I suffered agonies of suspense on that long trek to town. Encumbered with heavy garments and forcing their way through unbroken snow, Soldier’s Boy’s troops trailed in a long ant-line behind us. Gernian foot soldiers, I thought with wry pride, would have made little of this march, but for the Speck warriors, it was a new sort of experience, one that they did not relish. The dark of night, the resistance of the deep snow, and the oppressive cold were cooling their battle ardor.
I caught Soldier’s Boy wondering if his entire force would stay with him during this last leg of their journey, and then deciding it was better not to think of it. The men who had come with him this far had come for their own reasons; some for vengeance against the Gernians, some to put an end to Gettys and halt Kinrove’s dance, and some, doubtless, because they were young men and this all seemed like a marvelous adventure when they first heard of it. If some chose to turn back now, there was little he could do about it. They were all volunteers, and the Speck had no mechanisms to force a man to say he would do something for a month or a season, let alone a year. I surmised again that Soldier’s Boy was trying to impose a Gernian template on the Specks, one that was ill-suited to their culture. I think he caught a whiff of that thought.
“It is necessary,” he thought gruffly. “To fight a heartless and evil foe, we must take on some of their strategy. We must bring to Gettys a form of warfare that they recognize. Any who escape us tonight and manage to survive their flight must carry a tale of the Specks at bloody ruthless war against all Gernians. It is what must be. I do not relish it. But I will finish it.”
I made no response. I was trying desperately not to think too much about the town or the fort or Epiny and Spink. I tried to suspend my anxiety over whether or not Spink would react to my warning. Soldier’s Boy must not suspect that Gettys had been warned. If I dwelt on my fears or my hopes, he might decide to pry into my thoughts. I no longer knew how much I could conceal from him when he was determined.
Clove moved with confidence, even eagerness, through the cold and dark. Perhaps the beast remembered where he was and was dreaming of a warm stable and a nice feed of oats and hay. We pushed on; our columns straggled out behind us in a display that reminded me more of a prisoner coffle than a military force on the march. The cold was so deep that the snow was dry and fluffy and sometimes squeaked as we strode through it. When we came to the more traveled section of the road where sporadic wagon and horse traffic had packed the snow, we moved more quickly.
When Gettys came in view, the warriors rallied a bit. I heard muffled boasts and the callous laughter of young men who look forward to killing. Even this late at night, a few yellow lights shone in the town that huddled outside the walls of the fort. It was still and silent, a town deeply asleep, and my heart sank in me. My warning had not been heeded. I saw no extra sentries on top of the walls, no torches burning nor sign of any activity that would indicate that the fort was any more alert than usual. Soldier’s Boy’s plan would succeed. He would slaughter them in their sleep.
He gathered briefly with Dasie and his chosen sergeants, to refresh their minds on the plan. It was all about silence and stealth and organization. Dasie would take the town, while Soldier’s Boy would endeavor to get his force inside the fort. The warriors were organized in pairs, each with an objective to find and burn. Dasie touched again the torches the warriors carried and the archers’ fire-arrows, binding them to her magic; when the time came, her magic would kindle each one. Her ability with fire-magic was strong; she believed that despite the iron in Gettys, her magic would be strong enough to kindle the flames. The fire archers each had specific targets; Soldier’s Boy wanted the upper levels of the watchtowers to catch fire. His other warriors would set alight buildings at the ground level before employing their chosen weapons against all who fled the fires. The plan was that all the torches would light simultaneously, kindling fires in so many places that the soldiers could not hope to control them all. If Dasie’s magic failed, they would fall back on the fire pots that some of the warriors carried. Such a tactic would not enable the simultaneous firing of buildings that Soldier’s Boy hoped for, but he believed it would still suffice.
Soldier’s Boy reminded all of them yet again that they would rendezvous at the end of the King’s Road. When all were as prepared and eager as Soldier’s Boy could make them, he nodded to them and wished them well, and then his forces parted. Dasie’s group would spread out and filter into the town from all sides. Houses, inns, brothels, warehouses, and stores were their targets.
