Rob Scott - The Larion Senators

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.

He wondered how many fit young men had left farms like his to start this war. He was uneasy at the thought that he had left his own home vulnerable when he joined the partisans, but he was needed in Capehill, and if Falkan were to be free, this battle needed to be fought and won.

Sharr helped Gita as she scrambled awkwardly up the icy slope to the relatively flat summit, then checked back for Markus. He made no move to assist the lieutenant.

The two sentries stopped talking and stood to attention when they realised who had joined them. ‘Ma’am,’ one of them said, echoed by the second.

‘Good evening, boys,’ Gita said, trying to mask her wheezing. She was tired, and her stomach hurt from the climb. ‘Anything to report?’

The two shared a nervous look then shook their heads. ‘No, ma’am,’ said one.

‘Everyone in place?’

‘It’s getting harder to see, ma’am,’ he told her, ‘but from here it looks like the third and eighth platoons are moving into position, south of the city.’

The second sentry added, ‘Ma’am, we lost sight of Arden’s company when they passed across that snowfield there in the north.’

‘Captain Arden,’ Sharr corrected softly.

‘Sorry, sir, sorry, ma’am.’ The sentry coughed, and repeated, ‘Captain Arden.’

Gita ignored his lapse. ‘Good. My staff are here, their companies assembled behind these hills and in that grove to the southeast… so we’re in position. All we need now is the enemy – and we don’t know where the enemy has gone.’

Markus winced. ‘Ah, ma’am, if we-’

‘Just a moment, Markus,’ Gita interrupted, ‘Sharr was going to show us something. What is it, Sharr? I know you wouldn’t have had me haul my broken-down old body up here for nothing.’

Sharr grinned. Capehill lay sprawled at their feet, glittering firelight casting a shadowy glow on otherwise silent homes and businesses. From the hilltop, the city looked a natural target.

The harbour was different, however: something about it looked fundamentally wrong, though Gita wasn’t sure what had changed. There was a veritable fleet of boats moored in the shallows and lashed to the docks, and even from this distance she could hear the faint chime of a hundred or more bridges as bells rang out the aven changes. It had grown dark and there was no colour; the boats all looked like hulks, floating shadows. Gita shook her head, trying to figure out what was different. ‘What is it, Sharr? Where are they?’ she asked.

The erstwhile fisherman pointed towards the horizon, darker in the east. ‘You see that group of stars out there, just off the water?’

Gita sighted along Sharr’s outstretched arm. Her vision wasn’t what it had been two hundred Twinmoons earlier, but finally she focused on the low-lying constellation. ‘What is that?’ she asked, adding, ‘I’ve never seen those before.’

‘Demonpiss,’ Markus whispered to himself.

‘What? What is it? Someone tell me.’ Gita was irritated now, feeling as if she’d been left out of a secret everyone else knew. Behind her, the two sentries stood a bit straighter.

‘It’s a squadron of ships, ma’am,’ Sharr explained. ‘They left with the tide about two avens ago. They’re naval ships. There’s a bark, two brig-sloops, square-rigged, and a frigate, a big fat bastard, that one.’

‘And who in the names of the gods is on them?’ Gita was still confused, and angry at her own ignorance. ‘What do I care if-?’ She cut herself short. ‘That’s it. This harbour,’ she said. ‘I knew there was something awry, but I couldn’t figure it out. That’s it; that’s what’s different.’

‘Ma’am?’ Now Sharr looked confused.

‘The boats, Sharr. Markus, look at the boats. What do you see?’ Gita didn’t wait for them to reply. ‘There’re only fishing boats, no big merchant vessels, and no naval ships, only the trawlers and net-boats. See?’ She waved an open hand at the wharf as if the answer was obvious. ‘There’s no accommodation at Capehill Harbour for big merchant ships because passage through the North Sea is essentially impossible – unless there’s a northern Twinmoon and high tides in the archipelago – and anyway, very few merchant ships make the passage around the Ronan peninsula-’

‘Because the Malakasian navy has it blockaded,’ Markus finished up for her.

‘No one knows why,’ Gita went on, ‘it’s something to do with Estrad Village and the Forbidden Forest, but there haven’t been big merchant ships around Ronan point in generations, so, in turn, Capehill rarely plays host to those size vessels.’