the incorruptibles by john hornor jacobs extract

8/11/2019 The Incorruptibles by John Hornor Jacobs Extract

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John Hornor Jacobs

GOLLANCZ


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Copyright John Hornor Jacobs All rights reserved

The right of John Hornor Jacobs to be identied as the authorof this work has been asserted by him in accordance with

the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act .

First published in Great Britain in by GollanczAn imprint of the Orion Publishing Group

Orion House, Upper St Martins Lane, London

An Hachette UK CompanyA CIP catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library

(Cased) (Trade Paperback)

Typeset at The Spartan Press Ltd,Lymington, Hants

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd,Croydon,

The Orion Publishing Groups policy is to use papers thatare natural, renewable and recyclable products and madefrom wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging andmanufacturing processes are expected to conform to the

environmental regulations of the country of origin.

www.johnhornorjacobs.comwww.orionbooks.co.uk

www.gollancz.co.uk


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ONE

W elds burning like the plains of Hell Fisk on the black, Banty on the roan bay, and me on Bess,the mule, leading a string of ponies. We came up from the deltaand the lush watershed of the Big Rill through the edge of thefarmlands. Settlers worked the elds, shovels in hand, throwingdirt on fallow res. The farmhands looked lean and scrappy; poor

folk, eking a living off the land.The praefect orders another hunting expedition, theyll be

oating his body back to New Damnation, Banty said, low andthrough his teeth.

Fisk sniffed, glanced at the smoke billowing above us and thenback out over the Big Rills sun-hammered silver. No one movesthe way Fisk does. Slow and deliberate, each gesture languid andrelaxed. Until it isnt.

The Cornelian churned the wide waters of the Big Rill, brag-rags whipping in the wind, steaming upriver, while we kept pace.Fisk and I had picked up the escort contract from Marcellus outof New Damnation, but the proconsuls tribune had saddled uswith Banty, the greenhorn, who was good for nothing, except bigtalk and no action. The tribune wasnt a bad fellow, but even goodfolks make mistakes.

Fisk watched the Cornelian , the sky, the land. He remained still


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but his gaze never stopped roving, his grey eyes bleached by sunand years in the elements. Wed been partners for the last decade

and I still didnt know anything about the man, other than scrapsand pieces. Had a family once. Could shoot out the eye of a spar-row on the wing. Feared no man or vaettir . There would be no restfor Fisk until the stretchers were gone from the earth. He hatedthem with a passion wronged men reserve for gods, dangerouswomen, and whiskey.

Head-count conscripts milled about on the boats galleries,

staring out into the West, no doubt scanning the horizon forstretchers, terried. Up on the top deck, in the shadow of thepilots roost, stood an umbrella sheltering patrician women. Thestacks, daemon -red, blew ash and cinder skyward as if answeringthe ames of the elds.

Fire calls to re, they say. I believe that.From where I sat on Bess, I watched the other scouts Sharbo,

Ellis, and Jimson riding the western shore, stirrup-high in fallowgrowth. No farms that side of the river, so close to the mountains.Stretchers come down, raiding.

Fisk said, slowly, How dya come to gure that, Mr Bantam?Banty put a hand on his pistol, a Hellfire six-gun with imp

rounds. Sure to sully his soul, but deadly.Ill kill him.Fisk glanced at the young man, taking in the rumpled uniform,

the tight grip on his pistol.You might be stupid enough, at that.I laughed at the pups posturing and watched as his face went

through a series of expressions, from shame to embarrassment.Maybe some anger in there as well. When theyre as young andfull of juice as Banty, you never know which way theyll jump.

At the sound of my laughter, Bess showed gum and green teethand turned her head to nip at my leg, but I swatted her with my


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hat. There isnt anyone, anything, any animal, like Bess. Stout,indomitable, with feet that never slip, not on mountain trail or

riverbed. She was the lead mule, the fountainhead, immovableand cantankerous and full of mirth. Behind us followed the stringof ponies, bays and roans, dappled and skewbald. None wouldchallenge her lead.

Except maybe Fisks black. That bitch was erce.Then Banty laughed too, barking a forced, childish sound, and

said, I almost had you there, Fisk.

