Authors: David Gunn
One second he’s opposite, the next his blade slashes towards Ajac’s guts and his friends start cheering. Their cheer dies as Ajac jumps sideways and jabs wildly, his blade aimed at the trooper’s face.
Although he misses, their man still flinches. Ajac doesn’t notice, because he’s trying to find his balance, but Neen certainly does.
‘What orders did you give?’
‘Watch his eyes. Fight dirty. Get it over fast.’
Neen’s right about all three. Unfortunately, Ajac refuses to obey. At least, he refuses to obey the last two. He circles instead, blocking a couple of clumsy attacks, and just dodging a slash at his throat that looks slicker than the previous two blows, unless it’s simply lucky.
Iona watches slack-mouthed.
I’ll be having words with her about blind stupidity later. I imagine the others know that, even if she doesn’t.
‘Get it over with,’ Neen growls.
The Wolf Brigade trooper glances over and something tightens behind his eyes. He thinks Ajac is toying with him, that the blond boy plays a waiting game.
‘Another five gold coins on Ajac.’
I’m lucky. No one takes my bet.
But it does the job and the trooper’s next attack is so panicked that half his friends believe it’s a feint, until he follows through and leaves himself wide open.
‘Now,’ Neen orders.
Ajac steps back.
His blade should be in that man’s kidneys. And the man should be down, pissing the dregs of his life into the dirt. There is no excuse for the anguish on Ajac’s face, he’s not even injured.
That changes when Ajac’s opponent decides to go on the attack. Feinting in one direction, he juggles his blade from one hand to the other, and jabs. We all hear Ajac’s gasp of pain as blood starts running from his hip.
‘Sir . . .’ Shil stands beside me.
‘Not now, Shil.’
‘It’s about Ajac, sir.’
‘What about him?’ I ask quietly.
When the trooper swings his blade at Ajac’s throat, Ajac blocks, using his jacket-wrapped arm. From his whimper, he didn’t wrap it well enough.
‘Ajac hasn’t killed, sir.’
‘What?’
She nods towards the fight. ‘Iona doubts he’s done more than slaughter a goat. She says he’ll keep circling until he dies of blood loss or that man kills him.’
‘Get me Iona.’
‘Sir . . .’ Iona looks terrified.
Given how I feel about her that’s a sensible reaction. Ajac might make a good soldier five years down the line, if he lasts that long, which looks unlikely. Iona, I can count on one finger of one hand what she’s good for.
‘Do you and Ajac share a dialect?’
She looks at me blankly.
‘Do you share . . .’ A dozen Wolf Brigade stare as I raise my voice and Iona nods quickly. Telling me that yes, her tribe has its own dialect.
‘Good,’ I say. ‘Tell him if he loses I’m giving you to the trooper.’
Iona looks appalled.
Almost as appalled as Shil, who stands beside her.
‘Tell him it’s tradition. He wins, you go free. He loses, you belong to the Wolf Brigade. They don’t have female soldiers or medics. So I guess they’ll just have to find some other use for you.’
‘Sir . . .’
Shil shuts up when I glare at her.
Their trooper is looking more confident, his friends are looking happier and Ajac is obviously exhausted. His collection of wounds now includes a slash that reveals a glistening rack of ribs.
‘Tell him,’ I say.
Pushing her way to the front, Iona almost gets Ajac killed by reaching out to touch his shoulder. As he turns, the Wolf Brigade trooper slashes, and only Iona’s scream shocks her cousin into ducking.
The Wolf Brigade jeer.
But it’s at their own man for screwing up his attack. There are some sizeable bets being carried here, and the few who went heavy on Ajac at the beginning are starting to look worried.
In reply, Ajac asks only one question.
I know it’s a question from the way Iona nods when she answers.
Looking at her, Ajac looks at me, then looks at his opponent and something changes in the boy’s face. The question is, has that change come too late to save him? Now’s when I discover whether I get a soldier or a corpse out of this fight.
Their man is stronger, uninjured and experienced.
But he’s also a braggart. A small step up from a coward. I guess every regiment has at least one.
‘Finish it,’ a friend of his shouts.
Unless it’s someone who simply has money riding on the fight.
‘Yeah,’ says Neen. ‘Finish it.’
As the trooper steps in, Ajac jabs hard for the man’s gut and almost lands his blow. Twisting aside, the trooper slashes at Ajac’s face, and stumbles as his anxiety and the fury of Ajac’s attack tip him off balance.
‘Do it,’ I order.
Ajac nods, draws back his arm.
He’s on the point of striking when one of the friends objects. Sidekicking the back of Ajac’s knee, he waits for our man to drop and then drives his boot into Ajac’s face.
‘Fuck this,’ Neen says.
‘Sergeant.’
