Once, only once, in all the Dreams he’d had over the long months, did he hear his own name from Milo’s lips, see the soft look of melancholic tenderness that went with it. Ellis had no context for any of it—couldn’t make out whether it was day or night for Milo; couldn’t hear anything besides the low breath that carried his name on a despondent sigh. But he saw what Milo was looking at when he said it, a simple tarnished key held tight in dirty fingers, nails broken and ragged and knuckles dark with dried blood.
It probably shouldn’t have heartened Ellis the way it did.
He had little time to dwell on it. The influx of Royal Forces troops was a relief, but also a logistical nightmare, because there was only so much room at the Home Guard’s base to house them. And the fact that the base was up near Caeryngryf meant that if an invasion came by way of Hollywell, as everyone was sure it would, it would take too much time to transport the troops all the way south to defend.
Ellis volunteered the Croft as headquarters for the command staff then went to work on the rest of Wellech. Negotiating housing. Assigning tracts of land to be used for camps. Snagging an equally harried Walsh to insist that the bulk of the troops be stationed along the more vulnerable southern and eastern coasts. He’d been almost three-quarters of the way through his argument before he realized he hadn’t needed to argue at all—Walsh had already made the arrangements. And she’d placed every witch and sorcerer at her disposal at strategic intervals up and down the coasts as well. Which was a relief, because Ellis had got so used to not having magical help, he’d forgot to include any in his diatribe.
The naval battles were constant, unrelenting. And getting closer. It was the rare day when Ellis couldn’t hear the big guns in the distance, just out of sight from the beaches, or take a whiff of the chill late-winter air and not catch the sting of sulfur curling through it. They’d yet to get as close as they’d come when they’d tried to sneak up the strait, but they’d apparently called some of their northern fleet down from the Goshor and stationed them at the Surgebreaks. The intent behind it was clear.
All Wellech could do was watch the battles that skimmed the edges of the sound’s waters, listen to the artillery boom and blast, and wait.
“That’s all, as far as preparations go.” Petra squinted down at the list in her hand, before her mouth quirked up, and she sent a sly glance at Ellis. “Ready for the list of complaints?”
They were at the Wardens’ command post in Reescartref, having a cuppa after a grueling week, and trying to pretend everything was normal for five minutes while they went over the more mundane business of the day.
Ellis sighed. The list of complaints had grown exponentially since the Royal Forces had arrived.
He took a bracing sip from his mug. “Not really, but I reckon we’d best get it over with.”
“Right.” Petra was grinning now. “So, Cal over to Granstaf says you need to tell ‘all these city folk’ that cow-tipping isn’t a real thing. He’s getting tired of chasing off-duty soldiers from his fields in the middle of the night.”
“Cow-tipping.” Ellis set his mug down. Blinked. “Really?”
“Yup.” Petra rattled her list at him. “I’ve already got a memo for you to send to Walsh.”
Ellis snorted. “Yes. Grand.” Cow-tipping. “And give me a copy of it. I’ll personally hand it to one of the brass at the Croft to make sure the word gets ’round.”
Petra made a note, still grinning, then said, “Lieutenant Edwards would like you to have a word with Folant.”
“Oh, for—” Ellis pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why?”
“From what I can tell, for being Folant.” Petra pursed her lips, clearly trying not to outright laugh, and raised an eyebrow. “Apparently, the soldiers bivouacked at the Grange have out of the blue begun asking for credit at the pubs and inns. When their lieutenant inquired as to why they were all suddenly poverty-stricken and imposing upon the good citizens of Wellech to fund their recreation, turns out Folant not only told them the good citizens of Wellech would happily do so, but he’s also been—”
“He’s been running nightly card games and taking them for everything down to the lint in their pockets. Bloody—” It wasn’t funny. Ellis should not laugh. He threw his hands out. “What’s he even doing there? I don’t want him in any position to get information that might—”
“He’s not.” Petra shrugged. “He can’t. Or at least no more than anyone else with eyes could get. And even if he could, he couldn’t get it out to anyone who might matter. Walsh’s people keep a proper eye on him, and they apparently check Oed Tyddyn every two days or so to make sure he hasn’t got his hands on a radio or sommat.” She gave Ellis a reassuring smile. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think he’s up for trying anymore. I don’t think he even understood what he might be leaving Wellech open to before. And now that he does…” She left it there, but she was looking at Ellis like she was waiting for something.
