Fair Rebel

by Steph Swainston

Six legs jointed above thoraxes the smooth hue of patinated bronze. Each had spines down the back of their tibias. Some were the size of a man, most were the size of a horse – big, full-imago killers.

  They scissored their mandibles as they ran. Feet flexed, three-hooked claws spread wide, tore up the naked earth. Not a blade of grass grows here. No animal can survive. The Insects eat everything. The Insects build with everything. They even chew up our wadding and roundshot sabots into paper.

  I winged ahead of Tornado’s charging Insects, to see the first of the great swarm that Thunder was speeding up the line from the east. Their backs shone in the sunlight filtering through the spreading wreaths of smoke. Globular eyes glinting, throwing off strips of reflection, tails plated, held high – and the smoke dimmed the day to dusk.

  I laboured up, till I could clasp the whole battlefront in my arms. The Paperlands lay ahead of me like a pale, petrified sea, and smoke roiling off the cannons had formed a continuous slick towards the Wall.

  Directly below me, from the left, down the line, thousands of Insects charged leaving twisted carcasses behind. From the right, also trapped against the front of the Paperlands, more sped on before the line of cannon: thousands of Insects leaving bits of barbed legs and detached abdomens twitching. These two hordes are going to crash together in the middle.

  Directly in the middle.

  With a bit of luck.

  I pulled my wings in and dived. The air whacking up past me cleared a bit of the smoke until I fell so fast it was hard to breathe, fanned out and checked my speed. But in my memory rang Thunder’s arrogant voice: ‘Luck? It’s not luck, it’s Natural Philosophy! Ants won’t double back onto a scent trail of fear. They lay the trail, we can keep them running.’

  I was above Cyan. She was screaming something. I landed heavily behind her. On the ground now I could see wisps of smoke hanging in the air like gauzy curtains, dimming her men in an eerie grey-pink eclipse. They waited, listening to the encroaching cannonade. It was ear-splitting at this distance and getting louder all the time but the swarm wasn’t yet in sight.

  I ran past the line sergeants to Cyan. She was standing in the stirrups trying to see the bugs.

  ‘Jant. How long do we have?’

  ‘About two minutes.’

  Her lips pursed. ‘Right. What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m staying here.’

  ‘Until they’ve run in?’

  ‘Till they’ve all gone in. It’s a pleasure to fight beside you, Lightning.’

  ‘Good. You can bloody well shoot, then.’ She plucked my musket from her saddle holster and passed it down to me, then my cartridge box on its strap.

  The blasts shook the ground. She swallowed, and forced a ghastly grin, coughed to clear her throat and raised her high voice to the fyrd: ‘Hold fire! Hold fire till you hear the signal!’

  Up went her hand gripping her rifle.

  ‘Let them come! Wait …’

  I slipped my ramrod down the barrel to check it was still loaded, thumbed back the hammer, clicked on a percussion cap from its dispenser.

  Beside us the battalion of archers took a quarter-turn right, showed us their backs and drew their bows high.

  ‘They can see them,’ she said.

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘No! Oh. Shit, that was the last cannon, I saw the flash.’ Her dry mouth clicked. ‘It’s nearly us. First Hacilith! Hold your fire! Let them close … God’s holiday, you’ve all the time in the world!’

  ‘Level muskets,’ yelled her sergeant. The two ranks bristled with musket muzzles.

  Saker’s voice rang out between the cannon fire. ‘Loose!’

  The archers loosed and a volley of arrows arced up, whistled into the Insects we couldn’t yet see. Another volley, and another.

  Saker called, ‘Level!’ and the archers shot straight volleys. My hand was sweating so much the musket twisted in my grasp. I glanced at the percussion cap for the tenth time.

  ‘The fuckers still outshoot us,’ Cyan said of her father’s archers.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well … They don’t have our stopping power.’

  Volley after volley flew in a hard hail of shafts. The archers turned face-forwards as the Insects streamed past. They had twice our range and five times our rate of fire, but Saker can’t field as many trained bowmen as Cyan gives muskets to the scum of Hacilith.

  We saw the first mandibles hurtle out from before the nearest man. Cyan’s horse reared and she leant it down.