Neen’s hand freezes at my tone. And I watch him make himself release his own knife. The Wolf watches also, from across the circle.
‘Sir . . .?’
‘Ajac’s fight.’
Spitting teeth, Ajac gets to his knees.
His face is pulped, and he’s having trouble breathing through the blood that must run down the back of his throat. His original opponent decides the result is a foregone conclusion. Wrapping his fingers into Ajac’s hair, he drags back his head and slashes.
Iona screams and the crowd gasp.
When the trooper steps back to take a bow, he thinks it’s over. It’s not, because Ajac caught the blow across his palm. As we watch, he jacks his knife sideways into the man’s l
eg.
‘Twist,’ Neen yells.
Ajac does, viciously.
And with the man frozen in agony, he rips free his blade and rams it into the trooper’s groin, twisting hard. The man screams like a castrated pig, falling as Ajac rips his knife free one final time and crawls up the man’s shuddering body to drive it into his throat.
A knife’s point beats edge every time.
The trooper dies within seconds and is buried by his oppos, who dig through rocky dirt to their own depth, then stand to attention in the blazing sun to say the soldier’s prayer for a man who lost them money and standing.
I make the Aux join in, Ajac included.
No one in the burial detail blames him for what happened. There isn’t a Wolf Brigade trooper who wouldn’t have done the same.
The real surprise is that Ajac can stand, function and say the prayer. He can do this because Sergeant Toro turned up with five gold coins from General Luc, and a wizened major who turned out to be the Wolf’s own doctor.
A very good one too.
Having sewn Ajac’s ribs, hand and hip, and bent the boy’s nose into shape, he staples it at the bridge, before washing the teeth we collect in milk, coating them with protein coagulant and pushing them back into Ajac’s gums.
Then he gives the boy three jabs of battlefield morphine and tells him not to pick any more fights for a few days.
As we ride out, the Wolf tells the innkeeper not to cut down the trooper who tripped Ajac until he is dead. General Luc is very clear about what will happen if this order is disobeyed.
He leaves the trooper crucified to the tavern door.
Chapter 44
WE MAKE CAMP THAT NIGHT IN THE PLACE WHERE LEONA, Anton and I first met Senator Cos, and I smoked a cigarillo with the Wolf’s sergeant.
Sergeant Toro is still around.
Who do you think just gave me another bottle of cane spirit?
Mary, the girl from the inn, takes one look at the convoy that rides into her village and decides she doesn’t know me.
‘Wise decision,’ the SIG says.
‘How do you—?’
‘Fight, flight or fuck.’ The gun sighs. ‘You’re pretty basic. I could run you through the body chemistry, biological triggers and neural responses. But I’d only end up explaining every other word.’
‘Biological what?’
‘Your brain went, pretty. Your dick went, again . . .’ The SIG stops, thinks. ‘Actually, it was the other way round.’ My gun hasn’t forgiven me using its holster to store alcohol, but can’t resist being snotty.
If Mary has any sense, and she has, she’ll keep her head down and her opinions to herself and wait for us to roll out of here tomorrow. Then she can come up with a better plan for escaping. One that doesn’t involve me.
‘You’ll be all right, Sven?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good.’ Colonel Vijay tries to smile. ‘Earlier, when you asked . . . I appreciate your concern, Sven. And I know we’ll all be happier when this is over.’
That’s his own death he’s talking about.
‘Sir . . .’
He turns back, finds his smile. ‘Have a good evening, Sven. I’ll see you in the morning.’
As is the way in the wastes, the temperature plummets the moment the sun sinks behind the horizon. Iona asks why it’s so cold here when night in Farlight is hot and humid.
Taking this as an excuse to wrap his arm round her, my sergeant invents a theory to do with the city’s volcano trapping clouds. He does this between taking his turn at the cane spirit and cupping the underside of Iona’s breast when he thinks we won’t notice.
His sister opens her mouth to object.
And I interrupt her to talk the Aux through how things stand between the Wolf and Colonel Vijay. Although they hear about General Luc’s visit to Wildeside for the first time, it’s only when I mention Aptitude that Shil and Rachel start looking at each other.
The colonel dines with General Luc at the inn, while we sit round our fire, draining the bottle and watching sparks fly into a moonlit sky. The sparks should remind us of what happened last night, all those burning houses and looted shops, but they don’t. They simply look like sparks disappearing into the darkness.
Neen’s twenty, Iona’s eighteen.
They’ve been together less than six months.
Their lust is understandable, although Shil doesn’t look at it that way. She’s ten years older than her brother. Old enough to remember the dirt poor, Uplifted planet on which she was born, and the punishments the Enlightened inflicted on girls who let men get too close.
‘Neen,’ I say. ‘Check the perimeter.’
Scrambling to his feet, he disappears into the night.
I don’t mind members of the Aux fucking. Battle can take you like that. Actually, anything can take you like that. Battle, loneliness, alcohol, just the sheer bloody number of miles from home. But I’m not having it cause problems.
‘All quiet, sir.’
Neen has the sense to sit opposite Iona this time.
It should be all quiet. At least, quiet in the sense no one’s likely to attack. We’ve got five hundred Wolf Brigade camped around us. I’m more concerned with General Luc’s people listening in.
‘So the Wolf says he’s going to kill Colonel Vijay?’
Iona sounds puzzled.
‘He’ll do it too,’ Rachel says.
‘Then why doesn’t the colonel run away?’
A chorus tells Iona that the Death’s Head don’t run.
‘Escape then,’ she says. ‘Withdraw.’
You can tell she doesn’t know the difference.
‘Because,’ I say, ‘he’s given his surrender to General Luc. He would have to take it back. And then the general would know he was planning to escape.’
‘That’s stupid,’ Iona says.
Neen’s torn between agreeing and telling her why it isn’t true. He sees me watching and bites his lip. He still looks like a farm boy half a spiral from home. Pushing hair out of his eyes, he says, ‘The colonel’s high clan. They have their own rules.’
‘And those rules bind us?’
It’s the first sensible question I’ve heard Iona ask, ever.
The fact she’s Neen’s lover isn’t enough to earn her a place here. She travels with us because her safety was the price put on me by a tribal woman who nursed me back to life after I’d taken more damage than my body could handle.
Iona will never make a soldier.
She’s built for bars and bedrooms, children and gardens full of flowers. Some women are. So are some men. Iona never makes any secret of what she wants from life. What she hopes Neen will eventually give her.
All the same . . .
‘They bind the colonel,’ I say.
Something in my tone makes Shil glance my way.
Without a word, she clambers up and removes the cane-spirit bottle that has found its way into my hands again. What’s more, I let her. A few minutes later she reappears with a mug of coffee. It’s hot, bitter and black.
Chapter 45
EACH MILE TAKES COLONEL VIJAY CLOSER TO HIS DEATH. Although he knows this, he’s far too polite to make a fuss about the fact. Instead, he shrivels inside himself, becoming paler and more upright with every rut and pothole that vanishes under our wheels.
Makes me want to slap him.
We’ve been climbing all day, in serious heat, towards distant mountains. These aren’t the high plains that spread around us in a grey mess of gravel, broken walls and half-fossilized tree stumps, these are the wastes.
The high plains are beyond the pass.
Bocage, not wastes. These were orchards once.
When did I start thinking shit like that? Meeting Leona fucked with my head. Fucked with it far worse than killing her did. Even the SIG-37 knows it. My gun’s keeping quiet around me.
‘Why?’
‘To give you time.’
‘To do what?’
‘If you knew that,’ it says, ‘you wouldn’t need more time, would you?’
Even threatening to toss it under the wheels of my combat trike and keep going doesn’t produce a better answer.
This looks like a retreat. Only General Luc didn’t lose a battle, so it has to be a power play. But surely his position would be stronger if he remained in Farlight, or brought his troops from their barracks into the city centre, rather than moving them out altogether?
We’re back to the long game.
Tapping the brakes on my fat-wheel, I wait for Shil to slide alongside. She’s surprised I’m out of formation. Not least because I told her anyone fucking up formation would be shot.
‘Sir?’ she says.
I open my visor.
Takes her a moment to do the same.
‘Do you play chess?’
She looks at me. Wondering if it’s a trick question.
‘Well, Corporal?’
‘Yes, sir,’ she admits.
‘Good,’ I tell her. ‘I need you to teach me.’ She’s about to flip down her lid when I shake my head. Haven’t finished yet.
‘Sir?’
‘I should warn you. My old lieutenant tried and failed.’
The Aux, and for all I know, the entire Wolf Brigade, hear her swear over the comms channel. Luckily none of them knows what about.
That night Ajac carves me a chess set. He does it swiftly, from chunks of cork hacked from a dead tree on the edge of a village where we stop. When he’s done I don’t recognize any of the pieces.
That doesn’t surprise me.
But Shil doesn’t either. So she gets Ajac to cut her a new set, and tells him how she wants each piece to look. Ajac does it without complaint. His cousin and my sergeant use the diversion to disappear into the darkness. Iona and Neen think Shil won’t notice. They’re wrong. She does.
‘Let it go,’ I tell her.
‘That’s easy for you to say.’ Seeing my scowl, she adds, ‘Sir . . .’
‘No. It’s not. He’s my sergeant. Until she proves herself, she’s just a camp follower who almost got one of my men killed. I don’t carry dead wood on campaign.’
‘Is that what this is, sir?’
Good question.
