Westhaven by Rowan Erlking (best sci fi novels of all time TXT) 📕

“Shouldn’t we wait for his fever to break?” one of them asked.

Shaking his head, the lieutenant grabbed the rope to the bucket, lifting it off the ground.

Kemdin abruptly sat up as if from a nightmare, staring around and then at the ground where the bucket had been.

One of the corporals laughed. “Look at that! He’s alive!”

Panting hard, still sweating, Kemdin’s eyes scanned the floor. The key was gone. It was gone.

Kemdin dropped with his head down between his knees, holding his scalp with his hands. The opportunity was gone. And though he knew that it would have been useless to use with his new ankle irons, he had wanted that key as if his life depended on it.

“Can you walk?” the general asked, peering down at him.

It was awful, that general standing over him. Forced to relive that horrible memory once more. And yet, he had no choice but to obey.

Trying to at least, the boy pushed off the bench. Almost immediately he collapsed to the floor. It hurt too much. He braced himself up with his hands.

Yet, under his left hand he felt in the dust the surprising outline of the all-key. It had been buried so well that even he couldn’t see it. Unfortunately he also couldn’t walk.

Two of the corporals grabbed hold of Kemdin’s arms. They heaved him off the ground. The boy swiped the key up in his palm. They went up. Clenching both his hands into fists as if from the pain, which wasn’t entirely false, he hid the key. The other corporal hefted up Kemdin’s backside so that they wouldn’t have to drag him.

They hailed a taxi. The general and the lieutenant took the boy as the corporals took another taxi to return to the inn. And as Kemdin feigned sleep, curling into a ball on the back seat, he tucked the key into his ankle bandages hoping no one would ever find it.

The general’s boy walked with a slight limp. Everyone knew him on sight in Barnid Town. Though when he and the general had returned from Kalsworth the year before, the child had looked as if he had been mangled on their journeys west, running from a Gole. The boy had been off his feet for nearly three weeks before the general had him back on them marching all over town in his breeches and bandages. Though, in the recent days he had graduated to wearing a footman’s vest in a pair of new pants that was laced onto his body by the sides, along with shoes. His bandages had not completely come off until after the second month, but by then he really didn’t need them.

The boy’s hair had more white patches in it than before. His left leg was also scarred all the way up to his knee. His right ankle had a dent in it as if the muscle had been carved out with a spoon. But the real reason he was so identifiable as the general’s property was the tattoo on his right shoulder with the general’s name and the national insignia of Westhaven. It mostly marked him as the property of the government.

Traveling from village to town with the general had not changed much. The burning of villages had reduced though. General Gole’s reputation as a malignant despot was enough to frighten village patriarchs into making deals with him, including providing housing for soldiers and giving up a percentage of their crops and merchandise. On these trips, the boy often was kept busy running errands in his dragging leg irons. He kept his eyes down and his patchy head ducked—always prepared to be hit or to keep out of the crossfire between the general’s men and the insurgents that attacked his traveling party.

That was the worst of it. Going through the dangerous areas, especially along the rail route from Barnid down to Ladis just east of the Kirting Mountains. It was all forested area filled with many small villages with little Sky Child influence. The human insurgents attacked the road builders and set fire to their camps. It took nearly a year to clear the insurgents out, though most of them escaped. Rumor had it they had fled north to a village through a pass in the Semple Mountains. Of course that meant General Winstrong’s men had to head north to get rid of them.

Traveling through the dense forest to the north in an automobile caravan of six military cars with the general’s auto, the boy sat hunched in his rumble seat fiddling with the key he had taken over a year ago. Usually he kept it tucked in his shoe in a hole he had made by splitting the sewing that held the leather between the soft side of his foot under his ankle and the smooth hard leather of the outside. But in times of anxiety, he rolled it in his fingers, hoping that it acted as some sort of charm to keep him safe. The general’s caravan had often been shot at with crossbows, small missiles of flaming iron, and occasionally a flock of crow demons looking for food. It felt as if every day could be his final one, so he didn’t want to take the chance.

Rolling through the trees, the leafy shadows covering the dirt road that went mostly straight, the soldiers held their rifles at the ready as the drivers steered ahead. The general’s boy peered into the shadows to keep his eye out also, ducked down. Under the tree cover, he could only see trunks repeating as lines. Their branches created a green cover darker and darker the deeper he looked into the forest, though off in the distance he thought he caught sight of a flicker of light. It could have been a patch through the trees to a clearing, but it also could have been metal reflecting the light reflected off general’s shiny automobile. Shuddering, he ducked down further.

