by Baen Books
On the one hand, he needed company. On the other, he knew a suicide watch when he saw one.
"How is he doing?"
"Not good. Homb, they officially haven't said anything, but there were witnesses. Everyone knows what happened."
"Did they find the vendor yet?"
"No one knows where he is."
"Not even the other sellers?"
"They say they've never heard of him. They're also gone. No more local carts. All food is going to process through the dining hall now, for safety."
It might well be. But Jandro couldn't eat it. He pushed back from the table and left the food there.
"Is Jase coming back?" he asked.
Andreo shook his head. "No, he's pretty much sedated and prioritied to return home. He took it pretty hard."
"I took it pretty hard."
There was awkward silence for several moments.
"Well, if you need anything, I'm here. They say you're on extended quarters until tomorrow, then you're on days."
"Days" didn't really mean much here, since each shift would be four plus hours out of synch with the local clock. It was a gesture, though.
Andreo said, "The cooks are all going to be offworld contractors, too. Pricey. We put in a RFQ already, and have some interim workers from BuState and elsewhere. The chow hall is going to be substandard for a while, but that's better than…" He faded off, and shivered.
Jandro nodded. Lots of people had eaten from the local vendors.
Andreo asked, "Can I finish that ration if you're not going to?"
"Sure."
At least someone could eat it.
That local night, another MP was shot. Officially they were told counterfire had demolished the sniper’s hide, along with a chunk of that building, but he didn’t think it would matter.
He twitched all night, between wakefulness and dozing. The next morning, he was ravenous. He opened another field ration, and managed two bites before nausea caused him to curl up.
It's from Earth. It's vatory raised chicken. There's eggs and vegetables. It's guaranteed safe.
Maybe lunch.
He walked into the Logistics compound, into the bay, and got greeted.
"Hey, Jandro. Good to see you back."
"Danke," he said. Johann Meffert was German.
He had materiel to process. Three huge cargontainers sat in the bay, pending sort. This shipment was ammunition, spare parts, tools, generators and nuclear powerpacks for them. He had units and their transport chains on cue, with quantities needed. Those always exceeded quantity available. He broke them down by percentage, then applied the urgency codes to adjust the amounts. Once the Captain signed off, the loader operators would dispense it to be tied down and depart for the forward bases.
He ignored Meffert's periodic stares. Everyone was doing it.
"Ready for review, Captain," he said into his mic.
He sat back and stretched for a moment. It did feel good to do something productive.
"Looks good so far, Jandro. But those KPAKs need sorted, too."
He looked at his screen. He'd missed four pallets of field rations.
"It's not my fault!" he shouted at the bay. "I didn't plan to eat him, I didn't want to eat him, and I didn't put him in the food!"
He stood up and walked out, back to the clinic.
"You really must try to eat something," Doctor Ramjit said. "Vegetables should be fine. I've switched to that myself. It's perfectly understandable that you don't trust the meat."
He sat in a reclined chair, surrounded by trickling fountains, soft images, and with a therapy dog for company. It responded to his scratches with a thumping tail.
"They're from on planet," he said. Had they urinated on the plants? Grown them in poison? Fertilized the ground with dead troops?
"How are you managing with field rations?" she asked.
"Better," he said. "I've eaten part of one."
Her frown was earnest. "That's not enough for three days. You've already lost weight."
"I know," he said. "But I can't. I just …can't." He hoped she understood.
"It's not just the food," he continued. "It's this place. All of it. I can't be around people like this. The cooks were giggling. Our people stare at me. They get the gossip. They all know. Jase has already gone. Please send me, too."
"I'll try," she said. Her frown came across as pitying. He didn’t want that, either.
He untangled from the chair and dog and left in silence, though she said, "Good luck, Alejandro. You have our wishes."
As he entered his room, his phone pinged a message. He swiped it.
"Alejandro, you are scheduled to depart in fifteen days. The clinic will fit you with a nutrient IV to help you in the interim."
"Yes," he said to the Marine. "I'm a casualty."
