“We hit the spackle head on!” the Mayor shouts at the men, aiming his Noise right in the middle of everyone’s heads.
Even mine.
“They’ll be gathering at the bottom of the road,” he says, “but that’s as far as they’re going to go!”
I put a hand on Angharrad’s flank beneath me. In under two minutes, the Mayor had us up on horseback, Morpeth and Angharrad coming running from round the back of the ruins of the cathedral, and by the time we’d hopped up, stepping over the still unconshus bodies of the men who tried to help me overthrow the Mayor, there was the army taking messy shape in front of us.
Not all of it, tho, maybe less than half, the rest still stretched up along the southern road to the hill with the notch on it, the road to where the battle was sposed to be.
Boy Colt? Angharrad’s thinking and I can feel spikes of nerves all thru her body. She’s scared nearly half to death.
So am I.
“BATTALIONS READY!” the Mayor shouts and immediately Mr Hammar and the later-arriving Mr Tate and Mr O’Hare and Mr Morgan snap salutes and the soldiers start lining up in the right formayshuns, twisting thru each other in coils and getting into order so quickly it almost hurts my eyes to watch it.
“I know,” the Mayor says. “It’s a thing of beauty, isn’t it?”
I point my rifle at him, the rifle I took from Davy. “You just remember our agreement,” I say. “Yer gonna keep Viola safe and you ain’t gonna control me with yer Noise. You do that and you stay alive. That’s the only reason I let you go.”
His eyes flash. “You realize that means you can’t let me out of your sight,” he says, “even if you have to follow me into battle. Are you ready for that, Todd?”
“I’m ready,” I say, even tho I ain’t but I’m trying not to think about it.
“I have a feeling you’ll do well,” he says.
“Shut up,” I say. “I beat you once, I’ll beat you again.”
He grins. “Of that I have no doubt.”
“THE MEN ARE READY, SIR!” Mr Hammar shouts from his horse, saluting fiercely.
The Mayor keeps his eyes on me. “The men are ready, Todd,” he says, his voice teasing. “Are you?”
“Just get on with it.”
And his smile gets even wider. He turns to the men. “Two divisions down the western road for the first attack!” His voice snakes thru everyone’s head again, like a sound you can’t ignore. “Captain Hammar’s division at the front, Captain Morgan taking the rear! Captains Tate and O’Hare will round up the rest of the men and armaments yet to arrive and join the fray with the greatest despatch.”
Armaments? I think.
“If the fight isn’t already over the by time they join us–”
The men laugh at this, a loud, nervous, aggressive kind of laugh.
“Then as a united army, we will drive the Spackle back up that hill and make them regret the day they were EVER BORN!”
And the men give a roaring cheer.
“Sir!” Captain Hammar shouts. “What about the army of the Answer, sir?”
“First we beat the Spackle,” says the Mayor, “then the Answer will be child’s play.”
He looks across his army of men and back up the hill to the Spackle army still marching down. Then he raises his fist and gives the loudest Noise shout of all, a shout that bores right down into the very centre of every man hearing it.
“TO BATTLE!”
“TO BATTLE!” the army cries back at him and sets off at a fierce pace outta the square, racing towards the zigzag hill–
The Mayor looks at me one last time, like he can barely keep from laughing at how much fun he’s having. And without another word, he spurs Morpeth hard in the sides and they gallop into the square after the departing army.
The army heading off to war.
Follow? Angharrad asks, fear coming off her like sweat.
“He’s right,” I say. “We can’t let him out of our sight. He’s got to keep his word. He’s got to win his war. He’s got to save her.”
For her, Angharrad thinks.
For her, I think back, all my feeling about her behind it.
And I think her name–
Viola.
And Angharrad leaps forward into battle.
Todd, I think, riding Acorn through the mash of people crowding across the road, each of them trying to run away from those awful horn blasts in one direction and the bombs of Mistress Coyle in the other.
BOOM! goes another one and I see a ball of flame coughed up into the sky. The screaming around us is almost unbearable. People running up the road get tangled with people running down the road and everyone gets in our way.
Gets in the way of us getting to the scout ship first.
The horn blasts again and there’s even more screaming. “We have to go, Acorn,” I say between his ears. “Whatever that sound is, the people on my ship can–”
A hand grabs my arm and nearly yanks me off the saddle.
“Give me the horse!” a man screams at me, pulling harder. “Give it to me!”
Acorn twists around to try to get away but there are too many people in the road crowding us–
“Let go!” I shout at the man.
“Give it to me!” he screams. “The Spackle are coming!”
This surprises me so much he nearly gets me off the saddle. “The what?”
But he’s not listening and even in the dying light I can see the whites of his eyes blazing in terror–
HOLD! shouts Acorn’s Noise and I grip even harder on his mane and he rears up, knocking the man away and leaping forward into the night. People scream to get out of our way and we knock more of them over as Acorn ploughs up the road, me holding on for dear life.
We reach a clearing and he charges on even faster.
“The Spackle?” I say. “What did he mean? Surely they couldn’t be–”
Spackle, Acorn thinks. Spackle army. Spackle war.
I turn to look back as he runs, back to look at the lights coming down the distant zigzag hill.
A Spackle army.
A Spackle army is coming, too.
Todd? I think, knowing that I’m getting farther away from him and the tied-up Mayor with every hoofbeat.
The best hope is the ship. They’ll be able to help us. Somehow, they’ll be able to help me and Todd.
We stopped one war, we can stop another.
And so I think his name again, Todd, sending him strength. And Acorn and I race up the road towards the Answer, towards the scout ship, and I’m hoping against hope that I’m right–
Angharrad runs after Morpeth as the army surges down the road in front of us, brutally knocking down any citizens of New Prentisstown who happen to be in their way. There are two battalions, the first led by a screaming Mr Hammar on horseback and a less shouty Mr Morgan leading the second behind him. It’s maybe four hundred men in all, rifles up, their faces twisted in screams and yells.
And their Noise–
Their Noise is a monstrous thing, tuned together and twisted round itself, roaring as a single voice, like a loud and angry giant pounding its way down the road.
It’s making my heart beat right outta my chest.
“Stay close to me, Todd!” the Mayor shouts from Morpeth, pulling up to my side as we ride on, fast.
“You ain’t gotta worry bout that,” I say, gripping my rifle.
“I mean, to save your life,” he says, looking over. “And don’t forget your end of the bargain either. I’d hate for there to be any casualties from friendly fire.”
And he winks at me.
Viola, I think right at him, sending it to him in a fist of Noise.
He flinches.
And he ain’t smiling so much now.
We ride after the army thru the west end of town, down the main road, past what can only be the wreckage of the original jails the Answer burnt down in their biggest attack before today. I only ever been down here once, when I ran thru it the other way with Viola in my arms, carrying her down the zigzag road when she was dying, carrying her into what I thought was safety, but all I found was the man riding by my side, the man who killed a thousand Spackle to start this war, the man who tortured Viola for informayshun he already knew, the man who murdered his own son–
“And what other kind of man would you want leading you into battle?” he says, reading my Noise. “What other kind of man is suitable for war?”
A monster, I think, remembering what Ben told me once. War makes monsters of men.
“Wrong,” says the Mayor. “It’s war that makes us men in the first place. Until there’s war, we are only children.”
Another blast of the horn comes roaring down at us, so loud it nearly takes our heads off and it puts the army off its stride for a second or two.
We look up the road to the bottom of the hill. We see Spackle torches gathering there to meet us.
“Ready to grow up, Todd?” the Mayor asks.
BOOM!
Another explosion just up ahead of us now, sending smoking debris flying high above the trees. I’m so scared I forget the state of my ankles and I try to spur on Acorn like I’ve seen in vids on my ship. I curl forward from the pain. The bandages that Lee – still out there somewhere, trying to find the Answer in the wrong place, oh please be safe, please be safe – the bandages he wound around my feet are good but the bones are still broken and for a minute the agony flashes all the way up my body, right to the throbbing burn in the band around my forearm again. I pull back my sleeve to look. The skin around the band is red and hot, the band itself still just thin steel, immovable, uncuttable, marking me as number 1391 until the day I die.
That’s the price I paid.
The price I paid to find him.
“And now we’ve got to make it worth it,” I say to Acorn, whose Noise says Girl colt back to agree with me.
The air is filling with smoke and I can see fires burning up ahead. People are still running past us in all directions, though fewer and fewer as the town starts to thin out.
If Mistress Coyle and the Answer started at the Office of the Ask, marching towards the centre of town from the east, then they’d already be past the hill where the communications tower used to be. Which is the most likely place where the scout ship landed. Mistress Coyle would have turned around and taken a fast cart to get there, to be the first one to talk to them, but who would she have left in charge?
Acorn presses ahead, around the road as it curves–
And BOOM!
There’s a flash of light as another dormitory goes up in flames, reflecting the road for a shining second–
And I see them–
The Answer.
Lines of men and women, blue As written across their fronts and sometimes even painted on their faces.
And every one with guns pointed out–
In front of carts loaded with weaponry–
And though I recognize some of them (Mistress Lawson, Magnus, Mistress Nadari), it’s like I don’t know them at all, they look so fierce, so focused, so scared and brave and committed and for a second I pull back on Acorn’s reins, too afraid to ride towards them.
The flash of the explosion dies and they’re plunged into darkness again.
Forward? Acorn asks.
I take in a breath, wondering how they’ll react to seeing me, wondering if they’ll see me at all and not just blow me right out of the saddle in the confusion.
“We’ve got no choice,” I finally say.
And just as he readies himself to move again–
“Viola?” I hear from out of the darkness.
The road outta town reaches a wide clearing bounded by the river on the right, with the massive crashing of the falls and the zigzag road down the hill direcktly in front of us. The army roars into the clearing, Captain Hammar in the lead, and even tho I’ve only been here once, I know there were trees here before, trees and small houses, and so the Mayor musta had his men clearing it all this time, making it ready to be a battlefield–
As if he knew this was coming–
But I can’t stop to think about that cuz Mr Hammar is shouting “HALT!” and the men are stopping in formayshun and looking across the clearing–
Cuz there they are–
The first troops of the Spackle army–
Fanning out into the open ground, a dozen, two dozen, ten dozen of ’em, surging down the hill like a river of white blood, torches held high, bows and arrows and some weird long white stick things in their hands and there are Spackle foot soldiers swarming round other Spackle riding these huge white creachers, built wide like a bullock but taller and broader and with a massive single horn shooting out from the end of their noses and the creachers are covered in heavy armour that looks like it’s made from clay and I see that a lotta the Spackle soldiers are wearing it too, the clay covering their white skin–
And there’s another horn blast so loud I swear my ears are starting to bleed and you can see the horn with yer own eyes now, strapped to the backs of two of the horned creachers up on the hilltop and being blown by that huge Spackle–
And oh, God–
Oh, my, God–
Their Noise–
It comes tumbling down the hill like a weapon on its own, cresting across the open ground like foam on a raging river, and it’s coming right for us, pictures of their army cutting us down, pictures of our soldiers being ripped to pieces, pictures of ugliness and horror that you could never describe, pictures–
Pictures that our own soldiers are sending right back to ’em, pictures rising from the mass of men in front of me, pictures of heads torn from bodies, of bullets ripping Spackle apart, of slaughter, of endless endless–
“Keep your focus, Todd,” the Mayor says, “or the battle will take your life. And I, for one, am more than curious as to what sort of man you’re going to turn out to be.”
