We never knew what it was that had seen us snatched up, stripped of our goods and slung into slave-cells. It was simply one of those things that happened to people that you heard about, and this time the people it happened to were us ourselves. We had planned for this, though. Galtre Fael had a caper, and it was a good one, and one we had been waiting months to spring and, with slavery our only other option, why not spring it now? Riches beyond riches, Fael had said. Riches beyond riches indeed, but our target was behind Wasp lines, now, and somehow it had never seemed worth the journey.
‘It’ll be worth the journey,’ I had explained to Roven and Merric. ‘It’s a fair step, but riches, Sergeant, riches. They used to bury them well heeled back in the bad old days.’
It helped that Roven, the sergeant, had himself heard something of this. He opined, offhand, that some officer in the engineers he knew had struck old gold excavating some Commonweal lord’s broken-up castle. ‘Vaults of it, he said,’ Roven explained. ‘Just bodies and gold.’ Merric had looked interested.
‘I don’t know though,’ had said Galtre Fael, his lean face, the colour of gold itself, twisting in doubt. ‘Disturbing the dead?’
‘Disturbing the dead what?’ Roven had grunted.
The Dragonfly had shrugged. ‘They say… bad things happen when you open the oldest tombs. The makers protected their wealth with curses, and the dead aren’t always that dead.’
And the Wasps had jeered at that, and the seed was planted in their minds.
I could talk for ever, and Fael knew the land, and that got both of us sprung from the cells and travelling overland north, heading for the mountains. Roven and Merric were sick of campaigning, they said, or of campaigning in places where there was too much risk and not enough gold. Both of them were swearing blind they wished they’d signed on with the Slave Corps. After all, who cared if everyone hated you when you were that rich? Money bought back all the respect that a slaver’s uniform lost you, was how they put it. As for Skessi, he just turned up when we were two days out. Skessi was Fly-kinden, a scout attached to the Fourth, and a nosy bastard by anyone’s book. He’d heard, somehow, that Roven and Merric had something on the go, and he turned up threatening to shop them to their officers unless he was dealt in. Nobody much liked that, but Skessi could fly faster even than Galtre, and he was a wary little sod, and it didn’t seem we had much choice. It was odds on whether the officers would declare Roven a deserter anyway, especially after he’d had made off with four horses and a pack-beetle, but if he came back rich, well, that would smooth over a lot of rough waters. Besides, there were just so many Wasps forging west, even as winter came on, that it seemed possible that two soldiers could slip off on a frolic of their own and just claim to have got left behind. That was what Roven was counting on. As for Merric, he was happy enough to follow along, and if he ever got the chance to open my or Fael’s throat, well, that would be a bonus. Merric was like that, and he liked that. He was a simple man with simple pleasures, and would have been a perfect Wasp soldier if he’d had the slightest interest in listening to orders.
The plan, when me and Fael had first made the plan, had been to hightail it over here on our twosome, but it turned out our friends from the army were worth something after all. We ran into trouble twice. The first was with the Slave Corps, but Roven straightened that out. The second was with brigands, who had been having a field day since the Commonweal soldiers had given up these lands without a fight. About a dozen lean, ragged Grasshopper-kinden swept down on us from a tree-clogged ridge, with two Mantis warriors in the vanguard. Roven’s sting picked off one in a flash of golden fire, and Merric killed the other. He killed the Mantis sword to sword, too, with the Mantis sword near twice as long as his, and that gave me and Fael plenty to think about. The Grasshoppers themselves had leapt and flown and run as soon as their leaders were down.
Still, the initial plan didn’t call to split the loot five ways, and on the journey me and Fael had been given plenty of chance to discuss just what to do about that. ‘High stakes, high risk,’ Fael had said, but it turned out it was just one of our usual stock-in-trade scams after all – only played taut as a bowstring, and for real.
So that, and two tendays’ sullen travel through the cold crisp air and the occasional flurry of early snow, put us here, looking at the castle. This was an old one, and like a lot of them it had been left to rot a long time ago. No Wasp army had been forced to besiege this place. The walls were crumbling, their tops gappy and uneven like broken teeth. One face had come down entirely, leaving three tottering sides of uneven stones, the internal architecture laid out in sheared floors, the traces of fallen walls, and windows and doorways gaping like dead eyes.
‘Don’t know why you people bothered with these things,’ Roven spat, jabbing at Fael. ‘Half-dozen trebuchet and a leadshotter, and they come down a treat.’
How strange a thought, I remember thinking, having one of my philosophical fits on me, that sufficient Wasp artillery can do the work of centuries of decay. Is there a precise exchange rate, a year-value one can assign to a catapult? How many decades wear is a solid ball from a leadshotter?
‘We didn’t build them,’ Fael said, which prompted a reflective pause. That was news to me too. The Commonweal was dotted with such castles, tall stone keeps and towers, inward-leaning at the top to defend against aerial attackers. The Dragonflies had made much use of them as strong-points during the war, although Roven’s assessment of their longevity was a fair one. Everyone knew that the structures were very old, and these days the Dragonflies built flimsy stuff out of wood and screens that looked like any strong wind would blow it away. It was the first suggestion I’d heard that the castles were not originally theirs though.
‘Just grew like mushrooms, did they?’ Skessi jeered, winging close for a moment. Fly-kinden flew, it was true, but Skessi seemed to have unlimited reserves of Art to call on. He was in the air almost every waking moment.
‘We were not the first,’ Fael said airily, ‘to call these places home. Especially here near the mountains. There were ancient powers who taught us our ways and blessed the first Monarch and bade us found the Commonweal, but they were not of our kinden. They were great masters, whose magic could reshape the world, command the skies. It was they had the castles built for, while they lived amongst us, they loved to dwell in cold stone.’ By now I’d figured what he was up to, and I just nodded along.
‘Right, whatever,’ said Roven, but uneasily. The great broken edifice before us had a forlorn, tragic feel to it. It was evening by that point, and Merric chose that moment to start setting up camp. Nobody suggested investigating the place at night.
‘Where’s this loot of yours?’ Roven would ask, though, by moonlight. ‘Can’t see there’s much left of any treasury.’
‘Crypts,’ I explained blithely. ‘It’s the loot of the dead. The family that ruled here in yesteryear laid out its dead in state, and dressed in gold and jewels.’
‘And maybe those from before are laid out here as well,’ Fael muttered in dark tones. ‘The ancient nameless ones, they can lie in the earth for ever, they say, and yet wake again, if they must.’
‘Enough of that talk. We’re not superstitious savages like your lot,’ Roven growled. Merric’s fire shadowed his face, but the corner of Skessi’s mouth was twitching, and Merric himself had his sword held close, as if for comfort. The gutted castle loomed impartial over all, black against a darkening sky.
We went in next morning, once dawn and a bottle of war-loot wine had emboldened the Wasps. Fael would go first, with Skessi hovering at his shoulder, and then the Wasps with me in arm’s reach, in case of funny business. The Wasps had a couple of hissing gas lanterns, one of which was forced on me to carry. If it had been just the two of them, matters would have been easier, but Skessi’s eyes were as good in the dark as mine.