Dead Bones Read online

  “And...” Gabe said to Kimotak, “that’s it?”

  Kimotak grinned. “That it.”

  “Right. You said this will stop the mesquala from attacking the camp.”

  “They smell bones and stay away. Mesquala not like their bones.”

  Gabe nodded, as if he understood. “But the point I’m trying to make is that we aren’t bothered by these creatures. This is the first mesquala I’ve ever seen, the first any Delaluzian here has ever seen, I would wager, and yet you’re convinced we’re going to get overrun by the little blighters.”

  “Yes, ndargo. Soon, wet season. Breeding time for mesquala. Go to wetlands to breed. Come here in many, many numbers.”

  Thumping his boot on the dry ground, Gabe muttered, “These are the wetlands?”

  Kimotak laughed. “No. Wetlands that way.” He pointed vaguely west. “Mesquala come from that way.” He pointed vaguely east. “Come through here soon.”

  “Ah. It all makes sense now.”

  A deep, thrumming tone rang through the camp.

  “Excellent.” Gabe’s shoulders slumped.

  Kimotak frowned as the alarm sounded again. “Not excellent.”

  “My exact meaning.”

  All work ceased in the camp and everyone scattered to take up their positions. Kimotak adjusted his amshad and, head tilted back, loosed a loud, wavering cry that carried through the continuing ringing. All through the camp, the Valleymen would hear Kimotak and with as much precision as the finest de Ibarra squad, they would assemble in preparation for the coming turmoil. His call to arms complete, Kimotak loped off toward the airfield.

  Suddenly alone in the yard with the skeleton, Gabe gave the bones a despairing look. “Well, you’re doing your job, suppose I better go do mine.”

  The airfield sat outside the earthworks, an expanse of cleared and flattened ground divided into quarters by rows of rocks painted white. In each quarter was a large, padded cradle, waiting to receive the incoming flight. Gabe exited the camp proper with the stragglers, dodging stretcher bearers, Engineers, mages and the gaggle of officers along to issue orders to people who generally did their jobs very well without the interference of officers.

  Tibercio Vendaval de Ibarra roughly pushed past Gabe, heading back into the camp. Gabe staggered to a stop, catching his balance. Normally, Gabe wouldn’t have cared, but this was Vendaval.

  “What’s the rush, Vendaval?” he snapped.

  Vendaval, dove-grey Air Mage robes swirling dramatically as he turned, managed to wipe the scowl off his tanned face before it got too obvious. Although a mage and Named citizen, he was common born and should have shown deference to Gabe, a noble. “The frontline mages are having difficulty aiding the dirigibles. Lieutenant Botello wants me to bring them in. I don’t have time to waste.” He turned his back on Gabe and hauled himself up the ladder to the observation tower beside the main gate in the earthworks.

  “I don’t have time to waste,” Gabe mimicked. “We’re in the middle of a war! There’s no time for common decency. Kill, maim, torture and do it now, now, now!”

  “Mage Castillo? Are you all right?”

  Gabe looked at Dina Curador par Ibarra. The Head Sacerdio stood at a respectful distance, her hands folded together in the sleeves of her immaculate black robe. Another commoner of the Third Estate now a Named citizen, specialising in healing and, perhaps more importantly, the administration of healing. As a Bone Mage, Gabe was her nominal superior but he had worked out very early exactly who ran the hospital. He might be the one with all the magical abilities, but she was the one with the real magic of making the system work. And unlike conceited arses like Vendaval, Dina ensured Gabe never forgot who was noble and who wasn’t in their complicated little relationship.

  He contemplated her smooth skin, bright brown eyes and soft lips, wondering how she managed to avoid looking like she’d been living in the arid, wind-scoured, dust-drowned heart of nothingness when he looked exactly as one would expect—dirty, rumpled, uncomfortable and, if he was completely honest, beaten.

  “Define all right,” he said.

  She sighed, a neat, controlled breath wasting neither time nor air. “We’re expected at the airfield.”

  “Oh, yes, let’s hurry.” Gabe offered her his arm. “We simply mustn’t be late.”

