Minka turned to look about. Smoke was still rising from the remains of Tor Kharybdis. The ash gave the setting sun a spectacularly ruddy hue. It was like a red teardrop slipping into the sea, hanging for a moment before it was gone.

A hush fell as a bell began to ring out. Of course, she thought, it was the Eve of Sanguinalia.

Through the stillness, the cathedral bells tolled. Across the camp-city, each regiment was marking the festival according to their planetary rituals. Some spent the night in ritual feasts and dances, others in prayer.

The Munitorum were already repairing the bridge link to Tor Tartarus. How long would it take, Minka wondered, for all the scars of this war to be healed?

‘Hey,’ a voice said. It was Prassan. He was in his smart dress uniform. Despite his time away from the front lines, he’d lost some of his boyishness.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

Minka pursed her lips and nodded. She had no words. Not yet. It was all too raw. Prassan produced a bottle from behind his back. It was Arcady Pride. ‘Bendikt asked me to pass it on with his compliments. He wanted to say thank you.’

Minka took the bottle. ‘Bendikt?’

He nodded.

She half laughed. ‘Me?’

Prassan nodded. He gave her a look. ‘A drink?’

‘Yes,’ Minka said. She was exhausted, but that was exactly what she needed.

An hour later Minka and Prassan were sitting on the veranda of Minka’s cabin. Minka was half drunk already, and the alcohol helped the words to flow. The rest of her platoon had found groups of their own. But two figures stood apart, not quite sure how they fit in, or what exactly to do.

Minka called out to them.

‘Over here!’ She turned to Prassan. ‘Move over.’

Blanchez sat first, then Yedrin.

‘General Bendikt has sent this for you two,’ Minka told them as she filled up their mugs, ‘to welcome you into the Hundred-and-First.’

‘General Bendikt?’ they said.

She gave them a matter-of-fact nod. ‘Of course. Sent Trooper Prassan especially.’

Prassan gave them a non-committal look, but he was in the dress uniform of the HQ personnel so to them it must have looked true. They raised their cups in a salute and drank, and soon their tongues were running free with light words and laughter.

They reminded Minka of what she had been like, a few years earlier. She paused and looked out as the day faded about her. The sky was yellow at the horizon, and deep blue above her head, and between them it was shaded with green and turquoise and pale blue.

It was a beautiful evening, she thought. One to remember.

Perhaps one day, she thought, they would stand at her graveside, and think fondly of her.

It was beyond her, at this moment. She refilled their cups.

‘Here,’ she said. ‘Have another drink.’

About the Author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR