Iain Banks - A Song of Stone

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Iain Banks - A Song Of Stone

Chapter One

Winter always was my favourite season. Is this yet winter? I do not know. There

is some technical definition, something based on calendars and the position of

the sun, but I think one simply becomes aware that the tide of the seasons has

irrevocably turned; that the animal in us smells winter. Disregarding the

imposed grid of our chronology, winter is something inflicted upon our half

world, something taken away from the land by the cold and cooling sky and the

low and lowering sun, something that permeates the soul, and enters the mind

through the nose, between the teeth and across the porous barrier of the skin.

A raw wind picks and stirs small spirals of leaves across the broken grey

surface of the road and dumps them scattering in the cold puddles of water at

the bottom of the ditches. The leaves are yellow, red, ochre and brown; the

colours of burning in the midst of this damp chill. Some leaves remain on the

trees overlooking the road; no ice rims the ditches' mean trickle, and on both

sides of the plain the hills are free of snow under a midday sun within a wide

slice of cloud free sky. But still it feels like all autumn's past. Northwards,

in the distance, a few mountains hide behind a grey besieging fleet of clouds.

Perhaps there is snow there, on those peaks, but we are not allowed to see it

yet. The wind comes from the north, pushing veils of rain down the hills towards

us. Across the fields to the south some trample blonde and wasted, some

harvested and earth bare, a few pitted with craters columns of smoke climb,

shifted aslant by the freshening breeze. For a moment, the wind smells both of

rain and burning.

Those around us, our fellow refugees, mutter and stamp their feet on the greasy

surface of the road. We are, or were, a stream of humanity, a surge of outcast

people, arterial and quick in this quiet landscape, but now something holds us

up. The wind dies again, and on its ebb I smell the sweat of unwashed bodies and

the scent of the two horses pulling our makeshift wagon.

You reach up from behind me and hold my elbow, squeezing.

I turn back to you, brushing a wisp of jet black hair away from your brow.

Around you are clustered the bags and chests we thought to take, stuffed with

whatever we hoped might prove useful for us but not too tempting to others. A

few more precious items are hidden within and beneath the carriage. You have

been sitting with your back to me in the open carriage, looking back along our

route, perhaps trying to see the home we left, but now you are twisting round on

the seat, trying to see past me, a frown troubling your expression like a flaw

in a statue's marble face.

'I don't know why we've stopped,' I tell you. I stand up for a moment, looking

out over the heads of the people in front of us. A tall bodied truck fifty

metres ahead hides the view beyond; the road here is straight for a kilometre or

so, between the fields and the woods (our fields, our woods, our lands, as I

still think of them).

This morning, when we and our few servants joined the flow of people, carts and

vehicles, it stretched unbroken out of sight both up and down the road; a

continuity of the displaced, all moving, shuffling, eyes cast downwards,

trundling from roughly west to vaguely east. I had never seen such a mass of

people; a river of souls upon that road. They reminded me of childhood paper

people, outlines cut from compressed newspapers and then pulled out, all linked,

all similar, all slightly different, all taking their shape from what has been

removed and fragile, flammable, disposable by their nature demanding some

suitable ill use. We joined them easily enough, fitting in yet standing out.

Some noises come from ahead. They may be shouts; then I hear the dry crackle of

small arms fire, sparse and sharp in the resuming wind. My mouth becomes dry.

The people around us families, mostly, little groups of kin seem to shrink

in on themselves. I can hear a child crying. A couple of our servants, leading

the horses, glance back at us. After a while, a new, closer smudge of smoke

rises from beyond the tall truck ahead. A little later still, the queue of

people and vehicles starts to move again. I flick the reins and the two brown

mares clop onwards. The tall truck's exhaust gives up a cloud of smoke.

'Were those shots?' you ask, turning and standing and looking past my arm. I

smell your scent, the soap from your last bath this morning in the castle, like

a floral memory of summer.

'I think so.'

