He looked up, found himself staring at a harsh square of moonlight.
It was the bedroom window, with the thin curtains hanging over it.
A figure sat silhouetted in the chair, picking at the wood of one of its arms.
‘Che?’
The figure leaned forward in the chair. Ash heard the wood creak.
‘It must have been hard, hearing that news about your son.’
Nico.
A strange thrill filled Ash’s stomach, like the fear of falling. He found that he couldn’t speak.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Nico. ‘I don’t mean to pry.’
Ash rested his back against the headrest, feeling how the pillow was wet where his face had been lying.
The memory faded slowly in his mind, though he could still smell the popping maize in his nostrils.
‘Not as hard as losing him,’ he rasped, and blood pumped in his throat.
‘You miss him.’
‘I think of Lin every day. As I think of you.’
‘What do you think about?’
‘You, or my son?’
‘Your son.’
‘ Ach,’ Ash said in frustration.
He felt the urge for a drink, recalled he had already finished the wine he’d found in the kitchen.
‘I think of his eyes, like his mother’s. I think of how he gave his spare tackbread to his friends in the leanest days on the trail. I think of him chasing the girls before he even knew what he was chasing them for. I think-’ and he stopped himself there, on the brink of something reckless.
‘I think of his death,’ he said in a whisper.
Ash saw it then, as though he was there in the Sea of Wind and Grasses. He saw the dust of the tindergrass engulfing the clash of battle. The Heavy Wing of General Shin emerging from behind the lines of the Shining Way, betraying them all for a fortune in diamonds. A rider bearing down on his son, felling the boy with a single stroke. Hooves trampling over his body as though he was nothing but a discarded sack of clothing.
‘What is it?’ said Nico in the silence.
Ash clutched the sheet he lay upon in his fists, needing something to cling to.
‘You wish to hide things from me, even now?’
No, Ash thought. I wish to hide them only from myself.
He looked at the shadowy form of his apprentice across the room.
‘I did not love him,’ came his cracking voice. ‘For a time, at least, I thought I did not love him as my son.’
‘You thought he was not yours.’
Ash gripped harder. It came to him then that it hardly mattered whether he suppressed the memories of how he’d behaved towards the boy. He’d still be here, still living with the shame of it.
‘After I heard what my wife’s uncle had to say, I treated Lin unkindly.’
Unkindly, he reflected, as he listened to himself in disgust.
No, he’d been a bastard to the boy, plain and simple. For the few years they had spent together in the cause before he had died, Ash had treated his son with a cold and satisfying indifference.
‘I’m sorry, Nico,’ he said.
‘For what?’
‘If I was ever unkind to you also. If it seemed I did not care for you. I am not good with… these thing at times.’
The figure watched him in silence.
‘Please, now, I’m tired,’ he told it.
And he lay down again, and slowly pulled the blanket over his head, and waited until he knew that Nico was gone.
The ferries approached the mouth of the Chilos in single file, borne by the quickening current of the lake and the banks of oars that splashed through the dark waters. Drums sounded from within them, beating slow and steady beats for the benefit of the oarsmen labouring to increase their speed.
Halahan stood in the fortified wheelhouse at the stern of the boat next to General Creed, who peered through the gap at the top of the wooden screen that sheathed the gloomy space. Behind, other officers swayed to the gentle rocking of the boat, reeking of sweat, saying little. Koolas the war chattero was wedged in a corner at the back somewhere. The boat’s captain, a middle-aged woman with a pipe in her mouth like Halahan, manned the wheel herself, squinting too through the gap before her, a pair of borrowed Owls wrapped around her eyes. The mood was a sombre one. None of them knew if they were going to make it through.
The captain spun the wheel hard. The boat turned sluggishly, heavy in the water with so many men cramming its weatherdeck and the deck below.
‘Here we go,’ she murmured as they swung into the river mouth, and she rapped her boot-heel against the floor three times. Someone shouted a command beneath their feet. The rhythm of the drummer picked up pace. The oars splashed even faster. Halahan listened to the first smattering of shots hitting the wood all round them.
A flare went up, illuminating the scene like a noon sun.
More shots rained in. Arrows arced through the air towards the boat. Some were aflame. Riflemen on the deck opened up in reply, his own Greyjackets and regulars mixed in with archers.
Halahan turned to the screen fixed across the left side of the wheelhouse, and craned his neck to look behind them. He saw the other ferries bobbing over the wash of their wake, the churned waters of the Chilos aglow with blue fire. Each of the boats towed lines of improvised rafts, with men hunkered down behind what feeble protection they could find. They were falling already, picked off by the snipers along both banks.
‘ Fear is the Great Destroyer,’ someone was chanting over the riotous clatter of shots. It was Koolas, Halahan saw in the bright wash of flare light that speared through the slits in the screens. He was chanting the prayer of Fate’s Mercy.
They would need it, Halahan though, as he glimpsed the dark shapes of cannon on the eastern bank, and men struggling to aim them.
‘ Be without regrets, like straw in the gale.’
He realized he was holding his breath, and glanced to Creed to see how he was faring. The general’s attention was fixed on the river ahead of them. His face was still a grimace; he looked as though he wanted to tear something apart. His left hand was clenching in a fist.
They were passing the mouths of the cannon now.
‘ Be as the empty pail in the rain.’
Halahan waited for them to fire. He tried not to think of all the men crammed below deck; what would happen to them if the ferry’s hull was holed and the boat went down.
The riflemen on the weatherdeck were firing fast, replying to the gunfire from the shore. The shooting rose in pitch until it was all one deafening sound.
‘ Be as the stream that courses always to its source.’
They were past the cannon now. Halahan released his breath and swayed back on his aching feet. He looked behind again.
The second ferry was less fortunate. A spume of white water rose from its left side, falling as a shower of hissing droplets. The boat listed to its side, taking on water. Shouts rose from its decks.
Men were rolling clear of the rafts, and holding on as best they could as tried to stay low in the water.
The firing on the weatherdeck was dying down. Halahan saw that they were through the gauntlet, even as he heard the cannons fire again behind.
It was clear on either bank here, dark until another flare went screeching into the sky.
In the wake of their boat, corpses of men were floating after them.
‘I’ll make them pay for this,’ Creed muttered to no one. ‘Kincheko and the rest. They’ll pay for this.’ And the general gripped his left arm as though in sudden pain, and ground his teeth in silent fury.
