Use of Weapons

He rolled over, away from the achingly blue sky, to stare at the blurred dust.

Eventually, reluctantly, he pushed himself over, and then half up, then to his knees, then clutched at the tent-pole crutch and forced down on it, and got to his feet, ignoring all the pestering aches and pains, and staggered for the piled wreckage of the walls, and somehow dragged and hauled and scraped his way to the top, where the walls ran smooth and wide for a way, like roadways in the sky, and the bodies of a dozen or so soldiers lay, blood pooling, the ramparts around them scarred with bullet holes and grey with dust.

He staggered towards them, as though anxious to be one of their number. He sca

It was some time before they spotted the «Z» sign he made from the bodies on the top of the walls, but in that language it was a complicated letter, and he kept getting mixed up.

I

No lights burned on the Staberinde. It sat squat against the grey leechings of the false dawn, its dim silhouette a piled cone which only hinted at the concentric loops and lines of its decks and guns. Some effect of the marsh mists between him and the ziggurat of the ship made it look as though its black shape was not attached to the land at all, but floated over it, poised like some threatening dark cloud.

He watched with tired eyes, stood on tired feet. This close to the city and the ship, he could smell the sea, and — nose this close to the concrete of the bunker — a limey scent, acrid and bitter. He tried to remember the garden and the smell of flowers, the way he sometimes did whenever the fighting started to seem just too futile and cruel to have any point whatsoever, but for once he could not conjure up that faintly-remembered, beguilingly poignant perfume, or recall anything good that had come out of that garden (instead he saw again those sun-ta

The night beyond the bunker was warm and oppressive, the land's day-time heat trapped and pressed to the ground by the weight of clouds above, sticking against the skin of the land like some sweat-soaked shirt. Perhaps the wind changed then, for he thought he detected the smell of the grass and the hay in the air, swept hundreds of kilometres from the great prairies inland by some wind since spent, the old fragrance going stale now. He closed his eyes and leant his forehead against the rough concrete of the bunker wall, beneath the slit he'd been looking through; his fingers splayed out lightly on the hard, grainy surface, and he felt the warm material press into his flesh.

Sometimes all he wanted was for it all to be over, and the way of it did not really seem to matter. Cessation was all, simple and demanding and seductive, and worth almost anything. That was when he had to think of Darckense, trapped on the ship, held captive by Elethiomel. He knew she didn't love their cousin any more; that had been something brief and juvenile, something she'd used in her adolescence to get back at the family for some imagined slight, some favouring of Livueta over her. It might have seemed like love at the time, but he suspected even she knew it was not, now. He believed that Darckense really was an unwilling hostage; many people had been taken by surprise when Elethiomel attacked the city; just the speed of the advance had trapped half the population, and Darckense had been unlucky to be discovered trying to leave from the chaos of the airport; Elethiomel had had agents out looking for her.

So for her he had to go on fighting, even if he had almost worn away the hate in his heart for Elethiomel, the hate that had kept him fighting these last years, but now was ru

How could Elethiomel do it? Even if he didn't still love her (and the monster claimed that Livueta was his real desire), how could he use her like another shell stored in the battleship's cavernous magazines?

And what was he supposed to do in reply? Use Livueta against Elethiomel? Attempt the same level of cu

Already Livueta blamed him, not Elethiomel, for all that had happened. What was he supposed to do? Surrender? Barter sister for sister? Mount some mad, doomed rescue attempt? Simply attack?

He had tried to explain that only a prolonged siege guaranteed success, but argued about it so often now that he was starting to wonder if he was right.

"Sir?"

He turned, looked at the dim figures of the commanders behind him. "What?" he snapped.

"Sir," — it was Swaels — "Sir, perhaps we should be setting off now, back to headquarters. The cloud is breaking from the east, and it will be dawn soon… we shouldn't be caught in range."

"I know that," he said. He glanced out at the dark outline of the Staberinde, and felt himself flinch a little, as though he expected its huge guns to belch flame right there and then, straight at him. He drew a metal shutter across the concrete slit. It was very dark in the bunker for a second, then somebody switched on the harsh yellow lights and they all stood there, blinking in the glare.

They left the bunker; the long mass of the armoured staff car waited in the darkness. Assorted aides and junior officers leapt to attention, straightened caps, saluted and opened doors. He climbed into the car, sitting on the fur-covered rear bench, watching as three of the other commanders followed, sitting in a line opposite him. The armoured door clanged shut; the car growled and moved, bumping over the uneven ground and back into the forest, away from the dark shape resting in the night behind.

"Sir," Swaels said, exchanging looks with the other two commanders. "The other commanders and I have discussed —»

"You are going to tell me that we should attack; bomb and shell the Staberinde until it is a flaming hulk and then storm it with troop hovers," he said, holding up one hand, "I know what you've been discussing and I know what… decisions you think you've arrived at. They do not interest me."

"Sir, we all realise the strain you are under because your sister is held on the ship, but —»

"That has nothing to do with it, Swaels," he told the other man. "You insult me by implying that I even consider that a reason for holding off. My reasons are sound military reasons, and foremost of those is that the enemy has succeeded in creating a fortress that is, at the moment, almost impregnable. We must wait until the wi