Soldier’s Boy would go ahead of his warriors to eliminate the sentry at the gate. Once that way was cleared, his forces would flow in and spread out, torches ready to fire the buildings and weapons ready to kill anyone who emerged into the dark and cold. He himself would fire the stables; once his warriors saw the stables alight, they were to kindle their targets and then converge toward him.
Even before we reached the outlying buildings of Gettys Town, Dasie and her followers had vanished, melting into the night. Soldier’s Boy halted and whispered his final commands. His followers merged into the shadows. Very shortly, he rode on, apparently alone, a traveler on a big horse bundled against the night’s cold. The streets were empty around us as we passed. He had waited until it was so late that even the taverns were closed for the night, their lanterns long guttered out. Clove’s big hooves barely sounded on the deserted and snowy streets. I felt like a ghost, returned to the scene of my murder, as we thudded slowly past the crossroads. The cold of the night was as nothing compared to the cold I felt in my heart as I passed that place.
“Which is why I don’t understand why you think you owe them anything. This is where they killed you, or would have if the magic of the People hadn’t saved you. And yet you still see yourself as one of them. I would think that your thirst for revenge would be the most savage of all.”
I had no answer to that, so I remained still and small. Why didn’t I hate these people? Perhaps because I knew them too well. I knew what sort of fears had formed that mob, and I knew the forces that could turn a decent man into an animal. Should a man be judged forever based on what he did on one overwrought night? Was a man the good soldier he had been for fifteen years, or the mindless participant in a murder that he had been for only an hour?
I turned my mind from such useless thoughts. Perhaps, I thought, I was as spineless and unmanly as Soldier’s Boy and my father thought me. Perhaps all the anger and vengeance had gone into Soldier’s Boy, leaving me with only a weary and jaded understanding of the people who had tried to kill me.
I knew that a substantial force of warriors followed us, yet even aware of them, I heard no sound. If there was one thing that the Specks excelled at, it was stealth.
Soldier’s Boy rode up to the sentry post outside the gate. In the cold, still night, the torch burned steadily in a sconce beside his sentry box. I wondered if the sentry was dozing inside his shelter, huddling close to the small potbellied stove. I could smell the tiny drift of wood smoke and the iron of that stove tingled against Soldier Boy’s skin like the beginning of a sunburn. There was a stir in the shadows within the sentry box and the guard emerged, his long gun held across his chest. “Halt and identify yourself!” he called. The dark and the cold engulfed his words and made his challenge almost too small to matter.
Soldier’s Boy pulled Clove in and sat on the big horse, looking down at the man. He smiled. The sentry stared up at my face, looked down at my horse and then up again. When he tipped his face up to stare at me again, it was whiter with more than cold and his mouth hung open. “By the good god!” he rasped out hoarsely, and then caught his breath sharply.
It was all simultaneous. I recognized the man. He recognized my face. He was the fellow who had held Amzil’s arms pinned back behind her while another soldier tore her dress open to expose her body. He’d been there the night they’d killed me, and now he looked up at me, sitting on the horse he’d recognized, too, and thought he was seeing a ghost. Terror had frozen him more than the cold. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he babbled hopelessly.
And as he gawked up at me, Soldier’s Boy leaned down, seized the top of the man’s hood in one hand and with the other casually drew his copper knife across the fellow’s exposed throat. It happened so quickly that Clove wasn’t even spooked. He nudged the big horse back into motion, and as we rode on, the sentry fell into the road behind us, spasming and croaking softly as blood blackened the packed snow. Like following shadows, Speck warriors suddenly appeared and ghosted through the gate behind us. A moment later, not one of them was visible. They had immediately fanned out within the fort, each with a specific target to torch.
Soldier’s Boy rode on. He slid his knife, oiled with blood, back into his sheath just as smoothly as he’d drawn it. He rode on, but I felt I was still back there, leaning down from Clove’s broad back and pulling the knife smoothly across the exposed flesh. The man’s dying words echoed in my ears. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Had he been truly sorry for what he had done, or was he only feeling the emotion I’d pressed on him the night he had tried to help kill me? It shocked me that I could wonder that. One of my fellow soldiers from my own regiment lay sprawled in his own blood behind me.
