Empire of Ashes

Chapter LII - To the Slaughter

"If anyone is standing next to Tom, can you send him my way?" I asked. My answer was empty faces and odd looks. More than a minute passed that way.

"Tom," I repeated, more forcefully. "And you can come out. Better to die where the sun is shining."

Nobody moved, and nobody spoke, I swore at them all, using the filthy words I had learned from the northern warband, and then I turned on my heel and stalked back outside. Anlai raised a mocking eyebrow. He was still on his damned horse, but he had sheathed his blade and strapped the shield back to the saddle.

"No luck, slave girl?" he asked, jumping down from the horse, who took the opportunity to stretch its neck to the ground. The question didn't merit a reply, really, so I threw him a glance like sour milk.

"Get them all outside," I told him, "however the hell you like."

I was surprised when he grinned at me, but I was even more surprised when he obeyed. There were no gentle reassurances or warnings from Anlai. He stalked right into the tunnel, and I imagined the slaves within were scrambling to get out of his way. There was a lot of swearing, several mentions of cowardice, and by the yelps of pain, shoving.

And the sheep started coming out in their twos and threes. Some were sobbing, but it was impossible to tell whether that had been Anlai or the Anglians. I caught the gelding's reins, and he nuzzled at my shoulder while we watched them come, a trickle at first, then a veritable flood.

I saw beaten, abused bodies. I saw eyes narrowed against the glare of the summer sun when they had lived in darkness for so long. But worst of all, I saw children clutching men and women. Not their parents — no, I doubted many parents were left. They didn't look as scared as everyone else. They were just pale, drawn, and unnaturally still. Exhausted. We had worked on the farm as children, but not all day, every day, at such hard labour. These children were wasting away.

There was one little girl near me who caught my eye. It was the dark-haired one, the one called Emri. She was clutching some kind of dolly made of straw in bruised, skeletal hands. I found myself staring at her nails in particular — torn, flaky and stained red by the iron dust.

Eventually, Tommas worked his way through the crowd to find me. I was glad to see him alive — unharmed, even. I was willing to bet he felt the same way about me ... with an added dose of astonishment if the way his eyes widened and his mouth opened were any indication.

"Gods, Lyra. I thought they had killed you," he mouthed.

The corners of my mouth twitched upwards. "It isn't as easy as you might think, Tom."

And then he eyed the two northerners and I saw the spark of understanding: how I had escaped, what the smoke had been for, and what was going to happen now.

"These are your friends?" He said it aloud — he was far too nice to talk about people in a way they couldn't understand, most likely because he had to put up with the same thing constantly.

The first northerner gave him a little nod of acknowledgement, even though he hadn't the slightest idea who Tommas was, and Eirac grinned. I thought those were nice gestures. And there was Anlai, the arrogant prick, staring straight over his head, because interacting with a southern peasant was beneath him. It had taken him weeks to start treating me like a human being, after all. Tommas wasn't getting any shortcuts.

"Anlai, this is Tom," I said aloud, and then mouthed, "Tom, this is Anlai."

He got me to repeat it a few times because it was an unfamiliar name, and it was hard to know how to pronounce a word from lip reading alone. Eventually, I gave up and spelt it for him in the dust.

"An - lay," he tried, frowning at the letters.

"An – lie."

He repeated it, and I shrugged at him. It was close enough.

Anlai didn't understand what we were doing, of course, but he was trying to pretend that he didn't give a shit. He asked shortly, "Can this wait?"

I tossed my shoulders up and down. "Well, there's nothing better to do. This flock of idiots would piss themselves in the shield wall."

He shook his head, so very amused. "You have become too accustomed to the company of warriors, Lyra. They will do."

That earned a sceptical look on my part. If we were going to be fighting warriors, and our army was mostly untrained farmers who had never seen a battle in their lives, it seemed only sensible that they had a drop of courage. But I rolled my eyes eventually and looked away. He was right, in a way — they would have to do. We didn't have anything else.

My gaze wandered around, haughty and cold and fixed above any of the sheep. The other tunnel was still burning — a bonfire made of support beams and shattered oil lamps. There was no way to put it out, so it would have to be left. I just hoped there was no one left down in the tunnel, breathing smoke and roasting alive.

"We should move," Tom muttered from behind me, and while I didn't give any indication that I had heard, I agreed wholeheartedly. This was no place to stand, and if the soldiers managed to get themselves organised, we would find ourselves caught between swords and the flames.

I would have liked to defer to Anlai for a second time, but it was doubtful that he would obey unless I had at least tried to do it myself.

"This is your only chance," I called out, loud as my raw throat could manage. "We're going to fight the Anglians, and with your help we can win. How does freedom sound? I can't believe you've been in the dark long enough to forget the world outside."

"If we help you, they will kill us all," one man cried, and shouts of agreement rang out like echoes.

Sheep, the lot of them. They didn't want to save themselves. If we had brought them out of Canton and struck off their chains, and there hadn't been an Anglian in sight, they might have dared keep their freedom. But they wouldn't take it for themselves. I made a sound of disgust and looked away.

"Kill you?" Anlai laughed. "They will strip the flesh from your bones and carve you into little pieces as an example to the others."

"Not helpful," I hissed at him, but he waved me away.

"The fire is set already. These men are dead." He kicked an Anglian's corpse. "And you will be blamed — every last one of you. You had better find your balls, gentlemen, because you are all going to die for this."

Muttering broke out among the crowd. Many of them were eyeing Anlai like they would very much like to punch him, if only because he had just accused them of cowardice. But the overwhelming majority were proving him right by cowering or shaking or weeping.

"You've scared them," I observed dryly. "Now perhaps a rousing speech..."

"That's Tem's speciality. I just gave them something to think about."

I snorted because the idea of Anlai giving any sort of rousing speech was laughable, now that I thought about it. I could have tried in his stead, but I had difficulty inspiring myself, let alone anybody else. So we would just have to get them to Temris and hope he could do the rest.

"You aren't safe here," I shouted over the ruckus. "We're very close to the wall. When the Anglians march, this is the first place they will attack. We need to move towards the centre."

That worked in a way that none of our invitations to fight had. Spooked, a few men broke into a fast walk in the proposed direction, and soon the others were starting to follow, afraid of being left behind to be butchered. The northerners and I walked behind with the horses to usher along anyone who was lagging behind.

And so we herded our flock of sheep towards the centre of Canton, where we would make the shield wall, and they all bleated and worried because they were heading for the slaughter whichever way they walked.