Cloud Warrior Read online

  The Amtrak Wars

  The Talisman Prophecies

  Book 1:

  Cloud Warrior

  PATRICK TILLEY

  To Nick Austin, who made

  it all possible. This one’s for

  you.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  A Note on the Author

  ’Why did you not tell me you were a summoner?’

  Clearwater shook her head in bewilderment. ‘I did not know until now. It was only when you were about to die that the power came upon me. It was sent through me. It used my voice to call the forces up from the earth but I did not guide it.’ She paused and looked back at Shakatak’s body, suddenly intimidated by the terrible violence she had unleashed. ‘I do not know if it will come again.’

  Cadillac nodded. ‘The door in your mind has been opened. If you call, the power will enter. Mr Snow will teach you how to guide it.’

  Clearwater shivered and rubbed her arms. ‘It frightens me. Talisman saved your life. It was his strength that flowed through me.’

  ONE

  Cadillac sat on the ground near Mr Snow and listened with half-closed eyes as the white-haired, bearded old man told the naked clan-children the story of the War of a Thousand Suns.

  Cadillac knew the story off by heart. It was the two hundred and eighth time he had heard it, and it was not new to the sixty young children of the settlement that squatted in a half-circle before them. It did not matter. The children sat spellbound, hanging on every word, just as they had the first time. Most of them didn’t remember Mr Snow telling them the story before. But then, most of them hardly remembered anything for very long – and never would.

  But Cadillac could.

  Cadillac remembered everything. All he had ever seen and heard, down to the minutest detail. That was why he had been chosen by Mr Snow to learn all that had happened to his people from the beginning of the New Time. When Mr Snow left them to go to the High Ground, Cadillac would take his place as the clan’s wordsmith. It would then be Cadillac’s task to find a young child capable of memorising the series of events that made up the nine hundred year history of the Plainfolk.

  Before that, stretching back beyond the reach of even Mr Snow’s memory, was the uncounted span of years known as the Old Time when the world trembled before the feats of Heroes with Names of Power.

  Mr Snow knew a few tales of the Old Time, when there were as many people on the earth as there were blades of grass. When huts were built on top of one another to form settlements that rose high in the sky like the distant mountains. When the crumbling hard ways, that once ran across the land like veins along his arm were choked with a never-ending stream of giant beetles that carried people from one place to another so that no one would ever find himself alone.

  As Mr Snow rippled his fingers up the length of both arms to describe how, in the War, the falling Suns had burned the flesh from every living thing, Cadillac stood up and walked away down the slope towards the settlement. The morning sun warmed his bare back and cast a slim, broad-shouldered shadow in front of him.

  Cadillac took a deep breath to fill out his chest, stretched his arms out sideways then brought them together above his head.

  His shadow did the same.

  It never failed to fascinate Cadillac. The shape of his shadow pleased him. It was different from the shadows cast by most of the others in his clan. It had a sleek, smooth outline, with long straight arms and legs, and the shadow’s hands had only one thumb and four fingers – like the shadows of the sand-burrowers that Cadillac had never seen but whom Mr Snow had described.

  The hidden enemy far to the south by the Great Water who sent out the iron snakes and the cloud warriors – from whom he must always flee.

  Cadillac M’Call, now eighteen years old, belonged to one of the many clans of She-Kargo Mutes that roamed the Central and Northern Plains. According to Mr Snow, their ancestors had come from beyond the dawn on the backs of giant birds whose beating wings made the noise of a mighty waterfall.

  They had landed at a place called O-haya, by the side of a great lake. To celebrate their arrival, they had killed and roasted the birds and feasted on them all summer long then, when winter came, they used the frozen waters of the lake to build a great settlement full of towering pillars of ice that glowed with all the colours of the rainbow and whose tops were lost in the clouds.

