of the tower horns that wailed across the city to announce the departure of the last of the troops.
‘Remember what I said, now. Get a message to Reese. Let her know she can come and stay here with you. Tell her I’m sorry I haven’t been to see her.’ Bahn suddenly ran his fingers through his hair. He recalled the last time he had seen his sister-in-law; her quiet voice explaining how her son had left the city. ‘Sweet Mercy, I haven’t even been to ask after Nico. How long has it been now?’
‘It’s all right,’ soothed his wife behind him. ‘I’ll tell Reese. She’ll understand.’
Her words failed to assuage him. Bahn had felt a certain responsibility towards Reese and her son ever since his brother Cole had deserted them.
He cinched the leather strap with a final sharp tug, putting his frustration into it. He inspected his work, then took a deep breath before turning to face his wife.
‘Time to go.’
Marlee nodded without expression. She was maintaining her composure for the sake of them both.
He’d felt awkward around his wife these recent weeks. He’d found that in her presence his guilty conscience would often make him think of the girl Curl, and it made him uneasy in his wife’s gaze, as though she might somehow see through him.
Now he stared hard into her eyes, unflinching. Marlee clasped her arms around his neck as he held her slim waist in his hands. Their noses touched.
‘I love you,’ he told her.
‘And I love you, my sweet man.’
Her eyes shone with the beginnings of tears.
He held her to him tightly, crushing her against his armour. He did not wish to let her go.
I don’t deserve this woman, he thought bitterly.
The children were already asleep inside. Bahn had kissed his sleeping infant daughter on the forehead, had shared a few words with his bleary-eyed son tucked up in bed.
He couldn’t shake what he’d seen in the streets on his hasty return home. People had been lining the thoroughfares as columns of soldiers and old Molari marched for the northern gates, cheering them on as they passed by, forcing good-luck charms and parcels of food and bottles of spirits into their hands. Some had cried at the sight of them, old men even, stirred by the determined expressions of the soldiers and the knowledge of what they all marched towards.
We can do this, Bahn had thought as his own emotions soared with the collective spirit of the crowds. If we stand together we can get through this.
But then, cutting through the backstreets to make better progress, he had passed countless people rushing with their belongings towards the harbours, hoping to find safe passage off the island, and he had watched them pass with something of envy in his heart.
On the walls, fresh graffiti was painted as though in blood. The flesh is strong. Surrender and be free. The work of Mannian agitators, resurfacing in the city now that it was truly vulnerable, and the majority of its forces were leaving.
Standing with Marlee in his arms, Bahn once more felt the urge to grab his wife and shake her and say, For pity’s sake, take the children and find a way out! But they were words for him alone, for he could never bring himself to say them. Not to Marlee, his pillar of strength, this woman whose father had fallen on the first day of the siege in defence of the city. She would say no, absolutely no, and then she would think less of him as a husband, as a man.
‘Look after them,’ was all he could say amidst the soft thickness of her hair.
‘Of course,’ she breathed. ‘And promise me you’ll be careful.’
‘I will.’
And despite their words of reassurance, they kissed long and hard and desperate, as though they would never see each other again.
On the still-smouldering hilltop, Ash stood amongst the ashes and debris that were the remains of a small fishing village, and stared down at a line of severed penises laid out in the gloom like a children’s forgotten game of half-sticks.
Close by, the charred corpses of their owners lay contorted amid the rubble of a collapsed stable. Ash had glimpsed smaller bodies lying amongst them; children and even infants.
Of the women, there was no sign.
Not for the first time in Ash’s long life, it struck him how death smelled the same no matter if it was man, zel, or dog. Ash had seen such things before in his days