  Dina suppressed another sigh and headed for the airfield at a brisk pace. She joined her three fellow Sacerdios, heads coming together as they discussed what would be needed for the coming hours. Gabe sauntered in behind them, half an ear on their conversation. They were his support staff but the truth was, they worked better without his input.

  All Gabe really had to do was wait.

  It was a tense wait, as it was every time. Rush to the airfield at the first sound of the siren only to stand around and wait and wonder what horrors were going to be brought in this time. Gabe could be standing, waiting and wondering back against the wall of his hospital, but no, that wasn’t the protocol.

  “There,” Kimotak called, long arm pointing.

  The natives had much better eyesight than the Delaluzians but that didn’t stop the pale-skinned intruders from looking and murmuring knowingly to each other as if they could see it too. Second-Lieutenant Botello, standing with his sub-officers, Ruben and Mage Suelo, pointed here and there, spoke loudly and looked stern. Ruben, who had received much of the lecture, nodded and stepped away from the group. He faced the camp and, as he had done earlier, brought fire to his hand and in a series of precise gestures, relayed messages to Mage Vendaval in the observation tower.

  Within moments, the air began to move. The natural breeze altered direction, coming now from the south-west and gaining strength. For all his conceit, Vendaval had rightly earned his Name thanks to his strong air abilities. While the finest mages were more often trained for combat, the military didn’t mess around with their support personnel either. Any one of the mages of Tejon Company could outperform a civilian mage and walk away without having to catch their breath.

  The wind Vendaval created brought the flight of dirigibles into sight. They came out of the south-west, over the rise of the hills surrounding the camp, the whine of their engines cutting through the tense expectation at the airfield.

  Gabe counted an even dozen of the small, lightweight airships. Dina began directing her staff according to the estimated numbers of wounded. Likewise, Kimotak was talking to the gathered Valleymen in their own language, using not only words but complicated hand gestures as well. Ruben continued to send messages to the tower and Pio Chispa par Paloma and his fellow Engineers listened to the incoming flight for out-of-tune engines needing a quick fix before heading back to the front.

  Everyone had something important to do. Everyone, it seemed, but Gabe. His part would come, eventually, and he tried not to think about it. Tried to ignore the growing ache in his bones, the tightening in his guts, the sick, churning dread. The pain, the agony, the burning and, perhaps worst of all, the numbness.

  Once, when he’d been well into his share of company rum, Gabe had asked Ruben what it was like to set himself on fire. Ruben, also deep in his cups, had laughed and said, ‘Warm.’ Then he’d turned serious, recalling the first time he’d done it, accidentally, when his magic was new and strange.

  “It’s like holding a burning coal in your hand. At first it doesn’t hurt. It’s even pleasant, like a warm blanket on a cold night. Then you realise just what you’ve done and your mind begins screaming at you that it’s hot, burning, and that you’re in pain.”

  “You were burned by it?” Gabe had asked.

  “No.” Ruben grinned. “Fire Mages can’t be burned by their own fire. It’s a mental hurdle you have to get over, the idea that because there’s flames on your skin, you should be in pain. Once you learn the fire doesn’t hurt you, it’s all good. You can feel the warmth, set other things on fire, but you don’t burn yourself.”

  “I wish,” was all Gabe had been able to say and now, waiting for the wounded to
arrive, waiting for the pain, he tried to convince himself it was a mental hurdle. He just needed to believe it wouldn’t hurt him or leave him broken and aching.

  “Are you ready?” Dina asked him.

  “I’m never ready.”

  She nodded, taking it as an affirmative response. “We’re expecting a hundred wounded. Mage Suelo received a message from a frontline Earth Mage saying the fighting’s been minimal so most of the wounds are minor.”

  “Most?”

  “There was a failed raid on an enemy encampment. The survivors were pulled out of the wreckage of a mortar blast and an oil-bomb. There were only four survivors.”

  Gabe swallowed his lunch for the second time. “Excellent.”

  “I’ll perform the triage but I suspect we Sacerdios will be able to take care of most of the wounded. The four explosion victims will come to you, of course. They’re in the first dirigible.”

