The Year of Our War (37 page)

The fyrd, a sagging crowd, all heard Tawny bellow, “Now you’ll see what it’s like to have a real leader!” They looked at each other, and they stood a little more proudly.

“My god,” I said, awestruck.

“You have a few minutes’ rest,” Tornado announced. “Any more time, and the Insects start their wall-building. We don’t want them to build between us and the boats! I need a few more hours’ work from you this evening. Drink water from the well. Let Comet see the wounded; those too injured to fight can stay here.”

Vireo turned to me. “We have some too faint from hunger—the ones that refused to eat Lowespass Lobster. Pass them into the ward and instruct a captain to look after them while Tawny regroups the host, and we’ll leave some archers here to protect them.”

Twilight was growing rapidly, the afternoon becoming evening. I was low on energy from so much non-glide flying, but I attended to the maimed, traumatized and starving. There were fewer badly wounded men than I expected; they fell behind on the march and Insects don’t spare them. Still, I had my work cut out in the keep, while Tornado marshaled the troops up behind the shield wall in preparation to march out en masse. “How many have we lost?” he asked me.

“Above fifteen hundred in all, I think,” I said.

Ata said, “We’ve gained eight thousand, then.”

“They’re knackered, what did you put them through down there? Well, I suppose they’re ready as they’ll ever be.”

Vireo raised her crow’s beak hammer. “Tawny, you’re the best weapon the Emperor has!”

“Love you!”

“For Lowespass!” she howled. The Morenzians and Lowespass fyrd swarmed to her.

Ata shook her curved sword. “For the Empire!” she cried. “For Sute! To me, Islanders!”

“For something!” yelled Tawny as he pounded past me.

“Survival,” I explained. I outpaced him, took off.

They charged down the hill, and the fortress fyrd followed. Tornado’s two-handed ax decimated Insects at each stroke.

Lightning had not set foot inside the fortress wall. He had spread his archers along the crag summit, behind linked pavises brought out from the keep. Two divisions each toiled for thirty minutes, shooting nonstop, sending ten thousand arrows per minute down into the valley. I had never seen such desperate effort; Lightning kept them working at utmost strain. His hair was wet with sweat, he was bare to the waist but for the bracer on his left arm. His horse’s white neck was covered in bloody prints from the blisters even on his hardened hands. As Ata went past Lightning stopped the shooting, then spurred after her, furiously protesting. “I
said
we can only cover three hundred meters!”

“Tawny won’t go out of range. Look! They’re going to sweep round the hill.”

“Crazy! It will be too dark soon to see that far!”

“I’m going after them!” Ata leaped her horse down rocky outcrops. Her men peeled off in a long, formless line behind her.

I circled the archers. “Look! Insects are crossing back over the bridge!”

Groups of Insects, and then a whole horde, began to run from Tornado. Other Insects wavered antennae, sensed the panic, and joined them. They bit at men they passed, tussled with halberds. The bridge teemed with them scurrying from Tornado’s scything attack.

“Keep ranks,” I shouted, but a great wordless euphoria broke over the tired troops. Carried away, they began to chase Insects to the bridge, Tawny and Vireo marching ahead of the shield wall.

Now scarcely pausing to bite, Insects swarmed up to the apex and vanished into the air. They departed in a flood. Going back into the Shift; taking the line of least resistance—fleeing to safety. They think they’re safe. But Dunlin Rachiswater is waiting, worlds away at the other end.

I shouted, “They’re going!”

Vireo beat Insects back before her. Tornado was on her left, towering above the normal-sized men, nineteen thousand warriors fighting behind him. Vireo put a foot on the white walkway, strode up onto the bridge itself.

A gigantic black Insect turned from the stream to face her, Insects running past it on both sides. Head down, jaws gaping, it struck forward. She embedded her hammer between its multifaceted eyes. With an agonized movement it swept its claw into her shins and knocked her over. She cracked her head on the edge of the walkway and lay still, facedown.

