But they didn’t see him. It was as if the world had turned its eyes away and made him invisible. The gunners were attending to their gun; the guards were occupied with Ehri and Fal. Unobserved, he clambered over the sandbags and into the emplacement.
The first they knew of him was when he shot the first of the guards in the back at a distance of a couple of metres. He cocked his lever-action shotgun and blasted the second Dak as he turned in alarm. Hard to miss at that range. Then he went for the men on the gun.
The gunner’s assistant was still fumbling with his sidearm when Silo shot him. He went staggering back against the control assembly and slumped bonelessly to the ground, holding his guts. The gunner himself was still in the control seat. He raised his hands.
((Get out of the seat)) said Silo.
The gunner did as he was told.
((Over there.))
He stepped away from the gun, arms raised high. The barrel of Silo’s shotgun followed him. But then something in Silo’s expression, or lack of it, must have warned him what was coming, because his eyes filled with horror and his face crumpled.
((No! Please, I have children!))
Silo pulled the trigger and silenced him. He didn’t want to hear about a Dak’s children. They didn’t think children so precious when they were Murthian boys and girls, growing up bent from working in mines or with lost fingers from the cotton mills.
When he was a younger man, revenge had made him feel better. It had dampened the rage inside. Now it didn’t make him feel at all. A dead Dak was only a drop in the ocean. It didn’t change a thing.
Ehri and Fal came climbing over the sandbags and into the emplacement. Fal’s eyes were twinkling behind his goggles.
We did it! he said. – That was amazing!
" Just like old times, said Silo.
" Just like old times, Ehri agreed, her voice softer than he was used to hearing it.
A gunshot close at hand made them jump. Fal grunted. Silo pushed him out of the way, and saw one of the Daks dazedly trying to sit up, a revolver in his hand, a deep gash across his temple. Ehri hadn’t killed the one she hit, just winged him. Silo put him back down, and this time there was no mistake.
" Fal!
He didn’t want to turn around. Didn’t want to see what he knew would be there. Everything had happened so quickly, it had simply been a reaction to kill the Dak when he heard the shot. But now he put it all together. The shot, Fal’s grunt, Ehri’s cry.
Damn it, he thought to himself. Damn it all to rot and shit.
Fal was on the ground. Ehri was cradling his head with one hand, and pressing the other on his chest. Blood welled out between her fingers in pulses, spreading across Fal’s clothes.
Silo had seen enough bullet wounds in his time. The volume and colour of blood, the location of the hole, told him that this one was fatal.
"Fal! Fal! Stay with me!
Fal coughed inside his mask. His eyes were roving, confused. ~ I don’t… I Silo bent down to lay a hand on his shoulder, to offer some comfort, but Ehri screamed at him to get away. He stepped back. Fal was hers, not his. He’d left and hadn’t returned for nine years. He didn’t deserve any claim on his friend.
Fal focused on Ehri’s face, which was bent down close to his. The masks and goggles seemed cruel barriers to their final moments together.
" Mother’s coming, he said.
" No. She shook her head. ~ No.
He spluttered and gasped. ~ Maybe… maybe I’ll be reborn… outside the pens.
"You’re not going to die, Fal, she told him solemnly, through gathering tears.
" Maybe one day you’ll break me out.
Silo saw Ehri’s throat clench, and whatever words she’d meant to say were lost. She held up her hand in front of him, to show the tattoo on her palm. His eyes creased in a smile. He tried to lift his own hand to show his matching design, but he didn’t have the strength. Ehri did it for him and pressed it to her own.
It’s cold, said Fal. Then he gave a short and humourless laugh. ~ Why am I scared?
He didn’t say anything else. Silo looked away and began reloading his shotgun. He could see over the tops of the buildings to the gate of the slave pens. The battle was still going on around them, the rip and crackle of gunfire, but neither side had moved an inch. The fighters overhead still dodged and weaved, but it seemed like they were almost all Equalisers now.
When he was done reloading, Ehri was still leaning over the body of her husband. ht="0"›‹
Ehri.
Don’t, she said. – Don’t speak to me.
She raised her head and stared at him hatefully. Then she stabbed a finger at the enormous gun looming over them. ~ Get on with it! she spat.
He got into the seat, his eyes running over the controls. His brain wouldn’t make sense of it at first. Fal, dead, because of him. He’d thought he wouldn’t feel responsible for other people’s deaths any more, but he realised he was wrong. It was just people he didn’t know that he didn’t care about.
He seized the firing handles. Move forward. It was all a man could do. Keep moving forward, and forget what got wrecked in your wake.
The controls, once he applied himself, were easy enough for an engineer to figure out. He lowered the barrel. When it was horizontal, it wouldn’t go any lower, but he reckoned that the shells would dip over distance, so it would be enough for his purposes. He swung the gun around until it was facing the gate to the slave pens.
This is for you, Fal, he thought, and pressed down on the trigger.
The report of the gun pounded at his ears, a slow and steady whump-whump-whump as it spat blazing tracer shells over the rooftops. As he’d hoped, gravity sucked them down, and they hit the gates of the pen squarely, smashing them to pieces in a series of detonations. But Silo wasn’t done yet. He altered the angle, sending shells into the walls to either side of the gates, raining rubble down on the men hidden at their feet. The machine-gunners on the walls were swallowed in a cascade of brick and dust and flame. Daks fled from cover, trying to escape the destruction, and were mown down as they did so.
When Silo let off the trigger, the gate had been swallowed by a dirty, malevolent cloud, swelling outward. But as it swelled, it cleared. He heard the sound of raised voices. A charge had begun. Whether it was the slaves, or the free Murthians, or both, he couldn’t see.
But the day was won, he knew that.
He waited for a sense of triumph, and felt none. All he could think of was Fal. He got out of the gunner’s seat, and saw that Ehri was standing, her rifle in her hand, and her eyes were hard and dry.
" Are you coming? she asked.
He looked down at Fal. There was no ceremony for the dead in Murthian culture. The dead were just meat, their spirits gone back to Mother.
‘Reckon I’ll stay here a while,’ he said, and the words came out in Vardic. ‘Lost my appetite for killin’.’
Ehri looked away with a snort of bitter disdf bitterain. ‘Reckon you have,’ she said. Then she was away, over the sandbags and running down the slope towards the battle.
Silo watched her go, then knelt down next to Fal. He took off the mask and the goggles. Fal’s eyes were closed. Silo sighed.
‘Reckon I have,’ he muttered.
Thirty-Four
It was mayhem on the quarry floor.
Visibility was down to ten metres in the fog. Everyone was shooting at shadows. Bullets whizzed randomly out of the gloom. Jez was out there somewhere, still on a rampage, her screeches like the cry of some prehistoric animal. As if one of the gargants that lived on Atalon long ago had been resurrected and set loose among them.