Westhaven by Rowan Erlking (ebook audio reader .txt) 📖

at him everywhere along the line the general went, perhaps with the notion that they could end the Sky Child dominion by removing one man. Of course this meant that Gailert had to travel everywhere with armed escorts to oversee the progress his troops were making. After all, dodging arrows and curses were now part of the job.

After a number of years of hard work, he entered the village of Kitterleen midsummer with the intent to rest for the night. The armored cars that rode with his new issue automobile rolled in before and after him. His men searched around the village for anything or anyone suspicious. His new driver (who had replaced the general’s last driver because he had taken an arrow his neck during an attack) tugged up on his collar with the iron band and lifted the door latch to let himself out. This driver was much stiffer than Gailert’s last one. Almost daily the general mourned the loss of the other man.

The driver walked to the back door as the general’s human boy climbed out of the rumble seat and set the stepping stool down for his master’s feet. Opening the door, the driver bowed. Gailert stuck his head out to look, stepping with caution as he listened to the cicadas hum in the trees around them.

“All clear,” the lieutenant from the forward guard called, nodding to the general.

Nodding back, Gailert climbed out. He felt his age, especially in the summer heat. Five years had passed. Five long tedious years of inspecting, leading and straightening out lazy soldiers that had not taken their jobs seriously when they had entered this corner of the nation. His joints were creaking as sweat trickled down his back. It would take five more years to finish the job, but perhaps by then he would be too exhausted to enjoy retirement. The only thing he was glad of was that he did not need a cane.

Stepping off the stool to the dirt road, he lifted his chest and drew in a breath. The sultry air seeped into his skin. His eyes scanned the civilized buildings. He then glanced at the peering faces of the human villagers whom they were civilizing. Among them he noticed strong young men in sleeveless shirts and a few pretty young women in flowing loose dresses. A faint smile spread on his lips. He nodded to his driver as his boy carried away the step stool and was now opening the trunk for his bags.

“I want you to invite one of those young ladies to dine with me tonight,” he said to the driver. “Preferably that green-eyed one over there.”

Nodding with a bow, the driver looked over and sighed as he wiped the sweat off of his brow. “Yes, sir.”

Gailert turned and marched towards the inn, tugging on the waistband to his pants. He called over his shoulder as he stepped up to the doors. “Boy, when you have carried in my bags, come back out and wash the automobile. I see dead insects on the windshield.”

“Yes, sir.” The lanky thirteen-year-old replied, ducking his white and brown head of patchy hair, hunching over. He hardly lifted his eyes, heaving up the suitcase and shuffling across the ground. His chains dragged in the dirt.

“And hurry up about it.”

Gailert marched inside, lifting his chin with a sense of satisfaction. The room smelled wonderful, much better than the muggy outside. It was a proper inn with proper food and proper company. He nodded to the tradesmen chatting in the lounge, all who nodded back and hailed him with a smile and a wave. He gave the housekeeper a grin as he walked up the steps, knowing that this bed would have proper clean sheets. The last inn had been atrocious. The beds in the last inn had been were human style, on the floor with small rounded pillows and thin useless blankets. It didn’t even have electricity. The proprietor there had catered to humans and Sky Children and said he kept the inn that way for its charm. Charm indeed! Only his slave looked comfortable.

Gailert had to turn the corner to his room, his slave carrying his bag with an irritating bump, bump, bump up the steps. Again he would have to slap the boy for abusing the baggage and for being outright annoying. The kid often deserved it. It was spite. Gailert was sure the boy did it out of spite.

Opening the door, Gailert sighed at the sight. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. The windows had long gold brocade curtains with sheer drapes under them. The walls were papered with a mild design of vines and curling leaves. There was a good-sized bed raised off the plush cream-colored carpet with fluffy blankets and plump pillows. It was like walking into paradise. 

He stepped in and crossed straight to the stuffed armchair. He sat down, closing his eyes. “Perfect.”

The boy carried in the bag, his ankle chains dragging on the carpet.

“You are soiling that carpet,” Gailert said, opening his eyes to look straight at that rascal’s face.

Hardly lifting his eyes, the boy ducked his head down, hunching his shoulders. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“Not sorry! Not sorry!” Gailert rose from his chair. “If you were sorry, you wouldn’t have done it!”

Boxing his ears, the general then shoved the boy from the room. The child staggered to keep from falling, looking back with that old intense stare in one glance then ducked his eyes as if he were caught committing a crime and didn’t want to admit it.

“Now get downstairs and wash that automobile! Or so help me, I’ll have you whipped for insubordination,” Gailert said.

