by Col Buchanan
He heard a shout as the Acolyte went past him, and then nothing.
Ash hauled himself up over the parapet. He regained his feet, scanning the surrounding rooftops. No other Acolytes were looking his way. He exhaled long and hard, and glanced back over the parapet. The Acolyte lay crumpled in the rain-gully between two of the playhouse’s roofs.
‘Huh!’ Ash exclaimed.
He stepped out into the chaos of the Serpentine with his hood pulled low over his face. It was a scene of festa in the wide boulevard and the side streets branching off from it. Many in the crowds seemed intoxicated already, and people waved the red-hand flags of Mann, or garlands of white and red flowers bought from the many flower sellers who had suddenly appeared on every street corner, next to the street merchants selling hot food, alcohol, narcotics. Soldiers were clearing the road and forcing everyone back to the sidewalks. He knew what that meant; knew too why they were flying batwings over the district and so earnestly checking the rooftops.
He jostled through the press, his roll of belongings carried under his arm. He found a clear space in an archway next to a hot-food vendor, from where he purchased a paper cup of hot chee and a wrap of pork meat and peppers, and enjoyed breaking his fast as children shrieked in excitement all around him.
An old mangy-coated dog came up to him, and sat and looked up at his food with drool dangling from its panting mouth.
‘Hut,’ he said to the dog as he tossed the last third of the wrap into its mouth. The dog wagged its tail across the paving, wolfing down the food in a few swallows. It looked up at him for more, its tail still swinging.
Ash wiped his greasy hands and held them up empty for the dog’s inspection. ‘No more,’ he growled.
The dog lay down. Ash tried his best to ignore it as he leaned against the wall to ease the weight on his feet. There he waited beneath the archway, his eyes cast along the winding canyon that was the Serpentine, towards Freedom Square and beyond, where the Temple of Whispers reared high above a rabble of roofs and chimney stacks. He scratched his unkempt beard and listened to snatches of conversation around him. People spoke of the invasion ships in the harbour getting ready to set sail; of the Matriarch setting off for war. Questions abounded as to where they were destined.
At noon, a great battle-cry rose up from the direction of the square. Minutes later, it was followed by more cheering from further along the Serpentine. Over countless heads Ash spotted a procession making its way along the avenue. Painted red hands swayed from the tops of elaborately carved poles, and beneath them priests rocked to the same rhythm, decked out in their white robes and mirror-masks of burnished silver.
He turned his back to the street and bent low over his roll of belongings. The dog blinked and watched what his hands were doing as Ash tugged free the crossbow and locked its arms back into their firing position, glancing over his shoulder to see if he was being observed. He pulled the double strings back and fitted a bolt into place, then another, the scent of grease filling his nostrils.
For a moment, he experienced the sense of wani; of having lived this moment before, and then it was gone.
When Ash stood with the crossbow gripped within his cloak, the van of the procession was already passing by. He surveyed the balconies across the street filled with families rejoicing. Above them, Acolytes were positioned on several of the rooftops, studying the scene below through the eyeglasses of their longrifles.
A roar from the crowd was spreading towards him like a wave, matching pace with a high palanquin that moved slowly along the street, near-lost in clouds of red and white petals, people flinging them from the sidewalks or from the balconies above. He caught a flash of her, Sasheen.
Soldiers struggled to hold back the crowds that surged forward for a closer look at the Holy Matriarch, or, even better, for the Matriarch to lay eyes upon them.
Sasheen looked resplendent today. She stood on a massive palanquin shaped in the form of a glittering, jewel-encrusted dolphin, with oversized reins stretching back from its mouth to a rail she was resting one hand on for balance. The palanquin was borne on the backs of two dozen naked slaves, and she swayed slightly as they marched, her body encased in a contoured suit of white armour, her golden mask sculpted in her own features. She was holding aloft a stubby, gilded spear.
