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The ride back was a great deal easier than the ride out had been; Tighe coasted all the way, the air whistling a pure note of music through the hole in his kite.

That evening, in an angry tirade, Waldea berated the entire platon. They were useless; they had given him no information that was of any benefit to the War Pope – it had been humiliating for him to have to trot back and forth between the base ledge and the Cardinelle’s eyrie like a pet monkey with nothing to say, nothing to report. As soon as the dawn gale died down the platon would go all out, would all fly east, and would fly so close to the enemy ledges that they could count the
teeth
of the Otre soldiers – and if anybody did not, then he, Waldea, would personally eject them from the world and they could fall all the way to the rubble at the foot of the wall.

The platon sat, heads down, in aching silence. Tighe felt devastated; he felt has if he had personally betrayed Waldea, the Popes, the Empire itself. But he was so exhausted that he fell asleep almost at once.

The next morning, they all expected to be sent out flying straight away, as soon as the updraughts started. But instead Waldea disappeared and came back an hour later to tell them to stay where they were.

It was a warm day, with the sun climbing slowly and pushing light and heat at the wall in generous heaps. The usual sounds of battle were stilled; and a plump silence edged the occasional gust of wind.

The platon lounged about their little ledge, chattering nervously. When would the order come? The hours advanced, fifty, to sixty, to seventy, and it began to look as though they would not fly at all that day. Tighe was restless. When Waldea left, as he did from time to time to hurry upwall and check on the latest orders from the higher command, Tighe itched to go roaming about, to see what was happening. But he was afraid of leaving the ledge, afraid that if he stepped upwall for even a few minutes it would be at the time that Waldea came barreling back down and ordered them all into the air. Other boys were not so inhibited, particularly as the sun rose and the air cooled and it became clear that there would be no flying that day. Mulvaine and a few others darted away and scrambled upwall, returning breathlessly after a short while.

‘There are whole lines of men, riflemen and other soldiers,’ Mulvaine
reported to the kite-pilots, who gathered eagerly around him. ‘They’re queuing up there, preparing to go forward.’

‘It’s a big push,’ said somebody. ‘They’re going to push through and capture the Otre fortifications.’

‘They’re going to use darkness to get into position, I think,’ said Mulvaine. ‘Tomorrow will be the day of victory.’

The excitement of this intelligence buoyed Tighe up for a while, and there was a certain amount of high-spirited darting about and boys grappling and wrestling. But this died down and soon enough Tighe was bored again.

He curled up on the purple grass of the ledge and fell asleep, napping for no longer than ten minutes; but it was sleep filled with the most vivid dream-sense of flying, of pulling back away from the wall as full battle raged. The Imperial soldiers pushed forward, sweeping away the Otre, and Tighe caught a glimpse of the Door, the Door through the wall that was the purpose of the whole campaign – an enormous door like the front door to a house in his old village, complete with latch and storm-covering. People swarmed up and down it like ants, and then, impossibly, Tighe could see the top of the wall – could see the cloud-snaggled upper rim of the world. An enormous head, a head as big as the world, rose above it like the belly of a calabash. The head of an old man, and Tighe realised it was God, and at the same time realised that it was Grandhe, his old Grandhe. Grandhe opened his titanic mouth and bright light began spilling out.

He woke up, gasping, a sweat on his face.

Next to him a couple of boys were sitting opposite one another, playing a game with pebbles. Each boy had a pile of awkwardly shaped pebbles in a pile in front of them. Each took turns and put a pebble in a circle drawn in the turf: a pebble could be placed anywhere, so long as it touched another pebble. If it touched only one other pebble it could not be moved by the opponent, but if it touched two or more it could be nudged sideways by the other player’s move so long as it stayed in contact with at least one stone. If any pebbles strayed outside the circle the player concerned lost the game. This game was called
jazua
. It was sometimes played as a passtime by the kite-pilots.

Tighe watched the gameplay for a while until his pulse calmed and the sweat dried from his skin. Then he grew bored and sought out Ati.

‘Ati,’ he said, ‘will you help me stitch the hole in my kite? I do not know how to stitch the hole.’

‘You are an ignorant barbarian,’ said Ati automatically.

Together they fetched Tighe’s kite and Ati showed him how to work the needle through with pressure from the thumbnail and how to do a rough lock-stitch. As he worked he talked.