  ‘Now show those featherbacks how to shoot! Hold till we’ve range!’

  The Insects raged towards us. We can’t let them turn. If we buckle, they’ll pour after us and leave no-one alive. We had to keep them in the funnel.

  Many were horribly mangled: arrows sticking out of them, shells smashed into jagged edges, starred into dents. Some ran on five legs, four legs, even three – dragging their abdomens and unwinding intestines caught on their spines. The dozen balls in each canister had blown some practically apart – here one ran oozing cream fluid from its thorax cracked wide.

  Insects were so tightly packed, a hundred deep, that they bowled their dead along the ground. One with only half a head remaining, the ganglia flopping out, fell and was trampled by a thousand claws.

  ‘Wait!’

  I couldn’t see through the mass to the Insects on the far side. Those didn’t seem to be as badly damaged. There are so many, so many, that you never make as much impact as you think.

  ‘Wait!’

  I held the gun at arms’ length deliberately. Stop the fyrd firing prematurely. One nervous bastard shoots, then they all blaze away and the Insects turn on you as you reload.

  Cyan screamed at them to hold.

  The Insects were closing fast.

  That’s thirty metres, twenty …

  The archers were glancing at us with incredulity.

  ‘Ready!’ yelled Cyan.

  Fifteen metres.

  ‘Fire!’

  Flame jetted from the muskets. The nearest Insects jerked, midstride – seemed to pause as the balls hit them, holing shell, cracking chitin. Smoke drooled from the barrels and sank to knee level. Company two was already reloading and company three behind them fired over their shoulders.

  The sergeants bellowed, ‘Load!’

  ‘Fire!’

  ‘Load!’

  Cyan watched the rolling volley with delight. She levelled her fabulous rifle and shot into the smoke. What a waste of its performance. Who knows whether she hit? Who knows what effect one shot had? All she cared was that her six thousand men in six battalions were hammering twenty-four to thirty-six thousand lead balls a minute into the Insects and smashing them to bits, turning them into the valley ahead.

  I raised my musket to my shoulder and rested my cheek on the sideplate. I looked down the top of the muzzle and sighted on the bayonet notch, but beyond that was just drifting waves of smoke. The endless rush of triangular heads and jointed legs appeared and faded in thinning patches.

  Covered by smoke, was gone – revealed in a smaller patch further on.

  I pulled the trigger, the hammer flew home, the butt kicked the hollow of my shoulder, and I lowered to reload.

  Cyan bawled at her people who obeyed their training like clockwork. Hacilith factory workers know how to make themselves automata. Bite cartridge, pour stinging powder down the muzzle, wad the paper, shove in the ball, ramrod it down, percussion cap. Fire.

  Again … fire.

  Again … fire.

  Now my musket was growing so hot I couldn’t lay my cheek on the sideplate and gave up all pretence of aiming. My hands were raw.

  Cyan glanced down. Sweat beaded her brow, the whites of her eyes were red.

  ‘This is some herding!’

  ‘They’re going in.’

  ‘It’s working?’

  ‘I need to fly to see … You must stand, whatever happens. There are battalions you can’t see backing you up. And you’re backing up the ca
nnon.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  I slipped my musket back into her saddle holster. Its steel sizzled the leather. ‘I have to report to Thunder.’

  ‘Jant, you’re conducting an orchestra!’

  ‘Ha! The bastard needs someone to crow at.’

  She flashed her teeth in a grin. She’d taken off her helmet and her hair was thick with sweat. ‘Tell him we won’t drop below four shots a minute.’

  ‘Yes, Lightning.’

  ‘Send me an ammo caisson and a water cart, we can go all day!’

  ‘I’m only asking two hours.’ I turned on my heel and jumped into the sky.

  I wanted to rise from the smoke, but it was too high. If I flapped up there it would just blot out everything.

  I flew smoothly over the fyrd. Their white jackets, gleams of steel, stood out in the gloom, but the Awian archers in blue were scarcely visible. I could hear nothing but the cannons’ continuous roar, and the crackle of muskets, jetting tongues of flame rimmed with smoke.

  Company by company they fired, again and again as I passed over. They made no effort to aim. Every shot would find a mark now. The skill was only in the speed – and that’s why Saker hates it.

