by Andy Remic
Jones sat inside, thinking long thoughts as he savoured the food. The days of starving, first in the trenches, then later in the castle, had taught him an important lesson in life—a genuine and true enjoyment of savouring food. The spiritual fulfilment of a fine meal.
“I still think you should leave,” said Bainbridge. “That Orana is nothing but bad for you—she will be your downfall, mark my words! She will get you killed, all right! You’ve had her now, you’ve enjoyed her—now come on, let’s get out of this hole before the bloody army sweeps down on us and destroys the entire ——ing continent! They’ve more than half a million men! Half a ——ing million!”
“You are like a dog with a bone,” said Jones, between mouthfuls of food. “You don’t understand, do you? I don’t want to leave. I want to stop the war. I am going to try and open this Stoneway—whatever the Stoneway is.”
“That’s a bad idea,” persisted Bainbridge. “What you need to do is jump atop the nearest horse, take the reins in your teeth, and go at them with a rifle in each hand, thundering death and clearing a path! Bastards won’t see it coming! You’ll go down in their dark legends!”
Webb sighed. “Leave him be, Bainbridge. He’s staying. You go back to sleep.”
“Yes, sir!” said Bainbridge, sardonically. “Let me remind you I was a sergeant, and you were a private . . .”
“Yes, all right. I agree with Rob. Bainbridge, you’re like a dog terrorising a bone. One of those little yacking Yorkshire terriers, wiry white hair, stubborn little bastards, never shut the ——up.”
“Now hold on!” boomed Bainbridge. “If I’m going to be a dog, then it’s not going to be some farty little thing! I will be . . . a sheepdog! Yes, intelligent, pretty, and always in control . . .”
“In control of sheep?” said Webb, and Jones burst into laughter, and finished his bread and cheese with his two old comrades arguing across his waking dreams.
On the way to Orana’s house Jones passed the prison, and stopping, he opened the door and peered into the guardhouse. One guard sat, reading a book, a rifle across his lap.
“Can I help you?” the guard asked, getting to his feet and lifting his rifle into a more accessible and threatening position.
“Can I see the prisoners? The two Naravelle?” asked Jones.
“Why?”
“I believe they chased me across the bloody mountains, hunted me, shot at me; so just call me curious. I might be able to find out information, like infantry units heading this way, that sort of thing.”
The man looked uncertain.
“It’s been okayed with Orana,” added Jones, and smiled as the guard’s resolve crumbled.
“Five minutes. And don’t beat them—that blond man was almost dead when we dragged him in after Gamesh had taken his boot to him.”
“I won’t.”
“Wait!” boomed a voice from behind, and even as Jones turned, a fist smashed into the side of his head, hammering him sideways, where he hit his head on the doorframe and dropped to the ground. Groaning, Jones felt somebody step over him, then hands grabbed him, yanking him up and throwing him across the room, where he crashed into a table and rolled onto the floorboards.
Jones crawled backwards, trying to open his eyes, one hand before him to ward off further blows.
“Wait,” he groaned. “Wait!”
“He was caught trying to help the prisoners escape . . . yes?”
“Y . . . yes,” stuttered the guard.
Jones managed to open his eyes, just as Gamesh, a broad smile on his face, took a swing and his boot smashed into Jones’s head. Then hands were on him once more and he was dragged outside. He could smell the distant trees, damp, churned mud, and winced at a sudden glare blinding him after the gloom of the guardhouse.
“You interfering bastard,” growled Gamesh, his voice low and dangerous. He punched Jones in the face, sending the dazed Tommy sprawling across the ground. Jones tried to rise, but Gamesh’s boot hammered into his ribs and he rolled and lay coughing, coughing, until the boot smashed his face one final time, dumped him onto his back, nose broken, blood trickling down the back of his throat.
Gamesh looked around to make sure he was still unobserved, and then took hold of Jones, hauling him across the ground. An idea formed in his mind as he dragged Jones back towards the guardhouse. If he opened a prison cell, then it would give him an excuse for sport with the Naravelle . . . and if it appeared Jones had been trying to help the prisoners escape, well . . . Gamesh’s eyes glittered . . . it would be time for an execution.
