“The border?” cried Grandmother. “It is the border, isn’t it? You cannot take him! He will catch silent fever, and he will die. Please, keep him in the city.”
The private was trying to reassure her, but she went on wailing. “Sergeant Daniros will probably send him straight back,” the man said. “Come out and speak to him now.”
I went to the door and the man followed, Grandmother and Father Dunstan behind us. A group of soldiers were huddled against the front wall of the building, trying to shelter from the rain that gusted in all directions. There were about twenty—cadets, like me, but wearing privates’ uniforms. “Leonard North?” said a man—the sergeant—looking down at a soaked piece of paper.
The other soldier nodded. “That is him. Sir, this boy—”
“I want you to fetch the others and catch us up,” the sergeant interrupted. “We are running late. Go now. Here is the list.”
The private glanced at me, then hurried off through the rain. The sergeant turned to us. Grandmother was clinging to my arm, openly crying. “I will not let him go!” she told the sergeant. “I will not.”
“I really feel that Leonard would be better off here in the city,” began Father Dunstan, stepping close to the sergeant. “The circumstances are such that—”
“I do not want to hear about your circumstances,” said the sergeant. “We have had these scenes at every bloody house.”
“But, sir—” began Father Dunstan again.
“Listen,” said the sergeant. “The boy is perfectly willing to come. If he does not want to join us, we can talk about your circumstances then. If he wants to come with us, there is nothing further to discuss. North, are you willing to join up?”
They all looked at me in silence. I glanced from Grandmother, tears and rain running together down her face, to Father Dunstan, who still looked as if he would argue. I turned back to the sergeant and he took it for consent. “Good,” he said, and clapped his hands. “Then let’s go. Come on, boys.”
I hesitated, then followed them. Grandmother was wailing behind us, and some of them glanced back, avoiding my eyes. At the corner I turned for a moment, and she took a few steps toward me, reaching out like a child. “Hurry, will you?” shouted the sergeant. I followed him.
Perhaps I should have spoken to him. Perhaps I should have refused to go. But the private, when he reappeared, seemed to have forgotten it. And I would not speak. I could not. So there was nothing I could do. That was why I left. I had no choice.
Morale was low in the small group. We did not even march in file, just walked in a dejected trail. I lagged some way behind. The other boys were apprehensive. The sergeant and the private were edgy. We walked around the castle and out across the North Bridge. The river was heaving with milky brown water, and for a second it made me feel as though I was going to fall. And then I stopped thinking about that. Outside the city, the sergeant stopped and surveyed us. “Boys, I will not lie to you,” he said. “We are going to the Alcyrian border.”
The others muttered and glanced at each other, but I felt nothing. They resumed their dejected walk, and I followed in silence. I had prayed to be somewhere else. And here I was, on the road to the border.
We must have walked for hours, because when I looked up, the sky was growing dark. The clouds were still low, and the copper light and the heavy atmosphere made my head ache. After a while the clouds began to roll away, back toward the city, and we caught up with the weak evening sunlight. The rays were cutting down onto golden fields. I had never seen a cornfield until that day. I remember that part of the journey. Nearly all the rest has gone forever.
I was thinking of nothing. I stared ahead and saw only what was there and made nothing more of it. It was the way to survive. I could pretend that I was someone else, because I had nothing that reminded me of who I was; I was walking through a landscape I had never been in before, with none of my belongings and no one I knew or had ever met. Only the weight of the extra bracelet on my arm reminded me that I’d ever had a brother called Stirling, or that I had ever been Leo North, or that I had a grandmother at home who might wonder where I was.
At some point while we were walking, I began to cry. I had forgotten for an instant that Stirling was dead, and when I remembered, suddenly I was so frightened, and it seemed so real. More real than it had before, even when I had seen him lying in the coffin.
The boys sneaked embarrassed glances at me, turning their faces hastily away and whispering to each other. I went on crying, and they pretended they couldn’t hear. But then one of them, a boy with a silver tooth, dropped back from the group and fell in beside me. The tears in my eyes made his tooth glint like a star. “Are you scared about going to the border?” he asked. I shook my head wearily, looking away from him. He was silent for a moment while I tried to stop crying and he tried to think of something to say. Then he was asking if I was tired or ill. I did not reply. “Do you speak?” he said. I shook my head. “Are you a mute or what?” I shook my head again. He did not question it. “I guess we will reach Ositha soon,” he said. “It is getting late.”
I had thought that we were going to the border, but I realized then that it was too far to walk in one day. The sound of the explosions and gunfire was still faint. It was growing darker. The sky, patterned in shreds of dark blue and pink, was lying reflected in the puddles along the road. The reflections looked more real than reality, and the puddles were so close together that it was like looking at one large picture through windows in the ground. I imagined that I was looking into a different world—into heaven, where Stirling was. Maybe I’d catch a glimpse of him through one of the windows.
But they were just puddles. I marched straight through them, and the light in the water vanished. When I looked up, the boy was walking ahead again, and he didn’t look back.
