The Regiment-A Trilogy

by John Dalmas

  He turned his back on them and speeded up, trotting briskly. After a few minutes, Jerym's legs were tiring badly. He wasn't used to running any distance. His lungs labored to get enough oxygen; his breath rasped in his throat. A few guys had slowed to a walk, falling back or peeling off to the sides. Dao did not ease up. The column, strung out a bit now, turned off on a lesser road, and it seemed to Jerym that they may have slowed, just a little.

  But not enough. Soon his legs seemed too heavy to run farther. His strides slowed. He turned aside, one of the outer ranks breaking to let him through, and he stopped beside the road, bent forward, hands on thighs, mouth gaping as he gasped for breath. The truck pulled past, paused, and a T'swi reached out to him. Jerym reached back. The T'swi clamped onto his wrist and hoisted him onto the truck. The man's hand startled Jerym: The palm felt tough as a boot sole.

  There were a dozen or so other recruits on board ahead of him; in the darkness Jerym couldn't make out who. He remembered Dao saying that those who didn't keep up would be dealt with, but just now he didn't care. He was sure he couldn't have run another step.

  A minute later he decided he'd quit too early: Dao had slowed the platoon to a walk. Jerym moved to climb down, but the T'swi gripped his arm. "Stay," the T'swi said, and Jerym stayed. They followed the platoon, and three or four minutes later it began to jog again, but more slowly now, without any more dropouts. Twelve minutes more of jogging brought it back into the compound, headed toward the messhall, but the truck swung away with its cargo of stragglers and went to a shed.

  "Everyone off," said the T'swi, and Jerym climbed down with the others, sure that he wasn't going to like what happened next, wishing fervently he'd hung on for another minute, out there in the woods. He could have, he thought, for one more minute or maybe even two.

  The truck drove away.

  A light came on in the shed, and two T'swa herded him and the others inside. Jerym saw that Esenrok was there. Stacked on the floor were crude packs, bulky and shapeless, simple sacks sewn shut at the top and strapped to a pack frame. "Each of you put one on," a T'swi ordered. "Help each other if you need to."

  Jerym grabbed one and lifted. Heavy! As he struggled into the straps, he decided the bag was full of sand. "All right, outside!" the T'swi ordered, and fifteen recruits left the shed. The two T'swa had them form ranks and checked their packs, adjusting straps as needed. Then they began marching. They passed the messhall, lit up now; Jerym wanted to go over and see what was happening inside. Then they were through the gate again. It's better than running, he told himself, but it didn't reassure him.

  His mouth had swollen where he'd gotten hit in the brawl, and he was pretty sure his split lip was going to canker if he didn't get some powder for it.

  * * *

  Pitter Mellis was tired and hungry, and worse than either, he had to admit he was lost.

  He'd hung around another barracks, another platoon, talking with the guys there, until a bell rang, brief but loud, shocking in its unexpectedness. Then a T'swi had called in that it was time to eat. Mellis had thought about going to the messhall with those guys, but was afraid that if he did, he'd be caught. So he'd hung out in the latrine. It had seemed a safe place. If anyone looked in on him, he'd say he had diarrhea.

  But if he was still there when the guys who lived there came back from supper, it would look peculiar. So he'd watched out the window till he saw guys start to come out of the messhall. Then he'd left the barracks; it was getting somewhat dark.

  He'd already noticed where the gate was, and that a guard was posted there, so he'd gone to the far side of the compound, scaled the eight-foot fence, and jumped off. His ankle turned when he'd landed, and at first it worried him, but it walked off in half a minute and didn't bother him anymore. To avoid getting lost, he'd circled the compound on the outside till he'd come to the side with the gate, then angled to hit the road that came out of it.

  He'd begun to feel unsure of himself. Maybe he ought to go back in; it might be a long way to anywhere, and he was getting hungry. On the other hand, it might only be a few miles, and he'd told the guys in his barracks that he was leaving. What would they think of him if he came dragging back in, saying he was hungry?

