Phantoms of the North: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No. 6) by Mainak Dhar

in ten minutes.’
    ‘Good, I am keen to hear what they
have seen in this so-called Wonderland.’
    Rashid was about to get on his
horse when The Khan stopped him.
    ‘There is something that troubles
you, Rashid. I have known you too long for you to pretend otherwise. What is
it?’
    Rashid hesitated, knowing that he
was signing the death sentence for the two scouts, but that was a preferable
outcome than bringing The Khan’s wrath down on himself.
    ‘My Khan, the scouts have brought
back a human captive. It seems to be one of our suppliers, one of the bandits
we have dealt with in the past.’
    A flash of anger passed through
The Khan’s mind, but then it was gone. The men would be dealt with, but first
he had to learn what they had seen. He dismissed Rashid and came down to join
his men, riding with them. After a few minutes, the two scouts came in, a
gagged and bound man tied and draped across the back of one of their horses.
The Khan called them over and asked for them to be given water before they
talked to him.
    The two men were averting his
gaze, knowing they had erred, and even before they got to their mission, one of
them pointed to the man strung up on the horse.
    ‘My Khan, we are hungry and we
came across this one. He and his fellow bandits refuse to supply us any more,
they are so afraid of that Alice and her armies. They are of no use to us as
suppliers, so they may as well become our supplies.’
    The Khan’s eyes bored into the man
and he looked away, and both men were silent. The Khan walked up to the captive
and inspected him.
    ‘He is healthy, and seems stout.
Someone take him away and prepare him. We can have a feast tonight.’
    The two scouts were looking at
each other, grinning behind their masks, relieved that their infraction had not
angered the Khan. That was when the Khan walked up behind one of them, grabbed
him from behind and broke his neck. As his lifeless body crumpled to the
ground, the other man fell to his knees, begging for mercy.
    ‘I only need one of you to report
what you saw. As for this fool—he broke our rules and came back bragging about
it. For years we have cultivated these bandits to work for us. Yes, they fear
this Alice, but now they will never work for us if they know we have turned on
them.’
    He grabbed the man by his
shoulders and raised him to a standing position.
    ‘You will live today. Now tell me
what you have learned about this Alice and what you have seen of their
defenses.’
    When the man had finished, The
Khan retreated to his tent to think through his course of action. He had
learned much about the armament and numbers of Wonderland, but importantly, he
had learned much about Alice. He knew that the strength of any army, and indeed
the roots of its weakness, lay in its leadership, much more than the number of
foot soldiers or weapons it could bring to bear. His men had interrogated a
bandit who had been a captive in Wonderland and had seen Alice up close, and
what he learned about her intrigued him. She was a warrior, but her strength
and success lay more than in just her prowess on the battlefield. She had
somehow been able to create a fully functioning society that integrated humans
and Biters. Her unique hybrid condition was part of it, but part of it was her
surrounding herself with men and women, and indeed a certain Biter with strange
ears, who seemed to be her core group, the group that kept Wonderland going.
    His men in contrast were fighters
and followers, the two qualities that had kept them alive and by his side so
long, but they were hardly the sort to discuss strategy with. The Khan allowed
himself a smile as he recalled the days before The Rising, when he and his
colleagues would talk dismissively of these tribal guerrillas allied to Al
Qaeda or the Pakistani Taliban and their crude fighting tactics. Pray and
spray. That was what they had called it, and at the time, The Khan had found it
funny, basking in the security and arrogance that