There was a long pause where Gawarty thought the captain was not going to answer. “They almost gunned you down through the seat.”
Gawarty said, “You? Gunned down? I can’t believe it.”
Diggery grinned at him. “It came down to a difference in language, shall we say.”
Talking did feel good. Gawarty let himself unfold slightly. “I believe it. Down here it’s helpies and Happies, Sessies and Tacchies. I’ve heard of harpies and yowlers, and I hope to never meet them. How many languages do you speak? Isn’t three or four common?”
Diggery shrugged. “I’m told I don’t speak enough. Down here, you’ll find people who prefer pure Haphan, just like at Falling Mountain. There’s Tachbavim in three flavors: Southie, Sesseran, and Old—they call that one the Deep Tongue. The Happies have their Tagwa for fighting, and we have our whistling and hand signs.”
“And trench-talk,” Sethlan added, “a trench-talk for every discipline.”
Diggery nodded. “That’s the common denominator. It scrounges words from everywhere. A more confusing piece of work can not be found.” He paused. “Do you hear that?”
Semelon listened. “Our guns. We have some good artillery on this stretch,” he added, to Gawarty.
“They sound like they’re warming the barrels,” Diggery said. “Extra wadding for more friction, or whatever they do.”
“Them’s just airbursts, la,” said Drivvy authoritatively. “Inviting the Southie monsters to put their heads down.”
“Drivvy’s right,” said Semelon. “I hear some stop and go.”
Gawarty had stopped listening to their voices. The earth was humming. That thunder was the front, the damned front!
For the next twenty minutes it grew louder as they approached. It never stopped growing. It grew ludicrously loud, a sensation with no upper limit in volume. After thirty minutes Gawarty wasn’t hearing it so much as receiving hammer-blows to his organs. The unremitting noise went off like a kettledrum inside the carriage. It blasted through cubic miles of atmosphere, and seemed to trivialize the very sky of Grigory IV.
Each of those guns, Hommar 40s, Gawarty supposed, were manned by a crew of six who engaged in an intricate ballet composed of eight movements to load and fire. Each unit of seventeen guns, with squads of spotters, liaising detachees, signalers, the officership, aides. Six units to a battalion, and each battalion fed by an hourly pygmy train of munitions from the Northern auto-factories, unloaded by hand onto stalwart carts drawn by surgically deafened baxxaxx.
This had to be a show. It was just too much of an incredible collusion to have all this clockwork running at the ass-end of the world, generating such a thought-suffocating, physical sound.
By shit, I’m almost at the front, aren’t I? And lord, was he in trouble. Gawarty couldn’t even twitch his legs. The sound pressed him against the bench, thrumming against the very spark of his life, and he hadn’t even seen anything yet.
“My first time at the front, I felt small. So small. And the universe felt very unjust.” Though their heads were just inches apart, Sethlan had to shout.
“Yes, sir.”
“Keep your head up, back straight.” Sethlan jerked a finger at Diggery, who had his head buried between his knees. “Not like him. Let the sound pass through your bones. Don’t crunch up. It will reverberate and tire you out.”
Diggery shouted something incomprehensible.
“Will they leave off?” Gawarty cried.
Sethlan shook his head. “There is probably some schedule.”
“I will go mad!”
“I’ll meet you there!” Diggery’s laugh was lost in the noise.
“No, I will surely go mad!”
“The trenches are a mile or two forward,” Sethlan shouted. “If you were a gunner you would go mad. They are all blood-fed, they must be, to put up with this. But we’re going to the front where it’s quieter.”
They were already passing beyond the shock waves emitted by the batteries. Indeed, Sethlan was slightly easier to understand even then. Gawarty felt his limbs unkink. The guns were distant but not much quieter, when the steam cart stopped.
“Here we are, gents,” Drivvy blared through the firing hole. “In record time, I might add.”
They debarked and Sethlan strode away, bearing for the trenches. What looked initially to Gawarty like a hill scraped out of the land with a giant flat-edged shovel turned out to be an earthworks, a steep pile of dirt and sandbags.
