On (GollanczF.)

by Adam Roberts

  After the dusk gale, at supper, Waldea was in an expansive mood again. ‘Tomorrow will see a great victory over the wickedness of the Otre,’ he said. ‘And this platon will play its part. We will play our part! There will be no shame.’

  After the day’s idleness, Tighe found it difficult to go to sleep that night. He was not alone. Whispered conversations rustled around the dugout like the wind at dawn, mostly speculating about the Door that the army was sure to capture if not tomorrow, then surely the day after tomorrow. ‘It must open on a corridor,’ said somebody. ‘It is a mile high,’ said somebody else. was speaking to a soldier,’ said Ravielre, ‘an old soldier, and he knew somebody who had actually seen the Door.’

  Hissing astonishment. No! Really! What was it like?

  ‘Sleep, my children,’ grumbled Waldea, turning over and pulling his blanket more tightly about him.

  This quietened the exciting hissing for a moment, but it soon started up again. ‘It seems that the Door is ten miles high,’ whispered Ravielre. ‘Nobody has ever been able to open it because it is so big.’

  ‘How will we ever do it?’ asked Ati. ‘It is impossible to open so big a Door!’

  ‘Impossible for a shit-eater like you,’ hissed Mulvaine, ‘but not for decent Imperial citizens like us. We’ll open it, won’t we, boys!’

  There was a babble of sounds, rising above a whisper now, until Waldea barked out in the darkness, ‘Be still! Be quiet! Sleep, or I’ll light a torch and begin by punishing every boy in turn.’

  They were quiet after that and eventually Tighe fell asleep.

  16

  The morning after the dawn gale was quiet, but everybody was excited. Tighe could barely manage his breakfast, his stomach was so agitated with the thrill of anticipation.

  The kite-pilots all took positions on the ledge and assembled their kites.

  Then nothing happened. An hour passed, while Waldea paced up and down. Tighe felt the excitement wane in his belly and he began to believe that they would spend another day waiting pointlessly.

  Without warning there was an enormous explosion from the east. All the kite-pilots shouted and cheered in unison, and Waldea hurried through the dugout to fetch the wax-bombs. ‘This is it, my children,’ he called out to them, going amongst them and handing out the bombs. ‘Wait till I have lit your fuse and then fly off – fly away and bring the proper wrath of God upon the Otre. Fire from the sky! Fire from the sky! Now it is their judgement.’

  There was a series of regular booms in the heavy mid-morning air, and Tighe, straining his ears, even thought he could hear a sound like cheering as (he imagined) the Imperial troops surged forward. Or was it a sound like screaming? – as the Otre soldiers plunged from their ledges, fell through the air, to be dashed to fragments against the boulders at the foot of the wall?

  The kite-pilots were gathering at the edge of the world as Waldea went amongst them, bending forward with his flax and lighting the fuses. First Mulvaine, and then a procession of boys and girls stepped into the air and flew away. Tighe stepped up to the edge.

  ‘Keep the fuse free, give it air. Don’t stifle it with skin or clothing – it’ll burn your skin, Tig-he,’ said Waldea. The old man was panting, the scars on his face gleaming with sweat. ‘Tuck it, here, into the top of the trousers. That’s right. Now, fly – pick your target carefully! Do not merely throw it away!’

  Tighe nodded, gasped excitedly, and stepped into space. He was so intent upon not dropping the bomb, and not stifling the fuse, that he barely noticed where he flew. He swept rapidly away, looking up just in time to see another kite circling back, and hauled to the side to avoid colliding with it. His heart was really hammering now.

  The winds were good; clear and with strong lift. Tighe circled and pulled round and cleared the spar. The battlefield came into view.

  He had been expecting there to be something decisive marked on the face of the wall – lines of blue-coats marching along, grey uniforms falling – but the scene was much as it had been the day before yesterday. There was a mess of action, scattered bursts of flame or light, rags of smoke drifting up or being yanked to nothing by the wind. The central shelf was still occupied by the Imperial forces and they seemed no closer to the Otre fortifications.

  Tighe whirled through the air and made a pass at the ledge directly above the central shelf. Not close enough. He swung round again, as the air was tracked with smoky threads all around him. On the return he had lost height and was closer to the central shelf. A knot of blue-uniformed Imperial soldiers swelled into view. He swooped close to a group of them; two were kneeling and firing upwards with their rifles, a third was standing and reloading. Their attentions were distracted for a moment by Tighe’s approach, and he struggled to turn his kite without wriggling his body too much and risk dropping the bomb.

