nays. Looks like my vote doesn’t count for much anyway.
Norman sighed with relief.
Then the bottom fell out. Rush put down his hand. A hollow, wounded sound escaped his throat, then he too sat back and folded his arms.
A lump of warm lead the size of a billiard ball lodged in Norman’s throat.
Spoke too soon. Now it’s all down to you.
Yea, and they went.
Nay, and they had a hung vote. That meant hours of back-room politics, and sermons of passion. They didn’t have time for any of that.
But to say yes meant maybe condemning thousand to their deaths. It would be on his head—deaths met either on some foreign battlefield, or in homes burning in the wake of an army marching under a pigeon sigil.
It was too much. And so many eyes pressing in on him!
Wait. Wait. It’s all too too fast.
He needed to think.
No time to think.
He needed help.
You’re on your own, squire. Time you faced up to it.
He couldn’t. It wasn’t his place.
It’s your place alone.
Why?
Because it’s your destiny. It’s what Alexander drilled into their heads, because the son of a bitch always knew that eventually something would come along that was too big for him, and when that happened people would need someone to look to with blind faith. Not a leader, but a hero.
But I’m no hero. I’m a mess. When I’m not sucking air with ribs that feel like chunks of broken glass, I’m hallucinating ghosts from Before.
But did it matter? Did the truth actually matter? Wasn’t the idea of a hero always more powerful than any man, no matter how great, could ever be?
Shit.
“Mr Creek?” Evelyn’s voice split off into myriad crannies until a thousand separate echoes whispered his name. “Mr Creek, the deciding vote falls to you.” For a moment he thought he saw a pleading twitch amidst her icy brow.
Norman took a last look into the crowd and he found Allison. She nodded with such vehemence that, compared to the council’s subtleties and vagaries, it carried real power. His hand rose into the air as though yanked on invisible wires.
“It’s settled, then,” Evelyn said. “We go.”
PART 4 – THE LAST TRUMPET
“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
— T.S. Eliot
CHAPTER 13
Lucian grunted, gritting his teeth hard enough to set his gums bleeding. The sentries’ leather whipping straps had gotten to know the flesh of his back well of late. By now the breadth of his shoulders felt hot enough to smoulder like last night’s campfire. But he wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of knowing just how bad it hurt—that he wanted to get down on his knees and squeal, just like dozens who did just that every other minute, somewhere along the miles-long trail of slavers and captives.
“Keep it moving,” Charlie growled. “You’re slowing up, my friend. A guy could think you’re getting near quitting time.”
Lucian ignored him. Stumbling beside him, Max Vandeborn grunted something that sounded suspiciously like “little prick”.
Along the whole throng of ragged bodies, held aloft by the mounted sentries, were long hollow poles, fluttering from which were blood-red flags. Upon each was a hastily painted white symbol, one that by now played Lucian’s heartstrings like a harpsichord. The white pigeon sigils glared just as much as the real pigeons that hovered overhead and alighted on people’s shoulders.
More people had been appearing for the last few hours. At first it had been only small groups, sometimes only twos or threes being shepherded by a single guard. Then there had been staggered clumps, then wispy threads strung out over a hundred yards. Slowly, those threads had thickened, multiplied and lengthened, until now ribbons of marching hangdog figures linked up with the main drag like capillaries converging on a vein.
All of them laboured north under the sigil.
“So many,” Vandeborn muttered. “I didn’t think there were even this many left.”
Charlie grunted somewhere out of sight. “You’d be surprised what you can find if you push hard enough.”
Up ahead, someone crumpled to the mud, falling flat on their face in a stupor of blind exhaustion. Nobody dared try picking them up; they’d all learned that the punishment for that was to be beaten until they were lying right next to the fallen. An exasperated guard shunted the muddied figure to the side of the path with the base of his pole, and the droves of feet marched on.
Hundreds of bodies lay in their wake, strung over endless miles.
“How long are you going to keep marching us like