by Andy Graham
“Orr’s right,” Lukaz said. “I’m staying.”
“I want to fight,” Scar-Hail said, staking his claim before anyone else could.
“That’s three. We’re done. The rest of you, get back to the Angel City, tell them what’s happening. Hurry. If this is a diversion, your people will need you.”
One by one, the Hoyden started down the hill, confused, frustrated. Reluctant.
“What about your friend Nascimento?” one asked. “What should we tell him?”
Orr grinned from ear to ear. “Tell him he’s a dick.”
The lieutenant held up a fist.
The Unsung stumbled to a ragged halt.
The corporal muttered something about giving the peasants a bullet right up the arse.
The lieutenant put the corporal front and centre.
The corporal’s stream of profanities dried up. “Look, sir. They’re running.”
“Not all of them.”
Three figures stood defiant on the Lion’s Crest.
“Are we in range?”
“Yes, sir.”
Two weeks and I retire. Two weeks and I take my daughter back to hear the crash of the surf. Two weeks before I feel the spit of the sea on my cheeks. Two weeks until the madness is over. The lieutenant raised his rifle. “Open fire.”
The rattle of automatic fire split the air. Sods of earth exploded at their feet, scattering lion’s tooth flowers in the air. “Run.”
It was a skidding, crashing, tumbling, leg-breaking run down the hill. They hit the bottom in a heap. Scar-Hail had a bloody gash along his arm, right through the head of the thundergod’s hammer scratched into his skin.
“They messed up my picture!”
“Can you run?” Baris asked.
“Depends which direction. Towards them, yes. Away from them, not so well.”
“You go right. Lukaz, left. I’ll stay here. You two are better in the woods than me.”
“You sure they’re just gonna come straight over the top?” Lukaz asked.
“Nope.”
“Fair enough.”
The two Hoyden skirted around the base of the Lion’s Crest. They melted into the deep green darkness of the forest. Seconds later they were unseen and unheard.
Orr vaulted a tree trunk and rested his rifle in a crook formed by two branches. Wiping the sweat off his brow with one hand, he waited for the Unsung.
Two-thirds of the way up the hill, the lieutenant signalled. His chopping movement sent four squads left, another gesture sent the same right. There was less chance of the idiots getting lost in a flanking manoeuvre from here. (And at this point, he resolved to take his future son-in-law on a fishing trip to explain a few of the things about how the marriage to his daughter was going to work. For one, dad-in-law had a big knife.) Lieutenant Safety-Glass Jaw and Corporal Bullet took the centre. As the Unsung crashed through the undergrowth like a stag party in shopping trolleys, he whispered, “C’mon then, former corporal Baris Orr, let’s see what you’ve got for us.”
The deathly still of the forest was broken by the thud of gunshots. Birds screeched and hooted. Burst into the sky in a whirling flock of dots. Shouts. Voices. Closer. Screams in the Donian tongue. Unsung swearing. A crash of branches as something fled. A wild mountain horse? Another sound. Closer. Feet. A bullet hissed past his ear. Figures lying in the lion’s tooth flowers on the Crest. Single pops of rifle fire picked off branches, gouging out holes in the fallen tree trunk, and Orr returned fire.
An Unsung burst out of the undergrowth on his left flank and raised his rifle. Orr scrambled away. Scar-Hail dropped from a tree branch. Landed behind the legionnaire. Grabbing his head, he wrenched it round. The man slumped into a heap, legs pinned beneath him at unnatural angles.
Scar-Hail looked to be missing half his face. His chest was covered in blood and dirt. He raised his knife up in the air. “I got three of the bastards,” he crowed. And his head exploded in a shower of bone and brain.
“Baris!” Lukaz barrelled out of the trees behind Orr, breathless, excited. He saw Scar-Hail’s corpse collapse to the ground and cursed.
A dull thud broke the rat tat tat of bullet fire. A whistling noise.
“Down!”
