“Ignore them.” Sethlan already had his pistol out. He wouldn’t suffer any more antagonistic Haphan civilians, but it was a different matter to gun down an officer from his own unit.
“The ancestors are reaching out,” Pleural added. “It’s not like we imagine. It’s unwholesome.”
The soldiers surrounding them quivered in unison, and then shook. All of them at once? Sethlan knew he couldn’t take them all.
After a tight moment, where Sethlan wondered who to shoot first and which way to dodge, the soldiers simply bowed their heads. They turned to the right and ambled in circles.
~Ha!~ said the Voice, with deep satisfaction. ~Thank heavens you Tacchies have no brains. You’re all overloading and giving out before Lucky Strike can properly subvert you. Whoever polluted your people thought of everything.~
There is nothing good about this, Sethlan said.
~They’ll recover. But look, here are more Haphans bent on terror.~
The civilians chasing him were all manner of clumsy and slow, but Sethlan would be overwhelmed if he didn’t move. Their dead eyes and complete indifference to pain unnerved his men, but on the positive side, the regular Haphan soldiers had stopped sniping them, for fear of hitting the civilians.
“On me!” Sethlan rushed into the building, leaving Hemes to organize a defense of the door with a handful of functional boots. The remaining Observers fanned through the offices, either rooting out and disarming hidden Haphans or gunning them down, depending on their mood. This led to ever-wider circles of confusion and a distinct lack of confidence among the captured, who sometimes turned violent again after surrendering.
Sethlan was climbing a back stairway when he came across a soldier of the Third Skirmishers, circling the landing. This was odd because he knew the Third was at the front. There was clearly fighting above him, but it wouldn’t be Haphans shooting at themselves. Or would it?
“Hello, Flensers?” he called. “Third Skirmishers?”
The soldier immediately stopped circling and gave a challenge. “Make no move. Unless you are already crazy, of course, in which case you can disregard my instructions and I’ll understand. But if you’re not crazy, tell me your unit.”
“314th Observers,” Sethlan said. “Haut Captain Semelon. We are liberating this building.”
“Then we’re pleased to see you.”
Sethlan was waved up by another soldier in full battle press. This one looked utterly uncomfortable to be off the front and fighting in an office building. He led Sethlan up two more landings and then pointed at a fat old reptile of a Tachba in the uniform of a mess hall cook. The man squatted over a struggling Haphan, doing some butchering. “Bucephalon!”
The old boss spat and stood. “This one is ancestored too. Find me a sane Haphan, you damned scrags! Someone who will talk about something other than killing Semelon.” He glanced at Sethlan. “Oh, the man himself. The one who let the Haphans steal our Queen. Seems like everybody is pissed at you, neh?”
“So you haven’t found Nana yet?”
“No. Better she had never been stolen.”
“She’s near the top, the floors used by Native Affairs,” Sethlan told him. He didn’t wait for a reply as he continued up, but he heard Bucephalon pass the information. The next two floors had already been liberated. The third was being taken by corpsmen from the 1241st Mobile Hospital. They had their shovels and a few handguns from the Haphans, and each cell door they opened emitted throngs of angry Southie prisoners. The corpsmen received far more damage than they dealt.
A full platoon of Flensers swept past Sethlan and methodically bulleted the Southies. They beat the local Sesserans—who could be told apart by the finery of their clothing, and their smaller size—back into their cells with the stocks of their rifles, and if that didn’t work, they simply reversed their weapons and shot those prisoners too. There was soon a continuum of confusion, as the hospital corpsmen rushed ahead to open cell doors before the Flensers were quite ready.
~There’s no way to get them to stop killing, is there?~ the Voice asked quietly.
Sethlan didn’t bother answering. He stepped around the piles of struggling humanity with a growing disquiet. Only a few more doors, and if Nana wasn’t behind one of them…
“She’s here!” came the shout behind him. The cell had looked empty when Sethlan passed, but the soldier behind him had stuck his head in to check the corners. Blood gouted from a long gash that went from ear to chin. “She’s in a bad mood!”
