A Mist of Grit and Splinters

by Graydon Saunders

  Crinoline’s standard hasn’t got the appointments and furniture Fourth of the Twelfth’s old standard had. I’ve never asked where these came from. Purpose-made to fit the space, as the old appointments would not.

  I hand Crinoline the initial appointments list for the proposed Second of the First. And wait; these are not people Crinoline knows. Stuff will get pulled out of Crinoline’s standard.

  I’m doing it. Should be Four/Twelve’s standard, by reference. Or the Fourth’s. Not Crinoline’s personally. There aren’t enough of us. The habits of institutions become social.

  Crinoline’s the first person ever assigned this standard. You can compare standard-captains and battalions justly in the Second Commonweal; all the standards are the same. It’s meant something I can’t name when the battle-standards lack history.

  “Best independent support we’ve ever had.” Crinoline gives me an entirely unapologetic ‘you’re thinking loudly’ look and goes back to the appointment list. I juggle some lights.

  Of course I shouldn’t. The General ought to be a pillar of calm. No way for anyone to see in, and Crinoline knows about calm.

  Crinoline sets the appointment list down. “Slow’s sincere.”

  “Slow’s an over-focused, murderous lunatic before they’re a proponent of maneuver.”

  Crinoline grins at me, merry through their bones. “You were expecting control-of-advance positional defence doctrine out of Creeks? They’ve never had frontiers.”

  Which, yes, point. Living in dense settlements separated by wilderness, the Creeks have never had frontiers or the notion of meeting an enemy on the frontier. You meet the enemy away from your homes in some wilderness you can stand to have burnt. It’s surprisingly different as an outlook. I keep expecting a continuous road network, and there isn’t one.

  “You wouldn’t have wanted them to lose.” Crinoline’s sure of that.

  “I can wish they’d won another way.” It’s an admission. “The Fight Below The Edge’s what you might do with a full brigade and knowing there’s another up above.” I’m sure I look a bit apologetic, to be saying this out loud. “Everything isn’t win-or-die; sometimes it’s delay and fall back.” Gets me a nod, because win-or-die would have ended the Commonweal on the Dread River.

  “And here you are with a graul the other graul think fanatical and the prospect of promoting standard-captain someone who’s notable for — ” Crinoline gets a wicked look and starts ticking on their fingers — “being in the last two files standing, a cohesive banner, coming back to life.”

  Crinoline makes the fourth tick without saying anything. They summon up the record fragment, immediately, Crinoline thinks about this or builds indexes. Thorn Company’s fight against the Sea People, from inside the company fortification.

  Thorn Company is as far as my mind will go. The Wapentake would say ‘Thorn Banner’; the fashions of nomenclature change, they don’t mean the change as going back to the last ten years of Hammer’s life or an awkward fourteen years in the Third Century, I know they don’t, but it rankles.

  The fragment’s images show at half-speed. Part-Captain Slow’s image moves in a blur beyond my ability to follow. Most of the Colour Party; Creeks are large and amiable and languid until they aren’t. Demons go down, collapsing around javelins made by sorcerers. So do the Captain and the sergeant-major and a good chunk of the Colour Party. Whoever caught the physical banner did it with the hand that hasn’t got the pointy stick in it. They didn’t let go, they’re holding the stick with the sharp end in the head of a dying demon.

  “Three,” Crinoline says, numbers blinking across the last frozen image. Slow wasn’t holding three pointy sticks when the demons appeared. The first demon’s still losing motility. Slide the images forward and all the demons will fracture and twist and scrunch to nothing around the anti-demon javelins. The report-word is ‘collapsing’. Never liked it. ‘Collapse’ sounds natural, ‘collapse’ has horrible consequences but isn’t itself a collection of wrongness and flinch.

  Skill is finite, and a part-captain who can do that ought not to be the choice to promote.

  A part-captain whose banner loses the part-captain and the sergeant-major and two sergeants all at once and disdains the loss. Whose banner destroys a hundred demons and a brigade’s count of opposition as though the part-captain yet lives; steady, fluid, skillful. No grinding, no brute determination, plain operational superiority, swiftly decisive.