  For an instant their faces seemed close enough to touch, eyes wide. Then something buzzed through the air and the standing soldier opened his mouth, closed his eyes and toppled forward. Tighe pulled away, turned and angled back in time to see the body of the soldier twisting and falling through space. A lengthy string of red beading stretched up from the figure as it fell and dissipated into red mist. In a moment the body was gone.

  The wind was shushing in Tighe’s ears as he dropped down, hit a strong updraught and began a wobbly ascent, spiralling tighter and tighter. A shining orange blob hurtled past his face and he found himself abruptly confronted with a line of Otre snipers. Most had their weapons angled down, but one or two were firing out into the sky, aiming at kites. With a rushing sense of power, Tighe plucked the still smouldering wax-bomb from his lap and threw it.

  His fingers slipped a little as he jerked his arm, and the sphere spun upwards as it left his fingers. He just had time to see it collide with the overhang of the ledge and scintillate into flames before he banked and fell away. Rifle bullets zzed past his body.

  It was a disappointment not to have hit anybody with his bomb, but his heart was hammering anyway. He had a clear view of blue sky and squeezed his eyes flat in the glare of the sun; then he banked, and the worldwall slewed round into sight. Half a dozen kites were framed against the vista. They were all swooping diagonally down, closing in on the wall.

  One kite flickered, dimmed, and was suddenly on fire, flames flapping like streamers against the fabric of the kite. The kite-pilot – Tighe, mouth wide in horror, couldn’t see who it was – flapped with one arm in what appeared to be an attempt to put the fire out. But the flames slid easily along the arm and the body of the pilot was soon twitching and jerking in harness. The whole structure was alight, hundreds of tiny flames wriggling on the broad plane of the kite itself like grass in the wind. For a while, freakishly, the kite rose, lifted on the cushion of hot air it had itself created; then a pole, burnt through, broke, and the kite crumpled with a puff of ash and an intensification of the fire. It dropped straight down, falling like a meteor and leaving only a streaky column of black smoke behind it. Tighe, circling again, couldn’t be sure if the kite had been struck by some weapon from the wall, or if the pilot had mishandled their bomb and set themselves alight.

  The other kites in view swept close against the wall and Tighe could make out the actions of throwing arms. Pimples of flame started at various points above or on the main Otre ledge and the kites wheeled away.

  Back on the base ledge, Tighe unharnessed himself as Waldea hurried over. ‘A kite,’ he babbled. ‘Burn! Burn and fall …’

  ‘Be quiet!’ snapped Waldea. ‘This is war. No time for that. Strap yourself in. Take another bomb and go again. This is the great push!’

  Bewildered, blinking, Tighe took another bomb. He felt miserable with his cargo now; its burning tar fuse smelt to him of death, the little parcel of wax could burn him and kill him as it had done to whoever it was who had fallen to their fiery death.

  As he stepped off the ledge, Tighe resolved to get rid of the wax-bomb as soon as possible. It did not occur to him until afterwards tha
t he could just have flown out of sight of Waldea and dropped it. Instead he worked round and up on the rising air and flew hard at the Otre ledge. He hurled the bomb with a newly inspired vigour, but he was travelling so fast that he had to bank immediately and he did not see where or whether the bomb struck home.

  After this he pulled away from the wall and circled, uneager to go back to the base ledge and be armed once again. He watched waves of kites circle up, swoop down and throw their bombs. Mostly they would strike bare wall or explode next to soldiers, and Tighe could see that they were remarkably ineffectual; scattering nothing more damaging than shortlived fire and hot wax. ‘They’re more dangerous to us than to the enemy!’ he said aloud to himself.

  One bomb, thrown from another kite, hit a soldier in the chest and the fire rapidly claimed his grey tunic. He was struggling to pull the clothing off, as far as Tighe could see from his distance. Then he stumbled and fell off the world. The rush of air kept the flames close to him and he was soon gone.

