Salt

by Adam Roberts

  We were no hierarchy but warmaking has its own dynamic. It seemed I was talented with this making, and most were content to follow my advice. Some not, but we all faced the same enemy. So a force of sixty agreed to come with me. Another hundred wanted to stay with the planes, to fly them and fight from them like marines. The rest, and the wounded, were to go north with the cars, to the mines and safety. It was clear that as soon as we attacked the Senaarian base in Als we would have to leave the cave, because the enemy would retaliate with greater air force, and try to eradicate us. Our only defence in this situation, I thought, was to spread ourselves, although the pilots and the marines disagreed and spat at me, saying that they could wrench control of the air from Senaar. Then we ate, set up provisions, and parted. Most drove north; I took three cars and drove south. They were so full of rations that most of the ground troop had to walk beside them.

  It was an hour before the Evening Whisper when we moved. I ordered all weapons hidden beneath clothing, or otherwise disposed of (which was easy, because a needleweapon is a light and compact thing). Any sats seeing us might take us for refugees; a needless precaution with hindsight, because the sats were disabled. Our balloons made us seem tubby, like old people on an evening stroll. We drove the cars out east, and parked them in the lee of a dune, with salt-cloth draped over them. Then we made our way through the twilight towards the sea. It was tightly timed. Our attack had to happen at exactly the time of the Whisper, when nobody expected it.

  What this meant was that the sixty of us lay against the wind-side of a dune in the purpling light for ten minutes, waiting for the wind to start to rise. I lay nearest the top, and pushed a sight-tube all the way through the pinnacle so that the end glinted a little out of the other side (but dune tops always glint whites, silvers, reds and purples in the sunset, so no sentry would notice it). And there was the camp. Two planes parked, rigid-structured and packed wind-side against the evening winds. Then there were sentry posts, again packed against the wind. I saw also blocks, which must have been supplies, and a portable plant to desalinate the Aradys. There were three sentries, but they would go inside when the wind came. The rest of the force would be inside, taking mess. The other plane (because we knew there were three) was clearly still up in the air; and would either land very soon, or else would climb higher than the storm winds to be out of the way of the corrosive particles. Either way, the time was almost upon us.

  So I pulled out the tube and gave a thumb-signal left and right. We would attack when I stood up; and we would end the attack with our manpacks when I fired a yellow flare from my shoulder. Then we would regroup by the cars, and set up a defensive position; although I hoped we would inflict enough damage to avoid counter-attack.

  Nearly time. And the wind was starting at our backs. I pulled on my mask, as did we all; to cover all the skin and hair of the head. Even with its protection though, I could begin to feel the prick of bulleting salt crystals as tiny smarts.

  So, in those pre-fighting moments, what was it I felt? Because there was a nervousness, of course. And a sudden hot realisation in my head that I could die, that within minutes I could be dead. But this was not a trembly epiphany; and it reasoned like death without feeling like it. It felt like being alive. I could feel every component of my body, every finger and every toe. I could feel the pressure of my heart against its nestling membrane as it sucked in and pushed out. As the wind grew at our backs, and the grains of salt began stinging the backs of our heads, or the backs of our calves through our trousers, this feeling grew in my belly. It grew like a pregnancy speeded a hundred times; I grew great with my elation.

  It was suddenly very dark, and my ears were consumed with the howl of the wind. The universe had shrunken to this moment, and I stood. I barely noticed the line to my right and left standing, and barely noticed them following me as we stepped over the height of the dune.

  Running.

  First, down the dune, with the drop in sound and the reduction in the sparkling stabbing of the Whisper: but only a reduction, a fall in pitch like a musical composition. The heels digging into the pliant ground, half sliding, half running with ridiculous, comic exaggeration, lifting the legs very high and planting them much further forward than would be normal.

