“Know anybody eats a lot of pumpkin seeds?” Radish makes it a real question. “We’d like to talk to them.”
“Goes on the savoury cakes,” Meek says contemplative.
Radish nods once. “Snacks for children, where shelling absorbs their interest. Kilogramme a day — ” and Radish shrugs. “If it interferes with readiness, some other foodstuff will be found.”
D-Day Minus 63
Year of Peace 546, Floréal, Fourteenth Day (Spring)
Duckling
This chunk of the waste got rain. Close to the coast; dots and patches of green. Barren patches glitter. Weren’t about to go check between new salt and dust washed off the old.
Barren glitters in the dark, too. Clear night, no moon, close stars. Cold. Can’t wear your jacket over armour. There’s a trick; hold still. Armour smock’s meant to keep sun off, ain’t much for sides. Don’t move whatsoever it’ll trap some air. Ain’t many find it especial useful; ain’t easy to hold altogether still.
Colour Party’s here because the standard is. Four banners out there somewhere, maneuvering. Ochre Battery’s doing fire-support drills. Slow’s evaluating banners. Captain Eugenia’s evaluating artillery tube teams.
Crinoline’s got the Fourth down on Edge Road with the six banners of the Wapentake as ain’t here. We think it’s early for Sea People.
Must practice. Any time might be the wrong time.
Meek, Duckling.
Duckling, Meek. Meek’s been talking to the battery sergeant-major. Now they’ve drifted over.
Tap Flinch in the focus, get the acknowledgement from Ninny. Ninny’ll watch the feed for surprises.
Meek’s itching because Captain Eugenia passed for an independent, burned-out talent and all. Slow’s maintained the correspondence. There’s a lot of it, and Meek don’t know what’s in it.
Joyeuse don’t know what they talk about, Meek says, abrupt. Joyeuse is the battery sergeant-major.
Peace behind us.
Bit of irritation back from Meek.
Peace won’t stay there on its own.
Bit more irritation. Axioms of the Line ain’t a basis for conversation.
You know that collective up by Lockpoint I’ve got the social thing with?
Too dark for eyes; Meek’s raised eyebrows’re obvious anyway. Beyond your mood improving?
They go on about valves and pressure and feed rates and metrology. Ain’t a physical passion.
Tubes Ones and Three chuck something at the horizon. Gets you in the ankles and knees. The pressure wave strips your warm air off; nothing for it but to hold still and wait.
Focus brings me the noise Meek wants to make. All the marching’s social trouble; excess stamina. Taverns have schedules. Clever-handed collectives, ain’t saying passion. Reliable suffices.
You and that collective’s customary, Meeks says, however much sense I don’t find it to make.
Meek’s consistent reliable. Ain’t the same need even if I am getting habitual.
It ain’t about standing a unit up quick, Meek says, the idea of their torso turning to point their sword-arm shoulder where Slow and Eugenia are standing a metre apart. Notable as they are.
This is Ochre’s qualifying exercise. Pass it, and Captain Eugenia’s made an operational battery out of Regulars and Typicals and eleven months. Old Line’s deeply fussed.
Ain’t sense to ask me about falling in love, the which Meek knows full well, but I figure they’re in love with being understood. ‘Destroy those invading the Commonweal’ ain’t simple from the books, and they’re off somewhere the books’re school, not skill.
You ain’t gone stupid, Meek says.
Ain’t my skill.
Meek hands me a quantity of doubt.
Serious. Weren’t picking where or when.
Nor ‘with what’. Don’t know what thought produces Meek’s nod. Takes a minute.
Captain Eugenia’s unusual tall for their ilk. Poll’s about my elbows. Moves like they’re robust. Brisket’s got that walk, most robust lads do. Slow don’t; Slow ain’t strict robust. Slow don’t impinge on what Slow don’t care to, never has. It don’t show, gotta notice. Not the even-bricks’ll-shift walk tiny delicate Captain Eugenia has.
Regular Sixes were the priest-caste, in the old Kingdom of the Spider. Captain Eugenia’s reputed to have some of the education. Can’t imagine the Empress’d’ve much liked the walk.
Stops back a bit. Ain’t aloof; avoiding a crick in their neck.
