‘Some of the people who helped me are still there,’ she said. ‘They risked their lives for me. Cleomenes and Cominia. They have a little boy.’
Tadahito looked young and panicked. His hair was a little disordered, the knot at the back of his head askew. He said, ‘Parts of the city may be unaffected. I’m following our father’s wishes. There were children in Yuuhigawa and Aregaya too.’ The sentences clattered oddly together like misaligned tiles.
‘But this! So many, Tadahito!’
‘I know,’ said Tadahito miserably, ‘I know – but it will save just as many lives, in the end. People die in war, Noriko; better if it brings an end to all of this. How can I let it go on and on, when we can stop it? And then we will go home.’
Noriko seemed to wheel away from herself in a moment of vertigo. She could believe that hundreds of thousands of people, millions, even, were about to die in Rome. It was this conversation she could not believe was happening. She looked at her brother. She could not think of him as so incalculably dangerous. She felt as if the decision were a ghost, a conscious and malignant being, pushing itself into the world through Tadahito as if through a door. And through her father too, through Drusus. To get away from them all, she left the room.
There had been no need to move Varius out of the palace, for the best equipment in Axum was already there. Noriko passed two doctors, one Nionian and one Ethiopian, talking in unpractised, frustrated Latin in an anteroom as she approached the door of the medical room.
Varius was grey and motionless in the bed. Una was not there. Noriko did not look at Varius at any length; she was unnerved by the crank and whir of the machine doing the breathing for him. She already knew that the surgeons had cut a tiny splinter of shrapnel and a patch of poisoned tissue out of his back. She knew that despite this, his body’s systems were continuing to fail.
She walked on along the passage, peering into dusty, empty rooms that still looked like some forgotten part of the Golden House in Rome. She called quietly, ‘Una?’ because she could not believe Una would have gone far.
She heard a low crash somewhere over a soft mumble of machinery and hurried towards it.
A heavy door at the bottom of a small flight of stairs opened into a small laundry room. A dryer was whirring and the air was warm and crackly with dust. A bench was overturned on the floor and Una was standing over it, panting, her face running with tears.
She turned as Noriko opened the door and said wildly, ‘I can’t go on looking at him like that. I love him.’
She took a few helpless paces around the little room.
‘I didn’t know that,’ said Noriko quietly.
Una sighed, and wiped uselessly at her eyes. She managed to twist her mouth for an instant into a self-mocking smile. She said, ‘No, nor does he.’
Noriko was flicking through memories, searching for signs she had missed. Yes: Una’s agitation as she took out the stitches. Noriko wished she had known it before; she would have been pleased and hopeful, she thought, even if Varius knew nothing about it yet. And the idea of them happy together half-convinced her that there must, somehow or other, be more hope for Varius than anyone seemed to believe. She began impulsively, ‘Oh, but if he recovers—’
Una said, flatly, ‘He won’t recover,’ and then gasped and shook again. When she could speak she said, ‘I did find a longdictor, but I can’t get a line to Rome or Tamiathis or anywhere. I have to try again. But I don’t want— I can’t— Who’s going to explain this to his family?’
Noriko waited in silence while Una continued to stumble restlessly around the room. ‘I don’t understand how,’ Una muttered, ‘I always thought I’d never— And I still feel the same about Marcus—’ And Marcus’ name twisted more tears out of her. ‘Sulien could save him— Sulien’s dead, perhaps, already—’
She sat down on a crate against the wall and hugged herself, and seemed to Noriko’s eyes to dwindle to perhaps a twelve-year-old’s size. She was no longer sobbing or shaking, but tears still spilled heavily from her eyes, which were wide open and staring into an invisible distance. She whispered, ‘What can I do?’
‘They don’t have the right medicines here. I will take Varius back to Cynoto,’ said Noriko. ‘He will have the best possible care.’
Una looked up at her, and her wet eyes seemed unnaturally magnified. She protested, ‘But they can’t move him – it’s too dangerous—’
‘But he is in such danger already. Surely even a small chance is worthwhile.’