He was quiet, my partner, holding the blacks reins lightly in hisbig, rawboned hands. He watched the sky to the east of us, up highin the heavens, as turkey buzzards circled slowly above the plains.

He didnt even turn when he said to Banty, Thats right. Heslowed the black and took a Medieran cigarette from his vestpocket. You almost had me, Mr Bantam.

There wasnt any warmth in Fisks voice. But there was never

any warmth in it, except maybe when he cooed to his horse andnuzzled the beasts canescent neck, or rubbed down her anks. Shewas a bitch and a brute, but his and his alone and valuable. Nevercould understand why he didnt name her.

Banty kept talking. Hes a devil for the hunt, Cornelius is. Whenwe hit that thicket of quail, Fisk, you shoulda seen the look on hisface. Like Iad done forgave him all his sins and hed gone straightto Heaven.

Fisks expression hardened. He wouldnt shoot the boy, not now,not for foolishness alone. But Fisks a killer, natural born. I didntknow much about the man after a decade, but I knew that much.With every bit of idiocy issuing from Bantys mouth, he put hislife in jeopardy.

Banty slapped his knee and laughed again. Nice gun hes got,though, aint he?

Its a nice piece, I said. Real nice.


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Now that youre with us, maybe thingsll be different, Bantysaid.

Possible, said Fisk. Contract is to escort the Cornelian and toscout the territories shell be passing through. Doesnt say nothingabout hunting.

Fisk had joined us at the conuence of the Big Rill and theSnake. Hed been south in Harbor Town to restock his ammunitionfrom an engineer there. I dont have no truck with engineers, forfear of the nal disposition of my eternal soul, Ia help me, but Fisk

and Banty and it seems like every other able bodied man in theHardscrabble Territories does. Which means I have to be polite,and small, and humble as a saint. Show no aggression or somepistolero will give me extra breathing holes, which aint high onmy list of priorities. Hellre pistols their upkeep and ammunition

are expensive, and men whore moneyed well enough to affordthem are usually prickly in their honor, or the appearance of it.

But I keep various sharp, pointy metal things on my person, andIm good with a blade, and I can bring down a running rabbit atfty feet with a sling. But there arent enough good deeds in theworld that can counter-balance the taint you do your soul onceyou pick up a Hellre pistol. Each bullet takes a bit of you with it.

Fisk thumbed a match into fire and lit his cigarette, whichsmelled of spice and brimstone and brown ladies on a tropicalshore. Smoke is a vice that sullies your body, not your soul, so Imnot nnicky about it and enjoy a puff every now and then myself,Ia forgive me.

Hes highborn. A senator, with proconsular imperium. Thatsbig. And acting governor of the Territories, so Ill remind you towatch yourself. But, its true, hes mad for the hunt, I said. Withhis cohort behind him, if he wants to hunt, hell hunt.

Fisk did this thing with his eyebrow as he looked at me. Hardto tell what the man was thinking, other than he was thinking.


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He turned the black to the east and rode out a fair distance.Theres his private engineer to think about, Fisk said over

his shoulder. He took a long draw off the cigarette, held it, andexpelled the smoke that whisked away on the breeze. He spat loosetobacco into the dry grasses at his feet. Shoestring?

Yeah? I answered.Believe Ill outride a bit. Take a gander there. He nodded at the

pinwheel of turkey buzzards, hanging in the sky like dead cinderson the wind.

Huh. Might be something. Might be just a lame shoal auroch.He nodded again and pulled his hat tighter on his head. Every-

thing about him was weathered. The grey hat, the faded ridingleathers and vest, his gunbelt.

He squinted at me and said, Theres stretchers about. And thenhe looked back to the grey-washed plain. Ill catch up with you,

he added, and rode off. We watched him go, up the far rise, overthe slope and into the east where the buzzards wheeled under abig sky.

Whats stuck in his craw? Banty asked. Always talking, thatone.

Hes just hard.Theres always hard men. Garrisons full of them.

Yep. Youre right there. I touched my forehead, my lips, myheart. Ia save us from hard men.

