***
Lennart Bj?rck has been hiding in a hole in the ground for nearly two agonizing hours when he hears the crash. It’s an enormous, skull-rattling sound, loud enough to knock him down even while standing in a hole, and it makes him wonder if there’s some new Divine monstrosity now causing havoc in the city.
He pokes his head up and sees a tremendous column of steam and dust pouring up near the train tracks…and just to the west, he can see the very tip of the number three locomotive pointing up past the top of a house, though it seems to be on its side, like a beached whale.
“What in the hells…?” Bj?rck climbs out and begins to run to the crash, wondering what could have caused this new headache. Yet as he runs by the test assembly yard he stops and slowly turns around.
He saw something out of the corner of his eye—a flash of light.
The door to the test assembly yard stands open—something that should normally never, ever happen—and someone is lying in the mud before it.
Another victim of that monstrosity? It seems unlikely, as this body is in one piece.
Bj?rck slowly walks toward the test assembly yard. Then there’s another flash, illuminating the dark interior of the yard….
Involuntarily, he shouts, “Hey!”
A figure darts from the door of the yard and sprints up the street. Bj?rck gives chase, but finds he’s unwilling to go too far into Voortyashtan, much of which is on fire or falling apart.
He looks at the body lying in the mud. It’s one of the higher-ranking SDC guards…Karl, he thinks the man’s name was. A bolt is sticking out of his neck.
Bj?rck walks into the yard. He knows what’s in here, and knows not to turn on the light. Yet there’s an aroma in the air, a pungent, sulfurous smell he actually finds familiar—he smelled it once, long ago, when he went to a carnival in Jukoshtan with his then-sweetheart, and a man on the pier produced this strange device and said he could capture their images for them for only a few drekels.
“A camera?” says Bj?rck aloud. He scratches his head.
***
After a while the watchtower, still ablaze, begins creaking in a very disturbing fashion. Mulaghesh imagines the PK-512 plummeting to the ground, all of its ammunition spilling into open flame, and decides to seek refuge in the locomotive. Walking, she finds, hurts tremendously. She can’t remember where she got all these injuries from.
Sigrud is sitting on the edge of the locomotive door, smoking his pipe, arm held close to his body. “Is this victory?” he asks.
“Harbor’s still intact,” she says, groaning as she sits beside him.
“Harbor, yes. But…” He gestures toward Voortyashtan with the bowl of his pipe. He doesn’t need to say anything more. It looks like some impossibly large piece of farming equipment has mown great swaths through the city’s crude architecture.
“Where the hells are Biswal’s troops?” asks Mulaghesh. “I thought they were sending a whole battalion.”
“I don’t know. I thought that…Wait.” He cocks his head. “Do you hear that?”
“I can’t hear much, period. I should have worn ear protection, using that thing. What are you hearing?”
“Gunfire. And…screaming.”
“What? Where?”
He points up the cliffs, at the passage to Fort Thinadeshi.
“But that’s outside the city,” says Mulaghesh. “What could be happening there?”
The two stare up at the cliffs.
Mulaghesh realizes what the voice on the radio said: Secondary assault.
“Come on,” she says, and the two hop down and begin limping up the cliff paths to the first of the checkpoints.
The city is like a ghost town, a nightmare cityscape, dark and ruined. The only sounds she hears are distant cries and moans and the constant wind. Just an hour ago it was a bustling if unsightly little town: now it is inconceivable that people once lived and worked here.
“I smell gunpowder,” says Sigrud suddenly. “And blood.”
“Blood?”
“Yes. Blood.” He lifts his head, catching the wind. “Lots of it.”
They run up to the first checkpoint and find it abandoned, though the door and side are riddled with bullet holes. Then when they rise up to the top of the first hill they stop, look out, and see.
The hills are a cold, dark gray in the moonlight. Mulaghesh sees many still, dark forms lying where the road slashes through the countryside. Figures sprint back and forth atop the hills before the fortress. There is the sporadic flash of gunfire, like distant lightning, and screams—some bellowing orders, others in pain or fear.
“No,” whispers Mulaghesh. Suddenly she is running, running toward the group of soldiers she sees gathered ahead.
“Stop!” shouts Sigrud. “Stop, Turyin!”
As she runs her mind takes in all the signs, reading the story written in the countryside: she can see where the Saypuri battalion was marching down the road; she sees where the first volley hit them from the east; she can see where the Saypuris—surprised, terrified—took cover among the dales just west of the road; and she can see where the enemy—whoever it was—took positions north of them, cutting them off from the fortress, leaving them to either stay where they were, retreat to the cliffs, or descend to Voortyashtan, and expose themselves to Saint Zhurgut’s hellish assault.
A simple maneuver, really. But a very successful one.
Someone shoves her from behind and falls on top of her. She can tell by the way the impact pains them that it’s Sigrud.
“They will shoot you,” he croaks.
“Get off me!”
He groans as she pushes against his bad side, but he doesn’t budge. “They will shoot you dead on sight.”
“Let me go, let me go!” she cries. “I need to help them, I need to—”
“There is nothing to do. The enemy has fled. But the soldiers are wary. They will not take any more chances.”
Mulaghesh relents and lies there on the ground, helpless and miserable. He’s right, of course: whatever happened here, there’s not much for her to do now. She despises feeling so useless.
“Find me a body,” she says.
“What?” asks Sigrud.
“There’ll be an aid kit on one of the Saypuri soldiers. Yellow rubber thing, waterproof. Inside of that are some flares and a flare gun. Bring it here. You’re better at sneaking than I am.”
“You ask much of an injured man.” But he releases her and withdraws into the darkness. She sits up and stares around herself, mindful now that someone out in the shadows might take a shot at her. She recognizes the movements of the shapes in the distance: infantry securing the perimeter, closing down points of entry and escape.
Sigrud rises up out of the shadows, dragging something behind him. He drops it with a heavy thump. It reeks of sweat and coppery blood. She can see the outline of a cheek and a clutched fist in the darkness.
“That doesn’t look like a flare gun,” she says.
“No,” he says. “I thought you would like to see for yourself.”