by Helen Allan
Sorrow blushed, but laughed aloud at this, causing some of the other pairs further along the wall to look at her. She waved to them that everything was fine and turned to look at her friend.
“So, Etienne, if you have had all these lovers over the years, you must have many, many children. Didn’t you want to get to know any of them?
Etienne grinned, “Not at all ma beaute`. That is one of the many reasons I was always in demand by ladies of good taste; I am unable to procreate.”
“Oh,” Sorrow said, shocked at his candour, “I don’t know whether to be conciliatory or congratulatory.”
“Ah, both, I would say,” Etienne said, turning back to look to the woods. “My first wife, my first great love, wanted children badly. The fact that we could not have any was a great sadness to her. When she did eventually become pregnant, I was not angry, although I knew the child was not mine. I also knew it was what she badly wanted, and her happiness was what mattered most to me. She and the babe died during the birth.”
“Oh Etienne,” Sorrow said, touching his shoulder, “I am sorry.”
“These things happen,” he said soberly, “time heals all wounds they say, but the memories remain. You will, no doubt, always remember the babe you lost. But the pain will ease as you grow older.”
Sorrow took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said quietly, “I know you are right. Thank you, Etienne, for sharing your past with me.”
“Any time, sweet girl,” he said, “And the answer to your question is 304.”
Sorrow gasped, but she didn’t have time to make any remark, as dark shapes began to move forward from the trees and the arrows began to fly.
11
On the third night of attacks, the solution - when it came - was 100 times worse than the affliction.
Each night since the pod had left, the humans had manned the walls successfully. Wave after wave of Sin had broken on it; many had died, none had breached. Those inside knew they just had to hold out until Khalili and John returned with the missing Sin and the weapons. For Sorrow’s part, she felt like chewing her nails to the bone – the portals were open now, time was against her – she needed to lead her army out of the bailey and towards the Capital, but she could not do so when surrounded by hundreds of Sin bent on their destruction.
She leaned on the wall and ground her teeth, waiting for the fresh assault that she knew would come, as it had every evening. But this night, something was different.
The screams began filtering through the night, low at first, then constant and high pitched, heard easily above the battle cries of those closest to the wall. Suddenly en masse, the Sin began to race towards the wall, eyes wide, weapons discarded. They frantically tried to climb it, to help each other up, but not to attack, to flee.
Sorrow and Etienne looked at each other in astonishment.
“Now what?” he quipped dryly, aiming his bow down the face of the wall and shooting a Sin in the eye before quickly stringing and letting loose another.
Before Sorrow could reply, the answer revealed itself. From out of the trees came new forms, illuminated by the flame torches lying discarded all over the ground by the Sin; the new assailants’ skin glowed an eerie green. Scales were reflected in the torchlight, their snouts, long, crocodilian, were open in grins that revealed row upon row of sharp, elongated teeth. They marched in even, determined lines, mowing down the retreating Sin. Behind them, here and there, just out of clear sight, red shapes lurked.
“What the motherfucking fuck?” Sorrow breathed.
Etienne laughed.
Sorrow shook her head and laughed too. She knew her language didn’t shock him, he had been friends too long with her mother, and her bad language had rubbed off onto him. Growing up Sorrow had received 5 cents every time Megan cursed. By the time she was 15, she had estimated she had enough in coins to put herself through college; and a colourful store of words to draw on.
“Lizards? Crocodiles on legs?” Etienne suggested.
“Seth,” Sorrow sighed. “Mum said he would send aliens to destroy the Earthborn, aliens he had borrowed from Tefnut and Shu – and I guess she was right, something this hideous could only have come from someone so evil. One of the gates must lead to a lizard planet they control.”
“Well we had better set them straight then,” Etienne said, his face a picture of affronted French pride,
“we are not the Earthborn, they are all in the Capital – these lizard things need to go there and parley with them and leave us alone.”
Sorrow snorted. “Firstly, you forget, I am Earthborn. Secondly, I have a feeling they are not the ‘open-dialogue’ type of alien, friend. And since we don’t have the pod with us, it is going to be up to us to fight these monsters.”
As she said this another, more sinister thought occurred to her.
“Etienne we are way East of the gates. If they are here it means they may already have overrun the Capital. I haven’t heard from Aha in days – Khalili is already a day and a half overdue. I have a terrible feeling the portals may have been overrun and our friends were caught in the cross-fire.”
“It could be that the Earthborn have driven these creatures away from the portals,” Etienne said, his face sombre as he shot arrows into the Sin and considered his words. “You said Anhur had been preparing for an attack for some time. But if what you say is true, we need to get there and jump home, leave these things to fight it out amongst themselves. Let us leave this planet Sorrow; it is clear there will never be peace between the three species.”
“I don’t believe that Etienne, I won’t believe that. And I’m not leaving until I’ve done everything I can to forge that peace. But I’ll get you home, and the other humans who want to go, and I’ll close the lizard gate for good. If the pod doesn’t return today, we need to think of a way of getting the hell out of here and helping the humans get to the portals before they close.”
