by Celia Rees
Augusta had told him to keep his sights on the big tent and wait for the commanders to emerge. There was no mistaking them. The first to come out was the fat guy with a pointy head, bursting out of his buckskin breeches, his blue jacket stiff with gold facings, with epaulettes the size of dinner plates, boots polished to mirror brightness and wearing the biggest bicorne hat that Tom had ever seen. He was joined by another, younger, in the red of a foot regiment, the white plumes in his tall hat waving in the wind. They were both making for horses that were being brought up for them. Tom had them in his sights, but with this weapon from this distance…
Before he could take his shot, the hat went flying. Augusta was standing above him, reloading, oblivious of the musket balls flying around her, cursing that she’d hit the hat not the head inside it. His own shot went wide and, by the time they were ready to fire again, both generals were spurring away—never mind the soldiers being blown to pieces around them—thundering through their own troops, the confused mess of the camp, riding over the dead and the wounded, making for the rear as fast as their horses could carry them.
The Duke and his son, Douro. She was not surprised at their pell-mell retreat. It was only to be expected. Their army was mostly for show, to parade and intimidate by sheer numbers. The officers were more interested in strutting round Glass Town, showing off their elaborate and expensive uniforms, than actually fighting. Her smaller force was made up of men from the North, loyal and unwavering, fighting for their land, their homes and villages, their way of life.
The strange young man who had appeared from nowhere seemed to know what he was about, but it wasn’t won yet.
She put the glass to her eye to scan the ground below her. The generals turning tail, with most of the officers behind them, seemed to have taken the heart out of the troops.
Augusta looked to her own lines. Their bombardment was constant but the piles of shot were diminishing. They couldn’t keep this rate of fire up for long.
She swung the eyeglass back, attracted by a movement below her. A line of battle was forming, organized by an officer on horseback, hatless and helmet-less, his long, curling chestnut hair streaming behind him as he galloped back and forth, shouting orders and waving his sabre. He was keeping on the move, riding up and down the line, turning and wheeling, deliberately making himself a difficult target. He was getting the men in place, getting them organized. They seemed to take on some of his reckless defiance; as soon as one man fell, another stepped up to take his place.
“Rogue” Percy. Whatever the odds, he would not turn and run. Neither would Captain Dorn. She could see his short, powerful figure marshalling the infantry, directing the men forward, bayonets at the ready. The line came on steadily through their own thinning cannon fire.
Rogue wheeled away, leaving the command of the infantry to Dorn. His return was just as sudden, at a thunderous gallop, sabre pointing forward, at the head of a column of heavy cavalry. Carabineers, armed with short muskets and horse pistols. Big men in plumed brass helmets, armoured front and back, bandoliers crossing their shining breastplates. He must have been keeping them in reserve. The mix of flamboyance and cunning was typical of him.
At his command, their sabres flashed red in the rising sun. At Dorn’s shout, the line of infantry broke apart, the cavalry streaming through the gap, preparing to fan out and charge up the slope, sabres drawn to cut to left and right, their big horses ready to trample the men on the ground.
Well, let them come…
“Back! Fall back!” Tom ordered, directing his men to higher ground. “Hold position!”
Their apparent retreat accelerated the charge, which was just what he wanted. The heavy horses, weighed down by the big men in their armour, were caught in the marshy ground at the base of the slope. The charge halted as the carabineers tried to free their horses from the sucking mud. Ball and bullet pinged off metal as the horses struggled. The air was filled with the frantic neigh and snort of frightened horses and the shouts and screams of the men as the musket balls found their mark. Horses and riders went down, adding to the melee and confusion. The carabineers returned fire from horseback, but they couldn’t gain the slope and their horses were sinking deeper into the quagmire. The helmetless officer wheeled his sabre three times as the sign to withdraw.
A ragged cheer went up along the line of riflemen and musketeers lying prone on the hillside. They had won the day.