  Gabe nodded, because it was all he could do. Dina cleared a spot for him and he knelt as the first dirigible landed in a cloud of dust and cacophony of whirring propellers and grinding engines. The Valleymen rushed in, stretchers over their shoulders. Several of them jumped and caught the top edge of the gondola’s high sides, hauling themselves over and into the interior. A door dropped open on the side, the natives reappearing, carrying the wounded.

  Dina directed the Valleymen to Gabe, and Kimotak was on one end of the first stretcher laid on the ground before him. Gabe lifted away the blood soaked packing on the soldier’s torso.

  Mortar blast. Shrapnel had made mince of his chest, ribbons of his guts and a bloody mosaic of his face. Somehow, the heart battled on, pumping the decreasing volume of blood through the ruined flesh. He stank of shit, blood, burnt meat and the lingering acridity of the mortar explosion. Gabe used his teeth to pull the black leather glove from his left hand while checking the soldier’s pulse with his right. It was too fast, too erratic and Gabe’s heart began to mimic the beat.

  He laid his pallid, left hand on the man’s mutilated chest and closed his eyes.

  The pain hit him all at once. A hundred slashes cutting into his skin, a burning hot impact in his stomach, a crushing weight on his chest, unable to breathe, to swallow the blood bubbling up his throat, to release the wild, panicked scream rolling around inside his pounding skull. It hit him then, as it did sometimes with the worst injuries—a memory rising from the wounded and like the pain, became intimately, horribly, a part of Gabe. This had happened before. This pain, this burning agony, was terribly familiar.

  Gabe jerked his hand clear of the dying soldier. He rocked back on his heels, gasping for air. The echoes of the man’s injuries swam through him still, would remain for hours, days if he was unlucky, if something worse didn’t come along to replace it.

  “Ndargo?” Kimotak asked, reaching down to grasp the stretcher, ready to take him wherever Gabe instructed.

  “Wait,” Gabe snapped. “Wait a saints-damned moment.”

  Kimotak released the stretcher and crouched patiently.

  Taking a deep breath, Gabe touched two fingers to the soldier’s chest, at the base of his throat. This was a job usually reserved for the Sacerdios and one Gabe willingly left to them, but this time, he had to know.

  As each person was inducted into the military, a Bone Mage or Sacerdio of sufficient skill was called upon to implant that person’s name into their body. The officers called it ‘recognition’; the soldiers called it ‘branding’. In situations like this, it allowed the name of the soldier to be recorded and exact tallies to be kept of the wounded, the fully recovered, the hopelessly maimed and the honoured dead.

  Gabe breathed the words as his body read them. “Palo de Torres, Halcon Company.” No Name, no rank. Just a common boy who probably thought joining the military would help him earn a Name and citizenship and instead all it had earned him was a shattered body and closer to his crypt than he would have preferred. Gabe brushed the blood-clotted hair back from the young man’s brow, studying the face beneath. There was nothing in the broken nose, ripped lips, closed and bruised eyes which was recognisable.

  “Ndargo?” Kimotak asked. “Can you heal him?”

  He wanted to say no. He wanted to give Palo de Torres a killing dose of opio and tell Kimotak to take him to the death-hut. How could he do otherwise? How could he heal him and watch him get on a dirigible and be lifted back to the front, only to rush forward in another pointless charge and right into another blast that might be the one to make Gabe send him to the death-hut.

  How could he let Palo wake up once more, knowing he would only have to go back and start the whole, ridiculous cycle all over again?

  Watching Palo’s ruined chest rise and fall hesitantly, watching the blood seep through the roughly applied wads of material meant to keep him alive until Gabe could fix all the broken parts, he didn’t know what to do.

  “Ndargo?” Kimotak tried again for a command.

  There was a burst of wind from the now empty dirigible as the engines roared and lifted it off the ground. Stretcher bearers leaned over the wounded, protecting them from the kicked up dust. Kimotak crouched over Gabe and Palo, bringing his musty, earthy scent to mix with Palo’s dying stink.

