The Year of Our War (35 page)

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked. She was used to me looking gaunt, but not this defeated.

“He’s sick,” said Ata. “Will all you armor-clad bastards bugger off away from this compass?”

“Has he been bitten?”

“Not by anything you know about, my lady.”

I turned my head away. If I wasn’t so fucking weak I could have gone to score. The Circle had not broken again, so the rest of the Eszai must still be alive, with the Swordsman holding Hacilith. I thought of the city’s Rowel Alley, Needle Park, East Bank Docks, all the pure quality cat the knife-packing youths sell and cut-down cat in foil wraps the matelots deal between themselves. Zascai low voices, silhouettes at street corners, or a pickable lock on a field hospital coffer full of medical-grade phials.
Anything
to ease the pain.

“Cat-scratched,” Ata said.

The Archer looked back to the land.

Ata stared at me as if I was beneath contempt—just above derision, on about the same level as scorn. She continued to herself, “I thought death was the worst evil, because if it were good then Eszai would be content to die. Didn’t consider that some of them had chosen a living death.”

That was too much for my pride. What did she know? I tried to stand and only managed to kneel. I heaved a breath, struggled in a suffocating ocean. Tried to stay afloat.

Ata said, “The Messenger’s gone to pieces, Lightning. Hope you can keep your edge.”

Slid into the depths.

I
lay on a bunk, shivered and convulsed. My long fingers brushed the floorboards with each twitch. Swallow did not find me an easy patient; she put up with being screamed at in ten languages:

“I can’t go through this shit! There isn’t enough time!”

“Hush, Jant.”

“We only have three weeks!”

“You’re delirious…He was close to Mist, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”—Lightning’s voice—“And it was another bad shock for him to discover that Eszai
do
die.”

“Well, I can’t understand a word he’s saying.”

I
woke up at a lull point; the cabin was dark. I gripped my hands between my knees, lay with one wing half-spread, rigid with stress, shaking with accelerated heartbeat.

I felt the ocean boiling like tar, its surface paved with thousands of faces. A line of blue-gray elephants on cranefly legs whickered across the pillow. I plucked one from its perspective tightrope, and it stalked like an insect in my palm.

“Can’t believe the sun will rise again,” said a voice.

I squirmed round to see, feeling the crustiness where they had mopped vomit away from my mouth. An Awian soldier I didn’t recognize sat cross-legged on the floor, his face hollowed by shadows. Harrier, in his long, dark blue waxed coat, stood staring out of the porthole like a sleepwalker.

The soldier was spiral-binding goose feather fletchings to arrow shafts. His splitter-arrows had bodkin-sharp points designed to penetrate Insect shell, and heavy barbs along the length of the shaft to crack the shell open.

The cabin planks creaked. A lantern hanging on a chain from the low ceiling swung with its pattern of shadows. Its light merged with a horrible hallucinatory red glow radiating through the port.

Harrier said, “When god reappears from its break it’s going to have a shock.” Grisly humor twisted his voice.

“If it comes back tomorrow it just might save us.”

“Perhaps it will. Perhaps it will. They say it cares for the Fourlands, holidays notwithstanding. Maybe this is the Return the immortals are waiting for.”

“God’s supposed to bring ultimate peace and prosperity. Doesn’t seem very bloody peaceful to me.”

They wished for god’s arrival, so they didn’t trust in the Castle. I crushed handfuls of the blanket in agony and rage. For millennia the Castle held Insects at bay, kept a stalemate to make the Circle indispensable. Now the balance was tipped, Insects were everywhere, and it was all my fault.

“I doubt even the Emperor knows what to do. Maybe he will leave us.”

“Fuck sake, Bateleur! You heard Captain Dei and my lord say that the Circle is strong.”

The soldier glanced at me. I feigned coma, which was easy. He looked to Harrier as if to say if that’s the strength of the Eszai, we’re doomed.

“Did Lightning offer any other revelations?”

Harrier bit his lip. “Have some respect.”

“Oh, I’m brimming with respect. Lightning was there at the beginning of the world—”

“Of the Circle.”

“Right. Of the Circle. So he might have some idea how it will end.”

Harrier began sliding the completed arrows into the spacer holes of his leather quiver. “I’m not my lord’s confidant,” he said. “I don’t hear them discussing the Castle’s mysteries. Insects have never caused such devastation south of Lowespass in the Circle’s time—Cariama Eske said that they’re reaching her manor. If the immortals can’t stop Insects in Eske and Shivel, the Castle itself is threatened.”