The adoration of the crowd heightened as the figure of the Matriarch turned her masked face to regard them. People fell to their knees in devotion. Ash witnessed several pilgrims fainting on the spot.
The crossbow was shaking in his hand as he lifted it up and aimed it at her head.
All of his previous waiting, his long rooftop vigil, seemed like the blink of an eye now. His chance had come at last, his chance to lay the boy’s torment to rest within him. Ash tried to steady his aim, intensely aware that he was about to cross a line that could not be undone. He would no longer be Rōshun after this. Even though he had already cast that role aside by words, this deed would be the real ending of it.
So be it. I’m dying anyway.
He curled his finger around the trigger, tracking her as she came directly past him.
Something was wrong. A sheen of sunlight reflected for a moment off the space around her. Ash hesitated, squinting, and saw that she was surrounded by a box of incredibly thin glass. He knew what it was in an instant; the exotic, toughened glass so sought after from Zanzahar, and brought all the way from the Isles of Sky. Nothing could pierce it save for explosives.
He lowered his crossbow in disgust, tucking it quickly inside his cloak again.
Ash rocked back on the balls of his feet. To his surprise his heart was racing. He watched, stunned, as the Matriarch went by unmolested, his hand squeezing the grip of the crossbow in impotent frustration.
The dog whined from where it lay by his side. It prompted him to act. With haste he disassembled the crossbow and stowed it inside his rolled-up cloak next to the eyeglass and the sword. He glanced at the Holy Matriarch progressing along the Serpentine, knowing that he needed to keep her in sight, to follow until some opportunity presented itself. He hefted the burden and turned to pursue her.
The Rōshun pushed on through the crowds, leaving the dog staring after him.
Ash could smell the brine of the sea as he stalked the procession along the winding route of the Serpentine, knowing at last that they were nearing the First Harbour. Along the sidewalks the crowds were packed so tightly he was finding it difficult to keep up with even the slow pace of the Matriarch’s palanquin. It was like a dream of childhood, of trying to hurry through thickets of unyielding bamboo in the height of a storm. As he lost sight of her entirely, he growled and shoved through a group of men into a clearer side street. From there he proceeded by a different route to the harbour.
When he emerged onto the open quaysides, he stopped and took in the fleet lying at anchor there. It looked smaller than when last he had seen it, on the day he had bidden farewell to Baracha and the others on their journey home. The swarms of men-of-war that had previously been harboured there were largely gone now, save for a few remaining squadrons. The rest were heavy transports, the vessels surrounded by scores of rowing boats ferrying last-minute supplies and personnel from the quaysides. In their midst, the massive hulk of the imperial flagship loomed over them all.
He stood there watching helplessly as the foot-slaves bore Sasheen’s palanquin across a gangplank, and onto a large barge that awaited them in the water. The rest of the Matriarch’s entourage followed, and then the gangplank was pulled onboard, and long sweeps emerged to push the barge away from the wharf. It began to row out towards the flagship.
People brushed past him, though Ash barely noticed their touches. He didn’t stir, his eyes filled with the sight of the barge heading out into the deep water of the harbour. All along the quayside the crowds were waving their Holy Matriarch off, shouting blessings on her forthcoming victory. Ash shot a hungry glance about him, seeking some way to follow her: a free rowing boat he could procure, perhaps, o
r a space on one of the boats already going back and forth between the fleet and the quay.
Chancy madness, he knew, born from his own desperation.
Easy, he said in his mind. Calm yourself.
Once more Ash made his way through the press with his bundle of weapons, and found a quieter spot against the brick wall of a warehouse. He looked out to sea, hoping for some inspiration to strike him.
Gradually the crowds dwindled, until it was mostly only those involved in the loading of the fleet who remained. The sun arced higher in the sky, its heat carried away in a breeze that was playing off the water. In ones and twos, the ships of the fleet completed the loading of their stores and set off for the open sea, pulled by their own sweeps or by rowing boats and ropes.