The mares edge us onward. The smell of the truck's diesel fumes lies briefly

across the wind. Tied, hidden, under the carriage there are six drums of diesel,

two of petrol and one of oil. We left our vehicles in the castle yard, reckoning

the horses and this carriage could take us further towards whatever safety's to

be found than could the motors. There is more to that calculation than just

miles per gallon or kilometres per litre; from all the rumours, and indeed from

the little we've seen so far, working vehicles, and particularly those capable

of going offroad, attract the attention of exactly those we are currently trying

to avoid. Just so the castle, seemingly so strong, only draws trouble to it. I

have to keep telling myself and you that we have done the best thing, leaving

our home to save it; those no doubt already picking over it are welcome to what

they can carry.

The smoke ahead of us grows thicker, comes closer. I think perhaps a more

possessive, less protective soul than mine would have burned the castle, this

morning, when we left. But I could not. It would, no doubt, have felt good to

deprive those threatening us their stolen reward, but still I could not do it.

Uniformed men with guns uniforms and weapons both various, irregular are

shouting at the tall truck ahead of us. It lumbers off the road and into the

entrance to a field, letting those behind it pass on by. The column of refugees

ahead, a stream of folk, all heads and hats and hoods and wobbling piled up

carts, stretches towards the horizon.

We come to the source of the smoke, and by that rising column, ours stops again.

By the road there is a burning van; it lies tipped in the ditch, not quite on

its side; an open trailer behind it sticks its rear into the air, its contents

spilled from beneath a dark tarpaulin. The van pulses with fire, flames spilling

from its broken screen and windows, smoke bustling from its flung open rear

doors. Our fellow travellers, at least those on foot, bunch to the far side of

the road as they pass it, perhaps fearing an explosion. More uniformed men are

picking at the scatter of goods spilled from the van's trailer, oblivious to the

nearby fire. Spread on the ditch bank near the van, what looked at first like

two more piles of rags are both bodies; one face down and one, a woman, staring

up to the sky with wide, immobile eyes. A brown black stain discolours her

jacket down one side. You stand, looking, too. A pitiful, desperate moaning

comes from somewhere ahead.

Then, beyond the smoke and flames and the van's tilted roof, where a luggage

rack had broken free and spread bags, drums and containers across the coarse

grass and stunted bushes there is movement.

It was there we saw the lieutenant first, rising from beyond the wreck's full

bloody flames, her figure distorted by that rising heat as though through

twisting water; a rock to foul the flow.

A shot comes from where the tall truck is, stopped at the gate leading to a

field ahead, opposite the entrance to a forest track. People duck around us, the

horses start momentarily and you flinch, but I am held by the gaze of the figure

beyond the flames. Some more shots crack out, and I turn at last, gaze torn, to

watch people stumbling from the tall truck, hands raised or on their heads as

more men in uniforms herd them away, drop the tailgate with a thud and start to

rummage through the vehicle. When I look back, you are seated again, and the

uniformed woman I saw through the flames is stepping, flanked by two of these

irregular soldiers, to the door of our open carriage.

Our lieutenant (though I'll admit we did not think of her as such then) is of

average build, but with an air of gracefulness about her movements. Her plain

face is dark, nearly swarthy, her eyes grey under black brows. Her attire is

composed of many different types of uniforms; her stained, scuffed boots come

from one army, her torn fatigues from another, her grimy, holed jacket from yet

one more, and her crumpled cap sporting wings as part of its insignia

appears to have originated in an air force, but her gun (long and dark, sickle

shaped magazines neatly taped back to back and upside down) is spotlessly clean

and gleaming. She smiles at you and tips her cap briefly, then turns to me. The

long gun rests easily on her hip, barrel threatening the sky.

'And you, sir?' she asks. Her voice possesses a roughness I find perversely

pleasant, even as my skin crawls at a buried menace in her words, a promissory

threat. Did she suspect, did she foresee something even then? Did our carriage

mark us out within that crowd, a jewel set in a baser band, appealing to the

predator in her?

'What, ma'am?' I ask, as somebody screams. I glance away to see a group of the

soldiers gathered around somebody lying on the roadside, a few metres in front

of the burning van. The refugees file past this group as well, keeping well

away.

'Have you anything we might want?' the uniformed woman asks, swinging lightly up

on to the carriage's kick step and with another smile at you leaning over to

lift the edge of a travel rug with the muzzle of her long gun.

'I don't know,' I say slowly. 'What is it you want?'

'Guns,' she shrugs, glancing, eyes narrowed, at me. 'Anything precious,' she

says, to you, then uses the long gun's muzzle to peek under another rug across

the carriage from where you sit, pale faced, wide eyed, staring at her. 'Fuel?'

she says, looking at me again.

'Fuel?' I say. It crosses my mind to ask if she means coal, or logs, but I leave

the thought unsaid, intimidated by her manner and her gun. Another sobbing

scream comes from the small huddle of men ahead of the truck.

'Fuel,' she repeats, 'ammunition ' Then a shriek comes from the group of men

clustered ahead of us (you wince again); our lieutenant glances in the direction

of that awful wail, a tiny frown forming and disappearing on her face almost in

the same instant as she says, ' medical supplies?' A look of calculation appears

on her face.

I shrug. 'We have some first aid material.' I nod towards the mares. 'The horses

eat grain; that's their fuel.'

'Hmm,' she says.

'Lucius,' someone says from ahead of us. Our servant mutters something in

return. Two men walk from the small group gathered on the road; one of the

irregulars and the Factor from the village. He nods to me. Our lieutenant steps

down from the carriage and walks to him, then stands with her back to us, head

bowed, talking to the Factor. He glances up at us at one point, then walks away.

The lieutenant returns, steps up again, pushing her cap back over her dun

coloured, scraped back hair. 'Sir,' she says, smiling at me. 'You have a castle?

You should have said.'

'Had,' I reply. I cannot help but glance back in its direction. 'We've left it.'

'And a title,' she goes on.

'A minor one,' I grant her.

'Well,' the lieutenant exclaims, gaze sweeping round her nearby men. 'What

should we call you?'

'Just my name will do. Please call me Abel.' I hesitate. 'And you, ma'am?'

She looks, grinning, round her men, then back at me. 'You can call me

lieutenant,' she tells me. To you she says, 'What's your name?' You sit, still

staring at her.

'Morgan,' I tell her.

She remains looking at you for a moment, then slowly turns her gaze to me.

'Morgan,' she says slowly. Then another cry comes from the group huddled on the

road. The lieutenant frowns and looks that way. 'Stomach wound,' she says

quietly, two fingers tapping on the polished veneer of the carriage's door. She

glances at the two bodies lying by the burning van. She sighs. 'Just first aid

stuff?' she asks me. I nod. She taps the buxom quilting on the inside of the

door, then steps down and walks towards the group crouched ahead on the road.

The knot of men opens, the soldiers making way for her.

A young uniformed man lies on his side in the centre of the group, hands

clutched round his belly, shivering and moaning. Our lieutenant goes to him. She

lays her long gun down on the road surface as she crouches, stroking the lad's

head and talking quietly to him, one hand at his brow, the other doing something

at her hip. She nods a couple of the others out of the way they retreat then

bends down and kisses the young soldier full on the mouth. It looks a deep,

lingering, almost passionate kiss; a string of saliva, caught in the sunlight

slanting over the trees, connects them still as she pulls slowly away. Her lips

have hardly left his when the pistol she has placed at the boy's temple fires.

His head jerks as though kicked hard, his body spasms once then relaxes and some

blood flicks up and out across the road. (I feel your hand on my shoulder,

clutching at my skin through the layers of jacket, fleece and shirts.) The young

soldier uncurls and flops loosely on to his back mouth open, eyes closed.

The lieutenant stands promptly, shouldering her rifle. She spares the dead

soldier a last look, then turns to one of those who had been clustered round the

wounded lad. 'Mr Cuts: see he's buried properly.' She holsters the still smoking

automatic pistol as she glances at the two civilian bodies lying by the burning

van. 'Leave those two for the dogs.' She walks back to our carriage, shaking a

grey kerchief out of a pocket and dabbing at her face, removing a few small

spots of the youth's blood. She jumps up on to the step again, folding her

elbows over the carriage door.

