Ричард Морган - The Cold Commands

“You might say that, yes. Of course you might also say he’s come for the whole human race—plus a few offshoots that don’t really fit the description anymore. In these times of transition, it’s hard to know how to phrase these things. Let us just say that your heritage fits you best for the role of message recipient.”

Archeth stood back from the bright glare of the map. Unease stirred through her.

“And you cannot simply give me this message yourself?”

“No, I simply cannot.”

Unease stoking now, sitting in the base of her belly like some coiled thing. It wasn’t often you heard the Helmsmen admit to limitations—most of the time they were sulkily self-assured in their superiority, and even when Archeth thought she might have detected some boundary of word or deed they weren’t prepared to cross, the block was usually shrouded in evasive gibberish of one sort or other.

“Cannot or will not?”

“Where you are concerned, daughter of Flaradnam, I don’t see that there is any practical difference between the two.”

“No? What about the difference of me not going to meet this messenger because I don’t think you’re being honest with me.”

“Well, it’s your message.” As if the great stone shoulders of An-Monal itself shrugged at her. “Suit yourself.”

Quiet gathered, like the cobwebbed shadows in the corners of the room. The map burned in the gloom.

“Look,” she said finally. “That’s a lot of arid wasteland out there. We could spend days searching an area that size.”

“There will be a sign,” said the Helmsman succinctly. “Look to the east for guidance.”

Which, for all it sounded like some faintly mocking parody of revelatory text, was also Manathan’s last word on the matter. Attempts to get clarification were rebutted with the mild admonition not to waste time, daughter of Flaradnam . Archeth, who’d seen the Helmsman behave like this before, gave up and slammed her way back out to the courtyard to saddle her horse. It was a fair few hours’ ride down to the harbor, and she wanted to get there before it was fully dark.

But on the road down, jolting tiredly in the saddle, she noticed the feeling in her belly that she’d mistaken for unease, and realized that it was nothing of the sort. Noticed in fact that it had warmed and spread, had become a faint pitter-patter of excitement throughout the web of her veins, and a slowly building, suffocating eagerness in her chest.

She clucked her horse into a trot.

“ERROR OF TRANSLATION OR NOT,” SAID LAL NYANAR. “WE ARE STILL waiting for this signal the Helmsman promised us, and it has not come. That alone ought to give us pause.”

“We are paused.” Archeth gestured through the window at the iron quay and the glimmer of campfires built there on the dock. Impatience bubbling up in her now—time to wrap this up. “No one is suggesting we break camp and head upriver right now. Tomorrow morning will be quite soon enough, and that gives us time to lay sensible plans.”

“If—”

“Charts for instance.” Breaking smoothly into Nyanar’s continued objection before it could build any more steam. “I understand perfectly, Captain, if you’re concerned about our ability to navigate safely in the upper river at this time of year. But presumably we have summer charts aboard for just such an eventuality?”

The captain bristled visibly.

“I have no fears about navigation, my lady, but—”

“Excellent. Then we need to focus on available landing points along the southern bank in the area Manathan has indicated. Can I leave that in your capable hands?”

She let silence do the rest. Nyanar glanced around the table for support he had no hope of enlisting, then subsided. Even Hald wasn’t going to directly gainsay an officer of the court with her mind so obviously made up.

“I am”—head slowly inclined—“yours to command, my lady.”

“Good. Commander Hald, then. I believe we shou—”

Lightning raged.

Out of the east, flickering, harsh and brilliant, so furious it seemed the broad stern window must shatter inward with its force. It drenched the room, drove out every shadow with silent, blue-white glare. It washed their faces clean of the hesitant, yellowish, document-poring lamplight within. It lit them frozen in place.

And faded.

From outside, she heard the yells of Hald’s men and the crew. Saw figures leap to their feet around the campfires, saw the detail of everything on the quay laid out dim in the wake of the glare. Feet thundered on planking overhead. Babbling confusion as the sudden brilliance inked out and left them all blinking at each other in the gloom.

“The fuck ?” Hald, courtly manners forgotten for a moment, blown back to more soldierly roots by the shock.

“What was that ?” asked someone else in a shaking voice.

Archeth didn’t answer. She already knew; she didn’t need to hear it said. So it was left to young Hanesh Galat, displaying an ironic composure and humor she would not previously have credited him with, to lean forward and state the obvious.

“That,” he said, looking across the table at her, “was what I believe you’d call a sign . It would appear that Manathan’s messenger has arrived.”

Thunder rolled in behind his words.

The hunt went on into the night.

At first, it was raw panic and confusion, yelling and the excited bark of hounds still chained up back at the camp. Crash of fleeing bodies through the underbrush around them as those who’d gotten free trampled and flogged their way up the wooded slope. Fading glint of firelight behind them amid the thickening picket of the trees. Gerin seared his throat with panting, felt himself stung bloody across the face with the backswing of unseen lowered branches as he came through them in the blacksmith’s wake. He blundered on, terror of the hounds driving him like a lash.

He’d seen them on the march: great gray shaggy-coated wolf-killers with long heads and mouths that seemed to grin sideways at the slaves as they paced restlessly about on their leashes. The fear they aroused was primal. Once, out on the marsh as a child, he’d seen a man brought down by dogs like these, a convict of marsh dweller family escaped from one of the prison hulks in the estuary and floundering desperately homeward in some blind hope of sanctuary. Gerin had been little more than four or five years old at the time, and the noises the man made as the hounds pulled him down stuck in his head at a depth reserved for horrors more basic than he had language for.

But the memory brought with it conscious thought.

He snatched at the blacksmith’s shirt, dragged on his staggering bulk, caught another branch in the face for his trouble. He spat out pine needles, wiped his running nose, and groped after words.

“Wait—stop, stop !”

Panting to a halt, the two of them, in some dry ravine declivity fenced around with saplings and thick-foliaged undergrowth. They stood and propped each other up, grabbing after breath. Off to the right, someone crashed on through the trees, too separated from them to make out in the dense brush and moving away, galloping, tramping sounds receding. The cool, resin-smelling quiet of the pines came and wrapped them. Abruptly, the knotted mess of stew in Gerin’s stomach kicked, crammed hotly up into his throat. He doubled over and vomited. The blacksmith just stared.

“Fuck you stop me for?” Though he didn’t move.

“No good.” Gerin still bent over, hands on knees, coughing and retching. Threads of snot and drool, silver in the faint light, voice a thin thread itself. “Running, like this. No good. Got hounds.”