The war camp roils like a beast waking from slumber. It stirs with the heartbeat of unceasing drums. The pounding grows louder, and the conscripts all around are heard groaning and stretching out their backs. Kalykan soldiers near the edges of the conscript area pour out from their tents and begin forming into orderly ranks. Only when the drums become deafening does haste seem to reach their minds.
“Hey, Boots, don’t just stand around. Help them out,” Peter yells at me with his arms crossed.
The members of Group Eleven grunt as they attempt to pull out a thick coiled chain from within the tent. By the time I arrive to help, they’ve done most of the work and have already moved on to straightening it out in front of the tent. It seems like the chain will never end, but the uncoiling reveals circular ankle holds welded into the iron every few paces.
When I see the Group Eleven conscripts maneuvering their feet through the leg cuffs, I know I’m expected to do the same.
“Lock your left feet in,” Peter calls to us, but I can’t. I need to find some type of footwear. I drift away slightly from the pack to sneak a glance into the open tent, but the shadows from within don’t allow me a good enough look. A forceful set of hands grabs me by my shoulder.
“What are you doing? Lock in, now,” says the capa.
“I need shoes, something to cover my feet,” I argue. Father Winter is still a few months away, but Brother Autumn has given us rain in abundance, going by how much mud is caked in between my toes.
“It’s too late for that,” Peter says, and pushes me over to the line of men tethered to the chain. He deposits me with the only man who hasn’t locked himself in yet, saying, “Greg, he’s going to take your normal position. I want you at the end.”
“You want me to pay for your shortage?” The man, Greg, is livid with the capa. “I can’t move if I have to carry extra weight, and I’m the only chance our group has of surviving this.”
Peter goes on the offensive, growling, “Maybe next time you’ll hold that tongue of yours.” He points to me. “Get him situated.”
The man barely meets my eyes before muttering, “Situate him yourself.” He walks to the end of the chain.
Peter grabs me by the front of my shirt and, to my surprise, leads me to the position next to Caleb. “Left foot,” he says, then walks away.
I place my foot in the proper position and close the cuffs with a soft click. After a few moments, Peter does a pass and inspects each member of our group to ensure that the cuffs have properly closed. When he’s satisfied, he yells, “All right, let’s go to inspection.”
“Hey, kid,” Caleb says to me. “I never caught your name.”
“Nolan.” I say.
“Well, Nolan, make peace with the Seasons. This is probably it for us.”
“Where are we going? Why are we being shackled?”
The conscript in front of me lets out an amused laugh. “So we don’t run.”
“Silence! Eyes to the front!” barks Peter, who is walking up and down the line, hollering orders, and using a muddy stick to whack at the shins of those he deems out of line. Once everyone is standing to his liking, he walks to the head of the column and leads us over to an area located at the northern part of the conscript tents where the twelve other conscript groups await our arrival. Each conscript stands in a perfect line, locked to his chain. The capas remain unchained at the head of the lines. The drums continue their dirge.
The inspection turns out to be nothing more than waiting ten minutes for a Kalykan overseer to arrive and ensure that we are locked in place, then we’re ordered to another area of the camp.
“Let’s move!” Peter barks when the other conscript groups begin to outpace us en route to wherever our destination lies. I can’t help but note that those groups have fully shackled men on the conscript chain while our group has clear gaps due to the shortage, meaning some unlucky members on our line—like Greg—must carry the extra weight of the chains.
I experiment with keeping my pants from falling without holding them. I waddle with my legs spread in an unnatural way but learn this doesn’t work, so I go back to having one hand set permanently on my britches. To make my failure worse, I’m forced to do this while dragging the chain attached to my ankle.
I learn the best way to handle the weight from watching others more practiced. Each member of Group Eleven is spread out approximately two fathoms apart, but those that look like they know what they are doing hold their part of the chain in each hand. We cut through the enormous Kalykan war camp, and I spot a pair of soldiers passing wine back and forth. They laugh and throw some creative curses at us as we pass them.
The camp itself is half-barren; many of the soldiers that occupied it before left their tents and gathered on the outskirts of the battlefield. Still, the drums continue. It’s almost like they call to us, like we’re chasing them.
