Bahn's son was peering down at the wall currently under fire. Along its battlements, between the cannon, ballistae, and the occasional long-rifle firing in reply, men laboured with cranes as they raised great scoops of earth and rock. Some kept dropping out of sight as they were lowered on ropes over the far side, while others merely tipped the contents of the cranes' scoops over the outer rim. Even as they watched, a group of men pulling on ropes collapsed amidst a cloud of flying debris.
Juno gasped.
'Look there,' said Bahn, quickly drawing his son's attention away from the sight, and instead pointed out various structures dotted around the prospective killing grounds between the walls. They looked like towers, though they were open on all sides and not very tall. 'Mine shafts,' he explained. 'The Specials are fighting every hour down there, trying to stop the walls from being undermined.'
At last Juno looked down at his seated father.
'It's different, from what I was expecting,' he said. 'You fight there every day?'
'Some days. Though there are few battles any more. Just this.'
His words appeared to impress the boy. Bahn swallowed, turning away from what he recognized as pride in his son's eyes. Juno already knew that his grandfather had died defending the city. Even now he wore the old man's short-sword about his waist; and, when they returned home, he would no doubt insist that his father give him further lessons in its use. The boy talked often of how he would follow in his father's footsteps when he was old enough, but Bahn did not wish to encourage such ambitions. Better his son ran off to be a wandering monk, better even to sign up on a leaky merchanter, than stay here and fight to the inevitable end.
Juno seemed to read his mood. Softly, he asked, 'How long can we hold them off?'
Bahn blinked, surprised. That was the question of a soldier, not a boy.
'Papa?'
Bahn almost lied to his son then, even though he knew it would be an insult to the boy's growing maturity. But Marlee was sitting just behind them, his wife who had been raised to face the truth no matter how unpalatable it might be. He could sense her ears listening keenly in the silence that awaited his reply.
'We don't know,' he admitted, as he shut his eyes momentarily against another gust of wind. Bahn tasted salt on his lips, like the remnants of dried blood.
When he reopened them, it was to see Juno staring again at the walls, and the Mannian host that confronted them. He appeared to be studying the countless banners that were visible: to one side, the Khosian shield or the Mercian whorl on a sea-green background, dozens of them fluttering along the ramparts; on the other side the imperial red hand of Mann, with the tip of the little finger missing, emblazoned on a field of pure white – hundreds of them staked out across the isthmus. Intent on this scrutiny the boy's skin clung thin and tight to his face.
'There is always hope,' said Marlee reassuringly to her troubled son.
Juno looked to his father once more.
'Yes,' agreed Bahn. 'There is always hope.'
But even as he said these words, he could not meet his son's eyes.
CHAPTER TWO
Boon The foot prodded him again, more insistent this time.
'Your dog,' came the voice through the thin material of his blanket. It was female, and sour. 'I think it's dead.'
Nico forced his eyes open a fraction, so that a glimmer of early sunlight tangled within his lashes. Too bright, he thought, as he hunkered further into the warmth of his own body. Too early.
'Leave me be,' he mumbled.
The blanket swept away, leaving him beached in the daylight. He clamped a hand over his eyes, squinted through the crack between his fingers, to see the girl standing over him, her hands on her hips. Lena, he recalled.
'Your dog, I said. I think it's dead.'
It took a few moments for her words to make sense. He was a poor riser these days; mornings were always a sombre, unwanted affair, and he did not like to face them.
'What?' he said, as he sat up and frowned at the girl, frowned also at a sun that shone several hours old in the sky. Boon was by his side where he had lain down last night. The old dog was still sleeping, surely, but flies were climbing over his muzzle, his blond fur. 'What?' said Nico again.
He scattered the flies with his hand, and ran it along Boon's coat. The dog did not stir.
'He was like that when I woke up,' came Lena's distant voice. 'I tell you, we'll be next if we don't get some proper food into us.'
'Boon?'
The dog looked terribly thin in the bright daylight. Ribs protruded along his side; his spine was a sharp ridgeline of bone. Nico expected an ear to twitch, or maybe a sudden sigh inspired from some animal dream. There was nothing.
He lay back on the grass, pulled the blanket over his head. Then he rested an arm across his old friend.
*
The summer drought had hardened the ground, so Nico used his knife to loosen it before digging the grave with his bare hands. He had chosen a spot beneath an old jupe tree on a hill just to the south of the park, not far from where they had been sleeping. Gaunt faces watched him as he worked. More than once during months past, he had fought away people trying to kill his dog, people desperate enough to crave the animal's flesh. Nico had shouted at them and thrown sticks, while Boon stood snarling at his side. Now he glared at them defiantly, the mud on his face streaked with tears. I'll kill anyone who touches him, he swore to himself miserably.
Boon weighed no more than a sack of sticks as Nico lifted him and laid him out in the shallow grave. For a while he knelt over him, stroking his golden fur. The flies were gathering again.
Boon had been just a pup when Nico's father had first brought him back to the homestead, Nico himself only a few months old. 'A companion to look after you,' his father had explained when Nico was years older. Boon by then had grown into an oversized hound, and the two of them were now inseparable. His kind had been bred for baiting deer and bear; for coursing upon open plains and forested slopes. This last year, living rough in the streets of the city, with so little food, had not been kind to him.
It was hard, pushing the dirt back into the hole, and then covering him with it.
'Goodbye, Boon,' he said at last, patting the earth flat, and his young voice emerged as a dry whisper, lonely as the sky.
He stood up, placing his straw hat on his head, wishing he had more to say. Words normally came easily to his lips.
His shadow lay across the grave: a solid form, its legs parted, hands clenched like balls, its head made bulbous by the hat. Its presence turned the dry, upturned earth black.
'I'm sorry I let you come to the city with me,' he said. 'But I'm glad you were here, Boon. I never would have survived this long otherwise. You were a good friend.'
Nico felt subdued as he shambled, with his pack, down to the great pond. He found himself a space amongst the other park-dwellers crowding the water's edge. There he washed his hands to clean the dirt from them, though his fingernails remained embedded with earth. He had torn the skin around them with his digging, and for some time he watched his blood seep in small clouds into the murk of the pond.
Nico swept the water clear of surface scum, took his covestick from his pack, and scrubbed his teeth. He was aware of the rank taste of the water on his lips, like silage he always thought, and was careful not to swallow any. Sunlight blinded him. Way out in the middle of the pond, the sun glowered in a fiery reflection. For a while he stared at that too, long enough for his eyes to hurt.