“Yes, sir,” the boy whispered then hurried down the hall. He nearly slid down the stairs to get away. His haste, the general suspected, was only in the spirit of mischief.

With a huff, the general closed the door and turned from it. He dragged his feet back to the armchair and dropped into it, feeling more exhausted than before. That child wore him out. It was like a conspiracy against his nerves. The boy knew he was getting on in years, and yet he persisted to wear and drag out things. The kid even dared complain of his legs hurting, that the irons on his ankles were too tight. But he was a fool to think that would trick him, an experienced general, into taking them off. He wasn’t senile. Gailert’s mental capacity was as clear and ever.

In fact, resting there, he felt his purpose was also clear. His people were calling him the savior of the Southwestern corner. The railroad now ran regularly, and trade routes by truck were growing. The only trial he really truly had were the sheer numbers of savages in that quarter of land. They had to burn a village to the ground near the last place he visited. The people had taken up their hoes near the end of his visit and attempted to kill him. They called him things, dirty names. General Gole.

Gole.

That was disturbing. To think that they saw him as one of those hideous flesh-eating demons that loved to hear its victims scream as it ate them alive. It only proved how brutal and savage those humans really were. Morbidly so.

Sighing, Gailert rose from his seat and took up his suitcase. It was best that he unpack and take out that book he had been lugging around. He had been planning to read it for some time. It would be a while before supper.

*

Boy. Winstrong’s boy.

He hardly remembered his name as it and his former life was like a dream. He was just Boy.

Carrying the bucket of sudsy water to the side of the automobile from the yard pump as the summer sun beat down on him. It made his skin burn and peel on the tops of his shoulders, his back and his face. The boy folded up the cover to the rumble seat and dunked in the rag he had gotten from the inn’s servants. They didn’t ask much when he requested it. All he had to say was General Winstrong ordered it. He set the wet rag on the hot dusty metal of the new automobile his master had acquired in Ladis City earlier that year. The general liked that his slave no longer rode in the back seat. General Winstrong had purchased the auto with the rumble seat in mind to keep his slave where he belonged.

Not that the boy minded sitting in the far back. But when it rained, he had to lie down and pull the rumble cover over him, and that reminded him of the first days when he had been taken from his village—and he didn’t want to remember it. He didn’t want to remember lots of things, though it was hard to forget anything he had seen or heard.

Rubbing the grime off the automobile, his mind fell back to the last village. He struggled to keep his eyes dry. The heat of the fire that burned those homes had been hideously warm, even as the general had them parked far off enough to not be burned. He could hear the screams of the villagers—of the mothers, the fathers, the children, all fleeing with the elderly into the woods as the soldiers opened fire on them. The boy had sobbed against the back hood of the automobile. The stains of his tears were still in the dust where he cleaned.

And it wasn’t the first village he watched burn down either. Every village that rose up in anger at the general, not realizing what an enormous mistake it was to oppose the brown-eyed Sky Child who went about regulating the Southwest corner, burned. It was like leaving a trail of ash.

Blinking, the boy limped to the front of the automobile and scrubbed into the road dust there. It had to be perfectly clean. The general liked his autos to shine. He had three of them.

The soldiers were already surveying the land in this area, discussing their watch posts around the inn. The general took many of them with him as they traveled to enforce any regulation or execution he had in mind. Mostly the men in the group were privates in the army, with a handful of corporals and three lieutenants. They minded their business as long as the general’s boy minded his tasks. They often stood as watchmen. Their guns were ready for anything, including one child who was slacking in his work.

The boy knew their eyes, their faces, their backgrounds, and their gossip. One of the lieutenants was having an affair with a corporal’s wife. The other loved to visit the villages and extort items and money from the locals with threats. And the third was entirely about regulation and rules, so of course the general relied on him most. Most of the corporals had their vices, most of which had to do with gambling and women. The worst of it was they usually meddled with the local girls they could get their hands on, though they also visited prostitutes when they were available. As for the privates, they were just as bad. Most were eager young men who wanted their piece of the world and would stoop to whatever was necessary to get it. Of course, most of that meant they had to pander to General Winstrong who was all about ambition and honor towards the Sky Lord.

But that wasn’t the only gossip the boy overheard. He also heard things about the war against Kitai and of demons in the woods; two troubles that remained despite the efforts of the Sky Children’s armies against both. But recently the gossip had turned to the emergence of a new threat called Cordril.

He knew only what the soldiers had said about them, and they said very little. Though, even as he washed the general’s automobile, the boy heard two men talking in low voices about them. He listened, wetting and rubbing off the soap