———

Words are heavier in the dark.

I roll onto my side, stretching an arm over and past her slight naked figure. My pistol is still under the pillow despite our earlier efforts to shake it loose. She stirs a little and grasps my arm tightly to her chest. She only holds me for a moment before releasing me back into the night.

Shirt

Pants

Shoes

Tucking the heft of the cold pistol into my belt I think about the slick wet streets. I think about blasting my bits off when I slip with a loaded gun in my belt. I think better of it and slide it nervously into my front pocket. Slightly safer there I’d bet. Quietly I close my house door behind myself and step into the unforgiving and damaged city. It’s a crowded city and there’s no room for kindness in it. Father Time is shiftless, fidgety, here in this place.

The air is heavier in the dark.

My shaking right hand grasps and un-grasps the grip of the gun in my pocket. Any minute now it will happen. It plays out in my head over and over. I walk towards Daugherty St. as a steam carriage passes noisily in the day’s early hours. Then as the carriage is almost out of view, it turns around, turns back to me. Straight at me. It accelerates.

Lights

Siren

Gun

Every day I walk the quiet streets towards my shop in the wee hours. Every day I know they’ll find me out. Every day I play the same tragic scene in my head. But every day I make it the twelve blocks to my tiny shop unharmed. It would almost be easier if they would just show up and kill me. Almost. If nothing else it would relieve the tension.

Nothingness is heavier in the dark.

“Thadius! You’re late today, sir. What held you up?” my young apprentice shouts as I approach.

“Shush Marshal. No need to be so loud so early.”

“Sorry sir.”

Fumbling past my gun, finding the keys to the shop, I open the door; two turns left, one right, pull, then push. A satisfactory *shink* as a pin in the door drops, disarming the blunderbuss loaded with bird shot on the other side.

“Any proper crook could figure that out, sir.” my apprentice notes.

“Marshall, if your mouth were any larger I’d cut your head from your shoulders and sell it as a hat.”

The safe is closed tight. No windows are broken. Another night has gone by without incident. I open the safe and begin to tabulate yesterday’s sales, trying hard not to think about the pile of gold in the basement. I set Marshall to putting out our new top-hats and dusting the old flatcaps that haven’t sold in ages. Everyone wants something tall these days.
I steal a minute to reflect. I reflect on the gold in the basement. A small chronoatic ripple developed behind the store. I noted it while emptying a wastebin. I thought nothing of it until later when there was a large pile of gold bullion sitting in its place. I inspected each brick of it finding a serial number and two imprints; one simply reading “Knox”, the other reading “Property of the United States of America.” I didn’t know what either of those were but I knew they had to belong to somebody somewhere.

I should have reported it. Instead I carried the gold quickly into my basement, secreted it away, and settled on waiting a decade for somebody to claim it. It seemed reasonable enough. Ten years for somebody to notice their gold had gone missing.

Only two men ever came for it. They got to my store counter at the same time. They looked to be twins. They both looked shocked when they spoke simultaneously.

“Where is the gold! History says you have it!”

They both killed each other before I had to bother with it. The police made a report but never investigated. Labeled it “just an incident.”

I reflect on other things as well though. I think about buying some ammunition for my pistol. I think about the terrible day when I may have to use it. I think about the disappearance of my last apprentice. I think about the girl that wasn’t in my bed when I woke up. The steam carriage that wasn’t on the road. The noise I was half-hearing in front of my shop.

Dreams are heavier in the dark.

From my office I see the scene. A crash of glass and flesh sends Marshall and ten thousand sparkling reflections of sunrisen amber-light heavily to the shop floor.

Blood

Shadows

Hats

I dash to my heavy office door and slam it shut quickly as I see two large thugs enter the shop. They are wearing flatcaps. Must not be from around now. I pull the three large pins into the door, tighten the screwlock, and take stock. I’m uninjured. My apprentice is probably dead, but these things happen. So long as it isn’t my neck who am I to scoff. I reach to the pistol in my pocket and pull it out as I edge towards the viewing hatch to assess my situation.

“Thadius! We have returned! We have returned and decided not to kill myself this time.” The voices boom in unison.

I slide the hatch-cover back and peer into the dawn light flooding my shop. It’s grayed by smog, but I can see well enough in it. Immediately I understood. It was the two from before. One wears red, the other green. They came back from who knows when to claim their gold. Though it seems they’ve both been training quite a bit since the last confrontation. Planning at the least.

“I’ve come back for the gold and we won’t leave without it,” they shout together.

An axe flys towards the hatch and I dodge it, but only just. It snaps its heavy head into the dense wood and fires splinters into my office.

“I don’t have any gold. You may, both of you, leave this instant!”

I hear the ruffling of paper and I peek back through the hatch. They have a book. I begin to check the load on my pistol.

Powder

Packing

Ball

“No, see here, on page 2198 of ‘Chronology of Gold’, it says ‘Thadius R. Geurris – Only known successful robbery of Fort Knox. He held the stolen gold in the basement walls of his hat shop and blah blah blah blah. We know you have the-”

Bang

I fire blind through the hatch but only strike Red’s left leg. He drops to the ground screaming. Green reaches into a satchel and pulls out another axe.

“No guns is the only rule they put on these chrono-transports. That’s it! How stupid are they?”

Thud

Another axe blade now peeks through near my waist. A well built door this surely is, but it won’t hold up at this rate. I reach to load a second ball as it occours to me… I only brought one ball. I retreat to the corner of my office in a panic. I can hear Red getting back to his feet and both of them moving to the door. Both axes come out of the door and are promptly slammed back into it. Over and over. I’m sweating now. I’m hyperventilating. I’m shaking wildly.

I reach for my chunk of writing lead and try to break it into a ball shape. I fail. I think of the blunderbuss in the shop proper. I think of all the gold that will go unused. I think I hear a third person on the other side of my quickly thinning door.

“Get a load of this guy, eh? A regular samurai.” says Green to Red or Red to Green.

“That’s a right pretty hat you’ve got there Mr. Samurai.”

The axes retreat again from the door. I hear first the metal thuds of the heavy axe heads hitting the hard oak floor, then the softer thuds of some things less dense hitting the floor.
I sit in the corner and weep for an hour or more. Finally, satisfied that there is nobody left living in the building, I edge towards the door. The locks are jammed. The door is more solid than I gave it credit for. Even after the attack I can not press through it. I see the headless corpses of my assailants on the floor. Marshall’s corpse has gone lord knows where. I try the door for two hours more before resigning to waiting for authorities. I watch for them through the shattered door.

The authorities never come.

Nobody again passes my door.

The door never opens.

And as I sit in the dark, wondering where Father Time has landed me, I write my last words by dying candle. Starving. My words of advice to you, whomever finds this, are to never second guess an opportunity. Never horde. Never live in fear. And never forget to bring a second ball for yourself.

Words are heavier in the dark,

-Thadius Reginald Geurris

As told by Andi Anagni

Of course when I say Targa, I mean Field Targa, as regulated by the Imperial Targa Federation. I know there are blokes who think Running Targa is better, and they’re all about Targa Union and that, but I’m Imperial through and through, and I never bother with what the Outliers do.

So anyway, we went to the match in Tantaria because the Viridians were playing the Russets for the Championship. If the Viridians won, they’d go up to the Premier, see, because the Crimson Tide were bottom of the league, so it was a big match. Besides, the Greens are all Atheist anti-Imperial bastards as we know, and the Russets aren’t much better, because their supporters are all merchant class wankers. But at least they aren’t liberals like the Greenies. I’m blue, myself, and my friend Xin Shi is a white-shirt, so we didn’t have anything on the match, personally. Anyway, I wore red and he wore green to make it even, like. Adrian is a Veridian’s fan, so he wore green.

Anyway, the match was really good, just about the best I’ve seen. The Greens scored five High Schiffs and three lows And the Reds had four and six. That’s when the body goals started. Gods, it was epic. I lost count how many Greenies took a Targa to the head, but one of the Red had his leg broke and was off permanently. Adrian told me there were fifteen substitutions all told for men taken out by Body Goals. The Greens were getting really worked up in the stands and kept throwing Snagi sticks onto the pitch. At one point the Red Schiffy started throwing them back. Anyway, it was a great match. In the end it came down to sudden death. And the Green captain was pretty much exhausted. But the Red’s had lost their captain to a body goal to the head, so their vice-captain went out to meet him, and he was pretty fresh. So you’d have thought it was a forgone conclusion who’d win the sudden death. But I swear to the Gods that they hadn’t been at it five minutes when the Red boy submits, after the Green had thrown him twice and pinned him with his right arm broken. Well the reds went ballistic. They figured the vice-captain had thrown the match.

Well, Adrian was pretty chuff, as you might think, and we all thought he would be worth a glass or two of Kaat, so we were coming out from the stadium and the next thing I knew was some idiot in a red Targa Shirt was taking a swing at Xin Shi with a Snagi. I tried to stop the bastard and he shouted something about me being a traitor to red, and took a swipe at me. So I decks him with a poke to the snoot, and we take it on the run.