An ear-splitting explosion. Earth and twigs and stones pattered around the two men. A man was half-kneeling on the top of the Crest. A long tube rested on his shoulder. A second man loaded a shell into its back and patted the first man on the shoulder. The first hit had been short, the range-finding shot, the second would be closer. In the edges of the forest that encircled the base of the Lion’s Crest, Baris could see twitches of movement, rifles, black helmets, faces.
“Run?” Orr asked.
“Run!” Lukaz answered.
They sprinted into a bottleneck of trees that led away from the hill, back to the Angel City. To one side was a thick mesh of brambles, to the other an ankle-twisting mess of fallen branches. A second explosion lifted them off their feet and dashed them onto the ground. The air left Orr’s lungs with a bruising jolt. Pain lanced up and out from his back, linking with the acid feeling in his belly. Lukaz’s face was covered in scratches, a miniature version of the scars that laced his body. One eye was swollen shut. His arm hung twisted from his body, a divot under the point of his shoulder where there should be bone.
“You’ve dislocated that.” Orr pointed.
“I’ve lost my rifle, too.”
Orr grabbed the Hoyden’s other hand and dragged him to his feet.
“Can still fight one-handed.” Lukaz handed Baris a couple of grenades. “Picked up these off one of the legionnaires I nailed. Not sure I reckon much to my chances of throwing them anymore. You gonna give me one of the revolvers?”
“No.” Orr raised one of the revolvers and aimed it at Lukaz.
Lukaz’s blooded eyes narrowed. “You betraying me now?”
“Nope. This is the only way I’ll get you to leave me.”
“What you talking about?”
A boom of mortar fire was followed by a rain of branches. Neither man moved.
“I owe the legions for what they did to my home, New Town. I owe you for what I did to Kayle and the others. I owe myself for, well” — he shrugged nonchalantly — “for a lot of stuff.”
“Not going.”
Orr cocked the hammer. Lukaz’s pink eyes gleamed in the glow of the forest.
“I’m telling you, Baris, I am not going.”
Orr lowered the revolver. “I thought you wouldn’t.”
“We’re brothers. You’re one of us, now.”
Orr nodded. “Guess you’re right. Reckon you can really fight one-handed?”
“Watch me.” Lukaz held out his hand to shake. Orr clasped him high up on the forearm, the warrior’s grip, a grip which gave him the extra leverage to pull Lukaz off balance. He slammed his fist into the other man’s belly, and shoved him to the ground. Lukaz landed on his dislocated shoulder, gasping for breath, eyes wide in agony.
Orr grabbed Lukaz’s good shoulder. “Brothers look after each other, Lukaz. Tell the Elders I accept Kaleyne’s offer to join your people, if you’ll still have me.”
He sprinted back towards the Unsung. Fifty metres on, he stuffed the first grenade into the bole of a tree and carried on running, hoping and praying it would— The explosion lifted him from his feet and propelled him through the air. He landed on a soft patch of moss, damp and sweet.
The tree was in tatters, shreds of wood sticking out of the trunk randomly. The rest of it was blocking the pass. Impossible to pass with a dislocated shoulder and serving as a barrier for the Unsung, too. As the thump of feet approached, Orr raised his revolvers. Kayle’s big irons. The man who had shown Baris what it really meant to live by the principles you believed in by dying for them.
The Unsung appeared.
Orr fired. A sprawling noise of death. Two fell. The rest hid. Muzzles flashed from behind trees. Most went wide. One hit. In a mirror image of what Baris Orr had done to Kayle in
the Bridged Quarter of Tye, Orr fell to one knee. Forced himself up. Raised a revolver. A bullet punched through his gut. Orr doubled over. Unlike Kayle, Orr’s tear-streaked face twisted not in pain and anger but bitter happiness. One revolver tumbled to the ground. It bounced in the moss, sending up a spray of spores and sunshine. A legionnaire broke cover and advanced. Orr fanned the hammer of his remaining revolver with his palm. Slick with blood, the gun misfired.
“Stay down,” the approaching lieutenant snapped, rifle trained on Orr.
“Go fuck yourself.” Orr raised the revolver he had just retrieved. He aimed at the officer. An older man, the kind of man Orr would have liked to serve under. He had a firm jaw, clean-shaven, except he’d missed a patch of grey hair. Baris’s fingers closed on the revolvers. The elaborate filigree pattern of roses on the sides was covered in dirt and blood.
