by K. J. Parker
During the very long hour of total silence that followed, Linniu contemplated the things the officer hadn’t said: what they were to do if anything went wrong; who’d tell them what to do, and how he’d tell them, in the pitch dark, with people running in all directions as like as not, arrows everywhere, and burning buildings too; or (even more puzzling) what good getting back on the boats was supposed to do them, when the current would carry them further downstream, instead of back upstream, the way they wanted to go. It was, of course, impossible that the clever men who ran the People’s Defence Force hadn’t thought of something as elementary as that; in which case there was a plan, and presumably the officer hadn’t had time to tell them about it. He wondered what it could be, and whether it had something to do with standing-with-feet-together – they’d gone to the trouble of teaching them how to do it, after all, so it had to come in somewhere.
In any event, he reflected sadly, he could kiss his seventeen arrows goodbye. Ninepence for a new set still left him threepence out of his pay, but Father wasn’t going to be happy when he got home. He’d set his heart on the thoroughbred boar.
Very gently, without warning, the boat started moving again. He glanced up at the sky, because it was his only source of information. Getting dark – he realised he’d lost track of time, and tried to work it out. The heavy black cloud made the light an unreliable gauge, but his best guess was that it was past afternoon milking, getting on for shutting up the poultry and feeding the horse. In which case, dark in an hour. He wondered how soldiers managed to calibrate the passage of time, since their days were so often different. At home, if you knew the season and the time of day, you knew exactly where you’d be and what you’d be doing, and surely that was the way people were supposed to live. All the uncertainty of the military life must unhinge your head, sooner or later.
Movement or progress, there was a danger in confusing the two. They were moving, slow and steady, down the river and into darkness, but without knowing where he was or what was happening, he had no idea if things were going right or wrong. Not knowing where he was – he thought he’d been getting used to that, after a lifetime of certainty, but apparently not. He could feel panic stirring inside, but did his best to ignore it. If he had any part to play in all this, panic wouldn’t help. For the first time, he was quite sure he regretted coming on this adventure, valuable treasure or no valuable treasure.
It was quite dark now, and he couldn’t make out the man sitting next to him. He knew his name, where he was from, how many acres and the size of his herd, the bare essentials, but that was all. That wasn’t good. When the time came, if there really was going to be fighting, he’d need to know a lot more about all his companions if they were going to work together. He’d never had to co-operate before with someone he hadn’t known all his life.
From time to time he heard scraping, which he identified as the branches of trees brushing against the side of the barge. It sounded murderously loud, and weren’t they supposed to be keeping quiet? It was just as well, he told himself, that the officers knew what they were doing. But they were proper soldiers, and there wasn’t anything to worry about. If there was one thing he could rely on in this whole baffling, disconcerting experience, it was that they wouldn’t have been entrusted with men’s lives unless they knew everything there was to know about soldiering. That was why he’d been trained to trust them implicitly.
The barge shook; it must’ve hit something, or run into the bank. Someone shouted, and Linniu thought, no, be quiet; but whoever it was shouted again, and he realised they were receiving orders: get up, move, let’s go. But the voice sounded scared.
He jumped to his feet, collided with someone, staggered, fell against someone else. A boot crushed his instep. He suddenly realised he hadn’t even strung his bow yet; of course he hadn’t, nobody had told him to, so presumably he wasn’t meant to do it. He thought about the sergeant’s much-repeated phrase, wait for the command. Someone shoved him in the small of the back, pushing him forward. He couldn’t see where he was supposed to be going.
Shouting; not on the boat, and he couldn’t make out the words. Then someone yelled. He’d heard a yell like that before, just once, a barn-raising at his cousins’ place, when the youngest son of the farm fell off a scaffolding and broke his leg. It meant someone was in trouble; and then he thought, well of course, this is a war. A thought like that was an odd thing to have in his mind.