Ellis had no idea what. He huffed. “If you say so.” Skeptical. He didn’t trust Folant with so much as a 5p, but he trusted Petra’s judgement when it came to pretty much every aspect of Wellech’s wellbeing. He supposed he ought to trust her in this, though the words “trust” and “Folant” rather clashed in Ellis’s head, but he had to admit he had a definite bias he had a hard time thinking past. He waved at Petra’s list. “Fine, let’s move on. Because, honestly, if that’s the worst he gets up to before all this is done, we should count ourselves—”
“Rhywun Ellis! Rhywun Ellis!” Young Cled, one of the boys who’d been hanging about the soldiers just recently, eyeing their uniforms with clear envy, came skidding into the office. His bright gaze skimmed the room, then lit up even more when he spotted Ellis. He grinned. “Syr! Your dragon’s back!”
The children had made a game out of spotting her last autumn, excited and gleeful as they watched her wing overhead, and trying to guess at where she might land. The adults had been much more sanguine about it, and though no one ever suggested Ellis should find a way to keep her from landing at all—because how could he, really?—they nonetheless never hesitated to alert their Pennaeth and First Warden that they expected him to do something. Luckily, she never stayed long enough for anyone to get truly antsy or to cause any more trouble than she’d done that first time.
At first, Ellis matched Cled’s grin, pleased to hear the redcrest was back. A familiar warmth weltered through his chest, because though it was absurd and improbable, Ellis knew she was here to see him, to check up on him. It was almost an uncanny, improbable, secondhand connection to Milo. And the fact that she’d clearly made it through the winter was buoying.
But then Ellis realized what it all meant. And everything in him just sort of… froze.
He turned to Petra. “Go find a radio and get hold of Walsh.” He stood, heart abruptly knocking against his ribs as he pulled Petra up with him. He all but shoved her away from the desk, past a still grinning Cled, and out the door. “Tell her the dragons are waking up.”
THE SURGE, when it came a fortnight later, was brutal. Wellech wouldn’t know it for days after, but the attack began with the airfields in Werrdig. Dragons, a ravager and a marauder, decimated nearly every plane that had been on the ground, and at least a handful of those that had made it into the air. The air support the Royal Forces—both naval and ground troops—expected never came.
It was inevitable that landing troops would eventually make it through. The Confederation forces had been somewhat depleted as the war had raged on, Eretia having turned several tides on the continent over the winter. And once Błodwyl got its feet back under it and retook what ground it had lost, its troops proved as ruthless and determined as any Confederation soldier on their most bloodthirsty day. But the Confederation had clearly decided Kymbrygh was worth consolidating most of what it had left in an all-out push. When the first Western Unified battleship went down off the waters of Surreywitch Sound, it rocked Wellech to the core.
“That’s a
blackwing marauder,” Ellis said, hoarse, as he watched the too-familiar silver-white light sail from the deck of an enemy destroyer and splash the hull of a Royal Forces fast patrol boat. The light itself did no damage, but the dragon followed it, gliding across the battle lines to hover above the fringes of the Western Unified flotilla and spew jets of flame down in unrelenting swaths on the patrol boat. “I should’ve told Walsh about the lights.”
He hadn’t made the connection before. He didn’t think he’d actually realized there might be one. But now that he’d seen how they were getting the dragons to attack exactly what they wanted attacked, Ellis remembered that ball of fizzy light that had stuck to Milo’s shield. And how the dragons had followed it when Milo sent it back at the witch who’d thrown it.