“I didn’t do that,” I said, and then, as if I were praying, “I didn’t do that. I didn’t do that.”
“No,” Soldier’s Boy agreed, whispering to the night. “But you wanted to. Consider that one a gift. A little bit of your manhood back.”
The coldness of his words struck me. They mingled with the physical memory of drawing the sharp, cold blade across the man’s throat, the slight tugging resistance of his flesh as it parted, the wideness of his eyes rolled up to the night stars as he died. In that moment, I recognized how much both Soldier’s Boy and I hated who we were. We’d been split in such a way that neither of us had what was needed to be the person each of us longed to be. My ruthlessness had been parted from my empathy. Each of us was only part of a man. Yet the only way for me to become a complete person was for me to stop existing and merge myself with him. Merge myself with a renegade who had just killed one of his fellow soldiers with no more compunction than I’d have about gutting a fish. Become one with the enemy.
I was trapped in a nightmare, powerless to prevent what he was doing. The familiar streets of Gettys were quiet, deserted in the night. He made his way to the headquarters building. He did not slink; there was nothing furtive about him. He rode down the center of the street as if he were a king returned to claim his rightful crown. I recognized the sense of it. If anyone had been wakeful and had peered out a window at the sound of hoofbeats, he would have seen only a single cloaked and hooded rider moving slowly down the street. Nothing to fear in that. At the corner of the infirmary, Soldier’s Boy dismounted and led Clove around to the back.
Gettys was not like the cities of the west. There, Gernians had built with stone and mortar. Here on the eastern frontier, we had built almost entirely from wood. Soldier’s Boy, like every one of his warriors, carried three pitch torches bundled inside his coat. He took them out now and arranged all three against the dry boards at the base of the building. He cupped his hands over them, closed his eyes, and summoned the magic. For a short time, he was aware of the nails hammered into the building. Then he took a deep breath, focused his hatred on the torches, and called the magic. What I had never been able to do, he accomplished easily. A torch leapt into flame. He crouched over it, sheltering it from possible drafts with his hands and body. The first torch kindled the other two. The cold had dried the planks of the building. The united flames licked against the rough planks and peeling paint. Once the torches had heated them enough, the planks began to burn. Flames licked slowly up the side of the building. He wedged one pitch torch between two planks so that its stubborn flame would continue to feed the fire and stayed until he saw the flames crawling up the back of the building. Then he rose, and carrying his other two torches, hurried down the alley, leading Clove, until he came to the stables and the big heap of waste straw outside it.
He thrust a torch into it, and it kindled almost immediately. In no time, smoke was rising from it, and then suddenly, flames shot up, carrying sparks and bits of floating burning straw up into the night sky. The light and the heat from the burning straw were immediate. I saw the stable wall begin to steam and then to smoke.
The light of that fire was his signal to Dasie as well as to his followers. As soon as she saw that he had succeeded in striking one fire, she sent forth the magic that kindled the other torches. I felt the magic go out from her. Although I could not see it, I knew that all over Gettys Town and within the fort, torches suddenly burned. Soldier’s Boy still carried one flaming torch. Heedless now of who might see him, he led Clove right up to a cart between two buildings and used it as a mounting block to get on Clove. Torch held high, he rode toward a nearby barracks. As he went, other torch-bearing Specks drifted in from alleys and byways to join him. Their fantastic shadows danced ahead of them along the sides of the buildings. Sempayli, grinning, came running from the darkness to walk by his stirrup. “And now we shall see their blood run,” he told Soldier’s Boy confidently. He carried a bow.
Clove’s heavy hooves on the packed snow and the thud-whisper of his fur-booted followers were almost the only sound. Occasionally one of the torches crackled and spit. No one spoke and they moved as softly as only Specks could. Yet again, there was no furtiveness about this torch-bearing mob.
