by Col Buchanan
'Very well,' Creed's tired voice had replied, his back turned to Bahn in the deep leather armchair he sat within.
Knowing he was late, Bahn had stayed only long enough in the Ministry to wash his face and hands free of grime. He had also begged for some bread and cheese from the kitchen, and eaten that on the trot as he hurried down off the hill to the nearby Quarter of Barbers, the dawn streets lively, almost festive, as was their wont in the aftermath of such an attack.
His family temple was to be found in this quarter – Bahn's side of the family, in this area where he had been born and raised. On Quince Street, the prostitutes were still out from the night before, tending to business with those soldiers still drifting out from the walls, made lustful with relief and the shedding of blood.
As Bahn passed the women, a few called out to him by name, the older ones who still remembered him as a youth. He nodded with a tight smile, kept marching. At the corner of Quince and Abbot he caught the eye of one girl in particular. His stomach clenched at the sight of her. She recognized him, too, and not from long ago but from only recently, from mere days ago, as she curved her spine to pronounce her small bosom and peered out from under her heavy lashes.
So young, Bahn thought, with something close to despair in him.
He had made a promise to himself, that first and last time, that he would not do this again. Bahn strode onwards with every intention of passing the girl by. He turned his head only to nod a greeting, but then the girl's lips parted to speak, and he saw the colour of them, the soft red blush of them, and he halted.
Close up, he could see the red soreness around her nostrils from inhaling dross, and the sunken look of the addict in her eyes. She appeared thinner since last he had encountered her.
'How are you?' Bahn asked the girl, his words sounding gentle enough, though his voice was tense from the blood pulsing through him.
'I'm well', she had replied, and her look of hunger reached out to his own, stirring deep eddies of need.
His gaze roamed over her pale shoulders, the smooth skin of her chest under her low-cut dress. For a delicate moment he thought of savouring her small breasts in his mouth.
Bahn had taken her in an alleyway behind the side-street tenements, his sense of time suddenly diminished to a series of images as fractious and disconnected as in battle; consumed in all entirety by a need to empty his frantic lust inside her, along with incipient self-loathing certain to rally in strength later on, and those sights and sounds and scents that had surrounded him all through that awful bloody night and the ones before it, and the guilt too – shame even – at his pampered role in this war, the awareness of his own self-preservation as he looked down at men, at comrades, hour after hour, dying, while he did nothing but watch.
He released it all in those precious moments of squander, and afterwards, overcome by a hollow exhaustion, he pressed into her hand his purse which contained all the money he carried on him. Bahn wanted to say something more to the girl. She offered a brief smile, knowing the rhythms of men. For a moment Bahn felt he was a boy again.
Now, as the monks continued their chanting, and with the feel of the girl's body still impressed against his own, Bahn found that he was shivering slightly, perhaps from some form of aftershock from the night before, perhaps from the events more recent than that. He trembled in the stale temple air next to his wife, his son, the other family members who had come today to watch his daughter be bestowed with her name, and thought, in something of a panic, Merciful Fool, what was I thinking?
It had occurred in broad daylight, in an area where he was still well known by the locals. Anyone might have noticed him walk away with the girl, anyone who might know Marlee too. What would he do if he had caught some disease off the girl? How would he explain that away?
I am in the grasp of a demon, Bahn thought to himself. He looked about as though he had startled himself with this thought, and saw across the way, in the dim alcove of a wall opposite, a golden statue of the Great Fool kneeling in contemplation, thin and bald and handsome, grinning at him from ear to ear.
Bahn inhaled the pungent spiciness of the atmosphere, as it took long moments for his shaking to subside. Never again, he swore to himself, and in meaning it he felt his pulse begin to lower.
It is this war, he thought. It corrupts my spirit as it corrupts all things that it touches.
