Wulf (The Fifth Place #1)

by Set Sytes

A huge shape came leaping out of the darkness, sending one of the men sprawling to the ground, pinned beneath a great gnashing weight. The other man cried out in alarm, turning his gun sights on the black beast. Jay threw his knife at the man, and saw with a kind of hungry fascination how it sped in perfect form through the air and sunk itself in the back of the man’s neck. The Appalian wheeled around, choking on blood and metal, and Jay saw how the throw had actually taken the knife all the way through: the end of the blade emerged from the larynx, where blood was dribbling fast.

A sudden change in fortune, and two lives ending, ended. The man dropped to the floor, and was still. The tiger left its own target in spasms, kicking away in some awful last dance. Its muzzle was dripping.

Jay searched them, avoiding the faces. They carried nothing but their rifles. He took one. He reached out his hand to pull the knife from the man’s throat, his face averted, but he withdrew before his fingers had so much as touched the hilt. He had a gun now; that was enough. No need for butcher knives from the backstreets. Besides, he’d heard enough horrible sounds for one day.

‘Look, it don’t have to be this way! Put your gun down and we’ll —’ The man fired again, and swore. ‘You killed my friends!’ ‘They were bad people!’ Jay cocked his gun. ‘Aw, fuck this,’ he said. He stood up, held the rifle up to his chin, and fired. The man’s head collapsed. ‘Damn,’ Jay said. ‘Powerful shot.’ He headed forward. ‘Still, not like I didn’t try to avoid the outcome.’

There was box in the camp, or rather a satchel framed like a box, made of animal pelts. Inside was a beggar’s treasure trove. Assorted clothes, tools, ungainly weapons (most of them rusting or in pieces), cheap-looking jewellery and metal scrap. He rummaged through, trying to ignore the sounds of the tiger eating the pieces of the bandit’s head behind him. He found a dark brown greatcoat that he put aside, but swapped it when he saw a high-collared open black jacket lined with red, with red stitching and hems. He put it on over his shirt, admiring it. It hung loose, tapered at the sides and longer at the back, though it was lighter than an overcoat. There was a slightly military quality to it, although if it was once designed to fasten together it no longer had that capability.

Elsewhere in the camp he found a leather purse of money to the count of almost twenty queens, and a box of shells that fit the rifle he had taken. He took the purse and tied it to his belt on his side, covered by his jacket. There was an empty pouch on the belt that had been there all along, and he dumped as many shells for it as he could into it. The rifle itself he kept slung over his back.

With grunts of pleasure he chewed on the meat, tossing some of it to the tiger, which seemed still hungry even after snacking on the head and throats of two men. Jay refused to look at what the man in the camp looked like now,

Look,’ Jay said, as the clerk frowned, ‘She is a friend. But I don’t need you to believe me. Here.’ He withdrew five queens from his purse and put them on the desk. ‘An encouragement. But if you’d rather not take it, I’ll tell you now, I don’t need your permission. I can knock on every door in this rest house, disturb all your paying customers. Who knows what chaos I can cause. How many other “pleasant ladies of fine repute” I might encounter.’

‘Jerrens was my father’s man, not mine. And he trusts my judgement . . . more or less. This isn’t the first time I’ve come out from under my father’s wing. Besides,’ she added, ‘I’m stubborn. He didn’t get much choice in the matter.’ She stretched and yawned. ‘Come on, I’m ready if you are.’

with the pistol back in his holster and the rifle on his back he no longer felt ill-prepared, naked in a savage world. He checked the chamber of the pistol. Six shots. Six more people who could die in his presence.

‘I see you made a new friend.’ ‘Huh? Oh.’ Jay realised his horse was nudging him affectionately. ‘Ain’t he amazin? His name’s Khyber.’ ‘And whose is he? Sorry, whose was he?’ ‘He’s mine. I reckon he’s always been mine.’ ‘Really? Sorry, I guess I thought you’d be riding some dusty old mare on its last legs.’ ‘So did I, before I remembered I had him.’ ‘So you are remembering things.’ ‘Took me long enough. One more tiny piece of the puzzle. I spent all day ridin him yesterday. It felt like I was born to ride him.’

‘Tell me, what does tabaca mean? I been called it twice now.’ ‘It’s an off-and-on racial slur,’ Alexia said. ‘It means, literally, “he who sleeps in blood”.’ ‘Sounds kinda badass,’ Jay said. ‘That’s what quite a number of Rathians think. It was supposed to be an insult, but a lot of them adopted it for their own, calling themselves and each other it.’

‘Ah,’ Alexia said, spying Remembrance Ed sitting nearby eyeing Jay maliciously. ‘Just the man I’m after.’ ‘Him? I don’t think so.’ ‘He mans the trough and hitching post and tends the stables, does he not?’ ‘I thought he was just a sour old bastard who can’t mind his own damn business.’ ‘The two aren’t mutually exclusive.’

‘What’ll you call her?’ Jay said, ignoring the shouted curses coming from behind. ‘Lander,’ Alexia shouted over the sound of hooves pounding out of the valley. ‘My father’s name.’ ‘But your horse is a woman,’ Jay said. ‘You’re a woman,’ Alexia replied, overtaking him.

They travelled along horse trails that wound through towers of yellow rock and stunted white shrubs. Overhead flapped huge vulture like creatures. They ascended a bluff and came up on a wide plain, beaten flat by the sun. A ragged thing the colour of bone trotted after them for a while, but soon gave up and lay down panting. They followed the ruts of a passed carriage, tracks not yet stolen by wind and sand and time, and drank as little water as they could stand. The sky rippled. They spoke little.

‘How much further?’ he asked. ‘Do not ask such a question,’ she said. ‘There may be no end to this road.’

They drank from their flasks, and poured a little into the mouths of the horses. ‘They do not need much,’ she said, holding out her hand to stop him. ‘And until we find a water source, we don’t have much to spare.’ ‘Will they not dehydrate?’ ‘You have forgotten even the nature of horses?’ ‘Think of me as a newborn,’ he said. ‘A tall, muscular baby, holding guns.’ ‘Just that,’ he said. ‘Lucky me. Well. Dehydration . . . You would have to be a cruel rider, or in a crueller land. Worse than this place. Lander will need watered a little more, but yours – Rathian horses are adaptable animals, long evolved to hard climates, and to the unpredictability of this world and its riders. Even more so than Appalian breeds. They retain water for a long time, and take in moisture from the air if they can.’ ‘Like camels,’ he said. ‘I do not know what they are.’ ‘A horse with a hump. Pretty much.’ ‘I see.’

They sat close to each other while they ate and she taught him things. He asked questions and she answered them. Everything she said made sense, in some distant, half-imagined way. An old man’s recollection of his youth.

She told him the leafless white branches that stuck up out of the ground like fingers were called windil or elv-root. That the creature that had followed them was a doyot, a scavenger. She told him that the Eye was the northern border of Appalia, and past it they would enter a greener country, a land of prairie, woodland and homesteads known as Sol Ghoum. The land was a ring, she said, around a lake. In ...

She told him of Stoneswell, the brick city. She was born there, in that place where rubble was laid on to rubble and became architecture. The streets were paved with gold, she said, that was what travellers believed. But it was not so. They were only paved with stone. In the Eastern Quarter the factories belched smoke and it hung over that part of the city in great clouds. In the North Quarter everybody had money and fine dresses and spoke like...

‘We should get go—’ she started, but broke off and stood up. ‘—ing,’ she finished. ‘There appears to be a tiger coming towards us.’ ‘Oh shit,’ Jay said. ‘I completely forgot.’ ‘You forgot to tell me that you had a tiger.’ ‘It ain’t mine,’ he said. ‘It’s nobody’s, I reckon. A wild tiger. Or maybe it ain’t. I’ve no idea. It’s smart. It’s real strange. It’s been followin me ever since . . . ever since I found myself with a gun to my head and no understandin of who I was.’

