‘An excellent opportunity, sir,’ he said to the admiral, ‘to attack under cover.’
But Admiral Greenly was not convinced. ‘Yes,’ he said doubtfully. ‘Perhaps. We should wait for the first downpour before doing anything, however. I’m afraid the rain might put out the flames and waste ammunition, otherwise.’
He blinked and rubbed his eyes. There was something about this cloud that disturbed him. It seethed, clotting in the air overhead; he fancied he saw shapes in it, like bat wings or savage birds. Damned spider vision, he thought. Flies in the eyes.
The sergeant could not understand why the admiral was dragging his heels. Their course of action was obvious. ‘We should act fast, sir,’ he urged, ‘before it dissipates.’
Admiral Greenly took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. It was supernaturally hot, this storm cloud. It breathed like a furnace in his face. No chance of it quenching the cannon flames, he thought dismally: quite the contrary. There wasn’t a breath of wind in the air. And where was the rain, anyway?
Pumble, who had shuddered involuntarily at the sight of the rumpled handkerchief emerging from his superior’s breast pocket, decided to take the shillee by the horns. A chap without pride in his personal linen could not be a proper leader of men, in his opinion. He pushed out his chest, pulled back his shoulders and clamped his chin rigidly down on his collar. As far as he was concerned, storm clouds that appeared out of nowhere just before an attack were custom-made for the Saint’s crusade, especially when they were shorn of wind and rain. To use them for any other purpose would be outright negligence. Even if it only resulted in yet another confounded promotion, he had no choice but to insist on the proper action in the present circumstances.
‘Shall we order the ships to advance, and fire the first volley, sir?’ he said stiffly.
And barely waited for the admiral’s weary nod to do so himself.
It came down on Farhang like burning rain: a barrage of blast-poison out of the black cloud, a hail of deadly, devastating flame. Volley after volley ripped through the twig-forests, shaking the bark beneath the villagers’ feet, sending clouds of dust and blinding splinters into their eyes. The soldiers from Sheb, who had experience of the new Argosian weaponry, crouched down and took cover beneath loose building planks and sections of bark as best they could, grateful for the twig-thickets that sheltered much of the village. But they knew that even those barriers would not hold for long. They had little hope of prevailing against the enemy while the Argosians remained on their ships, pelting them with explosive shot. They could only hunker down, waiting for the bombardment to stop, and the Saint’s foot soldiers to move in.
They had not banked, even so, on the full effect of the cloud.
It was of course demoralising not to know where the explosive volleys were coming from. While the Freeholders judged the general position of the fleet to be somewhere in the heart of the freak storm, they could not see each ship. But what they did not expect, what truly took them by surprise, was how the storm cloud itself behaved. The vapours were tangible in a way ordinary fog should never be; with every new series of bombardments, the black miasma descended lower over the village, sliding its oily tendrils through the buildings and by-ways. It was like a clotting of feathers, a seething of cobwebs, a stinging of bat wings in the air. The Freeholders choked and coughed on it.
And there were other effects, too: an assault on the mind. Even as the soldiers’ limbs were being dismembered by the conventional barrage of blast-poison, they felt slithery horrors coiling around their arms and ankles, tangling them in knots. They found themselves clawing the air in front of their faces, scrambling away from their posts in panic and tripping into the fires that had started to blaze all over the village, their hearts filled with ashy fear. The cloud drained all will to fight out of them; they were terrorised, fleeing before it when they should have stood their ground.
The outer defences were soon broken. The Nurians retreated into the core of the village, fighting hand to hand with the Argosian foot soldiers who had begun their advance through the twig-thickets in the wake of the bombardment. By the time the inner cadre of defenders had fallen back to the barricade around the dining hall, the Freeholders had lost five entire fighting units, either to the disheartening effect of the cloud or to the explosions. Gardan was obliged to take her place at the thinly manned palisade herself. She crouched behind the barrier of sharpened twigs next to Halas, fingering a hardwood spear and listening to the steadily approaching din of combat. Nearby, her fellow soldiers at the palisade gripped their weapons with whitened knuckles, whispering nervously to each other. The miasma of the cloud drifted through the twigs along with the smell of burning. So far, the vapours had not produced a single drop of rain.
Gardan’s face was smeared with soot, her clothes and cropped hair covered in dust and bark chips. Her eyes stared wearily out of a background of grime, for her earlier terror had been replaced by a quiet despair, confronted with what seemed like overwhelming odds. Beside her, Halas squinted into the smoky gloom between the twig-shafts in grim silence, waiting for a glimpse of the enemy.
‘We should try to get the scientist out, at least,’ murmured Gardan, glancing over her shoulder at the dining hall. ‘Things don’t look good and, besides, he’s starting to annoy the troops. We’re cut off from the squadrons, anyway: he doesn’t need to stay.’
Halas shrugged unenthusiastically, following her gaze to the building where Galliano’s bent figure could be seen leaning out of a window, apparently oblivious to any danger. ‘Won’t it be more risky,’ he said, ‘to leave now, under enemy fire?’
‘It’s more of a responsibility to keep him in Farhang at such a time,’ Gardan replied. ‘Look at him! He’s starting up his nonsense again.’
She gestured in mute exasperation towards Galliano, who had begun to call once more out of the window, shouting to the soldiers cowering by the palisade. The scientist had refused to take cover when the cloud of poisonous fear descended over the village: it did not seem to affect him as it did so many other people, and as a result he would not believe in its influence.
‘It’s pure illusion!’ he was roaring, as the cries of approaching combat grew louder, mingled with the occasional distant explosion. ‘Bats in the fog — nothing but imagination!’
‘Just because he can’t see what’s going on,’ hissed Gardan to Halas, ‘he thinks it’s all in our minds. I’m afraid his is turning,’ she concluded, shaking her head. ‘I should have insisted he leave earlier, with the others.’
Galliano had claimed, to begin with, that he was trying to rouse the soldiers’ courage, but the tenor of his shouts had changed in the last few minutes. He was scolding them now. ‘Don’t buy into that humbug,’ he was yelling. ‘Don’t fall for those tricks. The Argosians just want to frighten you: they’re nothing but stupid little boys. Listen — they’re singing playground songs!’
And it was practically true, thought Gardan. In addition to the roar of blast-poison and the terrifying rush of flying spears in the air, she could hear a strident anthem rising in the distance, all bravado and childish rage. The enemy soldiers were drawing nearer, singing raucous battle songs.
In the steps of the Saint we come!
To the sound of his marching drum!
Dip your hands in gore,
Give your life to war,
Clean the Tree, in his name, of scum!
‘I want you to go with him,’ said Gardan, turning to Halas once more. ‘It’s pointless to lose everyone, we’re not going to survive here —’
She was not given the opportunity to finish her sentence. At that instant, a dark figure rose up from behind the palisade, vaulting with a shout over the barrier of twigs. Gardan barely had time to realise, with a stab of terror, that one of the enemy soldiers had crept up to the palisade, before she was thrown down on the bark with the weight of the foreigner on top of her, her spear knocked from her grasp. She struggled against her assailant, expecting at
any moment to feel the bite of his blade.
But instead of encountering her death, she found herself gazing into the face of a young Argosian boy. He was a lad of barely seventeen or eighteen, black-haired and wearing a wisp of a beard, his hazel eyes wide as he slumped on top of her. He made no further move after his first leap, his expression frozen in surprise. Gardan wondered fleetingly why he did not kill her. Then, as he continued to lie inert, she rolled him over with some difficulty to see Halas’ spear rooted between his shoulder blades. She watched in horror as a dark stain spread through the young Argosian’s clothing, soaking symmetrically on either side of his back like a pair of wings. Halas also stood staring down in consternation at the dead boy.
‘They’re just children!’ he muttered in disgust. ‘They’ve sent us a bunch of children!’
