Chapter_28_East_Sluice

Chen Jin's words—Next gate is the East Sluice—came true with the dawn.

The North Wall changed watch, and no one mentioned the red line on the post anymore, but every man leaned his gun against the embrasure a little harder. The tier Broken-Tooth had eaten out of the night before now sat in every chest, a weight. The swarm on the shoal had thinned by half, marching east along the moat, the water bending past North Wall's foot straight to the East Sluice. Lei Changgeng crouched on the embrasure and watched for a long while, turning the signal mallet in his palm. "It's done measuring North Wall," Lei Changgeng said. "Picking a new spot." The old soldier said it flat, matter-of-fact.

Behind North Wall sat half a city, old folk and children still packed in the alleys. Da Liu led men stacking another layer of mud bags on last night's breach, the cloth on his shoulder worn through to fresh blood. Chen Jin looked once and didn't stop them. North Wall had just been borne; the hollow stretch of brick at its foot still soaked in water and wouldn't last days. Fewer than three hundred could stand the wall, and the shoal Broken-Tooth brought had no far edge. This gate had just shut; that one was already cracking.

Chen Jin turned the panel over, then back. That tier still glowed in red—Broken-Tooth had eaten seven Hound-class, changed its bones, thickened its plates, and this morning it went straight for the gunless East Sluice. You couldn't beat a thing like this with force. You had to outlast it. The thing beyond the wall no longer keeps the copper's ledger—the words he'd spoken last night came true by morning.

Chen Jin took his men around to the East Sluice. The double-gated grate at the gate mouth had been welded shut by Xiao Mao the month before, one grid front, one back, the grate feet pinned under stone blocks. But the grass outside the grate-root lay flat in a strip, and a claw print was pressed into the mud—shallow, but new. Chen Jin stepped on it; his sole sank half a finger. This was Broken-Tooth's print.

The night before on North Wall it had "moved what it watched closer," and what it had watched all night wasn't this brick but the water gate to the east. What he'd only understood last night, Broken-Tooth had walked ahead of him.

Bugs fought on memory, and its memory was terrifying. North Wall's embrasure had squatted a cannon; it had seen iron-shot four hundred paces with its own eyes and logged it. The East Sluice had no cannon; it had listened a whole night and heard no report, and logged that too. Chen Jin had to feed it one wrong account—and that one had been waiting at the East Sluice for days.

Lei Changgeng crouched at the gate mouth and slapped the stone block at the grate foot. "I swapped shifts ten years; it learned it in three days," Lei Changgeng said. He meant Broken-Tooth picking gates—it walked around North Wall where the cannon squatted, and ran straight at the gunless East Sluice, the soft fruit. "The Sluice gun," Lei Changgeng said. "Still under the straw mat?"

"Under it," Chen Jin said. "The second one, lighter than the first, hauled in through the gate by night—it sits behind the mud-bag stack, and from the water it looks no different from any night." North Wall's cannon fed the swarm the true account; the East Sluice's fed it the wrong one—let Broken-Tooth be wrong this once. The trap had been set long ago.

Lei Changgeng thumped the shovel on the ground. "I hold the gate. You hide the cannon. Don't let it log the right one," Lei Changgeng said. The old soldier didn't ask to live. He only asked Broken-Tooth to log wrong this once—log wrong, and the East Sluice buys one more night.

Chen Jin walked the grate foot in a circle. The East Sluice wall was older than North Wall's, its roots hollower, its water faster. Xiao Mao's double grate would hold a while, not a whole main force. He knew it in his bones—this gate was harder to hold than North Wall. But Broken-Tooth picked the hard ones, and the gate Lei Changgeng meant to plug was exactly this one.

Thirty paces south of the Sluice was a broken grate, its mouth facing north, water knee-deep. Water ran from the drain toward the shelter quarter, the mesh's threads snapped clean once and mended. Twenty paces east of the well a ditch, water to the waist, wide enough for one Hound-class. Lei Changgeng shouldered the entrenching shovel and stepped up beside Chen Jin. "I'll hold the East Sluice," Lei Changgeng said.

No one answered. Wind poured in through the gate mouth, carrying the river's stink. Chen Jin didn't argue. This gate had to be plugged by someone; you couldn't talk him out of it, and shouldn't. He looked at the old soldier—the string of dog tags at his neck hung so heavy the knot had vanished, every plate strung on by his own hand. He'd already put himself in. He just hadn't said it.

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"You old bones," Chen Jin blurted, "stop showing off."