  Then, with a jolt, onto the harder compacted salt of the Aradys beach. Suddenly we were running in earnest, feet whipping through the sparse salt-grass, the ground beneath us seething with a shallow skin of wind-whipped salt. The Whisper was fierce now, and the flurry of salt grains was intense. It swung us as we ran, trying to tug us over (some did fall, although I did not notice it at the time). The stinging was now a fierce pain, striking like needles at every part of the body at once. But in the moment, the pain hardly registered; or it was only a goad. I may have been screaming as I ran. I really cannot remember. It made no difference. No human voice could impact upon the immensity of the Whisper.

  And then, my memory of the engagement is similarly precise. I remember points, illuminated as if they were tableaux, rather than the narrative of the whole; that was pieced together afterwards as we compared our stories. So I know that we covered the ground between the last dune and the camp; that the sentries were sheltering from the pain of the Devil’s Whisper, and so hardly noticed us: that it was automatic sensors that alerted them; and that (evidently) the sentries refused even to pay attention to these sensors. We assume they often malfunctioned during the Whisper.

  So I rounded the first sentry-hut and nobody came to engage me. I had to stop running, which felt wrong when the elation of running had been so intense. But I had to pull at the sentry-box to open it. As the hatch yawned the guard did not even come out, only looked up with a round expression. I shot him with a needle into the face, and his hands went up. As he fell forward, I shot some more needles into the back of his head. The other two sentries were out of their boxes, with their goggles on and their weapons up, but they were killed before they could fire. I waved the laggards up: they were slower because they were carrying heavier ordnance. These we set up using the sentry-boxes for cover, and aimed at the supply machinery and the planes. We would have to lose this ordnance, because we could not carry it with us when we jumped out, but it was crude. Pipes, from construction software, blocked at one end, with old-style detonation explosives in them on firework thrusters. Each was manned, and there were four of them.

  Then I waved the remainder forward. We were still undetected, but the setting up of the equipment had taken time, and the Whisper had passed its worst point. We started over the ground of the camp. Some went behind the barracks tenting and towards the water; I stayed this side of the buildings, and veered a little towards the planes. I was bleeding inside my clothing now, from a hundred tiny punctures. The pain did not bother me greatly but, oddly, I remember feeling discomforted by the sensation of slick wetness inside my suit.

  The planes, though, were manned at all times, and as the Whisper began to die, and the air started to clear, somebody must have seen us from one of them. Whatever, there was some warning, and suddenly armed and suited enemy troops were coming out of the two mess tents.

  We engaged, but here I remember only snapshots. The fighting was dreamlike, soundless in the roar of the wind. I did not fall to the ground, although some of us did for cover, but I crouched a little over my weapon and started shooting needles at the targets. I remember these shots, because they had the fluid connectivity of music: my finger on the button, the silent lash of metal visible only liminally, the target dropping as if deflated. Needles flashed by me. Then I remember being on one knee, firing my rifle rapidly, cursing, realising too late that the cartridge was empty. Then (this sounds idiotic when I relate it, but this is what I did) I stood up, and slowly (because my fingers were numb and bleeding through the fabric of their gloves) pulled out the old cartridge and dropped it to the ground. Then I fumbled for a new cartridge, a palm-sized circle, in a belt pouch. This took many, many seconds. Then I slotted it into position, and dropped again
to my knee to start firing.

  The wind was almost passed away now, just a last few fragments of salt whirling through the air. To the west the sky was clearing (the worst the wind could do over the Aradys was to scoop up some large waves), and the light was getting better. I got up to both feet and sprinted over towards a knot of Alsists.

  This was when the mortars were set off, and there was an instant whoom and a spectacular bellying-out of light, of flame, and then the shockwave reached us and knocked us over with a flick. We all fell to the ground but I struggled round to look up, and saw the planes and the desalination machinery trapped in fire. One mortar had struck the tent, but the fabric (though strong against winds) was too thin to block it and the charge had flown right through both walls and landed in the water.

