The old man came to the city outskirts along oily, cobbled streets. A jumble of clanking, smoking metal wheeled machines and horse-drawn wooden carts scrabbled for space as they moved chaotically up and down the street, progress made only by constantly pushing for and aggressively taking gaps as they opened up. Ramshackle stalls clustered down both sides, stall-keepers yelling their wares adding to the cacophony, and beyond them grimy brick buildings loomed, dilapidated floor upon dilapidated floor.

Under the wheels and feet that thronged the street ran strays, both animal and human. Street kids, faces oily and pockmarked, dodged and darted amongst the traffic with the same agility as the dogs, cats, and rodents that ran with them, easily avoiding the absentminded kicks of those riding the carts above. A hazy pall hung over it all, the stench of oil, burning fuels, effluent and livestock intermingled.

And towering over everything from the centre of the city, overshadowing the buildings even at this great distance, was a giant cannon. The cannon's bronzed, tarnished metal spoke of the many decades it had stood, colossal barrel tilted up at the sky, forever raised above the city in warning - or threat.

The base of the cannon disappeared within a colossal metallic fortress, two enormous cogwheels half-visible where they emerged from titanic trenches carved just for them. The cogwheels held the cannon between them, and a gargantuan effort from within the fortress could rotate the barrel. Though the fortress was massive and foreboding, it was dwarfed by the weapon it was built to support, protect and operate.

Barely a person paused to even glance at it. The cannon had always been, and always would be.

The old man made his way, unfaltering, towards the cannon and its attached fortress. Despite the chaos, he moved almost directly down the road, his passage somehow clear for the few seconds he occupied each space. By some means he also stayed unremarkable, and unremarked.

It was some time later that he reached the base of the fortress, coming to a stop in front of two immense iron gates, rust crusting the edges even as a myriad of ragged workers lathered the sides and base with oiled rags. The old man stood watching as they toiled and sweated at their task, some climbing high on ill-maintained wooden ladders, toughened skin crushing the splinters that would have penetrated less-worn limbs.

He stood like this for several hours, as the never-ending efforts of the preservers of the fortress continued and the baleful orange sun, distorted by the pollution of daily life within the city, made its way below the horizon.

At night, heavily armoured men appeared from somewhere further around the iron walls. They each had a sword sheathed to their side, and some long, tapered instrument holstered over their backs. Most held blazing torches that hissed and released an acrid smoke. These were placed within clasps placed uniformly around the base of the fortress, where they fizzed as they covered the world with ochre light. The workers coating oil on the gate were gradually replaced, slumped shoulders passing their rags to the newcomers and heading slowly into the night. Several of the armoured men had taken up station near the gate, standing to attention and watching the passers by with suspicious eyes, muttering to each other and sometimes, more unsettlingly, laughing maliciously.

Late into the night one of the workers, perched precariously upon his wooden ladder, lost balance and was sent crashing to the ground as his support slid from beneath him, scrabbling futilely at the bare metal surface of the gate as he fell before landing heavily on the concrete below, head snapping upward as it bounced off the hard floor. He slumped flat on the ground, a thin trickle of blood leaking from the gash in his head. Some of the armoured figures strolled nonchalantly over to him, and stood there, looking down. They chuckled as they made jokes, one removing his the sword and sheath and poking the sprawled man.

The man groaned and moved a little, then a great deal more after a swift jab in the ribs from a metal-booted foot. Lifting himself heavily off the ground, swaying a little in disorientation, he stumbled towards his fallen ladder and attempted to lift it. He failed, barely raising the ladder passed his waist before it fell back to the ground. The guards around him laughed as they watched, then one grabbed the ladder off the floor and thrust it into the back of another worker. Another guard gestured towards the disorientated man, steel-gloved thumb jerking over his shoulder, indicating the man should leave. In his state, he would be of no use for the rest of the night.

As the injured worker staggered away from the gate and the spitting torches, he passed close to the old man. His vision was hazy, his head splitting, and he stopped in his tracks to croak;

"Sir, could you help me?"