  In the War of a Thousand Suns, the city had melted and flowed back into the lake. Every living thing had perished except for an old man called She-Kargo and an old woman called Me-Sheegun and their children. She-Kargo had fifteen sons, all of them brave warriors, tall and strong as bears; the old woman had fifteen beautiful daughters. She-Kargo’s sons and Me-Sheegun’s daughters crossed wrists and bound their bodies together with the blood kiss and their children, and their children’s children, grew strong and multiplied, and moved westwards into the lands of the Minne-Sota, the Io-wa, Da-Kota, and Ne-Braska, killing all who resisted them, and making soul-brothers of all those who laid the hand of friendship upon them.

  They triumphed because their warriors were braver, their wordsmiths wiser, and their summoners more powerful. And thus it was that-the Plainfolk grew strong in number and gave thanks to their great mother-goddess, Mo-town.

  Cadillac went to his chosen place among the rocks at the edge of the plateau where the M’Call clan had set down their huts to wait out the growing time. From the ragged edge of the plateau the ground fell away steeply, ridged and hollowed as if clawed by the talons of a giant eagle. Lower down, the ground evened out, flowing in a gentle curve to join the rolling, orange grass-covered plain that stretched towards the rim of the world. Beyond that lay the hidden door through which the sun entered each morning. The pale blue that had quenched the golden fireclouds of the dawn was deepening as the sun climbed higher; small widely-spaced clouds, like a distant slow-grazing herd of white buffalo, were beginning to form over the far edge of the plains.

  Cadillac lay back against the warm rock face and let his eyes roam across the unbroken stretch of blue, searching for the tell-tale flash of silver light that he had been told would signal the presence of a cloud warrior. As Mr Snow’s chosen successor, Cadillac had no need to act as a sentinel. Over a hundred of his clan-brothers were perched on the hilltops that lay around the settlement; young warriors – known as Bears – were on guard, day and night; some watching the sky for cloud warriors; others, the ground, for any marauding bands from rival Mute clans seeking to invade the M’Call’s summer turf. Some manned hidden look-out posts on the high ground, others patrolled the area around the settlement in small mobile packs that doubled as hunting parties.

  Cadillac continued his search of the sky. Not because he felt threatened but because he was consumed with curiosity. As a Mute, he had every reason to fear the sand-burrowers; the mysterious people who lived beneath the earth and killed everything upon it whenever they emerged from the darkness; yet in spite of their awesome reputation – or perhaps because of it – he yearned to confront them; to challenge them.

  So far, they had not ventured into the lands of the Plainfolk. But the Sky Voices had told Mr Snow that the time of their coming was near. The first sign would be arrowheads in the sky; the birdwings that carried the cloud warriors on their journeys. They were the far-seeing eyes of the iron snake which followed, bearing more sand-burrowers in its belly. When they came
, there would be a great dying. The world would weep but all the tears in the sky would not wash the blood of the Plainfolk from the earth.

  When Mr Snow had finished telling his story to the children, he walked down to where Cadillac sat with his face turned up to the sky and squatted cross-legged on an adjoining rock. His long white hair was drawn up into a topknot, tied and threaded with ribbon; the aging skin covering his lean, hard body was patterned with random swirls, patches and spots of black, three shades of brown – from dark to light and an even lighter olive-pink.

  Mr Snow had said that the bodies of the sand-burrowers were the same colour all over. Olive-pink from the top of their heads to the soles of their feet. Like worms.

  Cadillac’s body was marked with a similar random pattern but his skin was as smooth as a raven’s wing. Some of Mr Snow’s skin was smooth too but in other places, such as his forehead, shoulders and forearms, the skin was lumpy as if it had pebbles stuffed underneath, or it was shrivelled up like a dead leaf or the gnarled bark of a tree,

  That was the way most Mutes were born. And many were different to Cadillac in other ways too. As a young child, when Cadillac finally became aware that his body was different from those of his clan-brothers, he had felt ashamed; a grotesque outcast. Some of the other children taunted him, saying he had a body like a sand-burrower. He became alienated from his peer group; ran away; was brought back; fell sick, refused to eat.