For a brief instant, I convince myself that my heart beats in tandem with their tempo, but the truth is that it beats furiously because I’m afraid. After being robbed of my family, I convinced myself that there was nothing more that could frighten me. What more could the Kalykans threaten me with? An image of the hot-orange tint of the gammadon mere moments before they seared it into my skin springs to my mind. This is my life now. No more Sarah. No Emily. I shudder as I think back to my daughter’s face as I signed to her that I was going to find her. She believed me. Maybe I believed it myself then, but that was before today, before becoming human chattel. There is no escape from this.
Just when I feel like I’m getting the hang of marching in my oversize pants, our group emerges from the war camp, and I’m overcome with awe as I come upon the Kalykan formations. Hundreds of men stand shoulder to shoulder in four columns of roughly fifteen men. My eye is drawn to their uniforms. There’s a brief instant where I feel like I’m being engulfed by a great blue wave nipped with tiny whitecaps in its swell. Such is the effect of the navy jackets tucked into gray trousers that the Kalykans sport.
“Halt, Group Eleven,” Peter orders. He’s led us to a spot among the other conscript groups behind the massive columns. Moments later, the portly Guard Lieutenant Hoods approaches. He’s flanked by a procession of men that hand long, thin objects from a supply carriage to the conscripts at the front of the chain lines. Is it some kind of weapon? Impossible. The Kalykans couldn’t possibly be that stupid.
When a rather large Kalykan soldier reaches the conscript in front of me, a feeling that I thought would never return flutters in my breast: hope.
It’s a rifle. They’re handing us rifles.
Images of Sarah and Emily dance through my mind once again. Escape. Reunion. I study the posture of the man, hoping to glean something as he hands a rifle to the man before me. After, he takes another from the bundle and walks toward me.
Hand it to me. Hand me the damn rifle, you fool.
To my surprise and delight, he does.
Once the rifle is finally in my hands, I immediately realize there’s something wrong with it. The bayonet on the end looks blunt, like it’s embedded into the wood. It dawns on me that this is no rifle but a replica meant to look the part. It was carved it from wood, down to fake trigger guards and fake hammers on the fake barrel. My eye is drawn to what’s supposed to look like a bayonet. It is the color of dry crimson. At first, I am tempted to marvel at the Kalykans’ attention to detail, but then I understand that this has seen action before, and this blunt wood has punctured flesh. A shudder rides through me.
The replica presents a unique problem for me: I have been able to get to this point by using one hand to ensure my pants are stationary and the other hand to support the weight of the chain, but this is no longer possible with the addition of the rifle. I adapt by holding both the chain and my pants with the same hand, but soon my shoulder grows weary.
I belatedly realize that the drums have stopped their incessant beating and the men have ushered themselves into silence. A senior Kalykan officer at the head of the column shouts something on horseback, but the distance between us makes it impossible to hear. I struggle to take in the entire scope of the army. Hundreds of men on horseback are arrayed in similar columns to the soldiers skirting the edges of my vision. Why didn’t I see them before? The senior officer bellows something I don’t catch. Thousands of Kalykan voices suddenly scream into the air, piercing it with a war chant.
The drums start abruptly, and the march begins.
We march alongside the Kalykan army, shadowed not only by Peter, who remains unchained, but also Kalykan overseers who ensure we keep pace. Someone up there must have thought it funny to send one of the drummer boys to march beside us. The pounding grates on me, and I flinch with each beat. The boy can’t be more than fourteen years old. It disgusts me that they’d involve children in their war, but I shouldn’t be shocked. After all, they took mine from me.
“Faster,” the fat soldier who handed out our weapons yells when the slamming of the drummer boy’s instrument picks up speed, and we’re forced to adopt a soft jog. I try to let my thoughts fade and focus on the run, but my mind won’t allow it. There’s tension in the back of my neck, and my grip on the chain is throbbing. It’s as if I were in a waking fever dream full of hallucinations, where all my senses are burdened.
“You’re bleeding, lad,” calls Caleb from behind.
I look down and see that every step I take leaves an imperfect scarlet imprint of my foot on the mud.
“Take your mind off the pain. Give yourself a task, and you’ll make it through.” Caleb is silent for a moment, thinking. “Ah, I know. Start counting your steps.”