Finally the tears stopped, and Una said, in a clearer voice, ‘You’re right.’ But she slumped heavily against the wall ‘Then I won’t be with him,’ she murmured after a long silence. ‘I wasn’t there when Marcus died.’
She shut her eyes and looked, for a moment, as if she would never get up again. But then she did rise, and wiped hard at her wet face again before bending to right the fallen bench, then trudged out of the little laundry.
Noriko stopped her at the door of Varius’ room. ‘You must come too. Please. I can’t leave you alone here. I am sure it would be better for Varius if you stayed with him. And if . . . if the worst happens, then you must let me help you. I could find somewhere for you where at least you can have peace. I know you would never be happy at court in Nionia, but . . . perhaps I will not spend so much time at court now myself. There is a house in Yamagata, by a lake. It belonged to my mother’s family. I have not been there in years, but it is very beautiful. Very quiet. We could stay there for a while. Please think about it before you decide. Of course I know it is not what you planned. But now—’ She shuddered over the thought of what was about to happen to Rome, couldn’t put it into words. ‘I think it will all be over soon,’ she whispered.
‘It isn’t over,’ said Una. ‘No, it won’t be over.’ Her voice was nearly toneless, but it had steadied. And when she looked at Noriko she even smiled. ‘You’re so kind. And I wish you weren’t going so far away. But I promised Maralah – I promised them all. I have to go back. Whatever happens, I have to go back to my people.’
She put her arms round Noriko for a moment, and then turned and pushed open the door. Before it swung closed, Noriko saw her drop into the chair beside Varius.
Sometimes, Varius was aware of himself dying. He tried to gasp for air, horrified by the tube in his mouth, which he felt was suffocating him rather than helping him breathe. He opened his eyes and strained to keep them open, though the light stung like a slap of seawater. But he couldn’t match the huge force weighing on his eyelids, his lungs, his heart, that pushed him down into the boiling dark. He recognised it from five years before, when he had bitten down on the poison outside the Palace in Rome. He made another exhausting effort – he saw Una’s face – and he could remember how it had been back then, trying to find his way into death, like running your hands over a wall in the dark, searching for the door.
No, not now, he thought, trying to hold the door closed this time. No, I can’t. Not without even knowing.
The dust was still sinking back to earth when they reached the plain; they drove into a brown fog of it through which leafless trees and shrubs emerged like starved prisoners turned loose across the desert. Everything was the same colour.
It can’t be true, Sulien had said. Not everyone can be dead.
He’d taken Pas and Dorion with him. Back at the base in the mountains, they had given up trying to reach anyone on the Roman side with their own radios and started experimenting with the more powerful Nionian equipment. He’d left Minius in charge, still trying.
Sulien slowed the truck because it seemed that slow mounds had sprouted like knee-high molehills across the ground ahead, littering the surface of the road. He wondered for a moment how the Surijin had had that effect, and then saw the soft, grass-like clumps of hair, the hard curve of horn, and realised that the hillocks were the bodies of bufali, painted into the landscape by the dust.
He braked. ‘I don’t know if I can—’ he began, and stopped. They hadn’t spok
en in a long time; it was as if he couldn’t remember how. He let his head droop forwards, put up a hand to cover his shut eyes. ‘Do we have to see this?’ he asked in a whisper. ‘Do we have to see this too?’
Neither Pas nor Dorion answered for a long time, though Dorion slung an arm round him and pressed his forehead against his shoulder.
‘We’ve come this far,’ said Pas at last, hollowly. ‘And there might be someone left. Maybe in the hills.’
Sulien sighed and pushed the truck on, slowly, into the haze of dust, trying to weave around the dead bufali, though he rolled over at least one of them.
It turned out there were only a few more miles to go.
On the road to the mountains, and in the pine valley before the battle, there had been at least the constant buzz and chirp of insects. He only realised it now that even that sound was gone.