“Will San call the Eszai back?”

“The Emperor San is
not
like Staniel Rachiswater! Damn!” Genuinely upset, Harrier pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head.

The fletcher named Bateleur continued, “The Emperor founded the Circle, though, and shared the immortality god gave him because Insects defeated his mortal legions. If the Circle is overcome, I wonder what he’ll set up next?”

“Daydream all you like.”

“Ask Lightning.”

“I may not ask my lord anything!”

I pulled myself up against the wall. “Ask me,” I said.

“Oh—by god! I’m sorry!”

Bateleur’s eyes were like saucers; the soldier was petrified. Weakly, I said, “I have driven myself into the ground for the Empire, and to save your lives, and all you do is speculate. I am sick with exhaustion, and all I hear is blasphemy.”

“I’m sorry!”

“The Emperor is in the Castle, and all will be well. San tells us no one knows when god will return, but I can assure you this is no way to prepare.”

“We didn’t mean anything by it, Messenger!”

I gave him a challenging look. “Will I see you in the ranks of bowmen?”

“Of course!”

“Good. Then pour me some water and get out of here!”

The room stank sharply of vomit. I was fully dressed, my black shirt stained, open to my hairless chest, jeans and bare feet. I doubled my wings up onto the bunk, bones grating, wiped beads of sweat off the Wheel scarification on my shoulder.

Lurid shades dappled Harrier’s face and coat; they looked like bruises, but as he stirred the bruises did not move. They were only shadows cast by the sickly red light, through water drops on the porthole glass.

My body shuddered. Pain wrenched; I groaned. Every muscle ached. Was the next wave coming on already? I needed some respite!

Harrier said, “Lightning did entrust me with the real cause of your condition.”

“Cold turkey.”

“Well, rest assured I will keep the secret.”

I told him, “You’ve seen inside the Circle. I’m nearly well now.”

“Yes, you’re making sense for a change.”

I raised a shaky toast to him with a horn cup of water, sipped it carefully, feeling my innards deciding whether to accept it or not. I was pouring with sweat, my hair plastered to my back. I disentangled it from my earrings.

“Did we make the rendezvous with the fleet?”

“Yes. Four days ago. Comet, I apologize on the fletcher’s behalf, but you should know there’s a lot of real dissent among the Awian soldiers. They know that Eleonora Tanager is our Queen now, and they want to join forces with her.” Harrier smiled; I could tell he supported Eleonora too.

“Has no one cried treason?”

“Eleonora is not a usurper. They call her the Emperor’s friend…I don’t know about Staniel. Communications are flashing back and forth between the ships that I can’t understand. Ata told us: ‘Wait, and you can send Tornado the Circle’s Champion to Rachiswater, and four thousand Lowespass warriors.’ That made them think.”

“I bet. What
is
that red light?” Harrier hesitated, peered through the porthole again and lost his chance to answer when Ata came in through the low cabin door.

“Ah, the physical freak’s recovered,” she said. She passed me a wooden bowl full of soggy pasta. I started guzzling handfuls—I was ravenous.

“If San ever decided to make an Eszai best in the world at being feverish and puking all over the place, it would be you. Lying in a pool of your own vomit…”

Well, it’s better than lying in a pool of someone else’s. An amazing feeling of accomplishment was dawning on me. I’m kicking it. I really am. I’m really going to be
free
.

“And you rave about some very interesting things, Jant Shira.”

“What’s the red light?” I said through a mouthful.

“We are sailing along the coast of Wrought.”

“Wrought? Oh, no—Insects?”

“I think you should come above and see for yourself.”

I
ate, washed, and followed her up to the deck, awash with the terrible light. I joined Lightning and Harrier at the stern. The brick-red glow stretched into the sky on the western horizon. It hung in a gigantic arc, one single body of rising air, like a red bubble.

The town of Wrought, Tern’s gothic manor house and Sleat’s Armorer’s Society Hall were out of sight, below the horizon. All I could see was the flat black landmass. I rubbed my dry eyes and just made out two thin black pylons in the center of the glow. The steelworks was burning.

One of the massive coal stores overheated and exploded. We ducked instinctively as a dull rumble like thunder toppled over the marshland.

In an untended steelworks it would only take one spark—or a furnace left burning when workers flee from the Insect assault—and now it was utterly out of control. No building could survive the conditions in that inferno.

Around the mad glow, the sky lit dark blue. Everywhere else was completely black. Blue, red and black, the colors of Wrought.

“What are we going to do, with no armory?” asked Harrier.

