Bram Wolfe's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

Bram caught up with the front of the march three streets from the tower. The arrows had done their work. Two hundred men filled the road, boots loud on the stones, but the sound was ragged. Some chanted the letters. Some cursed the horns. Some just walked with pipes in their hands. At the next corner the line split. Half went left toward a shuttered depot. Half kept toward the tower. Bram saw it and knew Joss was right. Without one voice, the march would break into small fires the troops could stamp out one by one. He pushed to the front and looked for something to stand on. A cracked stone drinking trough sat by the curb, shaped like the long shell of a tunnel tortoise, moss in its seams. He climbed it. He opened his mouth and nothing came. Two hundred faces turned. One of them held a wrinkled wanted poster, folded and refolded, his own face worn nearly off the paper. The man near the front squinted from the poster to Bram's left hand, to the two missing fingers, and his mouth opened. "Don't," Bram said. It came out flat. Not a speech. The man stopped. But the split at the corner kept spreading. Men drifted. Bram had no chant to give them. He had smashed a ration machine once. He had never led anything. A hand caught his sleeve from below. A gaunt young man in a stolen fur coat, hospital gown showing at the collar. A fresh cut ran down his cheek and closed itself as Bram watched, skin knitting like wet cloth pulled tight. The boy pushed back the coat's cuff. A bar code was burned into his left forearm. Bram had heard the rumors in the tunnels. He had not believed them until now. "They stamped me at fourteen," the boy said. Loud enough for the front rows. "For the ration rolls. Show them yours." Bram understood. He raised his left hand. Four fingers. The stumps clear in the lamplight. He did not speak. He did not need to. The boy climbed up beside him and held out his marked arm to the crowd. Bram held out his hand. "Two marks," the boy called. "Theirs and ours. Which one do you follow tonight?" The men at the split turned back. The depot group came jogging. Someone started the letters again and this time the whole street took them, three syllables in step with the boots. The march closed into one body. It moved toward the tower. Bram climbed down. His hand was shaking. Oryn Rask walked beside him now, the cut on his cheek already gone, and Bram had gained a second witness who could name him, and a weapon he did not know how to aim. Ahead, the tower's speakers pushed the nine o'clock numbers into the dark. The march did not slow.