The bodies looked as if they had been modelled out of the dust that covered them, or as if they were growing out of it like roots. It was like a preliminary burial, both kind and ruthless: blurring away pain and identity – the contours of faces and hands strangely meaningless without colour. There were a few hundred, here at the back of the convoy. No one seemed to have had time even to try to run, like the refugees on the road from Aregaya. He might have been able to guess more about how they had died if he had looked more closely, but he didn’t.
Some of the trucks had crashed and overturned, of course; something had caught fire and burned itself out, leaving a faint scent of smoke in the air. But it was strange how intact so many the vehicles were. Nearer the front of the convoy, some tyres had burst and a few windscreens were cracked, but not all of them. Inside, the bodies were bare of the covering of dust. Sulien glimpsed blood through a window and at that he stopped the truck.
Pas was crying. Sulien hugged him for a while in silence then opened the door and swung himself up onto the roof of the cab. He didn’t want to step down onto this ground.
He had a better view up here than he’d wanted. He turned dizzy, swayed a little. He dragged off his helmet, which now seemed pointless, let it fall, and sat down. He started to think of Gracilis, of the boys he’d watched playing pelota, but every thought tripped and interrupted itself and ended in the same moan: I can’t, I can’t.
Dorion climbed up to join him, then Pas. They huddled close to each other, the only three living things for miles.
‘Round those hills . . .’ suggested Dorion hopelessly. ‘The other legions . . .’
Sulien shook his head. ‘If there was anyone, they’d be here.’
He didn’t know what he would have done, how he would have been able to go on breathing if he hadn’t been able to feel somebody else doing it, if somebody’s back hadn’t been warm against his side. And yet he felt frightened of what the other two might say. Please, he thought, don’t ask me what we should do now.
But neither of them did. Dorion said, ‘And they’re going to do this to Rome?’ speaking quietly and weakly and with as little expression as if they were talking about some successful public works project.
‘He said that,’ Sulien answered, in the same slow helplessly neutral tone.
‘I never really thought that could happen.’
‘No,’ agreed Sulien. After a minute or so he added, ‘I lived there.’
‘In Rome? I thought you were from Alex?’
‘I lived in Rome before that.’ He closed his eyes. ‘A while ago.’
‘Well, I’m sorry,’ said Dorion.
Sulien shuddered as people he knew in Rome began to crowd into his mind as if for shelter there: everyone at the clinic, everyone in his old building, Tancorix and all the singers and actors he knew through her. Tancorix and Cleomenes both had children . . . and again the line of thought cut out. He lay down on the warm metal roof, as if in imitation of all the soldiers on the ground. The dust was trying to blend them in with the rest; he could feel it settling over them; once he wiped a hand across his face and it came away filthy. He didn’t feel as if they would ever move, or anyone would ever find them here.
And still some idiotic part of himself that insisted on ignoring what was around them chirped, But this can’t really happen to Rome. Something will happen to stop it.
And then it occurred to him that when he’d been on his feet, he’d seen what he thought was the Onager, further back along the convoy. He thought, idly, it might still work, if it ever did work. We could take it somewhere and . . .
No, he couldn’t finish that thought either.
Una would be making decisions by now, at least insisting that they move. He wished drowsily that she was there to do it. He couldn’t picture her the last time he’d seen her very well, when she’d been crying and banging open windows; instead he thought of her sitting beside him on the deck of the Ananke, making plans in which he’d never wholly believed, and rallying escaped slaves from piles of rubble in Alexandria. He felt oddly confident she was alive, though usually remembering those he’d left behind was tangled in thoughts of air-raids and arrest and executions. He was not even afraid that she might be in Rome. It had been so long since he’d been able to write to her. What will she do with her ships and her army now? he wondered. And will even she understand about all this when I see her?
It made no sense to think he would see her ever again. He couldn’t imagine what would happen next, but it would hardly be a ferry home.
