The New Day

by Lorraine Thomson

  “This is ugly,” David said. “If they don’t get to throw her out, they might just tear her apart.”

  “Where’s Yolanda?”

  “I don’t know – but Quirke’s here.”

  Sure enough, a brawny man was storming his way to the heart of the mob.

  Sorrel eyed his scarred arms. “I recognise him,” she said. “He’s the axe-man.”

  “One and the same,” David said.

  Just then, Yolanda arrived amid a troop of bailiffs. She climbed onto the ledge beside Sorrel and David.

  “They’re planning something,” Sorrel said.

  “I know – they want to cast her out.”

  “No – they’re planning something.”

  Sorrel jerked her head towards the army.

  Yolanda sucked in a deep breath. “Do you think this is it?”

  Sorrel nodded. “The final assault. They’re coming for the city.”

  “Then we must act. But first this.” She turned to face the mob.

  They had been quelled by her arrival and the presence of the bailiffs, but they wouldn’t stay quiet for long. It was blood they were after.

  “What is the charge against this woman?”

  “Hoarding food.”

  “The evidence?”

  “She ate it!” some wag called. The retort was met with jeers and laughter.

  “You think this is funny?”

  The words exploded out of Yolanda, wiping the silly grins from the faces below her. Strands of loose hair stood out from her head, creating a halo-effect. Her face twisted with fury as she regarded them.

  “We are facing the fight of our lives and you joke about sending one of your own to her death? You.” She pointed at Goneril. “One chance to tell the truth or I’ll put you from the city myself. Are you guilty of hoarding food?”

  Goneril’s pink face quivered.

  “I can’t hear you.”

  “Yes,” Goneril replied.

  “Did Quirke know anything about it?”

  “No – I swear – it was just me. It was my greed.” She dropped her gaze.

  Quirke had managed to push his way towards her and tried to comfort her, but Goneril shook her head and shrugged him off.

  “Our enemy is preparing to strike,” Yolanda said. “For all our sakes, we need everyone working together. When this is over, if any of us are still alive, then you will face the consequences of your actions.”

  “Thank you, thank you,” Goneril wept.

  Yolanda commanded the bailiffs. “Mark her face with an H for Hoarder, lest we forget.”

  Goneril screamed as the bailiffs moved in.

  “Let them do their duty, Quirke,” Yolanda commanded. “She’s getting off easy for now and you know it. As for the rest of you, if that’s not enough blood for now, there’ll be plenty more flowing soon enough. Now get back to your work stations and wait for orders – we have a war to win.”

  Goneril was held, marked by a blade and released in the blink of an eye. Then, urged on by the bailiffs, the crowd dispersed. Goneril sobbed and held a cloth to her bloodied cheek as Quirke led her away.

  Yolanda held herself together throughout, but she was crumbling around the edges.

  “They want to be led, but I don’t know where I’m taking them.”

  Sorrel looked at her, but Yolanda seemed to be talking more to herself than anyone else.

  “Even if Sorrel and David are mistaken about what the Monitors have planned, we can’t go on like this. It’s time for us to take control of our own destiny.”

  Yolanda addressed the group. They were sitting around a long table in a room in the palace: Yolanda, Slade, Sorrel, David, Einstein, Brig, Kala, Cyrus and several bailiffs Sorrel recognised. The only one she knew by name was Kyle, the one who had grown close to Alice.

  “It’s risky,” Kyle said.

  “Riskier still to do nothing,” Einstein replied.

  “Using up all the stores…”

  “At least this way, everyone will remember what it’s like to have food in their bellies,” Yolanda said. “Meal times lately have been no more than a torment.”

  “A decent meal will give the people heart,” Brig said, “and for this, they will need a lot of it.”

  “So, we are agreed?” Yolanda said.

  One by one, they gave their consent.

  “Agreed,” Sorrel said, when it was her turn.

  She’d thought they would mock her when she suggested her plan, but no-one laughed.