“Stand down or I shoot.”
“OK. OK. You win.” His stomach a searing ball of pain, Orr threw the revolvers away and collapsed to his knees.
“‘Cuff him,” the lieutenant said. “Let Major Henndrik know we’ve taken the Crest.”
Orr’s vision was blurred. His head spinning. The darkness was closing in. He was vaguely aware of feet. The officer walking away? Men coming closer? How long could he wait before the darkness took him forever.
From his crouched position on the ground he heard one say, “Look at him.” There was a sneer on that man’s face, he knew it. Orr would have been sneering. Boots appeared around him. Too many boots. He couldn’t count. He fumbled at his belt, his numb, blood-slick hands threatening to let him down. Was this the right thing to do? His answer came in his own voice, faint and framed by the crackles of the fire at the heart of the Angel City the last time he’d been here, the time Kaleyne’s green eyes had welcomed him like no one ever had. “Violence is the best form of diplomacy.”
“Just do it, Baris, you dick,” he breathed. “And you, the bastard thing growing in my belly, I’m gonna kill you before you kill me.”
With his dying breath, Corporal Baris Orr, the Little Guy, Old Squat and Ugly, He of the Heavy Hips and Heavy Heart, Orr the Obscure, Baris the Bard, stood up. The pin he had already removed from his second grenade fell to the mossy ground, and Baris smiled.
Birds. Crickets. Wind.
He knew these noises.
These were living noises, not dead ones.
Something harsh was scratching at his face. Something heavy lying across his neck. He pushed himself to his hands and knees. The weight that had been across his neck tumbled to the ground. It was a severed arm, clad in black with a bullet-shaped ring on one finger.
His stomach lurched and his breakfast splattered between his hands. Once the spasm had stopped he rolled to his knees, his back howling in agony. He could feel his feet, though, and his hands. That was good.
Ahead of him, the bottleneck running through the forest was a mess of branches and bodies. Blood-stained leaves. Guts hung from trees in a visceral imitation of the tinsel he hung on the family Midwinter tree. A handful of Unsung staggered around in a daze, trying to piece together what had happened, trying to piece together their colleagues.
His first thought was that he would have traded a legion of the losers he was saddled with for one man like Baris Orr.
His second thought was that Orr had sealed the path to the Angel City.
The third, he was still only two weeks away from his retirement.
31
The Best & Worst Of Friends
Brooke hadn’t said a word to Ray. And now, still silent, they stood on the dust that surrounded the Dawn Rock, one of her hands curved around her belly. Ray hadn’t been sure what kind of reaction he was going to get, Brooke didn’t do demonstrative, but this? This was two cold shoulders rather than the one. He’d have preferred violence, at least that gave you something to fight. “Your hair’s grown,” he said.
Her expression grew disdainful. As lover’s reunited statements went, it was lame. “Probably should have given it a little more thought,” he muttered as Brooke walked off.
She left footprints in the dust around the Dawn Rock, where they had once lain in each other’s arms, between each other’s legs. Her gait had once resembled that of a lioness; now it had a hint of duck to it. Ray, wisely, kept that thought to himself.
He followed her under the rustling leaves of the orchard to the small pond where they had once skimmed stones. Thundering into that pond was a waterfall. It sent up a spray that glittered diamonds in the morning sun. At the far end of the stone cauldron, away from the lovers not-yet-united and the waterfall, Unsung corpses smouldered outside the Council Chamber. The plume of smoke was as stiff as the bodies, a stark contrast to the bustle of activity at the base of the slope. People talked with broad sweeps of their arms. They blocked and unblocked the single-file tunnel mouth that led to the rest of the village as they organised themselves. The queuing system appeared to be based on bullying your way to the front rather than waiting your turn. And, Ray noted, a fight between the Resistance and the Donian was gathering a crowd of watchers. As Nascimento’s voice boomed at them — “Can we please all try to be a little more fucking civil with each other?”— Brooke edged onto the rock ledge that hid behind the crashing blue curtain.