Without fanfare they slipped into a minor shadow—and then they were in the trenches. Nothing, no training, stories, or gazette articles, could have prepared Gawarty enough. At their widest he was forced to squeeze through sideways, and at their narrowest the others had to push and pull to get him through. The Sesserans moved with no apparent trouble, but Gawarty’s ribcage was already bruised.
“You’ll learn the trick of it,” Diggery told him. “And they get more spacious the closer we get.”
The obstructed sky appeared to Gawarty as a meandering line of slightly-lighter darkness overhead, while under his feet was softness of unknown depth, which hinted at a slow slide into the viscera of the earth if he paused or slipped. The trench widened and narrowed as they moved, as if the ground were breathing them along, and he felt in danger of being inhaled out of view forever if he stepped awry or tickled the wrong brachial shadow. Without his vision—there was nothing in front of his face but packed dirt and sandbags, jutting pieces of wood from earlier efforts, and yellow-brown bones protruding like errors from the walls—it felt like he had been swallowed whole by the monstrous creature of the front.
“Make way!” Gawarty heard the call ahead. “Make way!”
Glancing up from darkness to darkness, he saw his first unit of front line Tachba. The men were huge, as big as Sethlan and dwarfing Diggery and Gawarty. They moved spryly down the trench with their arms out to push off each side and change their course. With their heads down they reminded Gawarty of nothing so much as a voiceless band of dark apes. They passed him in the narrow trench without touching.
Sethlan asked directions. Apparently the traverses had shifted, or the command bunker had moved. Gawarty had not noticed any intersections, so how could they be lost already? They back-tracked further into the trench. Soon the level of the sandbags above their heads raised, and the gutter at the bottom of the trench became sided with duckboard. The soil was firmer and the walls better kept.
Sethlan disappeared ahead of them, taking a sharp right. It was a bunker entrance, with several turns and a steep, unwelcoming stair. Two dozen feet of growing claustrophobia, and they entered a narrow lamp-lit room with bunks along one side and a fold-down table on the other.
General Tawarna glanced up, and then looked again as Gawarty doffed his helmet.
“Ah, Ribbon, come here,” he said, his voice a croak, and took Gawarty in a firm embrace.
“I had hoped you would be spared this,” said the General. He looked older, more dry and folded, than when Gawarty had seen him last. He moved as if living in the bunker had given him a permanent crouch.
“I know, Father, but I refused all those assignments.”
“That’s not what I meant.” The old man tore his gaze away, and spoke for the room. “I had quite expected to have this war tidied up by now. Of course, the Moon Kingdoms have different ideas. Anyhow, we have some action tonight.” Tawarna led them to the table and pointed significantly to a tea tray. “When Thache moves that platter, you will notice a map underneath. We’re grabbing some line off the Moon Biters tonight—yes, they’re still here, along with two new bunches we don’t know much about. We call them the Parasols and the Silhouettes, based on the odd things they show over the parapet.
“We patrolled last night, and we made a capture. A Moon Biter. Lasted thirty minutes under questioning. He said the other units are the 1065th and the 3020th, reinforcements. Reinforcing what, we don’t know. Have you heard of them?”
“No, sir,” said Sethlan. “But that
don’t signify.”
Tawarna grunted. “Whoever they are, we’re evicting them. This morning is not an exercise, it’s not a gawk. We are taking two lines of trench along four miles, and that blasted hill, once and for all. After the two trenches, the attack will appear to stall—as if we are too exhausted and surprised by our success. We won’t follow through. We will reinforce and let the new line go static.”
The general paused for a moment. “Hopefully that will be enough. Anyhow, that’s why I requested your presence here. You lot—” his eyes flickered over Gawarty “—will go up during consolidation and pick through any officers or other rubbish that was left behind. Papers, perhaps.”
Sethlan cleared his throat. “Papers we won’t find, sir. The Southies aren’t nearly so organized.”