As she said this the first wave of Sin to hit the walls, through sheer numbers, began to climb on each other’s shoulders, dead and alive, and breach the top, pursued closely behind, by the lizard creatures.
Hearing the screams of humans being murdered as the Sin reached the top, Etienne suddenly turned from the wall to face Sorrow, gripping her upper arm and forcing her to look at him.
“I would never abandon you, ma bichette,” he said softly, “but you had better come up with a plan to stop us getting eaten before you talk about gates and escape and peace. Use that prodigious and gorgeous brain of yours and think.”
Sorrow nodded, looking into his eyes and making an instant decision. “You know, Mum once said the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
“Yes,” Etienne frowned, “but I don’t think now is the time for existential deliberation.”
“No,” Sorrow snorted. Turning to the nearest humans, she began to shout, “throw open the gates. Throw open the gates.”
“Mon Dieu,” Etienne shouted, throwing his hands into the air, “to coin a phrase; what the mother-fucking fuck?”
“We need to let the Sin in,” Sorrow said, frowning as she watched the lizard men cut down the Sin in their dozens, “we need them on our side.”
“You are letting the fox into the hen house,” Etienne frowned, “ma ange, this is a bad, bad idea.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got,” Sorrow said, hoping against hope she hadn’t made the worse decision of her life.
“Open the gates,” she screamed to the humans standing by, looking up at her as though she had lost her mind, “I said open the fucking gates.”
As the Sin piled through the gateway and Sorrow saw the lizards making strides to do the same, she ordered the people on the walls to fire all arrows and spears at the lizards.
“Forget the Sin, shoot the lizards, shoot the lizards,” she screamed.
Etienne echoed her calls in Sin language, his voice booming across the walls, but she and he shared a worried glance when they saw that, even then, the lizards, with their laser guns, were killing
more humans and Sin than could be sustained. They too were going to make it inside the compound.
“Retreat, retreat,” she shouted, motioning the people on the wall to run to the Keep – “to the castle, to the Keep, now!”
As a great tide, the humans began pouring off the walls and running to the Keep as Sorrow and Etienne stood transfixed, watching the tide of Sin and lizards battle their way through the gateway.
“I’m sorry, Etienne,” Sorrow said, watching the lizards cut swathes through the Sin, “it didn’t work.”
“Don’t give up so soon, mon tresor,” Etienne smirked as the pod carrying Khalili and his Sin appeared over the horizon and zoomed low into the Keep, spilling out a dozen Sin women and children and several tall Earthborn before zipping over the wall and high above the bailey.
Sorrow breathed a sigh of relief and wiped her eyes as the pod hovered level with the wall and Khalili dropped down from the ramp.
“Khalili,” she breathed as he strode towards her, “Etienne, tell John to kill the lizards – I’m letting all the Sin in, then I’m going to shut the gate – he has to aim for the lizards.”
Etienne nodded and shot up the gangway as it closed behind him. The pod immediately moved across the wall and began re-targeting.
Khalili, seeing Sin pour through the gates, turned to stare at Sorrow, his eyes taking in her face, roaming her body, and coming back to her eyes.
“I’m OK,” she shouted above the deafening roar of the pod and its gun, “I let them in. It was the only way.”
He nodded and surveyed the Sin as they ran to the keep and huddled against its walls. Inside, the human populace was safe, and the Sin would also be safe once the gates to the bailey were once more shut, but there were still several hundred more that needed to gain the sanctuary of the bailey first. She would not let them into the Keep, the risks were too high. But when the gates were shut they would be safe in the bailey.
Turning to look back over the gate at the lizards, Khalili sneered.
“What are they?” he growled.
“I don’t fucking know,” Sorrow said quietly, “but whatever they are, I think they have overrun the gates and the Capital. And if that is true, then we now all have a common enemy.”
Khalili nodded. “You are right,” he said. “We rescued the Sin we could, and Aha’s family, but the Capital is holding on by a thread, these things come in their thousands through the portals. Some hundreds of Earthborn have managed to flee through the gates to other worlds. Many more stay to fight, but I do not think they have much chance; and while I am happy to hear of their destruction,” he paused, “these creatures,” he pointed to the lizard people being systematically destroyed by the pod’s lasers, “I like not.”
“We can certainly agree on that,” Sorrow muttered, “at the very least.”
They stood, side by side, saying nothing more, as the pod destroyed the last of the attacking lizards and more heeded the call of their commanders, visible on the tree line in red uniforms, and retreated. As the last of the Sin stragglers made it through the gateway, Khalili and Sorrow ran down the steps and, calling for help from some passing Sin, pulled the huge, timber doors of the bailey shut and barred them.
The pod continued to sweep around the walls, securing the township from any further attacks for the rest of the night. For John and Etienne there would be no sleep, but for once they were not alone, everyone in the town, to a child, was awake.
When Sorrow walked into the castle hall, the Keep was in an uproar and would be that way until almost dawn when she finally breathed a sigh of relief that she was not going to be lynched.
Khalili, addressing the surviving Sin sheltering in the bailey, some 400 from more than 12 tribes, had a similarly hard time being heard.
But by sun-up, a truce of sorts had been established, and a plan forward had been made.
