by Неизвестный
“Good lads.” He presses his cheek to the rifle stock, sighting down the long barrel towards the enemy that is still too far away to shoot, and lowers the hammer back down. “Let them hear that you’re not afraid.”
Then he joins in.
*
Last Night
“It’s just a machine. Nothing more.” Sigmund was a thin youth, too young and skinny to be a knight. His father had sent him to become a priest, but he’d become an artificer of the Church instead, one of the talented chosen to make and bless and modify the weapons and armour of the regiments.
Then the war had broken out. He’d followed his brother in the Praetorian Guard to war in excitement, and now he would never grow old enough to be the hero he always wanted to be.
He’d actually been there, on horseback right in the thick of the fighting, when the Turians had brought the dragon out from cover and ripped the Guard to shreds.
He’d swept the colours of the Guard out from right under the noses of the Turians, rescued the sacred sable cloth with the design of the golden gauntlet against the scarlet sunburst, and he’d spurred his horse and run for home.
He’d almost made it, but then he’d fled into the wrong canyon when he’d run into a phalanx. And he would have died, except that the scouts of the First had seen the black flag raised in defiance and Corso had led the unit in a forced march over half a mile of broken ground to fall upon the enemy.
A perfect flanking manoeuvre, except that by the time the First had rescued the flag and the terrified boy carrying it, the Turian legion to which the phalanx belonged had blocked the canyon mouth.
With his force shrunk down to the size it was, Corso could hold the canyon, but he could not break out. Stalemate, until now.
“It’s a machine that’s broken an entire division, boy.” Corso closed his eyes. “And it’s coming here
tomorrow.”
“So this is it.”
“This is it, boy. Tomorrow I want you to stay behind. Raise the colours before we go for the lads to see, but once we’re out of sight, I want you to burn them.”
“No. You can’t.”
“You want Turok to take the flag?”
“No.” Sigmund cradled the flag to him. “‘Where fly the colours, there stands the Guard.’” An incantation every boy knew from childhood. “While the Guard stands, Ferra lives.”
“And the gods will not let Ferra fall?” Corso spat into the fire. “You think the gods will provide a miracle for us, boy? Miracles belong to the noble and the powerful and the priests and, so, yes, they belong to people like you.”
“You’re protecting the flag. You’re the Guard. There has to be a miracle.”
“You think we’re worthy to be the Guard? More than half the lads are here because the hanging judge gave them the choice of steel or hemp” – soldiering or hanging – “and they decided that hemp was worse because with steel you at least get to die slow.” Corso began to laugh. “We’re walking dead men, Sigmund. We’re steeped in sin and bathed in blood, and there is nothing any god will ever see in us that they’ll want to save.”
“But you still came to save the flag.” A subtle shaft, enough to give Corso pause, slipped in with the deftness of a boy who’s been through the seminary.
“That has to be worth something to them.”
“That was duty. And keeping the flag out of the hands of the enemy? That, too, is duty.” Corso leaned forward.
“If you won’t do it, I’ll find someone who will.”
“I’ll do it. Nobody else will do it right.” Sigmund pulled the flag close, lips moving in silent prayer.
*
Now
The dragon’s front is armoured. As Corso watches, its head unfolds, drawing heavy smoke up from the furnace and blowing it across the battlefield, tumbling across the broken furrows like ground frost.
A tremor starts from deep within his body, dread and awe flowing through him as the fog begins to thicken and cloud the battlefield until there is nothing to be seen but white, everywhere. He catches a whiff of the sickly sweet stench, so reminiscent of the priest’s censer, and suddenly everything becomes magnified – the reek of human waste in an encampment that has been there for two days, the tingle of saltpetre on his tongue from the cartridge. The sudden silence as the song trails to a halt, as the men begin to feel the fear – the true fear that broke the will of the soldiers who died at Comolo.
And he knows that making the line is a hollow gesture. But sometimes a gesture, like a prayer, is all you have left.
“Present!” His voice cracks out, and the first row moves by instinct, each soldier bringing the rifle up and to his shoulder, turning a quarter-step away, the muzzles pointing forward into the blinding smoke. The ratcheting click of a hundred swan-necks coming into position is loud in the sudden silence.
He knows what will come next; every man in the line has heard the rumours. But it is still a shock. The smoke lights up an infernal red.
A wave of fire surges out over the battlefield, the heat washing across skin with nerves tightened as far as they will go, a transcendent blast of pain so intense that you expect your skin to blister and blacken under the onslaught and are surprised when it does not.
Corso fights the urge to flinch, and finally the flame recedes. And then he hears it: hoofbeats.
“Steady, lads! On my mark––”
And then all the demons of hell burst out from the smoke.
Last Night
“I can tell you how the dragon engine works.” Sigmund had finished praying. “I can tell you, and it’s something the Church has been using for decades.”
“You’ve seen inside it?”
“I’ve seen the body of the beast. It’s all I need.”
Sigmund took a deep breath. “And I can tell you what it’s doing to us.”
The smoke, he explained, was the same kind of incense used by the Church for Service. It raised the heartbeat and amplified every sense and let you see things invisible to the mortal eye. At Service, it brought people into contact with the gods.