His radio buzzed. For another moment he lay still, staring up at the clearing sky, and couldn’t bring himself even to lift his hand to answer – but he knew it was Minius, back at the Nionian radio base, and he thought distantly: I got them out of this, at least; I didn’t know I was doing it, but I saved them.
‘Are you there, sir?’ said Minius.
‘Yes,’ Sulien said dully.
‘Did you find them? It’s true, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it’s true.’
‘Yes,’ repeated Minius. His voice was strangely wry, helpless laughter lurking in it somewhere. ‘That’s what they told us. We’ve been trying the stuff here like you said, and we did get through to a base back in Aregaya. They’re pulling out of there as fast as they can. They think there’s some attack coming from the west, Sinoan troops landing at Tipaea, so—’
‘They didn’t have any useful ideas?’ asked Sulien with a listless mixture of hope and sarcasm.
‘They said the Nionians will probably find us pretty soon . . . they said no one can get to us. And we can’t really get to them . . . or anyone.’
Sulien listened, unsurprised.
‘They said we could die free like Romans,’ said Minius, and paused. ‘I think they meant before the Nionians get here.’
‘What?’ said Sulien, shocked into alertness, sitting upright. ‘Well, we’re not doing that. You can tell everyone they’re fucking not to.’ He stopped, suddenly frightened, ‘Are you all all right? No one . . . would’ve done it already?’
‘No,’ said Minius, ‘no, no one’s done that.’
‘Well, good. Of course not. You’re not stupid. You’ve got look-outs posted, haven’t you? Well, move if you have to, otherwise hold out there as long as you can, and we’ll be back later.’ He clipped the radio back on his belt and looked, this time without turning faint or flinching, at the devastation. Something will happen to stop it, he thought again, and slid down from the roof.
‘Come on,’ he said.
Obediently Pas climbed down, but once on the ground he collapsed limply against the truck and leant there. ‘And do what?’ he asked.
‘The Onager’s back there. We’re going to take it and show the Nionians we’ve got one too.’
Dorion didn’t move. He looked down at Sulien from the roof of the cab, his legs dangling. ‘I’m too tired for this,’ he said quietly.
‘What, you’d rather stay here? Get down here, Dorion. It’s not as if things can get any worse.’
‘They can’t? Well, our side could execute us for stealing it, which I admit probably won’t be a problem,’ sa
id Dorion, with a croak in his voice, his mouth skewed into a despairing little smile. ‘And when the Nionians find us with it, they’ll be even more pissed off with us than they would be anyway.’ He drooped suddenly, and put his head into his hands. ‘And what do you want to do, find a Nionian town and destroy it? I’m not going to do that, I don’t care if you think they’ve got it coming or whatever, I just can’t. I’ve had enough – sounds like our whole army has. Why should we be any different?’
‘No,’ said Sulien, ‘I’m not saying that’s what we should do. I want to get their attention. That’s really what these weapons do. You don’t have to— You don’t have to do this.’ He gestured at the devastation around them. ‘Then, perhaps if I talk to them—’
‘You want to talk to the Nionians?’ said Dorion, in disbelief.
‘I might be able to.’
Dorion stared. ‘You’ve really lost it, Archias,’ he said pityingly, and sagged again with exhaustion. ‘The thing’s probably broken now anyway.’
Pas was still slumped against the truck, but his eyes were grave and steady on Sulien’s face.
‘Do we get to go home at the end of this?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Sulien. ‘If it works, if anyone will listen . . . I think we might be prisoners for a while, Pas, even if we’re lucky. We don’t know what’s going on out there in the world. But the war’s going to end – if we can maybe change the way it ends, we might get home one day. It’s better than just waiting here or putting our guns in our mouths, isn’t it?’
Pas nodded. ‘Archias,’ he said softly, ‘Shouter . . . I’ll come with you if you want, if you’ll tell us first who you really are.’
‘What?’ Dorion muttered drearily from the top of truck, while Sulien stiffened. He returned Pas’ gaze in silence.
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