A Mist of Grit and Splinters

by Graydon Saunders

  “You can always quit and learn wreaking.” Meek looks like walking might have been a better thing to do tomorrow. Could be the day after.

  “Could.”

  There isn’t anyone here but the wounded who got mobile ahead of Meek, which is, right now, twelve. Everybody else who lived is growing new somethings, slow fussy work for the doctors. Everybody says the itching makes you wonder if it’s worth it. Meek says the anti-itch salve worked fine on them; the doctors are talking blind trials and risks to regrowing, always tougher than having what’s there mend itself.

  Demons try to tear off heads. You see the claws coming, you duck back. The new-model helmets are tough. Of the remaining eight, six were missing faces. One was shy an arm, one was shy their upper heart and a big chunk of sternum. The Independent Grue’s had things to say.

  The barracks echoes; not literally. Walls are four metres thick of rammed earth with glass tile outsides and thick rough plaster insides. Not much capacity for a physical echo.

  First Battalion’s support group’s down below the Edge with the battalion, just as it ought to be. We’ve got hired cooks, which doesn’t need the plural except for safety.

  Meek takes a minute to sit. I don’t sit, the benches are there for the aged and infirm, however temporary.

  “Fifty-one dead and twenty down, pretty much a platoon. In return we destroyed something the size of a brigade. Killed all their supporting sorcerers, having to chew through a hundred demons to do it. Having Thorn Company fight the whole landing force wasn’t the plan but it worked.”

  I nod, because there’s nothing else to do. True statement. One in five ain’t cheap but it’s not precisely expensive. Count the Colour Party and it’s closer to one in six.

  “You’re losing your voice.”

  “Not done,” Meek says in sort of a hiss. “Grim’s got Thorn and Slow’s offered you Signals in Second Battalion. I go from managing sergeants to managing sergeant-majors and making sure Slow admits it matters if they like somebody.”

  I get my mouth open, no more, before Meek says, faintly, “Does matter. It’s a focus.”

  Which is factual; a battle-standard is a focus. “Team of thousands.”

  “Team of six.” Meek looks more grim than hurting, just for a second. “Front, bubble, perimeter, and the spares. How the files push don’t signify.”

  I have no idea what to say. Meek means that those with executive in the focus make the decisions about what the standard does, how the fight is conducted. It’s not wrong. It’s not right, neither, because the files and the platoons and the banners have to trust you. And ‘Signaller’ would be ‘Adjutant’ if I had more experience or Slow was another kind of traditionalist and I wish I knew which. I’m in that team of six for Second Battalion, along with Slow and Meek and whichever part-captains.

  Meek makes a rude gesture. “Go murder a pell or something, after lunch. Do you good.”

  I got a list of symptoms when the hospital let Meek go. If I observe Meek having any of the symptoms for any reason, even if I think I know why, I’m to report them to the nearest hospital as fast as possible, and here’s a letter for whomever might be in charge on the Line side and another for whomever might be the doctor on duty at the hospital and don’t even think about reading the medical one.

  I stuck all of them on the notice board by the exercise area, symptom-list broad and flat, first time I made it back here. Ought to make them easy to find.

  Meek makes a good broad dent in lunch, and heads off to plunk themselves in the tub, along with five or six other irritable convalescents. I figure they’re all more convalescent than irritable and head off.

  Not to do pell work. Pells were yesterday; today’s throwing. Put the javelins away, sluice off, clean uniform, then wander down to the memorial. Skipping dinner; outright rude to come well-fed to speak to the dead.

  The middle of the memorial’s got the two pillars, and then two more and two more and one at the back, with the standard in front of it. Only it’s not, it looks precisely the same, but there was agreement it wasn’t wise to leave the real thing out where someone not in the Line might put a hand on it. So around the back of the memorial there’s a door, angled into the sod, and seven steps down because we’re hopeless traditionalists.

  The door’s complicated, Captain Blossom says. Has to take account of everybody present and all the emotional states.

  It lets me in.

  The light works. One bright beam straight down by the door. You have to walk back where it’s dim to get to the Standard of the Seventieth.

