The Modern World (26 page)

‘Did you? Armour, Jant; get yourself some of this.’

‘I can’t fly in harness.’

‘Wear something on your arms at least.’ He grinned. ‘What do you think you are, bloody immortal?’

I picked up one of his mirror-finish arm plates from the floor and turned it over. Its canvas straps were hidden underneath it and woven through with steel wire resistant to Insect jaws. The straps had metal
spring clips – they could be unfastened in a second if something did go wrong, and they were all easily reachable. Wrenn could don full harness in minutes.

He nodded at it. ‘You should ask Sleat to make you some. It’s much better than that old crap scale you wear.’

‘Show me,’ I said.

He took off a greave and ran his finger inside it. ‘Well, it’s lightweight. Feel that. My breast and back plates are thinner than the ones for my arms and legs. Chain mail strips sit under every joint – elbows, waist, knees – they don’t add much weight but no claw is going to find its way in there. And see the little holes?’ He ran his finger along a line of perforations. ‘They make it lighter still, but they’re to let the air breathe. It doesn’t collect sweat and rust and I can wear it all day without overheating. Not like old lancers’ armour.’

It was the highest-quality steel with the sunburst inlaid in orpiment yellow. I ran my thumb over the smooth embossing and Wrenn chuckled. ‘Decoration won’t save your life. Look here – all the plates are straight-edged and tapered. Mandibles won’t find purchase on that. There’s deep fluting along every plate – no jaws will be strong enough to crush that much reinforcement. Sleat’s proved it in trials. Best of all, there are no small pieces for the bastards to grab – the elbow couters are attached to the vambraces and the besagews aren’t discs hanging loose, they’re part of the breastplate, see?’

‘Is this Morenzian?’ All human armour was adaptable to Awians these days but sometimes the added pieces were unreliable.

‘Sleat extended the pauldrons for me and I tuck my wings under them. He can do the same for you. He took my measurements when I joined the Circle. He made exactly what I wanted.’

‘Sleat custom-forges armour for every new Eszai,’ I said.

‘He made me a whole garniture suite.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. All interchangeable plates, for all purposes and the decoration matches. I wear this to joust; I just change the breastplate for one with a lance stop, and I have a closed-visor bascinet with a crest instead of this light casque.’

‘Clever.’

‘Oh, and I have a matching surcoat too. I don’t want to joust in bare Insect-fighting steel when there are ladies watching.’

‘Frost is a keen jousting supporter,’ I said. ‘You should talk to her about it and help calm her a little. She remembers all Hayl’s scores.’

‘At the moment I’d rather not.’ He began unhooking the leather
spats stretched over his feet to prevent mud working in between the joints. ‘These are the only thing I have a problem with. Leather never lasts long in a bout with an Insect – I might as well wrap myself in bacon.’

Lightning yelled from across the hall, ‘Jant! Are you going to the Castle or are you going to wait until we’ve all been eaten?’

‘Damn,’ I said. ‘I’d better go. See you in a few days.’

‘Bye.’ Wrenn attended to replacing the madder-red crest on his helmet. His plumes were an Awian symbol of bravery and he must have bought them at market, moulted by a girl whose feathers were so beautiful she could sell them. They couldn’t have been keepsakes from lovers, because Wrenn was enjoying being single far too much. Only one clever lass has come close to snaring him; she was an ardent swordswoman and applied to be taught by him, but when their conversation never turned on anything but swordplay even her patience wore thin.

I walked out to the square and climbed up to the hall roof, dwelling enviously on Wrenn’s armour. I wanted some. I thought, we have come a long way since the year 430 when Morenzians started sewing thick metal plates onto clothes. Insects’ carapaces are the optimal natural armour and we have learnt from them how to give ourselves the best possible exoskeletons.

I stood on the ridge, watching Insects descending on the town. I ducked as one buzzed overhead, blotting out the rising sun, and waited for a clear space when it would be safe to take off.

