Jon Grimwood - redRobe

Pulling on his reins with cold awkward fingers, Axl wrapped his large grey coat tightly around himself and turned to face the low mountains on the other side of the plateau. Somewhere in the foothills, next to a waterfall there would be shaggy, squat-nosed yaks weighing half a ton or more, barley fields already cut, a village and a monastery, because there was always a monastery. If you could call low, pink-painted stone shacks monastic. It would take him several hours, maybe more to find the next place. But when he did, the monks would have spare food—and if not food then buttered tea. Everyone in the bloody place had buttered tea.

Dr Jane had given Axl painkillers, a roll of surgical tape, amphetamines and a silver space blanket taken from Red Cross supplies. From the Samsara Trust he got twenty silver thalers, coins heavy enough to make a good punching weight if he put ten together and folded them into the palm of his hand, though Axl didn’t point that out to Dr Jane. He also got a steel-bladed hunting knife which had a heavy brass handle but was missing its scabbard, a long grey woollen coat that was almost rain-proof and the brown mare, a mountain pony so shaggy it could have been a misbred yak.

The blonde doctor had walked him to the edge of the city herself, after finally accepting Axl’s angry, tearful statement that he couldn’t stay in Vajrayana for treatment because what he really needed was to find other people like him, persecuted followers of Pope Joan.

Axl knew why he’d been given a horse when regulations only specified a knife, staff and woollen coat; one look at his own face give him the answer. From the blinded eye to the raw scar of a non-consensual SQUID burned into his forehead, he wore the stigmata of the damned. His very injuries made him a VIP among those who had suffered. At least, those of them who remained alive.

The effect was kind of Downtown Boho, brocade and ribbons, both filthy.

As well as a brocaded waistcoat, the broad-hipped woman also wore a grey felt skirt, embroidered red blouse and no knickers. Axl was pretty sure of that last detail because he was squatted back on his heels, arms folded tight across his chest as he tried both to keep warm and not stare between the chapped and open knees of the round-faced ‘fugee squatting in front of him.

She’d kept on sweeping ashes from the cold grate as he came into the Inn and hadn’t even looked round until he dropped into a crouch opposite her. Now she was looking like she didn’t understand a word he said. And if she didn’t, who would? The other villagers he’d seen on his ride into Cocheforet had just crossed-themselves and turned their backs.

The Inn itself was no more than three rooms lumped on top of each other, with an outside latrine and a bit partitioned off from the main bar to make a kitchen, but it was still the biggest building in the village. Cocheforet had turned out to be an isolated ribbon-development of sod, wood and stamped-earth houses thrown up along the edge of a narrow stream in a valley planted on its lower slopes with millet and barley.

It also housed Joan’s most devout supporters. At least, that was what Dr Jane had told Axl before sending him on his way with a cloth map of the high plateau showing the settlement marked off at one edge with a cross. She forgot to mention the track in would be littered with bare-arsed Tibetan children scooping yak dung into wicker baskets to dry for fuel. Or that no one would appear to understand a word he said.

Axl started over again, explaining what he wanted as he tried to ignore the warm darkness between her open thighs. Only it seemed hopeless. Either that, or he was just too tired to make sense.

‘The inn’s full ...'

The voice came from behind him, low and gruff. Not remotely friendly. It punched the switch Axl had been looking for.

‘Full?’ Axl said in disbelief, clambering to his feet and stared past the thickset bearded man to an empty bar beyond. The place wasn’t just empty, it was also hideous. Rough beaten-earth walls were coated with whitewash that had mostly flaked off and the floor was so pitted it could have been dried mud. Two crude windows and an ill-fitting front door singularly failed to keep out the cold.

The only vaguely attractive thing about the Inn was the wide-hipped, heavy-breasted woman kneeling by the fireplace and she was thirty-five if she was a day. Her face was hidden now and her long hair was tied away under a grey scarf, but from what he’d seen her legs were lean and muscled and he could tell that her arms were strong.

The innkeeper grunted something that sent the woman scuttling from the room, leaving her pan where it was.

‘Full and closed ...' The bearded man said. Somewhere upstairs a door slammed heavily and the man scowled.

‘Looks empty to me,’ Axl said, feeling better already. ‘And you’ve got a welcome lamp burning over the door. . . Besides…’ he deftly loosened the pocket on his coat, pulled out his hunting knife and wiped the blade on his hip, even through it was clean. ‘I don’t take up much space and I won’t be staying long.’

‘Where you headed?’

Axl shrugged. ‘Passing through. You know, looking up old friends.’

‘Well, you won’t find them here,’ said the man firmly.

‘Here!’ Axl sounded amused. ‘No, you’re right, I doubt if there’s much of interest in Cocheforet.’ He looked through a window at mud-splattered chickens pecking at pebbles in the street outside, then cast an amused glance round the squalid bar, dismissing it. ‘How many live in this valley, fifteen, twenty?’

‘Thirty,’ said the innkeeper, ‘forty, fifty.’ He was drunk.

‘Petty thieves, cell sweepings,’ said Axl dismissively, ‘I’m looking for real ‘fugees.’

‘Real!’ The barkeeper sounded outraged. ‘Round here we’re…’

‘Having tea,’ the woman said from the doorway, sounding firm. Brown eyes looked steadily into Axl’s face as she thrust a steaming wooden bowl into his hand.

‘Drink it,’ she said, ‘it’ll help you warm up. Then I’ll show you the attic’ Her voice was neutral. ‘The room’s not much, but round here nothing is, except maybe…’ The woman stopped, then shrugged. ‘You’ll hear about it anyway. There’s an empty monastery across the valley but it’s not safe. Houses that grow like plants…’ She grunted and spat into the dead fireplace, before turning towards the door to the stairs. ‘Some of the houses on Samsara brick themselves up with the inhabitants inside if they don’t like you.’

Less than thirty years. That was how long Samsara had been functioning and already it had its own legends, its own dark myths. Axl smiled.

‘That monastery. . .’ Axl asked looking out of his attic window, but the woman cut him off before he could even ask the question.

‘It’s deserted,’ she told him firmly, ‘and dangerous. Understand?’

Yeah, he understood.

The attic had polycrete walls, roughly plastered, and a roof made from bamboo laid over rafters and lashed into place with sisal. The bamboo had been skimmed over with mud, and rough red tiles put on top of that. It was just enough to keep out the drizzle but it didn’t stand a chance against the wind.

Cold ashes filled the fireplace, turned to paste by droplets that pattered down the inside of its cracked chimney breast.

‘It’s what we’ve got,’ the woman said shortly.

‘No problem,’ said Axl, ‘but I’ll need a fire.’ His gaze flicked round the empty room. ‘Plus a mattress and blankets.’ He could see from the sour expression on her face that the woman regarded all three as unnecessary.

‘You got money?’