‘Are you okay?’ Jay said. ‘With you being a murderer?’ ‘Hey, it was all in defence!’ ‘Settle down. I’m just kidding. I knew you were a killer when I first saw you.’ He was taken aback. ‘And you were okay with that?’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I’ve known more than one killer in my life, Jay. Jerrens is a killer. My father killed once. In defence. To go your whole life making friends only with the innocent . . . leaves one alone. Such is the measure of this world.’ ‘And you? Have you killed anyone?’ Alexia tapped the side of her coat, which cloaked the gun on her thigh. ‘Not yet.’

‘I can’t believe you left your friend alone.’ ‘My friend? Oh. The tiger.’ Alexia crouched down and patted the tiger on the head. It looked slightly alarmed, but made no movement to escape. ‘Poor thing,’ she said. ‘I bet it’s starving.’

‘Who’s a good tiger? Who’s been left all alone by horrid old Jay?’ She tickled it under its chin and it licked her hand. ‘Good god,’ Jay said. ‘I’m about to be a third wheel.’ ‘You were never a second wheel,’ Alexia said. She smiled at him. ‘Bless.’ She took some dried meat out of her pack and fed it to the tiger.

The horses picked their way through a rocky landscape, led by the tiger. Jay thought it was a mistake to be following the beast, rather than the other way round, but Alexia had overridden him. ‘It wants us to go this way,’ she’d said. ‘It has to be for a reason.’ ‘What makes you think you can trust it?’ he’d replied. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘But look how furry it is!’ ‘Try and cuddle that, it’ll bite your face off.’ ‘Maybe your face. I have a nice face.’

‘Is this the woman who saved your life?’ Alexia said. ‘It couldn’t be anybody else,’ Jay said. ‘I’ll tell you now, she ain’t the most sociable of people.’ ‘Well she certainly looks the part,’ Alexia said. ‘A bottle of wine and I’d fuck her.’ ‘Don’t say that again for a while,’ Jay said. ‘I’m tryin to walk here.’

‘Well, let’s call the gun a trade.’ ‘You’re trading me my own gun? For what?’ ‘The weapons weren’t all they took. I took all your money.’ ‘I retract my previous thanks. You took my fuckin money?’ ‘Here’s me thinking you’re sounding a bit more yourself. Jay never used such fancy words as retract,’ Savvi said. ‘I doubt he even knew the meaning of the word. And hey,’ she added, ‘teaches me to be so honest. Give over. You got your weapons. You’re not getting more than that. If it weren’t for me you’d not even have them. Call it finder’s fee.’ ‘Call it fucked by a bitch,’ Jay said. ‘Ow, that hurt.’ ‘Whatever. Anythin else you stole?’ Savvi smiled. ‘Not that I recall.’

‘You, Jay Wulf,’ she said, ‘are a complete bastard. A murderous, whoremongering bastard.’ The tiger rumbled in its throat as though in agreement.

Jay opened the chamber of his returned gun. Fully loaded. He snapped it shut. ‘Why do you think she gave you your weapons back?’ Alexia said, watching him turn the pistol in his hands. ‘You don’t believe what she said?’ ‘She’s given me no reason to believe anything she says. Do you trust her?’ ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘No. I don’t know. It depends on what. I don’t think she’ll kill us. I’m pretty sure we can’t trust her to much help us though. Why do you think she gave me my weapons back?’ ‘Maybe she gave you them back because she thinks you’re going to need them.’

They descended the slope and returned to their horse, tiger in their wake. ‘I thought Lander might have run off,’ Alexia said. ‘Khyber’s been lookin after her,’ Jay said.

They travelled on under the thick purple of the late afternoon. Along the scars of the land. Past strata layered yellows and reds and oranges like they were slices of cake fallen from heavenly plates. Strange formations twisted and towered, in shapes of monsters and old things made before men. Some rocks and pathways veined as though living beings. The windil branches began to appear more often, and in clusters. The land grew darker, richer. Doyots scampered around them, growing in number, but a gunshot from Jay sent them yowling away. Vultures were replaced by flights of small brown birds, and wrinkled one-eyed mole-like things popped their heads out of pores in the stones.