“FORM A LINE!” we hear Mr Hammar shouting and the soldiers immediately behind him start spreading out. “FIRST WAVE READY!” he shouts and the men stop and raise their rifles, poised to rush forward at his command as the second wave lines up behind ’em.
The Spackle have stopped too, forming an equally long line at the bottom of the hill. A horned creacher parts their line in the middle, a Spackle standing on its back behind a u-shaped white thing that looks like it’s made of bone, half-again as wide as a man and mounted on a stand on the creacher’s armour.
“What is that?” I ask the Mayor.
He grins as if to himself. “I think we’re about to find out.”
“MEN READY!” Mr Hammar shouts.
“Stay back with me, Todd,” the Mayor says. “Keep out of the fighting as much as you can.”
“Yeah, I know,” I say, heavy feeling in my Noise. “You don’t like to get your hands dirty.”
He catches my eye. “Oh, there are going to be plenty of dirty days ahead. Don’t you worry.”
And then “CHARGE!!!” Mr Hammar screams at the top of his lungs–
And the war is on.
“Wilf!” I yell, riding over to him. He’s driving an ox-cart, out in front and off to the side of the first line of the Answer, still marching down the road in the smoky gloom.
“Yer alive!” Wilf says, hopping down off the cart and scooting over to me. “Mistress Coyle tol’ us yoo were dead.”
Anger fills my stomach again over what Mistress Coyle tried to do, at the bomb she intended for the Mayor and how she didn’t seem to mind that it would take me with it. “She’s wrong about a lot of things, Wilf.”
He looks up at me and in the light of the moons, I can see the fright in his Noise, fright in the most unflappable man I’ve ever met on this whole planet, a man who risked his life to save both me and Todd more than once, fright in the one man around here who’s never afraid. “The Spackle are comin, Viola,” he says. “Ya gotta get outta here.”
“I’m riding to get help, Wilf–”
Another BOOM rips through a building across the road from us. There’s a small blast wave and Wilf has to hold on to Acorn’s reins to keep standing up. “What the hell are they doing?” I yell.
“Mistress’s orders,” Wilf says. “To save the body, ya sometimes have to cut off the leg.”
I cough from the smoke. “That sounds exactly like the kind of stupid thing she’d say. Where is she?”
“Took off when that ship done flew over. Riding fast to where it landed.”
My heart jumps. “Where did it land, Wilf? Where exactly?”
He motions back down the road. “Yonder hill, where tower used to be.”
“I knew it.”
There’s another distant blast of the horn. Every time it goes off, there’s yet more screaming from the townsfolk running everywhere. I even hear some screaming from the army of the Answer.
“Ya gotta run, Viola,” Wilf says again, touching my arm. “Spackle army is bad news. Ya gotta go. Ya gotta go now.”
I fight down a flash of worry about Todd. “You’ve got to go, too, Wilf. Mistress Coyle’s trick didn’t work. The Mayor’s army is already back in town.” Wilf sucks in air over his teeth. “We’ve got the Mayor,” I continue, “and Todd’s trying to stop the army, but if you attack head on, you’ll be slaughtered.”
He looks back at the Answer, still marching down the road, faces still set, though some of them are seeing me and Wilf, seeing me alive on horseback, and surprise is starting to dawn. I hear my name more than once.
“Mistress Coyle said to keep marching,” Wilf says, “keep bombing, no matter what we heard.”
“Who’d she leave in charge? Mistress Lawson?” There’s a silence and I look back down at Wilf. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
He nods slowly. “She said Ah was the best at follering orders.”
“Yet another mistake she made,” I say. “Wilf, you have to turn them round.”
Wilf looks back at the Answer, still coming, still marching. “Other mistresses won’t lissen to me,” he says, but I can hear him thinking.
“Yes,” I say, agreeing with his thought, “but everyone else will.”
He looks back up to me. “Ah’ll turn ’em round.”
“I have to get to the ship,” I say. “There’ll be help there.”
Wilf nods and points his thumb back over his shoulder. “Second big road up back yonder. Mistress Coyle’s got twenty minutes on ya.”
“Thank you, Wilf.”
He nods again and turns back to the Answer. “Retreat!” he yells. “Retreat!”
I urge Acorn along again and we ride past Wilf and the astonished faces of Mistresses Lawson and Nadari at the front of the Answer line. “On whose authority?” Mistress Nadari snaps.
“Mine!” I hear Wilf say, strong as I’ve ever heard him.
I’m already passing through the Answer and pushing Acorn as fast as he’ll go and so I don’t see Wilf when he says, “And hers!”
But I know he’s pointing at me.
Our front line sprints across the clearing like a wall falling down a hill–
Men running in a V-shape with Mr Hammar screaming on horseback at its tip–
The next line of men sets off a split second later so now there’s two rows running at breakneck speed towards the line of Spackle, guns out but–
“Why ain’t they firing?” I ask the Mayor.
He breathes out a little. “Overconfidence, I should say.”
“What?”
“We’ve always fought the Spackle at close quarters, you see. It was most effective. But . . .” His eyes play over the front line of Spackle–
Which ain’t moving.
“I think we may want to be back a bit farther, Todd,” he says, turning Morpeth down the road before I can even say anything.
I look back to the men running–
And the Spackle line that ain’t moving–
And the men getting closer–
“But why–?”
“Todd,” the Mayor calls, now a good twenty metres behind me–
There’s a flash of Noise thru the Spackle–
A signal of some kind–
Every Spackle on the front line raises his bow and arrow–
Or his white stick–
And the Spackle on the horned creacher takes a lighted torch in each hand–
“READY!” Mr Hammar calls, thundering forward on his horse, heading right for the horned creacher–
The men raise their rifles–
“I really would get back if I were you,” the Mayor calls to me–
I pull a little on Angharrad’s reins–
But my eyes are still on the battle and the men running cross the clearing in front of me and the men behind ’em ready to do the same and more men behind them–
And me and the Mayor waiting at the back of the pack–
“AIM!” screams Mr Hammar with his voice and his Noise–
I turn Angharrad and ride back to the Mayor–
“Why ain’t they firing?” I say as I get close–
“Who?” the Mayor says, still studying the Spackle. “The men or the enemy?”
I look back–
Mr Hammar’s not fifteen metres from the horned creacher–
Ten–
“Either one,” I say–
Five–
“Now, this,” says the Mayor, “should be interesting.”
And we see the Spackle on the horned creacher bring the two torches together behind the u-shaped thing–
And WHOOMP!
An exploding, spilling, tumbling, churning flood of fire looking for all the world like the rushing river beside it comes whooshing out of the u-shaped thing, way bigger than looks possible, expanding and growing and eating the world like a nightmare–
Coming right for Mr Hammar–
Who pulls his horse hard to the right–
Leaping outta the way–
But too late–
The fire swoops round him–
Sticking to Mr Hammar and his horse like a coating–
And they’re burning burning burning as they try to ride away from it–
Riding straight for the river–
But Mr Hammar don’t make it–
He falls from the burning saddle of his burning horse–
Hitting the ground in a jerking pile of flame–
Then lying still as his horse disappears into the water–
Screaming and screaming–
I turn my eyes back to the army–
And see that the men on the front line don’t got horses that’ll carry ’em outta the way–
And the fire–
Thicker than normal fire–
Thicker and heavier–
Cuts thru ’em like a rockslide–
Eating the first ten men it touches–
Burning ’em up so fast you can barely hear ’em scream–
And they’re the lucky ones–
Cuz the fire spreads out–
Sticking to the uniforms and the hair–
And the skin–
And my God the skin of the frontline soldiers off to each side–
And they fall–
And they burn–
And they scream like Mr Hammar’s horse–
And they keep on screaming–
Their Noise rocketing up and out over the Noise of everything else–
And as the blast of fire finally dissipates and Mr Morgan is yelling “FALL BACK!” to the front lines of soldiers and as those soldiers are already turning and running but firing their rifles as they go and as the first arrows from the Spackle bows start arcing thru the air and as the other Spackle raise their white sticks and flashes come outta the ends and the men hit by the arrows in the back and in the stomach and in the face start to fall and as the men hit by the flashes from the white sticks start losing bits of their arms and their shoulders and their heads and falling to the ground dead dead dead–
And as I grip Angharrad’s mane hard enough to pull out hair–
And she’s so terrified she don’t even complain–
All I can hear is the Mayor next to me–
Saying, “At last, Todd–”
And he turns to me and he says–
“A worthy enemy.”
Me and Acorn are barely a minute away from the army of the Answer when we pass the first road and I recognize where we are. It’s the road down to the house of healing where I spent my first weeks in New Prentisstown, the house of healing where Maddy and I snuck out one night.
The house of healing where we took Maddy’s body to prepare it for burial after Sergeant Hammar shot her for no reason at all.
“Keep going, Acorn,” I say, pushing the thought away. “The road up to the tower has to be around–”
The dusky sky suddenly lights up behind me. I turn and Acorn does, too, and though the city is far away and behind trees, we can see a huge flash of light, silent from this distance, no rumble of an explosion, just a bright, bright glow that grows and grows before dying away, lighting up the few people on the road who’ve reached this far out of town, and I wonder what could possibly have happened back in the city to make a light like that.
And I wonder whether Todd is in the middle of it.
The next blast of fire comes before anyone’s ready for it–
WHOOMP!
Shooting across the open ground and catching the retreating soldiers, melting their guns, burning up their bodies, laying ’em to the ground in the worst sorta heap–
“We gotta get outta here!” I shout at the Mayor, who’s watching the battle like he’s hypnotized, his body still but his eyes moving this way and that, taking in everything.
“Those white sticks,” he says quietly. “Obviously a ballistic of some sort but do you see how destructive they are?”
I stare at him wide-eyed. “DO SOMETHING!” I shout. “They’re getting slaughtered!”
He raises one eyebrow. “What exactly do you think war is, Todd?”
“But the Spackle’ve got better weapons now! We won’t be able to stop ’em!”
“Won’t we?” he says, nodding at the battle. I look, too. The Spackle on the horned creacher readies his torches for another blast but one of the Mayor’s men has risen from where he’s fallen, burns all over him, and he raises his gun and fires–
And the Spackle on the horned creacher drops one torch and slaps a hand to his neck where the bullet hit him, then falls sideways off the creacher to the ground–
A cheer goes up from the Mayor’s men as they see what’s happened–
“All weapons have their weaknesses,” the Mayor says.
And quick as that, they’re regrouping and Mr Morgan is riding his horse forward, leading all the men now, and more rifles are getting fired and tho more arrows and white flashes are coming from the Spackle and more soldiers are falling, Spackle are falling, too, their clay armour cracking and exploding, falling under the feet of other Spackle marching behind ’em–
But they keep coming–
“We’re outnumbered,” I say to the Mayor.
