Among You Secret Children

by Jeff Kamen

  They stare at her as though hypnotised, their faces frozen, tragic, furious.

  ‘Be the night. Be this dark dawn now, deep inside you. Be the dark before the sun, and you will return to the day. See it. See it deeply. See the power there. If in all your lives you were afraid, be more afraid now. Feel the terror in you. Feel its shape, see the colour of it, see it bright, like blood. Death is waiting.’ She nods slowly, as if counting them. ‘This is where we are, in the night, not chattering like children. Be a child, be afraid, be thinking of your status, and you will not return. And we will not be here to bury you because we will lie around you slaughtered.’

  As a few of the villagers start muttering, her teeth glint savagely. ‘LISTEN TO ME!’ she roars, and they shudder still. ‘Be in your death! Now! And fight with the dead! Pass through the ones you kill like deer leaping from the mist, and you will land in the day. You are in the heart of your life, and your heart is beating you, and you are here to kill death which is our enemy. Be the man you are, not the fear of it. Be the woman you are, not the fear of it. Or stay with the dead.’

  She sweeps round the pike of her spear, watching the faces stiffen. ‘You. Here. Each person I see. Death is waiting. You are joining the dead. We are joining them and they are dreaming us from another day. Go then. Run towards that day. Feel the power of it. Remember what the enemy stole from us. Remember the faces. Feel the terror in you and use it. And you will pass on, and you will return. And you will live.’

  The silence is absolute and profound. Brutal. Her mouth is tightly drawn, her eyes flashing darkly as she surveys them all again, exhibiting a strange and distant caution as if catching the scent of something. At last her gaze settles on Ranuf, to whom she says, ‘Put half your people under Pétar and Markos’ command. They’ll be firing from the ridge. The rest of them you may take under the river with you. Yvor will lead on that side. You’ll be behind the pass, as you requested. But you do not move until you hear the sound of firing and you do not go out upon the bridge. Is that understood?’

  He nods.

  She glares round one more time, then with a brisk gesture of dismissal calls the leaders together for a final briefing. People break away, blinking, dazed. While the leaders talk, the other recruits check their packs and weapons and a few help the youngsters they’ve brought along to tend to the animals. When the briefing comes to an end, the brothers nod at her. Ranuf mutters his assent, wiping his brow. The bowyer Markos says, ‘I understand,’ revealing narrow stained teeth. He coughs into a handkerchief and pockets it and calls his party to him, as do the other leaders as they prepare to go. While she rounds up the hunters due to accompany her on the bridge, the two brothers embrace and the various parties mingle to wish each other luck.

  Yvor is the first to leave, taking Ranuf and twenty others with him along the foot of the ridge as they head south in search of the entrance to the foul and bone-strewn underpass which will lead them to the far side of the river. Their lights quiver in the bowels of the night and disappear behind the rocks. The three remaining groups depart a few minutes later, leaving a handful of youths to guard the vehicles and animals in a dingy lens of activity that soon fades behind them as they take to the rocks with their packs hitched. Then with ropes and picks at the ready, they begin their ascent of the ridge.

  ~O~

  At the top, upon taking their bearings, they go south, climbing from marker to marker in search of the deep recess in the rock they’ve been using as a shelter during the reconnaissance.

  Eventually a voice hisses the way down to it and Jaala has to hunch to clear her head as she enters. The recess is black and draughty. Once down inside it, she leaves the recruits to set down their gear and continue their preparations. The villagers keep to themselves but show no sign of rebellion and she takes little heed of them. All this performed in the glow of a single lampwick, the recruits shuffling in the murk like cattle, some sitting away in the corners to rest, others hanging their clothes up to dry.

