The Year of Our War (4 page)

“Merganser,” I panted. “Get off your horse and give me it. Now.
Quickly!
” Merganser gaped at me and threescore emotions appeared on his face—fear was the first and reverence the last. It was easy to recognize me—who else can fly?—but he found it hard to believe that an Eszai would ever cross his path.

He wriggled from the armored faring and jumped down. Wordlessly he passed me the reins and stood aside as I scrambled into the high-backed saddle.

He was a slim young man, brown hair knotted at his neck, and he was tall so the stirrups were set at the right height. I waved my feet about until I found them. I plucked the lance from his grasp and held it over my shoulder.

“What should I do, Comet?” he begged.

“Advise you run like buggery.” I jerked the mare’s reins left, gave her a hefty kick in the ribs. The smell of Insect blood was strong in the air but she obeyed.

Dunlin pulled his horse round, slashing at brown carapaces and compound eyes. His soldiers were vanishing. They were in a tight group, facing outward, but they were too few. Insects bit at his horse’s legs. She stumbled over them and fell. Jaws half a meter long, jagged and razor sharp, stripped the skin from her ribs immediately, the guts falling out. Dunlin rolled from the saddle, on top of a mashed Insect. Although only the head and thorax was left, it clung to him with two remaining arms, wet with yellow paste.

The time it took to reach him was agony for me. I had been flying so long I still wanted to yaw left, pitch right; and here I was on horseback, stuck with just two dimensions; a gallop is far too slow. Standing in the stirrups I let the horse run over Insects at the edge of the fray. They clung to her straps and I poked them with the lance. I’m no lancer, so I used the chromed weapon as a spear, jabbing at Insect thoraxes, rupturing abdomens, tearing their wings. I soon dropped it and drew my ice ax, which has a long haft and a strong serrated point. I hewed a path, swinging the ax and grunting with effort. The movement was familiar; it was like cutting ice steps in a glacier climb. Insect after Insect fell, headless and coiling.

Dunlin recognized me and moved nearer but there were too many Insects in the way. The fyrd gained strength from seeing me struggle toward them and they fought harder still.

“Get out!” I screamed, waving at the Wall. “Move!” Their way was blocked by the horde.

I could see Dunlin pressed between bulbous brown bodies. A mandible was in his leg, slicing to the bone. I saw him put his weight on that leg and the chitin tore out. He raised his visor, blinded by brightness, and stabbed ferociously at an Insect clutching his wing.

His sword skittered over its hard thorax plates. The Insect grasped it, losing a claw, put two other claws over the flat of the blade, and twitched it from his grasp. It snapped at his face. Antennae brushed the back of his neck. Insects behind and in front of him brought him down, kneeling, spidery arms pulling. Little cuts sank in, sawing, wherever the Insects could find a gap. Mandibles snipped. Not a man or horse was left standing; the Insects chewed live flesh.

Dunlin turned on his front, visor down, and covered the back of his neck with plated arms. The Insects stripped his wings and then left him. Some ran toward the Wall, and I hoped Tawny had readied his fyrd. Some picked over the carcasses, their heads inside horses’ barrel-ribs.

By the King, a single Insect crouched on complex leg-joints. A blow had cracked its carapace across, pushed the shell into a dent from which cream-yellow liquid oozed, running down between black spines. Its snapped antennae hung down like bent wires—still, it sensed me. It opened its jaws and I saw mouthparts whirling like fingers inside. I kicked it, and it struck at my foot. Its jaws gashed my boot open from toe to shin. The crack across its thorax opened wider, and beneath I saw a pale wrinkled membrane, damp with the liquid that was crusting at the edges of the wound. I smashed the ice ax down into its back with so much force that it disappeared to halfway up its hilt. Then I shook it free, my hand dripping. “Next!” I shouted. “Who’s next?”

Dunlin. The King. Heroically I thought of leaning from the saddle and lifting him onto the destrier’s neck. In reality I am not that strong. I grabbed his belt and dragged his body on the ground while the horse shied sideways. I beat my wings but I still couldn’t heave him up. Eventually I had to dismount and tie him to the saddlebow with his own sword belt. It seemed to take a long time, I glanced at the tunnel mouths every second. I became covered in feather fragments and his blood, which was soaking through and turning the chain mail into one big clot. The aftereffects of cat and adrenaline grew oppressive. I thought of what it means to die, which raised feelings I didn’t understand. “You’re a noble charger,” I sniffled at the mare. “Black is the proper color, don’t you think? I think his tomb should be black marble. Come on, now let me return you.” The death-scent didn’t disturb her, but she was aware of the stickiness as rivers of blood drained down her sides. I talked her into a trot, but the movement jarred Dunlin’s corpse. The corpse stirred and murmured. He was alive!