We got out into Novelty Square and the next thing I knew there’s this mob of reds, screaming and waving flags and Snagi’s and charging across the square, straight towards us, I think, and we turns around to run, and there’s a bloody army of greens coming the other way. Well, we legged it to hide behind the statue of General Ichinose and then the two gangs met and all hell broke loose. I don’t know what happened to Adrian because we got separated in the rush, and Xin Shi kept shouting “I’m White! I’m White!” but nobody was listening, because everybody just saw the green Targa shirt and the reds went for him. I was only wearing a red’s scarf so I threw that off so they could see my blue stripped Lludo, and I got a hold of a boken and started belting anybody who came close. It was brilliant. Lucky we got out before the Amber guard showed up and started dropping gas into the crowd. Of course the Guards don’t care for the Red supporters or the Greens, because they’re Golds to a man. Seven dead, thirty six injured and over a hundred in the pokey overnight. It was brilliant. Best match I ever been to.

Nebuchadnezzar had been down on his luck for a while when he hatched his plot to destroy the Laravinthian consul’s frigate one night. He had been slighted by the consul some years previous and long desired to have his revenge. What the slight had been is difficult to say, even Nebuchadnezzar was a little foggy on that point. But for ages he’d been muttering on about “that smug prick Tattinger Harding” and his arrogant ways. Whatever the reason, he’d been stewing a great hate towards Consul Harding for years and decided that it was time to act.

He’d recieved some information a couple weeks earlier about the Laravinthian fleet being laid up near Giardino while the consul was being entertained by their royal family. The fleet was a modest sized one, two brigantines, a few packet ships, and the consul’s steam-driven frigate, the Verite and its two tenders. It necessarily moved around at a snail’s pace due to the difficulty of securing coal in the area and they’d decided to wait out the rough winter seas and take advantage of the famous hospitality of the Giardino royal family.

It was a new moon and the famous night fogs of the Ypriocan Coast were rolling in. Rodriguez hove to just over the horizon from the fleet and set three of his runabouts loose, loaded with his best men and as many barrels of powder as they could carry. They rowed for hours against the tide until they reached the harbor where the fleet lay. All was silent onboard the sleepy ships, a skeleton crew had been left on them while the rest of the men were busy reveling in town, and the night watches had gotten lax in the safety of the harbor.

Nebuchadnezzar separated his ships, sending one to deal with the brigantines, another for the packets and tenders, and captaining the third himself to deal with the Verite. At each of the ships his men tied a couple barrels of powder with pressure switches to the anchor chains just under the water. For the Verite itself Nebuchadnezzar loaded up about ten barrels on the chain, wanting to be sure the job was done right.

They stole back into the night, reaching their ship just as dawn was showing. They struck anchor and made for the harbor with full sails set. When they got within sight they came about and let off several broadsides, even though they were still far out of range. This woke the entire town, and Harding and his men, seeing that they outnumbered their assailant five to one in fighting vessels, rushed to their ships and scrambled to strike anchor and give chase.

Nebuchadnezzar watched gleefully from his quarterdeck as, almost simultaneously, the charges ignited and with a tremendous explosion utterly destroyed the Laravinthian fleet.

“Serves that smug cocksucker right,” he was heard to remark with a cackle. Spurred by the success of his plan he order his ship to make way for Sante Savaria where another minor official has aroused his ire. This proved to be a mistake, however, in a tale that will be told another day.

Battle of the Three Fleets, a Memoir. By Jackson Sato Trevelyan

I was serving aboard the old Courage as a Gunner’s Mate on the upper port midship four incher. We were a crew of five, The Gun Captain, the Gunner, who actually sighted the old girl, me, and the two loaders. The Gun Captain read off the range, elevation and deflection as he got them from Fire Control, and the Gunner cranked in the numbers while I set pressure and charged the pistons. The loaders passed up the projectiles and dumped them into the breech. Number one would say “Lock” and the loader would snap the breech shut and say, “Locked” then the bell would ring from Fire control and the Gunner would yank the lanyard and Paf! The gun recoiled about six inches, and slowly slid out again, and we were re-aimed and loaded before she had fully extended.

In the casemate you could look fore or aft and see the other gun crews working behind their shields, and sometimes the atmosoldoj would come down and run along the catwalk to get to the aft rigging. Because the bulk-head fire doors were always locked down tight after General Quarters, the only way they could get aft was through the casemates. They’d run along with their bandoleers of 69 caliber shells wrapped around them to the spotters’ nests, to see if they could pick off anybody in the bridge of the Imperial ships. I don’t know of anybody ever taking any damage from one of them boys, and one ex-atmosoldo I talked to years back said they mostly traded shots with the fellows down in the rigging of the enemy ships.

Anyway, we were flying at about six, six and a half thousand right in the cloud layer waiting for the Imperials to show, every man ready and just about going crazy with the waiting. They must have had some idea of where the Imperials were, because General Quarters had sounded about a hour before so you could only hope somebody in charge knew what was going on. Sometimes you never knew until the Gun Captain looked up from his ranging plate and started shouting out the numbers. Of course the Gunner could see out of the shield, but squatting down where I was, by the valves, you couldn’t tell what was happening until orders started coming through or until you heard the thump-bang of a hit.

That’s what happened to us. No orders, no warning, nothing, just Thump! And then Bang! The biggest explosion I’d ever heard, and the old girl rocked and dipped and all hell broke loose.

Suddenly we’re lifting and turning and the bells are ringing for secure loose gear (Which meant us, by the way. No body ever left anything loose on a man-of-war when general quarters sounded. They meant us. We should hold on because of violent maneuvering.) Anyway, the whole line must have been doing an in line to line abreast turn, because the next thing I knew, the Gunner is saying, conversational like, that he could see the Avonmouth turning, and there was no way he should have, because the old Avon was three ahead of us in line. Then we ran through a bank of clouds and came out into the light again and the Gunner started swearing like anything and said that he could see the Imperials about five, maybe seven miles off, and below us. The Gun Capitan said that he must be seeing our Allies (who were just a bunch of pirates and freebooters to tell you the honest truth, for all they dressed themselves up as the United Independent Fleet,) because there was no way the Imperials could be firing on us from there, and the Gunner just turned and said, “It’s got to be the Imperials down there, because there is no way in heaven that anybody else could have a fleet that size.”

We all pushed and shoved to get a peep out of the sighting window, and as we turned, sure enough I could see them, two lines abreast about twenty or more line of battle ships with axillaries cruising at about 4000 feet or so, and rising, the sun catching them as they turned.

“Then who the hell are we shooting at?” I asked, because you could hear the repeater bells ringing away on the starboard side, and the little sneezes of the secondary guns.

“I’ll give you one guess, Jack,” he says, and right then I realized we were in for a tough day. Just then the voice tube gave a squeal and the Gun Capitan leaned over and stuck his ear to it and then said, “Aye, aye,” And turns to us and says, “Ready number six, H. E.,” And we all say “Aye, aye” and start loading Sweet Susie Six with high explosives, and then the Gunner says, “Well this is more like,” and gives us the thumbs up over his shoulder and says, “Line of Imperial trash cans,” (by which he means protected cruisers,) “Looks like Princesses.” (That’s a class of Imperial cruisers,) and then the Gun Capitan starts chanting out the numbers and we’re loaded up, and the bell rings and Sweet Susie sneezes and the Gunner gives a little twitch and says nice and calm like, “One for us,” and then we just start pumping the H.E. into the little bitch, cause the spotters had her range first time through.

Of course the Princess don’t carry anything heavier than a four inch, so we didn’t bother with the main guns, because they were busy with our so-called Allies at this point, but the whole Port battery opened up on that line of Imperial scouts and fairly took them apart. About five shots in the Gunner gives a whoop and says, “There goes her foremast,” but whether it was us or somebody else blew the thing off I couldn’t say, and it didn’t much matter because the bridge blew up after that and a fire started on her, and I suspect the crew started venting gas without orders after that because the voice tube squawked and the Gun Captain nodded and had us traversing forward for another target. Somebody later told me she was the Louise May. You can look her up.

After that things got pretty hot. We’d come around now so the port battery was engaging the United Independents. There is a kind of calm that comes over you once the fighting begins in earnest. Your training kicks in and it is just a matter of snapping the levers in rhythm of the gun. I kept my eye on the gage, giving the pressure wheel a quarter turn now and then to compensate for heating up, snapping the inlet valve back and waiting for the Gun Capitan to yank the lanyard to the discharge valve. And somehow you aren’t aware of time. Just the rhythm of working the gun.

Gun Capitan: One thousand fifteen, closing; Five degrees; Traverse plus eight,

Gunner: One thousand fifteen mark, five set, traverse set.

Gun Capitan: Lock.

Loader: Locked.

PAF!

And then me down against the gun shield: click back, check pressure, click forward. They didn’t even ask me, because if I didn’t charge the cylinders while the gunner was setting the numbers we were all in the shit. Only time they expected me NOT to do my job was if I was dead.

I suppose we’d sent off fifteen to twenty rounds or so, when there was a god-awful bang down the casemate and the ship kind of dipped and swayed, like she’d stumbled or something. Down where I was I couldn’t see a thing, but I could tell by the noise and shouting that we’d taken a pretty big hit. The Gun Capitan stopped in his chanting out the numbers and swore and said, “That’s number four gone.” And the Gunner, who must have been still looking out his sighting port just says, “Ĉu fakte ka?” like it was nothing, and then says, kind of irritable, “What’s the bloody range? Sir?” And we go back to firing.

