knocked sprawling to the ground before him, and he was in snarling amongst them all, breaking up a fight.
Bahn was in the shadow of Kharnost’s Wall long before he reached it. The guns along the top of the battlements sat silently, but sharp-shooters were taking the odd shot up there.
It was the breach of Kharnost’s Wall that Bahn had come to inspect this afternoon, that section which had collapsed in the previous month after it had been undermined by the Imperials, and which had been hard fought over for a week until the defenders had been able to plug it with debris.
It drew Bahn to it now, a pale jumbled wedge filling a broken portion of the great rampart. A makeshift job, he could see even before he reached it. Men and zels laboured to lift blocks of cut stone into place as they built a thin sheath wall to cover the loose filler. Still, they said the rampart would be permanently weakened here.
It had been a while, Bahn realized, since he’d actually mounted Kharnost’s Wall and looked to the other side. Not often were the guns so subdued, the air so clear of flying projectiles. Bahn decided to take a look.
He could feel sweat on his forehead by the time he had hiked the long steps to the very top. It was the armour: he’d never learned the knack of carrying its weight properly. On the upper parapet he placed a hand on a crenellation and tilted his helm back to wipe at his brow. A pair of Red Guards cast him a glance then returned to their game of rash; their lieutenant paid him no notice at all, the man was occupied with eyeing the isthmus beyond.
Bahn peered over the battlements himself. He saw dark lines of earthworks, and siege guns still wrapped in their night protections of straw and oiled canvas. Here and there were movements of white, and the odd desultory puff of smoke from one of their snipers.
Behind their lines spread the vast encampment of the Imperial Fourth Army, like a smoky, sleepy city.
We should ask them if they fancy a game of cross, he thought. We could settle the entire war here and now and get on with our lives.
Below, on the Khosian side, the game of cross was just finishing. He could see Halahan limping towards the wall as though he intended to climb its steps. Bahn had little wish to talk to the man, or anyone else just then.
He moved on, unconsciously keeping low as he stepped along the parapet towards the site of the breach, feeling exposed at each wind-blown open space between the teeth of the crenellations, and the occasional gaping emptiness where a section of the battlements had fallen away entirely. No one else was walking bent over, though, nor showing the least sign of concern about the odd incoming shot. Bahn forced himself to straighten his back and to walk in a way more befitting an officer.
He stopped as the battlements dropped away altogether, the stonework ragged where the undermined wall had collapsed. Bahn gaped down at the filled-in breach.
The rubble and earth that plugged the gap was a good half-throw across in size. It had been tamped down and floored with loose planking, and a crude barricade of stone blocks had been set across it for cover, although no one was out there just now. The breach itself was no longer visible from the Mannian side of the Shield. It was faced with the same great slope of earth that fronted the rest of the wall, the only defence they had found that could withstand the constant bombardments of cannon.
Still, it was certainly visible from where he stood, and Bahn could not tear his gaze from it. He stared at the broken section of wall as though staring into the depths of himself, feeling some kind of affinity with this weakened mass of stone.
He thought of the note that had arrived from Minos intelligence the week before, suggesting the possibility of an imminent invasion of Khos. He had been bound by his duty to keep the news to himself; it was, after all, only a supposition of the enemy’s plans. Even Marlee he had kept in the dark, not wanting to cause her unnecessary worries; she had known that something was wrong with him anyway, had noticed the despondent way he carried himself these days. And then the guns on the Mannian side had fallen silent, supposedly