In the square, Hurricane was forming up a company of shield lines; five lines deep, ten men in each, standing shoulder to shoulder. They wore thick gauntlets, and padding on their left arms.

Along their lines the heavy rectangular shields reached down to the ground with little space under them; their ground spikes had been unscrewed. Each had one flat edge and the other edge curved into a hook along its length, so they clipped together loosely into a flexible continuous wall without gaps or overlaps that an Insect claw can pin together.

At the far side of the square, under the direction of the Macer, squads of infantry were dispatching dying Insects with heavy lead mallets, their handles one and a half metres long. They looked as if they were breaking rocks or knocking in tent pegs, but I heard the awful cracking as Insect limbs and heads gave way.

*

Three men with shields, one at the front and two beside him on his either side formed a triangle, running towards the gatehouse tower. A young man, sheltering between them, dragged a tiny limber cart loaded with arrow sheaves. They ran as fast as they could, reminding me of servants under umbrellas dashing across the Castle’s courtyards in heavy rain. An Insect descended towards them and the three shield men raised their shields into a roof.

The Insect landed squarely on the shields – which angled in different directions under its scrabbling feet. It slid off and the whole thing collapsed – the Insect came down in the middle, tangled in the cart and spilling arrows everywhere. Before it could right itself, the men crowded around and I saw their swords flashing as they rose and fell.

I looked down the road, seeing Tornado’s shield lines coming around the corner. They were clearing Insects before them, pushing them forwards. Insects were bracing their powerful legs on the shields’ rims, tearing at the spears, trying to crawl up the sides of the buildings, slipping over discarded wings and backing, backing, backing, as the shield wall advanced.

Tornado was walking in the gap between the first and second lines. His company was also five deep. Each line was of shield bearers and spearmen arranged alternately to thrust their spears over the tops of the shields. Those in the last line walked backwards to deal with Insects running up behind them.

Five lines isn’t many. I’ve seen this formation twenty deep when we were clearing Insects from Awian towns.

Tornado’s lines were approaching one of the radial roads. Tornado boomed, ‘Cover right junction!’

The men who heard him repeated it at a shout. It made them focus, it bound them together and those at the back heard the concerted yell. They pulled their shields in and advanced towards the street corner. Tornado called, ‘Line one, continue! Line two, stack to right!’

Behind the first line, line two began to dissolve their line across the road and instead queued up behind the right end of the first line. As they approached the junction, the men in the first line looked down the side road, saw it was crawling with Insects, and called, ‘Ten Insects, right!’

The queue of shield bearers and spearmen together dashed out from behind the first line and ran across the side road, turning as they ran to face the Insects in it. They filled the side road wall-to-wall, spacing themselves out. They slammed their shields together. ‘Ho!’

The Insects forced against the shield wall but the spearmen had
them under control so quickly Tornado didn’t have to detach another line to stand behind them. He left them blocking the road and all the other lines marched across the junction.

The shield wall was left defending the junction, a vital position for the overall strategy. They shifted their weight from foot to foot, rubbed their bruised arms and hands and stared up at me. When more Insects hove into view they shouted to steady their nerves. Insects are deaf so our shouts mean nothing to them, but the men needed to reassure themselves over the unearthly buzzing.

A hiatus in the Insect storm, and I was aloft. I flew over the camp and saw the extent of the devastation. The tents outside the town wall were flattened, plastered in mud. Their drainage ditches had collapsed into brooks of sludge. Shining carapaces bobbed in the moat’s coffee-coloured water.

Around twenty soldiers were constructing a pyre outside the gate. Bodies were laid side by side next to the woodpile to be cremated. No one buries corpses in Lowespass because Insects simply unearth them.

A squad of ten women were stripping armour, belts, boots and identification tags from the bodies, leaving only the clothes on. A girl crouched, entering the details in a ledger, because armour and weapons are reissued to new fyrd and she would send any money and jewellery to the family of the deceased.

