Tilley, Patrick - The Amtrack Wars 04 - Blood River

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The Amtrak Wars - Book 4 - Blood River
By: Patrick Tilley
Synopsis:
On the snow-swept overground, Steve, Cadillac and Clearwater meet with
triumph and disaster as they try to evade the clutches of both the Iron
Masters and the First Family. The samurai of Ne-Issan prove to be
tenacious adversaries and the rulers of the Federation have no
intention of loosening their grip on Steve Brickman. For he and his
friends are valuable pawns in a game which, if lost, could spell the
end of the First Family's dream of reconquering the blue-sky world.
Also by Patrick Tilley:
MISSION
THE AMTRAK WARS BOOK 1: CLOUD WARRIOR
THE AMTRAK WARS BOOK 2: FIRST FAMILY THE AMTRAK WARS BOOK 3: IRON
MASTER THE AMTRAK WARS BOOK 5: DEATH-BRINGER
THE AMTRAK WARS BOOK 6: EARTH-THUNDER
DARK VISIONS: THE ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO THE AMTRAK WARS FADEOUT
STAR WARTZ
The Amtrak Wars Book 4: Blood River
PATRICK TILLEY
ORBIT
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An Orbit Book
First published in Great Britain by Sphere Books l.td 1988
Reprinted 989, 99o, 199
Reprinted by Warner Books 995
Reprinted 1996
Reprinted by Orbit 998
Copyright © 1988 by Patrick Tilley All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior
permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in
any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published
and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed
on the subsequent purchaser.
ISBN i 85723 538 X
Printed in England by Clays l.td, St lyes plc
Companies, institutions and other organiza6ons wishing to make bulk
purchases of this or any other books published by l.inle, Brown, should
contact their local bookshop or the special sales department at the
address below.
Tel o171 911 8ooo. Fax o171 9i i 8too.
Orbit
A Division of little, Brown and Company (ilK) Bretxenham House
Lancaster Place london we2E 7EN In loving memory of my mother born
Agnes Rose Lewer July 22nd, 1904-December 1st, 1987 who gave me the
priceless gift of education but whose formidable personality caused me
to censor everything I wrote.
God bless you, Ma. Hang on to your halo.
This is where it starts to get interesting.
BOOK 4:
BLOOD RIVER
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CHAPTER ONE
If it had not been for the fact that his youngest son suddenly took it
into his head to totter through the partially-open door while his
mother's back was turned, Izo Wantanabe would not have leapt up from
his writing table and stepped out onto the deck of the houseboat.
Had he not done so, the winter months would have passed with their
usual tranquil monotony and the lives of several hundred of his
comrades in arms would have been spared or, at the very least, expended
on a more profitable enterprise.
But it was not to be. Fate, in the guise of fatherly concern,
compelled him to follow and, as he scooped up the infant and lifted him
shoulder high, he saw something which took his breath away.
Two dark stiff-winged objects were moving across the sky on a line that
would take them almost directly above the boat on which he stood. The
objects were heading in a south-westerly direction, along the ragged
forward edge of a massive blanket of grey cloud now advancing over Lake
Mi-shiga from the northwest.
Oblivious of the wind-driven snow-flakes that were beginning to swirl
round him, Izo Wantanabe stood there open-mouthed with his small son
clutched to his breast and watched as the objects passed over the jetty
to which the wheelboat was moored then grew smaller and were finally
swallowed by the advancing snow-cloud.
And there he stayed, his dark button eyes fixed on the point where the
two winged dots had vanished, oblivious of the tiny fingers that pulled
playfully at his bottom lip.
The questions raised by what he had just witnessed caused him to forget
the original reason for being there and it took the shrill cries of his
wife, Yumiko, to alert
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him to the fact that his son's unprotected head
was now liberally coated with snow.
Wantanabe meekly allowed Tomo to be snatched from him and followed his
wife inside.
By the traditional laws of domestic etiquette, a wife was not permitted
to upbraid her husband but, in practice, that convention was normally
only observed when friends, relatives, servants or superiors were
present. A wife was duty bound to respect and obey her husband but
that did not stop the more spirited (or malicious) members of the
female sex from giving their menfolk an earful in private - or showing
their displeasure in other, more subtle ways.