The worker's voice was raspy from a day without use, exacerbated by the fall, and without waiting for an answer he fell heavily towards the old man, reaching out an arm to catch himself. His hand fell upon the old man's shoulder, which moved not an inch, and the worker found his collapse arrested.

The old man slowly reached a hand up and placed it over the wounded man's, holding it down with surprising firmness as he guided him. The worker shakily followed, knees weak, and it was sometime before he remembered to tell the old man directions to his home. When he did he found, fortunately to his mind, that they were already well on the way there.

To call the residence of the worker a home was to stretch the meaning of the word almost to breaking point. It was a small room sandwiched in between two others, on the third floor of a four floor building that tilted alarmingly and the stone walls of which flowed with some unidentifiable, foul-smelling liquid. The walls separating his room from the others were clearly makeshift, some thin plasterboard that offered more the idea of privacy rather than the reality.

There was a thin mattress on the floor, a light, dirty blanket crumpled atop. There were no pillows. Random detritus lay around it, which on closer inspection turned out to be old shoes, scattered clothing, and the other objects of a life spent on the edge of abject poverty. A worn wooden stool was wedged in one corner, and here the old man sat while the other fell onto the mattress and into a fitful sleep.

The worker awoke in the morning to rays of sunlight that entered through the small, grimy window. Someone had wiped a small portion of the smeared surface to allow more in. The smell of hot tea turned his head, to see a cracked porcelain cup steaming beside him. Beyond that, the old man who had helped him home last night sat, hands folded across his lap, staring towards the small circle of light through which the sun entered.

"I don't normally see the daylight," said the worker, clearing his throat and sitting up unsteadily, blanket sliding off him. He was still in his work clothes of the night before.

"I have been working the night shift for... years, I think. Thank you for your help." He stared at the old man, who had not moved his gaze.

"It's not many as would care for folk such as me. You do not have to 'elp me no more, sir, but if there is something I could do to repay your kindness, I will do so, should it be within my power."

The old man abruptly looked down from the window, affixing the man with the bright eyes that belied his years.

"I wish to hear your story."

The worker shifted uncomfortably under the gaze of the old man, switching the steaming cup from one hand to the other. He wandered who this man was, and how he had produced hot tea in these confines. As if reading his thoughts, the old man produced a small cloth bag from his pocket, the smell of tea leaves suffusing the room. The worker took this as answer, though it was not until much later he would wonder how the water had been boiled.

"My story?" he asked quizzically.

The old man nodded, smiling.

"I don't really know what you mean by that, sir. Do you mean the story of my job, or this city, or..?"

"I wish to hear your story."

Something in the old man's tone told the worker that it was not the story of any object or place that he sought, but truly his own story. Indeed, it was the only story he had - he had not had time nor opportunity in his life for the education those of the higher strata had. All he had were his experiences.

"Well, sir, I do not know where to start. Surely you do not have time for me whole life? It is a long one, sir, and though you may not see it looking at me 'ere, it has taken me to many places, and to see many things."

The old man nodded, smiling still, and leaned back. Now the worker noticed that he, too, held a cup, from which he sipped.

Failing to see what else he could say, still muzzy from the blow to the head last night and at being awake at such an unusual hour, the worker began the only story he knew.

"Well, the earliest I remember of my life was begun in darkness. I worked the mines below this city, you see, when I were little. There were many of us in those days, children barely out of swaddling. Not so many now, of course, since the mine ran dry, but back then there were more than I can remember.

They need kids you see, the mines. Small frames and nimble hands. Some of those tunnels is no wider than a couple of hands across, and no fully grown man can make the run through them more than once or twice a day. We, on the other hand, could stay within 'em for hours, for days it seemed."

"I dunno if you've ever been down a mine, have you sir?" He waited for some reply, but none was forthcoming.

"Well, they're often lined with iron or steel gates, you see, shutters that hold the air in or stop the dangerous gases we get down there from getting out. A back draft without those shutters could flame out the entire place in a moment. So they get placed every few 'undred meters, more as you go down lower.