“Oh, ten to one easily,” he says.
I point up the hill. “And they’ve got more of those fire things!”
“But not ready yet, Todd,” he says and he’s right, the creachers are backed up behind Spackle soldiers on the zigzag road, not ready to blast unless they want to take out half their own army.
But the Spackle line is really crashing into the line of men now and I see the Mayor do a counting moshun with his hands and then look back down the empty road behind us.
“You know, Todd,” he says, taking Morpeth’s reins. “I think we’re going to need every man.”
He turns to me.
“It’s time for us to fight.”
And I know with a stab in my heart that if the Mayor himself is gonna fight–
Then we’re really in trouble.
“There!” I shout, pointing at what has to be the road up the hill to the tower. Acorn flies straight up the incline, bits of foamy sweat flying from his shoulders and neck. “I know,” I say between his ears. “Almost there.”
Girl colt, he thinks and for a second I think he might even be laughing at my sympathy. Or maybe he’s just trying to comfort me.
The road is incredibly dark as it curves around the back of the hill. For a minute, I’m cut off from absolutely everything, all sound from the city, all light from what’s happening, all Noise that might tell me what’s going on. It’s like Acorn and I are racing through the black beyond itself, that weird quiet of being a small ship in the hugeness of space, where your light is so feeble against the surrounding dark, you might as well not have a light at all–
And then I hear a sound coming from the top of the hill–
A sound I recognize–
Steam escaping from a vent–
“Coolant systems!” I shout to Acorn, like they’re the happiest words in the whole world.
The steam sound gets louder as we near the crest of the hill and I picture it in my mind: two huge vents at the back of the scout ship, just above the engines, cooling them down after entry into the atmosphere–
The same vents that didn’t open on my own scout ship when the engines caught fire.
The same vents that caused us to crash and killed my mother and father.
Acorn reaches the top of the hill and for a second, all I see is the vast empty space where the communications tower used to be, the tower Mistress Coyle blew up rather than have the Mayor use it to contact my ships first. Most of the metal wreckage has been cleared away in huge scrap heaps and when Acorn races across the open ground, at first I only see the heaps in the moons-light, three big ones, covered in the dust and dullness of the months since the tower fell–
Three groupings of metal–
And behind them a fourth–
Shaped like a huge hawk, wings outstretched–
“There!”
Acorn puts on a burst of energy and we race towards the back of the scout ship, steam and heat pouring out of the vents into the sky, and we get nearer and I see a shaft of light on the left that must be the bay door open under a wing of the ship–
“Yes,” I say to myself. “They’re really here–”
Because they really are here. I almost believed they’d never come and I can feel myself getting lighter and my breath start rushing faster because they’re here, they’re actually here–
I see three figures standing on the ground at the bottom of the bay doors, silhouetted against the shaft of light, their shadows turning as they hear Acorn’s hoofbeats–
Just to the side, I see a cart parked in the darkness, its oxes nibbling on grass–
And we get closer–
And closer–
And the figures’ faces suddenly loom up as Acorn and I enter the shaft of light, too, juddering to a stop–
And it is, it’s exactly who I thought it would be and my heart does a skip of happiness and homesickness, and in spite of all that’s happening, I feel my eyes get wet and my throat start to choke–
Because it’s Bradley Tench from the Beta and Simone Watkin from the Gamma and I know they came looking for me, they came all this way looking for my mother and my father and me–
And they step back, startled at my sudden appearance, and then take a second to see past all the dirt and the grime and the longer hair–
And I’m bigger, too–
Taller–
Almost grown–
And their eyes get wider as they realize who I am–
And Simone opens her mouth–
But it’s not her voice that speaks.
It’s the third figure, the one whose eyes – now that I finally look at them – open even wider, and she says my name, says it with a look of shock that I have to say gives me a surprising flash of pleasure.
“Viola!” Mistress Coyle says.
“Yeah,” I say, looking right into her eyes. “It’s Viola.”
I don’t even think when the Mayor and Morpeth run after the soldiers into the battle. I just spur Angharrad and she trusts me and leaps right off after ’em–
I don’t want to be here–
I don’t want to fight anyone–
But if it keeps her safe–
(Viola)
Then I’ll bloody well fight–
We ride past soldiers on foot still charging forward, and the battleground at the bottom of the hill is heaving with men and Spackle and I keep on looking up the zigzag road which is still pouring down with more and more Spackle soldiers and it feels like I’m an ant riding into an anthill and you can hardly see the ground for writhing bodies–
“This way!” calls the Mayor, peeling off to the left, away from the river. The lines of men have pushed the Spackle back against both the river and the base of the hill, holding ’em there–
NOT FOR LONG, THOUGH, says the Mayor, straight into my head.
“You don’t do that!” I shout at him, raising my rifle.
“I need your attention and I need a good soldier!” he shouts back. “If you can’t do that, then you’re no good in this war and you give me far less reason to help you!”
And I think to myself, how did it turn into his choosing to help me, I had him tied up, I had him at my mercy, I won–
But there’s no time cuz I see where he’s heading–
The left flank, the one away from the river, is the weakest, it’s where the men are thinnest and the Spackle have seen that and a surge of ’em is pressing forward. “ATTEND TO ME!” the Mayor shouts and the soldiers nearest us turn and follow him–
Doing it immediately, like they don’t even think about it–
And they follow us towards the left flank and we cross the ground way faster than I’d like and I’m just swamped on all sides by how loud it all is, the men shouting, the weapons firing, the thump of bodies hitting the ground, that effing Spackle horn still blasting every two seconds, and the Noise, the Noise, the Noise, the Noise–
I’m riding into a nightmare.
I feel a whisk of air by my ear and turn quickly to see a soldier behind me shot in the cheek by the arrow that just missed my head–
He screams and he falls–
And then he’s left behind–
MIND YOURSELF, TODD, the Mayor puts in my head. WOULDN’T WANT YOU LOST IN THE FIRST BATTLE, NOW WOULD WE?
“Effing STOP that!” I shout, whirling round to him.
I’D RAISE MY GUN IF I WERE YOU, he thinks at me–
And I turn–
And I see–
The Spackle are on us–
“You’re alive!” Mistress Coyle says and I see her face change, making one kind of astonishment into a different, lying kind of astonishment. “Thank God!”
“Don’t you dare!” I yell at her. “Don’t you dare!”
“Viola–” she starts but I’m already sliding off Acorn, grunting badly at the pain in my ankles, but I stay standing, just, and turn to Simone and Bradley. “Don’t believe anything she’s told you.”
“Viola?” Simone says, coming forward. “Is it really you?”
“She’s as responsible for this war as the Mayor. Don’t do anything she–”
But I’m stopped by Bradley grabbing me in a hug so tight I can barely breathe. “Oh, my God, Viola,” he says, deep feeling in his voice. “We’d heard nothing from your ship. We thought–”
“What happened, Viola?” Simone says. “Where are your parents?”
And I’m overwhelmed by seeing them, so much so I can’t speak for a minute, and I pull a little away from Bradley and the light catches his face and I see him, really see him, see his kind brown eyes, his skin the same dark shade that Corinne’s was, his short curly hair, greying at the temples, Bradley who was always my favourite on the convoy, who used to teach me arts and maths, and I look over and see the familiar freckled skin of Simone, too, the red hair tied back in a ponytail, the teeny tiny scar on the rise of her chin and I think, in all that’s happened, how much they disappeared to the back of my mind, how much the process of just surviving on this stupid, stupid world made me forget that I came from a place where I was loved, where people cared for me and for each other, where someone as beautiful and smart as Simone and as gentle and funny as Bradley would actually come after me, actually want what was best.
My eyes are flooding again. It’s been too painful to remember. Like that life happened to a whole different person.
“My parents are dead,” I finally choke out. “We crashed and they died.”
“Oh, Viola–” Bradley says, his voice soft.
“And I was found by a boy,” I say, getting stronger. “A brave and brilliant boy who saved me over and over again and now he’s down there trying to stop a war that she started!”
“I did no such thing, my girl,” Mistress Coyle says, not looking fake astonished any more.
“Don’t you dare call me that–”
“We are fighting a tyrant down there, a tyrant who killed hundreds if not thousands, who imprisoned and banded women–”
“You shut up,” I say, low and threatening. “You tried to kill me and you don’t get to say anything more about anything.”
“She what?” I hear Bradley say.
“You had Wilf, kind, sweet, peaceful Wilf marching into town blowing up buildings–”
Mistress Coyle starts. “Viola–”
“I said, shut up!”
And she shuts up.
“Do you know what’s happening down there now?” I say. “Do you know what you were sending the Answer into?”
She just breathes at me, her face a storm.
“The Mayor figured out your trick,” I say. “He would have had a full army waiting for you by the time you reached the centre of town. You would have been annihilated.”
But all she says is, “Don’t underestimate the fighting spirit of the Answer.”
“What’s the Answer?” Bradley asks.
“A terrorist organization,” I say, just to see the look on Mistress Coyle’s face.
It’s worth it.
“You are speaking dangerous words, Viola Eade,” Mistress Coyle says, stepping towards me.
“What are you going to do about it?” I say. “Blow me up again?”
“Whoa, whoa,” Simone says, moving between us. “Whatever’s going on,” she says to Mistress Coyle, “you clearly haven’t told us the whole story.”
Mistress Coyle sighs in frustration. “I haven’t lied to you about what that man did,” she says and turns to me. “Have I, Viola?”
I try to outstare her, but no, he really did do terrible things. “We’ve already beat him, though,” I say. “Todd’s down there right now with the Mayor tied up but he needs our help because–”
“We can sort out our differences later,” Mistress Coyle says over me to Bradley and Simone. “It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. There’s an army down there that needs to be stopped–”
“Two armies,” I say.
Mistress Coyle turns to me, frustrated. “The Answer does not need to be stopped–”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” I say. “There’s an army of Spackle marching down the hill by the waterfall.”
“An army of what?” Simone asks.
But I’m still looking at Mistress Coyle.
Because her mouth has dropped open.
And I can see fear move right across her face.
Here they come–
This part of the hill is all rock and steepness so the Spackle can’t come straight down onto us but they’re surging cross the clearing towards the weakness in the line of men and here they come–
Here they come–
Here they come–
I raise my gun–
I’m surrounded by soldiers, some pushing forward, some pushing back, knocking into Angharrad who keeps calling Boy colt, boy colt! in her Noise–
“It’s okay, girl,” I lie–
Cuz here they are–
Gunfire erupts everywhere, like a flock of birds taking off–
Arrows zing thru the air–
The Spackle fire their sticks–
And before I can even have a thought, a soldier in front of me staggers back with a weird fizzing sound–
Grasping at his throat–
Which ain’t there no more–
And I can’t take my eyes off him as he stumbles to his knees–
And there’s blood just everywhere, all over him, real blood, his blood, so much I can smell the iron tang of it–
And he’s looking up at me–
Catching my eyes and holding ’em–
And his Noise–
My God his Noise–
And I’m suddenly in it, inside what he’s thinking, and there’s pictures of his family, pictures of his wife and his baby son and he’s trying to hold onto ’em but his Noise is breaking into bits and his fear is pouring thru like a bright red light and he’s reaching for his wife, he’s reaching for his little bitty son–
And then a Spackle arrow hits him in the ribcage–
And his Noise stops–
And I’m jerked back onto the battlefield–
Back into hell–
KEEP IT TOGETHER, TODD! the Mayor puts in my head.