Soldier’s Boy reined Clove in and spoke to his men. He divided them into three units, and sent two of them off to two other barracks farther down the main street. He moved purposefully toward the nearest barracks. I recognized which one. Captain Thayer’s troops would be sleeping inside. I felt queasy. Was this more of Soldier’s Boy’s vengeance on my behalf, that this barracks would be his personal target?
I heard a distant scream, and then a woman shouting, “Fire! Fire! Wake up, wake up! Fire!” Somewhere in the town, flames suddenly climbed the side of the building and rose, casting a ruddy light. The stables, full of stored hay, suddenly roared and the roof seemed to literally burst off the building. In a matter of seconds, smoke was rolling like a flood through the streets, while bits of burning straw floated up into the cold night sky. Chances were good that as they settled, they would kindle other fires, adding to the confusion.
Where was Spink? Why hadn’t he warned anyone? Did he and Epiny and Amzil and the children all sleep on? Would they awaken before smoke crept in to choke them? Would the townsfolk who had chosen to drug themselves with Gettys Tonic awaken at all, or burn as they slept?
“You’ve done enough!” I shouted at Soldier’s Boy as he advanced on the barracks.
One back corner of it was alight, and as I watched the door was flung open. A single soldier, hopping and skipping as he tried to pull his trousers on, emerged. He was shouting, “Fire! Fire! Wake up! Get out! Fire!”
“Just take your warriors and leave. You set the fort alight in so many places, they won’t be able to fight all the fires. Gettys will burn. Give some of them a chance to escape. Don’t you want them to flee alive, to carry word of the Speck attack?”
“They must carry word of a Speck war against them, not of a random fire that spread and burned the town down. We are lancing a boil here. Grit your teeth and be silent while I do what must be done!”
Sempayli had already lifted his bow. The arrow was trained on the door. There was a small sound like torn paper, and the hopping soldier went down on the snowy ground, clutching at an arrow shaft in his chest. He saw us then and, to his credit, tried to shout a warning. It came out as a gargled spray of blood, speckling his chin and the snow around him with black dots. Two other half-dressed soldiers burst out of the door. They too went down, feathered with arrows and blocking the door behind them.
There were two doors to the barracks. Soldier’s Boy’s warriors had surrounded both of them. The building was burning well now, kindled in at least three places. I heard a terrible shriek from the other door as a man escaped the fire to die under a sword. The flames were leaping up into the night. From inside, I heard shouts and the thunder of overturned furniture and coughing. There were only two windows in the barracks. One burst outward in a shatter of glass as a chair was flung through it. The man who tried to follow the chair was shot with an arrow through the throat and fell back inside. Shouts of consternation greeted this, but another man immediately launched himself through the window. He fell dying in the snow as one of Sempayli’s arrows took him.
I do not know how many soldiers were sleeping in the barracks that night. Perhaps some died of the smoke. But every one that emerged from the doors or the window was killed before he got two steps. It was slaughter, not battle, for the dazed and smoke-blinded soldiers scarcely seemed to comprehend what was happening. In their struggle to escape the flames and engulfing smoke, they understood too late that a second foe, just as deadly, awaited them outside. Bodies piled up outside as cries for help and shrieks of burning men came from within.
I could not look away. I could not control the eyes. I wanted desperately to cut myself off from Soldier’s Boy, to retreat to where I could not experience this in any way. Under Soldier’s Boy, Clove shifted and fought for his head. He didn’t like the flames, the smoke, the cries, and the blood. But like me he was forced to stand and witness. Soldier’s Boy reined him in hard and held him. The torment for both of us continued.
In that endless time, two things slowly transformed me. As I watched the men die so ignominiously, half-clothed, blinded by smoke and dazed by shock, they suddenly became my fellows, my regiment. Whatever they had done to me, they had done with their own rude sense of judgment. It had not been just, and I knew that, but they had not. My regiment had not been the mob that cornered me and tried to murder me. Looking back, I knew that only a dozen men had willingly partaken of that madness. The others had been reluctant witnesses or shocked bystanders. I would not judge my regiment by the base actions of a few during a time of fear and anger.
