James Funfer

As promised, here is a sneak peek at the sequel to Crystal Promise. Comments welcome.

***

Julio had forgotten how fresh the air could be outside of the city. Away from the smokestacks and grit and the smell of collective metropolitan sweat, he could feel life being infused into his lungs. On the open road, the wind burnt his cheeks and his lips curled up into a misshapen but honest smile. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d smiled like that; it was worth the occasional swallowed bug.

Roberto had never driven a motorcycle before, but he took to it like he did every other skill he tried his hand at, making the tight turns and switchbacks of the mountain roads look effortless. Drago drove much more recklessly, spinning his tires to spit up dirt and gravel, showing off by lifting the front tire on occasion, and whipping by Joveday drivers in their family ‘coaches by hugging the shoulder of the road. Julio would occasionally yell at Drago to be more careful, but if the young man heard him, he didn’t listen.

They set out north from Captus Nove, avoiding the wide, main road known as Sundus Motorway – at Julio’s suggestion they took the winding inner-country route known colloquially as the ‘Old Mine Road’, passing through small villages and alongside scenic upper-caste farmland estates. The day was brisk, but they had lucked out; the clouds were fleeting and there was little threat of rain.

Along the way, Julio would shout out historic anecdotes to Drago about the townships they passed, or the landscape – here at this bluff the barbarian tribes of Denlandia were held off by a meagre force of well-trained First Empire soldiers led by General Abritus, there the greatest crystal mine ever discovered gave up its last shard during the Fourth Republic, putting thousands of miners out of work. Whether Drago was truly listening, Julio couldn’t tell, but Roberto would occasionally add asides or ask questions.

They stopped on a pastoral hillside for lunch, snacking on cheese, sausage and a healthy few swigs of wine. Below, sheep grazed, and a weather balloon floated lazily overhead. Roberto examined both engines and brought out his loccimetre to check the resonance of the engines’ crystals.

“Bet you I could hit one of those sheep from here,” Drago boasted.

Roberto looked up from his device and shook his head. “What, by pissing off the cliff?”

Drago rolled his eyes. “No.” He rummaged in his pack and brought out a small wand. “With this.” He twirled it in his fingers dexterously.

Julio frowned. “We’re not shooting a farmer’s sheep.”

“Jova’s sake, dad.” Drago shut an eye and levelled his wand at a grazing ewe in the valley below. “What’s the point of this trip, if not to have fun?”

Julio and Roberto looked at each other. Roberto raised an eyebrow, as if to suggest that it was Julio’s task to mete out discipline.

Julio placed a hand on Drago’s wand and forced the barrel to point at the ground.

“The plan is to have fun, Drago, but that farmer relies on those sheep for his livelihood. Why don’t we make some stationary targets?”

Drago shrugged. “Sure…gotta use something you old guys can still hit.”

Roberto put his loccimetre away and lit a cigarette.

“Fuck you, kid. I was dropping soldiers before you were a twinkle in P…er, your pop’s eye. Worst shot has to buy the wine when we stop for the night.”

“A completely fair wager to the man with one eye,” Julio interjected. “The man who hasn’t shot a wand since he had to switch to his left.”

Roberto pointed to a set of old fenceposts down the hill.

“There. We can set up some stones and wager for best shot. Spook the sheep while we’re at it so you can get your kicks,” he suggested, looking at Drago. “And I know for a fact you didn’t lose your balls in the war, Jules, so quit whining. You were far from the worst wandman in the company.”

Julio grabbed a fist-sized stone and pretended that he was aiming to throw it at Roberto’s head.

“Says he who was second best.”

“Who was the best?” Drago inquired as he lit a cigarette of his own.

“Corporal Bocco,” Julio and Roberto said at the same time. Rocks in hand, they began clambering down the hill to the fenceposts.

“One of only four from our company to survive the war,” Roberto remarked. “Along with us and Largo Mita.”

“Largo’s in jail now, did you hear?” Julio said. He picked his way carefully down the slope, dragging his hook hand along the dirt for balance.

“He’s always in and out of there,” Roberto said. He began placing the rocks upon the fenceposts. “’Liza will never hold him, not while the Noctra can pay for his release.” He put out his cigarette on a post and began backing away from the rocks, one pace at a time. “They have bigger rocks to crack than one picker goon.”

Roberto stood thirty paces from the rocks and held up a thumb.

“What do you think, kid?”

“Too close,” Drago said. “Unless we’re blindfolded.”

Roberto chuckled and stepped back another twenty paces.

“There you go. The enemy is no longer in spitting range. What kind of crystal have you got on that wand, anyway?”

“Brown,” Drago said as he twirled the wand again. “Heavy grade precision stone, Noven officer’s issue. Same kind of crystal they use for the telescoped longwands.”

Roberto whistled.

“Shatters, we sure coulda used some of those in the war. They gave all the browns to us engineers for trenches and fortifications, but I would’ve been sent through the orange on the spot if I’d tried to re-appropriate crystals without a commanding officer’s express say-so. ‘Course, that didn’t stop us from getting Pip to re-align all the damn time by the end of the war. But then we were losing, so the officers were ready to try anything. Learned a lot more about tactics and crystals from our losses than our wins, that’s for godsdamn sure.” He looked at Drago. “Well, highest ranking soldier gets the first shot.”

Drago smirked, levelled the wand and took careful aim. Julio could tell even by the young man’s stance that he was a practiced wandman.

