The Refuge Song

by Francesca Haig

  Next to me, Piper had fought free of his opponent, but another horse came straight at him. He stepped aside at the last moment, aiming a low slash at the horse’s legs. It was a terrible sight—one of the legs seemed to have gained an extra joint, a bend where none should be. The horse went down screaming, and the soldier jumped clear just in time to avoid being crushed as his mount rolled to its side, knocking me down as it went.

  Piper and Zoe were fighting above me, each hand to hand with a Council soldier. Beside me, on the ground, the horse tried to right itself on its broken legs. Its nostrils flared, wide as overripe lilies. Its eyes had rolled so far back that all I could see was the white, marbled with red veins. When the horse screamed, the noise was somehow more human than half the sounds of the battle around me. One of its legs was pierced by its own bone, a spar of white thrust through the blood-matted hair.

  I pulled my knife from my belt, reached up to the horse’s thrashing head, and slit its throat. The blood emptied itself onto my hand, surprising me with its heat. Its force, too. It didn’t run but spurted, spraying up my arm. The snow beneath it melted, the blood soaking into the iced earth. Then it was finished.

  The horse died a single death. I felt it, the simplicity of it—no answering echo of death from a twin. For something so blood-soaked, it felt clean. I scrambled to my feet.

  The first wave of Council riders had broken through the front lines of our advance, but to the west I caught sight of ladders against the walls, and figures were scrambling up them. I had no time to see whether the climbers reached the top; the Council’s foot soldiers, carrying shields as well as swords, were swarming into the gaps created by their riders in our front line. I’d lost my shield, and I didn’t even remember where, or how. I stuck close to Piper and Zoe, staying out of the way when I could, and swinging my sword in wide slashes whenever a soldier drew too near. Any time a soldier bore down on me hard, Piper or Zoe stepped in to fight them off.

  The few times my sword hit flesh, I had to quash nausea. But that didn’t stop me. I didn’t deal any killing blows, but only through inexperience rather than reluctance. Nonetheless I made several strikes, and my blade was beaded with blood before long. I’d been the cause of so many deaths already that it didn’t feel strange to see the blood on my own weapon, finally, tangible proof of what I’d already done so many times.

  All our effort seemed to make little difference. The three of us had gained some ground, but from what glances I was able to snatch it was clear that our troops were being overrun. The Council’s soldiers were still pouring from the southern gate, and our troops with ladders had been surrounded, trapped against the wall. Farther west, where our first wave of troops had tried to set fires along the wall, the damp had repelled them, and only two of the fires remained lit. Scanning the wall, I could see no breaks yet in the structure, and the gates themselves remained tightly defended.

  As we gained a little ground we could see better, the torches and fires along the wall throwing flashes of light. But the closer we were to the walls, the more deadly were the arrows. When we were in close combat with the Council’s soldiers, the archers held back, but as soon as we had a moment’s respite, the arrows found us again. They didn’t fall from above—falling is too airy a word. They stabbed down, forceful as a horse’s kick. Forceful enough to bury themselves inches deep in the earth. Twice arrows passed so close that I felt the chill air warmed by their passing. A third arrow struck Piper in the leg, but my warning cry came in time for him to leap aside, so that the arrow’s head glanced along his flesh rather than tearing through it. Time had become blurred, and when I wiped my face my hand came away dark and wet, but I couldn’t tell whether it was my own blood or someone else’s. Several times, I staggered over bodies on the ground, lying in postures that announced themselves as lifeless. A head thrown back at an angle that no intact neck would allow; a knee that bent forward instead of backward. There was no light from the moon to cast shadows, only the glow of the distant fires at the wall. But the fallen bodies made their own shadows, bloodstains black in the snow.

  Piper retrieved his knife from the neck of a dead soldier a few yards away. There was a boulder, dusted with snow, and we crouched in its shelter for a moment.

  “There should be more Council soldiers,” said Piper, looking around. “By our tally they should have upward of fifteen hundred in there. Where are they?”

  “I think we have enough to be going on with,” said Zoe. She wiped each side of her sword on the snow, leaving two smears of blood.

