IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume
II: Tests of Fire and Blood
Chapter 18 Battle of the Tanks
Wednesday, April 29, 2708 My hammock trembles in the
night. Another pesky earthquake, but
that rumble in the distance...books start to fall on top of me. I flail out of my hammock in a half-asleep
panic and then realize that no natural quake of the earth shakes our rest as
the rumble mounts to a roar. "Everybody out!"
Cyran shouts as e runs through the building.
"Get to your troop leaders--everybody who's leaving, leave now! The rest of you man your posts." Through the library window, as I fling on
clothes and my pack, I watch Malcolm go to block a gaping rift in the wall,
gripping the surgery-cleaver, as he fills it up just by standing there. Inanely, I notice that he hasn't shaved; he
looks big and menacing with his bristle-darkened chins. (I wait by my crack in
the wall as the noise grows more and more painful, the cleaver heavier in my
hand. But I can lift anything I have
to. Explosions in the distance light the
night, and then comes fire. Kids
scramble everywhere, as lithe as monkeys, but that's not my power; mine is the
power not to budge.) I run out into the night,
casting about in the chaos for Lucinda's blocky silhouette while children
scamper frantically in all directions.
The moon comes out from behind the clouds, just a few days past the
full; in the sudden glow I catch the sight of some lanky teenager hoisting a
boy with a gun up onto the wall--and the child has no feet--before Kief
stumbles into me, grabs my wrist too hard and hisses, "This way!" as
he drags me along. He shouted just now; it
only sounded like a hiss to me because the roaring builds so loud it
hurts. And to think we felt so proud of
ourselves, so safe about disabling four of them--there must be dozens of
tanks all converging on us at once! They
must've cached them all over the countryside. (Now the noise grows so
deafening that it rattles loose shingles from the roofs. I can feel my dentures vibrate in my
mouth. Now it--behind me! Tanks already breached the walls behind
me! I watch a streak of light shoot into
the library and my heart wants to burst like that library bursts, flames
licking up all the pages that I will never turn.) Hands throw rifles arcing
through the air to kids perched on the wall.
I see a girl catch hers with one good arm and one stump--Cyran has left
the defense of this doomed base to our disabled. The cynical necessity of what e does locks me
in place with pure rage till Kief jerks me out of it. Our feet pound the ground till we reach the
rest of Lucinda's troop. Oh, I look
forward to battle all right, because a person wants to kill after seeing a wall
manned by the sick and injured like that.
Let's start with Cyran first and foremost, why don't we, by gun or knife
or teeth, but anyone'll do, don't get in my way, man! Cyran most of all because I agree with hir
and I hate hir for making too much sense. (Children scream--a
thousand children scream, running like rabbits with tails a-fire, more and more
blasts from more and more tanks--God, how many are there? I jog as fast as my body will let me from my
harmless little crack in the wall, in search of some other post that I can
better block with my bulk.) "Hurry!" Lucinda leads us out through the crack that
Malcolm had guarded before it became pointless.
"We have to circle behind and harry their flanks before they get
here," she tells us. Imad fills my
arms with sloshing, pine-and-piss-stinking Molotov cocktails, and I run like
crazy with the others, cursing Lufti hysterically when the boy starts to light
a cigarette nearby. Kief pinches the
match out without breaking stride, nor does he even glance at Lufti when the
boy protests and he cuffs him for it.
Then Kief takes some of the Molotovs from me for himself. We tear through leaves out
onto the broken road, leaping from scale to scale of pavement, too fast to even
think of how we know where to land our feet in the dark. How far, how fast do we have to run? How slow does a Charadocian tank move? They must've only recently reinvented the
ugly things, on research funded by dear Aunt Soskia, no doubt. What can they do, and what limits them? I'm not even fully awake, yet, and I'm trying
to think? I feel cold seep into my
sleeve with the sharp smell of phosphorus-saturated pine-whiskey. I realize that I've splashed myself with
flammable fluid--great thing to do in the middle of combat, Deirdre! ("...souvenir," I
hear someone say. He has climbed down
from the safety of his tank, he has planted his boot on Cantimar's back, her
face in the dirt. And he doesn’t see me
behind and to the left of him, with all his focus on his prize. Now he yanks at that long, dark braid of
hers, jerks her face up muddy and wincing, as he brings out his knife... Heavy falls the cleaver,
with the weight of an arm like mine behind it; between the neck and clavicle it
falls, the blade designed to shear through bone. Heavy falls the blood all over me as I
amputate a body from a soul. I watch as
if outside myself. I passed the test.) Hooves pound towards
us. Two horses thunder our way with
identical little boys on their backs.