  Can’t enter the standard. Can’t latch to it. Don’t need to make any inquiring noises, Twitch is right there. I suppose opening the door’s discernible.

  Not like you can knock. Twitch can talk audibly, saves it for special occasions.

  Not usefully. Rapping on the shaft of the standard won’t accomplish much beyond a forlorn flat tapping.

  You ain’t particular troubled by the dead. Twitch doesn’t fault me for it. My head shakes sorta rueful anyway.

  Can’t do anything for them. Can’t say I flubbed it especially bad. You don’t count on the opposition doing the same thing twice. Wasn’t especially expecting demons, more of what failed hard last time don’t qualify as a competent response.

  Twitch’s shade nods at me. Twitch don’t look judgemental. Came on with being dead.

  Go all disapproving, nobody will come to talk. Twitch waves me at one of the stone benches flanking the standard. Going to be a long wait.

  Twitch told the Captain they’d stick to brief their successor. Brisket’s been the Battalion sergeant-major these five years, and here’s Twitch, still, so Fire asked. Twitch told Fire there would be another time the Wapentake would march out whole.

  The dead know things. It’s not good for the living to ask how.

  Below the Edge might have counted, if First Battalion’s standard wasn’t the pennon of an absent army. If it had been a truly major fight. If there hadn’t been at least the idea of artillery batteries for the Wapentake.

  If there’s ever what could be taken as the Wapentake all going off to fight all together, a brigade or an army, every Creek with a warrant of authority knows to make entirely sure the sergeant-major comes to talk to Twitch.

  It’s one of the Line’s little bits of humour; Banner or Battery sergeant-major, Battalion sergeant-major, Brigade sergeant-major. If it’s an Army, it’s just sergeant-major. Armies are supposed to be temporary, it’s a conditional appointment. People make jokes about how the Line couldn’t figure out how to make ‘army’ start with B.

  “My words on the air, if you don’t mind.”

  Twitch’s shade makes a tossing gesture.

  Speak into the Standard, or think about what I want to say.

  “Taking an adjutant appointment is like agreeing to be considered for standard-captain. Signaller’s a step away, but it was my focus down Below the Edge after the demons chewed on Slow. I might need to do that with a battalion.”

  Twitch’s blank face dips in a nod. Regular shades of the dead don’t show enough features to look like they have eyes. Dead-in-the-standard do, at first. It’s something different than just being dead. If you don’t look close, your mind fills in what they ought to look like.

  If you do look close, don’t stop. Wavering between’s worse than either.

  “I figure I can do battalion front in a fight.” It’s hard to say. “I don’t figure I know, or any of us know, what we’re doing with tradition. We’re calling it the Wapentake, but it ain’t. We’re acting like there’s tradition, but it isn’t; the Old Line guys don’t do it the way we’re doing it.” Every other standard-captain we’ve met thinks the Captain is a fanatic. None of them will say so; Crinoline will say something about ‘notably goal-directed’. Crinoline, in the judgement of their peers, is middling-fanatical themself.

  Why Four/Twelve’s guarding Parliament. Haven’t got the brigade.

  Pain cuts channels, Twitch says. Fe
ar. Grooves of experience. You think along the low places, not even habit.

  I nod. Anything sends you back there, you’re back there. If you’re standing in another kind of place, you make bad mistakes.

  Line tradition’s how not to fail in pain’s habits, Twitch says. Wapentake’s got different experiences.

  So we need different traditions. It’s a clear implication and I can’t argue with it and it does not reassure. Need’s not the same as saying we’re making correct traditions.

  Can’t, Twitch says, sounding amused. That answer’s in the future.

  If Twitch knows, I shouldn’t.

  Peace behind us, Twitch says.

  “Peace behind us,” I say back. What we’re for.

  Bad century coming, Twitch says, more uncomfortable creepy than Twitch’s dead usual. Mind your front, Duckling.

  By the time I’ve said “Yes,” Twitch is gone.

  D-Day Minus 1196

  Year of Peace 543, Germinal, Seventh Day (Early Spring)

  Duckling

  There’s more dry in rain than doubt in Slow.

  Don’t much help the rest of us.