Number four, that was the gun up the casemate from us, had been hit by an eight inch H.E. which blew the shield, the gun and the entire crew out into open air. I can only hope none of them were alive at that point. We just kept plugging away at the Ship opposite, which was something along the lines of an Armored Cruiser, though doubtless she’d been built as a second rater. It was hard to tell with the Freebooters, because they weren’t a fleet in the usual way, but just a collection of ships put together anyhow. She had eight inchers in two single turrets, for and aft, and a double casemate of four inchers, six a side. I have to say they were making a pretty good show, considering that they weren’t proper Navy, and didn’t have central fire control like us.

Now some people ask why we don’t just shoot the envelope of the enemy ships and blow them up, seeing as how the lifting gas is flammable. The answer’s really simple: in the first place, even in a rigid airship like the men of war, there’s almost nothing solid inside the envelope: it’s 95% lifting gas, and 5% hard surface. So if you hit the gas cells with a six inch high explosive shell, it passes through and makes two six inch holes and that’s it. If you hit the substructure where all the guns are, you do real damage, and if you start a fire, the other fellow is in serious trouble.

Of course the envelopes do get hit, and the ships loose some gas. But you’ve got the riggers climbing around in there, patching just as fast as they can, and you’ve got the fire crew putting out fires in the substructure, so a “killing shot” is pretty rare. And, in a way, you want to loose a bit of lift in a fight, because you’re throwing hundred of pounds of ballast at the enemy when you shoot, not to mention the gas in the compression tanks. And beside, as any Navy man will tell you, only merchantmen use pure hydrogen for lift. They need it. Men of war use a 40 – 60 mixture of helium and hydrogen which is pretty much fire proof.

Of course, there were some of the United Frees who weren’t proper Navy ships. And they paid dearly for that. The fire crew were up forward where number four had been, securing the air lines and rigging a gangway, and suddenly started shouting and cheering like crazy. The Gunner gives a whoop, and shouts, “Got her! They got the back stabbing bastards!” The ship in line ahead of the one we’re engaging, most likely a second rate or armored cruiser was going down bow first, in flames. She must have been a hydrogen ship or had one pure cell of fire gas in her, because the substructure was on fire, and the whole of the envelope was going up. She was dumping her water ballast like anything, but nothing was going to stop that fall. It’s a terrible sight, I can tell you, and I wouldn’t wish it on anybody, even them Freebooters. Still, I have to admit it cheered me a little, because I was still thinking about that Imperial fleet down below us, who were rising all this time and getting closer.

The rest of the United Free line was taking a pounding mind, because they had taken on some of the best sky sailors in the world in the San Serifine Navy. Sweet Susie Six didn’t miss a beat, for all we were cheering. And I figure if the Imperials hadn’t played us all for fools, us and the United Frees, we would have had a chance against them. But the Freebooters were giving almost as good as they got and by the time that cruiser went down in flames, we were beginning to show some damage, and not just in the casemate.

We were moving along in line ahead about two thousand yards from the United Frees, going at each other hammer and tongs. Firing at that distance, in case you wonder, is like trying to hit a match-box with a grain of rice from twenty feet away with a pea-shooter. So it’s no wonder that most of the damage is done to the envelope and that means hardly anything at all. Still we were taking out guns and starting fires and blowing away masts and they were doing the same to us. What’s more, we were gaining height on them and pulling ahead, which was all to the good, if we had enough time to take advantage of it. Now, it’s always good to get above an enemy ship, because after a point he can’t elevate his guns to get at you, because his own envelope gets in the way. And the faster fleet can sometimes get far enough ahead to cross the T of the enemy, and beat the crap out of the lead ship, and so on down the line. Some times all that happens is that their line turns away, and you end up going in circles, and climbing in a spiral.

There’s an upper limit you can take an airship, of course. Too high and the gas cells get pressurized and the popper valves blow, and you vent gas anyway. But long before that the air gets too thin and the crew start drifting off, or get headaches or worse. And with men or war, when you fire the guns, the pressure release drops the temperature, see? But even with using pure Nitrogen, the way the San Serifine fleet did, there’s always a little moisture in the air, and that starts to form ice. And the higher you go the colder it gets and the more ice you get. And after a while, the gun mechanism can freeze up.

Of course, it’s worse for the Imperials, because they use compressed air, instead of Nitrogen, so they always have more moisture in the guns and that means they are more likely to freeze. The biggest problem from our point of view was that we were using up Nitrogen. And when we run out of nitrogen in the tanks, there’s nothing for it but to start pounding air, as they call it: filling the compressor tanks with air. But the higher you go the thinner the air is and the longer it takes to fill the tanks. And you can just bet that the Imperials were taking their sweet time down at 3000 feet or so, filling their tanks and letting the United Frees soften us up. But if we dropped to take on the Imperials, then the Freebooters would have the height on us, and that would be worse than staying where we were. So we were stuck between and it was no sandwich I wanted to be part of. The best we could hope for was that the Imperials would loose sight of us, or that we’d do enough damage to the freebooters before the Imperials came up that what was left of the other fleet would cut and run.

What we got was a running fight in between the Imperials on the starboard and the United free on the port. The Imperials came up just after the word came down from the compressors that we were on our last fifty tanks of nitrogen and the Compressor crews were pounding air. The Gun captain ordered me to switch to air so we could save out Nitro until the guns showed white, which would give us a chance to blow the ice out, so I cranked away at the valves and set Sweet Susie on air. I upped the pressure on the set valve, too, because one thing we didn’t want now was short fall of shot. There was an Atmosolda Lieutenant who had been carrying extra bandoleers of ammo down to the gunners in the tops and he came over from the Starboard casemate and said, “Right boys, it’s up to you now. the Imperials are coming into range to Starboard, so the sooner you get those traitor bastards off our backs the better.” And then we heard the Hiss and Paf! of the starboard casemates, and the bell rang for us, and we took on the next Freebooter in line.

They say the whole fight lasted about an hour and a half after the Imperials arrived. Caught in between two fleets, even when you had half wrecked one of them, there was no other way it could turn out. We took out one Princess class Imperial scout something they rated as a protected cruiser and a third rate from the United Frees, and an armored cruiser on the Imperial side before we went down. Sweet Susie Six took one in the eye from a eight inch, I figure, and it killed the Captain and the Gunner outright, and threw one of the loaders over to the other side of the ship, Somehow the other loader and I climbed out and took ourselves off to join damage control, and get bandaged up, until we were sent to join number seven in the starboard casemate. They had lost their Gunner to splinters and the pressure man had taken over so I jumped down and started back to work. I think I must have been half dazed from the hit that took Sweet Susie out, though, because I didn’t hear the order to secure arms until the Gun Captain shook me by the arm and told me to get up, because the old girl had had it.

We’d lost about half the side secondary armament, and one of the main turrets and were loosing gas from splinter damage faster than the remaining fitters could patch when we took a direct hit to the number 45 ring which took out the cross members holding the horizontal fins. The starboard tail fin started to break away and we couldn’t keep altitude or hold position in line, so the Captain gave order to right rudder in the hopes of ramming one of the Imperials. We damned near made it too, but for another hit from a ten incher which blew off the bridge and took out two nose cells and we started going down by the bows. The Engineering Officer found himself in command, which must have been a shock for him, but he got the damage control crews to work, and dumped all the aft ballast and managed to get us on an even keel but still headed down. There were a couple of Imperial scouts and a brace of cutters followed us down, but we still had guns enough to swat them off until we were down to 900 foot when we were ordered to secure. We’d lost all dynamic lift and were pretty much free ballooning by this time, and hit the ground at about fifteen knots for all the old man dumped ballast and backed the engines. I’ve had easier landings.

The atmosoloj had all come back into the substructure and their Captain gave the order to blow off the masts at about five hundred foot, which lightened the ship considerable and meant that we wouldn’t tip sideways when she hit, because of snagging the rigging. Sometimes the masts will strike straight through the envelope, which is not a pretty sight.

All hell broke loose when we struck, as you might guess, but I’ll give the atmosoldoj their due, they were out and establishing gun positions before most of the matelows had got off the ship. The bloody Imperial Princesses came by and pumped a few shells into the poor old Courage but that was just gloating, because they didn’t land or drop their atmosoldoj to engage. The officer in charge ordered the ship torched after they had took themselves off, and we drew up the surviving crew and marched off in good order. It just about broke my heart to leave the old girl a pyre of burning duralithium, but we all talked big about how we’d pay the Imperials out in what ever ship we were assigned to. Little did we know.

“This, then is the Curse of the Historian: never to be able to truly remember, and never to be able to completely forget.”

THIS IS the Place: the where is here; THIS IS the Time: the when is now; THIS IS the Person: the who is I; THIS IS the Act: the what is do; THIS IS the Way: the how is thus; THIS IS the Reason: the why is….

The why is….

Ah. But to see the WHY, we must go back. Back to the Beginning, and before the beginning of the Beginning.

Because just as every Life is a story, and all lives interweave, to make the Great Story, so every story has a life of its own. And just as with a child, who at conception has a Mother and a Father and the Third, the Other, who is neither Mother nor Father, but who is the catalyst, and acts from afar, so the Story must have its three antecedents, and each of these in turn have three parent stories. And so, although we speak of the beginning of a story, what we really speak of is the story of its beginning.

Here, at the edges of the Settled Area, far from the Conurbation, we live “Twixt the Wild and the Sewn” and we have our own ways and our own tellings. Here, when we think of the story of the Beginning, we, of course, turn to the Histories, the Scrolls of the Pot. But it is as well to remember, that in other paces, they have other Ways. And other Tellings.