  She stands in silence. The three parties must all at some point go their separate ways from here, Markos’ team heading to the lower position, there to dig in and wait for the vehicle’s descent, Pétar’s to the high position overlooking the bridge posts, and her own to descend the broad slopes leading to where the colossal bridge foundations sink into the landscape. Agitated, she sends scouts out to check that nothing has changed in the Versteckts’ set up. The rest must wait, their eyes swinging anxiously in the gloom. She paces about ferally. At some point a fuel drum is dragged across to the stones upon which it will be heated. Drapes are strung across the entrance against escaping fumes and smoke, the fabrics fastened to stakes hammered into place earlier in the week.

  Within the hour, a pair of scouts return with news that all is proceeding as usual. ‘Then we begin,’ she says, signalling, and as kindling is lit within the ring of stones, she warns the recruits overseeing the fire to take every precaution. None argue. Once more she looks round at them, their blackened faces and hands, each alien to all. Then, with a nod to Markos, who sits checking through a pile of weapons, she leads the way outside.

  She climbs with Pétar towards the crest, where on sighting a crooked finger of rock, they halt in light rainfall. He exchanges a few words with her and the hunters hiss and clasp hands in the dark and then the two parties continue on their separate ways, Pétar turning to the north so he can overlook the bridge deck while she continues ahead. Her party climb swiftly to the crest, and on reaching it continue over to the far side and into enemy view, the bridge standing some distance to the north as they descend.

  There are six hunters with her. They climb and slide and struggle down in ones and pairs. No torches, no weapons appear to be trained on the slope from the guards’ positions, but they know better than that. They watch the open terrain and the bridge for silhouettes and movement.

  Down they climb, and the moment they sense themselves at risk of being profiled they go to ground, go seeking shelter. Then they continue. Crouched in the wet stones of a natural windbreak, Jaala studies the folds of the broad slope below and the means by which it leads down to the embankment. It is intersected four or five times by the broad and looping road, which terminates at the bottom in a great wash of mud. The moon is not in view, yet she can see the dim flow of the river down there, flowing sluggishly, like a stream of smoked and leaden glass along a giant moulding.

  The only lights on the bridge appear to emanate from the tunnel area. She sees no guards moving but knows they are somewhere around, watching the darkened world they fear, and it is with great caution that she and the hunters turn towards the bridge as they climb further downhill. They descend slipping, grappling with loose stones and wet rootwires as they make their way towards the pale body of the road. Thin trees provide some cover as they near the point where they will cross, and as the rain comes gusting, she signals for them to stop. They squat beneath the branches, Karl with his hood up.

  They’ve made quick progress and the bridge is looming. She surveys it grimly. It looks different from down there. Feels different, vast and skybound as it is. Like the fossilised remains of something prehistoric, something terrible, a gate through which things beyond the imagination might roar through burnt and maimed and seething like the harbingers of a plague. She studies the thick lines of steel etched against the warring sky, its ribs and joins and thrusting limbs. Then she studies the area they must climb to, where, if their plans succeed, the vehicle will come crashing down, giving them just moments to scramble clear, perhaps to climb free, perhaps to take the long fall to the water, there to swim ashore.

  On hearing whispers she turns to find the hunters’ eyes glittering in the dark. They are waiting for her. Signalling with her spear, she breaks cover and they follow her to where the vehicle’s tracks have left thick rinds of mud, providing a dark patch where they can safely cross. They cross the road in haste, the last pair sprinting as a fierce needle of light slashes down through the railings and cuts throug
h the teeming droplets and burns upon the ground, its power raw and silent and unforgiving in its intent as it scans up and down and explodes upon the corrugated container sitting alone on the bank. The hunters fling themselves behind any cover they can find, she crouching behind a rock and watching the burning eye of the torchbeam as it scours the night for intruders.

  ‘What if they see us?’ Laszló hisses.

  ‘Then you keep still,’ Tanya replies.

  ‘What if they shoot?’ says Jakub, ‘we can’t just lie here.’

  ‘Just keep still.’

  ‘Can’t we go back to the trees?’ he asks. ‘Why can’t we —’

  As the beam cuts their way, their voices are silenced and do not come again until it has gone. They watch it burn a trail uphill, growing fainter as the distance extends, and as it disappears, Jaala finds herself looking back towards the container. Staring peculiarly. As though reminded of something other than the morning operations along the bank, the darkly jetting liquid.

