by T. C. Edge
The giant Brute is already moving as I complete the sentence, hurrying through the crowd. I want to follow, but find myself suddenly weak, my legs giving way. I drop to the earth, gasping, my head spinning. A soldier kneels down and hands me his water bottle, helping me gulp down the contents.
It refreshes me, clears the mud from my head. I climb back to my feet, searching for the commander. There are hundreds of soldiers here now, rushing around and tending the wounded. I hunt through the throng, asking to be directed to the senior officer. A young woman, her face ashen and eyes stark, answers.
“He’s there…right there,” quivers her voice.
I follow her shaking finger, and see a host of soldiers lying to one side. Some are still, maybe dead, maybe unconscious. Others are being hastily tended by a series of medics, wounds wrapped and treated before they’re hoisted into vans and sent back to the core of the city.
And looking upon the mess of bloodied soldiers, I see one man I know well. A man with a patch over his right eye. A man who had been leading the defence in the west after Commander Burns’ departure to the HQ.
A man who, right now, is lying completely still…
I stagger towards him, and fall to my knees.
“Rycard…Rycard,” I say.
I shake him, and nothing happens. I blink the tears away and look over his body. His lower left leg is missing, torn off at the knee. It’s wrapped up tight, the stump soaked red.
I shake him again.
“Rycard…”
Nothing.
My eyes blur, my vision affected. My breathing grows short, and my cheeks grow wet. I see two men coming from the side. They kneel and lift him, one taking his shoulders, the other gently holding his remaining leg.
“Is he…OK? Is he…alive?” I sniff.
I get no answer. My voice finds no space amid the din, the men rushing off with his body and out of sight. I look back at where he lay, at his blood soaked on the road, trickling off and joining with so many others, like tiny tributaries amassing at a great river.
And seeing it, I answer my own question.
No, he’s not alive.
Yes, Rycard is dead.
282
Grief and mourning require time and space to think. I have neither right now.
I take a final look at the gathering blood, and the sea of injured soldiers, and then turn away. It will do me no good contemplating the dead. Not at a time like this.
Resuming my hunt for the gate commander, I battle towards the little communication centre erected to one side. Inside, I find several technicians speaking into radios, hastily updating HQ on the current state of play. I rush at one of the men.
“Are you getting through?! Is the signal working?!”
He looks up at me and nods, still chattering down the line. On the other end, I think I hear a voice I hold dear.
I snatch the radio right off the man.
“Adryan…Adryan, is that you?!”
The technician tries to grapple the radio back. My death stare is enough to stay his hand.
“Brie!” comes my husband’s voice. “Is that really you? What are you doing at the western gate?!”
“Fighting,” I say. “Holding the line. Outer Haven is lost, Adryan. The Cure are going to start sieging the wall at any moment.”
“Yes, yes I know. Our radio transmissions have been improving. We’ve worked through the problems. Is Zander with you?”
“He was,” I say. “He’s coming your way. He’s got an injury to his flank, and needs blood. Do something for me, please…arrange for a medical team to see to him immediately.”
“Of course, of course. I’ll have them waiting for when he arrives.”
“Thank you,” I breathe. “It’s…it’s mayhem here, Adryan. Have you heard from our scout?”
“Wilson? Yes, he managed to get through only recently. This new force, it’s large, Brie…too large. He said he saw them on his way to the REEF. The Cure must have sent for backup after we disabled their sonic machines and took out the Elementals. This isn’t just another battalion, it’s an entire reserve army.”
“I figured,” I pant. “We misheard Wilson, but it gave us just enough time to mobilise the retreat. We’ve lost some here, but have hundreds of soldiers behind the wall. The Cure appear to be holding back now, away from our main guns. They’ll most likely test us for weaknesses as they did with the perimeter wall. It’s only a matter of time before they break through.”
“We’re devising plans for that now. Commander Burns and Colonel Hatcher are in discussion. We could do with your brother’s input when he arrives…and yours. You should come back here, Brie. I…I want you back here.”
I shut my eyes, and firm myself up.
“I will, I’ll come back soon. Just…take care of Zander for now. Patch him up. We need him back.”
“OK. Be safe out there, Brie…as safe as you can be.”
“I’ll do my best, promise.” There’s a short silence on the line. I can hear how hectic it is in the background, just as it is here. “Adryan…”
“Yes, Brie?”
“I just. I wanted to say…just in case…”
“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t think like that. You’re going to be fine, do you hear me? You’re going to live long and happy when all this is done. You’re going to…”
“I love you.”
My voice cuts through his, my words drawn up through need. I have to say them. I need to. I may not get another chance. I may never see him again.
Again, the background noise grows, and the radio goes quiet. And then I hear the words I want, the words I need.
“I love you too, Brie,” he says tenderly. “Please…come back safe. Please…”
I can hear his voice threatening to crack. And in doing so, my emotions start to swell. There’s so much in my head, too much. I have to get off the line.