'I was asking about guns,' she says.

'I ha I have a shotgun and rifle,' I tell her, my voice shaking. I glance up

the road. 'We may need them for '

'Where are they?'

'Here.' I stand slowly, and look down at the box beneath the coachman's seat.

The lieutenant nods to a soldier I had not noticed on the other side of the

carriage, who jumps up, opens the box, searches it and hauls out the oil heavy

bag in which I stowed the guns; he checks inside, then jumps back down.

'The rifle is not of a military calibre,' I protest.

'Ah. That'll mean it can't shoot soldiers, then,' the lieutenant says, nodding

ingenuously.

I glance round in the direction we were travelling. 'For pity's sake, we don't

know what we might meet further on '

'Oh, I don't think you need to worry about that,' she says, climbing a step

higher on the carriage and giving another nod. The same soldier who took the

guns clambers up beside me again. He proceeds to search me, efficiently but not

roughly, while the lieutenant alternately grins at me and smiles at you, who

look on, gloved hands clenched but visibly trembling. The soldier has a sour,

almost fetid odour. He finds nothing he judges worth exhibiting, save the heavy

bunch of keys I put into my pocket this morning. He throws them to the

lieutenant, who catches them one handed and looks at them, holding them up and

turning them against the light.

'A mighty bunch of keys,' she says, then looks at me, inquiring.

'The castle's,' I tell her. I shrug, a little embarrassed. 'A keepsake.'

She rolls them clinking round her hand, then with a flourish pockets them in her

torn jacket. 'You know, we need some place to hole up for a while, Abel,' she

tells me. 'Bit of rest and recreation.' She smiles at you. 'How far is this

castle?'

'It took us since dawn to get this far,' I tell her.

'Why did you leave? A castle ought to be protection, no?'

'It's small,' I tell her. 'Not very formidable. Not formidable at all. just a

house, really; it used to have a drawbridge, but now there's just an ordinary

stone bridge across the moat.'

She makes a show of being impressed. 'Oh! A moat. . .'She draws smirks from the

soldiers around her (and I notice for the first time how tired and beaten

looking many of them are, as some gather round us, some carry away the body of

the young soldier and others start to usher the people behind us round our

carriage and onwards down the road. Many of them seem wounded; some are limping,

some have arms in frayed slings, some dirty bandages on their heads like grey

bandanas.)

'The gate is not very strong,' I say, and feel that my words sound as lame as

some of these grubby, motley soldiers. 'We were worried it would be sacked if we

stayed and tried to hold out,' I continue. 'There were soldiers there; trying to

take it, yesterday,' I conclude.

Her eyes narrow. 'What soldiers?'

'I don't know who they were.'

'Uniforms?' she asks. She looks slyly around. 'Any better than ours?'

'We didn't really see them.'

'What sort of heavy equipment did they have?' she asks, then when I hesitate

waves one hand and suggests, 'Tanks, armoured cars, field guns ... ?'

I shrug. 'I don't know. They had guns; machine guns, grenades . . .'

'Mortar,' you say, gulping, startled eyes looking from me to her.

I put my hand on yours. 'I'm not sure about that,' I tell our lieutenant. 'I

think it was ... a rifle grenade?'

Our lieutenant nods wisely, seems to think for a moment, then says, 'Let's take

a look at your castle, Abel, shall we?'

'It's easy enough to find,' I tell her. I glance back the way we've come. 'Just

'No,' she says, opening the carriage door and swinging her short frame up and in

to sit across from you. She levers some bags aside to get more comfortable and

places the long gun across her knees. 'You take us back,' she tells me. 'I

always wanted to ride in a carriage like this.' She pats the plush surface of

the seat. 'And a little local knowledge can be useful.' She fishes inside her

jacket some sort of dark, ceremonial thing, torn in a few places, stained and

smudged with dirt then pulls out a gleaming silver case, opening it and

offering it to you and me. 'Cigarette?'

We each refuse; she takes out a cigarette then puts the silver case away.

