Monsters of Men (17 page)

And I’m leaning back on my knees, pulling on the reins–

“Please please please please please–”

And she’s lifting her head–

And her eyes go back to the falls–

Boy colt!
she shouts–

And I look back–

Another arc of spinning fires is coming right at us–

“Come on!”

She rocks up to her feet, unsteady on the ground, stumbling away from a burning body near us–

Boy colt!
she’s still screaming–

“Come on, girl!” I say and try to get to her side–

Get on her saddle–

But here come the fires–

Like swooping burning eagles–

One sails right over the top of her–

Right over where my head woulda been if I’d been on her back–

And suddenly she’s dashing forward in terror–

I hang onto her reins and run after her–

Stumbling along the ground–

Half-running, half-pulled–

As spinning fires come flying in from all direkshuns around us–

Like the whole
sky
is ablaze–

And my hands are twisted in the reins–

And Angharrad is screaming,
Boy colt!

And I’m falling–

The reins are pulling away–

Boy colt!

“Angharrad!”

And then I hear
SUBMIT!

Yelled in a different horse voice–

And as I fall to the ground, I hear another set of hooves, another horse–

The Mayor, riding Morpeth–

Swinging a cloth round Angharrad’s head–

Covering her eyes, blinding her from the rain of fire storming down around us–

And then he reaches down and grabs me hard by the arm–

Lifting me up and into the air–

And throwing me outta the way of a spinning fire that burns the ground where I had just fallen–

“COME ON!” he yells–

And I scrabble over to Angharrad, grabbing her reins to guide her–

And the Mayor is riding a circle round us–

Dodging the fires in the sky–

Watching me–

Watching to see me get safe–

He came back to save me–

He came back to save
me
–

“BACK TO THE CITY, TODD!” he yells. “THEIR RANGE IS LIMITED! THEY CAN’T REACH–”

And he disappears as a spinning fire slams right into the broad chest of Morpeth–

{VIOLA}

“Think what you’re doing,” Bradley says, his Noise roaring
Stupid, selfish bitch
behind Simone in the cockpit seat. “Sorry,” he says immediately through clenched teeth. “But we don’t need to do this!”

We’re crammed in here, Bradley and Mistress Coyle stepping into each other’s space behind me and Lee.

“I’ve got telemetry,” Simone says. A small panel opens, exposing a square, blue button. You can’t just press on a screen to fire a weapon. It has to be physical. You have to mean it. “Target locking,” Simone says.

“The field is clearing!” Bradley says, pointing at the viewscreen above the cockpit. “It doesn’t even look like the fires can reach any
further
!”

Simone doesn’t respond but her fingers hesitate above the blue button–

“Your boy is still down there, my girl,” Mistress Coyle says, still talking right to me, as if I was in charge of this whole thing–

But it’s true, he
is
still down there, trying to pull Angharrad to her feet, somehow we can still see him, in the middle of the twisting smoke and fire, small and alone and not answering my comm–

“I know what you’re thinking, Viola,” Bradley says, trying to keep his voice calm even as his Noise rages. “But it’s one life against thousands.”

“Enough talking!” Lee yells. “Fire the goddam thing!”

But on the viewscreen, I see the battlefield
is
emptying, clearing out except for Todd and a few other stragglers and I think, if he can make it, if he can just
make
it out,
then maybe it’s true, maybe the Mayor will realize how out-matched he is against weapons that powerful, because who’d want to fight this? Who could?

But Todd has to make it–

He
has
to–

And his horse is running now, pulling him along–

And the fires are whooshing in–

No,
no
–

Simone’s fingers are still hesitating above the button–

“Todd,”
I say out loud–

“Viola,” Bradley says strongly, getting my attention–

I turn to him–

“I know how much he must mean to you,” he says, “but we can’t, there are so many more lives at stake–”

“Bradley–” I say–

“Not for one person,” he says. “You can’t make war personal–”

“LOOK!” Mistress Coyle shouts–

And I turn back to the viewscreen–

And I see–

A spinning fire slam right into the front of a running horse–

“NO!” I scream.
“NO!”

And the screen erupts in a blast of flame–

And crying out at the top of my lungs, I lunge past Simone and I slam my fist down onto the blue button–

[T
ODD
]

Morpeth don’t even have time to scream–

His knees buckle as the bolt of fire cuts right thru him–

I jump away from the blast, pulling Angharrad’s reins again, dragging her from the impact as the fire roars right over the top of us–

She comes easier now that at least her eyes are dark, her Noise trying to find the ground to run on–

And the bolt of fire flies on, flames pouring out everywhere–

But another batch of fire separates from it–

Tumbling out to one side and hitting the ground-

The Mayor, rolling furiously towards me–

I grab the blanket off Angharrad and fling it down on top of him, smothering the flames on his general’s uniform–

He rolls a few more times in the dirt and I jump around, patting down spots of fire on him–

I’m dimly aware that the fires are returning to the ledge again–

That we have another few seconds to get moving–

The Mayor stumbles up, still smoking, face black with soot, hair singed some, but mostly unharmed–

Not so Morpeth, whose body is barely recognizable in the burning heap–

“They’re going to pay for that,” the Mayor says, his voice rough from the smoke–

“Come on!” I shout. “We can make it if we run!”