But of course the carts carrying the coal and slurry and stuff have got to come back out, and there ain't no time to be wasting with grown miners moving them up and around. So the kids stay down in the tunnels, between the gates, and when we get the signal lift them up until the cart comes by, gradually if they're being winched up but damn fast if they're going down - they sent 'em back free, you see, gravity doing the work.

You have to be damn fast too, if you don't want to get your feet taken off or worse. I saw a lot of kids lost that way; they didn't get far enough away from the track as they held the shutters open, or they just fell asleep in the dark and were crushed when a cart smashed the gate down on top of them. And then they'd send us to clean up...

I spent a long time down in the tunnels, I did. Can't say how long, but I was doing it until I grew a couple more feet and couldn't fit in there properly no more.

You can hear the heart of the world down there, you know? Go a couple of miles below the earth, sit in a dusty narrow tunnel for hours on end, no one else to distract you, and some days you can hear the heartbeat. I don't know rightly what it is - no-one does, least not anyone I've ever spoken too - but on those days, when the carts have stopped for some accident or change of seam or something, when no-one has passed by your tunnel for what seems like an eternity you can hear it, a deep, dull thumping that pulses up from the depths. I'm sure that right now, out there somewhere, more tiny kiddies are curled up below the earth hearing the same thing I heard all that time ago.

But what they don't hear is the other heartbeat, the heartbeat of this city that beat for so long we forgot when it hadn't. Because even down there you could hear the cannon."

The worker paused for a while, staring out through the dirt of the window to the dark shape that loomed even through the grime.

"It truly was the heart of this city, that cannon. It's the reason the God-King sits on the Steel Throne, it's the reason we control so much of this continent. They say that's a good thing.

I grew up to it's pounding. Every shell, they told us, was another enemy crushed, another city of defilers destroyed. They told us the giant shells carried society, carried the true way of living with them, and that they could only burn the unrighteous.

All I knew was that every shell was another day down the mines. The sheer amount of fuel needed to fire one of those things is unbelievable. Though hundreds of us worked every minute we had to feed the thing, it was never full.

There were days when the priests would come to us, standing on a metal dais as they lectured us on our duty to the people of this city, shouting at us for not matching the output of some other industry, some other factory. Sometimes, we would be made to watch an Endurance, the trial by water of someone they declared had been failing the city. If they survived, they were judged to have been forgiven by the heavens. Most didn't...

So I would sit down there, deep within the earth, and listen to the land and city beat in unison, and I felt jealous! Jealous of the shells that flew far across the land, escaping this prison we had built for ourselves.

I decided to join the army, and go abroad."

The tale ended there for a while, as the teller stood and changed his top for a seemingly equally filthy one from the floor. He crossed the small room in a few short strides and reached into a small cabinet that stood at the head of the mattress, little more than a few short planks nailed together. From within it, he produced a blue shirt of a cotton far finer than anything else in the room. On top of this carefully folded shirt lay a golden star, a ribbon and lanyard attached.

"My medal." The worker almost spat this rather than spoke it, contempt in his voice.

The tale resumed a little later that day. Now, the old man and the worker were seated across from each other at an old wooden table, the room warmed by a small charcoal stove in the corner. This was the main food preparation area for the house, in the basement. They sat eating a sparse meal of fish and rice, the rice taken from a large communal pot left heating above the stove, the fish from the worker's meagre supplies.

The worker had grown much more accustomed to the old man's presence, and his voice and attitude carried much less deference and humility as he continued.

"I think I was around 15 when I joined. I've never been sure of my age - my parents didn't live much longer than my infant years. The army seemed like a way out of this life, a way to escape this industrial hell we've made.

Besides, I think at that time I was genuine about our cause. I'd spent all me life hearing of our brave citizens bringing light to the dark places, and the drinking halls were full of talk about the triumphs and adventures they experienced. This was years before the wounded began filtering back, before the maimed, the blind, and the walking dead were allowed to return 'ere.

So I signed up. I didn't even need to fake my age; they didn't care and weren't asking.

I was sent out almost immediately. Though the cannon still blasted overhead constantly, no less than once every few hours, there were little left for us infantry. I was given a banged-up old rifle, shown how to point it so I didn't shoot meself, and sent on my way with a group of about 12 of us.

