of the dispossessed. It was snapping and fluttering like a flame.
Oshō rode with the easy grace of a man taking an early morning ride for the pleasure of it, as confident as the rest of the veterans of the Wing. Their strategy for this battle was a sound one, and it had been proposed by General Nisan himself, overall leader of the army and military hero of the revolution. They had voted overwhelmingly in its favour when the army had held its general assembly during the night.
With the main body of their forces acting as bait for the overwhelming numbers of enemy Pulses, and with feints to the flanks designed to entangle the overlords’ predictable Swan’s Wings, the real killing stroke would be delivered by the heavy cavalry of General Shin’s Wing, the Black Stars, hidden in the long grasses to the south-west, directly behind the position of the Shining Way. With every Wing of the enemy engaged and ensnared in the action, they would sweep around long and fast, and in all the confusion take the centre of the enemy from behind, hoping to create the type of rout they had seen countless times before.
‘Today is the day, brothers!’ General Oshō roared with passion. ‘Today is the day!’
Men raised lances and hollered as he passed by. Even Ash, not one for outward displays of enthusiasm, felt a rousing of pride as the men cheered and pumped their fists in reply. His son was one of them.
A plume of dust rose around the general as he drew his war-zel to a halt. With dancing steps he turned the mount to face the far ranks of the enemy. At the sight of them the zel snorted and swiped its tail. Together, Oshō and Chancer waited as silence fell.
‘By the Fool’s balls I hope he’s right,’ grumbled Kosh with a nod to their charismatic leader. ‘It’s time we brought these boys home to their mothers, don’t you think?’
It was a question hardly needing a reply.
Around them, ranging through the ranks, the daojos whipped at the rumps of zels and shouted for the men to draw tighter in their formations, reminding them of their orders and the basic preparations for the fight.
‘I hear the overlords offered a casket of diamonds to any general willing to turn tail.’
Ash flicked a grassfly from his cheek. ‘Phh. When haven’t they tried to buy us out? Today is hardly different.’
‘Ah. But today is the day.’
They both chuckled, their throats hoarse from the smoke of the pipes and the campfires of the night before.
It was true, what Ash had said. In the early days of the revolution, when the People’s Revolutionary Army was little more than a rag-tag force lacking confidence, cohesion or any notable victories to call its own, the overlords had offered each fighter in the army a small fortune in unchipped diamonds if they would desert to the other side.
Some had defected to the overlords’ ranks – a great number in fact. But those who had refused the offer, who remained to fight on despite the sudden impossibility of their position, had found an unexpected strength in their collective refusal to sell out to those who would own and exploit it all. Amongst the ranks, where many had become demoralized by hunger, bitter losses, and the constant threats of capture or death, a renewal of spirit came upon them all, a sense of righteous brotherhood. It was the true beginning of the cause. From that time onwards, slowly but surely, they had begun to turn back the tide.
‘It does feel like an end to things, don’t you think?’ Kosh asked.
‘One way or the other,’ Ash replied, glancing down at his son.
Lin was unaware of his scrutiny. The boy supported the upright bundle of spare lances in his hands, and the spare wicker shield upon his back. His eyes were wide with a fourteen-year-old’s sense of wonder. Specks of reflected sunlight shone in his dark pupils, the whites bloodshot from the heavy drinking of the night before. The boy had sat up late around one of the campfires, joking and throat-singing with the older battlesquires of their Wing.
A different person, Ash now thought, to the half-starved urchin who had stumbled into their base-camp two years ago, having run away to join his father as his battlesquire. The boy’s bare feet had been shredded from a trek that most grown men would have baulked at.
And for what? For the love and respect of a father who could