  So he'd started down the road. By then it was crowding full night, and moonless; soon he couldn't see much. Then, after a bit, there'd been light, like a distant floodlight, paling the tree crowns where they overhung the edges of the narrow roadway, and he'd heard a sound behind him like running feet. Startled, puzzled, he'd left the road, scuttling back into the woods where it was really dark. He'd gone sixty or eighty feet, groping in blackness, hands in front of his face to protect his eyes from brush. Once he'd stumbled and fallen. Then he turned and watched, but couldn't see enough to tell him much. Running men passed with a tramping of boots, followed by a floodlight on what seemed to be a truck. When they were past, he groped his way back to the road and went on.

  Occasionally it curved. Several times there'd been crossroads, forks, junctions, with signs, but he'd had no way to read them. Finally the road had come to a large meadow and appeared to stop there. It had seemed to him, though, that it must continue on the other side, that it was simply too dark to recognize a grass road on a meadow. So doggedly he'd started across. If he didn't find where the road went into the woods on the other side, he'd told himself, he'd just follow the edge of the meadow back to where he'd entered it.

  But it was hilly there, humpy rolling country, and the meadow seemed to go on quite a distance. Seeren, the major moon, had come up more than half full, making it easier not to stumble, but it didn't show him any sign of the road. The meadow had bent right, then pinched out, and when he'd tried to backtrack, it had pinched out that way too, ending at a marsh. Anxiety spasmed. How could that be? he asked himself. He'd backtracked still again, and again it had pinched out, where it had pinched out the first time, he suspected.

  He stood confused and defeated, utterly forlorn. Finally he decided to lay down and sleep till daylight. By daylight things would look different, he told himself, and he'd find his way out of there.

  He'd never tried to sleep on the ground before. It was lumpy and hard and cold. He wondered if he could sleep. Lying there, he was soon shivering, and after awhile wondered if it would get cold enough to freeze to death.

  "S-s-s-st!"

  He sat up, staring in the direction of the sound.

  "Recruit!"

  It was a T'swa voice, deep and furry. Shit! he thought, how could that be?

  "It's time to go back. On your feet, recruit!"

  Mellis got up. I would have been all right here, he told himself now. And gotten unlost in the morning. But he didn't try to run. He was too tired and too hungry, and mostly he was glad to be found. The T'swi led off as if he knew just where he was going, and it occurred to Mellis that the man must have followed him all the way from the compound, letting him go, letting him get lost.

  * * *

  Jerym didn't know how far they'd hiked. Walked and occasionally jogged with forty pounds of sand on their backs, following close behind a T'swi and followed by two others. He remembered reading that T'swa could see like cats in the dark. Their eyes were big enough, that was certain.

  They climbed one long steep hill that he thought must be the highest around there. His legs felt utterly exhausted by the time they reached the top, and he heard someone call out, "I name you Drag-Ass Hill." Somehow Jerym knew they'd climb Drag-Ass Hill many times before they left this place.

  It seemed to him they'd been on the road for at least a couple of hours. His shoulders were sore from the packstraps. Seeren had come up, and her light made it easier to see.

  "Fuck this shit!" a loud voice said up front, and someone stepped out of ranks onto the roadside. Jerym recognized the voice. It belonged to a guy named Romlar, a big, heavy, round-faced kid.

  "Here. Give me the pack." That was a T'swa voice. Then Jerym was past them. A minute later, Romlar caught up, packless. Five minutes later
they came into the open, the moonlight unscreened by trees. The gate was just ahead. Somehow they'd circled; there must be a network of roads in the woods, Jerym decided, and the T'swa knew them.

  He wondered what would happen to Romlar.

  They walked to the shed and got rid of their packs. A T'swi told Romlar to come with him, and the two of them left. One of the other T'swa took the rest of them to the messhall. Inside, a single panel glowed in the ceiling, and there was a big electric urn, its red light bright, with cups stacked by it upside down.

  "Hot thocal," said the T'swi. "It will help you sleep."

  The only thing I need to sleep is my bunk, Jerym thought. The hot cup hurt his split lip. The thocal tasted good though; good enough that he had a second cup. Unless he lay on his stomach, even his sore mouth wouldn't keep him awake, he was sure of it.

  He wondered what was happening to Romlar. It didn't seem like a good idea to quit on something the T'swa gave you to do.