You believe that shit?Yes. Matter of fact, I do.Banty grinned then, and placed his hand on his six-gun. Cant

deny you Ia. But if he gives a shit about us, he sure is doing a goodjob hiding his concern.

Just a boy, playing at being a man. Theres nothing to do inthe company of the faithless. Or the addle-brained. Ia will keep


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us from hard men, stretchers, shoal beasties, and daemon -born.Never you worry.

Ill give you a full gold denarius if you can tell me how.Ia sends us our own hard men.Banty looked puzzled; then his expression clouded as he looked

after Fisk.Wed come out of the farmlands, into the dry at plains be-

fore the foothills of the White Mountains, a wide expanse ofwind-whipped shallow hillocks wreathed in grass. The Cornelian

churned the waters, silvering its wake, while lascars in johnboatspaddled ahead to plumb depth and search for rocky shoals andsandbars. The Big Rill was wide here, and shallow. The boatsdaemon- red engine pumped a tilted column of ash and smokeinto the brittle sky, and gunre, like the crackle of cooking pig fat,echoed across the open spaces. The Senator was shooting again.

Ignoring that Banty had opened his mouth to speak, I threw

him the ponies lead rein.Watch for the skewbald mare. She balks at streams.I turned Bess to the east and followed Fisk.


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H at me when I brought Bess abreast his black,though she chucked her head and nickered and tried to pullahead.

Thought I might tag along.He nodded, keeping his eyes on the buzzards.Its a big country, and the vast expanse of it calls for silence, at

least from humankind, though Im not quite human. Got enoughdvergar blood for folks in New Damnation or Passasuego to lookat me twice. To rough me up maybe, spit on me, if theyve a mindto. Lynch me if I look funny at their women. Might be different ifI carried Hellre with me, if I was willing to tarnish that immortalpart of me, but I wont do that. Not for pride, or station. Not forrudeness.

Fire calls to re.Fisk seemed to sense what I was thinking because he tugged

his carbine out of the long holster on the blacks ank and beganfeeding imps into it. He popped each one off his belt, thumbed theintricate wards to make sure of the rounds integrity, and slippedit into the chamber. The silver of the bullets was tarnished andblack, but the warding was bright where it caught the light. WhenFisk was done, he levered the action and unloaded and reloadedhis pistol.


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We rode, trotting through the long plains grasses. After an houror so, we came upon a tangle of scrub brush and fragrant but

stunted sumac trees. Fisk dismounted, and I followed suit.He gave the black a small nosebag of oats, and I let Bess forage

the sumac berries. Shes sure got an iron belly. Found her chompingbrambles once, and I had to tug her away.

I tossed Fisk a hunk of jerked auroch tongue and some hardtack,and we both ate a little underneath the unbroken sky, watchingthose damned turkey buzzards circle and bank.

Theres something dead there, I think, he said.I didnt argue. Most likely a lame calf or cow.Seems like.He dropped the hobble rein, pulled the carbine, and looked at

me expectantly. We walk the rest of the way?Yep.We strolled under the big sky, up a shallow rise, through the

long shoal grass. Occasionally Fisk slowed and let me catch up, butbefore we reached the peak and could look down on the carnagethere hed broken into a run a big ungainly lope, his spurs jan-gling with each footfall, his arms pumping even with the carbineclutched in his st.

Fifteen or twenty of the shoal auroch sprawled in a disarray oflumps on the plain; woolly little hillocks. But thats wasnt whatFisk ran to. When I caught up, I saw the remains of the settlers.

At our approach, the buzzards erupted in a urry of black wingsand a stench of blood. But the corpses were pretty fresh. Probablyno more than a day old. Hours maybe. The carrionfowl had onlyhad time to take their eyes, lips, and other soft bits.

There was a boy, no more than eleven, a shattered rie in hislap, an arrow through his throat, whose shocked, eyeless face wasturned to the low, gunmetal grey clouds. There was a man, nearby,leaning against the carcass of an auroch, his mouth gaping wide in


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a frozen scream, his stomach split open. Wasnt until I got closerthat I saw he was holding his own tongue and liver.

Fisk hissed air through his teeth. And this one.A man, spread-eagled over an auroch, his back ayed open.He pointed. They took his backstraps.Stretchers are many things, but Id never heard of them eating a

man. At least Id never imagined they would. The man was skinny,though. Not much tenderloin on him.

