Tomorrow, the Killing

34

One before you go over?’ Roland Montgomery asked, blue eyes sparkling.

We were in his quarters, a half mile outside the walls of Zwollen. It was a canvas tent about ten square feet, a slit on one side opening it to the elements – standard issue to any soldier above the rank of private, the only addition a makeshift desk. He could have billeted himself somewhere, four walls and a roof, but he hadn’t.

I threw back the moonshine. It tasted like someone ran up and kicked me in the gut, but it was sure as shit safer than the water I’d been drinking.

‘I know you’re busy with your preparations, Lieutenant. I won’t keep you long.’

‘Yes, sir, of course.’

This whole thing was a formality, and as a rule I am not a big fan of those. We were going at them tonight – that was the word from up on high. Every member of the Allied forces had known it since noon, which meant that the Dren had known since twelve-thirty. If the spies littered amongst the camp followers had been slow to spill the news, the artillery barrage that had been going on the last two hours had most assuredly tipped them. Surprise was out – we’d be doing this the hard way: a picked squad with siege ladders, hoping to buy enough time with their flesh for the second wave to win through. Any private lucky enough to survive received extra pay, and whoever was fool enough to lead them was virtually guaranteed a promotion. I’d set my cap a few grades higher than lieutenant, though it’s hard now to remember why. Regardless, when they’d gathered us together and asked for a sacrifice, I’d raised my hand and gallantly offered up the men of ‘A’ company.

‘I’m not going to waste your time with any grand oratories. You aren’t a rookie and neither am I. We both know this operation has been a clusterfuck since day one. If my predecessor had done his duty instead of drinking himself to death we’d have been inside two months ago. If the brass had seen fit to back us up with a half-dozen competent practitioners we’d have been inside six weeks ago, and if the rain hadn’t collapsed our mines we’d have been inside this morning. But I don’t control the Army, Lieutenant, nor the weather. The only thing I have to call on is the strength of my right arm and the men under my command, and the first won’t be enough for tonight’s business. I won’t ask you to do it for the Queen, or for Rigus – Śakra knows you’ve done enough for both of them, and been ill-rewarded for your services. I’m asking you to do it for me, and I take care of my own.’

‘Yes, sir.’ I tossed it out from my chest. ‘We’ll take it, sir.’

He nodded, and rested his hand on my shoulder. ‘I don’t doubt it.’

I fell out of his tent and into the rain. Back at the front I arrayed my company before me, armed and armored, water beating down on the head of a hundred-plus fierce, tired, hungry souls – veterans to a man, six months, a year, the solid three that I’d suffered.

‘I ain’t gonna start with no speech,’ I said, and unlike Roland, I meant it. ‘You know the reward for making it inside. You know what it’ll take to get there. There are twenty ladders in front of us, and two men to a team. I need thirty-nine men. If you want in, step up.’

Adolphus was first off the mark, but there were a fair number close behind, and once it had all shaken out I didn’t need to conscript anyone. They were good men. They were as good as you could be, under the circumstances. Whatever that meant.

‘The rest of you will be attached to “B” company, and we all know what a bunch of pussies they are.’ There was a general rumble of forced laughter. ‘I’m counting on you to give them some backbone. We’ll do our part, but I want you coming in full-bore.’

The sane two-thirds of my company strayed into the background. Those of us who remained checked our equipment one final time. The frugal ones drained whatever they’d saved of their daily allotment of liquor. The delusional ones said their prayers, mumbling introduction to She Who Waits Behind All Things.

It’s the interim that kills you. I’d met a few fellows who could bear it without strain, but I was never one of them. My throat was parched as salt, and it was an act of will to keep my hand off my canteen. It’s a narrow line, rationing water. Your instinct is to drink until your belly bloats, but once the action starts a full stomach means wet trousers, and you lose something of your authority with piss-stains on your pants. Though what with the rain, I didn’t imagine anyone would have noticed.

