The King of the Spoil by Jonathan D. Beer

Author:Jonathan D. Beer [Beer, Jonathan D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-05-23T07:38:35+00:00

CHAPTER 18

Liocas Boscan and his friends had been staring at Haska since she had boarded the hauler.

They were sat at the far end of the trailer, their heads together in sly chatter that was inaudible beneath the grumble of the hauler’s engines. The crew – five of them, all of them the same age, more or less, as Haska – had been bitter rivals with hers for years. They had fought a dozen times, and traded insults and threats on an almost weekly basis. The scar on Haska’s lip had been given to her by Boscan in their first fight, and he had a hand’s span of taut, puckered skin on his forearm from when she had pushed him onto a red-hot steam pipe.

Fortunately, they were squeezed in at the back of the Raxis, and everyone was so packed in that there had been no chance of a disagreement breaking out. So far.

They had been driving for over an hour. The three haulers from the junction had been joined by several more, forming a convoy of heavy vehicles that rumbled unchallenged through the last hours of the day. A few enginebikes had sped by at one point, but Haska had no real notion of how many others had volunteered for Saitz’s escapade, or where they were heading.

The mood among the forty or so occupants of the hauler’s interior had been strangely jubilant as the haulers grumbled into life and set off, but had soured almost immediately into an awkward kind of quiet. The engines were so loud that it was impossible to have a conversation with anyone but their neighbour, and what was there to say?

Haska, for her part, was as close to peace as she could remember. Lira’s head was resting on her shoulder, and Katryn’s legs and hers were intertwined, the younger girl’s boots knocking against the outside of her thigh. Haska had been surprised to find that she was glad Aryat was with them. He and Katryn sat in an easy silence, their hands clasped, as the tenements and workhouses fell away behind them.

The hauler’s frame juddered. Lira jerked her head from Haska’s shoulder, woken from her state of half-sleep by the change in the engines’ droning pitch.

‘By the Throne, I need a piss.’

Haska’s own bladder was telling her the same thing. ‘I expect that’s why we’re stopping.’

They were, indeed, slowing down. Though it was hard to tell with the next hauler in line so close behind, they had evidently turned off the main arterials and onto some derelict scrubland. Tufts of snake grass broke through cracked asphalt, and low heaps of rockcrete rubble were piled haphazardly. A few buildings, black shapes against the orange-grey of the clouded sky, were a way off, and the Redfort was an imposing silhouette to the south. The hauler behind them began to swing out of line, and she assumed that the whole convoy was pulling to a stop.

Their vehicle finally ground to a halt. The absence of the constant vibration

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