But the automobile caravan slowed. Lifting his head, he peered over the top of the automobile he was riding in to the road ahead. Ahead was clearing, which they were approaching as they slowed down. There wasn’t a sign, or anything like it that indicated that the village was in contact with Sky Child regulators.

And as they got closer, he could see it was much like the other villages on the line in the Southwestern corner: wood, all built with carved awnings with demon wards like at his home village, but also with added ornamentation unique to the south. Knotted wood carvings, crimson roofs of not-painted-but-dyed chips of high resin wood with each shingle engraved with a circular symbol, and ornate windows with vellum paper instead of the soft northern opaque white or the oil paper seen further south.

There was very little Kitai influence in the organization of the village also, as if it had been untouched by their former rulers as well. Instead of back-to-back houses with connecting walkway porches, each of the homes stood separately with no crawlspace underneath or wooden walkways running in straight rows. Each home had back and front entrances so that people could come and go on both sides. There was no village square. But instead, the clearing in front of the village where the road passed through opened up to a hillside where their village crops grew with a small watch-house for villagers to take turns guarding against frost or invading demonic pests. The convoy halted on the road between the hill garden and the village.

The sound of the automobiles drew the villagers out.

Ducking down, the general’s boy watched the village women slide open their windows to stick their heads out. Others came out of their homes peering at the soldiers. Their mouths were pressed in thin lines, and their eyes darkly focused on them as if this village was not occupied by humans but demons ready to kill anyone who stepped into their valley. He noticed a woman with her hair wrapped in a kerchief turn her eyes towards him right away. She followed him with a steely gaze as the general’s automobile came to a halt behind the third armored car.

And hers eyes were not the only ones that fixed on him. Children playing between the homes halted, dropping their balls and toy carts. Boys his age set down the trades they were learning, their tools hanging in their hands as if they would use them as weapons. Girls looked up from their work on the porches, setting down their skeins of thread, their baskets, their grinders and their gathered herbs. Men clutched their tools in their fists, glancing to their sons. Some took steps forward.

The general’s boy wished that he could shrink into the seat’s cushions, but he could already see the driver step out of the auto to let the general exit. The soldiers already hopped off of the backs of their vehicles, prepared to retaliate against an attack.

Tucking his key into his shoe, the general’s boy hopped out of the rumble seat and slid down the side of the auto, grabbing the step stool from its place and setting it exactly under the general’s door. The door opened immediately. Right after, the general rested his foot on the stool.

Everyone in the village seemed to take his breath in. The boy could feel it. Their eyes turned now from him to the general, whose reputation had preceded their arrival with obvious overtones of doom.

General Winstrong emerged from the vehicle, stood up, and stepped down to the dirt road, looking around at the scene. He wrinkled his nose, peering at the red roofs and the ornamental demon wards. Then with a disgusted sigh, he turned to the driver and nodded. “Here is good. Lock the auto.”

The general’s slave swiped up the stool and scurried back to the rumble seat, dropping the stool inside and pulling the cover closed so the driver could lock it. Then he stepped aside and waited for orders.

The general glanced at him only slightly. “Wait here, boy. I need to negotiate lodging before you get my bags.”

Bowing, the boy stepped back, keeping his eyes lowered.

Already the lieutenant from the lead car marched towards the village homes, of which they all looked identical except for one. The one stood large with mostly windows, all closed, and only a pair of wooden doors. It was a typical meeting hall for those parts. No one lived in the building, but it stood as a place where the village fathers met for rituals and where families gathered into on holidays or in disaster. The front doors were painted red with black writing carved into it that the boy tried not to read, but failed. Closed together, the words said: Northern Lights bring in. Eastern Seas roll in. Southern Heat draws in. Western Wild grows in. Ward encircle and protect from demons. It was a spell.

General Winstrong’s eyes scanned the building, his expression darkening as he saw the writing on the door. He lifted his head, calling out. “Where is your village patriarch? I wish to speak with him.”

The villagers pulled back. Mothers drew their children away then retreated into their homes, most especially taking their daughters inside.

“I said—” The general’s