“Stop! Stop it!”
Orana was running down the street, closely followed by Jorian and several soldiers bearing rifles. Orana carried Jones’s SMLE and came panting to a halt before her brother, who stood on the prison’s porch steps holding a limp and groaning Jones.
“I caught him trying to free the prisoners,” said Gamesh, a sneer painting his bearded face.
All was silent, except the pattering of Jones’s blood on the wooden planks.
Orana lifted the SMLE and the barrel levelled with Gamesh’s head. “Let Robert go,” she said, words low and dangerous.
Gamesh laughed, and turned away, dragging Jones further into the guardhouse.
Jorian’s fists clenched. “This is the problem when you live in the shadow of a strong father . . .” he said, pushing past his daughter and grabbing Gamesh by the hair. His fist smashed down and Gamesh yelped, was dragged from the porch and into the dirt, and Jorian’s fist beat down and down and down, until he let go of his son’s hair and let the unconscious man fall to the hard-packed earth where his blood mixed with dust and dirt and he lay still. “. . . is that it can breed insecurity, stupidity, and a constant unnecessary need to prove oneself.”
Orana moved to Jones, helped him into a sitting position and propped his back against the prison wall. “Why is the world filled with fools?” she asked, and looked back at her brother, then across at the silent soldiers.
“Don’t you understand?” she shouted. “He is the key, the key to the Stoneway! To our salvation! Without him, then our luck will run out, our time will run out, and we will be ground into dust by the Naravelle!”
Jones opened his eyes—opened one eye, the other had swollen shut—and he smiled with bloody teeth at Jorian. “Sorry about the mess,” he managed, then started coughing again.
Jorian returned the smile, and shrugged.
“Is it true?” asked a soldier. “Do you really have the key to the Stoneway? Are you truly going to help us fight the Naravelle?”
Jones breathed, and blood frothed at his lips. He slipped sideways but Orana grabbed him, levered him upright. “But . . . I don’t have a key,” he said, blood mixed with saliva spitting from his lips. “I don’t have any ——ing key. . . .”
Orana glared at the soldiers. “You fools, he doesn’t hold a key, he is the key . . .”
She turned and entered the prison, whilst Jorian helped Jones to his feet and allowed the bleeding Tommy to lean against him. He kicked his son, and said to a soldier, “Take this offal to his cabin. His wife can tend his wounds.”
“Yes, Jorian.”
Suddenly, two shots cut through the silence, and all present jumped.
Orana appeared from the prison doorway with a grim, determined look on her face.
“Daughter, what have you done?” whispered Jorian, eyes widening.
“I have solved part of our problem,” said Orana, eyes hard, and helped her father to carry the limping figure of Jones back to their cabin.
Diary of Robert Jones. 3rd. Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers. 16th. November 1917.
I have been in this village of Ra’eth Ke Larn for days now. Orana says that I am quite an item of gossip amongst the people.
After my beating by Gamesh I was in pain, and even now I have headaches and a fire in my belly, but the swelling around my eye has subsided and I can see properly once more. I have seen Gamesh several times, walking through the village. He hangs his
head in shame (it is nice to see his bruises, thanks to Jorian) and our eyes never meet.
My wounds are healing, but Bainbridge and Webb are truly making me crazy with their incessant talk. I have almost perfected a technique of blanking them from my mind—it takes concentration—but if Bainbridge booms his laughter then I always break and they are back. . . .
I am sure Bainbridge knows this and does it on purpose. He always was a vindictive bastard.
I am staying with Orana’s mother and father now; they are treating me at least fairly, and with tolerance, on the strength of this Stoneway business. I only hope I can live up to their expectations, and secretly, I dread the moment they take me to this place, this locked place, and I raise my hands and nothing bloody happens.
I will have to leave the village then. I will surely be outcast. I only hope Orana will come with me.