Buzzards probably snatched up the straps. Theres a bloody

mark on the ground over here.Fisk remained silent, his grey eyes scanning the bodies. There

was a tenseness about him. At times like these I felt there was somedoom waiting for us just beyond the next hill, and nothing Ia orthe old gods or Hellre pistols and daemonlore could do about it.

Still get that feeling, sometimes. There aint no bottom to thewell.

Fisk squatted on his hams by the boy, looking at him, maybetrying to x his image into memory, or maybe trying to get anidea of how the boy might have looked before he died, putting thepuzzle of his face back together to honour him.

He reached out and snapped off the end of the arrow with theetching.

It was Berith, I think.Who?That big red son of a whore.He turned the arrow in his hands, rufed the feathers thatd

been daubed with paint in a triangular pattern.What, the stretcher from Broken Tooth last year? That his

name?No. Just what I call him. Nobody understands their Ia-damned

gibberish anyway.Im curious. Why Berith?


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Just seemed like the sort of name a murderous arsehole wouldhave. He stuffed the arrow haft in his belt. And there was a big

red-haired tussler at Fort Verrier by that name. This stuff remindsme of that son of a bitch.

The sun broke through the cloud cover, sending a bright columnof slanted light sweeping across the carnage. Fisk stood uprightand raised his rie.

The creature on the rise seemed to have just coalesced out ofair, or risen up from the earth, a thing of dirt and grass, windand sky, and the blood of settlers. He stood there, impossibly tall,long red hair whipping in the wind. All pointy ears and sharpenedteeth. Vaettir .

Everything was silent but I could tell he laughed at us. And whenhe moved, it was a blur so damned fast I recognised an arrow in theair before even registering that the stretcher had moved. The rst

arrow stuck out of Fisks thigh, and then another drove into theground at his feet. A gure appearing beside the vaettir Fisk calledBerith, also impossibly tall, cradled something over his shoulder.

Even with the pierced leg, Fisk didnt fall. He had the carbineup and ring.

The gun belched Hellre, and there was a boom as the daemon was released inside the chamber, behind the bullet. In the half-lit,

grey world of the plains, the muzzle-re left an after-image of awinged horror, expanding and rising, loosed into the world. Animp .

You cant hear their screams of joy at freedom, the imps , butyou can feel them, and every shot tears at the air, beats at yourears and exposed skin as damaging as lying in the too-hot sun.Its an invisible pressure. The pressure of damnation.

And Fisk loosed them. If the stretchers were fast, Fisk was theirequal, like light moving across water even while arrow-struck.


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One shot after another, he levered the rounds, his hands movingblindingly fast.

He stopped ring only when it was clear they were gone. Dis-appeared into the grasses, subsumed by sky, eaten by earth. Whoknows how they move? They appear and disappear. Theyre beyondman. Beyond dvergar .

Ia-damn. Ia-damn. He said it over and over. He was pale then,and I couldnt tell if it was from the arrow wound or the after-effects of gunwork. Id felt each of those rounds as they loosed. I

didnt like to imagine their effect on him. Got to follow No, youre struck.You see that other one? Fisk tried to push me away. Carrying

something. Maybe a settler. Ia dammit, he took a settler.Nothing you can do about it. Here. I grabbed his arm and laid

him down. He still clutched the carbine. No telling how manybullets were left or how much damage hed done his immortal soul.

There wasnt much blood coming from his leg, so it didnt lookas if he was going to expire from blood loss.

We gotta get back to the Cornelian . Well get this out.He groaned, pushed himself up off the ground and hobbled

west, toward the White Mountains and our horses.He stopped and turned to me. Dont let all this auroch meat

go to waste, Shoestring.Opening my oiled satchel and withdrawing my longknife, I went

to the nearest auroch, still warm to the touch. I took its tongueand liver and, moving to the next animal did the same. I harvestedthe carcasses until my satchel was full of meat, bloody, still warm.

Then I jogged to catch up with Fisk, the eyes and breath of theplains upon me.

the incorruptibles by john hornor jacobs extract

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