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.