Battle Hill Bolero

by Daniel José Older

  It was Vincent and Kaya who rallied us. The ’catchers were moving through our ranks, cutting 7s down at will and darting back to their Squads or getting slaughtered on the way. Vincent pulled everyone into a tight, outward-facing circle; then Kaya gave the command to push back toward the rebel lines.

  I heard Riley’s voice bristle across the sky: “East New York, Remote District 5, river giants, push hard on the eastern front.” He was trying to link them to us, a bridge through the ’catcher ranks. Bless him. A Council goon slashed out at Kaya while she pressed her attack on another; I parried and slashed his neck open. We inched along, fighting for every step. Exhaustion crept along my muscles. At some point, the adrenaline would run out and that heaviness would take over. I cut down another ’catcher, retreated into our ranks slightly to catch my breath as Kaya covered for me.

  “You okay?” she muttered, fending off an attack.

  “Yeah, I’ma make it. Don’t worry ’bout me.”

  And then the whole Council squad in front of us crumbled as a huge appendage swept across their ranks.

  River giants.

  Never thought I’d be happy to see one.

  “Fraang pa Konseeli!” they howled as they laid waste to a few more ’catchers. The path opened up around them, even as more ’catchers cleaved at their legs. Through the fighting, we could see the troops of Rebel District 5 pushing through the gap.

  And that’s when Riley’s voice echoed across the battlefield again, urging us to pull back to the summit of Battle Hill. The ’catchers roared forward, finally toppling one of the river giants, but their press was sloppy. With Kaya on one side and Vincent on the other, we shoved through and brought the surviving river giant with us.

  Now we’ve flattened our circle into a single line combined with the 5s. Our backs to Battle Hill, we fend off an ongoing Council assault as we retreat step by step up the slope.

  “Push!” Kaya hollers suddenly, and we flush forward in a single, vicious blitz, crushing the front line of ’catchers. “Back!” It’s bought us a few steps of untroubled retreat—cold comfort, but my aching muscles are grateful. From this higher ground, I can see the Council troops churn at the feet of several enormous throng haints. The ’catchers regroup and charge, but we’re already beneath the trees of Battle Hill and the rest of the rebellion swirls around us; the ’catcher attack autoaborts before they reach us.

  We have reached a fragile kind of pause.

  My whole body almost gives up when the ’catchers fall back. As the 5ers and 7s disperse into the crowd, I find a tree and collapse against it, letting myself slide slowly down to the snow-covered earth. My breath slows to my normal slow, and I slip inside myself to see what’s what. Mostly cuts and bruises. Nothing fatal. Only mild bleeding, no nasty ghost poison seeping through my veins.

  Excellent.

  It must be late, but I have no way of knowing. The moon hangs in a crisp crescent above the trees and gravestones. The snow sends its luminous glow back up toward the sky. Around me, hundreds of spirits ready for whatever round two may bring as the rebellion licks its wounds and gears up for more.

  —

  “Come here often?”

  I wake up from a tiny nap wanting to punch Carlos in the neck for being so cheesy and cover him in kisses for being alive still. I settle on a wry smile and accept the hand he’s holding out to me.

  “You survived,” I say, and then we’re kissing full on, and even though it’s wartime and we’re all about to die, the moon is a sliver and the snow a lantern and his lips my home and my slow slow heart is still alive; my slow heart is still very alive.

  “I toldya I would,” he says once we extract ourselves from each other.

  “Botus?”

  “Not so much.”

  I nod my approval. “Figured you were up to no good when you flashed that smile when we went our separate ways earlier.”

  “Mmhm.”

  “You did it, right?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Reminded him of our names?”

  “All of ’em. Both of our families. I did it right.”

  I have to catch myself, the tears welled up so suddenly. I blink them away as I thank him with another kiss. “You’re a keeper, I think.”

  “I’m fond of you as well. Good times on the field?”

  “Still alive. Your buddy ain’t half-bad in the commander chair.”