  The bailiff was right. It was risky and could fail in a hundred different ways, but desperate times required desperate measures.

  “All right,” Yolanda said. “You know what you have to do. Good luck.”

  Sorrel was on her way to The Three Rats with David, Brig and Einstein, when David suddenly lunged at a man they passed in the street. He pinned the fellow against the wall, his arm across his neck.

  “Have you gone crazy?” Sorrel said.

  The fellow’s face turned purple.

  David snarled at him. “Do you remember me? I remember you.”

  The fellow managed to judder a nod.

  “This piece of dirt was a guard in the showers at the thrall market. He enjoyed humiliating me.”

  “Nnghh!”

  “Best let go of his throat if you want to hear what he has to say,” Brig said.

  “I’m sorry,” the fellow wheezed. “It was wrong. But we’re on the same side now.”

  “He has a point,” Einstein said. “Whatever the wrongs of the past, it is our futures we now fight for.”

  The fellow nodded, looking like he’d lick the pavement clean if it meant David would lay off him. “I’m a different man now. Times have changed.”

  David closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he released the former guard. “If you see me again, you cross the street, you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  The former guard scurried away. David stared after him, clenching and unclenching his fists.

  “If I see him again…”

  Brig slapped him on the back. “C’mon, business first. If Sorrel’s crazy plan works, there’ll be plenty of time for settling scores later.”

  “And if not?” David stared at Brig with eyes as dark as the spaces between the stars.

  “Then we’ll all be dead and none of it will matter.”

  Sorrel winced as the musty aroma of the cellar rose to meet her. She hated rats. Hated their smell, hated the screeching, scrabbling sounds they made. She hated the hunched bulk of their bristling bodies, hated their sharp, quick eyes and she really hated their thick, scaly tails. But most of all she hated their lurking, sharp intelligence. She could feel their knowing wrap itself around her as she walked in their midst.

  “All of them?” Stacey asked. “Even the breeders?”

  “Every single one,” David said.

  Proclamations had been going out across the city all day and by the time the mass kitchen opened for the first sitting, the atmosphere was charged with excitement.

  The watered-down soup the people had grown unhappily accustomed to was gone, replaced by a broth so thick, it stuck to the ribs. It was served with hunks of freshly baked bread and a mug each of small ale.

  “I hope they enjoy it,” Yolanda murmured to Slade, “for the last of everything has gone into it.”

  When the eating was done, Sorrel’s plan swung into action. Tonight, it was all or nothing.

  A small advance party, Kala and Cyrus among them, left Dinawl by the North Gate. Sheathed in white as camouflage against the snowbound landscape, they headed directly to the hills to west of the city. From there, they circled around to the Monitors’ mini-camp at the West Port, taking those on watch by surprise and killing the rest while they still slept. A pair of swinging lanterns was the signal to Dinawl that the way was clear.

  Dinawl’s defenders left the city by the West Port in waves. The city’s beds had been stripped of sheets to provide them with hastil
y-made cloaks of white. Some carried only their weapons and ammunition, others hefted writhing sacks over their shoulders.

  Two parties hived off from the rest, one to take care of the enemy camp at the North Gate, the other the one at the East Port. The rest headed for the hills to the west, and from there, they snuck up on the Monitors’ great camp. It was hard going in the snow, but the effort required kept the cold at bay.

  Sorrel was among the first to reach the camp. She dropped her sack and leant against the wall of ice built by the Monitors, her heart racing. She sucked in deep breaths, calming herself. So far, so good. No need to panic. David was beside her, Lizbit hovering nearby.

  David stretched his fingers out to touch Sorrel’s. For the shortest of moments, she allowed herself to enjoy the contact, but there was no time to waste. They’d slunk through the night and got thus far without the alarm being raised. Now to push on.

  David took two augur drills from his sack and passed one to Sorrel. They knelt and began drilling into the base of the wall. All along its length, others were doing the same, Lizbit included, silently working away at the ice, creating small tunnels through the snow wall.

  “I’m through,” David said.

