Off to my right and high up I hear two sharp raps, and a series of rapid taps in three different pitches, several playing simultaneously, like a mechanical operation there in the corner, but I can’t pull my eyes down out of my head to see it. The taps seem to follow the droning voices from the doors, from whatever it is that stands behind the apse. The taps stop. A moment later, I hear two knocks off to my left, high up and behind me, and the same series of taps. Before it ends another two knocks far behind me high and to the right, and halfway through what I think is the same sequence another breaks in from my left and another again near the end of that from the right. As the last tap comes, I feel as if a great hand that had been squeezing me suddenly lets me go. I spring forward on my legs, my eyes drop down and I can see again, my voice has stopped my throat raw, everything has stopped. Before me, I see a great white arch—the tree is far away, deep beyond in the space through the arch where I feel a powerful yearning to go, there is darkness, silence. The lights are all out, the sounds have stopped.
I wait. Time passes.
I turn, afraid. Makemin is between me and the faint light of the door.
“Nothing!” he says. The word fills the dark.
“Go see if anything has changed outside.”
Nikhinoch’s shadow goes to the door, vanishes for a moment. The sight of him outside the doors, in daylight, is strange beyond my power to express, as though I saw a living man from the point of view of a dead one.
We wait in silence.
He returns quickly. He stands near Makemin, invisible in the dark, and quietly tells him,
“I see no change.”
Silence. Growing out of the silence ... I hear Makemin’s breathing rasp in his nostrils faster and faster. He is fumbling with something.
Fire erupts in the dark, shining on his face, features as unyielding and hard edged as a stone face; he is setting light to a torch. Match in his right hand, torch in his left, eyes staring blank and white as fog.
“What are you going to do?” Thrushchurl asks. I can see his long face there in the chaotic light of the torch.
Makemin fixes him with that blank look, then points to the nearest coffin, standing between the trees.
“They’re made of wood,” he says hoarsely.
“Oh, but ...” Thrushchurl’s brows contract, he looks stricken. I feel my insides turn to ice and my hands grow numb, my voice bolt up and gag itself in my throat.
“We’ll make them listen!” Makemin shouts.
“Oh, but you mustn’t burn them!” Thrushchurl explains, afraid, taking Makemin gently by the left arm.
Makemin tears his arm from Thrushchurl’s fingers, draws his pistol aims and shoots Thrushchurl in the chest.
My cry seems to draw the sound of the shot down into my own bosom, and it shrivels in me as I watch Thrushchurl drop to the floor. He lies face down in spreading black.
I take three steps dropping to my knees beside my friend. I touch him blindly and clutch at him.
“Traitor!” Makemin’s voice breaks near me I look up just as he fires.
Nikhinoch’s wan blue face twists in a streak against the dark, and shock, outrage, incomprehension flash out. With a faint noise, like someone tossing a pair of shoes into a corner, he falls forward onto Makemin, who staggers back. Silichieh is rushing in the door and Makemin, still staggering with Nikhinoch sliding down his standing length on the way to the floor, shoots Silichieh.
Silichieh cries out in pain. He rolls to the side as he goes down, diving into the impenetrable shadows around the bases of the pillars. Makemin rushes toward him, lunging around the column gun ready. I see a motion in the dark. Makemin veers back to the near side of the column. Silichieh jerks his rifle one handed from the floor and shoots Makemin in the stomach. The crash of the rifle makes my ears ring, and for a moment it’s as though nothing happens.
Makemin falls. Makemin’s all but unrecognizeable voice groans from the floor. Silichieh, gasping, lies on his stomach, I see now, rifle still extended in one hand, the other, streaked with blood, clasping his injured leg. Makemin is between us, in the streak of light from the open doors, on his right side. Slowly, he tilts over onto his chest and begins to push his upper body off the hexagonal tiles dripping blood. His bare head inches into the air.
Silichieh shoots it. I cry out and throw myself backward—I feel warm droplets on my face and upraised hands.
Makemin’s headless body lies there. Long black tree roots sprout from his neck flat across the floor, dotted here and there with lumps.
Silichieh rolls on his back, arm flung out, rifle resting on the ground. I can see the outline of his chest rise and fall, hear his breathing. I look down, and see faint light glint on Thrushchurl’s upper teeth. I lower my head to his face, I feel for life in his throat. I lay him down again. I go to Silichieh, keeping close to the dark wall behind the pillars, calling his name softly. I come round to him and crouch by his head.
Silichieh’s upside-down eyes flicker up to me.
“What happened?” he asks.
Makemin’s bullet perforated his thigh through the muscle on the outside. I work smoothly for a while, feeling weightless.
“Listen,” he says. “Saskia sent me ...”
Only now do I begin to notice the sound of shooting.
“They’re here,” I say.
He nods.
“Do we have a chance?”
“Maybe. They are nearly as few as we ... and they haven’t got Saskia. I think they could be low on ammunition. They shoot sparingly.”
“Do you think they have any help?”
Silichieh just breathes, looking up.
