Men of Truth (The Wasteland Soldier #4)

Nuria opened her eyes, and didn’t move for a few minutes.

Shafts of daylight filtered through the shutters of the small cottage. It was way past dawn and she could hear the groan of cattle outside. The village was alive. There were voices and footsteps, the grind of wagons and distant hammering. She propped herself on her elbows. She was a mess of blonde hair and tired blue eyes. She wrinkled her nose. The cottage was stale and musty. It was hardly surprising because it had stood empty for six months. The cottage belonged to Quinn who was still asleep, lightly snoring beneath a jumble of blankets, one stray foot hanging loose.

Nuria swung her bare feet onto a cold floor, stretched and then covered her mouth as she coughed. Her bones ached from long days of riding. Only twenty eight years of age, she felt more like one hundred and twenty eight at that moment. She lit a fire, put on fresh water and cycled the cramp from her legs. She emptied her bladder, replaced the circular lid on the bucket, and then stripped off her shirt and poured out the water. She washed the grime and dirt from her skin.

Once dry, she put the coffee on, and quickly dressed, pulling on woollen trousers, a heavy shirt, thick socks, a fleece, and heavy boots. Quinn muttered, and rolled onto her side, facing the wall. Nuria grabbed her coffee and turned her attention to the bed she’d slept in.

There was a brightly painted wooden object on the pillow. It resembled one piece of a heart, the left half. She plucked at its colourful contours before smothering it with her palm and bringing it to her chest, hand clenched. She thought back to that soggy and wind swept morning in Winshead. There had been a storm the night before. The ground had been marshy and she recalled the mournful drip of rainwater amongst the trees. Stone had been stunned by the gift. She’d suggested they carry a piece each, a sign of the bond they shared, the bond of friendship. And when he’d kissed her, not then but later, passionately, urgently, she’d known that friendship would only be the beginning for them.

Until the bridges had fallen. She would never give up on him even though she knew it was hopeless.

She poured her second cup of coffee. Today would mark a new step in the search for him. They had travelled the eastern borders of Ennpithia for the past six months, deep in the mountains, trying but failing to carve a route into Kiven. All the trails and paths led them to the canyon and there was no way to cross it. They rode north, into an arid land known as the red zone. No one lived there, nothing grew, and there was nothing to hunt. Several of the men who rode with them died from sickness. But even there, as the mountains became hills and the hills stretched into open wasteland, there was still no way across the canyon. They journeyed south, leaving behind unsettling outlines of once great cities half-buried in the scorched soil.

The Ancients had truly ruined the world.

Nuria slipped the wooden keepsake into her pocket. She feared it would become all that was left of him.

He was still the first thing she thought of in the morning and the last thing she thought of at night.

Quinn had told her she experienced the same thing, about her own family, who were all dead.

“First thing in the morning. Last thing at night. Despite all the stuff I went through with them.”

She had a tight voice, boxed-in, and she spoke fast, with no inflections, word after word rattling at speed. She had grown up in the state of Ennpithia but her family came from another place and the accent appeared to have followed.

“There was a lot of bad – a real lot of bad. But nothing is ever all bad, not even what they did. It’s hard to explain. People don’t get it. They think I’m making excuses for them. I’m not. If my mother was here now I’d put a bullet in her head. I would. I’d probably have a chat first. About stuff, things. And then I’d kill her. I doubt I would feel a thing. But none of that stops me thinking of them. People who have an impact are always in your head, whether you want them to be there or not.”

Quinn’s father had died of illness when she was ten years old. Her mother, a devout knee-bender, had fallen to the same disease, but much later and only after the damage had been done.

“With my father dead, she was the only voice. I hated her. I wanted her to die. And I wanted her to hold me when I was sick. Family is fucked up.”

Her mother had come upon Quinn with another girl, arriving home unexpectedly early from her chores at the Holy House. Quinn was already displaying a lack of faith in the word of the Lord and her mother now realised with horror that her daughter was truly different, perverted and deviant. Her mother’s influence within the Holy House allowed her to press for the girl and her family to be banished. With her gone, she set about cleansing her daughter of sin. Her son, Daniel, Quinn’s older brother, would be the natural instrument to restore balance. Though he refused, he was beaten until he complied, and eventually he complied without the beatings.

“Clarissa was born, a beautiful little girl. Even in the foulest moments, Nuria, I was able to find something pure.”

“But she never knew.”

Quinn drank with regret. “That will haunt me until the end. It’s the Lord’s final punishment for me. My damnation for hating the cross and pissing on my mother’s grave. Sometimes I’m glad my father died when he did.”

She loved her father, and missed him dearly. Her memories of him were becoming hazy and that troubled her. He had been dead for sixteen years and she was beginning to struggle with his features, the lines around his eyes, dimples on his cheeks, white and curly nasal hair, thick hands stained with tobacco. She showed Nuria the pipe he’d smoked until death.