“I will. Promise,” I say. “I’ll see you soon. Adryan. I’ll see you soon…”
I click the radio off, and plant it down hard on the flimsy table set up in the comms centre. The technician marches back towards me and snatches it back up, resuming his duties. I stand for a moment, lost and alone, not knowing why the hell I want to stay here amid this turmoil.
I’ve done enough. Surely, I’ve done enough…
Right above my head, the guns boom loudly. They do the same a little down the line. I hear voices calling.
“More soldiers coming! Ready your fire! Give them hell!”
I look up, and see our soldiers on the top of the wall, all firing once more as a fresh surge of men advance on our position. I act immediately, casting away my doubts and fears, and hurry up to join them, drawing my pulse rifle, now recharged, back into my arms.
I drop into position behind the low wall at the summit of the battlements. I’m passed several looks, admiring looks, by the grizzled soldiers around me.
“Glad to have you with us, Brie,” says one closest to me.
Then he turns and starts to fire, his pulse rifle spitting green.
“Good to be here,” I whisper back, as I start firing too.
And I know, seeing these men, that I haven’t done enough. I’m still alive. I’ve got more to give…
The wave of soldiers come, but not in great numbers. They’re testing us, as I thought they would, and perhaps offering distraction too. From this high vantage, I can see much further now, see the utter devastation that the streets ahead have suffered. The dead are already rising, many Cure soldiers lost as they pursued us towards the gate. But now, beyond, their main army has withdrawn, moving out of range of our primary guns.
The fighting doesn’t last long. The men are few, and quickly eradicated. But just as they’re downed, a swell of noise spreads from the south, not too far away.
“They’re attacking the wall!” comes the call. “To the south. We need to displace!”
I look down and see men piling into trucks and cars and speeding to the south. I wait and list
en, expecting to hear the fixed gun placements thunder and boom. They don’t. The wall has many vulnerable points, areas the guns can’t reach or defend. Instead, little explosions fill the air, fizzing missiles hissing as they punch into the rock and try to break it down.
I hurry down, ready to rush off and join the fight further south. Then, more explosions pepper my ears, and I twist around in the opposite direction.
“To the north!” someone shouts. “Soldiers to the north!”
More men tumble into the remaining vehicles. This time, I’m with them, just another soldier amid the storm, rushed up the line to the sound of battle. We arrive within a minute, rushing out to find some of our soldiers pouring down from their positions at the northern gate.
As we hurry up to the top of the wall to rain fire on the enemy, I shout out to one of them, “Is the northern gate secure? Did the Cure send reinforcements there?”
“Er…no. It’s quiet there,” he tells me.
It’s no wonder. They must be targeting the western areas, only going a little north and south. It’s where their army came from after all.
Yet, as with the perimeter wall, they might just surround us and batter us from all sides eventually. Stretch us thin to ensure that, when they do make a breach, we won’t have our full count of soldiers amassed and ready to do battle.
Upon the wall, I help to fight them off again. They come in larger numbers here than at the gate, apparently aware that our main guns cannot reach them. From behind the buildings of Outer Haven, they take cover, firing their explosive projectiles at us from various vantage points, ripping chunks from the wall as they did at the perimeter.
I wonder whether they have more Elementals with them. Will one step forward, as he did beyond the southern perimeter wall? Will he draw up all debris and lay siege to the wall alone? Will he unleash his full charge, his full power, and split the wall apart, scattering our defence to the wind and opening a hole for his men to pour through?
If they have such a man remaining, he will have little trouble here, or anywhere else along the line. This wall, splitting Inner and Outer Haven, is smaller, thinner, and less durable than the wall that protects us from the outerlands. It will not be able to hold them off for long, and that is a fact none of us can deny.
So whether they have an Elemental or not, they will break through. It will happen soon, whether here or further to the south, or elsewhere along our lines. Their numbers have swelled as ours have been depleted. Our coordinated strike, which seemed to light up the embers of our impending victory, now seems a distant memory. Nothing but a minor delay to what appears, now, to be inevitable.
But we fight on. To the last man, and the last woman, we fight on.
So many here have families at the core. Husbands and wives, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters. Everyone has people dear to them, people they will die to protect. It is the collective will that will stay the tide, hold back the storm, for as long as is humanly possible.
Yet we have our limits. The soldiers are growing exhausted. Our ammunition stocks are growing low. The sense of panic is brewing, so many unaccustomed to this sort of relentless bombardment and unable to go on. As we lose soldiers to death, others are lost to madness. We are fighting a war on so many fronts. And each minute that passes, our grip begins to falter.
Moving along the line, going where the fighting is fiercest, I find myself passing the western gate once more. It’s quieter there now, most soldiers to the north or the south where the Cure can attack without fear of our main guns. I stop at the comms centre when I get a chance, desperate to hear news from the HQ.
I manage to get on the line with a technician back at the command centre. He patches me straight through to my grandmother as soon as he hears it’s me.
“Brie!” comes Lady Orlando’s voice down the line. “Get back here now!”
“Why…what’s going on?!”
