Tomorrow, the Killing Read Online Free Page B

which, as it turns out, they did.
    I was a private back then, the lowest rung on a long fucking ladder. It wasn’t a position that much suited me. We’re all dancing on strings, but I prefer mine less visible. It’s impossible to maintain even the common pretense of free will when every drop of your energy is spent at the discretion of men you never see, who seem as far above you as the Firstborn and his siblings – albeit possessed of a good deal less wisdom.
    We’d been drawn up in formation since morning, packed against each other while the artillery corps wasted small mountains of iron in a futile effort to annihilate the opposing forces. The Great War would see a dramatic expansion of the role of cannon in combat, recent industrial advances having allowed for their mass production. Of course, you could build all the culverin you wanted, didn’t mean much without anyone who knew how to aim them. It was one thing to show an illiterate peasant how to swing a piece of metal at his Dren equivalent, another to provide him with the training necessary to correctly sight ordnance. As the conflict progressed and the gunners had time to perfect their craft, cannon fire would come to be as deadly as the plague, and the whistling of shot would be enough to send a brigade of stout-hearted men diving for cover – but that day was far off. The soldiers manning our batteries seemed half-blind or fully retarded, and there was probably no safer place in Nestria than that occupied by the army some half-mile distant. For once the Dren were equally incompetent, and a solid hour passed while shot and metal shards buried themselves in the mud a few hundred yards in front of us.
    If you’re hoping for a treatise on military history, you’re shit out of luck. I didn’t know then and I don’t know now what it was about Beneharnum that necessitated the death of ten thousand men, why this particular stretch of earth needed to be watered with blood. I suppose it was as good a place to die as any, and I never heard a man put six feet down complain about the spot.
    Certainly the officer who gave us our orders did no great job of explaining the situation. He looked the part at least, seated atop a white destrier and gesturing dramatically with his cavalry saber, though with the artillery duel going on no one could hear a word he said. I assumed he’d been exhorting us to die for Queen and Country, and though I’d never met the old bitch and wasn’t mad for what I’d seen of her kingdom, a half-hour later I nevertheless found myself in the front rank of her army, leaning against the twenty-foot spear I’d wedged into the ground and waiting to march on to death.
    Next to me Adolphus was doing the same, though the sapling seemed insufficient for his bulk. In light of future events it’s tempting to imbue our early relationship with more than casual importance, but the truth is back then he was just another face in the regiment, albeit one set substantially above the rest. I didn’t know much about him and didn’t want to – it didn’t make sense to get too close to anyone, given the reasonable likelihood of their demise. You could hear the hills in his argot, a country boy grown up slinging mud or diddling cows or doing whatever the fuck farmers do, I dunno. He’d told me the first time he’d left his village was when he’d joined up, as anxious to get out of the provinces as I’d been to leave the slums.
    The artillery barrage finally ended. Adolphus let a spiral of saliva fall to the ground. ‘Hell of an overture.’
    ‘Gorgeous,’ I responded. Tough as scrap iron, the two of us. If we hadn’t been holding our weapons you’d have seen our hands palsy.
    We had good reason for it. The front row was not an ideal spot as far as safety was concerned. The rest of the line had been drawn by lots, but the two of us had volunteered, meaning we drew double pay and more importantly, by my lights, had a shot at getting noticed by the