  Because we had been expecting it, we were the first to get to our feet, and then there were some easy targets as the Senaarians struggled up again. I put needles into three or four of them, and then rushed in to claim their guns. The firelight glared hellishly. One of the men, with needles through both lungs, clutched spastically at my ankle; I shook him off.

  Somewhere at this point I remember feeling a pinching sensation in my foot, which was nothing. But, later, it revealed itself as a needle wound to my heel. One of the Senaarians, flat on the salt, had taken advantage of the situation to fire low, and the needle had pierced my boot completely. But at the time I did not even register that I had been wounded. I crammed a bundle of weapons into a pouch under my arm, and ran back. I remember tripping over a body, falling, and clambering up again; but I do not know whose body, whether Alsist or Senaarian.

  The third plane was back, its belly black as it reared up over the fire: it had swooped low from the sea and then climbed sharply over the battlefield. For a moment it stood there over the flames, frozen, and then it was away above us with a roar that sounded like rage. At close quarters the plane could do nothing without injuring its own men, but if we pulled back or tried to regroup it would punish us.

  It was then I shot up the flare, and it howled in my left ear as it rocketed up. Time to jump away. This was the worst moment, because the manpacks had not been tested, and none of us knew really if they would work. We knew the theory: that we should lean in the direction we wanted to go (and lean away from the water if we didn’t want to be dropped in the sea), and hold our hands in front of us to avoid having them burnt by the blast behind. But after I tugged my balloons into life, and whilst I waited for them to pump out the air and take away some of my weight, there were three or four seconds when a terror came over me. Somehow, dying in battle did not seem so terrible as dying in a botched flight, as tumbling from the sky and squashing on the ground. The terror froze me, but the system was automatic. Tugging the balloon motors set the manpack into timed life, and there was nothing I could do. I felt the balloons lighten me; I remember distinctly the pressure of my feet against the soles of my shoes diminishing.

  Then, there was a shrieking, howling, and I started to scream. My stomach compressed within itself, and I felt like vomiting. My head whined and I gulped. But only then did I realise that the ground was far away, that the air was hissing past my head. I looked down and saw my feet, curled a little in towards each other. And between them I saw the battlefield, laid out like a general’s toy. The line drawn by the water at one end, and the corrugations of the dunes at the other. And between, all the damage we had done: the blotches of black smoke edged with the fire, just visible underneath; the scattered bodies like rabbit droppings, littering the ground. A few of the dots were still running. But then I looked up at the still-glowing horizon and the luminous sky above it, and then sideways at the darkening air, and I saw that it was dotted with other flying soldiers.

  I cheered with a sudden overwhelming elation; cheered aloud.

  Coming down was a more deflating experience. By the time I started dropping, it was quite dark; several kilometres further east with the force scattered over many places. But we checked the compass, and made our way towards the cars. For me, this was the hardest part of the operation, because my foot was now hurting badly. Perhaps the flight had made it worse; perhaps I had simply not noticed how bad it was in the adrenalin of battle. I limped, and made slow progress, and by the time I was back at the cars almost everybody had arrived.

  I remember that walk through the dark very well; because even with my painful foot, and even with an uncertainty in my breast about how many of us had survived, and whether Senaar was even now gathering themselves to strike at us with a counter-attack; despite all this, I was aware of a wonderful, near-religious sensation in my belly, a growing feeling that I could best describe, I suppose, with a word I have used little with respect to myself and my feelings: peace. There was something alien about this contentment, but it grew there anyway; and when I arrived back at the car, and was challenged, I felt it swell and blossom inside me.

  We had lost seven people, killed or wounded. Or, to be precise, killed and wounded-then-killed, because anybody wounded too greatly to jump with their manpacks would certainly have been killed eventually. Whichever, we never saw those seven again. But, although we prepared for it, there was no counter-attack that night.

