Dark Foundations (89 page)

“Seeing as it's you, Commander,” the official said with a weary sigh, “I'll call her. But it's pretty chaotic in there. Well over ten thousand here; almost every bunk taken.”

As they walked to the door, Merral heard from within the echoing murmur of a thousand distant voices.
Like bats in a cave.
He resolved that, whatever his fate might be
,
he would meet it in the open air.

As he waited for his mother to emerge and Lloyd did his tactful dozen-pace retreat, Merral stared at the massive doors with their great hinges and new bars.
How long will they hold?

Suddenly his mother was with him, her hair tied back and wearing overalls and an official armband. She blinked in the sun. “Merral!” she cried, throwing her arms around him. She then stepped back and scowled at his armor. “It's hard! And that
color
!”

“It works, Mother.”

“I should hope so. I heard you were here. They were all
so
excited when they heard. ‘It's all going to be all right,' they said. ‘Mrs. D'Avanos's son is coming. He'll kill them all.' I felt
so
proud.”

Merral stared at the ground.
They see me as the bringer of deliverance,
when in truth, I seem to have brought disaster
. “I will do all I can, Mother, but that may not be enough.”

Her gaze moved past him toward the devastation, then turned back to him. He saw certainty in her eyes. “No,” she said, her tone suddenly subdued. “It may not be enough. There's a new rumor that there are lots more of these Krallen things on their way. Thousands
.
”

Merral nodded.

“I see,” she said. “Look, your father is working on the defenses at the third circle. If you see him, give him my love. And tell him—” she bit her lip, her eyes moist—“that I could have done things better the last few months. I'm sorry.” She looked around. “I must go, Merral. There is work to do.”

She paused, as if struggling with what to say. “I want to tell you to stay out of harm's way. But you have to fight.” Without another word, she turned and, her shoulders heaving with emotion, walked back inside the hall.

With Lloyd once more at his side, Merral made his way to the new gateway. He stared at the walls. They were twice his height and made of thick, overlapping dura-polymer panes and buttressed every few meters by angled massive steel stanchions driven deep into the surface of the square. Around the top of the wall, in which firing slots had been regularly placed, a broad walkway ran.

Exchanging salutes with the irregs at the new gate, Merral walked down Island Road. He stared around, seeing the new defenses and passing doorways sealed off with rough-cemented masonry.
Crude work.
Is this how the Assembly ends, in an ugly untidiness?

At the main junctions on the road, barricades of brick or metal had been erected and behind them stood brown-clad irregulars with guns and the new swords. In other places, firing positions had been made that pointed down the street. There and elsewhere Merral glimpsed keen-eyed men and women with guns.

Almost everywhere, Merral was recognized and forced himself to respond to the waves and salutes. He smiled and admired the defenses with as much confidence and good humor as he could manage.
It's a pretense,
but a necessary one. I need to give these people hope
.

As they descended, they made a brief detour up a side alley to a house that had been hit by an artillery round from a cannon-insect. Merral paused, watching the rescue workers lift rubble and seal off the broken pipes, seeing the roof tiles flung everywhere, and stepping respectfully around the drying blood on the cobbles.
It is not just an ugly town
;
it's a wounded one.
He felt a surge of anger, but didn't know who he was angry with—God, the devil, the Dominion, or even himself.

He turned away and walked on. A minute later, he passed a group of six teenagers stringing up wire mesh across an alleyway.

One of them looked up. “Hey! Commander D'Avanos!” he shouted, dropping the wire and walking over.

“Remember me?” the lad asked, as his friends gathered behind him.

After a minute's puzzled reflection, Merral suddenly recognized the youths who had troubled him on his visit home after Fallambet.

“Wait. You were in the Hanston Road ga—”

“S'right. Sir, we want to apologize.” There were nods from his friends. “Things just kinda got out of hand. Sorry.”

There were other apologies.

“Apology accepted.” All shook hands.

“Commander, do you know as they put us in jail?” one lad said. “Me mum nearly died of shame. ‘The first convict in our family for a thousand generations,' she said.”

“Me too,” chorused a smaller lad.

“But they let you out today?”

“Yeah. The warden gave the police their orders. He let us out so that we could have a go at these Krallen things—goblins, your soldiers call 'em. We're sort of . . . well . . .
irregular
irregulars.”

“Dead right,” said the smaller lad.

“Well, be careful. It's not a game. But . . . glad to have you with us.”

“You kill 'em, Commander!”

Merral and Lloyd moved on, soon reaching the third-circle defenses where the new wall was broken by a narrow gateway with doors made of steel-reinforced polymer plates.

An earnest captain of the irregulars insisted on showing them the defenses and pointing out how every window and doorway facing out had been sealed off by bars or masonry.

Spotting a group of men carrying welding gear, Merral walked over to the nearest man. “Do you know where Stefan D'Avanos is?”

“Ah, your father,” the man said, a weary smile on his grubby face. “Over there. The yellow door.”

Merral found his father changing the battery on his welding rod. For a second they stared at each other.

