Winterstrike Read online

  ‘Is this a pilgrimage?’

  ‘Why, yes. We take the mantle of Ombre to the mountains, we walk in shadow.’

  The mountains: that meant the Hattins, which were effectively the foothills of the Saghair. From there I might be able to get canal transport or a train to the region that surrounded the Noumenon, as the majike had suggested.

  ‘Can I come with you?’ I asked. The majike’s idea had held some sense, however little I might like it. Going along with the procession would provide me with a measure of security – I could see guards walking by the carriage, weapons sheathed within the city walls but weapons nonetheless – and a reason for being out in the wilds.

  All are welcome,’ the woman intoned. She did not sound happy about it. I wondered what private tragedy had impelled her out onto the road. Pilgrimages are rarely formed of the blessed. I’d heard of the Mantle of Ombre; one of the lesser cults that had grown up around the festival itself, but it wasn’t one of the big state-sanctioned belief systems and I knew little about it.

  Thank you,’ I said, and fell into line behind her. I had no drum and no flute, but I followed the chants as best I could – some were old hymns that I’d learned at my governess’s knee. I walked with the procession into the darkness beneath the North Gate and when I came out again, Winterstrike was at my back and the Crater Plains lay beyond.

  An hour passed, then two. I realized how unaccustomed I’d become to walking so far and my calves started to ache again after the exertions of the day before. The pack I’d bought in the matriarchy store was filled with no more than cheap underwear and a bottle of water, but it started to weigh on me more and more heavily as we walked on. Gloomily, I supposed this was natural, and anyway it was so cold that the water must be turning to ice. But the pilgrimage had its advantages. The incessant chanting, which under normal circumstances would have infuriated me, served to drown out the voice of the geise. It resurfaced from time to time, a little less insistent than before, and although I wasn’t sure whether this was a result of the chanting itself or simply that I was doing what the geise wanted, it was nonetheless a relief.

  I also took the time to study my fellow pilgrims, as covertly as I could. Most of them seemed to be from Winterstrike, to judge from their pale colouring, but there were a few exceptions. I did not know where the very young girl with the long hair striped in red and black might be from: her skin was much darker than that of someone from the city and she kept casting nervous – no, more than that, frightened – glances around her as she walked. And there were three women wrapped in brown veils, whose faces could not be seen and who did not, as far as I could tell, join in with the chanting. I moved a little closer to them, out of curiosity, but they remained silent and paid no attention to me. As we passed one of the ruined towers that star the landscape outside the city, however, one of the women raised an arm and pointed out the tower to her companions. I saw something sinuous slide along her arm, disappearing up her sleeve. A bracelet? But it looked as though it had moved under its own power. I decided to keep an eye on the three brown-clad women.

  The highest buildings of Winterstrike had become tiny by midday, far in the distance and no more than a series of blocks and domes. Here, heading north-west, the Plains themselves were still monotonous under their covering of snow. In summer they would become all red soil, black grass, thin waving fronds planted in the very early days of terraformation and proving impossible to eradicate. The towers, a legacy of some long-forgotten war, rose in vitrified obsidian splendour at intervals across the plain, each one bearing the face of a different demon, carved some twenty feet in height. One of them was inhabited: a forlorn black and white pennant snapped from its ruined summit and a scuttling at the doorway as the procession drew near suggested it was some hermit, perhaps one of the mad religious that haunt Winterstrike’s further boundaries. None of us cared to find out more. In the distance, after we’d passed the tenth tower, a moving herd veered around and away, scenting us on the wind.

  ‘Gaezelles,’ one of the guards volunteered as I drew close to her.

  ‘Really? This far north?’

  She shrugged. ‘They come up from the southern craters sometimes, if there’s danger.’

  ‘I’d have thought there was more risk here, near the city.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s worse in the south. Or maybe they’re short of food: they come up if their prey fails.’

  I felt a little uneasy. In the olden days, they’d been designed as herbivores. So much for that. I knew they’d been revived, and it seemed there had been revisions. ‘Any likelihood of attack?’

  ‘Probably not. But if they do – well, we won’t have to look far for supper.’ The guard gave an unpleasant smack of the lips.

  By the time the sun sank down and cast the Plains into a russet shadow, I had blisters. The procession had not been permitted to halt apart from short breaks, but in the early afternoon a woman had gone among the crowd dispensing meat buns for a small amount of money. Though I was not used to a midday meal – at Calmaretto this was always considered vulgar, like so many things – I bought one anyway and ate it as I walked. But as the sun fell, I realized that the march-pace of the procession had been in order that we might reach shelter for the night, as I’d suspected and hoped.

  There aren’t many settlements between Winterstrike and the mountains. Unlike the south of the city, where the lakes lie and there are many small villages, this part of the region is still relatively deserted, apart from the towers and their accompanying ghosts. The place we now came to had been an oasis once, during the ancient desert days, and its name was Gharu. In the lost years, when this part of Mars had relied on beast-transport, it had been a way station and the old sinks and plunges were still there: pools of water beneath a thin layer of ice-trapped weed. The low buildings beyond were only the top layer of the town, which extended beneath the ground to preserve the place from the worst of the winter winds. The procession came to a gate, seemingly standing on its own: a rough black dolmen leading into nothing. At first, I thought it was some ritual structure, then realized that its appearance was deceptive. As the guards stepped up to it, the air shimmered beyond and revealed a winding flight of steps, leading down.

