On (GollanczF.)

by Adam Roberts

  He had time, as he rummaged in his grass-weave sack for the last few stones, to wonder about Ravielre. What would he do, now that Bel was dead? Would he be unhinged by grief? He felt tears himself and then he remembered: the wall was not an enormous, epic environment; it was no giant world filled with heroic souls. It was an ant-hill, a small-scale structure built by a small-minded God. He, Tighe, was nothing but an ant; Bel had been an ant; Ravielre was an ant. How stupid it would be to grieve for the loss of an ant! This thought, hollow and grief-tasting as it was, gave him a strange strength. What did it matter? What did anything matter?

  He almost didn’t realise that he was screaming as he swept in towards the Otre ledges. He banked fast and late, sweeping within a few hand spans of the enemy, and flinging down stones. Pray God, at the bottom of the wall, that these stones fly true! Pray that one strikes an enemy soldier in the eye, blinding them so that they stumble off the world and die!

  And then, before he even realised what he was doing, Tighe had landed on the enemy ledge.

  It was a wide ledge that was about a third overhung, and the Otre sappers had constructed a rim along the outside edge of its floor that was a hand-span high. The ground was panelled with stems of planks of wood and the wallside was regularly marked with windows. Tighe hopped over the rim and ran a little way down the ledge to kill the last of the speed of his kite. Up ahead were four Otre soldiers, all crouching down and aiming weaponry below them. With a start, one of them looked up at Tighe and fell backwards in what appeared to be sheer astonishment, collapsing on his back. His three fellows looked up.

  For a fraction of a moment Tighe could see straight into their eyes. They were afraid at this apparition, and then their fright blenched to anger. In unison the three of them levelled their rifles, as their fourth comrade struggled to get himself upright again.

  ‘Hello!’ Tighe said, loudly, in the Imperial language. Then he said it again, ‘Hello!’ this time in his native language. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. Then he started to laugh, the laughter just bubbling out, unstoppable, inappropriate, as he stepped smartly to the left. His bad foot struck the rim of the Otre ledge and he fell sideways off the world.

  His head went down and the blood flushed into his face. Then the blade of his kite, cutting through the air, caught and swirled round. He was instantly righted and then he pulled hard left to fly down and away from the wall.

  He had only two stones left now, so he scooped them both out and threw them vaguely in the direction of the wall to his right, uncaring now whether they hit friendly or enemy troops. He was still laughing. It all seemed ridiculous to him.

  A series of yawing tumbles and a rising spiral on a strong updraught brought him into a position where he could see the battlefield. It looked as chaotic as before. Some blue-suited soldiers were trying to climb, like flies up a sheer surface, from the central shelf to a tiny hummock half-way between the two front lines. They moved slowly, picks attached to their wrists and ankles, digging one pick into the clay of the worldwall before removing another and creeping up. Dizzy-bombs swirled out and round, exploding close to them; sniper fire rained down. Each time Tighe circled through the air and round another one of them had been picked off by the enemy.

  He flew back to the home ledge as the morning winds began to lose lift, and discovered that he was one of the last to return. Ati came running up to him as he landed. ‘We thought you’d been killed, you stupid barbarian,’ he said, embracing Tighe whilst he was still unbuckling. Tighe felt strange; mostly he felt annoyed that Ati was interrupting him getting himself unbuckled from his kite. The laughter had all dribbled out of him now and had left a residue of bad temper, like a petulant child. He couldn’t understand why Ati was acting the way he was; couldn’t understand the tears. All through supper, Ati chattered, hyperactive, fidgeting and repeating himself over and again. Tighe sat sullenly, glowering around him, and brushing Ati’s arm away whenever the downwaller tried to embrace him.

  After eating, Waldea stood up to address them. ‘Today I spoke with the high command,’ he said. ‘We are close to victory, my children. Think of it! Victory will be ours soon! One more day!’

  Nobody cheered; but when Waldea led them all in singing patriotic songs they all joined in.