  5

  Jerym woke up needing to go to the latrine, badly, and groaning softly, got out of bed. It was the two cups of thocal, he told himself. The wall clock glowed at him: 0320. His legs were stiff and sore, enough that he limped.

  Mellis was there, on a commode, slumped with his head in his hands. He wasn't doing anything, just sitting there, his pants up.

  "Anything the matter?" Jerym murmured.

  The head raised, shook a negative.

  Jerym went over to the long, trough-like urinal, thinking that Mellis looked as worn out as he'd been himself, four hours earlier. When he was done, Mellis was still sitting there, his head in his cupped hands again.

  "Where've you been?" Jerym asked.

  Briefly Mellis told him. "And now I'm so damn hungry!" He almost keened it. "I haven't eaten since before we got on the floater, back in Farningum, and the damn T'swi made me run half the way back. And then, when we got back, he gave me a shovel and told me to dig a hole. Six feet long, six feet wide, and six feet deep! I'd have told him to go fuck himself, but I was afraid what he might do."

  He looked up at Jerym. "I found out. There was another guy there from our platoon, a big guy, already digging. Real slow. The guard called him 'Romlar,' and when Romlar got his hole about ass deep, he quit."

  Mellis shook his head, remembering. "There's some posts there, with chains on them, and the T'swi said, all right, come here. And started to chain him to a post. So Romlar started to fight him."

  Jerym listened, engrossed.

  "The T'swi never hit him or anything," Mellis went on, "just kind of grappled him around, and the next thing I knew, Romlar was laying there chained to the post, all curled up, swearing and crying. Actually crying! My eyes must have been as big as a T'swi's. The T'swi told him to let him know when he was ready to start digging." Mellis shook his head. "He said it as friendly as could be, even after Romlar had been calling him all kinds of things and trying to punch him.

  "It took me quite a while before I got my hole dug, and when I was done, the T'swi pulled me out and had me fill it back up again. That's all; just dig it and fill it back up. Romlar was sitting up with his arms wrapped around himself, and I could hear his teeth clattering. It must be close to freezing out there now. The T'swi brought me here, and then I suppose he went back to Romlar."

  Amber's balls! Jerym thought. They're ruthless! "You ought to go to bed," he said. "No telling what they'll have us doing in the morning."

  Mellis nodded and Jerym gave him a hand, hoisting him to his feet. At Mellis's bunk, the younger boy asked for a boost. He had an upper bunk, and said he was so tired, he didn't think he could make it himself. Then he peeled out of his pants and shirt, and Jerym helped him climb up. After that, Jerym went to his own bed and lay awake for several minutes, thinking about his night and Mellis's, before falling asleep again.

  * * *

  He woke up to wild ringing that jerked him to his feet. There were groans and scattered curses as guys got up. Or pulled their covers up, trying to drown out the noise. A door opened, and a T'swi yelled in that they had three minutes to get dressed and outside.

  The clock above the door read 0600.

  Three minutes didn't even give a guy time to go piss! Jerym grabbed his shirt from the floor where he'd dropped it, and put it on, then his pants, his socks, his boots. Six-oh-two. That's when he noticed Romlar still in bed, asleep, face dirty, mouth open. The arm that was out of the covers showed he hadn't taken off his shirt. A booted foot stuck out too. Carrmak walked over, grabbed the bed by an edge, and dumped Romlar out.

  "Hey! Fat boy!" he called. "Rise and shine! You've got about one minute to get up and outside."

  Romlar lay on the floor, half wrapped in sheet and blanket, not moving. Spittle had dried at the corners of his mouth. A sort of half snore, half snort, came from it.

  Tunis! Jerym thought. What he doesn't need is to get in more trouble. "Let's help him," he said to Carrmak. Carrmak grinned and nodded. Together they hoisted Romlar up, and half walking him, half dragging him, took him out between them for morning muster.

  6

  The morning was not the physical ordeal Jerym had half expected. After reveille, they'd had almost half an hour to use the latrine, clean up, and make their beds before breakfast. They had another half hour to eat; after that they waited by their beds.