  Eventually Tighe decided he could not loiter much longer in the air without incurring Waldea’s anger, so he returned to the base ledge to be armed once again. For the third time that day he flew out, flew over the battlefield, swept straight up and lobbed his bomb. This time he yelped with pleasure to see it glance off an upraised rifle and slide along the shaft to explode directly in the face of an Otre soldier. The fellow dropped straight to the ground rolling back and forth in the dust to put out the burning wax. His hair had caught fire. Tighe passed and circled round, anxious to see whether he had actually killed somebody, but on his return it looked as though the soldier’s comrades had put out his flaming hair.

  The Otre had armed themselves with a new weapon. From several points on a number of ledges they released birds; to these birds they had tethered a mesh filled with tarred grassblades. Set alight, this globe of fire would terrify the birds to which they were attached, and the creatures would fly fast and straight to try and escape the flames. Blur their wings in flight and hurtle away.

  At first Tighe only saw the burning circles, tracing a thread of smoke away from the wall, speeding out in an impossibly straight line. The first of these missed its aim, but the second struck a kite away to Tighe’s right and spread its burning load over the wind-dried leather. It flamed and dropped in seconds.

  As more and more of these fiery parcels shot out from the Otre ledges, Tighe could see the birds that preceded them, and realised what the weapon was. A ball of fire came straight for him and he twitched his kite aside.

  He span, losing control for a moment, and then pulled round and flew west. He cleared the spar and left the battlefield behind. As the base ledge came into view he could see Waldea standing there. There were two kites on the ledge next to him, one warped and broken. Two kite-pilots were sitting at his feet.

  Tighe came in to land and unshackled himself. ‘Master!’ he shrieked. ‘I saw two kites destroyed! Two! It’s terrible!’

  Mulvaine and Mocghe were the pilots sitting at his feet. Mocghe was nursing his left arm.

  ‘This we know,’ said Waldea in a strange tone.

  ‘They have a new weapon!’ Tighe said, as other kites came whooshing down around him. ‘I think it bird, with fire tethered. Flies straight to us. Two kites!’

  ‘This is the glory and the pity of war, my children,’ said Waldea, in a musical voice. ‘There are no more bombs or I would send you out again. Again and over again until you destroyed every Otre soldier!’

  Tight’s stomach was crossed with conflicting senses of horror and excitement; the image of the kites crumbling in flame and falling to the bottom of the world kept flashing over his mind; but there was a thrumming in his blood so intense and exciting that his hands were trembling. He had thrown a bomb! Brought down an enemy soldier! ‘I struck an Otre,’ he told Waldea. ‘I hit one! His head flamed!’

  But Waldea was distracted now by the return of the remaining kites.

  The upwinds died as the afternoon went on and the kite-pilots huddled together on their ledge. Four were not present: Stel, Mani, Tolo and Chemler. The talk amongst those who remained was subdued, and avoided all mention of the dead companions. Each kite-pilot in turn related his day, the accuracy of his bombs. ‘I threw three,’ said Tighe. ‘The first two went bad, but the three was good. It struck an Otre on the head and his hair went on fire.’

  Murmurs went round the circle.

  ‘I threw four,’ said Mulvaine. ‘Two of those claimed Otre lives. I am glad to have killed two of the enemy!’

  Murmurs again.

  ‘My kite was struck twice by riflemen of Otre,’ said Ravielre. ‘There was such a rattle! Such shaking when their bullets went through my kite! But I threw two bombs and they both landed on ledges.’

  ‘I threw four,’ said Oldievre.

  ‘Three,’ corrected Waldea, in a deep base rumble. He was sitting, head down, silent for most of the time. ‘I only gave you out three bombs, Oldievre.’

  Oldievre blushed. ‘Three, I say,’ he said. ‘They all struck at the ledges and I saw grass on fire under the feet of several Otre soldiers.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘You have done well, my children,’ said Waldea, after the pause had extended long enough. ‘We shall be heroes of the war!’

  ‘Did we push through?’ asked Mulvaine tentatively. ‘Did the army capture the fortifications?’

  Nobody replied.

  Tighe slept poorly, and kept waking sweating. He had nightmares about fire, dreaming he was flying his kite as fire sprouted spontaneously from all around. Then he was falling and he woke up crying aloud as he had done as a child, with a gut-wrenching sensation that the ledge beneath him was tilting and that he was falling all over again.

  He must have woken half a dozen times, each time blubbing and sweating. Finally he woke to the sound of the dawn gale through the open dugout doorway and could not sleep further. He felt exhausted in every part of his body. There was a clench of terror at the back of his throat, a palpable sensation of horrified anticipation. But at the same time he was eager to get back out into the air, to throw more bombs at the enemy. It was them; it was the Otre. They were devils.

  Over breakfast, Ati came and settled himself next to Tighe. ‘We’re soldiers now,’ he said, in a quavery voice. ‘We fight in the war.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tighe. ‘I am hungry to fight again.’

  Ati nodded, as if he understood exactly the complex of eagerness and terror that informed Tighe’s statement. ‘We always be soldiers now,’ he said. ‘All through the future. We will always be soldiers now after this.’

  ‘I am hungry to fight again,’ repeated Tighe. But, as he thought about what he was saying, he realised that his real eagerness was to get back to his village. He remembered his pashe. He remembered being held in his pashe’s arms.

  Waiting on the ledge in the low, early sunshine, the kite-pilots could already hear the sound of battle from beyond the spar. Waldea stood before them. ‘We have no bombs now,’ he declared, ‘but we will have bombs soon. The higher command is very happy with the work you have done, my children! The Pope is pleased! You harassed the enemy, you distracted them from their attacks upon the Imperial comrades. Today our glorious army will push hard and break though; and you can repeat your heroism. You can distract the Otre from our attack. Each of you will gather stones in a grass-weave sack.’ He held out an empty bag as illustration; it was big enough for half a dozen stones perhaps, no more. ‘Fly, my children! Pelt the enemy with stones! Today will be a great victory!’

  Tighe, agitated and unhappy, eager to get out in the air and fight, or eager to spring up the stairway and run back to the Meshwood – he could not even decide which thing he wanted to do more – got down on all fours with the rest of the platon. They all searched the ledge and even up the stairway for stones to gather into their sacks. ‘Barbarian,’ said Mulvaine, crawling close to him, ‘this is an idiot idea.’

  ‘Hush,’ said Tighe.

&n
bsp; ‘What harm can we do to soldiers by throwing stones at them? It is a children’s game. It is an idiot idea. How many of us will die?’

  ‘Hush!’ said Tighe in a louder voice, his panic rising inside him.

  He fitted six stones into the bag; any more and the extra weight would start to interfere with the flying. But he couldn’t have fitted many more in. He tucked the sack inside his trousers and started strapping himself on to his kite. Ati’s kite was next to him. ‘Today the army will push through,’ said Ati, his voice wobbly with fear. ‘They will – yes?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Tighe. ‘Today.’

  He was glad for the clench in his stomach as he fell off the world, glad for the rush in his head as he banked and climbed.

  *

  The battlefield looked as it always did. If anything, the central shelf looked less thronged with blue uniforms than it had done before. It was impossible to see how the battle was progressing, whether the Empire or the Otre were prevailing. The whole thing looked static. Tighe’s eye for detail had improved a little: so that he noticed, now, when a blue- or grey-suited individual tumbled from the ledge. He distinguished between the blossoms of flame that resulted from dizzy-bombs and those from cannon fire; he could start to pick out individual kites and distinguish them from the differing patchwork patterns of their construction.

  He swept down and then pulled in towards the enemy ledges. Snipers turned their attentions from firing down to firing out at the incoming kites, and Tighe felt the blended sensations of thrill and fear. His free hand was groping in his trousers, pulling out a graspful of stones and flinging them desperately. They rattled down harmlessly, and Tighe pulled back and away.

  He flew away from the wall and passed several other kites coming in. By the time he circled round for another pass each of these was returning, flying awaywall again. Tighe saw Mulvaine pass, then Ati, and then Bel. He passed close enough to Bel to see her face, which was caught in a rictus of fear, mouth open. She looked as though she was yelling, screaming, but with a twinge Tighe realised she was dead; dribbles of blood were falling away from her feet, her clothes were black and glistening, soaked with blood, her free arm and her legs dangled slackly. He turned, followed her kite for a while and flew in behind her close enough to see the perforated hole in the exact middle of her back. But even in death, with her right arm wedged under the cross-spar, she flew a good kite; she flew, following the ups and downs of the morning air, out and out. Tighe turned back. Perhaps she would fly all the way to the Pause.