I try my best to heed Caleb’s advice, but my mind is prone to wandering when the count gets high enough.
Concentrate, Nolan.
At fifty steps, the man in front of me starts to cough. What would happen if he collapsed? Would they execute him? How would they free him from the shackles? Does Peter have a key? Maybe I can swipe it and escape? Stop it. Focus on counting.
At 568 steps, my left foot catches on an exposed root, but luckily, I catch myself from falling fully. Peter rushes over to my side to scream at me for slowing the pace. I ignore him. Where was I?
At 2,558 steps, we climb a hill, separating momentarily from the baggage train as it takes a longer route. By the time we catch back up to the baggage train, the searing pain in my feet starts to worry me. My mind conjures images of a festering open wound being continually rubbed in the mud we trudge through.
“You all right, Nolan?” Caleb calls from behind.
“2,563 steps,” I holler back in response, pain evident in my tone.
“That can’t be right. I’m at 3,233,” he calls back, keeping the banter alive.
“You two, shut your mouths,” yells Peter, who jogs past us, ruining the distraction.
We’re well past eight thousand steps when we come upon a road that cuts through a forest. The entire way, we’ve had the sounds of the drums to guide us, but here those noises give way to a more nerve-racking sound, one that dictates life and death: gunfire. The staccato barks echo through the forest like the angry song of some unseen bird.
“The advance guard must already be in action,” the fat Kalykan says to his companion.
At this, I expect them to order us to halt and form back up into the perfectly aligned ranks. But instead, these madmen hurry us toward the sounds and force us to march even faster, so that the conscripts are almost running. The farther down the road we get, the clearer the music of war becomes. The earth groans beneath my bloodied feet, and the thunder of cannon fire is so loud that there’s a moment I look to the sky and wonder if it’s real or man-made.
I’ve been so focused on counting my steps that I belatedly realize that the soldiers’ columns that had started the march in front of us are now mostly behind us. Some stand off to the sides of the forest road, loading their weapons and readying themselves for war. Few, if any, pay us any mind.
At the head of the army is a group of men on horseback. Each wears a metal helmet with some type of scrap-metal face covering hanging from it. Wouldn’t be quite right to call the covering a mask, rather it’s a sheet with two small slits that make for barely enough room for the eyes to see through.
The Kalykan who first briefed us at the draft barks a command for us to stop in place. Once we’ve complied, he steps up and salutes the group of men.
“Guard Lieutenant Emmanuel Hoods of the Thirty-Second Conscript Battalion reporting for duty. What are your orders, sir?”
A voice made inhuman by the face covering acknowledges the lieutenant. “Get them to the front, Hoods. The advance guard needs a shield to sell this ruse. We’ll engage when the fish bites.”
The lieutenant salutes in response, turns, and relays the order to the entire conscript battalion. As I pass the officers on horses, I recognize that my assessment was incorrect. Not all of them are wearing the face coverings. One stands apart. He bears his face for all to see and seems openly bored with waiting. His gray duster jacket splits to either side of his horse, and his black gloves blend into his black horse. I’m unable to linger long enough to get a better look at him before we emerge from the forest and my senses are overcome with the madness of war.
We find ourselves at the edge of the bramble, standing atop a hillock. Below us: chaos.
The battle appears to be taking place on what once was green, pastoral fields divided only by the road we’ve followed into oblivion. However, these fields are no longer green but are alternating swathes of brown mud swales and charred remains of vegetation. Great craters scar the landscape, collecting pools of rainwater littered with the bloated corpses of both man and beast. Once-mighty poplars, oaks, and walnut trees along the road are now broken splinters and burned stumps. A thick, unnerving mist hangs over the field, calling to mind the foreboding churchyard back in Mustang Prairie on one of Mother Spring’s chilly morning[HR1] s[MB2] .
My eyes naturally flick to the Kalykan standards adorned with the gammadon, hanging limp in the still air. They are held among many hundreds of men standing shoulder to shoulder with their weapons pointed at a fog so thick that I can’t see to the other side of the battlefield. Every so often, the flickers of cannon and artillery light up the crowd of men, followed a moment later by a dull boom.