Something has happened, something to change the whole atmosphere of the village. A messenger has arrived, bearing a yellow flag—that of the Femor army, so I am told—and he has brought grave news. Ten units of infantry, under the banner of the Naravelle Second, are marching through the marshes to the south and will be with us within the week. Jorian is furious; he is demanding Femoria send soldiers to protect his people . . . ten units (according to Jorian) will number around twelve thousand men, all with rifles. The messenger also informed us the Naravelle have learned the secret of mortars, and have been mass-producing these explosive weapons in their own factories.
Jorian sat for a long while afterwards, his hands in his hair, cursing and thinking and crying with frustration.
I could offer no support. All I could do was explain the true implications of mortar bombs, and the violent devastation they wreak. It did not make me a popular man during the evening.
Later, Jorian penned a letter to a Femor general to the east, camped in the Grellend Valley protecting a valuable arms route through the pass; the Femor Seventh have six thousand men there and Jorian begged the general to spare men to protect his village. It is all he can do. The village now lives under a banner of fear.
Orana came to me tonight, stealing through the darkness like a ghost. We lay together, naked, warm, but we did not make love. I think she needed comfort—merely that—and I provided, took nothing from her, and we fell asleep under the blankets.
When I awoke the next morning she had gone.
The Forest of Bone. “The Cabin.” 16th. November 1917.
ORANA STOOD IN THE MOONLIGHT, and her pale skin seemed to glow with the light of God. Jones watched, and felt his pulse quicken, his mouth go dry, and she took the strap from one shoulder, exposing bare flesh, then the strap from her second shoulder, and allowed the white garment to slither down her body to pool like mercury on the floor around her feet. She stepped sideways, a delicate movement, and stood with feet slightly apart on the bare floorboards of Jones’s bedroom.
“I missed you,” she said, her words like starlight.
“And I you. Come here.”
Jones threw back the covers and Orana slid in beside him. They touched, tenderly, and pressed their naked bodies together. They kissed, so gentle it was nothing more than a brushing of lips. Her tongue darted out, sliding into his mouth, and he groaned, feeling himself get hard, pressing against her, feeling her feel him get hard and respond, moving against him with rhythmical sways.
His hand dropped low, and felt her heat, her wetness, and now she groaned and it was a thrilling animal sound as Jones felt himself falling into her, becoming lost in her mind, falling headlong into the moment and there was only the moment and suddenly the rest of the world did not exist.
“I want you.”
“I want you.”
They panted against one another.
“I want you inside me. Right now. Here, like this.” She rolled, onto her hands and knees, and thrust her hips back, swaying slightly. “Get behind me, lover. I want to feel you like an animal.”
Jones scrambled onto his knees, placed his hands on her pale white buttocks, and slowly, eased himself inside her. Orana groaned. Jones’s teeth clenched, and he bit his lips. The world spun around his head. A million stars were born and died. They moved together, ——ed together, and the harder Jones thrust the more Orana groaned, and pushed back with her hips, and he was deeper than he’d ever been, and she had him ensnared like a slave in chains . . .
Jones made love to Orana.
Her eyes were closed, facing away from him, ecstatic in received pleasure. But even as she groaned in pleasure, hips thrusting back, hands clawing the blankets, her face seemed to blur a little and began to change, like wax melting, like smoke drifting. Her eyes became brighter, almost glowing, her lips squirmed, then her teeth clicked softly as her muzzle pushed out from her face, teeth extending into long yellow fangs, twisted from her broken walrider muzzle.
“Oh God!” moaned Jones, carried away in the magic spell of the moment . . . rising fast towards climax, panting, sweat dripping from his forehead, and feeling Orana pulsing around his shaft, her quim clenching and unclenching him like a powerful fist. . . .
He failed to hear the walrider’s soft growl as he climaxed.
Diary of Robert Jones. 3rd. Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers. 18th. November 1917.
Troops have arrived, grim-eyed men under a yellow banner. A thousand armed men to defend against twelve thousand—this is insanity!
