by Col Buchanan
The fallen tree they were all clinging to was a mature Khosian hill fir, bearing clumps of green needles that had purpled in the winter frost, short and spiky things which kept poking Nico’s face and going for his eyes whenever he moved. He hoped its foliage would be enough to keep the group hidden from sight, for the river coursed across the plain now with the tree drifting along it, and in moments they would be floating through the enemy encampment itself.
Directly ahead, the plain was covered in the tents of the Imperial Expeditionary Force, arrayed beyond range of the northern wall of Bar-Khos where cannon coughed fire into the night, exchanging shots with the enemy’s forward artillery. The distant wall itself was brilliantly illuminated by blinding beams of white light cast from the imperial positions, beams that roamed this way and that along its face, revealing swarms of enemy forces trying to storm it.
Yet more beams of light slanted upwards over the besieged city itself, and they flickered and flashed with colours which seemed to form themselves into shapes hanging there in the sky above Bar-Khos. Nico wiped his eyes clear, seeing a giant face with pits for eyes leering down at the city’s population, flickering in and out of existence against the curtains of rain.
‘Holy Kush,’ swore his father from ahead, even as others muttered in the darkness.
What were they going through in Bar-Khos right now? Were the children gaping from their windows or dreaming terrible dreams from their beds? Were the dross heads all lying up on the hill of Steziy Park, freaking out at the face looming in the sky like the old High King’s ghost himself, returned to slay the great-grandsons of revolutionaries?
Nico blinked, surprised to see a fire burning in the sky off to the west of the Bitter River. But then he made out the dark form of the ridge upon which it was perched, and realized they were passing Beacon Heights, a well-known hill visible from the city, topped with a watchtower and shrine.
Just ahead of him, Cole hissed for sudden silence. They were entering the enemy encampment.
On either bank the tents squatted in their thousands, many of them dark though many more lit warmly from within; shapes moved behind walls of thin cloth. It was too wet for open camp fires tonight. Few figures moved about, save for those hurrying from one tent to the other.
A cough sounded out from the river bank, then a harsh clearing of a throat. Nico craned his head for a better look. A soldier was having a piss over there, cloaked and helmeted, swaying wearily against the air at his back. The fellow looked up at the tree as it floated past him on the river, but paid it no more mind than that, for he spat and eventually turned away.
Onwards they drifted undetected through the heart of the enemy encampment. Zels snickered from their enclosures along the banks; herds of penned cattle brayed in the rain. Still there was no sign of Bull or the other Contrarè ahead of them.
They were nearing a wooden bridge that spanned bluffs on either high bank. The bridge was lit by lanterns, and crowded with wagons loaded high with cargoes as drivers yelled and whipped at their teams of zels. All of them were headed in the same direction, crossing to the eastern side of the river with a long line of others waiting behind to do the same. Along the tree, everyone ducked their heads as they passed underneath. For a few precious moments the bridge sheltered them from the downpour, and then they were out the other side and getting rained on again. More bridges spanned the river here, minor rope bridges filled with lines of soldiers hunched and hurrying across them. Again they were all headed to the eastern side.
Curious, thought Nico, wondering what was going on.
The river slowed, growing wider, its banks lower. Time passed as slowly as the water’s flow.
Ahead, the brilliantly lit city wall grew ever closer as the Bitter River curved around a wide bend. The water here grew shallow enough that Nico could feel the slippery rocks beneath his boots. Across its surface bobbed the reflections of distant lights, punctured by ripples. Faintly they illuminated a figure crouched on a sandbar along the inner left bank – another armoured soldier. Drifting closer, Nico could see water dashing off the young man’s helm, and how he wiped at his eyes as though he was weeping.
With a slow inevitability, the top of the tree snagged itself against the sandbar right at the soldier’s feet, prompting him to look up.
Sure enough, Nico saw red-raw eyes and the stripes of tears on the young soldier’s cheeks. He was holding a knife loosely in his hand for some reason. Before him, a branch full of fir needles suddenly quivered, and the soldier leaned forwards to peer closer.
It was Nico’s father, the length of his body submerged just beneath the surface, hidden beneath the branch, shaking it.
‘Hey,’ whispered Cole over the rain, shaking the fir needles again, his tone a playful one. ‘You want something to cry about?’
‘What?’ asked the startled man.
All at once the water erupted as Cole lunged out at him like a crocodile at its beached prey. In an instant he dragged the man back into the water with him, where he broke his neck with a rough twist.
Nico flinched at the sound of it.
With kicks of their feet they freed the tree from the sandbar and carried onwards downstream towards the city, leaving the young soldier floating just behind them, face down in the water, as though he too was now part of the group.
‘You think that was funny?’ Nico asked of his father.
‘What?’
‘You want something to cry about.’
‘Looked to me like he was going to kill himself anyway,’ said Kes. ‘He had a knife in his hand, did you see it?’
No one answered. The corpse following behind them was spectacle enough.
