Bahn peered over the battlements himself. He saw dark lines of earthworks, and siege guns still wrapped in their night protections of straw and oiled canvas. Here and there were movements of white, and the odd desultory puff of smoke from one of their snipers.
Behind their lines spread the vast encampment of the Imperial Fourth Army, like a smoky, sleepy city.
We should ask them if they fancy a game of cross, he thought. We could settle the entire war here and now and get on with our lives.
Below, on the Khosian side, the game of cross was just finishing. He could see Halahan limping towards the wall as though he intended to climb its steps. Bahn had little wish to talk to the man, or anyone else just then.
He moved on, unconsciously keeping low as he stepped along the parapet towards the site of the breach, feeling exposed at each wind-blown open space between the teeth of the crenellations, and the occasional gaping emptiness where a section of the battlements had fallen away entirely. No one else was walking bent over, though, nor showing the least sign of concern about the odd incoming shot. Bahn forced himself to straighten his back and to walk in a way more befitting an officer.
He stopped as the battlements dropped away altogether, the stonework ragged where the undermined wall had collapsed. Bahn gaped down at the filled-in breach.
The rubble and earth that plugged the gap was a good half-throw across in size. It had been tamped down and floored with loose planking, and a crude barricade of stone blocks had been set across it for cover, although no one was out there just now. The breach itself was no longer visible from the Mannian side of the Shield. It was faced with the same great slope of earth that fronted the rest of the wall, the only defence they had found that could withstand the constant bombardments of cannon.
Still, it was certainly visible from where he stood, and Bahn could not tear his gaze from it. He stared at the broken section of wall as though staring into the depths of himself, feeling some kind of affinity with this weakened mass of stone.
He thought of the note that had arrived from Minos intelligence the week before, suggesting the possibility of an imminent invasion of Khos. He had been bound by his duty to keep the news to himself; it was, after all, only a supposition of the enemy’s plans. Even Marlee he had kept in the dark, not wanting to cause her unnecessary worries; she had known that something was wrong with him anyway, had noticed the despondent way he carried himself these days. And then the guns on the Mannian side had fallen silent, supposedly as part of the Empire’s period of mourning. To Bahn, it had seemed more as if they were catching their breath for the onslaught to come.
Bahn removed his helmet, set it down on a surviving crenellation next to him with a scrape of metal. A cistern was built into the battlements here, filled with rainwater, and he drank a few sips from a cup fixed to it by a chain. Sated, he leaned against the stonework and gazed out over the Lansway, lost in the tumult of his thoughts.
A far thunderstorm was trailing curtains of rain across the far end of the isthmus and the crust of hills that stretched away on either side of it: the very tip of the southern continent, and the land of Pathia, now ten years fallen to Mann. His hair blew about in the breeze as birds wheeled high and aimless in the sky above.
He ducked as a shot whined off the stonework near to him. Bahn turned to look at where it had struck, and saw Halahan standing there with the foot of his bad leg propped up on the rubble of the broken battlement, a hand on his raised knee, his other holding the clay pipe in the corner of his mouth, coolly studying a breath of dust drifting from the stonework next to his boot.
The Nathalese veteran leaned and spat on the chalky bullet-strike as though putting out a flame, then spoke to Bahn without turning to him. ‘Thinking of some poke?’
Bahn blinked, not understanding his meaning.
‘You seemed lost, a moment ago. I wondered if you were thinking of some lass.’
Bahn rose from his crouch and brushed his fingers through his hair and fixed his helm back on his head. He was careful all the while to remain behind the protection of the battlements. ‘You walk quieter than a mountain lion,’ he replied to the Nathalese man, before he realized what he was saying.
Halahan was gracious enough not to glance down at the hinged metal support that wrapped a good portion of his leg, but instead simply met his gaze. A dark humour played in the backs of his eyes, which shone with the dazzling dark blue of setting skies. Bahn had always liked the Nathalese commander of the Greyjacket brigade, had always respected his no-nonsense manner, without guile or self-importance – unlike so many of the other officers he knew within the army.
The colonel had been a priest once, or so he’d heard, though it was hard to see anything of the religious man about him now. Instead there was something windburned about his character, and something lawless.
‘I was thinking of that fleet in Q’os,’ Bahn confessed. ‘I was wondering if it would be setting forth soon, and if so, for where.’
‘You were wondering if it would be coming here.’
‘Of course. Aren’t you?’
Halahan seemed to laugh without showing it anywhere but in his eyes.
‘Is the old man back yet?’ he asked him.
Ah, thought Bahn.
‘No. And the council are flapping my ears off about it.’
‘I can imagine. It looks bad on them when the Lord Protector goes off by himself asking for League reinforcements.’
‘You think that’s what he’s doing there?’
‘Certainly. Amongst other things. What else can he do? The council would rather bury their heads in the sand. By the sounds of it they’re just hoping the Mannians invade Minos rather than here.’
Bahn offered a shrug, but the motion was lost beneath the shoulder-guard of his armour. ‘Maybe they’re right, then. Minos could be as much a target. They’re being hard hit as we speak.’
‘Aye, I’ve been following the reports. Imperial Diplomats running amok in Al-Minos. The Second Fleet engaged in a battle with sizeable enemy formations.’ Halahan sounded as though he didn’t believe any of it. ‘And the Third Fleet dispatched from our waters to help, it’s so bad. Handy that. If you wanted to slip an invasion fleet down here from Lagos unmolested.’
Halahan puffed on his pipe as the wind jostled his long grey hair about his face. It did not seem as though he was discussing the matter of their possible extinction here. Bahn had often wondered about these men who lived through war as though it were an ordinary life to them. How they were able to switch off their imaginations from the worst of fates that could befall them. How they glided through their lives whether in peace or in battle.
He was envious of anyone who exhibited such traits. Bahn never seemed to stop being frightened of the future and the war. And he certainly didn’t glide through his life; he trod furtively with his attention darting left and right, always concerned at making a false step or saying the wrong thing. Perhaps he should develop a taste for drinking more, like so many of his fellow officers. Or for the hazii weed, like Halahan always seemed to be smoking. Even now he could smell it in the odd twist of the wind.
A flight of skyships was circling over the city, far above the merchant balloons tethered to their towers, higher even than the wheeling birds. Bahn had dreamed the other night that he and his family had been aboard one of those magnificent flying vessels, heading towards the rising sun in search of sanctuary.
‘You know, don’t you, that every one of them has a private ship moored in the western harbour. Fast sloops with their crews on standby, in case the Shield ever falls.’
Bahn nodded absently. He listened to the cuff of the wind against his ears.
‘Still,’ he spoke at last, and his voice sounded fragile, ready to break. ‘The feint could be here, don’t you think? Minos could be their real target.’