Bainbridge urges me to leave this place, to seek strength in the mass of numbers of a mercenary unit. He is a rat. Sometimes, it seems he has no morals, but I know deep down he is a good man.
I will not leave. My Orana is here, and I love her.
The new troops are well-armed and armoured; but they make me—and the rest of the people in the village—uneasy. They have been boarded up in the Grellend Valley for nearly a year without female companionship, and they watch the village women with dark glittering eyes. There have been several fights, one concerning Gamesh, who took on two Femors jeering comments at his wife. He was beaten to the ground with rifle butts and Jorian had to swallow his anger and pride and hate and request the men of the Seventh not be unreasonable.
Their sergeants are hardy men, who have seen much combat; they shrugged off Jorian’s request, but there is nothing he can do. He must make a sacrifice, allow a lesser evil in order that his people are protected. The whole situation stinks like a corpse. These soldiers are less than men, and I am sick to the death of it all. I am sick of war. I am sick of men. I am sick of death and shit. We call ourselves human, we say that we are at the pinnacle of evolution and superior to all other forms of life, and that we have the higher order of empathy—but who is to say what defines superiority? No other creature within the animal kingdom gathers in its masses with only one purpose—the mass destruction of its own race. We are unique in our destruction.
I once believed in the nobility of man. Not any longer.
It has become a farce.
It is night. I have been talking with Beth. She is sweet, and gentle, but her eyes still betray her mistrust. We talked about the weather, cooking, anything but the soldiers now camped all around the village and filling the trenches with their stink. Beth mentioned, during the course of idle chatter, that she spied a white gren on the previous evening; it came skulking to the back door, long muzzle to the ground, yellow eyes wary. I asked her what she did, and she said that she tried to shoot it.
“Why?” I asked.
She said they are bad luck, they are possessed by demons and carry death in their blood.
Now I am confused. Very confused.
Diary of Robert Jones. 3rd. Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers. 18th. November 1917 (night).
A messenger arrived. I heard him speaking with Jorian, but could hear no words. Minutes later, Jorian entered my room and sat in a chair facing me. His face was white, eyes weary and red-rimmed through lack of sleep. He constantly rubbed his beard, unaware he did so.
He said: It is happening. The Naravelle are half a day’s march from her
e. They have attacked a village and utterly destroyed it. It hasn’t yet been confirmed they are in possession of mortar bombs, but it is a very real possibility. Further orders have been relayed by the Femors that the Third, Fifth, and Twelfth armies are also on their way. It would appear this land, this valley, will be the scene of a massive battle.
The man looked at me then, and I thought he was going to burst into tears. But he regained his composure, came to me, and I stood. Understanding passed between us.
He said: My people are not going to survive this. None of them. I have a terrible dark feeling, deep down inside. I know these things. Jones. Would you—if I die, would you take care of Orana for me? She is so young, so vulnerable—I cannot bear to think of the soldiers capturing her, abusing her. Will you do this for me? Will you promise me?
I told him yes, and not to give up hope, and that I would do the other thing if it was looking bad.
I also said I would attempt entry to the Stoneway, although what help this could afford I knew not. And, although I do not and did not admit it, I am terribly frightened.
Jorian left me then. And for once Bainbridge and Webb were silent. I have a suspicion they know more than they are telling.
When the battle begins, if the Stoneway reveals no answers, then I am going to take Orana and flee—if I can. I care not for this war now. I have seen battle countless times and it is always the same—people die. I once held visions of being a saviour, a hero, a golden-eyed warrior vanquishing dark enemies and bringing about peace . . . but this is a fiction, an unreality. There is no black and white, no good and evil—only shades of grey, and I am sinking fast into a deep mire of grey and becoming as one, whole, enveloped, lost, merged without colour.
Now, more than ever before during my life, I curse my lack of whiskey. If I had a bottle I would quite happily drink myself into ——ing oblivion. And then, hopefully, I would awake from this nightmare and find myself back in the real world, a world where people treat one another with respect and friendliness, and the fear of bullets and bombs is no longer a reality.