A Mist of Grit and Splinters

by Graydon Saunders

  Instead of waiting until a decision is absolutely required.

  It is, it must be, a consensus. All of us in the Folded Hills have come down to a mix of ‘sound record’ and ‘what does Chert think, Chert’s met them?’

  Nobody’s met Slow. Nobody’d met the Captain outside the Twelfth. The Eighth was dead and the Second had pulled back to Parliament. Everybody in the Twelfth takes Crinoline’s lead because they remember the relief of the Eighth. Five hundred years, and then something destroyed a brigade.

  The Eighteenth had a chance to think about the possibility. The Eighteenth died a formed brigade. The Eighth was a wordless mass of rage and one narrow will that would not again step back.

  I wasn’t there. Crinoline was.

  “We’re used to conflicted graul.” Crinoline’s gone officer-voice, light and abstract and unconcerned. Crinoline’s not thinking loudly.

  It’s why we didn’t lose Wending. Why we have Shadow. The Captain taught Shadow sword-work as to a young graul.

  “As to kin.” Crinoline’s sounding human again.

  “That loudly?”

  “It’s my standard.” Half a smile. “You don’t want to connect up the old stories and a graul standard-captain whole of will.”

  Laurel gave battle-standards to individual graul, with orders and five- and ten- thousand graul at a time. Nothing and no one ever stopped them before they marched out of history again, going wherever Laurel was going.

  “‘Nothing and no one’ can’t be your sibling.” Which is hard to say. “The Second’s brigadier wrote the Eighth’s formal report, but I’ve read the Captain’s.”

  “‘Unrecoverable after the ninth day’,” Crinoline quotes. “It reads different if you haven’t seen hell-things.”

  “Everything the Captain says — ” because it’s so. For me it’s so. I think for a lot of people — “Slow’s brave and accomplished. Slow’s been returned.”

  “Maybe to life.” Crinoline’s amused.

  I get a small shrug. “On the scale of certain worries?” There’s a pause, and I nod. Slow can be almost anything before what they are matters.

  “Slow’s been recommended. I’m not sure the Captain’s serving the Commonweal I’m serving, but grant that, too.” I find myself spreading both hands across the table top. Making a strict effort to speak calmly. “Positive reasons.”

  That’s the requirement. No promotions by inertia or absence of objection, there has to be a positive reason. There has to be consensus on a positive reason. For standard-captain, more than one.

  “Third Company fighting under another’s direction, that’s Slow’s training and Slow’s choice of appointments, the full-captain doesn’t have to run the fight.” Which is factual. Still uneasy.

  Crinoline pulls a visual record out of their standard, two platoons on the roof of a fort. Wapentake titanium armour and a burning landscape, only one thing this could be even without the standard’s helpful labels. The roof’s tight, and they’re throwing by files.

  “They can’t have drilled that.” It’s clearly discretion-of-the-file-closers, file forward, step-step-step-and-toss to drive the throwing stick as hard as they can. The First drills that style of throwing, drills it constantly. It’s the four-file front at individual rates per file, the utter smoothness as the files throw, turn left, and trot and turn to clear the file behind them. Individual file-closers picking targets. Multiple targets, most of the files are throwing at two. Smooth as glass.

  “Clean-up on the constructs and the survivors.” Those Sea People officers personally protected enough to live in the inferno, Crinoline means. The sticks went out from the fort roof not quite so high as flat and hissing-fast.

  After Slow went down. After two waves of demons.

  “Same platoons?”

  Crinoline nods.

  After these two platoons stood under the bubble and air and put the demon flavour of pointy sticks into most of those demons.

  “I’d say that body language was calm.”

  “Job-of-work,” Crinoline says. “No more fussed than getting stuff off a barge.”

  Creeks fluster. They’re not getting through this on a reliable rage like Amazons would.

  “It sort of half-works on Regulars,” Crinoline says, voice entirely dispassionate. “Whatever Slow does.” Crinoline motions toward where I saw the imagery. “The Captain’s been clear their other banners don’t cohere to the same degree.”