Gardan struggled to her feet, shocked out of the sense of hopelessness that had overcome her. There was a reason for this reprieve, she thought, a cause to cling to that went beyond survival. She took hold of Halas’ arm, her voice soft and urgent in his ear.
‘Leave now,’ she told him, as the manic chant of the Saint’s boy army drew ever closer. ‘Find Oren and his sister, I beg of you. They’re our only hope, I see that now. I should have sent this message earlier, but it may not be too late if you bring it yourself. You’re a brave man, our bravest. Protect the Grafters with your life. They’re the ones who can lift this cloud from our hearts. Do it,’ she whispered, as lurid flames lit up the darkness and Galliano finally stopped shouting out of the window, doubled up with coughing, ‘do it in the name of our old friend Laska.’
In the twig-thickets beyond the palisade, flames, smoke, and the black fog of despair consumed Farhang. The Argosians were torching the Freehold, house by house, heart by heart, song by song.
The beating of dark wings was suffocating in the Grafters’ tent. The Focals’ chant fought, but could not banish it. Gripping her brother’s hand, Noni felt the fog brush her cheek and clammy tendrils smear the surface of her lips. She had difficulty in resisting the impulse to pull her fingers away from Oren’s in order to wipe the slime off her forehead. The cloud descending over the Freehold was made of some viscous substance, seeping into every nook and cranny. Psychic constructs, she thought with a shudder. Half-real pieces of matter spread out in a choking miasma. The camp of the refugees might have been hidden from the admiral’s fleet, but it was at the mercy of the Envoy. The heavy air closed in around the young Grafters, oozing between them, clogging their nostrils and hair. Lace was everywhere. They resisted his pernicious influence by entering the trance.
Their strength depended on unity, thought Noni. It did not matter how weak they might be individually, so long as their union was strong. A brief glance round the circle before shutting her eyes confirmed it. Oren was holding her right hand, and had Ishi’s left in his firm grasp; Ishi was holding Ara’s right hand and Ara was holding Mata’s left; Mata had laced Tudah’s right fingers in his own and Tudah’s grip tightened on Noni’s left. The circle was complete. Their voices grew firmer and more confident as they felt the Sap surge through them. It passed like a fiery thread from hand to hand, glowing warmer, growing wider as they confronted Lace in the trance. If they could draw his attention to themselves, they might help release the Freeholders from his grip.
Worlds made one, thought Noni, remembering the Oracle’s lessons from long ago. If they were one, their influence could reach out into the world. One, unified.
‘Use the Letter of Union,’ said Oren, echoing her thoughts.
Noni knew what he meant them to do, to banish the slithering fog. She held tightly to her companions’ hands and opened her eyes again, concentrating not on leaving her body but on the space at the centre of their circle. She visualised the Letter of Union there, an unbroken ring of light, and felt the others doing the same as they wove the trance, adding their strength to her own. A glowing point appeared in the air and expanded into a sphere of light, a pool of energy throbbing with the Sap. The pieces of Lace, the bats’ wings and puddles of frogspawn, the dead birds’ feathers and lumps of wet shadow, were repelled from it. Everything depended on their holding firm, Noni told herself. Everything depended on their widening that little globe of light, outwards from this tent across the camp, bringing Adhama and the Saffid into the circle and reaching further, wider, until they reached Farhang and beyond. They must stretch their unity out to where Nurians and Argosians were fighting their futile battle, extend their globe of light and wellbeing to push the Envoy’s cloud away —
Mother help us, she thought suddenly, for we are weak.
And as she contemplated how far this tiny circle of unity would have to stretch to fight the fog, considered the vast impossibility of their light reaching out and including every dark crevice of the canopy, Noni felt the slap of something feathered and sticky across her mouth. She almost cried aloud in revulsion, breaking her focus to shake her head and be rid of the filthy thing. But the next minute, the disgusting fragment flew back into her face from the other side, covering her mouth and nostrils completely. She felt she was choking. It took the greatest will in the world not to tear her hand from Tudah’s trembling fingers, or pull free from Oren and wipe the horrid clot off her skin.