  Through the howl of the engines and the whining wind, Gabe heard the clatter and clank of the skeleton. At least he thought he did. This far outside of the camp, amidst all the noise of the airfield, screaming wounded and shouting officers, he shouldn’t have heard it, but he was sure he did. The quiet clinking of clean, perfect bones dancing to music no one heard, doing a job no one understood.

  “Take him to the hospital,” Gabe said to Kimotak. “I’ll see him first.”

  The Valleyman nodded and he and the other picked up Palo’s stretcher, loping toward the camp on long, graceful legs.

  Another stretcher was laid before Gabe and he looked at the wounds without looking at the face attached to them. He put his hand on the torn flesh and took the wounds into himself, cataloguing everything that was broken and needed fixing, suffering the pain in his own body.

  “To the hospital,” he told the Valleyman. “In the second row. Her injuries aren’t too grievous. Next,” he bellowed over the roar of another landing dirigible.

  As the procession of the near dead continued, Gabe concentrated on the dancing skeleton so far away, letting it sooth him. As the weight of the collected wounds dug into his bones, he wondered if his job was half as important as that of the skeleton.

  Chapter 2

  Gabe woke in pain. It was dull and would fade within an hour, but the nightmares and the memories would linger. His body forgot relatively quickly the horrors he’d felt, but his mind was altogether different.

  He sat up, swallowing a moan of pain as his innards protested. It felt as if shards of hot metal sliced through his guts, then it was gone, replaced by a stabbing in his chest as broken ribs punched through the soft tissues of his lungs. Then that too drifted away and left him with a throbbing head and sour flavour in his mouth.

  Rubbing bleary eyes, Gabe looked around. He was in his tent though there were no shafts of brilliant sunlight cleaving their way through the canvas. Instead there was a grey half-glow, the insistent patter of rain on the roof and a brisk chill in the air.

  He couldn’t remember leaving the hospital. The last clear memory he had was of the man with the severed leg, finally succumbing to a sleep command. Exhausted, Gabe had tried to stand but his body, so recently tied to the patient’s, thought he had no right leg below the knee and he’d crashed into the next bed, knocking over the transfusion stand, shattering the glass bottle and spraying blood across three patients, Dina and himself.

  Ten hours of surgery, of wave after wave of injured from the front and Gabe finished it all in a pool of blood, wondering where his leg had gone.

  Now he was here, aching and sore, hungry and annoyed he’d have to plod through a quagmire to get to the mess tent.

  In a deliberate protest, Gabe refused to wear the military app
roved robes of a Bone Mage. They’d supplied him with several red-trimmed, black robes yet they all remained untouched in his military issued trunk. Instead, he retained his own clothes; two pairs of leather pants—a fancy that had taken him in Ibarra City which he now regretted but refused to give up on principle—three linen shirts looking much the worse for near constant wear and a choice of two jackets. Captain Meraz had spent the first week of his time with Tejon Company ordering him to change into robes and he’d spent the first week ignoring her. He’d won the eventual argument by claiming as a de Roque he couldn’t possibly practice his magic in Saint Ciro colours. Until she produced robes with Saint Sevastian’s green, he would wear whatever he wanted.

  This morning, he went with the three-quarter length, forest green jacket trimmed in gold, mainly because it would keep the most rain off.

  The rain wasn’t heavy but it was insistent, given a friendly little shove by an easterly wind gusting like an old man trying to catch his breath. It had been raining for some time, the hard packed dirt slushy, little rivulets coursing their way between tents. Gabe darted from the meagre cover of his tent to the meagre cover of the hospital wall. He followed it to the door, keeping under the slightly overhanging eaves, and slipped inside.

  A few evenly-spaced lamps turned the grey light of the rainy day into mild yellow within the long, narrow ward. The sound of the rain was muffled in the thatch above the ceiling. When the Valleymen had offered to build the hospital, they’d initially planned it as they planned their huts. A mud-brick outer wall with a wooden frame supporting the thatched roof, which would leak under sufficient pressure from rain. Rather than concede a tent would be better, Gabe had cajoled Mage Suelo into using her earth magic to extend the mud walls into a ceiling—a misappropriation of military personnel no one much minded when the finished product was seen. Though mightily impressed Kimotak had still insisted on thatching over it.