The Sheriff followed the tracks into town. At its edge he dismounted and entered the ring of yurts on foot. As he walked forwards, people shrank away. If they were in groups, they dispersed. If they were alone, they ran.
By the time he reached the yurts and looked inside, all were empty.
That did not matter. His law may have carried no power in Sonton, but his voice did.
One person lingered in the Sheriff’s field of vision. A beekeeper, up on a mound overlooking the encampment, had been building a shelter for her hives and thought herself beyond his reach. He wet his lips and spoke to her.
“We saw the smoke,” he said. The force of the sheriff’s voice knocked over a stack of hives. The clay pipes broke when they fell at the beekeeper’s feet. She did not look at the Sheriff and did not answer him. She ducked her head low and disappeared behind the ridge.
The Sheriff stood alone and twisted a lock of his long hair between his fingertip and thumb. The Order of Fury had tolerated this tiny Republic for a generation. It had spread in all directions out of Mlunplin Town and taken in refugees from the entire island until much of the Realm of Ponmom came to be outside of the Order’s influence.
The Republic wanted to be ignored by the Order, and the Order was content to ignore it—at least, until the Brothers had seen the chimneys, and then the Worm.
At that point, it was past time to bring the Republic to heel.
The Sheriff returned to his battleforged camel and filled her feedbag. He fastened her ear protectors and adjusted his necklace. He turned his voice up as loud as he dared—a warning would do.
He walked to the spot he perceived to be the nucleus of the village of Sonton: a circle of chopped stumps attached around an iron stove. He spoke.
“I hold a warrant from the Order. I will inspect the Iron Worm.”
There were hundreds of Free Republics that clung like lichen to the edges of the world. They filled up its cracks, floated off shore, or burrowed underground. They were made of many shapes and ideas, but all had this in common: they stood where the Orders did not.
The Free Republic of Ponmom was one of the more stubborn stains.
The Sheriff’s voice whirled through the town. It turned its thin soil into a scouring wind. When the echoes faded and the dust settled, Ouma Tau appeared. She had been tanning a yak hide, so was covered in grime.
The Sheriff had never seen a face so wrinkled.
“In a man’s greeting lies his character,” said Ouma. “You are a shameless pig. A nuisance. And you have upset the bees.”
The Sheriff touched his necklace. He spread his voice only a little further than his throat could project. “I would say the same about the greeting given to me by the people of Sonton. I saw no Banner to welcome me to your House.”
“There is no Banner here. There is no House, just people,” said Ouma.
“Those people have not answered my salutation. They have turned away from me,” said the Sheriff.
The old woman laughed, and the sound was more mocking than amused. “The people cannot see a guest that is carrying Calamities!” she said, waving a finger across the Sheriff’s body. “The chain around your throat, your armour, your bludgeon. Even your camel might harm us, I think!”
She waved in the direction of the beast, who was still chewing her way through her feedbag.
“Calamities like these,” Ouma continued, “we can do without. There are calamities everywhere else in the world, but not here. We have no Order so we have no Calamities. This keeps fortune on our side. Surrender yours, or leave.”
The Sheriff rankled at the use of the foreign word but recognised the tone of authority that carried it.
“You are the leader here?” he asked, his voice lowered a notch in respect.
“I tan the hides, I split the hives, I spoil the children,” Ouma said, gazing abstractedly at the hills.
The Sheriff spat. The dry ground should be thankful for the moisture. His patience was exhausted.
“But you are lying,” he said, marching past the old woman. “You have the Worm.”
She paused, gaze turning pensive. “The Worm is not a Calamity,” she called, and started after him.
He was surprised at how easily she matched his pace. He was heading downhill towards the valley. “You don’t have the expertise to identify one. They can take many guises,” he snarled.
“The Worm is not one,” she repeated, raising her voice.
Their walk had gathered some attention. The Sheriff saw men appear at the tops of the cliffs. He measured the distances, turned up his voice, and spoke three words at each of them, “On your way.”