A sudden blast of red sparks lit up the night, the flare our signal to begin. I grabbed my end of the ladder and Adolphus did his, and then there was no time for my legs to remember they weren’t working, just three hundred yards at a dead sprint, or as dead as one can make with fifty pounds of wood on your shoulder. The terrain was mud broken up with corpses, every step a struggle. It was too dark for the enemy to see us, let alone get a decent bead, but they fired off quarrels anyway. I could hear them landing in the sediment around us, thicker than the drizzle, and it occurred to me that a lucky shot will kill you same as a good one. These were intermittently joined by bright beams of light, corridors of heat tearing through the falling rain, illuminating the surroundings then disappearing. The Dren practitioners hadn’t gotten any less deadly since Beneharnum, but they couldn’t see in the dark any more than the bowmen. At least, I hoped they couldn’t. You never knew exactly what to expect, where the Art was concerned.

The moat was a trash-strewn ditch, the run-off knee-deep and mostly sewage to judge by the smell. Littering the bottom were sharpened caltrops, the tainted water ensuring an injury would end with infection. A man on the ladder team next to mine set his foot against one and collapsed in a heap. He let out a scream that gave away our position, but there wasn’t time to do anything about it. I plunged forward, hoping to Maletus I didn’t meet the same fate.

The Scarred One took pity on me, in so far at least as I made it through without injury. A few feet before the battlements I set the bottom of the ladder in the dirt, and after a second Adolphus sent the rest hurtling up against the stone. I unsheathed a knife and shoved it between my teeth, then clambered up the rungs before my partner could do the same.

Cannon fire from the battlements above us flared in the night, but I kept my eyes on the wall and climbed as quick as I could. If there was anyone looking down I was dead, an easy shot with a crossbow or a barrel of burning pitch. That last was the worst, heated tallow eating through your clothes and sticking to your skin, maiming anyone who survived, a long life begging coin and frightening children. Course, if I was lucky the fall alone would kill me – a happy thought indeed.

On the top rung I discovered the motherfucking ladder was short. I was still a good two feet from the rim of the battlements, but at that point there was no going back. Hoping to Śakra Adolphus had those bovine arms of his firm on the bottom struts, I braced myself and leapt for the summit. My fingers found purchase on the stone, but it was an agonizing moment before I could swing my legs up.

It took a second for me to get my bearings. I’d been so certain the run over would kill me I hadn’t bothered to give much thought to what I’d do if I made it to the top. Happily the Dren nearest to me seemed as surprised as I was, hesitating to do the obvious and run me through with the pig sticker he’d been issued for that exact purpose. I got over my shock quicker than he did his, pulled my knife from my teeth and slipped it between his ribs. He moved at the last second, turning a lethal strike into a glancing blow, but it unmanned him enough for me to get him by the shoulders and trip him over the side.

A trio of guards from down the line were coming to their comrade’s aid, too slow for salvation but in plenty of time for revenge. I pulled a grenade loose from my bandolier and struck the flashpoint against the floor, setting the fuse to light, then tossed it underhand and dropped to the ground. A deafening caterwaul and a wave of flesh. I pushed myself up as quick as I could, every second lost a desperate one. A thread of entrails was caught in my hair and I brushed it off negligently, one more horror I didn’t have time to process. If I gave them a chance to fall on me I was good as buried, audacity was all I had. I pulled my trench blade from its sheath and took a running leap into the sea of men swelling up the stairwell from the courtyard below.

The Great War was the largest conflict in human history. Millions of men killing each other across the breadth of the Thirteen Lands. You get enough people together and all kinds of wacky shit starts to happen – it’s just a function of the numbers. I once saw a man take an entire Dren platoon all on his lonely, screaming like Maletus and swinging a flamberge one-handed. Walked half of them back tame as sheep, fifteen-odd soldiers with their eyes down. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it, but I did and it happened. A shell got him a few days later, but he was the toast of the division in the interim.

Point being what happened was just luck, random and blind – any stray bolt could have done me, and there must have been a hundred thousand soldiers as hard as me, or harder. But that night, I didn’t run into any of them. That night, couldn’t no one touch me.

I moved on that part of the brain that is below the conscious mind, which is remembered only impersonally, as if watching the actions of a third party. The edge of my blade surged forward of its own volition, and what it touched dissipated like water. In the narrow confines of the staircase numbers didn’t count for anything, it was one-to-one. The Dren in front of me held his spear above his head, lips trembling, and I sheared my blade straight through the shaft and into bone. The next one got a boot in his chest hard enough to crack a few ribs, and he fell from the steps, carrying one of his mates with him.

