Chapter_29_Deadlock

Late in the night watch, the sound of water at the East Sluice fell away.

The water hadn't receded. It had stopped. Press an ear to the surface and that low mutter gathered in, thinner and thinner, until the line of it snapped and there was nothing. The tall one crouched at the grate-root, worked his rifle's bolt open, held it to his ear, closed it again. Empty chamber. He looked at the water—black, dense, no telling how deep, no telling what walked under it.

Chen Jin came down from the gun position behind the pier. Three powder charges had gone into the charge box at noon; he counted them again by feel, one at a time. The crew was the same two men: the Ember Guard veteran, the garrison recruit. The recruit reached out to touch the barrel and got his hand slapped away.

"It still holds the heat."

The recruit pulled back, took out his punch, and counted marks by torchlight. Twenty-eight through forty-one. He stopped, then counted them again from the start. Marks there, work whole.

Behind the mud-bag stack, Da Liu patted down the layer he'd just laid. The cloth on his shoulder had worn through to a fresh blood print. He didn't change it. Somewhere across half the city, the machine shop's hammer went on—stroke, stroke, unhurried—the third gun growing its bore. No one on the wall asked what the sound was.

Lei Changgeng crouched at the gate mouth, hadn't moved all night. The entrenching shovel lay across his knees, the blade a white line in the moonlight. Chen Jin walked over and crouched at the other end of the stone block. The signal mallet sat on the stone between them, handle worn bright. It hadn't sounded once all night.

"The third gun," Lei Changgeng said. His voice was ruined; each word came out on a push of air. "How far along?"

"Body's done. Three more days on the bore."

"Three days." He turned the words over in his mouth and let them go. He pressed a hand to his ear—the stuffiness Wen Heng had found, two days now, no better.

"Save your voice," Chen Jin said. "As if you'll get to shout."

Lei Changgeng laughed—a scrape of grit in his throat. He reached up to undo the string of dog tags at his neck, stopped halfway, and closed his fist around the whole string instead. Tag touched tag and made no sound.

"Every one of these, I strung on with my own hands," he said. "One day I can't come down off this wall—count them for me. See if they match the roster."

"Nothing to count," Chen Jin said. "You'll count them yourself when you come down."

Lei Changgeng didn't answer. He tucked the string back inside his collar, picked up the shovel, and crouched back down at the gate mouth.

At first light, before the watch-change whistle, the water rose.

No rain, no word from upstream, and the level at the gate mouth climbed inch by inch. Broken-Tooth had picked its hour the way it picked everything—by memory. The breath when both watches stood on the wall and both watches were worn to nothing. The tall one saw it first: what came drifting over the surface wasn't a layer of shells anymore. It was a rampart. Shell back stacked on shell back, layer pressed on layer, banked as thick as a mud-bag wall, pushing slow toward the grate. They'd used the roadbed trick twice. This time what they laid down was a ramp.

Broken-Tooth came up onto the shoal.

A full circle bigger than the night before. Plate stacked on plate, shards of half-eaten shell still wedged in the seams, flakes of itself dropping with every step. No more hiding, no more testing. It walked from the shoal straight at the gate mouth, slow, each step landing on what its own kind had laid down.

"Open."

The straw mat flew. The grapeshot swept out flat, plowed a white furrow four hundred paces down the water lane, and the stacked shells rolled over layer by layer, water standing a man high. The first charge flipped half the lane.

Before the loader's ram came around for the second, Chen Jin had already called it. The shot swept into the ramp's waist, square into Broken-Tooth. Iron shot struck home—into the seams. It took the full face of it sideways, went off the shoal whole, and the splash reached the grate top.

For a breath, no one on the wall made a sound. Then the pile in the water moved. It heaved itself up on its forelegs, the plate on its left shoulder caved in, black water weeping from the seam. It stood, faced the gate mouth, and took another step.

The third charge went off at the breach's lip. When the double grate went under the whole weight at once, the gate split—grate bars and grate feet rolled into the water together, a mouth torn two zhang wide. Broken-Tooth crowded into the gap, and the shot met it at two zhang, flat, into half its body, burying half its head in the collapsed brick.

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The gun rocked back and never came forward again. A crack ran through the breech from trunnion to muzzle, white smoke bleeding out of the seam. The gun had fired the last shot of its life. The two crewmen hauled the cracked carriage back off the stack, the recruit's hand still locked around his punch.

"Plug it!"

Lei Changgeng's voice split on the word. What came out was two sounds ground from broken stone. No one waited for a second call. Door planks, rolling timbers, mud bags—all of it went down into the gap together.

The men who plugged the gate went down in order.

The Ember Guard veteran went first, hugging a door plank. He didn't come back up. Two old garrison men took the rolling timbers left and right of the gap, wedging the torn grate ends—one end held, the other let go in the current, and the men went under with the timbers.