  I pulled off my boot, and treated my own wound with simple wadding. There was no question of regenerating the flesh, and we had gladly put the habits of civilisation behind us. Instead I wadded my foot and put the boot back on it. I took off my jacket, and my topclothing, to see if there was anything I could do for my skin. But it was grazed all over by the Whisper, all red and looking rather inflamed. I decided the best thing was to leave it, and so I replaced my clothing. My warsuit had been rendered a little ragged by the wind but was wearable. I toured the cars for a bit, and everybody talked to me in excited, low tones.

  Eventually, I went inside one of the cars and lay on a bunk. Despite the painful tingling of my body on the side I lay upon, I fell asleep easily. What I remember of that sleep is that I dreamt. I dreamt of the Devil. He was a tall thin man, with a nose so small as to be little more than a crease, but with great eyes, and thick eyelids like blankets of cloth that slid down over his eyes. He was dressed in a scarlet coat and scarlet kilt, and was as white as salt. In the dream I was knelt at his back, pinning up the hem of his skirt, and I was struck by how powerful his calves were, and how the hair on his legs ran in perfect lines, like iron filings caught in the lines of force of a magnet. When I stood up, I found myself (although I did not move round him, and he did not turn about) face to face with him, and he smiled. It was a fearful smile. I said to him, ‘Now I must ask you for my payment,’ as if I were a hierarch, and he laughed and said that in his Utopia there was only exchange, barter, monies. ‘And you understand this already,’ he said, ‘because it is who you have become. You understand that I pay you in pleasure, and that you return the exchange and pay me with your pain. This way we are both satisfied.’

  It was an unsettling dream.

  In the morning, after the Morning Whisper, we moved the cars east.

  Barlei

  We were, there can be no sort of doubt around this, unlucky at the start of the war. The Alsists struck during the Evening Whisper which, I freely concede, I did not expect. Theirs was an ill-disciplined but large force, and it caused a great deal of damage in an initial ground attack. But an indication of how ill-discliplined the Alsists were in all military affairs is the time-lag before they deployed their air forces. Instead of co-ordinating these with their attack, they waited several hours before bringing them in. I sometimes think that their error here was the result of shoddy thinking; the ground forces wanted to use the cover provided by the Devil’s Whisper (which was good thinking), but the air force could not fly low in such conditions. But, instead of coming in as soon as the Whisper died down, the Alsists decided to wait until it was fully dark, as if they were afraid of attacking during even the merest twilight! Given the ease with which any large flying craft can be detected, during day or night, this was poor thinking ind
eed. And it cost them dearly.

  There are no Visuals of the initial attack, but the footage of the air battle is justly famous. I have been praised for my foresight in putting the full force of Senaar in the air, but the truth of the matter has less to do with my foresight and more to do with the Will of God. I remember the first reports coming through, garbled (because transmission through the Whisper is always difficult) but decipherable. At first it was not certain who was attacking us, whether Convento had launched an assault or whether it was Als, but either way we needed air support for the beleaguered.

  Senaar is some sixty kilometres east of Als, and the Whisper dies out of our air minutes before it happens there, so I was able to order our planes into the air before the assault was completed. I knew that some of our planes had been destroyed on the ground, although not how many; but I acted as if we had lost all air support, and acted with dispatch. The planes flew north, skirting the retreating edge of the Whisper, and making difficult turbulent progress (our pilots are the best) at supersonic speeds.

  What happened on the battlefield during this time was that the ground troops, encountering greater resistance than perhaps they had anticipated, withdrew as soon as the Whisper died away. For over an hour there was quiet, and our troops regrouped, putting the fires under control, and sorted out their casualties. Then the Alsists attacked again, this time from the air.

  Their superior numbers initially overwhelmed the one surviving Senaarian craft, even though they were poorly weaponed and their pilots had no experience of war. The truth, in fact (and perhaps this will put an end to the pointless arguments that circle around this issue) is that our pilots were not initially certain whose the planes were. The first assumption was that they belonged to Convento: not a reason to drop guard, of course, but an explanation.