The flagship itself began to depart, drawn towards the harbour mouth by its own minor fleet of small vessels. Ash forced himself to remain seated.
For a while he studied the majority of vessels still at anchor, the lack of movement on many of their decks. He turned his attention to the chaos still apparent along the dockside. Tempers were running high, various captains along with their crews arguing with quartermasters as they tried to procure what supplies they still required.
At this rate, Ash pondered, many of those ships would be setting off in darkness. He leaned back, pulling his hood further down over his face. He crossed his arms and closed his eyes.
Without hurry, the autumn afternoon faded towards the onset of twilight.
There was a story told of the Great Fool, that Honshu sage of the Dao who had decried all dogmas, yet had himself become a religion after his own death. Every Rōshun apprentice was taught the story during his training.
While walking in the mountains along the source of the Perfume River, the Great Fool’s newest follower, the branded woman Miri, had asked of him: How does one remain still, great master?
In reply, the Great Fool had cast a stick into the rushing torrent, and bade his followers to watch as it floated along with the flow.
But I am not a stick of wood, Miri had replied with frustration. How can I flow with the stream so naturally?
The Great Fool had tapped her forehead once, lightly.
By allowing your mind to be still.
It was a paradox that had impressed Ash when he had first heard it as a Rōshun in training, for he’d been in great need of a saviour back then. Cast into exile with his fellow comrades, his family lost to him and with no hope of ever returning home, he had needed, desperately, something in which to tame the bleakness in his heart, and the runaway thoughts in his head that told him to end this life of his that was no longer worth living. And so he had embraced the Rōshun way of stillness, and it had saved him.
There was another story, one the Great Fool had himself used to instruct his followers, which Ash remembered too from that time.
A madman is held in a cage, with a blinded tiger as a companion.
For as long as he can remember, the madman has been walking from one side of the cage to the other, circling the tiger as it circles him, the animal snarling in hunger. For as long as he can remember, he has been leaping aside from its blind attacks, or standing silently in a corner watching it work its slow way around the bars. Never has it stopped this ranging about, so powerful are its desires.
One day, the madman finds he can no longer carry on this way. He stops his pacing. He turns his back on the tiger. He sits down and waits to die.
He falls asleep, or so he assumes – for when he opens his eyes again, all is different.
The door of the cage is hanging open. At long last, freedom beckons him.
The madman steps outside. He sees how everything is one in this place of all-consuming light. He sees how the bars of his confinement have been dividing his vision into narrow vertical slices for all this time. He looks to the tiger still prowling the cage. He sees how he has attached a name to it, and an identity, and a story of all the times they have shared together. He sees too how immature and petty, how strong and noble, the tiger truly is.
It is then that the man steps back into the cage with his earnest companion. The animal wishes to devour him even now; it still fears for its lasting survival.
But it does him no harm, for he is the master here.
He is sane.
It was in this way that Ash was no longer certain of himself. He no longer knew if he was flowing skilfully with the Dao in clear and detached purpose. Perhaps, in his grief, he had lost the Way.
How to know, though? How could he ever know the right way from the wrong way, when everything seemed equally as dark and unclear to him now?
Just breathe and go with it, the Chan monks of the Dao would have said. So Ash inhaled the cool night air deep into his lungs, and exhaled in a single long release all the pressure and confusion that was caught up within him; and from his stillness he launched himself from where he sat, springing up like a man on fire and sprinting through the darkness across the hard paving of the quayside, out onto the wooden planking of a jetty, pounding all the way to the very edge of it, where he leapt with a whoosh of breath and dived headfirst into the sea.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Breach
The procession of cloud-men walked along the cobbles with their black robes flapping in the wind and their voices loud as they chanted the solemn words of the death rite. Clatters sounded from the occasional coin dropped into their begging bowls; incense trailed grey and pungent around their shaven heads. In the hands of the oldest monk, following at the very back of their procession, a wooden aeslo clapped together like the jaws of a mouth, beating a slow and steady rhythm that was a jolt to the senses every time that it sounded.