The words were out before he could call them back. Lei Changgeng's "showing off" was plugging a gate with his life, and the words had stabbed at the old soldier's pride. Lei Changgeng didn't take offense. He only hooked the mallet to his belt. "Showing off or not, the gate needs plugging," Lei Changgeng said. He turned and walked toward the gate mouth, the shovel tip dragging a long line in the dirt, not looking back.

Xiaosui was still at North Wall, crouched behind the embrasure, pressing shells into the clip one by one. Last night's "take these down" still caught in his throat. The city had held those three days on hands like hers, and the bowl of noodles he owed her took another mark. He didn't go back for those words—on North Wall, an apology wouldn't buy a single shell.

Three days without sleep still pressed his eyelids; he braced his temple with the bayonet grip and held. North Wall had just been borne; the East Sluice had opened its mouth, and his men couldn't rotate fast enough.

Chen Jin pulled out every man North Wall could spare and handed them to Lei Changgeng for the East Sluice. The garrison was already thin; split off another gate and North Wall grew thinner still. Lin Yuan Holds—you held the whole city, not one stretch of wall. His hand didn't shake as he called the names—three days without sleep, his eyelids heavy, his mind clear. North Wall's gate had just shut; the East Sluice's had opened.

The tall one went east too. The recruit Lei Changgeng had checked three times before posting him to the grate-root now stood the East Sluice's grate-root. He leaned his gun against the grate foot and crouched first to feel the double grate, an inch at a time, before he rose and took his post. Chen Jin saw it and said nothing—the method the old soldier taught was growing onto a new gate.

After he turned, the gate mouth went quiet. Not the quiet after a win, but the quiet of someone shouldering the heaviest load alone while the rest hadn't found their voices yet. Chen Jin gripped the bayonet and heard his own heartbeat, beat after beat, clearer than the rail.

Broken-Tooth's advance party had already arrived. A small probe, a dozen or so, dug up from under the grate-root. Chen Jin lay at the waterline and waited, bayonet down, sending each one the moment its carapace showed.

The first Hound-class wedged in the grate seam, and he drove it through the neck joint; the panel lit: [Kill confirmed: Hound-class x1. +10 Embers.]. Four more squeezed out through the drain after it, and he sent those too. Bugs didn't pick men; they picked gates, climbing the grate-root, plate scraping plate with a dry rasp. Chen Jin's bayonet was steady; he could find the seam blind—but the East Sluice floor was softer than North Wall's foot, water pushing up through the seam, empty beneath his feet.

One Hound-class skittered past his shin, and he reversed the stroke, the bayonet into its neck joint, warm slurry spattering his trouser leg; he took it for nothing. When the five were sent, the grate-root went quiet for a stretch. Broken-Tooth didn't press again; it pulled the probe back, as if logging this round's losses. Chen Jin wiped his face and couldn't tell sweat from water. It had finished North Wall; now it was studying the East Sluice.

By the torchlight Chen Jin made out the shadow's shape on the shoal—a size larger than the night before, plates layered over plates. Broken-Tooth had grown the eaten kin into its own armor. The King-class signal wasn't empty.

With his own hands he'd sent five into the seam; a slice on the back of his hand from a carapace edge, blood mixed with mud, he took for nothing. The panel lit five times: [Kill confirmed: Hound-class x1. +10 Embers.] one after another, and finally a line: [Embers: 1607]. The rifle was still four hundred ninety-three short; he looked at that number for two breaths, then turned the panel face down. Whether he could afford the gun would wait till the East Sluice was past.

Wen Heng came up in the dark and pinched each man's ears in turn. At Chen Jin she paused one breath longer and wrote another line—the stuffiness in his ears was heavier than the night before. At Lei Changgeng she paused too; the old soldier's stuffed ears made her frown, but she said nothing, only adding a line to her little book. "Stuffed," Wen Heng said to both. "Stay off the windward side." Then she took her box down the wall, same as the nights before. She walked to the gate mouth, looked back once at Lei Changgeng crouched there, and slowed her step half a beat.

Lei Changgeng crouched at the gate mouth the whole night, shovel never leaving his hand. Past midnight Broken-Tooth didn't rush again, but it listened to the East Sluice the whole night too. Chen Jin sat at the gate mouth till past midnight and didn't dare close his eyes. Broken-Tooth's shadow shifted on the shoal, beat after beat, slow enough to grate. It had finished North Wall; this round, the East Sluice would settle the account. He knew that when dawn came, the main force would arrive.

Lei Changgeng took the mallet from his belt and set it on the stone block by Chen Jin's hand, then shouldered the shovel and walked alone into the gate. The East Sluice's water swallowed his footsteps; all that remained of his back was a strip of shovel haft slanting in the moonlight.