by Adam Roberts
Away to the right a tall, brown-branched willow appeared from nowhere, hung in the air, and fell away in shreds of dirt.
Everybody was running, sluggishly but earnestly.
Polystom tried to pick up his feet. There was another crashing sound of detonation, and another enormous tuft of mud sprouted and wilted away to the right.
Then, much closer, there was an explosive double compression, boum-boum, and Polystom was flattened, flicked over by the force of it. Face to the mud. He couldn’t hear properly. His head wobbled, his thoughts scribbling like sunlight on choppy water. Trying to get to his feet, the clay clutching at his legs. He rose up, overbalanced backwards and fell again, the pale mauve of the sky above him. The whole battle had gone eerily silent. There was nothing except a high-pitched sound of birdsong. Bird? No, it was tinnitus, singing inside his head. Trying again to get to his feet. Up, unsteadily. One of his men was in front of him. He could feel the man’s grip on his shoulders, see his anxious face right in front of him. He was yelling something, his mouth working vigorously, but Polystom’s ears weren’t functioning. The man was waving his arms. Waving, and then pushing, pushing him back towards the trenches, go back now, and Polystom, stunned, turned unsteadily and started heaving his steps through the mud. Back in the direction he had come. It was all silent. Epileptic flashes of light blinked in the corner of his eye. A series of ragged lumps of smoke barrelled past. The singing noise in his head rose a tone, a tone and a half, and then popped into muffled sounds.
‘. . . on the hogsback,’ a voice was yelling behind him. ‘They must have heavy guns up there. Get the captain under cover.’ Other figures, bent forward, were on the edge of Polystom’s vision.
‘Get him back to the dugout!’ Behind the words was a grumbling sub-bass, the deepest of organ notes, punctuated by crackles and thuds. And it was so hot. Too hot. Sweat was dribbling into his eyes, soaking down his neck, as his legs laboured and laboured through the mud. Polystom saw the wooden pegs that marked the outer edge of the trench, and turned to see who it was had guided him back. He saw the man’s face for only a moment.
There was an enormous clatter. The air all around buckled and twisted like a great sheet of steel being crunched up. Sight dissolved to smoke. Polystom felt a smack, a punch, in his gut, and almost at once he was in the air, flying backwards, the world caught in an impossible perspective of vertical horizon and bleaching sunlight, and then with a soggy crunch his shoulder bashed into the back wall of the trench, the rest of his body colliding into the mud a moment later. The next thing Polystom knew he was on the floor of the trench, on his side, winded, panting, the sweat still dribbling into his eyes and over his face. There was a fierce pain in his gut. He had been shot. Shrapnel had penetrated his abdomen. He was going to die.
With a steady sort of panic, a sort of panic that he had never experienced before, cold and intense and terrifying, Polystom pulled himself into a sitting position and started unbuttoning his jacket. He had to see the wound for himself. Men were on either side – ‘You alright, sir?’ ‘Caught one, sir?’ – but he had no time for them now. He had to be alone with his wound, alone with his own death. He hauled the jacket off his back, pulled away the tie, and started scrabbling at his shirt buttons, imagining the gaping hole that must be there, the blood-rimmed emptiness, and finally the shirt was off.
He looked down at himself, panting. The skin of his stomach was whole, entire, white, unmarked except for the snail-trail lines of his own sweat. There was a slight redness to one side.
He breathed, breathed. The stomach pulsed in, out.
He looked up at the men who had gathered around him. ‘What are you looking at?’ he shrieked. ‘Man the trench! Are they counterattacking? The enemy, are they coming?’ He pulled his shirt shut over his torso as they scattered.
It was five minutes, fully five minutes, before the panic relaxed sufficiently to allow himself to dress himself again. His jacket, thoroughly muddied, was stiffly recalcitrant as he tried to button it. Finally he tried to stand, like a newborn deer, wobbled, slipped back down, and tried again. His pistol was not in his hand. He must have dropped it out on the battlefield. He needed a pistol. His other one was in his digs. He needed his batman to retrieve it for him. Where was the man? Twisting his head left, right, looking up and down the trench.
