Monsters of Men (60 page)

“Where’s Viola?” I say, trying to prime my voice for an attack with her name.

“I’m afraid the probes lost track of her in the fog,” he says, pressing buttons to show me the different views of the valley, all hidden by fog and smoke, with fires in the only clear spaces, burning in a huge way to the north.

“Let me go.”

“All in good time, Todd. Now–”

He stops and looks into the air, his face momentarily troubled, but not by nothing going on this room. He turns back to the probe projeckshun but it’s still all fog and there ain’t nothing to see there.

VIOLA!
I think right at him, hoping he don’t hear it coming.

He barely flinches, just stares up into empty space again, his frown getting deeper and deeper. And then he heads outta the little chapel thru the collapsed wall, leaving me there, tied fast to the table, shivering in the cold, feeling like I weigh a ton.

I just lie there heavy for a long while, longer than I want, trying to think of her out there, trying to think of all the people who’re gonna die if I don’t move.

And then I slowly start trying to get myself free.

(THE SKY)

The fog is thick as a white night now and the Land marches only according to its voice, tied together, showing us our way as we near the hilltop, coming through the trees–

And I order the battlehorn to be blown–

The sound spills out into the world, and even from a distance we can hear the Clearing’s terror at it–

I press my battlemore on, faster through the forest, feeling the pace of the Land pick up behind me. I am at the front of the guard now, the Source still with me, ahead of the first of our soldiers, their fires lit and ready to be shot, and behind them–

Behind them the entire voice of the Land–

Quickening its stride–

Nearly there,
I show to the Source, as we pass through a deserted Clearing farm swamped by receding waters and on up through a dense forest–

We march through it, faster, faster still–

The voices of the Clearing hear us coming now, hear our voice, hear our
innumerable
voice bearing down on them, hear the battlehorn blown again–

And we march onto a small flat of land and up through another rise–

And I burst through a wall of foliage, acid rifle raised–

And I am the Sky–

I am the
Sky
–

Leading the Land into its greatest battle with the Clearing–

The fog is thick and I seek out the Clearing in the whiteness, preparing my weapon for its first firing and ordering the soldiers to raise their burning bolts and ready them to fire–

To purge the Clearing from the world once and for all–

And then a single man from the Clearing emerges.

“Wait,” he says calmly, unarmed, alone in the sea of fog. “Ah have somethin to say.”

{VIOLA}

“Look at the valley,” Bradley says, as we race through the forests on the hilltops.

In glimpses down to our left, through the leaves and tendrils of drifting fog, you can see the river in full flood. The first wave of debris is well past us and it’s just water now, settling its way above the riverbed, flooding the road that takes you straight to the ocean.

“We’re not going to get there in time,” I shout to Bradley. “It’s too far–”

“We’ve come a long way,” Bradley shouts back. “And we’re moving fast.”

Too
fast,
I think. Acorn’s lungs have started rasping in an unnerving way. “Are you all right, boy?” I ask between his ears.

He doesn’t answer, just keeps on chugging forward, foamy spit flying from his mouth. “Bradley?” I say, worried.

He knows. He’s looking down at Angharrad, who seems better than Acorn but not by much. He looks back at me. “It’s the only chance we’ve got, Viola,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

Girl colt
,
I hear from Acorn, low and pained.

And that’s all he says.

And I think about Lee and Wilf and others on the hilltop we left behind.

And we keep on riding.

(THE SKY)

“My name is Wilf,” the man says, standing alone in the fog, though I can hear hundreds behind him, hear their fears and their readiness to fight if they must–

And they must–

But something in the man’s voice–

Even as the first rows of soldiers on their battlemores line up next to me, weapons at the ready, burning and blazing and ready to fight–

The man’s voice–

It is as open as a bird’s, as a pack animal’s, as the surface of a lake–

Open and true and incapable of deceit–

And it is a channel, a channel for the voices behind him, those voices of the Clearing hidden in the fog, full of fear, full of dread–

Full of the wish that this would end–

Full of the wish for peace–

You have shown how false that wish is,
I show to the man called Wilf.

But he does not answer, merely stands there, his voice open, and again the feeling, the certainty that this man is incapable of an untruth–

He opens his voice further and I see more clearly all the voices behind him, coming through him, as he disregards all their lies, takes them away and gives me–

“Ah’m only lissnen,” he says. “Ah’m only lissnen to what’s true.”

Are
you
listening?
the Source shows, next to me.