I now understood what they had become when the mob spirit had taken them because I now saw how I myself behaved. Bereft of empathy or sympathy, Soldier’s Boy mirrored for me what any man might become when hate and purpose ruled him. What I had become, for all purposes. He was me; folly to deny that. He was doing what I might have done, were I ever in a position that I hated someone so badly that I completely lost sight of his humanity.
A stray memory rose in me. I had been about fourteen the summer that an odd combination of weather had led to a suddenly burgeoning population of rats. They’d infested the barns and the corn bins, and when they had begun to appear even in the house kitchen, my father had had enough. He sent for the Rat Man, so called because he claimed that he and his pack of terriers could rid any holding of rats in a matter of days. When the Rat Man arrived, my elder brother and I had followed him and his seething pack of terriers to the barns. He ordered my father’s grooms to remove every bit of stock from the area. Then “Get your feet up off the floor!” the Rat Man had warned us, and my brother and I had perched on one of the mangers. “Kill them all, boys!” the Rat Man had shouted, and his dogs had dispersed instantly. They’d raced to every corner of the barn, and nose to the walls, had run along them smooth as water, digging at every hole, yelping excitedly and snapping at one another in their competition. The Rat Man had been as active as his terriers as he darted about eliminating obstacles for the dogs. With a hay fork, he lifted the edge of a loose board. The dogs had raced in to seize the boiling rats he had exposed. Snatch, snap, and fling! Each rat was seized, shaken violently, and then flung aside for the next. Rat bodies flew and fell all around us as the Rat Man exposed hidey-hole after hidey-hole to his dogs.
And how we had laughed, my brother and I! Laughed until we nearly lost our perches and fell into the chaos. The Rat Man danced a wild jig when a rat tried to run up his legs. One of his dogs snatched it up by the head, a second grabbed the hindquarters, and a third seized the middle and tore it into pieces, sending a wild spray of blood into my brother’s face. He had wiped his sleeve across his face, and we had laughed until we nearly choked. Rats, rats, and more rats, dying in a frenzy of yips and squeaks and squirting blood. Rats that fled, and hid, and bared their yellow teeth when cornered.
What fun.
And Soldier’s Boy’s face was set in the same hard grin that it had worn on the long-ago day. He was exterminating vermin that had overrun his territory, and he felt nothing for them as they fell and died.
The fire gave a sudden roar, and then the entire roof erupted into flames. Shingles and pieces of burning rafter began to fall inside the building and the anguished screams grew louder. Then, with a sudden crack, the roof gave way and collapsed inside. It was over. The night darkened around us as the fire that had blazed overhead like a beacon suddenly folded in on itself. Soldier’s Boy gave his head a shake as if he were just waking. He looked around for his next target. More rats were hiding and must be rooted out.
Throughout the fort and town, other cries were heard: men shouting hoarsely for help, shrieks of death and despair. The flames had a voice of their own, hissing and crackling. Uneven light and wild leaping shadow populated the town. The screams of trapped horses still came from the inferno that had been the stable. The air thickened with smoke and blowing ash and floating sparks. I heard gunfire from the direction of the prison barracks, and wondered what was happening there. When it became obvious that no one else remained alive inside the barracks, Soldier’s Boy lifted his hand over his head. “Come!” he shouted. “Follow me!”
He nudged Clove and the big horse was glad to move away from the fire. I prayed that we were leaving, that the Specks’ lust for blood had been satisfied. Instead, Soldier’s Boy led us deeper into the fort. In the dark and the smoke I could scarcely tell where we were, but it soon became apparent that he was guiding us toward the sound of gunfire. The flames and the smoke combined to turn the night to a murky red sunset around us. We passed a dark alley. A young man, or perhaps a soldier’s son, clad only in a nightshirt, raced out of it. A Speck warrior was right behind him. He speared the boy, and then pinned him to the ground with his weapon as a sharp kick to the boy’s head ended his struggles. Soldier’s Boy didn’t even pause. He led his warriors on. From the corner of his eye, I saw the warrior jerk his spear from the boy’s body and fall in with us.