As though in some tacit agreement, the guns on the Shield opened up just then in a ripple of distant concussions. A few of the children's heads turned in interest; the rest of the congregation remained unmoved. Perhaps the guns heralded another Mannian assault after the brief respite. Perhaps it was simply the resumption of an ordinary day at the Shield. Bahn did not feel inclined to concern himself with it just now. It was hardly as though he was badly needed on the walls.
Before his gathered family, three monks of the Way stood around the cut-stone edges of a sunken fire. It was only a small fire, a handful of coals with soft red underbellies, barely smoking. Upon the coals lay a pile of mymar leaves, yellow and crisping inwards from their serrated edges, their smoke tinged blue and rising to curl around the coddled form of his daughter, who was held by the monks above the same fire, as they chanted and moved their hands in a circular motion so that she was borne with it, wrapped in a bundle of linen. She does not cry, Bahn observed, and his daughter coughed a tiny-lunged cough from the smoke wafting about her, and blinked up at the oldest of the three monks – old Jerv who had been here even when Bahn was a boy – and studied the white wisps of a beard that sprouted from his chin.
His daughter had made it through her first year, and was fit and well. For Mercians this meant a time for rejoicing, the time when the child would finally be bestowed with its name. For his daughter – who, ever since learning to crawl, had tended to rush around everywhere at a fast trot – this name would be Ariale, after the legendary horse with wings on its hooves. Marlee herself had announced this was the perfect name for her, but then Marlee thought all things that were humorous in life were apt and good. For Bahn it had taken some time to come around to the idea of naming his daughter after a horse.
Ariale Calvone. It was a good name, he decided now, smiling, and with that smile he felt more himself than he had done in many days.
The assemblage of people today was mostly from Marlee's side of the family: her mother, her aunts and uncles, shopkeepers and military men in the main, some of them people whom Bahn hardly knew at all, and who he had barely met since the day he and Marlee had first been bonded. As a family they looked well in their fine-stitched clothes, each standing with the same straight-backed dignity of Marlee herself.
In comparison, his own relatives were few in numbers, and looked at odds with the others in their casual stances and their well-worn temple-best clothing. His mother was not there, no doubt already busy mending shoes and leatherwork in her small dwelling-cum-workshop on Adobe Street, not far from here in fact. Bahn had not expected her to come, nor had it been for her benefit that they had chosen his family temple of boyhood for the ceremony. Their own local temple in the north of the city had simply been fully booked long in advance.
His aunt was in attendance, though, Vicha with her wild black hair barely tamed for the occasion, and her two daughters, Alexa and Maureen, both as blond as she was dark, all of them still officially in mourning after the death of Hecelos, husband, father and master carpenter, lost at sea when his grain convoy – the one that the Al-Khos shipyards were working so hard to replace – had been sunk on its return from Zanzahar five months previously. A good man, Bahn had always thought.
Reese was there too, striking in her red-headed beauty, though her eyes were lined with darkness as though she had not been sleeping much. Los was not with her, thank Ers.
A young monk emerged from the shadows and began to shuffle around the family members with a wooden aeslo in his hand, letting it ratchet open before flicking his wrist to clap its two boards together like the jaws of a mouth, over and over again, in a rhythm tha
t was slow and brooding. His other hand bore a plain begging bowl, seeking alms in return for the service they were performing on this day. With solemn faces the congregation dutifully emptied coins into the bowl passing by.
When the monk came to Bahn, he realized he had given all his money to the street-girl, and was now without coin. He was forced to mutter an apology to the shaven-headed young man. It irked Bahn, anyway, this needless interruption to the ceremony. In his youth, they had simply allowed you to leave what you could on the way out after the service was finished. But times had changed it seemed, even here.
Marlee produced a coin from her own purse and offered it instead. Her eyes inquired if he was all right, sensing the tension in him, and he nodded, placed a palm against her back, drew her closer.
The monks bore the couple's daughter high in the air now. Their chanting was in old Khosian, sounds as smooth and fluid as water sluicing over stone. They recited her given name and prayed that she would receive the Nine Deliverances during a long and fruitful lifetime of good work. Little Ariale giggled as they lowered her again, kicking her legs within her bundling garment. The old monk Jerv smiled down at her.