“Perhaps we shall be surprised,” the General said, not meeting his eyes. “They have been surprising us fiercely. Someone is training them, or as you Tacchies put it, telling them new stories. Our patrol last night was flanked, by God. Almost encircled. Who in the seven hells taught them to do that? Can you imagine a Southie walking thirty yards to the side, when the enemy is ten yards ahead? Ah, there go the Big Bumpers.”
“Those are big guns, about three miles back,” said Sethlan abruptly, with a tone of explanation.
“Erm, yes, captain. And there’s the full roll, just behind.” The general grabbed a wall support as the sound washed through the earth.
“Tea!” Thache glared at them. “Tea is getting cold.”
The general seemed unable to pull his eyes off Gawarty. “Take a cup, and I’ll send you along. A real going-over should not be missed, Ribbon.”
7
Sethlan
~This must simply be the most horrific existence in the universe.~
Sethlan shifted the thought out of his head, concentrating on moving up to the front trench.
~Depraved, pointless. Ugh. That wall is full of corpses.~
“I thought the tea was pretty good, at least,” said Sethlan aloud.
“Thank you,” said Gawarty. “I think that was from a family plantation. I used to know the name, but I switched to coffee at school.”
~I just wonder where they got the water.~
“The water is brought to the front, fresh daily,” said Sethlan, a little acidly. “I found it most refreshing.”
“Father was always particular. I can’t believe he has the whole tea service here. A hundred yards from the edge of the empire.”
Diggery glanced between Semelon and Gawarty with a disbelieving look. “Myself, I found the floor cleanly swept.”
Sethlan gave an exasperated sigh. “Yes, we’re talking nonsense.”
~I’m only thinking about your working conditions. There are serious health implications.~
They slipped into the front trench and turned a few traverses, mostly to get out of the way of the stream of men and boxes being shepherded forward by anxious noncoms. When they stopped, they were facing the men of the first wave, who were stacked three deep and holding their ladders so they wouldn’t show over the parapet.
The soldiers were still, and pale where their skin showed around the blacking powder. Still Sethlan sensed their excitement, decently restrained, at being sent over the top.
It was more than he could say for Gawarty, who stared around with eyes like saucers, trembling visibly. Diggery noticed it too and twirled his finger in the air.
~What’s the Haphan doing?~
He’s close-looking. You do it when you’re about to go over. It’s a degree to madness.
~Tell him to snap out of it. We’re not going over. Please remind everybody of this fact.~
Sethlan tapped Gawarty’s shoulder, shying away when the young man snapped around. His pupils were huge, and he panted like a dog. The nearest soldiers averted their faces, not wanting to be closely studied. Many believed it invited Uncle Nestor.
“Lieutenant, you will soon hear the call to attack. It will be difficult to resist, but so you must. We are not going with the first wave, or even the second. These scrags will try to drag you up, but don’t let them, either.”
“Them, either…” Gawarty replied.
Sethlan pointed up, to the world above the trench. “We have now started taking counter-fire from the South. They like to rake the trenches before they engage the artillery, so make yourself small.”
~We are very exposed here,~ said the Voice.
“We are hardly exposed at all,” Sethlan continued. “But, of course, you might fit into one of those bolt holes carved into the trench wall. These boys are standing to, and can’t take cover, but our load is lighter.”
He folded Gawarty into a cubby, and none too soon. A shell exploded in the next traverse, creating a fountain of limbs and bodies in a red burst and then obscuring the trench with smoke. Shrapnel and bone matter spattered against the parados, and the assembled men surged toward the wall.
“Stand and eat it, you animals,” shouted a sarnt up the line. “You’re going to get bashed and like it. First man to lean a ladder before the call gets a bullet.”
Seeing that Diggery had already disappeared, Sethlan took a hole for himself. He found the nook small but dry. The ceiling pressed hard against his nose, and there was only just room for his legs, though his knees were smashed against the hard packed dirt. He lay foot-level to the trench, and could see the boots and legs of the soldiers waiting to attack. They weren’t as still as he had thought, shifting weight, stamping, some even walking circles.