  17

  That night Tighe lay for a long while awake, staring up into the darkness. He became convinced, as his restless mind circled round and round, swooped through the same thoughts like a kite marking time in the air, that his pashe had once told him something that was terribly important, something that would serve him well at this time. But he couldn’t remember what it was. And he searched and searched through his memory for the thing that his mother had told him, hoping it would come back to him.

  His head was itching, as it sometimes did, where the scars ran over his scalp. He scratched at them with dirty nails, thinking again of his pashe.

  Eventually he fell asleep.

  He woke in the dark, shoved awake by somebody pressing a foot against his shoulder and rocking him back and forth. ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘Out of your blanket, you one,’ came Waldea’s voice. He was holding a grass-torch, which threw queer shadows over his face, doubling the ridges of his scars with dark lines, hollowing out his eye sockets.

  Tighe sat up. The sky through the dugout door was still tar-black; it was long before the dawn gale. There was the sound of shouting from outside, and a hectic bustle all around.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Outside, my children!’ shouted Waldea. ‘Outside and up the stairway!’

  Several of the kite-pilots were still evidently half asleep as they climbed out of their blankets. Mocghe stumbled over to his kite and began to pick up the main spar. ‘Leave that!’ bellowed Waldea. ‘Leave your kites here, my children. Straight through the door and up the stairs.’

  Out of the dugout it was bitterly cold and Tighe pulled his blanket around his shoulders to keep his neck warm. With only starlight the ledge looked murky, alien; Tighe followed the boy ahead of him and soon was stumbling lumpishly up the stairway. Still wondering if he was dreaming, he lined up with the rest of the platon on the broad shelf at the top of the ascent. Soldiers passed and returned. The dugout doors on this level flickered with the orange light of grass-torches inside. There was a general commotion, shouting and knocking noises from inside the dugouts and from further east along the wall.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Ati, breathless with the night climb.

  ‘I don’t know. Mulvaine! Mulvaine, what’s going on?’

  Mulvaine looked around. ‘Where’s Waldea?’ he bleated.

  A man emerged from one of the dugouts; a short, pouch-bellied man with a great mane of hair. ‘You!’ he screamed. ‘Who are you?’

  Nobody dared answer until he had screamed again, ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Kite-pilot platon, sir,’ answered Tighe. ‘Command of Waldea. Ordered to come up here, sir, in the night!’

  The little man grunted, a high-pitched noise like a pig. ‘Get in this dugout and take a pike each – you know what a pike is?’

  The platon stared at him, until he started screaming again, and they hurriedly filed through the door. Inside, the dugout was a chaos of people and flickering lights; the floor over to the left was piled with blue-coated bodies, blood patched over their clothes and skin. Some still trembling. The dust of the floor had been turned into a sticky mud by what Tighe realised was probably blood. The sight did not shock him, but he turned his eyes away. It was, somehow, untidy. People in the dugout were hurrying in all directions and there was a stench of something unpleasant. Tighe followed the other kite-pilots to the far wall, where a jumble of poles had been stacked. They were all of wood, with tarred fire-hardened points at one end. Each member of the platon took one and made their way back outside.

  The little man was still there. ‘Hurry! hurry!’ he screamed. ‘Come along now – all of you.’ And at a jog he led them east, up a slope, a ser
ies of steps and through a short tunnel. On the far side of this was a view of the battlefield, a dark expanse of mostly flat vertical worldwall, lit with the jewel reds and oranges of fires.

  ‘How,’ shouted the little man. ‘How many?’ He started counting in threes, running his eye from pilot to pilot. ‘Twelve and one is thirteen, very well. That will be enough.’

  ‘Please sir,’ offered Mulvaine. ‘Our commander is Waldea …’

  ‘Be quiet!’ the little man shrieked. ‘Your orders are to hold this ledge. Use your pikes. If any of us come, any Imperial, they will call friend and you must let them past. If any enemy come, you must use your pikes and not let them past. You understand! Desertion is cowardice and you will be thrown off the wall. The glory of the Empire is at stake! The life of the Pope himself. You must not let them past’ And without another word he hurried off west, carrying his torch with him.