But I’m still looking at the dead soldier–
His dead eyes looking back up at me–
“Dammit, Todd!” the Mayor yells at me and–
I AM THE CIRCLE AND THE CIRCLE IS ME.
Thudding thru my brain like a dropped brick–
I AM THE CIRCLE AND THE CIRCLE IS ME.
In his voice and my own–
Twisted together–
Right in the centre of my head–
“Eff off,” I try to shout–
But my voice is weirdly quiet–
And–
And–
And I look up–
And I feel calmer–
Like the world is clearer and slower–
And a Spackle breaks thru where two soldiers have separated–
And he raises his white stick at me–
And I’m gonna have to do it–
(killer–)
(yer a killer–)
I’m gonna have to shoot him before he shoots me–
And I raise my gun–
Davy’s gun that I took from him–
And I think, Oh, please, as I put my finger on the trigger–
Oh, please, oh, please, oh, please–
And–
Snick–
I look down in shock.
My gun ain’t loaded.
“You’re lying,” Mistress Coyle says, but she’s already turning, as if she could see over the trees and into town. She can’t, there’s just the shadows of the forest against the distant glow. The steam from the vents is so loud we can barely hear ourselves talk, much less anything from the town, and if she took off after the ship the second she saw it come in for landing, she wouldn’t have heard the horn at all.
“That’s impossible,” she’s saying. “They agreed, they signed a truce!”
Spackle! Acorn says, behind me.
“What did you say?” Simone asks me.
“No,” Mistress Coyle says. “Oh, no.”
“Would someone please explain what the hell’s going on?” Bradley asks.
“The Spackle are the indigenous species,” I say. “Intelligent and smart–”
“Vicious in battle,” Mistress Coyle interrupts.
“The only one I met was gentle and much more frightened of humans than the humans here seem to be of them-”
“You didn’t fight them in a war,” Mistress Coyle says.
“I also didn’t enslave them.”
“I will not stand here and have this conversation with a child–”
“It’s hardly as if they’re coming for no reason.” I turn back to Bradley and Simone. “They’re attacking because the Mayor committed a genocide of all the Spackle slaves, and if we can maybe just talk to them, tell them we’re not like the Mayor–”
“They’ll kill your precious boy,” Mistress Coyle says. “Won’t even think twice about it.”
My breath immediately stops as panic starts to rise from what she says, but then I try to remember that she’d like it if I panicked. If I was afraid, I’d be easier to control.
But I won’t be, because we’ll stop this. We’ll stop all of this.
That’s what me and Todd do.
“We’ve caught the Mayor,” I say, “and if the Spackle see that–”
“With all due respect,” Mistress Coyle says to Simone. “Viola is a girl with an extremely limited knowledge of the history of this world. If the Spackle are attacking, we’ve got to fight back!”
“Fight back?” Bradley says, frowning. “Who do you think we are?”
“Todd needs our help,” I say. “We can fly down there and stop this before it’s too late–”
“It’s already too late,” Mistress Coyle interrupts. “If you could just take me up in your ship, I could show you–”
But Simone’s shaking her head. “The atmosphere was thicker up top than we expected. We had to land in full coolant mode–”
“No!” I say but of course they did. Two vents open–
“What does that mean?” Mistress Coyle asks.
“It means we don’t fly for at least another eight hours as the engines cool and replenish their fuel cells,” Simone says.
“Eight hours?” Mistress Coyle says. She makes a fist, actually makes a fist in the air in frustration.
For once, I know how she feels.
“But we’ve got to help Todd!” I say. “He can’t control one army and hold off another–”
“He’ll have to let the President go,” Mistress Coyle says.
“No,” I say quickly. “No, he wouldn’t do that.”
Would he?
No.
Not after we fought so hard.
“War makes ugly necessity,” Mistress Coyle says. “And however good your boy may be, he’s one against thousands.”
I fight down the panic again and turn to Bradley. “We have to do something!”
He looks hard over to Simone and I know they’re wondering what disaster they’ve landed themselves in. Then Bradley snaps his fingers like he’s remembered something.
“Hold on!” he says and rushes back into the scout ship.
I pull the trigger again–
All I get is another snick–
I look up–
The Spackle’s raising his white stick–
(what are those things?)
(what are they that causes so much damage?)
And I’m dead–
I’m dead–
I’m–
BANG!
A gun goes off right by my head–
And the Spackle with the white stick jerks to one side, a trail of blood flying from his neck above the line of his armour–
The Mayor–
The Mayor shot him from the back of Morpeth–
And I’m staring over at him, ignoring the fighting that’s going on all around us–
“You sent yer son to war with an EMPTY GUN?” I scream, shaking from anger and from having just about died–
“Now is not the time, Todd,” the Mayor says–
And I flinch again as the whisk of an arrow flies right past me and I grab the reins and try to turn Angharrad to get the hell outta here and I see a soldier stumble back into Morpeth, blood rushing out from a nightmarish-looking hole in the stomach of his uniform and he raises his bloody hands to the Mayor for help–
And the Mayor snatches the soldier’s rifle from him and tosses it over to me–
I catch it out of reflex, my hands instantly wet from the blood all over it–
NOW IS ALSO NOT THE TIME FOR NICETIES, the Mayor puts in my head. TURN! FIRE!
And I turn–
And I fire–
“Survey probe!” Bradley says, coming back down the ramp, carrying what looks like an oversize insect, maybe half a metre long, shiny metal wings spread open over a thin metal body. He holds it up to Simone as if asking her. She nods and I see that she’s Mission Commander for this trip.
“What kind of probe?” Mistress Coyle asks.
“They scope out the landscape,” Simone says. “Didn’t you have them when you landed?”
Mistress Coyle snorts. “Our ships left Old World twenty-three years before yours, my girl. We practically flew here steam-powered compared to what you’ve got.”
“What happened to yours?” Bradley says to me, setting up the probe.
“Destroyed in the crash,” I say. “Along with nearly everything else. I barely even had any food left.”
“Hey,” Simone says, trying to say it soft and comforting. “But you made it. You’re alive.” She moves to put an arm around me.
“Careful,” I say. “Both my ankles are broken.”
Simone looks horrified. “Viola–”
“Look, I’ll live,” I say, “but I’m only alive because of Todd, okay? If he’s in trouble down there, Simone, we have to help him–”
“Always thinking of her boy,” Mistress Coyle mutters. “Making it personal at the expense of the entire world.”
“It’s because no one and nothing matters to you that you’re willing to blow the world to pieces!”
Pieces, Acorn thinks, shifting nervously beneath me.
Simone looks at him, furrowing her forehead. “Wait a minute–”
“Ready!” Bradley says, standing back from the probe, a small control device in his hand.
“How does it know where to go?” Mistress Coyle asks.
“I’ve set it to fly towards the brightest source of light,” Bradley says. “These are just area probes with limited altitude, but it should be enough to clear a few hills.”
“Can you set it to look for a specific person?” I say.
But I stop because the night sky lights up again with the same glow I saw on my ride here. Everyone looks towards the city.
“Get the probe up!” I say. “Get it up now!”
I fire the gun before I can even think if I want to–
BANG!
I ain’t ready for the kick-back and it knocks me in my collarbone and I grab Angharrad’s reins and we spin round in a full circle before I finally see–
A Spackle–
Lying on the ground in front of me–
(with a knife stuck in his–)
With a gunshot wound bleeding from a hole in his chest–
“Nice shot,” the Mayor says.
“You did it,” I say, turning to him. “I told you to stay the hell outta my head!”
“Not even to save your life, Todd?” he says, firing his gun again and another Spackle falls.
I turn, gun raised–
They’re still coming–
I aim at a Spackle raising his bow at a soldier–
I fire–
But I pull it to the side on purpose at the last second, missing altogether (shut up)–
The Spackle jumps away, tho, so it worked–
“That’s not how you win wars, Todd!” the Mayor yells, firing his gun at the Spackle I missed, catching it in the chin and sending it sprawling–
“You have to choose,” the Mayor says, ranging his gun round, looking for the next thing to shoot. “You said you’d kill for her. Did you mean it?”
Then there’s another whisk sound–
And the worst squeal imaginable from Angharrad–
I turn round in the saddle–
She’s been hit in the back right flank with an arrow–
Boy colt! she yells. Boy COLT!
And I’m immediately reaching back to try and grab the arrow and not fall off from her leaping about at the pain of it and it snaps in two in my hand and I leave a broken bit stuck into her back leg and Boy colt! Boy colt! Todd! and I’m trying to calm her so she doesn’t throw me down into the heaving mass of soldiers all round us–
And that’s when it happens again–
WHOOMP!
A huge flash of light and I turn to look–
The Spackle have another fire weapon at the bottom of the hill.
The flames spill out from the top of the horned creacher and cut right thru the middle of the soldiers and men are screaming and burning and screaming and burning and soldiers are turning back and running and the line is breaking and Angharrad is bucking and bleeding and squealing and we’re slammed by a wave of men retreating and she bucks again and–
And I drop my gun–
And the fire expands out and up–
And men are running–
And smoke is everywhere–
And suddenly Angharrad spins free and we’re somehow in a place where no man stands, where the army is behind us and the Spackle are in front of us and I don’t got my gun and I don’t know where the Mayor is–
And the Spackle on the back of the horned creacher with the fire-making thing has seen us–
And he starts coming right towards us–
Bradley presses the screen on the remote device. The probe lifts lightly off the ground, straight up with almost no sound except a little zip. It hovers for a second, extends its wings, and then takes off for the city so fast you almost don’t see it go.
“Wow,” Mistress Coyle says under her breath. She looks back to Bradley. “And we’ll be able to see what’s happening?”
“And hear,” he says, “to a limited degree.”
He presses the remote again, dialling the screen with his thumb until a light flashes out the end of the remote device, projecting a three-dimensional picture that hangs in mid-air, lit up in bright greens because of night vision. Trees rush by, a flash of the road, a few blurs of tiny people running–
“How far is the city from here?” Bradley asks.
“Ten kilometres, maybe?” I say.
“Then it should almost be–”
And then the probe’s there, at the edge of the city, rushing over buildings burning where the Answer set them alight, rushing on over the ruins of the cathedral, rushing over crowds of townsfolk running in panic from the square–
“My God,” Simone whispers, turning to me. “Viola–”
“It’s still going,” Mistress Coyle says, watching.
It is still going, flying past the town square and down the main road.
“Brightest light source–” Bradley starts to say–
And then we see just exactly what the brightest light source is.
Men burning–
Everywhere–
The screaming–
And the terrible smell of cooked meat–
I gag in my throat–
And the Spackle’s riding right towards me–
He’s standing on the back of a horned creacher, his feet and lower legs strapped into boot-type things on either side of the saddle, letting him stand there without needing to balance–
And he’s got a burning torch in each hand and the u-shaped fire-making thing in front of him–
And I see his Noise–
I see me in his Noise–
I see me and Angharrad alone in the middle of an emptiness–
Her screaming and twisting with the broken arrow in her flank–
Me staring back at the Spackle–
Me without a gun–
And behind me is the weakest part of our line–
And I see the Spackle shooting the fire in his Noise and taking out me and the men behind me–
Leaving the Spackle an opening to come pouring into the city–
Their war won before it’s barely even started–
I grab Angharrad’s reins and try to move her but I can see the pain and fright shooting thru her Noise as she keeps calling out Boy colt! Todd! and it’s ripping my heart as she calls it and I wheel round trying to find the Mayor, trying to find anyone who’ll shoot the Spackle on the horned creacher–
But the Mayor ain’t nowhere I can see–
Hidden by smoke and panicking men–
And no one is lifting a gun–
And the Spackle is raising his torches to fire the weapon–
And I think, No–
I think, It can’t end this way–
I think, Viola–
I think, Viola–
And then I think, “Viola”?
Would it work on a Spackle?
And I sit up as high in the saddle as I can–
And I think about her riding away from me on Davy’s horse–
I think of her broken ankles–
I think of us saying we’d never part, not even in our heads–
I think of her fingers twirling round mine–
(I don’t think about what she’d say if she knew I let the Mayor go–)
I just think Viola–
I think Viola–
Right at the Spackle on the horned creacher–
I think–
VIOLA!
And the Spackle’s head jerks back, dropping both torches and falling backwards over the horned creacher, slipping outta the boots and onto the ground, and the horned creacher turns from the sudden shift in weight, stumbling back into the line of advancing Spackle, knocking ’em this way and that–
And I hear a cheer behind me–
I turn to see a line of soldiers, recovering, surging forward, past me, all round me–
And the Mayor’s suddenly there, too, riding beside me, and he’s saying, “Excellent work, Todd. I knew you had it in you.”
And Angharrad’s tiring beneath me but still calling–
Boy colt? Boy colt? Todd?
“No time to rest,” the Mayor says–
And I look up and I see the same huge wall of Spackle coming down the hill, coming to eat us alive–
“Oh, my God,” says Bradley.
“Are those–?” Simone says, shocked, stepping towards to the projection. “Are they on fire?”
Bradley presses the remote and the picture suddenly gets closer and–
They really are on fire–
Through great swathes of smoke, we see chaos, men running this way and that, some pressing forward, some running backwards–
And some just burning–
Burning and burning and sometimes running for the river and sometimes falling to the ground and staying there.
And I just think, Todd.
“But you said there was a truce?” Simone says to Mistress Coyle.
“After a bloody war that killed hundreds of us and thousands of them,” Mistress Coyle says.
Bradley dials again. As the camera pulls back, showing the whole road and the bottom of the hill, swarming with an impossible number of Spackle, in reddish and brown armour and holding what look like sticks or something and riding–
“What is that?” I say, pointing at some kind of massive tank-like animal stomping down the hill, a single thick horn curving out the end of its nose.
“Battlemores,” Mistress Coyle says. “At least, that’s what we called them. The Spackle don’t have a spoken language, it’s all visual, but none of this matters! If they overrun the Mayor’s army, they’ll just keep coming and kill the rest of us.”
“And if he beats them?” Bradley asks.
“If he beats them, then his control over this planet will be absolute and that’s not a place you’d ever want to live.”
“And what if you had absolute control over this planet?” Bradley asks, surprising fire in his voice. “What kind of place would that be?”
Mistress Coyle blinks in surprise.
“Bradley–” Simone starts to say–
But I’m no longer listening to them–
I’m looking at the projection–
Because the camera’s moved down the hill and south a little–
And there he is–
Right in the middle of it all–
Surrounded by soldiers–
Fighting off Spackle–
“Todd,” I whisper–
And then I see a man on horseback next to him–
My stomach drops–
The Mayor is next to him–
Untied and set free, just like Mistress Coyle said–
Todd’s let him go–
Or the Mayor’s forced him to–
And Todd’s at the very front of the battle–
Then smoke rises up and he disappears.
“Get the camera in closer!” I say. “Todd’s down there in it!”
Mistress Coyle gives me a look as Bradley dials the controls again and the image on the projection searches through the battle, seeing bodies everywhere, living and dead, men and Spackle mixed together, until how can you tell who you’re fighting, how can you safely fire any kind of weapon without killing your own side?
“We have to get him out of there!” I say. “We have to save him!”
“Eight hours,” Simone says, shaking her head. “We can’t–”
“No!” I shout, hobbling over to Acorn. “I’ve got to get to him–”
But then Mistress Coyle says to Simone, “You have some kind of weapons on this ship, yes?”
I spin round.
“You wouldn’t have landed unarmed,” Mistress Coyle says.
Bradley’s face is as stern as I’ve seen it. “That is no concern of yours, madam–”
But Simone’s already answering, “We have twelve point-to-point missiles–”
“No!” Bradley says. “That is not who we are. We’re here to settle the planet peacefully–”
“–and the standard complement of hoopers,” Simone finishes.
“Hoopers?” Mistress Coyle says.
“A kind of small bomb,” Simone says. “Dropped in clusters, but–”
“Simone,” Bradley says angrily. “We did not come here to fight a–”
Mistress Coyle interrupts again. “Can you fire any of them from a ship that’s landed?”
We push forward–
Forward forward forward–
Into the line of attacking Spackle–
There’s so many–
And Angharrad is whinnying beneath me in pain and fright–
I’m sorry, girl, I’m sorry–
But there’s no time–
There ain’t no time for nothing in war except war–
“Here!” the Mayor says, shoving another gun in my hand–
And we’re at the front of a small rush of men–
Racing towards a bigger rush of Spackle–
And I’m pointing the gun–
And I’m pulling the trigger–
BANG!
I close my eyes at the pop and I don’t see where I shot cuz there’s too much smoke already in the air and there’s Spackle falling and men calling out on either side and Angharrad screaming and pressing forward anyway and the Spackle armour cracking and bursting under repeated fire and more arrows and white sticks and I’m so terrified I can’t even breathe and I’m just firing my gun and firing my gun, not even seeing where the bullets are going–
And the Spackle keep coming, climbing over the bodies of soldiers, and their Noises are wide open and so are the Noises of every soldier and it’s like a thousand wars at once, not just the one I’m seeing but ones happening over and over again in the Noise of the men and the Spackle round me till the air and the sky and my brain and my soul are filled with war and I’m bleeding it outta my ears and spitting it outta my mouth and it’s like it’s the only thing I ever knew, the only thing I can ever remember, the only thing that’s ever gonna happen to me–
And there’s a fizzing sound and a burning feeling in my arm and I instinctively lean away from it but I see a Spackle with one of those white sticks pointed at me and I see the cloth from my uniform burning away in a foul-smelling steam and the skin under it feeling like it’s been slapped and I realize if I’d been two centimetres over I’d have probably just lost my arm and–
BANG!
A rifle shot beside me and the Mayor’s there and he’s shot the Spackle, shot him to the ground, saying, “That’s twice now, Todd.”
And he plunges back into battle.
Bradley starts to answer Mistress Coyle but Simone speaks first, “Yes, we can.”
“Simone!” Bradley snaps.
“But fire them where?” Simone continues. “Into which army?”
“Into the Spackle!” Mistress Coyle shouts.
“A moment ago you wanted our help to stop this President’s army!” Bradley says. “And Viola told us you tried to kill her to suit your own ends. Why exactly should we trust your opinion?”
“You shouldn’t,” I say.
“Not even when I’m right, my girl!?” Mistress Coyle says, pointing at the projection. “The battle is being lost!” We can see a break in the darker line of men and a pulse like a river bursting its banks as the Spackle pour through.
Todd, I think. Get out of there.
“We could send a point-to-point at the base of the hill,” Simone says.
Bradley turns to her, shocked. “And have our first action here be killing hundreds of the local species, the local intelligent species that, in case you’re forgetting, we’re going to have to live with for the rest of our lives?”
“The rest of your very short lives if you don’t hurry up and do something!” Mistress Coyle practically screams.
“We could just show them our fire-power,” Simone says to Bradley. “Get them to back off and then try and negotiate–”
Mistress Coyle makes a hard clucking sound. “You can’t negotiate with them!”
“You did,” Bradley says and turns back to Simone. “Look, we jump into the middle of a war? Without even knowing which side to trust? We just blow something up and hope the consequences aren’t too terrible?”
“People are dying!” Mistress Coyle yells.
“People you were just asking us to KILL!” Bradley shouts back. “If the President committed genocide, maybe they’re just after him and us attacking will only cause an even bigger mess!”
“That’s enough!” Simone snaps, suddenly like the Mission Commander. Bradley and Mistress Coyle stop. Then Simone says, “Viola?”
They all look at me.
“You’re the one who’s been here,” Simone says. “What do you think we should do?”
We’re losing–
There ain’t no two ways about it–
Me knocking down the Spackle on the horned creacher only made things better for a second–
The men keep pushing forward and firing their guns and Spackle are falling and dying everywhere–
But they keep coming down the hill–
And there’s so many more of ’em than there are of us–
The only thing that’s saved us so far is that they ain’t been able to get another one of those fire things down to the bottom of the hill yet–
But there’re more coming–
And when they get here–
I AM THE CIRCLE AND THE CIRCLE IS ME.
Thumping thru my head as the Mayor’s horse bumps into Angharrad, so exhausted now she’s barely lifting her nose–
“Keep in the moment!” he shouts, firing his gun past me. “Or all is lost!”
“All is lost!” I shout back. “We can’t win this!”
“It’s always darkest before the dawn, Todd.”
I look at him, baffled. “No, it ain’t! What kinda stupid saying is that? It’s always lightest before the dawn!”
DOWN! he puts in my head and I duck before I even think about it and an arrow flies right thru the space where my head just was.
“That’s three times,” the Mayor says.
And then there’s another blast of the Spackle horn, so loud you can almost see the sound, bending the air, twisting it, and there’s a new note to it–
A note of victory–
We spin round–
The line of soldiers has broken–
Mr Morgan has fallen under the feet of a horned creacher–
Spackle are pouring down the hill now–
Pouring onto the battlefield from all direkshuns–
Cutting thru the men who still fight–
Pouring like a wave straight at me and the Mayor–
“Ready yourself!” shouts the Mayor–
“We have to retreat!” I shout back. “We have to get outta here!”
And I try to turn Angharrad’s reins–
But I look behind us–
The Spackle have come round the back of the men–
We’re surrounded–
“Ready!” the Mayor shouts into the Noise of the soldiers around him–
Viola, I think–
There’s too many of ’em, I think–
Oh, help, I think–
“FIGHT TO THE LAST MAN!” screams the Mayor.