More pushing, shoving, stumbling. He barked his shin on something, and realised it was the rung of a ladder. Was he supposed to climb up it? Nobody had said. Then someone grabbed his arm and dragged him forward, and there was nowhere else to go but up the ladder. It was awkward, with his bow in his right hand and not being able to see. He climbed, and then ran out of rungs. Someone pushed him; he felt himself fall, thought, this can’t be right, and landed in mud.
He expected people to laugh, because that was what happened when you did a spectacular belly-flop in deep, sticky mud; he must’ve got it wrong, and now they’d be ribbing him about it for ever. But no laughter, and he heard a body land very close beside him, felt muddy spray on his face. Apparently that was how you got off a boat in the People’s Defence Force. Strange way to go about things.
Getting to his feet wasn’t easy. His hands were full of mud. He paused, trying to wipe them clean, because you couldn’t hold or use anything if your hands were clogged and slippery. He scrabbled about for his bow and found it. He’d landed on it and snapped it in half. Disaster.
Disaster, because a good bow cost tenpence; because the only reason for him being there at all was to use the bow, and he couldn’t now, could he? Obviously he had to tell someone; they were relying on him to play his part in this manoeuvre, and before it had even started he’d contrived to render himself completely useless. They were going to be so angry; but first things first, they had to be told. Then, presumably, he’d have to get back on the boat and wait until it was all over. His boots were full of mud, and he felt completely stupid.
Finding someone to tell… There were shapes, bodies, moving all around him, and it suddenly occurred to him that he was out of position and in danger of being left behind. It’d be like getting out of line in a woodland drive, one man could wreck everything. Bad enough that he’d broken his bow. The last thing he wanted was to make it even worse.
Someone barged against him; he grabbed, found himself holding an arm. “The sergeant,” he shouted. “Where’s the sergeant? I need to tell him—” But someone’s boot rammed into the back of his knee and he went down again, belly in the mud. He felt a kick; someone tripped over him and landed on his back, scrambled up cursing. This was terrible. He was ruining the whole mission, all by himself. He had to get out of everybody’s way, then find the sergeant and be told what he had to do. The worst day of his life, he thought.
Light. Up ahead, yellow and orange, like a building on fire. But that was what they were there for, of course, stupid. By the glow he could see definite shapes, men all around him, moving forward. As a shape lunged past him he called out, “Hey, I’ve broken my bow, what should I… ?” but whoever it was didn’t seem to have heard him. In fact, nobody was taking any notice of him at all.
Well, he thought, fine; and it occurred to him (a guilty thought at the back of his mind, wicked but tempting) that in all this darkness and mess, it didn’t matter that he’d screwed up really badly and done everything wrong, because how would anybody ever know? If he kept his nerve, went along with the crowd, went through the motions, how would they ever find out? Later he could pretend he’d done his bit, shot off all his arrows, and then lost his bow right at the last minute. Damn it (he grinned stupidly into the dark at the thought of it), he could probably even put a claim in, get the People’s Defence Force to buy him a new one, or at least pay something towards it. Well, it’d be worth a try; and it was their fault as much as his that it’d got broken. At the very least they should have warned him about the ladder.
So h
e started to drag his way forward, his feet desperately heavy with the weight of caked mud. Furtively he started pulling arrows out of his quiver and dropping them on the ground. A wicked waste, but he couldn’t very well claim he’d fought like a hero till his bow snapped if he reported back with a full quiver. Uncle Loimen always said you had to be crafty in the army.
Something fluttered past him in the dark. A bat, only bats didn’t whistle. He felt the cool air on his wet face and wondered what it could be.
Somebody screamed.
For a moment he froze, and then his better instincts took over. A scream like that; someone was hurt. He tried to place where it had come from. It changed everything, of course; his whole clever plan, pretending he still had his bow, but he knew what he had to do if someone was hurt that badly, even if it meant getting found out. He stopped moving. Someone bashed into his shoulder, though he didn’t see him. The firelight was getting brighter, but he couldn’t spot the injured man, there were too many moving bodies in the way. Over there, he told himself, that’s where it came from. He started forward, tripped over something and fell.
