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

“Humans with guns,” Gailert murmured, affixed the last of his buttons. He tucked his shirt in again then picked up his vest. “I’m sure you’d hate to hear this, but I told you those humans were organizing.”

Captain Welsin gave a weak smile. “Yes. You did say that. However this…I don’t think any of us conceived of this. And my apologies again for having to put you through that search. You do understand that we are now searching everyone. Those human spies looked authentic. They had their papers. All their documents looked real. Nothing came as suspicious.”

“Nothing?” Gailert tilted his head, now pulling on his vest.

“Not a thing.” Captain Welsin led him towards the door. “They could all read and write, and they acted as if they were born Sky Children, regarding the humans around them as we would. The captain said that he saw nothing that would have indicated they were human.”

“They could all read?” That was something that made Gailert’s stomach clench. Somewhere in the back of his brain, his mind went to his mistake for teaching his first slave to read. The boy’s eyes had taken in everything he could when he understood what the marks meant. Back then, Gailert had seen a glimpse of the danger humans reading would cause. Old General Lemmun had warned him. Here were now the full fruits—perfect spies among them that had just stolen gun-making technology.

“Captain! Captain!” A corporal ran into the room. “We got one!”

Both Captain Welsin and General Winstrong ran out to the barely snow piled street where three of their solders were dragging up a beaten and bleeding man. He looked like a common brown-eyed Sky Child rail worker. But the men had torn open his shirt to expose his stomach, which was as white as the snow around them. Gailert stared, watching the men drag their captive by his hair, arms, and legs and deposited him in front of the two military leaders. They held him down.

“Did he have poison on him?” Captain Welsin asked.

“Yes,” leader of the team said, a private. “But we forced him to vomit it out. He’s lucid.”

“Good.” The captain squatted before the man and set his hand on the spy’s forehead, feeling into his mind. Almost immediately the human howled, so much that the captain jerked back and cursed. Captain Welsin slapped their prisoner. “You lousy human! Don’t you do that to me! I know that trick!”

Captain Welsin glanced barely to Gailert who understood immediately what trick he was referring to. The human had sent an overload of emotion to shock the captain, something Gailert himself practiced to keep prying blue-eyes out his head.

The captain set his hand against the human’s forehead again and fought his way through the intense emotions. It took a great deal of effort, but he sucked out the information he was looking for. It seemed to take much mucking through as the spy worked to fight him. The spy’s own brown eyes glared at the captain with furious determination. In a peculiar way, it was admirable. Never before had Gailert seen a human fight so hard to maintain his own thoughts.

Speaking out loud for Gailert’s benefit, the captain started to breathe hard from the effort. “I have the name of the leader of their army. It is General Dalis Holbruk. Huh. And get this. I know his face. It’s that lone gunman from the southwest corner.”

“Where is their camp?” Gailert asked, waiting eagerly for the information he had been dying to know for years.

But the captain shook his head. Clenching his teeth, he tried to draw it out. “I don’t know. This man has no sense of direction. Somewhere north in the mountains is all I can get. No city names. He just calls it Dalis’s camp.”

“What about other spies? What are their plans? Where are they stationed?” Gailert was already calculating the northern areas where an army could hide. Unfortunately the Duglis Mountains were a difficult range to search. There were several villages along it, but nothing that looked able to hide an army.

With another shake of his head, the captain strained to pull something coherent through the man’s thoughts. “I can’t see it. The man keeps blocking. No. Wait. No. He doesn’t know where the other spies are except the ones that work on the railway where he works. They’re there to learn how trains work.”

“To learn how trains work?” Gailert repeated, wondering why the humans wanted to know that.

Captain Welsin nodded. “That’s his purpose. And he is supposed to return with what he knows soon.”

“Return where?” Gailert asked.

“Wingsley.” The captain then frowned. “He has a contact there with a pass code.”

“What’s the code?” This had to be it, the key to finding the human army. Gailert waited and hoped.

But the captain shrugged. “He hasn’t been given it yet. He was waiting for a human courier that was to deliver it.”

“Then we will meet the courier and take it from him,” Gailert said.

Nodding the captain then dug into the man’s mind more. The human howled, thrashing to break away, but it really did no good. Besides being held fast by the soldiers, the captain also sucked energy from him to keep the man from truly struggling. After a while the captain let go.

“Ugh! This man is impossible! All I keep getting from him is how worried he is that Key will be angry with him.” Captain Welsin shoved the man back then hit him in the stomach.

“He knows Key?” Gailert pushed in to look at the human spy now.

“Knows of him,” the captain said, rising and wiping off his hands. “Key’s the mastermind. Their spy network was Key’s plan—the entire thing. All I can get from this human is that Key is one of many leaders that have arranged the army. But it’s that General Holbruk that leads the army of trained gunmen and spies. He’s the one to worry about.”

