Iron Council - China Mieville [18]
“He says there are too many stories for the Council not to be real. And it’s precious to wilderness-men. Iron Council. Like a promised place. So when he got word what was happening—when he heard who’d gone to protect it—he had to come after him to help. To find it. He followed us. Till he was sure he could trust us.”
“You ain’t a truesayer,” Pomeroy said. “This don’t mean shit.”
“No I ain’t, but I’ve got something.” Elsie glowered. “I can feel. I was verity-gauging.”
The whispersmith replaced his hat and turned back to the dogs, subvocalising till they skittered for his affection among the bodies of their handlers.
“She ain’t got the puissance to be sure, Cutter,” Pomeroy said.
Why am I supposed to fucking decide? thought Cutter.
Drogon held the cloths to the dogs’ absurd noses, and the animals slobbered and wheeled north. “We have to go.” Drogon spoke to Cutter. “We’re still being followed. We’re close, now, we’re close.”
Elsie tried to thank the tardy, with no reaction. “You have to go,” she shouted. “Handlingers are coming.” But the ge’ain did not answer. They stood among their revenge and waited for nothing. The humans could only shout their thanks and leave the plant-
giants in stupor. Cutter saluted Fejh’s grave.
The dogs fanned on their leads ahead of Drogon, sniffing urgently. Sometimes he let them career through the hard vegetation, their outsized heads swinging. While Cutter and the others continued their trudging, he would ride out.
He whispered to the travellers each in turn, from miles ahead. He let the dogs run, their leads trailing behind them, and when they went too far he would whisper commands and they would come back.
“Keep walking,” he told Cutter. “Handlinger’s behind you.”
Handlingers. The malefic hands of history. Five-fingered parasites, come out now to the light.
Up through a col in the hills. Cutter thought of Fejh slowly baking in the earth. He looked at the mark they had left, the dead and nearly dead, the two tardy standing like trees, the ruins of the skirmish like a soot stain.
The land before them was more wooded, the ground become peaked, slopes of scree gripped in the roots of olives. Drogon’s dust scattered into a low cloud. He was ahead, his path visible like a seam. There was sage, and dog-rose. Each of Cutter’s steps dispersed a gathering of cicadas.
It was not the only moment of the journey when time clotted, and Cutter was stuck fast. A day was only an instant drawn out. Motion itself—the putter of insects, the appearance-disappearance of a tiny rodent—was an endless repetition of the same.
They did not sleep long that night for the sounding of the bloodhounds and Drogon’s whispers from his camp ahead. They were weighed down by weapons they had taken from the militia, and they left a trail of boot-knives and heavy rifles.
Once they saw a garuda way above them, stretched out like someone on a cross. They saw her dip, lurch earthward, veer toward Drogon, then break and ascend.
“He tried to whisper her,” Cutter said. “But she got out of it.” He was pleased.
Their rhythms were not the day’s: they slept for minutes while the sun was up, as well as at dusk and night. If the whispersmith slept it was in the saddle. On the sierra they passed smudged pebblebeasts, something between giraffes and gorillas, knuckle-walking and eating low leaves.
“You have to speed,” the whispersmith told Cutter. “The handlinger’s coming.”
By moonlight they followed Drogon and their quarry toward a hill-line topped by plateau. They saw dark, a corridor through the butte. They would reach it in daylight, and Cutter could imagine the relief it would be, the punishing hot sky just a band seething above lichened rock walls and stone stiles.
Elsie said: “Something’s coming.” She looked gaunt. She looked horrified. “Something’s coming from the south.” There was a disturbance behind many waves of landscape, beyond sight. Cutter