Then the legs seemed to ascend into the air, out of sight, before everything was obscured by a curtain of dirt. The explosion occurred—or seemed to occur—after the shock wave had emptied the trench. A huge noise punched Sethlan like a cannon recoil into all five walls of the cubby. It was as if the very earth had taken a breath and squeezed him flat.
When he awoke he was on the duckboard in the open. There was a body across his chest, and a shoe against his jaw. His ears rang with a perfect tritone chord. He waited for the soldiers on top of him to gather their wits and stand…and fell asleep.
He woke again to find Diggery slapping his face.
~At last!~ said the Voice. ~He has been hitting us for five minutes.~
“Enough,” mouthed Sethlan, catching Diggery’s eye.
There was another shower of dirt, and Diggery stuffed Sethlan back in his hole before diving away.
Sethlan knew he shouldn’t close his eyes again but drifted off nonetheless.
He awoke, preternaturally alert, and stared out of the hole. The first wave had placed its ladders against the front parapet. All he saw now were the heels of their boots. What had woken him up was the sudden, pervasive silence. As if the heartbeat of the giant creature of the front had paused.
“This is the attack,” Sethlan said unnecessarily when Gawarty’s face appeared by his hole.
He clambered out, assessing his state. He could feel no wound, no fullness in his torso that would indicate an overpressure to his organs; soldiers stricken that way simply wound down like clocks and then died asleep. In contrast, he’d never felt more alive and on the bounce. Even his hearing was almost clear.
He cornered Gawarty against the wall. “Keep clear, there will be another wave jogging through here after these fellows are plinked.”
“Get yer fucking ladders up, you animals.” The sarnt ran down the line. “South thinks you’re going to bend over and spread for Nestor? Not likely! You there, puke on your own time. Form queues for the ladders. If I see any fighting betwixt you, yea I shall reap thee like blades of grass.”
A chrysanthemum flare illuminated the sky above.
“There you go!” the sarnt screamed. “Up, you motherless bastards. You fucking fucks! Get up and over!”
The first soldiers rattled up the ladders. Then Sethlan heard the uneven rat-tat of the Tachba repeaters clearing their throats. They always went two rounds before the spring recoiler picked up enough momentum to automatically chamber the next round. The only art
to shooting a Tachba repeater was to time the first few trigger-pulls. The soldiers flipped backward off the ladders, landing crooked and still on the trench floor.
This will be bad, Sethlan thought. Had the barrage cleared none of the enemy? He listened as other repeaters came to life up and down the line.
“Keep moving, you shit-sacks,” the sarnt bellowed.
For a moment, the men going up the ladders were perfectly balanced by the rain of dead and wounded back into the trench, where they were trod into the earth as layers of strata by the surging wave of soldiers. Some of the fallen jumped back to their feet, shaking off their wounds, and bodily scrambling up the side of the trench. The remaining soldiers gave a hoarse yell, a cry that built all along the Sesseran line. The queues broke to pieces. The soldiers started making it over the parapet by sheer desperation and force of numbers.
More soldiers appeared above them, having charged overground from the rearward trenches. They clattered across the impromptu bridges over the trench, raining dirt into the monochrome chaos.
~They’re moving much too slowly,~ said the Voice. Sethlan felt a deep, anesthetized horror behind the words in his mind. Horror he didn’t feel himself.
You’re not me, are you? he asked. You’re really not me at all. He glanced around at the carnage and confusion. To him it looked like any other going over after an ineffectual bombardment. There would be heavy losses in any action—it was the nature of the war—but the real fighting would start when enough men had moved up to the enemy trenches for the last push. The next wave was already rushing into the trench. They sped past Sethlan, Diggery, and Gawarty, propelled by the immense pressure of manpower feeding the line.
The Voice had still not answered.
You’re not me, so you are something different that is in my mind.
~Yes.~
You are some sort of advanced technology. Are you a Haphan? No, you’re too ignorant for that.
~Well, thanks.~
You will survive today, Sethlan offered, but only if you level with me. Don’t test me on this or I shall call myself mad and allow myself to properly check out of this life.
The Eternal Front: A Lines of Thunder Novel (Lines of Thunder Universe) Page 21