The Ask and the Answer

“I do,” I say. Also a fact.

“In that way?”

We both look over at Todd. He’s gesturing with his arms and telling the men what we’re planning and what they should do.

He’s looking like a leader.

“Viola?” Lee asks.

I turn back to him. “You need to find the Answer before the army does, Lee, if you can at all.”

He frowns. “They may not believe me about Mistress Coyle. A lot of people need her to be right.”

“Well,” I say, gently taking up the reins of the horse. Boy colt? she thinks, watching Todd, too. “Think of it this way. If you can reach them and we can take care of the Mayor, this could all be over today.”

Lee squints into the sun. “And if you don’t take care of him?”

I try to smile. “Well, then, you’re just going to have to come rescue us, aren’t you?”

He tries to smile back.

“We’re ready,” Todd says, coming back over.

“This is it,” I say.

Todd holds out his hand to Lee. “Good luck.”

Lee takes his hand. “And to you,” he says.

But he’s looking at me.

After Lee’s set off into the woods, running to scale the hills and intercept the Answer before the army does, the rest of us start our march down the road. Todd leads Angharrad, who keeps saying Boy colt over and over again in her Noise, nervous at someone new on her back. Todd murmurs things to keep her calm, rubbing her nose and petting her flank as we go.

“How do you feel?” he asks me as we approach the first set of dormitories.

“My feet hurt,” I say. “My head, too.” I rub my hand on my sleeve where the band is hiding. “And my arm.”

“Other than that?” He smiles.

I look at the guards around us, marching in formation, as if they really are escorting me and Todd to the Mayor as ordered: Ivan and another in front, two behind, two to my right and the last to my left.

“Do you believe we can beat him?” I ask Todd.

“Well,” he says and laughs, low, “we’re going, ain’t we?”

We’re going.

Up the road and into New Prentisstown.

“Let’s pick it up,” Todd says, a bit louder.

The men pick up the pace.

“It’s deserted,” whispers the guard with flaming red hair as we pass through areas with more and more buildings.

Buildings but no people.

“Not deserted,” another guard says, one with a big belly poking out in front of him. “In hiding.”

“It’s spooky without the army,” the red-haired one says. “Without soldiers marching up and down the street.”

“We’re marching, Private,” Ivan says. “We’re soldiers, too.”

We pass houses with shutters closed tight, store fronts with locked shutters, roads with no carts or fissionbikes or even people walking. You can hear the ROAR from behind closed doors but it’s half the volume.

And it’s scared.

“They know it’s coming,” Todd says. “They know this could be the war they’ve been waiting for.”

I look around from atop Angharrad. No homes have any lights on, no faces peep out of windows, no one even curious as to what this band of guards is doing around a horse carrying a girl with bandaged feet.

And then the road bends and there’s the cathedral.

“Holy moly,” says the red-haired guard, as we come to a stop.

“You lived through that?” the pot belly says to Todd. He whistles in appreciation. “Maybe you are a bit blessed.”

The bell tower still stands, though it’s hard to see how, teetering on top of an unsteady ladder of bricks. Two walls of the main building stand, too, including the one with the coloured glass circle.

But the rest of it.

The rest of it’s just a pile of stone and dust.

Even from behind, you can see that most of the roof has caved in and the largest parts of two walls have been blown out onto the road and the square in front of it. Arches lean dangerously out of balance, doors are twisted off their hinges, and most of the inside lies open to the world, receiving the last of the sun as it heads down to the horizon.

And there’s not one soldier guarding it.

“He’s unprotected?” says the red-haired one.

“That sounds like something he’d do,” Todd says, staring at the cathedral as if he can see the Mayor somewhere through the walls.

“If he’s even inside,” Ivan says.

“He is,” Todd says. “Trust me.”

The red-haired soldier starts backing away down the road. “No way,” he says. “We’re walking to our deaths here, boys. No way.”

And with a final frightened look, he takes off running back the way we came.

Todd sighs. “Anyone else?” The men look to each other, their Noises wondering why they came in the first place.

“He’ll put the band on you,” Ivan says. He nods up at me. I pull up my sleeve and show them. The skin is still red and hot to the touch. Infection, I think. The first aid creams aren’t doing what they’re supposed to.

“And then he’ll enslave you,” Ivan continues. “I don’t know about you, but that’s not why I joined the army.”

“Why did you join?” asks another guard but it’s clear he doesn’t want an answer.

“We take him down,” Ivan says. “And we’re heroes.”

“Heroes with the cure,” says the pot belly, nodding. “And he who controls the cure–”

“Enough talking,” Todd says and I hear the discomfort in his Noise about how this is going. “Are we gonna do this or not?”

The men look to one another.

And Todd raises his voice.

Raises it so it commands.

Raises it so even I look at him.

“I said, are we ready?”

“Yes, sir,” the men say, seeming almost surprised to hear it coming out of their mouths.

“Then let’s go,” Todd says.

And the men start marching again, step step step, crunching through the loose gravel scattered across the road, down a small slope, through the town and towards the cathedral, getting bigger and bigger the closer we get.

We file past some trees and I look to our left, to the hills on the southern horizon.

“Sweet Jesus,” Pot Belly says.

Even from here you can see the army marching in the distance, a single black arm twisting up a path too narrow for them, up to the summit of the hill with the notch on top, up to where they’ll meet The Answer.