I swooped over. Vireo was unconscious. “Tawny!”

The big Insect crouched and brushed its antennae over Vireo’s compound-eye helmet and metal-covered shoulders, trying to figure out what she was. Then it raised its sharp foreleg and jabbed it neatly into the nape of her neck.

“Tawny!” I yelled. “Here! Can’t you see?”

Tornado realized what was happening as Insects started to tear at Vireo’s armor. He roared. He ran to her, picked up the black Insect bodily, and threw it through the air. Writhing, it crashed onto the swarm, fell between rounded backs and disappeared under their claws.

He shook her gently. Her face was calm; blood was pooling on the rough gray paper. He put her over one shoulder and began to fight back down off the bridge. He hewed Insects as he strode, casting their shell carcasses aside. The shields parted to let him through at the bridge’s base, while the stampede kept on around them. The Insect crush became a river, a trickle, and after an hour complete silence.

I
touched down heavily onto the scarred ground behind him.

“She’s dead, Tawny.”

“No…I just have to get her to Rayne.”

“She’s dead!”

Tornado bounded to his feet and took a menacing step toward me. I fanned my wings out hastily.

“I won’t leave her!” He picked Vireo’s body up onto his shoulders. “Rayne can save her!”

The hooves of Ata’s mare boomed, her armor reflecting darkness and the wide, empty land. She spoke quietly, full of respect: “Tornado, will you order the fyrd back to the ships? Sun’s setting, tide’s turning, and no one should remain in the Paperlands after dark.”

T
he ships got under way at nightfall, caravels and pinnaces packed with fyrd. We abandoned the
Stormy Petrel;
it was lodged upright even-keel in the gravelly river bed. Ata took command of the
Ortolan
. Tornado, standing at its stern, still carried Vireo’s corpse; no one dared approach him.

Swallow and Harrier helped me with the wounded. Men sat on the steps between decks, hammocks were hung in the hold where arrow-sacks had been. Cabins stank of human grease, muddy river water and wet feathers. Food was passed around: bread, smoked cod and samphire broth, black coffee and flasks of water. Men and women laid their packs on the decks and slept there.

I brought a bowl of chips up to the stern, and Tawny told me to get lost. “You can’t avenge against Insects,” he said. Vireo’s blood was dried across his back, her hair hung down, twisted around a quill.

“Come help me build a pyre,” I said. Vireo was Lowespass, I knew their tradition. Unlike Awians, the practical Plainslanders do not want to take up space forever in opulent tombs. “Tawny, I will ask the Emperor to raise a memorial for her, where the bridge was.”

“Where the bridge
was
?”

“That’s the idea.”

W
hile the line of ships passed in the darkness under the bridge, I began sorting and laying out pieces of tubular steel scaffolding, elastic straps, piles of nuts and bolts on the stern deck of the
Ortolan
, to rebuild one of the Lowespass catapults.

“That contraption is far too dangerous,” Ata protested. “I won’t allow you to play with it on my ship.”

“Lightning—leave Swallow alone! Remember your promise. Will you help me with the trebuchet?”

“I think Jant’s right.” Lightning strode up to us, hiding his fatigue with willpower, clear voice and upright bearing. “We should be able to shoot safely from the stern.”

“I liked Jant better when he was on the drug salad,” Ata said.

Lookouts kept watch for Insects, as Tornado and I led an armed expedition to shore, with horses drawing wagons full of pitch barrels. We piled fifty barrels in pyramid-shaped stacks around each of the bridge’s four nearest legs.

I hunkered down and touched a match to the sailcloth on one of the stacks, and called to my captains to do the same. We stepped back and watched flame lick up around the barrels. The fire took hold quickly, barrels bursting open and the pitch seeping out.

Tawny walked into the flames, shrugged Vireo’s body from his shoulders and laid it down.

“Goodbye, love,” he said.

