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  Behind the other three inner walls, more heavily garrisoned in comparison, cranes and labourers could be seen erecting yet another one. So far, four walls had fallen to the never-ending barrage of the enemy – at a staggering material expense to the Mannians. In response, the defenders had succeeded in building two new ones to replace them, but they could not hope to erect ramparts indefinitely. The latest construction lay close to the straight channel of the canal which cut across the Lansway to connect the two bays. Not far beyond this canal, the Lansway ended at the Mount of Truth, and beyond that sprawled the city itself. It was clear they were running out of room.

  Bahn's son was peering down at the wall currently under fire. Along its battlements, between the cannon, ballistae, and the occasional long-rifle firing in reply, men laboured with cranes as they raised great scoops of earth and rock. Some kept dropping out of sight as they were lowered on ropes over the far side, while others merely tipped the contents of the cranes' scoops over the outer rim. Even as they watched, a group of men pulling on ropes collapsed amidst a cloud of flying debris.

  Juno gasped.

  'Look there,' said Bahn, quickly drawing his son's attention away from the sight, and instead pointed out various structures dotted around the prospective killing grounds between the walls. They looked like towers, though they were open on all sides and not very tall. 'Mine shafts,' he explained. 'The Specials are fighting every hour down there, trying to stop the walls from being undermined.'

  At last Juno looked down at his seated father.

  'It's different, from what I was expecting,' he said. 'You fight there every day?'

  'Some days. Though there are few battles any more. Just this.'

  His words appeared to impress the boy. Bahn swallowed, turning away from what he recognized as pride in his son's eyes. Juno already knew that his grandfather had died defending the city. Even now he wore the old man's short-sword about his waist; and, when they returned home, he would no doubt insist that his father give him further lessons in its use. The boy talked often of how he would follow in his father's footsteps when he was old enough, but Bahn did not wish to encourage such ambitions. Better his son ran off to be a wandering monk, better even to sign up on a leaky merchanter, than stay here and fight to the inevitable end.

  Juno seemed to read his mood. Softly, he asked, 'How long can we hold them off?'

  Bahn blinked, surprised. That was the question of a soldier, not a boy.

  'Papa?'

  Bahn almost lied to his son then, even though he knew it would be an insult to the boy's growing maturity. But Marlee was sitting just behind them, his wife who had been raised to face the truth no matter how unpalatable it might be. He could sense her ears listening keenly in the silence that awaited his reply.

  'We don't know,' he admitted, as he shut his eyes momentarily against another gust of wind. Bahn tasted salt on his lips, like the remnants of dried blood.

  When he reopened them, it was to see Juno staring again at the walls, and the Mannian host that confronted them. He appeared to be studying the countless banners that were visible: to one side, the Khosian shield or the Mercian whorl on a sea-green background, dozens of them fluttering along the ramparts; on the other side the imperial red hand of Mann, with the tip of the little finger missing, emblazoned on a field of pure white – hundreds of them staked out across the isthmus. Intent on this scrutiny the boy's skin clung thin and tight to his face.

  'There is always hope,' said Marlee reassuringly to her troubled son.

  Juno looked to his father once more.

  'Yes,' agreed Bahn. 'There is always hope.'

  But even as he said these words, he could not meet his son's eyes.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Boon The foot prodded him again, more insistent this time.

  'Your dog,' came the voice through the thin material of his blanket. It was female, and sour. 'I think it's dead.'

  Nico forced his eyes open a fraction, so that a glimmer of early sunlight tangled within his lashes. Too bright, he thought, as he hunkered further into the warmth of his own body. Too early.

  'Leave me be,' he mumbled.

  The blanket swept away, leaving him beached in the daylight. He clamped a hand over his eyes, squinted through the crack between his fingers, to see the girl standing over him, her hands on her hips. Lena, he recalled.

  'Your dog, I said. I think it's dead.'

  It took a few moments for her words to make sense. He was a poor riser these days; mornings were always a sombre, unwanted affair, and he did not like to face them.

