The Carhullan Army (27 page)

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This is my statement. Let it serve as a confession if one is still required. I was a willing participant in the siege on Rith, and the occupation of Authority headquarters. I led the patrol that bombed the clinic and I gave armed support to attacks on three other targets, including the refinery and the railway station. I do not know how many men I have killed.

We regretted the civilian casualties and civilian deaths that occurred in the first few weeks of the conflict, when residents of the quarters attacked the remaining Authority cruisers and were shot. We were unable to provide adequate support. Their bravery will not be forgotten, and others will follow them. This is just the beginning.

We took the town and held it for fifty-three days before the air corps and a regiment of ground forces were called back from overseas and deployed. We executed those monitors that were captured, and three doctors from the hospital, and we destroyed all official records for the Northern territories. There are no remaining carbon prints, or medical files, and the census had been wiped. You will not find out who I am. I have no status. No one does.

My name is Sister. I am second in council to the Carhullan Army. I do not recognise the jurisdiction of this government.

I’d like to thank Cantrell Jones for help with military research, and Philip Robinson for his environmental predictions. Thanks to Jane Kotapish, Valecia McDowell and Joanna Härmä for their conversations over the years.

Thanks also to Jacob Polley for reading several drafts of this novel, and for coming up the fell in bad weather. Thanks to Clare Conville for all her support, and to Lee Brackstone and Trevor Horwood for their editorial advice.

The Carhullan Army
is a work of fiction. Character, events and place names are either products of the author’s imagination, or, if real, not portrayed with geographical and historical accuracy.

Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria in 1974. She received a BA from Aberystwyth University, Wales, and a MLitt in Creative Writing from St Andrews, Scotland. She is the author of
Haweswater
, which won the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel, a Society of Authors Betty Trask Award, and a Lakeland Book of the Year prize. In 2004, her second novel,
The Electric Michelangelo
, was short-listed for the Man Booker prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia region), and the Prix Femina Etranger, and was long-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her third novel,
The Carhullan Army
, was published in 2007, and won the 2006/07 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the James Tiptree Jr. Award, a Lakeland Book of the Year prize, and was short-listed for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction. Her fourth novel,
How to Paint a Dead Man
, was longlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize.