Read Online The Sacred Band: Book Three of the Acacia Trilogy by David Anthony Durham - Free Book Online Page A

moved for the door. Rialus waved her to stillness. Don’t play dumb, girl! he thought, as he had many times before. The Meinish young woman, his slave since Avina, showed a dogged unwillingness to ever anticipate his desires. It should be dead obvious that he would not want to be disturbed.
    “There is someone at the door,” she said, staring at him with her gray eyes.
    As if on cue, the circular portal was yanked open, letting in a howling beast of a wind that surged through the chamber, making it instantly frigid. A furred figure stepped across the threshold. He was bundled from head to foot, hooded, and wore black goggles. He cast about a moment, no doubt letting his eyes adjust to the dim lamplight.
    “Rialus,” Allek said, “get dressed. Stop all that scribbling. Sabeer wants to massage your feet. Or … she wants you to massage her feet. I forget which. Either way, she asked for you. What charm have you put on her?” he asked.
    “No charm but my wit and the pleasure of my company,” Rialus said.
    The hooded figure guffawed. “Right. Your charm. Come, Rialus! Show me your charm at work. She’s in the steamship.”
    “Please tell her I’m busy. I’m—”
    “I’ll drag you by your locks if you don’t start dressing now. I’ll enjoy it, too. Just like last time.”
    Still an ogre, Rialus thought. “Fine,” he muttered, setting his pen aside and tidying his supplies. “I’m coming. Keep your nose on.”
    Rialus carefully pulled on his fur-lined leggings and boots. He shrugged himself into his sealskin jacket. The garment draped bulkily about him. He had learned the hard way that if it hung loose, wicked fingers of cold found their way to his skin, so he cinched down the buckles. He even strapped on the visor to protect his eyes, and then tugged his hood in place. All this for a walk that would only take a few minutes. Damn this place. So thinking, he followed Allek out.
    The wind smacked him as if it had clung just above the door, waiting to pounce on him. He stood on a platform running along one side of what the Auldek called stations, rocking, taking in a scene he still barely believed. His room was but one chamber of several in the large wooden and steel structure, a rolling tower that churned across the frozen earth with unrelenting steadiness. All around him other stations rolled, pulled by long lines of harnessed rhinoceroses, the same woolly breed that the Numrek had ridden down into the Known World. The structures creaked and groaned. The creatures bellowed and snorted. The blown snow obscured further stations, making it feel like they went on forever, out beyond the reach of his vision.
    The vessels were relics of ancient Auldek travel, quickly outfitted for this journey. Indeed, much of the preparation was made easier because of the great stores of old equipment and devices the Auldek had but to dust off and haul into use. The stations. Cargo wagons. The sleds. Stores of arms and supplies, tons of grain and other foodstuffs in crates and barrels. All of it slid into motion more rapidly than Rialus would have thought possible. Slaves had tended herds of the beasts outside Avina. Rhinoceroses. Antoks. Kwedeir. Not to mention the fréketes. Rialus had not seen much of the monsters since the cold weather had set in, but he understood them to be housed in stations outfitted for them.
    Beneath and between the structures figures moved, driving animals, hauling supplies, doing the million things needed to feed and care for an army in constant, rolling motion. Rialus had doubted it would be possible, but the Auldek—or their slaves—were more efficient than he thought. They unpacked food stores in an organized manner that meant they could abandon the vehicles that had carried them. They ate the animals freed up from this, or any that got injured or sick. Rialus even suspected that the slaves themselves became food for the animals or worse. He tried not to think about it.
    A man rode by atop an