It penetrated my awareness that I was no longer hearing random shots, but organized volleys of fire. A surge of hope lifted me. Someone had rallied and imposed order on at least some of the troops. The same thought seemed to occur to Soldier’s Boy. Scowling, he shouted for Sempayli, and then ordered him to find the other warriors and bring them to join him. His lieutenant nodded curtly and ran off into the smoke and darkness. Soldier’s Boy rode on toward the prison.
Soldier’s Boy’s plan had been to simultaneously set fire to the prison while freeing the prisoners to add to the chaos. I think I recognized what had happened before he did. The freed prisoners, confronted with the marauding Specks, had not fled but had seized whatever they could find to use as weapons and attacked their liberators. Perhaps they had not perceived the Specks were deliberately freeing them, or perhaps they had simply chosen to side with their countrymen when faced with savages with unknown intentions. In either case, the Specks had not been prepared for the prisoners to turn on them with such fury.
The section of the fort that housed the prisoners had been constructed in such a way that the watchtower overlooked both the prisoners’ compound and the outer wall. I would later hear that some of the prisoners had doused the fires set near the watchtower while others had fought hand to hand with the Specks to hold the warriors back. Their valiant action had enabled their guards to organize themselves and retreat to the upper level of the watchtower. Flames leapt upon the roof of the tower; at least one of his fire-arrows had found its target. But the forces that held the watchtower were undeterred by the fire above them. From that vantage, their long guns were having a deadly effect upon the Specks. The open space around the watchtower was littered with bodies, many of them Speck. As we approached, it was obvious to me that the prisoners and their guards had joined forces, for gunfire came now from the lower level of the watchtower as well. As long as the defenders’ ammunition held out, the Specks had no hopes of taking the watchtower.
I knew that. Therefore Soldier’s Boy knew it also.
His Speck warriors did not seem to comprehend it. Even as we came onto the scene, a handful more brave than sensible rushed into the open, bows drawn, to launch their arrows at the high tower windows. Coming into the open was the only way for them to bring their weapons into effective range, yet the soldiers in the tower had only been waiting for them to do so. I heard the distant shout of “Fire!” and the bark of the long guns. Every one of the Specks went down. Four lay shuddering; only one crawled back toward the sheltering shadows. Another gun cracked and he, too, lay still. Soldier’s Boy’s whole body twitched as if the shot had entered him.
I had a moment of icy realization. If there was one good man in that tower, one sharpshooter, I was at the edge of his range. I could die at any moment now. Terror clawed at me from the inside as if I had swallowed a small beast with sharp claws. Still, I did not hesitate. I clenched myself around my fear and did not let it show. I did not warn him, but only breathed a prayer. Good god, let it happen now. Let this be over. I was sure that if Soldier’s Boy fell to a bullet, his followers would scatter.
The long guns in the tower flashed again; strangely, I do not recall that I heard them. Between the muzzle flash and the blows of the iron balls, I knew a thousand regrets for my life’s end, said a hundred farewells. To my left, a warrior crumpled, howling and clutching at his shattered knee. To my right, a man dropped without a sound. Before me, like a tiny hailstorm, the impact of bullets kicked up spurts of packed snow and ice. Was I hit? I waited for pain.
Soldier’s Boy did not. He jerked Clove’s big head around and kneed him at the same time. “Fall back!” I heard him shout, in Gernian, and then he cursed in the same language before crying, “Run! Get back—stay out of the open and the light! Get back!”
The fool had never thought to teach them how to retreat in an orderly fashion. In his arrogance, he’d never imagined that he’d need for them to know that. Now his careless order and his own apparent flight from the battle woke their fears, and the men who fled to follow him did so heedlessly. I heard another volley fired and screams behind me. Some of his warriors had not heeded his warning to stay out of the open in their haste to follow him away from danger.
