by Col Buchanan
He watched her roll onto her back and stretch, then sit up and look about her. She took a sniff of her leathers, wrinkled her nose. ‘I need a wash,’ she announced.
He limped down to the river with Curl helping to support him. His wound had been cleaned and stitched the night before, though it still hurt enough to make him pant. Together they washed naked in the river, Curl drawing the eyes of the men there, soldiers and civilians alike, until Ché scowled at them, and they made their interest less obvious.
He’d heard of the spiritual properties of the Chilos. And even though he hardly believed in such things, he dunked himself anyway, and tried to make himself believe there was truth in it. All the while, he wondered what he would do with himself now, what he was even doing here with this girl he’d grown fond of so quickly.
Afterwards, they helped themselves to breakfast in one of the military mess tents that had been set up amongst the encampment. He saw Curl look about her for faces she knew. She talked to a couple of them, asking after a few people by name, pleased when she heard they still lived.
Together, they took their wooden platters outside and sat on a mound of grass to eat their plain meals of hash and beans.
‘What is that thing?’ he asked Curl as she absently fingered the wooden charm about her neck.
‘This?’ she said, noticing herself playing with it. ‘My ally.’
‘Yes?’
‘It looks after me,’ she explained.
Ché gave a tilt of his head. Lagosians had some strange notions, he reflected. But then that was a little rich, being a Mannian himself. ‘Do you miss it?’ he asked her.
‘What?’
‘Your home.’
She looked at him over her plate of food, her brow furrowed.
‘I’m sorry. That was stupid of me.’
He was surprised to hear the word come so easily from his lips. He could not recall when he had last apologized for anything.
Ché did not feel entirely like himself today. An odd contented-ness had come upon him, as though for the first time in his life he was precisely where he was supposed to be, and all was fine with the world. He had dreamed of his mother in the night. She had spoken about many things he couldn’t now remember, yet he recalled how she had smiled, and how the warmth shone off her like sunshine. His heart had swelled with it, and he had thought, How ugly the world is without these connections between us.
And then he had awakened, to find Curl blinking at him next to his side.
‘What about you? Do you miss it?’ Her tone said she was still annoyed with him.
‘Home?’
‘Yes.’
He shook his head and realized it was true. He didn’t care if he never saw Q’os again.
‘And where is home, Ché?’
He hesitated, and then the lie that formed got tangled in his lips somehow, so that he said nothing. He was weary of secrets and the burdens they had become to him. This was a day for new beginnings.
‘Ché?’
He placed his platter on the ground, wiped his hands on his knees.
‘What is it? Why can’t you tell me?’
‘It’s just . . .’ He met her eye then.
Curl seemed to see into him, for her expression hardened. ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Not you.’
Still he couldn’t find the words. Her face twisted in anguish. When Curl spoke, it was as though some invisible creature was trying to throttle her. ‘You’re one of them? A Mannian?’
Ché glanced about to see if anyone had overheard her. When he looked back, he felt the gulf that suddenly existed between them, the sudden loss of their connection, like a candle flame snuffed out.
What have I done?
Her platter fell to the ground. She walked off quickly towards the mess tent.
‘Wait,’ he suddenly called after her. ‘Let me explain!’
She went inside. He watched with dread in his stomach as a group of Specials rushed from the tent, Curl walking behind them.
‘On your feet,’ one of them ordered.
Ché had eyes only for Curl. He knew he could still make her understand, if only she would look at him.
‘On your feet, Mannian,’ growled another, catching the attention of others nearby.
The man kicked Ché hard in the ribs, and he spilled over onto the grass. He caught a sight of Curl, her back turned to him, walking away with a hand covering her face.
And then they laid into him with all their fury.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Courage of the Dead
Bull dreamed of his younger brother Kurtez, though in the dream Kurtez was a gangly boy again, shy and overly sensitive to the world, and Bull still the overbearing full-grown man.