  For a while the platon stood, a little stunned, in the absolute darkness. Eventually Mulvaine said, ‘Well, we have orders, I suppose.’

  ‘What must we do, Mulvaine?’ asked Ravielre.

  ‘Form a line – be careful in the dark, though. Form a line and then a line behind it. I suppose we do that. Do we do that?’

  ‘Yes,’ offered Tighe. Then Pelis said, more forcefully, ‘Yes.’

  They shuffled into position on the ledge and held their pikes out at an angle before them, with the points facing away. For a while everything was quiet. Tighe felt his breathing calm a little. He looked around himself; the blotches of orange and red visible from this oblique perspective all over the night-time wall seemed a crude imitation of the pure sharp light of the stars.

  ‘What are we doing here, do you think?’ asked Ravielre.

  ‘Holding this position,’ said Mulvaine. But his voice was trembling.

  ‘Are the Otre coming, then?’ asked Ati.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Tighe, with feeling, ‘you shit-eating idiot.’

  But they all knew it must be true. For a while Ati was silent, stung by Tighe’s rebuke; but eventually he couldn’t contain himself. ‘But if they come what will we do? They are a terrible enemy – they will eat us, kill us.’

  ‘We were breaking through,’ said Mocghe, but there was no real conviction in his voice. ‘Victory is almost ours.’

  They stood for a while; it was hard to know for how long. Tighe’s forearms began to ache with the load of holding the pike out. His foot twinged. As the time dragged on, he began to feel a little absurd. Somebody coughed and the boy next to Tighe shuffled.

  ‘This is stupid,’ muttered Mulvaine.

  Tighe didn’t say anything, but the sensation of ridiculousness was spreading through him.

  Somebody appeared at the end of the ledge, a tall man carrying a rifle. ‘Stop!’ warbled Mulvaine. ‘Stop!’

  ‘Who are you?’ grunted this figure. ‘Fuck it, what’s this?’

  ‘Are you friend?’ insisted Mulvaine, wobbling his pike in front of him.

  ‘No time for this, you idiots,’ said the man, pushing past. As he brushed past Tighe smelt on him the odour of fresh blood.

  After he had passed by, the platon chattered nervously.

  ‘What’s happened? Have the Otre broken through?’

  ‘You saw how it was on the battlefield – we all saw how it was from the air.’

  ‘Yes – yes – it was chaos.’

  ‘The enemy had the higher ledges.’

  ‘Oh God,’ wailed Ati. ‘They’re coming.’

  ‘Hush!’ called Mulvaine. But his own voice was breaking with fear.

  ‘They’ll be here soon,’ said Mocghe.

  ‘Oh God,’ wailed Ati.

  ‘These pikes will be no use,’ said somebody behind Tighe. ‘We’ll all die – all of us.’

  ‘Be quiet,’ whimpered Mulvaine. ‘Please – be quiet.’

  There was the sudden, piercing sound of an explosion somewhere in front of them and a clamour of voices; the platon fell silent. Further explosions followed, like giant footsteps percussing the wall closer and closer to the ledge where the platon cowered behind their pikes. Tighe could see the bulges of white and yellow light spilling out from the wall below them.

  The voices were suddenly very close, and a gaggle of soldiers appeared at the end of the ledge. Two of them had torches fixed to their helmets, but the light was low. Their uniforms looked dark, might have been blue, but that might have been only shadow colouring the grey darkly. Tighe’s heart was hammering.

  Mulvaine started saying something, but the soldiers were upon them in an instant. They took no notice at all of the pike-guard and swept right through them.

  Almost as soon as they were past, Ati threw down his pike. ‘We’re dead if we stay here,’ he cried and suddenly everybody was dropping their pikes and starting backwards along the ledge, Tighe losing his weapon just as eagerly as the others.

  They swarmed back through the tunnel and hurried down and along. They quickly caught up the guards who had passed them earlier. Behind them the sounds of the explosions boomed and every blast made Tighe twitch in his skin.

