Monsters of Men (9 page)

“The eye in the sky is still there,” he says to me, walking over and looking up to the dot of light the Mayor’s pretty sure is a probe of some kind. We first saw it hovering over us an hour ago when the Mayor was giving orders to his captains, telling ’em to build a camp down here at the bottom of the hill, to send out spies to see what we’re up against and send out other troops to find out what’s happened to the army of the Answer.

But so far no one’s been sent to the scout ship.

“They can see us already,” the Mayor says, still looking up. “When they want to meet, they can just come to me, now, can’t they?”

He looks round us slowly, at the men sorting themselves out for what’s left of the night.

“Just listen to the voices,” he says, in a strange whisper.

The air is still filled with the Noise of the men but the look in the Mayor’s eyes makes me wonder if he’s talking bout something else.

“What voices?” I ask.

He blinks, like he’s surprised I’m still here. He smiles again and reaches out a hand to rest on Angharrad’s mane.

“Don’t touch her,” I say and I stare at him till he takes his hand away.

“I know how you feel, Todd,” he says gently.

“No, you don’t.”

“I do,” he insists. “I remember my first battle in the very first Spackle War. You think you’re going to die now. You think this is the worst thing you’ve ever seen and how can you live now you’ve seen it? How can
anyone
live after seeing it?”

“Get outta my head,” I say.

“I’m only talking, Todd. That’s all I’m doing.”

I don’t answer him. I just keep whispering to Angharrad. “I’m here, girl.”

“But you’ll be fine,” the Mayor says. “So will your horse. You’ll both be stronger. You’ll be better for it.”

I look at him. “How can anyone be better after that? How can anyone be more of a
man
after that?”

He leans down close to me. “Because it was exciting, too, wasn’t it?”

I don’t say nothing to that.

(cuz it was–)

(for a minute there–)

But then I remember the soldier dying, the one reaching for his baby son in his Noise, the one who won’t never see him again–

“You felt the excitement when we chased them up the hill,” the Mayor’s saying. “I saw it. It blazed through your Noise like a fire. Every man in the army felt the same thing, Todd. You’re never more alive than in battle.”

“Never more dead after,” I say.

“Ah, philosophy,” he smiles. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

I turn away from him, back to Angharrad.

And then I hear it.

I
AM THE
C
IRCLE AND THE
C
IRCLE IS ME.

I look back at him and I slap
VIOLA
at him.

He flinches but he don’t lose his smile. “Exactly, Todd,” he says. “I said it before. Control your Noise and you control yourself. Control yourself–”

“And you control the world,” I finish. “Yeah, I heard you the first time. I only wanna control myself, thank you. I ain’t got no interest in the rest of the world.”

“Everyone says that. Until they get their first taste of power.” He looks up again at the probe. “I wonder if Viola’s friends would be able to tell us what sort of numbers we’re actually up against.”

“
Too
many, that’s how many,” I say. “It’s probably the whole Spackle world up there. You can’t kill ’em all.”

“Cannons against arrows, my boy,” he says, looking back at me. “Even with their nifty new fire weapon and whatever those white sticks are, they don’t have cannons. They don’t–” he nods to the eastern horizon where the scout ship landed “–have flying ships. I’d call us just about even.”

“All the more reason to end it now,” I say.

“All the more reason to keep fighting,” he says back. “There’s only room on this planet for one side to be dominant, Todd.”

“Not if we–”

“No,” he says more strongly. “You set me free for one reason. To make this planet safe for your Viola.”

I don’t say nothing to that.

“And I’ve agreed to your condition and now you will let me do what needs to be done. You will let me make this planet safe for her and for the rest of us. And you will let me do this for you, because you cannot do it for yourself.”

And I remember how the soldiers followed his every command, throwing themselves into battle and dying, just cuz he told ’em to.

And he’s right, I don’t know that I’d ever be able to do that.

I need him. I hate that I do, but I do.

I turn away from him again. I close my eyes and press my forehead against Angharrad.

I am the Circle and the Circle is me,
I think.

If I can control my Noise, I can control myself.

And if I can control myself–

Maybe I can control him.

“Maybe you can,” he says. “I’ve always said you had power.”

I look at him.

He’s still smiling.

“Now,” he says. “Settle your horse down for the night and get some rest.”

He sniffs in some air, it’s starting to feel cold now that we’re not thinking about dying every second, and he looks up the hill to the glow of Spackle campfires coming over the hilltop.

“We’ve won the first skirmish, Todd,” he says. “But the war has only just begun.”

And a Third

(THE RETURN)

The Land waits. I wait with them.

And I
burn
with the waiting.

Because we had our enemy beaten. At the foot of their own hill, on the outskirts of their own city, we had the army of men surrounded and at our mercy. They were broken and confused and ready to be conquered–

The battle was nearly won. We had them
beaten.

But then the ground erupted beneath our feet and our bodies were thrown into the air.