  Images from another age, perhaps, a time of magic lights and moving machines. And her role? Her place back then?

  ... habibi ... o, o, habibi ... habibi ...

  ... instruments ... ensure the instruments are there ...

  Close all the doors ...

  She grips her spear.

  Such a strange object, she thinks, one which would look to the innocent like an oversized box. It sits inert and silent for the moment, but she can sense its power, even from there. Shaped like a head equipped with gills, sleeping watchfully, dreaming of the fruit of black tides.

  The hunters’ whispers bring her back and they are discussing the glossy black shelter further along the bank, watching it for signs of other treachery. Where the tar-stained buckets are kept; where the guards hide by day from the elements, watching their slaves weep and carry and drop and haul. An image comes to her of a woman the guards had dragged off as she’d tried to protect her young daughter, a girl appearing to be simple-minded and slow. A girl who’d been hurled into the water where she’d thrashed about weakly in the long brown archipelagos of foam, then vanished amidst her mother’s bottomless wailing. She gently rubs her temples. The hunters look to her for guidance but she does not move. Nothing happens anywhere; the search beam has gone. A minute passes. Two. Still nothing.

  ‘Jaala?’

  In the background the constant washing boom of the waterfall. Its noise seeming to her like rocks tumbling down water, not the other way around. Like the fatal dissolution of the storms which had brought it into being from the firmament. At last she looks up. She eyes the grains of movement along the bridge where the guards are roving. The beam might return at any time, but this is the risk they must take. ‘Follow me,’ she says, and they raise up and travel through rain and darkness to the field of utter shadow beneath the bridge, where they cannot be seen.

  ~O~

  A scout who has come from the southern position slithers down into the gulley and calls for Pétar, who, warning him to be quiet, rises to receive him. ‘What’s wrong?’ he says.

  ‘Markos sent me,’ the scout says, panting. ‘We saw them going under it. They made it alright.’

  ‘Good. Anything else? Any messages?’

  ‘No. We’re just waiting. We’ve got everything ready, just taking it in turns to watch.’

  Pétar scratches his bearded cheek. ‘Did you pass the shelter?’

  ‘No. Came along the top.’

  ‘Could you smell anything? Smoke?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘See any lights down there?’

  ‘I couldn’t see any.’

  ‘Good,’ he says, then tells the scout to return to Markos with the message that all is well. When the scout has clambered away, he crouches again to survey the enemy. The bridge is almost deserted, lit by just one of the two standing lamps that flank the entrance, and even this appears to be dimmer than in days before. He watches the guards where they stand at the midpoint of the deck and a minute later he moves a fraction to keep an eye on the pair whose rainshelter is positioned on the roadside, adjacent to the entry posts. All is as expected. He is checking his bow when he notices somebody struggling to smother a cough. He whispers across at a shag-haired figure with its back to a rock.

  ‘Lajos? That you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You okay?’

  Lajos hawks quietly and spits. ‘Alright,’ he whispers.

  ‘Your leg?’

  ‘Improvin. Must be all this rock climbin.’

  Pétar smiles.

  Then Sonja’s outline appears and she says something about Radjík. Lajos seems to nod.

  ‘Don’t worry about her,’ Pétar says. ‘She’ll be fine. She’s a tough little nut.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Lajos murmurs.

  ‘How long now?’ Sonya whispers.

  Pétar looks in her direction but can no longer see her. ‘Hard to say exactly,’ he says. ‘Listen. Go and keep warm, both of you. Go back to the shelter. The first signal won’t come until we see the lights change. It’ll take a while.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Okay. Thanks.’

  Pétar watches them stir, then he goes across to a knot of armed figures and sits camped among them and their canopy of raised hoods. After a while a low female voice starts to whisper at the back of his head. A voice that grips and will not leave.

  Be in your death. Now. And fight with the dead. Pass through the ones you kill like deer leaping from the mist, and you will land in the day ...