  We hunched as we ran, flinching from the sounds of arrows overhead, to rejoin Simon, who was sheltering in a shallow ditch barely fifty yards from the southern gate. Ten or more of our troops were there with him. One man swore as he spat two broken teeth out into the snow. A woman with a gash on her calf was binding it tightly with a strip of cloth, her teeth clenched over her bottom lip as if she could bite back the pain.

  Simon spoke quickly.

  “Violet’s squadron have got the ladders up twice and been repelled both times. I’ve drawn Charlie’s men back from the western side—that’s too heavily fortified, and the fires aren’t taking. They’re going to join Violet for another push at the south, where the watchtowers are farthest apart, and the fire’s damaged the wall.”

  “And Derek?” Piper said.

  Simon wiped a hand down his face, and gave his head a quick shake. “Killed at the wall, with all his men—though they managed to get some fires started first.” Simon’s sword hand was bruised and swollen, the skin purple and stretched too tightly on the fattened flesh.

  “Derek’s squadron didn’t light that,” said Piper, pointing up at the town. From its center, high above the walls, a plume of smoke was unfurling into the sky.

  “Something’s going on inside,” said Simon. Despite the streak of blood on his cheek, and his bruised hand, he looked more animated than I’d seen him since the island. “The harvesters must have got the message. They’re joining in.”

  “It explains why the Council haven’t unleashed their full numbers out here,” Zoe said. “But the Omegas in there can only do so much. They won’t even have proper weapons.”

  She was right. I pictured New Hobart’s residents, armed with pokers or cooking knives, pitted against the broadswords of trained soldiers.

  “We need to get in there before they’re all killed,” I said. My voice came out higher than I’d intended.

  “What do you think we’re trying to do?” said Zoe.

  Piper looked behind him, surveying the plain between the town and the burned forest. Most of our troops had hunkered down now in whatever sparse shelter they could find. Some were huddled behind the bodies of horses or soldiers, peering up at the walled city above us. The Council soldiers, too, had regrouped, drawing back to the gates, though some fighting was still visible near the western gate.

  “We need to make a push on the southern gate, while their soldiers are distracted by what’s going on inside the walls. Bring the archers forward to those boulders to cover us.” Piper gestured at a cluster of low boulders on the plain, a little to our west. “Pull back the troops from the eastern wall, too—we’ll need them all.”

  This was it, then. The final push. Within the walls, the people of New Hobart would be fighting, and dying. On the plain below us were the broken bodies of our troops, and of the Council soldiers. Their twins, wherever they were, would never wake today. The carrion birds were coming with the dawn.

  Under Simon’s and Piper’s directions, our surviving troops began to mass on a small hillock just south of the wall. Some arrows still reached us there, but I’d found that if I concentrated, I could usually sense their approach before we heard the sound, giving us a few extra seconds to scurry aside. Even those troops who had glared at me in the camp obeyed me now when I shouted my warnings.

  It took half an hour for our troops to muster for the final assa
ult. A small force of soldiers rode out of the town and tried to cut off one of our squadrons before it could join the main group, but the icy ground was treacherous for the horses and there were four axmen in the squadron who managed to hold them off long enough for the group to reach the shelter of the hill.

  “How many of us are left?” I said to Piper.

  He scanned the gathered troops. “More than half.”

  Neither of us had to say it. Not enough. But we’d fought better than I would have dared to imagine. Already we’d lasted longer than my worst fears had predicted. Perhaps Piper had been right: our troops had needed to believe that winning was possible. It had made a difference. The axmen who I’d just watched, holding ten mounted soldiers at bay, had been different from the downcast troops at the encampment the day before. And those within the town had not only received our message, but they’d answered it and fought with us. It might not be enough to save any of us. But Piper had been right—there was some hope in this day, even among the blood.

  We formed into rough lines, and again Piper, Zoe, and I were at the front. When Piper gave the shout to charge, we left the cover of the hillock and ran. Time, which had been running so speedily, now seemed very slow. I had time to hear everything: my own noisy breath. The knives tucked in Piper’s belt striking one another as he ran beside me. The sound of the soft new snow giving way underfoot, and the crunch of the icy layer beneath.

