The shout had gone up behind Hall, on the knoll. He looked up and found at least ten hawks speeding over his head. Not sentries, these; they cruised the sky, spread equidistant, flying westward in silent formation. Specially trained, but for what?
There was no time to ponder it. Another Mort soldier came at him, this one left-handed, and Hall forgot about the hawks as he fought the man off. His helmet fell backward again, off his head, and Hall cursed as he threw it to the ground. Fighting without a helmet was a good way to die, but even death seemed like an acceptable outcome at this point. At least there would be sleep waiting there. Hall jabbed at the Mort, felt his sword clang harmlessly off the man’s iron breastplate. The damned Mort armor! A scream came from behind him, but Hall could not turn around, not even when warmth soaked the back of his neck.
Someone launched into the Mort from the side, knocking him to the ground. Blaser, grappling with the soldier for a moment before clubbing him across the face. When the man lay still, Blaser got up and grabbed Hall’s arm, pulling him back toward the Tear line.
“What is it? A retreat?”
“Come, sir! The general!”
They pushed their way back through, knocking aside several Mort along the way. Hall moved along in a dream. Everything seemed muted somehow: the sunlight, the sounds of battle, the stench, even the screams of the dying. But the waters of the Caddell were clear and sharp, a bright and sparkling red.
Atop the knoll ahead, a group of soldiers were clustered, their faces grave. Something about this tableau shook Hall awake for the first time in days, and he began to run, Blaser at his side, heedless of the battle at the bottom of the hill.
Bermond lay facedown in a heap. No one had dared touch him, so Hall squatted down and rolled him over. A collective groan went up from the assembled men; Bermond’s throat had been torn out, leaving only shreds of flesh that dangled on either side of his neck. His chest had been protected by his armor, but all four of his limbs had been shredded to pieces. His left arm was barely attached at the shoulder. His eyes gazed blankly at the sky from a face wet with blood.
A few feet away, in the grass, Hall spotted Bermond’s helmet with its ridiculous blue plume. A silly affectation, that helmet, but Bermond had loved it, loved riding the Tearling with the plume waving jauntily in the breeze. A general for peace, not wartime, and Hall felt his throat tighten as he closed Bermond’s eyes.
“Sir! We’re losing ground!”
Hall straightened and saw that the Tear line was indeed weakening. At several points, the Mort had pushed the Tear neatly inward, like a pin in a cushion. Hall stared at the men around him—Blaser and Caffrey, Colonel Griffin, a young major whose name he didn’t know, several infantry—feeling at a loss. Promotion of a general required a formal procedure, approval by the Queen, a ceremony. Hall had stood right beside Bermond, years ago, when Queen Elyssa had invested him with command. At this moment the Queen was miles away, but when Hall looked around, he saw that all of them, even Griffin, were looking to him, waiting for orders. Queen or no, he was the general now.
“Caffrey. Fall back to the next knoll.”
Major Caffrey took off in a dead sprint down the hill.
“You, Griffin. Pull the remainder of your battalion back and head for New London. Take the leftover material from the deserted areas of the refugee camp and barricade the bridge.”
“A barricade of old furniture and tents won’t hold up for long.”
“But it has to. Ask the Queen for extra lumber if you need to, but get it done. We’ll meet you there as soon as the evacuation’s complete.”
Griffin turned and strode away. Hall returned his attention to the battlefield and saw that the Tear had already begun to retreat, inching up the gentle slope at the bottom of the knoll. He looked down at Bermond’s corpse and felt sorrow and exhaustion heave up inside him, but there was no time for either. The Mort were slowly creeping up the slope, accelerating the retreat. A deep voice bellowed orders behind the Mort line, and Hall knew, somehow, that it was General Ducarte, close to the battle now. Ducarte wasn’t one to hang back and keep his hands clean. He had come to see blood.
“You.” Hall pointed to the two infantrymen. “Go with Griffin. Take the general’s body back to New London.”
They lifted Bermond’s body and carried it down the other side of the knoll, toward the horses. Hall followed their passage for a moment, then lifted his eyes to the refugee camp. Defenseless people, an entire city.
One more day, he thought, watching the Mort mass at the weakest point of the Tear line and charge, swords and freshly polished armor gleaming in the sunlight. They went through the Tear easily, breaking the line even as Hall’s soldiers scrambled to get back up the hill. Tear soldiers swarmed in, bolstering the gap, but the damage was done; there was a hole in Hall’s formations now, and they would have no time to regroup. The Mort pressed their advantage, massing at the weak point, forcing the Tear to fall backward and accommodate them. Bermond was dead, but Hall could still feel him somewhere, on the next hill perhaps, watching and evaluating, waiting to see what Hall would do next. The sun broke through the clouds and Hall drew his sword, relieved to find new life in the muscles of his arm, to find himself more awake than he had been in a long time. The Mort tore through the Tear line, a black mass that could not be defeated, and General Hall charged down the hill to meet them.
C
HAPTER
11
B
LUE
H
ORIZON
In the decade before the Crossing, the American Security apparatus took thousands of alleged separatists into custody. The sheer number of detainees convinced the American government, as well as the public, that Security was winning the war on domestic terrorism. But this single-minded focus on demonstrable results also blinded the government to the real issue: an enormous fault beneath the American surface, unseen, that was finally beginning to crack.
—The Dark Night of America, GLEE DELAMERE
DORIAN WAS GONE.
Lily stood in the doorway of her nursery, blinking. Dorian was gone, and so were the medical supplies, the extra clothes that Lily had given her. The nursery was still as always, full of tiny dust motes that floated in the late-morning sun. No one would know that Dorian had ever been there.
Of course Lily hadn’t expected her to say good-bye, but she had thought there would be more time. Now William Tear had come in the night and taken Dorian away. Lily turned and walked back down the hall, all of her pleasure in the morning suddenly evaporated. What was she supposed to do now? She was supposed to play bridge later, with Michele and Christine and Jessa, but she saw now that she would have to call that off. There was no way she could sit there at the table with the three of them, gossiping and drinking whatever cocktail Christine favored this week. Something had shifted, and now there was no way for Lily to return to the world of small things.
TWO DAYS LATER, the news sites announced that simultaneous terrorist attacks had taken place in Boston and Dearborn, Virginia. The terrorists in Boston had broken into one of Dow’s warehouse facilities and stolen medical equipment and drugs, nearly fifty million dollars’ worth, a huge coup that was splashed all over the top of every website. But the attack in Virginia, though less spectacular, was more interesting to Lily because it made no sense. Some ten or twelve armed guerrillas had broken into a billionaire’s Dearborn horse farm and stolen most of his breeding stock. The guerrillas came prepared, with their own trailers for the horses, but they took nothing except the animals and some equipment for their care.
Horses! Lily was baffled. No one actually used horses for anything anymore, not even farming; they were a rich man’s vice, only valuable for harness racing and the gambling that went with it. Lily wondered briefly if the tall Englishman was crazy—for she was certain, somehow, that this was Tear’s work—but that wasn’t the impression she had received. Rather, the entire thing seemed like a puzzle, one that was missing several pieces. Horses and medical equipment stolen, jet facilities destroyed. Each day Lily moved these pieces around a board in her mind, trying to understand. She felt sure that if she could only fit them together, assemble the puzzle, then it would somehow clarify everything, show her the Englishman’s real plan, the clear outlines of the better world.