Page 55 of Green City Wars

There are plenty of squirrels between them and the Chapel, and the one thing that stops them just being held at gunpoint until Szerky can catch up is that they’re squirrels from two different armies. When they run into Graycoat checkpoints Skotch leads his ragbag of rodents into Red territory, and vice versa. They cut a zigzag through the rootways beneath the city, and leave half a dozen shoot-outs behind them as Reds and Grays cross invisible boundaries and end up in each others’ faces. And through it all, he keeps the hapless cultists out of the firing line. Or, rather, the six cultists and their new addition, the one just wearing the impractical clothes.

He wants to stop and speak to Meece, to the good doctor. There’s no moment when he has the breath for it, between ’75 and the Chapel. And Meece isn’t volunteering. Meece, of all of them, can run. He ran all the way from the Farm Projects, after all, and halfway across the unfamiliar territory of Neuwien before Skotch first saw him in Franz-Ferdinand’s.

With one more fur-flying skirmish at their heels, they pile into the Chapel.

Two things become apparent to Skotch then, as they skitter out onto the rubble, and to the water’s edge. One is how crowded the place is, the other how empty.

When he was here last, the place had only a skeleton crew of idlers and fugitives crouching in the Saint’s shadow. He recognises now that this was because the armies were moving in, and a lot of the Chapel’s regular malcontents are of a mobile breed. When a place gets hot, that kind of Gehirner packs up and moves on for as long as necessary. No sense holding out in a war zone. And there’s always a war in Neuwien-Grunstadt, because Eddi was right. The armies are just bigger gangs, players in a game where numbers and main force lend legitimacy. Skotch heard from some high-minded rat once that official power always devolves to the control of force. And that isn’t really true in the Gehirner world, or if it is, it’s in the shadow of human power, which is a force so far beyond animal comprehension that it skews all the scales. But Skotch reckons that the equation is a two-way street. Control of force makes you official, if you can hold on to it for a generation or two. Mother Murnau is a gangster and a criminal, oppressing the weak and breaking all the rules around the edges of the Gehirner way of life. But if she had not thirty rats under arms but three hundred, she’d be a statesrat, a general, and people would talk about her wisdom and dignity.

So now there’s a war on, and while all the transient Gehirner have cleared out, the regular working Gehirner couldn’t or didn’t. When their places were filled with armed squirrels with itchy trigger fingers, those who weren’t actively working at keeping the human city running have come here. Come for the safety of the Chapel, until the Reds and Grays settle just who it is gets to call this territory theirs, and demand tithes and taxes from the locals. Skotch sees a fair cross-section of all the guilds that call this part of the city home. Waste collectors, electricians, plumbers, cleaners, botanists, apiarists, haulers, all the different trades whose entire existence goes towards making sure that the needs of the human populace of Neuwien are met. Who only exist because humans decided those needs should be met, and wanted an eco-friendly and sustainable way of ensuring they were. Because the armies and the Rattenkönige and even random freelancers like Skotch, they’re parasites, really. They’re evidence that the humans wrought well when they engineered the Gehirner system. Built in enough spare flesh and redundancy that just this many animals can carve a living by doing something other than providing essential services. Because the humans never really thought that the animals they were gifting intellect and speech to might not just be happy trudging along the ruts they were designed to. Despite the fact that the Divine Jeff is always depicted as that smiling, reclining human, humans never really understood his simple four-word mantra. That living things are going to push the boundaries, just as humans have always done.

So the Chapel is busy today. Dozens, scores, hundreds of Gehirner who’ve abandoned their nooks and guilds to come here and keep out of the way of the fighting. Whole families of rats and moles, half-blind infants curled close to their parents. Frogs, newts, even some birds and bats from up top who fled here as the armies descended towards the roots. A handful of loose freelancers who haven’t run. Old Tekki the ratsnake coiled into a knot on one small island. A grim-looking owl. A pair of scarred badgers. None of them anybody’s good neighbours under normal circumstances, but right now everyone has bigger worries.

And yet one obvious absence. Because Saint Frances isn’t here. The pillar of this particular community, in whose presence rests the only actual sanctuary the Chapel can offer, and she’s gone.

“Well, damn,” says Skotch. Out there on her island, the big one in the centre, there’s a clutch of animals, and some of them, at least, he knows by name. Time to go find out what the hell’s gone wrong. Because they’re down one nun and so this place just lost its divine protection.

Because nothing in his life can ever be easy, even getting over there is a trial. The rat gondoliers usually plying their trade here have fled, and so it’s wade or swim. And there are precious few animals who can’t swim, honestly, and the water’s not deep, but the cultists won’t doff their robes, and those things get sodden and heavy real quick. In the end Skotch has to stride laboriously over with the entire cult clinging to him like he’s turned into Mother Possum. Very aware of eyes on him. Knowing that someone out of all these fugitive beasts will already have turned quisling. Be running off to the Reds or the Grays or someone, to say that the raccoon everyone was so interested in finally turned up.

Herr Fischer the toad is the one who helps Skotch up out of the water. A rather token gesture given their difference in sizes, honestly. The Mauler has his popgun slug across the bulging sack of his body, and Skotch sees a handful of other anarchists there as well. And, fine, he’s not actually daggers-drawn with them—maybe one of the few factions he isn’t—but that doesn’t mean he’s ever going to be delighted to see this particular group of loose cannons. There’s Wizzo the Rat, with his bandolier of outsize bullets and some kind of clockwork-assisted crossbow slung under his belly. There’s a handful of others, squirrels, pigeons, a bat, a salamander with a bright belly, all with the red scarves of revolution proudly displayed. Warning colours—in this case, warning Skotch that he’s probably picked the wrong side to throw his lot in with.