“They know.” Yelton was stood beside him, looking just as sick as Ellis felt, and watching the pinprick of what had to be another dragon wing in over the sea from the southern horizon and toward the battle. “They’ve known since the first time.” Yelton’s jaw was so tight his red-stubbled chin quivered. “Doesn’t mean they can do much about it.”
They were difficult targets, dragons. Scale plating impenetrable to almost everything Ellis knew of. More maneuverable and reactive than airplanes. Built-in weapons. They didn’t seem to have much problem dodging the missiles and heavy artillery aimed at them. Though the rockets launched from the decks of the Royal Forces ships did seem to at least stagger them off target when they managed to hit, it was getting a hit that seemed to be the first problem in defending against them. Ensuring the hit did damage looked like the second.
“They lose scales,” Ellis said, seeing the redcrest in his mind’s eye, the dragons he’d watched Milo set loose in a Dream. “The poison they feed them makes them lose scales.” He turned to Yelton. “Vulnerabilities.”
Yelton was still watching the battle, grim-faced, but he shrugged then nodded. “They probably know.” He turned and jerked his chin at the cadet with the radio. “But we’ll just make sure, aye?”
Ellis didn’t know if the message ever got through, or if it did, if it made any kind of difference. Like every child of Kymbrygh, he’d learned about dragons in school. The different breeds he hadn’t really remembered past the exams. The cautions against approaching one. The rarity of encountering an aggressive one. The damage it could do if provoked. How to avoid provoking.
None of it prepared him for the realization that he could do very little but watch as two dragons followed silver-white light toward the shores of Wellech.
Chapter 22—Presto
: a very fast tempo
If life were a play, or maybe a book, a novel, there would be a distinct villain, and a hero in counterpoint who’d been written into existence to thwart them. The villain would be casually evil, brazenly cruel, easy to spot by an obvious lack of a moral center, and their only goal would be something craven that good people could point to and confidently, unquestioningly judge as bad. The hero would be strong, and tall, and likely quite good-looking, always kind and always sure, their flaws small and common and forgivable, and their strengths—both physical and ethical—unquestioned.
If life were a play—or a novel—there would be a discernable plot. A beginning, a middle, and an end. An introduction, a conflict, and a resolution. The hero would grow as the story went on, learn important lessons about themselves and their world that would help them to address the conflict in the most noble way possible, probably find love along the way. And when it was all over, when the narrative was played out, when the story ended, the hero would go on to live the life that had been interrupted by the plot, and enjoy the love they’d earned.
Life was not a play. It was not a novel. There was no one clear beginning that could be recognized as a beginning except perhaps in hindsight. There was no discernable middle where one could judge the number of pages left and be confident the hardship was nearly done. There was no distinct end, only a continuation, a steady, sometimes reluctant journey onward into more unknowns—more beginnings unrecognized, more conflicts undeserved or maybe even deserved, more resolutions that too often resolved nothing at all.
Life was merely life. It moved analogous to the blue threads of time that only very few could See and none could wholly understand. It changed, it stayed stagnant; it gave, it took; it hosted conflicts with transcendent indifference, but it didn’t actually create them, cause them. It simply was.
Once Upon a Time Ellis thought as he carefully placed the bomb in the crook of the lowest strut of the trestle, Once Upon a Time there was a man who realized that this was just how life was now.
Stretches of hollow-eyed, immediate existence between conflicts neverending. Learning how to prop himself just so against a sturdy vertical surface so he could sleep on his feet without falling over. Eating things he would’ve snubbed only a while ago but now merely shoveled it in because it was food, and his body needed it if he meant to keep it moving. Too-young faces around him that had aged decades in the space of weeks, days, sometimes hours. Firefights in the middle of streets he’d run along, blithe and happy, as a child; stumbled end to end, drunk and laughing with mates, as a teen; patrolled, brash and cocksure, as a man.
