The Wasteland Soldier, Book 3, Drums Of War (TWS) Read online

  “I’ve travelled all my life. This is where I’m going to stop.”

  “Why couldn’t you have picked Dessan as a final place to stay?”

  The Map Maker remained silent.

  “You left behind a woman carrying your unborn child. You might have been happy there. I know Sadie would’ve been.”

  He stared forward at the man on the cross. “Dessan is not here and here is where I need to be.”

  Nuria shook her head. Despite their differences and his increasingly odd ways, she was uncomfortable leaving him behind.

  “Will they look after you?”

  “I can hear her clearly now,” he replied, ignoring the question. “This place has brought clarity to the noise. I never imagined it was a voice. I’d hoped it was but often I thought it was a punishment. Now I know different. Her words are inside me. This is where it begins for me. For all of us.”

  Nuria frowned. “Who can you hear?”

  Stone shrugged and walked away. The enigmatic man had made his decision and another piece of his rag-tag family was lost, albeit an edgy and dysfunctional and sometimes unwanted piece, but a piece nonetheless. The Map Maker had chosen his place; surrounded by strangers with a curious belief in something intangible. For a fleeting moment, he envied the man and wondered what it felt like to arrive somewhere and know, in that instant, it was where you belonged. There had been a place like that for him during childhood. Slowly, though, he believed such a place existed now.

  Though not here in Brix, not exactly.

  He glanced around the Holy House, noting the trappings of the Ennpithian faith. Quinn was right. There were crosses everywhere. He thought of the branding on his arm. Was this cross truly any different to the shapes scorched into his flesh? Was this mythical deity observing him and tapping into his rambling thoughts this very moment? Was he plotting the places men and women stopped and had picked the Map Maker to stop here? Were choices not really choices after all? Stone grimaced. No deity was choosing his path. He was a free man. One foot after the other. But had the deity chosen for him not to choose? Should he stay here out of defiance or would that defiance be the deity’s choice, too?

  No wonder the villagers looked miserable. He’d only been here for one afternoon and his head was already aching.

  He stepped outside, the sun on his face, the wind in his hair. The boy hiding behind the well had gone and Quinn’s cottage looked still. The workshop doors were closed and her horse was missing. Crossbow over his shoulder, sword buckled at his waist, he set the box of ammunition on the ground, placed his boot on it, and closed his eyes.

  “How was your business with Mr Boyd?”

  He’d already heard Duggan’s approach. Slowly, he opened his eyes. The man wore armour and his leathery face was squashed beneath an iron helmet. He carried a bag of coins; similar to the one Boyd had offered them in the inn, though noticeably smaller.

  “This belongs to you.”

  He tossed it in his gloved hand.

  “It’s the reward for the capture of Sal Munton.”

  Stone looked into the man’s eyes; he saw frustrated tolerance.

  “Well, it’s yours.”

  He threw the bag. It hit Stone in the chest and dropped to his feet, landing with a clink.

  “You might not be Kiven but I don’t trust any of you.”

  Stone glanced at the cross on the man’s armour.

  “You’d rather trust that?”

  “It’s not too late to place you in the barracks. I don’t leave until the morning. I’m sure I can think of a reason to arrest you.”

  “I’m sure you can.”

  Nuria stepped into the warm sunshine. “He’s adamant he’s staying …” She stopped as she saw Duggan.

  “Who’s staying?” said Duggan, nose twitching.

  “Our friend.”

  “That stupid man calling himself the Map Maker? What’s his real name? Why does he hide it? Is he wanted?”

  “He doesn’t have a name,” said Stone.

  “Not everyone starts life the same way.” Nuria folded her arms. “Besides, Father Devon asked him to say. It seems his word carries a lot of weight in this village.”

  Duggan turned away from her.

  “Make sure Boyd enlists some new help on his trip,” he said. “I don’t want you two back in Brix.”

  He bent, picked up the bag from the dirt, and chucked it at Nuria. Instinctively, she caught it.