  Carlos wiggles his eyebrows. “I’ve always known he had it in him to fuck shit up on a massive scale. Speaking of which, there’s a war council—he asked me to come find you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Oh indeed.”

  “Well, let’s go, then, shall we?” I offer him my arm, and together we promenade through the snow and the rebel camp to the summit of Battle Hill.

  —

  “They’ll retreat,” Talbot the Staten Island captain snaps as we walk up. “And bleed us out over the next five months.” We’ve set up shop around a tombstone by the Civil War memorial. Snow-covered statues gaze out in either direction around a stone pillar.

  “No,” Cyrus Langley says calmly. “They’ll press their advantage. Botus would’ve retreated, maybe, but Carlos here has dealt with him.” Cyrus winks at us as the whole war council rises to applaud Carlos.

  He waves them off. “Y’all were here doing the hard work. I just offed one bureaucrat we’ve all been wanting to murk for ages. Any word on the other five Ignobles?”

  Riley shakes his head. “That faceless guy, Flores, seems to have taken over as commander. He’s holed up somewhere in the back, running things. We think Caitlin Fern’s with him.”

  “That’d make sense,” Carlos says. “He blocked for her when I massacred the High Council meeting at HQ earlier. We gotta keep an eye on that one; she’s a helluva necromancer.”

  Little Damian grunts. “From what our spies say, Flores has been choking at the bit for a chance to come at us head-on. Botus was the only thing standing in his way.”

  “He’ll attack,” I say, and then the whole table turns their questioning glares to me. “We, uh, knew each other in life. Not that I remember life.” I hate words. My fingers itch for my blade, an easier way out of difficult situations than talking. I sigh. “We were married when we were fully alive. It’s complicated. But I do believe he’ll throw everything he’s got at us, from what I’ve seen of him recently.”

  Everyone nods and turns back to Damian.

  “Thank you, Sasha. So, given all that, I’m guessing we’ll have a full-on assault coming our direction once they’ve had a chance to regroup.”

  “Good,” Riley says. “We move into guerilla warfare now.”

  “My favorite,” Cyrus whispers. It’s good to see him smiling again.

  Riley looks less excited. “We probably can’t wipe them out, but we can bring them to their knees, especially once they’re on our turf. Mass confusion will be the game. We strike and fade back into the darkness. Hit ’em quick, get out fast. At a certain point, they’ll have to give. Then we step up to the negotiating table with the upper hand.”

  A few murmurs of dissent rise around the table.

  “I don’t like it either,” Riley says. “But we have to be clear about what we can and can’t do. And look: that all stays at this table. As far as the troops are concerned, we’re wiping the Council off the map tonight. Any word on how bad our losses are?”

  “Significant,” Damian reports. “But no worse than we’d imagined. And we inflicted some serious damage on their numbers. Unfortunately—”

  “They can afford the damage,” Riley grumbles. “I know.”

  Vincent Jackson raises his hand. Riley nods at him. “There’s something else. They’re not giving it their all. Like . . . they’re demoralized. I dunno if it’s the ngk shit working on ’em still or what, but they not coming at us like they have in the past. A
nd they dropping quicker.”

  He’s right. I had noticed it but wasn’t sure if my own view was somehow skewed in the thick of battle.

  “It’s true,” Saeen says. “A whole squad melted away when La Venganza and I came at them, even with our reduced numbers.”

  La Venganza just grunts her agreement.

  “I mean, I’d run if I saw you two coming at me too,” Talbot says.

  “Related to that,” Damian says, “there were some unconfirmed—and I stress unconfirmed—reports that a sizable group of the Council army has defected.”

  “Already?” Riley blurts out. “We haven’t even really begun demoralizing them.”

  “Multiple scouts reported seeing ’catchers wandering off the battlefield, looking defeated, and vanishing into the night. Getting mixed signals about the numbers, but some say up to a quarter of their forces.”

  Riley shakes his head. “Can’t be.”