Men were tumbling back into the dugout now in ones and twos, and the crashing explosive sounds were still beating out a dull, sodden rhythm in the air.
Twenty minutes later the barrage had ceased. A man helped him, wobbly, along the trench to his hole.
Everything was still, as if there had never been anything but silence and sunshine on this world. Polystom was sitting, his hands trembling slightly, holding a metal, book-shaped whisky flask. He had drained it, but the shivers in his hands hadn’t stopped. He was sitting in the door to his digs, watching men come and go along the trench.
A shadow spilled up and embraced him. Sof was standing over him. Or was it Stet? No, it was Sof. ‘You alright sir?’ he drawled.
Polystom thought of saying something, thought again. Took a deep breath. ‘Did you find my batman?’ he asked.
‘He caught one, sir, I’m sorry to say.’
‘Caught one? Dead, you mean?’
‘Come inside, sir,’ said Sof, helping him to his feet and leading him into the muggy darkness of the room inside. He settled Stom into his chair, and sprawled himself nonchalantly over the edge of the table. Stom watched him as he fished a cigarette packet from his upper pocket, pulled a white stick from inside, popped it into his mouth and replaced the packet, all with one hand. It was remarkably dextrous. The same hand located the lighter, and placed a glowing dot of red at the end of the cigarette. His eyes had their usual lazy, dreamy look, although there was a red cut, thin as an insect’s leg, running up the middle of his forehead, and small marks and bruises on his nose and chin.
‘Quite a party, eh, sir?’ he said, finally.
‘Party,’ said Polystom, numbly.
‘I’m sure you’re just about to ask, sir, so I’ll tell you. We lost nineteen, sir, with another seven wounded too badly to fight tomorrow.’
Polystom tried to think of something to say to this, but couldn’t. Sof seemed to be in no hurry. He sucked in the smoke, and it poured out of his face, white dribbles from his mouth, his nostrils.
‘Is Stet dead?’ Polystom asked, his face in his hands.
‘Sorry, sir? Didn’t catch that?’
‘Lieutenant Stetrus,’ said Polystom, sitting up properly.
‘Stet’s fine,’ said Sof, sucking in a great lungful of smoke. ‘He’s sorting out non-commissioned rankings. We lost both sergeant and corporal. Unlucky that.’ He exhaled, and the smoke drained out of him. Polystom noticed that it was coming out of the middle of the man’s cheek as well as his mouth and nose. A spike of smoke, thrusting out from the exact middle of his cheek, like steam coming out of a boiling kettle.
‘What’s wrong with your cheek?’ he asked.
Sof opened his eyes marginally, his dumb-show for surprise, and put his free hand to his left cheek. Polystom shook his head, and Sof touched his right cheek, fingering the hole there. ‘Well well,’ he said, getting to his feet and wandering over to the mirror. ‘I must have got a bit of scrap metal through there. It’s a hole as big as my big finger.’ He leaned into the mirror, slipping a finger inside his mouth and poking it out again through the hole in his cheek. There was something obscene about the gesture. ‘Will you look at that,’ he said, with his mouth full of fingers. He withdrew the hand, and laughed: short, donkey brays. ‘That’ll spoil the face a little. I’d better have it sewn,’ he said, squashing the cigarette under his heel. ‘Back in a moment.’
He wandered out.
Polystom’s hands were still shaking.
He unbuttoned his jacket and took it off, holding it in front of him. It was completely crusted with heavy, dark-brown mud. It looked as though it had been dipped in a tub of boiling brown w
ax and left to dry.
A messenger arrived an hour later, looking for Polystom. ‘With your permission, sir,’ he said, handing over a black cloth-sealed envelope. Polystom opened it, read the order slip inside, nodded to the messenger, and sat down again. Assault to recommence. Bombing run in thirty minutes.
The last thing, the very last thing, he wanted to do in the remnants of the afternoon was to step out again onto the battlefield. He felt sick at the very thought. He felt tired, a sweeping tiredness that came down on his head like a hammer blow. He would curl up in his bunk and sleep; he would sleep all the way through to the next day, and then everything would be finished – the hogsback would be taken, and he could take the next balloon-boat away from the world. He would go home.