(“Really?”
“Haven’t you felt it?”
“Never go to church.”
“That’s what they teach.”)
The engine contained pipes – special organ pipes, such as you saw in the grandest churches, that played notes not meant for human ears. There are notes so low that you feel them from deep inside your chest, resonating about your heart and through your bones, and you begin to feel uneasy. A good preacher can direct it and lead you into the presence of your gods, to sense the weight of their awful love and majesty on your unworthy soul.
But the dragon engine brought fear instead.
“Because it gives you a foretaste of hell and the demons within, and then it primes you to see what Turok wants you to see.” Sigmund drew a deep breath. “And then––” He broke off as a figure climbed up the slope to them.
“Sergeant major, sir.” Brera was one of the scouts.
“We think there’s a way out of the canyon. We thought it was blocked by a rock fall but it opens up again about half a mile in.”
“For all of us?” Sigmund was on his feet in a moment, looking towards Corso with a gleam of triumph.
“No, sir.” Brera touched his forelock. “You need a good horse, but if the old maps are correct, it’ll take you over the ridge by morning.” And into the valley that opened up to a straight run back to the border fortress of Altius.
But the First of Foot was exactly that, and all their horses had been left with the logistic train that had no doubt been long overrun. Which meant that only Sigmund was going to be able to make it out.
Corso felt his lips twist into a bitter smile. “It seems, my lord, that the gods have reserved their miracle for you.”
*
Now
The demons, Sigmund explained last night, only appear as demons because you expect to see them as such. But they are men. Men on the largest horses the Turians can
field, both decked in lacquered armour that makes them look like nothing of this world, and driven into a killing frenzy by alcohol and the herbs that make them immune to fear.
But knowing that in your head is not the same as believing it in your heart, Corso realizes as the howling horde charges them with crimson steel drawn, blood streaming from the jagged edges of the weapons designed to inflict the hundred and eight punishments meted out to sinners in purgatory before they are allowed to truly die.
“Wait for my mark.” But fear has robbed Corso of his sergeant’s voice, the one jokingly and blasphemously referred to as the Word of the Gods, and in any case it is too late as the first ragged shots ring out.
No. It is too soon and the demons are too far away.
The plan had been simple: Wait for them to come too close to miss and then fire a concentrated volley into the horses of the first wave. Let the falling horses act as an obstacle, see that the demons can be hurt and killed, and then the second line can fire. And once you begin to fire, once you begin to fight and slaughter the enemy, the fear goes, swept away by the unholy joy of killing for king and gods and country.
But without a concentrated volley delivering a solid wave of bullets nothing happens and the line begins to back away. Corso pulls the trigger, feels the Fantomas kick and buck in his hand, sees the lead demon jerk as the spinning Minie ball skids off the armour of the horse he rides.
There is nothing left for it but to draw his heavy sabre and charge.
He takes two steps before realizing that he is alone, that the rest of the line has broken and run. Thoughts come clearly when there is nothing left to do but wait for the end. Can’t say as I blame the lads. At least they’d stood, for a little while. Better than the real Praetorian Guard. Better than the entire Ferran Expeditionary.
The first weapon slashes down at him; his sabre moves automatically to block it, but the shock of impact drives him to his knees. A second weapon hits him in the shoulder, slamming him to the dirt.
So this is it.
A jarring crash to his right, and a demon hits the ground next to him, a Ferran lance through his throat.
What?
He rolls over onto his back and sees the sable flag, sees the gauntleted fist thrown in defiance against the pellucid sky.
No. No, you didn’t.
But he had.
Sigmund’s horse was light cavalry; he’d been able to loop around from the outside of the box canyon and hit the engine’s attendants from the side while the smoke screened him. And he was carrying the colours.
But surprise only works for so long, and even as Corso rises to his feet, two riders catch up and cut Sigmund out of his saddle. Sigmund staggers to his feet, blood pouring from his face, into his eyes, blinding him.
“Lad!” Corso catches him as he starts to fall again.
“I’m here. I’m here.”
The Turians surround the two of them, weapons shimmering with the wetness of blood, the gleam of madness lending them the aspect of the demons they pretend to be. Corso is dimly surprised that they let him reach Sigmund’s side. But perhaps they know it doesn’t matter; perhaps they prefer to drink in his despair as they watch him try to comfort the boy who is beyond comfort, and then they will close in at the end.
“There will be a miracle.” Sigmund’s voice is soft as he wipes blood from his eyes. “There must be. The gods have to be watching.”
Corso grunts in response.
The smoke from the engine is beginning to clear. He can see the First, too far away to reach. Not that it would make a difference even if it were close. He can see the blood raining from a second wound on Sigmund’s thigh, spouting and pulsing in a scarlet fountain of arterial life, and Corso knows the boy will be dead soon.
“You can tell them I’m looking forward to it.”
Sigmund closes his eyes, tears seeping from under his eyelids – a boy who followed his dreams to war, only to find that there is no honour and no glory, only death and more death. Finally he opens them again.
“So that’s the way it is.” He pushes himself away from Corso, raising the standard overhead with a trembling hand.