“We’ll have to rely on Morenzia.”

I moaned. No scolopendium to stroke me, I only thought of Tern. Everything she owned was in that manor house. She had to be safe, within the Castle’s walls. I didn’t want Tern to face this; too much for her to manage, it would change her forever and her voice would lose its softness.

Lightning traced his scar compulsively. “I watched that town being built. I witnessed Awia’s achievements over fifteen hundred years. It
cannot
stop now…Insects are eating their way to the core of my country and, by god, I will kill every last one of them.”

I watched Tern’s manor. My responsibility, the town I knew so well.

“The Chatelaine Diamond. Esmerillion’s crown…”

All the people. All the people’s homes.

“The glass sculpture by Jaeger…”

I hope our steward has made it safe to Rachiswater.

“Conure’s poetry. Wrought katanas…” came the voice from the golden age.

At least the children were evacuated.

“Donaise wine. The Pentice Towers. Micawater Bridge…”

Ata said, “Saker? Saker! Snap out of it.”

Ata took the wheel and adjusted the horizon glass of her sextant; she looked impassive and ethereal. Harrier’s long brown hair was tangled, he had sunken eyes. And me, a pale blur. And faces lined the port side of every deck of eighty ships. I never knew eleven thousand men could make so much silence. Nobody spoke. Nobody slept. We all just stood there watching Wrought go up in flames.

T
he fleet sailed in a crescent formation up the coast to Summerday bay. There, the great caravels and little pinnaces entered the mouth of Oriole River.

Immediately, a knot of six pinnaces got stuck on a sandbar. Ata could do nothing to dislodge them; we offloaded the soldiers and supplies, and left the boats.

A clock still running in abandoned Summerday town chimed five in the morning as we passed through the ruins. I saw burned thatched roofs above the town wall, a snapped rooftree shedding stone tiles, an unstable weather vane teetering on flaking charcoal timbers. Crows flapped above derelict shop courtyards.

Half an hour later, another clock chimed five, and bitter laughter rippled over the troops. The Hacilith soldiers wore baggy trousers tucked into half-length boots, daggers on chains looped at their hips, and their hair cropped short. Most looked even younger than me, at fifteen or twenty, although a few among them had grim experience. Their polearms and armor were mass produced, but painted, scrawled with slogans—personalized—so that the city fyrd gave me more to look at than the Awians in all their plumy panoply.

Gray-green estuary water became clearer as we sailed upstream. Through Midelspass the eddying river was broad, the tide was on the flow, and we made good progress.

A team on every caravel dropped lines, taking depth measurements.

“Fifteen meters. Twelve meters. Seven. Five meters.”

“A sandbar!” said Ata, and swung the wheel round hard. The keel scraped through the mud. I held my breath. Ata found a deeper channel, and we sailed on.

“The river’s not tidal from here, the passage’s too narrow. If one ship gets beached none of the ones behind it will be able to sail round. We’ll have to leave them, only have half an army, and never escape.”

“The wind won’t be with us on the way back,” Harrier pointed out.

“It blows offshore at night,” I said.

“We can drift back downstream,” Ata explained. “For god’s sake trust me.”

O
ur ships slipped into the Paperlands.

“It’s so quiet,” said Swallow.

White paper buildings covered the ground, as far as I could see from the river banks up to the tops of the valley sides. Insect tunnel arches, scaly paper passages, the roofs of cells. No green fields were left, no trees. The river bank mud was dark with decomposing matter; its putrescent stench wafted over the ships.

I imagined Insect mating flights twisting up above the Crag. I thought of fat, pupa-pale maggots large as a man but soft-bodied on stubby legs, lying in damp nests glowing with decay, belching silent chemical demands for food. I shuddered; I blame my father for my Awian imagination.

My Rhydanne instinct, on the other hand, was telling me to quit now and go get drunk. “God, this place is totally flyblown.”

“It’s another world,” Swallow whispered, not aware how close to the truth she was.

The bridge loomed.

“The river winds between its legs,” said Ata.

“We’re going
underneath
?”

“Aye. Soon,” she said shortly. It was getting harder for her to steer.

The
Tragopan
misjudged a bend in the river and smacked into the mud.

Ata yelled, “Concentrate, Carmine!”

The caravel ran along the bank and veered off into the center of the river, with mud smeared up to its railings.

A
n Insect was drinking from the river. Its abdomen pulsed; it stood on the tips of its claws, mandibles opening and closing underwater. A second Insect joined it, glistening light gold brown with darker dorsal stripes. It stretched up; they stroked their antennae together; four front legs rasped against thoraxes. They lowered their heads to drink.