  “Don’t underestimate the combined power of being ngked and hating your bosses,” Sylvia Bell points out. She would know.

  “Touché,” Riley says. “Either way, we gotta act like it ain’t real till we get confirmation. Don’t change much one way or the other. Are all our captains accounted for?”

  “Breyla was killed in the initial charge,” Kaya reports. In my head, her screams still echo as she fell to the onslaught of ’catchers rushing to hold us off.

  “You alright?” Riley asks.

  Kaya nods curtly, looks away.

  “Two leaders from RD 8 were killed as well,” Talbot says. “Delano Fritz and Juan Alvarez. Most of the 8s were scattered and cut down early on. A few fell in with us, and they let us know. They got separated somehow. Sounds like a horror show.”

  Riley shakes his head. “Alright, so we—”

  A trumpet blast cuts him off. The warning call. The whole table rises at once. My pulse thunders in my ears—I haven’t recouped fully; my body still burns from the first half of the night.

  The message gets relayed up the hill to us from soldier to soldier: “Throng haints. Several of them.”

  “How many, dammit?” Damian spits.

  “We’ll find out,” Riley says. “In the meantime, get to your troops.”

  Damian growls. “This is bad. They’re sending those haints in because they can inflict maximum damage without any toll on their own troops. Plus they get bigger every time they—”

  “We know, Dr. Sunshine,” Riley snarls. “Now all of you, get!” The captains scatter in all directions, their troops melting back into the darkness of the cemetery. Carlos and I duck behind some trees. Riley’s roar covers the sky—“BATTLE STATIONS!”—just as the first throng haint barrels up the hill. It hurls that massive chain forward, crushing a few scattered soldiers who didn’t flee in time, and begins hauling them in.

  We emerge from the shadows in one whispered rush, the snow crunching beneath my boots, beneath Carlos’s boots, everyone else just a silent swoosh of motion as we converge on the throng haint. It swings those massive arms, smashing whole squads out of its path, but more leap forward, weapons drawn, and hack away at its core.

  The thing bellows, a hundred mouths releasing the same, piteous, earthshaking scream as we duck and dodge around it, chopping and cutting all the while. The troops caught up in its chain are sprung loose, and the haint is looking like it’s ready to collapse when another hurdles up the hill, then another. They’re greeted with yells and curses, then swinging blades. Further off, I see three more clambering up toward our troops on adjacent hilltops.

  Carlos

  Sasha flings herself at the second throng haint with such brutal abandon I’m almost offended. Doesn’t she realize we have to make it through this alive so we can go off and be in love, I catch myself wondering. But this is war, and there’s no room for such self-absorption in battle. Plus, I remember, watching her deftly swoop out of the way of one of its swinging arms, she’s a fucking assassin at heart. Sasha was born, or reborn maybe, for this. All the exhaustion she was covered in just moments ago has receded beneath the rush of life and death.

  I chop the dying throng haint at my feet a few more times, then join Kaya’s squad of 7s as they rally around Sasha. The gigantic thing won’t budge, though. It lashes those chains out, clobbering two 7s who strayed too close, and pulls them in before anyone can save them. The throng haint howls with all its mouths and trembles, growing a few inches taller from the meal.

  Another cry comes from down the hill: “Incoming!”

  Vague as hell, but there’s no time to be annoyed: yet another throng haint comes charging up the hill, this one bigger than the other two. In fact, this one looks familiar, I think, leaving Sasha and the 7s to handle theirs and heading directly into this new one’s path. Vincent’s Black Hoodies move in with me, and soon we’re directly in front of it as it scrabbles up toward us through the snow.

  This is the motherfucker that was waiting in my apartment. I don’t know how to explain what makes one throng haint stand out from another. To the untrained eye, they really all do just look like humongous voids of rotting Jell-O with long, ungainly arms and chains slung over them in reams. This one, though, besides being even more humongous than the rest, just has a certain bulk to it, wider shoulders and thicker arms, that make it stand out in a hellish crowd.

