Stands a Shadow

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

A Fighting Retreat

Che stuffed the pistol into his belt and fought his way through the jostling infantry towards Sasheen. He caught a glimpse of her body lying unmoving in the mud. Someone had removed her mask. A wound in her neck pumped profusely.

Not far from the scene, a lone Acolyte lay sprawled on the ground. His cloak was splayed open to reveal a pair of leather leggings. Che tore the mask from the man’s face. He gasped and stood back in surprise.

Ash! he thought as he took in the black skin of the old farlander. One of the Roshun, here, of all places.

Che reeled with his thoughts asunder. Blood was coursing from a swollen lump in the man’s head. He was still alive, then.

Che looked about him for a moment, at the masks and the stark faces of strangers.

He knelt and slapped the farlander’s face. Ash’s eyes fluttered open, then closed again. He seemed to weigh nothing but skin and bones as Che lifted him and threw him over his shoulder. He grabbed the reins of a loose zel, threw the old man over the saddle. The animal tried to skitter away as he bent to reach for the fallen sword. He pulled it back towards him, then mounted behind Ash.

He kicked the animal into a trot.

For a moment the battle hung in the balance.

Perhaps if the imperial army had learned nothing from the previous fifty years of land war – or if Sparus’s own five hundred Acolytes hadn’t positioned themselves in the direct path of the Khosian advance and stood firm – or if one more man in the ordinary ranks had yelled in fear for his life – then the First Expeditionary Force might have broken.

But it didn’t. Instead it rallied gamely and began to fight back. And in the way of these things, the collective shame of its near-defeat lent an impetus to the army’s efforts, and they fell upon the Khosian flanks like a flood.

The Khosians reeled.

‘She fell, sir, I saw it with my own eyes.’

The Red Guard captain stood with a slight stoop as he spoke. He held a bloody hand across his stomach.

‘Very well,’ said General Creed. ‘Now go and find yourself a medico.’

The officer gritted his teeth – perhaps it was an attempt at a smile – and hoisted his charta before returning to the lines of the right flank. They were disintegrating now, much like the rest of the formation.

Bahn paid little attention to the news of the Matriarch’s possible death, or even to the destruction of the army taking place all about him. He was in something of a daze as he stood fighting down his nausea, the blood leaking from an ear he could no longer hear from.

‘That’s four sightings, Bahn!’ barked General Creed by his side, pulling him from his scattered thoughts.

Bahn blinked dumbly in reply.

The general stood with hands behind his back, taking in the imperial onslaught on all sides. ‘They rallied well, don’t you think?’

‘Like Khosians, sir,’ Bahn finally replied, feeling giddy.

Creed examined his lieutenant. The flesh around the general’s eyes was swollen from exhaustion.‘We’ve accomplished all we can here. I think it’s time that we left, don’t you?’

‘General?’

‘You’d rather we stay here a while longer?’

He tried to shake his head, but it only caused more sickness to wash through him.

‘Not – for a single moment,’ he said.

Creed turned to one of his bodyguards. ‘Have a runner sent to fetch General Reveres.’

‘Reveres is dead, sir,’ replied the bodyguard.

‘What? When?’

‘I’m not certain, sir.’

‘Nidemes, then!’

It was some minutes before General Nidemes limped towards them through the darkness. His helm was missing and his greying hair was matted to his head in the semblance of a bird’s nest.

‘Nidemes, we’re leaving as of now. We’ll perform a heel turn and proceed to the lake as fast as we can.’

With obvious relief the general hurried away off to pass on the order.

‘The lake?’ asked Bahn.

General Creed’s breath formed a rising cloud in the air. ‘I’m sure that by the time that we get there, you’ll have worked it out, Bahn.’

‘They’re heading for the lake,’ observed Sergeant Jay.

Halahan saw it. What was left of the army had turned about and tightened its flanks, and now was forging a path through to the lake on the northern side of the battlefield.

‘About bloody time,’ breathed the colonel to himself.