  ‘Dormitories,’ the guard explained.

  When we went down the stairs, filing two at a time, I discovered that the whole place was geared towards pilgrimages. This must be the only way the occupants had of making a living. Rows of beds stood in nooks set into the walls, affording some privacy, and a hatch at the end of the long room dispensed basic meals. I claimed a bed, then queued with the rest and bought a mess of meat porridge. Everyone seemed subdued, probably from fatigue. I kept thinking about Leretui, wondering where she was now, how she was faring. We ate in silence. I found myself facing the three brown-veiled women: they conveyed small fragments of food to their mouths with deft movements beneath the veils, and drank hot tea through long metal straws. My own tea was too scalding to touch: I watched in awe as the women sipped. They must have metal-lined mouths, I thought. I kept looking at their sleeves, but nothing else moved in them. I started to wonder whether I’d imagined it. Then something glistened briefly at one of the women’s throats. I raised my head to see that she was, apparently, staring at me. They finished their tea and simultaneously rose, then went to one of the slightly larger bed-booths, all three, and hung a blanket decisively over the entrance, blocking the booth from public view.

  I wasn’t the only one watching. The woman sitting next to me, an older person, turned to me and said in an urgent whisper, ‘Do you know who they are?

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t,’ I said.

  They’re a clone-group from the south,’ someone else said knowledgeably from across the table.

  ‘No they’re not,’ someone else replied. ‘They’re from Bale. I’ve seen people like that before.’

  An argument, conducted in hushed voices, broke out around me as various theories were put forward and ruthlessly demolished. I fin
ished my meal and debated whether to go outside for a breath of fresh air; the common room was stuffy and smelled of hot wool. Then I remembered what had happened in Winter-strike and decided that safety would be the more sensible choice. I couldn’t rule out anything befalling me in the middle of the mass of pilgrims, but whoever was after me would find it harder to accomplish in a crowd than if I was on my own. I bought more tea and took it into my chosen bed-booth, electing to leave the opening uncovered. I stripped down to my underwear and took refuge under the blanket.

  I didn’t get to sleep until a couple of hours later. It’s hard to sleep when people are singing and someone insisted on playing the flute, which whistled and mourned around the echoing common room like a wind over the marshes.

  Eventually there came a shout: ‘Can’t you shut up?’

  Another argument, resulting in a brief but vocally ferocious intervention by the guards, and peace reigned. Whoever was responsible for the common room dimmed the lights to a faint rosy glow and I slept, but not for long.

  When I woke, it was colder. It struck me, fancifully, that I could feel the winter pressing down on the roof of the common room, hard and final as a fist. Someone was whispering, a quick, urgent sound. Then a figure flitted past the entrance to my bed-booth and in the lamplight I caught a glimpse of floating brown cloth. There was an almost inaudible chittering.

  Infernal curiosity! But I thought I’d rather try to pre-empt an attack, after what had happened to me already. I slid out from under the blanket, bundled my coat around my inadequately clad self, then peered around the corner of the booth. Old, cold stone pressed against my face. The figure was heading quickly up the steps. Sliding out of the booth, I went around to the brown women’s booth and lifted a corner of the blanket. The booth was empty.

  It was none of my business, I told myself, but I still followed them, up the steps past the silent serving hatch and out into the covered courtyard. Heaters were blasting out warmth from either side of the courtyard, keeping the frost at bay, but there was still a bite to the air in between the gusts of heat. I kept back, hiding in the shadows. Ahead, I could see movement and hear a distant whispering. I moved closer, trying to catch what was being said, but when I reached the end of the column of pillars which supported the roof, I found that the voices were not speaking in the common dialect of Winterstrike, or standard Northern Martian, or indeed any language that I understood. A hissing, clicking language – I wasn’t even sure whether it was an actual tongue, or some kind of code. But now that my eyes were adjusting to the dim light I could see the brown-clad women. They stood in a huddle like ancient witches, arms about one another’s shoulders and heads close together. Something was writhing along their linked arms: a smooth, cool-looking body that at first I took to be some kind of snake, until it shifted position and I saw the myriad carpet of legs gliding underneath. A centipede.

  It looked almost like some kind of plastic. I wasn’t sure at first whether it was a real animal, or a machine. Then the head came into sight: stubby twitching antennae and formidably curved mandibles. I stood a step back and the thing raised its head as though listening. I held my breath and to my intense relief it resumed its movement around the linked bodies of the women. I melted back the way I had come and returned to my bed. A few minutes later, I heard footsteps and again the three forms flitted past.

  I hoped they hadn’t seen me. It was so hard to know what abilities people have these days, what technology. Nothing about the women spoke of haunt-tech. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep and forget what I had seen, and eventually I did so.

