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riding right towards me–
    He’s standing on the back of a horned creacher, his feet and lower legs strapped into boot-type things on either side of the saddle, letting him stand there without needing to balance–
    And he’s got a burning torch in each hand and the u-shaped fire-making thing in front of him–
    And I see his Noise–
    I see me in his Noise–
    I see me and Angharrad alone in the middle of an emptiness–
    Her screaming and twisting with the broken arrow in her flank–
    Me staring back at the Spackle–
    Me without a gun–
    And behind me is the weakest part of our line–
    And I see the Spackle shooting the fire in his Noise and taking out me and the men behind me–
    Leaving the Spackle an opening to come pouring into the city–
    Their war won before it’s barely even started–
    I grab Angharrad’s reins and try to move her but I can see the pain and fright shooting thru her Noise as she keeps calling out Boy colt! Todd! and it’s ripping my heart as she calls it and I wheel round trying to find the Mayor, trying to find anyone who’ll shoot the Spackle on the horned creacher–
    But the Mayor ain’t nowhere I can see–
    Hidden by smoke and panicking men–
    And no one is lifting a gun–
    And the Spackle is raising his torches to fire the weapon–
    And I think, No–
    I think, It can’t end this way–
    I think, Viola–
    I think, Viola–
    And then I think, “ Viola”?
    Would it work on a Spackle?
    And I sit up as high in the saddle as I can–
    And I think about her riding away from me on Davy’s horse–
    I think of her broken ankles–
    I think of us saying we’d never part, not even in our heads–
    I think of her fingers twirling round mine–
    (I don’t think about what she’d say if she knew I let the Mayor go–)
    I just think Viola–
    I think Viola –
    Right at the Spackle on the horned creacher–
    I think–
    VIOLA!
    And the Spackle’s head jerks back, dropping both torches and falling backwards over the horned creacher, slipping outta the boots and onto the ground, and the horned creacher turns from the sudden shift in weight, stumbling back into the line of advancing Spackle, knocking ’em this way and that–
    And I hear a cheer behind me–
    I turn to see a line of soldiers, recovering, surging forward, past me, all round me–
    And the Mayor’s suddenly there, too, riding beside me, and he’s saying, “Excellent work, Todd. I knew you had it in you.”
    And Angharrad’s tiring beneath me but still calling–
    Boy colt? Boy colt? Todd?
    “No time to rest,” the Mayor says–
    And I look up and I see the same huge wall of Spackle coming down the hill, coming to eat us alive–

{VIOLA}
    “Oh, my God,” says Bradley.
    “Are those–?” Simone says, shocked, stepping towards to the projection. “Are they on
fire
?”
    Bradley presses the remote and the picture suddenly gets closer and–
    They really
are
on fire–
    Through great swathes of smoke, we see chaos, men running this way and that, some pressing forward, some running backwards–
    And some just burning–
    Burning and burning and sometimes running for the river and sometimes falling to the ground and staying there.
    And I just think,
Todd
.
    “But you said there was a
truce
?” Simone says to Mistress Coyle.
    “After a bloody war that killed hundreds of us and thousands of them,” Mistress Coyle says.
    Bradley dials again. As the camera pulls back, showing the whole road and the bottom of the hill, swarming with an impossible number of Spackle, in reddish and brown armour and holding what look like sticks or something and riding–
    “What is
that
?” I say, pointing at some kind of massive tank-like animal stomping down the hill, a single thick horn curving out the end of its nose.
    “Battlemores,” Mistress Coyle says. “At least, that’s what
we
called them. The Spackle don’t have a spoken language, it’s all visual, but none of this matters! If they overrun the Mayor’s army,