At almost the same instant, I heard a sound that had never been sweeter in my ears. A trumpet sang, a call to arms. And miraculously, in the distance, from outside the fort, I heard another horn answer it, and then the heart-leaping sound as the same faraway instrument sounded a charge. Hope, all but dead in me a few minutes before, suddenly surged back to life. The first trumpet sounded again, within the fort, and it seemed much closer now. From the watchtower, I heard a resounding cheer. Then, a volley of bullets peppered the ground near us. A few, perhaps charged with an extra bit of powder or simply by luck, penetrated the shadows that hid us and found random targets. Three warriors howled in pain, and one abruptly fell, still.
“Follow me!” Soldier’s Boy shouted, and urged Clove into a trot. His warriors needed no urging. They ran alongside him. The leaping flames and the thick smoke that had been his allies earlier now seemed his enemy. He turned down one street, only to have a burning building suddenly sway and then collapse across his path in a searing whoosh of hot air and sparks. It was too much even for steady Clove. He half reared and whinnied in distress. Soldier’s Boy came shamefully close to falling off him before he mastered him and turned him aside from the wreckage. But now his warriors were in front of him in the darkness, blocking his path and milling in confusion. He had to force Clove through them, shouting, “Give way, give way!”
The trumpet sounded again while he was pushing his way through his own warriors. It was closer still. The fort seemed a labyrinth of buildings and streets to him, one made more confusing in that some of the streets that had been clear were now blocked with burning debris. He cursed and I sensed his rising dismay. Once he broke clear of his followers, he called back to them, “We need to make for the gate. We must not be corralled inside the fort!” He pushed Clove into a trot again and once more his warriors fell in behind him. I could sense him seething with fury and impotence that he had no way of summoning his scattered force to him, no way to reach all of his warriors and tell them that he wanted them outside the walls of the fort rather than within.
We retreated through a nightmare. The fires had spread, just as he had planned. The streets were thick with smoke and fallen burning debris littered the road. There were bodies as well, mostly Gernian but some Speck, and once I glimpsed a mother holding a baby and clutching an older girl by the hand. When she saw us turn down the street toward her, she silently fled, pulling her child behind her. They ran down a narrow alley. When we passed it, they were out of sight, and no one gave chase to them. Soldier’s Boy was as intent now on getting his warriors out of the fort as he had been originally on getting into it.
Clove was equally willing to depart from this hellish place. My placid old mount fought his bit and jigged ponderously, longing to break from his heavy trot to a lope. Soldier’s Boy held him in, shouting to his warriors to keep up with him. He could have fled and left them there; I will give him that. He did not desert his men. It was not his fault that he had passed a crossroads when, from the shadows on his left, small-arms fire burst out, dropping the men immediately behind him. Clove, startled, leapt forward, while those who had seen the men in front of them fall fled backward, shouting. Soldier’s Boy hauled hard on Clove’s reins, turning the big horse and then kicking him after his fleeing warriors. He was fortunate that the hidden soldiers were recharging their weapons. Clove jigged and shied over the bodies in front of him before he left them behind and caught up with Soldier’s Boy’s force.
“Stay close to me! We must go a different way, to another gate,” he shouted to them. He glanced up at the sky, hoping to take his bearings from the stars. The rising smoke banished that hope. At the next intersection, he turned, randomly I suspect, and led his warriors on. This section of the town was mostly intact; these were the simpler homes and the less important buildings that had escaped his fires. I prayed that any folk in them would stay within and hidden, and that Soldier’s Boy would be too intent on fleeing to do them any harm. The light from the fires several streets away danced eerily in the windowpanes of the crouching houses. Either their occupants had fled or they huddled, lightless and silent, inside them. We saw no one, and no one barred our way.
