Monsters of Men (7 page)

“A girl we
trust,
” Simone says. “A girl trained to be a settler just as much as her parents were.”

My face flushes a little at this but only partly out of embarrassment. Because it’s
true
. I did train for this. And I’ve been through more than enough in this place for my opinion to count–

I look back at the projection, back at the battle, which seems to be getting even worse, and I try to
think
. It looks awful as anything down there, but the Spackle aren’t attacking for no reason. And their target could just be the Mayor and we did beat him before but–

“Your Todd’s down there,” Mistress Coyle says. “He’s going to be killed if you don’t do something.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” I say. Because that’s the thing, the thing that overrides everything. I turn to Bradley and Simone. “I’m sorry, but we
have
to save him. We
have to
. Me and him were
this close
to saving the whole planet until they screwed it all up–”

“But would saving him be at the cost of something
greater
?” Bradley says, kindly, but very serious, trying to make me see. “Think hard now. What you do first anywhere is remembered
for ever
. It sets the whole future.”

“I’m not inclined to trust this woman, Viola,” says Simone and Mistress Coyle glowers. “But that doesn’t mean she’s not right about this. If you say it’s right, Viola, we’ll intervene.”

“If you say it’s right, Viola,” Bradley says, echoing Simone with a little snap, “we start our new life here as conquerors and you’ll be setting up brand new wars for generations to come.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Mistress Coyle shouts in frustration. “The power is
here,
Viola! Here is where we can change
everything
! Not even for me, my girl, for
Todd,
for
you
! Right here, right now, what you decide can
end
all of this!”

“Or,” Bradley says, “you can start something even worse.”

They’re all looking at me. I look back to the projection. The Spackle are throughout the men now and more and more are coming–

And Todd’s down there in it–

“If you do nothing,” Mistress Coyle says. “Your boy dies.”

Todd,
I think–

Would I start a new war just to save you?

Would I?

“Viola?” Simone says again. “What’s the right thing to do?”

[T
ODD
]

I fire my gun but there’s so many Spackle and men mixed together I have to aim high to make sure I don’t hit none of my own side and cuz of that I don’t hit no Spackle neither and one is suddenly in front of me raising a white stick to Angharrad’s head and I swing the barrel of the gun round and hit the Spackle hard behind his too-high ear and he falls and another one is already right there and it’s grabbing my arm and I’m thinking
VIOLA
right into its face and it stumbles back and there’s a
rip
at my opposite sleeve and an arrow’s flown right thru it and just misses going into the soft spot underneath my jaw and I’m pulling Angharrad’s reins to turn her cuz there ain’t no way outta this alive and we gotta
run
and a soldier gets hit with a blast from a white stick right next to us and a spray of blood covers my face and I turn away not seeing where I’m going and I’m pulling Angharrad with me and all I can think, all I can think in the middle of so much Noise, all I can think as I hear men die and Spackle die and see them die in Noise even with my eyes shut, all I can think is–

Is this what war is?

Is this what men want so much?

Is this sposed to make them
men
?

Death coming at you with a roar and a scream so fast you can’t do nothing about it–

And then I hear the Mayor’s voice–

“
FIGHT!
” he’s shouting–

In his voice and his Noise–

“
FIGHT!
”

And I wipe away the blood and open my eyes and it’s plain as anything that fighting is all that’s ever gonna happen in the world till we die and I see the Mayor on Morpeth and both he and his horse are bloodied and he’s fighting so hard I can actually hear his Noise and it’s still cold as stone but it’s saying
T
O THE END, TO THE END
–

And he catches my eye–

And I realize it really is the end–

We’ve lost–

There’s too many of ’em–

We’ve lost–

And I grab Angharrad’s mane with both my hands and I hold it tight and I think
Viola–

And then–

The entire bottom section of the hill the Spackle are coming down explodes in a roar of fire and dirt and flesh–

Rising up and over everything, pelting us with stones and soil and bits of Spackle–

And Angharrad’s yelling and we’re both falling sideways to the ground and there’s men and Spackle screaming all round us and running this way and that way and my leg is pinned under Angharrad who’s trying to work her way back up to standing but I see the Mayor ride past–

And I can hear him
laughing–

“What the hell was that?” I scream at him.

“A GIFT!” he screams back as he rides thru the dirt and the smoke and he’s yelling to the men, “ATTACK! ATTACK NOW!”

{VIOLA}

We snap our attention back to the projection. “What was that?” I say.

There was a sudden
boom
but all the probe is showing is a solid block of smoke. Bradley dials the screen of the remote and the probe rises again, but smoke is covering everything.