“Her?!” Mistress Coyle says. “She’s just a girl–”
“A girl we trust,” Simone says. “A girl trained to be a settler just as much as her parents were.”
My face flushes a little at this but only partly out of embarrassment. Because it’s true. I did train for this. And I’ve been through more than enough in this place for my opinion to count–
I look back at the projection, back at the battle, which seems to be getting even worse, and I try to think. It looks awful as anything down there, but the Spackle aren’t attacking for no reason. And their target could just be the Mayor and we did beat him before but–
“Your Todd’s down there,” Mistress Coyle says. “He’s going to be killed if you don’t do something.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” I say. Because that’s the thing, the thing that overrides everything. I turn to Bradley and Simone. “I’m sorry, but we have to save him. We have to. Me and him were this close to saving the whole planet until they screwed it all up–”
“But would saving him be at the cost of something greater?” Bradley says, kindly, but very serious, trying to make me see. “Think hard now. What you do first anywhere is remembered for ever. It sets the whole future.”
“I’m not inclined to trust this woman, Viola,” says Simone and Mistress Coyle glowers. “But that doesn’t mean she’s not right about this. If you say it’s right, Viola, we’ll intervene.”
“If you say it’s right, Viola,” Bradley says, echoing Simone with a little snap, “we start our new life here as conquerors and you’ll be setting up brand new wars for generations to come.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Mistress Coyle shouts in frustration. “The power is here, Viola! Here is where we can change everything! Not even for me, my girl, for Todd, for you! Right here, right now, what you decide can end all of this!”
“Or,” Bradley says, “you can start something even worse.”
They’re all looking at me. I look back to the projection. The Spackle are throughout the men now and more and more are coming–
And Todd’s down there in it–
“If you do nothing,” Mistress Coyle says. “Your boy dies.”
Todd, I think–
Would I start a new war just to save you?
Would I?
“Viola?” Simone says again. “What’s the right thing to do?”
I fire my gun but there’s so many Spackle and men mixed together I have to aim high to make sure I don’t hit none of my own side and cuz of that I don’t hit no Spackle neither and one is suddenly in front of me raising a white stick to Angharrad’s head and I swing the barrel of the gun round and hit the Spackle hard behind his too-high ear and he falls and another one is already right there and it’s grabbing my arm and I’m thinking VIOLA right into its face and it stumbles back and there’s a rip at my opposite sleeve and an arrow’s flown right thru it and just misses going into the soft spot underneath my jaw and I’m pulling Angharrad’s reins to turn her cuz there ain’t no way outta this alive and we gotta run and a soldier gets hit with a blast from a white stick right next to us and a spray of blood covers my face and I turn away not seeing where I’m going and I’m pulling Angharrad with me and all I can think, all I can think in the middle of so much Noise, all I can think as I hear men die and Spackle die and see them die in Noise even with my eyes shut, all I can think is–
Is this what war is?
Is this what men want so much?
Is this sposed to make them men?
Death coming at you with a roar and a scream so fast you can’t do nothing about it–
And then I hear the Mayor’s voice–
“FIGHT!” he’s shouting–
In his voice and his Noise–
“FIGHT!”
And I wipe away the blood and open my eyes and it’s plain as anything that fighting is all that’s ever gonna happen in the world till we die and I see the Mayor on Morpeth and both he and his horse are bloodied and he’s fighting so hard I can actually hear his Noise and it’s still cold as stone but it’s saying TO THE END, TO THE END–
And he catches my eye–
And I realize it really is the end–
We’ve lost–
There’s too many of ’em–
We’ve lost–
And I grab Angharrad’s mane with both my hands and I hold it tight and I think Viola–
And then–
The entire bottom section of the hill the Spackle are coming down explodes in a roar of fire and dirt and flesh–
Rising up and over everything, pelting us with stones and soil and bits of Spackle–
And Angharrad’s yelling and we’re both falling sideways to the ground and there’s men and Spackle screaming all round us and running this way and that way and my leg is pinned under Angharrad who’s trying to work her way back up to standing but I see the Mayor ride past–
And I can hear him laughing–
“What the hell was that?” I scream at him.
“A GIFT!” he screams back as he rides thru the dirt and the smoke and he’s yelling to the men, “ATTACK! ATTACK NOW!”
We snap our attention back to the projection. “What was that?” I say.
There was a sudden boom but all the probe is showing is a solid block of smoke. Bradley dials the screen of the remote and the probe rises again, but smoke is covering everything.
“Is it recording?” Simone says. “Can you rewind?”
Bradley dials some more and suddenly the picture is going back on itself, back down into the cloud, the smoke rapidly gathering together and–
“There,” Bradley stops it and runs it forward again in slow motion.
The battle is as chaotic and terrible as it was, the men being overwhelmed by the Spackle army and then–
BOOM!
There’s an explosion at the base of the hill, a sudden violent eruption sending dirt and rock and the bodies of Spackle and their battlemores flying up and out, spinning into the cloud of smoke that rapidly covers everything–
Bradley rewinds again and we watch it once more, a small flash and then a whole section of the hill is picked up and thrown into the air and right there on the screen we see Spackle die–
Die and die and die–
Dozens of them–
And I remember the one on the riverbank–
I remember his fear–
“Is this you?” Simone says to Mistress Coyle. “Has your army reached the fighting?”
“We don’t have missiles,” Mistress Coyle says, not taking her eyes off the projection. “If we did, I wouldn’t be asking you to fire yours.”
“Then where did it come from?” Simone says. Bradley’s fiddled with the controls and the picture is bigger and clearer and on the slowest setting you can see something flying into the base of the hill, see even more slowly the earth flying up, the Spackle bodies being torn, not caring what lives they had, who they loved, what their names are or were–
Just bodies flying apart–
Lives ending–
We did this to them, we made them attack, we enslaved and killed them, or at least the Mayor did–
And here we are killing them all over again–
Simone and Mistress Coyle are arguing but I’m really not hearing them–
Because I also know this.
When Simone asked me what to do–
I was going to say fire the missile.
I was.
I was going to cause this damage myself. I was going to say, yes, do it, fire it–
Kill all these Spackle, these Spackle with their real reason to attack someone who deserves it more than anyone on this planet–
If it would save Todd, it wouldn’t have mattered, I was going to do it–
I would have killed hundreds, thousands to save him.
I would have started an even bigger war for Todd.
And that realization is so huge I have to reach out a hand to Acorn to steady myself.
Then I hear Mistress Coyle’s voice rise over Simone’s, “It can only mean that he’s been building artillery himself!”
In the smoke and the screaming, Angharrad rocks her way back up to her feet, her Noise not saying nothing now, not saying it in a way that makes me really scared for her, but she’s up again and I’m looking back and I’m seeing it, I’m seeing where the blast came from–
The other army units. Led by Mr Tate and Mr O’Hare, back from collecting the rest of the soldiers, back from collecting the armaments the Mayor was talking about.
Armaments that I for one didn’t know he had.
“Secret weapons only work if they’re secret,” he says, riding back up to me.
He’s smiling wide now.
Cuz here comes a surge of new soldiers from the city road, hundreds of ’em, fresh and screaming and ready to fight–
And already the Spackle are turning–
Already the Spackle are looking back up the hill, trying to see if there’s any way over where the ground exploded–
And there’s another flash and a whistling sound over our heads and–
I flinch and Angharrad screams as another hole is blasted into the hill and more dirt and smoke and Spackle bodies and horned creacher parts go flying into the air.
The Mayor don’t flinch at all, just looks happy as the new soldiers flood round us, as the Spackle army collapses into chaos and turns and tries to run–
And is cut down by our new arrivals–
And I’m breathing heavy–
And I’m watching the tide turn–
And I gotta say–
I gotta say–
(shut up)
I feel a rush as I see it–
(shut up)
I feel relief and I feel joy and I feel my blood pumping as I see the Spackle fall–
(shut up shut up shut up)
“You weren’t worried there, were you, Todd?” the Mayor asks.
I look back at him, dirt and blood drying on my face, the bodies of men and Spackle around us everywhere, a new bright flood of Noise filling the air even tho I didn’t think it could ever get any louder–
“Come!” he says to me. “See what it’s like to be on the winning side.”
And he rides off after the new soldiers.
I ride after him, gun up, but not shooting, just watching and feeling–
Feeling the thrill of it–
Cuz that’s it–
That’s the nasty, nasty secret of war–
When yer winning–
When yer winning, it’s ruddy thrilling–
The Spackle are running back up the hill, climbing over the rubble and running–
Running away from us–
And I raise my gun–
And I aim it at the back of a running Spackle–
And my finger’s on the trigger–
And it’s ready to pull–
And the Spackle stumbles over the body of another Spackle, but it ain’t just one body, it’s two, it’s three–
And then the smoke is clearing and I’m seeing more, I’m seeing bodies everywhere, men and Spackle and horned creachers–
And I’m back in the monastery, back where the Spackle bodies were piled up–
And it don’t feel so thrilling no more–
“CHASE THEM UP THE HILL!” the Mayor shouts to his soldiers. “MAKE THEM SORRY THEY WERE EVER BORN!”
“It’s finishing,” I say. “The battle’s ending.”
Bradley let the projection play normally again, and we all saw the arrival of the rest of the army.
Saw the second explosion.
Saw the Spackle turn and try to run back up on themselves, over the wreckage of the bottom of the hill, chaos sending some of them falling into the river, into the road below, into the battle where they didn’t live for long.
The amount of death is making me feel physically sick, throbbing along with my ankles, and I have to lean against Acorn as everyone else argues.
“If he can do that,” Mistress Coyle says, “then he’s even more dangerous to you than I’ve been saying. Is that who you want in charge of the world you’re about to join?”
“I don’t know,” Bradley says. “Are you the only alternative?”
“Bradley,” Simone says, “she’s got a point.”
“She does?”
“We can’t make a new settlement in the middle of a war,” Simone continues. “And this is our last stop. There’s nowhere else for the ships to go. We have to find a way to make it work here, and if we’re in danger–”
“We could land somewhere else on the planet,” Bradley says.
Mistress Coyle takes a sharp breath. “You wouldn’t.”
“There’s no law that says we have to join up with the previous settlement,” Bradley says to her. “We never had any communication from you so we were already landing on the assumption you hadn’t made it. We could just leave you to your war. Find our own place to start life new.”
“Abandon them?” Simone says, sounding shocked herself.
“You’d end up fighting the Spackle anyway,” Mistress Coyle says, “without anyone experienced to help you.”
“Whereas here we’d end up fighting both Spackle and men,” Bradley says. “And probably you, eventually.”
“Bradley–” Simone says–
“No,” I say, loud enough for them to hear me.
Because I’m still watching the projection, watching men and Spackle die–
And I’m still thinking of Todd, of all the death I would have caused for him–
It makes me dizzy.
And I don’t ever want to be in that position again.
“No weapons,” I say. “No bombing anyone. The Spackle are retreating. We beat the Mayor before and if we have to do it again, we will. Same thing for a truce with the Spackle.”