We watched the flames wrap round, until roils of thick smoke covered her shape. Intense heat drove us back little by little as the bridge’s legs began to burn.

“Let’s go,” I said. We returned along the river bank, through the alien scenery. Although I was still wary of Insects, their absence was dramatic—quick as blowing out a candle, they had fled and we were actually walking without attack in their noiseless landscape.

“There’ll never be another like her,” Tawny said gloomily, as we reached the
Ortolan
.

“In all immortality there might be.”

“Vireo. Vireo…I should’ve made her Eszai. God knows why I always hang on until it’s too late.”

We heard Lightning’s clear voice instructing the catapult crew with an authority he must have been taught at an early age. The catapult loosed. A burning barrel of pitch arced high over our heads, crashed onto the bridge’s walkway, dropping gobs of flame. Trust Lightning to get the trajectory right first time. Two more followed, spread throughout the walkway, and the bridge caught fire along its length.

From end to end of the ships’ procession, men were cheering. They waved swords, helmets, cups in the air. The uproar grew as the bridge lit the night, Swallow’s voice leading the applause, until men were gasping for air to cheer with.

The bridge blossomed bright yellow. Its nearest legs split open from the ground into the sky. They unfurled along their length in sheets of flame, and the whole thing started to collapse. Cables snapped, the walkway crumpled. It went down slowly, sinuously; debris raining down, ash flecks twirling into the air.

I thought of the citizens besieged in Rachis Town, and molten glass creaking as it set in the cooling ruins of Wrought. “That’ll show them,” I said to myself.

I watched the Paperlands lit flickering amber and black, seguing into empty fields and the Summerday town wall. Dunlin’s coffin was buried somewhere in that mess; would I ever be able to find it? I determined to send search parties when soldiers began to smash the cells, fill in tunnels, and rebuild the town. Staniel knew the exact location where the metal coffin lay; I would drag him out here to give us directions, and examine every centimeter of ground. I would recover the King’s remains and, no matter what happened, I would find a way to report the truth to Dunlin, as I promised and as he deserved. Now I’m clean, addiction’s prison seemed distant, and it was strange to think that the Shift still exists, and Dunlin is alive.

“I must search for Dunlin.” I turned to Lightning. “The King’s bier has to be retrieved.”

Lightning nodded, as if this matched his thoughts. “It will be built into a wall. When we destroy them, we’ll find it.”

“Insects or no, it will take months to break up the Paperlands,” said Swallow. Cyan was quiet at her side; she still did not stand close to Lightning.

“Yes, but it can be done,” the Archer told her.

Tornado said nothing, his face was lined with grief. I didn’t want to give him time to dwell on it. I said, “Tawny, we need you in Rachiswater. There are still Insects to clear out; Eleonora Tanager needs help.”

“Eleonora’s revolution,” Ata said, leaning on the ship’s wheel.

“And her coronation,” said Lightning graciously.

I sighed. “It never ends, does it?”

“Consider yourself lucky that it doesn’t, Messenger.”

Lightning understood. He clapped my shoulder, face radiant. “Don’t worry, Jant,” he said. “Times will pass, and we’ll survive. We’ll live long enough for all these trials to become satisfying memories and the best tales.”

Huge thanks above all to Simon Spanton. Thank you to my Eszai-good agents, Mic Cheetham and Simon Kavanagh, for their vital help. My gratitude to Ben Jeapes for his excellent advice. Thanks and love to Brian, immovable object of my unstoppable force.

S
TEPH
S
WAINSTON
was born in 1974 and comes from Bradford, England. She studied archaeology at Cambridge University and then worked as an archaeologist for three years, gaining a masters of philosophy from the University of Wales.

She also worked as a researcher in a company that develops herbal medicines. Her current job is in defense research.

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This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE YEAR OF OUR WAR
. Copyright © 2004, 2005 by Steph Swainston. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Adobe Digital Edition February 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-190046-4

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