On

by Adam Roberts

  ‘No,’ said Oldievre, stepping away from the wall. ‘We must go now.’ He sprinted up the stairs, two at a time, and was gone.

  The sky was getting lighter all the time. It did not seem to bother the other soldiers, who still hurried up the stairs, or else came clattering down carrying bodies between them.

  ‘If we stay here,’ said Tighe, firmly. He meant, We cannot stay here, but the others understood his actions as he took Mulvaine by the arm and pulled him away, westward, hurrying down the shelf.

  They quickly caught up with a party lugging a body wrapped in a blanket and trailed them, following them into the first of the dugout doors on the shelf.

  Inside the air was smoky from the grass-torches and crammed with people. There were several people screaming, or shouting in pain, and a level of piercing hubbub. Tighe and the other kite-pilots ducked and wove their way through the mass of people and pressed themselves against the wall. Squatting down, each holding hands with each in a line against the wall, they panted, getting their breath back.

  The five kite-pilots seemed unnoticed where they were. Legs pressed against them, feet trampled over them, but nobody questioned their being there. After a while Tighe found himself becoming used to the noise and even to the buffeting from people pushing past them. He closed his eyes.

  When he opened them again he wasn’t sure if he had slept or not. The tumult in the dugout seemed a little less. Through the legs of the thronging people Tighe caught glimpses of piled bodies.

  His memory was already a jumble of strange images; the darkness, bright fire hurrying past, a crush of bodies. Was this what war was?

  Mulvaine, squatting next to him and still holding his hand, seemed asleep. Tighe poked his shoulder. ‘Mulvaine!’

  Mulvaine twitched, woke. ‘Have we reached the Door?’ he asked, blearily.

  ‘It is day, Mulvaine,’ said Tighe. ‘We go back down to the platon base ledge. Wake the others.’

  Mulvaine pulled at his hair with twin fists. ‘They will know that we ran from the fighting,’ he said, moaning. ‘They will throw us off the wall.’

  ‘Be quiet!’ snapped Tighe. He looked around him. Nobody in the dugout seemed to be paying them any attention. ‘Come, come.’

  Tighe woke up Ati, rubbing the sides of his head gently with his hands until he opened his eyes and smiled. Mulvaine woke Pelis, who immediately stood up. ‘It is quieter now,’ she said.

  Ati gave Ravielre a kick. ‘Come,’ he said, as Ravielre groaned. ‘We must rouse ourselves.’

  Tighe led the way, and the line of them wove a path through the people thronging the dugout. Tighe made sure to keep his eyes down, to avoid making eye contact with anybody. He stepped through the door of the dugout and nervously glanced up and down the ledge outside. It was a bright morning.

  ‘Tighe?’ asked Mulvaine, coming up behind him. ‘What shall we do?’

  ‘We must find Waldea,’ said Tighe.

  ‘Yes. But will he be cross?’

  ‘We must find him,’ Tighe said firmly.

  Mulvaine put his eyes down and nodded. The gesture bothered Tighe obscurely. Something difficult to define, as obscure and smoky as the light in the dugout, something had changed. Mulvaine was deferring to him. It seemed wrong, somehow. But there was a sense of some catastrophic change in the air. But he took a deep breath in and decided to ignore his uneasiness. ‘I am a Prince, after all,’ he said.

  ‘We go down to the platon base ledge,’ he told the other four. They were all looking at him seriously; Mulvaine nodded. The events of the night had taken away his arrogance; he did not look at Tighe in the same way, did not call him an ignorant barbarian.

  There were half a dozen riflemen lined along the ledge eastwards, but otherwise the ledge was largely deserted. Tighe approached the nearest of the riflemen. ‘Hello, in the name of the Popes!’ he said, following the polite form of address he had heard others using. The rifleman looked round with bleary eyes.

  ‘Scrap?’ he said. Tighe wasn’t sure if he heard this correctly; it seemed to be the food word. ‘What you want?’ The speaker was clearly not a native of the Empire; his accent was thick, difficult to place. His pale skin was mottled all over with red threads.

  ‘We wondering, sir,’ said Tighe, ducking his head politely, ‘how the war went last night?’

  ‘Hard fighting,’ said the rifleman, turning his attention eastward again. ‘Hard fighting.’

