as part of the Empire’s period of mourning. To Bahn, it had seemed more as if they were catching their breath for the onslaught to come.
Bahn removed his helmet, set it down on a surviving crenellation next to him with a scrape of metal. A cistern was built into the battlements here, filled with rainwater, and he drank a few sips from a cup fixed to it by a chain. Sated, he leaned against the stonework and gazed out over the Lansway, lost in the tumult of his thoughts.
A far thunderstorm was trailing curtains of rain across the far end of the isthmus and the crust of hills that stretched away on either side of it: the very tip of the southern continent, and the land of Pathia, now ten years fallen to Mann. His hair blew about in the breeze as birds wheeled high and aimless in the sky above.
He ducked as a shot whined off the stonework near to him. Bahn turned to look at where it had struck, and saw Halahan standing there with the foot of his bad leg propped up on the rubble of the broken battlement, a hand on his raised knee, his other holding the clay pipe in the corner of his mouth, coolly studying a breath of dust drifting from the stonework next to his boot.
The Nathalese veteran leaned and spat on the chalky bullet-strike as though putting out a flame, then spoke to Bahn without turning to him. ‘Thinking of some poke?’
Bahn blinked, not understanding his meaning.
‘You seemed lost, a moment ago. I wondered if you were thinking of some lass.’
Bahn rose from his crouch and brushed his fingers through his hair and fixed his helm back on his head. He was careful all the while to remain behind the protection of the battlements. ‘You walk quieter than a mountain lion,’ he replied to the Nathalese man, before he realized what he was saying.
Halahan was gracious enough not to glance down at the hinged metal support that wrapped a good portion of his leg, but instead simply met his gaze. A dark humour played in the backs of his eyes, which shone with the dazzling dark blue of setting skies. Bahn had always liked the Nathalese commander of the Greyjacket brigade, had always respected his no-nonsense manner, without guile or self-importance – unlike so many of the other officers he knew within the army.
The colonel had been a priest once, or so he’d heard, though it was hard to see anything of the religious man about him now. Instead there was something windburned about his character, and something lawless.
‘I was thinking of that fleet in Q’os,’ Bahn confessed. ‘I was wondering if it would be setting forth soon, and if so, for where.’
‘You were wondering if it would be coming here.’
‘Of course. Aren’t you?’
Halahan seemed to laugh without showing it anywhere but in his eyes.
‘Is the old man back yet?’ he asked him.
Ah, thought Bahn.
‘No. And the council are flapping my ears off about it.’
‘I can imagine. It looks bad on them when the Lord Protector goes off by himself asking for League reinforcements.’
‘You think that’s what he’s doing there?’
‘Certainly. Amongst other things. What else can he do? The council would rather bury their heads in the sand. By the sounds of it they’re just hoping the Mannians invade Minos rather than here.’
Bahn offered a shrug, but the motion was lost beneath the shoulder-guard of his armour. ‘Maybe they’re right, then. Minos could be as much a target. They’re being hard hit as we speak.’
‘Aye, I’ve been following the reports. Imperial Diplomats running amok in Al-Minos. The Second Fleet engaged in a battle with sizeable enemy formations.’ Halahan sounded as though he didn’t believe any of it. ‘And the Third Fleet dispatched from our waters to help, it’s so bad. Handy that. If you wanted to slip an invasion fleet down here from Lagos unmolested.’
Halahan puffed on his pipe as the wind jostled his long grey hair about his face. It did not seem as though he was discussing the matter of their possible extinction here. Bahn had often wondered about these men who lived through war as though it were an ordinary life to them. How they were able to switch off their imaginations from the worst of fates that could befall them. How they glided through their lives whether in peace or in battle.
He was envious of anyone who exhibited such traits. Bahn never seemed to stop being frightened