Several hundred people bow their heads when I say the soldier’s prayer.
Chapter 43
Theearth is red round here. Scrub clings to the edges of a road, which is broken and scabbed and full of badly mended holes. Stunted trees dot the distance. Twisted pines and cork and something that sheds its bark in leprous strips.
For all that it is hot and dry, the air is cleaner than in Farlight. Much cleaner and much clearer. In the distance a low line of hills stands between us and snow-covered mountains.
Birds circle a clump of distant thorn, wide-winged and lazy.
On the bike ahead, Rachel shifts her gaze. One, two, three, four . . . She’s just judged their speed and distance, allowed for deflection, wind and the diffraction that heat induces, and mentally shot each buzzard through its head.
Colonel Vijay rides at the front.
He won’t look at me.
Actually, he won’t look at anyone.
He just stares ahead and keeps his eyes on the red earth.
Still, if I’d delivered myself into the hands of a man who wants to cut out my heart and fuck my girlfriend, I’d probably be concentrating on the road too. Mind you, I wouldn’t give my parole. So the problem wouldn’t arise.
‘No,’ says the SIG. ‘You’d invent a whole new category of fuck-ups. You know the value of teamwork?’ It waits for my answer, then sighs. ‘You get to blame someone else.’ When I don’t reply to that either, it puts itself to sleep.
We pull into a hill village that afternoon.
There are a thousand like it dotted across the wastes.
An old church, now peeling whitewash. A small square, surrounded by broken buildings. The handful of children who watch us arrive get slapped into silence and dragged inside. Not sure if their mothers expect the Wolf Brigade to eat them, rape them or use them as target practice.
General Luc obviously feels happier to be out of the city, because he commandeers the village bar, its owner, the serving girls and its cook and settles himself at a table out front where he can keep an eye on what is going on.
As he waits, he sends for our colonel.
We’re too far away to hear their conversation. But it ends with Colonel Vijay’s clumsy salute. Never met a senior officer who could salute properly yet.
Turning on his heel, Colonel Vijay heads for where we sit in the shadow of the church’s faded bell tower. When he tells us to stay as we are, we stop climbing to our feet. ‘Sven,’ he says, ‘how are you feeling now?’
‘Better, sir. Thank you. Vomiting helps.’
He sighs. ‘Where are Ajac and Iona?’
‘Inside, sir.’
I imagine they’re lighting candles for Hekati.
‘I eat with General Luc’s officers.’ The colonel’s words are addressed to us all, but he’s staring at me when he says this.
‘Understood, sir.’
He looks relieved.
What does he think? I’m going to tell him he’s an idiot in front of the others? I’m not even going to tell him he’s an idiot when we’re alone. For all that giving his parole is one of the stupidest things I’ve heard.
The next time I see Colonel Vijay he’s next to the Wolf, slicing ewe’s cheese with a blunt knife to eat on fat slabs of dark bread, which he washes down with a local wine. The general is asking his opinion on how many hours it will take a courier to ride from the Wolf’s Lair to Wildeside.
The man’s torturing Colonel Vijay with politeness.
Imagine we’re handcuffed or held in a cage, stripped of our weapons and uniforms and badges of rank. Both sides know where they stand. We’re the naked, shit-covered ones and they’re our captors.
We get to hate them.
They get to regard us with contempt. Everybody is happy.
This way is crueller. The Wolf’s officers reply politely to the colonel’s conversation and let him take his food before them, but there isn’t a single one who doubts their general’s intention to cut out Vijay’s heart.
And he will do it. This is Shadow Luc we’re talking about. Who slit the throats of a Silver Fist’s five children.
God knows, we’ve all cut throats.
An Enlightened eleven-braid, a three-braid and several Silver Fist in my case. But the Wolf did it in cold blood to make a point, because their father refused to surrender.
‘Sir, you OK?’ Shil sits beside me without being invited. Since these are the first words she’s said to me all day, I assume she’s been sent by the others.
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
My corporal slicks a sideways glance.
She’s scowling, which might be the light in her eyes, because the sun is eating the edges of the shadow where we sit. I can smell the sweat on her. As surely as I can smell the smoke and stink that clings after any battle.
If that’s what last night was.
‘Colonel Vijay mentioned Leona took his message to Aptitude . . .’
Shil’s choosing her words carefully. There’s a reason for this. Actually, there are a couple of reasons. I’m her lieutenant, and I’ve been known to lose my temper with her. And we’ve talked a couple of times; alcohol was involved and nothing happened, at least not that I remember.
She’s come to see how I feel about executing Leona. How does she think I feel? It occurs to me she doesn’t know.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘Really, sir. We all are.’
The idea the Aux are discussing this behind my back doesn’t improve my hangover any. They’re cannon fodder, wasn’t that what I told them at the start? I’m about to remind Shil of this, when a thought closes my mouth.
Leona delivered Vijay’s letter to Aptitude.
‘Later,’ I say.
Stamping to where Colonel Vijay sits, I come to salute.
The Wolf watches me, his ADC watches me. My own troop watch me from where they sit near the church tower. Apart from Shil, who watches from where I was a few seconds ago. Her scowl has nothing to do with the sun this time.
‘Join us,’ Colonel Vijay tells me. He gestures to a bench opposite. So that’s where I sit. ‘Sven,’ he says, sounding formal. ‘I’m so-’
I nod away his sympathy.
The colonel clicks his fingers and a girl appears. Huge eyes and a tight smile. She hides her fear behind a fringe that half-covers her face.
‘More wine,’ he says. ‘And some food.’
Her smile falters. Might be my metal arm. Might be the fact my uniform is so stained with blood I can’t remember whose most of it is. Alternatively, the fact I stink of vomit and alcohol could have something to do with it. Vijay Jaxx is far too polite to mention that fact. But then Colonel Jaxx is high clan.
‘What he had,’ I say.
The cheese is so hard I use my own knife, wiping its blade before hacking myself a chunk. The loaf that arrives with it is oily and tough as old leather. Polite people tear their bread. My old lieutenant taught me that. Luckily I’m not polite.
‘You seem to have found your appetite.’
Looking down, I discover the colonel is right. All the cheese is gone and most of the bread. ‘The kyp’s quieter these days, sir,’ I say.
Colonel Vijay flicks a glance towards General Luc.
The Wolf is concentrating on the glass in front of him. He tastes his wine with the restrained ferocity that underlies everything he does.
There is a tightness to Colonel Vijay’s face . . .
He doesn’t like me talking about the symbiont in public. Actually, it’s not that. His father is dead, he’s going to his own death and the house where he was born is a burnt-out ruin, all of this inside the last twenty-four hours. Having to pretend it hasn’t happened is killing him.
‘Sir,’ I say. ‘Perhaps we could take a walk?’
General Luc watches us leave.
For all I know, he watches us the entire way round the village square, because that is where we walk, our heads together and my questions low. As we return to where we started, Colonel Vijay retakes his place and dismisses me with a nod.