  The Black Hoodies and I stand, blades drawn, bracing for impact, but the damn thing hurls to one side at the last second and bustles past us before anyone can get a hit off it, beelining for the summit. “Heads up!” I yell to the group battling the other throng haint. They turn just as the giant one reaches the top. It runs head-on into its comrade, thrashing it with both arms and sending it sliding across the snow.

  For a moment, we all just stand there gaping. The bigger one doesn’t stop: it closes the distance on its fellow haint in seconds and proceeds to pummel the ever-loving hell out of it, sending entrapped ghosts skittering into the night sky around it.

  “Two more!” the sentry yells from below. “Coming in fast!”

  We turn, our mouths still wide open, just in time to see the two new throng haints charge past us at the larger one. It doesn’t miss a beat clobbering the first one before taking a heavy blow to the face from the second. The renegade haint staggers, then hurtles forward into its attacker, clawing at it as they both tumble in a colossal phantom tangle over the side of Battle Hill.

  The Black Hoodies move first. Blades drawn, they pounce on the Council haint as it rears up from the fray. It clobbers one, but then the larger haint throttles it, pulling it into the snow and rising over it, smashing it again and again as we cheer in disbelief.

  Victorious, the throng haint bellows at the night sky, then reaches into its own face and pulls at either side. All those mouths open together. An ear-shattering scream fills the air, then the throng haint literally tears itself into pieces as tattered ghosts stagger to either side. In the middle, Big Cane stands panting. He drops to his knees. Another cheer erupts from our ranks. The Black Hoodies swoop in to help him as he collapses fully across the snow.

  “What the fuck?” I hear Sasha whisper behind me.

  I shake my head. “That’s where the fuck he was, I guess.”

  Cane is up again by the time I reach him. And he’s smiling, the bastard. “Carlos, my brother.”

  “You . . . you did that shit,” I said. “Did you plan it all along or . . . ?”

  “I won’t say I gave myself up thinking I was gonna bust out of a throng haint three weeks later. But I figured if I did get caught, this kinda shit might happen, so I trained for the possibility. Always be prepared, the Council taught me.” He winks warily.

  “How does one even—you know what? Never mind. You’re a fucking hero, man.”

  Cane straightens slowly. “Eh, we still got a long night ahead. I seen their ranks. Even with most of their throng haints gone, we still have a problem, C.”


  Alice, one of the Black Hoodies, helps Big Cane stand. “Commander Riley’s sent word along to expect another wave of ’catchers at any moment. Tolula, you see anyone coming out there?”

  A tiny ghost in a child-sized hoodie gazes out into the darkness, then turns back to us and shakes her head.

  “Good,” Alice says. “Let’s get you out of here.” We’re helping Cane back toward the rebel camp when the alarm horn rings again.

  “Something’s going on with the eastern flank,” comes the call.

  “The hell does that mean?” Alice scowls.

  “Not a goddamn thing,” Cane says. “You see anything?”

  Tolula rolls up out of the darkness gesturing frantically.

  “Fire,” Alice says. “She says they’re on fire.”

  “What?” Cane and I say together.

  “Our whole flank?” Vincent asks, running up next to us.

  Tolula looks, then gestures again.

  Alice takes a step back. “And they’re heading this way.”

  “Caitlin Fern,” I say. “Shit.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Caitlin

  I can admit it: the sight of the enemy troops catching fire, the splash of terror that reaches through me as they struggle against my grip, realize they’re trapped, they’re mine, and then hurl toward their own comrades . . . It’s chilling.

  Even to a heart as fallen as mine.

  What is wrong with me?

  Who have I become?

  Mama Esther’s never-ending laugh still cycles on and on through me; it has become me, encrypted in my DNA, which means she’s won. Somehow, she’s won, even dead and gone, ether, nothing more than ether, even as I set fire to her troops and smash them into each other, my helpless puppets; still, somehow, she has won.