Ember Legion

The second gun was done by noon.

Forty jin lighter than the first. Xiao Mao said the rail web he picked this time ran one line thinner than the last pair, and the bore wall would hold all the same; the thickest length on the requisition, he kept back—for gun three. When the last weld cooled he set the punch to it and marked a dot beside the seam. The first gun carried twenty-seven dots. This one started at twenty-eight.

A helper asked what he was keeping count for.

”Catching up,” he said.

On the mountain a count never restarted with a new shift—the new hand picked up the old number and went on. The dots were the same rule, cut into steel.

The news went up the pier by noon. Lei Changgeng asked: ”Where does it go? North wall, facing the old breach?”

”East sluice.”

”The one on the north wall is bolted in place. If this one moves—”

”The north wall has a gun. It knows that,” Chen Jin said. ”The east sluice has no gun. It knows that too. Let it be wrong for one night.”

Lei Changgeng turned the sentence over. Two nights of the badger drive, three nights of nothing, the thing on the slope drifting north to look just yesterday—every line of that ledger was right except one: it counted one gun in this city, nailed to the north wall, going nowhere. He didn’t ask again. Just: ”Move it at night?”

”At night.”

Full dark, the gun left the city. Three layers of felt went under it on the cart; Da Liu and two helpers lifted the barrel aboard, and the wheels were wound in rags, round after round, until nothing could creak. The night-pass had gone ahead—no one stopped the cart at the street crossings. The three men pushing walked slow, four hands braced under the barrel on every rise.

At the east sluice the gun never went up on the parapet. The sandbag stacks behind the pier’s flank opened into a pocket; the barrel nested in, straw matting thrown over, muzzle out through a gap in the bags, teeth already on the water. On the pier the torches burned as always, the sandbag stacks as always—from the water, this looked like every other night.

Two men took the gun post: one Ember Guard veteran, one garrison recruit. The recruit crouched next to the barrel for the first time, reached to touch it, and the veteran caught his wrist. ”Still hot. It’ll bite.” He pulled back, drifted close again a while later—looked at the bore, the breech, the row of punch marks down the barrel, counting from twenty-eight to forty-one. What are they, he asked. Welds, the veteran said. Forty-one welds, one dot each. The dots are there, the work is there.

Xiao Mao had come out with the cart. He taught loading in three steps: charge home, ram it, close the breech. Same flat voice as when he checked work, no looking up: ”If the charge goes in crooked, don’t force the ram. Pull it and seat it again. A gun that bursts is meaner than the bugs.” Then he went back to the city the same night—the hammer at the repair station must not stop; the stock for gun three was already under way.

”Can’t I stay to hear it fire first?” he asked.

”Back to your forge,” Chen Jin said. ”Keep hammering. That hammer of yours—that’s aimed at it too. The moment the hammering quits, it starts wondering where the gun went.”

Xiao Mao shouldered his tool roll and went. A few steps out he turned back, looked once at the muzzle showing through the bag gap, tightened the roll on his shoulder, and left.

Chen Jin passed one order down the whole pier, hide by hide, man by man: before the gun fires, open your mouth. Nobody asked why. Wherever the order arrived, the people there opened their jaws once, like running through a drill.

Past midnight, the north wall fired first.

One dull boom at the old breach, iron shot out, then nothing after—only six or seven over there, feeling the ground. They found what they were looking for, and went. The north wall’s account was on file, and it had that entry right.

The east sluice’s water began to move on the very breath of that first boom.

Not a line. A sheet of it. Hound-class came riding the surface at the grating, twenty-odd, stacked front to back—the first wave hadn’t touched land when the second went into the water. You couldn’t see water anymore, only shell backs stacked on shell backs, layer pushing layer toward the grating. Lei Changgeng gave no shout; the rifle line fired in volleys, cutting the front wave down. One wave fell, the next came on—the old surface-riding play, but never laid on this thick. Reload orders passed in a hush, one squad at a time.

”Make it last!” Lei Changgeng roared. ”They’re laying a road with them—”

Before the words were out, three shapes rose from the middle of the water.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

War-hounds. Three, abreast, walking forward on the hound shells in the water. The hound swarm carpeting the surface was their road—and roads were a thing men had laid first; now the bugs laid them too. Rifle rounds sparked off the armor and the three never broke stride. The lead one took two volleys, wavered once. It reached the grating root, foreclaw onto the top bar, and the bar bent with a groan.

Nobody on the pier spoke. Hands kept moving through the reloads, fast, and getting away from themselves.

Lei Changgeng looked at Chen Jin.

Chen Jin nodded. ”Now.”

The straw matting flew. The muzzle waiting in the bag gap had held its teeth on the water half the night—the second gun, canister, level fire. The recoil sat the whole sandbag stack back on itself; the recruit loading it went down on his tailbone, and the veteran ignored him, ram already swinging. Four hundred paces of water, plowed end to end.