  ‘What you want?’ hissed another of the riflemen, with the same accent.

  ‘Nothing, sirs,’ said Tighe, backing away a little. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Platon?’ demanded the first rifleman, hoisting his rifle about to point it at Tighe.

  ‘We are kite-pilots, honoured sir. Hello, in the name of the Popes!’

  ‘Kite-pilots,’ grunted the rifleman, swinging his rifle back around again. ‘Useless. Scraps.’

  Tighe hurried back to where the others were standing. ‘He said it was hard fighting last night. We go down to the platon base ledge.’ He took Ati by the wrist and pulled him urgently.

  In a line they filed rapidly along and down the stairwell, arriving back on the base ledge in a matter of minutes. The ledge was deserted. It took only a moment to check the platon dugout, but it was empty except for the dismantled spars and bundles of the platon’s kites. No other pilots; no Waldea. ‘Where is Waldea?’ Ravielre asked, several times, tears tinting his voice. ‘Where is Waldea?’

  ‘Waldea would tell us what to do,’ observed Pelis coolly. ‘What shall we do, Tighe?’

  ‘What shall we do?’ echoed Mulvaine.

  Tighe scratched feverishly at the back of his head; his scars were itching again. ‘We must find him.’

  ‘He is dead,’ said Ati in a sepulchral voice. Ravielre started whimpering; his eyes were moist.

  ‘Come!’ barked Tighe, trying to remember Waldea’s intonation, the manner he had used. ‘No crying! We are warriors now – we have fought for many days. Remember!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ati, hurrying over to stand beside him. ‘Warriors!’

  ‘If Waldea is dead, we shall report to the Cardinelle and he will tell us what to do. I met the Cardinelle one time and he knows me I am sure. I will speak to him.’

  ‘I spoke to the Pope himself,’ Ati reminded them all. He seemed agitated, hopping from foot to foot. Tighe recognised the anxiety in him.

  The sound of an enormous explosion bounced through the air and all five of them looked east. A plume of grey was spreading into the air from beyond the spar, sagging and drooping; an enormous cloud of dust. Distantly, muffled by the cloud, the sounds of people crying, yelling, shouting, could be picked out.

  ‘What is that?’ asked Ravielre.

  ‘Perhaps we have broken through,’ suggested Pelis.

  ‘Perhaps we have broken through,’ echoed Mulvaine, his face wide with excitement. ‘Perhaps we have done that!’

  ‘We have broken through!’ shouted Ati, bouncing into the air.

  ‘We should make up our kites and fly to see what is happening,’ suggested Mulvaine. ‘Let us fly round and see what is happening.’

  ‘No,’ said Tighe.

  Everybody stopped and looked at him.

  ‘No,’ he repeated. ‘That is not the best. We must go back up to the main shelf here and find Waldea.’

  Mulvaine looked at Ati and for a moment Tighe was aware that matters were on a hinge. But Ati was nodding and Mulvaine started nodding along with him. ‘Very well,’ he said.

  ‘Come,’ said Tighe, not wanting to lose momentum. He had a bad intimation about the explosion to the east. As he put his left foot on the lowest step of the stair that led up to the main shelf there was another enormous cracking sound, and then another. It sounded like rifle fire, only much louder. All five kite-pilots turned, their jaws dropping. There was a high-pitched whine, like a clockwork motor whirring but on the same enormous scale as the cracking noises, and suddenly the bone-jarring cracking noises multiplied: there were dozens of them
all following hard upon one another, like a drumroll.

  Then there was silence.

  ‘What is that?’ asked Pelis, in hushed tones.

  ‘Come,’ said Tighe, tugging at Mulvaine’s shirt and grabbing Ati’s hand, eager to get them up the stairway. ‘Come!’

  He hurried up and they followed. His bad foot ached with every step.

  At the top of the stairs the shelf was in chaos, people running in both directions. Tighe paused a few steps below the top so that his head was at ledge-level. The other four gathered behind and beneath him. He looked up at the scene from his lowered perspective. A dancing flurry of hurrying legs, rifles trailed unceremoniously along the floor; bawling and shouting too loud to be distinct except for the swear words. One man – tripped or pushed – sprawling in the dust of the shelf, his face sliding up close to where Tighe was watching. But his eyes were unfocused with the pain of the fall and he was picking himself up and hurrying on before he noticed Tighe.

