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

keep, you run your horses out to the other two gates. Have you sent runners to the lord mayor and high sheriff?’
    The radioman nodded.
    ‘What about transmitting word up to Rodal?’
    ‘Of course,’ said the radioman, growing irritated at the pastor’s questioning. ‘But it’s a waste of battery acid. Their skyguard squadrons are out with our fleet, dropping rocks in the sea and pretending target barrels are pirate galleons. Our luck’s as empty as the territorial army’s barracks.’
    Jacob shouted at Carter to stay where he was, before running down the same road they had just climbed. Carter ignored his father, sprinting down the hill after him. Damned if I’ll stay back there. Carter called after the pastor. ‘What’s this about? Just a plane in the air. Aircraft pass over from Rodal all the time.’
    ‘This isn’t a single-seater kite, boy. Even aerial nomads answer ground hails from countries they’re overflying. And you only travel wave-skipping over the ocean to avoid being spotted by radiomen until it’s too late.’
    ‘Bandits?’ said Carter, astonished at the alien sound of the word in his mouth. Bandit raids were something that happened to other people. Distant parts far away in the sparsely populated east, not boring backwaters like Northhaven, quiet boondocks nearly fallen off the map. Carter was growing short of breath, even sprinting downhill. He had never run through town so fast before. ‘What the hell we got that they might want?’
    ‘You mean apart from the entire harvest of corn oil filling the Landors’ warehouses along the river? The engines on a bandit’s rotors would drink Benner’s crop faster than a sailor downing whisky rye.’
    ‘We’ve got to warn mother,’ said Carter.
    ‘And I need to ring the church bells,’ said Jacob. ‘Warn everyone living outside the battlements to get up into the old town. Bandits like their pickings easy. They won’t be here for a siege. Just what they can pillage before the sea fort at Redwater sends frigates up the river.’
    Despite Jacob Carnehan’s protestations, Carter arrived at the battlement’s western keep close behind his old man. He watched his father put the fear of god into Constable Wiggins and the other policemen manning the customs gate. Wiggins might have been the oldest of the group, but he was faster on the uptake than the two younger constables, shouting at his men to fetch more officers to the wall and bring heavy rifles to drop on the rampart’s tripod mountings.
    Wiggins spat onto the cobbles under the portcullis. ‘Sitting here since sun-up, playing cloakroom attendant for all the traders and travellers coming in. Turns out I should have been handing out guns and swords, not collecting them in.’
    ‘Are the barrage balloons along the wall in any state to be raised?’ asked Jacob.
    ‘Damned if I know,’ said Wiggins. ‘They only go up during the annual wall drill. More patches than fabric, and that’s if the cylinders to inflate them haven’t leaked. Well, we’ll find out, I reckon.’
    ‘You’ve got pistols collected in there?’ asked Carter, pointing to the guardroom. ‘Let me have one.’
    ‘As far as my son’s concerned, you keep your guns racked,’ ordered Jacob. ‘I know you, Carter. You get five rounds in a chamber and you’ll be charging the first bandits that hit the ground as though they’re no more than paper targets at a fairground stall.’
    ‘Your old man’s got a point,’ laughed Wiggins. ‘I’ve seen how that drunken sot of a sergeant in the territorials teaches you kids to shoot on cadet days. One hand on a bottle and the other like this—’ Wiggins formed a gun barrel with his fingers and clicked off shots straight up into the air ‘—when he gets overexcited.’
    ‘Stick it,’ said Carter, his temper flaring at both of them. ‘I’ll fight them with my fists and harsh language if I have to. This is my town; I’ll do what I need to defend us!’
    It was the distant