The First Scroll

There are those who say that first came the land, and that then the Peoples came and settled the land. And there are those who say that the land was unimportant before the coming of the Peoples, and that there is no story before the Peoples. These two groups dispute, and rather pointlessly, I think, for there can little doubt that it was not the Coming that created the land. Others argue that this was in fact the case; that in truth the land did not exist before the Peoples arrived, but I ask you, what sense is there in that? And as neither of these views answers the question of where the Land came from, they leave something to be desired.

The third thread begins with the Journey. But even this tale must lead us to ask: the journey to the Land, we know, but from whence? And thus, the thread of the Peoples is the Father of History, and the thread of the land is the Mother of History and the thread of the journey is the Other of History, because it acts from afar, and begins those things which will give birth to the story, in the fullness of time.

Whether or not the Peoples left the place where they were from fear, or famine, or fighting; whether they left for hope, or heartsickness or from hazard; whether they sought battle or beauty or bounty, none is now prepared to say. But there are references in the second chapter of the Scroll of Recipes of the songs that were sung on the journey, songs of lost lovers and wandering riders, and high-flying deeds of daring, by men and women of great fame. And yet none of these songs mention places in the land; none speak of names now known to us, and not one tells of the Sky Pirates and their ships. Which, by my way of thinking, indicates a culture so foreign to our own as to be either a myth, or from so long ago as to amount to the same thing. For who could conceive of a time when we had no ships? You might as well say that the Burbah had no legs then.

The first story the young Acolyte Historian must prepare and enter into the histories is, of course, his own. It is unthinkable that any Historian might himself have a life that is not in the closest possible agreement with Canon. You can not imagine how difficult it was for me to even gain admission to the School of Acolytes, then, having arrived at the Historium in the hands of Father Celestine as a foundling. In Historical circles, foundlings are as so many human palimpsests: the original text has been expunged and another written over it. Although often very intriguing and curious, palimpsests are almost always given a nil rating or placed the theoretical “nine deviations from true” away from acceptable norms. There simply can be no place for documents which say one thing at one period, and then are changed in another, if it is not through the agreed actions of the Historians that these changes be made. In any case, all such historical anomalies are recorded, before they are quite rightly destroyed.

Quite what the Holy Father was thinking of when he brought me here I cannot say, but this much is certain, in researching the beginnings of my own beginnings, I found so many untraced threads and so many unexpected anomalies, that I can only believe that Father Celestine had already written the outcome of my initiation, and thus foreshadowed what my own life story would reveal to the greater glory of the Brotherhood of Historians.

Back then, however I had nothing to go on, and no inkling of what I was to later discover. In the ordinary way, an Acolyte Initiate would begin with his family records if any and then the records of the local township, or Hetman, if the community was too small or impermanent to have reached Township status. I am told that in some of the herding communities, there is usually one old woman, whose task it is to memorize all the family relationships within the tribe. Surprisingly, such pedigree keepers are in the main extremely accurate. In the case of a foundling such as I, however, there is no family to go to, and so I had to begin with Father Celestine himself, to find the most basic information: where had he found me?

I waited until mid-morning, when I had finished my chores, and I knew that the Holy Father would have finished his offices for the day, before I asked the Acolyte Master’s permission to absent myself and seek out Father Celestine. I found him, sitting in the dark in his cell, surrounded by his papers, apparently in meditation, but he spoke to me before I even had time to turn away, calling me into sit across from him. Barely had I settled myself onto the zabutan, when he began.

“Ah. Xandra,” he said, pronouncing my name with the soft guttural of the Northerners, rather than the silly click fashionable among those who would copy all the styles of the Imperials. “Let me see; yes it must be fifteen years now that you have been with us. Yes…. High time and more that you came to fond out about yourself. You show great patience, boy, that is good. But frankly I would have expected more curiosity from a child of mine. Had I been your father, perhaps you would have not waited so long to come and see me, eh? But then, had I been your father, you would not have had to ask, would you? There would be no mystery, no questioning, no wonder…. But I can tell I have piqued your curiosity now, haven’t I? Yes… of course. Mmmm.” He had a curious way of asking questions that was less than rhetorical and somehow more than a verbal cue to the direction your thoughts should go. And then he always seemed to be on the edge of humming quietly to himself.

“Mmmm. Hmmmm. Yes. Hmm. Curious enough now, eh? Good, An Historian must possess enough curiosity to doubt everything, my son, or else we should so easily stray into Error. And as it is we who define Error, that would be unfortunate to say the least, Eh? Mmmm? Do you think? Yes, of course you do. Now then,” he reached behind where he sat and drew out a slender piece of wood, and handed it to me. It was about three-quarters of a cubit long, and as thick around as my middle finger. It was covered with small notches down its length, divided into sections by bands of leather which had been somehow affixed to it with some form of glue.

“There you are, my son, what do you make of that? That was the middle section of the back-brace you were strapped to when I found you.”

“I see, Reverend Father,” although, of course, I could see nothing.

“Liar,” he said without malice. “Please do not waste either of our time with such meaningless pleasantries, boy. You have no idea what it is, or what it means, or what you are going to do with it. Don’t pretend, Xandra. It will do you no good, ever to pretend. Pretending is precisely what you should never do. You are an Acolyte Initiate Historian, young fellow, and Historians do not pretend!”

The rod the reverend Father had given me I was to learn later, was what is called a nammastok, or tallastok which might best be rendered as story, history or naming rod. It is a means of recording information, not so much in the form of writing as through a collection of linked mnemonics, which serve those who understand them to record and recover information which is imbedded in the songs and stories of their oral traditions. The closest thing I can liken it to would be a series of footnotes without the text of the book, and indeed referring to notations in a number of books whose titles you are not given, but are expected to know already. All I could see at the time, sitting at the feet of my teacher, mentor and father was a piece of wood with small grooves, notches and patterns cut delicately into it.

“Well, then, Reverend Father, if I am not to begin with pleasantries, let us proceed to what we can at this point know. You have given me a stick, a carefully crafted rod which you tell me was part of my baby accouterments. Not now having access to the other parts of the back-brace from which this had been presumably removed, I can not at this time state categorically that there was a back-brace, nor that this came from it. I do have sufficient reason to believe the truth of your story, or at least to believe your conviction that you are now telling me honestly what you know of this thing. Furthermore, you have, through the Historium’s carefully cross referencing of information received from you previously with information from other verifiable sources been granted the status of a ‘prima-facie source,’ and therefore a person whose statements I may safely be allowed to take at face value. That is to say, I am allowed to believe that you are trying to tell the truth as you know it, and that you are correct in your understanding within one-comma-five standard deviations. I could of course come back tomorrow, and you could then inform me that this thing the badge of office of a Marshal of the Army from some time before the Imperial act of Unification (NT. 1435.10.17:12:00; HT. 2006.Dec.15:13:00) and I would have to take this information under consideration, bearing in mind that you are still a heretofore reliable provider of information, even though the information you now provide seems to be at odds with the information you gave me the day before. After all, the wood could be both things at once.”

My master’s only response was to hum the first five bars of ‘The Lad From the Ups-and-Downs.’

“Now, given all of the above, and taking into account that you are, as my Father in History, as well as my guardian from an early age, as attested to by the records of the Historium Local Records Department, I will as a working hypothesis the information that this rod is in some way connected to me, if only by early association. But I will also venture to surmise that you have presented me with this artifact at this time because you believe it to be in some way a clue or key which I can use to discover something of my past and my genesis.”

The Reverend Father nodded his head and said nothing.

“Therefore…” I began. The reverend Father leaned quickly forward and peered up at me from under his left eyebrow. “Therefore..?” he prompted.

“Therefore I should think that the time has come for me to ready myself for my first Field Assignment, and that the theme of this Field Assignment is to be to investigate the meaning of and possible Historical Impact of this artifact.”

I sat back on my heels feeling proud of myself.

“Something like that, yes,” he said, nodding, “When will you start?”

“I shall have to petition for permission of Reverend Father Alain to leave the House of the Acolytes, of course..”

“Permission has been granted.”

“And then I should gather together provisions and equipment from the Historium Commissary..”

As I spoke, my father leaned across to the small cupboard standing against the wall, and, without rising, open a door, pulled out a pack and threw it down in front of me.

“Done.”

And then there are my personal belongings to collect form the Dormatory..”

He clapped his hands and one of the servants padded in behind me and lay a small bundle, done up in my Service Shawl beside me.

“Anything else?” he asked, smiling.

“Nothing that I can think of. I can leave at any time, if the Reverend Father wishes it.”

“Close, Xandra, but not quite accurate. The Reverend Father does not wish you to go, but he understands that it is time, and so he will regretfully allow you to go. And also, your education is as of yet deficient in one very important feature. Something that I have asked you to come here to learn today, and now. You can not leave at any time, Xandra, my son. You can only leave now.”

He reached across and took my hand, the first time I had had physical contact from the old man since I was a child.

“Xandra, remember this: There is no time but the present. Go.”

And so it was that I set forth on my first Field Assignment, to find out who I was, at seventeen minutes after three on ninth day of the eighth month in the one thousandth, five hundredth and eighteenth year of the New Time reckoning, or, 4:17 pm on October 7th, 2089, Historical Time.