  You wouldn’t expect the banner to hold focus with those losses. You wouldn’t expect it because it doesn’t happen. Maybe someone can put a focus back together, given time; maybe everybody alive would shift over to the standard, both of those have happened.

  “A Wapentake determined to grant active authority to an infant goddess. Any artillery we’re going to get arriving via another.” Slow’s, honestly, Slow’s the least awkward precedent, even given how Slow came back from the dead.

  “Spend some time with Blossom.” Crinoline’s formally serious.

  Not able to conclude what I should first remark.

  “We will never have enough brigades to kill all the hell-things.” Crinoline’s plainly factual voice is worse than any amount of grim. “We’ve got a plethora of supposition about ward duration.” Crinoline makes a graceful gesture about the necessity of responding to those circumstances actually obtaining. “The artillery presents a possible solution.”

  “You’re aware Captain Blossom shouldn’t … ”

  “Present as a regular person?” Crinoline nods. “Galdor-gesith clerks, Line-gesith clerks, the Independent Order, and several librarians inform me it’s impossible. Ongen says you can’t explain how it works to someone who hasn’t got a specific immaterial substrate.”

  Far from the only thing.

  “Ongen was impressed. Ongen’s trying to figure out how to do it.” Crinoline sounds approving. “I doubt it’s generally practicable.”

  “Considering no one ever has?” I manage not to point at the appointments list. “Committing to artillery production compels artillery doctrine.” Haven’t got the money or the manufacturing or the people to have broader capability.

  “We’ve got Three/Ten, Four/Twelve, One/Twenty-two, and the pennon. The Wapentake has the First. That’s it for deployable, and it shan’t improve quick. Using battalions to spot for decisive artillery’s a lot better than using battalions where we don’t have brigades.”

  “Other than the First.”

  “Their output doesn’t make them a brigade.” Crinoline’s back to plainly factual. “Irrespective of the relative outputs.”

  You bring a brigade so you can keep enough companies awake. Three out of fifteen’s practical. Three out of five isn’t. “Point.”

  “We’ve learnt a few things,” Crinoline says. “You know Laurel probably didn’t understand how the multiplier works, the Foremost units sizes don’t make sense if you’re trying to optimize.”

  “Not going there.” Laurel had more graul than standards. It’s a reliable argument.

  “Got an actual problem with Slow?” Crinoline’s serious voice.

  “Can you avoid claiming a reverse-point ambush is an example of a positional defence?”

  “If you won’t claim there was a plausible positional defence.”

  “There were options other than prompt annihilation.” Someone gets annihilated. This time, it wasn’t the Line.

  “Tactically?” Crinoline nods agreement and hands me a half-litre mug. Theirs is some sort of consommé. Mine’s ethanol and peach nectar, five parts to one. Crinoline puts the peach nectar on soft cheese and eats it with a spoon. I don’t know where they get it, but I appreciate being handed a spoon. Combination of the ingredients takes some stirring.

  “You want me to believe graul hunches extend to knowing there’s going to be demons?” Graul have hunches half-a-minute deep. Stall a force with demons and they’re going to send the demons around you if they have any sense. Can’t assume the sense or the lack.r />
  “When’s the last time the Captain guessed wrong?” Crinoline’s voice stays mild.

  “You’re not claiming they’re some sort of seer?”

  “I’m claiming it’s been a long time since they guessed wrong. If they weren’t graul you’d credit them with skillful analysis.”

  “Fair point.”

  “Ever meet any old graul?”

  “No.” Give the peach stuff another thorough stir. “Mostly the southern border, some time in the City of Peace. Not away west where there’s a graul population.” Which Crinoline knows as service history. Just like I know Crinoline’s from well-away west, up in the headwaters of the Main River, west of any significant graul settlement.

  “The Captain’s a lot like old graul. I think the Eighth aged them.” Crinoline looks, just for a moment, immensely kind. “Old graul get that certainty about unknowable things.”

  “Possible things. Maybe likely things.”

