by Patty Jansen
Sady’s balloon was one of the last to come down, and by that time, the soldiers had secured that area, holding back a crowd of refugees.
General Finnisius yelled, “Hold your fire for the proctor of Chevakia, by whose grace you are in this country and whose food you’re eating.”
Sady clambered out of the basket, accepting a hand from one of the men and then helped out Loriane, into the circle of Chevakian troops.
The people behind the troops were all southern refugees by the look of their clothing, and more of them crammed from behind. Loriane studied their faces.
“Do know anyone?” Sady asked.
She shook her head.
Jammed in between a wall of soldiers, Sady couldn’t see anything. Fights raged on the other side of the closest tents. He couldn’t see who was fighting. He couldn’t see General Finnisius. Eagles flew over. Shots rang out. Smoke billowed, reducing visibility to a few paces. How had he ever thought of finding something of use here?
He would have been better off hiding in the shelters.
Chapter 31
* * *
AFTER THE KNIGHTS had gone with both the youngsters, first Jevaithi and then Isandor, Milleus slumped against the side of the truck. He felt sore and tired, and incredibly old.
The refugees stood huddled around the truck. A man leaned on another’s shoulders. A woman cried. What were the Knights going to do with the youngsters?
He could sit down and cry himself. He might have been half-decent at running a wartime army, but ever since, he had failed everyone he cared about. Suri, Kalius and Andrean, Sady and now the youngsters.
He stuck his hand through the bars of the trailer and scratched a hairy flank. His goats were the only thing he had left.
The Knights had retreated to a position from where they could watch the truck. He could see six of them, watching like silent statues, silhouetted against the threatening sky. The southern horizon was a broiling mass of black clouds. If he had been at home he would have said there was a snow storm coming.
But first things first. The goats needed milking or they would dry up or their udders would become infected. He had run out of hay and he would have to set up the pen so that they could graze whatever grass had not yet been trampled into the mud. But it would have to wait until the situation calmed a bit. Milking couldn’t wait.
So he climbed in the trailer. The animals bumped and jolted him. There was barely enough room for him to sit. The goats pushed him. They nibbled his clothes. The bucket fell over twice. A couple of animals dunked their heads in the bucket and drank their own milk.
When he finished, he had only half a bucket left. He poured some in a container for himself, and was just distributing the rest to the refugees the ground shook with a roar. Several of the refugees ran for the cover of the truck. A young girl squealed.
But Milleus would recognise that sound in his sleep: the sound of a burner. And indeed, there were the dark shapes of balloons in the northern sky. The Chevakian army had turned up. There was hope yet. Destran wasn’t half-stupid after all.
Milleus put away the bucket and climbed over the trailer railing. The goats bleated and pushed him.
“I’m sorry, ladies, but l don’t have anything for you.” He would have to do something soon because the poor things were going crazy.
The Knights had gathered in a group, and looked uncertain as to what to do.
Milleus wanted to be ready to move, as soon as he had the opportunity. Join the Chevakian troops, tell them what was going on here. Get them to free the youngsters.
He checked the furnace and threw in a couple of logs. The boiler was still full of steaming water.
The first of the balloons had come down on the downhill side of the camp, to sounds of shouting. Groups of Knights were running down the hill. The refugees around him were getting restless. Milleus closed the escape valves, allowing steam to build up in the boiler.
A Knight came up to him and said something.
“You can say whatever you want, but I’m going to join my countrymen.”
The Knight didn’t move. He flapped his hands and gestured. Milleus had no idea what he meant.
“Look, I am Chevakian, and it is my right—”
The man gestured again, more angrily now.
One of the goats in the trailer behind Milleus stuck its nose between the bars of the railing and managed to get hold of his shirt. It pulled, hard. “I need grass for the goats. They’re hungry.”
He was sore, tired and hungry, too. And angry.
The man yelled. A couple of refugees argued back. Over their heads, Milleus could see smoke rise into the air. A number of Knights came running back up the hill, took positions behind tents and aimed crossbows.
“Come on, Mister. I’m Chevakian. I don’t understand. I don’t want to get out.” He pointed uphill.
The Knight repeated the same command and pointed to his right, where there was a dark and empty field. Go there? No, not likely.
Burners roared. Gunshots rang out. Tents went up in flames.
The goats were jumping and pushing in the trailer.
The Knight raised his crossbow . . .
And Milleus pulled the pin out of the trailer’s tailgate. It fell down with a clang and an avalanche of goats burst out. The Knight was caught in the middle of the stream of hairy bodies, waving his arms to stay on his feet. They jumped against him, pulled his clothes. He screamed, pushing the animals away.
The refugees cheered.
At the same time, a number of Chevakian soldiers surged onto the hillside and took possession of the terrain like a well-oiled machine. Most of them were wearing sonorics suits. There were a few warning shots, but they outnumbered the Knights on the side of the camp by at least ten to one, and guns were more effective than crossbows. Some Knights whistled—presumably for birds—but none came and the Chevakians rounded them up.
Strangely, the goats had settled to graze peacefully amongst all these goings-on. Well, at least someone was going to get a good meal today.
A group of five suited people came up the hill towards Milleus, four khaki-suited men surrounding one man in a civilian suit. Their khaki suits sported the insignia of the proctorial guard. The man in the middle was too short to be Destran . . . Besides, he couldn’t imagine Destran coming into battle.
“Milleus!” The voice sounded muffled inside the suit, but it sounded like . . .
“Sady?” What in mercy’s name was he doing here, with the proctorial guard no less?
“Milleus, you’re safe!” Sady ran, and took Milleus into a hug.
Milleus hugged him back. “Mercy, Sady. I am glad to see you.” And he was.
“I was so scared for you. I should never have left without you.”
“And I should have come with you.”
“I should have realised that you were one of the people trapped in the camp when we didn’t find you with the Ensar road refugees.”
“Don’t blame yourself. I’m here now, ready for whatever you want me to do. You know I still have that damn letter. We’ll show Destran, huh?”
Sady didn’t respond to that and an uneasy silence followed.
The four guards had positioned themselves in a rectangle around them. There was something eerily familiar about the way they watched Sady.
“Sady, what is going on?”
“Well . . .” Unease crept into Sady’s voice. “I wanted you to challenge, but you weren’t there and . . .”
All of a sudden, it became plainly obvious. Sady, his little brother, was doing the job he had asked Milleus to do. The job Milleus had come back to do.
Then the second shock. Sady had allowed the traffic to build u
p on the Ensar road? Sady had under-staffed the camp? Sady had made this mess?
“Milleus?”
“I’m . . . happy for you.” He couldn’t possibly challenge his brother.
He would never have expected Sady to consider himself for the job. His brother always had his nose in maps. Sady, run the country?
“It has nothing to do with happy, Milleus. We’re in a major crisis. I need your help. I need the help from every person I can still trust. Are you with me?”
“Yes, certainly.”
“Well then, listen. The only reason I am here is because there is a huge front of sonorics coming this way, none of us can do anything about it, we don’t have enough shelters, Alius was supposed to have given us a medicine against sonorics, but it never worked, and Alius had killed himself, and all there is left for us to do is hide and hope we survive. We have until midday, and I’m not going to spend that time doing nothing. You’ve lived with the southern people. If there is anything or anyone who can make a difference to our survival, no matter how small—”
“Did you know I was here?”
“No.”
“Surely you haven’t come here just because of some vague hunch. I know you better than that, Sady.”
“Well—uhm—no.” Sady hesitated. “This is going to sound like I’ve gone crazy, but, it’s like this: I’m trying to find a giant winged creature called a dacon.”
Milleus’ first thought was that his brother had gone crazy. Then he remembered the book Isandor had shown him, and he remembered the screech in the night, and the warm air.
He said, “Larger than a southern eagle?”
“Yes.” Sady’s gaze was intense. “Please, can we leave the mockery until this is over?”
“I’m not mocking you. I’ve seen that thing. When it flies over, the air that follows it is warm.”
“Where did you see it?”
“Exactly where I’m standing now. It came from the direction of the city and went over there, to the forest.”
Then he told Sady of Isandor’s book, and the spark on Isandor’s hand, and when he finished, Sady swore loudly.
“What?” It chilled Milleus. Sady never used such language.
But Sady turned to one of his guards. “Can you contact the prison urgently, and tell them to release the prisoner.”
The man bowed and left.
The battlefield had quietened.
By the weak dawn light, Chevakians marched Eagle Knights off to repossessed trucks, which Sady said the Knights had stolen from farms. Their birds were harder to control, because none of the Chevakians knew how to control them.
A group of soldiers approached. Their suits hid their faces, but they stopped and the first man saluted.
“Proctor, the situation is under control. We defeated the Knights, and more than half of them switched sides.”
Milleus recognised that stiff voice: General Finnisius.
Sady said, “Good. Sweep the camp and ask anyone who has ideas about our safety to come forward. Make it clear that they will be rewarded.”
Finnisius gave a small bow. “Certainly, sir.” And he was off again.
Milleus stared after his retreating back. Finnisius was a self-important, arrogant piece of work. If Sady had him acting like this, his brother must be doing something right.
Chapter 32
* * *
IN THE DARKNESS of the eternal night in the prison cell, Tandor could tell day from night by the number of meals brought by the guards. During the day, there would be three meals fairly close together, followed by a long time without any meals. Also, during the day, guards came and went, jangling keys, and taking prisoners away, to the courts or the gallows room. Every time someone left, other prisoners took bets as to whether he would be back.
But today, they’d received only two meals, and no one had come to get the prisoners. In fact, no one had come yesterday either. The other inmates went into a frenzy about this. They said the guards never skipped a meal, and sentencing went on every day, even during festivities.
With his knowledge of Ruko and the other children, Tandor feared that this was the beginning of the end. The guards didn’t come because either they were too busy trying to organise people into shelter or, and that was worse, they were all dead, and in that case, the prisoners would starve to death in this hole.
What a way to end a life that should have ended in triumph.
When a guard finally did show up, he marched past all the doors, to loud protests of the inmates.
“Bring our bread.”
“We’re hungry!”
The guard walked past all of them, while the patch of light from his lantern moved down the corridor. He set the lantern down at the door to Tandor’s cell, extracted keys and opened the door. He picked up the lantern, and set it on the bench inside. He didn’t close the door. By then, Tandor knew.
“I told that idiot of a Proctor that he’d beg for my help,” he said, and coughed. “He still wouldn’t believe me. So what’s happened now?”
“The Eagle Knights have attacked, and there is fighting in the refugee camps. A large sonorics storm approaches. Someone seems to think that you can do something about it.”
The guard knelt next to Tandor and unlocked the shackles that held his legs. “Don’t get too cocky. Also, don’t think that this means that’s you’re innocent.”
“I don’t think my innocence or guilt matters.”
The man swore under his breath. Next, he unlocked the shackles that held Tandor’s arms, then quickly backed off.
Tandor let his arms rest by his side, relishing the feeling of freedom.
“Come on then, go,” the guard said. “Before I change my mind. I don’t like this order one bit.”
“Good for you then you didn’t have to give it.” Tandor struggled to his feet. He was stiff and sore, and clumsy. In slow, shuffling steps, he walked past the guard into the corridor.
Prisoners stirred in their cells.
“Hey, they let him go.”
“What about us?”
“You can ask him,” Tandor said, jerking his head at the guard. “But I doubt he’ll be in the mood. To be honest, you’ll be safer down here.”
It cost him much effort to climb the stairs.
The courthouse corridor was deserted and lit only by a few flapping lamps along the walls.
There was a guard just inside the building’s entrance, looking bored at a temporary guard station that would normally be outside. Tandor half-expected to be challenged, but it seemed the order to release him had been genuine, and the guard only watched him.
He opened the door and walked onto the porch of the building. Cold air buffeted him in the face, and with the wind came a familiar tingle. He drank in the icefire, and searched the sky for the flying dacon. He didn’t see it.
To the south, the sky was pitch black, a dark mass of roiling clouds with the occasional flicker of lightning within. The base of the clouds glowed orange. That was the direction of the camp, where all the action was taking place. But he was too stiff and sore to get there in a hurry.
He moved in a kind of shuffling run. Through the merchant quarter past the houses of families he knew. The sky was dark and ominous punctuated with flashes of lightning.
The wind whipped around corners, sometimes warm, sometimes cold. Sheets of rain lashed his face. When his muscles cramped, he stopped and studied the sky, but never did he see a dark form fly over, not an eagle, not the dacon. Where would it have fled?
Finally, he stumbled up the steps to his house. The windows at the front were dark, at least those he could see over the wall.
The doorman stuck his head out of the ga
tehouse and called, “Halt, what are you doing here?”
“Don’t be stupid, let me into my house.”
The man came out, carrying a torch. He shone it into Tandor’s face and stared, his mouth open. “Master?”
“Open the gate, you idiot. I don’t have all night.” In fact, it was almost morning.
“Yes, yes, sure.” The man unlocked the gate and pushed one half of the solid metal gate aside.
There was light on in his mother’s back room, and he heard voices.
“But it was your guarantee that none of us would be harmed!” said a male voice.
“That depended on your work.” That was his mother. “You didn’t do the work I required.”
“No, that was not what I heard. This medicine was to protect us all from sonorics.”
“You lied to us!” Another voice.
“You are responsible for Alius’ death.”
Tandor opened the door and went in.
His mother sat at her desk, surrounded by her rich Chevakian men, the ones she had convinced to support her. Their clean and cultured faces twisted into masks of horror. Tandor could only imagine what he looked like to them, dirty, with his hair burned off, his face scarred so that he could barely close his eyes and his clothes filthy from the prison.
The rule was that when family turned up, guests left, so the men rose and left the room. One of them was the former proctor Destran.
No one said anything until the door closed.
His mother gave him a cold look.
As he took his time sitting down, he noticed that his sisters were also in the room.
Rosane wrinkled her nose at him. “You stink.”
He felt like telling her off, the arrogant cow. Always thought she was better than him, and never did any of the hard work.
But his mother glared his sister into silence. She regarded him from behind her desk, her elbows leaning on the surface and the tips of her fingers touching each other. “You took your time turning up.”