  'What?' he said, as he sat up and frowned at the girl, frowned also at a sun that shone several hours old in the sky. Boon was by his side where he had lain down last night. The old dog was still sleeping, surely, but flies were climbing over his muzzle, his blond fur. 'What?' said Nico again.

  He scattered the flies with his hand, and ran it along Boon's coat. The dog did not stir.

  'He was like that when I woke up,' came Lena's distant voice. 'I tell you, we'll be next if we don't get some proper food into us.'

  'Boon?'

  The dog looked terribly thin in the bright daylight. Ribs protruded along his side; his spine was a sharp ridgeline of bone. Nico expected an ear to twitch, or maybe a sudden sigh inspired from some animal dream. There was nothing.

  He lay back on the grass, pulled the blanket over his head. Then he rested an arm across his old friend.

  *

  The summer drought had hardened the ground, so Nico used his knife to loosen it before digging the grave with his bare hands. He had chosen a spot beneath an old jupe tree on a hill just to the south of the park, not far from where they had been sleeping. Gaunt faces watched him as he worked. More than once during months past, he had fought away people trying to kill his dog, people desperate enough to crave the animal's flesh. Nico had shouted at them and thrown sticks, while Boon stood snarling at his side. Now he glared at them defiantly, the mud on his face streaked with tears. I'll kill anyone who touches him, he swore to himself miserably.

  Boon weighed no more than a sack of sticks as Nico lifted him and laid him out in the shallow grave. For a while he knelt over him, stroking his golden fur. The flies were gathering again.

  Boon had been just a pup when Nico's father had first brought him back to the homestead, Nico himself only a few months old. 'A companion to look after you,' his father had explained when Nico was years older. Boon by then had grown into an oversized hound, and the two of them were now inseparable. His kind had been bred for baiting deer and bear; for coursing upon open plains and forested slopes. This last year, living rough in the streets of the city, with so little food, had not been kind to him.

  It was hard, pushing the dirt back into the hole, and then covering him with it.

  'Goodbye, Boon,' he said at last, patting the earth flat, and his young voice emerged as a dry whisper, lonely as the sky.

  He stood up, placing his straw hat on his head, wishing he had more to say. Words normally came easily to his lips.

  His shadow lay across the grave: a solid form, its legs parted, hands clenched like balls, its head made bulbous by the hat. Its presence turned the dry, upturned earth black.

  'I'm sorry I let you come to the city with me,' he said. 'But I'm glad you were here, Boon. I never would have survived this long otherwise. You were a good friend.'

  Nico felt subdued as he shambled, with his pack, down to the great pond. He found himself a space amongst the other park-dwellers crowding the water's edge. There he washed his hands to clean the dirt from them, though his fingernails remained embedded with earth. He had torn the skin around them with his digging, and for some time he watched his blood seep in small clouds into the murk of the pond.

  Nico swept the water clear of surface scum, took his covestick from his pack, and scrubbed his teeth. He was aware of the rank taste of the water on his lips, like silage he always thought, and was careful not to swallow any. Sunlight blinded him. W
ay out in the middle of the pond, the sun glowered in a fiery reflection. For a while he stared at that too, long enough for his eyes to hurt.

  Lost, aimless, his thoughts returned to him slowly, settling down with care. Just walk, they said to him. Get on your feet and walk.

  Nico stood and hitched his pack, all that he owned, on to his back. The blood rushed from his head and he swayed for a moment, feeling nauseous and weak. Around him the park was choked with refugees, its lawns of yellowgrass long since trampled to bare earth, its trees cut to stumps that poked in sorry isolation from the ground. He placed a foot forwards, allowed himself to fall into the rhythm of a forward stride. It was without haste or even purpose that he picked his way between wooden lean-tos and patched tents stitched out of old clothing. He passed groups of dirty children, as thin as sticks, and men and women with blunted looks in their eyes, struggling to bear up to more than just the present. Some were Khosian by appearance, but many more were refugees from the southern continent, Pathians and Nathalese; or more recent arrivals from the north, from the island of Lagos or from the Green Isles. They were strangely quiet, for so many people. Dogs barked, of course. Babes howled for mothers' milk. But, overall, they saved their energies for things more important than talk.