‘The sky is beautiful here,’ Jay said. ‘Most people forget. They stop looking upwards. But it is.’ She glanced at him. ‘You look like you’re seeing it for the first time. I wish I could see it that way.’

He laid it on the ground and stretched out with his hands behind his head and looked up at the stars. He didn’t recognise anything, just as he knew he wouldn’t. He felt like one tiny pinprick in an infinite ocean. So many worlds. How many more Earths? Hundreds? Thousands? Millions?

I don’t really know much. I only remember things in bits. I think I was a bad person, or at least part bad. Maybe I wasn’t someone you’d have wanted to know. And maybe I’ll slowly become more like that, the more I remember. But I don’t think I will, not fully. I think I can control it. I don’t know, it comes in and out like a tide, washing over me then leaving me dry . . .’

By midday they came to the North Eye. It was a hole in a cliff that walled off the land for as far as he could see. A huge hole, a round tunnel driven through the rock that caravans could enter with ease. It looked natural, eroded, one of those wonders of nature he’d have understood if he’d ever researched them, if he ever wanted to dissect the mystery or stop pretending they were made by giants.

They exited the Eye and saw across a new land. They stood in dirt but in front of them the dirt sloped down and laced itself with grass; in tufts at first, but quickly spreading and lengthening, overwhelming the brown soil and turning it to pale prairie. In the distance the colour shifted steadily to green, painting grasslands and rolling meadows littered with trees. It was richest towards the east; there the ground seemed to glow under the sun like a vast emerald, climbing hills until blocked by their ascent into mountains. From that direction wandered a river – The River Karth, flowing from its source in the Rathian Mountains. Far westwards were great forests the colour of copper, and further still a black line that trailed the horizon like a border, no doubt a formidable range. In front of them a road made from the tracks of cartwheels ran from the Eye onwards north for many leagues, rising and dipping over low hills. It disappeared into woodlands and re-appeared again on a bend to the northwest, and escaped past the edges of his vision. Here and there across the country were tiny dotted towns, and across the grasslands were clusters of strange green mounds that from far off looked like pimples on the land. And there, in the far centre distance, past the woodlands, a great lake. Lake Ghoum. Jay squinted and could just make out a small island. The Isle of Ghoum,

He came dressed in the colours of crow and slate. Long black coat, long black boots, a shirt of grey silk and darker cravat. A black hat turned up slightly at the sides and hanging crooked and low on his brow. His hair flowed around his shoulders, a pure white, and his eyes seemed sunken and deathly tired in darkened sockets, though his skin was smooth and grey. As he came closer Jay could see black speckling on the lower right side of his face, but that was the only pigmentation noticeable. His eyes. Black sclera with big white pupils and no irises, framed by long lashes. He moved towards them, his eyes never leaving them and rarely blinking. He was lean, and he was lithe, moving with an almost supernatural lightness that seemed to come wholly natural to him.

His handshake was light and quick yet not loose. It felt like shaking hands with someone made of paper. ‘Call me what you want,’ Jerrens said, his voice soft and whispery. ‘Or nothing at all. The late Mr Slade called me Jerrens. Miss Slade follows his example. Others know me as Dol Sander. I care not.’

They ate, while Jay tried to strike up a conversation with Dol Sander Jerrens. The man was not talkative, preferring to get on and eat, and he swallowed each mouthful before replying. Jay couldn’t make head or tail of him, only that he seemed both careful and graceful with his movements, not wasting them just like he did not waste words.

When Jerrens had sat down to eat he had removed a thin sheathless sword from his side, previously hidden beneath his coat. It was a silvery rapier with a black hilt. When the coat shifted aside Jay also made out a holster and the butt of a pistol, and it was confirmed what he already knew: this wasn’t someone to cross.

Dol Sander strode while their horses walked, and he never seemed to show any signs of tiring.

they enjoyed picking their way through the countryside, which grew steadily more beautiful. It was a welcome change from the dryness of the Appalian Wastes. They slept on the prairie, hidden by long stalks that clustered in around them as the sun fell and the moon rose.