Wantanabe seated himself on the mat behind his writing desk and endured
the inevitable blast for endangering the health of his youngest child
in dignified silence. He knew Yumiko's concern was well-founded but
his mind was engaged on other, far more important matters which she,
being a woman, could not be expected to understand.
He slowly twirled the point of his writing brush on the ink block and
let her voice flow unheeded through his brain. Stripped of their
meaning, the stream of words resembled the clucking of an irate hen
driven from a newly-laid egg before she has had time to admire her
handiwork.
Eventually, as the ten-month-old child was vigorously rubbed dry and
his happy gurgles indicated that he was not about to expire, the
reproachful clucking was replaced by the soft mothering sounds that
humans and animals use when nurturing their young. And shortly
afterwards, when he had been dressed in dry clean clothes, the
glowing-checked child was presented to his father as a peace
offering.
Musing upon the fact that his wife's moods were as predictable as night
and day, Wantanabe gathered Tomo briefly in his arms, bestowed a kiss
on his soft, downy skull then handed him back carefully. For Yumiko,
the crisis was over, harmony was restored. Her husband's problems were
only just beginning.
Izo Wantanabe and his wife Yumiko came from a race of people known to
their neighbours as Iron Masters; a stratified collection of asiatic
bloodlines in which the Japanese formed the top layer, followed by
Chinese, Korean then the other ethnic groups in descending order.
Each group's position related directly to the distance - in the World
Before - of their ancestral lands from a sacred site known as Mount
Fuji.
Successive waves of the Iron Masters' ancestors had landed on the
north-eastern coast of North America between 2300 and 2400 A.D. Now,
six centuries later, the seventeen domains that made up their nation
state known as Ne-Issan - stretched from the Atlantic to Lake Erie, and
from the St Lawrence Seaway to Cape Fear, in North Carolina.
Wantanabe's family owed its allegiance to the noble house of
Yama-Shita, holder of the exclusive licence to trade with the
grass-monkeys who roamed the endless Western Plains. Izo's family
formed part of the Japanese ruling class but he himself was a
love-child produced by one of his father's Chinese concubines.
The resulting social stigma, while not catastrophic, meant he was
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permanently barred from the high appointments open to his peer group
and that his future wife should he choose to marry - would have to be
Chinese.
This had led to his decision to enter commerce, for it was here that
many Chinese families had flourished, and his father's connections had
secured him a junior position in one of the rich trading houses with a
string of depots from Bu-faro on Lake In to the Eastern Sea.
His alert intelligence, plus a head for figures and a flair for
organisation, won him quick promotion and a fortunate introduction to
Yumiko, the fourth daughter of a Chinese merchant who, with a shrewd
eye to the main chance, provided her with a handsome dowry.
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The father's gamble on Izo's family connections did not bring the
hoped-for rewards. After Yumiko had given birth to a son and a
daughter, and was carrying Tomo within her, the senior partner's latent
disapproval of Izo's mixed parentage was finally revealed when he was
twice passed over in the annual round of promotions, putting an end to
his hopes of reaching the top echelons.
His despair, however, had been short-lived. Summoned to the palace at
Sara-kusa, Izo Wantanabe had been met by an official of Lord
Yama-Shita's court who offered him the post of Resident Agent to the
Outlands.
He would, explained the trade-captain, be one of a trial batch of five
appointees - the first to be stationed beyond the borders of
Ne-Issan.
Aware that this was a heaven-sent opportunity to get in on the ground
floor of a pioneering enterprise and escape from the veiled but
vengeful discrimination that continued to shadow his marriage and
career, Izo accepted the offer without hesitation.
The wheelboats of the Yama-Shita had visited the two established
trading posts at Bei-sita and Du-aruta once a year for several decades,
but in the summer of 2990
Domain-Lord Hiro Yama-Shita had decided to set up a chain of resident
commercial agents to develop regular contacts with the Mute clans in
the hinterland.