Tom stood up, slightly unsteady, light-headed with elation. He’d never felt such a rush, such a buzz. He waved his hat, grinning and laughing, accepting the salutations of his men.
Below him, the young officer turned back, steadied his carbine over one arm and took aim. A punching blow to the shoulder threw Tom backwards. He looked down in wonder at the hole smouldering in his jacket, at the bright blood welling from it. For a long moment, he felt no pain, and then it hurt like hell.
Augusta didn’t see him go down, her attention taken by the enemy forces disappearing into the smoke and dust. The retreat was as unexpected as it was sudden, and not altogether to be trusted…
The enemy camp was strangely empty except for ragged women and children picking their way through the wreckage. Where they came from was a mystery but every battlefield knew them; they descended like the carrion birds—crow, raven and kite—wheeling in the sky above, ready to descend to feed on the dead and dying.
The boy. What had happened to the boy? Without him, the day would have been lost. This victory was his.
“Come, Keeper.”
The dog followed as she strode down the hillside. He had stayed by her side, steadfast through the fighting, undaunted by the din of battle and the cannons’ roar.
They found the boy being helped to his feet, supported by Webster and Roberts.
“He’s hurt, my lady. Hit in the shoulder.”
The boy was deadly pale and near to fainting.
“Take him to my tent. Have him tended to and look to the other wounded.”
The two men carried him between them, trying to be gentle, trying not to hurt him, but every jolt sent pain shooting through him and fresh blood leaking. He could feel it running down his arm, dripping from his dangling wrist. His sleeve and the front of his jacket were soaked, the stain black on the bottle-green cloth. What kind of game is this, where you feel real pain and bleed real blood?
He was lying on a small camp bed, Webster cutting his coat away for Roberts to inspect the wound. Roberts frowned and rolled up his sleeves. He washed his hands in the basin on a stand by the bed and dipped a cloth in the ewer to swab round the wound. He wrung the reddened water into the basin before soaking the cloth again.
“Here, lad, drink some of this.” Webster helped Tom to sit up and brought a bottle to his lips.
Tom coughed and gasped as the fiery liquid hit his throat.
“Steady, steady. Bit more. That’s it. You’re in good hands, lad. Roberts were ’prentice to a barber. He has medical interests, you might say. Heard tell he were a resurrectionist for a doctor who weren’t too fussy where the bodies come from, ain’t that right?”
The other man laughed. “Aye, right enough. Dr Bady. Used to stay and watch him working. Learnt a thing or two that way.”
He unfurled a roll of fearsome-looking instruments, selected a probe and a pair of long, pointed tweezers and thrust them into the glowing coals of a brazier. He took a swig from the bottle Webster was holding and handed it back to him.
“Pour some of that into the wound and the rest of it down his throat. Hold him!”
The pain from the spirit was searing. Tom bucked, gagging and choking as rum spilt from his mouth. He struggled even more as Roberts loomed over him, probe in one thin, long-fingered hand, tweezers in the other, but Webster was too strong for him. Roberts’s movements were quick and decisive.
The probe entering the wound brought a white-hot bolt of agony. Blackness gathered all around him and he seemed to be falling, falling…
“It’s for the best,”
he heard a voice say. “It’ll be for the best.”
And then there was nothing.
“YOU DON’T HAVE TO DECIDE YET. There will be other tests…”
He was aware of people standing round his bed. A doctor, his parents. His mother, tearful, being comforted by his sister. They were talking about him, he realized. Trauma to the brain. Oxygen deprivation. What had happened to him? And what were they going to do to him, or with him now?
He tried to move, to speak—but nothing. Not even an eyelid flicker, no matter how hard he bent his will to it.
How long had he been away? He thought about it like that. Being away. He had no sense of time, no way to measure its passing, apart from whether it was day or night. It was daytime right now, with the sun coming through the window, but was it the same day, or another, or another? It had been winter when he came in here. Days short. Decorations going up and being taken down again. It was different now. The days were longer but was it spring or summer? He couldn’t tell. No way of knowing. For some reason that bothered him. People came to talk to him but they never told him anything that he wanted to know.