This time, though, he didn’t land in mud. His chin hit something hard, jarring his teeth. A man’s head. He opened his mouth to apologise, then realised, though he wasn’t quite sure how he knew, that the man was dead.
His first thought was: shit, I’ve killed him; knocked him over, made him bang his head on a stone or something. It was actually a relief, for a split second, when he saw the arrow.
Then he thought, what do I do? Well, obviously he had to tell someone; the sergeant, the officer, there’s a man dead over here, what should I do? He hauled himself up on to his knees and looked round: in front, to the sides, over his shoulder. At which point, he noticed it.
First he thought, how the hell did that get there? It took a moment for his mind to clear; an arrow, or rather the foreshaft of an arrow, the rest of it had broken off, sticking out of his shoulder: impossible. For a start, it should be hurting like hell. Then he remembered the man who’d blundered into him, but whom he hadn’t seen. Not a man after all. It had felt just like a shove at the time (but then, he told himself gravely, I’ve never been shot before, so how should I know?).
Like someone who’d fallen asleep on the job and been found out, the pain suddenly started and made up for lost time. He heard a whimper and realised it was him, but somehow it didn’t seem like it was actually happening, though the pain was real enough. I’ve been shot with an arrow, he had to tell himself. Men were bustling past him all the time, and there was a lot of shouting now. I’ve been shot, he repeated; and then he thought, well, look on the bright side, it definitely means I’m excused duty. I can go back to the boat, and…
He remembered he’d left his helmet on the boat. Bloody fool, he thought; and his entire head started to itch, as he thought, there’s arrows flying about all over the place and I haven’t got my helmet. Fuck that, I could get killed…
(Yes, he realised suddenly. Of course he’d thought about that before, but never actually believed it. Now full, paralysing belief dropped down on him, like a bag over his head. I could die here, he thought; and he felt piss run down his leg.)
Excused duty; back to the fucking boat. He tried to turn round, but while he’d been standing still he’d sunk deeper into the mud than he’d realised, and now he couldn’t move. Panic; he wrenched his foot up, felt it slide out of the boot, the hell with the stupid boot. He felt the mud squelch up through his bare toes. Just get back to the boat and everything will be fine.
A man was yelling at him, “Where do you think you’re—?” but he didn’t finish the question because he died. An arrow hit him in the face, his cheek, just under his eye. His expression didn’t change, he just fell over. Linniu tried to run, but the mud was hands grabbing his ankles. He lost his other boot, which made the next few steps easier, but then he slipped and went down on his face. As soon as he landed he was scrabbling to get up again; he felt the arrowhead move inside him, the strangest sensation. He managed a few more steps, then something broke or failed. All his strength drained out of him and he was suddenly too weary to move. His legs gave way and he was kneeling in the mud. Any sort of movement was too much effort. Even the fear was gone. Nothing mattered.
(He thought about long-netting; how when you’ve walked up the line with the lanterns to drive the rabbits into the net, sometimes you find one that hasn’t bolted but just sits there, frozen, until you grab its legs and it starts kicking like crazy till you pull its neck. Just sits there.)
At some point, he heard and felt a great thump. It came through the air and up through the mud at the same time. He had no idea what it was, but it made the firelight flicker.
Then it was as though he’d woken up (he thought, I can’t possibly have fallen asleep, but I definitely wasn’t here for a while), and there was a man standing a few yards away. Of course, he thought; it’s all right. I’m not alone, there’s other people here, someone will help me. He’d forgotten about help, because all through his strange and terrible experiences it was as though he was completely alone, the only man in the world. But that was just panic. All he had to do was call out, and the man would pull him out of the mud and help him to the barge, and then all his troubles would be over.
The man turned his head, and Linniu breathed in to shout. But there was something wrong about the man. He wasn’t an archer. He was wearing armour and holding a blade on a pole, something like a long-handled billhook but with a spike on the front. There hadn’t been anybody like that at Sicrypha or Doulichar. He wondered who on earth it could be, and then the answer came. The enemy.
He mustn’t see me. If he sees me, he’ll kill me. He felt an urge to flop down into the mud, lie flat; but that’d mean moving, and maybe, just possibly, the enemy hadn’t noticed him yet. Movement got you noticed. He kept perfectly still and held his breath.
(The enemy; not something he’d given any thought to. In his mind, they’d been targets, concentric rings of colour with a yellow centre, things that only existed to be shot at; definitely not people, because the one thing you’re taught before you get your first bow is, don’t point it at anyone. The enemy. The same word, of course, for one man or the whole lot of them, a million savages, they reckoned. Perhaps it was just the confusion inherent in the word, but as he looked at the man with the billhook, there didn’t seem to be any difference. He was one man, but he was also all of them: the enemy. The slightest movement, and the enemy will see me.)
The man seemed terribly calm. He was turning his head slowly as though looking for something in particular – me, Linniu thought; he knows I’m here somewhere and he’s looking for me – taking his time, unafraid, a man who knew what he was doing. Then, after a very long time, he started to walk, leaning forward to break the suction of the mud around his boots. After a few steps he raised his arm and called out, then carried on, moving steadily away.
Relief made Linniu’s head swim. The enemy had been there, but hadn’t seen him; and while that had been going on, he’d had a chance to rest. He felt a little stronger, and he’d realised that not getting killed did matter, after all. And all he had to do was get back to the boat.
He looked round, trying to make out its shape, and realised that there was light behind him now – that was how he’d been able to see the enemy – as well as in front. Helpful. Maybe he could see the boat from here. Then it occurred to him that the light was coming from where the boat should be.
The light was the boat. Burning.
And where was everybody, anyway? Suddenly he realised there weren’t many people about, which didn’t make any sense. He looked at the few he could see. They were the enemy, too.
Oh, he thought.
As soon as he realised what had happened, he accepted it. His side, everybody except him, must all be dead; the battle’s over, we’ve lost, everybody’s been killed except me. The explanation was so very easy to believe. It slipped down into his mind without the faintest hint
of a struggle, and the only question was, what’s going to happen next? He felt quite detached about it, though there was a certain degree of general apprehension. Will they kill me here, or has something else got to happen first? He was prepared to accept it, but it bothered him that he didn’t know the procedure.
There had been more than one boat. He hadn’t been aware of that before. Somehow, he’d assumed that his barge was the only one, but there were five sources of glowing orange light in the direction of the river. He tried to work out how many men had been on the barge with him: forty, fifty? As many as two hundred and fifty men, then; they couldn’t all be dead, could they (apart from him, of course), in such a short space of time? Everything changed, of course; each day on the farm was a slight turn of the wheel, one degree in three hundred and sixty-five. But so much change, so quickly. Then he thought about early summer, when it was time to kill the surplus cock-birds out of the spring hatching. It was always a morning’s solid work, forty, forty-five necks to pull, each one a sombre repetition of the last sad panic and desperate, pointless flapping of wings. When it was done, you noticed the change. Stillness in the runs where there’d been movement, silence where there’d been sound. He thought about it some more. It was a job he neither liked nor hated. The grab-jerk-twist was fluent, second nature to him after ten years. He thought of the birds in his hands. They’d crouch still as he held them, wings clamped against the body, their eyes very wide open, until he started the procedure. Then there’d be the panic, every last scrap of the bird’s strength applied pointlessly against him, because he was so much bigger and stronger, and that was all there was to it. The struggle did no good. In fact, it was counterproductive; death would come even quicker and easier if they didn’t try and thrash about, though it made very little difference, usually. He wondered if he’d struggle when the moment came, and assumed he would. Instinct, after all.