“Rachiswater? My lord?” No answer. I ripped his cloak, bundled it under his head as a cushion. What should I do? Lowespass—the fortress! I wrapped the reins in my hand, pressed a filed spur to the mare’s flank. She ran like a Rhydanne.

F
or fifty kilometers around Lowespass the land is as battle-scarred as Tawny’s flesh. Lightning can remember when it was green undulating hills, seamed with darker hedges and patches of woodland; the only graze a pale gray promontory on which Lowespass fortress would later be built. Now the fortress is over a thousand years old, and its earthworks fill the valley. The moat is made from a redirected river, the outer walls take in the whole crag. The stables and arms depots are entire villages.

This is rampart warfare—Lowespass is sculpted, the ground churned up. There are six corrals, some with multiple entrances and holding pens; palisaded tracks, ditches, mounds, ashlar walls, some with iron spikes. All act to slow the Insect advance, and soldiers are constantly rebuilding them, changing them, as little by little, they are overthrown.

Lightning is familiar with every centimeter of ground. He remembers the construction of even the oldest embankments—five-meter-high ramparts now like lines of molehills, and trenches that are now shallow and grassy. The earth has been dug up and the valley remodeled, not once but again and again, so I think that in Lightning’s memory the land itself seems to move—to throw up artificial banks and crease into hillforts, white scars soon sprouting green—to sink artificial pitfalls and flood-land of its own accord.

Fyrd train in the tortured landscape which one generation prepares for the battles of the next. They cull Insects and clear the Paperlands. We call Insect pulp “paper,” but it doesn’t have all the properties of paper; it is rigid, inflexible, and the Insect spit that holds the chewed paste together has a fire-retardant effect. Our wooden buildings are burned when abandoned to stop the Insects chewing them, but Insects use anything they can find; fabric and bone as well. The fyrd wield axes and set patches of pitch-fire to clear Paperlands, but it doesn’t burn easily.

Lowespass terrain is like a board game—three-dimensional, in marble and green velvet. This land we’ve lost to the Insects, and won again, and lost—so many times. Dunlin knew that it was originally farmland, as tranquil and productive as the golden fields of Awia. But I could never make Dunlin appreciate how long ago that was. He was incapable of sensing the vastness of time that had passed since then, although he trod every day along roads that ran through the living rooms of deserted villages and over ramparts raised from the bones of the Fifthland fyrd. Dunlin was adamant that the land could be occupied peacefully again, if only it was reclaimed. We strive for that, of course, but perhaps if we won, the fyrd’s screams and the clash of battle would stay in the Eszai’s memories and Lowespass would seem unfamiliar without adversaries.

The Zascai soldiers’ concept of the Lowespass front is even more limited than Dunlin’s. This is a valley where terrible things happen. Every fable and every childhood threat hangs on the Insects’ jaws and the way they move inspires every nightmare.

I see the Lowespass landscape in yet another way. There’s bloodshed, sure, but I’m also grabbed by insane joy of freedom when I fly there. The valley alters dramatically for me, but by the hour. Clouds chase over it, cumulus spins into wave-clouds beyond the Wall, but at the moment the western sky is clear and warm. Every morning the sun rises out of a mass of peaks behind peaks stepped like shark’s teeth but sharper.

In the Darkling mountains Oriole River starts as a torrent and widens as it flows east through Lowespass, to Midelspass then the coast. At the place where we use the river to undermine the Wall, the Oriole is so fast-flowing that the waterweed looks as if it has been combed. Crayfish live there and, like little Insects, they have fed on dead soldiers’ flesh. Then it flows into an earthwork, and at the foot of Fortress Crag the river is channeled twenty meters deep. The Darkling foothills are tamer in Lowespass, the valley is lined with supply roads. Mass graves are covered by woodland but burned bone fragments rise to the plow. Farmsteads built on latrines of the eighteenth century fyrd are very fertile.