“Shall we?” The doctor was shepherding them out now. “We can carry on the conversation in the office.”
He was glad when they’d gone. They were the people he loved, the people he cared about most in the world, but their pain, the suffering that he’d brought down on them, made it worse somehow.
#heroinacoma Milo had called him. He remembered the match heading for a one-all draw, then the player running to the corner, shouting, arms raised, team mates around him, the roar of the crowd erupting. After that—blank.
“Hi there. How are you doing?”
It was the male nurse he liked. The other nurses called him Joe. He spoke with a slight lilt that marked him as coming from somewhere Tom couldn’t quite place. Tom liked his voice. It was quiet and soothing, with a spark of humour and just a little mischief. You could hear the smile in it. He spoke as though Tom could hear him, as if they were having a conversation—one-sided but still a conversation. He was wearing fresh scrubs. Tom could smell crisp laundering. Tom sensed that he was not tall, but broad and strong. His touch was gentle, subtle, but Tom could sense the strength in his hands.
“Let’s get you sorted out, shall we?”
Joe bathed him, gently, a bit at a time, turning him this way and that way. Sometimes he gave Tom a massage. Other times, he just moved his hands over Tom’s body in a kind of hovering way, not even touching, but Tom felt a tingling—the nearest thing he’d had to any kind of sensation. Afterwards, Tom felt better—quieter in his body, calmer in his mind.
Every day, Joe moved Tom’s limbs for him, working round his inert body with infinite patience, keeping the muscles and joints in working order ready for when he could move by himself. Tom sensed that this was what Joe was doing—that while he was working, he was thinking not if but when. Tom liked that. He saw it as an act of faith. Tom sensed the power in Joe’s touch, like heat coming through his palms and fingers, as if he was giving some of his strength to Tom.
“Where you been, eh?” Joe whispered as he worked on flaccid muscles. “Where do you go when you travel away from us?” He straightened up. “There. That’s better, huh?”
Joe checked the instruments, the drips and tubes snaking in and out of him.
He was washed, powdered, dressed in clean pyjamas. Bedclothes tucked in around him. It made him feel better, fresher, like a very clean baby.
“He’s all yours.”
The girl came in. The one who had been reading. She settled in the corner and opened the book.
The sound of her voice soothed and he thought maybe he’d sleep now.
He drifted, Joe’s question echoing. Where do I go? What was this place he was visiting? Would he go back there if he went to sleep? Was it like dreaming? Lucid dreaming, maybe? Although it wasn’t like any dream he’d ever had, lucid or otherwise. You were supposed to be able to control lucid dreams, right? He’d had as much control in that place as he did here. What was that fish thing that Milo had planted in his ear? Kind of like a game was how he’d described it but it wasn’t like anything Tom had ever played. In games you could kill, see people die, but it was never real, not like that battle. If you were hit, even killed, you just lost the game, lost points, went down a level, whatever. You didn’t hurt and you didn’t bleed. He’d moved from a world where he felt nothing to one where pain was all too real. If he’d been able to, he’d have laughed at the irony of it.
“WILL HE BE ALL RIGHT?”
Augusta frowned down at the young man stretched out on her camp bed. His wound had been cleaned, his shoulder bandaged.
“’Appen he will.” Roberts shrugged. “’Appen not. I’ve took out the ball.” He rolled it between finger and thumb before handing it to her. “He might like to keep it. Some do. I’ve cleaned the wound. Best he sleeps now. He’s a reet brave lad.”
Augusta nodded in thanks and agreement. Roberts was the nearest thing to a doctor that they had. Better than a doctor. She didn’t like doctors. Didn’t trust them. Full of pompous bluster and liable to make patients worse, not better. As likely to kill as cure. Roberts had medical knowledge; where he’d acquired it, she didn’t care to enquire. His mother and grandmother had been Herb Wives, she did know; Hedge Witches some called them. Perhaps there was truth in the latter name. Ordinary folk had certainly revered them, even feared them. They were said to keep to the old ways, but they knew about cures and they knew about healing. Roberts’s skills came mostly from them.