  “Me too.”

  He passed her a pair of long gloves. She pulled them on but hesitated before reaching for her bulging sack. It contained three enormous rats. As if sensing her, the rodents stopped moving for a moment but when she picked up the sack, they writhed and mewled. Just as well the creatures were being released now or they’d surely chew and claw their way through the canvas.

  Sorrel grabbed up the sack, untied it, and emptied the rats into the hole in the wall. She felt exhilarated as the huge rodents fled straight through the tunnel into the camp beyond.

  All along the wall sack after sack of agitated rats was emptied into the camp. When every sack had been emptied and every rat from Dinawl was inside the camp, the holes were filled up then Sorrel and David gathered with the others near the front of the camp and waited.

  At first there was silence. And then the silence stretched out.

  The cold edge of the moon’s pale light etched the contours of David’s face, picking out the bones of his brow and cheeks, emphasising the dark hollows of his eyes. How close to death they all were.

  Just as she thought their efforts had been in vain, the first cries arose from inside the camp. Those lone voices were soon joined by others as the Monitors woke to the horror of finding their tents alive with the bristling bodies of giant rats.

  The rats swarmed everywhere, investigating this exciting new world. They stood on the chests of the slumbering Monitors, sucking the breaths from their mouths as they slept, before growing bold enough to nip at warm flesh.

  Dogs howled, though there were precious few of them, and those soon reduced to dying whimpers. Human voices screamed and shouted, fear and horror the common theme. And gun shots rang out. Blam, blam, blam. Every bullet aimed at a rat, one less to be turned on the people of Dinawl.

  Under Slade’s orders, a group of archers fired mini resin blasts into the camp. Flames flared into the night. Sorrel caught glimpses of people stumbling between burning tents, rats clinging to them. A woman tried to pull one from her hair. She fell, and her body disappeared under a carpet of bristling bodies.

  Galvanised into action by the flames, there was a rush to flee the camp. They ran into the night, their vision marred by blood and fear, only to be met by the weapon-wielding citizens of Dinawl.

  A skeleton crew had been left behind in the city. Enough only to look after those too young or frail to defend themselves. Everyone else in the city, had descended upon the enemy camp.

  The archers kept up a constant assault, raining arrows and resin blasts on the enemy in a torrent of pain. Those who broke free of the camp first came across Dinawl’s skilled fighters. If the swords didn’t cut them down, the rest of the citizens were ready and willing to finish the job with axes, hatchets, cudgels, knives.

  Merchants fought alongside reformed beggars, ale wives beside bakers and tanners. Jugglers and craftsmen, teachers and weavers, confectioners and hunters. All had taken up arms to save their city. And beyond those hearty fighters, the last line of attack came from the very young and the very old. Children and old women and men stood on the edge of the fray, picking off staggering survivors of the camp with rocks and sharp stones.

  Despite the rats and the shock of the resin blast fires, the invaders did not give up easily. They had long considered Dinawl theirs for the taking and many of them, reacting on instinct, grabbed their weapons as they fled, and thus a bloody skirmish was fought on frozen ground.

  The people of Dinawl were fighting to the grim end. If they lost, there was nothing beyond this night, not for them, nor their children. Nothing but the bottom of the Great Trench.

  Sorrel and David fought side-by-side, calling warnings to each other as assailants came at them, but the combination of flickering light and sparkling snow played tricks on the eyes. Several times they leapt at shadows, but too late did they see an enemy sword slicing through the air. David would have been killed for sure if Lizbit had not thrown herself between the blade and his neck, sacrificing her own life in the process.

  David, his face spattered with her blood, caught hold of Lizbit as she fell while Sorrel flew at her killer, slashing her knife across his throat. He died at her feet, his final gasp a dark froth on his lips.

  By the time the sun rose, the landscape was no longer white, but ran red with blood. Many of those who fought for Dinawl were cut down that night, but after it all – starvation, deprivation, desolation – the Monitors were no more.

  20.