Once Upon a Time there was a man who always kept his gun clean and dry.
Once Upon a Time there was a man who always ensured it was loaded.
Once Upon a Time there was a man who always shot to kill.
He climbed up to the next sill, over one column, and placed the next bomb.
“Patrol,” Bethan hissed from somewhere below, not even a vague figure in the dark, just a low voice nearly blending with the calm rush of the river.
Ellis stilled, hanging on to his unsteady perch, trying to fit himself to the too-geometrical shapes of columns and braces and struts, and thought about how war didn’t end with an invasion repelled. War went on, war was, a life lived within it small and of little consequence unless the loss of it crafted it into something remarkable.
Memorials of war, as well as the dead made a part of it, had been a matter of course to Ellis. Sometimes ignored, sometimes contemplated. Names and dates and events dug into straight lines in marble, mapping out beginnings, alluding to middles, chiseling out endings, and demanding remembrance. On this date, the armies of Blah and Blah met in battle. These are the lives that ended here, the names history has chosen to remember, these are their deeds, this is why it’s important. Ellis had never really considered the reality that words carved stark and tidy couldn’t quite touch. Who’d been witness to this event and thought it demanded a record in history? Who’d watched the people around them fall and decided which among them would be a name in stone? Who’d been there and survived, observed an end, and made their history the history? Because history, after all, needed to be recorded, needed to end, before it could become historic.
And he’d never, not once, imagined he’d be the person witnessing history in the making. Marking the faces around him. Cataloguing events, words, actions and reactions, landscapes before a battle and landscapes after. Looking for The End written somehow into the fabric of his life, this war, woven through with the threads of red possibility that would disappear when it turned to reality.
A life could begin in the midst of war, it could end because of it, it could take on new meaning as a result of it, or it could lose what made it a life worth living. Time contracted to pinpoints within it while moments expanded toward infinity, and life became something easy to take, dear to hold, excruciating to endure, poignant to lose.
“They’re gone,” Bethan whispered. “Set the last two, and let’s go.”
Grim, Ellis pried his now-stiff fingers from their grip, moving quick but careful, doing everything by feel, because there was no moon, no stars. It was late spring in Wellech, which meant rain and mud and weeks without anything in the sky but clouds. Ellis couldn’t see a bloody thing but the vague sparkle of the river beneath him.
“That’s the last,” he called down softly, hugging the near
est column as he began his cautious way down. “Get back to the radio.”
He didn’t look to see if Bethan obeyed, minding only his own movements for now, heeding only this moment and his place within it before moving on to the next. Because that was one of the first things he’d learnt about a war waged up-close: it was made of infinite moments, each spent one after the next by someone different, each moving on its own trajectory. And sometimes all those moments gathered like threads in a closing fist to become one moment shared, defining those who lived it together.
War didn’t end with an invasion repelled, but Ellis supposed a life could begin with an invasion executed, because this new thing he was living was not his life. It was something new, something he didn’t recognize, something built of brittle, too-brief-too-infinite moments, and all he was doing was moving from one to the next. The enemy surged, tried to move inland, and Ellis fisted the moments of his life in his hand and spent them on stopping it—one moment strategizing; one moment shouting an order; one moment watching it implemented; one moment taking away all possible remaining moments from someone else. And if he was lucky, Ellis came away from it with more moments to dole out, miserly, as it all began again.
“They’re not getting past Gefēonde.” Bethan was crouched on the high side of the watershed nearest where the Addfwyn doglegged into the Aled, neck bent and eyes faraway as she listened to the chatter through her headset. “The 142nd has them pinned to the beach, and Western Unified has regained control of the Blackson and the Goshor. Those Eretian troops aren’t giving ground.” She shook her head, still listening. “Nothing from Walsh yet, but three Werrdig divisions got through to Caeryngryf, and it’s holding strong.” She gave Ellis something that might’ve been trying for a grin. “If we can get these bridges down and hold Torcalon…”
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