nodded again, but puzzled now. ‘So most here hate you even more. And why? Because already you stand a much greater chance of surviving than they — you see?’
‘If we worked together we’d all stand a much greater chance.’
He shook his head. ‘No. It does not work that way.’
His accent was strange to her. ‘You’re not from round here either.’
‘No. I’m from south Genabackis.’ He stood, motioned to a man apparently asleep two places down, older, with a touch of grey in his hair. ‘Ask him how it works.’
‘Thank you — what’s your name?’
He paused, looking back. ‘Jemain.’
‘Shell.’
‘Good luck, Shell.’
She squinted over at the older fellow, ignored the continuing insults regarding her person and what she might do with a spear. ‘Hey, you — old man!’
The fellow did not stir. He must be awake; no one could sleep amid all this uproar. She found a piece of stone and threw it at him. He cracked open an eye, rubbed his unshaven jaw.
‘What’s the routine?’ she demanded.
He sighed as if already exhausted by her, said, ‘It’s in pairs. One shieldman. One spearman — or woman,’ he added, nodding to her.
‘That’s stupid. We should mass together, fend them off.’
He was shaking his head. ‘That’s not the Stormguard’s priority. Their priority is to cover the wall. There’s a good stone’s throw between you and the next pair.’
‘That’s stupid,’ she repeated. This entire exercise struck her as stupid. An utter waste.
The older fellow shrugged. He was eyeing her now, narrowly. ‘You’re not Sixth Army.’
‘No. I’m not.’
‘What’re you doing here then?’
‘Shipwrecked on the west coast.’
‘What in Hood’s name you doin’ there?’
It was her turn to shrug. He bared his yellowed teeth in answer to his own question. ‘Reconnaissance, hey?’
She didn’t reply and he leaned his head back against the stone wall. ‘Don’t matter. We’re not goin’ anywhere.’
Two days later the Chosen came for them.
The bronze-bound door slammed open and a detail entered to unlatch the chain securing their ankle fetters. Covered by crossbowmen, the lines along both walls stood. At an order one file, Shell’s, began shuffling along out of the door. The line walked corridors, ever upwards, the air getting colder and steadily more damp. They came out into a night-time snowstorm. Guards pushed them up steep ice-slick stairs cut from naked stone. The cold snatched Shell’s breath away and bit at her hands and feet. To left and right lay slopes of heaped boulders rising up to disappear into the driven snow that came blasting from the darkness. The guards urged them on with blows from the flat of their blades. As she walked she tore a strip of cloth from her inner shirt and wrapped it round her hands.
From down beneath the rock came a great shudder that struck Shell like a blow. Stones tumbled and grated amid the boulders. A roar sounded above, a waterfall thundering, which slowly passed. The file of prisoners exchanged wide-eyed, terrified glances.
The Stormwall. She was to stand it. Only now did the certitude of such an unreal and outrageous fate strike home. Who would’ve imagined it? The stairs led up into a tower and a circular staircase. In a chamber within the tower two Chosen Stormguard awaited them at the only other exit, a portal leading to narrow ascending stairs. A single brazier cast a weak circle of warmth in the centre of the room. ‘Sit,’ one of the Stormguard told them.
While they waited, regular guards distributed sets of battered armour, mostly studded leathers, some boiled cuirasses, a few leather caps. All the equipment bore the gouges and scars of terrible blows — many obviously mortal. Just for the warmth, Shell grabbed a cap and strapped it on tight. No one spoke. Two men vomited where they sat. One shuffled to the piss-hole in a corner at least five times. The vomit froze solid on the stone-flagged floor.
Shell saw piled rags and took a bunch to wrap round her head, neck and hands. The old veteran, she noticed, had unwound a scarf from his waist and wrapped it round his head and neck.
A shout echoed from the stairway and the Stormguard closed on the front of the line. While one watched, the other struck the chain from the fetters. The first two, the first ‘pair’, were pushed up the stairs.
Counting off, Shell looked at the man next to her, her partner to be. He was skinny and shuddering uncontrollably — either from the cold or from terror. ‘What’s your name?’
The man flinched as if she’d struck him. ‘What?’
‘Your name… what is it?’
‘What does that matter? We’re dead, aren’t we?’
‘Quiet,’ one of the Stormguard warned.
‘We’re planning!’ she answered, glaring. The man scowled but didn’t answer. ‘Have you used a spear?’
The fellow looked on the verge of tears. ‘What? A spear? You think it matters? You think we have a chance?’
‘This is your last warning,’ the Stormguard said quietly.
Shell muttered a response. Shit! I’m going to be chained to this fool? I’d be better off on my own. She leaned forward, trying to pull more warmth from the brazier. Well… it may just come to that…
The wait lengthened. Everyone sat in an agony of tense anticipation. After what seemed half the night one of the Stormguard squinted up the narrow chute of stairs and then back at them. ‘Sleep,’ he said.
Shell did not sleep. She sat back, eyes slitted, while the man next to her nodded off — though perhaps he simply passed out in an utter exhaustion of dread. At intervals, one Stormguard paced the chamber. She watched him when he passed. Who were these soldiers? Their manner struck her as one of a military order, one dedicated to their Blessed Lady. She’d heard of them all her life, of course; they were always cited in admiration. And she could admit to having once shared that awe for what seemed — from far away — an honourable calling. Once.
Now, they’d rather fallen in her regard.
Eventually, inevitably, their turn came. The Stormguard struck them from the chain and pushed them up the narrow stone stairway. Her partner went first, and when he reached the top someone passed him a spear, which he flinched from before shakily taking.
Fanderay help us. The shield was thrust at her. It was a broad curved rectangle of layered wood, bone and bronze. The narrow chute of the stairway opened on to a small frigid room with one door; that door was lined in rime, its threshold wet with melted ice and slush. She knew where that door led.
While she fought with the shield’s old strapping the entire structure around and beneath her shuddered, jerking, and a great booming burst through the room like a thunderclap. She rocked, taking a step. Ice fell like glass shards from the walls. The regular guards holding cocked crossbows on her and her partner grinned at them over the stocks of their weapons.
The outer door slammed open and in came a Stormguard. Sleet and wind-tossed salt spume coated his cloak. His longsword was drawn and he gestured to them with it. Her partner, to whom she was linked by a few arms’ length of chain, gaped at the Chosen, frozen in terror, or disbelief. His eyes blazing within his narrow vision slit, the Stormguard snatched the spear close to its wide leaf-shaped blade and yanked the man forward.
In this undignified manner they stumbled out on to the marshalling walk of the Stormwall. A brutal wind cut at Shell while sleet slashed almost level. The coming dawn brightened the east behind massed heavy clouds. The Stormguard urged them along, now tugging on the chain linking them. As he force-marched them he was yelling: ‘You will face the enemy. You will fight! If you flinch or cringe I will kill you myself! And believe me… you have a better chance against them than against me!’
He led them up stairs that were no more than flows of ice cascading down from a higher wall, a machicolation perhaps. Here the cut stones sloped downward, no doubt to cast the wash of the crashing waves back over the face of the wall.
Shell reached the top and had her breath stolen from her. The sea raged beneath a horizon-wide ceiling of