Bahn offered nothing as they passed by. It wasn’t that he wished to refuse them a donation; he simply couldn’t rouse himself enough to perform the simple act of it. He was standing as though buried ten feet within himself, looking out through a bramble of whispered thoughts in a weariness that had become familiar to him now.
All he desired just then was to skip his duties this afternoon, and catch a rickshaw back to their home in the north of the city, and climb into bed, and pull the blankets over his head, and shut out the world until morning.
He had been plagued with this lethargy for a week now. Achieving sleep had always been a nightly struggle for Bahn, his head spinning with reflections and concerns. Yet now, no matter how much sleep he was able to manage, whether three hours of tossing and turning or ten hours of total oblivion, he would still wake feeling lifeless and drained.
It was all he could do to watch indull silence as the monks rustled along the street between the lines of onlookers paying their respects; and after them, the pale mourners who followed, the small jar of ashes cradled in a young man’s arm, his even younger wife next to him, barely able to walk without support.
Bahn needed to resume walking again, if only to invigorate his senses. Not wishing to show his disrespect by rushing past them all, he stepped behind the mourners for a while, trying not to yawn as he watched their grief from behind.
He headed south, through the bustling Quarter of Barbers, that district where Bahn had been born and raised, along with his two brothers. From there the Mount of Truth could be seen rising gently over the rooftops to the west, the hill with a crown of green parkland around its flattened summit, and a building of white that was the Ministry of War, where Bahn reported on most days to his superior, General Creed.
Not today, though. With the lull in the fighting, the general had taken the opportunity to fly to Minos on a personal mission of diplomacy, or so he had deigned to explain it when Bahn had voiced his curiosity. Bahn hoped he would not be long in returning. It had become a daily chore of his to field the endless missives from the Michinè council, demanding to know when the Lord Protector would be back, why he’d failed to seek their consent before deserting Bar-Khos and the Shield for so long.
Bahn had begun to respond with the same stock answer every time. He simply copied it from
a carefully worded page he kept lying on his desk.
He passed a long line of refugees and locals waiting for their bread rations from one of the council-sponsored bakeries. It made him wonder if he should buy some food for the energy it might give him. Bahn had been eating less lately too, often giving his share of their meagre supplies to Marlee and the children. When he walked through Hawkers’ Plaza, though, the food stalls of the small bazaar were nearly empty, and what little was on display bore prices he could hardly justify squandering with his few coins. Better to grab some plain bread and beans from one of the mess tents when he could.
He stopped as he emerged onto the High King’s Road, the longest thoroughfare of Bar-Khos, running from east to west along the coastline for the entire breadth of the city. The High King’s Road crossed the mouth of the Lansway, the thin isthmus that ran out towards the distant southern continent, and upon which stood the distant ranked walls of the Shield. The road too overlooked All Fools here, the closest district to the Shield and the only civilian area to be found on the isthmus proper, packed now to bursting with refugees. Beyond it lay the canal that intersected the Lansway to connect both harbours, and, beyond that, a line of construction that was a new wall in the making, dwarfed by Tyrill’s Wall, which rose as sheer and massive as a cliff, given scale by the occasional small speck of a Red Guard patrolling its crenellated crown.
Reluctantly, Bahn trod towards it.
The no-man’s land between the walls were churned expanses of planked walkways and sagging field tents, bordered on either side by the sea-walls and ahead and behind by the larger walls of the Shield, so that the space within them contained the acoustics and light of a deep valley trough. The chaos of city life was replaced with orderly discipline and the raw mood of men who fought every day on the top of the ramparts, and below them.
A full army was garrisoned here in these spaces between the foremost two walls of the Shield. Stepping out of a postern gate in the penultimate wall, Bahn found himself in the principal military encampment of the war. Ahead stood Kharnost’s Wall. It was the only thing now standing between himself and the Imperial Fourth Army on the other side.