Slow stops closer. Meek shifts over; I turn a bit. Slow sets the standard down informal, slanting back to Slow’s left shoulder. Cackles catches I don’t know what, and stays put by the wheelbarrows. No immediate expectation of movement nor need for pointy sticks.
Battery sergeant-major’s running the shooting. Suppose that’s front.
Ninny’s got the periphery. Squish has the bubble solid.
All six tube muzzles drop, ready shot sliding back and out, kinetic shot sliding in. Tap Ninny, push a noise warning. Captain Eugenia does something, I do something outside that for the clump of us. Mine used the focus. Captain Eugenia’s got a prosthetic talent, courtesy of the Shot Shop. Lets them latch. Lets them approximate a sorcerer. Old Line ain’t half fussed.
Evaluators have provided each tube a heave target. Ripple from the left. Dust pulses up off the ground, one-two-three-four-five-six. Dust cloud kicks up about to your neck. Didn’t much hear anything. No dust in with the Colour Party. No dust in our clump.
Warm. Bright. Lightning-crackle and spare thunders back along the plasma tracks.
A bronze bull lows, cranky. Five or six more. There’s a barrier-to-dust ward layer; Slow runs it like a falling blanket, abstract and directionless. A drover swears. Air’s clear inside the battery bubble.
I suppose they think we’re terribly disorganized. Captain Eugenia’s ‘they’ glimmers over every bronze bull. Enumerated list behind the implicit presence-label; names and service record and drover-responsible.
In the focus, people ain’t distinguishable, or they’re distinguishable, or they seem like they’re right there, speaking. Captain Eugenia’s distinguishable.
Ain’t where they’d come on their own. Meek’s wry, careful social wry.
Scarlet and Ochre share, Captain Eugenia says. The draft teams spend more time in the waste than any artillerist. Any blood-hunger they read from Meek ain’t altered their tone.
Always one battery at the armoury. Hank’s standing orders, on behalf of the full-captain the Fifth don’t have.
Captain Eugenia affirms in the focus. Nor is the supply of suitable oxen so great as might be preferred.
It was dark. Crackling night now. Two-red shot, bright and sudden; battery’s shooting out of sequence.
Captain Hank’s officially unofficial persona has seen fit to inform me that it is customary for a battery on exercise to enquire of the covering heavy battalion, Captain Eugenia says. Presumably about concerns not yet operational.
How marginal’s the focus? Meek’s commiserating, not accusatory. First ain’t where it ought. Second ain’t close.
Fire and movement, Captain Eugenia says. Push is firm. Imported experience — the battery sergeant-major and two gunners get focus-halos — helps. A splendidly complex expression, wry and rueful and determined. Practice is not substitutable.
Captain Eugenia does Creek posture-and-motions for ‘it is easy to misunderstand’, drama-formal. Bubble floors when firing present a limitation of recoil, not skill. Focus fills up with diagrams. Carriages are meant to shift and wiggle when firing. Tubes’ll slide on a bubble floor into the far side of the over-bubble. Spades won’t anchor, fixed grip on spades or wheels’ll snap’em given a few shots.
Innovation is required, Captain Eugenia says. Orders-voice adjacent.
We can’t fix wheelbarrows quick enough. Ain’t for lack of trying, ours or the armoury.
Slow don’t do anything overt. Still my turn.
Thoughts on the Lower Second
? Halt and kin have been parked there rising twenty-three months. City-Stater refugees sitting in front of them just as long, alleging to respect a border. The Sea People must know where the City-Staters are. Likely trying to sneak teams over the border. We ain’t getting regular reports. Abstract information flow from a point of contact can give a diviner targets.
In range as geography, Captain Eugenia says. Unobserved shot is not operationally useful.
Figure they’ll get through? Meek means the Sea People. The available City-Staters don’t suffice Pelōŕios the Unicorn, even impersonal. Reported remarks about Rose’ll render it artistic.
No. Captain Eugenia makes some Regular gesture. The principal risk is information loss. Secondary concern for the geography.
Halt ain’t invincible.
The Sea People expect a unicorn, Captain Eugenia says. Not — and there’s a definitively Regular gesture. We all nod. Comrades, kin, Slow and Meek are Fire’s second cousins, still ain’t wise to say the names. I do not speak of subsequent attempts, but the initial force estimation must be mistaken.