He turned to face the remnants of his own small force. The imperial mortars had been abandoned – three of the pieces had seized up finally, too hot to fire any longer; a fourth had blown up, though only the charge had exploded, miraculously, not the explosive shot itself. Their crews were gulping from small flasks of spirits, looking as though they’d just survived a deadly game of blind-man’s duel.

The riflemen defending the perimeter had run out of ammunition too. They were exhausted to the man, and they were nervously watching as the Imperials regrouped again along the waist of the ridge and around the base of its slopes. All knew that the next assault would finish them.

Colonel Halahan drew in a breath and bellowed: ‘Someone send up a signal flare – we’re leaving!’

The men roused themselves, brief burns of energy returning to their spent frames. ‘And let’s destroy the rest of these mortars, shall we?’

Halahan scanned the bloody carnage of the ridge. The dead would have to be left where they’d fallen. He struck a match to relight his pipe. Exhaling smoke, he gathered all the precious pistols he’d tossed aside so far. As he stood next to the sergeant the signal flare shot upwards into the air, burning yellow as it stalled and fell back to earth.

Beyond it, skyships were blasting each other with spurts of cannon fire.

‘Let’s pray our skuds are still up there somewhere,’ said Sergeant Jay, and they both stood together, scanning the dark skies in silent hope.

Che drew the zel to a halt in front of the twins’ tent. He leapt off it, leaving Ash across the saddle; ducked quickly inside without waiting to see if anyone spotted him.

Guan and Swan’s packs were lying on the ground next to their cots. Che rummaged through them until he found the vial of wild-wood juice, then ran back outside with it gripped in his fist. He led the zel to his own tent and went in to grab his pack. He threw his books into it, shoving them in next to the bundle of civilian clothing he had brought with him. He left his Scripture of Lies facedown on the bunk.

‘How’s it going down there?’

A silhouette filled the entrance to the tent. A priest.

Che rose slowly as he tightened his grip on the straps of his backpack.

The silhouette raised its hand to its mouth, took a bite from something. Che scented the sweet narcotic scent of the parmadio fruit.

‘Hard to say,’ he told the spymaster Alarum. ‘I’m no expert on war.’

The spymaster stood there with a blanket wrapped across his shoulders. Che glanced at Alarum’s other hand, saw it hanging limp by his side next to a sheathed dagger in his belt. Che knew this man was dangerous.

‘For a moment I thought we were being overrun, the way you came charging into camp like that.’ He gestured to the pack in Che’s hand. ‘Going somewhere?’

Without warning, Che swung the backpack and threw it at Alarum’s face.

He was a step behind it. He punched the man in the stomach to knock the wind from him, doubling Alarum over with a whoosh of air. Che locked an arm around his neck, snatched the knife from the man’s scabbard, drew him back away from the entrance with the edge of the blade pressing against his throat.

‘ Wait! ’ Alarum hissed through his teeth.

He struggled, strong for his thin build, gripping Che’s wrist as he tried to stop him from cutting his throat. One of the bunks toppled over as he kicked it with a foot. ‘ Wait a moment!’ he hissed in a strangled whisper, white spittle flying from his lips.

The man forced his sleeve back from his arm, held the skin up for Che to see. Che stared at it, saw the scaly patch of skin along the spymaster’s arm. His grip loosened a fraction.

‘We may share the same afflicted blood, Che,’ came his strangled voice. ‘I just might be your father!’

He released the spymaster. Alarum gasped for air with a hand to his throat.

‘My mother slept with many men,’ he said. ‘That proves nothing.’

‘No it doesn’t, not for certain. But still, don’t you wonder?’

Che tossed the knife quivering into the ground. ‘You left the note for me in the Scripture,’ he said as the realization came to him. ‘That was you.’

‘I see you’re paying it some heed, too. Good. If you stay they’ll kill you. I’ll do what I can for your mother, what little that may be.’

‘You can help her?’

‘Perhaps. If I’m quick enough about it.’