  North

  “The people of Dinawl are not easy to govern. They’re happy now because we’ve won the war, but the road to recovery will be long and arduous. It would be good to have your help – and your friendship. Are you sure I can’t persuade you to stay?”

  Though she was tattered around the edges, Yolanda had grown into her role and looked every bit the leader. She had come through the war blood-spattered and weary, but she was resilient and resourceful, and Sorrel had come to admire her.

  “You have my friendship,” Sorrel said, “now and forever after. But I can’t stay. I promised Alice I’d go to Ulbroom when the war was over, and that’s what I must do. Eli and David are coming with me – the others must decide for themselves.”

  Five days had passed since the people of Dinawl had decimated their mighty enemy. Most of the time since had been spent in dealing with the dead, Lizbit among them.

  She, along with the rest of Dinawl’s fallen, had been bound in sheets and laid to rest in the Great Trench, and so in some way, Niven’s vision of it as a mass grave for the city had come to pass. When the snow melted, and the earth softened, the grave would be filled.

  The enemy camp had been laid to waste by fire. Rat hunters from Dinawl went in with traps, but when they saw the creatures dining on the dead, rat-meat was declared unfit for human consumption. The bodies of the enemy were gathered and burnt in funeral pyres and what little remained of the camp was torched. Rats were killed on sight, their corpses incinerated.

  Fearing contamination more than death, the few remaining survivors they found killed themselves rather than be taken. As Slade explained later, “That’s why they killed Juno. She didn’t know it – none of us from the forward party did – but we were always destined to be killed by our own people. We had been above ground too long – they thought we were unclean.”

  “They wanted the world for themselves,” Einstein said.

  “It wasn’t going to be much of a world without children,” Sorrel said, but then she caught the look on Slade’s face. “Slade?”

  “There are children. They are still underground.”

  “Still underground? For protection? Like we protected ours?”

  “Something like that.”

  “But that means –”

  “Yes, there are people look
ing after them. I’ve talked to Yolanda about this. I’m going there. I’ll take a party with me. We’ll tell them what happened here, offer them peace, a new life above ground.”

  “We’re offering them a future where they can feel the sun on their faces and the wind in their hair,” Yolanda said.

  “Einstein?” Sorrel looked at her friend. “If you don’t want to go back to Ulbroom, I’ll understand.”

  “The thought of returning there does not fill me with joy. But my place is by your side.”

  Sorrel scratched Tailwagger’s head. It was Brig who had taken the dog. When visiting Eli, he’d noted the hunger on the faces of the bailiffs eyeing her up and smuggled her away to Warbles and Zee to hide. They’d fed her on rat scraps from the mass kitchen, and though her ribs were showing, the dog had survived.

  “Brig, you’ll be coming with us?” Sorrel asked.

  “You’d have thought so,” he replied.

  “Aren’t you?”

  He shook his head. “I considered it, but you have your mission and my destiny lies elsewhere.”

  “What about Eli, don’t you want to be with him?”

  “Of course, and wherever I am, he will always be welcome. But he has also you. I’ve decided to go with Slade.”

  “You’re going to rescue the children?”

  Brig nodded. “Ivan will come with us. Warbles and Zee will stay in Dinawl.”

  “What about you and Cyrus?” Yolanda asked Kala.

  Kala glanced at Cyrus. He nodded and she spoke. “We’ve decided to stay and help, if you’ll have us. At least for the winter.”

  “Come the spring, come the wanderlust,” Cyrus said. “We’ll leave then and look for whoever is left of the Zeros.”

  Yolanda grinned. “I’ll gladly accept your help.”

  And so it was that Sorrel, David, Eli, Einstein, Valen, Alice, Tailwagger and the bailiff, Kyle, left Dinawl and headed north to Ulbroom.

  It was the third night of their trek north, and for once their bellies were full for they had managed to trap and kill a badger. Kyle had driven the death blow into the creature’s heart and had been lapping up Alice’s doe-eyed admiration ever since.