by Col Buchanan
Where are my children? Bahn wondered all of a sudden, and then he recalled that they were being looked after by Marlee’s sister while his wife came to see him off.
‘No heroics this time, you hear me?’ Marlee hissed into his ear. ‘If they need someone to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, then you let it be someone else this time. Think of your family!’
Not at all the kind of thing his wife would have once said to him, daughter of an old soldier and as proud a Khosian as they came. But then she had recently almost lost him to this war, just as she had once lost her father to it, on the very first day of the siege. That which did not kill us shaped us.
There was Creed now, riding up with his retinue of bodyguards, his chosen men, only to quickly dismount and take his place at the head of the column.
‘I have to go,’ said Bahn, and when he pulled himself free from his wife he felt the whole weft of his emotions tearing off with her, leaving him standing there as an empty shell. It was so hard to hold her gaze for any longer than a heartbeat.
He turned and stepped away through the crowds.
‘I’ll wait here for your return,’ his wife called after him in hope.
But Bahn said nothing, already gone.
*
By word of mouth alone, Creed had requested two thousand volunteers to assemble here at dawn. Two thousand fighters to join the score or so who already knew of the raid to come, men and women willing to take the fight to the enemy outside the city gates, even as the Mannians’ first assaults began against the wall.
And so here they had gathered in the brightening light, in the streets nearest the wall with only a block of buildings in between, to be counted into line. More were still arriving, but they were being turned away now, for there were enough already. People wanted a crack at the Mannians, it seemed. Bahn found himself stepping past a noisy mix of Red Guards and purple-cloaked Hoo, Volunteers and Specials, foreign Greyjackets and wild-haired Redeemers in their furs, young and old, men and women alike. Their weapons were too varied to list, but everyone was being handed a pair of bog shoes to bring with them, unwieldy things of wood and leather strips, like rounded snow shoes but not as large.
Chanting cloudmen moved along the columns blessing the troops; robed monks dabbing at foreheads with sky-blue paint, right over the third eye. Go in peace. Go with the blessing of your people, they intoned.
Their administrations were a stark contrast to the screams of the enemy forces assaulting the wall, visible over the rooftops of the buildings; the imperial shock troops high on narcotics and their near-to-death experiences, launching themselves from siege towers and ladders at the Khosian defenders thronging the parapet above. The monks’ chanting was like the gentle thrum of bees in the hedgerows as they made their way along the lines, though a voice was booming out now to drown them – the voice of the Lord Protector, towering at the very head of the column, shouting over the heads of the gathered two thousand.
‘Are you ready?’
‘Hoo!’
‘Fire parties, keep your wicks smoking. Burn everything you can! The rest of you, no mercy for these rapists and plunderers, these scum of empire.’
‘Aiyee!’
‘Clear your heads this morning,’ hollered General Creed. His words rippled back along the crowds, passed on in Mercian fashion by the raised voices of people repeating them for others. ‘I need you sharp out there. Sharp as razors. Our aim is to wreak the greatest harm and misery upon those forces gathered outside as we few thousand are able. And our method will be a simple one. We will maim, rather than kill. Chop their bastard limbs off them! Let them bleed, not die.’
The assembled soldiers began to mumble to each other in query. What was that?
‘Dead soldiers need no shelter, nor food, nor treatment. Wounded soldiers are a drain on them all. A drain too on morale. We all know this well enough, from the injuries they have inflicted upon us over the years. Today, let us reap of that bloody harvest!’
‘Hoo!’
‘Will we allow these invaders to enslave our people, as they have enslaved all others before them?’
‘No!’
‘Then let us show them our fury!’
And with that Creed was off, trotting along the street with his bodyguards flanking him; a great bear-coated figure waving everyone onwards as the whole column set off after his lead.
Hand on his helm, Bahn dashed between two of the bodyguards before they spotted him, and joined Creed and his few aides. The street was lined with civilians, braving the sporadic shelling as they shouted out in gratitude and for good fortune. Some asked for the names of passing fighters so that they might be remembered.