He leaned back in his chair.
‘Helloë,’ said Stet, from the door. ‘Was that a command orderly I saw coming and going? Have we orders?’
Polystom stared at him. He wanted to deny that he had received any orders. He knew, in the honeycombed centre of his bones, that he could never fight again. He just couldn’t.
‘And these,’ said Stet, stepping inside the digs, with what struck Polystom as a near-obscene jauntiness, ‘must be they. Shouldn’t leave them lying around on the table, sir.’ He fished up the sheet of paper and read it.
Look, Polystom wanted to say. Can’t we just forget we received this? But his mouth felt gummed up. It’s clearly a mistake. Look, I’ll send to Command for clarification. Can’t we wait? Can’t I . . . can’t I go home now?
‘Right ho,’ said Stet, beaming. ‘Ho ha hum. I’ll get the men organised.’
I won’t be going with you this time, Lieutenant.
‘The men,’ said Polystom.
‘Sir?’
‘Casualties were . . .?’
‘Nineteen dead, sir. Five injured. Another half dozen minor injuries, but they’ll be alright to fight again.’
‘Lieutenant,’ said Stom, slowly. His brain didn’t seem able to process the words properly. ‘Lieutenant . . .’
‘Sir?’
‘Lieutenant Sof was . . . injured, I think.’
‘Oh I know sir,’ said Stet, with a broad smile. ‘I saw him trotting up-trench to get it fixed. Quite a hole, that. Quite a beauty spot, it’ll make. There,’ he said, angling his head. ‘There they go.’ Polystom could hear the drone of planes overhead. He found himself on his feet without quite instructing his muscles to stand up. That’s not half an hour! That can’t have been half an hour!
‘I’ll whip the men up,’ said Stet, and slipped easily through the doorway.
Polystom was planning his excuses as he stepped into the trench outside. He felt dazed. There were flickers of light passing in front of his eyes, perfectly transparent globular blotches, like a magnified image of unicellular life, drifting across his line of sight. Like clouds. He had injured his head. He had been blown up, and needed medical attention.
He had changed into his regular jacket and trousers. They were mud-free.
The noise of the bombing died away, as it had done earlier that day, and lieutenants up and down the line shouted the order to advance. Once again, soldiers scrambled over the lips of the trenches and out of the dugouts, and started across the broken ground. Polystom stood motionless in the bottom of the trench, until a passing soldier – one of his own, or another platoon, he didn’t know – slapped his shoulder. ‘Need a hand up, sir?’ And then, like a triggered clockwork toy, he sleepwalked up the steps and out into the exposed territory.
What are you doing? Go back! But there seemed some disconnection between brain and muscles, because he was trudging forward through the mud as before, the sweat was oozing into his eyes as before, and at any moment he expected the explosions to begin, the men to start falling all around him, the concussion to strike him, the metal scraps to come hurtling towards him. He plodded on.
Stupidly, he realised that he hadn’t brought his revolver with him. He had had one before, he knew, but he’d dropped it somewhere in the mud. Perhaps it was around here somewhere? Without breaking his stride he started scanning the ground about him. Dead men were inserted into the mud like static swimmers in the static sea: arms propping out, faces, backs, legs at queer angles. A clay-smeared man caught in the middle of some balletic pose, body twisted like the letter M. A leg lay, severed, by itself. Here was a face, a framed oval in the mud with nothing else around it to indicate head or body: like a discarded mask. There was a hand reaching out of the ground, its fingers curled into a miniature model of a winter tree.
You ought to, said his inner voice. You ought to have a weapon, you know.
Who could he send back for his pistol?
But looking around, everybody was so intent on marching onwards. The land was more uphill now, and the going tougher. He didn’t feel he could interrupt anybody’s procession. Perhaps it didn’t matter.
Perhaps nothing mattered. Every second was the last second of his life. He marched on and on, and he knew with every step that he pulled out of the mud that he would never plant that foot. Never lean into it, drawing the other foot out with a squelch. Never swing that forward, and plant it in its turn. And then, the slightest pressure on his shoulder, and it was Stetrus, beaming at him.
