Not so Morpeth, whose body is barely recognizable in the burning heap–

“They’re going to pay for that,” the Mayor says, his voice rough from the smoke–

“Come on!” I shout. “We can make it if we run!”

“This isn’t how it was supposed to go, Todd,” he says angrily, as we head up the road. “They can’t come as far as the city, though, and I think they’ve got vertical limitations, too, which must be why they didn’t fire them from the hilltop–”

“Just shut up and run!” I say, huffing Angharrad along, thinking that we ain’t gonna make it by the time the next fires come–

“I’m telling you this because you shouldn’t think we’re beaten!” the Mayor yells. “This isn’t a victory for them. It’s merely a setback! We’ll still go after them, we’ll still–”

And then there’s a sudden shriek in the air above us, whipping by like a bullet and–

–the whole hillside explodes outwards like a volcano of dust and fire and the blast wave knocks me and the Mayor and Angharrad down to the ground and a hail of pebbles splatters down on top of us, big boulders landing nearby that could smash us flat–

“What?!” the Mayor says, looking back up–

The dry falls is collapsing into the emptied pool below, taking all the spinning fire Spackle with it, dust and smoke heaving into the sky as the zigzag road is obliterated, too, the whole front section of the hill tumbling down on itself, leaving a jagged wreck along the top–

“Was that yer men?” I shout, my ears ringing from the boom. “Was that the artillery?”

“We didn’t have time!” he shouts back, his eyes reading the destruckshun. “And we don’t have anything like that kind of power.”

The first billows of smoke start to clear a little, showing a big, gaping funnel where the lip of the hill was, jagged rocks everywhere, a scar ripped right outta the hillside–

And Viola, I think–

“Indeed,” says the Mayor, realizing it, too, a sudden, ugly pleasure in his voice.

And standing up in front of a field of dead soldiers, a field covered with the burnt remains of men I saw walking and talking not ten minutes before, men who fought and died for him, in a battle he started–

In front of all of this–

The Mayor says, “Your friends have joined the war.”

And he smiles.

Weapons of War

(THE RETURN)

The blast hits us all.

The hill that overlooks the valley is torn from the earth. The archers of the Land are killed instantly, as are all the Land near the edge of the hill when it exploded, the Sky and I only saved by a matter of body-lengths.

And the blast keeps on occurring, echoing through the voice of the Land, stretching back down the river, amplifying over and over until it seems to be continually happening, the shock of it roaring through us again and again and again, leaving the Land dazed as one, wondering what the sheer size of the explosion means.

Wondering what will come next.

Wondering if it will be big enough to kill us all.

The Sky stopped the river shortly after the sun rose. He sent a message through the Pathways to the Land who were building the dam far upriver, telling them to raise their final walls, drop their final stones, turn the river back onto itself. The river began to subside, slowly at first, then faster and faster until the arcs of colour thrown up by the spray of the waterfall disappeared and the vast width of the river became a muddy plain. As the sound of rushing water vanished, we could hear the voices of the Clearing raised in bafflement and fear at the bottom of the hill.

And then came the hour of the archers, and our eyes went with them. They had slipped beneath the falls under cover of darkness, waiting until the sun rose and the water stopped.

And then they raised their weapons and fired.

Every part of the Land watched as it happened, seeing through the eyes of the archers as the burning blades tore through the Clearing, as the Clearing ran and screamed and died. We watched as one as our victory unfolded, watched as they were powerless to retaliate–

And then came the sudden tearing in the air, the whoosh of something moving so fast it was sensed more than seen, a final, thudding flash that filled the mind and soul and voice of every member of the Land, signalling that our apparent victory would come at a cost, that the Clearing had bigger weapons than we thought, that now they would use them to destroy us all–

But further explosions do not come.

The vessel that flew over us, I show to the Sky when the Land begins to stumble to its feet again. He helps me up from where the blast knocked us back, neither of us hurt more than small cuts but the ground around us littered with bodies of the Land.

The vessel, the Sky agrees.

We go right to work, fearing a second blast every moment. He sends out commands to the Land for immediate regrouping, and I help him move the wounded to healing crèches, a new camp already organizing itself farther up the dry riverbed even in the early moments after the blast because that is what the Sky has ordered, a place for the voice of the Land to gather itself together again, to become one again.

But not too far up the riverbed. The Sky wants the Clearing still in physical sight, even though the hill is so destroyed now there is no longer space for an army to march down it, unless it were to climb down single file.

There are other ways, he shows to me, and already I can hear the messages being passed from him to the Pathways, messages that rearrange where the body of the Land rests, messages that tell it to start moving along roads that the Clearing is unaware of.

It is strange, he shows, hours later, when we finally stop to eat and a second blast has still not come. To fire once, but not again.

Maybe they only had the one weapon, I show. Or they know that such weapons are useless against the force of a backed-up river. If they destroy us, we will release it and destroy them.

Mutually assured destruction, the Sky says, words that catch oddly in his voice, like foreign things. His voice turns in on itself for a long moment, searching deep within the voice of the Land, looking for answers.

Then he stands. The Sky must leave the Return for now.

Leave? I show. But there is work to do–

There are things the Sky must first do alone. He looks down on my bewilderment. Meet me by my steed at dusk.

Your steed? I show, but he is already walking away.

As the afternoon dwindles away, I do as the Sky asks and walk back up the dry riverbed, past the cookfires and healing crèches, past the Land’s soldiers, recovering after the blast, tending to their weapons, readying themselves for the next attack, and mourning the body of the Land that died.

But the Land must also keep living, and as I get far enough upriver from the blast site, I pass members of the Land regurgitating the materials used to build new bivouacs, with several huts already reaching their way into the still smoky evening. I walk by the Land tending to flocks of whitebirds and scriven, part of our living larder. I walk by the bivouacs of grain and the fish stores, replenished now from the emptied river. I walk past the Land digging new latrine holes and even through a group of young ones singing the songs that will teach them how to sort out the history of the Land from all the voices, how to turn and twist and weave the mass of sound into one single voice that will tell them who they are, always and for ever.

A song whose language I still struggle to speak, even when the Land talks to me at the pace they would to one of those children.