They were in the warren slums of their Bar-Khos childhoods, where Bull had first learned to fight and to enjoy it, being chased by a gang of unseen pursuers and their whoops and their war cries. In the dream, Bull told his younger brother to keep running, while he stopped and turned to face the baying mob, putting his scarred and massive body in their way to save him.
When he awoke, startled, he found himself curled on the wet straw floor of the pit, shaking from the cold and drenched by the rain that fell from the night sky overhead. A soldier stood over the pit, a long jabber in his hand that wobbled as it he held it down through the wooden bars. He was poking Bull hard in the ribs to rouse him.
‘No sleeping,’ said the man, and he sounded annoyed at having to remind him of this vital rule of life.
Bull scraped himself up and leaned his back against the earthen wall, where rainwater was trickling down into the hole. The soldier moved around the edge of the pit, poking each of the prisoners in turn. Grunts and snorts of surprise sounded in the blackness.
Bull thought of his dream, of the face of his brother.
Kurtez had left a note when he’d taken his belt and hung himself from the rafters of his room. He couldn’t live with being cast aside by Adrianos, he had written. And seeing him strut around with his new lover.
It was that note that Bull had stuffed into the mouth of Adri-anos as the man lay there dying. There had been no mention of it at his trial. Perhaps the family had removed it to cover their own sense of shame.
Another jab against his shoulder made him look up. The guard had made a circuit of the pit, and had returned to him.
‘No sleeping.’
Bull was still shackled. His cramped and abused body was a study in every shade of bruise. Still, something snapped in him. He grabbed for the end of the jabber and yanked it from the surprised man’s grip. He clamped his other hand around it and shoved hard so that the end of it struck the man’s mouth. Bull rammed it again and again into his face.
The man’s foot slipped on the crumbling edge of the pit, and he went down, sprawling face first across the bars that caged them in, the wood creaking against his weight. Bull wiped his face clear of rain and aimed the swaying jabber carefully. He cracked the man a final time on his temple, knocking him out.
‘Chilanos!’ he hissed in the darkness and the rain as he struggled to his feet. ‘Give me a hand up, man.’
But Chilanos was silent, and Bull recalled the fellow had lost the ability to speak after his last interrogation with the priests.
‘Bahn!’ he tried, though he wasn’t sure why, for Bahn was as far gone as the rest of them. ‘Calvone!’
A rustle of chains sounded next to him.
‘Help me, damn it!’
He was surprised when a hand reached out and grabbed his overall, and Bahn hauled himself to his feet.
Good man, he thought. Good man!
He could hardly see his old comrade in the darkness, only the vague shape of him. Bahn bent down and grabbed at his foot until Bull lifted it and placed it into the stirrup of his hands. ‘Now,’ whispered Bull, and he hopped with his other foot as Bahn strained and grunted to lift his great bulk.
Bahn managed to raise him by a few feet, his arms shaking and his back brace
d against the wall. Bull grabbed out for one of the wooden bars. He missed and fell back down as Bahn’s strength gave out. The soldier was starting to stir above them.
‘Once more,’ Bull told him. ‘Come on, you bastard!’
They tried again, and this time Bull managed to grab one of the slippery bars. The wood creaked some more, sagging a little as it took his weight. Raindrops were blinding him.
‘Hold steady,’ he hissed down at Bahn, and fumbled with the leather straps that held the door shut, blinking to see anything while the face of the soldier looked down at him from a few feet away, his eyes rolling white in his head. The straps were slippery in his fingers. He cursed and tugged and tried to free them.
A loop of leather came free, and then before he knew it the rest of the bound strap was unravelling from around the bars. He pulled it clear and dropped it into the pit.
Bull shoved at the door and it swung open. He hung there long enough to catch a breath, dripping with water, no strength left in him.
‘Push,’ he said down to Bahn. ‘For the love of Mercy, push now!’
Bahn was dreaming; he was sure of it.
