DAY 24

‘You will rise when an officer enters the tent, cadet!’ the captain said, large globules of saliva arching through the air and landing on Ansen’s face.

The private resisted the urge to show his disgust at being spat on, and his hands itched to wipe the wetness from his cheeks. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said instead, and it took some doing to say just that. He rose from his bunk and saluted the captain, balancing the fine line between respectful and mocking. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Lila—also a cadet—smirking, but the captain seemed not to notice.

‘Weapon inspection!’ the captain announced to the dozen cadets assigned to tent Demeter-5.

The cadets hurried to form two lines in the centre of the tent, their rifles carried on their shoulders and then retrieved, one by one, as the captain went down the line. Lila’s inspection passed without incident—naturally; it always did—but when the captain stood before Ansen, however…

‘You call this barrel clean, soldier?’

‘Yes, sir!’ Cadet Ansen responded.

‘Wrong answer. This, this isn’t done. We’ll be facing down the enemy, soon, soldier—do you want to do so with a well-maintained weapon, or do you want to tie?’ It was a bit heavy-handed, but Ansen didn’t open his mouth to tell the captain that. ‘You’ll clean it again, now, before you head to the mess hall. Is that understood?’

‘Yes, sir!’ Ansen said, in an identical manner to the first time around.

The captain’s left eyelid twitched; the man suspected he was being mocked, but of course Ansen hadn’t given him anything to discipline him for. After a pause in which the captain stared Ansen down, he reluctantly moved on to the next in line.

Ansen sat alone in the tent once again cleaning out his rifle’s barrel—he had done it once already, whether the captain thought so or not—and heard the rain begin to pour. As the drops hit the canvas above his head, a gentle pitter-patter engulfed him. For a moment, Ansen felt peace he hadn’t felt since he’d left the city he called home. Not often was it that he had a space to himself, these days. The enemy were to blame for that, he knew; it was their refusal to accept that the world was changing that had resulted in his conscription. Even if he hadn’t despised their values, this would have been enough to stoke the fury in his stomach.

* * *

The day turned to night, and the risk of inspections or last-minute drills faded away. Ansen lied on his cot, reading through a old, worn, pulp mystery novel—one that had been traded around the camp every few days, as each of the cadets finished. Ansen was just getting towards the—the point at which the protagonist would pull something out of his arse and reveal the murderer; Ansen suspected the butler—when Lila suddenly appeared at his side.

‘We’re sneaking out,’ she said. ‘The Green Goose.’

‘Again?’ Ansen asked. ‘I haven’t got the money to get drunk every night.’

‘Don’t be boring. I’ll buy you a couple.’

‘See, I knew you came from money.’

Lila rolled her eyes. ‘Spending a sixpence on you is hardly “coming from money”.’

‘Is where I’m from,’ Ansen mumbled, but not loudly enough to put Lila off buying him ale.

They disappeared off across the camp, using for cover the darkness that was so thick this far away from the lights of the city. The route to the Green Goose—the only roadside tavern anywhere near where the regiment had made their encampment—was well worn. News off the inn had travelled fast, and the members of Demeter-5 were not the only cadets on the path, that Ansen could see.

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The chill of the frosty night was just becoming uncomfortable when they saw the beacon of light in the distance, and the cadets picked up the pace; Ansen could practically taste that first sip of bitter on his lips.

Lila was good for her promise, and then some, buying Ansen not just a couple of drinks, but enough drinks to waste the night away. She really did come from money, Ansen thought—money with a capital M, maybe, if she continued like this. Each beer slipped down better than the last, and suddenly some of the local girls were looking more appealing to Ansen than they had when he walked in. He’d set his eyes on one, and was just working out a line to use on her, when he saw one of his fellow cadets swing a punch.

The man that the flailing fist clocked in the face was not another cadet, but one of the local men—and far taller, broader, and more likely to have a Vigour skill than the cadet who’d attacked him.

There was a moment of strange quiet in the tavern as the man who’d been hit realised just what was happening. Then, his fist rose to hit back, and Ansen found himself charging across the room to stop him. Ansen gripped the man by the wrist tightly, received a manic glare in response, and turned back to the cadet who started the fight. ‘What do you think you’re doing? This is the only tavern around here; if you get us kicked out—’

‘He’s one of them,’ the cadet said. ‘I heard him.’

Ansen turned slowly back to the local who’d been hit, snarling. He released the man’s hand, and stepped backwards. ‘Have at him then,’ he said, then spat at the man’s feet.

Everyone knew what had to happen next.

The cadets moved first, their training on their side, but this advantage was lost considering they were fewer in number than the locals. While both cadets and locals alike had firearms, nobody used them; it would do more harm than good in this close proximity. Nobody wanted to be to blame for the deaths of their friends or comrades.

But that didn’t mean the cadets weren’t out to cause pain. To hurt. To kill. If it was true that these locals were sympathetic to the enemy, then they deserved everything that was coming to them and more. To side with them? Those who would stand in the way of progress? Who would stop Haven from becoming the great city it could be?

Ansen left his revolver in its holster, but that didn’t stop him from drawing his blade.

* * *

The cadets slinked back into camp in the early hours of the morning, nursing sore heads and some broken bones. Ansen himself clutched torn cloth around a gash in his arm; the drawing of his blade had inspired some of the locals to do the same. The injuries were nothing that wouldn’t heal in the weeks to come, but that supposed that they had weeks before they finally faced down the enemy. Would they have that long?

Ansen got his answer two days later, when hangovers had faded but other injuries remained. The rain pelted the tents, and as a result, the encampment was quiet. It wasn’t just that soldiers stayed in tents as much as possible; the rain itself seemed to dampen any noise.

So it went nearly unnoticed when a small group of soldiers rose into the camp on horseback, wearing the insignia of officers. Ansen watched them from underneath the tent flap as they spoke to the captain for a moment, before the captain shouted something across the camp. The orders were passed along by shouting soldiers, each of them crying out the message as they heard it. The order: “form up!”

The cadets gathered in their lines, the regiment organised enough after their strict and rapid skill training routine to do so with little hassle, and the major stepped forward to speak.

‘We’ve known the battle is coming for many days now,’ he bellowed. ‘I am here to tell you that the time truly has come. In the morrow, we will dismantle our camp and begin the long journey to the enemy. I wished to deliver this news to you all personally, for I wished also to accompany it with a reminder.

‘My reminder is this: we will win. We have trained for this, true, but there is another factor on our side: it is the will of the gods. How can the Architects allow such despicable people to hold power? The answer—they cannot. And we are the weapon with which Zeus strikes down those destined for Tartarus’s wretched depths.’

Ansen glanced to Lila, at his side. There was no smirk on the woman’s face, only an intense determination, one which sparkled in her eyes. The cadet turned his attention back to the major, at the front of the regiment.

‘Our spies report that they have done true evil to get to where they are today. Their leader, that contemptible woman, has maimed and has killed those close to us—our friends, our families—to accumulate this power. She commands, too, an elite squadron—highly skilled, terrible and capable of atrocities the likes of which we cannot imagine. These are our targets; without them, the city shall fall.

The major drew in a deep breathe, the passion glistening in his eyes.

‘We must take down their leader. We must eliminate the New Legion. We must killed Ariel Marsh.’ The major raised his rifle into the air. ‘For Her Majesty!’ he bellowed.

Hundreds of soldiers raised their own rifles in unison, and they too shouted, ‘For Her Majesty!’

This was a single voice, eight hundred soldiers strong, all sharing one single objective—and Ansen’s regiment was just one of dozens. How could they lose?