Ramparts and hollows, which make all the difference in a battle, are hard to see from the air because they are often evenly grassed over. I flew low and my shadow flicked over them, changing size. I wished I were not the only one who could see Lowespass from the air. I have tried to design machines that glide so that other people could fly, but I have not had much success. I guess that if god wanted us to design gliders, it wouldn’t have given us wings.

T
he door burst open and Staniel paced into my room, Lightning behind him spreading his hands apologetically. Staniel was taken aback by me sitting cross-legged on my bedding, which was on the stone floor, not the bed. The aroma of sandalwood incense and the fact that I was halfway through writing an Imperial report also unnerved him.

He kept his head bowed, gaze fixed on one stone slab. His chest was almost tubular, very narrow, and he covered it with one hand on his breastbone in an act of supplication that was nearly a bow. He faltered, “Please. Dunlin—how is he?”

“Well…”

“I have to know how he is! Rayne won’t give me any answers!”

“You’ve seen. He hasn’t changed. He’s still in the hospital. Rayne is still tending him, and he’s still unconscious.”

“He’ll wake up, won’t he?”

“I’ve been that wounded and survived.”

“But for a mortal?”

Lightning raised his voice. “I don’t think Jant wants to be disturbed at the moment.”

“Apologies, Comet. But…Supposedly the Eszai assist us at times of tragedy.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Dunlin’s going to die, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know. Yes.”

Staniel’s clothes were clean and pressed, as befitted his status at all times except after a battle, when he was expected to be as filthy as the rest of us. His long, corn-gold hair was still damp; he had been sitting in the river upstream of the overheated soldiers who crowded the river bank to bank. I had forded the river in a chaos of spray, blood, mane, and hooves, and behind me a whispering started that the King was dead.

I was grimy and had a few broken feathers, Lightning’s mantle was stained with dust from his ride back, but already Staniel had managed to find black textured silk, the color of mourning. Buzzard feathers were tangled in his hair, from a thin silver crown set with lapis lazuli. His blue eyes were bloodshot from rubbing them; he looked more tearful than a teenager. Lightning laid a hand on his shoulder, said, “We don’t have to discuss this until the morning, Your Majesty.”

“Stop calling me that! Honestly, Archer.” Staniel twisted the silk tassels of his long sleeves, leaving sweat stains. “To follow me is disagreeable enough, but then you say, ‘Your Majesty,’ ‘my lord,’ constantly! How can
you
call
me
‘lord’?”

Lightning didn’t say anything, but I could sense the intensity of his disapproval directed at the Prince.

I repeated, “What do you want me to do?”

“Save him.”

“Rayne is doing all she can; she doesn’t need my help.” Or respect it. “What in Darkling do you expect me to do?”

“I don’t know…I just don’t know.” He rubbed his face with both hands, because to wake would be the best escape from grief.

The Archer tried again with a tone of complaint: “There’s coffee in the Solar. Genya has laid out some bread and meat. The men have eaten, I don’t see why we should fast.”

Staniel started at the name of Genya, like a child who has been told there is a dragon in the drawing room. He was used to me, but had never encountered a female Rhydanne. I had sent couriers to her and had persuaded her to provide food for the exhausted, wounded fyrd.

“Genya…” he said, with mixed fascination and repulsion.

Anger flared—I was so weary. I have seen the same emotions on the faces of people meeting me. Often fear and aversion has made city people turn on me with insults at best, then arrows. I fought back in my own way, but I have thicker skin than Genya, and she was very violent. “Careful!” I told Staniel. “If you trouble her she will scratch your eyes out.”

“We have to keep a vigil for my brother.”

“We’ll be more use as commanders if we eat and bloody sleep! My lord.”

“I can’t eat.”

“It will help you feel better.”

“Maybe I don’t want to feel better.”

Lightning took a deep breath. “I cannot believe the dynasty of Rachiswater has at its end produced someone as spineless as yourself! This is a terrible situation, of course I admit that, but are you going to stand up and confront it? You’re grown from Avernwater, the lineage that held the throne and the walls strong for five hundred years since my line ended. The Rachiswater branch grew so powerful and prolific that it became another tree. I find it hard to accept that one of the leaves on the twigs of the branches of that tree can be so different from the rest. I am not having kin, no matter how distant, shunning the responsibility placed on him by means of birth and tutelage at a time when the whole of Awia needs him. I don’t see anything I recognize as Rachiswater in you! Your grandfather Sarcelle would never have cowered in the pavilion the way you have since you came to the front.”