  Nothing helps with making files. Nobody’s got the hang of latching; nobody’s got habits for a focus, or they wouldn’t likely be here. They’ve made friends. They’re getting less unfit. They still don’t know what a file is, and there’s no explaining. Example worked in the First; not quick, but it worked.

  What I get are the twitchy and the witchy and the habitual doubters of consensus, half-a-banner’s worth. The Colour Party gets the fit-to-serve the banners don’t want, no matter how it’s formally described.

  I’m the signaller only so long as I can do the job.

  Meek’s take is you watch how the files form; that’ll show you who gets granted authority. That’s not wrong, but it’s not quick. I need some kind of quick; too much else to teach.

  Slow ordered four wheelbarrows per file, which is twelve hundred, and ‘some over’, which is another couple-hundred spares. We got the first barge-load today. Twenty-four files in the Colour Party; that gives me claim on an even hundred, granting spares. One’ve’m’ll find a way to break, first thing.

  Thing about a wheelbarrow is you haven’t likely used one proper. People do; there’s folk who make shifting goods a trade where there’s no call for waggons. It’s not usual; usual is sequential waggon-loading and a decent road. Wheelbarrows don’t ask the road, though they do ask dry. You’re more than half-likely to think you’ve used one, is where the problem comes in.

  Good bearings and you can go all day, till the load balance you didn’t realize was wrong cramps your arms up or locks your neck, because you can’t push steady like that. As its own effort, likely; for a few minutes, sure. But once you’ve got up or down into it, and the inevitable bumps and lumps, keeping the load flat’ll creep into your muscles and hurt you. Everybody who thinks they’ve used a wheelbarrow’s done it maybe five kilometres. Usually less.

  No cattle in the Corner; the bugs don’t just eat them, the bugs make them strange. I have used a wheelbarrow.

  Nobody minds Duckling volunteering to go first, kit’s all to hand, and it isn’t raining.

  Still past two hundred in the Colour Party. Going to lose a few yet. This lot hold up with running and the beginnings of drill. We’re adequate for pipers.

  We’ve got the tents, and the tents go one per file. So I send the whole Colour Party off to Gauge, the attached quartermaster’s function is Gauge just the same way what the old line’d call First Company is Fierce Banner.

  Lay out the tents in two lines. Thirteen and fourteen tents with five rank’s space between them. Fifty kilogrammes of sticks and canvas, thump. With the space, it takes up more of the one corner of the drill-yard than the two-hundred-plus people do. Still one corner. Then four wheelbarrows per tent, lined up on their stands. Then everybody sent to get their full kit out of the barracks, come back, and find a wheelbarrow to pair up on.

  Full kit, in piles; no armour yet, everybody has their bag of sand. I’m in armour, for example and obviousness.

  They’ve got the personal-kit ruck with the sweater and the coat and the spare boots and the layers and the towel and the soap and the sewing-kit and the bandages and the boot-oil and the socks. They’ve got their drill weapons, and the bundle of pointy-stick shafts and box of blank tips, only sharp, that weighs the same as the interesting stuff. Shields. The cot you must have. Bubble or not, sleeping on live ground’s frequently fatal.

  Bone-worm’s such a wretched way to die.

  One trooper is ten litres of water per day. Four days is forty litres, two twenty-litre water cans. One trooper is two-and-a-half kilos of dried meat, alleged cheese, ration crackers, dried fruit, hard candy, and salt every day. Double rations for hard focus work. The candy is the awful healthful stuff made from rhubarb and false-grape. Full of electrolytes and minerals. Old Line waggon-logistics gives you all this in platoon-size daily boxes; we’ve got it wrapped up per-trooper, per-day. Three days per, in a specific bag. Bag’ll hold five days; bag’ll go under the ruck flap. You can get six days in the bag if you’re clever and shift your mess-kit into the ruck. Most of them have. Send everybody back to Gauge food bag in hand. Gauge got a written request four days back, so the water cans are full and lined up neatly and the rations are on the counter in stacks of three.

  Another bag with the file’s kettle and heatable hunk of quartz and steeping-pot and the measuring spoons, the stir-spoon, and the strainer, all of which nest together. Forty person-days of dried, shredded, and compressed wood-lettuce roots, ten two-kilogramme cans. Tick those who picked up kettles; they mostly still can’t latch, but I latch fine.