‘Just like Chey-Wes, eh, Bahn?’ remarked General Creed with his long hair flowing.
‘I suppose so, General.’
Yes, like Chey-Wes, when Creed and his smaller Khosian force had taken on this very same enemy army. Though back then the Khosians had used the cover of night to attack, and surprise had meant everything.
Back then, Bahn hadn’t been carrying the fate of Khos at his waist either. He could feel it even now against his armour, or so he imagined, the press of the leather tube containing the charts to the Isles of Sky, tucked into his belt and strapped in place.
He had managed not to betray their existence to his Mannian handlers, yet he had also failed to hand them over to his own commanders. Stuck in a limbo, this was the best he could do with them.
Let them fall where they will.
Creed turned left into a street that led right to the wall, and they all followed him at a trot, four thousand boots stamping the cobbles. They were in the north-east quarter here, and ahead in the wall a small postern gate was being opened at their approach. Daylight shone through a portcullis and tunnel from the other side.
Yelps sounded from the war hounds as their Red Guard handlers ran to flank the column, forming up just behind Creed and his retinue. Weapons jingled. Already men were panting and sweating, and they had barely even begun.
The fighting had yet to reach this far eastern section of the wall. From the high parapet the defenders stared down at them with open mouths, cloaks drifting in the wind, only now aware of the impending sortie heading outside.
‘We’ll give you cover as long as we’re able!’ called down a voice from the parapet, and Bahn sighted a puff of pipe-smoke and then the lean form of Halahan himself, the Nathalese commander of the foreign brigade known as the Greyjackets. The fellow had one foot propped up on the parapet as he watched their approach.
‘Make sure that you do,’ Creed shouted back.
Through the open tunnel of the postern gate the wind was howling like a living thing. It shot out at them as they came nearer, an icy force that tore at cloaks and scarves and faces as though trying to turn them back from their audacity.
And then the mouth of the gateway swallowed Bahn and Creed and the rest of the bodyguards in its shadows, and in the fierce blast of the wind he could hear nothing at all, not even the racing thunder of his own heartbeat. He could barely see either, and through a screen of tears Bahn focused on the square of daylight growing nearer, and General Creed’s form bounding ahead.
Suddenly they were trotting out into the light of morning again, out onto the open plain facing the city.
To their right, the silver waters of the Bitter River ran through another portcullis in the wall. The distant enemy encampment lay sprawled on either side of the river, well beyond effective range of the Khosian guns. To their left, the enemy forces were ranged along the earthen slope of the wall: towers, smoke and masses of running figures. Other enemy figures ranged closer towards them – skirmishers reacting to the sight of their sudden emergence from the wall. Shots rang out from the parapet behind and they started falling.
Bahn had drawn his sword some time in the last few moments. They all had. The ground here beside the river was boggy with all the recent rain. In a hurry he followed Creed’s example and strapped the big bog shoes
to his boots. Everyone else was doing the same.
Creed led them north-east, away from the assault and the safety of the wall, headed straight for the enemy encampment. It was hard to run in the bog shoes without feeling like a fool. Bahn could only hear individual sounds now, coming to him one after the other: the amplified pants of their breathing; the jostle of equipment and armour; the splash of boots on the soaking ground; the dim percussions of gunfire behind; the awful snarl of the war hounds bounding ahead.
A trio of League skyships soared over their heads, joining them on the raid to offer what covering fire they could. But it was the figures rushing at them as they neared the river that seized Bahn’s full attention now – imperial light troops in leather armour, wielding swords. The Khosian war hounds were quick to dart in at them, going for their limbs as they tried to drag them to the ground.
Bahn glanced over his shoulder to make sure the small army was still at his back. Two thousand figures followed behind on their unwieldy bog shoes, looking ridiculous in their wide-legged bounds with water splashing from every footstep. Yet they covered the marshy ground much faster than the approaching enemy forces, and they started flanking them easily.
