Fern sighed his relief as the mask came away. Carnelian was glad to see his dear face. Fern looked at the mask.
‘Throw it away,’ Carnelian said.
Fern hesitated, then threw the thing down, grimacing. He pointed. ‘I think it’s this way.’
Soon they were up and stumbling along. A clump of guardsmen appeared before them. Fern was about to turn away at a junction when Carnelian, with a grim laugh, threw back his cowl to expose his face. The guardsmen’s faces suddenly sickened and they ducked back from where they had come and he and Fern moved on.
Suddenly, they found themselves on the edge of a ditch whose depths were lost in shadow. Along its further edge a road ran, dense with dragons and squadrons of riders. They had worked at digging ditches long enough to be shocked by the vast labour this represented. The ditch curved round and out of sight: a stupendous work that seemed beyond the power of men. Again Carnelian gazed across to the other side and saw, beyond the vast melee of the camp, the wall of red dust full of a slow, blossoming life and his heart raced.
‘I’ve no idea where your father’s tent lies.’
Fern stood at bay regarding the route they had come, his head turning slightly from side to side as he listened out for the cries of their pursuers. Carnelian wanted to ask about his father, about Poppy, about how Fern had come to save him disguised as a Master, but that Fern was here was answer enough. To ask for more was to risk the decision he felt stirring in him. He tried to clear his mind enough to work things out. Notions of finding his father, his brothers, rolled together with other, inchoate feelings. One thing he knew: as things stood, in joining them he could only bring them more suffering. He focused on Fern, trying to think of a way to save him. He shook his head, letting out a growl that caused Fern to turn to him. It was those dark eyes that seemed the only solid thing in the world. ‘I’m going to cross this ditch.’
Fern scowled. ‘What about your father?’
‘You go and find him, but I’m going to cross this ditch.’
Fern looked surprised. ‘You want to fight in the battle?’
Carnelian had not thought that far ahead.
‘Is it because you want to help defeat the Master?’
Carnelian shook his head. ‘I don’t care about him.’
‘But is he going to lose?’
It was a strain for Carnelian to give any thought to that. He regarded the vast turmoil of the camp. ‘He has all that ranged against him.’
‘But you still believe he will win?’
Eyeing the red dust, Carnelian nodded.
‘So you want to fight on the losing side?’
He regarded Fern, feeling sadness welling up in him. ‘I no longer care who wins.’ He felt doubt fall from him; a burden he had been carrying for so long, he had forgotten how much it weighed. ‘I just want to be free.’
‘So do I,’ Fern whispered. He raised his hand tenderly to Carnelian, but his fingers hesitated short of touching him. ‘Are you strong enough?’
Carnelian caught his hand and pulled it to him. ‘I will be.’
Fern began to cry, but also to laugh. Carnelian let his tears join Fern’s and the laughter came bubbling out of him. Like sun after a storm, Fern’s smile stirred Carnelian to joy. ‘It’s a good day to die.’
Together, like children, they slid down the earthy wall into the ditch, leaning back against the slope, using clawed fingers and heels as anchors to try to control their descent. Soon they had plunged into a region in which night yet dwelt. Here the earth gave way to a stinking mulch that sucked at their limbs. The stench intensified until they felt their feet sinking into some noisome pool. Carnelian tried to gather up his cloak, but its edge was already heavy and dripping. He peered across, but could see nothing. They could easily have been on the edge of some filthy swamp. Carnelian raised his gaze to the black sky and saw the upper edge of the further wall of the ditch rising like a cliff into the morning light. He searched along the rim until he saw a gully leading up from the darkness. He reached out and found Fern’s arm and lifted it to point at the gully. ‘We can climb that.’
‘Unless we drown in this filth,’ came back Fern, his tone enough for Carnelian to imagine his face twisted with disgust.
Together they began to wade through the sewage. It climbed up to their knees, but no further. Carnelian made sure to breathe through his mouth, giving a shudder every time he put his foot back into the sludge.
At last they reached the other side and, moving sideways, found the mouth of the gully. Then they began the long, careful clamber up its slippy, slimy course, clawing at clods of sewage-sodden soil. As they climbed, Carnelian began to feel a tremor in the earth. Glancing up, he wondered if it was thunder, but the higher they went, the more the tremor resolved into an arrhythmic pounding he recognized.
As they emerged into the light, they saw their limbs were sheathed with dark slime. Carnelian’s cloak dragged and he wanted to discard it, but it was all he had to wear. The pounding intensified so that it seemed the earth itself was alive. A fine red dust settled upon them and rouged their filthy skin. The closer they came to the rim of the ditch, the louder grew the din. At last they pushed their heads up over the edge and their ears were assaulted by a roar. They gaped. Dragons were thundering past, the leprous pyramids of their towers scratching the stormy sky. Their horns were huge bone scythes. Their heavy heads were rising and falling like beaked ships upon a swell. Walls of hide stretching, rucking, flexing as massive muscles pistoned beneath. Tree legs lifting improbably, swinging forward, settling with a thump that sent a rumble and shudder through the earth. Among this heaving tide of hide and flesh and bone, squadrons of aquar cantered past, their riders watching the monsters nervously. As the vast procession slid from left to right across their vision, Carnelian peered among the reed legs of the aquar and the forest of the passing giants and caught glimpses of the camp beyond, from which an inexhaustible torrent was pouring out to join them. In this distant melee, a few twinkling flashes made him look round and see the watch-tower rising behind him, from whose summit a constant stream of instructions was being transmitted. This seeming chaos was being directed by the Wise, perhaps relaying instructions from Molochite.
He turned to Fern. ‘The battle will soon be upon us. We need some beasts to ride.’
Grimly, his friend nodded. Carnelian saw in Fern’s face that he was still determined to fight.
‘Let’s do it.’
Pulling his cowl over his head, Carnelian clambered up onto the road, a rough mosaic of blocks and fractured stone probably cannibalized from the demolished leftway. Glancing round to make sure Fern was close, he made his way along the edge of the road, all the while keeping a wary eye on the massive lumbering dragons, until he saw a squadron of auxiliaries approaching. When he stepped out in front of them, they came straight at him. He raised his arms aggressively. As they slowed he thought they were responding to him, but then he saw they were gazing past him. The object of their scrutiny was Fern. Though spattered with filth, encrusted to knees and elbows, the paleness of his commanders’ leathers was still unmistakable. One of the auxiliaries cried out a challenge, his face distorting with anger and confusion. Perhaps the man could see that, in spite of his costume, Fern was not a Master. Carnelian sensed that the man was about to order his squadron to resume their march and he strode towards him. The man regarded Carnelian with some uncertainty.
‘Give us two of your aquar,’ he said, in a ringing tone of command.
The man hesitated. Carnelian realized that all the man was seeing was a tall figure in a filthy cloak. He became aware that the auxiliaries were impeding the flow of traffic along the road. Voices were rising in angry consternation. He drew back his cowl to expose his face and continued to advance towards the auxiliary. The man grew sickly pale as if his face was seeking to mirror the whiteness of Carnelian’s own. Faces everywhere were averting their gaze with such violence that this communicated to their aquar, whose plumes raised in alarm. Carnelian had nearly reached the man who was bent forward in his saddle-chair moaning, when he felt a vast shadow looming up and saw the great horned head of a dragon above him. The monster’s reek oppressed the air. Suddenly a screaming roar tore the air, making Carnelian’s teeth rattle. Its commander was sounding his trumpets to clear the road, or perhaps he had seen the Master below. Carnelian did not care. He clasped the auxiliary’s thigh. ‘Down!’