Stands a Shadow (56 page)

The forest folk failed to reappear, though he knew they watched him from the undergrowth. He heard one of them knocking rapidly on wood. Moments later, the signal was returned from deeper within the forest.

To placate them before they started any trouble, he rummaged around in his filthy trousers where he fumbled with the drawstrings of his purse. At last he produced a coin from it, a whole golden eagle, and held the small fortune over his head so they could see. ‘It is yours,’ he called out, and carefully laid it down on a wooden chopping block that stood in the dirt nearby. ‘I will not be long here. Just passing through.’

He felt that was enough to buy him a little time. He went to the water’s edge and stripped off his stiff clothes and scrubbed himself down with handfuls of leather-leaves, using their rough undersides as he hummed a tune from Honshu. He washed his clothes next, almost rags by now, and let them dry in the breeze as he sat on the bank and watched the waterfowl cluck and preen themselves in the water.

There were two canoes tied to the shore. When he was dressed and ready to leave, he stepped into one carefully and lay down his sword and picked up the paddle. He sat and nudged the boat out into the flow.

‘My thanks!’ he called out to the people as he held up a hand.

The breeze played noisily through the bushes. The trees creaked overhead.

They both woke at the same time, and lay there beneath the blanket, blinking at each other bleary-eyed and dirty, the sounds of the camp all around them.

‘Good morning,’ Ché said with a smile, and Curl smiled back at him.

He watched her roll onto her back and stretch, then sit up and look about her. She took a sniff of her leathers, wrinkled her nose. ‘I need a wash,’ she announced.

He limped down to the river with Curl helping to support him. His wound had been cleaned and stitched the night before, though it still hurt enough to make him pant. Together they washed naked in the river, Curl drawing the eyes of the men there, soldiers and civilians alike, until Ché scowled at them, and they made their interest less obvious.

He’d heard of the spiritual properties of the Chilos. And even though he hardly believed in such things, he dunked himself anyway, and tried to make himself believe there was truth in it. All the while, he wondered what he would do with himself now, what he was even doing here with this girl he’d grown fond of so quickly.

Afterwards, they helped themselves to breakfast in one of the military mess tents that had been set up amongst the encampment. He saw Curl look about her for faces she knew. She talked to a couple of them, asking after a few people by name, pleased when she heard they still lived.

Together, they took their wooden platters outside and sat on a mound of grass to eat their plain meals of hash and beans.

‘What is that thing?’ he asked Curl as she absently fingered the wooden charm about her neck.

‘This?’ she said, noticing herself playing with it. ‘My ally.’

‘Yes?’

‘It looks after me,’ she explained.

Ché gave a tilt of his head. Lagosians had some strange notions, he reflected. But then that was a little rich, being a Mannian himself. ‘Do you miss it?’ he asked her.

‘What?’

‘Your home.’

She looked at him over her plate of food, her brow furrowed.

‘I’m sorry. That was stupid of me.’

He was surprised to hear the word come so easily from his lips. He could not recall when he had last apologized for anything.

Ché did not feel entirely like himself today. An odd contented-ness had come upon him, as though for the first time in his life he was precisely where he was supposed to be, and all was fine with the world. He had dreamed of his mother in the night. She had spoken about many things he couldn’t now remember, yet he recalled how she had smiled, and how the warmth shone off her like sunshine. His heart had swelled with it, and he had thought,
How ugly the world is without these connections between us
.

And then he had awakened, to find Curl blinking at him next to his side.

‘What about you? Do you miss it?’ Her tone said she was still annoyed with him.

‘Home?’

‘Yes.’

He shook his head and realized it was true. He didn’t care if he never saw Q’os again.

‘And where is home, Ché?’

He hesitated, and then the lie that formed got tangled in his lips somehow, so that he said nothing. He was weary of secrets and the burdens they had become to him. This was a day for new beginnings.

‘Ché?’

He placed his platter on the ground, wiped his hands on his knees.

‘What is it? Why can’t you tell me?’

‘It’s just . . .’ He met her eye then.

Curl seemed to see into him, for her expression hardened. ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Not you.’

Still he couldn’t find the words. Her face twisted in anguish. When Curl spoke, it was as though some invisible creature was trying to throttle her. ‘You’re one of them? A Mannian?’

Ché glanced about to see if anyone had overheard her. When he looked back, he felt the gulf that suddenly existed between them, the sudden loss of their connection, like a candle flame snuffed out.

What have I done
?

Her platter fell to the ground. She walked off quickly towards the mess tent.

‘Wait,’ he suddenly called after her. ‘Let me explain!’

She went inside. He watched with dread in his stomach as a group of Specials rushed from the tent, Curl walking behind them.

‘On your feet,’ one of them ordered.

Ché had eyes only for Curl. He knew he could still make her understand, if only she would look at him.

‘
On your feet, Mannian
,’ growled another, catching the attention of others nearby.

The man kicked Ché hard in the ribs, and he spilled over onto the grass. He caught a sight of Curl, her back turned to him, walking away with a hand covering her face.

And then they laid into him with all their fury.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Courage of the Dead

Bull dreamed of his younger brother Kurtez, though in the dream Kurtez was a gangly boy again, shy and overly sensitive to the world, and Bull still the overbearing full-grown man.

They were in the warren slums of their Bar-Khos childhoods, where Bull had first learned to fight and to enjoy it, being chased by a gang of unseen pursuers and their whoops and their war cries. In the dream, Bull told his younger brother to keep running, while he stopped and turned to face the baying mob, putting his scarred and massive body in their way to save him.

