The New Day

by Lorraine Thomson

  Despite that small mercy, it was a day Sorrel thought would never end, but as the sun set low in the sky and the shadows lengthened, the army finally withdrew to the other side of the trench, leaving those in Dinawl to lick their wounds that were deep and many.

  Those not on watch duty left their posts and went to the mass kitchen for a hard-earned meal of stew and dumplings. There was plenty of talk at the tables, but the voices were muted with exhaustion from the day that had passed and dread of what the one to follow might hold.

  Sorrel caught sight of Yolanda in deep conversation with Slade and a group of red-collared bailiffs. Yolanda would have to dig deep within herself to find the fire to rally the citizens for another day of onslaught.

  Sorrel and David had collected their food and were looking for a place to sit when Einstein hailed them. He was sitting at a table with the rest of their group. Sorrel put down her bowl, her eyes brimming at the sight of Einstein’s jutting jawline and heavy brow. As glad to see her as she was him, he stood and embraced her, hugging her long and hard. It felt like coming home.

  “I’m scared,” she whispered.

  “With good reason,” he said.

  “That’s a comfort.”

  “We will do what we can, and what will be will be.”

  She pulled back from him. “You know, Einstein, sometimes I think you talk the biggest load of nonsense.”

  “Have you only just realised?” he grinned.

  She sat down with David on one side, Einstein on the other. Brig was sitting across the table from her, his face even less joyous than usual.

  Sorrel mentally ticked off the members of the group. Kala had a bruise on her cheek and Cyrus looked as tired as she felt, but otherwise the pair seemed were sound. Lizbit stared at David even more intently than usual, hanging onto his every word, her lips moving as she repeated them to herself.

  Her father surprised her by locking gazes with her, and though he said nothing, she felt that he was present. Perhaps the intensity of war had brought him to himself. Beside Valen was Ivan. He ate steadily, not once raising his gaze from his bowl. Eli she would check on just as soon as they had eaten. That still left one short.

  “Where’s Olaf?” she asked Brig.

  Ivan’s spoon paused, though his eyes remained downcast. Sorrel immediately understood what had happened but there was no way to take back the words.

  “Dead,” Brig said. “Shot through the head.”

  “He was working the catapults,” Kala said. “He fought bravely.”

  Brig drew her a long, withering look. “Olaf started many fights but rarely stood his ground. He was a coward through and through, but in this instance he had no choice. He died scared out of his wits.”

  His words were bitter, but Kala responded with kindness. “If Olaf was so afraid, but still stood on the wall, loading and reloading, in my opinion, that makes him all the braver.” She raised her mug of water and called a toast. “To Olaf.”

  They all looked to Brig. After a moment, he nodded at Kala and raised his mug.

  “To Olaf.”

  Sorrel was surprised to find that there was genuine sorrow in her heart as she joined in the toast in honour of the sly, no-neck mutant who she’d come to accept as one of her own. She looked at David and he too had raised his mug. They’d come a long way from Amat.

  The jail was as grim as Sorrel remembered, but Eli seemed blissfully unaware of his dismal surroundings and called her name gleefully when he saw her.

  She had pictured him sleeping in a miserable cell, albeit with the door unlocked and open. Instead, the main reception area of the jailhouse had been turned into a dormitory lined with cots and beds for the children and those who had been charged with their care.

  Though the walls were stark, fires glowed in the hearths, candles flickered brightly, and going by the remains of a meal on the long table in the middle of the room, the children had been well fed.

  Their basic needs of food and shelter taken care of, it struck Sorrel that for those who had grown up in the Dregs, this may be have been the most comfort some of them had ever known.

  There were other people visiting the children, some not much older than children themselves. Siblings, she supposed.

  Sorrel picked up Eli and cuddled him, Tailwagger bouncing around her legs. She had not known the fate of the dog and, fearing the worst, had forced herself not to think about what might have become of her. To find her here with Eli was a mighty relief.

  Discovering Alice at the jailhouse, looking after the children, was something else to be thankful for.