They crouch into the wind, grinning madly; their fine hair looks demonic
in their kewpie peaks, their elfin features sharp and menacing. Hard to say by the moonlight, but I think
they're redheads. I don't even see who hoists
me up behind the rider, but now I lock my knees tightly to the heaving animal's
ribs, with no hands free to hold on with as I hug my fumy, rag-stuffed bottles
like treasures stolen from some angry fairytale giant three strides
behind. I look to my right and Kief
rides next to me behind the other twin, beautiful in a nightmare sort of way,
as burdened as I am with nascent firebombs. Suddenly I laugh, swept up
in the rhythms of this violent night, my hair streaming behind me like black
fire and the winds of war full in my face!
It doesn't cool my anger but fans it, strengthens and directs it. Tonight I can do anything, anything at all in
the name of the Cause, and right will take my side--total freedom! I gallop, rise and fall and rise and fall
into something dreadful and desirable, my conscience left behind me in my dust. (I help Cantimar to her
feet, there amid the screams and chaos, explosions of sound and lurid
light. The fever has her tonight; I
don't believe she comprehends. We move
slowly through the mayhem, she and I. I pick
up as many wounded kids as I can, and she follows my example, eyes clouded,
moving in a dream, but soon puts each one down that she lifts, no strength left
in her. I take them up for her, and
carry them in turn to the shell of a room already blasted out, no longer worthy
as a target. Then I go back for
more. Some of these teens stand nearly
as tall as I do, but I can lift anything I have to. Cannon blasts and bullets fly around me, but
I don't pay attention. Why should I care
whether I live or die?) Louder and louder the tanks
assault my ears--the drivers must go deaf, must not hear death galloping their
way. Kief grins, an orange glow on his
teeth as he lights his cigar. Oh,
reckless, reckless night! Now we burst through
trees from the dead road onto the living one, the leaves slapping my gasping
face like a wake-up call. The tanks loom
right in front of us. (Now tanks roll right in
front of me. I watch them plow through
our cornfield and turn it into mash. I
watch the treads chew up our cemetery, knocking down crosses like desperate
little wooden figures with arms outstretched in vain to stop them--nobody gets
any peace tonight.) Still grinning, Kief
synchronizes with the horse's motion to light a bomb on the cigar clenched
between his teeth. Then he hurls it in
an arc of streaming sparks over the head of the hard-riding imp. I see it burst harmlessly against the tank's
tough shell, but oh, how it lights up the night! (Fire shoots right past my
shoulder. I turn, slowly, with Cantimar
leaning on my arm, to face my makeshift infirmary. Direct hit.) Kief lights another cigar,
kissed against his own, twirling them together lovingly, and then passes it to
me, in tune with the rhythm of our steeds.
I breathe in smoke that I can hardly taste for the stinging fumes of my
burden. Then it's my turn. My horse leaps on the ascendant as I ignite a
Molotov cocktail and hurl it right into the lead-tank's treads. It explodes like a star rising up from Hell,
rips tread from gears and sends the tank spinning, while its brother monsters
swing their cannons this way and that in search of us. "Down!" Kief
shouts. As one our driving imps pull at
their bridles to make their trained mounts roll to the side onto the
ground. I jump clear just in time--as a
stream of fire rakes over us, right where our bodies used to be. The twins grab bombs from
us but leave us our share as we run forward, the forest blazing behind us from
the cannon blasts. I can taste the
tobacco now: sweet, brandy-soaked savor of rebellion. I scramble right up the side of a tank, chuck
a Molotov into the cockpit and leap away again, propelled by the explosion,
laughing more wildly than I ever have in my life! (“Dr. De Groot? Dr. De Groot--thank God I found you!" I turn, stunned, to see
Solon, Head Butler of Mukheymer Manor, leap lightly from a tank and run towards
me. "Good God, man, you're
injured!" I glance down at all the
blood on me. "Wounded
children," I say. "I
carried...tried to save..." Their
blood so blends with that of my enemy that I can't see a difference. His alien hand touches my
arm. "Such a good-hearted man--to
try and heal even your captors!" Captors? I stare aghast at this man, Cantimar
oblivious on my arm.) I hear the sound of
screaming, screaming--I turn around to see and the cigar falls from my
lips. He crawls out of the wreckage of
his tank, all of him torch, blinding bright yet still alive enough to scream
and not stop screaming. Frantically he
rolls in the dirt but phosphorus clings and burns deep. He can't possibly live--his entire skin has
charred. So in horror I grab up a rock
and go after him, I pound the blackened skull till the screaming stops and we
both get some peace. (“Mr. Mukheymer cursed the
day he'd ever told you about the university," Solon says solicitously,
"once he'd realized it had become a rebel enclave. When you didn't come back he gave himself no
peace; he wouldn't rest until he'd agitated the army into coming to your
rescue." Rescue? I look around at the university burning in
the night, and all of the bodies, all the little bodies.) Bullets whir past me and I
roll back into forest-shelter.
