The Amtrak Wars: Blood River Read online

  The Amtrak Wars

  The Talisman Prophecies

  Book 4:

  Blood River

  PATRICK TILLEY

  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.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  A Note on the Author

  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 house-boat. 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 southwesterly direction, along the ragged forward edge of a massive blanket of grey cloud now advancing over Lake Mi-shiga from the north-west.

  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 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-cheeked 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 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 Iri 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.

  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 G
reat River’.

  Each resident would live with his family aboard a houseboat, smaller cousins of the three-storied steam-powered monsters that made the annual journey to Du-aruta. It was envisaged that the houseboats 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 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 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 hard ways – 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 charriots ‘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. 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 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 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 they 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 ironsnake by the advancing snow-cloud. 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 kami 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 sightin
g 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 ironsnake 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 brush.

  For ‘Buffalo Bill’ Hartmann, commander of The Lady from Louisiana, the word came in the form of a coded radio signal at 0625 hours Mountain Standard Time, some ten minutes before sunrise on the 12th November 2990. Hartmann was just easing himself out of his bunk when the VidCommTech on the redeye shift triggered the soft alarm bleeper in the headboard by his pillow. He looked across at the VDU above the small desk built into a corner of his private quarters and saw the screen fill rapidly with line after line of five letter code-blocks.

  Hartmann’s wagon-train, which had halted overnight seventy-six miles south of the Pueblo way-station, had been following a trail – once known as Highway 25 – that led down through navref point Trinidad and Raton, New Mexico and across the Canadian River before turning west to Roosevelt Field, the underground divisional base situated close to the long-vanished city of Santa Fe. Because the Federation maps of the overground were based on pre-Holocaust editions, urban areas, state lines and major highways had been retained as navigational reference points. So although the main part of the base was several hundred feet below ground, it was known by its composite title – Roosevelt/Santa Fe.

  There were ten such bases buried deep within the earth shield under or near major cities of the southern mid-west, the majority named after past Presidents of the United States: the headquarters of the Federation, Washington/Houston – known informally as ‘Grand Central’ or Houston/GC, Johnson-Phoenix, Reagan/Lubbock, Nixon/Ft. Worth, Eisenhower/ San Antone, Truman/Lafayette, Le May/Jackson, Lincoln/ Little Rock and Grant/Tulsa. The latest, still under construction, was Monroe/Wichita.