“But what does he know about Key?” General Winstrong moved with the greatest desire to beat it out of the human, wishing for once he could drain thoughts also.

The captain shrugged. “Only that Key is said to be insane. What this man knows of him is mostly from rumor. And rumor is that Key was behind the burning of the city in the Herra Hills, that he consorts with wizards, and that he has ordered for the humans that can read to go out and teach the other insurgents to read, including peasants. But the latest rumor that he heard was that Key wants to align himself with the Cordrils and bring them into the human army.”

“Align with Cordrils?” Gailert pulled back. The words of that one Cordril jumped back out at him. Key already had a relationship with the Cordrils. “And are the humans going to do it?”

Captain Welsin shook his head with an abrupt laugh. “No. The humans are too terrified of those Cordils to even consider it. They believe the idea to be mad.”

The human spy was panting on the cold road now, hardly able to lift up his head, though he seemed to be grieving with a wish to die. It was clear he now considered himself a traitor.

“Mad, hmm?” The general took a step back from their captive. There was no way that Key was insane. Genius was often confused with insanity when the others around were so little-minded in comparison. In his day, the blue-eyed soldiers had often called him insane, but he had proved to be a visionary, one they appreciated later.

“Well, I think we ought to take up this human and store him away,” Gailert said, looking down on him. “He may be more forthcoming tomorrow once he’s had a rest.”

The captain nodded then gestured for the private and the others to gather the human up. The soldiers heaved the spy onto his feet. The man could hardly stand. They dragged him in towards their prison wing of the military post. As they did, Gailert and the captain headed back into the office to discuss the information they had just learned in more depth, especially concerning the new threat of a standing human army. 

Yet, in the moment they stepped in the door, they heard the screech of tires on the frosty road. Gunfire followed.

Both men turned, quickly ducking down. They saw a shiny automobile drive up. The passengers shot their pistols out the windows, killing all five soldiers and several others on the street, though they also shot the icicles overhead, causing them to crash down on top of the soldiers. The spy leapt from the dead and chunks of ice, darting dizzily forward to the flung-open the door of the auto. The attackers’ arms reached out, pulling him in. The wheels spun. Immediately the automobile screeched off again, skidding straight down the road towards the gates that would take them right out of Roan. Clouds of hot exhausted trailed behind them.

When they had gone, the captain rose, peering down the road.

“Don’t just stand there!” Gailert shouted, trying to get to his feet also. But he was unable to get a foothold on the ice. “Call to the gate and have them close it!”

Nodding the captain rushed to his office and gave the order.

The general pushed off his knees, bracing his hand against the door for balance. His breath puffed coldly in front of him. The scene before him was all wrong. There were dead bodies, but the dead were Sky Children and not humans. It was as if the world had suddenly been turned on its head, and that new human general, Key, was the one who had tipped it.

*

“Where is he? Where’s Key?” Berd, their old comrade from the Herra Hills asked, peering through the small snow covered settlement in the Westerlund Hills

“Where else?” Polan said, pointing to the smoke from the covered smithy. “He’s pretty much been there since he returned from Stiltson, just banging away on those swords of his. It’s like he’s transfixed. Tiler’s been bringing him food and making him take breaks, while those two friends of his from the lakes have been up in Yarrding to get away from him. I hear that guy Loid say Key’s upset about something—but no one will say what.”

“It’s probably about how the council won’t listen to him regarding the Cordrils. Especially after the blue-eyes had found out about our spies,” Berd muttered, nodding. “I have a note for him that Weston brought from Sadena.”

“Did you read it?” Polan asked, leading him over the snow toward the smithy since it was business they had to discuss with Key. If it was from Sadena it had to be important.

“Me?” Berd chuckled. “I’m not Weston. Of course I read it. That wizard is telling him to have the camp near Wingsley evacuated into the tunnels of that town. Apparently the location has been compromised. General Holbruk is also to move the refugees near Yarrding into the Mistrim tunnels and then prepare his army for full war.”

“Where is Lady Sadena right now?” Polan glanced at the letter as if to read an address, but their mail system did not need such. Weston only knew his contacts. The letters passed hands too many times to be perfectly traced from person to person.

“Somewhere east. Callen, that warrior, is with her. I think they are in Tobi right now, but I could be wrong.”

Berd followed Polan around the front of the smithy. He noticed Tiler who was leaning on his sheathed sword, nodding off as if the bang bang bang on metal were a lullaby.

Berd chuckled. “I hear all the wizards are out shifting the color on the skin of the spies from their bellies to some more, uh, better hidden spots. The witches had given them skin dyes to take with them in case that does not work.”

Tiler jerked upright with a snort, waking with a bleary-eyed stare. The rhythmic banging had stopped, and they could hear the hot iron inside hit water, steaming.

“Oh. Hi fellas.”