“Let him rest here,” she said. “We’ll be on the move soon enough.”
Roberts left her looking down at this stranger, his unconscious state giving her leave to study him. Not very old—sixteen or seventeen? Well built, but the skin over the long muscles was fine, delicate, as milk white as a maid’s. His face was well favoured: a wide forehead under coal-black curls, dark straight brows over slightly slanting eyes, long eyelashes above high cheekbones, a straight nose and a firm mouth, the lips full and curving up slightly at the corners. Lying there, he looked sculpted from marble, like the beautiful youth Endymion, lover of the moon goddess, lying in his cave on Mount Latmus, choosing the sleep perpetual so he could stay young for ever.
She turned away from the sleeping boy, a little embarrassed by the intensity of her scrutiny, and turned her mind to other matters.
This was by no means the end of it. A lull, merely. She distrusted that sudden withdrawal. They were bloodied but by no means defeated. “If you can’t win one way, find another.” Rogue’s words. He was no coward, not like the others, but he was devious and he’d left so abruptly, galloping off with his cavalry. It didn’t make sense. He had to be up to something…
She went to the campaign table to study the map. Her lands lay to the north and west of this ridge where she had made her stand. The little clusters of buildings that marked the hamlets and villages were scattered, isolated…
“My lady, a messenger…”
Young Wainwright. A sheep farmer from Windhover Crags, a high point at the end of the ridge. He’d been riding hard. His face was wet; although with rain, sweat or tears, it was hard to tell. He stood, chest heaving, gasping out his news.
“Marauders, milady. Flying black banners, reiving through the country burning and pillaging. I thought to warn you. Wit’ main force here, tha’ country is reet easy pickings.”
“Show me.”
“They come across here not an hour ago, spreading out across the land.” Wainwright pointed to the map. “I seen ’em from the Crags. Layin’ to waste. I seen smoke rising from farms and farmsteads, village and hamlet.”
“What about the people?”
“Killed, I reckon. Or took off.”
She turned from the man, dashing away her own tears. Her people taken to build the city, or slave in the mills and factories, or on the docks. The work in Glass Town never stopped.
“Thank you for taking the risk to come here a
nd tell me.” She turned back to him. “But go, now. Save yourself.”
Black banners meant Rogue’s men. So that was what he was up to, why he’d left the field of battle. Allowed her to think that she had won, so he could attack the land she’d left defenceless. Damn him! Rogue was as handsome as the devil and just as vicious. They had known each other since childhood and she knew him as only one child could know another. She’d learnt to her cost that he could never be trusted. She had seen his cruelties. As a boy, he’d delighted in torturing birds and small creatures. Now he went after bigger prey. He would take a great satisfaction in ruining her land, taking her people into slavery or putting them to the sword. She had once been promised to him and had broken that promise. This was his revenge for that insult. Women swooned over him but he tortured them with the same exquisite precision he’d lavished on his captive birds and hapless frogs. She’d rather be married to a Barbary ape, but Rogue would always want what he couldn’t get.
“There—there’s more, milady.” Wainwright stepped towards her. “And worse…”
Augusta frowned. What could be worse?
“Jinn.” The man spoke low, as though someone, or something, might hear. “I saw them. Rising up in the North like a gurt swarm o’ hornets…”
“Show me!”
Far on the northern horizon, two pillars were forming above the distant peaks of the Jibbel Kumri, the Mountains of the Moon; one was dark, as if made of dust and smoke, the other of flame and fire. They were growing at frightening speed, spiralling up, expanding and contracting like a murmuration of starlings as they took on more and more power. Within the clouds, threads of silver lightning flickered, but they were too distant to hear the roar of thunder. As they watched, the columns began to bend and twist and spin across the land.