‘Can’t see what else it is,’ I say finally.
When Neen and Iona return, Shil goes to talk to them. I’m not sure what she says but Iona scurries off. When she comes back it’s with a basin so I can shave. And she offers to mend the rips in my uniform.
God knows where she stole the water.
Shil watches impassively as Iona wastes half our thread tacking a piece of cloth under a hole in my shirt the size of my fist.
‘That’s better,’ Shil says.
Later, Iona brings me food. It’s chilli stew (meat undefined). Biscuits, dry (two). Cheese, processed (not yet mouldy) and chocolate pudding in a tin that heats itself when I rip the lid. For all I know the stew heats the same way, but she prepared that for me.
The pudding tastes like glue.
That’s fine. I like army rations. And I know Colonel Vijay gave us a little talk about eating with the Wolf Brigade. But one thing at a time. We’re still finding his bit about not killing them hard enough.
‘Sir,’ Rachel says.
I look up. So do the others. Rachel’s not given to starting conversations on her own.
‘What does General Luc gain from cutting out the colonel’s heart?’
She has a part-stripped Z93z long-range rifle in front of her. She’s already cleaned its scope and laser sights. And the 8.59-calibre floating barrel lies on an oiled sheet, momentarily forgotten.
As said, snipers are high maintenance.
If a target’s out there Rachel can kill it, moving or not, distance no object. In everything else she’s a mare. A sullen, slightly podgy one who hides behind a curtain of red hair. Lash marks for abandoning her position scar her shoulders. And an Obsidian Cross second class hangs on her dog-tag chain for saving our lives.
Being her, both incidents took place at the same time.
‘Rachel?’
‘You say he plans to marry Aptitude. So why would he kill Colonel Vijay?’
Why would he . . .?
What kind of question is that? This is the man who . . .
It’s a long and bloody list. Dead babies, crucified women, impaled officers, and spies hung with their own guts or returned to their own side with their noses slit, ears cropped and balls stuffed into their mouths and their lips sewn tight.
The general, our general, used cruelty as an art.
The Wolf is cruel by nature. The difference between Generals Jaxx and Luc couldn’t be greater. If the Wolf says he’ll serve Colonel Vijay’s heart on a plate to Aptitude why should I doubt it?
I wouldn’t put it past him to cook it first.
‘Sir,’ Rachel says. ‘Don’t think you’re right.’
The Aux go silent. Neen glances at Shil, then looks away. I could have Rachel whipped for insubordination and that would make twice in a year. As it is, I’m seriously considering having Neen flog Iona for what happened earlier today.
‘Want to tell me why?’
Rachel bites her lip. She’s not good at judging what she’s allowed to say. All she knows is she’s said too much already, and she only knows that because the others have gone silent.
‘Aptitude would hate him if he did.’
I open my mouth to call her a fool and shut it again.
Maybe she’s right? Perhaps General Luc doesn’t want Aptitude the way men usually want women? If he did, he’d simply marry her, rape her and burn Wildeside down around her head if she dared whine.
Have to say, that’s what I thought he had in mind.
‘Shil. What do you think?’
She hesitates. Makes me wonder if Rachel’s mentioned this before.
‘Well?’
‘It’s a good threat, sir. But I’m not sure he’ll go through with it. Not unless the colonel refuses to give Aptitude up. The Wolf might want to. But he’ll need things to be right with Aptitude and her parents.’
Shil’s showing a touching faith in the Wolf’s nature.
‘Vijay gives up Aptitude in return for his life?’
She nods.
‘What if Colonel Vijay would rather die?’
From the look on her face, Shil wants to say he won’t be that stupid. Only he will. Vijay Jaxx is dumb enough to die for love.
‘Sir,’ Iona says.
‘What?’
Maybe I say it too roughly, because she bites her lip.
‘It’s just, General Luc reminds me of Milo. You remember . . .’
Yeah, I remember. Although it’s a stretch to compare the head man of a village on a ring world with the commander of one of the most feared regiments ever to exist.
‘They called him the Fox.’
And we call Luc the Wolf. OK, she’s got an animal thing going. All the same . . . I glance round, seeing faces edged by firelight. It should soften our features but all it does is harden them. We’re good, I remind myself. Anybody who survives what we’ve survived has to be good.
‘Where’s this going?’ I ask Iona.
Looking up, she meets my gaze. Her eyes are huge and seem different in the dark. As if an owl watches me through her eye sockets. Static travels my spine and I shiver, despite myself.
‘He won’t offer Colonel Vijay his life, sir. Not for giving up Aptitude. He’s too cunning. He’ll offer her his life for rejecting him.’
I want to check I understood that.
‘He’ll spare Colonel Vijay? But only if Aptitude renounces him? And agrees to marry General Luc instead?’
All three women nod.