In weakness find strength. Oren was chanting the Grafter’s litany beside her, calling desperately on the Leaf Letters. In emptiness, power.
She realised from the tenor of his voice that he was being similarly attacked. They all must be. She had to stay firm! She had to keep the circle true. Noni gathered up her courage and joined her brother in the chant, singing despite the slimy fragments of the Envoy that seethed through the air, slipping between her lips and thickening her tongue.
Worlds that were severed, we now bind together.
But the pool of light between them was becoming clouded. The emptiness that had allowed the Sap to flow from hand to hand was being blocked, even as they struggled to maintain the trance. They were only as strong as the weakest links in their chain, thought Noni in dismay, and one of the fledgling Grafters — she sensed it was Ishi — had already broken away. She could see him across the circle from her, batting his arms about his head, furiously swinging his fists in the air. Into the breach he had created surged a dark puddle of filth, a viscous arm dividing the Grafters’ circle in half. It muddied the Sap globe and darkened the light, causing Tudah to squirm with discomfort and assailing Mata and Ara in a similar fashion. They held firm another long moment, and Noni hoped they would prevail: in spite of the breach, she imagined the Sap would still flow, the light still pulse between them. Then Tudah finally tore her hand from Mata’s grasp, Ara coughed and groaned and Ishi scrambled out of the circle. The trance began to disintegrate.
Oren had not stopped chanting the Grafter’s song all this while, but Noni could see he was straining to concentrate. Tudah retreated to the back of the tent, weeping bitterly, while Ishi still lunged about in a fruitless fight against the Envoy’s vile particles. Noni saw Oren reach out and grasp Ara’s hand in an attempt to maintain the circle. So she did the same. Still chanting despite the choking air, she held out her free hand to Mata to keep the trance intact. If they could just maintain the flow of the Sap, even if they were only four — ah, Tymon! mourned Noni’s heart, silently, as her lips kept moving. If only you had returned to us.
But Ara and Mata could not sustain it. They broke apart, retching in the fog. Mata doubled up and starting vomiting. Trembling with nausea herself, Noni fancied she heard a jeering echo in the clotted air. Lace was laughing at them. She felt the wet slap across her face again and an insidious finger of slime being traced across her neck. It was all too much for her; she shuddered in horror and pulled away from Oren, covering her face with her hands.
At that moment, a dreadful cry rent the air. It sounded like a creature in terrible pain.
The cry catapulted Oren from the shredded remains of the trance and he opened his eyes, shaking. He did not know whether the scream had come fro
m Noni’s lips, or from one of the others. Was it was poor Ishi asking for help as he writhed on the ground, or Mata gagging on the other side of the tent? Was it Ara, or perhaps little Tudah, hunched in the far corner weeping her heart out? He felt a terrible sense of responsibility for the fate of whoever had called out between the suffocating echoes of their enemy’s laughter. He felt he was to blame for that cry.
Oren ground his hands together after Noni let him go, balling his fists in his lap. He knew that the glowing globe was extinguished, and that the waves of Sap had spiralled away, useless; the trance was a failure. He ached all over, and there was a dead weight lodged in the middle of his chest that made it difficult to breathe. It was a wrench to have been torn apart from his fellow Grafters in the middle of their chant. He felt bruised and broken, crushed and beaten by the Envoy’s cloud of despair, as if the shreds of cobweb and clogging feathers had been whips and hooked thongs rather than a fog, finally settling like hardwood in his lungs. But that cry had been the most painful of all. Such a call it was! Such agony! It tugged at his heart, filling him with remorse. He should not have permitted the fledglings to take part in the trance, he reproached himself. They had not been ready for such a test.
But though he sensed the pain that rose from the ruins of their little circle, he could not banish the persistent feeling that the cry itself had come from far away. Whose voice was reaching out to him from the distance? Who was suffering so? And with the thought of Ishi and Tudah, Oren suddenly remembered Jedda, combating the Envoy’s curses. And Tymon, lost and invisible to them.
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