A Mist of Grit and Splinters

by Graydon Saunders

  Old Line battalion’s got attached medics. Works for waggon-advance; don’t work at our march rates. Ain’t precisely spare medics ever but a battalion’s a point of greater need. There’s a rotation. Nobody qualified’s got time to train up to run. Have to hope for independents, come the day.

  D-Day Minus 626

  Year of Peace 545, Vendémiaire, Twenty-seventh Day (Early Fall)

  Archimedes the Surveyor

  The Independent Etch dutifully abstracts each day’s notes and annotated maps. The paper copies are wrapped or rolled and put away. Fold the table up. No rain now; not much mist. I stay sitting, the camp table’s not much like a table but this is close enough to a chair.

  It rains, down Below the Edge. Not always; not even every day. Sometimes, everything gets to dry out, or nearly.

  Sometimes.

  It’s not an intentional part of the design, but if you make a sort of low frame, an inverted seven-metre canoe is enough roof for two people on cots end to end. The frame’s small enough you can carry it with you, lengths of peeled poles the only addition. Line for lashing we had in plenty. Still have to find a flat spot mostly dry. Still have to get out of the canoes, and off the water, well away from any turtles. Well away from other surprises. Still have to get some folk under other shelter.

  It wouldn’t be especially practical without the bug-charms. Warding the camp is required, still; turtles, the wild kine, anything unexpected. There are at least two kinds of ground-running feathered things, sleek as ducks. Both try to steal what they consider edible; no one is so hopeful as to suppose this would not include limbs or appendages. Not for desire; the smaller kind is perhaps ten kilos, and the larger maybe forty. No idea what they eat. Sometimes diet indicates optimism. You get the odd duck’ll lurk and try nabbing cruncher. Works sometimes; the cruncher’s heavier, but a greenhead bite’ll poison most anything. Not much reed-bed’ll hide a lot of greenhead. Buffle-ducks don’t try that. They’re a third the mass of greenheads, three metres long to five or so. Hotter fire; roll-preening at dusk’ll light kilometres, beak quibbling away at feather arrangement and white fire from the nares.

  “The wildlife is a trouble to you?” Etch’s skilled at reading moods.

  “The Cousins ate something. Those feathered things eat something, they’re not critters. Can’t figure out what. Not much for parasites down here.”

  Etch nods. They put out ward stakes every time, all the same. Stick parasites under a lens and you can sometimes tell what lives around here, which can be useful. The bug-charms work on what bites you, or stings, or wants to lay eggs. That’s useful. The bug-charms won’t do anything for what falls in the pot. There are ticks that’ll live through six hours of boiling; little ones, ones you’re not likely to chew. Won’t stay little, battened on down at the end of your gullet.

  “The wild kine are critters.” Throughly definitive pronouncement. Etch did not appreciate seeing those, even from six, eight hundred metres back.

  “Don’t figure anything eats those.”

  “Nor do I. Yet you are concerned.” There’s a flowing gesture in the general direction of yesterday’s slab bridge. “I had thought matters proceeded well.”

  The bridge did go well. Get lucky with what’s in the river or outcrop and the bridge’ll look old.

  “No Sea People.”

  “It is altogether a matter of inherent and extravagant uncertainty, yet I do not think it is Sea People unobserved,” Etch says. “Patience and caution are plausible enough, but,” and Etch shrugs from their ankles upward, “this is a quiet place. The Power is a thousand things, but it is not quiet.”

  “There’s Power-using weeds surprise people every year.” Every day, if people went into the wild habitual.

  “One note in the symphony.” Etch crouches down. “The turtles are creatures, and the kine are creatures, yet creatures old in their kinds. The Power is in them, not around them.” Something coils around Etch, half mist and half intention. “This place has its strange memories out of the salt sea around its weeds and its hungers where the blood spilled on the land is not enough. It remembers, and the memory makes currents among the trees, that will not float and shift as the great weeds in the water. Yet it is quiet.”

  “Which is how the Cousins lived.” No eel-tree down here, not much large. Bugs and diseases and the places none return, but not really weedy. The Cousins’d be extinct if it were.