Sethlan knocked him out of the way and blocked the door so the soldiers wouldn’t swarm into the cell. Behind him, the fighting leveled off, the final cells forgotten.
Nana stepped out of the dark corner and into the light from the doorway. He took in her bare dirty feet, her narrow shoulders, her raised arms. Her hair seemed to glow, and her eyes were screwed up against the light. She looked so small.
“Nana, it’s me,” he said. “It’s Sethlan. Do you want to kill me?”
“Right now, or generally?”
“Did the ancestors talk to you?”
“Oh, them!” She snorted. She had a finger-knife in one hand, which she quickly hid again in her hair. “Someone talked to me in my mind, but I made them angry and they went away.”
“That’s Nana.” Sethlan half-lunged, half-sagged into her arms. She was cold and shivering. She clung to his shoulders like a drowning child.
In that moment, he could have let everything else go. Let me be through with it all; let me be through with war.
~Don’t promise the stars,~ said the Voice.
“We must get you out of the city,” he whispered. She went tense in his arms. “Everything has been done that can be done. The Haphans are running away and the front line is a shambles. The South will break through soon, if they haven’t already.”
He turned and found Bucephalon behind them. “We will need a conveyance. We have to get the queen out of here.”
“So says the haut captain,” Bucephalon waved a hand and one of his soldiers took off running.
“How did you know she was in this building?” Sethlan asked.
“Mmm?” Bucephalon had nothing but eyes for Nana. “We didn’t, we just hate this place. But your messenger, Sappa, is one of mine. After you went mad, stuffing purple plants into giant eggs, sparks in your hair, all the rest, he decided the old ways are best. He passed the word for a real leader and gave me enough information to come here.”
Nana entered the hallway and caused an uproar. Sethlan kept her cradled, even as the crush lifted his feet off the floor.
“A cheer for the queen!”
Nana wriggled out of Sethlan’s grasp and walked alone, but she was not overwhelmed by the press of bodies. The crowd in the hallway grew quickly, every face glowing with pride, joy, and even a possessive lust that Sethlan reluctantly recognized. She stopped momentarily next to the soldier with the long open wound on his cheek and apologized.
“I shall wear it proudly,” the soldier beamed, his voice breaking.
The man’s joy was so obvious that Sethlan felt it like his own. Even the collected soldiers, even the trench-hardened Flensers, smiled so that their faces would break.
Am I being jealous? Sethlan wondered. Is this how it feels?
~She’s yours,~ the Voice said impatiently. ~I know women. Trust me, I can tell.~
All these men, Sethlan thought. They love her like I do…
~They can’t possibly love her like you do, Sethlan, because they don’t know anything about her. To them, she’s a piece of wish fulfillment. And no, you’re not actually jealous. This is what you’re really thinking about:~
The scene unfurled into Sethlan’s mind, with the smells rolling in first. Lice powder, of all things. The warm humid air after a bath, and the taste of Spring Wine in his mouth. The utter quiet of having nothing that needed to be done. Nana perched naked on the bed in front of him, giving him a look that was equal parts embarrassment, concern, and fire. She said, “Are you think
ing of Nana’s body?”
Sethlan blinked in astonishment. I didn’t know you could do that. Do it again!
~No. You have to earn it.~
Hemes still guarded the building’s front entrance. When the crowd reached the door, he told Sethlan, “We got tired of shooting the Haphan soldiers, especially the ones that were merely hiding. I thought it would be kinder to shoot them all at once and also more frugal. They’re lined up against the wall with a repeater on them. Shall we send them home?”
Sethlan answered carefully. “They walk free, but don’t give them their weapons back.”
“Home it is,” Hemes nodded, relieved.
A tap on his shoulder. Diggery stood behind him, looking stiff and worried. “Which I have two of our friends hidden in the top floor. One is little Gawarty, the other is his sister.”
“I see,” Sethlan said. He raised his voice so everybody in the crowd would hear. “The Haphans go free. There is no more killing of Haphans today! But do not let them keep their arms. Pass the word to the Flensers and to Bucephalon.”