  Wiping his brow, his face, he leaves the group and climbs off a short way to get some air. Nearby is another group of archers. The man nearest in the row whispers to him and Pétar looks out to find that the roadside guards have left their shelter. They are training their torches on the upper road. ‘What’s going on?’ he says.

  ‘Don’t know. They’ve just started doing it.’

  ‘Did you see anything?’

  ‘No. Could be anything. Could be foxes.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be other people would it?’ hisses another voice.

  ‘Not people we know,’ Pétar replies. He looks back to the tunnel, where a deep blotch of light is permanently kindling, neither growing nor fading. He feels the sweat grow cold on him, hears a noise beginning, almost like a chant. He sees a black radiance shining into him from beneath a pair of horn-shaped eyebrows.

  You are in the heart of your life, and your heart is beating you, and you are here to kill death which is our enemy. Be the man you are, not the fear of it. Be the woman you are, not the fear of it. Or stay with the dead ...

  Chapter 50 — The Tracks

  Most of the climbing is over and she sits high above the roaring world, leaning crook-armed in the dark, looking around herself. Watching the crows wheel below, their harsh cries muffled in the foul-scented vapour. Waiting with the thundering downpour of water streaked in shades of black and bone and charcoal, thick skeins that twist and fall away in endlessly separating sheets.

  They have been up there for hours. Just to be sure. Should anything change. Time now like a mutiny in her heart as she struggles to hold on to what she has become, all of it wrapped in a deadly convergence of beginnings and voices.

  She realises that the rain has stopped, and that the night is losing its depth. Just then a pair of hunters come climbing her way, returning to their hiding place in the airy metal eaves. She sits round, Jakub and Karl taking shape and whispering upon arrival to confirm that the pulleys are in position. ‘Good,’ she says, then her eyes pick out the female hunters nearby. ‘You two, listen,’ she says, and they look up. ‘You’re to keep watch on the tunnel area. Only there. If they come running, you shoot. I want you one on each side, so get a line secured to the fixtures. If you fall, do it clear of the bridge.’

  Radjík and Tanya nod. The entire group gathers to discuss a few last details and shortly they hear the engines fire. A muffled roar breaks out, echoing throughout the underdeck. Jaala looks through the cor
ridor of interlocking beams to see a red cloud drifting. ‘Come,’ she says, and climbs away.

  The hunters follow her. Climbing under. In. Through. Around. Pausing to balance at times, hooking with their arms, taking grips and dropping them, swinging, moving as a team through each rectangular section of the latticework until they are directly beneath the hole overlaid by the parallel tracks of armoured steel. They sit tight and wait as the vehicle begins to move. Voices arise, officers issuing a series of commands that tell them it is reversing. The red spray of light intensifies and then disappears in a downward waft of fumes as the great hulking wheels power backwards over the space they plan to drag it down from on its return. Back it goes, the heavy linked treads pressing ton on ton upon the bonded plates, steel biting into steel. It grinds and roars, and after a short period of darkness and shade the brilliant headlights bleach the air, and from where they sit they see exposed the wormy outline of their ropes and winches strung around the area where they’ll be working.

  ‘Can they see it?’ Jakub asks.

  ‘If they look down they will,’ says Karl.

  ‘Fuck.’

  Karl’s curses echo this as the vehicle’s front lip passes overhead. Its noise is thunderous, with every fixture shaking under its weight and the fury of its mechanisms. When it’s fully across, they turn to watch as the rear lights blood the road and the area around the foot of the ridge. The vehicle continues reversing, turning tightly. It makes a full backward manoeuvre and when it is sitting square in the road it rocks still a moment, then trundles forward, following the road as it dips downhill. From this point on it begins its winding descent in pursuit of fuel. They look back again. The guards’ voices are still audible but the underbed is now dark enough for them to feel safe beneath it when they are moving. When the two girls have climbed away, Jaala orders Gustav to stay on watch while the rest of them focus on the main operation.