It was my first time outside the city, and boy was it a shock for me! I didn't know the land outside the city were so blasted. It was just crater after crater, pools of some nasty looking stuff scattered all over the place. I thought the twisted metal things were trees!

My new mates joled me for that for a long time after, but how was I to know this was what we had done to the country? This ...moonscape... was the first time I came to see what we had done to the land in our constant wars, and I thought it were normal!

It took us a few weeks to get to the action, and I got lucky in my companions. They showed me the ropes, taught me how to use the rifle properly and how to add to our rations by scavenging. We even caught a horse one time, out there alone, and cooked it up before anyone else was the wiser. Could've been shot for that if the wrong person found out, but hell we were hungry! I think that shared crime brought us together a little more.

Anyway, our first fight was a small town far to the north of here. The cannon shells were still screaming overhead far into the distance, crashing down over the horizon deep behind the enemy lines. They weren't any help to us, save to show the general direction we should march and shoot.

The fight was short and brutal, and I won't say much about it except my pants were wet at the end of it, and that weren't because of the pools on the ground, and my knife were wet too. My mates got lively about that - it's not many get their first blood in hand-to-hand rather than with gunshot.

I don't know how long it took us to get through the first resistance, but one day, after a fight that had gone on well into the night, I woke up to a sound I hadn't heard before. Some high-pitched whistle. I panicked and jumped out of the tent with me rifle, yelling at the others to get up. I thought it must be some new weapon.

It was birdsong. I'd never heard it before.

The further we marched up north, the greener it became. The land was still battered and cratered for miles around, but every step we took led to more and more of this 'nature.' The resistance got less too, and we saw more women and children huddled behind hedges or walls, trying to hide from us.

A lot of our soldiers had already been through this area, and we saw the results of their passing too. It took me a while to realise those bodies in the gutters were because of our lot, not theirs.

Anyway, we reached the enemy city a few days after I heard the birds for the first time. It lay in valley between two hills, spreading out for miles. When we rounded the ridge, we saw where the shells of the great cannon had been falling.

There were great sections of the city that were just... gone. Massive, smoking craters where houses and shops used to be. In the middle a giant fortress stood, covered in gunmetal. It looked like they'd tried to copy the fortress of our own fine city, but after we looked at it for a while we realised that it was actually some kind of palace, the white brick showing through where great chunks had been torn out. They'd actually tried to cover it in metal! We had a laugh at that.

We'd only arrived to the top of the ridge at twilight. We could see our camp down below, torches burning as drills went on, but it were still a fair distance and we were wiped out, so we bedded down for the night there. As we fell asleep, we could hear the screams coming from the city.

But I never made it to the city. I was taken during the night."

They had finished eating while the story went on, and now, by unspoken agreement, were walking the streets of the city, heading outwards and away from the fortress and its great cannon. Though the streets were noisy, the old man heard the worker's voice clearly.

"I don't know where they came from, but I woke to find a cloth bag stuck over my head and a whispered warning not to make a sound, or else. They picked me up and carried me off quietly, managing not to disturb the others. I was tempted to put up a fight, but they said they had my rifle and would use it first on my friends, before me, so I went quietly. Besides, there was a very sharp knife to my throat the whole time.

At some point they threw me onto a cart, bound, gagged, the bag around my head and tight around my neck. It sounded like whoever they were, they split up soon after, and I was buried under boxes of something as the cart moved on, through the checkpoints my own people had set up, and out into the countryside.

It seemed an age before I was able to move again. For many hours I was kept, crushed, unable to call out, at the bottom of the cart. My bindings cut into me and I was parched with thirst. It lasted until I was sure I would die, or go mad.

When they untied me and took the bag off my head, I was in the mountains. The war didn't seem to have made it this far. It was a wooded area crammed in between the mountains, high and chill but far more peaceful than anywhere I had seen in months, if ever. There were basic wooden shelters amongst the trees, and there must have been hundreds of people, men, women, and children. They milled around, dusty and wide-eyed, many staring at me.