Izo and the other four appointees were to be the first links in this
chain which - if positive results were obtained - would eventually
extend right around the southern shores of the four, interconnected
lakes which formed the Western Sea; the vast body of water the Mutes
called 'The Great River'.
Each resident would live with his family aboard a house-boat, smaller
cousins of the three-storied steam-powered monsters that made the
annual journey to Du-aruta. It was envisaged that the house-boats
would be permanently moored to purpose-built jetties but, if the need
arose, they could always cast off and put to sea.
Domestic servants would be provided and the boats would be maintained
and, if need be, protected, by a small detachment of sea-soldiers.
For Izo, it meant assuming the leadership of an enclosed community of
thirty-five souls. Food and other stores would be delivered by sea
until adequate supplies could be obtained locally.
Yumiko had not been overjoyed at the prospect of an isolated existence
in the back of beyond, but the chance to make a fresh start plus the
generous lump sum payable on completion of a nine-year term and the
promise of three months' paid home leave for every thirty-six served in
the outlands had softened her protests.
The possibility that she and her family might not even survive three
years, let alone nine, did not appear to have occurred to her and Izo
had wisely kept silent about the possible dangers of living amongst a
horde of unwashed, unfettered savages.
The first four residents were posted to Detroit, Saginaw Bay,
Cheboygan, and Ludington. Izo Wantanabe, the last far-flung link in
the chain, was anchored at a place once known as Benton Harbour, twenty
miles north of the point where, on pre-Holocaust maps, the Indiana
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state line met the eastern shore of Lake Michigan.
Their primary task was to forge closer trade links, including the
recruitment of more 'guest-workers'. They were to achieve this by
commercial and cultural 'counselling', the purpose of which was to
change the Mutes' perception of the Iron Masters as cold and forbidding
into something more. paternal. Firm (the grass-monkeys despised
weakness) yet benign.
That, in itself, was a job and a half but the residents had also been
entrusted with an equally important, parallel assignment; the gathering
of intelligence.
Following the first incursions by the Federation wagon-trains into
Plainfolk territory in 2989, the conflict between Tracker and Mute had
been drawing ever closer to the borders of Ne-Issan. Lord Yama-Shita
had hit
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upon the idea of using the residents - Wantanabe in particular
- as forward listening-posts. Their genuine effort to improve trade
relations would provide both the cover and the opportunity to gather
information about the Federation's war machine and its northward and
eastward advance towards the Running Red Buffalo Hills - the
Plainfolk's name for the Northern Appalachians.
As point man, Izo Wantanabe was nearest the action.
Up to now, the probing advances of the warriors from the Deserts of the
South appeared to have stopped at the west bank of the wide, meandering
river the outlanders called the Miz-Hippy. The river had its source in
a cluster of lakes to the north-west of Du-ruta. Wantanabe had only
been on the ground for less than four months so much remained to be
discovered, but according to his initial contacts, the iron snakes had
never attempted to cross this waterway. Whether they could not, or did
not wish to do so, remained to be seen.
The Plainfolk had said the iron snakes preferred to follow the lines of
the ancient hardways - most of which, outside Ne-Issan, had long since
crumbled into dust.
From a captured Federation map acquired in exchange for six knives it
was clear the iron snakes (which their owners called wagon-trains)
would have to cross a number of smaller rivers to reach the
Miz-Hippy.
Izo Wantanabe had not yet seen one of these much-feared killing
machines for himself but perhaps because of their huge size or the
manner of their construction they could not float across a river like a
loaded cart drawn by oxen and supported on air-filled bags made from
animal skins. So much the better. It meant that, until a bridge was
built or suitable ferry craft were put in place, the iron snakes would
be held at bay perhaps indefinitely. Gangs of construction workers
were a soft target and even if bridges and ferries were completed, they
could still be attacked and burned by determined bands of men.
The Miz-Hippy was like the wide moats that surrounded the
palace-castles of the domain-lords of Ne-Issan. It formed an almost
endless defensive line which - as far as he knew - could only be turned
by journeying northwards around the Western Sea.
Densely-forested hills pitted with lakes formed the first line of
defence. If this was penetrated the iron snakes would be halted by the
San-Oransa, the wide river that protected Ne-Issan's border domains.