  “Enjoy it. Women are good at spending coin.”

  He walked away.

  “Prick,” said Nuria.

  Stone looked at her and smiled.

  “You frighten him,” said the Map Maker, joining them on the steps. “Look at these people. They live in fear. All of them. Fear of the Lord and the Above and the sins they are guilty of. It has been drummed into them from birth. How the sins of their ancestors created this awful world. How their sins perpetuate the evil we face. These people are abused in a way I have never seen before. Not through weapons or brute strength. But in here.”

  He tapped his wrists against his bald head.

  “Then why do you want to stay?” said Nuria.

  “Have you not been listening to me? A part of me has been missing all these years. I first discovered it when I met Sadie and she gave me a map from the time of the Ancients. It opened up a doorway to the past. And it’s here. The rest of me. It’s all here. My true purpose.”

  He gestured toward the old stone building. Stone grunted, stooped for the ammunition box.

  “I don’t like leaving you behind,” said Nuria.

  “Last chance,” said Stone.

  But he was no longer listening, only talking. He was going to lead the people from the dark and into the light. He was going to do this and do that. His mouth moved and the words came out and little of it made any sense. They had fled the murderous gangs of Gallen and tossed him off the edge of the world and Stone realised the mercurial man had never seemed more content that right now. He was eager to leave with Nuria. He was looking forward to the road. There was nothing he liked nothing about the village; except Quinn. He thought about her dead niece and wondered how she would survive in Mosscar.

  Maybe they could detour?

  Stone edged into the shadows, leaving Nuria stranded with the Map Maker. She threw him a sideways glance – thanks a lot. He watched her for a long time, soft pale skin, dirty blonde hair tied into a ponytail, and that sense of belonging touched his murky soul.

  “Nuria,” he called.

  She eased the talkative man onto the steps of the Holy House and told him to rest.

  Hands on her hips, she leaned toward Stone, lips curled smile. “I think he’s staying.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  “Would you ever consider staying?”

  “Here? No.”

  “No, not here, but somewhere.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  He looked into her bright blue eyes and saw the humour had gone. He plucked the bag of coins from her palm.

  “Shall we go back to the inn?”

  She realised he wasn’t going to answer.

  “Sure.”

  As they walked through the village, Stone said, “What kind of a person bundles an eleven year old girl into a city stricken with sickness?”

  “You don’t think she went in there alone?”

  “Quinn doesn’t.”

  “It’s too horrible to think about. I just want to get drunk.”

  “How do they survive but the girl doesn’t?”

  They stopped outside the inn.

  “We’re working for Boyd,” she said.

  Stone scratched his beard. “I reckon we can do more than one thing at a time.”

  It was the season of long hot days and short warm nights. It was the season when Shauna slept naked with her husband.

  Not that he was there to appreciate it.

  She woke abruptly, a film of perspiration on her fa
ce, the fourth night in a row it had happened. Her dreams had grown messy. She sat up, blankets slipping to her waist. Patches of grey moonlight slanted into the room. The wind ached. The cattle groaned. The dream had faded. She licked her lips. Her throat was dry. She had taken to bringing a half-filled cup of water with her at night. She reached for it, drank too quickly, set it down gasping.

  His pillow was untouched.

  Wrapping a blanket around her thin frame, she went looking for him. She knew where he would be. He would be on the other side of the wall, slumped half-drunk in his chair, dirty boots and empty bottles discarded on the rug, the fire dwindling to almost nothing. She sighed, hesitated, glanced back at the empty bed, tempted to return. It was his last night and she really didn’t want another fight. Then she looked at the cross-stitch hanging from the bedroom wall, a beautiful piece of embroidery they had forgotten to notice for so long now, their names woven amongst trees and flowers and Holy crosses, a wedding gift, nearly seven years ago, the day of her thirteenth birthday.

  She wasn’t giving up on him, on them.