The air grew clearer but the darkness deeper. Surrounded by fires earlier, no one had thought to bring a torch. Soldier Boy cursed his own stupidity and then, with a deep grunt of effort, summoned the magic. Light emanated from him. Probably I alone knew what it cost him to work such a charm in a settlement so thick with iron. Even the nails in the boards of the buildings we passed seemed to snag and tear at our magic as we hastened by them. The illumination he gave off enabled his followers to trail us, but did not light the way for him. I thought to myself that it made him an excellent target for anyone who might see him, but kept that thought small and to myself.
Another turn, and suddenly the gate was before us. It was open, and torches flanked it, beckoning us. I wondered that the sentries had not roused to the fires and trumpets. Perhaps they had, for I saw no sign of them. Freedom and escape beckoned us through the open mouth of the gate. It was the north gate, the most seldom used gate of the fort, the gate that we joked led to “nowhere.” Outside it, only a thin layer of town lay between us and the wastelands beyond. The north side of the fort was the least sheltered from the prevailing winds. Blown snow was always deepest there and the howl of the wind always the strongest. Only the poorest hovels were built on the north side of the fort, the homes of the widows and orphans of dead prisoners for the most part. Their huts were dark and unfired. The unimportance and uselessness of that population had saved them from the Specks’ attention. Shadow and concealment beckoned in the crooked streets. Relief bloomed in Soldier’s Boy heart. “To me!” he commanded his drained band, and kicked up Clove’s flagging trot.
Soldier’s Boy cleared the gate and a moment later, his warriors mobbed around him. They were clear of the fort’s confining walls. He glanced about himself, getting his bearings. He caught a tiny flash of light, a reflection of smoke-filtered moonlight on someone’s buckle. Years of Sergeant Duril’s drilling me paid off for him. He flung himself sideways off his horse, putting Clove’s bulk between him and the ambush, quenching his light as he fell. Muzzle-flash, the crack of explosion, and angry bees whizzing over him. Clove screamed as a projectile tore out a chunk of his neck. A wall of smoke rose up from the weapons and wafted up to join the smoke of the burning buildings. A stench of rotten eggs floated with it.
Behind him, warriors screamed. They had not seen that flash of buckle, had not dropped down to the earth to avoid the deadly hail. Instead it had cut through them, a scythe through standing grain. The warriors who remained standing were those who had been saved by the bodies of the men in front of them. On the ground in the dark, men squirmed and thrashed. Off to our right, I heard a familiar voice say, “First rank, recharge. Second rank, forward.”
Spink’s voice might have been reciting in a classroom, so devoid was it of emotion. Hadn’t he seen me? Had he failed to recognize me? Would I fall to the command of my best friend? I devoutly hoped so. Time had frozen in its tracks.
“Ready—”
“Scatter!” Soldier’s Boy bellowed to his troops. “Return to the rendezvous!” Those that could, did. He did not watch them go. Rather, with a display of strength and agility that was amply assisted by a surge of magic, he flung himself at Clove and swarmed up into the saddle again.
“Aim—”
He reined the big horse around, directly toward the ranked shooters, and kicked him hard. Startled, Clove surged forward. Before Spink could give the order to fire, we crashed into his front line. The firing line gave way before us, men leaping out of the way, some guns going off randomly. In the light of muzzle-flash, I had one glimpse of Spink’s horrified face. He stared up at me, eyes huge and betrayed. In the noise of the gunfire, I saw his mouth shape one heartbroken word: Nevare! He’d tracked me with his pistol. The muzzle of it was pointed dead at my chest. All he had to do was pull the trigger.
He did not.
And then Soldier’s Boy was through their lines and galloping down the dark side street. Even if he had wanted to, I don’t think he could have reined Clove in. The big horse had never been battle trained, and this night had been one long series of horrors for him. Given the chance to flee into the dark, he took it. Soldier’s Boy could only hope that the warriors who could retreat had done so. For those who lay dead or dying, he could do nothing. The thought of his wounded came to his mind, and too late, he wondered how they would be treated if captured. I answered that for him.
“Have you fired the houses of families? Will they find women and children with arrows in them or the marks of the sword upon them? If they do, they will be treated as we treat anyone who slaughters women and children.”
I think at that moment he wished to die just as much as I did.