Chapter 23: Neville – The Mouth of War
Neville had new doors made at the Square House of Fabec. He himself helped make them, using some of the knowledge he had aquired by watching his father work with wood.
People thought it odd the same way they would find it odd if he brushed the teeth of a dead man. They found his behavior odd, but they obeyed him. Neville saw that as a good sign: Fabec was still alive enough to follow orders.
Neville had targets put up and an area prepared near the city wall to train archers. He himself practiced there every morning. It was cold near the wall that separated Fabec from the Mouth of War. Thaila had said that the grey stole warmth. In Fabec there was more grey than in Debur. Neville finally understood what his mother meant when she spoke of colors. He hadn’t noticed them in Fulion or in any of the other places Maëlle had seen them, but their absence occupied Fabec. An intrinsic grey pilfered the light right out from those poeple’s eyes.
My people, thought Neville.
He organized groups of scouts. On the day he arrived, even before the former captain had been buried, Neville summoned Leather Head and two of the men that had come with him from Debur to go to the valley with him and study the situation.
Leather Head opened the gate. Neville took up to calling him Leather Head because the man was so astonished with all the changes Neville was implementing, that wave of movement, of action, of decisions, of military heels rhythmically hitting the tiles in front of the Square House’s entrance, that he forgot to introduce himself, even after Neville asked for his name. How long had Fabec been in that numb state between insomnia and death?
Neville was the first one to step out of the city’s gate. Fabec’s ground leaked out from under the gates, but the road disappeared under a grey carpet of ash a few meters away. The Mouth of War reminded Neville of a gigantic ashtray, but the smell was sweeter and with a hint of honey, almost like flowers. Neville picked up something white from the ash. Smooth and cold: it was a tibia. No cigarrette butts, but human bones protruded from the sea of ash, even there, at the skirts of the wall, right at Fabec’s gate.
‘Was there a recent battle here?’ Neville asked. He searched the wall in search of evidence.
‘No,’ said Leather Head.
‘Then why are there bones here?’
‘They come. We here sometimes listen, especially in the dark, the tides of grey.’
‘What causes these tides?’ asked Neville.
‘Darkness.’
Neville threw away the tibia and clapped his hands to get rid of the dust, but the grey stuck to the lines on his hands, in the folds of his fingers.
‘Show me the valley,’ he said.
Leather Head led, Neville walked beside him. The two other soldiers followed behind, gripping their spears, their knees bent; defensive. Neville knew he was being watched. There were more men on the walls than the usual number of sentinels, vultures observing him. People, he corrected himself. Not vultures, people.
You couldn’t see all of Beloú from Fabec and nothing at all of Sananssau. At the time these cities were built, nobody imagined they would become the front lines of a civil war. They hadn’t been built to keep each other under surveillance. Progress built them, not war. Neville sometimes tried to imagine what it was like, that imperial world. He liked to imagine that the roads of that time didn’t have holes.
Together with Leather Head, Neville covered the valley around Fabec. He suggested points of surveillance, where at least one sentinel should be, always alert to movement coming from Beloú or Sananssau.
‘Even Sananssau?’ asked Leather Head. ‘Deran never takes part in the fighting.’
‘It’s been a while since Farheim and Inlang stopped raiding Deran,’ said Neville. ‘They might feel safe enough to participate more actively in the War. We will watch them.’
‘All the time?’ asked Leather Head. ‘We here sometimes are afraid of—‘
‘Of everything! Sananssau and Beloú are our enemies and have to be watched. Can we here follow an order?’
Leather Head straightened up.
‘Yes, sir!’
From where they stood, Neville could see Beloú clearly, but not Fabec. Yet, he still felt he was being watched. A grey curiosity hung over him, bristling the hair on top of his head. He held himself in order not to look over his shoulder or to give any sign of concern. Fabec needed courage and honor. Bushido. Honored men would never have fallen to that half-dead state, even buried in ash. Honor, if Neville could instill some of it in that people, would keep Fabec standing.
‘We’ll build a watch station here,’ he drew a circle on the ground with his toe. ‘With a pire to be lit to warn us of danger.’
Something sniffled Neville’s neck. He managed to remain motionless, for there was nothing there, man or creature, close enough to sniffle him. If he jumped up in fright, Leather Head’s ‘Yes sir’ would lose it’s meaning, if it ever had one. Slowly, Neville turned around. Nothing. In the valley there was only death and ash.
And darkness.