The order carried through the crowd with palpable relief. “Passing the word, and no more Happies plinked.”
Nana now stood in the Haphan command car, which was parked in the middle of the street. The car had some bullet holes but was heavily armored and a beaming Flenser corporal already had it running. Nana waved Sethlan over.
“Sethlan,” she said quietly, “please bring me to the front.”
“The front? No.”
“Bring me to the Southie army. They must be led. They must be led next, I mean. It’s all for nothing if the queen can’t get to them.” She saw his resistance, and shifted. “The queen asks you, Sethlan. Nana asks you, Briff asks you.” A brief self-conscious smile. “All of me asks you. I beg you.”
His heart flipped in his chest. “Never beg. Of course we will visit the front, it will be fine.” He glanced at the sky, not knowing what he was looking for (but the Voice seemed very interested in the clouds), and added, “Anywhere outside of Ville Emsa is preferable, as long as I’m with you.”
She laughed out loud at that, and laughed again when she saw his hurt expression. “Wipe that look off your face, Vercetorix, of course I’m laughing at you. I would simply die if you ever left my side again.”
The Flenser corporal leaned on the horn, which must have had some landing-day power-source because the volume alone pressed the crowd back. They had another moment of confusion when an Observer thought he should kill the driver for the noise. Bucephalon cracked the Observer over the head with the back of his cleaver, dropping him before he could aim his rifle.
In due time the car finally got underway, and the corporal took them up the street to the Sec Bellawa bridge. The Granta river sparkled in the late-afternoon sun, its usual level of sewage submerged by the cold.
On the other side of the bridge, it was much the same chaos as in the Haphan Quarter but the Sesserans wore it better. Civilians, namely the old, doddering, and half-wooden, hurried through the streets with their possessions on their backs. Carts filled with plunder were worried through the crowds. Soldiers rolled barrels of liquor down the street.
As the command car passed, horn bleating, they all turned and looked. Their faces shifted from confusion to joy as if they had been expecting the queen all along. The car turned onto Sell Street and blazed up the thoroughfare, gaining speed. A comet trail of cheers followed their passage.
“Let them cheer,” Nana giggled. “Don’t I deserve a good day?” She sank into Sethlan’s arms.
The car kept accelerating.
Buildings whizzed past.
The car hit a pile of wooden pallets and sent it spinning into the crowd. Tachba leapt out of the car’s path.
~Check the corporal,~ the Voice said.
“Service, helpie,” Sethlan snapped.
The corporal glanced back with a knowing, cynical look.
“I’m sorry, Eponymous,” he said to Sethlan, his voice flat and uninflected. “It has to end now, with you still locked inside that body. I must say, you were simply magnificent. More than I bargained for.”
~Stop him!~ the Voice screamed.
Sethlan released Nana and scrabbled for his revolver. The corporal accelerated wildly, yanking the wheel toward the upcoming train depot, which was built out of stacked granite boulders.
The sky went white.
The buildings around them turned incandescent.
The car swerved into a cart of baxxaxx carcasses and then deflected into the granite wall of the depot. Sethlan flew out of his seat clutching Nana tightly, knowing it was hopeless—
Then both of them were pressed back into the upholstery by an invisible hand. A black bubble encompassed the car. Its surface glowed with fractal patterns that lit the interior of the bubble.
What is this?
Even in the fractional moments before Sethlan could fully enunciate the thought, the Voice understood. ~A protective shield built into the car. Old technology. I’ll turn off soon.~
Indeed, the shield immediately disappeared. The front of the car was buried in the building, with its crumpled steel nose drawn up to the Flenser corporal’s chin like a blanket.
Gravity corrected itself, and the car pitched sideways, spilling Sethlan onto the cobblestone with Nana on top of him. He still had the pistol in his hand. He cocked it and turned it towards the corporal’s head.
The corporal twitched at the sound. “Don’t shoot, I’m back to myself again.” He cast around with eyes that were unseeing silvered blots. “Is the queen harmed? I should never…”
Sethlan remembered Nana and sorted through their limbs, trying not to be frantic. He finally turned her over and saw her blink at the sky.