Such afflictions cross the globe that no deity could turn unchanged from it, but there exists beyond that the pains of the inexplicable. Any warrior can handle pain. Any child can suffer a cold. But the wanderer suffers something altogether different. A burning emptiness that no amount of travel can smother. Not booze, nor drugs, nor women can stave the infernal gray that tints every scene not fresh to the eye. A familiar tree, a comfortable bend in the road, a passerby who looks like a friend or bartender or shopkeep you once claimed to know. Anything can send the illusion of a different world crashing down into the gray haze again.

This is of course not to discount the pains of those that suffer afflictions of the body.A body and mind must work in unison. The ailment of one is the curse of the other. But bodily pains can be shut out. They can be left at the door by your hat and coat and bottle of pills.

An illness of the soul cannot.

Traverse the globe. Take in its peoples. Discover its wonders. For when you are through, You’re left only with You.

The Wanderlust.

I have walked so many paces since that day have seen so many sunrises, tasted of so many streams, said so many farewells, how am I to pick out the most notable days amongst them all, the path most significant? For if there is one thing I have truly discovered on my wanderings it is this: every step leads somewhere, every turning taken marks a break from that path not taken, every conversation along the way leads to another story, every scrap of truth discovered forms a new understanding, and that understanding leads us on to new paths, new encounters, new stories. Truly, though we mark the passing of time in eons, centuries, decades, years, months, weeks, days, hours minutes seconds… yet time, the very matter of whose understanding my life is dedicated, it is no more divided, no more differentiated than is water. Though we speak of oceans, rivers, tributaries , streams, springs, wells, buckets and glasses full of water, yet the rain that falls on the desert is mingles with the ocean, and the vapors of the Empyrean and the dregs of last night’s tea are all the same. Take this canteen, and poor it on the ground, and then find those drops again for me. Thus are the hours of our lives: though we number them, yet they are all, all part of the same stream, the same river, flowing into who knows what ocean?

There are few who have traveled further into the mysteries of the past, or who have looked deeper into the future than I and still I tell you this: I am but a cartographer; a map-maker who plots the course of the river. It is truly said: you cannot step into the same stream twice; the water has changed even as you step into it. But if you have walked the streambeds of time, as I have done, you will find this: as a man is wetted by entering the waters of the word, so he is changed by bathing in the streams of time. And what is more, the time changes around him, as surely it must, each ripple having his echo, each wavelet breaking on some distant shore of possibility, each cataract of time thundering into the chasms of reality, they bear his stamp, even as they make their mark upon him; each drip, drip, drip of time wearing away at his soul even as the drops of water will wear down the mountain…. over time.

No doubt I set off briskly that afternoon. After all, it was incumbent on me, a traveling Journeyman Acolyte, to be out of sight of the House of Acolytes by sundown. And of course when I say out of sight, I mean it must be impossible for me to see it or be seen from it at sunset. And given that it was situated in the middle of a vast plain, some several dozen versts across, with the nearest hills fifteen miles away, I had to step out lively. I suppose that was the deciding factor for me: I had to crest those hills before nightfall, so I headed for the nearest. In the end, I realized that where ever I had headed then I would have ended up here or some where near here. Or somewhere like here, or even (and this is very important) somewhere other than here, but here just the same. So I walked swiftly as I could, and I had strong young legs, and I covered the miles. I slept that night, as I did so often in the coming months.. or years, if you will.. beside the road. There was not what you would call traffic after all. Who would be going toward the Acolyte House of the Historium, for goodness sake?

I arrived at the first village worthy of the name at 5:15 am on October 13th 2089, Historical Time, and was amazed to find that I was welcomed with some enthusiasm. There was an issue under debate, it seemed, concerning the legality of a contract. The head man of the village, an interesting old gentleman, I must say, or so I thought at the time, was unable to adjudicate, as the essence (as they say) of the contract was time: a certain property was due to be returned to the control of one family to another, at a given date. Unfortunately (and now you will see the difficulty) the contract was over a hundred years old. No one in the village understood any of the dates recorded in the contract, because they were all written in the local time notation, and the people had since changed to Imperial temporal notations. (Or New Time Reckoning, as we know it.) In reality the problem was easy enough, but I was young, and I didn’t want to make any mistakes, of course, so I went through the whole process of cross-referencing and did all of the calculations three times just to make sure, and managed to get two meals out of it as well. (Maybe I wasn’t so naïve back then as I now think…) In any case it was a straight forward affair. I realize now I could have just given them some answer off the top of my head, and it wouldn’t have made any difference. But I told them with great accuracy that the contract had one year, five months, and thirteen days, three hours to run. The holder of the contract was somewhat disappointed, but I pointed out to him that it gave him adequate time to negotiate another contract and he quite cheered up at that.

However, that was the first task I had ever been asked to perform as an Historian, and you may be sure I felt as proud as any young peacock may. The Headman was very interested in my calculations and questioned me carefully. Of course, I was careful not to tell him anything that might have been of any use to him. It would hardly do if every village Headman in the Wilds knew what year it was.

Well stocked with provisions and with the blessings of the village Mothers in my ears (I had thrown in a few horoscopes for them, gratis) I set off, provided (or so I thought) with directions for the nearest town. Those countrymen seed to be as jealous of their geography as we Historians are of temporal directions. Fortunately, when the path petered out in a swamp, I knew enough to back track and find a hill, from which I could see the Headman’s youngest son heading hell-for-leather down what was most likely the road I wanted. I was a little piqued, I must confess, but the poor lad really didn’t deserve to spend twelve hours on a three hour ride, and then find me waiting for him on the outskirts of town. As he sat there on his thoroughly lathered horse, I slowly and deliberately drew a line across the road in the dirt.

“I will rest in this town for thirty six hours,” I told him. “This line will remain here for forty seven. Do not attempt to cross it. Tell your father this from me, Boy: never cross an Historian. It may be the last thing he ever does.”

All utter poppycock, of course, but it sounded imposing to my ears, and it did the trick. I traveled slowly after that, and was greeted with respect at each place I came to. There is nothing like having a little reputation proceed you.

A Story of the Last World by David Pilling

In the aftermath of the technology wars that wracked our world and destroyed all traces of earlier civilization, there rose an Empire. Formed by a coalition of warrior tribes, the Namoto Empire became the strongest of the primitive nations that slowly reclaimed the ruined earth.

Like all Empires, the Namoto Empire was ruled by a series of Emperors. And like all Emperors they needed to be guarded. For centuries this duty was performed by the Imperial Guard until an Emperor came who decided he had no further use for them.

The Emperor Theodore was a thorough young man and he rid himself of the Imperial Guard with ruthless efficiency. The officer class was slaughtered almost to a man and the ordinary troopers disbanded and scattered among other regiments.

Pleased with his success, Theodore installed a new personal guard. These were the Amber Guard, savage fighters whose loyalties lay with the Emperor and the shadowy organisation known as the Imperial State Security Commissariat. With his new allies Theodore hoped to dissolve the democratic Senate and gather all power into his own hands.

The old Imperial Guard were consigned to the dustbin of history. Most of their officers were dead or imprisoned, their banners and insignia outlawed and their presence wiped from the history books. And that would have been the end, had it not been for Jorge White. White was a liar, a drunkard and a disreputable poser who came to a bad end, but he gave rise to a legend. The legend of Major White.

1.

Beams of yellow light lanced through the night as the Amber Guard returned fire. Their famous discipline had briefly deserted them thanks to the speed and suddenness of the ambush, and they fired wild at the phantoms darting in and out of the thermal glare of their Arclight rifles.

There were only ten of them, left to observe the man hanging in the village square until he died. The occupants of the village had been purged, every adult male executed for collaborating with rebels, and the rest of the Guard platoon had marched back to camp with the women and children in tow.

The remaining Guards were soon made to pay the price for their commanding officer’s arrogance. In the past hour many times their number of rebels had quietly surrounded the village, and at a sign from their chiefs opened fire with rifles, pistols and crossbows.

The firefight lasted a little under two minutes, at the end of which the ten Guardsmen lay dead or dying, their bodies strewn about the square. As the echoing reports of gunfire faded away the rebels emerged from the shadows of timber cabins and the surrounding forest.

At first glance they looked like common brigands, brutish hard-faced men in worn and stained clothing, cracked leather belts and bandoliers bristling with knives, pistols and spare ammunition.

Closer inspection would have revealed that many of them wore faded silver and grey tunics with the crest of the Imperial Eagle on their breasts. They moved like soldiers, strung out in an ordered skirmish formation.

The first to emerge from the woods was Captain Mishra, a stocky broad-shouldered man whose crimson pork butcher’s face was in no way improved by a livid scar bisecting his nose and cheeks. Despite the sweltering summer heat he wore a heavy grey overcoat with silver epaulettes and a pair of gleaming polished black leather boots.

He strode forward, ignoring the screams and gurgles behind him as the rebels finished off wounded Guardsmen. The officer’s only concern was the man dangling from a chain in the middle of the square. The Amber Guard had hanged him, but not in the conventional sense. Instead of a noose about his neck they had replaced the rope on the village scaffold with a length of chain, and attached an iron hook to one end of the chain. The hook was then driven through the man’s left side and into his ribcage, allowing him to be hoisted into the air and left to die by inches.