  I was astonished at how much punishment the Insects were taking, and still they came. Company after company of fyrd passed below me, busy with their ramrods, spitting out cartridge paper. Levelling muskets.

  I zipped over six men standing back from their gun. The firer’s arm holding the taper dropped, the fuse flared, the barrel boomed and spat a cone of fire – twitched the smoke as the grapeshot tore through it. The pall had taken on the shape and colour of an anvil, and murkily I saw the brass tubes of Thunder’s battery shining ahead. In the black smog, the orange splodges of explosions bloomed and vanished a second before each blast. They looked like flowers.

  Flowers? I apologise for my floridity. We’ve all had brandy for breakfast.

  A soldier below looked up, musket in hand, and I rowed higher in the air. Chances are one of those buggers will shoot me by accident.

  At the end of the line, behind the final cannon, Capelin Thunder was a bizarre eye of calm in the inferno. His Trisian tunic, smutted by the smoke, shone clearly. So did his bald head and shaped white beard.

  He moved not a muscle as I screamed flat out down the sky. I flared wings abruptly, swung into standing position, hit the ground and ran to a halt in front of him.

  ‘They’re pouring in!’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, in Trisian.

  His horse tried to back from me but I grabbed its guide rein. What a sight we looked! Me, all in black and sweating like a Rhydanne in a steel forge, Thunder in white and a model of cool imperturbability.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before,’ I shouted.

  ‘I grant you,’ said Thunder. ‘I’ve never done it before.’

  The sluicer nearest me ploshed his sponge in a bucket of filthy water. His teammates scooped up the ropes and heaved the cannon back into place. Its single limber gouged the gritty mud. Sloshed out the barrel. In went the charge, he reversed his sponge and rammed down. In went the shot like two big tin cans. The men stood clear. Into the vent the igniter jammed his sharp quill of powder, down went his hand with the linstock and boom! The cannon flew back and we scythed bugs to bits.

  ‘Fly over the valley,’ said Thunder. ‘Bring me a description.’

  The three kilometres to Valley Twenty were packed with Insects, and second after second yet more arrived. They flowed down the front of the Paperlands into the valley, scrabbling over their cells. Along the front, dead Insects were piling up. More and more crashed into the mounds of dead – spiky limbs bunching, antennae whirling.

  Those at the back were still intact and they’d nowhere to run but into the gorge. Hurricane’s battery stood west of Cyan’s muskets at the valley mouth. His teams hurled buckets of water over their cannons – clouds of steam joined the smoke. They gave the brass wheels under each muzzle a quarter turn, raising them from point blank, and the next charge was roundshot.

  It pushed Insects further into the valley. At first they climbed on the roofs of their cells and swarmed away. The gorge kept them in, like spiders in a bathtub – some chewed through the crust of paper and crawled headfirst into the tunnels below. They dropped out of view, and in the valley we’d trapped them.

  For an hour and a half Tornado and Thunder sent more Insects down the line. Hurricane and Lightning forced them into the valley. The trickle gradually slowed, until the Paperlands was drained for a radius of thirty kilometres, and their onslaught stopped.

  High dunes of dead Insects clogged the valley mouth. Broken ones limped along, some lay pulsing. Lone Insects ran back and forth, and others scaled the piles of dead to enter the gorge.

  ‘That’s right, we’re dangerous!’ Thunder called to them. ‘Wall yourselves in! Seal up your tunnels! For beneath you there’s a charge that will blow you at the moon!’

  I ordered Eleonora’s cavalry to support Tornado’s artillery as they limbered up, and Hayl’s Eske cavalry protected Thunder’s cannon. Cyan kept her musketmen in line and, by division, each battalion pulled back and marched to our temporary camp nearby, which Thunder had built beside the entrance to his mine.

  Then I gave the field to Eleonora. Her lancers would ride stray Insects down. As all the cannons bounced and jolted over the barren ground behind their six-horse teams, I looked for Thunder. There he was, riding sedately among them. Seeming to glow from within as he did, he looked like a little, bald version of the Emperor.

  I sailed down through the smoke and landed beside him. ‘Well done,’ I said.

  ‘We detonate the charge at first light tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll start moving everyone out. That was masterly.’