Sure they’ll get it wrong? Meek can’t imagine anyone mistaking Halt.
Crow mistook Captain Blossom, Eugenia says. From no very great distance, with Captain Blossom doing the approaching. The Sea People have something to see which matches their expectation.
Ought to attack weakness. Inhale. Between one unicorn or where your landing force vanished, pick unicorn.
Make the weak appear strong, and the strong appear weak, Meek says. Line proverb.
Halt appears weak. The Land Below the Edge appears empty. Slow.
Their anchorage off the Lower Second Valley represents a partial conquest, Captain Eugenia adds. They have no complete dominion or there should be no fled mass of City-Staters in the Second Valley. There’s a cloud of unlikely things in the focus, specifically discounted. Conquest does not work by victory.
Which, yeah. Initial conquest works by destroying opposition, same as what we do. Control’s third phase, after asserting dominion.
The Fight Below the Edge involved a Sea People force most pre-eminents could overcome, Captain Eugenia says. If the Sea People have concluded their initial landing faced some pre-eminent profligate of resources, they may believe them still rash and wrathful but weakened.
That’s their best case, Meeks says.
They must discover if it should apply, Captain Eugenia says. We must not expect Sea People force levels set by hopeful assumptions.
We ain’t assuming we can beat anything, Meeks says. Best outcome’s no more Sea People.
The accumulated writings — Captain Eugenia says, and stops.
Any tradition of invincibility died on the Dread River, Slow says. We shall do what is needful.
Gives me enough shakes for armour-rattle.
Captain’s Eugenia’s inquiring look tugs on your teeth.
‘Do what’s needful’ ain’t just us. Breathe, Duckling.
Outright missing landscape. Captain Eugenia smiles as our heads come up. The Captain’s phrase for the consequences of the full-mighty; I do not claim it.
Don’t think it’s error, it ain’t error, it’s ‘ain’t complete.’
Evaluators have Ochre shifting shot around on the caissons. Something metal rings one pure note.
Asked Halt, after Below the Edge. There’d been a quantity of demons under that fortress, at the end of the March. Couldn’t see how Halt’d overcome them. Be like standing in a landslide overcoming each rock.
Captain Eugenia nods. Slow don’t show change, Meek’s uncertain betwixt concerns.
Customary summons, you summon, then command. Reems’d stored summoned demons absent command. Couldn’t leave, ritual’s incomplete. Then Halt arrived.
Well, us, too. Remnant half-company with one of the oldest standards there are.
Got Halt in there.
Halt took over the ritual, gave commands. Ain’t easy, ain’t expected. Still hit Reems in the idiot. Half the hand signal for ‘draw’, afore I catch it. What we’ve got to be hit in I could wish I knew.
Hétaros? Slow says it regular. Meek gets the flinch. Captain Eugenia smiles fond and there’s this focus construct, time and inputs and possibility.
Complex. Big chunk of it’s just too much, nothing the Line can withstand, nothing the Second Commonweal can answer. Hell-things same time as anything else, this year, on to five-fifty, five-fifty-one. Maybe -two. Having the tubes ain’t having the teams. Sea People making any serious attempt at our destruction, out a generation.
Slow blinks one bent cone of future possibility. It’s narrow about now, wider later.
The prevention of conquest is the preservation of possibility, Slow says.
D-Day Minus 13
Year of Peace Five Hundred Forty-Seven, Festival, Celebration of Convictions (Festival (Summer Solstice))
Duckling
Regular year, five days of festival, five banners. Tradition has the banner sergeant-majors draw lots for which day. Would-be conquerors don’t know our calendar.
Detached scattered banners ain’t reason to alter festival tradition. Gives me the flinch both ways.
Colour Party getting Celebration of Convictions’ Slows’ decision, nothing random. Don’t go into camp any slower.
Squish hands out the mail; Festival means most of a bag. It found us crossing the Blue. One of Slow’s letters is from Captain Eugenia. Meek gets the twitch because it’s regular post-office mail, not Line correspondence. Slow reads Meek the part about Captain Hank accepting promotion to standard-captain, out loud so I’ll hear it.