But not the skies above them. These marauding serpents carried winged
chariots that could travel through the cloud world of the kami.
Rivers and mountains were no barrier to them.
The grass-monkeys called these chariots 'arrowheads', and the soldiers
who rode in them were known as 'cloud-warriors'.
Up to this moment, all the stories about 'arrowheads' dropping
fire-blossoms from the sky and killing people with long sharp iron were
nothing more than hearsay.
EXaggerated rumours. None of his informants had ever seen an
'arrowhead'. Neither had Izo Wantanabe until today - when he had seen
two! Only these sky-chariots were not like the crafts his informants
had described.
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Their wings were not triangular. They were stretched out on either
side of their bodies like those of a gliding seabird. And they had a
tail - not fan-shaped like that of a bird, but a tail nevertheless
attached by two beams to the wings on either side of the plump body.
Their shape, in one sense, was immaterial. Izo Wantanabe was in no
doubt that the sky-chariots were a product of the Federation. Merely
to look upon them sent a chill down the spine. They were dark alien
things whose form could not have been conceived in the soul of a noble
samurai. But what were they doing in a sky filled with snow?
Lord Yama-Shita's trade captain had told him that the iron snakes
retreated south to their underground lairs during the winter months and
his own tame grass-monkeys had confirmed this was so. But . . . if
there were sky-chariots aloft, it meant that somewhere away to the
south-west, an iron snake was lurking. Hiding
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perhaps in a forest,
awaiting their return.
Yes ... News of its presence and its exact whereabouts would soon - if
it was not already - become common knowledge among the locally-based
Mute clans. And someone would bring the news to him in the hope of a
reward. Izo had several trunkfuls of small gifts, some useful, some
decorative, for such occasions.
Wantanabe gazed at the blank sheet of paper before him and continued to
twirl his brush on the ink-block even though it was now fully
charged.
It helped concentrate his mind on the circumstances surrounding the
appearance of the sky-chariots. The air had been getting progressively
colder over the past two weeks but the sky had been clear, or dotted
with broken cloud.
And that very morning, the rising sun had warmed an empty sky. It was
only later that a line of grey cloud had appeared on the northern
horizon.
The two sky-chariots had approached from the north-east and had flown
over the mooring in a south-westerly direction - back towards the
Miz-Hippy.
Which meant they must have either circled round from the north or round
from the south - driven back towards the iron snake by the advancing
snowcloud. But before that, they would have been flying across a clear
sky - so their course would have been observed by the sharp-eyed Mutes
who occupied the lands around Lake Mi-shiga.
Perhaps his nearest neighbour, Saito Aichi, the resident agent at
Ludington whose house-boat lay one hundred and twenty miles north of
his own, had seen them crossing Lake Mi-shiga while the windswept
blanket of snow was still beyond the far shore. Hhhaaawww!
Cloud-warrior was an apt name for men bold enough to drive their winged
chariots over such a huge expanse of water! But if they were ever rash
enough to invade the sacred sky-world above Ne-Issan, the karni who
guarded the heavens would send them crashing to earth like birds struck
by a hunter's arrows.
Izo decided to pen a message slip that would be delivered to his
neighbour by carrier pigeon. He would have to wait for the snow storm
to pass, but if the bird could be released by noon, he might have a
reply the following day that could help him pinpoint the location of
the wagon-train. On the other hand, if the sky-chariots had circled
round from the south, word of their sighting would take longer to reach
him. But it would come - of that he had no doubt.
The high-born half-caste had made full use of his organizing skills
since arriving in the outlands, putting his greatest effort into the
area south and west of Benton Harbour. As a result, there were few
grass-monkeys within a hundred miles of where he now sat who did not
know of the rewards to be gained by being the first to report the
sighting of an iron snake or an arrowhead.
Selecting a smaller, much finer brush, Izo Wantanabe took a narrow slip
of thin paper from a leather folder and began to compose his message to
Saito. A string of tiny ideograms - the symbols the Iron Masters used
instead of the roman alphabet - flowed effortlessly from the tip of his
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