Sorrow smiled and dangled the babe on her knee, offering it a cup of goat’s milk and watching the child’s mother stare into the fireplace and weep.
“You don’t know he is dead,” she told the Earthborn woman again, sighing and rising to hand the child back to her.
“Aha would not have insisted I fly here if he thought there was any other option,” the woman sniffled, “the portals are overrun by the lizards, the Capital is doomed. He knew it, why else would he send me to this?” She motioned to Sorrow’s room, a look of disgust on her face.
Sorrow gritted her teeth.
“Te, this castle may be basic, but it is fortified, it is warm, and it is a shit-load better than sleeping in a tent in the bailey with the other Earthborn and the Sin.”
The woman sniffled and wrapped her arms around her child, holding it close.
“I did not mean to offend you,” she said sadly, “it is just that I have only ever known luxury. Palaces on earth, the Capital here on Heaven.”
As she said this, Sorrow thought sadly of the Capital. She had come to love the city when she called it home. The once orderly streets, lined by modern, white apartments now overrun and thrown into chaos if reports were true. The beautiful parks and gardens most likely destroyed.
“I know,” she sighed, “I’m sorry I snapped. I’ve got a lot on my mind – the gates are only open for a few more days. Unless Seth has figured out a way to keep the portals open – and I sincerely doubt that - the lizard invasion will stop by next week. If Aha has any plan at all, he should be trying to kill as many as he can as they come through or figuring out a way to blow the shit out of that portal and stop it for good.”
“The last thing he said to me was to have faith in you,” the woman sniffed, “he and Anhur were leading an army against the lizards. I begged him to let me stay, but he would not bend. I don’t believe he truly thinks victory is possible.”
Sorrow gritted her teeth and turned to look out the window of her room across the crowded bailey. Everywhere tents rose like little white mushrooms, the basic hide tents of the Sin, the modern nylon tents of the Earthborn who had wandered in just as the humans did, a tide of bedraggled and wounded refugees that started at first as a trickle and had now become a flood.
Aha, she had to assume it was him, had sent several more pod-loads of Earthborn and supplies over the past few days. The pods had been on auto-pilot, spilling out mostly women and children, tents, food and belongings, before returning to the Capital. John had suggested trying to board one and take control, but Sorrow had shaken her head – whoever was using them might need them to deliver more people and Earthborn. Taking them was not an option.
Scanning the grounds now, she saw Sin, humans and Earthborn all moving around, carrying sticks for firewood, buckets of water, children, food.
“I wanted this,” she murmured under her breath, “I wanted them all united, and now, look, a common enemy has done what I could not.
“It is an uneasy truce,” a deep voice said from the doorway.
Aha’s wife, Te, seeing Khalili enter, clutched her child close to her bosom and left the room in a hurry.
Sorrow sighed. The mistrust between the races would take years, decades, centuries even, to dissipate.
“Uneasy?” she smirked ruefully at Khalili, “I’d say that was the understatement of the century.”
Stalking towards her he helped himself to a plate of goat’s meat and a cup of milk. Sorrow watched him gulp from the jug, rather than pour a cup and shook her head. At least that was something she could be thankful for. The majority of the township’s goat herd was safely corralled in a valley two days walk away over the plains. Reports from the human shepherds said the lizards and the Sin had left the animals alone. Without them, she had no idea how she would feed the populace below and prevent those in the crowded bailey from killing or eating one another. Already she had needed to publicly execute a Sin for eating an Earthborn child, and a human for stabbing a sleeping Sin. The decision had not been hers. Khalili had insisted on sending a strong message, and Etienne had agreed only a harsh lesson would be learned if they were to cu
rb further bloodshed – it was one of the few arguments they had ever had, but she had eventually capitulated.
He entered the room now, along with Joella and Newto and pulled up a chair.
Sorrow nodded to them in acknowledgement as they sat. The last to arrive were Han and Jess, and Sorrow noticed Khalili’s shoulders stiffen at the sight of the girl – her stomach swollen with his grandchild.
“Ok,” she said, smiling at them. “We have to come up with a plan. I’ve got one, but I want to hear what everyone else thinks.”
Sorrow watched the heavily pregnant Jess embrace Han one last time, her tears leaving stains on his leather jerkin that would follow him into battle.
Han, his father, more than 300 fit and healthy fighting Sin, and a hundred or so humans, some fighters, some not, were leaving today for the gates.
Of Aha and the other Earthborn, nothing had been heard. Despite numerous attempts to get a message through, Sorrow could only assume the Capital had been completely overrun by the lizard aliens, and the Earthborn were either dead, captured or scattered. But despite her fears for her friend, and for many of the other Earthborn that she had known during her time in the city and their human slaves, her main concern was and had to be, the portals.
In preparation for their march her small army had collected all the weapons they had retrieved from the Capital, and any they could find from the dead lizard aliens and spent some time practising with them. The lizard lasers were similar to the small laser chainsaws the Earthborn used, except they had two settings, slice and dice or delay and blow. They could cut a person in half in the first setting and fired a small explosive in the second, which gave a one-second delay before blowing the victim into smithereens.