by Col Buchanan
A full chartassa of heavy infantry drilled in formation under the heat of the noonday sun, their step sergeants screeching out commands for the manoeuvres they were expertly practising. He watched as the phalanx of men halted with a stamp of their feet, and the front ranks lowered the glittering warheads of the spears they called charta, and cried out with a collective shout. Red Guards and League Volunteers strode amongst the tents. Specials lingered next to the open-sided towers that perched over the pitheads of the tunnels that ran beneath Kharnost’s Wall, where the siege engineers laboured in the dark earth, and the Specials fought when they were needed.
Over by the mess tents, a group of Greyjackets and Volunteers had stripped to their trousers and were playing a game of cross. Colonel Halahan was there, smoking his pipe as he stood in his plain grey uniform, offering the occasional bellow to the men of his brigade, all of them internationals from abroad; Nathalese, Pathian, Tilanian and beyond. Across from him, Halahan’s counterpart in the Free Volunteers appeared to be offering encouragement to his own men by way of laughing at their mistakes.
The Volunteers were fighters from Minos and the other islands of the democras. They held nothing back as they gestured and swore at their mocking officer in a manner that always surprised Bahn whenever he came across it; such informality would never have been tolerated within the rigid hierarchy of the Khosian army. Just like the Greyjackets they were competing against, these men had no superiors save for those they most respected; they could even dismiss and replace their officers by a show of hands whenever that respect was lost.
Halahan raised a hand now at the sight of Bahn, and Bahn nodded in response to the old Nathalese veteran. ‘Colonel Halahan,’ he called out in greeting. ‘You look well.’
‘You’re a bloody bad liar, Bahn,’ the old veteran shouted back, just as one of his men was knocked sprawling to the ground before him, and he was in snarling amongst them all, breaking up a fight.
Bahn was in the shadow of Kharnost’s Wall long before he reached it. The guns along the top of the battlements sat silently, but sharp-shooters were taking the odd shot up there.
It was the breach of Kharnost’s Wall that Bahn had come to inspect this afternoon, that section which had collapsed in the previous month after it had been undermined by the Imperials, and which had been hard fought over for a week until the defenders had been able to plug it with debris.
It drew Bahn to it now, a pale jumbled wedge filling a broken portion of the great rampart. A makeshift job, he could see even before he reached it. Men and zels laboured to lift blocks of cut stone into place as they built a thin sheath wall to cover the loose filler. Still, they said the rampart would be permanently weakened here.
It had been a while, Bahn realized, since he’d actually mounted Kharnost’s Wall and looked to the other side. Not often were the guns so subdued, the air so clear of flying projectiles. Bahn decided to take a look.
He could feel sweat on his forehead by the time he had hiked the long steps to the very top. It was the armour: he’d never learned the knack of carrying its weight properly. On the upper parapet he placed a hand on a crenellation and tilted his helm back to wipe at his brow. A pair of Red Guards cast him a glance then returned to their game of rash; their lieutenant paid him no notice at all, the man was occupied with eyeing the isthmus beyond.
Bahn peered over the battlements himself. He saw dark lines of earthworks, and siege guns still wrapped in their night protections of straw and oiled canvas. Here and there were movements of white, and the odd desultory puff of smoke from one of their snipers.
Behind their lines spread the vast encampment of the Imperial Fourth Army, like a smoky, sleepy city.
We should ask them if they fancy a game of cross, he thought. We could settle the entire war here and now and get on with our lives.
Below, on the Khosian side, the game of cross was just finishing. He could see Halahan limping towards the wall as though he intended to climb its steps. Bahn had little wish to talk to the man, or anyone else just then.
He moved on, unconsciously keeping low as he stepped along the parapet towards the site of the breach, feeling exposed at each wind-blown open space between the teeth of the crenellations, and the occasional gaping emptiness where a section of the battlements had fallen away entirely. No one else was walking bent over, though, nor showing the least sign of concern about the odd incoming shot. Bahn forced himself to straighten his back and to walk in a way more befitting an officer.