“Is it recording?” Simone says. “Can you rewind?”

Bradley dials some more and suddenly the picture is going back on itself, back down into the cloud, the smoke rapidly gathering together and–

“There,” Bradley stops it and runs it forward again in slow motion.

The battle is as chaotic and terrible as it was, the men being overwhelmed by the Spackle army and then–

BOOM!

There’s an explosion at the base of the hill, a sudden violent eruption sending dirt and rock and the bodies of Spackle and their battlemores flying up and out, spinning into the cloud of smoke that rapidly covers everything–

Bradley rewinds again and we watch it once more, a small flash and then a whole section of the hill is picked up and thrown into the air and right there on the screen we see Spackle die–

Die and die and die–

Dozens of them–

And I remember the one on the riverbank–

I remember his
fear–

“Is this you?” Simone says to Mistress Coyle. “Has your army reached the fighting?”

“We don’t have
missiles,
” Mistress Coyle says, not taking her eyes off the projection. “If we did, I wouldn’t be asking you to fire yours.”

“Then where did it come from?” Simone says. Bradley’s fiddled with the controls and the picture is bigger and clearer and on the slowest setting you can see something flying into the base of the hill, see even more slowly the earth flying up, the Spackle bodies being torn, not caring what lives they had, who they loved, what their names are or were–

Just bodies flying apart–

Lives ending–

We did this to them, we
made
them attack, we enslaved and killed them, or at least the Mayor did–

And here we are killing them all over again–

Simone and Mistress Coyle are arguing but I’m really not hearing them–

Because I also know this.

When Simone asked me what to do–

I was going to say fire the missile.

I was.

I was going to cause this damage myself. I was going to say, yes, do it, fire it–

Kill all these Spackle, these Spackle with their
real
reason to attack someone who deserves it more than anyone on this planet–

If it would save Todd, it wouldn’t have mattered, I was going to do it–

I would have killed hundreds,
thousands
to save him.

I would have started an even bigger war for Todd.

And that realization is so huge I have to reach out a hand to Acorn to steady myself.

Then I hear Mistress Coyle’s voice rise over Simone’s, “It can only mean that he’s been building artillery himself!”

[T
ODD
]

In the smoke and the screaming, Angharrad rocks her way back up to her feet, her Noise not saying nothing now, not saying it in a way that makes me really scared for her, but she’s up again and I’m looking back and I’m seeing it, I’m seeing where the blast came from–

The other army units. Led by Mr Tate and Mr O’Hare, back from collecting the rest of the soldiers, back from collecting the armaments the Mayor was talking about.

Armaments that I for one didn’t know he had.

“Secret weapons only work if they’re secret,” he says, riding back up to me.

He’s smiling wide now.

Cuz here comes a surge of new soldiers from the city road, hundreds of ’em, fresh and screaming and ready to fight–

And already the Spackle are turning–

Already the Spackle are looking back up the hill, trying to see if there’s any way over where the ground exploded–

And there’s another flash and a whistling sound over our heads and–

I flinch and Angharrad screams as another hole is blasted into the hill and more dirt and smoke and Spackle bodies and horned creacher parts go flying into the air.

The Mayor don’t flinch at all, just looks happy as the new soldiers flood round us, as the Spackle army collapses into chaos and turns and tries to run–

And is cut down by our new arrivals–

And I’m breathing heavy–

And I’m watching the tide turn–

And I gotta say–

I gotta say–

(shut up)

I feel a rush as I see it–

(shut up)

I feel relief and I feel joy and I feel my blood pumping as I see the Spackle fall–

(shut up shut up
shut up
)

“You weren’t worried there, were you, Todd?” the Mayor asks.

I look back at him, dirt and blood drying on my face, the bodies of men and Spackle around us everywhere, a new bright flood of Noise filling the air even tho I didn’t think it could ever get any louder–

“Come!” he says to me. “See what it’s like to be on the winning side.”

And he rides off after the new soldiers.

I ride after him, gun up, but not shooting, just watching and feeling–

Feeling the thrill of it–

Cuz that’s it–

That’s the nasty, nasty secret of war–

When yer winning–

When yer winning, it’s ruddy
thrilling–

The Spackle are running back up the hill, climbing over the rubble and running–

Running away from
us–

And I raise my gun–

And I aim it at the back of a running Spackle–

And my finger’s on the trigger–

And it’s ready to pull–

And the Spackle stumbles over the body of another Spackle, but it ain’t just one body, it’s two, it’s three–

And then the smoke is clearing and I’m seeing more, I’m seeing bodies everywhere, men and Spackle and horned creachers–