“I’d chase around the herb garden with a wooden sword. Fighting Shaylighters. I always wanted to fight Shaylighters. My father would be on his bench. Smoking this big pipe. He made that bench himself. I watched him fell a tree and carve it day after day. That was before they fetched in the timber laws. Now you can’t do anything without violating a law. He would smoke his pipe and watch me run wild amongst the herbs.”

She paused. “I must have trampled over half of them. He didn’t mind. I killed plenty of Shaylighters.”

Nuria often saw her smoke it with a wistful look in her eye, sometimes even a tear that was quickly wiped away. Quinn was a woman who accepted little weakness. Her shoulders were broad, her spine straight. She also held Clarissa’s hairbrush and her loss had been the hardest to cope with. It was the only time Nuria saw Quinn bend and fold. She was only slowly coming to terms with the knowledge that Clarissa was missing from this world. The men who had betrayed her were dead. But that was scant consolation.

“Stone was right. What he told me in Touron.”

“About what?” said Nuria.

“You feel nothing when you kill them. You take vengeance to them, you push them violently from this life into the next but nothing changes. The sun still comes up. The rain still falls.”

Quinn shrugged.

“People climb into your life, into your heart. What can you do?”

Nuria nodded. She had never known the caress or cruelty of her mother or the look or scent of her father. Training and discipline had been her family. Abandoned in an orphanage, she had found her way in life surrounded by strangers, progressing into military school, working hard and following orders, until she attained a high-ranking position within the Red Guard of Chett, the city of her birthplace. Her rise had been carefully mentored, and possibly manipulated, by a retired officer, a man who would become chancellor. But it had been a dark period for her, brightened only by encountering Stone.

She smiled wryly, thinking back on Quinn’s words. There was a sudden knock at the door, jolting her from the past.

“Quinn?”

Captain Duggan. Nuria recognised his gruff voice. He knocked again. She kept him waiting and lingered with the coffee pot. She poured out her third cup but left it on the table. He was a more recent part of her past, but no less unpleasant. She had not seen him since the summer, when he served her with a banishment order, later quashed by Governor Albury. She combed her hair with her hands, loosening knots and tangles, and swept it into a ponytail before opening the door.

“Where’s Quinn?”

“Sleeping.”

“Wake her.”

“No, we only rode in last night. She’s exhausted.”

“I have to discuss these orders from Touron.”

Nuria fixed him with a stare. “There’s nothing to discuss. Governor Albury signed all the papers.”

Duggan fumed. He had little patience, even less tolerance, but orders were orders, and when Touron issued them he had to obey.

“I still need to talk to her.”

His stocky frame filled the narrow doorway. He wasn’t backing down. A man in his mid-fifties, bearded and rugged, he was a veteran of the civil war. He had lost his son during the conflict, after the peace treaty had been signed but before the killing had ceased on the frontline. He stood ankle-deep in snow, wearing full armour, his tunic emblazoned with a cross. A helmet covered his grey hair and a sheathed sword hung from his belt, gloved fist resting on the pommel.

Nuria went inside and left him in the cold, the door ajar. She was hoping he would leave because she didn’t quite have the heart to slam the door on him. She picked up her pistol, lying with her coffee cup, and ejected the magazine. It was nearly empty. She scooped a handful of bullets from a leather pouch and began to load it, watching Duggan as she pushed each one down.

He bristled, knowing she was attempting to provoke him. Ennpithian law stated that all tech and weapons from the Before were forbidden and that included firearms. Faith promised a peaceful future but only by rejecting the sinful inventions of the past could it be assured. Possession of such weapons was punishable by death though Nuria and Quinn were exempt, with documentation to prove it. At least one man recognised the sacrifice Stone had made in protecting Ennpithia and would bend any rule to repay the debt.

Duggan was sickened by the situation. Stone could rot as far as he was concerned.

“What do you want?”

It was Quinn.

He was silent for a moment.

“What did you do to your hair?”

“That’s none of your business.”

Her thick ropes of blonde hair had gone; yellow fuzz covered her scalp.

“You look like a man.”

“I don’t need your approval.”

Quinn climbed from her brother’s bed. She had slept in her clothes. She arched her back, grunting from the pain around her lower spine. It had been nagging her for the past few days. She was in her mid-twenties, muscular arms and legs, a large nose with flared nostrils and a curved upper lip. She picked up the coffee Nuria had poured for her.

Duggan shuffled in the doorway. The cottage was growing cold with the door open.

“Why are you still here?” said Quinn.

“I wanted to see how you were.”

“We’re alive.”

“Ossie had a girl. We called her Annie.”

Quinn was Quinn. Even her father had called her Quinn. But Quinn was the family name and her birth name was Annie.