  Black-Wing, his mother, had taken him to Mr Snow who explained that the things he hated about himself were precious differences that would, in the years to come, enable him to perform great feats of valour. That was why he had been made straight and strong as the Heroes of the Old Time, and had been given a Name of Power. Cadillac, then four years old, had sat listening wide-eyed as, in the flickering firelight under a dark sky heavy with shimmering stars, Mr Snow had revealed to him the Talisman Prophecy.

  From that moment, Cadillac knew, with a child-like certainty he had never lost, that everything that happened to him had a meaning, and that his destiny was bound up with the greater destiny of the Plainfolk.

  Cadillac gave up his search of the sky and turned to Mr Snow. He had no need to tell the old man what he had been looking for. Mr Snow, his teacher and guide since early childhood, who spoke to the Sky Voices, knew these things; knew everything.

  ‘Is this the year of the Great Dying?’ asked Cadillac.

  ‘This is the year it begins,’ said Mr Snow.

  ‘When will the iron snakes come?’

  Mr Snow closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, and turned his face towards the sun. The sky had now turned a deep blue. Cadillac waited patiently.

  Eventually, the answer came. ‘When the moon’s face has turned away three times.’

  ‘And what of the cloud warrior the Sky Voices have chosen?’

  Mr Snow let the air out of his body with a long sigh and dropped his head onto his chest. His eyes fluttered open. ‘His journey towards us begins. He dreams the dreams of young men. Of feats of valour, of triumph, of power, of greatness.’ Mr Snow raised his eyes and looked at Cadillac. ‘But like all young men, he thinks these things are gifts. He does not yet know how much the world pays for such dreams.’

  TWO

  The one hundred members of Eagle Squadron jerked back their shoulders and sat bolt upright in their desks as the Flight Adjudicator entered the briefing room. The Adjudicator surveyed them briefly with grey expressionless eyes then scanned the list displayed on his video-pad. ‘Avery –?’

  Mel Avery leapt out of her seat and snapped to attention, thumbs aligned with the side seams of her blue jump-suit. ‘Sir!’

  ‘Flightline Three.’

  Avery grabbed her visored helmet, saluted swiftly and headed for the door at the double.

  The Flight Adjudicator keyed in a box code against Avery’s name and looked up. ‘Ayers –?’

  Ayers stood up, jaw squared, back ram-rod straight. ‘Sir!’

  ‘Flightline Five.’

  Ayers saluted and ran.

  ‘Brickman –?’

  Steve Brickman shot to his feet, stamped his right heel into line with his left and braced his shoulderblades together. ‘Sir!’

  ‘Flightline Six.’

  The Snake Pit.

  Despite his tensed neck and jaw muscles, Brickman let slip a brief involuntary gasp of dismay.

  The Adjudicator’s grey eyes fastened on him. ‘Anything wrong?’

  ‘No, sirr!’

  ‘Okay, get moving.’

  Brickman picked up his helmet from the desk top and saluted smartly.

  The Flight Adjudicator’s attention was already elsewhere. ‘Bridges –?’

  ‘Sir!’

  Brickman cursed his luck as he ran along the corridor which led to the simulators and free-flight rigs. The end-of-course exam consisted of eight segments. Like all the other candidates, he had been hoping to warm up on one of the easier rigs. Instead, his first test was to be over the toughest hurdle.

  The Snake Pit – as it had been christened by a long-dead generation of flight cadets – was described officially in the Academy’s training manual as the Double Helix, and listed in Daily Orders as Flightline Six.

  The rig consisted of two circular ramps wrapped around massive central pillars housed side-by-side in a sausage-shaped shaft. In elevation, they looked like two giant corkscrews with opposing threads; the left-hand ramp descending eleven full turns in a clockwise direction; the right-hand one, anti-clockwise.

  As each ramp wound down the shaft around its central pillar, it created a rectangular tunnel of air space one hundred and thirty feet wide and ninety feet high. In the centre of the shaft the two ramps touched rim to rim enabling a pupil pilot aboard one of the Academy’s Skyhawks to fly from one to the other, weaving his way up and down the shaft in an almost infinitely variable series of ascending or descending figure-eights and tight right- or left-hand turns around the two pillars.