“We need you here. Adryan told me you were staying out there. There’s no need, Brie. Outer Haven is overrun. The wall will not hold…”
“I know,” I cut in. “I’m right here, grandma. I know what’s going on.”
“Then…you know to return here right now. There’s no sense in you being there.”
“There is,” I say. “I’m helping. What can I do there?”
“You can survive. The fight will spread to the streets soon. We need to have our best soldiers here to protect the people. We will be setting the order to abandon the wall soon.”
“Abandon the wall? We can’t give in like that!”
“Brie! We have no choice. We’re not giving in. We’re trying to make sure as many people escape as possible…”
“Escape? What do you mean?”
“I mean, we’re going to plan B. The city is lost. There’s no hiding from that now. We need to begin moving the people out, and all convoys will need to be protected.”
“Out…but where? There’s nowhere to go out there.”
“There’s a world out there,” says Lady Orlando. “A whole world you don’t know about. Now come back immediately. Your brother needs you…”
“My…Zander,” I whisper, my twin storming back to the front of my mind. “How is he? Is he OK?”
“He’s looking good. His wound has been treated and he’s been given blood and fluids. He wants you back here, Brie. We all do. Please…please just return.”
I look around at the hurrying figures, still moving north and south from the western gate, still heading off to try to fight the Cure from the walls. None of them are being called back. What makes me special?
“I don’t want to leave the men,” I say after a pause. “I can’t abandon them.”
I hear my grandmother taking a calming breath.
“Brie, listen to me carefully. You are not abandoning anyone. The order to retreat is about to be set. There are several points along the wall that are about to fall. You will get your chance to fight again when the convoys leave. We need to draw the Cure’s attention away, to give the people a chance to evacuate. Now, do as I say, and get back to the HQ right now.”
Her words stiffen as she speaks. She’s not messing around anymore.
“But…”
“No buts! Find a car, and return immediately. That is an order, soldier.”
I hear the line click off. Her final command has given me no choice. I am a soldier, and I have to obey.
I take a final look at the men and women I’ve been fighting with, hurrying to the nearest point of attack. And with my head bowed low, I start hurrying away, back to the core of the city.
283
I don’t find a car to transport me until I’m about halfway towards the HQ.
For the first mile or so, I run, my Dasher powers now all but depleted, my body weighed heavy by weaponry and armour. I pass other soldiers, units beginning to take position back behind the front line along the major intersections through Inner Haven. As with the battle for Outer Haven, blockades are being manufactured to draw the Cure into the fighting. When the time comes.
I get a better impression of the battle as I press further towards the centre of the city. Behind me is where the fighting seems to be. Along the western front, where the Cure’s reserve army came from, all of their soldiers now appear to have gathered. The east is quiet, to my ears at least. It may just give us a chance to evacuate while the Cure are drawn to our remaining forces.
With my legs growing weary, I search for a vehicle to help return me to the HQ as quickly as possible. I see many of them, but mostly they’re heading west and not east, bringing any final reserve troops we have to the fighting, or otherwise moving soldiers from the quieter regions to where they’re needed most.
At one point, I think I spot the sight of animal pelts through a window, and in my head the jingling of fang necklaces echo. I wonder how many of Rhoth’s tribe got caught in the recent fighting. I imagine they must have got back past the wall, and Drum too. But what’s happened to them sin
ce? Have they been defending the battlements towards the south? Have they moved further towards the interior of the city to take up position at one of the blockades?
I look again at the truck as it passes, and hope that most of them are alive. And yet, I wonder too whether they know what they’re now facing. Have all our soldiers been told that the high command have determined the city to be a lost cause? Do they know that their job now is solely to draw the Cure’s army into a final bout, in order to give the civilians time to escape?
Most likely, they don’t. But if they did, they’d take up position anyway. There are few cowards here now. All those still dedicated to defending our lines appear willing to lay down their lives.
And Drum is included in that number. Ever since that fateful day in which he accidentally killed a man. A man who mocked him, and whose mocking words were given at such an unfortunate time. A time when Drum was so grief-stricken by the loss of his roommates, the deaths of Fred and Ziggy in the marketplace during one of the Fanatics’ attacks. Ever since that happened, and Zander and I saved him from death or reconditioning, he’s been living on borrowed time.
He’s changed, no longer the quiet, timid, oversized boy from the academy. He’s a soldier now, happy to give his life to save others. He considers his life to be one of service. He believes his sole purpose now is to make up for the life he took. And out here, in this city turned to hell, I can only imagine that he’s making up for it many, many times over.
And so, with thoughts of Drum and Rhoth, and West and the Fangs, and the many hundreds of other soldiers still holding the lines, filling my head, I press on. Away from them. Moving to the relative safety of the HQ, when all I really want is to be out there now, finding my friends, protecting them if I can, or else dying alongside them if I can’t.
Eventually, I come across a jeep heading east, moving back to collect more soldiers from the other side of the city. I jump in, hitching a ride as close as possible to the core, before taking flight again by foot, hurrying fast from the battle, in a bid to return to it as quickly as I can.