He stopped as the battlements dropped away altogether, the stonework ragged where the undermined wall had collapsed. Bahn gaped down at the filled-in breach.
The rubble and earth that plugged the gap was a good half-throw across in size. It had been tamped down and floored with loose planking, and a crude barricade of stone blocks had been set across it for cover, although no one was out there just now. The breach itself was no longer visible from the Mannian side of the Shield. It was faced with the same great slope of earth that fronted the rest of the wall, the only defence they had found that could withstand the constant bombardments of cannon.
Still, it was certainly visible from where he stood, and Bahn could not tear his gaze from it. He stared at the broken section of wall as though staring into the depths of himself, feeling some kind of affinity with this weakened mass of stone.
He thought of the note that had arrived from Minos intelligence the week before, suggesting the possibility of an imminent invasion of Khos. He had been bound by his duty to keep the news to himself; it was, after all, only a supposition of the enemy’s plans. Even Marlee he had kept in the dark, not wanting to cause her unnecessary worries; she had known that something was wrong with him anyway, had noticed the despondent way he carried himself these days. And then the guns on the Mannian side had fallen silent, supposedly as part of the Empire’s period of mourning. To Bahn, it had seemed more as if they were catching their breath for the onslaught to come.
Bahn removed his helmet, set it down on a surviving crenellation next to him with a scrape of metal. A cistern was built into the battlements here, filled with rainwater, and he drank a few sips from a cup fixed to it by a chain. Sated, he leaned against the stonework and gazed out over the Lansway, lost in the tumult of his thoughts.
A far thunderstorm was trailing curtains of rain across the far end of the isthmus and the crust of hills that stretched away on either side of it: the very tip of the southern continent, and the land of Pathia, now ten years fallen to Mann. His hair blew about in the breeze as birds wheeled high and aimless in the sky above.
He ducked as a shot whined off the stonework near to him. Bahn turned to look at where it had struck, and saw Halahan standing there with the foot of his bad leg propped up on the rubble of the broken battlement, a hand on his raised knee, his other holding the clay pipe in the corner of his mouth, coolly studying a breath of dust drifting from the stonework next to his boot.
The Nathalese veteran leaned and spat on the chalky bullet-strike as though putting out a flame, then spoke to Bahn without turning to him. ‘Thinking of some poke?’
Bahn blinked, not understanding his meaning.
‘You seemed lost, a moment ago. I wondered if you were thinking of some lass.’
Bahn rose from his crouch and brushed his fingers through his hair and fixed his helm back on his head. He was careful all the while to remain behind the protection of the battlements. ‘You walk quieter than a mountain lion,’ he replied to the Nathalese man, before he realized what he was saying.
Halahan was gracious enough not to glance down at the hinged metal support that wrapped a good portion of his leg, but instead simply met his gaze. A dark humour played in the backs of his eyes, which shone with the dazzling dark blue of setting skies. Bahn had always liked the Nathalese commander of the Greyjacket brigade, had always respected his no-nonsense manner, without guile or self-importance – unlike so many of the other officers he knew within the army.
The colon
el had been a priest once, or so he’d heard, though it was hard to see anything of the religious man about him now. Instead there was something windburned about his character, and something lawless.
‘I was thinking of that fleet in Q’os,’ Bahn confessed. ‘I was wondering if it would be setting forth soon, and if so, for where.’
‘You were wondering if it would be coming here.’
‘Of course. Aren’t you?’
Halahan seemed to laugh without showing it anywhere but in his eyes.
‘Is the old man back yet?’ he asked him.
Ah, thought Bahn.
‘No. And the council are flapping my ears off about it.’
‘I can imagine. It looks bad on them when the Lord Protector goes off by himself asking for League reinforcements.’
‘You think that’s what he’s doing there?’
‘Certainly. Amongst other things. What else can he do? The council would rather bury their heads in the sand. By the sounds of it they’re just hoping the Mannians invade Minos rather than here.’