  Runways for take-off and landing were situated in flight access tunnels at the top and bottom of the rig and these were linked by express elevators able to carry two Skyhawks with their wings folded.

  The overall height of the Snake Pit was some twelve hundred feet. The shaft containing the spiral ramps measured seven hundred by three hundred and fifty feet. Each flight access tunnel was one hundred and fifty feet wide, one hundred feet high, and a quarter of a mile long.

  And the whole colossal structure, together with the other rigs and the rest of the Flight Academy had been drilled, hammered and blasted out of the bedrock several hundred feet beneath the desert sands of New Mexico near the ruins of a city that, in the prehistory of the Federation, had been known as Alamogordo.

  Already rated above-average, Brickman knew every twist and turn of the Snake Pit. He knew he would make it through to the finish line, out-performing the rest of the senior year in the process. But that wasn’t enough. Brickman was intent on gaining the maximum possible points.

  That was the difficult part. It meant his performance had to be faultless. Not only on the Snake Pit but on all the other rigs and flight simulators too. For Brickman was not only aiming to finish top of his class; he wanted to rack up a perfect score. Something no wingman had ever achieved in the hundred year history of the Academy.

  Fate had ordained that the graduation date of Brickman’s class coincided with his seventeenth birthday and the one hundredth anniversary of the Academy. The traditional passing out parade in which the senior third-year cadets were awarded their wings was scheduled to be part of the celebrations. When he had learned of this providential conjunction upon his enrolment as a Freshman, Brickman had determined to provide the Academy and his guardians with something extra to celebrate.

  Steven Roosevelt Brickman. The first double century wingman. Leader of the class of 2989 with a ground-flight test score of two hundred and winner of the coveted Minuteman Trophy – awarded on graduation for the best all-round performance while under training.

  Br
ickman paused as he reached the access door to the Snake Pit, took several deep, calming breaths, checked the alignment of the creases in his blue flight fatigues, then stepped through into the Rig Supervisor’s Office and logged his arrival by feeding his ID sensor card into the checkpoint console at the door.

  As soon as he was cleared to enter the flight area, Brickman ran at the double towards the ramp where two Skyhawk microlites were being readied by six of the Academy’s ground staff. Bob Carrol, the Chief Flying Instructor, stood at the edge of the runway talking to another of the ten Adjudicators who had been sent down from Grand Central to conduct the flight tests and award the marks.

  Brickman thudded to a halt with perfect timing, cocked his elbow into line with his shoulder and saluted, his arm folding like a well-oiled jack-knife, fingers, hand and wrist rigidly aligned, the tip of his black glove exactly one inch from the bar and star badge on his forage cap. ‘Senior Cadet 8902 Brickman reporting for flight test, sir!’

  The Adjudicator gave Brickman a dry, appraising glance then lifted the cover of his video-pad and scanned the text displayed on the centimetre-thick screen beneath… He pursed his lips at whatever was written there, then nodded at Carrol,’ Ah, yes – your star performer.’ Then to Brickman he said, ‘Okay. Hear this. Take-off and landing will be from this runway. Your first turn will be to the left. The rest of your flight pattern on the downward and return leg will be indicated by course markers on each level. Lead time will be fifteen degrees of arc. Points will be deducted for course and altitude deviations, and–’ the Adjudicator paused,’ – you’ll be flying against the clock. Overall flight time will be counted in the final pass mark. Have you got that?’

  ‘Loud and clear, sir!’

  ‘Okay. You roll on the green in fifteen.’ The Adjudicator returned Brickman’s salute and walked away towards the Flight Control Room.

  CFI Carrol, a sandy-haired thirty-year-old leatherneck, eyed Brickman sympathetically. Like all the Academy staff, Carrol was a tough, demanding instructor but if he had allowed himself to show favour to a cadet, Brickman would have been the recipient. ‘I had a hunch you might draw the short straw. How do you feel?’