“Trench warfare is a thing of the past,” Drago muttered as he pulled the trigger. With a deafening crack, the first rock exploded into powder. Shooting Roberto a satisfied grin, he handed the wand to him.

Roberto glanced at Drago, then examined the wand. He seemed to be admiring its craftsmanship. Julio leaned in to note that Officer Drago Andari had been carved into the barrel, and that the grip was a custom carved fit designed to fit Drago’s hand. The republic certainly seems to favour its officers, Julio thought.

“Some of us were hoping that warfare in general was a thing of the past,” Roberto replied as he lifted the wand. He seemed to take a while to steady his hand. When he shot, however, his aim was true, and Julio heard shards of the rock scatter into the grass. The nearby sheep made a few noises of alarm and sought out a more placid section of pasture.

“Nice shot, old man,” Drago said. He turned to him. “If warfare is all in the past then why is the republic hiring soldiers instead of more pickers and planters?”

“Because there’s a drought,” Julio replied as Roberto handed him the wand. “Farmers are out of work and pickers are striking. The Rundia Accord nearly took our military away entirely. The fact that they didn’t means that the republic wants to ensure we still have one so that an opportunistic nation doesn’t try to get payback for the Great War, not to mention access to our crystal mines.” Julio took aim. Even at the best of times his hands were shaky, and holding a wand made it no different. In fact, it felt shakier. He could see them up ahead, brutish Parsish soldiers in their winter furs storming the trench, screaming the abyssal screams of those who knew they were about to die.

Julio opened his eyes and lowered the wand. There were no fur-clad soldiers, only woolly sheep grazing in the distance.

“What makes you say trench warfare is in the past?”

“Come on, Master Vellize, you’re the historian,” Drago replied. “You always said that wars were a series of trials and errors when it came to tactics, and the brilliant generals were the ones who challenged the status quo of what no longer worked. Well, what did we learn from the Great War? We had all the best crystal technology, but we dug ourselves into the dirt and played back-and-forth until one side broke. It was all about numbers. Then the Dennish got clever and borrowed non-crystal weapons from the Eastern Empire, which had limited ammunition but fired rapidly. It was incredibly effective in entrenched positions, and especially against massed charges. So when Denlund was freed and we lost the Parsish front, we broke hard.”

“That was Longoro’s fault for fighting on two fronts in the first place,” Roberto argued.

“Sure,” Drago agreed. “He should have taken out Faxon or arranged some kind of treaty with them. But any general worth his rocks these days knows that the future of warfare is in multi-layered assault.”

Julio gazed at Drago, the boy he pretended was his son. The boy he wished was his son. He’d given the lad too little credit; behind Drago’s braggadocio was a keen mind. He must have inherited that from Ramona, Julio told himself.

Roberto raised an eyebrow.

“Explain what you mean by multi-layered assault.” Julio could hear the interest in Roberto’s voice.

“I will,” Drago said, “if you explain to me why we have more crystals than any other nation but we’re still dirt-fucking-poor. Economics was never my colour.”

“Rundia Accord,” Julio offered. “Our currency is undervalued because we have to make reparations for the Great War. Granted, we still need to trade, so we still sell, and the other nations are reaping the profits from cheap crystals. So the republic limits trade, which isn’t helping given the depression, and the Noctra sell illegally and make millions of dinari.”

“You know they’re in bed with the republic,” Roberto added. “On the clear side, it means the Noctra are probably stockpiling crystals somewhere for when this godsdamned depression ends.” He popped a cigarette in his mouth and prodded Drago. “Your turn. Multi-layered assault.”

Drago gave his usual half-cocked grin.

“Uh-uh. Jules hasn’t shot yet. No military secrets until I know I’m talking to soldiers.”

Julio tried to suppress his sigh. Only the draft had made him a soldier. Only a lifetime of duskblossom and whiskey and work had separated him from the war, and even then, when he closed his eyes at night, sometimes he returned to those trenches. He had spent his whole life trying to escape that uniform, but Drago wore it with pride. He wondered what Pietro would think of it.

He raised the wand half-heartedly and glanced at the stone upon the post. His depth perception had never been the same since losing his eye; it was difficult to tell if the barrel was lined up with the stone. He’d spent a lifetime developing his left-handed penmanship, but wandsmanship was a different matter. Julio hated to admit it, but somewhere deep down he wanted to impress the boy. He shut out the distant sound of booming scattershot from his ears and pulled the trigger.

The rock didn’t move, but somehow there was still an explosive noise.

“Oh, fuck,” Drago said. “Nice shot, Jules.”

“So much for not hitting the sheep,” Roberto said with a snicker. Sure enough, one of the beasts had fallen over in the pasture, and a bright red stain spread out from its head in a circular pattern – or, what was left of its head. Cautiously, the three men approached the corpse. All that remained of its skull was a bottom jaw and some bits of bone and brain tissue. Julio began to feel ill. An image flashed in his mind – Pietro’s body twirling, thrown into the air by scattershot, blood spraying in a spiral.

“Hey!” came an irate voice from across the field, “what in Jova’s name are you doing to my sheep?”

The rancher had appeared at the other end of the clearing, brandishing a woodsman’s axe.

“Shit,” Drago said. “Run!”

If it hadn’t been for his lame leg, Julio would have felt nineteen again. They scrambled up the hill to the bikes like they were storming the next rise – full of fear, full of life.