  Then a T'swa corporal had them pull their bedding off and showed them how to make a bed in the military manner. After making their beds several times to train in the proper technique, they went to the drill field and learned to salute and do left, right, and about face; then practiced standing at ease, attention, and parade rest. After that they learned to march, both in close-order drill and on the road. Sergeant Dao told them that in this regiment, saluting and close-order marching would not often be done—they were primarily for ceremony—but they needed to do them well.

  T'swa cadre, in platoon formation, gave a demonstration to show how close-order drill looked—sharp and precise—and that warriors didn't consider it beneath them.

  They drilled these things till noon under the unrelenting eyes of T'swa, then ate dinner.

  They were gone when the transports brought in the rest of the recruits. The T'swa had taken them out on a road march, nothing particularly strenuous—no running, no packs—a brisk three-hour hike on roads of grass, through the forests and meadows and smells of near-autumn. It wasn't at all bad, and much of the stiffness in Jerym's thighs wore off. The only ones in the second platoon who had difficulties that day were Mellis and Romlar, especially Romlar. Both kept falling asleep on break, and of course had to wake up brief minutes later.

  That evening they watched recordings in the company messhall, of army and T'swa and "Birds," in the Kettle War. The real stuff. Dirt flew, and pieces of trees, and guys got killed—even blown up! Jerym got a nervous stomach watching, from pure excitement. Most of the best of it, Captain Gotasu told them, had been recorded by an Iryalan who'd been with the T'swa, a guy named Varlik Lormagen who'd been called the White T'swi.

  "You," Captain Gotasu said—Gotasu was their company commander—"will be the new White T'swa. When we have finished training you. It will be harder for you than it was for us, because we began at age six or seven, and learned and trained for almost twelve standard years before we went to war. But we will help you. We will help you find out that you can do far more than most people would believe possible. We will push you nearly to your limits—sometimes you may think we've pushed you beyond them—and you, and we, will watch those limits grow."

  He paused. "And when you have completed your training, you will know, and we will know, that you are warriors to be proud of."

  When Gotasu finished, there was silence, but every recruit in the company had been affected by what he'd said. He dismissed them, and they returned to their barracks with only time to get ready for bed before lights out. There was no horseplay; lights out meant quiet. And they'd been warned that the next day would see their training begin in earnest. Orientation was over
.

  7

  The young chauffeur opened the door for Lord Kristal, who got out easily despite his eighty-one years.

  The Durslan estate at Lake Loreen was one of Kristal's favorite places, although he got there infrequently. And this was one of its pleasantest aspects—mellowed by late afternoon sunlight slanting soft through trees and autumn haze. The changes since he'd arrived there as a pupil, seventy-five years earlier, had been modest and graceful.

  The greatest change was an addition. Despite some architectural innovations, the new building, the Research Building, might almost have stood there as long as the others, for generations, fitted as it was among great peioks that shaded the lawns and had begun to spill bronze leaves across them.

  It was the Research Building where his interest lay today, but the limousine had delivered him to the Main Building. He took this for granted. Even among the alumni, even—especially—for a representative of the Crown, there was protocol to observe. But it was simple, common courtesy really, and with friends a pleasure. He went up the steps to the veranda, where Laira Gouer Lormagen waited, with Kusu, to greet him.

  When she'd embraced her guest, she took his hand and stepped back. "Emry," she said, "I'm the only Gouer family representative here today, the only one who hasn't flown off to Durslan Hall to help prepare for Harvest Festival. But it's my husband's research you've come to see"—she half turned and put her hand on Kusu's sleeve—"so I'll wait till dinner to claim you for a talk, if your schedule permits dinner with us."

  She left them then—she'd seen the test already; it wasn't pleasant—and the two men walked the winding, eighty-yard sidewalk to the research building, exchanging pleasantries. Kristal knew in general terms what the test had shown, but he wanted to see for himself. In the actual presence of an event, a useful cognition might be triggered, if not then, perhaps later. Especially in someone of his training and experience. And a relevant cognition was needed here. Although he was at Service instead of Wisdom/Knowledge, over the years he'd shown occasional flashes of exceptional perceptivity.