  Crinoline nods. “Sea People and Reems and the Dread River’re an unfortunate confluence.”

  “Ceasing to pretend we’ve got a choice about artillery doesn’t answer if we’ve got a choice about Slow.”

  Crinoline doesn’t say anything for awhile, and then, “The third demon?”

  Slow was dying. Slow was missing a limb. Slow did wince a bit, but there wasn’t anything to fault in the form of the arm with a javelin in it, stuffing its death into the third demon.

  “Not just. The proposed command team’s Slow, Meek, and Duckling, plus ‘whoever winds up with a banner’.” Which is honest, whatever I think of the terminology.

  It isn’t something we’ve got proper language to explain to ourselves. “The Wapentake accounts demon kills to persons only when the demon is in arm’s reach.” I don’t manage to say this with an appropriate dispassion. “Duckling’s got close to a hundred, the way we’d count. Slow’s got three, the way they count.”

  “You know they don’t count Fire’s?” Crinoline wants to make sure I know.

  “Because those were stuck on a ward.” I nod. “Arm’s reach and mobile, or it’s not notable.” The Captain’s, done with thrown javelins, don’t count. Every trooper in the Wapentake could tell you seventeen. “Duckling’s still got one. Meek has two. It makes me doubtful they’re any of them sane.”

  “The pointy sticks make a large difference.”

  Crinoline says that in such neutral tones I would have held up a hand, but realize I’ve got the mug in that hand, and hand it back. Crinoline does the interrogative wave with the peach syrup, and I nod. Elegants do not live by ethanol alone. Not enough so to make the consommé Crinoline’s drinking smell appetizing, but the peach stuff is good.

  Sharply perceptive, Crinoline. Make an indication of thanks, taking the mug back.

  “Unit of work, unit of contract, scale of issue, unit of account.” Just fighting doesn’t bother you that much if you make standard-captain. This stuff’s likely to haunt you.

  “You don’t think Blossom’s math was wrong.” Crinoline’s sure that’s not where I’m going.

  Blossom’s math being wrong isn’t plausible enough to worry about. It’s been checked by a mess of clerks and several independents. “An argument that the Second Commonweal has a survival imperative to leap on the opportunity to consider metaphysical munitions like knives or nails.”

  “We’re getting the sticks.” Crinoline’s more pleased than not, I think. It’s not easy to tell. “May I point out you don’t understand Creeks?”

  “Stating the obvious.” No, no, I do have to say it. “I know I don’t understand Creeks. I know an awareness they could tear my arms off makes me uneasy in ways I can’t suppress.” Seven little sparkles. “Even the really calm ones don’t have a problem with Slow.”

  “Slow fits their social expectations for the resolute and the composed.”

  I can never articulate an objection, not without sounding like there’s something wrong with the ilk of Creeks.

  “It’s not stupid, Chert.” Crinoline’s entirely amused. “So you can’t say it’s heroic. It’s an expectation of sacrifice, you don’t get glory, you get a statue somewhere, but only if you’re the only one who died.”

  “Not sure I like command teams who prefer expending themselves.” Try to stay mild. Battalions don’t keep cohesion when they lose the command team. Sometimes they latch to the signa by banners. All these signas would allow that. You keep the command team latched in distinct nodes, the metaphysically perceptible commander identifies a node. Opposition getting something through to multiple command nodes is going to win anyway.

  “You’re fussing,” Crinoline says. And keeps looking at me, because it’s the same command team Three Company of the First had, and, yeah.

  “I can complain about being too willing to die and being too aggressive at the same time. They’re not unrelated.”

  “If they were doing either,” Crinoline says, setting their mug down empty.

  There’s one of those pauses.

  “You never stop moving,” Crinoline says. “When you do stop moving it’s in the desolate Second Valley. I’ve had a succession of pleasant young artillery warrants show up to further their educations with the Experimental Battery and come back half-baffled and half-admiring, I’ve had the whole of the Shot Team come visit twice and wring opinion from my battalion so they may be sure they’re making the correct sorts of pointy stick, and the whole of the Blue Creek watershed makes a point of inviting the Fourth to seasonal observations.”