“I am untouched,” she said. “Corporal, please don’t struggle. You kept me safe.”
“Oh, thank you.” The driver dissolved into tears. “It was something in my head. I shall never speak to the ancestors again, for that.”
The boy’s sobs turned into coughs. He couldn’t move, crushed as he was in the car’s metal. Blood spurted out of his mouth and didn’t stop.
Sethlan glanced around, and said, “One of the bombs went off.”
~And your low-function idiots apparently forgot to close its choke all the way. It blew out more than it blew up, but still, this is better than I’d hoped.~
It is?
The street was chaos. Everyone caught in the open during the blast had devolved into screaming red husks. Sesserans poured out of surrounding buildings and jumped to help.
A moment later, the shock wave from the explosion arrived like a giant invisible broom, and swept everyone down the street.
The command car’s shield kicked in again and blocked chaotic sight.
The shield only dropped the second time when the battery ran down. Sell Street was full of Tachba staggering to their feet. Even the red ones, burned by the flare of the atomic explosion, were rubbing their eyes as if just waking up. People who weren’t categorically dead, piled like driftwood against the door jams and stoops of the buildings, helped each other stand, leaning together for support.
Beside the car, a man flexed his fingers, fascinated as his skin flaked away like a crust of stale bread. Some Tachba were laughing and still others were unharmed, who had been inside when the main shock wave hit. The consensus of all the Tachba on the street was to break open a loose-rolling barrel and distribute cups, helmets, and even cloth hatfuls of bourbon up and down the street.
“They will be fine,” Sethlan whispered to Nana. “They will recover.”
~They will get sick from radiation poisoning and die,~ the Voice said.
Whatever that is, it has already been thought of by our original polluters. These Tacchies will have months of pain and then recover. That’s how it happens for everything you can imagine. It’s all been considered ahead of time. These people will suffer like you wouldn’t believe, because they should be dead. On the other hand, Pretty Polly will have them treat
it like one long holiday.
~If you say so,~ the Voice said, not entirely convinced.
Of course, the Southies will get them before any of this. We need to get moving again too. But how?
~As for that, Sethlan, use your eyes.~
Sethlan turned and saw the familiar hulking shape of the steam cart coming up Sell Street. Drivvy sat in the pilot’s turret, navigating with variable care through the morass of wounded and dead. He picked the destroyed command car out of the chaotic mess and bore toward them. “Hop on, little queen, I still can’t stop.”
“Soldier, we must leave now,” Sethlan told the Flenser corporal, but the boy was past hearing. Sethlan hoisted Nana into the steam cart, and swung himself onto the runner. Drivvy accelerated up the street.
“The front, Drivvy,” Sethlan said.
“Front of what?”
“The front line.”
Drivvy gave him a look.
“Mile seventeen,” Nana said.
Drivvy shook his head but said, “I know the place.”
22
Jalamadon
Jalam Jalamadon Of-Three wanted nothing more than to plow the staging area under with a rain of exploding skulls. He wanted an angry answer from the Haphan artillery and to be pushed off by small arms fire so he could circle and strike again. He wanted Sesserans throwing insults and oggies into his beautiful new trench. He would have even welcomed a unit of raw, unfit Haphans waving papers at him.
Something. Anything.
What he needed, he confessed, was some damned pressure in front of him, something to lean against. This emptiness was a damned insult, and it spread before him like a fat man’s belly, waiting to be split with a trench shovel, and where was the challenge in that? It was almost the last straw, after having entered the Northern trenches and seeing what the Haphans had done. They had killed the great beast of the front simply by pulling out all the blood.
There could be no doubting that man chair, though. It had been standing orders sent all the way from the bone pit in Gring, where the King of Kings ruled. Orders standing for a hundred years. The troops were to accept any parlay if it was offered correctly.
The Eternal Front: A Lines of Thunder Novel (Lines of Thunder Universe) Page 48