“Is that it?”

“No, that’s not it. I’ve seen these orders that you left at the barracks last night. You’re taking the trawler east along the coastline?”

“That’s right.”

“I can’t spare any men.”

“We don’t need any.”

“You took Marshals with you into the mountains.”

“That was Commander Eddis,” said Nuria. “It was his recommendation. He offered us men with mountaineering experience.”

“Well, I can’t offer you any Churchmen,” said Duggan, directing his words at Quinn, and blanking Nuria. “They’re soldiers, not sailors.”

“We won’t need them,” said Quinn. “We’re taking a minimal crew. Read Albury’s letter.”

“There’s nowhere to land in Kiven.”

“Then we won’t be long.”

“Do you realise that going onto their soil is an act of war? Has Governor Albury considered this?”

Quinn slammed down her coffee cup.

“They fired a missile at us, Duggan, and over fifty men were killed at the Place of Bridges. I’m sure that evens it out.”

“I’m not happy about this, Quinn.”

She put her hand against the door.

“You don’t have to be happy. Just follow orders, Captain. That’s what you’re good at.”

She closed the door, waited for a moment. Nuria eased back in her chair, and said nothing.

“None of this is your fault,” said Quinn.

“Mind reader.”

“No, that’s not one of my skills.”

She smiled, and dropped down into a chair. She took a loaf of bread and broke it into two pieces.

“He’s an asshole. He’s forgotten what you did in the summer. No, he knows exactly what you did. That’s why he’s pissed.”

She had admired Duggan through childhood. He had been a role model for her. But Quinn would never forget and it was unlikely she would ever forgive. When the time came to make a stand, Duggan had shunned her and aligned himself to the law, not with what was right, because in his eyes there was only the law, and nothing else. He had banished her from the village, with Stone and Nuria, and taken the side of a child abuser.

Despite all that, Nuria almost pitied him as he trudged from the snow-covered garden and back toward the barracks.

“Don’t feel sorry for him,” said Quinn. She chewed on the bread. “I can see that look in your eyes. He was happy to bend the law when Daniel firebombed the Holy House. Why was that? To impress me? The man is a rodent. He treats you like shit. He has from the moment you arrived. He has a problem with strong women.”

“You got on well with him before we got here.”

Quinn grinned. “I don’t count. He looks at me as another man. He always has. If I wasn’t … different … then he’d treat me like you. And creeping around me with that shit about his new baby. How could he do that? Name her after me? Bastard.”

She tore off a strip of crust, popped it into her mouth.

“Do I look like a man?”

“No, of course not.”

“Why do you think it happened?”

Nuria was quiet for a moment. She looked at Quinn’s head. “I don’t know. But we should have seen Trinity before leaving Touron.”

Quinn shrugged.

“I wasn’t prepared to wait two weeks to see her. Besides, I’m not sick.”

“You have back pain.”

“Too much riding.”

“And a bad cough.”

“It’s winter.”

“You let the girl heal you before. When you were shot.”

A gloom descended. Quinn chose to break it. “Maybe the Lord intends to change me into a man. I might wake up in the morning with a cock.”

“I’ll finally have some use for you.”

They laughed. It had been a long time since laughter had reverberated around the cottage.

“You could have walked away from all this,” said Nuria. “I won’t forget the help you’ve given me.”

“I owe you both. You know that.”

Quinn blinked back tears as ghosts of the past began to crawl through her, leaving footprints.

Breakfast was finished in silence. They began to gather their weapons and supplies.

“Will you come back here?” asked Nuria.

“I swore in the summer I wouldn’t and here I am again. But I don’t think so.”

“They’re rebuilding Winshead. Filling it with the survivors from Great Onglee. Would you think about staying there?”

Quinn shrugged and lifted her crossbow. It was heavily customised, rapid fire with a lever action. She slotted a wooden magazine box onto the shaft.

“I don’t know,” she said. “The Shaylighters will always want me dead.” She shook her head. “I can’t see how I can live amongst them. What about you and Stone? It’s the same for you. Will you come back to Ennpithia?”

Nuria tucked her pistol into her waistband, and hesitated. “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

“I’m confident we’ll find him,” said Quinn. “Once we get into Kiven. Then you can decide.”

The wind ached around the cottage.

“I still believe he’s alive,” said Nuria. “I have to. But he’s been over there since the summer, on the run. We spent all that time in the mountains and it was a waste. Eddis was right. They’d tried to find a way through ten years ago and failed and we didn’t fare any better.”

“This will work,” said Quinn. “We take the trawler along the coast. The canyon is the marker. Once we pass it we know we’re south of Kiven. Then we drop anchor the moment we spy a cove or a beach or anything.”

“But we could spend years wandering the Black Region.”

Quinn shook her head.

“We just follow the trouble. That’s where Stone will be.”