The Modern World

by Steph Swainston

  You say that Lightning is cold and distant. My dear, nothing could be further from the truth! He is passionate in the extreme! He must hide from his passions because they’re so strong. I could give plenty of examples, but I only have time to tell one, a secret to which Lightning never refers, and the other Eszai are too polite – or afraid – to mention.

  Eighteen nineteen was a year in which everything changed. It was the year after Jant joined the Circle. Lightning was married and widowed in the same night, and his grief for Savory threw him into an almost catatonic state.

  There had been no letters from Micawater. I taught doctors in the university. I sat in my room and read books. I did my daily rounds of the general hospital and came home tired but only in body; I was wondering how Lightning was. He was missed in court and at the front, at the King’s table and in the hunting stables. He had sequestered himself, to the exclusion of the real world. I am very much of the real world and, as his closest friend, I decided to pay him a visit.

  Eighteen nineteen passed into eighteen twenty. On a freezing January night I arrived at your father’s palace to find the Lake Gate locked. The stone winged hounds stood rampant on the gateposts, rain dripping from their paws. I peered through the fine drizzle, but saw no lights shining in the bulk of the palace beyond the river.

  I left my coach and followed the estate wall in the dark, until I came to the tradesmen’s little arched entrance. I hurried through and across the soaking lawns. I passed the grand staircase and instead knocked on the door of the kitchens in the basement.

  Lightning’s steward brought me in and gave me supper. As well as his white apron, he wore a black crepe armband. He gathered a candelabra from the dresser and took a taper from the stove, talking all the while. He bent close to light the candles and whispered, ‘M’lord scares us. He sits alone for days, no meals, no sleep. He doesn’t bother to open the curtains and we don’t dare light the lamps in Main. Doctor, he’s wound up in himself and the manor go hang. Thought it best to warn you.’

  *

  He guided me, up out of the Covey cellars and through the silent, unlit palace. I think even you would find it discouraging, the building so majestic I felt it extending on both sides of me as we ascended to the main floor. The steward pressed on, past the drawing rooms.

  Mourning cloths covered all the statues in the niches, reducing them to featureless, barely human shapes. The portraits had been turned to the wall; their blank backs faced us. I wondered at them, when there had never been any changes in your father’s house before; now I believe he wanted to rid himself of the mute, accusing glare of his ancestors.

  The rooms leading off from the corridor were in impermeable darkness, but when light from the candelabra flickered in I glimpsed the furniture and objects of virtu standing in shades of grey. Dust sheets had been thrown over them, as when the servants expect Lightning to be absent for years on business. The chandeliers hung in thick wraps. Black linen masked the deep-framed mirror in the salon. The great gold clock had been deliberately stopped.

  The ceilings may have been painted by the world’s greatest masters, but we walked past like thieves without looking up. A glimmer of candlelight shone under the door to the dining hall. The steward hesitated and looked at me anxiously. I nodded to reassure him; he gave me the candelabra and showed me through, then bowed and made a hasty retreat.

  Lightning sat at the very end of the long table, halfway down the hall. He was leaning forward with his head down, resting in the crook of his arm. His reflection was blurred in the polished marble.

  He was not aware of my presence. He picked an orange desultorily out of a bowl with his free hand and rolled it down the table without looking up. It rolled through the small gap between the legs of the silver centrepiece, out the other side and on for another five metres until it dropped off the end of the table beside me.

  I put the candelabra down but Lightning did not acknowledge me. He picked another orange and sent it trundling straight down the middle of the table, through the centrepiece.

  He was wearing a silk dressing gown and, over it, a very dirty and bloodstained Cathee plaid. He had wound it around his waist and over one shoulder with an automatic gesture from back when he used to wear a toga.

  The rear of the hall was invisible in the gloom. I looked past Lightning, and at the edge of the darkness stood his grand piano, wreathed in paper music. Its keys were smeared thickly with dried blood.

  The centrepiece was the same then as now, the small statue of a girl reclining on a couch. Lightning rolled another orange between its legs with an accuracy that was both considerable talent and long, long practice. The orange fell off the end of the table and joined several others on the carpet.

  ‘Talk to me,’ I said, but the room was so sombre it came out as a murmur. I pulled up a chair and sat down. His breath misted the table top. I touched his arm. ‘Come on, Saker. Speak to me.’

  ‘That chair … is two hundred years old.’

  ‘I’m not going to break your chair.’

  He said nothing else.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I was married …’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘I was …’

  ‘Saker …’

  ‘… Married.’

  ‘I really think –’

  ‘Do you really? Leave me, Ella, please.’

  He was still looking away from me. I put my hand to his cheek and turned his head. He complied, though his eyes were blank.

  I said, ‘I’m –’

  ‘Going to leave me alone?’

  ‘Saker, please tell me the matter.’

  ‘Savory was killed. I tried to shoot the man but I … I missed my shot … I missed.’

  ‘It’s been three months,’ I said gently.

  ‘Three months is nothing. Nothing.’

  ‘Long enough for Challengers to prick up their ears.’