“I don’t think so ... Did you ...?”
“No.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. It didn’t work.”
From far off come shots, cries.
“He didn’t get you, right?”
Thrushchurl, he killed.
“I’m not shot,” I say. “Any better?”
“Yes, thank you,” he says.
I sit by him.
“We should get back,” he says.
“You wouldn’t get there,” I say. “I’m not going to just leave you here.”
I put his pistol in my empty holster. I look up at the open doors, thinking I should shut them.
“We never should have come,” Silichieh says to himself.
Nikhinoch lies on his face across from me. Silichieh is resting.
I go over to Nikhinoch and turn him over onto his back. The look of suprise is still there. I try to lay him out with some dignity. It reminds me of the mortuary college, my friends. I start gasping, and I stagger away from Nikhinoch. My eye falls on Makemin’s body. I go over to it and stand, looking down.
I can’t hold my body steady—my hands shake, my legs sway, my head swivels on my neck, my breathing catches. I swallow thick saliva with effort.
“You idiot ...” I say.
I shout at abuse at him, and I kick his corpse, hearing only echoes of my own disjointed words as I jump on him with both my heels, stumble off balance from his body then jump again. I pick him up and throw him, his body collapsing a foot or so from me where I seize him up again and throw him down, take him and run with him, fling him up against a pillar. His body tumbles back to the ground hands slapping the floor.
Thrushchurl lies where left him, on his back, his spine curving off to one side. I go round to where I can face the door and straighten him out. I fold his hands on his chest, but then I take back the right one, and hold it.
Rattling—Saskia stops short in the doorway, bending over Silichieh.
“Where’s Makemin?” she asks, her voice ragged.
I haven’t heard any shooting for a while, it seems.
“He’s there,” I say, indicating with my head.
Saskia jerks at the sound of my voice, peers and sees me—“Who’s that? Low?”
I come forward.
“He’s there,” I repeat my words and
gesture.
She straightens and takes two steps. Silence. Saskia whips off her helmet and dashes it to the ground. I can see half her shadow there in the strip of light from the door, see the helmet roll.
“Thrushchurl gone, too?” she asks.
I can’t see where she looks. It wasn’t a question. I hear the scrape of her boots as she turns in place—“His secretary?”
Silichieh’s voice is weak, “Makemin killed them both, for no reason. I came with your message, and he shoots me too. If Nikhinoch hadn’t been falling all over him just then, I’d be dead ... and Low as well.”
Although I can’t see her, I know Saskia is looking at me.
“You shot him?”
Silichieh answers—“He was coming to kill me. What else could I do?”
I hear her head swing to listen to him, then, again she addresses me.
“Why—did he shoot ...?”
“There’s no help here,” I say.
“That’s impossible. We’re in the right.”
“What does this look like to you?” I ask, spreading my hands, still clasping Thrushchurl’s in my left.
“They wouldn’t help?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything, even if they heard us or noticed us. What about the others?”
“We’ve lost. We must retreat.”
Saskia crosses slowly to retrieve her helmet. I see her put it back on.
“Let’s get him out of here. Hurry.”
She points to the bodies with a sweep of her finger.
“Take their rations.”
We lift Silichieh between us and carry him outside, hastening down to lower ground almost headlong. Saskia tosses her head to the left and we begin to make our way through the side streets. A plume of smoke comes from the direction of the prominence.
“The others?” I ask jerkily, Silichieh’s arm around my neck, looking across his shoulders to Saskia. She does not take her eyes from the path.
“... There are no others.”
We go as fast as we can. Over us, the sky is growing darker.
“We were overrun. The survivors fell back. I made a sortie alone and lived. The traitors sent a group in behind me I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop them. I got back, and a few were still living. They drove off the enemy, made them regroup. Everyone was wounded, then they all died. The enemy is still regrouping on the other side.”
“How many? How many?”
“Fifty. I’d say. At most. No more than that. No more.”
The clouds are denser still. I see the outer wall coming near. We draw close. I hear sounds off in the distance, a few shots, raised voices.
“They’re at the prominence.”
“I thought you said everyone was dead ...”
“They are—I don’t know why they shoot.”
We’re through the first gate.
“Can they see the gate from there?”
“Yes. If they look.”
Second gate goes by, and the third. I startle to one side wildly as a bullet clangs off the brass wall a dozen yards away. We break in to a run, Silichieh hopping on his free leg in wild discoordination, another bullet bangs into the brass closer to us and we veer to one side passing through the last gap into the open, putting the wall between us and the enemy. Breathing hard, we run for the trees.
*
Deeper into the woods now, out of sight of the walls. Silichieh drops swooning to the ground as we let up—his face is grey. I check his bandage—soaked through with blood—his wound torn open by our flight. His breathing is weak.
“Will he be all right?” Saskia asks.
“No.”
I am redressing his wound as fast as I can.
“We can’t move him any more.”
“If they come for us, we’ll have to leave him.”
“You’ll have to leave him,” I say without a thought in my head.
