And despite their words of reassurance, they kissed long and hard and desperate, as though they would never see each other again.
On the still-smouldering hilltop, Ash stood amongst the ashes and debris that were the remains of a small fishing village, and stared down at a line of severed penises laid out in the gloom like a children’s forgotten game of half-sticks.
Close by, the charred corpses of their owners lay contorted amid the rubble of a collapsed stable. Ash had glimpsed smaller bodies lying amongst them; children and even infants.
Of the women, there was no sign.
Not for the first time in Ash’s long life, it struck him how death smelled the same no matter if it was man, zel, or dog. Ash had seen such things before in his days with the People’s Revolutionary Army. The long-running war of his homeland had burned the compassion from many men’s hearts. Friends had become unhinged with loss or simply callous and hardened like himself, while those men already tainted with cruelty within had revelled unfettered through a landscape of war where the normal bounds of decency no longer applied.
It had broken his heart the first time he’d witnessed such an atrocity; an anguish almost akin to the heartbreak of a beloved’s infidelity, though much worse than that; like a great lie at the heart of the world, suddenly exposed by shocking vivisection.
‘This is not your war,’ Ash told himself aloud in the darkness of the night.
He almost expected to hear the voice of Nico in admonishment. Those were Khosians lying there in the rubble. The whole country, the boy’s family included, faced slavery or the same fate as this.
Nothing came to Ash, though, no voice of conscience or disembodied spirit, only the vague unsettled feeling that he was as much a part of this as anyone, whether he chose a side or not.
The brief gap in the clouds closed above his head, and pitch blackness enveloped him. Sheathed sword in hand, face and hands blackened with soot, Ash turned his back on what lay there in the darkness.
He held a finger against a clogged nostril and blew it clear, then stepped beyond the ruins to the edge of the hill, where he lay on his belly on the coarse grass and looked down on the glowing tents of the Matriarch’s camp below.
The tents were visible for the lamps that shone within them, and they stood on a rise of ground that was broad and flat on top, surrounded by a palisade of sharpened, outward-leaning stakes, and the black line of a ditch ran around the foot of the position. Behind the stakes, white-robed sentries stood half a dozen paces apart. At their backs, a bonfire crackled in a clear space between the tents. The flames were illuminating the twitching flag of the Matriarch.
Ash ranged outwards with his gaze, taking in the much larger camp that sprawled around the Matriarch’s palisade, perhaps a thousand Acolytes or more. They were surrounded in turn by a band of blackness, and he struggled to make out the double picket lines he knew would be positioned there beyond the light. He couldn’t see them, though; only the fires that flickered further along the dunes, the main army spread out far and wide.
He snapped his attention back to the imperial enclosure. By the look of it, the entrance lay on the western side of the palisade, but he couldn’t see clearly enough from here. He would need to get down there if he wanted a closer look.
Over the course of the next half-hour, Ash descended towards the outermost perimeter, working his way around it as he went. He stopped once to take a drink from a brook running down a cleft in the hill. He stopped again when he was on the flat ground to the west and sensed that he was approaching the first line of sentries, the pickets he’d been unable to see from above.
Ash waited until he formed an impression of what was ranged before him; an outer ring of guards spaced widely apart. He could smell them, their musk of sweat and garlic. He could hear them too: a throat being cleared, the rustle of movement as a cloak was drawn tighter against the chill.
When he thought he knew where the nearest two were located, Ash crept forwards carefully through the space between them. It was no more difficult than that.
Ahead stood the inner line of pickets. He could see them silhouetted against the many fires, standing some fifteen paces apart. They were too far out, he thought in his experienced way; more vulnerable here in the backlit darkness where they were visible but could barely see.
At the heart of the camp stood the Matriarch’s enclosure. Barbed wire had been stretched in coils between the stakes of the palisade. The ditch below it was invisible from his position; most likely filled with caltrops to impale the soles of unwary feet. At least he could see the entrance to the enclosure better. It was covered by a screen of wood, and while he watched he saw it being dragged aside to allow an Acolyte to pass through.
Ash had a decision to make: whether this was to be a reconnaissance or a full attempt at reaching Sasheen. He’d seen enough to know there was only one way for him to gain access to her enclosure.
He lay down on the cool grass and rested his chin on his hands. Tried to sense the flow of it all. The opportunity was there all right, though it was a risky one. And no telling what procedures the guards were following at the entrance to the enclosure – not from here.
Let us go and find out then.
Ash singled out the closest sentry to him, a form standing alone taking the odd drink from a flask. He judged the size of the Acolyte and thought that he would do.
For another half-hour, Ash crawled towards the figure through the blackness of the night. It was hard work, moving each limb a tiny fraction at a time without sound. It required his utmost concentration. All the while, his troubled chest burned with the pain of breathing so shallowly.
Six feet from the sentry, he froze as a cough nearby broke the stillness. It made Ash want to cough too. His chest convulsed, and he clamped a hand over his mouth and fought the urge until it had passed. He saw the Acolyte turn his head in his direction.
Ash lay pressed against the grass, barely breathing, his eyes closed.
Long moments passed, enough for a passing mosquito to settle on his sooty cheek. He felt the itch of it, but remained so perfectly still that after a moment the insect took off again, without biting him.
He peered through his eyelashes and saw that the Acolyte was looking elsewhere. Ash began to move again. Like a cat on the hunt, he lifted and settled his limbs with a deliberate slowness, closing the distance an inch at a time. Sweat beaded his skin by the time that he was within range.
He lay right at the man’s boots.
The white-robe sniffed the air, looking about him. He could scent Ash’s sweat.
Ash lunged up and stabbed his thumbs into the man’s throat. The Acolyte choked, trying to release a sound; a hand clawed at Ash’s face. Ash pressed his thumbs even harder, seeing the white flash of his victim’s eyes through the mask.
He helped him to the ground as the man went slack in his grip. Maintained the pressure of his thumbs until he was certain he was dead.
‘Cuno?’ came a voice from the darkness to his left.
Ash froze with his hands still around the Acolyte’s neck. He caught a scent of the alcohol that had spilled from the man’s dropped flask.
He swallowed air and forced a belch from his gullet.
‘Aye,’ he said in Trade, and waited for a cry of alarm.
‘Nothing,’ came the voice again. ‘Thought I heard something.’
Ash hurried. His victim was larger than he’d first appeared, and as Ash donned the Acolyte’s armour and robe they felt much too big on him.
No, he realized. It was Ash who was smaller now. He’d lost weight during the long voyage.
He pulled the cloak over the oversized armour, hoping that would be enough to the hide the ill fit and the curve of his sword. Then he fixed the mask about his face, which covered his scalp too, like a helm. Only once did he glance at the contorted face that had been revealed beneath it; a middle-aged man with a shaven head, his jowls pronounced beneath a hard face. Ash bent and closed the Acolyte’s bulging eyes.
The camp was quiet at this hour, with most of the Acolytes asleep, though laughter and music played from the largest, brightest tent within the Matriarch’s enclosure. The camp was arranged in orderly squares, and Ash strode along the lanes between the pup tents and dying campfires as though he rightly belonged there, ignoring the occasional Acolyte that walked past him, or hunkered down over some flames.
As he neared the mound of the enclosure the sounds grew louder in his ears. He heard a sharp cry of