Laughter roared from one of the passing tents on the eastern bank. The troops were all hunkered down in their shelters, no one in sight now. Nico lost track of the passing time, falling into a kind of trance of hyper-alertness until suddenly, with a jolt, the tree stopped once more against the flow.
His feet kicked at loose rocks.
Damn it, he thought. The river had become too shallow to go any further.
‘Shit, shit, shit!’ cursed Kes, realizing their predicament as the other women’s voices rose in alarm. Nico tried to quieten them.
‘This tree’s going no further,’ Cole declared, and he rose to a crouch to survey the shallow stretch of river ahead. Nico drew up alongside him.
‘We’re still in the middle of the enemy camp here!’
With a struggle Nico tried to rise from the water, but he could no longer feel his feet. His legs were vague appendages barely under his control. Shivering uncontrollably, he peered over a snarl of branches and through the haze of rain towards the northern wall of the city rising ahead of them, still terribly distant.
‘Look,’ said Kes from the other side of the trunk, and Nico saw it too: the jagged shape of another tree up ahead in the water, snared on the opposite bank.
‘It’s Bull,’ he said to his father. Nico was still amazed by just how well he could see at night now, as though everything was struck by moonlight, including the outlines of Bull and his two Contrarè companions, hunkered down in the branches of their own beached tree.
They were making no attempt to move, he could see, and little wonder. On either bank facing their position, a fire sputtered in a covered brazier accompanied by a few sentries standing watch in the rain. Storm lanterns hung on poles, casting their light across the water. Just behind both sets of sentries, more lanterns flickered from within sandbagged positions that were dug into the rising ground, facing each other as they overlooked the shoals of the river.
‘They’re still there. Those lanterns are lighting them up. They can’t move for fear of being spotted.’
‘What do we do?’ asked Kes, and her voice shuddered with the shaking of her body.
‘The city doesn’t look so far,’ said another woman. ‘We could make a dash for it.’
They wanted to try it. He could feel it in the air – their longing for the sanctuary of
the city that might just be within reach now, if only because hope was foreshortening the distance. But in their silence hung the unspoken truth of the matter – they would be spotted in no time. Such dilemmas lead people to inaction, and so it was with the party now. No one moved. No one offered any ideas, any further options.
They were growing even colder now that they had stopped moving. Each panted breath sounded loud in the crash of the rain. Teeth chattered and steam rose from exposed skin. Near the back of the tree the child whimpered in his sleep.
It was hard to tell how much time had passed in floating down the river. Nico guessed that dawn must be only a few hours away.
‘We can’t just lie here in this river!’ said one of the women. ‘We’ll freeze to death! I’m already freezing to death!’
They all knew it. Either the elements would finish them one by one or the child would wake up and start crying, giving them away. Nico cast a desperate look about them, but all he could see were the shallow banks of the river and the tents lined along it, where the odd stooped figure moved through the torrential downpour. Zels were snickering up there somewhere just beyond sight. For a moment he thought about stealing some of them and making their escape that way. But then he shook his head inwardly, frowning at such fantasies. He knew he might make it alone, but never with the entire group following behind.
Nico breathed deep into his belly. He was reminded of his brief Rōshun apprenticeship, and their methods of going naturally with the flow of any situation, knowing when to act and when to wait in stillness, allowing space for things to happen. Yet the freezing river was hardly a conducive place to wait around for an opportunity to present itself.
He needed the old Rōshun Ash, and his impeccable talent for getting out of trouble.
‘I’m not getting caught like this,’ said Kes, shaking her head vehemently. She glanced along the river towards the city as though judging whether she could make it. ‘I’m not lying here till the sun comes up and every soldier in the camp is lining the banks for a piss.’
‘Nor I,’ agreed another.
They were close to panicking here, Nico sensed. And if some of them bolted they would give the others away, and that would be that.
‘Keep your heads,’ Nico said along the tree. ‘It’s the only way we all stand a chance of getting out of this.’
‘Oh, it’s that simple?’ said Kes, this girl he had so recently been entwined with, clearly close to breaking point.
‘Kes,’ he said, reaching out a hand to grasp her own. ‘Stay calm. It doesn’t end like this.’
‘No?’
‘No!’
Nico swept forwards through the water to join his father’s side. Grabbing on to a branch he lay there in the river with the cold waters rushing through his clothing, shivering and fearful.
‘It doesn’t, does it?’
‘What’s that?’
‘End like this. I can’t see a way out of here.’
His father only grunted.
On the bluffs ahead overlooking the river, sentries in grey cloaks stamped their feet around the smoking braziers. More smoke rose from the dugouts behind them.
‘If Bull and the Contrarè fear to make a move,’ he whispered to his son, ‘we hardly have a chance with all these women.’
‘But we can’t just stay here!’
His father was shivering, he noticed. When Cole spoke, it was in a file-rasp of exhaustion.
‘I said I’d take them as far as I could. Looks like this is it.’
‘I’m not leaving them here!’
‘Nico. Sooner or later it’s going to be everyone for themselves anyway. Think straight. Your mother is likely somewhere in this camp. The pair of us can cut loose on our own. We can pass as camp followers while we look for your mother.’
