The Shepherd Read online

be playing grab-ass, no matter how much the dway was pissing him off.

  Today they would cross between the mountains and the edge of the Skeletonwood, where they’d emerge onto open scrubland. Nomad territory. As the caravan departed, the hounds swept in like sleuths to investigate the campsite. The hounds had formed a whole new tier in the ecosystem; an intermediary between human and buzzard. Whenever the trade caravans didn’t leave enough food behind, the hounds ate the buzzards. Toler didn’t know what they’d do if they ran out of buzzards.

  The hounds were dog-like in name more than in form; they had long forelegs, thick meaty shoulders, pinback ears, and broad snouts that gave way to jutting fangs. They had the tiniest stubs of tails or no tails at all, and mangy, mottled fur run through with half a dozen shades of gray and brown. Where dogs had paws, the hounds had slender, graceful feet, with talons like carnivorous birds.

  The sight of slavering beasts the size of horses gave newer shepherds like Korley Frittock a start, but Toler liked them. Maybe that was because part of him felt like he and the hounds had something in common. He’d run off from his life too, in a manner of speaking.

  Shepherding had been in him since he was young, and even as a boy he knew it was only a matter of opportunity. That opportunity came when his sister-in-law disappeared three years past. Toler had pledged to help his brother find her, for good or ill. Falling in with a passing caravan had appeared to be a means of keeping his promise, but he’d been planning to leave home that way all along. The route they were on now would take them through Bradsleigh, but the only way Toler would stay in his hometown for more than a couple days anymore was if they carried him there in a box.

  “Think we’ll get a visit from the nomads?” Korley asked him.

  They were riding beside Calistari’s flatbed, the blue painted steel shipping crate half-rusted and bearing the notorious VANTANIBLE, INC. logo on either side. Thick-treaded sand tires squealed on ancient axles, the line of identical flatbeds stretching out before and after them, one to a merchant. Goods from all over traveled with them–fabrics, liquor, tobacco, scrap metal, weapons, candles, oil, tea, coffee, spices, grains, canned goods. If it would last the trip and survive the heat, chances were Vantanible, Inc. traded it.

  “Hope so. Been itching for a fight,” Toler replied, searching the hills.

  “You’re a coffing lunatic.”

  “Nah, not me. You do this long enough, it gets so you look for something to break up the monotony. Shipping west is easier than east anyway–I’ll take Clays over Salts any day. Salt Nomads are tricky. They know the open desert better than anyone. Their favorite thing to do is ride after you and let you think you’re getting away. They do it so well you won't even realize they're funneling you into a catch, over a dune or into a ravine somewhere. Clay Nomads, on the other hand... they don’t fool around with fancy tricks. They’ll send their hounds after you and then run you down sidelong on foot. In country like this, all a train can do against an attack like that is brace itself. Can you imagine trying to run from that? Running a loaded flatbed on four horses… that’d be a laugh, huh?”

  “Never seen one go faster than I can walk,” Korley said.

  “S’right. These monstrosities could never handle a two-ton load at a gallop.”

  “How you figure we’d do if there was an attack?”

  “With this lot?” Toler glanced around, pantomiming an assessment he’d already made. “We’d be in the ground in fifteen minutes flat.”

  “You’re frightening him,” said Blatcher, seeing Korley’s worried look. He leaned in. “Besides... the Clays don’t bury their enemies. They relieve them of their arms and legs and let the hounds wrestle over what's left. They say the hounds don’t get fed unless there’s human flesh to be had.”

  Korley went white as noontime.

  “You’re awful gullible for an old dway, Korley,” said Toler.

  “You’re pulling my leg?”

  “Not as hard as the nomads will.”

  Dead trees wore away over the hillsides until they were specks in the distance behind. The caravan hit the open country with the Clayhollows jutting up into the blue on their right. Daylight flooded a clear sky, the light-star pulling on their shadows. Hounds zigzagged along behind them, sniffing at every distraction but always keeping pace.

  “Anybody who doesn’t like sweating should be in another line of work,” Blatcher was saying.

  Infernal was the reason for all their sweat; it was the reason Toler had grown up in a world without progress. Blatcher was right; as soon as the light-star got high enough to snatch away the mountain shade, they’d be sweating out every word.

  While the others talked, Toler had been working on draining his flask. He’d lost the thrust of the conversation, but he didn’t mind. He was busy trying to picture the way Reylenn had looked naked, soft blonde hair giving way to the curve of her breasts, slender hips swaying as she moved toward him on long shy legs.

  “You do something to me that I’ve never felt before,” she had told him, after.

  “I get that a lot,” he’d said. It was a lie, of course. He hadn’t wanted to admit he was feeling the same things she was.

  She’d hit him on the arm and rolled over, pouting, and he’d pulled her into him and tickled her until she was laughing so hard he had to cover her mouth with his so no one would hear.

  Twelve weeks had never sounded like such a painfully long time.

  “Can’t think of a line of work in the Aionach that isn’t earned with sweat,” said Andover Mays, a dark-skinned veteran who made rare occasion of speaking.

  Blatcher’s neckcloth pulled at his cheeks when he smiled. “How ‘bout merchantry?”

  The other shepherds chuckled.