Cyan pointed. “Look! They don’t even care we’re here!”

“This is their land now,” Swallow said.

“I’m not scared,” said Cyan. “Imnotscaredimnotscaredimnotscared—”

Swallow spread her wing around the girl.

Oriole River looped round and led under the bridge’s white legs. The spindly, impossible construction reared higher than the Crag. It leaped at the sky like a frozen fountain; swept up and vanished cleanly at its height. Its long shadow cast on the Paperlands cut off too.

“It’s so vast!”

“Look up!” I said. The bridge’s shadow fell over us. Small as nutshells, Ata’s great ships threaded beneath it.

Ata shivered. “How do brainless bloody Insects build something like this?”

“They start at the top and work down.”

Ata grimaced when she saw I was serious.

Maybe these animals aren’t so mindless; Vireo said that they organize themselves, speaking in gestures or scents. Infuriated, I thought: a language I don’t know, in a medium I can’t even perceive. I felt the weight of two centuries more keenly as I thought no matter how long I study them, the way they communicate with each other and the way they see the world are far too alien for us to understand.

The men pointed, muttered, looked up. They rubbed aching necks and gaped up to see the walkway’s underside, a hundred meters above the topmost reach of our masts. The bridge’s legs shouldn’t be able to take that weight; they’re only as thick as the masts. Closer, pale gray laminations showed on the surface. It looked like a wasp’s nest, with striated curves, brittle but amazingly strong. The walkway was wider than the Grand Place. It hung from thousands of Insect spit cables, liquid set hard. Some fine strands trailed out on the wind.

I could soar through and around it, fly between the cables, explore the structure in three dimensions, see it fall past me, survey its depth—

“No Insects on the bridge,” Lightning said.

Without thinking I said, “There probably aren’t any more to come through.”

“What?”

“We have to destroy it.”

Lightning said, “That’s beyond our capability.”

“We have to!”

Ata put in: “Jant, shoot some cat and look at this from your usual level of consciousness. While you were being impressively sick, Lightning and I worked out our plan of attack. I rallied the men until I had no brave words left.”

“The bridge is key! No matter what we do, if the bridge stays the Insects swarm in!” I demanded, “What will burn? What can we sacrifice?”

Ata gestured to the flotilla behind us. “There are wagons. Barrels of tar we prepared to heat-crack Insect walls.”

“Then to work!”

On twenty pinnaces I had men cutting spare sail into strips and packing all the cloth they could find around tar barrels, transferring them to the
Ortolan
and lashing them tight to the wagons with ropes.

I clipped my tertiary feathers shorter, the ones nearest my body; sculpting my wings sharp to maneuver like a falcon. Soaring would be difficult, but it was worth it for the fine control and gain in speed. I buckled my sword to my back, and long cuisses and poleynes to my legs, customized to my shape, the only armor I could carry.

As we sailed we drew Insects from every part of the valley to the river bank. They ran alongside us, on the mud and claw-deep in the water.

Five Insects snipped branches off a felled tree, dragged them to where others crouched, building up a passageway. They cemented the chewed pulp onto the end of the tube. Insects infested ruined villages; as the ship carried me past I saw the wall of a burned-out cottage collapse, rust-brown claws thrashing under the rubble.

The Crag came into view. Solid Insect spit veiled the gray stone fortress; it jutted from rings of white walls. I could construct Tawny’s and Vireo’s struggles from the concentric walls, holding out and falling back, until Insects sealed them in. White paper structures washed over Lowespass’s outer defenses, but the Inner Ward looked clear.

“They’re in there.”

“It’s like a maze,” said Lightning.

I spread my wings. “I can direct you.”

From the sailors’ noisy swearing and despairing it was clear they thought the terrain mountainous. Humans choose to live shoulder-width apart in the crowded capital of their flat country. The deserted Paperlands affected them—they tried to fill it with sound. Shouting stridently to each other, boasting, encouraging, captains organized the fyrd divisions on the main decks. Lightning made them check and recheck their equipment, keeping their minds occupied as much as possible, to lessen their fear.

T
he Circle broke. Faster than with Mist. For a split second I filled infinity, fell to nothing. The Circle reformed.

“No!” Lightning cried out.

I picked myself off the deck. “Who’s gone? Who’s killed?”

Lightning paused momentarily, gray gaze on the surface of the water without seeing it, concentrating on the faintest external feeling. “The Blacksmith, I think.”