I can tell he’s conscious, but he doesn’t speak. His face goes whiter and whiter, rigid with fear. The light in his eyes turns fixed, glassy. He’s watching something coming for him that he knows won’t stop. I call his name. His hand is clutching my arm, squeezing it with all his strength. His hand rests on my arm. His white face is turned up, in terror forever.
“He’s gone,” I explain.
*
She wanted to return through the city and start the machine I’d seen from the window.
“The machine is set off by light tripwires that are too close to it for you to be able to get away before being affected, or even killed,” someone is saying. “They might already be in the city themselves anyway, waiting for you.”
*
Trees, walk, dark, sleep, wake, walk, trees. Come out into colorless clay heath covered with puddles, some mountains bathed in fog in the distance. Muffled, close, hot my face against the cold air. We are heading toward the mountains.
“We can get out through the mountains,” she says, more to herself. “The reinforcements should be there by now. And we’ll come back. And this time we’ll win.”
“We should never have come,” I say.
“It was supposed to be.”
Suddenly I want to argue—it’s the first feeling I’ve had for so long—I almost feel nostalgic as the words burst from my mouth—
“What kind of nonsense is that?!”
“The spirits or gods whatever they are—”
“Gods?”
“... I don’t know anything about religion, but they must have brought us here to test us.”
“They must have?”
“Don’t parrot me!” she snaps, her chinstrap banging against her neck as she turns to me.
“Tested us why?”
“We have to prove our worth to them before they will help us.”
“What worth?”
“The worth of our side, you idiot! Our worth!”
“Worthy to do what? Make the whole world like this?!” I stop, wave my arm around, at the land, and the ruins in the distance.
She stops too. “Worthy because we are willing to die for what’s right, that’s what nobility is! When they see we are noble, I’m telling you, they will send us the victory we’ve earned.”
“What victory?”
“What victory?! Are you out of your mind? Who are you to say ‘what victory’—you want them to win?” She jabs the air with her finger in the direction of the cemetery.
“What you’re calling victory is just death—can’t you get that through your thick head? It’s all just death—that’s the only enemy I know or care about and who wins against death? What kind of victory is that? Who ever won a fight against death?”
“—And so Makemin and the rest, your friends, they all die for nothing?”
“Makemin was a murderer! He deserved to die! He deserved to die a thousand times! And just what price are you going to get us for their deaths? You think the enemy won’t try to make us pay for all the ones of theirs we’ve killed? Show me where you go to make these final payments you’re always talking about!”
“It’s not something you see happen—history in the future will show we were right, and say everything I’ve been saying to you. Now will you belt up and move?”
“Right about what? If you’re right you’re right whether you win or not!”
“Who’s going to tell the truth if we lose? If we lose, there won’t be any one to tell our story at all!”
“To hell with the story! It’s a stupid story! It’s a worthless story! It’s a shameful story! What do I care about stories when I’m dead!? Which of these dead people is going to tell the story?”
“You.”
“I won’t tell! I won’t tell a word of it!”
“You will,” she says. Panting and hot eyed she grabs me by the front of my uniform and shakes me. “You will do it. You are the narrator.”
“I’ll say they were all insane, I’ll call them murderers, and you too!” I shout it into her face, waving my head back and forth.
“You!
You’re nothing!” Shaking me, “You tell lies and nothing is all you are—even a traitor tells lies for a reason! You’ll tell the truth!”
“I won’t do it! I won’t say anything! If I get back, I’ll say I never went anywhere! I was never in the army!”
I tear open my tunic, the buttons fly in all directions.
“I won’t say a word about this obscenity! I’ll say it never happened!”
She pushes me away from her.
“You think history can’t do without you? I can talk too you know—I can tell the truth better than you ever could! I’ll see to it every name is memorialized in a list of heroes, except yours! I’ll leave you out altogether, like you never lived at all! Or no, that’s not what I’ll do, I’ll tell everyone you were a hero just like the rest of them, then no one will believe your lies anyway. You’ll do your part whether you like it or not!”
I fly at her, she throws me to the ground so hard my breath is knocked out.
“If I didn’t need you—! ” she snarls.
“You don’t need me!” I shout back from the ground when I can. My voice is squashed flat.
“I could have been in those mountains by now, if I hadn’t held back to keep up with you! I’ll never understand why the spirits talk to you—that’s one thing I can’t understand.”
I get my breath back.
“The spirits never said anything to me you cretin! Pepedora gave both sides special compasses that showed the way in. I was following it until your boy broke it for me in service to your great cause, so don’t stick to me on your own account! I never knew any more about this place than you or the rest of them did—I knew less!” I’m getting onto my hands and knees, trying to rise.
“You’re not a traitor,” I hear her say, livid in her voice.
“You’re the one who’s thinking like war, not me,” I say gingerly, pausing until a twinge of pain in my gut fades.
“You’re not a soldier—you aren’t anything at all!”
I look up as she turns and begins to leap, each step growing longer and longer—now she is bounding away from me, toward the mountains, streaking just above the ground like an ice skater. She disappears into the trees.
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