‘Major’ the stocky officer said ‘Major White, can you hear me?’ His florid face turned pale as he observed the blood soaking through the man’s jacket and breeches and the tip of the fearsome hook protruding from his flesh. The ‘Major’ had been hanging there for hours as the rebels dared not attempt a rescue until nightfall.

For a moment the officer feared he was too late as his words evoked no response. Then the hanging man’s mouth worked slightly and a low moan escaped his bloodless lips as he attempted to speak.

‘Over here!’ the officer roared, turning and gesturing at his men ‘get him down, quickly!’

The nearest rebels left off cutting throats and ransacking bodies and hurried towards the scaffold. Three of them held the hanging officer’s feet while another unfastened the chain. As the chain went slack they gently lowered his body to earth, grimacing as fresh blood spattered their faces and their burden cried out in agony.

2.

Commissar Hale was not happy. He seldom was, being of a naturally sour and cynical disposition, but there were specific reasons for his current misery. One was the constant pressure from his superiors in the Imperial State Security Commissariat. Another was the outlaw known as Major Jorge White.

The Major was a thorn in the side of the Namoto Empire. He and his band of guerrilla fighters had holed up in the forested mountains that covered the north-eastern provinces. From their camp in the mountains White and his men disrupted traffic and ambushed Imperial patrols. They did this to such effect that taxes from the province had ceased to roll into Imperial coffers, and the Emperor had sent a crack brigade of Amber Guardsmen to flush out the rebels and restore the flow of revenue.

Commissar Hale was entrusted with the command of the brigade, which in other circumstances he might have welcomed. Instead he suspected that the appointment was a poisoned chalice arranged by his enemies within the ISSC.

Hale was assured by his superiors that all he had to do was capture and kill Major White, on the grounds that a body soon dies once its head is lopped off. So far his Amber Guard had lopped off several heads but the body showed no sign of dying. Instead the rebels seemed to be growing in strength, as attacks on patrols increased and reports came in of local men joining their ranks.

‘How many times have we killed him now?’ Hale demanded, rapping the board displaying a map of the area with his cane. Rapping things with his cane was a habit he had acquired as a way of drawing attention when people ignored his reedy voice.

‘Three, sir’ replied Commissar Lieutenant Cueto, leafing through his notebook. ‘Two years ago Major White was shot through the throat in a skirmish with our troops. Nine months ago he was fatally stabbed in another skirmish. Two days ago he was betrayed and handed over to one of our patrols, who hanged him in the village square’

‘And the idiots left him there instead of bringing the body back to base’ snarled Hale ‘we could have paraded it through all the local villages, letting them know that their precious hero is dead’

‘He must be dead, sir. The original man, that is. Since his death I suggest that the rebels have been using men dressed up as the Major to keep his name alive. It’s the only possible answer’

Commissar Hale nodded and gazed at the map, tracing the contours of the mountains with his cane. ‘I think you’re right’ he said ‘but how to prove it? Let us hope this latest false Major dies of his injuries. And I want the next one taken aliv’

3.

Sol Haymaker was a good boy who always did as he was told. This was because he had lived all his seventeen years on a remote farm in the mountains where any semblance of independent thought was crushed by his tyrannical father. Haymaker Senior was a stern glowering Gods-fearing widower who ruled his thirteen massive sons with an acid tongue and a leather strap.

Haymaker Senior hated the Namoto Empire, but was too old and scared to fight himself and regarded most of his sons as too precious a commodity to send off to die. His fatherly concern did not extend to his youngest, Sol, who was good-natured and obedient but also dreamy and impractical and a liability on the farm. Haymaker Senior had no time for dreamy and impractical boys who were no good at farming, so he gave Sol his blessing and ordered him to go and join the rebels in the forest. True to his dutiful and obedient nature, off Sol went.

Like his father, the rebels were at a loss to know what to do with him. They usually welcomed new recruits, especially tall broad-shouldered lads with hands like shovels, but they needed recruits with a killer instinct and Sol didn’t have one. Instead he possessed all the natural ferocity of a stunned puppy and was about to be sent home when one man noticed something special about him. The man was Captain Mishra, and when he went to witness Major White’s death he took Sol along with him.

For the latest Major was dying. After rescuing him the rebels had carried him to a secluded base deep in the mountains. There a medic named Sawbones tried to extricate the hook from his side with the minimum of damage, but it was too late. Gangrene had already set in and the sickly sweet stench of death hung over his tent.

The base wasn’t much, a few tents and timber cabins scattered about a clearing with a stream flowing through it, but it was secure. A mountain nicknamed the Old Man loomed over the camp to the south. The rebels found the Old Man strangely comforting, seeing his vast rugged bulk as a reminder that some part of the world would never change. Their own world had been changed beyond recognition.

‘How is he?’ Captain Mishra asked the sentry guarding the Major’s tent.

‘Not good, sir’ was the reply ‘Sawbones has dosed him with poppy juice to dull the pain, but can’t do much more’

Captain Mishra nodded and ducked inside, beckoning Sol to follow.

Major White lay on a camp bed, swathed in bandages up to his neck. His skin was taut and yellow and his breathing came in a harsh rasp.

The gnarled silver-haired medic known as Sawbones looked up from his patient as Captain Mishra entered.

‘Is he ready?’ Captain Mishra asked.

‘He is’ Sawbones replied.

The wasted figure on the bed coughed feebly and a thin trickle of blood escaped from the Major’s lips as he attempted to speak.

‘Permission to fall out?’ he whispered.

‘Not yet’ Captain Mishra replied brusquely ‘first you must choose’

Major White lifted a trembling hand and pointed at Haymaker. ‘He is the one’ the dying man croaked.

‘I am the one what?’ asked Haymaker. No one replied.

‘Permission to fall out?’ Major White repeated.

‘Permission granted’

With Sawbone’s help Major White returned the salute. Then he closed his eyes and nodded, which was the signal for Sawbones to slide a needle into his forearm.

‘Quick and clean’ Sawbones explained briskly as his patient’s body shuddered and went limp ‘much better than having him linger for days, screaming and whatnot’

Captain Mishra nodded in agreement. ‘We’ll have the funeral this evening’ he said ‘no time to waste. And our new Major can begin his training’

‘I don’t think…’ began Haymaker, but was interrupted by Captain Mishra’s heavy hand descending upon his shoulder.

‘That’s the spirit’ the officer grinned, displaying thick white teeth ‘try not to think. I like a young man without initiative’

The funeral took place in a small meadow tucked away at the rear of the camp and was conducted with the utmost military pomp and gravity. Every rebel in camp was present in full dress uniform, and it was early evening before they had all filed away and left Captain Mishra and Sol Haymaker alone together. ‘What do you think of this place, boy?’ asked Captain Mishra.

Haymaker looked around. The meadow contained three graves, one of which now contained the body of the late Major. Each grave had a pole stuck into it and on each hung an Imperial Guard officer’s jacket and peaked cap.

‘It’s desolate’ Haymaker replied, shivering as a chill breeze swept through the meadow ‘cold’

‘Your predecessors said the same thing. And now there they lie’

Haymaker looked blank.

‘Didn’t you listen to the Major’s last words? You are the one. You will be the new Major White. The fourth to carry the name’

Sol gaped. ‘Why me?’ he demanded.

‘Because the people of this province need a hero. They need Major White. It doesn’t matter that the real Jorge White was shot dead two years ago. They believe, and we provide’

‘But why me?’ Sol repeated.

‘Because every Major needs to look like the original man. He was big and broad and dark, like you. He was also a drunk, but don’t worry about that. And because you are a good boy who does what he’s told’

‘Am I?’

‘You are if you know what’s good for you’

Sol continued to protest, but to no effect as Captain Mishra took him to Major White’s tent and ordered him to put on a fresh set of the dead man’s uniform. It was a grand affair, with the usual silver and grey of the Imperial Guard complemented by red stripes on the breeches, gold epaulettes and delicate embroidery on the cuffs and collar.

‘Normally you will wear fatigues like the rest of us’ Captain Mishra told Sol as he reluctantly clambered into the uniform ‘but sometimes the people will want to see Major White in all his glory. On those occasions you will also wear these’

He handed Sol a monocle, a swagger stick and a brace of silver-mounted pistols with the Imperial Eagle engraved on the grips.

‘These belonged to the original Major’ Captain Mishra said ‘they were his trademarks. Now they are yours’

‘A monocle?’ groaned Sol ‘if my father could see me now…’

‘Impossible’ Captain Mishra said firmly ‘Major White’s father died years ago’

Sol learned a lot in the next few days. He learned that the rebels were the last remnant in arms of the old Imperial Guard. He learned that they did not consider themselves rebels at all and were still loyal to the Emperor. He learned that their real enemies were the Amber Guard, and that Major White would not rest until every Amber Guardsman was dead and the Imperial Guard restored.

He also began to learn to think for himself and notice things. One of the first things he noticed was that the rebels were crazy. They were obsessed with the maintenance of standards, polishing and brushing their rotting boots and tarnished buttons and fading uniforms with desperate fervour.

Sol often saw men pacing back and forth reading aloud from their regulations manual as though it was scripture, and others lying sprawled in a trance. When he enquired about this Captain Mishra cheerfully informed him that some had taken to using drugs in the hope that the way back to power would be revealed in hallucinogenic dreams . Three days after he first put on the uniform, Captain Mishra came to Sol’s tent and informed him that it was time for a test.

‘What sort of test?’ asked Sol, gratefully closing the Imperial Guard regulations manual. It was five hundred pages long and full of clauses and sub-clauses that made his head ache.