I blink and try to shake the cobwebs loose. Another gun goes off. The Kalykan artillery position is located behind the columns of the advance guard, but the Kalykans’ canons aren’t the only firing.
The Cenecans, my countrymen, must also have cannons firing from across the foggy battlefield. Most miss their marks, but even from afar and despite the fog, every now and then an explosion appears among the Kalykan lines and men are flung like rag dolls to their violent deaths.
Hoods screams to our group: “Group Eleven, to the front!”
No one stands up to the lieutenant. No one argues and says it’s a bad idea to send untrained and unarmed conscripts to the front line. Instead, the column of men I’m tethered to makes its way into the heart of the battle. It’s like they are immune to fear, and I have no choice but to swallow mine.
“You heard the guard lieutenant: get to the front,” Peter hollers. I can hear him, but I can’t see him. It sounds like his voice is coming from behind us.
I am overwhelmed with the belief that everyone converging on this battlefield is destined to perish, that each time a cannonball or bullet is discharged, it will find its mark, and one or more of the men around me will fall. There’s no point in fighting, and so I do not fight. I think back to the stories of Cenecan bravery that my father and grandfather used to tell, bold words from men who never in their lives saw war.
But as Peter leads us through the ranks of Kalykan soldiers toward the front of the battle, as I see men loading weapons and officers drawing their swords and galloping their horses this way and that, I’m all but overcome with terror. Chained to a line of prisoners, I have no choice.
Group Eleven is to be placed in front of the first row of soldiers. This will be our doom.
As I step over a conscripted man’s corpse that is missing an arm, a dark realization dawns on me: they mean for us to be a type of shield to save the lives of their citizen soldiery at the front. That’s what the officer meant in the forest when he said that the advance guard needed a shield.
That shield is us.
A man on horseback pacing back and forth behind the column yells, “Hold the line, advance guard.”
Cenecan and Kalykan cannons increase their rates of fire until the resulting near-constant earthquake makes it difficult to discern from which direction the projectiles originate. As our conscript group passes one of these massive guns, I fixate on its wheels and how each time it’s fired, it’s forced a cart’s length backward in the mud. It takes two whole men just to march it back into position, where it is reloaded and prepared for the next barrage.
Peter’s voice is somehow audible over the din as we reach the front of the column. It’s as though the Kalykans at the front are fighting against the fog itself, shooting into the inky smoke with abandon. Worse still, the enemy they fight are my brethren. Men who would come into my shop for a fitting. Men I’d liked to fight alongside, against these Kalykan dogs.
“Group Eleven, form ranks!”
Once again, momentum propels me forward when every fiber of my being is telling me to flee. A cannonball whistles above my head before slamming into the ground at the back of our column. The projectile hops like a rabbit between Kalykan ranks, taking the leg of a soldier here, the arm of another there.
“Get in position, you worthless scum,” a Kalykan in the row shouts. “Do your damned jobs.”
I trudge forward until one of the soldiers grabs me harshly by the back of my shirt, holding me in place. “You stop here, when the—” I don’t catch what he says because a bullet takes him through the face, splitting his mouth open like a rotten pumpkin. The row of Kalykans we are supposed to be shielding respond immediately, firing volley after volley into the mist. Some use our shoulders to steady their weapons while others simply fire their repeating rifles inches from the back of our heads, adding to the maelstrom of chaos.
When one of the older conscripts on the chain gang sees this, he panics and drops to the ground. But the soldier directly behind him opens fire point-blank, into his back.
“Stand, you bastards!” the soldier yells. “Your miserable lives depend on it.”
The smoke from the battle has now grown so thick that it obscures the sun, which is now veiled in a gray shroud, and my mind, so disturbed by the sight, worries that it will be permanent.
How long will I remain a spectator?
Another cannonball explodes midair, sending numerous splinters of hot metal into our number and tearing off the head of a conscript farther down our line.
I instinctually glance to the end of our line, expecting to see Peter telling us to remain firm, but he is nowhere to be found. Instead, I see that roughly half our number has been felled. Yet by some miracle, Caleb is still standing. His gaze meets mine, and we share a moment of true terror. A bullet whizzes past my arm and takes some of the thin shirt with it—a reminder that survival here is a matter of random chance.