Staniel glanced at me for help. He stood his ground, and I took pity on him because I do not agree with Lightning’s notion that men should be compared to each other. Staniel was no warrior—a coward, in fact—but I had noticed his grandiloquence. With time I might turn him into a prosperous diplomat.

I said, “Calm down, Lightning.”

“No. For example, Staniel has disturbed your rest to ask about His Majesty without bothering to thank you for bringing Dunlin back in the first place. He is so thoroughly—”

“Enough!” I saw that Staniel had begun to tremble with confusion. If his nerves had been frayed before they were ripped to shreds now. I wanted to give him a chance to speak, but stopping Lightning mid-rant is as difficult as halting a bolted destrier. I reached out to Staniel, and he gained composure as he shook my hand, although with another little shudder as my long fingers enclosed his hand completely.

“Yes. Certainly. Yes…Comet,” he announced. “Awia commends you greatly for rescuing my brother; it was an act of great courage at no little risk. I have inscribed my profound gratitude in a missive to the Emperor, which unfortunately Lightning won’t yet let me dispatch; perhaps you could convey it yourself. Thank you also for averting the casualties of those fyrd who would otherwise have been dispatched to retrieve my brother’s body.”

If words on paper could be transformed to a token of gratitude in cash I’d be more delighted.

“Where were you?” inquired Lightning.

“Um. Press conference.”

“What?”

“And I also apologize on behalf of Dunlin, that he transgressed your unambiguous orders and rode into the Paperlands.” Staniel stood nervously, his blond wings limp at his back, fading to white at the round ends of the feathers. He had thin gold bands on them, like the rings on his tapering fingers.

I shouldn’t listen to Staniel’s apologies, and I know the Emperor won’t. Dunlin had no excuse; his plight is an example of what happens when Zascai no matter how blue-blooded disobey Eszai on the battlefield. On the other hand, I didn’t want to complicate the situation. There was plenty of time to argue in the following months, rather than at the King’s deathbed.

“I accept your apologies,” I said. “But more of this later.”

“Will you come to the Solar?” he asked, and there was a tiny noise out in the corridor.

Staniel froze, mouthed, “What’s that?” I sensed the feeling of intensity caused by another presence.

Someone was listening very quietly, with a concentration that thickened the air. I caught the faintest odor of bracken and alcohol. I leaped across the room, flung the door wide. We ran out into the corridor but there was nobody there.

“Genya,” I said.

Staniel repeated, “Genya Dara.”

The first time our paths cross in ten years. It’s all right, I told myself. Nobody knows.

A
crescent moon became brighter as the surrounding sky dimmed. Soldiers’ muted conversation drifted through the corridors and courts of square gray Lowespass. The akontistai-javelin men; lancers and archers, sarissai and cavalry alike were waiting for the latest news of Dunlin’s progress to be announced.

If I hadn’t been so busy, it would have been my duty to walk among the soldiers and talk to them in order to gauge their opinions. Tawny and Staniel were now set to this task, Tawny with the Plainslands fyrd, and Staniel in the Outer Ward. The Outer Ward was a walled grassy enclosure studded with limestone outcrops. The Awian infantry had raised their tents where the soil was deeper, by the thick curtain wall. Most were asleep, but some sat in groups talking in subdued voices about their companions who had been left out in the field.

Primroses grew down by the river, and after Slake Crossroads Battle ninety years ago, their yellow flowers had bloomed with pink petals. The soldiers picked these in remembrance of the fyrd who had gone before, because I once wrote it was our blood that stained the flowers, back in 1925. It was strange to see a strong man, weathered and bristly from an outdoor life, with a primrose bloom threaded through the links of his chain mail.

I walked around the keep, trying to dispel a vague feeling that something was missing. It was a sensation, not a conscious thought, but it was very familiar and I knew it was worsening. I would become more and more jumpy, until eventually I would have no other choice but to lock myself in my sparse room and take some more cat. Everywhere I went people asked me how Dunlin was, whether he was still alive, and how long the fyrd might be expected to stay in the cold fortress.

I passed a window left open, and I knew Genya had been here. I could smell her. Pacing along an austere colonnade, which turned sharp corners every hundred meters as it followed the curtain wall, I had the prickly feeling that someone was watching. I called her name and the feeling subsided. Silently, she had gone.