  The door creaked as she nudged it open. Her bare feet were sticky against the stone floor. She was right about his boots and about the empty bottles. She almost laughed to herself. His chair was angled toward the fire and all she could see was his arm dangling from it, a bottle of cheap wine loosely clutched between his fingers.

  Shauna placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. He sighed.

  “Why don’t you come to bed?”

  She loosened the blanket; pert breasts and an untamed bush. He tilted the bottle to his lips. She watched his Adam’s apple bob as he gulped it down.

  It was her turn to sigh. She sat beside the crackling fire and curled around his legs, leaning onto his thighs.

  He drank, stroked her hair.

  “Jeremy called me an inbred retard. Because I ain’t able to speak their tongue like he does. He’s the fucking retard, Shauna. He’s the cunt in deep shit. He let Quinn leave for Mosscar this afternoon.”

  “What’s going to happen?” She looked up at him.

  “Jeremy needs to find a reason for her to turn back. She can’t be up there, nosing around.”

  Shauna shook her head. “Walk away from this.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can, Brian. You can do whatever you want.”

  “The beacon is finished. Everything is in place. I can’t walk away. Not now. Not after everything we’ve been through. We need the coin. You know I make next to nothing. When it’s done, we’re fucking rich.”

  “You’ll make extra going to Touron looking after the horses.”

  “And what will that do?” He glared at her. “Clear the rent we owe and fuck all else.”

  “I can take on more cleaning jobs. We can work it out.”

  He shook his head, buried his hand in her hair, and massaged her scalp. She moaned at his gentle touch.

  “There are no more paying jobs in the village,” he said, taking his hand away. “You know that. People like us are just unlucky. We’ve done the sums, Shauna. Even a retard like me can do the sums. You know there’s no fucking way out of this. We need money. I have to do it.”

  He scratched his ragged beard, picked up the bottle.

  “I want to fucking do it.”

  She knew it had always been about more than the coin. They had struggled for years. Now was no different to then.

  “Anyway, what do you think would happen to us if we walked away now?”

  She shivered.

  “When will you be back from Touron?”

  “Duggan has a hush-hush meeting with Governor Albury and then we escort the fucking Archbishop back here so the cunt can begin the Summer Blessings. It shouldn’t take too long.”

  “What do you have to do whilst you’re there?”

  “Just pass on news of the strangers to the emissary. Nothing else.”

  “Why does he need to know about them?”

  “No more questions, Shauna, I’m tired.”

  She bit her lower lip. Peered into the flames.

  “This is our last night.”

  He didn’t answer. He made no move. She spread the blanket beside the fire. Her hands reached for him. His lust had never dimmed. Even when they learned their union within the Holy House would be a childless one. He had always wanted her. Nothing stopped him. Not even the lack of coin or drink or food or decent clothing or anything nice other than the cross-stitch which they no longer looked at. Shauna had feared she would lose him to another woman, a fertile one, but his appetite for her refused to be sated. Until this plot, this horrible plan, had surfaced. Now, he hardly even looked at her. And when he did he could barely maintain himself and even when all that was present there was more chance of the moon falling from the sky than him finishing inside her.

  She recoiled from him. He was cold, disinterested. She lay back on the blanket, propped on her elbows.

  He drank some more. And still ignored her.

  “Make sure you pack before I return. Only what we can carry. We have to move fast.”

  She picked up the blanket, pulled it around her.

  “I don’t want to leave Brix.”

  “There’s no choice.”

  “I’ve only ever been as far as Great Onglee.”

  “Once it’s done, we can’t stay.”

  “Why? Why do we have to go away?”

  “Because the Churchmen will hunt us down. They’ll know the beacon was a signal.”

  “What about Jeremy? What will he do? He has a family here, Brian, sisters and a father.”

  Brian snorted, got to his feet, brushed past her. He paced the gloomy room dotted with odds of furniture and little else.

  “I don’t care what Jeremy’s going to do. At the moment the smarmy little bastard needs to worry about Quinn.”

