Sentinels had hauled it up the path and had almost reached the craft when two figures came down the cargo ramp to meet them. Frey felt a chill jolt at the sight of them. Being so close to the craft didn’t seem like such a good idea any more.

They were dressed head to toe in close-fitting suits of black leather. Not an inch of their skin was showing. They wore gloves and boots, and cloaks with their hoods pulled up. Their faces were hidden behind smooth black masks, through which only the eyes could be seen.

Imperators. The Awakeners’ most dreaded operatives. Men who could suck the thoughts right out of your head, if the stories were to be believed. Men whose stare could send you mad.

Frey hunkered down further into the bracken.

The Sentinels put the chest down in front of the Imperators, then one of them knelt and opened it. Frey was too far away to see what was within.

One of the Imperators nodded, satisfied, and the chest was closed. The Sentinels lifted it and carried it up the Moment of Silence’s cargo ramp. They emerged seconds later, having left their burden inside. A few words were exchanged, and then one of the Imperators boarded the craft. The other turned to follow, but suddenly hesitated, his head tilted as if listening. Then he turned, and fixed his gaze on the spot where Frey hid in the bracken.

An awful sensation washed over him: foul, seething, corrupt. Frey’s heart thumped hard in terror. He ducked down, out of sight, burying himself among the stalks and leaves. The loamy smell of wet soil and the faintly acrid tang of bracken filled his nostrils. He willed himself to be a stone, a rabbit, some small and insignificant thing. Anything that would be beneath the Imperator’s notice. Some distant part of him was aware that such overwhelming fear wasn’t natural, that there was some power at work here; but reason and logic had fled.

Then, all at once, the feeling was gone. The fear left him. He stayed huddled, not daring to move, breathing hard, soaked in relief. It had passed, it had passed. He murmured desperate thanks, addressed to no one. Never again, he swore. Never again would he go through that. Those few seconds had been among the most horrible of his life.

He heard the whine of the hydraulics as the cargo ramp slid shut. Electromagnets throbbed as the aerium engines got to work. The Moment of Silence was taking off.

Frey gathered his courage and raised his head, peering out above the bracken. The Imperators were gone. All eyes were on the craft. Frey took advantage of the moment, and scampered away towards the hermitage.

By damn, what did that thing do to me?

He could only remember one event vaguely comparable to the ordeal he’d just suffered. He’d been young, perhaps seventeen, and he and some friends went out to some fields where some very ‘special’ mushrooms grew. The night had started off with hilarity and ended with Frey seized by a crushing paranoia, afraid that his heart was going to burst, and being mobbed by hallucinatory bats. That senseless, primal fear had turned a confident young man into a quivering wreck. Now he’d been brushed by it again.

His breathing had returned to normal by the time he got to the hermitage, and he had himself under control again. Shaken, but unharmed. He approached the building from behind, where there were no guards to be seen, and pressed himself against the cool stone of the wall. Security was lax here. He had that to be thankful for. The guards didn’t expect any trouble. They were only here for protection against pirates and other marauders, who might find the idea of a hermitage full of nubile, sex-starved young women somewhat alluring.

Frey cheered at the thought. He’d forgotten about the nubile, sex-starved part. It made his mistake back in Aulenfay twinge a little less, although his cheeks still burned at the memory.

He’d studied the Awakeners in Olden Square and picked Crake’s brains about their faith for a purpose. His idea was to disguise himself as a Speaker, to blend in seamlessly, and thereby move about the hermitage unopposed. Congratulating himself on his unusually thorough preparations, he’d surprised Crake by appearing in full Speaker dress: the high-collared white cassock with red piping, the sandals, the Cipher painted on his forehead in a passable impression of a tattoo.

‘What do you think?’ he asked proudly.

Crake burst out laughing, before explaining to the rather miffed captain that Awakener hermitages were always single sex institutions. Acolytes were allowed no contact with the opposite gender. In Amalicia’s hermitage, all the tutors and students would be female. The male guards would be forbidden to go inside except under special circumstances, and even then the female acolytes would be kept to their rooms. Lust interfered with the meditation necessary to communicate with the Allsoul.

‘So you’re telling me that there’s a building full of women who haven’t even seen a man in years?’ Frey had demanded to know.

‘What I’m telling you is that your cunning disguise is going to be pretty useless in there, since there shouldn’t be a male Speaker within twenty kloms of that hermitage,’ said Crake. ‘However, it’s interesting that you jumped to the other conclusion first. I never pegged you as a glass-half-full kind of person.’

‘Well, a man must make the best of things,’ Frey replied, already envisioning a pleasant death by sexual exhaustion, after being brutally abused by dozens of rampant adolescent beauties.

So Frey had discarded the uniform. Pinn found it later and had been wearing it ever since, for a joke, pretending to be an Awakener. It was funny for the first few hours, but Pinn, encouraged, had carried the joke far past its natural end and now it was just annoying. Frey wouldn’t be surprised if Malvery had beaten him up and burned the robe by the time he got back. He rather hoped so.