At first I had just wanted to get away. Away from Grandmother’s crying, and Stirling’s empty bed, and sanctimonious Father Dunstan. And I had got away from those things, and I was glad of it, but what I hadn’t got away from was the ache in my heart. Still, I was glad to be walking. I began to think that just walking would stop me from falling or realizing that Stirling was gone. I wished we could go on all night, but the gray lump of the barracks was in sight already. Then I grew tired and I stopped thinking. A strange sort of calm fell.
A line of carts came up over the crest of the road. We stood to one side to let them pass, and I thought at first that they were filled with sleeping people all piled on top of each other. But then I realized that they were dead—dead bodies, still in their uniforms.
“Silent fever,” I heard the sergeant say. “It’s the only thing that’s killing them. They sit in the mud all day waiting to catch it. It’s not a war. A hundred men shot a week, and most of them by accident. We don’t need the cadets. Bloody waste of time bringing in kids.”
I listened. It was something to fix my mind on to stop it from drifting. “If you ask me,” said the private, “Lucien is only pulling the cadets out of the cities for fear they will revolt. They are the ones who are not being paid for their obedience to the government. And with these revolutionary groups gaining strength …” He must have gone on, but I did not hear.
We walked a way farther. The sun had almost set. The private was telling the sergeant that if he was Lucien, he would get out of the country. “Last time there was an atmosphere like this, the king ignored it,” he said. “And next thing, he was dead.”
My mind was drifting away. I tried to force myself to listen rather than think. “People are hauling in that old prophecy again,” the sergeant said. “The atmosphere is full of rumors. Is that what you mean?”
“The lord Aldebaran is communicating with the revolutionaries,” said the private. “It is not just rumor—it is fact.”
And then I was back with Stirling, walking through the snow that day when we had talked about Aldebaran and the prince. And I started to realize that things would never be like that again. Tears were rising in
my eyes. I willed them not to fall, and went on trailing after the others. We were in the town now. We passed through an empty square where cannons were standing in rows, then a waste ground turned into a shooting range with half a house still standing at one side. The wind was wailing through the gutted building.
There was an atmosphere of disquiet in that strange town. Horses shifted and puffed steam in the damp evening air, and the men who walked around did not talk or smile. There were Malonian flags everywhere, grubby and damp, and they flapped like sickening birds against the buildings. Reaching a small house, we stopped. “All right, boys,” said the sergeant. “You will stay here tonight. We will be at the inn down the road.” He pushed the door open and led us into the deserted room. The floor was covered in dust, which was swirled all around where people must have lain before. I traced those shapes in my mind while the sergeant was talking.
Time must have passed, because darkness had fallen completely and the sergeant and the private were gone. The others were spreading out blankets on the floor. I stood still at the back window, and the other boys paid me no attention, except for casting uneasy glances at me from time to time. Someone lit a candle. I watched the reflections in the glass. The boy who had spoken to me earlier, his silver tooth glinting in the dusky room, was showing off a pistol that he had brought. A couple of the others lifted their rifles and aimed them at each other, laughing, then tried to fire at the wall, only to find they were not loaded. They had not given us bayonets either; the sergeant was evidently more thoughtful than he seemed. “This is loaded,” the boy assured the others, holding the pistol sideways along his palm. They looked suitably impressed.
He slept with the pistol in his hand. The candle had run down to the ground and it was too dark to find another. Eventually the last whispers died away, and when I turned from the darkened window, I saw that they were all asleep. I had not even taken my rifle off my back. I shivered in my damp clothes. I stood there and watched the stars come out.
The heavy silence, and the coldness of the stars, and the dismal, shadowy room were dispiriting. But at least I was alone. I stood at the window and cried, not madly but silently, and partly because of those cold white stars, and I felt quite calm. As if I could cope. As if I could already see the way forward.
It was stupid to think it. I turned, and the sleeping boys reminded me of Stirling sleeping at the other side of the room at home. And then I really cried. Not for who Stirling might have been, or who he used to be, or the part of me that was lost, but for who he was—Stirling, my brother. Because I felt so desperate, and more than anything I wanted someone to comfort me, and the one who I wanted was Stirling. He was so far away.
My breath came in fast sobs that shook my whole body, and I pressed my hand to my mouth and sunk to the floor. I sat slumped against the wall and cried, letting out wavering wails like an animal. I didn’t care how stupid I sounded or if any of the other boys would wake. I think you can quickly get to a point where you’re so unhappy you just don’t care about anything anymore.
If only I had run faster. Why had I not run faster? If only I could go back in time and run faster; I could have, but I had thought I was safe. Then, in the dark room, I realized that no one is ever safe. I could have run faster, and I didn’t. If only, if only I had. Why had God not warned me to run faster? But there wasn’t a God. And Stirling wasn’t there to tell me that there was.
He was nothing but gentle and good, all the days of his life. And I never told him that he meant anything to me. I never told him that I loved him. I was a poor brother to little Stirling. Alone in the darkness, I remembered every cruel thing I’d ever said to him. I hadn’t thought of him dying before I could take them back.
Tears coursed down my face, over my mouth, and onto the collar of my coat as if they would not stop. Even when I pressed my eyelids tightly together, they ran through my eyelashes and went on falling.