Creed launched himself right into the enemy midst with a heave of his broadsword, and just like that he hewed off an arm with an easy lop of the blade. Barely pausing for breath, the general grabbed at the arm of another fellow who had been wrestled to the ground by one of the hounds, and he lifted his butcher’s blade again to chop through the man’s arm just below the elbow.
The enemy soldier screamed.
General Creed, Lord Protector of Khos, turned to his bodyguards likewise hacking away at the limbs of their imperial attackers, then to the column of fighters snaking back all the way to the city wall, and with a heave he tossed over their heads the severed bloody arm as though an example to them all.
‘Make them bleed!’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Nico
At first he thought it was a lantern shining in his face, but then Nico cracked open his eyes and saw that it was the faintest hint of predawn in the clouded sky.
With a stiff neck he lifted his head from the branch he lay across to blink down at the shallow river water rushing beneath him. Instantly Nico recalled where he was: perched on a felled tree in the middle of the Bitter River, right in the middle of the enemy camp.
Sudden dread stewed in his stomach.
He must have dozed off for a time, despite Cole’s fierce warnings to them all not to fall asleep while they were this cold, for fear of never waking again. Yet something had snapped him awake.
Quickly the young man looked back along the fallen tree, where everyone was still grimly hanging on, propped up as best they could out of the water, huddling together for warmth. Near the back he spotted Chira nursing the baby, who had stayed miraculously quiet throughout the long hours of waiting.
No doubt for many of them it had been the most miserable night of their lives, frozen stiff and exposed to the elements, wondering when one of the enemy would spot them lying there in the water. At least it had stopped raining, though with the steady encroachment of dawn, they would soon be clearly visible sprawled across the branches of the tree like this.
It was time to make a move, no matter how desperate their chances. There was nothing else for it.
He turned to see Kes lying sprawled over the half-submerged trunk, nodding off too. In front of him, even his father seemed to have fallen asleep.
Splash!
Nico lifted his head at the sound, as did his father. Up on the right-hand embankment, two figures were hacking down the sentries hunched around a brazier. It looked like Bull and one of his companions, while down in the river stood the third Contrarè, firing his bow at a sentry just above him so that the man toppled from the bluff and into the river, creating another violent splash.
‘Kush,’ cursed Cole, shifting where he lay, with the river sloshing around his boots. ‘They’ll wake the whole damned camp up. We have to move.’
With dawn approaching, the Contrarè too must have given up waiting for an opportunity to present itself – a change of guards or some other unexpected diversion – and had decided to create a way out for themselves.
But sure enough a shout went out from the sentries on the opposite bank, raising the alarm. His braids and tassels flying, the Contrarè fellow in the river sprang to the bank and scrambled up to join the others, who were charging now at soldiers hurrying from the doorway of the dugout.
‘Everyone,’ said Cole snatching up his rifle, and then he shook his head, not knowing what to say to them all. ‘Just make a bloody run for it, before they’re lining the banks.’
Even as he spoke a pair of women thrashed off through the water, though both fell sprawling after a few floundering steps. The others were trying to rise too, but they were in the same condition as Nico, their rubbery legs having divorced them.
Like the most ridiculous of drunks, like dental patients escaped on ether, the group staggered clear of the floating tree only to fall crashing into the shallow river on their hands and knees, flashing expressions of pained surprise. In their panic, they made their way towards the bluff on the right-hand bank as though it offered hope in this hopeless situation, for at least the Contrarè were killing Mannians up there.
A crack sounded out from a sudden puff of smoke on the opposite bank; a spout of water flew up next to Cole’s thigh. Up came his father’s rifle as he fired back in the same instant, toppling an enemy figure.
Another crack sounded and the women floundered faster for the side, falling and crawling just as much as they ran. On the stilts of his legs Nico made it to the bank and glanced back, fearful of what he would see.