‘How focused you look sir!’ he said. ‘Well, you can stop now, sir. We’re here.’
Polystom assumed the bombing had been more effective than the first time, and that all the defenders had been eliminated. Stet was of the opinion that the enemy had simply pulled back. ‘Their heavy ordnance has vanished,’ he pointed out. ‘I think they’ve scarpered.’ Either way, the elation at obtaining their objective lifted Polystom’s spirits. He felt absurdly, ridiculously happy. He danced, as well as he could, in the mud, lifting each clay-weighted boot with ponderous grace and dancing about.
‘Best not let the men see you do that,’ said Stet, from behind him. ‘Shall we dig in, sir?’
‘What?’
‘Dig our position in, sir? I’ll tell the men to get going on the digging straight away. Until we receive further orders, you know.’
Polystom stood, grinning, dazed.
‘Best get to it, I’d say, sir,’ Stet went on. ‘The sun’s hot. Ordnance has softened this mud up some, but it’ll dry out hard as stone quick enough. Assuming there’s no rain.’ He went off.
Polystom looked up at the beautiful blue-mauve sky, at the glorious hot sun. Life! The men were standing around, their rifles across their shoulders, running up into the sky like horns. The lieutenants were going amongst them, barking at them. Shovels were being unpacked, men were leaning into their work, heaving dirt aside.
Polystom sat himself down on the lip of a larger crater, and reached into his breast for his whisky flask. Only when he’d twisted off the cap and lifted it to his mouth did he remember that it was empty.
There was a dead body, half buried in the mud, inches from his hip.
Polystom carefully rescrewed the cap and put the flask away. Then he leant forward a little. The dead body might have been naked, might have been in full dress uniform, it was so caked in mud it was hard to tell. Only its left hand was clear of dirt; that, and its cheek. The top of its head was missing. Its legs were buried in the earth, its torso lying along the contour of the crater, one arm lying forward alongside its face. It looked like it was sleeping, except that its head ended in a shear-line of red. The insides of the cavity were filled with mud also. What most caught Polystom’s eye was the quality of the dead flesh, like soft cheese.
In an hour the lieutenants had overseen the construction of a trench along the line of the ridge. The men had been able to dig in a small room at the end of it, bracing the ceiling with some pieces of wood hauled up from the camp at the root of the ridge. ‘Captain’s dugout, sir,’ said Sof.
‘What about Captain Parocles?’ Polystom asked.
For a fraction of a second, the expression in Sof ’s eyes was that of a tired parent dealing with an awkward child. Then he smiled, ducked his h
ead forward. ‘The captain caught one in the first attack, sir. Weren’t you told?’
‘No,’ said Polystom. ‘So I’m in sole command?’
‘That’s right sir,’ said Sof, complaisantly. The stitched wound in his cheek looked like a tiny mouth caught in the act of gobbling a fly. Polystom didn’t like the look of it.
Clouds spooled and curled in the sky, and in half an hour all the pale mauve was swallowed up by a greasy, low-slung ceiling of raincloud. A shower splashed abruptly down upon them, lasting five minutes and then passing by.
There were three more brief, intense showers in the next half hour. Polystom sat in his dugout, looking down the line of the newly constructed trench. The men were working on, digging side-lines and excavating quarters for the lieutenants at the end of the thing. According to Stet, nineteen men survived from Parocles’ company. Nineteen men and no officers. ‘What should I do?’ Polystom asked. His euphoria had dissipated entirely, and now he felt disoriented and powerless.
‘Absorb them into your platoon, sir,’ said Stet, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
‘Right,’ said Polystom.
The men were working energetically, the rain bouncing off their bent backs. A puddle had formed at the foot of the trench, a few feet wide but many yards long. In the rainstorm, splashes made a hundred transient little nipples out of the surface of the water.
Parties of men hurried up and down the ridge, bringing chairs and tables, Polystom’s possessions, moveable things from the lower dugout.