“Does anyone else know about this entrance to the caves?” Ray hurried after her, determined not to lose her again.
“The only brother I have left, a man who doesn’t deserve the skin he was born with, a man who will die without it.”
“So you can speak then.”
Her answer was to disappear behind the tumbling, spitting sheet of water. The last time they had come this way, they’d been nearly naked. This time, to his disappointment, she went fully clothed with an air of contempt thrown in for good measure. They wound their way along the slippery rock tunnel, the thudding noise of water first deafening, then echoing, then fading, before they emerged into a low-ceilinged cave. The pool in the centre of that cave was lit a vivid greeny-blue by the rock lining it.
Now she did strip.
The woman who Nascimento had said could make an icicle look voluptuous had a softening around the edges, drifting curves where once there had been straight lines. Her belly was rounded and very, very obviously pregnant.
“Never ask a woman if she’s pregnant unless you can actually see the baby coming out of her,” Lenka Zemlicka, Ray’s surrogate aunt, had once said. But with Brooke, a body that he had learnt so much about so quickly, her condition was blatant. And she had never looked better.
“You’ve . . . filled out a little. In a good way,” he added hastily.
A frown. A touch of colour in her cheeks. A bashful look? She dived into the pool. Ray stripped to his underwear and followed, leaving two sets of ripples butting up against each other on the water’s surface.
Freezing tentacles of water grasped his legs and arms. It crushed the air out of his chest and the heat out of his balls. He emerged, gasping, into the Resting Room. Rows upon rows of statues stared back at him, each slightly larger than life-size to hold the people that had been buried inside them. The statues were carved with weapons: rocks, knives, spears, rifles and revolvers. Brooke was waiting for him, wrapped in a blanket that must have been lying next to the pool. Her curly hair stuck slick to her forehead.
“I hated you,” she said. “For what you did to me. You put this creature inside me, a thing that is sucking myself out of me. I cannot think. I cannot fight. I cannot sleep. I cannot run. I hated you for all those things, but most of all, I hated you for deserting me, for leaving me to deal with this alone. For turning me into the same as all those ladies with their painted nails waiting for their husbands to give them their pocket money.” Her face twisted into a grimace that was a prayer’s breath away from tears. “Weak and needy. I cannot even walk like a person anymore. When I walk, I widdle—”
“Waddle,” he corrected her. “Like a duck.”
“Waddle?” Her eyes flashed dangerously in the ha
lf-light.
“Widdle means to piss.”
The silence between them stretched out long enough for Ray to think of any number of things he could have said instead and, crucially, what he was going to say now. Maybe nothing. Nothing was probably best.
“I meant to say widdle. I am trying to tone down my language in preparation for—” She snapped her jaw shut. In the depths of the cave there was a soft crunching of falling stones. “Nothing to say?” she asked finally, in the tone he (and half the Legions) knew best: brash and challenging.
“Just listening,” he said. And shivering. The exhilarating chill of the icy water had left. Soaking wet, tired, hurt and standing in his underwear in a damp cave had brought him up in a rash of gooseflesh. Brooke’s near-nakedness under that blanket of hers went some way to warming him, but not enough, at least not from this distance. He took a step forwards, half-wary, half-respectful.
The harshness in her posture faded a touch. “Most of all, I hated myself for missing you.”
“I thought you were dead.”
“You could have checked.”
“I was afraid of finding out you really were dead.”
She scowled as only she could. “That’s pathetic.”
He pointed to her midsection. “I heard rumours but I didn’t know you were—”
“Don’t say it.”
His teeth were starting to chatter. “As soon as I knew I came here.”
“You brought most of the Unsung with you, too. What’s happening up there?”
“Nascimento is trying to broker a peace between your people and the Resistance. They shot one of them; them shot one of they. The Donian are used to nothing but fighting. Now the Resistance have finally decided they want to fight and it’s all gone belly up.”
“Skovsky.”
“Yeah, Skovsky. Not sure we should be using Junior’s name to mean things are going to shit anymore. Not after the way he died. Not after what his dad has done since.”