And we retreated. We pulled back, stumbling up the hill over broken rock and damaged road to reach the hilltop to treat our wounds and mourn our dead.

But we were close to victory. We were so close I could taste it.

I still
can
taste it, as I look out onto the valley below, where the men from the Clearing make their camp, tend to their own wounds, and bury their dead while leaving ours in carelessly thrown piles.

I remember other piles of bodies, in another place.

And I burn again at the memory.

Then I see something from where I sit on the edge of the hilltop, beside where the river crashes into the valley below. I see a light, hovering in the night air.

Watching us. Watching the Land.

I get to my feet to go and find the Sky.

I walk down the river road, deeper into our camp, the night’s full blackness held back by campfires. Wet spray from the rushing river throws up mist, and the light from the fires gives everything a low glow. The Land watches me as I weave through them, their faces friendly, if weary from the battle, their voices open.

The Sky?
I show with my voice as I walk.
Which way to the Sky?

In answer, they show me the way among the campfires and secreted bivouacs, the feeding crèches and the paddocks for the battlemores–

Battlemore,
I hear whispered just out of sight, whispered with no small shock and even disgust, as the word is not a word in the language of the Land, it is a word from the language of the enemy, of the Clearing, and so I make my voice even louder to cover it and I show
The Sky?

The Land keeps showing me the way.

But behind their helpfulness, do I hear their doubts?

For who am I, after all?

Am I hero? Am I saviour?

Or am I broken? Am I danger?

Am I beginning or end?

Am I truly of the Land?

If I am honest, I do not know the answers either.

And so they show me the way to the Sky as I move through them up the road and I feel like a leaf floating on the river, above it, on it.

But perhaps not of it.

And then they begin to send ahead news of my coming.

The Return approaches,
they show, one to the other.
The Return approaches.

For that is their name for me. The Return.

But I have another name, too.

I have had to learn what the Land calls things, pulling words from their wordless language, from the great single voice of the Land, so that I can understand them. The Land is what they call themselves, have always called themselves, for are they not the very Land of this world? With the Sky watching over them?

Men do not call them the Land. They invented a name based on a mistaken first attempt at communication and were never curious enough to fix it. Maybe that was where all the problems began.

“The Clearing” is the Land’s name for men, the parasites who came from nowhere and sought to make this world a nowhere of their own, killing the Land in huge numbers until a truce forced a separation, the Land and the Clearing for ever apart.

Except, that is, for the Land that was left behind. The Land that remained as slaves to the Clearing as a concession to peace. The Land that ceased
being
called the Land, the Land that ceased being the Land, forced even to take on the language of the Clearing. The Land that was left behind was a great shame for the Land, a shame that came to be called the Burden.

Until that Burden was erased by the Clearing in a single afternoon of killing.

And then there is me, the Return. So called not only because I am the single survivor returned from the Burden, but because my return has caused
the Land
to return here to this hilltop, after the years of truce, poised and ready above the Clearing, with better weapons, with better numbers, with a better Sky.

All brought here by the Return. By me.

But no longer attacking.

The Return approaches,
shows the Sky when I find him, his back to me. He is addressing the Pathways, who sit in a semicircle in front of him. He shows them messages to take throughout the Land, messages which pass by so quickly I have difficulty reading them.

The Return will relearn the language of the Land,
shows the Sky, finishing with the Pathways and coming over to me.
In time.

They understand my words,
I show back, looking out at the Land who watch me as I speak to the Sky.
They use them themselves when they speak of me.

The words of the Clearing are in the memory of the Land,
the Sky shows, taking me by the arm and walking me away.
The Land never forgets.

You forgot about
us,
I show him, heat behind my words that I cannot suppress.
We waited for you. We waited for you until our deaths.

The Land is here now,
he shows.

The Land has retreated,
I show, with greater heat.
The Land sits on a hilltop when it could be destroying the Clearing now, right now, this very night. We outnumber them. Even with their new weapons, we
–

You are young,
he shows to me.
You have seen much,
too
much, but you are not even fully grown. You have never lived among the Land. The heart of the Land weeps that it was too late to save the Burden
–

I interrupt him, a rudeness unheard of in the Land,
You did not even
know
–

But the Land rejoices that the Return was saved,
he continues as if I had shown nothing.
The Land rejoices that it can avenge the memory of the Burden.

No one is avenging
anything!

And my memories spill into my voice, and it is only here, now, when the pain of them grows too great, when I am unable to speak the language of the Burden, it is only
now
I speak the true language of the Land, wordless and felt and pouring out of me all at once. I am unable to stop from showing them my loss, from showing how the Clearing treated us like animals, how they regarded their voices and ours as curses, as something to be
cured
, and I cannot stop from showing the Land my memories of the Burden dying at the hands of the Clearing, of the bullets and the blades and the silent screaming, of the field of bodies piled high–