  “I didn’t know Eli was your brother,” Alice said. “He’s a lovely boy.”

  “We were separated for a long time. I was looking for him when Martin found me.”

  “I’m sorry for everything that happened to you in Ulbroom, but I’m glad we met.” Alice looked around. “I’m staying here now, to look after the children. There are others too. Yolanda has given us our own guards. If the walls are breached, the jailhouse gates will be locked with us inside. We have our own well for water, and the cellar is stocked with food. Eli will be safe.”

  Alice smiled as brightly as she had in Ulbroom. Sorrel had thought her then a simpering fool, but now she saw the vacuous grin for what it really was: a mask to conceal her true feelings. Alice was scared.

  “We’ll do our best to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Sorrel said.

  “I know. And we will do our best here.”

  Alice’s gaze drifted for a moment. A square-faced bailiff with short blond hair had stopped in the doorway. He nodded at Alice before moving on. Sorrel smiled to herself when Alice blushed, but didn’t say anything. If there was anything to tell, let her tell it in her own time.

  Alice looked down at Tailwagger. “The children adore the dog, but it does not leave Eli’s side – it’s as if they are friends.”

  Sorrel scratched Tailwagger behind the ears, “They are.”

  “I didn’t know people and animals could be friends.”

  “Neither did I,” Sorrel said. “At least not until I met Tailwagger.”

  After playing with him for a little while, Sorrel tucked her brother up in bed and kissed him on the forehead.

  “Where’s Dada?” Eli asked.

  He means Brig.

  “He’s fine. He’s fighting to keep you safe.” Sorrel spoke truthfully, her words applying equally as well to Brig and Valen. “We all are.”

  Alice walked Sorrel to the door. “Sorrel?”

  “Yes, Alice?”

  “When this is over, will you come with me to Ulbroom and help Doctor Abigail?”

  “Alice, you’re looking after Eli – you don’t know what that means to me. When this is over, I’ll do anything I can to repay you.”

  “So, you’ll come to Ulbroom?”

  “Yes,” Sorrel said, “I will come to Ulbroom.”

  Alice’s words resonated within Sorrel as she walked back to the palace. When this is over.

  The Monitors were determined to take Dinawl, but was their will to take the city greater than the will to defend it?

  The streets were quiet. Most people slumbered, exhausted by the day’s events, resting before the onslaught of the morrow, but there was work going on still. Muted sounds flowed through the narrow lanes and back streets of Dinawl. They spoke of quiet industry and preparation, and whispered suggestions of thoughts put into action.

  Sorrel thought of Eli, tucked up in his small bed in the jailhouse, and took comfort from these sounds.

  They had suffered that day. They had been tested and would be tested again come the new day, but they had not and would not give up.

  The Monitors had met their match.

  18.

  Besieged

  Sorrel was sure of it – they could win, they could beat their mighty enemy. The Monitors were fighting for new territory, while those in Dinawl were fighting for their very lives. That had to count for something.

  Everyone in Dinawl
had to believe they could win, for the alternative was too terrible to think about. It seemed so simple: all they had to do was hold fast, fight back, and keep their collective nerve.

  She wanted to share her thoughts with the group, but there was little chat in the room. By the time she returned, most of them had already bedded down for the night. Sorrel snuggled down beside David only to be woken a few short hours later, still tired and reluctant to leave the peace of deep sleep.

  She emerged from her slumber to a gnawing sense of fear. She tried to recall her bold thoughts of the night before, but there was an empty space in the corner where Olaf had once slept and her big ideas had deserted her, leaving nothing in their place but dread in her belly about what the new day would bring. As they walked to the wall, her certainty of victory seemed fanciful and crumbled like dust in the reality of the biting-cold crack of dawn.

  Camp fires flickered in the dark mass of the enemy camp and the sun had yet to breach the horizon when messages came in from the East and West Ports – the Monitors were trying to tunnel under the walls. Sorrel’s fear grew tenfold, but Dinawl was ready for the invaders.