Hank’s promotion ought to have come sooner; Crinoline’d had a chat with Hank concerning necessity and propriety. Heard that it’d happened. Nothing about contents.
There’d been worry; Hank’s the first person not a Creek to need descend into the standard-shrine and ask Twitch for a standard. Twitch’s got opinions. Slow and the Captain both say it ain’t automatic Twitch’ll surrender a standard into your keeping.
Hank’d been warned. Hank’d said “I served with Twitch,” collected the heavy platoon of intended Colour Party Captain Blossom had kept attached to Scarlet, and headed off to Westcreek Town.
Ain’t obviously against tradition; authority gets a say. Ought to get dead authority’s say in before official promotion happens.
Hank came back to the armoury with the Standard of the Fifth and the other three banners. Twitch’ll hand Blossom banners, which is how Scarlet and Ochre got theirs. Can’t think of anyone surprised by the banners, nor by Hank.
Meek ain’t particular ostensible fussing. They do fuss. I figure Slow and Eugenia are collaborating artistic; Meek don’t think that’s it. Meek might not want to think so; the medium’d be murder. Slow’s excruciating particular. Captain Eugenia’s excellent cheekbones shan’t suffice for sex or species or propriety, no matter how much fun they’re both having feeling the job’s more possible.
Puts me in the middle. Meek’s this, now, today; better Battalion sergeant-major than their years of service should produce, and improving. Slow’s off two centuries hence. Don’t know as Captain Eugenia’s got the same displacement of perspective, but they’ve got one. I can manage to worry about authority succession and boot production over spans of enlistment.
We ain’t cooking rations, we didn’t stop at the armoury. Flesh put together Festival rations; nuts and fruitcake, candy youth’d acknowledge, same old crackers, cheese, and the jerky’s large duck and double ration. Copper tags on the bags. Nought written, just shiny and obvious. Brandy in kegs, enough for the toasts.
Not everybody’d ever had large duck. I never had. Standard’s got provenance, Flesh shows up with a barge and a fit-in-your-hand scroll, standard eats the scroll. It’s all greenhead.
“The graul, ain’t it,” Meek says. “Greenheads can’t dive.”
Provenance don’t extend to ‘whence’. What, inspected by, assigned quality. No whence.
“Seems likely.”
Creeks’ll hunt greenhead occasional. Don’t entire repay the effort.
“Not that many ducks,” Cackles says.
“Too few and we get swans,” Meek says. “I figure the Food-gesith knows.”
Cackles tips their head over, take-your-point. Meet some, you think about how much ophidiform graul could eat.
Ain’t nohow fussy eaters.
Swans’re particular about their water-plants, and I get to thinking.
Think through a kilogramme of crackers, then there’s troopers standing to give the toasts to the Peace Established and the Work of the Year.
Tradition’d have Slow toast the Acquisition of Skill.
“Duty is that conduct which permits your future self benevolent self-regard,” Slow says. “Awareness prevents that future self from startling your conscious knowledge.”
Which neither I shan’t argue.
Slow goes from holding their field mug to hoisting it. “None avoid necessity. Let not our hearts be hard.”
“Let not our hearts be hard,” gets repeated aloud. Two hundred people aloud sounds different than the focus. Everybody drinks.
Think they got it.
Think I got it.
Tidy up and head back west, to Westcreek and the First. Losing any habit of holding still.
Thread 7
Slow’s memoirs
The Second continued to train throughout the winter of five-hundred-and-forty-six. The First maintained a watch along the Southern Edge. The First’s barracks outside Westcreek Town went unoccupied, aside from the Second’s medical supports and a small number of convalescents from each battalion. Consideration was given to establishing strong points along the Edge Road, in part because constructing such strong points would serve as useful practice for the Second. We did not construct any such because we did not propose to continuously defend them. An opponent who uses demons may attack from a great distance any strong place they observe. We cannot prevent distant observations, but we may prevent making obvious targets.
Demons will destroy something once released. A defence may or may not defeat the demons sent against it, but strong works left empty serve only to increase an opponent’s perception of the number of demons required. A fixed presentation of defended works serves to give an opponent a more accurate count of the number of demons they truly require to reduce those works.
A Mist of Grit and Splinters Page 24