“In Rachiswater! What the fuck is going on back there?”

“Two Eszai dead, forty-eight to go.” Lightning turned away.

Perhaps it’s a good thing I’m too inexperienced to feel the Circle. I don’t want to know just how much my drug abuse had been stretching it.

A
s the ships slowed, a hundred more Insects sprinted to the swarm on both banks, packing in around the ships, hungry, desperate to get to us.

“Steady yourselves,” called Ata. “Here we go.”

The depth-finders at the prow were hollering. “Ten meters! Eight meters! Five! Three!”

Stormy Petrel
shuddered along her length as she ran aground. The caravel behind us nearly ran on to our stern.

Ata yelled, “
Tragopan
! Steady! Steady…We need you to get away.”
Tragopan
dropped anchor and slid back in the current. I could hear the river trickling past the hull, pooling up as so many ships blocked the flow.

The landscape came alive. Insects teemed down from Fortress Crag, two kilometers away. Watching them, I didn’t trust my strength to fly up there. I saw myself falling onto thousands of razor-jaws. Hitting the ground and breaking my legs. Faceted eyes plunging toward my face, whiplike feelers whirling.

L
ightning approached Swallow, and lingered to compose himself. “Stay here, stay on the ship. Some of us will return. I…If I do not…ah…you will take good care of Cyan, won’t you?”

“Yes,” Swallow said. Cyan toyed with an arrow. Insects massed on the shore.

“If I survive, will you join me in the Circle?”

“Repeat to fade,” Swallow murmured.

“I can still offer you immortality. Will you marry me?”

Worn down, lamed, overwhelmed, Swallow’s glorious ambition just buckled. “Yes,” she said.

Lightning swept an elegant bow, gold-blond wings spread; he received Swallow’s hand and touched his lips to it. “Kiss?” he said hopefully.

“No. I think under the circumstances…”

Insects waded into the river’s edge and scraped mandibles on the ships’ sides.

“Under the circumstances it would make me feel much better.”

Swallow threw her arms around him, fastened her lips to his, and gave him a really deep, long kiss that seemed to go on forever. Lightning reciprocated, burying his powerful hands in her red hair.

“The longer we wait the more arrive,” said Ata; she drew her Wrought sword.

“There’s
hundreds
of thousands!” I shouted.

“Hurry!”

Each ship lowered a gangway, splashing down in shallow water. For a second, every fyrd captain waited for another to make the first move. Archers, pikemen and those leading the horses, all delayed.

“Go!”

Lightning said, “Ata, raise flags to tell them I will shoot anyone who refuses to leave the ships.” He nocked an arrow to string and stood on the steps in view of all.

Ata agreed. “Comet, do something useful! Into the fortress and speak to Tornado. If he can, ask him to start breaking through. It’ll save time when we reach them.” She pointed up to the Crag.

I hesitated, and Lightning leveled his bow at me. All right! For Wrought. For Tern.

I went from standing to top speed in three strides. Launched from the deck, fell till I gained windspeed. Hurtled low over the Insects’ heads.

They jumped up, jaws snapping.

Can’t catch me!

Insects appeared from every crevice, streaming down into the colorless valley. Their red-brown bodies scrunched into one great mass around the ships.

I
found no lift in the bumpy, dead air. I beat my wings fast, keeping just above the festering swarm.

I worked my way low up the profile of the hill to the summit. Lowespass Fortress, like a model, spun below me. A trace of green—some grass still in the Outer Ward. I swung round low over the tower tops. Concentrating on flying, I was surprised at my agility. I stretched, feeling braver, glided in with my wings held below me. I leaned right, tipped the skyline crazily, and dropped into the fortress.

Faces peered out from arrow-ports in the gray bastions. There were more people than I expected, their packs dotted all over the ground. The filthy soldiers looked sullen, sitting in their curved square shields. I spotted Tornado looking up, surprised.

I flared wings, hit the grass, dropped to my armored knees and slid to a halt; flicked sickle wings closed.

Tornado seized my jacket and shook me, bellowing, “You should have come earlier!”

I struggled for breath. “We had a lot of trouble at the coast.”

Tornado’s shaved head was bristly. He stank of sour sweat; he was covered in cuts, his canvas trousers slashed. Fragments of chain mail strung on his belt hung round his loins and buttocks. Armpit hair stuck through his overlarge leather waistcoat, open at the sides with crisscross binding.

I said, “I want you to break through the wall. Here…to here,” pointing out a space where the Insects’ defenses were one wall deep.