Do not speak,
I show.

But are you
listening?
he shows.
Listening as this man is?

I do not know what you mean
–

And then I hear it, hear it through the man called Wilf, his voice calm and open, speaking the voices of all his people.

As if he was their Sky.

And with that thought, I am listening to my own voice–

Listening to the Land massing behind me, streaming towards this place, at the command of the Sky–

But–

But they are also speaking. They are speaking of fear and regret. Of worry for the Clearing and for the Clearing to come from the black world above. They see the man Wilf in front of me, see his wish for peace, see his
innocence
–

They are not all like this,
I show to the Land.
They are violent creatures. They kill us, enslave us
–

But here is the man called Wilf with the Clearing behind him (and an army ready, I can see it in his voice, a frightened but willing army led by a blind man) and here is the Sky with the Land behind
him,
willing to do what the Sky wants, willing to march forward and obliterate the Clearing from this planet, should I tell them to do so–

But they fear as well. They saw peace as the same chance that the man called Wilf saw it, as a
chance,
an
opportunity,
a way to live without constant threat–

They will do what I tell them–

Without hesitation, they will do it–

But what I tell them is not what they want–

I see it now. I see it as clearly as anything in the voice of the man called Wilf.

We are here for my revenge. Not even the Sky’s revenge, the revenge of the
Return.
I have made this war personal. Personal for the Return.

And I am no longer the Return.

One action is all it takes,
shows the Source.
The fate of this world, the fate of the Land, rests on what you do now.

I turn to him.
But what do I do?
I show, asking it unexpectedly, even to myself.
How do I act?

You act,
he shows,
like the Sky.

I look back at the man called Wilf, see the Clearing behind him through his voice, feel the weight of the Land behind me in my own voice.

The voice of the Sky.

I am the Sky.

I
am the Sky.

And so I act like the Sky.

{VIOLA}

We’re outrunning the fog now, but the snow keeps falling, thicker here, even through the trees. We keep the flooded river to our left in the valley below and go as fast as the horses can carry us.

The horses.

Acorn no longer responds to anything I ask him, his Noise focused only on running through the pain in his legs and his chest and I can feel how much this is costing him–

And I realize it at the same time I realize he must know it, too–

He won’t be making the journey back.

“Acorn,” I whisper between his ears. “Acorn, my friend.”

Girl colt
,
he says back, almost tenderly, and he thunders on, through a thinning forest that opens out onto an unexpected plateau, sandwiched under the snow clouds, a thick dusting of white already accumulated across it, and we race through a surprised herd of animals calling
Here
to each other in alarm, and just before we plunge back into the forest–

“There it is!” Bradley calls–

Our first, fleeting view of the ocean.

It’s so big I’m almost overwhelmed–

Eating the world all the way to the cloudy horizon, seeming bigger than the black beyond, just like Mistress Coyle said, because it hides its hugeness–

And then we’re back in the trees.

“It’s still a ways,” Bradley calls. “But we’ll make it by nightfall–”

And Acorn collapses beneath me.

(THE SKY)

There is a long silence as I lower my weapon while the whole world waits to see what I mean by it–

While I wait to see what I mean by it, too.

And again I see the Clearing through the Noise of the man called Wilf, see them rush with a feeling behind him, a feeling I know very little of–

It’s hope,
the Source shows.

I know what it is,
I show back.

And I feel the Land behind me, waiting as well–

And I feel the hope there, too–

And that is the decision of the Sky made. The Sky must act in the best interests of the Land. That is who the Sky is.

The Sky is the Land.

And the Sky who forgets that is no kind of Sky at all.

I open my voice to the Land and pass a message back to them, back to all those who have joined the fight, back to all those who united behind me when I called them–

And who now unite behind my decision not to attack–

Because another decision accompanies it. A decision necessary for the Sky, necessary for the safety of the Land.

I must find the man who attacked us,
I show to the Source.
And I must kill him. That is what is best for the Land.

The Source nods and rides his beast into the fog ahead of us, disappearing past the man called Wilf and I hear him calling out to the Clearing, telling them we will not attack. Their relief is so pure and strong that the wave of it nearly knocks me off my mount.

I look to the soldiers beside me to see if they only agree with my decision through obedience to the Sky, but they are already turning their voices back to their own lives, the lives of the Land, the lives that will now, inevitably, involve the Clearing in ways no one can foresee, ways that will first involve cleaning up the mess the Clearing made.