  Etch’s head tips and the coil of mist blurs wide.

  “Maybe the Sea People ain’t coming back. Maybe they’re taking their time to bring more than enough.” I sort of wave at the ground. “Lots of Sea People’s more risk for us, and much more risk for the land. Won’t be seeing the Cousins returning, if they wanted it; won’t be seeing anybody come down here to look for what’s useful.”

  “Armies and the tumult of battles.” Etch doesn’t approve. The Galdor-gesith thinks Etch is as militant as modest talents get. File says something about manners, and strong opinions. “You fear a prolonged conflict?”

  “Second Commonweal can’t do prolonged conflict. No point in fearing it.”

  Don’t usually say this stuff.

  “Point of surveying’s to know what’s there. Maybe it’s useful, maybe it’s important, maybe you just know what you didn’t. Everything the Cousins knew’s gone.” All practical purposes. “We won’t have time.”

  “I had thought the survey nearly complete.” We’re low on food and north of the River of Mists sort of sits there being perplexed for Etch.

  “We know what Slow wanted us to find out.”

  Etch stands up, makes ‘do please elaborate’ motions.

  “‘The Line’ is a bunch of standard-captains. Slow’s concerned for movement down here.”

  Etch summarizes a book of doubt with facial expressions. Mostly flat, mostly wet, drippy, and if there’s nothing with thorns there’s a whole vast variety of starving slimes. No lost hands this year.

  Only, you can move down here. There are paths. We added bridges. We made a map.

  “Too many Sea People and fighting gets us back to early days, land that’s melt pools.” Dry upland, most of that. Down by the Main River it didn’t melt so neat. Wouldn’t melt neat here.

  “I should prefer to believe it need not be so in these days,” Etch says. “However the Sea People come, it shall not be with walled cities and long-established fortification.” Etch’s face does something more complex than wry. “Even should they have the skill, the Line’s duty would be to forbid them any sufficiency of time.”

  “That duty’s to the benefit of the Commonweal.” Etch looks quizzical. I think it’s quizzical; could be worried. “The increase of knowledge don’t benefit.”

  “Ah,” Etch says. “I should suppose it would not.”

  D-Day Minus 439

  Year of Peace 545, Floréal, Fourth Day (Spring)

  Duckling

  The standards aren’t different to look at. Easy to forget once you latch.

  Inside’s different. As issued, nothing in the Second’s. Nothing in any of them as issued except this one.

  “A sincere generosity.” The Captain ain’t sounding human. “Today, they would know they should not; in time, perhaps they could not.”

  There were five brigades’ count of standards made, then two over. One of the over’s with General Chert, pennon of the Army of the Western Hills. The Standard of the First’s the other army pennon. Some kind of statement, when the Wapentake didn’t know we could muster a battalion.

  Well, and political. Can admit the political for thinking.

  The Fight Below the Edge settled any questions about a sufficient focus. This’s my first time in the Standard of the First.

  The Captain waves me at the map-room table. It’s new. Ten years old but it hasn’t worn. Could get a hand lens and look for scratches and not find any.

  Takes will to pull out a chair. Two for Creeks, a generic human size, and one that’s the Captain’s. Everything’s art. Cohesive a
rt, one will and one vision. Ought to be in a material artifacts library together. Displayed where it’s not permissible to pick things up and wiggle them. The kind for things not made by any work of hands.

  “The furnishings in the Standard of the Seventieth came from Laurel’s day,” the Captain says, “though not from Laurel.” A single sparse gesture at their quarters. “This recommends the Commonweal.”

  The Captain hands me a stack of paper. No sign of my logistics exercises; could be those do not recommend the Commonweal. The stack’s a centimetre thick.

  The top sheet says ‘Wapentake Area of Responsibility’ and ‘Priorities and Resources’ and a date about two months ago. That’s enough to get me to look straight at the Captain.

  “These are yours, to take away and read.”

  “Sir.” Certain-sure not something I read now. Set the stack aside. They tell you if you’re in the grant of a warrant. Only I am. The Captain might not tell me what kind of interview this is.

  The Captain’s even looks make you feel tilted.

  “The Wapentake is new. New means no learning, no tradition, no competence.” The Captain means it conversational.

  “Arrangement’s maybe new?” Keep the inhale small. “No idea where you’re going with this, sir.”

  “Stamina.” The Captain says it like it’s obvious.

  “Sir?” Totally flummoxed.

  “I did not know, and did not investigate, anything about Creek physical stamina.” The Captain makes a tiny motion I don’t recognize. “Those graul in grant of warrants of authority are sternly taught to avoid taxing the stamina of other ilks of folk.”

  Graul can go for a run and come back next décade. Uses up boots but the graul won’t mind.

  “Creek stamina with the Power is not of notable duration.” The Captain’s using their voice for specific facts. “Your physical stamina exceeds human expectation.”

  “Sir?” That was specific facts voice. I’m flummoxed. Never been for a run with Regulars. They ain’t strong, even for their size, but that don’t signify. Graul ain’t strong.

  “Your training did not subject you to the march tables for other ilks of folk.” The Captain gestures at the bookshelf behind my right shoulder. “Little need, and less point. Fit Regulars might advance on their feet in sixty-kilometre marches for five days.” The Captain pauses to meet my eyes. Disconcerts me no end. “Absent the focus, without armour, with provided rations, and with the understanding they’re going to be capable of little for three days after.”

  “We eat more. Getting fit’s not often required.”

  The Captain nods. “So I have been given to understand.”

  I get one of the quiet pauses.

  “Getting stronger’s hard. You grow into your thews and there you are.” Have to say it. The Captain’s a Creek for custom.

  We’ll be finding stuff the Captain ought to know for a hundred years. They’ll be young as graul go at the end. Brisket said that to those in authority when the First began.

  “Slow held need asked, and getting fit’s repetition. The more you do, the more you can.” You mostly don’t. Some surveyors, a busy rose-grower antique enough to shovel-dig all the graves.

  “Up to a point.” The Captain’s wondering where it is.

  “Ain’t what need asks, to turn food into running. Not everyone’d recall the possibility. Couple thousand getting fit together’s never been done. Gets expensive.”

  Iron in the rain, sharper than material. The Captain’s not saying ‘Less costly than defeat’. Hear it anyway.

  “Not much variation for running.” Line don’t get the delicate. “Anybody adult’d keep up three metres a second for ten, twenty kilometres. Second’s up to a hundred kilometres a day. Ain’t much past three metres a second. There’s folk living as run sustained past five.” Not far past. “Slow figures another year’n any kind of road the Second’ll get to five metres per second sustained with wheelbarrows.”

  Not usual in armour, but we’ve got it. Three days’ rations. Pointy sticks. We can keep enough of the focus up for weeds and surprises. “More run than push.”

  The Captain’s carefully human thinking look. “Slow made some remarks to that effect while a part-captain.”

  “There’s old stories, someone ran a long way.” Half a thousand kilometres, maybe. Brisket’d make the same remarks if you asked.

  “I have received some explanation as to the doubtfulness of historical linear measurement.” The Captain thinks that’s funny. “Slow might accomplish the five hundred kilometres of legend. So might you.”

  Oh, rot. Meek said. “There weren’t independents in the Creeks, sir. First one I ever saw do anything was Rust.” The Captain nods. The rule of sorcerers was terrible. Rust’s a solid example. “Second one was Halt. Halt is kind to children and respectful of Eirene and Halt said ‘Draw me this’.” ‘Draw me this’, in a room lit by demon eyes and the purple fire coming out of a sheep. “Don’t care to make a trade of it.”

  “The Line benefits from the Talented.” The Captain means it flat. “The Second has reduced the uncertainty of statistical approximation of the Creek ilk’s degree of talent.”

  Second’s maybe not exactly the First. The First’s years of practice. Still.

  “Don’t mean we can fight, sir.”

  The way the bridges went weren’t especial hopeful.

