Monsters of Men

“First we beat the Spackle,” says the Mayor, “then the Answer will be child’s play.”

He looks across his army of men and back up the hill to the Spackle army still marching down. Then he raises his fist and gives the loudest Noise shout of all, a shout that bores right down into the very centre of every man hearing it.

“TO BATTLE!”

“TO BATTLE!” the army cries back at him and sets off at a fierce pace outta the square, racing towards the zigzag hill–

The Mayor looks at me one last time, like he can barely keep from laughing at how much fun he’s having. And without another word, he spurs Morpeth hard in the sides and they gallop into the square after the departing army.

The army heading off to war.

Follow? Angharrad asks, fear coming off her like sweat.

“He’s right,” I say. “We can’t let him out of our sight. He’s got to keep his word. He’s got to win his war. He’s got to save her.”

For her, Angharrad thinks.

For her, I think back, all my feeling about her behind it.

And I think her name–

Viola.

And Angharrad leaps forward into battle.

{VIOLA}

Todd, I think, riding Acorn through the mash of people crowding across the road, each of them trying to run away from those awful horn blasts in one direction and the bombs of Mistress Coyle in the other.

BOOM! goes another one and I see a ball of flame coughed up into the sky. The screaming around us is almost unbearable. People ru

Gets in the way of us getting to the scout ship first.

The horn blasts again and there’s even more screaming. “We have to go, Acorn,” I say between his ears. “Whatever that sound is, the people on my ship can–”

A hand grabs my arm and nearly yanks me off the saddle.

“Give me the horse!” a man screams at me, pulling harder. “Give it to me!”

Acorn twists around to try to get away but there are too many people in the road crowding us–

“Let go!” I shout at the man.

“Give it to me!” he screams. “The Spackle are coming!”

This surprises me so much he nearly gets me off the saddle. “The what?”

But he’s not listening and even in the dying light I can see the whites of his eyes blazing in terror–

HOLD! shouts Acorn’s Noise and I grip even harder on his mane and he rears up, knocking the man away and leaping forward into the night. People scream to get out of our way and we knock more of them over as Acorn ploughs up the road, me holding on for dear life.

We reach a clearing and he charges on even faster.

“The Spackle?” I say. “What did he mean? Surely they couldn’t be–”

Spackle, Acorn thinks. Spackle army. Spackle war.

I turn to look back as he runs, back to look at the lights coming down the distant zigzag hill.

A Spackle army.

A Spackle army is coming, too.

Todd? I think, knowing that I’m getting farther away from him and the tied-up Mayor with every hoofbeat.

The best hope is the ship. They’ll be able to help us. Somehow, they’ll be able to help me and Todd.

We stopped one war, we can stop another.

And so I think his name again, Todd, sending him strength. And Acorn and I race up the road towards the Answer, towards the scout ship, and I’m hoping against hope that I’m right–

[TODD]

Angharrad runs after Morpeth as the army surges down the road in front of us, brutally knocking down any citizens of New Prentisstown who happen to be in their way. There are two battalions, the first led by a screaming Mr Hammar on horseback and a less shouty Mr Morgan leading the second behind him. It’s maybe four hundred men in all, rifles up, their faces twisted in screams and yells.

And their Noise–

Their Noise is a monstrous thing, tuned together and twisted round itself, roaring as a single voice, like a loud and angry giant pounding its way down the road.

It’s making my heart beat right outta my chest.

“Stay close to me, Todd!” the Mayor shouts from Morpeth, pulling up to my side as we ride on, fast.

“You ain’t gotta worry bout that,” I say, gripping my rifle.

“I mean, to save your life,” he says, looking over. “And don’t forget your end of the bargain either. I’d hate for there to be any casualties from friendly fire.”

And he winks at me.

Viola, I think right at him, sending it to him in a fist of Noise.

He flinches.

And he ain’t smiling so much now.

We ride after the army thru the west end of town, down the main road, past what can only be the wreckage of the original jails the Answer burnt down in their biggest attack before today. I only ever been down here once, when I ran thru it the other way with Viola in my arms, carrying her down the zigzag road when she was dying, carrying her into what I thought was safety, but all I found was the man riding by my side, the man who killed a thousand Spackle to start this war, the man who tortured Viola for informayshun he already knew, the man who murdered his own son–

“And what other kind of man would you want leading you into battle?” he says, reading my Noise. “What other kind of man is suitable for war?”

A monster, I think, remembering what Ben told me once. War makes monsters of men.

“Wrong,” says the Mayor. “It’s war that makes us men in the first place. Until there’s war, we are only children.”

Another blast of the horn comes roaring down at us, so loud it nearly takes our heads off and it puts the army off its stride for a second or two.

We look up the road to the bottom of the hill. We see Spackle torches gathering there to meet us.

“Ready to grow up, Todd?” the Mayor asks.

{VIOLA}

BOOM!

Another explosion just up ahead of us now, sending smoking debris flying high above the trees. I’m so scared I forget the state of my ankles and I try to spur on Acorn like I’ve seen in vids on my ship. I curl forward from the pain. The bandages that Lee – still out there somewhere, trying to find the Answer in the wrong place, oh please be safe, please be safe – the bandages he wound around my feet are good but the bones are still broken and for a minute the agony flashes all the way up my body, right to the throbbing burn in the band around my forearm again. I pull back my sleeve to look. The skin around the band is red and hot, the band itself still just thin steel, immovable, uncuttable, marking me as number 1391 until the day I die.

That’s the price I paid.

The price I paid to find him.

“And now we’ve got to make it worth it,” I say to Acorn, whose Noise says Girl colt back to agree with me.

The air is filling with smoke and I can see fires burning up ahead. People are still ru

If Mistress Coyle and the Answer started at the Office of the Ask, marching towards the centre of town from the east, then they’d already be past the hill where the communications tower used to be. Which is the most likely place where the scout ship landed. Mistress Coyle would have turned around and taken a fast cart to get there, to be the first one to talk to them, but who would she have left in charge?

Acorn presses ahead, around the road as it curves–

And BOOM!

There’s a flash of light as another dormitory goes up in flames, reflecting the road for a shining second–

And I see them–

The Answer.

Lines of men and women, blue As written across their fronts and sometimes even painted on their faces.

And every one with guns pointed out–

In front of carts loaded with weaponry–

And though I recognize some of them (Mistress Lawson, Magnus, Mistress Nadari), it’s like I don’t know them at all, they look so fierce, so focused, so scared and brave and committed and for a second I pull back on Acorn’s reins, too afraid to ride towards them.