When he awoke, startled, he found himself curled on the wet straw floor of the pit, shaking from the cold and drenched by the rain that fell from the night sky overhead. A soldier stood over the pit, a long jabber in his hand that wobbled as it he held it down through the wooden bars. He was poking Bull hard in the ribs to rouse him.

‘No sleeping,’ said the man, and he sounded annoyed at having to remind him of this vital rule of life.

Bull scraped himself up and leaned his back against the earthen wall, where rainwater was trickling down into the hole. The soldier moved around the edge of the pit, poking each of the prisoners in turn. Grunts and snorts of surprise sounded in the blackness.

Bull thought of his dream, of the face of his brother.

Kurtez had left a note when he’d taken his belt and hung himself from the rafters of his room. He couldn’t live with being cast aside by Adrianos, he had written. And seeing him strut around with his new lover.

It was that note that Bull had stuffed into the mouth of Adri-anos as the man lay there dying. There had been no mention of it at his trial. Perhaps the family had removed it to cover their own sense of shame.

Another jab against his shoulder made him look up. The guard had made a circuit of the pit, and had returned to him.

‘No sleeping.’

Bull was still shackled. His cramped and abused body was a study in every shade of bruise. Still, something snapped in him. He grabbed for the end of the jabber and yanked it from the surprised man’s grip. He clamped his other hand around it and shoved hard so that the end of it struck the man’s mouth. Bull rammed it again and again into his face.

The man’s foot slipped on the crumbling edge of the pit, and he went down, sprawling face first across the bars that caged them in, the wood creaking against his weight. Bull wiped his face clear of rain and aimed the swaying jabber carefully. He cracked the man a final time on his temple, knocking him out.

‘Chilanos!’ he hissed in the darkness and the rain as he struggled to his feet. ‘Give me a hand up, man.’

But Chilanos was silent, and Bull recalled the fellow had lost the ability to speak after his last interrogation with the priests.

‘Bahn!’ he tried, though he wasn’t sure why, for Bahn was as far gone as the rest of them. ‘
Calvone!
’

A rustle of chains sounded next to him.

‘Help me, damn it!’

He was surprised when a hand reached out and grabbed his overall, and Bahn hauled himself to his feet.

Good man
, he thought.
Good man
!

He could hardly see his old comrade in the darkness, only the vague shape of him. Bahn bent down and grabbed at his foot until Bull lifted it and placed it into the stirrup of his hands. ‘
Now
,’ whispered Bull, and he hopped with his other foot as Bahn strained and grunted to lift his great bulk.

Bahn managed to raise him by a few feet, his arms shaking and his back braced against the wall. Bull grabbed out for one of the wooden bars. He missed and fell back down as Bahn’s strength gave out. The soldier was starting to stir above them.

‘Once more,’ Bull told him. ‘Come on, you bastard!’

They tried again, and this time Bull managed to grab one of the slippery bars. The wood creaked some more, sagging a little as it took his weight. Raindrops were blinding him.

‘
Hold steady
,’ he hissed down at Bahn, and fumbled with the leather straps that held the door shut, blinking to see anything while the face of the soldier looked down at him from a few feet away, his eyes rolling white in his head. The straps were slippery in his fingers. He cursed and tugged and tried to free them.

A loop of leather came free, and then before he knew it the rest of the bound strap was unravelling from around the bars. He pulled it clear and dropped it into the pit.

Bull shoved at the door and it swung open. He hung there long enough to catch a breath, dripping with water, no strength left in him.

‘Push,’ he said down to Bahn. ‘For the love of Mercy, push now!’

Bahn was dreaming; he was sure of it.

They were walking through the camp of the Imperial Expeditionary Force in a torrent of freezing rain. Bull was up front, dressed in the armour of an imperial soldier, a slight limp in his gait. The others shambled after him, arms supporting each other, their eyes wide and staring at the neatly ordered rows of pup tents they passed by, at the soldiers hunkered down inside them.

Over their shoulders lay Simmer Lake and the island of Tume, the city brilliantly lit tonight. The camp sprawled around the shore not far from where the bridge ran onto the land. Bahn could see earthworks over there, near the bridge. They had heard fighting over recent days, gunshots and men riding past in haste. At first they’d hoped and prayed for it to be a rescue mission, but no one had come for them.

From the overhead mutters of their captors it had sounded as though the Mannians were fighting amongst themselves. Still, it offered the prisoners a respite from their torments. The beatings had stopped, and the regular interrogations and the drugs. It was as though they’d been forgotten.

For Bahn, it had been a time for brooding, of coming to terms with the knowledge that he was dead now in this nightmare of a pit, and was simply waiting to be buried. He’d found a measure of peace amongst the despair of their situation. Had found that you could face your own impending death and come to terms with it, almost welcome it, for the end of all your earthly petty troubles that it would bring.

And now this; this dream of stumbling along at the rear of the chain of men, with the sheets of rain blinding him and his shackles biting into the open sores of his skin.

They walked and walked with the reek of their foulness preceding them, passing through the camp unchallenged, shuffling clinking past the gleaming eyes of soldiers as they watched Bull leading them, the soldiers looking miserable and spent and uncaring.

In front of Bahn, the man called Gadeon uttered a strange mewling noise from his throat and began to stagger away on a different course. Bahn grabbed him, slipping in the mud in his bare feet as he pulled him back in line.

‘Stay with us, brother,’ he whispered. ‘Stay with us now.’

‘We should go back,’ said the man frantically. ‘They’ll punish us for this when they find us gone. They’ll call us traitors again or worse.’

Bahn felt ashamed to see the man so broken; then ashamed that he should feel that way at all.