  “Duckling. Laurel did not make graul to use battle-standards. By graul tradition, Laurel did not know of certainty any kind of focus would work when they set out to create graul. While we do not know what Laurel’s purposes were, they meant to accomplish them. Graul might march Creeks into the dirt. Graul can eat anything, and Laurel meant us to eat the dead of the armies we destroyed, as the least-weedy food available.”

  The Captain approximates a cheerful face. “Given battle-standards, Creeks can give graul two-to-one odds and win.”

  The real graul smile. “I am fortunate in my adoption, as well as my service.”

  Think about that later.

  The Captain goes officer. “A challenge of leadership; be aware of positive facts, yet do not succumb to optimism.” There’s a compressed wave at the bookshelves generally. “Half of those works concern examples. What the First and the Second have done is impossible by established Line doctrine; depending on ilk of troops, new battalions take between twenty and thirty years to become serviceable. By that expectation, the survivors of the March could have sufficed to establish a single banner.”

  Deep breath.

  Know how Thorn felt in the First. How the Fight Below the Edge went.

  Can’t doubt the Second for anything but skill.

  “Ain’t sure we’re using it right, sir.” Try to make an off-hand motion more general-interrogative than fidget. “Working ain’t the same as experienced.”

  One way to get experienced.

  “The future is not the same as the past.” The Captain doesn’t wave at the bookshelves. “Experience creates a false expectation that future events will follow the past’s patterns.”

  “That’s the opposition, sir. Any battalion correctly expects to do as it has done.”

  That look might have met approval once.

  “You have taken command in desperate circumstances and achieved victory.” The Captain lets that sit there. “I am not by antecedent a Creek; I have no feel for how exceptional the personnel of the First and Second might be. I must trust your fellows by antecedent when they assure me you are yourself exceptional.”

  “What I may know from my own observation is that you fight.” The Captain produces a direct look. Don’t twitch, Duckling. “This is not sufficient, but it is necessary.”

  The Old Line don’t view the March as one engagement. So, yeah, over the average before there was anything Below the Edge.

  “Slow means signaller differently than the historical usage.” The Captain sounds conversational. I get their intent to sound human like salt on a fire. It passes quick, but unmistakable. “It remains
convenient to avoid formally clarifying the distinction.”

  “Sir?” Political-as-possibility doesn’t mean comprehension.

  “Slow doesn’t like to argue.” The thing like a smile passes over the Captain’s face. “The First follows the traditions of the Old Line without more deviation than accommodates your ilk. Slow proposes for the Second that we take note of the output magnitude, of how frequently a banner shall deploy as itself, and of how we may wish to engage as would a conventional brigade.”

  Nod, because all of that makes sense. The First does some of it without new names.

  “A standard-captain appointed full-captain is required to present reconcilable accounts and a battalion fit by the requirements of their ilk.” The Captain’s simple-facts voice. I nod again. Know that much.

  “Such requirements have not been established for Creeks.”

  Thought I knew that much.

  “The First is in service?”

  “The First is in service. No question of fitness has arisen.” The Captain thinks this is funny. The shades we didn’t leave of all those Sea People might, too. I get a whiff of that strange mist and the wind from the sea come over a hundred kilometres of stubborn trees.

  This one of those places where the regulations and the traditions of the Line haven’t bothered to talk for centuries, I can feel it.

  “Old and new,” the Captain says, and there’s a pair of battalion schematics floating over the table, gold on blue.

  Slow don’t like to argue. More proper not, somehow. Don’t mean Slow don’t advance ideas.

  Old, ‘signaller’ is a support job. You report to the full-captain. The colour-sergeant runs the Colour Party; running eight files is what a sergeant does and the appointment needs a name. There’s a line off to ‘adjutant’, too, who doesn’t do anything specific but would certainly be an officer. Old-style signaller could be, but you wouldn’t expect so. Even with a brigade, where you’d always have one.

  New, ‘signaller’ is between the full-captain and the banner-captains. They’ve got twenty-four files of troops in the Colour Party, two sergeants, and the Piper. The whirligig hell. Thought I was getting so many to hold them while the banners shuffled files.