‘No, not yet. I’m not moving until we absolutely have to. We have to give them as long as we can here.’
Cole hissed into the sodden night.
‘And how long is that?’
‘As long as we can!’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Bahn
This is it, chimed a voice in his head that he no longer believed was his own. This is the day.
A rooster called out from next door’s yard. A dog barked from somewhere down the street. In his cloak and full armour, Bahn Calvone stood facing the tall mirror of his marital bedroom surveying the reflection before him – the scuffed boots that he had once kept meticulously polished, the tarnished helm tucked in the crook of his arm, the sword and hand cannon dangling in their sheaths from his belt. Never before had he felt the weight of it all on his body like he did now, the pull of steel and leather like an anchor fixing him to the spot.
Do it.
Bahn blinked in the pale light of dawn gathering at the window; in the shadows thrown across the room; in the faint mist of his panted breathing.
Do it!
He grabbed for the double-barrelled hand cannon and yanked it from its holster, pointing it straight at the mirror.
Bang, he thought, and then Bahn shifted the gun and pressed the barrel hard against his temple, where beads of sweat were running.
Bang!
Bahn flinched from a sudden din below – his wife Marlee heating water on the kitchen stove. Little Ariale must be awake already, having coughed through much of the night. His son was probably stirring in his bunk too. Always the last to rise.
They were the centre of his world, his whole sense of meaning. But he couldn’t think of his family just then. He knew that if he did the weight of all he carried would crush him down into a weeping heap on the floor; and then the grief would kill him.
The heavy gun dropped with his hand and Bahn felt the pain flaring in his side again. He had bruised his ribs the other day when he’d fallen from the zel, even wearing his armour. And now he was expected to go out and do it all over again, this time on foot.
Beyond, in the world at large, the enemy artillery was fading away as the first assault of the day began against the city wall. Rifles crackled from the defences. Boots could be heard marching through the streets in quick-step formation.
It was New Year’s Day.
Time to go.
*
Smoke was pouring in black clouds over the wall and the heads of its defenders, tossed by the winds from a siege tower burning somewhere on the other side. Within moments it had fogged the street with a scented, eye-stinging haze, making the faces around him grimy from soot, causing soldiers to clear their lungs with ragged coughs.
Through the overhanging pall, Bahn could see flocks of birds wheeling up there in anticipation above the nearby wall, waiting for the first lull in the fighting so they could descend in their winter-starved hundreds to feast on the dead. Behind them the early sun rose low in the sky, obscured by the haze, and Bahn squinted at the sight of it as though glimpsing an omen; a black sun in a blackened sky.
Slowly, a tug brought him back to the world of people around him.
Bahn looked down to see his wife tying a scarf about his neck above the low collar of his armour, her mouth talking without sound. But then his ears seemed to pop, and suddenly he could hear what she was saying, something about wrapping up warm in his present condition. Indeed he could suddenly hear everything around him again, like the whole world dumped right on his head: the awful racket of the fighting on the wall while the Khosian artillery boomed away; the commands being shouted along the lines of soldiers waiting in the streets below; packs of war hounds growling to be set free from their leashes. A small army was gathering here behind the wall.
‘Where are you, my love? Where have you gone?’
‘Still here,’ he heard himself reply.
‘Barely. You’re on the far side of the world these days.’
‘I’m here. Right here.’
‘My dear husband you’re in no condition for this. You should have told the Lord Protector as much, that you’re not yet fully recovered. He would never expect this of you if he knew wha
t a fog your head is still in.’
Behind them, staff-sergeants were striding past the lines of fighters forming along the street in long columns. They barked at the civilians to get clear; wives and lovers, sisters and mothers, friends and perfect strangers seeing the soldiers off to battle.
‘I’m fine,’ Bahn lied to her face, and she scowled and thumped him lightly on his breastplate.
He didn’t tell his wife that he’d volunteered for this mission, having asked to be by Creed’s side today. Let alone that he’d helped spur on this second raid against the Imperials, on foot this time and with greater numbers, by backing up Creed’s plan against the protests of the Lord Protector’s closest advisers.
Instead he jerked as something hot settled against his cheek. His wife’s hand cupped in tenderness. For an instant the connection of her touch seemed to break through Bahn’s numbness, reaching some deep inner memory of himself, causing him to blink quickly, startling tears from his eyes. But then once more he felt himself falling away from her, away from all that he loved – an awful sensation, like something from a dream, like that first moment of panic when your foot fails to meet resistance on the ground and keeps on going, pulling the rest of you with it, pulling you down through a bottomless crack in the substance of everything.
‘Oh my love. My husband.’
She was holding him now, her arms spread around the bulk of his armour, her soft body crushed against his stony silence. The winds gusted over the fighting on the wall, while the cannon roared and a man screamed his life away. Around them the staff-sergeants blustered at the men forming up in the street. Officers were already taking positions at the heads of their squads.
It didn’t feel like New Year’s Day, with its usual sense of hope and fresh beginnings for the future. More like the end of all things.