Bahn offered a shrug, but the motion was lost beneath the shoulder-guard of his armour. ‘Maybe they’re right, then. Minos could be as much a target. They’re being hard hit as we speak.’
‘Aye, I’ve been following the reports. Imperial Diplomats running amok in Al-Minos. The Second Fleet engaged in a battle with sizeable enemy formations.’ Halahan sounded as though he didn’t believe any of it. ‘And the Third Fleet dispatched from our waters to help, it’s so bad. Handy that. If you wanted to slip an invasion fleet down here from Lagos unmolested.’
Halahan puffed on his pipe as the wind jostled his long grey hair about his face. It did not seem as though he was discussing the matter of their possible extinction here. Bahn had often wondered about these men who lived through war as though it were an ordinary life to them. How they were able to switch off their imaginations from the worst of fates that could befall them. How they glided through their lives whether in peace or in battle.
He was envious of anyone who exhibited such traits. Bahn never seemed to stop being frightened of the future and the war. And he certainly didn’t glide through his life; he trod furtively with his attention darting left and right, always concerned at making a false step or saying the wrong thing. Perhaps he should develop a taste for drinking more, like so many of his fellow officers. Or for the hazii weed, like Halahan always seemed to be smoking. Even now he could smell it in the odd twist of the wind.
A flight of skyships was circling over the city, far above the merchant balloons tethered to their towers, higher even than the wheeling birds. Bahn had dreamed the other night that he and his family had been aboard one of those magnificent flying vessels, heading towards the rising sun in search of sanctuary.
‘You know, don’t you, that every one of them has a private ship moored in the western harbour. Fast sloops with their crews on standby, in case the Shield ever falls.’
Bahn nodded absently. He listened to the cuff of the wind against his ears.
‘Still,’ he spoke at last, and his voice sounded fragile, ready to break. ‘The feint could be here, don’t you think? Minos could be their real target.’
Halahan studied him for a time, the humour gone from his eyes.
The man placed a hand on Bahn’s shoulder.
‘Better get your head straight, son,’ Halahan told him softly. ‘They’re coming for us all right.’
CHAPTER NINE
In the Company of Rats
The ship sped along on its south-easterly course with its sails straining fat with wind and its prow clipping through the rise and fall of the swells. Ché stood by the rail with the salty spray hissing past the hull, the vessel thrumming beneath him as it bore them across the Heart of the World.
To others, he looked as though he was merely taking in the sea air on another day on their journey east. For Ché, it was a form of meditation standing like this, his mind focused on the flow of his breathing and the senses of his body. It was a pleasure to be this way, so much so that a slight unconscious smile curled the corners of his mouth.
He didn’t dare do any more than this. Not here, not in the presence of so many of his peers. To squat down now on the main deck in the customary position of a Daoist monk, or a Rōshun for that matter – kneeling with spine erect, thoughtless and still – would be an open challenge to them all. Remarks would be made. Something would be said to him by one of the Monbarri, threats veiled behind skilful questions of double meaning.
His feet rocking to the gentle swaying of the ship, Ché could see the wheelhouse rising high before him in the mid-section of the ship, a legion of signal flags fluttering from the top of it. Behind him, at the stern of the vessel, the quarterdeck rose three storeys tall, where the stately cabins of the Holy Matriarch were located, along with those of her two generals. Sasheen was up there now, on the uppermost deck, taking in the sea air like Ché himself, though she was seated in a deep wicker chair and wrapped in a heavy fur cloak against the bite of the wind, surrounded by white screens to shield her position. Between the screens, Archgeneral Sparus and young Romano could be glimpsed sitting on either side of her, engaged in conversation and attended by slaves. The Matriarch wasn’t looking at them as they spoke. Sasheen was watching the skyship that was passing overhead, one of their birds-of-war guarding the invasion fleet; a scattering of vessels that stretched ahead and behind as far as the eye could see.
He sensed rather than heard the approach of someone behind him.