‘The most important one, but don’t worry. Just do as I tell you and everything will be fine’

Sol followed Captain Mishra outside to the exercise yard, where the rebels had assembled in a hollow square. Much to Sol’s annoyance and embarrassment they turned and saluted him. In their minds he was now the Major.

The ranks parted to let Sol and Captain Mishra through, revealing a man chained to a stake in the middle of the square. The man was naked except for a loincloth and his once-muscular body was starved and covered in bruises and livid scars. His face was square and raw-boned and his blue eyes burned with hatred and a complete absence of fear as he stared at the men around him.

‘Who is this?’ asked Sol.

‘This is a thing’ replied Captain Mishra ‘a beast that we captured in a skirmish. It was once a member of the Amber Guard’

‘I still am’ the prisoner growled, and was rewarded with a blow from a truncheon wielded by a nearby officer.

Captain Mishra drew his combat knife and offered it to Sol.

‘Take this and cut the beast’s throat’ he said.

Sol looked at Captain Mishra, then at the prisoner, and then at the knife. He stepped back and shook his head.

‘Do it’ said Captain Mishra, his eyes hard and unblinking as he offered the knife again. Sol was suddenly very aware of the men all around him, looking at him expectantly.

‘He has done me no harm’ said Sol ‘why should I kill him?’

‘He is the enemy’ said a trooper behind Sol.

‘He would do the same to you, if he had the chance’ said another.

‘Major White shows no mercy to his enemies’ said Captain Mishra.

‘Kill me, coward’ jeered the prisoner, baring his teeth and drawing his thumb across his throat in mockery.

Sol slowly reached out and took the knife. He held it at full stretch for a moment, watching sunlight gleam along the length of the blade, and then drove his elbow hard into the ribs of the trooper standing behind him.

The trooper went down, gasping and clutching his sides, and Sol twisted and charged through the gap. His sheer bulk and momentum took him through those who unwisely tried to bar his way.

The tree line was less than twenty paces away and Sol raced towards it, expecting any moment to hear the crack of rifles and feel bullets tearing into his back.

It didn’t happen. Sol kept going, charging into the woods and through the wall of waist-high undergrowth, using his stolen knife to hack and slash a path through the network of brambles and twisted branches.

Eventually the undergrowth gave way to a steep bank littered with the remains of dead trees. Sol skidded down the bank, scattering loose earth and rotting wood in his path. He rolled into a ditch at the foot of the bank, came up covered in soil and leaves, and ran straight into the Amber Guard.

There were three of them, instantly recognisable with their black face-masks and heavy Arclight rifles, though they had put aside their traditional yellow robes and armour for camouflage gear. They were also marked out by their height, for a man had to be over six foot to qualify for the Amber Guard.

Before Sol could react a gloved hand was clapped over his mouth and he was shoved onto his back. A Guardsman knelt on Sol’s chest, drew his knife and looked at his commanding officer.

The officer, alien and inscrutable behind his mask, glared down at Sol. Sol was still wearing Major White’s uniform and this saved his life.

‘This is the one Commissar Hale is looking for’ said the officer ‘we will take him back to base’ The Guardsman shrugged, sheathed his knife and hauled Sol up by his collar.

‘Don’t think of crying for help’ he hissed into Sol’s ear ‘the Commissar wants to speak to you, but you don’t need your fingers to speak. You want to keep your fingers, right?’

Sol nodded. He very much wanted to keep his fingers.

4.

Commissar Hale peeled off his gloves and slapped Sol in the face with them. Then he tossed the gloves away.

‘Burn them’ he said. An orderly picked up the gloves and hurried out.

Hale stuck his yellow crocodile face down close to Sol’s own face. Sol was tied to a chair in the Commissar’s office, his arms and legs strapped tight with lengths of wire.

‘We meet at last, Major Jorge White’ Commissar Hale barked.

‘I’m not him’ Sol managed.

‘You are a notorious rebel’ said the Commissar ‘being Major White is a crime punishable by death by firing squad’

‘But I’m not him!’

‘Then why are you wearing his uniform?’

‘I took it’

‘So you are a thief. Thieving is a crime punishable by death by firing squad’

‘I meant that they gave the uniform to me’

‘Who did?’

‘The rebels’

‘So you consort with rebels. Consorting with rebels is a crime punishable by death by firing squad’

‘I didn’t consort with them, they made me wear the uniform and swear an oath that I would be Major White’

‘So you are Major White’

‘No! The rebels wanted me to pretend to be him but I’m not. My real name is Sol Haymaker’

‘So you are not Major White, but you were masquerading as him. Masquerading as the enemy is a crime –

‘Punishable by death by firing squad, yes, I know!’ Haymaker wailed ‘what do you want me to say?’

‘Ah, now we come to it’ Commissar Hale smiled, increasing his resemblance to a crocodile. ‘We have a little job for you, Major White’

‘I’m not Major White!’

‘You are now. Play along and you may get to live a bit longer. Won’t that be nice?’

What Commissar Hale had in store for Sol was not nice at all. A squad of Amber Guardsmen untied him and took him outside where he was bundled inside a specially constructed steel cage. His wrists were strapped to the roof and his shirt and jacket removed, leaving him naked from the waist up.

When this was done Hale stepped into the cage and flogged Sol with his cane until sweat poured down the Commissar’s face and Sol’s broad back was laced with purple stripes.

‘Now what, sir?’ enquired Commissar Lieutenant Cueto.

‘Now we parade him through the villages’ replied Hale, mopping his perspiring face with a cloth ‘let them see that their hero is in our custody’

‘Why the flogging?’

‘I want the people in the villages to see the scars on his back. They think Major White is some kind of superman who cannot be hurt or killed. This will prove otherwise’

‘But, sir, the person in the cage is not Major White’

‘He is wearing the uniform. You know and I know that the real Major is long dead, but the idiot peasants around here look at the uniform, not the man. If we parade this boy around the villages and then hang him in full sight of everyone, it ought to kill the legend of Major White stone dead’

‘It will certainly kill him stone dead’ Commissar Lieutenant Cueto said doubtfully, nodding at the whimpering figure of Sol ‘are you sure this is wise, sir?’

Commissar Hale didn’t even hear the question. ‘Put him in a cell somewhere for the night’ he ordered ‘and have the brigade ready to march for tomorrow morning. We leave at first light’

Next morning the entire brigade marched out with banners flying and musicians playing and Commissar Hale at the front uncomfortably perched on a white mare. Four more horses were used to pull the wagon bearing Sol’s cage. The brigade marched in platoons in front and behind the wagon, with squads of twenty men either side.

There were numerous villages and hamlets scattered throughout the mountains, though the Empire had done its best to connect them by widening the rough forest paths into something resembling a highway. Six hundred Amber Guardsmen now tramped along the winding roads, raising great clouds of dust in the baking summer heat. Three Imperial airships ghosted along above the brigade, their crews keeping a close watch through their telescopes for any sign of rebel activity in the patchwork of mountains and forests far below.

The brigade passed through six villages in the first day. In each the wagon bearing Sol’s cage was wheeled into the village square for the peasants to gawp at.

‘Come see your hero’ bawled Commissar Hale ‘come see the Major in his new home’

And the crowds of peasants, bearded farmers in rough working clothes, their harassed pinch-faced wives and squalls of filthy children, would stare sadly at the man hanging in his cage. A double line of Amber Guards stood in front of the wagon, Arclight rifles at the ready in case any of the peasants came too close.

Commissar Hale had expected a spark of defiance from the villagers, had been looking forward to ordering a few massacres, but there was nothing. Instead they looked weary and beaten and resigned, and shuffled away quietly without raising a single voice in protest.

The result was that by the end of the first day Commissar Hale was in a filthy temper, and took it out on Sol by flogging him again.

‘Tomorrow’ Hale screamed, throwing away his cane after he had broken it on Sol’s back ‘tomorrow I will give those filthy oafs something to yell about!’

Commissar Lieutenant Cueto nodded and scribbled something in his ever-present notebook. Sol groaned and slumped forward, but was stopped from falling by the chains strapped to his wrists. An orderly slopped a spoonful of warm gruel into Sol’s mouth and was about to rub liniment on his back when Hale stopped him.

‘None of that’ he snarled ‘I want the little bastard to suffer’

‘If we don’t treat his injuries and let him rest occasionally, he might not live out the week’ said Cueto.

‘Then we will find someone else to wear the uniform. I told you, they look at the uniform, not the man. Contradict me once more, Cueto, and it might just be you wearing it’

Cueto smiled blandly and made another note. Having asserted his authority, Hale stormed off to find something to drink.

Next morning the brigade set off again, tramping along the misty winding mountain roads in disciplined silence. Sol hung listlessly in his cage, barely aware of what was going on around him as his mind and abused body floated in a haze of pain, hunger and sleep deprivation.

Commissar Hale soon lived up to his promise to give the ‘oafs’ something to think about. At the very next village, a poor place consisting of a few timber huts scattered about inside a ramshackle stockade, he decided to play a little game.

Most of the half dozen or so families that lived in the village owned nothing of real value, except one that owned a great treasure in the form of a pig.

Commissar Hale had the family, husband, wife and a young daughter, brought out and lined up in front of Sol’s cage. The pig was also fetched, not without difficulty as she had no fear of Amber Guards and made life difficult for the squad detailed to drag her out of her pen.