  Thinking they had broken into the city unseen, the intruders emerged from the tunnels, pulling themselves from their worm holes one by one. They did not realise until it was too late that the dark surrounding them was not made of shadow, but of men and women, dressed in dark bailiff cloaks.

  Dinawl’s defenders moved in quickly and silently, slitting the invaders’ throats one after the other as they emerged, until no more came. They acted swiftly and decisively, first killing then taking the weapons from their would-be attackers.

  All bar four corpses – two from each of the Ports – was stuffed back into the tunnels, and the holes behind them filled with rubble and waste.

  Sorrel and David had collected crossbows from the armoury and were on the ledge above the South Gate with Yolanda when the sound of wooden wheels trundling on the street below heralded the arrival of a handcart. It bore one of the dead tunnellers. One corpse had been kept at each of the Ports, with the other two being sent to the North and South Gates.

  “Your plan worked,” Sorrel said.

  “We’ve got Slade to thank for that,” Yolanda replied. “He understands the Monitors’ tactics.”

  The body was removed from the handcart, trussed up then winched to the ledge by Sorrel and David. Slade joined them just as they were unloading it.

  The tunneller hadn’t been a big man, no doubt chosen that way for the job, but he looked as fierce and muscular as the men Sorrel and Einstein had seen back in the woods. All of them out there were fit and hardy, well-nourished and determined.

  “How best to do this?” Sorrel asked.

  “Tie the rope around his body, under his arms,” Slade said. “Be sure and make a good knot. We don’t want him slipping through.”

  She and David secured the rope around the dead man while Slade fastened the other end to a metal loop anchored in the wall.

  “Done,” Slade said.

  “Do it,” Yolanda replied.

  They lifted the body and dropped it over the side of the wall so that it swung in front of the South Gate. The other three bodies were hung similarly over the North Gate and East and West Ports, a message to the Monitors that Dinawl was not theirs for the taking.

  The day had barely broken, and the army moved around their camp in shades of colourless drab, but as dawn’s first light caressed the corpse swinging from the South Gate, there was a change in the intensity of activity in the camp. People pointed and ran and clustered together. Their voices carried in the still of the grey morning, and though no words could be discerned, the agitated tone was clear. A few moments later, a volley of barking and howls from the dogs obliterated the human voices.

  Yolanda studied the camp through a set of Before binoculars.

  “They’ve seen their friends swing alright.”

  She passed the glasses to Slade. He studied the camp for a few moments.

  “They’re going into attack mode.”

  “Didn’t we have that yesterday?” Sorrel asked.

  “Yesterday was a warm-up,” Slade replied. “Now we’ll be tested.”

  “Make sure the resin blast is ready to go,” Yolanda told him. “Today we take the fight to them.”

  Under cover of gunfire, the invading army swarmed over the bridges, and stormed towards the city. The Dinawl archers took pot-shots at the enemy with their crossbows, ducking down each time a hail of bullets came their way.

  “Hold steady!” Yolanda shouted as the first tranche of the raider’s ladders were propped against the wall.

  “You okay?” David asked Sorrel as the two of them crouched behind the wall, shots firing over their heads.

  A bullet had screamed by Sorrel’s head, leaving her ear singing and her heart hammering.

  David touched her ear.

  She looked at the blood on his fingers then felt her ear for herself. “It’s only a nick.”

  “Sorrel! Watch out!” Einstein yelled.

  She looked up to see a man peering over the wall at her, his face twisted with hatred. Without hesitation, she whipped out an arrow and lunged at him. He yowled, and as his hands flew to protect his face, David stood up and pushed the ladder away.

  “Resin blast, now!” Slade shouted.

  It was the order they’d been waiting for. Sorrel gasped as the heavy grey sky filled with blazing balls of fire. The resin blasts flew from the catapults and exploded on impact, causing flaming chaos amid the invaders outside the city walls.