All three war-hounds went over at once. Water stood up man-high; the hound layer on the surface was harrowed into nothing you could name. The first tore apart where it stood; the second flipped two zhang out, clawed twice, and sank; the third was thrown onto the shallows, half its carapace cracked, alive, dragging one forelimb toward the grating root—

Chen Jin went down off the bags, ran it down across the sandbags, and put the knife in at the neck joint, to the hilt.

[Kill confirmed: War-hound class x1. +50 Embers.]

The hound on the grating crown chose the chaos to climb; the hide behind it met it with a bayonet. One more came feeling along the pier’s back face—the stretch the stand-in held with two men. He gave no shout. The rod went sideways into the forelimb joint, one pry, over it went; he leaned on the rod through the kicking, then bawled up the pier: ”One here—got a hand to spare?” Chen Jin came over and finished it down the joint seam. On the shallows a hound from the third wave had made the breach; he went back for it, caved its skull with a stock, and used the knife.

[Kill confirmed: Hound-class x1. +10 Embers.]

[Kill confirmed: Hound-class x1. +10 Embers.]

[Kill confirmed: Hound-class x1. +10 Embers.]

The rifle line chased the breaking swarm two more volleys, and the water went still. Out on the high slope, the thing stood up.

And it howled.

Three short, one long, the tail dragged flat—the rally pitch, same as the night the swarm came. When it finished, slope and water were both silent. Nobody in the hides moved; everybody listening its way. It stood a while, then went down.

The count came before first light. Seventeen hound husks hooked off the water. Three war-hounds: two torn apart in the water, one on the shallows, shell full of water, four men to carry it up the pier. Two garrison men hurt, both glancing—the sandbag stacks they’d been tucked behind took the worst of it. Ember Guard: untouched.

Chen Jin crouched at the grating root and looked at the bent bar. He ran a thumb over the bend. It wouldn’t straighten; it would have to come out and be replaced.

”Should’ve brought the gun three days ago,” he said.

The words were out before he heard them—three days ago there was no gun to bring. Nothing to say it to. Say it to the bent bar; the bar had been bent just as long. He put the thought down and stood up to run the tally.

[Night tally: War-hound class x1, Hound-class x3]

[Embers: 1415]

On the panel, tonight’s entries: three hounds, one war-hound. The three war-hounds the gun tore apart—one number, none of them. The dozen-plus the rifle line cut down—not a number either. A month ago one war-hound took a man to the edge of dying to buy. Now one boom bought three. The scale hadn’t changed; the goods on it had. This ledger kept narrowing down to his one hand, and the more they won, the less it looked like an account.

He closed the panel. One thousand four hundred fifteen. The rifle was two thousand one; six hundred eighty-five short. He turned the number over once: eighty closer than last night. Keep hitting like this and the rifle had a date—the accounts for guns, for rounds, for backs were all queued up in front of that date.

Wen Heng came at first light, med kit still in hand, and went down the line ear by ear. Asked one, wrote one—seven this time, more than the north wall. And she asked it finer: mouth open or not when it fired, were you behind the stacks or beside them, was it the concussion or the blast that got you—each answer its own line. Her notebook ran like a ledger: every ear its own entry, every entry dated, so the next check could pick up where this one left off. At the gun post there were two men: one clear-eared, one muffled. She looked up. ”You passed the order?”

”Your rule. Open your mouth before the gun fires.”

She looked at him for two breaths, put one line into her notebook, and didn’t read it out. When the last muffled ear was done she closed the book and said only: ”One boom shakes more men than the bugs break. Next time, half a step farther back from the gap.” A beat, then: ”The muffled one—no gun post for three days. Ears don’t get hardened by gritting through it.”

The order came once and she was gone, kit swinging.

At noon, Zhou Zhengting’s note reached the east sluice. One line, the characters squared off like type: last night, two guns—how many charges, how many jin of iron shot, how many rifle rounds? The copper account wants its numbers.

Chen Jin sent back three lines: two charges, one jin of iron shot, two hundred forty-odd rounds. And a line under: what this night spent, the garrison’s saved rounds will pay back, entry by entry. Signed in pencil, as always.

On the pier, Da Liu brought the empty magazines in, rows of them. Lei Changgeng counted: forty-one. Have them boxed, he said, and tell the shelter side—reloading has to speed up. One more night like this and the wall starts passing up empty mags.

Da Liu said somebody over at the shelter had already come asking for the casings—couldn’t remember who said it, but the word was she’d picked out the steadiest hands for the work herself.

At the repair station the hammer had never stopped that night. Xiao Mao said that when the boom came, his hammer paused—one beat, no more—then went back to work. Gun three’s rail web had its first planing cut by morning.

Out on the high slope, the thing stood again.

It had howled when the firing stopped, and it had not left. Past midnight somebody saw it come halfway down the slope, stand on the half-ground, watch the east sluice a while longer, and go down. By its ledger the east sluice had no gun; by its ears, all night, none. The gun had sat three layers of felt away from both. After first light, men went to look: a crushed patch of grass on the half-slope where its weight had sat, and in front of it a swath of laid-flat brush. It had crouched there more than a moment.

It had moved its watching-place closer.