I look at Mistress Coyle’s face, hardening at my words. “No more death,” I say. “Not by my choice, not even for an army that deserves it, Spackle or human. We’ll find a peaceful solution.”
“Well said,” Bradley says strongly. And he looks at me with a face I remember well, a face full of kindness and love and a pride so fierce it stings.
And I have to look away because I know how close I came to having them fire the missile.
“Well, then, if you’re all so sure,” Mistress Coyle says, her voice cold as the bottom of a river. “I’ve got lives to save.”
And before anyone can stop her, she’s gone, running to her cart and driving off into the night.
“CUT THEM DOWN!” the Mayor’s yelling. “SEND THEM RUNNING!”
It don’t matter what he yells, tho, he could be screaming types of fruit and the soldiers would still be surging up the lower part of the zigzag road, climbing over where it’s been blown away, hacking and shooting at the Spackle scrambling up it before ’em.
Mr O’Hare is at the front of the new group of men, leading the charge, but the Mayor’s stopped Mr Tate and called him over to where we’re waiting on the open ground at the bottom.
I hop off Angharrad to get a closer look at the arrow wound. It don’t seem that bad but she still ain’t saying nothing in her Noise, not even plain horse sounds, just silence, which I don’t know what it means but I’m sure it ain’t good.
“Girl?” I say, trying to rub calm hands over her side. “We’ll get you stitched up, okay? We’ll get you all healed up like new, all right? Girl?”
But she hangs her head down towards the ground, foam coming up round her lips and in the sweat on her sides.
“Sorry for the delay, sir,” Mr Tate’s saying to the Mayor behind me. “We’ll have to work on their mobility.”
I glance over to where the artillery sits: four big cannons on the backs of steel carts pulled by tired-looking oxes. The metal of the cannons is black and thick and like it wants to knock your skull clean off. Weapons, secret weapons, built away from the city somewhere, the men doing it kept separate so their Noise wouldn’t be heard, building weapons meant to be used on the Answer, ready to blow ’em to bits with no problem whatsoever and now used to do the same to the Spackle.
Ugly brute weapons that only make him stronger.
“I leave improvements in your capable hands, Captain,” the Mayor says. “Right now, find Captain O’Hare, tell him to draw back to the base of the hill.”
“Draw back?” says Mr Tate, surprised.
“The Spackle are on the run,” the Mayor says, nodding at the zigzag road, almost clear of Spackle now as they disappear over the top of the hill into the upper valley. “But who knows how many thousands are waiting on the road above? They’ll regroup and replan and we shall do the same here and be ready for them.”
“Yes, sir,” Mr Tate says, and takes off on his horse.
I lean into Angharrad, pressing my face against her side, closing my eyes but still seeing everything in my Noise, the men, the Spackle, the fighting, the fire, the death, the death, the death–
“You did well, Todd,” the Mayor says, riding up close behind me. “Very well indeed.”
“It was–” I say but I stop.
Cuz how was it?
“I’m proud of you,” he says.
I turn to him, my face a picture.
He laughs at my expresshun. “I am,” he says. “You didn’t buckle under extreme pressure. You kept your head. You kept your steed even though she was injured. And most importantly, Todd, you kept your word.”
I look into his eyes, those black eyes the colour of river rock.
“These are the actions of a man, Todd, truly they are.”
And his voice feels true, his words feel true.
But then they always do, don’t they?
“I don’t feel nothing,” I say. “Nothing but hate for you.”
He just smiles at me.
“It may not seem like it, Todd,” he says, “but you will look back on this as the day you finally became a man.” His eyes flash. “The day you were transformed.”
“It does seem to be ending down there,” Bradley says, looking at the projection.
A separation is opening up on the zigzag road. The Mayor’s men are pulling back and the Spackle are retreating, leaving an empty hill between them. We can see all of the Mayor’s army now, see the big cannons he’s somehow got, see his soldiers starting to gather themselves in some order at the bottom of the hill, regrouping to prepare to fight again, no doubt.
And then I see Todd.
I say his name out loud and Bradley zooms in to where I’m pointing. My heart rushes as I see how he leans into Angharrad, and he’s alive, he’s alive, he’s alive–
“That your friend?” Simone asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s Todd, he’s–”
I stop because we see the Mayor riding over.
Riding over to talk to Todd, like it was just a normal day.
“Wouldn’t that be the tyrant, though?” Simone asks.
I sigh. “It’s complicated.”
“Yeah,” Bradley says. “I’m getting that impression.”
“No,” I say firmly. “If you ever doubt anything here, if you ever not know what to think or who to trust, you trust Todd, okay? You remember that.”
“Okay,” Bradley says, smiling at me, “we’ll remember.”
“But there remains the bigger asking,” Simone says. “What do we do now?”
“We were expecting dead settlements and hopefully you and your parents in the middle of it all,” Bradley says. “Instead we got a dictator, a revolutionary, and an invading army of natives.”
“How big is the Spackle army?” I say, turning back to the projection. “Can you fly up?”
“Not much higher,” he says, but he dials some more and the probe moves up the zigzag hill, cresting the top of it and–
“Oh, my God,” I say, hearing Simone take in a breath.
Reflected in the light of both moons and of the campfires they’re burning and the torches they’re holding–
A whole nation of Spackle stretches back down the river road above the falls in the upper valley, far, far bigger than the Mayor’s army, enough to overwhelm them in a flood, enough to never, ever be beaten.
Thousands of them.
Tens of thousands.
“Superior numbers,” Bradley says, “versus superior fire-power. A recipe for unending slaughter.”
“Mistress Coyle said there was a truce,” I say. “If there was one before, there can be another.”
“What about the competing armies?” Simone asks.
“Competing generals, really,” I say. “If we can sort those two out, then it’ll be easier.”
“And maybe we should start,” Bradley says to me, “by meeting your Todd.”
He dials the remote again until the view zooms back in to the men on horses, on Todd next to Angharrad.
And then Todd looks up, right at the probe, right into the projection–
Right into me.
We see the Mayor notice and look up, too.
“They’ve remembered we’re here,” Simone says. She starts back up the ramp into the scout ship. “I’ll get something for your ankles, Viola, then I’ll contact the convoy. Though I don’t even know where to begin explaining . . .”
She disappears into the ship. Bradley comes over to me again. He reaches over and gently squeezes my shoulder. “I’m so sorry about your parents, Viola. More than I can say.”
I blink away fresh wet from my eyes, not just at the memory of my mum and dad dying in our crash, but at Bradley’s kindness–
And then I remember, almost with a gasp, that it was Bradley who gave me the gift that proved so useful, the box that made the fire, the box that made a light against the darkness, the box that eventually blew up a whole bridge to save me and Todd.
“It flickers,” I say.
“What’s that?” he says, looking up.
“Way back on the convoy,” I say, “you asked me to tell you what the night sky looks like by firelight, because I’d be the first one to know. It flickers.”
He smiles, remembering. He breathes in deep through his nose. “So this is what fresh air smells like,” he says, because of course it’s the first time he’s ever breathed it. He spent his whole life on a ship, too. “It’s different than I expected.” He looks back at me. “Stronger.”
“Lots of things are different than we expected.”
He squeezes my shoulder again. “We’re here now, Viola,” he says. “You’re not alone any more.”
I swallow and look back at the projection. “I wasn’t alone.”
Bradley sighs again, looking with me. It flickers, he says.
“We’ll have to build a fire so you can see for yourself,” I say.
“See what?”
“That it flickers.”
He looks at me puzzled for a minute. “What you said earlier?”
“No,” I say. “Just now, you said–”
What’s she talking about? he says.
But he doesn’t say it.
And my stomach turns in a knot.
No.
Oh, no.
“Did you hear that?” he says, looking even more puzzled and turning around. “It sounded like my voice . . .”
But how could it be my–? he thinks and then stops.
He looks back at me.
And Viola? he says.
But he says it in his Noise.
He says it in his brand-new Noise.
I hold the bandage to the wound on Angharrad’s flank and let the medicine enter her bloodstream. She still don’t say nothing, but I keep my hands on her, keep saying her name.
Horses can’t be alone and I need to tell her I’m part of her herd.
“Come back to me, Angharrad,” I whisper into her ears. “Come on, girl.”
I look over to the Mayor, talking to his men, and I try to think how the hell it came to this.
We had him beat. We did. Beaten and tied up and we’d won.
But now.
Now he’s just walking round again like he owns the place, like he’s completely in charge of the whole goddam world again, like what I did to him and how I beat him is of no concern at all.
But I did beat him. And I will again.
I untied a monster to save Viola.
And now I’ve somehow gotta keep hold of the leash.
“The eye in the sky is still there,” he says to me, walking over and looking up to the dot of light the Mayor’s pretty sure is a probe of some kind. We first saw it hovering over us an hour ago when the Mayor was giving orders to his captains, telling ’em to build a camp down here at the bottom of the hill, to send out spies to see what we’re up against and send out other troops to find out what’s happened to the army of the Answer.
But so far no one’s been sent to the scout ship.
“They can see us already,” the Mayor says, still looking up. “When they want to meet, they can just come to me, now, can’t they?”
He looks round us slowly, at the men sorting themselves out for what’s left of the night.
“Just listen to the voices,” he says, in a strange whisper.
The air is still filled with the Noise of the men but the look in the Mayor’s eyes makes me wonder if he’s talking bout something else.
“What voices?” I ask.
He blinks, like he’s surprised I’m still here. He smiles again and reaches out a hand to rest on Angharrad’s mane.
“Don’t touch her,” I say and I stare at him till he takes his hand away.
“I know how you feel, Todd,” he says gently.
“No, you don’t.”
“I do,” he insists. “I remember my first battle in the very first Spackle War. You think you’re going to die now. You think this is the worst thing you’ve ever seen and how can you live now you’ve seen it? How can anyone live after seeing it?”
“Get outta my head,” I say.
“I’m only talking, Todd. That’s all I’m doing.”
I don’t answer him. I just keep whispering to Angharrad. “I’m here, girl.”
“But you’ll be fine,” the Mayor says. “So will your horse. You’ll both be stronger. You’ll be better for it.”
I look at him. “How can anyone be better after that? How can anyone be more of a man after that?”
He leans down close to me. “Because it was exciting, too, wasn’t it?”
I don’t say nothing to that.
(cuz it was–)
(for a minute there–)
But then I remember the soldier dying, the one reaching for his baby son in his Noise, the one who won’t never see him again–
“You felt the excitement when we chased them up the hill,” the Mayor’s saying. “I saw it. It blazed through your Noise like a fire. Every man in the army felt the same thing, Todd. You’re never more alive than in battle.”
“Never more dead after,” I say.
“Ah, philosophy,” he smiles. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”
I turn away from him, back to Angharrad.
And then I hear it.
I AM THE CIRCLE AND THE CIRCLE IS ME.
I look back at him and I slap VIOLA at him.
He flinches but he don’t lose his smile. “Exactly, Todd,” he says. “I said it before. Control your Noise and you control yourself. Control yourself–”
“And you control the world,” I finish. “Yeah, I heard you the first time. I only wanna control myself, thank you. I ain’t got no interest in the rest of the world.”