They were walking through the camp of the Imperial Expeditionary Force in a torrent of freezing rain. Bull was up front, dressed in the armour of an imperial soldier, a slight limp in his gait. The others shambled after him, arms supporting each other, their eyes wide and staring at the neatly ordered rows of pup tents they passed by, at the soldiers hunkered down inside them.
Over their shoulders lay Simmer Lake and the island of Tume, the city brilliantly lit tonight. The camp sprawled around the shore not far from where the bridge ran onto the land. Bahn could see earthworks over there, near the bridge. They had heard fighting over recent days, gunshots and men riding past in haste. At first they’d hoped and prayed for it to be a rescue mission, but no one had come for them.
From the overhead mutters of their captors it had sounded as though the Mannians were fighting amongst themselves. Still, it offered the prisoners a respite from their torments. The beatings had stopped, and the regular interrogations and the drugs. It was as though they’d been forgotten.
For Bahn, it had been a time for brooding, of coming to terms with the knowledge that he was dead now in this nightmare of a pit, and was simply waiting to be buried. He’d found a measure of peace amongst the despair of their situation. Had found that you could face your own impending death and come to terms with it, almost welcome it, for the end of all your earthly petty troubles that it would bring.
And now this; this dream of stumbling along at the rear of the chain of men, with the sheets of rain blinding him and his shackles biting into the open sores of his skin.
They walked and walked with the reek of their foulness preceding them, passing through the camp unchallenged, shuffling clinking past the gleaming eyes of soldiers as they watched Bull leading them, the soldiers looking miserable and spent and uncaring.
In front of Bahn, the man called Gadeon uttered a strange mewling noise from his throat and began to stagger away on a different course. Bahn grabbed him, slipping in the mud in his bare feet as he pulled him back in line.
‘Stay with us, brother,’ he whispered. ‘Stay with us now.’
‘We should go back,’ said the man frantically. ‘They’ll punish us for this when they find us gone. They’ll call us traitors again or worse.’
Bahn felt ashamed to see the man so broken; then ashamed that he should feel that way at all.
What have they done to us? he thought, listening to the man gabble in fright. What have they done to our minds?
Gadeon stopped all of a sudden, and he turned on Bahn and seized him with his clawed hands. ‘Are they letting us go?’ he asked loudly, almost shouting. ‘Is that it?’
Someone shushed for him to be quiet. ‘Tell me, Bahn!’ he shouted. ‘I can’t go on if they—’ Bahn clamped a hand over his mouth and nose. The man struggled, suffocating.
For a moment Bahn held on grimly, wanting him only to shut up and die.
A hand seized his arm and pulled it free. It was Chilanos. He pushed Gadeon ahead of him and back into line, following the man with an arm across his shoulder.
Bahn stumbled after them.
Yes, he thought to himself. They’re playing with our heads. They’re making us dream this night, and when I wake I’ll be back in that hole, waiting to die.
He looked about him, and realized they had left the camp behind them, that they were stumbling out onto the open plain. The darkness there like an embrace.
Bahn bumped into the back of Chilanos, for the man had stopped dead in his tracks. He peered ahead through the rain and saw that Gadeon had stopped too, and the man before him. Bahn staggered forwards around them, not wanting to stop now. He saw the dark form of Bull with his hand held up for silence. The big warrior’s head was scanning slowly left to right.
‘Halt!’ came a voice through the darkness ahead of them, and then sound of footsteps squelching through mud. ‘Declare yourselves!’
Steel rasped against leather. Bull vanished into the night.
Two blades struck each other. Another shout sounded from their left. ‘Sound a report!’
Footsteps running towards them. ‘Report, I say!’
This is real, Bahn thought. This is no fantasy.
‘Go,’ urged Bahn to his comrades in a sudden rush of panic. He grabbed a man and shoved him forwards into the darkness. ‘Go,’ he said again, trying to get them all moving. They started to run for it, the whole huffing shambling group of them.
They passed Bull in the darkness. The man whirled away from something and waved them on.
‘Sound the alarm!’ a man was hollering. ‘Sound the alarm there!’