I was kept there for weeks. They wanted information, wanted to know why we were attacking them. I didn't know what to say. How could they not understand?

We were bringing a better way of life, I said. They were content, they replied.

We were bringing machines that would change their lives, I said. They were fulfilled, they answered.

We were bringing leadership and government, I said. They chose their own leaders, they insisted.

They wouldn't understand, they chose not to, so I was forced to live amongst them. They held me in a crude barn where the children gathered with the sick and injured, and I watched person after person slowly weaken and fade until one day, a few weeks later, I was rescued."

The worker had led them out from the city limits and up a rutted track too steep and potholed for major traffic. It rose quickly, tapering into a thin dirt path after a long walk. The worker flagged, though the old man did not, and they walked in silence for a while.

Eventually, they found themselves high above the city, a curve in the track looping round and coming to a ledge. The ledge offered a stirring view of the buildings below, only the top of the cannon yet higher. The sound of the city was muted, and the area deserted, with only brown, dusty boulders for company.

The worker spoke again, looking out over the city;

"Of course, that isn't what happened. No-one questions my tale, but how could it be possible? They took me without waking the others? Impossible!

No, I left the night we reached the blasted city, after my companions bunked down. I was sick of all I had seen. That place, that land, was what my city could have been, but instead we chose to foul and pollute the very air! And we forced it on others!

No, I went willingly, and it was me who searched them out. The clearing in the mountain was true, yes, and the barn where I stayed. But I was free. What I just told you is the story I have been telling everyone since I returned, and is based on reality, though the reality was worse. I do not talk about the orphans, stumbling around in a fugue, nor the maimed whose screams kept the camp awake at night, nor the women who sat around the camp, unseeing, shaking at whatever nightmares they had experienced before coming there.

They took me in almost unquestioningly, certainly with far less suspicion than they should have. Where we would have seen a possible threat, a spy, an adversary, they saw a child. We had met many children on our journey - and I thought of them as children, though some must have been two or three years older than me - and not once had we taken them in. We left them beside the roads, beside their burnt out homes and ruined fields. After all this, they took me in.

I've never told anyone this, but those few weeks were the happiest I've ever been. Even amidst all the shell-shocked, weeping men and women, I had never felt so at home. Suddenly I had people concerned for my safety, concerned for my happiness!

I met a girl, too. She was beautiful. Her name was Lanna."

The worker paused in his story for a moment, choking back a sob, then continued;

"Lanna... She was a couple of years older than me, but you couldn't have told. Where I was lean and muscled from the months of marching and fighting, she was wan and wasted. Everyone was. There wasn't nearly enough food, and what still grew was taken by my people anyway.

I began helping them on the hunts, searching further and further within the mountain range for scarcer and scarcer prey. Within a couple of weeks the snow had fallen so hard that some days we spent as long cutting our way out of the pass as we did hunting, and within a month we spent longer.

The children went first, then the ones who were too injured or to hopeless to move. We kept the fires going as much as we could, but there was never enough wood. At night, wolves would burst out of the darkness and drag people off - they told me this was unusual, but it was a harder winter than any had seen, and we were weak enough to be easy pickings.

I'd say it was about two months in that I was woken up with the moon still full in the sky, and told to prepare for a long trip. I had no idea what was happening, but I trusted the men and women I hunted with and readied myself unquestioningly. We left before the sunrise.

We walked for days. I asked where we were going, but no-one would tell me. Leola, the band leader, told me one night I was lucky to be going with them at all, that many within the group thought it unacceptable, unwise to take me with them. I couldn't understand this - I was close to everyone in the hunting party, I couldn't imagine anyone saying such things.

We crossed narrow, crumbling ledges and forded freezing streams, heading upwards through blizzards and ice. I thought I was done for many times. Frostbite ate at my fingers and toes, and I could barely draw enough breath to keep going. But when I fell, the others picked me up. Leola even carried me for a stretch, when I couldn't get my legs to move.

