around. All you can do is duck, and run.
Later that summer, the first of the
omniblasters showed up, firing a beam of
pure energy with a silence so loud that
tiny hairs all over my body would stand up
in fright.
Cosmetics, baby milk, and whisky were the
most prized commodities on the black
market.
I had no idea what the war was about.
Nobody was able to explain it in terms
that an eleven-year-old could understand;
few even bothered to try. All I knew was
that evil people on hilltops were trying
to destroy everything I loved, and good
men like my foster father were trying to
stop them.
I slowly learned that my foster father
was, apparently, quite important to the
defense. He never talked about what he
did, but I overheard other men refer to
him with terms like "vital" and
"indispensable," and these words made me
proud. At first I simply thought that they
merely meant that the existence of men
like him, proud of the city and vowing
never to leave, were the core of what made
the defense worthwhile. But later I
realized that it must be more than this.
There were thousands of men who loved the
city.
Toward the end of the summer, the siege
closed around the city again. The army of
the Tenth Crusade arrived and took over
the ridgetops just one valley to the west;
the Pan-Slavic army and the Orthodox
Resurgence held the ridges next to the
city and the territory to the east. All
that autumn the shells of the Tenth
Crusade arced over our heads toward the
Pan-Slavs, and beams of purple fire from
pop-up robots with omniblasters would fire
back. It was a good autumn; mostly only
stray fire hit the civilians. But we were
locked in place, and there was no way out.
