Although Ajac still is.
And Neen’s only a year or two more.
You’d think, given the death of his father and the fate awaiting him, that Vijay Jaxx would look older. Not a bit of it. He still looks what he is: a well-brought-up late teen, with floppy hair and a tiny beard so blond it’s almost invisible.
After supper, he excuses himself politely.
He sounds apologetic when he says he needs to return to General Luc. As if he regrets being forced to leave our cheap cigars and cheaper brandy and outdated rations for real food and a requisitioned hunting lodge.
Maybe he does.
Even the best meals taste sour when you’re prisoner.
‘Who takes first watch, sir?’
Neen looks surprised when I say no one. No watches and no pickets, Colonel Vijay’s orders. We’re under the protection of the Wolf Brigade. I hope he finds the words as hard to say as I do to hear.
‘I’m not tired, sir,’ Neen says.
‘You want to walk our perimeter, that’s fine. Wake me if you get bored.’
He salutes, collects his Kemzin and takes himself out to the edge of our fire, while I settle myself in the shelter of a rock that rises like broken bone from the slope we’re descending, with the others round me in a sprawl. Our fire burns to ashes faster than we’d like and, come morning, our uniforms are frozen so hard they creak when we move.
I sleep in my boots. We all do.
Our rations might taste vile, but they’re still better than any I ate in the Legion. These merely taste bad, those were sometimes poisonous. I’ve known fifteen-year-old pressed meat slaughter more than a full-on tribal attack.
Telling the Aux to quit whining, I flick my trike to life and wait for my team to saddle up. We edge through a sprawl of Wolf Brigade troopers folding their camp and pulling faces at their own rations.
We’re the first to the road. So we wait, as we did yesterday.
It’s worth being early to see General Luc’s scowl when he finds us drawn up in order, waiting for his men to sort themselves out. Unless he knows how close we came to falling into his trap and scowls because we pulled back before it snapped shut.
We are half a day from his lair. A small castle perched on the top of a basalt mountain a hundred miles from the rift. The walls are cut from the mountain’s rock, making them almost invisible.
Or so I’ve been told. Few visit it willingly.
‘Mount up,’ Sergeant Toro tells his outriders.
From the tightness of his voice, the Wolf’s had words about being late on parade. The glare Sergeant Toro shoots me is blasphemous. So I grin back and that upsets him even worse.
His men ride us tight for the rest of the morning. So maybe he’s also upset we didn’t fall into yesterday’s trap. We respond by pretending they don’t exist. And the sergeant doesn’t like that much either.
We stop once, an hour before noon.
There are usually two stops a day. One before the sun reaches its highest. Another an hour before sunset begins. That means we ride through the heat of the day. General Luc probably has his reasons. Not sure what they are, mind you.
‘Sorry,’ the sergeant says. ‘Not enough to go round.’
We’re not allowed to join the others filling their camelbacks and bottles from the water truck. So I tell Sergeant Toro he’s a dumb fuck, and I can’t believe General Luc is stupid enough to think we’d fall for a trap. Just how fucking dumb do they think we are?
He doesn’t know. How fucking dumb are we?
Not as dumb as a bunch of bastards who’ve never fought a real battle in their lives and run at the first sign of danger. Thought that would hit a nerve. Sergeant Toro doesn’t know why we’re retreating either.
If I wasn’t an officer, he tells me.
So I say not to let that worry him, because I never have. ‘Behind that,’ I suggest, nodding at the truck. ‘Who’s going to know?’
He looks tempted. ‘And the injuries?’
‘You can tell them you fell over.’
His laugh is harsh. ‘And what will you say?’
‘I saw you trip.’
Chapter 48
‘Keep your wits about you,’ I tell the Aux. ‘Only attack if I give the order.’
‘That was a joke, all right?’ Colonel Vijay’s voice sounds tired. ‘For anyone listening over the comms system: that was a joke.’
He brings his trike alongside for a quiet word.
The Wolf’s Lair hugs the top of a peak that has been flattened to take it. There’s one road, which crawls round the mountain in a slowly rising spiral, cut into the living rock. This forms the only way in.
High walls, looking down on the spiral, mean every step of the approach can be targeted from the ramparts. The black rock into which the spiral is cut is studded with steel doors for its final twist, which must be vast to be visible from here.
‘It’s hollow,’ I tell Neen.
He nods. ‘Yes, sir.’
Maybe Colonel Vijay told him that, as well.
My guess is one of the earlier COs decided he needed more space, so had the rock beneath his base quarried to provide it. The quarrying will be deep and the rock strong. This is not an easy place to capture.
As General Luc approaches the castle, a steel door slowly opens and his vehicle disappears, presumably inside. We’re two spirals below, with twenty scout cars ahead, each one leaving a safe distance, in case of mines . . .
Although I’d like to see someone dig this road.
As we finish our second loop around the mountain, the faces around me tighten. Neen looks determined, Shil resigned. Rachel is reciting a table of distances, wind speeds and deflection settings, her default position in times of stress. Ajac is doing his best to look like Neen.
Iona simply looks scared.
‘Being scanned,’ the SIG says. It shivers as it handshakes the castle’s security settings. No idea what it tells it. That it’s General Luc’s new housekeeper, probably. ‘Sven,’ it says, a moment later, ‘I think you should . . .’
Yeah, I know I should.
This is the bit I always hate.
The kyp in my throat leaps as I swallow the information the SIG is feeding me. There’s a taste of static, and my combat trike lurches as a spasm locks my muscles. But it’s fleeting and the gyros kick in anyway.
‘You OK?’ Shil asks. ‘Sir?’
‘Yeah. Just busy.’
Floor plans blossom inside my head. The hidden part of the castle is vast. There are dormitories for a thousand Wolf Brigade, and enough weapons for twice that number. Real weapons: pulse rifles and missile launchers, grenades and smart bombs. The armoury, fifteen floors below, is lined with mesh behind ceramic plate. It holds more ammunition than I’ve ever seen in one place.
The Wolf is ready for war.
That’s interesting. General Jaxx had an intelligence service second to none. So how come he didn’t know? Unless the Wolf’s naturally suspicious, and his suspicions are accidentally right.
‘Paranoid,’ says a voice.
‘What?’
Neen looks across, sees my expression and glances away. Most of this conversation is inside my head anyway. So, as far as he’s concerned, I’m just talking to myself.
All the same, I’m not sure I knew I’d said that aloud.
‘That’s the word you’re looking for. Paranoid. Displaying an extreme or unnatural distrust of others. A character trait often found in senior officers. Well, in mine . . .’
‘OctoV?’
‘He’s dead. She’s dead. Doesn’t make much difference.’
‘So who are you?’
‘A ghost.’
‘Oh Sven. Can I stroke your gun, please?’ The SIG-37’s impression of Leona’s voice is good enough to startle me.
‘Little bitch.’
‘My feelings exactly.’
We’re approaching the last of the spiral, which means an open door blocks our way. Its hinges are larger than me, and now it’s open, its outer edge extends over the drop, making it impossible to ride round. A steel iris in the rock reveals a tunnel, with luminescent strip lights and gun encampments every hundred paces.