  Fatigue must have caught up with me, for when I next woke most of the pilgrims were already up and about, and the air smelled tantalizingly of tea and frying meat. I crawled out of bed, wrapped myself once more in my coat and went to the washroom. A shower, blisteringly hot, woke me up, but as I washed the water stung my arm. I looked down at the bare skin. Something had bitten me, producing two deep holes about an inch apart on the underside of my wrist, embedded in raised bumps. Gingerly, I prodded the bumps. The skin felt numb.

  I thought at once of the centipede and fought back panic. Had the women detected me, there in the shadows, and sent their familiar to deal with me? Would I die? It seemed ironic that I’d survived two apparent assassination attempts in Winterstrike only to meet my end as a result of my own stupid curiosity out here on the empty, barren Plains. I dressed, wondering whether to confront the women or complain to a guard. But what would I say, if it turned out not to be the case? There were all manner of insects living in the countryside: it might have been something else entirely that had bitten me.

  When I went back out into the common room, however, the three women were nowhere to be seen. Already inclined towards paranoia, I saw this as suspicious. I asked a woman where they’d gone and she replied that she did not know, but someone had told her that they had left shortly after dawn in a great hurry.

  This did not, I thought, bode well. I kept an anxious eye on the bite throughout my quick breakfast, but although the numbness seemed to be wearing off to some degree, the bite was not as painful as it looked and I felt much the same as before. But it was yet another thing to worry about. I was glad when we left the way station and recommenced our journey: it took my mind off things, although in a manner which was not altogether welcome. Since we had entered the way station the evening before, the weather had taken a turn for the worse, and now a stinging squall of sleet was washing down from the distant mountains and scouring the Plains before its lash. I bundled my coat closer and kept my head down as we left the huddle of buildings that made up Gharu and struck out on the open road. If I had not been so intent on avoiding the sleet, perhaps I would have seen what was coming for me, and avoided that, as well.

  TEN

  Hestia — Caud/Crater Plain

  I’d noticed before how extensive Caud was, how far it reached beyond its city walls. The barge took me past interminable industrial estates, each with its own dock: some gleaming and newly framed, others rotting into the water. Occasionally the captain, whose name was Peto, pointed out areas of note and I pretended to take interest in them. I found that I kept looking back, as if at some level I couldn’t really believe that I’d managed to escape the city, but it was more that I expected pursuit. The warrior of the Library had not returned, but in the Library’s absence, the excissiere I had killed haunted me instead. I glimpsed her out of the corner of my eye, ghastly and unmoving upon the deck, propped up between boxes, or hanging from the stairs. I couldn’t put these macabre visitations down to guilt, since I didn’t feel any. I was damn relieved that the Library had managed to dispatch her when she had, otherwise I’d be dead myself. It struck me, however, that the excissiere might have managed to download some encapsulated element of herself into the Library’s own functionality and the Library, herself contained, was projecting the excissiere outward in random stress. Peto, to my immense relief, didn’t seem to see her, and this suggested that the appearance of the excissiere was peculiar to my own visual system.

  Either that, or I was simply being over-sensitive as usual. I had no idea whether the excissieres were capable of haunting beyond death: they keep their secrets close and no one outside their Orders really knew what the hell went on in there. I didn’t even think it was truly accurate to describe them as human any longer. And to think that people still avoided the Changed.

  These thoughts occupied me as the bleak hinterland of Caud passed by and we came out onto a series of locks. Then I had no more time for speculation: the captain put me to work on the lock system and we descended, slowly, creakily, onto the first dark reaches of the Crater Plain.

  It was still very cold, but it seemed to me to be a little milder than in Caud. At this time of year, really warm weather would only be found much farther south, towards the lakes. My hands, even in gloves, fumbled with the lock mechanisms and I could feel the breath freeze in my nose and mouth. I bit down on ice crystals. Finally, we reached the last d
escent and the barge glided out onto smooth water.

  Civilization, if you could call it that, lay behind. Here, no torches illuminated the canal banks and the only light came from the faint splinter of Phobos, hanging red over the frozen grassland. When I went to the place in the cabin allotted to me and tried to raise a signal on the antiscribe, I could not get any response out of it. I wondered fruitlessly what was happening back in Winterstrike. Now that I was away from the game, I had a chance to start thinking about whether I wanted to stay in it, and what the ramifications of leaving it might be. Spies who jump ship are not popular at any time, and even less so in times of war.

  Peto leaped out and tethered the barge to a ring for the night and I slept a fitful sleep, surrounded by the cries of night birds and the rustle of winter insects in the grass along the bank, until I woke to the white and grey dawn.

  When I forced myself to leave the comparative warmth of my bed and go out onto the deck, I found that I had been mistaken: we were not alone after all. Half of Caud seemed to have departed with us, fleeing the recent strike. A makeshift refugee encampment stretched out across the icy grassland: plastic sheets strung on poles to keep out the winter wind, shelters made of bedsheets and towels. Dim lights moved between these temporary tents as early risers – probably unable to sleep – sought friends and relatives. The acrid smell of tea drifted across the plain. I felt suddenly privileged to have the protection of the barge, solid wooden walls and a kettle.