  I called out a warning when I felt the arrows coming, but here we had no shelter, and running as a pack meant there was no room to dodge. A woman to my left went down with an arrow to the face. The sound of the impact wasn’t fleshy—it was a bone crunch, like an ax into wood. There were shouts from behind me, too, as others were struck.

  The arrows only relented when the first Council soldiers reached us, a hundred yards from the wall. After the spread-out clashes on the plain, here the fighting was cramped. Twice I had to duck to avoid the swords of our own troops. Piper and Zoe were fighting back-to-back. Between them, there were no spare movements, and nothing casual or accidental. Each sword thrust or elbow jab was precise and intentional. Everything that they touched bled.

  “Stay close,” Piper grunted, glancing at me from the corner of his eye while he exchanged blows with a tall soldier.

  I stayed as near to Piper and Zoe as I could, striking only when I had a clear chance and wouldn’t get in their way. But after several minutes, one of the Council soldiers had gained on Zoe, pushing her back so that she stumbled into Piper. She landed on her back, and managed to keep her sword in hand, but the soldier made the most of the fall and kicked out, hard, at her jaw. Her head was thrown back with the force of it, her neck exposed. When the soldier drew back his sword, I swung at the back of his head.

  I’d traveled too long with hunters to be squeamish. I’d plucked pigeons and skinned rabbits and picked through the carcasses for anything edible, kidneys and liver and all. In the attack on the island I’d seen people killed, and smelled the rich iron whiff of blood. But this was different. I felt the resistance of the skin, and its giving way, and finally the jar of the blade lodging in bone.

  I heard three screams: the dying man’s. His twin’s, in my mind. And my own, lasting longer than either of the others.

  chapter 20

  I pulled back my blade. The man fell as if my sword had been a hook on which his body hung.

  Something broke in me. All the visions I’d had over the past few months were knocked loose, to rattle at random through my mind. The blast. Rows of tanks, now full of fire. The island’s crater, full of blood. The blast.

  Piper grabbed me, shook me until I had to stop the scream to draw breath.

  “Concentrate on staying alive,” he said, then shoved me to the side as another soldier came at him. I staggered back, sword shaking as I held it out before me.

  I had already been responsible for more deaths than I knew. But this was new. The swing of my arms and the steel of my sword had put an end to that man. It was final, and absolute, and as intimate as a kiss. It could never be undone. His twin, wherever she was, some Omega somewhere, had died, too, without even knowing why.

  “Pull yourself together,” Zoe shouted at me. I looked up. She was standing again, blood running from her mouth where the soldier had kicked her. Her shirt was sprayed with blood. At the collar it had stiffened, standing out from her neck at a strange angle. Even her teeth, as she shouted at me, had flecks of blood on them. Could she taste it? I wondered. What had happened to us? I used to work in the fields and grow things. Now, on this icy plain, I was a harvester of blood.

  “Pull yourself together,” she shouted. I breathed out, and in again. Somehow my sword was still in my hands.

  I looked up. We were making no progress. The front line of our final charge had already broken, the soldiers driving us farther from the wall. Simon and a cluster of his troops had gained a little ground, but not enough. They were cut off now, and surrounded by Council soldiers. They reminded me of the islands of the Sunken Shore, being gradually swallowed by the hungry tide. Simon fought with two swords, and a knife in his third hand. Nobody got past him. But two of the Omegas next to him had already fallen, and the soldiers were closing ever tighter around him.

  Perhaps I felt the riders coming—perhaps that’s what led me to turn east, to the road, just as Piper gave the shout to push forward once again. I almost fell as I turned to look, everyone around me running. Piper saw me looking, and turned, too.

  There were hundreds of them, devouring the horizon with their galloping hoofs. Mounted soldiers in their red tunics, leaving the sunrise behind them as they raced toward the town. They would be on top of us in minutes.