Stirling was so good, and I was so bad, and now I was left while he was gone. I wished that I was the dead one. Or else that I was dead too. Then maybe—maybe—we could be together. And even if we were not together, perhaps I could stop being and just lie there in the earth. Perhaps I could stop thinking. That was the only thing I really wanted. I could see nothing else in my bleak future.
When I stopped crying, it was beginning to get light. My cheeks stung with the bitter tears that were still lying on them. A dismal calm had descended on me; it was worse than wild grief, because it would endure forever. I could feel it in my stomach, in my head, in my very bones. I was too tired to move. I looked at my reflection in the window, a stranger looking back from the glass.
I had not stopped crying for any reason I could understand. The sadness in my heart was no easier to bear than it had been before. It was strange, because I suddenly felt so weary of being unhappy. I wished that I didn’t have to cry. I wished that I could laugh. I wished that I could worry about inconsequential things like whether I had to be a soldier. I wished that I could flirt with Maria. I couldn’t understand it exactly, only that the old Leo—the Leo who was dead now—wanted to do all those things, but the ghost that was left behind didn’t have the heart or the strength to do anything at all. I would never be doing those things now. I felt far removed from everything I used to be. And then I remembered that it had been less than two days, and I felt so desperate I wished I was dead.
Very quietly, I moved. My muscles were stiff from standing so long in wet clothes, but I managed to limp across the room to where the boy with the silver tooth lay. I knelt down beside him and watched him breathing slowly in and out, and my breathing slowed to match his. Then I put my hand on the gun. It was a Delmar .45—the army pistol.
I prized it from his fingers, took off the safety catch and cocked it, then got up and went back to the window. I stood with my back to the light and pointed it at each of the boys in turn. I don’t know why I did that. Then I closed my eyes and imagined dying—pain for a moment, and then nothing; escaping from this, from everything, into white silence.
I held the gun to the side of my head. I was not frightened. And the weight had lifted off my heart, and I didn’t feel as if Stirling was dead anymore. I felt as if I was fighting against God—against God and his plan for my life. And then someone spoke. It was me, but it sounded like someone else, and I couldn’t tell if it was out loud or in my own head. “Even if you’re dead,” said the voice, “Stirling still will be too.” But I won’t know it, I thought. I won’t know anything. There will be nothing. “Hell comes after death,” said the voice. But I didn’t believe in that.
And then I saw Grandmother crying as I turned my back on her and walked away into the rain. And suddenly I changed my mind.
Someone pushed the door open. It was the sergeant, looking the worse for his night at the inn, clutching his head and carrying a bag of food. He caught my eye, and I caught his. Then, slowly, I took the gun from my head and pointed it at him.
He stared at me silently. He dropped the bag and made the slightest move for the pistol at his side, identical to the one in my hand. I made a move, even slighter, with my head, to tell him not to. He stayed still. I gripped the gun more tightly, with both hands, so that it would hold steady. He didn’t believe I would do it. If he had, he would have gone for the pistol. He thought I was joking. I thought I might be too—I was not sure.
There was irritation in his face, but also a hint of what was almost amusement. As if I was a child dragging a game out far too long. It reminded me of how my father had looked one time when I was about five years old, when I stole his expensive watch and ran round with it, sick with laughter, while he got later and later and didn’t know whether to laugh or shout or chase me. I was angry because he had to go out to an interview almost every day that month, when The Sins of Judas was published. I kept running, because once I’d gone so far with the game, I couldn’t go back. And then my mother gave him her watch and he jogged off down the street, and when he turned to wave, I saw that he looke
d tired and he wasn’t smiling. The laughter died in my throat and I wished I’d given it to him to begin with.
I came back abruptly from my thoughts and tightened my hold on the pistol. Then I think the sergeant realized I was serious.
We stared at each other. Then, “Put that down,” he breathed, quiet as ice. I pulled the trigger.
The gunshot surprised me with its loudness, and the recoil made me stumble. The other boys woke at once, shouting out. I opened my eyes and saw the sergeant again and expected him to sway and go down like a felled tree. He looked as if he expected it too. But he didn’t move. A lump of plaster dropped from the wall, and I saw where the bullet had really struck—three or four feet wide. I was not used to firing this type of gun; I would not have missed with a Maracon rifle.
There was silence in the room while everyone stared at me and I went on grinning stupidly. “I could get you imprisoned for attempted murder,” said the sergeant, his voice high. “Do you know that?”
“The hell you could,” said the loud voice in my head, “while I still have the gun.” But I didn’t say it out loud. I walked toward him without lowering the pistol. They were trained to get to their weapons quickly. I watched for a sudden movement. But everyone was still. It was like walking through a gallery of statues.
I was within a few steps of the sergeant, and I nodded to him to move away from the door. He did it. I went out, and then I lowered the gun, turned, and walked off. He could shoot, and I knew it. I braced myself for a bullet in the back of the head at every step, but none came. “He took my pistol,” I heard the boy with the silver tooth complaining in the house behind me.
“Shut your mouth,” the sergeant growled. “I swear to God, the blood of whoever he takes it into his head to shoot now is as much on your hands as his.”
“He’s sick,” the boy said. “There is something mentally wrong with him. He’s possessed by a demon.”
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