They passed crops of trees; wild-looking things that clawed up at the sky and some decorated in pastel blossoms. Things scurried in their shadows. On the edges of their vision they saw ghostly cat-like creatures pacing, and birds flit and whistled high overhead, but by and large the world was quiet and serene.

‘I get it, Jay,’ Alexia said. ‘Why don’t you go and lay with Jerrens, if you’re so desperate.’ ‘I ain’t interested in men,’ Jay said under his breath. He looked at Dol Sander, but he gave no sign that he was listening, no sign that he was in anything but a light sleep. ‘But he is not a man,’ Alexia said. She laughed at his reaction. ‘Oh, I refer to him as such, and indeed I can’t help but say he and him, but he is one of the Duna. Some know them as Grey Devils, others call them incubi.

‘Duna are hermaphrodites, both male and female parts – though they do not think of them in such a way. They do not have a word for hermaphrodite in their language, and they learned words like “male” and “female” from other races. They have no home, for they have always been wanderers, and have never truly fit in. It is unclear if they even want to anymore, or if they ever did. They are rarely seen, and many people do not know of their existence, and few understand them.’

‘Tell me, Dol Sander,’ Jay started, slowly, as Khyber waded through thick grasses, the stalks brushing against his boots. ‘When referring to you, should I say him or her? Do you prefer to be . . . noted a male or a female?’ ‘I am neither,’ Dol Sander said, brushing the grasses aside with his hand. They seemed to part gracefully with every step, not a stalk broken. ‘The common languages are needlessly complex, and so lacking. To the Duna it appears somewhat . . . childish. Though it does not matter. Say whichever makes you most comfortable. Usually people talk of me as a man. Though not always, not among all people, all cultures.’ ‘But you must have a preference?’ Dol Sander looked at Jay with abyssal eyes. Each white moon floating on an ocean of night. ‘My preference is for people to use what they wish, what comes most naturally and easily to them. I care not.’ ‘Does it not ever offend you?’ ‘I do not get offended,’ Dol Sander said. ‘No such word exists in the Duna language. The concept is foreign to us. We learned it only from other races. It seems a truly wasteful idea.’ ‘I see. I can’t help but think of you as a man.’ ‘As you say. You cannot help but.’ ‘I’ll continue then, until you tell me otherwise.’ ‘As you wish,’ Dol Sander said, disinterested. ‘You other races do make such a fuss.’

‘How do you think of yourself, then?’ ‘I am Dol Sander Jerrens. My parent was Baal Sander Jerrens. I am a Duna. What more is there? I am a person, not a gender.

Jay shrugged. ‘Fair enough. That’s all, I guess. I just wanted to be sure. I don’t want to slowly make an enemy.’ Dol Sander nodded slightly. ‘If you become my enemy, you will quickly know. The time for conversation will be past.’

By the time the sun had fallen the prairie had begun to flush green, flourishing ahead of them into full grasslands. They stopped to camp under a lone tree, scaring off the three-legged strangely loping animals that were stretching their necks to nibble on the leaves. They lay blankets on the ground and ate in the gory dark. The loping neck-twisting animals were called (striped) garaths and by the time the moon was at its brightest and bluest they were everywhere, and the three wanderers fell asleep to the sound of their gentle chewing.

‘It might help you,’ Alexia said. ‘I appreciate it Jay, I do. But they’d just be words. Inside me . . . right now inside me is everything. I can feel it there, buried and wanting out. Sometimes it . . . it rages. It wails. It tries to tear itself apart. Sometimes it feels like a beast, and sometimes it feels like a bubbling volcano, boiling and acidic, all grief and anger. But it can’t ever leave. Not just because I don’t want it to, but because it can’t. Words are so pathetic in comparison. They are such small, weak things. They could never in any way give form to what’s inside, they can only make a mockery of it. A pantomime. I would feel more frustrated for not being able to do justice to my feelings. And so I tend them inside. And bury them in ice.’