Hunted
936 A.O.P.
One
SOREN
Soren usually didn’t pay attention to gossip, but it was impossible for him to ignore the pair of businessmen walking ahead of him on the Karnak train platform. A much younger man worked to keep pace with them while juggling an armful of folios. None of them seemed aware that Soren was behind them, pushing his velocycle toward the cargo carriage at the end of the train.
“Did you hear? Another delivery truck was lost between two towns in the House of Kimathi’svasilyet. I was told a warden went looking for the truck at the behest of the company and found it tipped over on a back road, all its inventory looted,” the taller man said.
“What of the driver?” his companion asked.
“Dead, from what I understand. It was a revenant attack, and the warden had to hunt down the horde.”
“That’s the dozenth attack this season.”
“The roads aren’t safe heading into Bellingham. The only sure way to transport cargo into that city is via steam train or airship, but the cost is exorbitant. It’s getting to the point we’re thinking of closing up shop in Bellingham. The loss of inventory and hike in transportation costs isn’t worth the risk or money.”
Soren tightened his grip on the handlebars of his velocycle. He knew the number of revenants in the House of Kimathi’svasilyethad nearly doubled over the last few years. He also knew that the House of Kimathi’svezirhad allowed hostility to fester in hervasilyettoward wardens. Getting accurate readings of the poison levels, or lack thereof, in the land around that major city wasn’t easy these days.
Part of the problem was politics. The rest of it was revenants.
Mostly, it was a headache.
It wasn’t just the House of Kimathi’svasilyetthat had an influx of the dead. Ashion suffered from an uptick in revenants as well, both human and wild beasts, and the governor had been forced to allocate wardens accordingly to deal with the threat in both countries.
Which meant, when Soren wasn’t keeping watch on the crypts below the Imperial palace, he ranged afield in the Southern Plains beyond Calhames, hunting down revenants. Vanya might have wished for Soren to stay within the palace grounds, at his beck and call, but Soren was a warden down to his bones. He knew his duty, and he kept it.
Duty was why Soren had returned to the Warden’s Island to report on Solaria’s compliance with the Poison Accords and the country’s overall politics. The sanctions were stayed until the governor could be certain that issuing them wouldn’t bring harm to every warden guarding that country’s borders.
The Houses had played their murderous games in pursuit of power and the Imperial throne for centuries, but rarely had it spilled over onto the wardens. These days, with the tension brewing between countries, not just the Houses, the governor had to be careful.
Soren slowed to a stop, looking up at the departure board hanging over the platform. As he watched, the little numbers and letters flipped over to show the cities and departure times for other trains. His eyes locked on a train heading to Bellingham, a city he hadn’t been allowed into for quite some time, that left in an hour from a different platform.
He knew Vanya and Raiah were in Oeiras for the duration of Eighth Month while Vanya hammered out a trade treaty with the Tovan Isles representatives in that coastal city. Soren had a ticket for a train heading direct to Oeiras tucked into his back pocket, and that route didn’t run through Bellingham.
He exchanged it for one that did.
The train rolled out of Karnak’s train station an hour later with Soren sitting on a shared bench. He stretched out his legs, leaned his head against the window, and let the sound of the wheels chugging along the rails lull him to sleep.
Two days later, Soren disembarked at a way station situated down the road from a small town and a quarter day’s ride from Bellingham. Soren squinted against the glare of the sun as he wheeled his velocycle out of the cargo carriage and down the ramp. He was the only one departing at this stop, and after two days sitting cramped on a bench, Soren was glad to be out on the open road alone.
Bellingham sat on cleansed land, but the surrounding area hadn’t been logged in almost a year, according to the governor. Walking the border around that city wasn’t Soren’s current post, but the House of Kimathi had been a thorn in Vanya’s side ever since Nicca’s death.
Knowing the hostility he faced didn’t stop Soren from crossing the railroad tracks after topping up his tank at the way station and taking time to eat a travel sausage roll. He rode west, parallel to the tracks but deeper into the prairie than most travelers went. His tires ate up ground as the sun moved across the cloudless summer sky.
Soren steered clear of the road that led to Bellingham, aiming for one of the smaller towns in the outskirts of thevasilyet. He stopped along the way when he reached the field markers, taking time to hurriedly log the records from the machines no warden had seemingly touched in months.
By the time he came within sight of the main road that stretched between Calhames and Bellingham, twilight had fallen. Soren would’ve switched on his velocycle’s headlamp if not for the convoy of trucks rumbling down the road.
Trucks that turned off the road and into the prairie rather than continue south.
Soren frowned, staring at the taillights that became increasingly dimmer in the dark as the trucks drove farther away. “That’s odd.”
Any warden worth their pistols knew the maps of the areas they patrolled. Soren kept meticulous notes of the borders he guarded. He’d updated his working map of Solaria while at the Warden’s Island from other wardens’ records. He knew there wasn’t any town in this area that would take delivery of anything past sundown.
But therewasan area of land the wardens had been refused passage on.