“Here fly the colours!” His voice rings out across the hush of the battlefield, in defiance of the mortal cold that must be seeping into him. “And here stands the Guard!”
Then his knees buckle and he falls.
The world slows as the flag slips from the dying boy’s fingers. Corso’s own lunge is too slow to reach it in time and so the colours of the Praetorian Guard, the pride of Ferra, fall to the blood-soaked mud in ignominy.
And when it touches the ground, a miracle happens.
*
Afterwards
The soldiers of the shrunken battalion that enters the gates of Altius are a sorry lot: half starved and further worn down by days of forced marches, with tattered uniforms and broken boots. They carry a litter with them, the body of a boy too young to see battle, the flag of the Praetorian Guard hangs limply over his head. But they carry themselves with pride – the pride of those who have seen their duty through to the bitter end.
The dragon engine is gone, they tell the camp commander, destroyed in the canyon. And even if there are more, the truth is out now: the dragon engine is a machine, the demons it spews forth are mere men, and machines and men can be destroyed by men and machines, and so there is nothing to fear.
They lay the body of the youth out on the altar of the chapel, to the horror of the priests who hurry out with hasty genuflections, fleeing the sanctum defiled by death and the unclean who deal in it. One tries to deny them, telling them that the altar is not for soldiers, that it is fit only for the cleansed and saints, but the sergeant meets his gaze with eyes that have looked into the Pit and the Fire and tells him “That’s why he’s here,” in tones that brook no argument, and the priest’s resistance crumbles.
And soon the chapel is empty, except for the body and the man standing vigil.
Corso sits down by the altar. “So here we are, boy.”
Soon someone will find out the truth, that Sigmund was of the Church, and the priests will come back to shrive his body and prepare it for burial. And they will eject Corso as being a man unfit for the presence of such a sacred duty as death. But all that is in the future. For now, he sits with the body in the silence of the chapel. “You were right after all.”
The First had charged when the flag had fallen, the fear and terror in their bowels transformed in an instant into white-hot passion as the roiled emotions created by the engine had focused onto a single point:
Save the colours.
Because the colours are the pride of an army, and without pride a man is no soldier, merely a scrap of poorest humanity awaiting death. Because what drives a man into the maelstrom of death and violence, over and over, is nothing more than pride, and what keeps him there is nothing more than love for his fellow soldier who fights for the same.
“And maybe every time the Guard and Ferra were saved has been the same. And maybe in one generation of tales you will become the knight you always wanted to be, in two the rest of us will be officers and gentlemen, and in ten nobody will remember us except as yet another child’s fairy tale. But you have what you wanted, boy.”
Corso gets to his feet, a tired old man who has finally seen the last battle he ever wants to see.
“Ferra is safe. You have your miracle.”
Yuen Xiang Hao is a schoolteacher who believes that people are better than they think and a certain amount of self-deception is essential to sanity.
How the Morning Glory Grows
by Mint Kang
Just before dawn, a report about a hacker incident came in from Three Dragons Street. It wasn’t flagged an emergency or even particularly urgent, and no one would have been very bothered about it except that the superintendent picked the message up himself. When he saw the magic word “hacker” he woke the entire day shift up to deal with it. Then he ordered a two-mecha squad out to investigate.
Two mechas was overkill for a non-urgent report, Iron Inch Kum thought grumpily as she stalked down the street in the creaking, clicking encasement of her mecha suit, her partner Shu on her right and two regular constables trailing behind them. But the new superintendent was an enthusiast. In the three months since his posting to Tsing Mui Shan Station, he had driven the engineers and mecha officers nearly to distraction by ordering mecha dispatches at every hint of hacker activity. The last time, he had sent a four-mecha squad after what turned out to be a dog that had fallen into a bucket of dye.
“Bet you a copper tael it’s just some neighbourhood boy’s practical joke,” Shu murmured.
“Not taking that bet,” Iron Inch muttered back. There weren’t any real hackers in this part of the city – they congregated around the commercial and administrative centres, where they could wreak the most havoc. Just a week ago someone had released a swarm of paper-eating beetles into the downtown offices of a large shipping company, destroying all the records and costing the company thousands. But there was no such excitement to be found in a residential area like Tsing Mui Shan.
By the time they arrived at Three Dragons Street half the neighbourhood was clustered outside a public teahouse, staring at the life-sized wooden statue beside its door. The statue was a door god, the sort put up by people who wanted to show off their patriotism, depicting an officer of the Imperial Army grasping a spear in one hand and glaring fiercely ahead.
This door god did not seem well cared for, though. Morning glory vines had grown thickly around it, obscuring the carved face and wreathing the spear until it looked more like a New-year decoration than a weapon.
“Police! Stand aside!” the regulars barked, shoving through the crowd. “We have a report of a hacker attack!”
Immediately a babble of voices went up and all the hands in the crowd pointed at the vine- and flower- encased statue.
Iron Inch exchanged a shrug with Shu and both of them moved forward, the spring-loaded stilt legs of their exoskeletons clicking dully on the cobblestones. The people in the crowd looked up at the two mecha-suited officers, towering half again as high as a man, and quickly drew back.