‘It is most exciting,’ he was saying. ‘They say tomorrow will be the big push. Tomorrow we can fly free and watch the Otre being pushed off the ledges. By the next day we will have the Door and we will have won the war.’

‘Ati?’ asked Tighe. ‘Do you ever look at the wall when you fly; and think it small?’

‘How do you mean, small?’

‘You know you see ants on a patch of earth? What if the wall is small and we are ants? The whole worldwall small and we are ants.’

‘What a philosopher you are,’ said Ati, grinning. ‘Would it matter if we were ants? We are still bigger than
our
ants, bigger than other bugs. We are big enough, I think.’

Tighe shook his head. It was hard for him to convey the hollow sense of falling away within his breast that this concept produced. It was as if the entire world had been trivialised, as if the epic conflict between the two mighty nations were nothing but insects bickering over a blade of grass. It diminished existence, corroded the sense of meaning in being. ‘Bigger than ants,’ he said, mournfully, ‘but not bigger than claw-caterpils.’

Ati made a
chch
sound in the back of his throat. ‘There,’ he said, ‘your kite is made whole, I think.’

Later that day Waldea gathered up three of the boys, Mulvaine, Oldievre and Mocghe, and took them upwall. When this little party returned, the boys were swinging grass-weave sacks full of something.

‘Now,’ said Waldea, ‘we fly tomorrow. And each of you, my children, will carry a wax-bomb. You must carry it inside your trousers, at the top of your trousers, children, and hold your thighs tight and cradle them in your lap not to drop them. They are lit, with a grass fuse that will smoulder – the fuses are tarred, so they will smoulder even when you fly and the wind will not put them out. And you will fly up and release the bombs at the soldiers on the upper ledges. Do you understand?’

The pilots eagerly gathered around the three boys as the wax-bombs were brought out. Fist-sized spheres of wax, they were hollow. ‘Filled with mushroom powder,’ explained Mulvaine, cocky and knowledgeable. ‘You throw them and when they strike the wall the wax breaks and the fuse here flames up the powder and
boum
.’

‘Handle them carefully!’ fussed Waldea. ‘You are only to look at them today and we shall pack them away tonight. Tomorrow morning is a big push and you will assist.’

Tighe, almost trembling with the excitement of the thing, cradled a bomb in his open palms. The wax had been mixed with grass filaments, drawn out of the finer blades, to form a rough circle. The wax was dark red,
almost black, and there was a little tar-covered nipple at the top. A weapon! Explosives!

Waldea gathered every one of the precious bombs and stocked them at the rear of the dugout. Then he had the platon spend an hour practising throwing stones. Since one of the favourite passtimes of most of the boys and some of the girls was precisely this, the platon proved adept. Waldea set up a target by scrawling the shape of a man into the mud of the wall and everybody took turns hurling pebbles at it.

After the dusk gale, at supper, Waldea was in an expansive mood again. ‘Tomorrow will see a great victory over the wickedness of the Otre,’ he said. ‘And this platon will play its part. We will play our part! There will be no shame.’

After the day’s idleness, Tighe found it difficult to go to sleep that night. He was not alone. Whispered conversations rustled around the dugout like the wind at dawn, mostly speculating about the Door that the army was sure to capture if not tomorrow, then surely the day after tomorrow. ‘It must open on a corridor,’ said somebody. ‘It is a mile high,’ said somebody else. was speaking to a soldier,’ said Ravielre, ‘an old soldier, and he knew somebody who had actually seen the Door.’

Hissing astonishment. No! Really! What was it like?

‘Sleep, my children,’ grumbled Waldea, turning over and pulling his blanket more tightly about him.

This quietened the exciting hissing for a moment, but it soon started up again. ‘It seems that the Door is ten miles high,’ whispered Ravielre. ‘Nobody has ever been able to open it because it is so big.’

‘How will we ever do it?’ asked Ati. ‘It is impossible to open so big a Door!’

‘Impossible for a shit-eater like you,’ hissed Mulvaine, ‘but not for decent Imperial citizens like us. We’ll open it, won’t we, boys!’

There was a babble of sounds, rising above a whisper now, until Waldea barked out in the darkness, ‘Be still! Be quiet! Sleep, or I’ll light a torch and begin by punishing every boy in turn.’