  Somebody collided with Tighe in the darkness and sent him spinning. For one horrible moment he thought he was going to fall off the world, but his chest and face slapped hard against the dirt of the ledge and his relief was almost strong enough to drown out the pain.

  Feet were thudding past; somebody trod on his hand and he yelped with pain. Rolling aside and getting himself up on his feet again he found himself in the midst of a jostling crowd. He elbowed his way back to the wall, gasping with the general infection of fright, and made his way along to the opening of one of the dugouts. As he stepped forward to go inside somebody slammed into him in a hurry to get out. Tighe was knocked back, but not over, and abandoned himself. There was no hope. It was all over.

  He started running westward along the ledge in the same direction as the bulk of people. Shouts filled the air. Pools of light passed as he hurried along. The only thing that mattered in the world was to get away – to get away from whatever unseen horror was approaching from behind.

  He ran into a blockage, a tight huddle of people all trying to squeeze down a narrow defile. Initially he felt a terrible panic at the thought of being blocked in his path and he threw himself against the back of one of the soldiers at the rear of the ruck and slapped with his fists. ‘Let me through! Let me pass!’

  Somebody’s voice rose clear above the hubbub. ‘To me! For the Empire! To me!’

  There was a moment’s hesitation in the knot of bodies, and then, with a palpable sense of something turning about a hinge, the flow of people shifted. Tighe was being jostled the other way now, as people pushed past him to stream eastward along the ledge. The voice receded, To me! For the Empire! and with a sense of something clicking Tighe’s fear switched to courage. He was hurrying eastward along the ledge, actually pushing past people in his eagerness to get to the front. A group of kite-pilots were with him.

  They ran back along the shelf, past the flickering lit holes of the dugout doorways. The voice carried them along. To me! For the Empire! On to the Door! Let us capture the Door!

  The flood of people slowed, clogged, up the stairs and back into the tunnel. This pause gave Tighe time to catch his breath and wonder what he was doing. Rushing into battle? Without a weapon? His pike was probably where he had dropped it, but even if he could find it in the darkness, did he really want to come up against a terrible, fearsome Otre warrior armed only with a pike?

  He doubled back with the vague intention of finding the stairs back down to the kite-platon base ledge, and almost at once he ran straight into the small fat-bellied man who had screamed at them earlier.

  ‘You!’ screeched this fellow. ‘Where are you going? The battle is eastward, you!’

  ‘Kite-pilot, sir,’ gasped Tighe.

  ‘There’s no kite flying at night!’ howled the man. ‘Deserters are thrown off the wall! That way – that way!’ He gave Tighe a huge push and propelled him eastw
ard along the ledge. Tighe almost fell, picked himself up and ran along the ledge. At the end of the shelf was the stair up.

  ‘Tighe?’

  It was Mulvaine. ‘Tighe what’s going on?’

  ‘Empire!’ bellowed a tall man, hurrying past them up the stairs. He was pulling his rifle from his shoulder as he ran.

  ‘Tighe what’s going on?’ repeated Mulvaine. Tighe pulled him hard against the wall, out of the way of the intermittent stream of soldiers hurrying up the wall. He saw that Ati, Ravielre, Oldievre and Pelis were also huddled there.

  ‘It’s chaos,’ said Tighe, breathlessly. ‘I think the Otre are trying to break through.’

  ‘Should we fight?’ Mulvaine asked nervously. ‘We could go up the stair and join the others.’

  ‘We have no weapons!’ moaned Ati.

  ‘We should fight!’ said Oldievre. ‘We are soldiers!’

  ‘We’re kite-pilots,’ countered Ati, hugging himself and rocking a little back and forth, so that the back of his head bumped against the wall behind him. ‘We fight already.’

  ‘Well, we can’t stay here,’ said Tighe. ‘It’ll be dawn soon.’

  He was right: the sky was beginning to pale and the hurrying soldiers had a weird, spectral quality to them.

  ‘Through here!’ shouted somebody from up the stairway. ‘Through here!’ A group dashed past, carrying between them three or maybe four bodies slung in blankets.