‘Don’t dwell on it,’ came the quiet voice of a man. ‘It’s always much worse than you can imagine anyway.’
Ché felt a moment’s irritation, and turned his head to see Guan standing there, the young man of the Mortarus sect who had come aboard with his sister as part of Sasheen’s travelling entourage. The priest stood dwarfed by the ship’s great masts and sails that diminished half the sky.
‘And what’s that?’ Ché enquired drily.
‘The invasion. You’ve never been to war, have you?’
Ché simply shook his head.
‘I was there with my sister, the last time we invaded the Free Ports. It wasn’t a pretty sight.’
‘You were in Coros? You hardly look old enough.’
‘No. We hardly were. Our father was the commander of the fifty-fifth Lights. Bringing us along was his idea of an education. And we learned, all right. We learned what a warhead could do to the integrity of his skull.’
His father, Ché reflected. It was rare for a priest to speak of a father; to even know who the man was.
He saw that Guan was waiting for him to ask more, so instead he said nothing. He wished only to be left alone.
It was Guan who broke the silence. ‘You don’t know what I’m saying, do you?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’
‘Then you’re not alone. The people on this ship seem to have no idea of what they’re getting into either. These aren’t some northern tribesmen that we plan to invade here. Or an army of Lagosian insurgents, for that matter. These are Khosians, with the finest chartassa in all the Free Ports. They’ve fought off more invasions than most of the southern nations combined.’
Ché was in no mood for horror stories of war today. The man simply wished to show off, to notch himself a little higher than Ché.
‘I see. A people to be feared.’
Guan stared hard at Ché, and Ché stared out to sea.
‘I’m wondering if you’ve balled anything lately, Ché? You seem a little uptight.’ And Guan smiled suddenly, as though that would make it fine to say these things to him. ‘Or perhaps you’re getting plenty enough from the Matriarch herself?’
Ché allowed a scowl to show in his eyes.
‘You’re either a fool or a lunatic, Guan. I think your Mortarus training leads you too close to a worship of death.’
Guan shrugged without care. A fool, then, Ché decided. ‘I see you don’t deny it.’
Ché turned away from t
he man, refusing to be drawn into this conversation. He wondered once more if Guan and his sister were not in fact Regulators in disguise, and if Guan was merely playing at being a careless fool. Indeed, Ché had been surprised at this man’s insistence in befriending him, had wondered if perhaps he had been tasked with watching Ché during the long voyage to Khos.
Guan sighed as though ridding himself of frustration. ‘Have you eaten yet?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Later, then. We can share a drink perhaps, and find ourselves another game of cards. It’s your turn to lose, as I recall.’
‘Perhaps,’ responded Ché.
He waited until he heard the man walking away, then gradually relaxed again.
It was often this way with his peers. Even a few moments of simple chatter could seem like a squabble over spilled milk. How could it not be? They had been raised knowing three things above all else in life: their own self-importance, their freedom to pursue every desire, and their voracious need to defeat each other. Always they would look for ways to better him, to manipulate him; it grew tiresome after a while, when all he wanted was some honest companionship. It made him as hostile as they were.
The price, of course, was one of alienation, but Ché had found the alternative to be even worse: alienation from his true self. He felt lost when he was with these people for too long, weakened in his own struggling convictions.
Guan was wrong about one thing. The men and women on board were hardly ignorant of what they were facing. He could feel it all around him, the tension in the air, the quietness.
Ché’s gaze roamed up to look at the Matriarch again, the woman still listening to the talk of her two generals. Romano was a dangerous one to bring on this expedition. The young general was the greatest contender to Sasheen’s throne; hence, Ché suspected, she had elected to suffer his presence during the campaign, fearing what troubles he might foment during her absence from the capital. But he was to be feared here too, for with him had come his contribution to the invasion force, his own private military company of sixteen thousand men. If it came to it, they would be loyal to their paymasters, Romano and his family, before even the Holy Matriarch herself.