The words ballooned inside their bodies. They doubled over with pain and fell, gasping, to their knees.
“You are so frightened by my grandchildren that you’ve hurt them.” Ouma chuckled. “How worthy your magic is!” The Sheriff turned to her and spoke another word. “Comply.”
Ouma crumbled like a log burned through. She coughed and coughed.
Over her gasping breaths, the Sheriff said, “I have seen the smoke of the Worm. I have heard its cries. You people claim to forsake the magic, but you crawl back to it like a dog at the back door.”
Ouma said nothing; the wind was gone from her. She shook her head, but even this somehow had a hectoring tone to it.
He would not be underestimated or mocked. “Since you are now making use of magic, your land must respect the authority of the Order. Without our guidance, you will misuse it. People will be hurt and killed. We have seen it happen again and again.” He gathered himself, then paused. “Cover your ears, grandmother,” he said to her.
Then, through his necklace, he addressed all who were hidden.
“This House is now under the protection of the Order of Fury. We will send a Brother with a Banner and we will build an abbey for him. You will feed him and respect his wishes, for they are the wishes of the Order. Any act against your Brother will be an act against the Order.”
The Sheriff’s hair settled again around his shoulders. His pulse was racing from the exertion of pushing the necklace that far. He had no doubt that the people of Sonton had heard his voice. Since they had heard it, they were now subject to the law.
He was satisfied.
He helped Ouma Tau to her feet. “It will be for the best,” he said, with his plain voice. “Our Brother and our Banner will stand guard against others who would use the Relics to conquer you. You won’t have to be afraid of outsiders.”
“You should be afraid of us,” said Ouma, scowling.
The Sheriff looked at the old woman, who was barely standing. He looked at the grandchildren who had tried to attack him and who were staggering off to hide again. He looked around at the frightened faces peering out from behind trees and yurts.
He allowed the old woman her pride and waited until she was back on her feet under her own power. Then he held her small, brown hand in his. “Please show me the Worm,” he asked.
She led him towards the coast and into the valley. This is where he had seen the smoke rise. The mage from his office had heard the breathing come from within the mountain. He wondered how the people had caught the Worm and how they controlled it.
In the valley was a well-worn path leading towards the entrance of a coal mine that had been cut into the cliff face. The mines in Sonton provided coal for much of the Realm. In the civilised world there was little need for the black stone but the Republics were especially reliant on it as a source of heat and fuel.
The pair walked on the path, overshadowed by the cliffs. The Sheriff could smell the sea air.
“We’ve already had one,” muttered Ouma Tau.
“What was that, grandmother?” asked the Sheriff. He’d thought she’d be silent unless questioned now that she’d experienced what his voice could do. He had gone easy on her—sometimes he had been forced to use his words lethally, to rupture lungs and turn brains into jelly.
“When I was a girl, we had a Brother. He lived just there, in a fine abbey. The tallest building for miles.” She pointed at an indistinguishable scrap of land. “When we decided we wanted no part in the Order, he went over the cliff, just there.”
It was clear enough what she was pointing at then. The Sheriff gave a short, ugly laugh. There was much to doubt about the story, and he admired the old woman for her spirit. He knew what the repercussions would be for a House that killed its attendant Brother. Even one Advocate of the Order could lay this Realm to waste. The leaders would be culled with the cattle. The crops and the dwellings burned. He estimated that he could do all of that here, single-handedly, in an afternoon.
Why she persisted in her lies, he couldn’t fathom.
He whistled as the entrance to the mine loomed closer. He could hear something coming from within. “That is the breathing of the Worm?” the Sheriff asked.
Ouma Tau nodded.
He activated his breastplate, which shone a bright beam ahead of him. He entered the mine and Ouma Tau lingered behind. The Worm’s breathing was short and deep. The Sheriff had not heard anything quite like it.
His suspicions about the Worm were confirmed—it was a massive beast. Had it been made artificially large by a Relic, or was it a demon of an unknown nature? Had the people here captured it somehow or were they in its thrall?