"Good luck with it, then. I'm sorry, At first I'd figured you were a base monkey. They don't know what the point is like."
"No, most of them don't," he agreed. He looked around at the other people on the rotation. Some were military, some UN bureau staff, some contractors. They might know what had happened, but they had no idea what it felt like. Thankfully, none of them recognized him.
The Marine said, "But I saw that," pointing at the IV. "I hope you're recovering?"
"Yes. It shouldn't take long. Good luck with the leg."
"Thanks. They say three months."
He boarded the ship and found his launch couch. The shuttle was well-used, smelling of people, disinfectant and musty military bags. He settled in and closed his eyes, not wanting to talk to anyone. They bantered and joked and sounded cheerful to be leaving. He wasn't cheerful, only relieved.
When they sealed up, pressure increased to Earth normal. He breathed deeply.
The acceleration and engine roar took a faint edge off his nerves. Soon. Off this nightmarish hellhole and home.
The tranks worked. He had a scrip for more, and a note that said he should not be questioned about them. Doctor Ramjit had said that wasn't unusual for some of the Special Unit troops, and even some of the infantry. "The ship infirmary should be able to refill you without problems," she'd said. "Especially as we've put out a bulletin about personnel generally suffering stress disorders. We haven't said why."
They even helped with launch sickness. He felt blissfully fine, not nauseous.
He zoned through until the intercom interrupted him.
"Passengers, we are in orbit, and will dock directly with the Wabash. Departure for Earth will be only a couple of hours. Final loading is taking place now."
Good. He eyed the tube on his arm. He could have them unplug this, and he could eat real, solid food from safe, quality-inspected producers on Earth.
Well, he'd have to start with baby food. Fifteen days of the tube had wiped out his GI tract. He'd have to rebuild it. That would be fine. And he'd never touch a sausage again.
He unlatched when the screen said to, and waited impatiently. He wasn't bad in emgee, knowing how to drag himself along the couches and guide cable. Several passengers didn't seem to know how, and some of them were even military.
Shortly, he was in the gangtube, creeping along behind the Marine and a couple of contractors rotating out.
There was a small port to his right, looking aft along the length of the ship. He looked out and saw the open framework of an orbital supply shuttle detach a cargotainer from the ship's cargo lock, rotate and attach another in its place.
He flinched, and nausea and dizziness poured into him again.
The cargotainer was marked "Hughes Commissary Services, Jefferson, Freehold of Grainne."
He fumbled with his kit, slapped three patches on his arm, and almost bit his tongue off holding back a scream.
Songs of Waste and Wood
by P.C. Hodgell
I
“Oh, I have come from a far, far land
My songs to sing to you...”
What came next? As he groped through his sodden memory, the Wol
ver Grimly slipped on a pink marble step and started to fall. The stair circled the outside of the Rose Tower, a long tumble to the hard pavement of the plaza below. Grimly yelped and flailed with all four paws, turned clumsy with drink. He tripped and slid down to a landing, chin first, biting his tongue. The night spun around him, the moon careening through the sky.
Laughter spilled down the steps from King Krothen’s Rose Chamber above, and Grimly flinched at the sound. Now the party guests were applauding, but not for him. Never for him.
“In green halls first my song began
When first I heard another sing...”
That had been the poet Malodium, performing for Krothen’s father King Kruin in the Grimly Holt. Oh, what beauty. The wolver pup had yearned toward it from the bushes where he had crouched hidden. For years he had practiced with only the forest as an audience, and then he had come here, to Kothifir the Cruel, to find his master. Now an old man and out of favor, Malodium had nonetheless welcomed him and promised to present him to the king. With what pride had he stood forth to sing. Silence had greeted his end, and then laughter, with Malodium laughing hardest of all.
Now they called him the Wildman of the Woods, and he capered to win the only accolade they would give him, and he drank to blunt the shame of what he had become.
Here at last was the bottom of the stair. Grimly rose on his hind legs and shambled forward, naked except for a garland of wilted flowers. He began again to sing, or rather to howl.