  We were outnumbered—five to one, at least. Whatever hope our makeshift army had been able to muster, it was finished now. This was where my visions of blood on snow had been leading. This was how it would end.

  I thought of Zach, and wondered if he felt his death approaching. When I pictured him, it was his face as a child that I saw. His wary eyes, watching everything I did. The way he’d cover his face with his arm when sleeping, as if hiding his dreams from the night’s gaze. It had been years since Zach and I had shared anything, but as the soldiers rode closer I thought of him, and it was easier, somehow, knowing that we would at least share our deaths.

  I heard Piper swear, and Zoe call back to him, and her voice stop midshout as she saw the soldiers coming. And I was sorry that this would be their end, too. At least, I thought, they were near each other. It seemed right that they would lie together at the end, their blood mixed.

  The Council soldiers at the gate were calling out, too, a whoop of relief and renewed vigor. When I heard their shouts, I realized how close we had come. They’d been afraid. We might have taken the town after all. It was luck, in the end, that had turned the battle against us. A messenger who managed to slip out, past our archers. Or perhaps reinforcements had been due anyway, in preparation for the tanking of the townsfolk. On such small things, so many lives would turn. We might have freed the town. Now we could not.

  I hoped it would be quick. No torture, and no tank.

  I saw that Piper had turned to watch me. He had planted his sword in the ground before him, and instead held one of his small knives in his hand. It was pointing at me, not the oncoming riders.

  I knew that he would do it, if the soldiers reached us. I wasn’t surprised, or even afraid. The sudden steel of the knife in the throat—a gush of hot blood. An act of mercy, like my knife in the horse’s neck. Better than the cell and the tanks. He saw me looking, and he made no pretense, didn’t move to hide his knife, or avert his gaze. I gave him a slow nod. I didn’t have it in me to smile, but it was as close to a thanks as I could muster. Kip had given me his death, for my life. Piper would give me my death, and I would be grateful, in the end.

  The soldiers at the gate held back now. There was no rush—soon enough we woul
d be trapped between them and the reinforcements, pounding up the eastern road. The percussion of hoofs made the frozen earth shift underfoot. They were only a hundred yards away now. Piper was watching me, Zoe watching him. I closed my eyes.

  But the noises that reached me were wrong. I felt as though sound had come unmoored. The cries and shouts were coming from the wrong place: from our right, at the eastern gate of the town.

  The riders had not left the road to charge to where we clustered at the south of the wall. Instead, they’d stayed on course for the eastern gate. From within the mass of riders, a row of bows was raised. The first arrows fell on the sentry tower at the eastern gate. Then the riders caught up with the arrows, and grappling irons were hurled over the gate itself. The gate was lightly manned; most of the occupying soldiers were at the southern gate, holding us off. Already the arriving fighters had thrown a ladder against the eastern watchtower.

  I saw him then: the Ringmaster, at the center of the mounted mass of soldiers. He carried a sword but was busy directing his soldiers, shouting and pointing, bending sometimes to confer with those around him.

  Part of the eastern gate was aflame. More arrows buried themselves in the watchtower. There was a scream, and a body dropped from the tower, lodging on the top of the smoldering gate. With a shriek of ripping wood, the gate was breached, grappling irons hauling the spars from the frame. The Ringmaster’s army had the numbers to keep the Council troops at bay while they prized the gate apart. Already, the new attackers were streaming into the town. There was no way that New Hobart could withstand this onslaught.

  The soldiers facing us had realized they were about to be trapped between the Ringmaster’s forces and ours. A squadron of his soldiers had already veered away from the fallen gate and were galloping in formation along the wall toward us. They wore the same red uniform as the Council’s soldiers, but didn’t hesitate to ride them down. There were cries for the Council soldiers on the plain to retreat and regroup. But there was nowhere for them to retreat to. The eastern gate was down, and our forces, though depleted, were still pushing in from the south and west. More of the Ringmaster’s troops were pouring onto the plain from the east. Now that they were closer, I could see that they each wore a strip of black cloth bound around the forehead, to distinguish them from the soldiers they were facing. Everywhere I looked, the black-banded soldiers outnumbered the others.