On the afternoon of the fourth or fifth day, we came to a crack between two peaks that ran far above. I followed them through without speaking - I couldn't speak, to tell the truth, my lips wouldn't unseal. It was so narrow I was sure we were going to get stuck within it, held there until the cold froze us into unchanging corpses. I expected we would unfreeze at the end of time, when the fires of Sala rise and the God King's armies come to meet them.

Instead, we popped out the other side within... I don't know how to describe it. A sanctuary, I guess. 5 peaks towered above us, blocking any wind and forming a wall that would stop even a giant from entering. Within was an open area, a wide circle filled with water. We were standing on the bank of a lake. The bank ran in a thin line all the way around, and somehow no snow lay atop it. The others ignored my questions, staring in silence at the lake.

I couldn't understand why the lake wasn't frozen at first, not until I spotted the wisps of steam rising from it. The silence of the others was making me really uncomfortable. It was scary, to be honest. I'd never seen them like this, even at the worst of times. They were staring at the lake like they were seeing the end of all hope.

They came out of it eventually, and finally Leola told me what was going on.

It turned out this lake was the source of their religion, some hokey story about a Goddess in the water or something. I didn't really listen, to be honest. I had never really thought about what I believed, you see. There was always only one belief where I came from, the same belief we have now, and that is our belief in the God King and his army. So I was a little disappointed. I couldn't understand why we were here.

Leola explained that the priests back in the pass had decided that only the water of the lake could save them. The water's heat, they said, would remain with it if we collected it and brought it back, and they could use it to get everyone through the winter. We were here to collect that water.

I could have laughed! We'd come all this way (and still somehow had to get back, too) for a drink! The only reason I didn't was because I had too much respect for Leola. That, and my lips were too cracked.

Leola must have seen how I felt, because he turned to the others and said something I didn't catch. Suddenly, I was in the centre of a circle of my friends and I didn't like the way they looked one bit. They didn't look angry, but they did have an expression I hadn't seen before, and didn't know what to think of it.

Leola told me the reason I had been brought with them was because I had proven myself over the past few weeks. It was true, I was stronger and fitter than most of them, and my accuracy with the rifle had scored us some bigger game than they could have caught otherwise, but I was still surprised to hear this. My adolescent chest nearly burst with pride and self-importance.

They'd taken me here because they wanted to offer me a chance most never got. They said I could be baptised, whatever that meant, in their most sacred place. I didn't have to, they said, but to do so was a great honour that even most of them had never had. Most had been baptised using water carried down from the lake, in the churches of their homes.

In the churches that now lay burnt and defiled.

Well, I wasn't exactly eager for this, but I understood enough to realise this was an honour, and I was still young enough to think I was special, that I deserved this. Also, the water seemed warm, and it looked like this was at least going to involve some, so I accepted. I basically said yes because I wanted a bath.

Anyway, we removed our jackets - no easy task even this close to the lake - and then they took off the rest of their clothes! I was fifteen, had rarely undressed near men, and had never even come close to seeing a woman naked! No, that's not true. But those I had seen during my time with my unit were rarely living, and never in a state that made more than a glance palatable.

It was difficult, taking my kit off in front of all these people, but they teased and joked about it until eventually I was in my birthday dress. I got in the water pretty darn quick, I tell you!

The water wasn't warm, either. It was boiling. I couldn't believe it. It felt like the first bath I'd ever had. Though truth be told I hadn't had many. It fed heat right through to me bones, right down into my core.

The others began some kind of chant I had never heard before, but they had a few they used before and after a hunt so I'd heard the language before. Never with such intensity, though. Usually they were said out of habit, I thought, or as an afterthought. This as different. They chanted with real passion. At first, I didn't want to let myself go. I fought against the feeling, trying to watch from afar and study the chanters like the heathens I had been taught to think they were.

They pushed me under without warning. One minute I was standing shoulder-deep within the circle, the next I was suddenly being forced under and couldn't find the bottom. To this day I can't explain how that happened - it was like an abyss opened beneath me.

I panicked and struggled, punching at the hands that held me down and kicking at the water below. I managed to get my head up once, taking a great gulp of air, but they forced me down again, and this time didn't let me rise.

