Che looked about him for a moment, at the masks and the stark faces of strangers.
He knelt and slapped the farlander’s face. Ash’s eyes fluttered open, then closed again. He seemed to weigh nothing but skin and bones as Che lifted him and threw him over his shoulder. He grabbed the reins of a loose zel, threw the old man over the saddle. The animal tried to skitter away as he bent to reach for the fallen sword. He pulled it back towards him, then mounted behind Ash.
He kicked the animal into a trot.
For a moment the battle hung in the balance.
Perhaps if the imperial army had learned nothing from the previous fifty years of land war – or if Sparus’s own five hundred Acolytes hadn’t positioned themselves in the direct path of the Khosian advance and stood firm – or if one more man in the ordinary ranks had yelled in fear for his life – then the First Expeditionary Force might have broken.
But it didn’t. Instead it rallied gamely and began to fight back. And in the way of these things, the collective shame of its near-defeat lent an impetus to the army’s efforts, and they fell upon the Khosian flanks like a flood.
The Khosians reeled.
‘She fell, sir, I saw it with my own eyes.’
The Red Guard captain stood with a slight stoop as he spoke. He held a bloody hand across his stomach.
‘Very well,’ said General Creed. ‘Now go and find yourself a medico.’
The officer gritted his teeth – perhaps it was an attempt at a smile – and hoisted his charta before returning to the lines of the right flank. They were disintegrating now, much like the rest of the formation.
Bahn paid little attention to the news of the Matriarch’s possible death, or even to the destruction of the army taking place all about him. He was in something of a daze as he stood fighting down his nausea, the blood leaking from an ear he could no longer hear from.
‘That’s four sightings, Bahn!’ barked General Creed by his side, pulling him from his scattered thoughts.
Bahn blinked dumbly in reply.
The general stood with hands behind his back, taking in the imperial onslaught on all sides. ‘They rallied well, don’t you think?’
‘Like Khosians, sir,’ Bahn finally replied, feeling giddy.
Creed examined his lieutenant. The flesh around the general’s eyes was swollen from exhaustion.‘We’ve accomplished all we can here. I think it’s time that we left, don’t you?’
‘General?’
‘You’d rather we stay here a while longer?’
He tried to shake his head, but it only caused more sickness to wash through him.
‘Not – for a single moment,’ he said.
Creed turned to one of his bodyguards. ‘Have a runner sent to fetch General Reveres.’
‘Reveres is dead, sir,’ replied the bodyguard.
‘What? When?’
‘I’m not certain, sir.’
‘Nidemes, then!’
It was some minutes before General Nidemes limped towards them through the darkness. His helm was missing and his greying hair was matted to his head in the semblance of a bird’s nest.
‘Nidemes, we’re leaving as of now. We’ll perform a heel turn and proceed to the lake as fast as we can.’
With obvious relief the general hurried away off to pass on the order.
‘The lake?’ asked Bahn.
General Creed’s breath formed a rising cloud in the air. ‘I’m sure that by the time that we get there, you’ll have worked it out, Bahn.’
‘They’re heading for the lake,’ observed Sergeant Jay.
Halahan saw it. What was left of the army had turned about and tightened its flanks, and now was forging a path through to the lake on the northern side of the battlefield.
‘About bloody time,’ breathed the colonel to himself.
He turned to face the remnants of his own small force. The imperial mortars had been abandoned – three of the pieces had seized up finally, too hot to fire any longer; a fourth had blown up, though only the charge had exploded, miraculously, not the explosive shot itself. Their crews were gulping from small flasks of spirits, looking as though they’d just survived a deadly game of blind-man’s duel.
The riflemen defending the perimeter had run out of ammunition too. They were exhausted to the man, and they were nervously watching as the Imperials regrouped again along the waist of the ridge and around the base of its slopes. All knew that the next assault would finish them.
Colonel Halahan drew in a breath and bellowed: ‘Someone send up a signal flare – we’re leaving!’
The men roused themselves, brief burns of energy returning to their spent frames. ‘And let’s destroy the rest of these mortars, shall we?’
Halahan scanned the bloody carnage of the ridge. The dead would have to be left where they’d fallen. He struck a match to relight his pipe. Exhaling smoke, he gathered all the precious pistols he’d tossed aside so far. As he stood next to the sergeant the signal flare shot upwards into the air, burning yellow as it stalled and fell back to earth.
Beyond it, skyships were blasting each other with spurts of cannon fire.
‘Let’s pray our skuds are still up there somewhere,’ said Sergeant Jay, and they both stood together, scanning the dark skies in silent hope.
Che drew the zel to a halt in front of the twins’ tent. He leapt off it, leaving Ash across the saddle; ducked quickly inside without waiting to see if anyone spotted him.
Guan and Swan’s packs were lying on the ground next to their cots. Che rummaged through them until he found the vial of wild-wood juice, then ran back outside with it gripped in his fist. He led the zel to his own tent and went in to grab his pack. He threw his books into it, shoving them in next to the bundle of civilian clothing he had brought with him. He left his Scripture of Lies facedown on the bunk.
‘How’s it going down there?’
A silhouette filled the entrance to the tent. A priest.
Che rose slowly as he tightened his grip on the straps of his backpack.
The silhouette raised its hand to its mouth, took a bite from something. Che scented the sweet narcotic scent of the parmadio fruit.
‘Hard to say,’ he told the spymaster Alarum. ‘I’m no expert on war.’
The spymaster stood there with a blanket wrapped across his shoulders. Che glanced at Alarum’s other hand, saw it hanging limp by his side next to a sheathed dagger in his belt. Che knew this man was dangerous.
‘For a moment I thought we were being overrun, the way you came charging into camp like that.’ He gestured to the pack in Che’s hand. ‘Going somewhere?’
Without warning, Che swung the backpack and threw it at Alarum’s face.
He was a step behind it. He punched the man in the stomach to knock the wind from him, doubling Alarum over with a whoosh of air. Che locked an arm around his neck, snatched the knife from the man’s scabbard, drew him back away from the entrance with the edge of the blade pressing against his throat.
‘ Wait! ’ Alarum hissed through his teeth.
He struggled, strong for his thin build, gripping Che’s wrist as he tried to stop him from cutting his throat. One of the bunks toppled over as he kicked it with a foot. ‘ Wait a moment!’ he hissed in a strangled whisper, white spittle flying from his lips.
The man forced his sleeve back from his arm, held the skin up for Che to see. Che stared at it, saw the scaly patch of skin along the spymaster’s arm. His grip loosened a fraction.
‘We may share the same afflicted blood, Che,’ came his strangled voice. ‘I just might be your father!’
He released the spymaster. Alarum gasped for air with a hand to his throat.
‘My mother slept with many men,’ he said. ‘That proves nothing.’
‘No it doesn’t, not for certain. But still, don’t you wonder?’
Che tossed the knife quivering into the ground. ‘You left the note for me in the Scripture,’ he said as the