  “There’s nothing to worry about. The sickness will kill her.”

  “Yeah,” said Brian. “That’s right. How could I forget?”

  He was tired, half-drunk and edgy and Shauna knew she should have gone back to bed and left him to dwell on the decisions he had made and how nothing in their lives would ever be the same again since he had made them. How had they both found themselves in this? No. Why had Brian put them in this? He should have never listened to Jeremy about a lucrative way of making extra coin and gaining revenge against the Holy House. It was stupid. What did he think it would involve? Shovelling manure? Chopping wood? Brian was right; there was no paying work left in Brix, not honest paying work anyway.

  “If we stay we hang.” He stared at her. “Once it’s over we’ll go far from this miserable village to a place where we can have nice things like our friends have and no longer worry about how much things cost.”

  “What’s the point of nice things if we’ll never see our friends again? I like it here, Brian.”

  “We’ll have a decent house to live in. You want that, don’t you?”

  “We have a decent house now,” she said, tiredness fuelling the defiance in her voice. “We just don’t have …”

  “A decent house?” He slammed his open hand against the wall. His nostrils flared. ”It’s a fucking hovel. We live in shit, Shauna. Shit, shit and more fucking shit.” He took a deep breath. “I hate it. I hate this house. I hate Brix. What has it ever done for us? Tell me. Tell me.”

  He threw the bottle.

  “I hate them for what they’ve done to us.”

  “This is what it’s all about, isn’t it?”

  He came to her, gently placed his hand against her flat stomach.

  “Empty,” he whispered. “All their sermons and prayers and words. It’s a big fucking lie, Shauna, a big lie.”

  He pushed the blanket from her shoulders, looked down at her bare skin. She gasped as he grabbed her and roughly pushed her to his chair. He fumbled with his trousers and pounded against her, thrusts of anger, ruthless and near brutal, the sweat pouring from his face, dripping onto her back. She stared at his dirty boots a
nd empty bottles askew on the floor. He grunted loudly, unable to spill his seed. He kept driving into her until her knees buckled and then he pushed her against the floor and he was above her and his weight was against her and her legs were wrapped around him and her nails were digging into him and still he could not finish.

  He rolled off her, exhausted, panting heavily.

  Shauna could see the blackness in his eyes as he lay staring at the ceiling.

  SEVEN

  Stone opened his eyes.

  It was shortly after dawn and the mild air resonated with the clump of horses and the rumble of wagons. He eased into an upright position, head throbbing. He saw Nuria watching the convoy, leaning her hip against the open doorway of the barn, arms folded, head tilted to one side, wind lightly tossing her blonde hair. The property belonged to Boyd. He owned a piece of land on the outskirts of the village with several outbuildings and stables. His house was wood and stone with a moss covered thatched roof. Stone pushed himself onto his feet, licked his dry lips. Nuria heard him cough and glanced over her shoulder. He saw the dark, half-circles below her eyes. He washed his hands through his shoulder length hair, scratched his beard and stepped gingerly toward her.

  Sal Munton was straining his lungs inside the prison wagon, damning every man and woman who had ever crossed him and cursing their families and loved ones with all manner of plagues. His shackled gang of thieves were less belligerent. A girl of no more than six years old was deeply distressed. Duggan, riding at the front of a column of armoured Churchmen, appeared untroubled by her choking sobs. The sun glinted off his iron helmet as he trotted past, glaring at them.

  Nuria said, “Do you really believe Quinn’s niece was murdered?”

  “I don’t know but something’s off about it.”

  After Boyd had invited them onto his land, introducing them to his wife and children, they had discussed at length the dead child, Clarissa. They talked with Boyd’s staff, two men who maintained the property during his absence, but they knew little of the girl who had chosen to wander into a city stricken with a sickness left behind by the Ancients. Nuria pointed out that Quinn would have no doubt spoken with the locals already and there was little to be accomplished by poking their noses into the matter here.