  “Seasonal observations?”

  “Can’t call them festivals, it’s confusing. So they always use the old poetic allusion.” Crinoline’s gaze hardens, just slightly. “They really are that polite.”

  “That is not unrelated to my disbelief.”

  “Met any Cousins?”

  “I haven’t.”

  “Regular people,” Crinoline says. “Pragmatic, skulkers, disinclined to risk. The Creek creator stuffed big and strong and frankly stupid into that, and different big and strong and blood-hungry. I suspect so everyone believed they had descent.”

  “So their visual arts are prone to sculpture.” No idea where Crinoline’s going. Creeks aren’t often visual thinkers, not much artistic painting.

  “If I had to guess,” Crinoline says, “their creator had no idea themself what they were and was trying for a species immune to sorcerous control. Creeks don’t obey Power, and those as know say that’s not easy to take out. Creeks run about a third murderous and two-thirds prone to over-focus and the proportions overlap. Their philosophy all runs to necessity.”

  I don’t believe Crinoline’s assignment of proportions. I would like some real statistics. “Creeks couldn’t be sorcerers, and then Halt fixed it.” It’s an unwelcome thought.

  “Socially.” It’s not a new thought to Crinoline. “The hell-things got loose and all is desperation.”

  “You’re saying Creeks have a historically stable society because they’re not sure how else not to murder each other.”

  “That’s how they tell it.” Crinoline looks amused. “Only — ” and there’s a single-shoulder shrug.

  I’m entirely unsure how my mind gets there. “Slow’s reassuring because they’re a traditionalist.”

  “Deeply conservative,” Crinoline says. “I’ve had someone say ‘antique’ and all the other Creeks looked offended, but not falsehood-offended.”

  Right. Time to think.

  “We’re buying pointy sticks by the Wapentake battalion.” Three hundred files. “The Captain issues twelve shafts per trooper, and requests a corresponding supply of twelve blank tips, twelve anti-demon, twelve spinner, eight flash, and six punch. You’ve tried all of those and are inclined to reduce the proportion of blank tips.”

  “Is it the unit of account or the unit of work?” Crinoline doesn’t distract well.

  “Nobody knows what the accounting looks like. Parliament established the armouries very broadly, and no one is sure how some of the spending
works. Someone will get that sorted.” Which I actually believe. “Twelve shafts, but fifty points; a hundred-and-twenty-thousand pointy sticks per Creek battalion. If we count training and oddments, may as well count ours the same. All from one team in one notional armoury, and they can do it.”

  Eighteen other problems there. It’d nearly do it, if we don’t fight too much, for the whole Line but it’s getting closer every month and every season.

  “What no one’s done is explain to me where Slow’s conservativeness and Slow’s delight in munitions intersect.”

  Crinoline looks happy. “Did you watch One-Thorn’s records?” Crinoline goes right on looking innocent when my jaw tightens. The First’s perfect right to change company numbers for names makes some sense. Deployed companies need to be obviously not battalions. It gets in my head as the harbinger of all the Captain’s other dismissals of half-a-millennium of custom.

  “Apart from Slow, summary only.” Never enough time. Had to opine on Slow’s continued humanity.

  “Demon on a banner bubble’s maybe five metres from a trooper. A lot of those throws were underhanded and up.” The sort of thing you’d do against a sentry leaning over a wall you were standing at the bottom of. “They were all accurate. Some of them were careful.”

  Crinoline lets that sit there.

  “You’re saying we only got the dutiful.” Back when there was one Commonweal, and you were pleased to get one of the rare Creeks with warrants of authority.

  “Could be,” Crinoline says. “Could be the consensus of the ilk has shifted.”

  Crinoline agreed with the Captain’s choice, but that could be politeness and paperwork and no strong feeling about the consensus. “For clarification — ” is all I get out.

  “I’m in favour of promoting Slow.” Crinoline must have an uncertain tone somewhere, for this to be so far away from it. There’s a just-not-too-long pause. “If you were against, you’d have said no months ago.”