“Everyone says that. Until they get their first taste of power.” He looks up again at the probe. “I wonder if Viola’s friends would be able to tell us what sort of numbers we’re actually up against.”
“Too many, that’s how many,” I say. “It’s probably the whole Spackle world up there. You can’t kill ’em all.”
“Cannons against arrows, my boy,” he says, looking back at me. “Even with their nifty new fire weapon and whatever those white sticks are, they don’t have cannons. They don’t–” he nods to the eastern horizon where the scout ship landed “–have flying ships. I’d call us just about even.”
“All the more reason to end it now,” I say.
“All the more reason to keep fighting,” he says back. “There’s only room on this planet for one side to be dominant, Todd.”
“Not if we–”
“No,” he says more strongly. “You set me free for one reason. To make this planet safe for your Viola.”
I don’t say nothing to that.
“And I’ve agreed to your condition and now you will let me do what needs to be done. You will let me make this planet safe for her and for the rest of us. And you will let me do this for you, because you cannot do it for yourself.”
And I remember how the soldiers followed his every command, throwing themselves into battle and dying, just cuz he told ’em to.
And he’s right, I don’t know that I’d ever be able to do that.
I need him. I hate that I do, but I do.
I turn away from him again. I close my eyes and press my forehead against Angharrad.
I am the Circle and the Circle is me, I think.
If I can control my Noise, I can control myself.
And if I can control myself–
Maybe I can control him.
“Maybe you can,” he says. “I’ve always said you had power.”
I look at him.
He’s still smiling.
“Now,” he says. “Settle your horse down for the night and get some rest.”
He sniffs in some air, it’s starting to feel cold now that we’re not thinking about dying every second, and he looks up the hill to the glow of Spackle campfires coming over the hilltop.
“We’ve won the first skirmish, Todd,” he says. “But the war has only just begun.”
The Land waits. I wait with them.
And I burn with the waiting.
Because we had our enemy beaten. At the foot of their own hill, on the outskirts of their own city, we had the army of men surrounded and at our mercy. They were broken and confused and ready to be conquered–
The battle was nearly won. We had them beaten.
But then the ground erupted beneath our feet and our bodies were thrown into the air.
And we retreated. We pulled back, stumbling up the hill over broken rock and damaged road to reach the hilltop to treat our wounds and mourn our dead.
But we were close to victory. We were so close I could taste it.
I still can taste it, as I look out onto the valley below, where the men from the Clearing make their camp, tend to their own wounds, and bury their dead while leaving ours in carelessly thrown piles.
I remember other piles of bodies, in another place.
And I burn again at the memory.
Then I see something from where I sit on the edge of the hilltop, beside where the river crashes into the valley below. I see a light, hovering in the night air.
Watching us. Watching the Land.
I get to my feet to go and find the Sky.
I walk down the river road, deeper into our camp, the night’s full blackness held back by campfires. Wet spray from the rushing river throws up mist, and the light from the fires gives everything a low glow. The Land watches me as I weave through them, their faces friendly, if weary from the battle, their voices open.
The Sky? I show with my voice as I walk. Which way to the Sky?
In answer, they show me the way among the campfires and secreted bivouacs, the feeding crèches and the paddocks for the battlemores–
Battlemore, I hear whispered just out of sight, whispered with no small shock and even disgust, as the word is not a word in the language of the Land, it is a word from the language of the enemy, of the Clearing, and so I make my voice even louder to cover it and I show The Sky?
The Land keeps showing me the way.
But behind their helpfulness, do I hear their doubts?
For who am I, after all?
Am I hero? Am I saviour?
Or am I broken? Am I danger?
Am I beginning or end?
Am I truly of the Land?
If I am honest, I do not know the answers either.
And so they show me the way to the Sky as I move through them up the road and I feel like a leaf floating on the river, above it, on it.
But perhaps not of it.
And then they begin to send ahead news of my coming.
The Return approaches, they show, one to the other. The Return approaches.
For that is their name for me. The Return.
But I have another name, too.
I have had to learn what the Land calls things, pulling words from their wordless language, from the great single voice of the Land, so that I can understand them. The Land is what they call themselves, have always called themselves, for are they not the very Land of this world? With the Sky watching over them?
Men do not call them the Land. They invented a name based on a mistaken first attempt at communication and were never curious enough to fix it. Maybe that was where all the problems began.
“The Clearing” is the Land’s name for men, the parasites who came from nowhere and sought to make this world a nowhere of their own, killing the Land in huge numbers until a truce forced a separation, the Land and the Clearing for ever apart.
Except, that is, for the Land that was left behind. The Land that remained as slaves to the Clearing as a concession to peace. The Land that ceased being called the Land, the Land that ceased being the Land, forced even to take on the language of the Clearing. The Land that was left behind was a great shame for the Land, a shame that came to be called the Burden.
Until that Burden was erased by the Clearing in a single afternoon of killing.
And then there is me, the Return. So called not only because I am the single survivor returned from the Burden, but because my return has caused the Land to return here to this hilltop, after the years of truce, poised and ready above the Clearing, with better weapons, with better numbers, with a better Sky.
All brought here by the Return. By me.
But no longer attacking.
The Return approaches, shows the Sky when I find him, his back to me. He is addressing the Pathways, who sit in a semicircle in front of him. He shows them messages to take throughout the Land, messages which pass by so quickly I have difficulty reading them.
The Return will relearn the language of the Land, shows the Sky, finishing with the Pathways and coming over to me. In time.
They understand my words, I show back, looking out at the Land who watch me as I speak to the Sky. They use them themselves when they speak of me.
The words of the Clearing are in the memory of the Land, the Sky shows, taking me by the arm and walking me away. The Land never forgets.
You forgot about us, I show him, heat behind my words that I cannot suppress. We waited for you. We waited for you until our deaths.
The Land is here now, he shows.
The Land has retreated, I show, with greater heat. The Land sits on a hilltop when it could be destroying the Clearing now, right now, this very night. We outnumber them. Even with their new weapons, we–
You are young, he shows to me. You have seen much, too much, but you are not even fully grown. You have never lived among the Land. The heart of the Land weeps that it was too late to save the Burden–
I interrupt him, a rudeness unheard of in the Land, You did not even know–
But the Land rejoices that the Return was saved, he continues as if I had shown nothing. The Land rejoices that it can avenge the memory of the Burden.
No one is avenging anything!
And my memories spill into my voice, and it is only here, now, when the pain of them grows too great, when I am unable to speak the language of the Burden, it is only now I speak the true language of the Land, wordless and felt and pouring out of me all at once. I am unable to stop from showing them my loss, from showing how the Clearing treated us like animals, how they regarded their voices and ours as curses, as something to be cured, and I cannot stop from showing the Land my memories of the Burden dying at the hands of the Clearing, of the bullets and the blades and the silent screaming, of the field of bodies piled high–
Of the one I lost in particular.
The Sky shows me comfort in his voice, as do all of the Land around us, until I find I am swimming in a river of voices reaching out and touching mine to soothe it and calm it, and I have never felt so much a part of the Land, I have never felt so at home, so comforted, so at one with the single joined voice of the Land–
And I blink as I realize that this only happens when I feel so much pain I forget myself.
But that will pass, shows the Sky. You will grow and heal. You will find it easier to be among the Land–
I will find it easier, I show, when the Clearing are gone from here for ever.
You speak the language of the Burden, he shows. Which is also the language of the Clearing, of the men we fight, and though we welcome you as a brother returned to the Land, the first thing you must learn – even as I tell it to you in language you will understand – is that there is no I and there is no you. There is only the Land.
I show nothing to him in response.
You sought the Sky? he finally asks.
I look up again into his eyes, small for the Land – though nothing like the hideous smallness of the eyes of the Clearing, small, mean eyes that hide and hide and hide – but the eyes of the Sky are still big enough to reflect the moons, the firelight, me looking into them.
And I know that he waits for me.
For I have lived my life among the Clearing and I have learned much from them.
Including how to hide my thoughts behind other thoughts, how to conceal what I feel and think. How to layer my voice so it is harder to read.
Alone among the Land, I am not fully joined to the Land’s single voice.
Not yet.
I make him wait for a moment more, then I open my voice to show him the light I saw hovering, what I suspect it to be. He understands in an instant.
A smaller version of what flew over the Land as it marched here, he shows.
Yes, I show and I remember. Lights in the sky, one of their machines flying down the road, so high above it was almost nothing but a sound.
Then the Land shall make an answer, he shows, and he takes my arm again to lead me back to the hill’s edge.
As the Sky watches the light hovering out from the hilltop, I look down upon the Clearing as they settle in for the night. I look among their too-small faces on bodies stocky and short in unhealthy shades of pink and sand.
The Sky knows what I am looking for.
You seek him, he shows. You seek the Knife.
I saw him in battle. But I was too far back.
For the Return’s own safety, the Sky shows.
He is mine–
But I stop.
Because I see him.
In the middle of the camp, he is leaning into his pack animal, his horse, in their language, talking to it, no doubt with great feeling, with great anguish at what he has seen.
No doubt with great care and emotion and kindness.
And this, perversely, is why the Return hates the Knife, shows the Sky.
He is worse than the others, I show. He is worst of all of them.
Because–
Because he knew he was doing wrong. He felt the pain of his actions–
But he did not amend them, shows the Sky.
The rest are worth as much as their pack animals, I show, but worst is the one who knows better and does nothing.
The Knife set the Return free, the Sky offers.
He should have killed me. He killed one of the Land before with the knife in his voice that he cannot put down. But he was too cowardly to even do the Return that favour.
If he had killed you as you wished, shows the Sky in a way that pulls my eyes towards his, then the Land would not be here.
Yes, I show. Here where we do nothing. Here where we wait and watch instead of fight.
Waiting and watching is part of fighting. The Clearing has grown stronger in the time of truce. Their men are fiercer, as are their weapons.
But the Land is fierce, too, I show. Is it not?
The Sky holds my gaze for a long moment, and then he turns and speaks in the voice of the Land, starting a message that is passed from one to another until it reaches one of the Land who I now see has prepared a bow with a burning arrow. She takes aim and lets the arrow fly into the night, sailing out from the hilltop.
The entire Land watches it fly, either with their own eyes or through the voices of others, until it hits the hovering light, which spirals and spins and crashes into the river below.
Today was a battle, the Sky shows to me, as a small outcry rises from the Clearing’s camp. But a war is made of many battles.
Then he reaches across and takes my arm, the one on which I keep the sleeve of lichen growing heavily, the one that hurts, the one that will not heal. I pull away from him but he reaches again and this time I let his long white fingers lift it gently from the wrist, let him brush away the sleeve.
And we will not forget why we are here, the Sky shows.
And this spreads, in the language of the Burden, the language that the Land fears for its shame, it spreads among them until I can hear them all, feel them all.
Feel all of the Land saying, We will not forget.
As they all see my arm through the eyes of the Sky.
As they see the metal band, with writing on it in the language of the Clearing.
As they see the permanent mark upon me, the true name that sets me apart from them for ever.
1017.