Quick steps sounded on the pavement, and someone crashed into him. Grimly went down with a startled yelp.
“Rose, stop!” Somebody else had come up, hard on the heels of the first. “I’ve heard of this fellow. He clowns for the King.”
“I do not!” cried Grimly, curling up in a hairy puddle on the ground, his tail tucked tight between his legs. “I’m a court poet! Hic.”
A child stood regarding him. Where had she come from? Even in the moonlight, her hair was a dark red helm, her eyes a startling shade of green, her gaze solemn and direct.
“Is the puppy sick?” she asked.
The woman named Rose stepped away from Grimly. “No, dear. The puppy is drunk. Why did you attack my daughter?”
“Attack her?” wailed Grimly. “I didn’t even see her!”
Beside Rose and the child, two other people stood over him. One, like Rose, was a tall, rangy woman – a Kendar of Krothen’s mercenary Southern Host, most likely. The other was nearer Grimly’s age, not much more than a boy, slender and dark-clad.
“What are you doing in the city at night?” the latter asked the child with concern, as if he really cared. “The lift cages don’t even run after midnight.”
“I climbed.” The little girl handed Rose a packet. “You forgot your dinner.”
“Oh, Brier. How often do I have to tell you not to follow me?”
The boy nudged Grimly with a booted toe. His eyes were an arresting shade of silver-gray, set in a fine-boned face. No Kendar, this, but definitely Kencyr. Grimly’s scrambled wits came up with a name: Torisen. The city had noted this young Highborn although it had no idea how he fit into the Southern Host. The Caineron, most powerful of the nine houses that made up the Kencyrath, dismissed him as a bastard. Nonetheless, second–in-command Harn Grip-hard had first made him his clerk and then a one-hundred commander, tasked with learning why so many Kothifiran nobles were mysteriously dying. Neat and supple as tempered steel in its sheath, he made Grimly feel acutely uncouth.
“You can get up now,” he said. “Sorry about that.”
“’Sorry.’” Grimly heard the whine in his voice and hated it. “Who apologizes to a poor wolver so far from home?”
Torisen regarded his shadow as he rose. “Do all wolvers cast the shadow of a wolf?”
“It depends on the phase of the moon.”
“Which tonight is full. Do you know a wolver called the Gnasher?”
“Oh, him.” Above, people were clapping. Lights played against the paper thin marble petals of the king’s chamber. “Steer clear...hic...that’s my advice. I’m from the Grimly Holt, but he’s from the Deep Weald. ‘nother kind of beastie altogether. What?”
He looked up, perplexed, at three intent faces.
“When did you last see him?”
“Why, tonight. He’s up there, entertaining the king. Juggles lights, doesn’t he? Shining Glory, they call him. He’s performed for all the best families.”
“Damn,” said Torisen. “Rose, stay with your daughter. Rowan, with me.”
“Don’t you want to hear one of my poems?” the Wolver Grimly cried after them as they sprinted to the foot of the stair and began to climb its sweep of steps three at a time. He didn’t want them to go, especially not the young Highborn, but what could anyone like that want with someone like him?
“Oh, never mind,” he muttered, and stumbled back into the city.
II
It was hard, afterward, to figure out what had happened. The Gnasher had fled Kothifir. Apparently he had been behind all of the mysterious deaths through the casting of his shadow. Grimly only knew that his absence had opened no new opportunities for him, nor did he see the young Highborn Torisen again for some time.
Previously, Grimly had paid little attention to Kothifiran politics. What were they, after all, to an artist? Now he found himself wondering what role that silver-eyed boy might be playing in them.
Within days after the Gnasher had fled the Rose Tower, Kothifir declared war on the distant city of Urakarn, infamous for its religious fanatics. The reasons for this war were obscure: Princess Amantine had lost her husband to the Gnasher, and the Gnasher had some connection to the Karnid Prophet, who had been King Kruin’s advisor. Moreover, Lord Caineron’s favorite son, Genjar, was currently commandant of the Kencyrath’s Southern Host, and he was hot to prove himself in battle.