  “Another reason?”

  Crinoline looks at me, and their voice goes time-to-die. “We could search each separate hell for a million years and not find a hope of getting through this,” Crinoline says. Calmly, because calm’s part of the job. “If we have to try to stop the hell-things we can’t. Maybe Reems, maybe the Sea People, certainly not both.”

  I nod, because there’s not much arguing.

  “Slow disagrees.” Crinoline’s wry, sad, I don’t know what to call whatever feeling Crinoline’s having. “Slow’s sane. Slow’s seen the might of Reems. Slow’s got demon scars. Duty requires.”

  Nothing much to say, so I say it for a little while.

  “Ever wonder what things would be like if luck wasn’t real?”

  I get a strange look. “Not a practical supposition.”

  “Suppose not.”

  Thread 2

  Slow’s memoirs

  The Creeks armoury is a hopeful structure.

  Certainly it exceeds in its dimensions and capacities any present ability to make use of it, but it also supposes that a time shall come when we may make that entire use. Initially, we might do no more than hope for the production of artillery and its attendant supplies. Those things must come in no very long time, as must boots and armour and greater supply of active javelins, if the Line were to perform its duty of preserving the Commonweal from attack.

  Beyond containment of many necessary manufactures, the armoury serves as barracks. It was built to hold an army twice, fifty battalions; the supplies on hand do not suffice that use, but a single battalion in the form of General Chert’s pennon might readily be accommodated. The presence of an un-appointed officer does not of itself provoke notice in such circumstances.

  General Chert has not benefitted greatly from history; there are no notable victories to their name, nor are they especially regarded as a commander. I do not think this entirely just, as their task was, before all else, to avoid defeat. The long turning retreat from the Dread River, the awkward and uncertain circumstances of the Second Commonweal’s first years, and the very great difficulty of encompassing the active and ongoing assistance of independent sorcerers without surrendering the Line’s primacy of defensive responsibility were all achieved under Chert’s command, and without those things there would have been nothing whatsoever to follow.

  The Line of the Second Commonweal retains the intent of certain customs, if it cannot achieve the whole. My interview with General Chert was for the most part both amiable and collegial. I returned from that interview at the armoury to Westcreek Town, and took up the standard of the Second Battalion there.

  After that, I became busy. I could not have more than a very few persons from the First Battalion, though there must be some: a battalion is never built quickly, and cannot be made entirely from the inexperienced. Yet these were not the best of times and there was some need of haste, and so risk. But not all risk; it was some trouble to get Meek to follow medical recommendations and not present themselves for duty until fully healed, but I think worthwhile trouble. Having the Battalion sergeant-major collapse is not good for morale, and Meek was apparently hale well before they were truly so.

  In addition to Meek, I was able to have Duckling and Sergeant Puddle from Thorn Company of the First, along with four sergeants intent on becoming sergeant-majors, and a scattering of file-closers interested in becoming sergeants. There are twenty-six sergeants in a battalion and six sergeant-majors. Meek fills the battalion sergeant-major appointment; Puddle intends to fill an appointment
as a banner part-captain; Duckling fills the battalion signaller’s appointment. I might get twelve or fourteen sergeants from the file-closers. Everyone else would have to rise from the pool of recruits.

  Recruits responded in plentiful numbers to the mustering notice, but not generally in sufficient condition. It is not anyone’s daily business to be prepared to fight, and the condition appropriate is by few maintained. To address this lack, I was able to apply the budgetary discretion granted standard-captains to procure four wheelbarrows for each file and some additional. There are few places a determined trooper cannot push a wheelbarrow. One wheelbarrow is enough for the armour and bedding and bundles of javelin shafts for two troopers, along with a few day’s rations, and taking turns pushing while moving at speed is an effective cohesion exercise for files and platoons.