His spirit sang. He looked back at the entrance to the mine, where the frightened silhouettes of villagers had started to collect around Ouma. They formed a beast of their own, a useless lump of coal stuck in the mouth of the valley.
He was not afraid, so he pressed on. His voice could tame any monster. The larger the foe, the more pressure he could exert on its innards. He adjusted his necklace to a suitable power for a stunning blow.
The breathing was deafening now.
The light from his breastplate caught a moment of movement. A blurred set of spikes, attached to a whirling mass, was coming close as if held by runners.
The Sheriff had all of half a second to inspect the Worm before it hit him.
His armour took the brunt of the impact, and its beam was extinguished. The Sheriff was carried backwards by the blow. The Worm ran along with him, dragging him by the sleeve of his coat as it galloped towards the mine’s entrance.
The incessant panting of its lungs filled his head. A rectangle of daylight sped towards him, and he calculated the unearthly speed at which the Worm was lunging out of its lair.
He had mere seconds to free himself.
He yanked his sleeve out, but the Worm would not permit him to leave; it snapped its jaws around his hair and pulled with a leaden millstone grasp. The Sheriff found his footing along the floor of the mine and brought his knife up with his free hand, severing his hair in a quick motion that the Worm didn’t seem to catch. It ran ahead, still clutching his shorn hair in its claws. He ran beside it to slow his momentum and keep from falling. The front of the Worm punched into the light while its long body shuddered by him.
He had the span of a few footsteps to try and make sense of the Iron Worm’s nature. It was indeed made of iron, but the idea of it being a beast fell short. It had no head to speak of, and where he had expected to see the clattering legs of a centipede, there were small wheels. It was segmented, but in the same way a series of wagons were hitched together, rather than any creature he’d seen before. As it disgorged from the mine’s entrance and headed for the valley, he saw that the Iron Worm had many containers trailing behind it. They were full of coal, being carried like hard eggs on the back of a frog.
The Sheriff stood at the opening of the mine and adjusted his necklace. His confusion hardened to anger. He had gone under the earth to liberate a town from a demon but, instead of glory, a contraption for hauling coal had nearly taken his scalp. He would slay this beast that was never a beast with one almighty shout.
Two men in veils appeared at his left and threw a heavy, clay pipe at him. It glanced off his side and broke on the ground. The two men were already in a run when the Sheriff turned to them. Another pair, carrying another pipe, appeared at his right—but this time, he was prepared. He saw the ambush and pulled at a toggle on his necklace, ready to strike them both dead for this childishness.
A cacophony of buzzing filled the air. The sheriff whirled toward the noise, then took a step back at the sight.
From within the broken clay pipes, packed full of beehives, swarmed thousands upon thousands of angry bees.
One of the bees was sucked into his incoming breath and landed on the upper part of his trachea. This bee panicked and stung the inside of his throat.
The Sheriff coughed, which sent a thunderclap into the cliffside and crushed the bee. He choked on the bee’s carcass as her sisters fell upon him with vengeance.
The Sheriff’s cries and splutters were bulldozers that carved through the stone of the valley. The veiled men who had thrown the pipe moved through the cloud of bees and removed the Sheriff’s necklace. The Sheriff began to enter anaphylaxis, unable to resist the disarmament.
The men brought the necklace to Ouma Tau, who was standing a safe distance away. With the Sheriff dead and the bees settled down, her grandchildren collected his body, along with his breastplate. Ouma Tau led them to the top of the cliff and they threw the entire collection of things into the sea.
They let the Sheriff’s camel go. Relieved of her saddlebags and harness, she was sent off to wander wherever she wished.
The Iron Worm went on its way out of Sonton. It pulled its train of coal to Mlonpon, then on to the Mlunplin. With each delivery, the Realm of Ponmom became a little less dependent on the Order for heat and light and food.
The tracks that the Worm dug into the ground formed a network of arteries, carrying the lifeblood of the Free Republic to its furthest reaches.