Sometimesyou don’t recognize death until it beats the door down. Others, you know it’s out there before it arrives. You can taste death on the wind. That is what they say in the Legion. It can take whole forts, the taste of death.
Once conscripts go flat-eyed and sullen you might as well kill them anyway, because they are going to die. It’s never happened on my watch and it’s never going to. But standing where two paths cross beyond the gate, I can taste death on the night wind, and it tastes metallic, like blood and blades.
‘Situation?’
‘Pincer movement,’ says the SIG. ‘Three hostiles left, three right, both groups closing on a target. Another four hostiles ten seconds behind.’
‘Highly probable?’
‘Certain,’ it says. Certainty burns battery.
In this case, I can live with it.
‘And their target?’
‘Tiring . . .’
‘Cover me,’ I shout over my shoulder.
Colonel Vijay makes the signal for understood.
The slope gives me enough speed to turn a stumble into a roll that takes me under the enemy’s opening shot. Coming up, I find myself half kneeling and sight my gun.
An ejercito goes down, tripping the man behind.
The man who trips turns back to see what happened and dies. Flechette is silent, that is what makes it so effective. ‘Only twelve to go.’ The SIG’s voice is sour.
A pistol shot comes from the gate above.
‘Eleven,’ I say.
A hostile spots me and fires. Throwing myself sideways, I get off two shots before taking cover half a dozen paces away. We are down to ten attackers, their quarry and me.
The Aux have just opened up. So has an enemy sharpshooter.
‘Sniper on the roof,’ warns the gun.
‘Take him.’
An oak tree explodes, and he falls to earth like a cheap firework. The sight of his overcooked body is too much for one of our attackers. He dies on his knees with a mouth full of vomit, and one of Rachel’s moly-coated specials in his throat. Dropping out a clip, I slam a new one into place.
Someone’s shouting at Shil to run and it sounds like Colonel Vijay. She’s five steps ahead of the first man chasing her. Nine steps after I kill him. Fifteen paces when Rachel kills the man behind that. Only six ejercito left. It is enough to make the others hesitate.
‘Run faster,’ someone shouts. I realize it’s me.
I put a flechette into a runner and roll sideways in time to see grit explode from where I’d been. ‘Night sights,’ says the gun.
Night sights? These are ejercito.
A second incendiary takes it down to four as a second sniper drops to his death rather than burn alive. I blip away a clip of hollow-point, drop it out and insert another.
‘Sven?’ It’s Colonel Vijay. Out of position.
‘Back to the fucking wall.’
He stares at me, looks at Shil and retreats. When I glance round, he’s keeping low and weaving frantically. Obviously works, because he makes it without taking a hit. Bloody idiot.
Shil is clearly visible in the moonlight. So I stand up and free fire as she staggers past. Her stumbling is made worse by bleeding feet and that afternoon’s forced march. Her face has enough thorn cuts to need stitching.
‘Earth to Sven,’ says my gun. ‘Anybody in?’
‘Wait.’
An ejercito breaks from the right. He is firing as fast as he can jack the slide on his . . . single-shot rifle?
Brains splatter the bush behind him.
It’s a good shot by Rachel, but I want one of these bastards alive. I have questions, like snipers? rifles? flak jackets? The last time I saw them, these men were riding ponies and waving swords.
‘Come on,’ says my gun. ‘We’re being outflanked.’
Yeah, I can hear them.
As I begin my retreat, with the SIG held low, a man rises from a ditch beside me. He is carrying the blade I expected them all to be carrying. Ducking low, he goes for my guts. So I spin away, blocking his jab on my arm.
The ejercito knows what he is doing. He knows a knife is as good as a gun in a fight this close. He just doesn’t expect me to agree.
‘Sven,’ says the SIG. ‘You’re not-’ It sighs. ‘Fuck,’ it says. ‘You are.’
Dropping the gun, I rip free a blade. I’d like to say it’s old, that it has saved my life in back alleys and bars. But it’s militia standard issue. A double-edged blade with a blood runnel to ease suction. The man grins, because my knife is half the size of his.
‘You die,’ he says.
Shaking my head, I grin back.
What with not having marched bloody miles and fought two battles already, he is fresher than I am. Also, broad-shouldered and muscled. In addition, he is fast. At least, he’s fast for his size. But he’s not me.
So when he stabs, I take the blow in my side. And watch his eyes widen as I grab his fist to hold the blade in place. He is too flustered to see me rear back my head. Slamming my forehead into his nose ends the fight. Although he’s not dead until I rip free his blade, and return it deep into his own throat.
‘Sven,’ Shil shouts a warning.
‘That’s sir,’ I say, without thinking.
Then I’m on my knees. When I try to straighten, something slows me. No one has a grip on my shoulders, but I’m slow, way too slow . . . Someone is screaming, but I don’t think it’s me.
There is a hole below my chest. Silvery coils slide out of my fingers as I try to stop them falling. Some bits of me are missing. I know this, because a length of fat gut lies at my feet, covered in grass and grit.
‘Sir.’
‘Should have kept going,’ I say.
Dropping to her knees Shil stares into my face.
‘Man down,’ she shouts, turning back. ‘Man down.’ Should have guessed from all that yelling earlier.
‘Don’t die,’ she says.
It’s a fucking stupid thing to say.
I apologize, because I didn’t mean to say that aloud. ‘Back to the wall,’ I tell her. ‘Now . . .’
Grabbing my arm, she tries to lift me.
‘Shil,’ I say, ‘just fucking go.’ Doubt floods her eyes, then awareness. She glances at my wound, probably doesn’t even know she has done it. She recognizes a killing shot when she sees one. ‘I’ve got morphine,’ she says.
‘Save it. Colonel Vijay leads, OK? No arguments.’
She nods blindly and rises to a crouch. I hear the crack of a rifle, a cry from the trees below and then silence. The ejercito should be dead now, only they’re opening fire again. Our enemy have reinforcements. I know that, otherwise Neen would be here now.
Whatever it takes.
Wish I had been able to make that true.
It’s a hundred paces to the gate. But it’s uphill and she will be in the open. I can see fear growing in her eyes. Any minute now, Shil’s resolve will fail.
Can’t let that happen. ‘Go now,’ I try to say.
But the clouds are red and the night’s gone pink. I can hear Aptitude’s voice and see her mother’s face and that is absurd. One’s in Farlight and the other is locked down on a prison planet. I can hear my old lieutenant too. And that’s even more ridiculous, because he’s dead.
An army of ejercito advance from the treeline. Some have guns. Others carry blades. ‘Run,’ I whisper, but it’s too late.
As a man drags back Shil’s head and a blade glints in the moonlight, a voice that isn’t mine says:
‘No.’
A voice that expects to be obeyed. And that’s good, because it is obeyed. Instead of cutting Shil’s throat, the ejercito reverses his dagger and clubs its pommel into the side of her head.
She drops, eyes open. A boot rolls me over and the owner of the voice bends closer. When he spits I grin, because I’m obviously who he thinks I am.
‘Leave him here,’ says Pavel. ‘Let him die slowly.’
‘And her?’
‘We take. His woman for my dead grandson.’
Not my woman, I think. It’s my last thought before the sky floods crimson and the hillside drops away.