'I don't think going back is a good idea,' I say, trying to sound reasonable.

She is taking off her cap, pushing a hand through her short, mouse brown curls.

'Well, too bad,' she says, frowning to inspect something inside her cap and

running one finger round the inside rim. 'Consider yourself requisitioned.' She

puts her cap back on and glances up at me with a small cold smile. 'Turn the

carriage round and head back there.' She pulls a lighter from a breast pocket.

'But it took us since dawn,' I protest. 'And that was with the flow. It'll be

after dark '

She shakes her head quickly. 'We'll put the trucks in front.' She flicks the

skip of her cap. 'People get out the way for a truck with a machine gun; you'd

be amazed. It won't take too long.' She makes a delicate twirling motion with

one finger as she lights her cigarette with her other hand. 'Turn around, Abel,'

she says through a cloud of exhaled smoke.

The tall truck ahead of us has been driven into the field; its diesel fuel is

being siphoned off. We turn round in the gateway and a couple of jeeps and two

six wheel trucks with camouflaged canopies drive out of hiding in the forest

track opposite. The soldiers who investigated the remains of the burning van

load petrol cans and plastic drums into the back of one of the trucks, which go

ahead of us back up the road, into the stream of refugees, horns blaring, a

soldier standing proud of the leading truck's cab where a machine gun points

out. The people part and scatter before the trucks like water round the bows of

a ship; it is all I can do to keep up. The mares break into a canter for the

first time that day.

One of their jeeps follows immediately behind us. It too has a machine gun,

mounted on a post behind the front seats. The second jeep remains behind; two of

the soldiers and our servants will bury the young soldier and then follow us.

The carriage rattles, sways and shakes; the damp wind courses round my face,

cold and quick. The carriage's shadow, wheels flickering, is thrown long and

spindly across the verge by the watery sun. The lieutenant looks pleased, and

sits cross legged with the gun balanced against one thigh, her cap on a bag

beside her, her hand absently pushing through her short char brown hair. She

smiles at us both in turn. You look up at me, put one gloved hand up to mine.

Behind us, the refugees close up again and continue on their way. The burning

van in the ditch makes a noise like a distant cough and a dark blister of smoke

rolls upward into the greying sky, joining the smoke from all the other burning

vehicles, farms and houses across the plain.

Chapter Two

And so we are delivered to the castle. I had not thought to see it again so

soon; in fact I half expected never to see it again. I feel foolish, like

somebody who has bidden a long and heartfelt farewell to a dear friend at a

station, only to discover that through some misunderstanding they are on the

same train. Still, as the trucks turn off the main road, leaving the line of

refugees behind, I wonder what welcome awaits us. I have been watching for smoke

as we approach, apprehensive that the soldiers who appeared yesterday might have

sacked our home and set it on fire. So far, however, the sky above the trees

where the castle is shows only the grey clouds moving down from the north.

The lieutenant investigates the interior of the carriage while we drive, finding

much that fascinates her. I look round as she discovers your jewel box, behind

your feet; you bend and hold it to your breast but she prises it from your hands

with a deal of soft clucking and gentle admonishment that breaks your grip, I

believe, as certainly as her greater strength. She inspects each piece in turn,

admiring a few against her breast, around her wrist or on her fingers, before

laughing and giving them back to you, save for one small ring of white gold and

ruby.

'May I keep this?' she asks you. The carriage jolts, clattering over a pothole

and I have to look forward again; your head is pressed up against the small of

my back as I pull on the reins, keeping the mares away from a line of holes

along the road. I feel you nod to her.

'Thank you, Morgan,' the lieutenant says, and sounds well satisfied.

She seems to doze for the last few minutes (you touch me on the back', to get me

to look, and there is a smile on your face as you nod at her, head bobbing

slackly). I am not so sure; our lieutenant's face does not appear completely

relaxed to me, the way people really look when they are genuinely asleep.

Perhaps she is still watching us, tempting us, waiting to see what we shall do.