  Nico's stomach growled at the scents of their cooking. For two weeks now he'd eaten nothing but beggar's broth – hot chee with hunks of keesh bobbing in it. No one could hope to live for long on a diet like that, and already his breeches hung slack from the belt he had re-notched tighter just a few days ago. As he moved, he could feel his protruding bones rub against the coarseness of his filthy clothes. The girl Lena was right: if he did not eat properly soon, he would lie down and die, just like Boon.

  Just walk, soothed his mind.

  Nico pressed through the main gates of Sunswallow park into the district beyond. There, in the streets, people walked without hurry, chatting or lost in their private thoughts. Man-drawn rickshaws rattled noisily over the cobbles, bearing single passengers of every kind. From the south, Nico could hear the grumble of guns, just over a laq away.

  He took off towards the heart of the city, in the direction of those guns, his loose soles slap-slapping against the cobbles, his head thrust forward. A few blocks later he rounded a corner and emerged into the Avenue of Lies. The noise was overwhelming, like stepping out of a deep cave into a roaring torrent. Shouting was more common than ordinary talk. Hordes of street performers rang bells or played flutes for small change; wind chimes strung across the streets clattered in the breeze. It was as though the populace of Bar-Khos wished to make as much clamour as possible, so as to drown out any reminders of the ongoing siege from their daily lives.

  Trees lined much of the avenue. In one of them, on a bare branch that twisted and drooped its way towards the street, a black and white pica sat watching the traffic below. From habit, Nico found himself tipping his head to the bird.

  The mere act reminded him of a different morning. Of the day he had left home for good.

  He had seen a pica then, too. It had laughed down at him from the roof of the cottage as he took off into the early glow of dawn, his pack on his back and his head filled with naivety. He had disliked that particular bird about as much as he disliked senseless superstitions, yet he had nodded to it anyway, as his mother always did, and set his feet to the path that would lead him down to the coast road and, from there, a four-hour march to the city. He had not wished to tempt fate on that of all days.

  That same morning he'd found that leaving home was hardly the joyous occasion he had dreamed about. With each step, his sense of guilt had grown ever sharper in his chest. He knew his mother would be distraught at finding him gone in this way. And Boon… Boon would pine in his own canine way.

  He had gently stroked the dog as he slept on regardless on the old rag blanket beneath Nico's own bed, the hound being too old, by then, for early rises. Boon had whimpered in his sleep, like a young pup, and quietly farted.

  'I can't take you with me,' Nico had whispered. 'You wouldn't like it in the city.'

  He had then departed quickly, before he could change his mind.

  Guilt had not stopped him from walking away, though, as he carried onwards down the path, it had struck him, with unexpected force, how he was facing more than just the groves of cane trees and swaying redgrass and the gently winding track immediately ahead. In front of him now stretched a great expanse of the unknown, a future that was daunting and without bounds. The thought might have been enough to turn him back there and then, if he'd had any suitable alternative – but he did not. Better to run away than remain in the oppressive atmosphere of the cottage with Los, his mother's latest lover. A scoundrel, Nico considered. A man he despised.

  Nico had been sixteen years of age that morning. Turning the corner, losing sight of the cottage and his childhood home, he had never felt such trepidation and loneliness before then, such a bleak isolation of his spirit.

  When he heard the padded footfalls of Boon approaching behind him, he had smiled within, despite himself.

  Boon had appeared at his side, tail thrashing in excitement.

  'Go home!' Nico had hissed without much sincerity.

  Boon panted without concern. He had no intention of going anywhere that Nico was not.

  Again, he had tried to shoo the dog away. His heart was hardly in it though. He ruffled the fur of Boon's neck. 'Come, then,' he had told him.

  Together, with the day brightening, they had continued on their long trudge towards the city.

  Nico now smiled at the memory. It did not seem a mere year ago. Rather, it seemed like a lifetime had passed since then. Change was the true measure of time, he had come to realize. Change and loss.