I fought against it as long as I could, 'til my lungs were burning hotter than fire, but I couldn't hold it forever. I opened my mouth, and took in a lungful of the lake. The heat that had reached my bones now reached my soul. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I don't know what else to say. I should have drowned, but instead I heard a voice. It whispered in my ear, and I felt calm. It spoke to me for a while, then suddenly I was free, and floated up to the surface.

The next thing I remember I was lying on the bank of the lake with the others all around me, Leola pounding at my chest. I coughed up water until I vomited, then lay like a dying fish on the ground for a while.

The others kept asking me what happened. I told them they must have held me down too long, but they said they had only pushed me under for a second, if that. Well, that made no sense to me. I told them I remembered breathing in the water, then... But I couldn't remember what the voice had said to me. I knew there had been a voice, but what it said, what it meant, I couldn't remember. I nearly cried at that."

The worker seemed as distressed as when he had mentioned the girl from long ago.

"Do you know what it is, to have a memory so dear as that, then to find it is gone? It haunts me as much as what came next.

They collected the water of the lake in a tall glass tube, one they said had been taken from one of their churches before my former army came and razed it to the ground. It was put into Leola's pack, and we made our way back to the pass where the rest waited.

The way back was just as hard as the way there. The weather came down on us as if we had offended the sky itself, as if it wanted to throw us over the cliffs and onto the crags below. Some of us didn't make it back, when a rockslide smashed down where we slept and swept two of our tents away, burying them somewhere we could not find. But all the way Leola carried the water more preciously than he carried his own life, and we guarded him.

We arrived at the pass on the evening of the fourth day, the sun barely visible behind the peaks. The snow had grown unexpectedly high at the entrance we used, so we were forced to dig our way through.

We had been digging for a few hours when Andra found the hand. It poked out of the snow mockingly, blue and stiff and horrendous. We couldn't understand why it was there, who it could be, and none of us would face what it meant. We kept digging, trying to force a path through to where our people waited. But with every meter, we began to find more and more limbs protruding from the ice, more and more bodies buried under the snow.

We dug in a panic, beginning to claw our way through desperately rather than the methodical routine we knew would get us there. Blue and purple faces stared at us from below, from the sides, from all around. They taunted us, screamed at us, accused us, and they grew in number with every step.

The army - my army - had found the pass a day or two before we returned. They had followed the path the refugees had made as they came in increasing numbers to this place of safety, and when they found it they stationed sappers at either end. They blew the passage below first, trapping those below and forcing them in a terrified mass towards the other end, the passage we returned on. As soon as the mass of people was pouring through, they blew the sides of that crevice too.

The first thing we did was head to the clearing and houses. As we got closer to the area, usually alive with activity, we heard nothing but the howling wind. There were snowdrifts piled up against the walls of the buildings, in some places so high they had actually caused the walls to collapse. The infirmary where I had spent my first days, always the largest building in the place, seemed to be the only one not half-buried. We pushed ourselves through the snow towards it.

The reason the infirmary was mostly clear of snow became clear as we approached. Lying like discarded dolls in the snow were tens of bodies of those who had been inside, tossed out onto the ground without thought. They were all long dead. Inside the infirmary the remains of a giant fire lay, and we could tell from the state of the beds that the army had bivouacked here, tossing out the sick and claiming the beds for their own. The embers still smouldering and the last warmth of the room told us the soldiers were not long gone.

When I stepped out into the frigid cold again, I saw Leola on his knees in the centre of the clearing, staring unblinkingly at the cylinder of water. The cylinder had been pushed down into the snow, and stood there at a slight tilt.

'It doesn't melt,' Leola said, almost a whisper. I wasn't sure if he was speaking to me or to the air, and at first I didn't understand what he meant. But of course, the water was no longer hot. I had never expected it to be. It was only now I realised just how much they truly believed in their strange story; only when I saw the tears turned to ice on their cheeks.