In another life, Bahn might have been performing this ceremony for someone else's child. His mother had always wanted him to become a monk, being the youngest of three sons, his elder brother Teech already committed to their craft of shoe and leather mending, and the middle brother Cole enlisted young in the army against her wishes.
Bahn might have made a fine monk, too, for at heart he was a gentle man. The result of too much mothering, his father had always declared in his own, quiet way. But Bahn's love for Marlee had swayed him from that course.
In the proceeding years, his eldest brother had died of unknown causes, suddenly dropping dead as he sat eating his supper. A heart defect, the local healer had suspected. It was not long after this that his other brother Cole, Reese's husband, had deserted his family along with the cause of Bar-Khos. With two sons so quickly gone from him, his ailing father had wasted away from grief within the space of a year. Bahn's mother had struggled on alone, her simmering, unvoiced resentment towards Bahn, her only remaining son, turning in the months following into open animosity towards him. She cut him regularly with remarks aimed at provoking a sense of guilt. She compared him constantly with those sons she had already lost. It was as though she believed he was in some way responsible for his brothers' plights, and had brought down on them the injustices of Fate for his shunning of the cloth.
And now what was he? Bahn wondered. A soldier, yes, though certainly no warrior.
Only his own little family offered Bahn a sense of having achieved something right on this path he had chosen with Marlee. He worked hard at being a good husband, a good father, so it cut him even deeper than his mother's words did when he failed them.
Well, no more, he thought. I will hold this family together no matter what the cost.
*
Once the ceremony was over, and his daughter returned to them flushed with excitement, the smell of smoke still lingering in her fine hair, the family gathered in the small square outside the temple in the bright sunlight they had almost forgotten during their time inside. They would return to his aunt's house only a few streets away, where she would hold a family reception with food provided by all, in whatever meagre spread they had been able to fashion together.
Reese walked together with Bahn and his family. She fussed over Ariale and Juno, equally playful with them both. She and Marlee chatted about the ceremony, small things inconsequential, while the sound of the guns roared to the south so steady and regular that Bahn could tell it was merely the daily exchange between the opposing sides. Perhaps the Mannians had given up for the time being, Bahn thought, and truly wished for it to be so.
He and Marlee walked arm in arm while Reese carried their daughter, and their son trailed behind. Marlee looked to him, as though to say, Well then, ask her. He nodded.
'Have you heard from Nico yet?' he asked Reese, and she hefted Ariale more firmly upon her hip before she replied, 'A letter arrived last week, half drowned in the sea by the looks of it. I couldn't make out what it said but, yes, it was from Nico. I could tell that much from the terrible handwriting.'
'Good news at least,' said Marlee. 'Even if you could not read it. I'm sure he's thriving… wherever he might be.' And Marlee left her words adrift in the hope that Reese might tell them more about where her boy had gone, but she did not.
As they left the square, they saw a hedge-monk squatting on the ground with a bowl sitting before him. The man was of middle years, and he stood up as he saw the group approach, then stepped before them, offering his blessings and shaking his bowl. Save for his grubby robes, he barely even looked like a priest. A livid scar ran down his face from forehead to chin. His skull had not been shaved for days.
Another fake monk, Bahn realized. Ever since the council had decreed all begging illegal save on grounds of religion, men in desperation had donned robes and shaved their heads and pretended to be monks such as this one.
The sham of it, Bahn thought, simmering anger suddenly arising inexplicably within him.
'Blessing be upon you,' the man in the black robes declared kindly enough, a few coins clinking in his bowl.
Bahn shoved his way past him, pushing harder than he had intended. A yelp of surprise come from the fake monk's throat, as his bowl went tumbling to the ground and the coins scattered, spinning sunlight.
The family, all of them, stopped to stare at Bahn. Even his son Juno blinked up at him.
