Monsters of Men

Then we’re really in trouble.

{VIOLA}

“There!” I shout, pointing at what has to be the road up the hill to the tower. Acorn flies straight up the incline, bits of foamy sweat flying from his shoulders and neck. “I know,” I say between his ears. “Almost there.”

Girl colt, he thinks and for a second I think he might even be laughing at my sympathy. Or maybe he’s just trying to comfort me.

The road is incredibly dark as it curves around the back of the hill. For a minute, I’m cut off from absolutely everything, all sound from the city, all light from what’s happening, all Noise that might tell me what’s going on. It’s like Acorn and I are racing through the black beyond itself, that weird quiet of being a small ship in the hugeness of space, where your light is so feeble against the surrounding dark, you might as well not have a light at all–

And then I hear a sound coming from the top of the hill–

A sound I recognize–

Steam escaping from a vent–

“Coolant systems!” I shout to Acorn, like they’re the happiest words in the whole world.

The steam sound gets louder as we near the crest of the hill and I picture it in my mind: two huge vents at the back of the scout ship, just above the engines, cooling them down after entry into the atmosphere–

The same vents that didn’t open on my own scout ship when the engines caught fire.

The same vents that caused us to crash and killed my mother and father.

Acorn reaches the top of the hill and for a second, all I see is the vast empty space where the communications tower used to be, the tower Mistress Coyle blew up rather than have the Mayor use it to contact my ships first. Most of the metal wreckage has been cleared away in huge scrap heaps and when Acorn races across the open ground, at first I only see the heaps in the moons-light, three big ones, covered in the dust and dullness of the months since the tower fell–

Three groupings of metal–

And behind them a fourth–

Shaped like a huge hawk, wings outstretched–

“There!”

Acorn puts on a burst of energy and we race towards the back of the scout ship, steam and heat pouring out of the vents into the sky, and we get nearer and I see a shaft of light on the left that must be the bay door open under a wing of the ship–

“Yes,” I say to myself. “They’re really here–”

Because they really are here. I almost believed they’d never come and I can feel myself getting lighter and my breath start rushing faster because they’re here, they’re actually here–

I see three figures standing on the ground at the bottom of the bay doors, silhouetted against the shaft of light, their shadows turning as they hear Acorn’s hoofbeats–

Just to the side, I see a cart parked in the darkness, its oxes nibbling on grass–

And we get closer–

And closer–

And the figures’ faces suddenly loom up as Acorn and I enter the shaft of light, too, juddering to a stop–

And it is, it’s exactly who I thought it would be and my heart does a skip of happiness and homesickness, and in spite of all that’s happening, I feel my eyes get wet and my throat start to choke–

Because it’s Bradley Tench from the Beta and Simone Watkin from the Gamma and I know they came looking for me, they came all this way looking for my mother and my father and me–

And they step back, startled at my sudden appearance, and then take a second to see past all the dirt and the grime and the longer hair–

And I’m bigger, too–

Taller–

Almost grown–

And their eyes get wider as they realize who I am–

And Simone opens her mouth–

But it’s not her voice that speaks.

It’s the third figure, the one whose eyes – now that I finally look at them – open even wider, and she says my name, says it with a look of shock that I have to say gives me a surprising flash of pleasure.

“Viola!” Mistress Coyle says.

“Yeah,” I say, looking right into her eyes. “It’s Viola.”

[TODD]

I don’t even think when the Mayor and Morpeth run after the soldiers into the battle. I just spur Angharrad and she trusts me and leaps right off after ’em–

I don’t want to be here–

I don’t want to fight anyone–

But if it keeps her safe–

(Viola)

Then I’ll bloody well fight–

We ride past soldiers on foot still charging forward, and the battleground at the bottom of the hill is heaving with men and Spackle and I keep on looking up the zigzag road which is still pouring down with more and more Spackle soldiers and it feels like I’m an ant riding into an anthill and you can hardly see the ground for writhing bodies–

“This way!” calls the Mayor, peeling off to the left, away from the river. The lines of men have pushed the Spackle back against both the river and the base of the hill, holding ’em there–

NOT FOR LONG, THOUGH, says the Mayor, straight into my head.

“You don’t do that!” I shout at him, raising my rifle.

“I need your attention and I need a good soldier!” he shouts back. “If you can’t do that, then you’re no good in this war and you give me far less reason to help you!”

And I think to myself, how did it turn into his choosing to help me, I had him tied up, I had him at my mercy, I won–

But there’s no time cuz I see where he’s heading–

The left flank, the one away from the river, is the weakest, it’s where the men are thinnest and the Spackle have seen that and a surge of ’em is pressing forward. “ATTEND TO ME!” the Mayor shouts and the soldiers nearest us turn and follow him–

Doing it immediately, like they don’t even think about it–

And they follow us towards the left flank and we cross the ground way faster than I’d like and I’m just swamped on all sides by how loud it all is, the men shouting, the weapons firing, the thump of bodies hitting the ground, that effing Spackle horn still blasting every two seconds, and the Noise, the Noise, the Noise, the Noise–

I’m riding into a nightmare.

I feel a whisk of air by my ear and turn quickly to see a soldier behind me shot in the cheek by the arrow that just missed my head–

He screams and he falls–

And then he’s left behind–

MIND YOURSELF, TODD, the Mayor puts in my head. WOULDN’T WANT YOU LOST IN THE FIRST BATTLE, NOW WOULD WE?

“Effing STOP that!” I shout, whirling round to him.

I’D RAISE MY GUN IF I WERE YOU, he thinks at me–

And I turn–

And I see–

The Spackle are on us–

{VIOLA}

“You’re alive!” Mistress Coyle says and I see her face change, making one kind of astonishment into a different, lying kind of astonishment. “Thank God!”

“Don’t you dare!” I yell at her. “Don’t you dare!”

“Viola–” she starts but I’m already sliding off Acorn, grunting badly at the pain in my ankles, but I stay standing, just, and turn to Simone and Bradley. “Don’t believe anything she’s told you.”

“Viola?” Simone says, coming forward. “Is it really you?”

“She’s as responsible for this war as the Mayor. Don’t do anything she–”

But I’m stopped by Bradley grabbing me in a hug so tight I can barely breathe. “Oh, my God, Viola,” he says, deep feeling in his voice. “We’d heard nothing from your ship. We thought–”

“What happened, Viola?” Simone says. “Where are your parents?”

And I’m overwhelmed by seeing them, so much so I can’t speak for a minute, and I pull a little away from Bradley and the light catches his face and I see him, really see him, see his kind brown eyes, his skin the same dark shade that Corinne’s was, his short curly hair, greying at the temples, Bradley who was always my favourite on the convoy, who used to teach me arts and maths, and I look over and see the familiar freckled skin of Simone, too, the red hair tied back in a ponytail, the teeny tiny scar on the rise of her chin and I think, in all that’s happened, how much they disappeared to the back of my mind, how much the process of just surviving on this stupid, stupid world made me forget that I came from a place where I was loved, where people cared for me and for each other, where someone as beautiful and smart as Simone and as gentle and funny as Bradley would actually come after me, actually want what was best.