However that may be, now she rouses herself, looks around, asks where we are and

pulls a small radio from her tunic. She talks briefly into it and the trucks

ahead of us growl to a stop on the driveway. I pull the carriage up just behind;

the jeep idles to our rear. We are perhaps a half kilometre from the entrance to

the castle's drive, hidden round a bend beneath the damp dark skeletons of the

trees.

'Is there a gatehouse?' she asks me quietly. I nod.

'Any other road or track avoiding the gatehouse?'

'Not for the trucks,' I tell her.

'The jeep?'

'I'd think so.'

She stands quickly, rocking the carriage, tips her cap at you then nods to me.

'You lead us. We'll take a jeep.' You glance fearfully at me and put your hand

out to me. 'Kneecap,' our lieutenant says to one of the men in the jeep. 'You

look after the horses.'

The lieutenant gives orders I do not hear to the men in the trucks, then swings

into the jeep, taking the wheel herself. The fellow sitting in the passenger

seat holds a drainpipe diameter olive tube about a metre and a half long. I take

it to be a rocket launcher. I am squeezed in the back between the metal post

supporting the machine gun and a fat, pale soldier who smells like a week dead

fox. Behind us, sitting on the rear lip of the vehicle, crouches a fourth

soldier who holds the heavy machinegun.

We take the narrow forest track, round the back of the old estate, beneath the

small escarpment fringed with dripping evergreens. The overhanging trees and

bushes in places form a tunnel around the track, and the soldier manning the

machinegun curses quietly, ducking as snagging branches try to wrest the gun

from his grip. The track approaches the stream that feeds the moat. The bridge

is rotten, too frail for the jeep, timbers skewed and loose. The lieutenant

turns to me, a look of disappointment beginning to form on her face.

'We're close now,' I tell her, keeping my voice low. I nod. 'Just over the

ridge; there's a clear view.'

She follows my gaze, then says quietly to the soldier at the machine gun,

'Karma, take the gun. Let's go.'

It would seem I am included. We leave the jeep unmanned and the five of us the

lieutenant and I, the man with the rocket launcher, the fat, pale soldier and

the one she called Karma, who totes the jeep's machine gun and several heavy

looking loops of belted ammunition cross the bridge and scale the steep bank

on the far side. From the top, through bushes, the castle and the nearer gardens

are spread out. It is a fine vantage point. The lieutenant takes out a pair of

small fieldglasses, training them on our home.

A brief shower comes upon us, the falling drops catching in one last slant of

sunlight levered underneath the rain clouds billowing down from the north. I

look at my home, as a golden shroud of wind and rain wraps round it, trying to

see it as another might; a modest castellation, not large; age smoothed, sitting

prettily in a ring of water and surrounded by lawns, hedges, gravel paths and

outbuildings. The ancient walls once pierced only by arrow slots, long since

remodelled to allow more generous windows are the colour of honey, in that

rose red light. It looks peaceful; but still, for all that architectural

delicacy, somehow too strong for these brutal, disrespecting times.

Steeped in all this indiscriminate barbarity, anything standing proud invites a

razing, like some defiant shout which only draws the hands' attention still

faster to the throat, to grasp that moving strand of air by which we hang from

and on to life. The only persistence in these unleashed days is achieved through

low denominations and banality; in uniformity if not in uniforms, like that

shoal of the displaced we tried to become part of. Sometimes the lowest how is

the highest guard to offer.

For now, all is still about the castle; no smoke rises, no figures stalk its

square of battlements; no flag flies above, no light shines and nothing moves.

There are still a few tents on the front lawns; people from the village who'd

suffered the attentions of armed bands before and had thought the proximity of

the castle might guarantee a degree of safety. Some smoke rises slowly there.

I think the castle never looked so good to me as now, for all that one lot of

pirates are in charge of it and I am being forced to help another band even more

determined to have it for their own.

The grounds around it are another matter; even before the despoilings inflicted

by our mongrel dispossessed cutting wood for fires, digging latrines in our

lawns the fields, woods and policies were running down, going to seed,

becoming neglected. We lost our estate manager two years ago, and I only ever

distantly interested in the running of the estate could not find it in me to

take his place. Thereafter, gradually, all the other estate workers were taken

by the war, one way or the other, and nature, unrestrained, began to renew its

old authority over the burden of our lands.