  Jakob Calistari shot them a long look from his seat on the flatbed, a sheen of sweat glistening on his jowls over a layer of ointment. He had fair skin that would’ve burned in the daylight, so he was continually smearing himself with a white lotion made to block the heat. Whenever he worked up a good lather, it looked like he was oozing butter.

  Calistari didn’t have to come on the trade routes if he didn’t want to–he was wealthy enough that he could've sent his underlings in his stead and stayed at home in Unterberg, the below-world settlement where Vantanible, Inc. was headquartered. Vantanible’s presence in Unterberg made it one of the largest trade centers in the Inner East. When an established merchant like Calistari took his own trips, it was because he had reason to keep a close eye on his goods.

  That was why Toler had chosen this particular trip to make his foray into smuggling. As much as he hated Calistari, he couldn’t have been happier that the fat merchant had come. This was the perfect opportunity to pay him back for months of torment, but Toler would have to tread delicately if he wanted to pull it off just right.

  There was always the risk of being caught, of course. If Reylenn’s father ever found out Toler had been smuggling, he could kiss any hope of a future with her goodbye. He could kiss his own ass goodbye, for that matter. But the temptation to take this job had been too great to resist. It had been a last-minute thing–agreements made in shadows between contacts he barely knew. He hadn’t even had the chance to inspect the goods before the caravan left Unterberg. That’s the first order of business, he decided. Unveiling the stash at the bottom of Calistari’s crate… “Korley, what kind of work did you say you did before this?”

  It was only Korley’s second time out with them, though he’d impressed them with how well he could handle a javelin. He drew in his lips, reminiscing. “Made a decent wage as a warehouse man before I came on as a shepherd. Not decent enough for my wife and three kids. Fourth is on the way and there’s more where that came from, if I have anything to say about it.” He smiled, and Toler couldn’t help but join him.

  “Living above-world is a good way to make sure your fourth kid is your last,” Blatcher said. He pointed at the sky. “Infernal don’t like kids much.”

  “There are above-worlde
rs who can make children,” Toler said.

  “Not many,” Andover Mays mumbled past a cigarette. He took it between his fingers. “Except you, I hear. I hear you got a kid in every town from here to the Slickwash, Glaive.”

  Toler felt himself flush. “That’s me,” he said, feigning conceit. The smoke smelled good, so he fumbled in the pocket of his leathers for one of his handmade wraps.

  “Ah well, putting a stop to the childbearing would be fine by the missus,” Korley said. “Got her hands full as it is.”

  “Especially with you away on travel, I’d imagine,” Toler said, searching for a light.

  “You tell it true. Though the pay makes up for it, I s’pose.”

  “Danger does pay well.”

  Korley nodded, his face softening. Toler imagined he was thinking of home, and he let himself do the same. He loved to travel, but it wasn’t because of the women, like Andover Mays always said. Reylenn was the only girl he ever thought of anymore.

  “Look sharp, dways. They’re not wasting any time.” Blatcher’s shout woke Toler from his thoughts. Shapes were moving in the hills, bodies of animals and men hurtling toward them like an avalanche in black-and-brown. Nomads. Savages. The calgoarethi, they called themselves, among other things, their bloodlines more pure and ancient than any in the Aionach. They’d arrived on cue, as if the caravan were an expected house guest.

  When the nomads raised their battle cry, the sound chilled Toler’s blood. He knew the nomads would grant them no quarter. As always, he would treat them in kind. His heart leapt as he watched them come, a song swelling inside his chest. The rush of battle ran through him, fear wrapped in mettle. It was the sting of daylight and the comfort of new leathers; a thrill no woman's touch had ever given him.

  He swung his horse around to face them, pulling a javelin from his quiver. All along the line, he saw the other shepherds slipping between the merchant vehicles and coming to bear on the mountain side of the caravan. Horses stamped with the impatience bequeathed them by their riders. Toler smiled. We’re shepherds, and this is what shepherds do.

  The scavenging hounds had fled, perhaps reluctant to risk recapture at the hands of their former masters.

  Korley and Blatcher came alongside him, Andover Mays sucking down his perpetual cigarette and gazing toward the approaching surge as casually as if he were looking at an empty horizon. Calistari’s coachman was armed and ready to defend the flatbed, but the merchant himself was missing. He’ll be cowering somewhere right about now, praying the other merchants have given their shepherds generous gratuities. Praying he remembered to pay us ours.

  The wasteland covers a multitude of sins, and murder is chief among them. Toler had no qualms about killing. Neither did any shepherd worth his dust. Few enough were blessed with the good fortune to be alive and healthy after more than a few seasons working the trains. So when the savages came, with their hounds slavering ahead of them, hair shaven into wild patterns, cryptic emblems branded into their bare brown chests, and the slaughterlust in their eyes–every shepherd in the caravan knew that murder had never been more necessary than it was now.

  The meeting of two opposing forces is sometimes like the crashing of a wave against rocks; other times, there is the mere suggestion of one side’s strength over the other, the way two playing cards lean together to form a steeple fragile enough to be blown over by a draft. The nature of the meeting depends on the momentum behind it. Toler imagined the nomads’ wave crashing against the caravan’s rocks. He didn’t want to be a rock. He wanted to be a wave. So he let his horse feel his spurs.

  He didn’t look back to see whether any of the others had followed, but it was clear that neither the