Men were looping ropes around dead Insects and dragging them out of the gate, hefting them onto a pile beyond the pyre.

A fireman was unwinding the leather pipe from his flamethrower, a cart carrying a metal cylinder of neat alcohol and rape oil. He directed the nozzle while his mate pumped the handle. They sprayed liquid flame onto the Insect carcasses. Insects are supposed to be deterred by the smell of burning chitin but I’ve never seen any evidence of it.

I hastened south to the Castle for the rest of the day and all night, rehearsing in my head what I was going to say to the Emperor. I couldn’t see the horizon, so I tried to keep the strain on both wings the same and maintained a straight line. I navigated south carefully, checking the sultry stars by my compass.

Their constellations reflected like scattered salt on my oiled wings. I have always been convinced that stars are an illusion, just like rainbows, because no matter how high I fly they never seem any nearer. The spaces between them mesmerised me and I flew on, composing my report to the Emperor in my head. I wondered what to do if Frost’s madness worsened. I couldn’t think of any way to ease the pressure
on her, because she was the only one of us who really understood the dam.

I didn’t know Frost’s pre-Castle name but I have heard how she joined the Circle. She won her Challenge in 1703. She had lived all her life in Brandoch, where she founded the Riverworks Company in partnership with her husband.

Brandoch town is built on a little rise so low as to be almost indistinguishable from the rest of the drowned fenland. In Frost’s day it flourished because it overlooked the only passage through the Moren Delta deep enough for carracks. Frost and her husband laboured in the manorship’s tradition of reclaiming low-lying land from the sea which often flooded it: every one of its polder fields are man-made. They worked as a brilliant team, draining and shoring the marshy levels with dykes and long, raised roads.

Frost only sought the Castle when her husband fell ill with malaria. She realised that if she could make him immortal she had a chance of saving him. She is the most selfless of us all.

Her predecessor, Frost Pasquin, set her the Challenge of moving a fyrd division across the Oriole River using nothing but their own manpower and the materials to hand in Lowespass. Pasquin had been working at the front for too long and had lost touch with the rest of the world. He had not been aware of his Challenger’s area of expertise and he was surprised at how gladly she accepted the competition.

Pasquin took eight days to build an ingenious pontoon bridge of pine and cowhide, with a load-bearing weight enough for the five hundred men. Then it was the Challenger’s turn.

She moved the river. She surveyed it, dug a short channel and ran it into an old meander. Her husband lay on a stretcher and watched her silently, growing ever weaker while she worked day and night for five days solid. He was forbidden to help her by the Castle’s rules even if he had been well enough. The river altered its course and flowed a little south of the camp of fyrdsmen. They didn’t have to walk a step; Pasquin’s bridge was left high and dry.

The Emperor asked Pasquin if he could return the river to its original course. But Pasquin couldn’t, and had to admit he was beaten.

Frost’s husband died the same night. She won her place in the Circle but all she would say was that she had failed to save him. She became locked in mourning and refused herself any pleasure.

The changes in people’s characters cannot be divorced from the changes in their bodies. An adolescent is passionate and changeable because of his changing body, not just his lack of experience. An octogenarian is fatalistic since he can feel his body failing, and knows
it prefigures his death, not solely because he has seen friends die. Middle-aged mortals change more slowly than the very young and very old, so their characters are more stable. And we Eszai never age at all, so aspects of our characters are also fixed.

Moreover, I doubt any Eszai really grows up while the Emperor San is our immortal father. They preserve their identities against the grind of long centuries, and by their quirks they distance themselves from the crowds. So, Frost still retains the attitude of mourning. She lives for her work but complains she can’t achieve as much working alone. She leaves the fruits of genius scattered through the Fourlands, like the tidal mills of Marenna Dock, the Anga Shore breakwater on the Brandoch coast, and a hundred six-sailed wind pumps along Miredike and Atterdike that drain the malaria swamp.