They were quiet after that and eventually Tighe fell asleep.

The morning after the dawn gale was quiet, but everybody was excited. Tighe could barely manage his breakfast, his stomach was so agitated with the thrill of anticipation.

The kite-pilots all took positions on the ledge and assembled their kites.

Then nothing happened. An hour passed, while Waldea paced up and down. Tighe felt the excitement wane in his belly and he began to believe that they would spend another day waiting pointlessly.

Without warning there was an enormous explosion from the east. All the kite-pilots shouted and cheered in unison, and Waldea hurried through the dugout to fetch the wax-bombs. ‘This is it, my children,’ he called out to them, going amongst them and handing out the bombs. ‘Wait till I have lit your fuse and then fly off – fly away and bring the proper wrath of God upon the Otre. Fire from the sky! Fire from the sky! Now it is their judgement.’

There was a series of regular booms in the heavy mid-morning air, and Tighe, straining his ears, even thought he could hear a sound like cheering as (he imagined) the Imperial troops surged forward. Or was it a sound like screaming? – as the Otre soldiers plunged from their ledges, fell through the air, to be dashed to fragments against the boulders at the foot of the wall?

The kite-pilots were gathering at the edge of the world as Waldea went amongst them, bending forward with his flax and lighting the fuses. First Mulvaine, and then a procession of boys and girls stepped into the air and flew away. Tighe stepped up to the edge.

‘Keep the fuse free, give it air. Don’t stifle it with skin or clothing – it’ll burn your skin, Tig-he,’ said Waldea. The old man was panting, the scars on his face gleaming with sweat. ‘Tuck it, here, into the top of the trousers. That’s right. Now, fly – pick your target carefully! Do not merely throw it away!’

Tighe nodded, gasped excitedly, and stepped into space. He was so intent upon not dropping the bomb, and not stifling the fuse, that he barely noticed where he flew. He swept rapidly away, looking up just in time to see another kite circling back, and hauled to the side to avoid colliding with it. His heart was really hammering now.

The winds were good; clear and with strong lift. Tighe circled and pulled round and cleared the spar. The battlefield came into view.

He had been expecting there to be something decisive marked on the face of the wall – lines of blue-coats marching along, grey uniforms falling – but the scene was much as it had been the day before yesterday. There was a mess of action, scattered bursts of flame or light, rags of smoke drifting up or being yanked to nothing by the wind. The central shelf was still occupied by the Imperial forces and they seemed no closer to the Otre fortifications.

Tighe whirled through the air and made a pass at the ledge directly above the central shelf. Not close enough. He swung round again, as the air was tracked with smoky threads all around him. On the return he had lost height and was closer to the central shelf. A knot of blue-uniformed Imperial soldiers swelled into view. He swooped close to a group of them; two were kneeling and firing upwards with their rifles, a third was standing and reloading. Their attentions were distracted for a moment by Tighe’s approach, and he struggled to turn his kite without wriggling his body too much and risk dropping the bomb.

For an instant their faces seemed close enough to touch, eyes wide. Then something buzzed through the air and the standing soldier opened his mouth, closed his eyes and toppled forward. Tighe pulled away, turned and angled back in time to see the body of the soldier twisting and falling through space. A lengthy string of red beading stretched up from the figure as it fell and dissipated into red mist. In a moment the body was gone.

The wind was shushing in Tighe’s ears as he dropped down, hit a strong updraught and began a wobbly ascent, spiralling tighter and tighter. A shining orange blob hurtled past his face and he found himself abruptly confronted with a line of Otre snipers. Most had their weapons angled down, but one or two were firing out into the sky, aiming at kites. With a rushing sense of power, Tighe plucked the still smouldering wax-bomb from his lap and threw it.

His fingers slipped a little as he jerked his arm, and the sphere spun upwards as it left his fingers. He just had time to see it collide with the overhang of the ledge and scintillate into flames before he banked and fell away. Rifle bullets zzed past his body.

It was a disappointment not to have hit anybody with his bomb, but his heart was hammering anyway. He had a clear view of blue sky and squeezed his eyes flat in the glare of the sun; then he banked, and the worldwall slewed round into sight. Half a dozen kites were framed against the vista. They were all swooping diagonally down, closing in on the wall.