‘Major White?’ said Commissar Hale when everything was ready ‘Major White, can you hear me?’

Sol lifted his head slightly and found himself making eye contact with the daughter. Her liquid brown eyes looked at him expectantly.

‘Major White, you must make a decision’ Hale went on, slapping his cane against the bars to get Sol’s attention ‘which is more important to this family, the life of the girl or the life of the pig? Choose well, because I am going to kill the least important’

The mother sobbed and grabbed her daughter, and the father lunged at the Commissar. Two Amber Guards stepped in his way and clubbed him to the ground with the butts of their rifles.

‘Choose, Major’ said the Commissar.

Sol cleared his throat. ‘The girl is more important’ he said huskily ‘let her live’

‘Certainly’

Commissar Hale pulled his pistol out of its holster and blew the pig’s brains out.

‘Well done, Major’ he said as the animal slumped to the ground ‘without the pig these people will starve over the winter. They will be forced to rely on the charity of their neighbours, except their neighbours have nothing to give. A splendid decision’

He holstered his pistol and cheerfully ordered the brigade to move on, leaving the family to contemplate slow starvation. Sol tried to think of something to say as the wagon slowly creaked into life and carried him away, but none of the villagers were looking at him anymore. Major White was dead to them.

The Major might be dead, but Sol wasn’t. Commissar Hale’s spirits were thoroughly restored and he spared his captive another flogging. For his part Sol had found another reason to live, to cling onto existence with grim determination. He wanted a chance, just one chance to slip out of his chains, reach through the bars and crush Commissar Hale’s windpipe.

He was wearily contemplating this fantasy when a tremendous blast threw him against the side of his cage. The brigade had been marching along a mountain track and all seemed peaceful enough until the front ranks disappeared in a billowing cloud of smoke, ash and flame.

The rebels had predicted the Amber Guard’s route through the mountains and laid an enormous mine just beneath the road. They had done so the previous night to escape detection, and the first Guardsman to place his foot on the vital spot triggered the mine.

Two entire platoons of Amber Guards were flung high into the air as though some giant hand had scooped them up and tossed them like chaff. Shattered pieces of limb and burning equipment rained down on their stunned comrades as the rebels burst out of cover from the woods flanking the road. Rifles, pistols, hand grenades and naptha bombs enfiladed and exploded among the scattered brigade, and screams and oaths rang out as men fell or came to grips knife-to-knife amid the smoke and chaos.

Somehow Commissar Hale was not killed in the initial explosion and he came galloping back through the melee towards the wagon. His cap was missing, coat burned to tatters and his lean yellow face bleeding and singed, but he cared about only one thing.

‘Kill the prisoner!’ he screamed, brandishing his pistol ‘kill Major White!’

A stray bullet caught his mare in the neck and she toppled sideways, flinging him from the saddle. He landed heavily, snapping a couple of ribs, and lay gasping and writhing and clutching his injured side. He might have stayed down indefinitely if Commissar Lieutenant Cueto hadn’t appeared and offered him a hand up.

‘Cueto’ Hale gasped as he was hauled to his feet ‘we must kill the Major – we mustn’t let the rebels have him…we must…’

‘Hush, sir’ replied Cueto, and shot Commissar Hale in the stomach. Cueto released his victim’s hand, letting him fall, and shot him again right between his astonished eyes.

‘Help’ Cueto cried ‘the rebels have murdered our beloved Commissar’

A couple of Guards heard his call and came charging out of the smoke. They stopped at the sight of Cueto standing over Commissar Hale’s corpse and for a brief moment their eyes rested upon Cueto’s pistol.

Along with height a certain amount of intelligence was pre-requisite in the Amber Guard, and these two possessed enough to realise that former Commissar Lieutenant Cueto was now their commanding officer. They lowered their rifles and saluted.

Cueto left them guarding the corpse while he clambered onto the wagon and began wrestling with the bolt on the door of Sol’s cage. He intended to get inside and cut Sol’s throat, but something hit his right arm. He looked down, saw the crossbow bolt protruding from his upper arm and the blood slowly spreading across his sleeve, yelped and staggered backwards.

In his panic Cueto forgot to watch where he was going and toppled off the back of the wagon. He cracked his head upon landing and lay stunned. At the same time Captain Mishra came charging out of the smoke, pistolling right and left, and saw Sol hanging in his cage.

The big officer heaved himself up onto the platform, wrenched the door open and stood in front of Sol. ‘Major White?’ he rasped, grabbing Sol’s chin and tilting his head up ‘can you hear me, Major White?’ Sol’s eyes flickered open. ‘I’m not Major White’ he mumbled. Captain Mishra grinned, spat on his hands and took hold of one of the chains binding Sol’s wrists to the roof of the cage. He twisted, grunting with effort, and with a snap the chain gave way before his muscles did.

Captain Mishra paused for a second, panting with exertion, and then turned his attention to the chain binding Sol’s other wrist. Sol reached up with his free hand to help, and the links parted just as a hail of Arclight beams strafed the cage and perforated Captain Mishra’s body.

Mishra slumped to his knees, staring in amazement at the neat circular holes burned through his chest. His eyes met Sol’s and a look of understanding passed between them. Captain Mishra thrust his pistol into Sol’s hand but had no time to speak before another beam of Arclight fire passed through his heart. Sol was left alone. Instinct screamed at him to duck and he obeyed just in time as a concentrated volley of Arclight fire streaked over his head.

The door to the cage still hung open. He scrambled through it on all fours and dropped over the back of the wagon, landing next to the prone figure of Commissar Lieutenant Cueto.

Heavy boots thudded nearby and the shadows of three Amber Guards fell across Sol. He knew they were coming and had the barrel of his pistol resting against Cueto’s forehead.

‘Let me go or I will kill him’ he said, trying not to let terror show on his face as the trio of black-masked gunmen stared down at him. Two of them had combat knives dangling from their ammunition belts, their blades smeared in fresh blood.

Still groggy from his fall, Cueto was by now aware that someone was holding a gun to his head. Beneath his quiet efficiency lurked a firm desire to stay away from danger and he knew he had never been so close to death.

‘You heard him, you idiots’ he croaked at the Amber Guards ‘let him go or he will kill me’

The Guardsmen lowered their weapons. ‘Up’ Sol hissed into Cueto’s ears, and the Imperial officer shakily got to his feet with Sol’s gun pressed against his ear.

Sol backed away towards the treeline, keeping a tight hold on Cueto’s collar and forcing the man to keep pace with him.

‘They will remember this, you know’ Cueto said in a conversational tone.

‘What?’ snapped Sol. Around him the sound of fighting was dying down to the occasional crackle of gunfire and the cries of wounded and dying. He didn’t know it, thanks to the smoke and general confusion, but the rebels were retreating back into the woods. They left forty of their number strewn dead on the battlefield along with a roughly equal number of Amber Guards.

‘Your escape’ Cueto explained ‘very daring stuff. The story of it will spread through the villages, no doubt magnified in the telling. You will be a hero again’

‘I am not a hero’

‘You are Major White. I have no doubt about that. Only Major White could escape the Amber Guard’

They were almost inside the woods now. Sol briefly thought of keeping Cueto as a prisoner, but wasn’t sure how long he could endure the man’s sneering tone before shooting him.

‘Go’ he said, giving his captive a shove. Cueto stumbled, then turned, straightened his uniform and smiled.

‘Be seeing you, Major’ he said, and watched calmly as Sol turned and hared off into the woods.

‘Sooner rather than later’ he said softly.

Sol didn’t get far before he stumbled into a group of surviving rebels. Most of them were wounded, all were exhausted and demoralised and they looked at Sol with disbelief, as though a ghost had appeared among them.

He knew now that they were looking at the uniform, not the man. And without Captain Mishra they were leaderless.

Sol met their gaze and made his choice.

The Amber Guard exacted fierce reprisals for the losses they had suffered during the ambush. They wanted revenge and the newly promoted Commissar Cueto was not the man to deny it. He unleashed them on the villages.

In the summer of bloodshed and terror that followed, none of the Amber Guard enjoyed themselves as much as Corporal Stride. Stride was a sadist, a useful trait for a Guardsman provided he stayed within disciplined limits, and he took full advantage of the sudden opportunity for unrestrained slaughter that Cueto granted.

Stride’s preferred method was to march alone into an isolated hamlet or farmstead, kick down the door and steal anything he fancied at gunpoint. He was also fond of finding defenceless people and torturing them, and so was overjoyed one afternoon when he discovered a lonely cabin deep in the woods inhabited by two young children and an old woman crippled by arthritis.

The corporal had tied the old woman to a tree and was just wondering whether to kill the children first or force them to watch while he flogged her to death, when a shot rang out.

Corporal Stride flopped to the ground, the cruel smile still frozen on his face. The bullet had entered the back of his skull into his brain, killing him instantly.

A young man stepped out of the woods beyond the clearing. He was tall, heavily built and dressed in an immaculate officer’s uniform. Rather incongruously, he also wore a monocle and carried a silver-mounted pistol engraved with the Imperial Eagle. Behind him came two older and heavier riflemen in camouflage gear.

‘Who are you?’ asked the old woman as one of the riflemen untied her.

The tall officer smiled, holstered his pistol and adjusted his monocle to a jauntier angle.

‘I am Major White’ said Major White.