Grimly went out with most of Kothifir to see the Host assemble on the south-western training ground below their permanent camp. Genjar rode up, self-important on a showy white horse, trailed by his gaudy staff made up mostly of Kothifiran nobles. Native brass bands bounced around the perimeter of the field playing different patriotic tunes, chased by over-excited dogs and one confused donkey. Genjar made a speech that few could hear. Nonetheless, when he stopped the crowd cheered. Grimly ducked through their ranks, looking for Torisen. There he was at last, riding expressionless beside the scowling hulk that was Harn Grip-hard.
At last the Host marched away. When it was only dust on the horizon, everyone went home.
III
Days passed without news, then weeks. Grimly reminded himself that Urakarn was on the far, western side of the Southern Wastes, a month’s round trip at least. Patience, patience...
In the meantime, he moved into very modest quarters of his own among the abandoned towers, over the indignant protests of his mentor. Malodium had done very well out of exploiting his freakish guest.
“Just see what becomes of you without me!” he shouted after Grimly as the wolver trotted away down the street, his belongings in a bundle over his back, jeering children on his heels. “Kothifir isn’t called the Cruel for nothing!”
At least now Grimly could choose his own audiences. He drank less and practiced more, not that it did much good; Kothifirans were too used to him as a bumbling buffoon and laughed before he could even open his mouth. At night, he crouched on his shaky, rusty balcony overlooking the lit towers of the central city and sang to himself, not in court Rendish but in the crooning wails of his native holt. A swelling howl shaped the full moon. Shorter yips traced the outlines of trees and the walls of the ruined keep that was his pack’s den. Burbling ululations became the creek that run through the fallen blocks. Sometimes stray dogs below lifted their voices with his, but he did not understand them, nor did they him. Perhaps it was time to go home, back to the wood. First, however, he would wait until news came from Urakarn.
At last it did.
Genjar led back the tattered, bloody remnant of
the Host, depleted by at least a quarter. The Karnids had ambushed him, he said, and there were too many of them. He hadn’t been warned of that. It was all the fault of the vanguard which had pressed too far forward, intent on stealing his glory. Damn Harn for his ambition and jealousy of his betters. Damn that sneaking bastard of a clerk, Torisen, for urging the big Kendar on. It served them right that they had all been slaughtered and that their bones were left to rot in the sun. At least he, Genjar, had brought what remained of the Host home safely. The Kencyrath and King Krothen owed him thanks for that.
Kothifir murmured, uneasily. At the foot of the Escarpment, the camp of the Southern Host settled into a sullen silence.
Grimly started to drink heavily again, often forgetting to eat. He couldn’t get Torisen’s fate out of his mind, or Genjar’s boasting. Besides “rescuing” the Host, the Caineron demanded praise for his feats in battle, which no one else had witnessed. To challenge him, however, would be to accuse him of lying, and one apparently did not do that to a Kencyr Highborn.
Then a summons arrived. The Caineron commandant had been holding high court ever since his return from the Wastes. Now he wanted the Wildman of the Woods to perform for him.
Grimly thought about that. He had ignored more and more requests while his funds had shrunken to a pittance. To drink or to eat? Food didn’t assuage his hunger. Drink, then, although sleep brought him increasingly vivid dreams of the hunt. The pursuit, the pounce, the rich red blood gushing between his sharp teeth – oh, so satisfying! – while wild, disbelieving eyes stared into his own...
When he woke from this fever dream, he found himself crouching before the eastern gate of the Caineron barracks. Despite being called a camp, the structures here were three stories high and quite substantial. It was morning. Surely he had been asked to sing at supper. On this day or another? And had he really meant to rip out Genjar’s throat for the sake of someone whom he barely knew? Because Torisen had been kind to a child? Because he had apologized to a wretched wolver? Because his hands and eyes were so beautiful?