Free Far Called Trilogy 01 - In Dark Service by Stephen Hunt

he stood of achieving that. The shadows of the staff moving around behind the dining room curtains told him that dessert was being served. Time to head back to my room before my absence’s noticed.

    Carter stalked angrily along the pavement of the North Road, ignor­ing honking geese being driven down the middle of the street by a pair of drovers. The drovers’ long walking sticks whirled like windmills; streams of curious geese trying to duck down side roads before the whirling canes dropped in front of them, encouraging stray birds to keep with the main flock. Heading for the central market and slaughter at dawn, not that they knew it. Behind Carter and his father a string of flat-bottomed carts creaked, loaded down with corn oil, the Landor crest carefully stamped into each barrel. Every one another pocket full of profit for their family. What’s Duncan done to deserve it? Except being born to a man with ambition in his belly, not a sermon in his throat?
    ‘You don’t have to come with me,’ Carter told his father. ‘I’ll be at the radiomen’s hold in time to catch their first message run of the day out to the library.’
    ‘I need to pass through the market, anyway,’ said Jacob. ‘I promised I would buy some fresh milk to take along to the Hanniels’ house. He’s nursing his wife and doesn’t leave her bedside as near often as he should.’
    Carter didn’t know what to say to that.
    ‘Be with the angels soon enough,’ continued Jacob.
    Carter grunted. There was no shortage of old people in Northhaven. Anyone young enough to still have some spark left in them usually jumped on to a train to look for work in the teeming cities down south.
    ‘Both of them, probably. Seen it before,’ Jacob added. ‘Get to that age and with half of you gone, the other half just ups and follows.’
    Carter said nothing. He noted the way shopkeepers opened their shutters and nodded towards his father, everyone with all the time in the world to exchange a friendly greeting. That’s all he would ever be here, the child of Jacob Carnehan. The preacher’s son .
    Northhaven was built on a hill, and the closer they came to its centre, the narrower and steeper the streets became. There had been a church inside the old town once, centuries ago. Now it was gone, the valuable land sold off and the churchyard relocated to the sprawl outside the old town’s walls. Carter found the forest of towering radio masts rising over the cramped streets, partially obscured by washing lines hung between buildings, the guild’s hold safely within the town walls. A central minaret concealed the main radio mast, the tower circled by booster spikes. Carter hadn’t even reached the top of the street when he spotted something was wrong. The radiomen’s delivery cart was outside their hold, a flatbed half loaded with message crates, but its two horses were off the train; being saddled up individually while a gaggle of radiomen stood around outside. The armoured entrance to the hold stood gaping open. They never left their door open! You’d think a person would go blind for glimpsing the guild secrets inside that sanctum. There was something you never saw in Northhaven, too… urgency and fear written across the faces of the guild’s members.
    ‘Why are you saddling outriders?’ asked Jacob, addressing a guildsman with gold stripes sewn onto his black leather radioman’s jacket.
    ‘We’re getting word out fast,’ said the radioman. ‘An aircraft’s been spotted heading our way, not answering any guild hails.’
    ‘How many rotors?’ demanded Jacob.
    ‘Three hundred, at least,’ said the radioman. ‘Maybe five, hugging the coast before turning east. Blackwood Bay called it in, but the station there was down for maintenance. It took them two hours to get back up and pass the warning along the relay.’
    Jacob’s mouth drew into a thin line, as close as Carter’s father ever got to showing anger. ‘I’ll warn the wall’s western