From the far side enemy soldiers were leaping down into the water with their curved swords drawn. But it was the sight of Kes that stopped his heart in its next beat. The girl was still close to the snagged tree, unable to stand without her numbed legs giving out on her, so bad that she was giggling at her own uncontrollable antics, giggling in a hysteria of fear as the enemy soldiers splashed across the river towards her.
‘Kes!’
Nico drew his sword and took a step back into the current, but a hand gripped his arm like a vice and yanked him back up onto the bank; his father, shouting curses into his face as he took another shot.
Other women were struggling clear but Kes was still out there, crashing across the river before falling again. She was giggling as she staggered to her feet, stuffing a fist into her mouth to try to stop herself, silly with panic. He remembered her saying how she’d rather kill herself than get caught again. She glanced back at the enemy soldiers. One of the figures fell as Cole fired his rifle.
‘Kes!’ he screamed again, and he ignored his father’s shout and leaped back down into the river. ‘Come on!’
The girl locked eyes with Nico, terrified and alone. And then a crack sounded from the far bank and Kes’s face exploded outwards, and he saw the bloody mess for an instant before her body toppled into the Bitter River in a splash of red froth.
He was so horrified he couldn’t move. But then his father was yanking him up towards the bluff and the dugout after the others, and there was no time to focus on anything except the moment itself, and the next one after that. Soldiers were emerging from between the nearest rows of tents, already dressed in full armour, flanking them and leaving nowhere to go but up. Bull had emerged from the dugout with a naked sword in his hand. But a volley of gunfire made him duck back inside.
Something whisked past Nico’s head – crossbow bolts streaking in as they ran. Three strides ahead of him one of the women fell dead with a bolt sticking from her back.
‘You lousy bastards!’ Nico screamed with tears blinding his sight.
Gunshots zipped through the air. Streaking bolts and arrows. One of the Contrarè was lying face down in the dirt, not moving. Nico leaped over him. Women were crowding into the dugout for shelter, and his father shoved h
im towards the doorway and fired back with his rifle as Nico tumbled inside. He almost tripped over the dead body of an enemy soldier, and then he glimpsed the women taking cover in the cramped space with the Contrarè, ducking down from the gun slit, dripping wet with their soaked clothes and hair stuck to their skin.
Bull roared in the doorway as bullets splintered the wood all around him. He took cover as gunfire blasted outside in a rippling fusillade, and then Cole came spilling inside with a burst of breath and shots ripping chunks from the dirt wall over his head, cursing them for all that he was worth.
‘We’re trapped!’ screamed Chira like it wasn’t obvious to them all; the woman crouched in the far corner, clutching the bawling infant to her chest as though she would never let go of the child again.
*
He couldn’t stop seeing it in his mind, the moment Kes’s face had exploded into a bloody ruin; her thin body crashing into the river.
It was his fault, he knew. He should have helped her get clear of the tree instead of just leaving her there to fend for herself. But it had all happened so suddenly, like a nightmare made real.
Even now he half expected the girl to be sitting there when he looked for her amongst the women huddled down in the dugout, throwing him her sly lopsided grin. And each time he failed to see her, Nico felt the same sickening stab of remorse.
How did anyone ever get used to such things in war, their companions ripped away from life right beside them while they carried on? And this startling, guilty grief that he felt was born from the loss of a single companion, one person he had barely known, for all that they had so briefly shared. How did soldiers cope when it was one comrade after another torn away by violent deaths, people they were as close to as anyone in their lives?
How had his father coped, at least for as long as he had? It was little wonder he had been turned into a shadow of his younger self from his years fighting beneath the Shield.
Cole was peering along the barrel of his rifle, perched through the gun slit in the sandbagged wall that directly overlooked the river, looking for someone to shoot at on the opposite bank while he chewed on a stalk of wheatgrass.