I tried to comfort Leola, to say something that might reach him, but nothing worked. All of my attempts to somehow dull the pain were wasted breath, and the rest of the group slowly came and gathered around the water too. They sat in a circle around it, staring, unspeaking, as the snow fell heavier and the sun grew weaker. Pretty soon, it was dark, and I could hear the wolves howling in the distance. It was time to move.

But none of my entreaties worked. It took me a while to realise at first, but they had no intention of getting back up. I think something broke in them - it damn near broke in me. I railed at them, shouting at each in turn, finally screaming at them. How could they be so stubborn? They needed to survive! None of them would listen to me, my increasingly desperate appeals. They just sat there, staring at the damned tube.

So I smashed it. Before they could react, before they knew what was happening, I stormed over to the cursed thing and scooped it up, not breaking stride, and swung it against the nearest tree trunk. It splintered into a million glass pieces, and the water inside burst into steam.

It was over in seconds, from taking the water in my hands to it steaming away. It turned to steam almost the instant the glass was cracked, a cloud pouring out and moving amongst the trees. I was knocked to the ground the next second, blows smashing into my sides and the back of my head as I was forced face down into the snow. They let up soon though, fading, and whoever was holding me down collapsed off of me. I turned over to see Leola, hands covering his face as he shook his head to the sky. The others had not moved. Only the gentle sound of snow falling remained.

I don't know what happened to Lanna, and I don't know what happened to them either. I left soon after, at their request. They didn't ask me to leave out of anger, but because they didn't want me to throw away my life with theirs. They were not leaving the clearing, I knew without asking, and the snow would swallow them up soon enough. A storm was brewing above us, and it looked to be a heavier one than we had yet seen. They were not going to make the night. I felt guilty as I left, but I was not ready to die."

The former soldier turned to the old man.

"I remembered some of what the voice in the lake told me, you see. I remembered the words in the darkness.

It told me;

'Do not choose how to die, but how to live.'

I don't know if I truly understand those words, even now, but I could at least choose to live, if not how. I fought my way through the snow and caught up with the army unit the next day, told them the story I first told you, the story of my capture and miraculous survival under the snow.

Then I went home, with the people who had murdered everyone I had come to know and love."

They sat, the old man and the former soldier, the worker, watching as the sun fell gradually behind the city and below the horizon. The cannon's shadow stretched ever closer to them, as if reaching out for its long-neglected servant. Below, smoking torches were lit and their acrid smell joined the rest of the odours that drifted up towards them. Mechanical cries and industrial roars filtered up, the sounds of the lifeblood of the insatiable creature that was the city.

"I work for the God-King now. The frostbite that took my toes got me out of the army, and as soon as I recovered, they sent me back here to 'serve from home,' they said. You saw me on the gate last night, but it is not often I do that - can't keep a good grip without my toes, see? I was only out there because we were shorthanded.

No, I work in the fortress. There are a hundred elevators in there, and I operate one. It is my honoured duty - they tell me it is an honour - to pull the lever that will, at the God King's request, carry him up to the Grand Floor or back down to the Residential Chambers. I sit, once again, in the dark, a small, cramped tunnel awaiting the bell that signals me to pull the lever. This tunnel runs vertical, not like the mines, but it reminds me deeply of them."

Suddenly the worker laughed, a snorted 'ha!'

"They think I am just a poor cripple, another victim of the war, but they see my medal and think I am a patriot! So they gave me this job. But they don't understand, they don't see. Every day, I could bring their world crashing down on them just as they did to me. All I have to do is release the safety lever that sits so conveniently next to the main controls, and I could drop their high-and-mighty lord 10 storeys to his end! It would be so simple!

I could be the man who killed the God King! I could avenge my friends, who were left to die in the ice and snow like dogs. I could do what they couldn't and destroy the man in whose name it was all carried out.

Every day I tell myself how simple it would be, and one day yet I may well do it.

But I will not choose to do it this day, because I choose to live. We shall see what I choose tomorrow..."

In the silence that fell over them the old man stood, quietly bowing towards the man who held the God King's life in his hands. He turned away, beginning the long climb further up the trail and disappearing along the curve around the peak. The man he left behind sat there, legs tucked up to his chest, and stared out across the city as darkness fell.