No one moved. Whatever relief they had felt at the discovery that Gilmour and Steven were friendly was dissipating: this was obviously a madman.
Steven went on, still too angry at what these people had suffered to lower his voice, ‘Which one of you is a mathematician?’
A frightened woman near the wall hesitantly raised her hand. ‘I am.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘That clock across the street, it’s working again.’
This news shocked them all. A few of the rag-tag students looked as though they might bolt, dive out the windows.
Steven asked, ‘Can you learn to read it?’
‘Yes, sir,’ she said, beginning to look less worried.
‘Good,’ he said, and then to the entire room, shouted, ‘Tell them to get ready! If you’re teachers, then you understand how important this moment is for Eldarn. One Twinmoon more. Then this world will be in your hands. If you know of outlaw classrooms elsewhere, in Praga or Rona or Gorsk, wherever they are, get word to them. I want it spreading like a prairie fire: Eldarn will be free in one Twinmoon.’
‘Excuse me, sir.’ The little professor with the pinched nose took Steven by the forearm and dropped it as quickly as if he’d been shocked with a bolt of electricity. His eyes widened and he backed a few steps towards the brazier.
‘What is it, professor?’
‘Sir, who are you?’
Steven looked at Gilmour and then grinned. ‘We’re the Larion Senators.’
BOOK III
The Crossing
THE EXODUS
Gita Kamrec shouted, ‘What do you mean we don’t know where they are? Bleeding whores, but I need Brand here! I can’t get a decent piece of intelligence from this band of pissing-’ She stormed along the path; her lieutenants avoided eye-contact with one another, each fearing that one of the others would roll their eyes or chuckle and that would be the end of them all. Gita might be small in stature, but she’d have them gutted and filleted for a Twinmoon festival in a heartbeat. Gita missed Brand Krug, her tough, level-headed commander. He was still not back from his foray south, escorting the Larion Senator, Gilmour Stow, and his company of freedom fighters into Wellham Ridge.
They knew he was coming, thanks to Stalwick Rees’s fit. He had collapsed, repeating over and over again: Brand is on his way and the Malakasians know about the Capehill attack. Several of her men were concerned, but Gita would not be swayed: she had agreed with Gilmour that taking Capehill would give the Falkans a foothold in the east, and she meant to follow through. It was an easier target than Orindale; the capital had a full infantry division, even without counting the Seron companies. She would need at least one more regiment and to make it a surprise attack if she had any hope of taking Orindale. Winning Capehill would give the Resistance a place to call home, a base in which to muster an army and prepare for a bloody march westwards.
In spite of all Gita’s planning, a problem had arisen. The Falkan Army, moving southeast as covertly as possible, had encountered no occupation forces. A battalion of partisans, travelling in small groups disguised as miners or farmers, had encountered just one Malakasian, a woman apparently separated from her unit. Sharr Becklen had killed her, a miracle shot into the rising sun. Apart from the woman, there had been no patrols, no soldiers away on leave, nothing. It was far, far too quiet. And that worried Gita.
Now, half an aven from Capehill, she wondered if she was marching her boys into a carefully baited snare. She had orchestrated what she believed to be one of the cleverest troop movements in the history of modern warfare, breaking her force up into its component parts and using everything from side roads to goat paths to move the squads and platoons – and she was certain no one, not even the country dwellers through whose land they were passing, had realised.
And now here they were, within striking distance, and no one could give her a cogent report on the Malakasian Army’s whereabouts.
She stalked through their temporary camp, fuming. ‘Tell me again!’ she barked, trying to think fast.
‘We just don’t know where they are, ma’am,’ said Markus Fillin, a lieutenant from the Central Plain, looking anywhere but at his commander.
‘Is the city that big?’ she mused aloud. ‘Can they really be hiding a brigade down there? If Stalwick was right, they know we’re coming, but how much do they know – do they know we’re here now, that we were coming from Traver’s Notch? Do they know how many soldiers we have, what we ate for breakfast this morning? Can anyone tell me anything?
Her officers and advisors shook their heads and Gita shouted, ‘Where is Sharr Becklen? He lives there, doesn’t he? He must know where the flaming horsecocks are hiding – what’s the most defensible position in the city?’
‘The heights above the wharf, ma’am,’ Markus interjected quickly. ‘It’s already been checked, but there’s no one there, ma’am, not one single soldier. The locals say they were in the city as normal, until sometime this morning, when they all disappeared.’
There was a moment of heavy silence, broken only by the crackle and spit of the camp fires, then Gita was shouting again. ‘An entire brigade of occupation soldiers does not just disappear, Lieutenant, do you understand? And I repeat: where is Sharr Becklen?’
‘Here I am, ma’am.’ Sharr himself came over the rise, as if summoned by Gita’s cries.
‘Oh, thank the gods,’ Gita said. ‘So what can you tell us?’
‘I’ll show you, ma’am.’ He reached out, inviting the partisan leader to join him. ‘It’s just up here. I think you’ll find this interesting.’
‘Where are we going, Sharr?’ Gita said. ‘I have to tell you; I’m not amused by any of this.’ She glared at her officers, then took Sharr’s offered hand and allowed him to help her up the snowy embankment.
At the top she released him. ‘Where are they dug in?’ she asked.
‘They aren’t,’ Sharr said.
‘That’s impossible.’
‘Be that as it may, ma’am, but apart from a bunch of very nervous-looking fellows on the wharf, the Malakasian Army is gone.’
‘Gone.’
‘If you come a bit further up here, just up this next hill, I think I can show you where to find them, but we need to hurry, they’ve at least a two-aven head-start.’
Gita frowned. She was not one who appreciated surprises, not on the Twinmoon, not at festivals, not even after she stood the tides with Rove Kamrec, all those Twinmoons ago. ‘Where are you taking me, Sharr?’
‘Up there.’ He pointed towards the rounded summit of a small hill they’d been using to watch the arriving groups of partisans forming up into an army. The gentle slopes around Capehill were teeming with Resistance fighters, every one of them awaiting Gita’s word, and they would take the city.
She herself had expected to be fighting already; she had never dared hope they would make it all the way from Traver’s Notch without a fight. Her orders had been simple: kill or take prisoner every Malakasian soldier you see. If by some stroke of profound luck Stalwick had been wrong and their attack was still a surprise, the last thing Gita wanted was for a Malakasian to escape and reach Capehill in time to warn them.
She looked behind her and called, ‘Markus, come with us.’
The lieutenant hustled up the rise, his boots slipping in the snow. Markus Fillin was not thrilled to be in Capehill; he didn’t suppose he was alone in that. It was hard to leave home and wage war in another part of one’s own country. All his life, Markus had watched Malakasian troops on the Central Plains, as had his father and his grandfather when they were boys working in the family fields. Sometimes soldiers would come into the yard and buy food; other times – most times – they simply rode into the barn or the storehouse, or even broke into the canning cellar, and took what they wanted.