“Oh look,” he says sourly. “It’s the Revolutionary People’s Front of Neuwien.”

“Herr Bandit has finally put in an appearance,” Fischer observes.

“Ran into some trouble with…” Skotch pauses. “Let’s say just about everyone.”

“Skotch!” And any further verbal fencing is knocked sideways as Lulu totters over. She’s still bandaged up, and probably a bit hazy on painkillers, but apparently she’s pleased to see him. “Skotch, what happened? Where did you go? Did you find—”

“Amerikaner, you brought friends,” Wizzo breaks in. He’s sitting, cradling his crossbow, the other Maulers clustered about him, trying to look more belligerent than they are scared.

“These squeakers?” Skotch says, looking at the rather damp cultists wringing out their robes. “I mean—”

“Not them, Amerikaner,” Wizzo says. One rat finger points, and Skotch looks round to see that the army has arrived.

Armies, even. At one point along the Chapel’s circumference, there’s a crack in the wall that a force of Grays is filing out of, spreading out on the shore and with their beady eyes very much fixed on this central island, and Skotch. Across the way from them, through one of the overflow pipes, come the Reds, no less a figure than Brass-Shirt at their head, in his polished cuirass. Eddies of alarm amongst the various camps of refugees, and those closest to either incursion start putting distance between themselves and the uniforms. Some head for the central island, as though the ghost of Saint Frances lingers there. Others see which way the soldiers are looking and move around the edge, clustering on every outcrop and rock and mound that’s neither between the two hereditary enemies nor in the way of their path to the Chapel’s heart. Plenty give up on their last hope that the Chapel can offer any kind of sanctuary and just get the hell out by any egress by which the armies aren’t coming in.

“Well, damn,” Skotch says again. He keeps waiting for the two forces to start pot-shotting at one another, but right now trigger discipline prevails. The Redcoats glower over at the Grays and the Grays scowl right back, but these are squirrels with a chain of command, and their officers are restraining them. And everyone sees that. Not that they’re working together, because that’s a step too far to describe the détente on display here. But that they’re pointed in the same direction and not trying to kill one another. Skotch wonders whether this, here, will start some ripples that might lead to big changes in the future. The guilds put up with the armies lording it over them, because the armies act as their own counterbalances. Reds, Grays, that pigeon corps from across the city, they spend more time shoving one another than punching down. But here’s evidence that it needn’t be that way. Maybe tomorrow the guilds will start to organise against them, arm up, and throw off the parasitic rule of the militias. Nice thought. Shame it seems unlikely Skotch’ll be there to see it happen.

21GREY MATTER

Skotch looks out at the troops as they file in. Squirrels, in the majority, but he sees a badger out there with the grays, and the reds have a fox. Those remnant carnivores, those discontinued models, making rent the best way they can by turning mercenary.

“Where,” he demands, “is Saint Frances?” Because there should be a huge figure at his back right now, forbidding by its very presence the possibility of violence. Instead of which there’s an absence as big as the Chapel itself.

“She left!” Lulu bursts out. “Skotch, we were all sitting here waiting, and all these others coming in to escape the fighting, and then suddenly the Saint, she gets a call on her device, the little one she carries. I tried to listen in but all the talk was on the other side. All she was saying was ‘yes’ and ‘okay’ and she didn’t seem happy with any of it, but she listened and she listened. And then she was up on her feet, and she gave over the food and medicines to us, told us to give it out to whoever needed, and she left! She left, Skotch. Just walked away. Walked up.” Meaning she went up the metal ladder to the one human-sized exit the Chapel had, the one that led up to a metro station for humans, and thence to all the other human spaces of the city. The exit that Gehirner didn’t take, because it led to where they weren’t supposed to be.

Skotch looks around, matching gazes with Wizzo, with Fischer. Nobody’s any the wiser. Saint Frances just up and left them in their hour of need and that’s mighty inconvenient, because that need is just ramping up the more soldiers filter in.

No fighting yet, just that gradual buildup. Wizzo has a little telescope, probably self-made, and he hands it to Skotch wordlessly. The Reds and the Grays have at least as many eyes on each other as they do on anyone else. No love lost nor trust given, over that way. But they’re not doing what nature intended and just popping away at the opposite side. He sees the more decorated squirrels going round, curbing the keen of the others. Brass-Shirt is sitting on a tiny fold-out stool sipping at that damn goblet. On the Gray side there’s some scarred veteran Skotch doesn’t know, wearing a cloak of sewn-together leaf shapes. The material looks like that tough vegetable faleather stuff that can probably stop a popgun bullet at sufficient range.

Not fighting each other, but not advancing on the centre of the Chapel, nor just randomly brutalising the refugees. Waiting for something. Which in the short term is obviously preferable, but it gives Skotch a bad feeling about the long term.

“So tell me!” Lulu shoulders into him and he almost loses the glass into the water. “What happened? Did you get the mouse? Was there a fight? What’s the story, Skotch?”

“Did nobody prescribe you some bedrest?” he complains.

“You owe me, Skotch! You owe me the story!” And they’ve obviously been feeding her the right drugs because, while she still sounds a bit weak, there’s the annoying pigeon he knows and—if you twist his arm enough to make him admit it—is at least a little bit fond of.