Che hesitated, caught between sudden emotions. He looked at the man, his gaunt face and dark, intense eyes, wondering if it might be true.

A few priests rushed past the entrance of the tent. Someone was shouting in the distance.

‘Wait!’ shouted Alarum as Che swirled away, leaving him standing there in the middle of the tent next to the overturned cot.

Che’s mind raced with uncertainties as he stepped outside.

‘Come on, old man,’ Che said to the unconscious Ash, climbing back into the saddle with his pack. He nodded to Alarum as the spymaster emerged from the tent. The man seemed to be struggling for words.

With a kick and a whip of the reins Che galloped out of the encampment, Alarum and the Acolyte guards at the entrance watching him go.

A bodyguard ducked behind his shield as something whistled past close by. For once, Bahn stood cool and unflinching.

‘Our scouts tried it before we attacked.’ Creed was telling Koolas the war chattero. ‘It should hold, so long as we’re careful.’

The surface of the lake had frozen solid. It was strange, to face such a silent, open expanse of ice with the intensity of the battle still raging behind them.

‘With luck, Mandalay’s cavalry have scattered their zels. It should take them time to organize a pursuit.’

Creed and the others stood on a spur of land that projected into the lake for a hundred feet or more. The remnants of the army were filtering onto this projection, heavy and light infantry alike. Already, at the instructions of their officers, men cast aside shields and helms, shrugged out of their heavy armour, before they headed out onto the lake. They spread out so as to distribute their weight more evenly. Stretcher-bearers carried off what casualties they could. The ice, still reasonably thin, creaked beneath their feet, but held.

The army was subliming away.

Past the heavy press of men still heading towards the ice, Bahn could barely see the rearguard that stretched across the mouth of this projection of land. They had formed into a single chartassa, and they fought alone to hold off the imperial attackers; a mixture of Hoo and Red Guards, many badly wounded themselves, each a volunteer for this role.

Bahn found it hard to look at them.

More than anything else now, he wished to get back to Bar-Khos so that he could be in the sanctuary of his own home with Marlee and the children. He could see it in his mind’s eye. It was raining outside the house. The fire was lit. Marlee toasted sweetcakes on the flames while Juno his son played with his model ships and little Ariale gazed at him; Bahn, sitting deep in his armchair in a glow of contented peace.

General Nidemes approached, flanked by Colonel Barklee, one of his Red Guard officers, the man holding a shield aloft to protect them from the missiles that still thudded down. ‘Time to go,’ Nidemes told Creed. General Creed’s eyes glimmered in the dimness. ‘Have you taken all the neck chains from the rearguard?’

‘We have,’ Barklee replied, hoisting a bundled cloak that chinked with the many identity chains within it.

‘We must find some way to repay them for this,’ announced Creed.

Koolas the war chattero listened from behind.

Bahn turned to the rearguard again. They were being pushed back step by step.

Once more, Bahn stood on the sidelines, watching from afar the bravery of men as they lay down their lives for the sake of others. For some reason, since regaining his feet, Bahn had found that he no longer felt any fear at all, as though he’d shed a heavy cloak he had forgotten he was even wearing. More than ever before, he understood why he was here, and why the men of the rearguard were here, giving up their lives for the sake of their people.

‘I’m staying,’ he told Creed as the general turned to leave.

Creed cast him a look of surprise. ‘What’s that?’

‘I’m staying,’ he said as he took the chain from his neck. ‘With the rest of those men.’ And he tossed the chain across to Barklee.

Creed frowned and quizzed him with his eyes. ‘You’re in shock, Bahn,’ he decided. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying. We’ve won here, damn it! Even if it doesn’t seem so just now, we’ve scored a victory here!’

‘Hold Bar-Khos, no matter what, General,’ Bahn told him. ‘That’s the only way you can repay these men now.’

Before Creed could answer, Bahn turned and walked away.

‘Bahn!’ Creed shouted after him. ‘Bahn!’ he commanded.

But within half a dozen footsteps, Bahn was lost amongst the confusion of men.