“This isn’t how it was supposed to go, Todd,” he says angrily, as we head up the road. “They can’t come as far as the city, though, and I think they’ve got vertical limitations, too, which must be why they didn’t fire them from the hilltop–”

“Just shut up and
run
!” I say, huffing Angharrad along, thinking that we ain’t gonna make it by the time the next fires come–

“I’m telling you this because you shouldn’t think we’re beaten!” the Mayor yells. “This isn’t a victory for them. It’s merely a setback! We’ll still go after them, we’ll still–”

And then there’s a sudden
shriek
in the air above us, whipping by like a bullet and–

–the whole hillside explodes outwards like a volcano of dust and fire and the blast wave knocks me and the Mayor and Angharrad down to the ground and a hail of pebbles splatters down on top of us, big boulders landing nearby that could smash us flat–

“
What?!
” the Mayor says, looking back up–

The dry falls is collapsing into the emptied pool below, taking all the spinning fire Spackle with it, dust and smoke heaving into the sky as the zigzag road is obliterated, too, the whole front section of the hill tumbling down on itself, leaving a jagged wreck along the top–

“Was that yer men?” I shout, my ears ringing from the boom. “Was that the artillery?”

“We didn’t have time!” he shouts back, his eyes reading the destruckshun. “And we don’t have anything like that kind of power.”

The first billows of smoke start to clear a little, showing a big, gaping funnel where the lip of the hill was, jagged rocks everywhere, a scar ripped right outta the hillside–

And
Viola,
I think–

“Indeed,” says the Mayor, realizing it, too, a sudden, ugly pleasure in his voice.

And standing up in front of a field of dead soldiers, a field covered with the burnt remains of men I saw walking and talking not ten minutes before, men who fought and died for him, in a battle he started–

In front of all of this–

The Mayor says, “Your friends have joined the war.”

And he smiles.

Weapons of War

(THE RETURN)

The blast hits us all.

The hill that overlooks the valley is torn from the earth. The archers of the Land are killed instantly, as are all the Land near the edge of the hill when it exploded, the Sky and I only saved by a matter of body-lengths.

And the blast keeps on occurring, echoing through the voice of the Land, stretching back down the river, amplifying over and over until it seems to be continually happening, the shock of it roaring through us again and again and again, leaving the Land dazed as one, wondering what the sheer size of the explosion means.

Wondering what will come next.

Wondering if it will be big enough to kill us all.

The Sky stopped the river shortly after the sun rose. He sent a message through the Pathways to the Land who were building the dam far upriver, telling them to raise their final walls, drop their final stones, turn the river back onto itself. The river began to subside, slowly at first, then faster and faster until the arcs of colour thrown up by the spray of the waterfall disappeared and the vast width of the river became a muddy plain. As the sound of rushing water vanished, we could hear the voices of the Clearing raised in bafflement and fear at the bottom of the hill.

And then came the hour of the archers, and our eyes went with them. They had slipped beneath the falls under cover of darkness, waiting until the sun rose and the water stopped.

And then they raised their weapons and fired.

Every part of the Land watched as it happened, seeing through the eyes of the archers as the burning blades tore through the Clearing, as the Clearing ran and screamed and died. We watched as one as our victory unfolded, watched as they were powerless to retaliate–

And then came the sudden tearing in the air, the
whoosh
of something moving so fast it was sensed more than seen, a final, thudding flash that filled the mind and soul and voice of every member of the Land, signalling that our apparent victory would come at a cost, that the Clearing had bigger weapons than we thought, that now they would use them to destroy us all–

But further explosions do not come.

The vessel that flew over us
, I show to the Sky when the Land begins to stumble to its feet again. He helps me up from where the blast knocked us back, neither of us hurt more than small cuts but the ground around us littered with bodies of the Land.

The vessel
, the Sky agrees.

We go right to work, fearing a second blast every moment. He sends out commands to the Land for immediate regrouping, and I help him move the wounded to healing crèches, a new camp already organizing itself farther up the dry riverbed even in the early moments after the blast because that is what the Sky has ordered, a place for the voice of the Land to gather itself together again, to become one again.

But not
too
far up the riverbed. The Sky wants the Clearing still in physical sight, even though the hill is so destroyed now there is no longer space for an army to march down it, unless it were to climb down single file.

There are other ways
, he shows to me, and already I can hear the messages being passed from him to the Pathways, messages that rearrange where the body of the Land rests, messages that tell it to start moving along roads that the Clearing is unaware of.

It is strange
, he shows, hours later, when we finally stop to eat and a second blast has still not come.
To fire once, but not again
.