  ‘Challengers,’ Lightning sighed. ‘How you worry me. My heart is torn from my body and I’ll never heal. Ever. No matter how long I live. I weep every day. Savory was real, she was strong. In an ugly, unworthy world I had seen a hundred thousand and found just one to love … And everything I’d been through seemed worth it.’

  His washed-out voice continued ‘ … When I close my eyes I see images of her. Smiling in the village. Shooting at the butts. My mind flicks through still pictures shockingly quickly, as if I’m constantly waking from sleep … It seems odd that I was really in Cathee.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How could Savory have come from among such a people? They … I should … well, in a hundred years the birds will have eaten them every one …’

  For all my fourteen centuries I hadn’t lived long enough to know what to say. I tried, ‘You’re missed at the Castle.’

  ‘Already?’ He looked away abjectly. ‘I feel that if just one more thing goes wrong, everything will fall apart. Just one tiny thing and I’ll go mad. There were hundreds of things I should have told her and never had the time.’

  ‘I’m sure she already knew. Sentiments sound crude when voiced, precious when understood in silence.’

  ‘Oh, Ella. She was perfect, and I’m such a fool.’

  ‘You are no fool.’

  ‘Maybe I have been … but now I have some of her blood in me. I can carry it for the rest of immortality.’ He began to stroke his palm.

  ‘Let me see your cut.’

  He extended his hand to me and opened it. I saw the wound shining, encrusted with dried blood. He had kept it open to the white fan of bone.

  So, Cyan, you must see Lightning as a person, not just as your father. There is no point in thinking about death because no amount of thinking will arrive at an answer. He had to return to the Castle. He still has not properly recovered from Savory but the Circle needs him. The Kingdom of Awia needs him, too; who’s to say that without Lightning’s generosity and sense of order their aristocracy wouldn’t have dissolved into something akin to the pack of
wolves who run Morenzia.

  Cyan, I must go now. I have been writing this letter in between giving orders to prepare for tomorrow’s advance. I apologise for my deteriorating handwriting: it is about four a.m.

  The Eszai and soldiers will be exhausted for days after this – I have seen men in full armour come in off the battlefield and sleep where they fall. For twenty-four hours straight they’re even oblivious to the cries of the wounded and nothing rouses them except extreme physical danger. So, Cyan, if nothing seems to be happening directly the dam gates open, and if Jant doesn’t visit you, be patient.

  I shall give this letter to him now and go to check the preparations in the hospital.

  Yours with love,

  Rayne

  *

  I collected the letter from Rayne with a stack of last-minute dispatches. The rest I gave to my couriers to deliver.

  Rayne’s scale of organisation was incredible, and only one part of the preparations heaving the town into action. She had called all her surgeons and doctors drafted with the rest of the fyrd and given them their chain of command. Anyone else in the fyrd who had medical knowledge – first-aiders and nurses – reported to the doctors.

  She was preparing to take over the hall as well as the hospital and tavern, because as soon as San is out of the hall tomorrow morning it will be the overspill for intensive care. The medical supplies had been divided into each site and guards kept a sharp eye on them.

  Her hundreds of stretcher teams had received their orders. She was stocking the two enormous pavilions inside the canvas city’s gate to be used as triage. Dressing stations were being set up on the road behind the troops, as the battalions were already starting to assemble. She had girls at every station to count the casualties coming in, or record dog tags and remove the dead.

  The dawn air was cool and fresh. The first light of a new day rose pale gold on the horizon. A last word with the Emperor as the Imperial Fyrd were arming and I swept up into the air. One hundred and fifty thousand men were marching out of town to take up their positions.

  I helped direct each battalion into the enormous formation. From the air, the ground filled with men like a fluid jigsaw, pouring into squares of colour. The battle array was one of our many familiar standard plans – Insects are predictable so we have honed the perfect ways to face them in different situations. But this was on a massive scale, taken to an extreme. We had never fielded anything like these numbers before. The front of the host was three kilometres long. It was incredible, just incredible.

  I was busy keeping the multitudes in line, with some difficult flying between the enormous host, the town and the canvas city. While one battalion was being eased into place, the next was lining up behind it, then decanted up along the flank to fill their patch. I ordered, threatened and encouraged the wardens depending on their personality. I wove an aerial web linking the Eszai to one another. In the distance I could always see the lake and the dam. The lake was silted and filthy, coffee-coloured brown, with fuliginous shapes and rafts of detritus bobbing in it like broth.

  Sirocco the Javelin Master’s ranks were filling in behind Lourie’s pikemen. The Javelin Master arranged his battalions with great expertise so, while the last ranks were aligning, the front didn’t lose coherence. I had a spare second, so I swept away to the edge of the field, and Cyan’s peel tower.

  The shutters were hooked back wide. Cyan was leaning out, her bare shoulders high as she propped herself with straight arms on the ledge. She was watching the movement of people on the entire ground: from the fresh earth embankments of the canvas city into the extreme distance the road was solid with tight companies of lancers trotting past archers on foot, trailed by dogs pulling diminutive arrow carts, whole divisions of infantry sitting on the verge awaiting their turn to march.

  I dropped down, feet together, onto the plank. The draught of my wings tangled Cyan’s hair.

  ‘What do you think?’ I leant back, sweeping my arm at the colourful, clinquant steel expanse of troops behind me.

  ‘It’s exhilarating! The Empire’s sheer might.’

  I nodded. ‘Here’s a letter from Rayne.’

  A gust of wind snatched it out of her hand, but I caught it. ‘Don’t drop it! And for god’s sake don’t let anyone else read it. If I were you, I’d burn it when I’ve finished with it.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Cyan.

  I boinged up and down on the end of the plank. ‘I just imagine it’s full of Rayne’s advice. You don’t necessarily have to listen to her. Other people’s advice is from their own experience and you won’t reach your full potential following it.’

  ‘Not more advice.’ Cyan gave a mock grimace. She shrugged and her ruby pendant rolled down the cleft of her breasts in the bodice.

  I pointed at the dam. ‘Watch for the great wave when we open the gates!’

  ‘Will you come back and tell me the news?’

  ‘Your wish is my command!’

  ‘I wish that was always the case.’

  I grinned at her and raised my arms, bouncing on the end of the board. Two more jumps, higher, and I sprang up, arced out backwards, hugged in my legs and described two perfect somersaults.

  Falling high above the road, I stretched out my arms in a swallow dive. I opened my wings and curved out over the soldiers’ heads, gliding so fast I didn’t have to beat my wings once.

  CHAPTER 21

  The five kilometres to the dam had never seemed so far, there were so many Insects scurrying about between us and the winch house. It would be hours before we could cut our way there and open the gates.

  Our skirmishing cavalry had been out since first light, preventing the more adventurous Insects getting too close to the mustering troops. The Ghallain prickers’ horses were skittish, being not used to Insects. The men were unruly, but disciplined by long experience working together. They dashed and wheeled in small charges, hurling javelins at attacking Insects. Those with the swiftest horses offered themselves as bait to break up larger groups, luring them in different directions, and their comrades swooped to surround them. Their seemingly effortless efficiency was a pleasure to watch. I swept over, hearing them calling scores to each other.

  ‘Thirteen!’

  ‘Fourteen! … Hey, Jant, away! You Eszai will get your turn later!’

  ‘You’re crazy, Vir Ghallain! There’s Insects enough for everyone here!’

  He laughed. ‘There won’t be when I’ve shown Summerday and Lowespass how real men can ride!’

  I shook my head and headed back to our lines, wondering how long he would wait before Challenging our new Hayl. The wind was beginning to shift to the south. Lightning would appreciate a good tailwind to add force to the arrows but it was also blowing our scent towards the swarm near the lake, stirring them up.

  The main force was drawing up into two deep blocks of roughly equal size, one about ten metres behind the other. The first block would have to break through the Insects, with the reserve formation offering support and engaging if those in front started to waver. In such a large force the Select units were interspersed with the inexperienced General Fyrd to provide an example and keep them fighting.

  The centre of the first body was a solid phalanx of pikemen led by Lourie, stationed astride the road to the dam. They stood sixteen deep and, once engaged, their lowered pikes would present an impenetrable forest of points to the Insects, who would simply impale themselves on the barbed shafts trying to get at the men. They wore greaves and breastplates but trusted in the six metres of ash and steel they wielded to fend off Insects better than any shield. Behind them came a triple rank of javelin-throwers commanded by the Javelin Master, in their front line. They would hurl their missiles over the heads of the spearmen should they be hard-pressed by Insects. They were unarmoured and when their ammunition was exhausted they would pull back to the munitions carts following the troops at a safe distance to rearm.

  Guarding both flanks of the phalanx were thousands of hea
vy infantry: solid blocks dripping with chain mail and shining plates, with tall rectangular shields and spears. In addition each carried a mace, axe, or Wrought sword to destroy any Insects who broke through their shield wall. They were a patchwork of colours as they drew up by battalion, each with its standard flickering in the breeze, and within that by division and company. Each square seemed tiled with smaller squares, in five hundreds, and smaller patches still, in fifties. The commanding Eszai stood in their front lines: Tornado and Serein on the left flank nearest the reservoir, the Macer and Sapper on the east flank by Cyan’s tower.

  The second body of troops were lines of archers, predominantly Awian, and more shield men in reserve, mostly Morenzian. The archers were on foot, their captains and wardens mounted, with Lightning clearly visible on his white horse in their centre. Those on horseback directed the shot of the footmen, who would be loosing blind over the heads of the ranks in front. In the open, archers cannot be left to face Insects alone so they shot high and indirectly, relying on the sheer weight of arrows to impact into the Insects’ backs. The Awian ranks were typically orderly, each soldier turned out in blue livery and gleaming helmet, but more spacious to allow each man sufficient room to draw his longbow. The Morenzians were a motley contrast; only their officers and the richer fyrd were armoured. But a sea of banners fluttered above them, proudly proclaiming the village or Hacilith district from which they’d been raised. Each man in their jostling ranks held a shield and spear provided by the Castle and wore a sword, from Wrought. The Armourer and the Blacksmith led this infantry reserve.