"Hurry!" Kief shouts, "They're getting past!" I find my last Molotov where it dropped, half
of its contents gurgled into the dirt.
I'm going to have to make a little count a lot. I hurl it under the nearest tank to grind by,
aiming for the spot where I remember the fuel-tank hangs. Bad design decision, Soskia. Again I hear the explosion and the screams
but this time I don't look, the light all behind me as I run into a stretch of
rainforest not yet ignited. Guerrillas do this, attack
and then scatter, no cowardice to it, but I don't run from the bullets behind
me, not entirely, I just run. I slam
into a tree, put the tree between me and parting shots, gasp and gasp and then
throw up--violent heaves, badly hung-over from the brandy of war, sickened of
all past mirth. (“But it's all right now,
Dr. De Groot. I've come to take you
home." Home? He tugs my arm. "This way, doctor. Do as I say--I can see that you're in
shock. I know what's best for you. Come with me.
There. Like that.” Cantimar moves with me, and
for the first time he notices her.
"Who's she?" he asks, gesturing with a pistol. "A fellow captive? Mr. Mukheymer will give her refuge, too, I'm
sure of it. You have only to ask." For a second I hope. Maybe I can salvage one life. I can...I can see how full her fevered lips
are, see how perfectly formed beneath their temporary blisters that will fade
back down in a day or two, I see the lips part for just a hint of a questioning
sound... "Her? She's a rebel, my prisoner of war. But she's young and naive; with time in a
reform school, she should..." I
hear the bang at the same time that I feel her full weight sag on my arm. Solon lowers his gun. "I regret to report that we have no
facilities for prisoners at this time." I should've killed
him. I should never have just stood
there rooted in horror. But by now the
cynical mind has managed to kick in--if I attack him, I die accomplishing
absolutely nothing. Already they must've
picked off my half-healed amputees from the wall, one by one. If I play along, on the other hand, I can
position myself easily to where I can smuggle supplies from the rich to their
enemies, spy on the secrets of the arrogant, and eventually rejoin my own. Cantimar drops into the dirt and I let him
lead me away.) The roar of machinery
dwindles, headed towards Base Camp. I
drop into the first stream I stumble upon, to wash the pine-whiskey off before
the conflagration comes my way, or so I tell myself, working the purifying mud
into my clothes and rinsing it out again as the fire dwindles in the dank
rainforest, dying back down to nothing but a smear of ember-spangled darkness
and a stench upon the air. Yeah, get the
old blood out, too, while I'm at it; the too-flammable-for-turpentine extract
of the pitch-pine seems to have stain-removing properties, if the first glow of
dawn doesn't deceive. Then, dressed again and
heavy with water, I climb back up the bank and wonder how to rejoin the others
when we didn't have time to set a rendezvous point. After awhile I figure that the logical thing
to do would be to head back towards Petro's Canyon. Yeah, that's the best bet, that's what the
rest of Lucinda’s band would think of, too. ("How have they treated you, sir?"
he asks. "How are you
feeling?" "Hungry," I say,
hating myself for saying it, hating myself more than ever in a lifetime of
self-hatred. "Ah, of course!" he says sympathetically. "They must starve their prisoners.") I guess it's official. I'm a soldier, now. |
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