  With the army distracted by the flames, the archers picked out their targets on the field of mayhem. More blasts were loaded and shot from the catapults. People outside the walls screamed as the flames took hold of their clothes. Wooden ladders, dropped by the panicked invaders, caught alight, adding to the turmoil.

  “No respite,” Yolanda yelled.

  The smell of burning resin filled the air, the sharp scent swirling amid the odour of scorched clothes, blazing wood and charred skin. Gunfire came only in sporadic bursts now, some of it from within the city as Slade took his vengeance on the tribe to which he had once belonged.

  Sorrel fired her crossbow again, and again, and again. Some of her arrows went wide, but others made their targets, plunging into necks, arms, torsos. She became inured to her bleeding fingers, aching muscles and tired limbs. She grew detached from her body’s pains, knowing that all she could gain from giving up was dying.

  The army did not give up easily and screams ascended and shattered on both sides of the wall. Though she did not turn to look, Sorrel knew that the blood of people within the city flowed in the gutters below. Yolanda’s voice, hoarse and cracked, yelled orders over the sound of bones splintering as the wounded fell. The air was filled with the last gasps of the dying, all of them locked in the here and now until the gasping, bitter, bloody end.

  They were making a stand. There would be no surrender. It was do or die, and even as the bodies of the dead piled up, they fought on. One arrow after the other, one resin blast after another, with the sky pressing down and the smell of death rising up, tendons stretched, muscles weeping with effort and nothing in the belly but adrenalin.

  And then suddenly, it was over. Sorrel kept firing arrows, but now they landed in scorched and bloodied earth. There was no returning fire and ladders were abandoned as the enemy retreated beyond the trench.

  It should have felt like a victory, but when the Monitors faced Dinawl from the other side of the corpse-filled ditch, Sorrel experienced a new kind of dread. Suddenly aware of her bleeding fingers and heavy limbs, she looked along the wall to Yolanda for direction, but there was no cheer to be found there. This was not victory. The enemy had not bowed down; they had merely stepped back.

  As Dinawl’s defenders gazed out at their enemy, the first snow of winter fell on the city.

  They awoke the next morning to find the city shrouded in a heavy blanket of snow. Teams of workers had toi
led through the cold night to make new supplies of arrows and resin blasts, but the invaders did not come close to the trench, let alone cross it, and seemed to pay no heed to the city at all.

  The defenders assembled at the wall, but their weapons lay unused.

  “They’ve set up camps at the North Gate and the East and West Ports,” Yolanda said.

  “What are they doing?” Sorrel asked.

  “Making sure no-one leaves the city,” Einstein said. “They mean to starve us into submission.”

  “There’s plenty of food in the city, though,” Sorrel said. “Isn’t there?”

  But the grim set of Yolanda’s face told another story.

  “They could sit there for a long time,” Einstein said.

  Yolanda looked at Slade. “I’m going to make an announcement. Make sure the bailiffs are prepared.”

  “There is no fighting today.”

  A small cheer went up at Yolanda’s words, but when her expression did not lighten, it died in the air. She spoke from a hastily erected podium in the market place.

  “Our enemy is playing a long game. We have become a city besieged. We can survive, but we must work together. From this day hence, all food in Dinawl belongs to the city. Food stored in vittle houses, inns, shops, and private homes will be requisitioned.”

  Yolanda stopped for a moment to let the quell of murmuring from the crowd die down.

  “This could get ugly,” Einstein whispered.

  “Until this time has passed, it will be unlawful to sell, barter or hoard food. Everything we have belongs to us all. From now on everyone but the very young and the infirm will eat at the mass kitchen.”

  “Does that include you?” someone shouted.

  Yolanda stared into the crowd. “Yes, it includes me – and everyone else. We’re in this together. What we have will be shared equally.”

  People nodded.

  “But hear this,” Yolanda said. “Anyone caught hoarding will be cast out of the city.”

  She paused again to let gasps from the crowd die down.

  “Does that seem harsh to you?”

  There were nods and murmurs of agreement.