“Son!”

They hugged each other and Merral caught the odor of sweat and burned metal.

He stood back to look at his father, struck by how haggard his face was.

“You haven't shaved,” his father observed.

Merral playfully tweaked his father's beard. “And neither have you.”

“
I'm
not a commander,” came the reply. With a weary smile, Merral's father wiped the sweat off his face with an oily rag. “But it's good to see you. I like the armor, by the way.” He prodded it and grunted with approval. “Nice work. Clever stuff with the elbow joints. Need to keep it lubed though.”

He stood back, a sudden look of disbelief on his face. “This is an odd business, Son. Who would have thought it? War! And in our town, too. Still, we're glad to have you here. Your coming has cheered a lot of folk up.”

“I had to come. I really did.”

“I know.”

“You're not planning to fight, are you, Father?”

“If it comes to it,” he said, looking stern, “I will. I may try and get one of these new swords.”

“If you think that's wise. But, Father, I must leave you. I have to go down to the Gate House and the causeway.”

“Of course.”

“Mother sends her love. And . . . she apologizes.”

His father smiled weakly. “That's good. Things have been a bit strange. I'll call her when I get the chance. Tell her I'm sorry too. No excuses.”

Their eyes locked and there was a intense moment of silence between them.
We both know
that this may be the last time we meet
.

His father rubbed his beard and shook his head. “A bad business,” he said slowly, “a very bad one. But I'm proud of you. You have done it before. And you can do it again.”

“Let's hope so.”

Merral and Lloyd returned to Island Road and continued down its loops to Causeway Square and the Gate House. As they drew closer to the level of the lake, Merral met more of his own soldiers. Some were checking weapons; others sat in the shade eating lunch, while still others lay under trees or in doorways, trying to catch up on sleep.

They roused themselves as he passed, but he put them at ease. All that could be done on the defenses had either been done or was being done and there was little point in draining their energy in the midday heat. They would need all their strength later.

As they turned a final bend Merral stopped, awestruck at the transformation of the entrance to Ynysmant. All his life, people had entered Ynysmant by walking, riding, or driving off the causeway through the archway, a structure that served no function other than as a mounting point for flags and banners, and traveled past the Gate House, a three-story, balconied building of character, and so entered the broad expanse of Causeway Square.

All this had changed, almost beyond recognition. Between the causeway and the town and incorporating both the Gate House and the archway lay a high, buttressed wall, part beige masonry and part black dura-polymer sheets. Along the top lay a walkway with parapets. The archway had been broadened and reinforced by girders to give a stark and barbaric structure, with two massive doors.

Causeway Square was now filled with the equipment of war, soldiers with uniforms and weapons, the clatter of workmen, and the shouts of military orders.

Merral tried to be reconciled to the changes.
It must be done.
And unless there is a miracle, there will be worse done down here today than damage to buildings.

He found Vero and Balancal in the ground-floor room of the Gate House, next to where sweating men, some in the brown uniforms of the irregulars and some just wearing old clothes, were passing ammunition to the top of the walls. They exchanged news and there were gloomy looks of resignation when Merral said that, unless Clemant relented, Frankie would not be coming.

They scrambled up ladders onto the parapet and Balancal walked Merral along the defenses, showing him the two wide-mouthed cannons that Barrand had fashioned, which pointed along the causeway. Merral agreed that they would be formidable weapons.

They talked about communications in case the Dominion forces managed to suppress the ordinary links.

Merral was glad to find that Balancal had fiber-optic backups and, as a last resort, an agreed system of flare signals: red to warn of an attack, blue to signal a retreat, and green to order an advance. Finally, they agreed that Merral's soldiers, who were better armored and had battle experience, would be stationed on the walls while the irregs bore the brunt of any street fighting.

At one level, Merral found the preparations and Balancal's evident competence reassuring; yet at a deeper level, they did little to quell his fears. Against the massive forces now on their way, they were hopelessly inadequate.

As Merral descended from the walls, he met his uncle, Barrand. They embraced and shared news. Of the Antalfers, only Elana was left in Ynysmant; the others had left by boat. Then they talked about the defenses, the cannons, and the explosives planted under the causeway.

Barrand pulled a face that expressed deep unease. “But don't expect too much, Nephew. It's all untested.” He looked up at the new fortifications towering over him. “From what I hear, we will need more than all this to survive.”

“Yes, Uncle. We will.”

After Merral completed his reconnaissance of the defenses in front of the causeway, he was taken to a house at the edge of the square that had been borrowed as office for the regulars. There he met with his captains around a table in the main room and they discussed, as best they could, the strategy for the coming fight.

The latest information from Betafor was that the Dominion forces immediately around Ynysmant were static, but the main Krallen army was still moving rapidly toward them and was expected to arrive within four hours. It was a somber meeting. The family images on the walls around them seemed to deepen Merral's mood.
Where are they—this young couple and their two toddlers? Did they manage to leave or are they in one of the refuges? And to what extent is their fate my responsibility?