“Conscripts, ready bayonets.” A loud voice pierces through the thunder. “Prepare a charge.”
The Kalykan behind me nudges my back, and a quick glance left and right shows me that the surviving conscripts have their fake rifles held up as though they were preparing for a brave charge to stab to death the entire Cenecan army with blunted wooden toys. Barely believing the insanity of the moment, I follow suit.
The cannon fire suddenly stops. At once, half the sound dominating the air ceases. What’s going on? My back feels like a weight has lifted off it. I turn and notice the entire advance guard has backed up thirty paces, creating distance between us and them. There’s confusion among our group. Are they leaving us?No, they’re standing with their rifles pointed toward the enemy. They’re using us as decoys to bait the enemy into attacking.
As the acrid smoke from various fires crawls toward us over the battlefield, the air becomes suffocatingly hot, like being in an oven. It reminds me of the thunderheads that we’d see upon the horizon during the middle of summer. The kind Sister Summer would send to spit lightning and quake the earth with to signal their arrival. Then, tendrils of the smoke appear to turn crimson. In my hallucinatory state, I think for a moment that the blood of all the dead has mixed into the air, giving the smoke that unnatural color.
But to my horror, the cloud births forth not corpses but Cenecans, dozens of them, in uniforms of scarlet and white. With a mighty cry, they rush through the breach of smoke and charge us, their bayonets fixed on our hearts and their muzzles laughing fire into our midst. I fear to even extend an arm, as it will surely mean losing it, but I muster the courage to prepare for their charge with my wooden rifle defensively held in front of me. Doing so causes my pants to fall, and I grab at them in panic. This momentary lapse in concentration is enough for three Cenecan soldiers to reach within striking distance of the foremost conscripts. But before they can make contact, the Kalykans situated thirty paces behind us open fire. I watch helplessly as both Cenecans and conscripts fall like harvest wheat to the reaper’s scythe.
Another cannonball whistles past my shoulder and shears off both of an approaching Cenecan’s legs. The Kalykans now open their cannon fire directly at the advancing Cenecan units, with no regard for the conscripts that stand among their target. Instinctually, I fall to the ground and cover my head. After a moment, a soft sound somehow pierces through all the harsh ones.
“Save me,” a ragged voice calls out. A Cenecan crawls toward me. He is missing both his legs. His dark skin has gone ashen and pale. Shuddering, I try to crawl away from the man but find the chain on my ankle pulled taught. I cannot move away.
Violent hands throw me to the ground, and I’m mounted by one of the three Cenecan soldiers that charged us earlier. Somehow, he survived. He lost his two-cornered hat in the frenzy, revealing locks of dark, curly hair, like many in my village and the surrounding towns are known to have. His hands find my throat, and I feel my windpipe constrict. I grab at his wrists and try desperately to pull him off me. When that doesn’t work, I search for a rock, a piece of shrapnel, anything that could be my salvation.
Nothing.
The world fades from my vision, and our eyes meet. He’s young, barely out of his teenage years. His eyes are wild, but in any other moment, I’d bet they would look kind. I wonder if he has ever heard of Mustang Prairie. In another life, I could have sold him a pair of work boots. The look we share is profound. I’m you, I want to shout. I’m one of your countrymen. But he has seen his friends die today. There is no room in his heart for kindness anymore. His grip tightens. My throat clicks, and my eyes roll back.
It’s odd what the mind seems to notice when approaching death. I can’t seem to stop staring at his golden, tasseled epaulettes that hang from each shoulder. Each time he moves forward to create leverage to take my life, he grunts and the epaulettes jiggle like a wind chime in a storm.
As my consciousness slips away, there’s a certain part of me that rages against the blackness. Thoughts of Emily and Sarah penetrate my mind and make me feel as though I’ve lost them all over again. My daughter. That’s what I want my last thought to be as I leave this place. Why can’t I picture her face?
No, I scream inside. You cannot take that from me too!
There’s a ringing in my ears that grows louder as my vision narrows. Soon that ringing regains order and swells to a heartbeat that pounds in my ears.
Buh-bump …
Buh-bump …
Buh-bump …
But the sound doesn’t fade, even when I’ve drifted to the darkness.