The tall one wasn't at the gap. Another wave had dug open the grate-root he held; he fired with his back against the stone block until the bolt wouldn't move. When they found him he sat against the grate foot, bolt still drawn, stopped at the listening step. Along the gun line, reloads and factory rounds went up the wall mixed, magazine by magazine—the hands that had loaded them were half a city away, still counting twenty to a corner.

Zhao Tieshuan went down with the big cooking pot in his arms.

The stove shed stood behind the pier; porridge had been on the fire since before dawn. When the gap sagged a second time he lifted the pot off the stove and went down, pot rim facing out, his whole body braced behind the door plank. Someone called his name; he waved it off, mess-cook loud to the last.

"These old bones can still plug a hole!"

And the hole—this once—he plugged. The plank in front of the porridge pot held through the worst of it. The man didn't come back up.

Da Liu was the one the falling gate beam caught. When the lip caved inward he was dragging the last crate of rounds toward the gap, and half of him went under the brick. Someone moved to dig; Wen Heng stopped them. She ran the lift on rolling timbers, a little at a time. When they got him out he was breathing, and the left arm below the elbow was no longer an arm. She belted it off above the joint, looked back once, and said three words.

"Can't be saved."

Da Liu lay in the mud and looked at what was left. After a long moment he said, "That hand won't be counting shell casings anymore."

Nobody answered. Wen Heng cut the sleeve open and kept working.

The pier's back stretch, the stand-in held with two men. Three times in the night they wedged the seams below the waterline shut with punches. That stretch never broke.

In the end the gap was plugged with men.

Chen Jin never drew the blade, from the moment he came down off the gun position. He carried mud bags, hauled door planks, bore the wounded back behind the pier. He ran between gap and pier too many times to count. His boots filled with water; he emptied them; they filled again.

Lei Changgeng stood at the center of the gap.

Three men on his left, two on his right, five men holding the space he'd made. The last wave came up and the two on the right went first, then the three on the left. The shovel blade curled; he levered with the haft. When that failed, he pressed with his hands. When Chen Jin reached him, half the old man's body was in the water of the gap, one hand still flat on the door plank.

"The tags."

Two words, on air alone. His other hand pulled the whole string out of his collar—his own name plate with it, and one more Chen Jin knew: black iron, no letters, a mark worn nearly flat on the back, the hole at the top worn into a groove. The night the sky fell, that tag had pulled one faint signal out of the panel in Chen Jin's pocket. Never again after.

The whole string went into Chen Jin's palm. The old man's two hands closed over his and pressed down.

"Hold the city."

Three words, all but inaudible. Crouched there, Chen Jin heard his own words from the night watch—save your voice. He'd held those words back a month before saying them out loud, and this was all the return they drew. Then Lei Changgeng's hand slid off the door plank. The body went down into the water. Chen Jin took him by the collar and hauled, hauled him up, pressed fingers under his nose. Nothing.

For a while no one on the wall spoke. No one called the roll.

Chen Jin crouched at the gap's edge and drew the string through his hand, tag by tag. Lei Changgeng had said the mark was called the candle. Which generation it had come down from, he'd never said; why it bore that name, he'd never said. One line passed down the generations: worn flat or not, it doesn't get worn away.

Wind poured in through the gap and the torches bent.

Chen Jin gathered the string and put it inside his jacket—the pocket where the notes went. The note was still in there, three lines, long since known by heart. Now under the note lay an armful of iron.

By full light, the bugs withdrew.

It wasn't a rout. Broken-Tooth dug itself out of the brick, dragged its black-weeping half up onto the shoal, and the swarm opened a road for it. It stood on the shoal a long while, facing the gate mouth, then backed off behind the shoal—not far. From the wall they could see it plain: it had claimed the ground behind the shoal for itself, and bug husks were gathering toward it layer by layer. It would eat out there. Eat itself whole again, and come settle the account.

A burnt smell came over from the stove shed. Someone went to look: the pot still on the fire, the porridge boiled dry, a black crust welded to the bottom. No one had pulled the fire; no one had eaten. The small sound of it drying out had run under the gunfire all night, and no one heard it.

Wen Heng came over from the stretcher line and stopped when she passed him. She looked at his hands, both blanched white by the water, for two breaths. The little book was in her hand. She didn't open it. She wrote nothing, and turned to the next wounded man.

In the stove shed the saw took the length of a meal. Da Liu bit down on a towel and made no sound. His remaining hand went over his body piece by piece and ended flat on the magazines against his chest. Not one lost.

The panel in his pocket had stayed dark the whole night.

Chen Jin didn't open it. Kills, rescues—it had recorded none of it. This night's ledger sat elsewhere: in the gap, in the pried-up door planks, in the black crust at the bottom of a pot, in an armful of iron inside his jacket.

You'll count them yourself when you come down.

He counted the string. Name plate and the black-iron tag with it, twenty-seven. The roster was under Lei Changgeng's bedroll behind the pier. It wouldn't match now. It would never match.

Out on the shoal, the long howl rose.

Three short. One long.

The long one cracked.