  Makes quite the pile. You can do it by mass; three hundred kilogrammes rough-ground load per wheelbarrow, and the pile for a file’s just about twelve hundred kilos when the water cans are full.

  Everybody’s looking at me.

  “Two to the wheelbarrow, eight to the file. Pack the file’s gear across your file’s barrows.”

  No files have been assigned. Files don’t work with ‘assigned’.

  It’ll get us to lunch. The tent’s a problem. Bubble’s usual, it’ll keep off the rain, but you don’t want to sleep staring at the sky. Want the shade, sometimes. Ain’t going to talk Meek out of having the canvas on hand. Slow’ll say ‘shelter for the wounded’ and mean it. Don’t know if we’re going to get medics; medics need waggons.

  Hopeful indications; passing a marble around, trying to check level. Dunno why someone had a marble, but hey. Maybe it’s lucky. Have to be truly lucky for the attempt to work, anybody holding the barrow’s going to adjust. But they’re trying, and they’re worrying about the correct thing.

  The argument about rope vs straps didn’t get far; someone went back to Gauge and asked. No finished straps, rope’s in hundred metre lengths, oilcloth’s next month. So there’s an even split, by agreement. Lots of rope-ends got proper whipped and the strapping’s been sewn to d-rings, sturdy bronze ones.

  Less hopeful; nobody knows how to do this. They’ve got the idea, mostly, but nobody’s done it before. There’s one nominal file that’s maybe got an idea about load order: you don’t get to balanced at the end, you stay balanced the whole time. You put stuff on in reverse of taking it off; shields under the kit-bags is better support and sturdy and entirely wrong for practical.

  Get lunch, cooked, in the mess.

  Come back out; nothing’s fallen off. They’ve got to understanding Listen up and they do. We’re going for an extended march, an easy initial one along the West-East, Westcreek Town to Lockpoint to Seven Bridges on Slow Creek, then back. I get some looks. I make some more tick-marks as various people start making sure everybody’s got their hat tied on.

  We’ve been doing double columns of files without wheelbarrows. I get us round the drill yard with, twice and thrice. The command to halt’s no different with wheelbarrows, but what you need to do is. I sound different with my helmet on; I plunk
it on early and we try that, too.

  Still ain’t raining.

  We get out the gate and start down the regular fused road. Slow rolls the wheelbarrow I packed last night out of the gatehouse and falls in behind me. Slow’s got their helmet on. Nothing about Slow shows to look at, and nobody in the Colour Party’s got the latch to notice the standard’s right behind them, slid in with the bundles of pointy sticks on the left side of the wheelbarrow.

  Let’s see if we can get to Westcreek Town before anybody notices Slow.

  D-Day Minus 1114

  Year of Peace 543, Prairial, Twenty-ninth Day (Late Spring)

  Duckling

  We’re along to regular meetings. We’re along to feeling like the barracks are organized. It’s strange; I was here when the First built the barracks, and this isn’t the First in them now.

  Slow, with the banner leaning on their left shoulder; even clear light, what’s officially Slow’s office. The hired clerks have gone home. There’s a couple covered typewriters and a wall of new filing cabinets for us opposite the First’s wall of cabinets. Official-official’s in the standard, but you can’t be asking the standard-captain for your spring boot-issue contract list.

  Morning meeting’s meant to go quick; why Slow holds it before breakfast. We’ve just had a list of names for provisional sergeant appointments from four provisional Part-captains, and I’m getting a look from Meek.

  “Going to name somebody?” Meek knows the answer, doesn’t approve, and might not be patient.

  “Nope.”

  Slow doesn’t say anything. The four provisional part-captains don’t quite know where to look. Ain’t how the First does things. Meek ain’t specifically angry. The provisional part-captains can’t tell.

  “Why not?” Meek’s emphatic.

  “We’ve had approximate latch most of this month.” There’s a few rueful nods. “I don’t need a sergeant to run their platoon focus, I don’t need a sergeant to take front on independent operations; I need a sergeant to run sticks against close and overwhelming. I need somebody to aggregate observer reports.”