I was mad with the sheer joy of it. I’d have laughed if I’d had the breath.

The last two broke and ran – one I caught while he was turning but the other took off at a good sprint and I didn’t bother to chase after him. At the distant edges of my mind I realized we’d broken through, could see my men running past me, down the other sets of steps and into the city proper. The hand on my shoulder was Adolphus’s, a wound on his arm that bore looking into but a smile on his face just the same. He laughed and I laughed with him. After a few moments there was an explosion off to the right, the space I’d carved giving our sappers time to demolish the main gate. Reinforcements would be on their way, but it wouldn’t matter – whatever strength had allowed the besieged to hold out against the full might of the Rigun Empire was utterly spent. Immediate survival was now the sole concern.

For a few blissful moments I stood there, watching as, I assumed at the time, the rest of my company chased after the fleeing Dren – and I felt like I was supposed to feel. Like a man who had done his duty, right as the falling rain.

Then the screams started, distinct from the noise of battle by the presence of feminine voices, and I realized, neither for the first time nor the last, that I was a fool.

The soldiers streaming past me weren’t under my command but I shrieked at them anyway – halt, form a line, retreat, anything I could think of. No one listened. Victory can unmake an army just the same as defeat. Two months camped in front of those walls, freezing and wet, while the people inside lobbed explosives down on our heads – I guess we’d worked up something of a grudge.

In the middle of the street a man barely old enough to shave held a woman against the ground. She struggled desperately, screaming for help, and he slapped her silent, then went back to struggling with her petticoat. Adolphus roared over and tore him off, nearly ripping the boy’s arm out of its socket. In his pre-coital excitement he seemed barely to notice, laughing as he pulled his pants on. ‘All right, all right – officers first. No need to get rough, there’s plenty of wool to go around.’ He ran off into the night, the streets full of prey.

His victim stared up at us, certain that we were next. I remember that look better than anything else about that night, the fear in her eyes and the hate behind it. After a long moment she got to her feet and sprinted off into an alleyway.

In the distance a line of fires were spreading, the product of an upturned candle or deliberate vandalism. My friends and comrades continued their triumphant rush into the city proper. I’d given up trying to stop them. In the light of the burning metropolis they seemed faceless, interchangeable. If you weren’t up to it, the next man in line certainly would be – so why not be up to it? The herd don’t have no code. I’d learned that a long time ago. I wasn’t sure why it still surprised me.

I looked up at Adolphus. He looked back down at me. We fell off into a side street. After about a hundred yards we stopped in front of a house, decently built but nothing special, residence of a shopkeeper or minor merchant. Adolphus put a foot in the middle of the door and it splintered away to nothing.

The burgher standing behind the entrance held a carving knife forgotten in one hand, eyes saucer wide, any will to fight lost at the sight of the giant. Behind him stood his wife and daughter, meat-faced and wide-hipped, almost indistinguishable, clutching each other with terrified ferocity. Adolphus grabbed the man’s wrist, firmly but not cruelly. Steel clanged to the ground. I slipped past my partner and took a seat at a kitchen table that dominated the room. Private Gustav took the one across from me. ‘Food,’ I said in my pidgin Dren. ‘Drink.’

The matron sobbed piteously, a tune her progeny soon took up. I repeated my request to the old man, and after a moment he shook himself out of his shock and headed to the larder. Adolphus stared off at the wall with sad, dull eyes.

We spent the rest of the night like that, our host bringing us dark beer and what sundries were left in his pantry, the mother and daughter never letting go of each other, convinced at any moment we would break our repast and ravish them. Between the two of us we finished off half a keg, trying to get drunk enough to forget what was going on around us without passing so deeply into inebriation as to allow the old man a chance to slit our throats. It was a difficult task we set ourselves, and we didn’t quite meet it.

In the darkness outside, terrible things happened.

The pillage lasted three days, after which the men gradually formed back into that shape that distinguishes an army from a band of marauders. I daresay there were some men in my company who spent those days like Adolphus and I did; I daresay there weren’t many. I would have received a promotion for my role in the assault, but the second afternoon I got drunk and broke the jaw of a man who turned out to be my captain, and it was all Roland could do to keep me from being busted down in rank, or flogged.