'There, at the stables,' the lieutenant whispers, over the noise of raindrops

pattering through the foliage around us. 'Those two four wheel drives.'

'Ours,' I tell her. We left them there, and the stable doors unlocked, knowing

that to attempt to secure anything would only invite more damage. 'Although we

didn't leave the doors open like that.'

'That building with the slatted sides at the back of the garages,' the

lieutenant says. 'Is that a generator house?'

'Yes.'

'Any fuel for it?' She looks at me hopefully.

Only under our carriage. 'The tank ran dry last month,' I tell her, truthfully

enough. Saving our last few drums of diesel, we have mostly used candles for

light and open fires for heating since then; the kitchen stoves burn wood too.

There were fires and lamps that ran off propane, but we used up the final

cylinder last night, before we left.

'Hmm,' our lieutenant says, as the soldier to her other side nudges her and

points. We watch as a man another irregular, as far as I can see appears

from the stable block, puts a drum in the back of one of the four wheel drives

and then starts it, bringing it round to the front of the castle, out of sight

from us.

'Much fuel in those cars?' the lieutenant asks quietly.

'Only what we couldn't siphon,' I reply.

'Can you take a vehicle into the castle itself?'

'Not one of those,' I tell her. 'Too tall. There's a small courtyard, with

enough room to rum something the size of a jeep around.'

'No drawbridge?' she says, looking at me. I shake my head. She smiles thinly. 'I

think you mentioned a gate, though, didn't you, Abel?'

'A thin one, and a portcullis of wrought iron. I doubt either would stop '

The lieutenant's radio chirps. She holds up one hand to me, and answers the

radio, listening then making a snuffing noise. 'Yes, if you can do it cleanly.

We're on the ridge just behind the castle.'

She puts the instrument away. 'Amateurs,' she says, sneering, and shakes her

head. 'They've nobody in the gatehouse.' She looks at the man to her other side.

'Psycho's in the trees by the drive, over there,' she tells him. 'Says there's

only two loading the car. Nothing heavy in sight. He's about to start shooting,

then one of the trucks and the other jeep are going to make a dash for the

front. Give them cover.' She turns to me. 'These aren't soldiers,' she says with

seeming disgust, 'they're just looters.' She shakes her head, then puts the

binoculars away and readies her long gun, steadying it and sighting.

'Deathwish,' she says to the soldier with the rocket launcher. 'Save it. Not

unless I tell you, okay?'

The fellow looks disappointed.

Gunfire comes from beyond the castle, near where the driveway leaves the trees

and climbs up the shallow slope to the main lawn. There is nothing to see for a

moment, then the four wheel drive reappears racing round the gravel track from

the front of the castle, back towards the stable block. The car drifts across

the gravel, rear door swinging wildly, still open. Its windscreen is starred

white and somebody is trying to punch through it from behind. The lieutenant's

gun barks suddenly, making me start; the heavy machine gun they brought from the

jeep opens up and I put my hands to my ears. The four wheel drive shakes, pieces

fly off it and it turns sharply, front wheel seeming to buckle, almost tipping

it into the moat (the machine gun's rounds kick tall thin splashes in the water

for a moment); the car swerves the other way, losing speed; it straightens out

briefly and crashes into the corner of the stable block.

'Stop!' shouts our lieutenant, and the firing ceases.

Steam curls upwards from the car's crushed bonnet. The driver's door opens and

somebody falls out, crawling on all fours on the ground, then collapsing.

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IainBanks-ASongOfStoneChapterOneWinteralwayswasmyfavouriteseason.Isthisyetwinter?Idonotknow.Thereissometechnicaldefinition,somethingbasedoncalendarsandthepositionofthesun,butIthinkonesimplybecomesawarethatthetideoftheseasonshasirrevocablyturned;thattheanimalinussmellswinter.Disregardingtheimposedgri...

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Iain Banks - A Song of Stone

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