The men gasped as they splashed through the gully of a stream. They helped each other to their feet and up the other side of it. Bahn fell and swallowed a mouthful of muddy water. Rain splashed off the flowing stream. Retching, he got to his feet and clawed his way up the other side.
He turned back for Bull. The man stood on the bank of the gully silhouetted by the campfires. His back was to them, a naked sword in his hand.
Someone was trying to tug Bahn along. He turned and followed in a hopping skipping run. They ran until their hearts were fit to burst and kept on running, scattering into the night like phantoms.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
A Mother
Smoke tumbled from the chimney of the cottage and from the roof of a rundown shack at the back. Against the side of the cottage rested a lean-to of rotten planks, its floor strewn with hay that had spilled out into the muddy yard where chickens pecked at scattered corn. At the edge of a fenced enclosure, an old zel ambled lazily, chewing contentedly and swatting its tail at the late autumn flies. Beyond, in the far distance, the southern mountains rose with silver falls of water shining on their flanks, catching sunlight.
Nico’s mother bustled from the kitchen doorway. She selected a few small logs from a pile that leaned against the whitewashed wall of the cottage, then made her way quickly to the smoky shack with the dirty hems of her skirts dragging across the ground. Her red hair was tied back this morning; it shone with a deep lustre.
Ash saw her as walked up the dirt track, and stopped as though he had walked into a wall. His heart started hammering inside him.
He came up to her as she left the smoking shack, wiping her empty hands.
‘Oh!’ Reese exclaimed and clutched her chest in fright. She relaxed as recognition came to her. She glanced behind him for Nico, and her face tightened when she failed to see him.
‘Mister Ash,’ she managed.
‘Mistress Calvone.’
He could see her taking in his ragged, unkempt condition. A tension was slowly settling upon her pretty features. ‘My son. Where is he?’
Ash’s eyes closed of their own accord, wanting to spare him from her distress. He lowered his head in shame.
‘No,’ she whispered in realization.
How cou
ld he say what needed to be said? Ash forced himself at least to meet her stare.
‘The boy . . .’ he began, and it took all the force of his will to continue. ‘Miss Calvone. I am sorry. He is gone.’
‘No.’ She was shaking her head, a hand clutching at her throat; her skin had flushed a vivid crimson.
Ash fumbled with the small clay vial of ashes about his neck until he held it outstretched in his hands. He saw how pitiful it looked. More pitiful even than the urn of ashes he had given to Baracha for safe keeping. But it was all he could offer her, and he had a need just then to give something of her son back to her.
‘I . . . I am . . . deeply sorry.’
Reese glared in horror at the tiny vial as though he held a stillborn foetus in his hands. In that moment, it was true self-loathing that possessed him.
She slapped the jar from his hands and it went spinning across the yard, where it struck the wall of the cottage and shattered into pieces. Reese launched herself at him, swinging her fist across his face. It was a solid blow and he swayed from it, and then her rage fully unleashed in a torrent of punches and kicks.
‘You promised!’ she screamed over and over again. ‘You promised you’d protect him!’
Ash didn’t try to stop her, not even when she blindly grabbed at a spade and laid into him with the full weight of its metal head. He fell, sprawling in the dirt with his hands raised over his face. Vaguely, he was aware of the torrent of words rushing from her mouth, words of accusation, every one of them justified, each one true.
He could barely see with the blood coursing into his eyes. He heard the shouts of a man, felt strong hands grabbing him. Ash blinked his eyes clear, saw the looming face of Los peering down at him. Reese sat on the ground amongst her piled skirts, sobbing inconsolably, slapping at the earth and wrenching handfuls free with her fingertips.
‘You’d better leave, old man,’ advised Los, his hands helping Ash to his feet.
Ash stood and swayed on the spot. He wanted to say something to her, try in some way to lighten her grief. But he knew there was nothing in all the worldhe could say that would do that. He left her in pieces, like the clay vial scattered in the dirt.