  I was quite pleased to get the whole order as quickly as we did, and at the quality of the work; the wheels and bearings came from collectives established north of Old Lake. The arrival of the wheelbarrows did not make anyone else pleased; a new battalion cannot use the standard focus to do much of anything. For the first season, we could not so much as communicate among ourselves. So the early months of forming the Second Battalion were much occupied with road movement by wheelbarrow with all the pushing done by muscle. Later months were much the same, only over sheep tracks instead of good roads. By then the battalion could maintain one banner on weed-watch.

  The Captain, who did not like the logistical situation of waggons operating below the Southern Edge nor the supply of bronze bulls existing or expected for the Heavy Line, observed the Second’s results and equipped the First with wheelbarrows of armoury manufacture. The armoury designs — there have been several for divers purposes — are mostly aluminium. The armoury’s general Heavy Line pattern has wheels of twenty-one decimetre diameter, three decimetres greater than the traditional eighteen. It is a more useful design than a traditional wheelbarrow, being all of lighter, sturdier, and more readily pushed over small irregularities of ground. Despite those virtues, armoury designs do neglect the utility of a traditional wood-and-iron wheelbarrow’s greater mass for training purposes. Still, by the time the First had shifted their operational logistics to wheelbarrows the physical condition of the Second met the expectations of the Heavy Line. Switching to armoury manufacture ourselves allowed meaningful comparison of march times. The individual banners of both battalions became overtly competitive about their rates of advance.

  On the whole, I was in those first two seasons satisfied with the progress of the Second. The customs of the First Battalion were themselves not so long-established as not to admit of ready adjustment by the Second’s emerging consensus, and yet were well-enough established to have a weight of familiarity and presumption, so that each thing need not to be addressed before so much as a platoon focus could form. The habit of drill, of working hard every day at acts which produce no material benefit to anyone, is difficult to acquire. Everyone has the voice in their head asking what common purpose their work serves; mothers and relatives and teachers have put it there. An ability to answer that voice with thoroughness is as much of a division between those whose characters suit them being soldiers and those whose characters do not as we find an ability to deliberately kill other sophonts to be.

  D-Day Minus 1323

  Year of Peace 543, Brumaire, Thirtieth Day (Fall)

  Radish

  “Got the mope?”

  That’s a lot of words from Slow.

  It’s after dark. I’m sitting on a memorial bench by myself with a jug of beer. Mope ain’t implausible.

  Jug and mug means all I can manage is a sort of wave, both hands full. “All that lives is food,” which ain’t quite the mope.

  Slow’s bundle of spear-hafts comes down flat to the next bench over. Looks like dancing; looks like Slow practiced doing exactly that. Sounds like nothing.

  Slow’s been like this since youth. Meek says you could see it before, but it would lapse. Don’t know as it’s ever lapsed in the Wapentake. The story has Slow killing the third demon with good form and one arm and about half of each heart. After Shadow did whatever, dead flesh’d rise graceful.

  It could have; opinion’s divided.

  Still moves like Slow. Got a field mug. I’ve got past enough beer.

  Nobody knows what you say when the dead are listening. Slow and I clink mugs and say nothing.

  Half a mug later it’s “Kid’s hale?”

  Slow perfectly well knows their name. Slow taught them how to peel root vegetables efficiently. Slow’s ‘give the flinch’ talk was the one that stuck, about tucking their thumb in using a saw.

  Slow’s a wretched cook, can’t thread a needle reliable, and you can go on awhile. Anything with an edge and you’d think Slow had been doing just that for thirty years.

  “Doing well. Gone apprentice with cordwainers.” Little collective; they’re the only apprentice. I take another slug of beer. “Went by my sister’s, told them all about it.” Sister’s marker’s among the roses. Slow’s been. Still wouldn’t say it aloud most times, most places.

  “Bad year,” Slow says. It was. The kid would have been downstream where the wound-wedges got loose if they hadn’t sprained their foot. Don’t think I’ve done too bad a job since.

  Most times, I don’t. First parent and a job with travel, it’s not the best thing.

  “How’s our old sergeant-major?” Say “Twitch” out loud on the memorial and you might as well be summoning up with a pageant and choir. Rude at best. The sergeant-major’s Fire, if you’re alive. Wouldn’t have taken any bet on them being alive this long when they joined.