I'm sorry, Bahn thought of saying to them all. I watched our men die last night while you all slept in your beds safe and sound because of them. And then, this morning, I ploughed a young whore likely riddled with infection, driven to this condition by poverty and the warped needs of wayward husbands like myself.
But he did not, not on this day. Instead, Bahn performed the apologetic smile of the good husband, the good father, and took his son by the hand, and walked on.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Shay Madi The chief whip enjoyed his job. At least it seemed that way to Nico, as the stocky man dragged him roughly from the holding pen deep beneath the stadium floor, occasionally spitting the word 'Rshun' from his plump, stained lips as though it was the worst of curses. Twice his whip lashed out against Nico's back, though Nico barely felt it. It was merely one more pain to add to many.
'In you go,' he snarled as he shoved Nico through a rusty barred door. Nico stumbled into a narrow caged passageway which he saw led some six feet to another sliding door, now also being drawn open from the outside.
A guard stabbed at him through the bars with a pronged stave, blunt but painful, forcing Nico through it into the cage beyond.
He tripped over a prone body and sprawled to the floor, crying out as fresh agonies shot through his shattered hand.
Nico could feel pain everywhere, and he was increasingly feverish from it. His left eye had swollen shut; he couldn't even tell if the eyeball was still there. His lips were a swollen mush. Most of his front teeth were broken or missing. It hurt even to breathe.
The door clattered shut behind him and was locked by one of the guards, while the chief whip laughingly called out to the rest of the unfortunates confined in the cage.
'Make way for the mighty Rshun,' he declared. 'Perhaps, if you're kind enough to him, he will save you all.'
Nico curled into a ball and lay shivering. He could smell his own stench and, above it, that of many others. The cage was crowded with men and women waiting to die.
He felt a hand settle on his arm. He peered up from his one good eye to see a man's face looking down at him with concern.
'Here,' he said softly, as he offered a ladle of water. Nico sipped, instantly choked it back up. 'Easy,' soothed the man. Nico drank some more.
With care he tried to sit up, if only to breathe a little better. Almost instantly his ribs were suffused with white heat. Nico gasped.
The man helped him along, and a few of the others cleared a space so he might rest his back against the bars of the cage. He noticed the man's head was shaven and he wore a black robe.
'Yes, I'm a monk,' said the man, in response to Nico's surprise.
Nico merely nodded. It was the only thanks he could offer. He looked around the enclosed space, saw that everyone was now observing him. He let his gaze drop to the straw-strewn, earthen floor.
A roar rose from the arena outside, the muffled sound passing through a heavy gate at the end of another barred passageway. A woman lying on the floor moaned into the dust.
'May you be with the Dao,' said the priest to Nico, touching him lightly again on the arm. The touch was comforting, human. The monk turned away to see to the woman, and to offer her what little comfort he could.
Nico wrapped his arms about himself, moving the limbs with a delicate slowness. He forced his mind to focus on his breathing. Every time he exhaled, he thought of the agony releasing itself from his body. When he inhaled, he thought of stillness.
It seemed to work, after a while – or at least enough for him to think straight. Thoughts were good now. They could take him away from this place.
So he allowed his mind to drift. He thought of sunny Khos, the cottage, his mother. He wished he could see her now more than anything else in the world.
Time passed unawares. The bars of the cage clattered behind his head. It was the chief whip again.
'That one next,' the man decided, and pointed out the woman being comforted by the monk. 'And that one, the monk, too.'
Other guards prodded the chosen captives with their pronged staves, though keeping at a safe distance behind the bars. 'Up – up!' they shouted.
The monk helped the woman to her feet, still holding her close to him. An outer door slid open in the cage. Together, they stepped into the passageway leading to the gate.
'Stop,' said the chief whip.
The guards pressed against the barred passageway and reached inside with leather-gloved hands. They yanked away the woman's clothing until she stood there exposed to their stares. Purple bruises covered her flesh. Bite marks, too. The monk for his part, was allowed to keep his robe, so that the crowd could tell what he was.