The Modern World Read Online Free PDF Page A

concentric squares in which the town was laid out. The buildings around the courtyard formed the first of three rings. Behind them ran a wide road, then another ring comprising the smithy, workshops, food, livery and ammunition stores, since Slake Cross is the supply base for all of western Lowespass. Every junction was staggered to prevent any Insects that might get in running straight to the heart of the town.
    The smell of hot iron rose from the blacksmith’s shop, mingling with the yellow-hay stink of horse turds on the road and the washy smell of potatoes boiling in the cookhouse adjoining the hall.
    Below, the innkeeper thwacked a brass tap with a mallet to drive it into an enormous keg of beer. His blows rang around the square together with the wail of the innkeeper’s squab and its mother shushing as she tried to calm it. She held it inside her cream shawl, against her breasts. It flailed one naked pinion with three pointed fingers like the wing of a plucked chicken. ‘Squab’ is Morenzian slang for Awian babies before they are fledged, and it was probably crying from the itching as its pinfeathers were starting to push through.
    The long buildings of the third ring were barracks to billet ten thousand troops. I could see the stone cisterns on the shower blocks’ roofs, replenished by recent rainstorms. The Awian soldiers had added a sauna and a talcum bath: conditions are bad enough at the front without suffering from lice in your wings.
    Then came the stables and allotments, in shadow at the foot of the curtain wall. Mangy apple and hazelnut trees bowed over cramped, tilled plots with green shoots – hardy runner beans and turnips. The soldiers supplemented their diet by growing vegetables but they were only permitted to do so inside the walls because any kind of plant attracts Insects.
    A few metal cages beside them each contained an Insect the size of a warhorse. Their jaws and antennae were bound with wire; they were soon to be sold and carted south to the Rachiswater amphitheatre. Their scent set mastiffs barking on the far side of town.
    Towers reinforced the exterior curtain wall at intervals along its length and at all four corners. It was tall, height being more important against the Insects than thickness, and it extended below ground to stop them undermining it. Roofed wooden walkways overhung the tops of the walls along their lengths. The single gate faced north towards the Paperlands. A guard with a jaunty crest on her helmet stared out of the large, square windows in the gatehouse tower.
    These military towns – Slake Cross, Frass and Whittorn – had been designed by Frost soon after her initiation to the Circle. She became a great favourite with the troops who no longer had to construct open air camps. Each town was in essence a fort, with a shifting population of fyrd and the people who supply them: quartermasters, fletchers, sutlers and male and female prostitutes.
    Slake Cross gave me a sinking feeling like the cold trepidation you feel on returning to a place you knew long ago. All your friends have moved on; their houses have strangers in them now. Even the routes you used to walk have changed, because the pubs you knew have been boarded up and cafés opened where they shouldn’t be. The lasttime I was here I was completely screwed up, living on drug time, time measured by needles and veins, not real time at all, and I scarcely noticed how bleak and utilitarian the place was.
    I concentrated on the far end of the roof, breathing calmly like a gymnast on the high bar, arms out for balance. I started running, opened my wings and their fingers spread automatically. They dragged, pulling me back, and I pushed at the tiles to find more speed. I lengthened my stride, faster still. I reached the end of the roof, sprang into the air, pulled my legs up and swept my wings down powerfully.
    When I begin to fall I always – because I have the same instinct as everyone – expect to hit the ground