  He was currently heading south, following the general direction of traffic moving towards the bazaar or the harbour. He did not yet know which destination he would choose; for he did not yet have one in mind. On either side of him, buildings rose three or four storeys high, drawing Nico's gaze upwards to rooftops overgrown with greenery. High above their chimneys, merchant balloons hung in the air, tethered by lines of rope. Wicker baskets dangled underneath them, and in one he spied the tiny face of a young boy. The lad was shielding his eyes as he gazed out towards the coast, watching the distant signal platforms for signs of approaching merchanters. Beyond him, the blue wash of sky thinned to white under the sun's blinding glare. Gulls wheeled up there, mere specks.

  Nico instinctively turned left, into Gato's Way. The bazaar then. He wondered at himself and the unconscious choice in that. The bazaar held few attractions for someone starving and without means. Yet it was also where he and his mother used to come to sell their home-brewed potcheen once a month, travelling to the city in their rickety cart to earn what little money they could. Those trips had been the high point of his month, when he was younger; exciting yet still safe in his mother's presence.

  A man pulling an empty rickshaw veered past him as Nico stepped into a riot of noise. The bazaar was a rolling mishmash of a place. Its great square, so vast that its furthest edges were obscured by smoke and haze, was open on one side to the sea front and the grey stone arms of the harbour, where masts swayed as thickly as trees in a forest. On the other three sides the space was enclosed by the shady porticos of chee houses, inns, and temples dedicated to the Great Fool. A maze of stalls stretched between them; people in their thousands jostled or bartered or perused the goods for sale. Nico, suddenly eager to lose himself amongst the press, allowed himself to be swept into it all.

  Everywhere, colours shone sun-soaked in the heaving spaces. Nico swiped flies from his face, inhaled the damp reek of sweat, pungent spices, animal dung, perfumes, fruits. His stomach was on fire now. It was eating itself, and the rest of his emaciated body, with every step that he took. He felt dizzy, unreal. His eyes were interested only in the foodstuffs all around him, on the stalls already half empty of goods. Thoughts of snatching an apple, a stick of smoked crab, filled his mind. He fought
against such thoughts, since he knew he did not have the strength to run if it came to a chase.

  For a time, simply to distract himself from these rising temptations, he stopped in the lee of one stall to listen to some street traders singing out with gusto over the heads of the passers-by. Their melodies were pleasing to hear, even though they sang of nothing more profound than goods on offer and prices for the day. On a whim, Nico asked several of them for food in return for work. They shook their heads: no time for him. They were barely surviving themselves, their expressions said. One old woman, on a stall selling sheets of gala lace next to baskets of half-rotten potatoes, chuckled as though he had made some kind of joke… though she checked herself when she noticed his brittle gaze, his gaunt appearance.

  'Come back in a few days,' she told him. 'I'm not promising you anything, mind, but I might have some things needing done. Come and see me then, yes?'

  He thanked her, though this was of little help to him. In a few days he might be too far gone.

  Maybe, Nico reflected moodily, it was time to go home. What was left for him in the city now? The Red Guard wouldn't have him; he'd tried more times than he could remember to enlist like his father before him, but he looked his youthful age and could not pass for being any older. And there was little casual work here in Bar-Khos. Over the past year he had been lucky if he had gained a few days' labour here and there, mostly on the docks sweating under heavy loads for a pittance. In between, nothing but daily desperation. There were simply too many people available for too few jobs. Along with the worsening food crisis due to the siege, it was becoming ever more difficult to survive here.

  The loose confederacy of islands known as Mercia was still free, certainly, but it was effectively besieged by Mannian sea blockades, in the same way that Bar-Khos was besieged by the Imperial Fourth Army. No safe passage existed anywhere in or out of the isles themselves. Since every nation of the Miders had fallen save for the desert Caliphate in the east, all foreign waters were patrolled by imperial fleets. Only a single foreign trade route remained open to Mercia, and that was the Zanzahar run, as perilous a route for convoys as could be, hard fought over every day and with their shipping harried constantly by the enemy.