  Not me, not Twitch, not anybody, not after that first fight. The Line will advance.

  “Troubled by precedent.” Slow shifts in the dark. Not a smile, but Slow thinks it’s funny. Slow’s got a hand on the bundle of spear shafts. They are, too, plain as anything. It’s the stuff that looks like a long cylindrical ferrule that’s interesting. In the dark, inactive, it looks like seven of what you’d give a total novice to learn spear drill. “I took up the Wapentake’s second standard.”

  The second army pennon, the one Chert don’t have, got fitments personal for the Captain. It wasn’t an accident. I know the Line-gesith specifically chose not to ask about intent, and the next and current one made the same choice. Unofficially understood a sort of thanks in lieu from the ilk of Creeks. The Wapentake wouldn’t have known what to do.

  I sure wouldn’t’ve. The Captain always knew the joke. Might not like it, but they knew where it was going before it got there.

  “Wanted you to take the first?” Not precisely like it matters. Used to matter; the banners went with the standard made for them, and the signa worked with the standards made for it. These don’t care. Any banner in the Second Commonweal with any standard, any standard with any signa. Banners with a signa if you must.

  Slow’s shoulders move with some contented thought. Demons dying, teaching the kid how to peel turnips proper, I could never tell what Slow was thinking and it’s got harder. “Wished a specific custom to become established.”

  I know that joke. The standard-captains won’t promote you among them if they think you’ll do anything but whatever you think gets the job done best. Why I’ve stuck with the Food-gesith.

  “Got plans?” Slow says, like it isn’t dark and almost winter. Like the dead aren’t down there and memories don’t fade.

  Depends if you want them. Can’t see my sister’s face for thinking. Someone give that a good smack with a hammer comes back whenever with the smell and the slurping.

  “Hyacinth’s been after me to go full clerk.” I pour myself some more beer and wave the jug at Slow, who holds out their field mug. Which finishes the jug. “Kid’s grown. Seems like the time. Food-gesith’s encouraging.”

  Gesiths don’t regularly have non-clerk fylstans. The Second Commonweal’s had to make do, and no-one will insist you’re enrolled as a Clerk, but the gesiths all
want you to have passed the training before you’re wandering about the landscape making decisions.

  “You ain’t arguing slick or smooth on immutable.” Slow sounds kind. Like usual, the rest of us have to stop a bit and figure out where Slow’s chain of reasoning started.

  There are wreaking teams trying to do that. There’s a couple others trying to make ‘immutable’ take a shape that ain’t little and round. We care and the Lug-gesith cares because little and round makes a bearing, so, anything with a wheel. Don’t matter if it’s a knife-grinder or a reaper or waggon, food involves wheels. The rollers for the copper foil that gets punched into jar seals, which we don’t have enough of. And ‘immutable’, by itself, sticks. Could be it’s lacking mutability of position.

  Creeks do pass for Clerks. Not many of us, never quite enough of us, but it’s not like Hyacinth’s the sole example. So, yeah, Slow’s right, clerking’s known to be possible.

  Slow’s the first Creek standard-captain.

  “Figure I went too fast passing the Wapentake to the Captain?”

  After a little while, Slow says “Ilk need not be folk.” It comes with a brief grip on my shoulder, which is a lot for Slow. Beats Slow saying out loud the shape I wasn’t in. Nothing strange about their hand.

  Which is where I thought it would sit.

  “The Captain puts necessity ahead of tradition,” Slow says. “Victory is necessary. I believe them correct.”

  Slow pours some water into their field mug — can’t imagine anybody with the mug not filling their canteen — and swirls it a bit, then drinks it. You’d never toss the dregs on the ground at a memorial. “The dead fearing the future does not so oblige us.”

  Dead isn’t supposed to leave much room for strong emotions. Being dead and sticking confers a certain authority, or at least credibility.

  “Are the dead peaceful?”

  Slow shrugs the shoulder they set under the bundled banners of a battalion as they stood and says “Tonight.”

  D-Day Minus 1434