  ‘What does it look like?’ Mulvaine called from the end of the line, several steps below.

  ‘Ants,’ said Tighe, more to himself than the others. ‘Ants.’

  To his right he heard the sound of rifle fire; not so monstrously loud as the sounds they had just heard, but much closer. The crowd of dancing legs twitched to a faster rhythm.

  18

  In an instant the scene on the shelf transformed from one of frantic passage back and forward to one of battle. Tighe pressed himself close against the stairway, only his face poking above the level of the floor. The soldiers directly in front of him were yelling, screaming, pressing themselves tightly against the wall at the back of the shelf. A dozen or so had gone charging forwards, their rifles lowered ready to fire, and Tighe watched their progress; and saw, at the far end of the shelf, what they were charging towards. A file of grey-suited Otre soldiers was kneeling at the foot of the defilade, aiming their own weapons: an almost-simultaneous blasting sound of the weapons being fired, a steamy blurring of the rifle ends, and several of the charging Imperial troops stumbled and fell.

  What happened next wasn’t clear to Tighe because his eyesight was poor and because trails and puffs of smoke wove in front of the grey soldiers; but it seemed to him that the kneeling soldiers dropped their rifles and drew out knives from their belts. Except that they were not knives because the Otre riflemen levelled them at the approaching charge as if they were aiming miniature rifles and the air was stunned again with the sound of bullets being discharged.

  Several charging blue-coats sprawled in the dust of the shelf; one threw up both his arms and staggered backwards, his foot missing the edge of the world and his body toppling lurchingly away. The remnant of the charge stopped, turned, and began running back.

  Tighe could see now that Otre soldiers occupied the stairs at the eastern reach of the shelf, all the way (it seemed) up. Rifles were being reloaded and volleys rattled out. The Imperial troops, pressing themselves as close as they could against the wall for cover, returned the fire.

  Mulvaine was pushing into the small of Tighe’s back. ‘I want to see!’ he called. ‘I want to see – they are fighting.’ His head appeared beside Tighe’s and his mouth went circular.

  ‘Keep down,’ called Tighe, having to shout over the roar of the almost continuous gunfire. The smell of spent mushroom powder, a burnt and charcoal-dense odour, was reaching his nose. He sneezed.

  ‘The Otre!’ gasped Mulvaine. He started up, so that his head and shoulders poked fully up from the stair, but Tighe caught hold of his shirt and tried to haul him back down again.

  ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘Stay!’

  Mulvaine seemed hypnotised by the rattle of gunfire. An Imperial soldier, not far from the stair, was crouched over his rifle, aiming it carefully. He stood up abruptly, dropping his weapon and reaching with both hands for his throat. Then he toppled backwards.

  ‘Look at that!’ called Mulvaine. He sounded thrilled in a deep way.

  A bullet cracked into the shelf floor half an arm’s length from where Tighe and Mulvaine were, spitting up dust and lumps of dirt. Tighe gave a harder pull and dragged Mulvaine down by main force.

  ‘Idiot!’ he called.

  As if snapped awake, Mulvaine was suddenly terrified. ‘We cannot stay here! We must go back down to the base ledge below.’

  Tighe hazarded another look over the top of the stairway. His mind was running, sprinting. If they went down to the base ledge they would be in a dead end; they would be captured by the Otre for sure. Unless they could use their kites to fly away – but it was already fifty and the winds were dying. The best way was along the shelf, west, to run back to the Meshwood and safety there. That was the best thing. But it was dangerous, obviously it was dangerous. The gunfire was severe.

  Another bullet gouged into the shelf near Tighe’s face, making an odd popping noise and blowing out a hand-sized pit of dust.

  ‘We must go down!’ insisted Mulvaine, from below. ‘We must!’

  But, Tighe noticed, they did not go down. They were waiting for him to tell them it was the right thing to do. They were waiting for his instruction.

  ‘We will be captured by the Otre if we go down there. Down there is no other way out.’

  Ati was cowering, trying to press himself into the earth of the stairwell. ‘We will die here!’ he warbled.