  He inclined his head. ‘Snow insists we’ve got less than fifteen hours now before I must light the fuse. Here’s the order of march,’ He thrust a piece of paper at me, and then pointed at Eleonora’s lancers. ‘I can see many improvements to make. Those barbarians are still strapping on armour and hurling themselves at the Insects.’

  ‘But Leon loves it.’

  ‘I would have thought better of Awia. As I said, there’s much work here for one of superior mind.’

  He pulled his horse’s head right and rode around me. I watched him go, before taking off to find everyone on the list, to organise the withdrawal.

  CHAPTER 4

  Cyan Lightning

  Cyan’s battalion was to bring up the rear, together with Saker’s archers and the lancers. I couldn’t find Cyan at her fyrd’s tents, so I guessed she’d be with her father and ran across camp to Saker’s pavilion.

  Saker and Eleonora’s is the largest three-peaked tent, though given that we’ve planned to abandon them all, it wasn’t as luxurious as Leon usually makes it, but rather more like Saker’s pavilion when he used to be Lightning. The Awian eagle, with Micawater’s white mascle, flew outside. The entrance was tied open, and no one visible, although Saker’s bow and quiver were on the central rack.

  I hollered and heard an answering shout from behind the tent. I walked around the ropes to see Cyan and Saker standing on the rock escarpment above me, watching the lines of troops and wagons leaving far below. Saker was holding his arm extended, looking through the outstretched L of his thumb and closed fingers, the way he does to block out the sun and judge distance. His sunglasses were pushed up on his forehead, with his greying hair tufted over them. Cyan was loading her rifle.

  ‘It’s about eight hundred and twenty metres,’ he said.

  ‘It’s eight hundred and twenty-two.’

  ‘I said “about”. So you’ve gained fifty metres.’

  ‘Fifty four, oh ye of little faith.’

  ‘Guys?’ I said.

  ‘Hello, Jant,’ said Saker, still gazing into the distance. He reached out for her rifle. ‘Give me another go.’

  ‘I haven’t reloaded it yet.’

  ‘Well, there�
�s grounds for improvement. At four shots a minute, I can still annihilate you with one hundred from a recurve bow.’

  ‘Yes, dad.’

  I sat down on a rock. ‘You’re leaving tomorrow, after Hurricane but before Tornado. You’re leaving at the same time as Leon’s cavalry, you’re second to last out.’

  ‘Archers always get a raw deal,’ said Saker.

  ‘So you’ve got fifteen hours.’

  ‘Thanks, Jant,’ said Cyan. ‘We can move any time if there’s a change.’ She is Lightning, the Castle’s Archer, and the Emperor joined her to the Circle and immortalised her fifteen years ago, at the age of seventeen.

  And here I run into a problem. How do I recap without making it heavy going for those of you who’ve followed me from the start? If I explain, for example, that Cyan Challenged Saker for his position in the Circle and he deliberately lost to her, those of you who remember the tournament will cry, ‘old hat!’

  On the other hand, if you’ve just started listening and I press on regardless, I’ll make it seem desperately complicated, when really it’s not. Our exchanges would be like:

  ME: So, after Saker threw his archery tournament he lost his position in the Circle as Lightning, and San dropped him back into the flow of time.

  New listener: ‘Into the flow of time’?

  Me: Yes, because the Circle keeps us immortal, the fifty people who are the best in the world at our professions, those best suited to defeat the Insects. The Emperor San instigated this meritocracy – as long as we defend our positions in fair Challenge, he keeps us immortal by sharing his eternal life with us.

  New listener: Who’s the Emperor San?

  Me: He says he was chosen by god, before god left the world in year zero, to defend it against any threat. When the Insects arrived in four-eleven San changed from being an itinerant wise man and advisor to lead people against them. He set up the Circle in the year six-twenty, with Games to first select the best warriors as Eszai, and Saker had been Lightning from that time.

  New listener: But not now?

  Me: No.

  You see? We could go on all day. The only solution I can think of, is to ask you guys who’ve already heard it to let your mind wander for a bit. There’s a lot you can be doing – putting an edge on your sword, polishing your horse – while I place the facts before the newcomers.