  ‘We need to run back along the shelf. Run to the Meshwood.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ said Mulvaine, slapping his own head with the flats of his hands. ‘No, it is dangerous.’

  There was a yell of several voices from above and Tighe looked up. Imperial troops were charging eastward again: eight or nine blue-coats lumbering up the shelf with their rifles lowered. They were only a little way past Tighe’s vantage point when the first Otre bullets hit them. Tighe heard the dull slapping noise, like the wet, clicking noise that is made by bouncing the tongue against the roof of the mouth. Two men stumbled, one turning right around to face the other way as he came down on hands and knees. His eyes were all white; Tighe could see no pupils and blood was blurting from his mouth. Then the man fell forward, as if kissing the ground with his open lips. The charge faltered and the remaining soldiers turned to run back along the shelf, away from the Otre. Immediately one of them was struck in the head by a bullet: there was a scattering of droplets of blood that drummed down upon the dirt in front of Tighe’s face and upon Tighe’s face itself.

  The blood felt warm, a sprinkling of warm points on his cheeks, his forehead.

  Tighe was frozen by the ugliness of the sensation. He couldn’t even cry out. The shot man stumbled forward and then stopped. He was still standing. Tighe looked up and saw that his head had been cracked open like a clay jar; there was a chin, a mouth, two wide eyes and a sharp-edged nose that ran all the way up to its bridge, but there was nothing more above that. The head simply stopped in a ragged line. But the soldier did not fall. He stood, swaying a little, his eyes unblinking staring directly west. A bullet hurtled so close to his arm as to rip the cloth of his blue tunic. He simply stood there.

  Run, thought Tighe, trying to force the words out of his mouth. Run. ‘Run! Run!’

  But the man simply stood, swaying a little bit. Tighe reached up to touch his own face and the stickiness made his stomach lurch, clench. He was trembling. ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘No!’

  ‘Tighe,’ called Mulvaine from below. ‘Come on!’

  But Tighe’s mind was in some form of spasm. It occurred to him that he might be dooming his companions to death, but he could not move his muscles. The horror of what had happened was too great. There were flashes, bright white light, gathering at the corner of his eyes. His brain was hot, sparkling. He could smell a strange smell, exotic and strange but also frightening; it overlaid the smell of blood and of burnt mushroom powder. His hand was trembling. Sunlight was swelling in the middle of his head.

  He was moving his mouth, but no words were coming out.

  Everything began to bleach white: the bl
ue uniforms of the soldiers fading, the tones of dirt colour and the pastels of the wall greying. The sounds of battle seemed to recede. He was held by the intensity of the moment.

  Flashes pulsed in his brain, whiting out everything in time with his heartbeat. And, precariously, he had a sense of tremendous insight, of powerful meaning in everything. It was a sensation he had known sometimes as a child, but here it was so powerful as almost to overwhelm him. He felt close to understanding everything; to unpicking the mystery of the worldwall itself. Its size, its scale. What would be seen through the Door.

  Somebody was slapping him on the small of his back; one of the kite-pilots from below trying to get his attention.

  Dreamlike.

  And, dreamlike, the shot soldier standing before him swayed, infinitely slowly, but managed to stay, impossibly on his feet.

  Then, with a sound that started as nothing and built rapidly to a swoosh, the spell was broken; and the sound was the rushing towards him of an Otre bullet, closer and closer until it, ploc, powered into the back of the standing man, directly between his shoulder blades. The force of the impact pushed the soldier forward as if he had been a man of clay and he clattered in the dust.

  But the sound, the impact, shook Tighe free of the spell. He twitched, looked round. Below him the faces of the other kite-pilots were looking up at him, terrified. Ati was slapping him on the back, trying to attract his attention.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Ati was calling to him. Bullets keened and shushed through the air. The cries of soldiers and screams of pain were again loud in Tighe’s ears. He heard and comprehended Ati’s question, and it was in his mind to answer it, if he had the words in Imperial language; to say that he had been frozen, half drawn out of the reality of the battle, taken away. That he had been on the verge of being able to understand the worldwall itself, its scale, its mystery. Why God had built it and – no, that was not it; to understand who God was, and what it would mean to meet Him. On the edge of a revelation, like standing on the edge of the world ready to jump.