The Regiment-A Trilogy

by John Dalmas

  He would have missed the close combat drills, because the jokanru ground was on the far side of camp. But an off-duty Smoleni had strolled up beside him, and the two of them carried on an intermittent conversation while they watched the gymnastics.

  "Somethin', ain't it?" the Smoleni said.

  "Yup. Sure is."

  "You ever watch 'em practice fightin'?"

  "What d'ya mean?"

  "You know." The man stepped around as if in some dance, moving his arms. "Hand to hand."

  Kro frowned at the exhibition. "Nope, never did. Where do they do that?"

  The man pointed. "Round t' the far side." So after another three or four minutes, Kro trotted over there. Several pre-teen Smoleni boys were already watching. These drills were even more interesting to Kro than the gymnastics had been, and he began to grasp a concept he'd never known before; the concept of personal development technologies. The platoon he watched was sparring, the men matched off in pairs. One played the role of a man who had a knife but lacked jokanru. He'd attack using some technique, and his "victim" would counter and "destroy" him. Then they changed roles. These encounters were brief, over in a moment, but Kro's warrior eye, evaluating, saw how truly powerful the techniques were. Then they faced off as two jokanru opponents. Some of these bouts lasted as long as fifteen seconds, and were even more impressive. He saw the techniques here as for use between men who were more or less equals. Then the troopers grouped in threes, two as canny fighters lacking jokanru; the one would subdue the two. Kro recognized that such skills could only have grown from true talent drilled at length.

  Finally that platoon moved on to other activities, another platoon replacing them. They started with stretching, even though they'd just come from the gymnastics area. Men stood on one booted foot, with the other leg out straight, foot at shoulder height, reaching out with their hands to pull back on their toes, stretching the Achilles tendon. After two or three minutes of stretching, they began their forms, as flowing and rhythmic and graceful as ballet, but moving ever faster. Watching them almost hypnotized Kro; this, he realized, was the basis of the fighting skills he'd just seen.

  He watched the platoon through a full twenty-minute cycle, then hiked thoughtfully back toward Burnt Woods. If they develop such skill in hand-to-hand fighting, he told himself, they no doubt do as well with their weapons. To kill their commander, it seemed to him now, might best take an indirect approach. Perhaps he needed to get hold of a rifle, and a sniper scope if the Smoleni had them. Make his strike from a distance, then disappear into the forest. It was not an approach he cared for.

  * * *

  Meanwhile he needed to find a home, a unit to live with. After getting directions, he went to the Smoleni army camp south of the village, and presented himself to the personnel officer. The captain there frowned at Kro's coarse-stubbled face, and at the dirt ingrained in clothes and skin. The captured Smoleni uniform Kro wore had sergeant's insignia on the sleeves, and the unit emblem of a regiment from the Eel River-Welvarn District.

  "Where have you been, Sergeant?"

  Kro had had days to concoct a story, should he ever need one, and he knew enough about the fighting in the south, that spring, to make the story sound real. He'd been in the Eagle Regiment, he said, an outfit that had fought long and hard to hold the coast, and been pretty much shot to pieces. When his company was overrun, he'd hidden in a culvert. After that he'd picked his way west and north through occupied territory, traveling by night and hiding by day. Civilians had given him food, and at times had hidden him. Finally he'd reached the Free Lands, and made better time. Now he was here, reporting for assignment.

  The captain bought it all. And looking beneath the unsoldierly appearance, he recognized Kro's strength and presence. There'd been an attempted assassination of President Lanks, two nights earlier, he said. Since then, 3rd Battalion had been scouring the woods for Komarsi infiltrators, and lost several men in shoot-outs. They'd be glad to have a seasoned replacement.

  Gulthar Kro had a home.

  35

  Varky Graymar was trotting. He'd had hard country to cross, mountainous part of the time, and been living off the land, so when the terrain permitted, he went for speed. The sooner he delivered the letter he carried, the better.

  He knew he was near settlement. Not only had the forest been logged through; the unmerchantable tops of fallen trees had been hauled away for fuelwood. Just now he ran along a narrow sleigh road.

  He heard a gunshot some distance off, followed immediately by screams, almost certainly by women. He veered off, moving quietly. Shortly he heard men laughing. Ugly laughter. He slowed to a walk, his senses turned full on, Fingas Kelromak's pistol in his hand.

  One thing he would not do was endanger the mission Kelromak had given him—to deliver the letter to Romlar. But he'd take a look.

  He glimpsed movement ahead through the trees and undergrowth, lowered himself to hands and knees and crept to where he could see. Several happa trees lay freshly felled, and large baskets stood near. There were two men there. And two—three women. Two they'd bound, and seemed to have gagged. One of the men was holding the third, while the other raped her. He saw two army packs with guns lying on them, submachine guns.

  Varky scanned the vicinity and saw no sign of any other men. It seemed highly unlikely that there were any; they'd be with the two. He crept forward on his elbows, pistol in his right hand, belly on the needle mat, pushing with knees and feet. The rapists seemed to be soldiers, perhaps Smoleni. He'd give them a chance to surrender.

  At eighty feet he rose, pistol leveled with both hands. "On your feet," he shouted, "hands in the air."

  He didn't expect compliance, and wasn't surprised at what happened. The man doing the holding half rose and dove for a gun. Varky's shot burst into the soldier's temple and blew half his forehead away. The other man pushed away and turned in a crouch.

  "Hands in the air!" Varky repeated, and this one too dove for a gun. A bullet burst his upper mandible from the front, and destroyed the second and third cervical vertebrae. The woman who'd been on her back sat up staring, her face a smear of blood from someone's fist. Varky had crouched again, following the second shot, and scanned around, listening intently. He spied a fourth woman then, surely dead. After a moment he trotted over to the women who were tied, and with his knife cut them free. The cords they'd been bound with had cut deeply. They too were bloody-faced, and more or less in shock. One had lost her front teeth; the other, luckier, had had her nose broken. It took a moment before either got up. Then the one with the bloody mouth rolled to her knees, got up, and with a cry ran to the one who'd been raped. They clasped each other and wept. They were young, Varky realized, hardly more than girls.

  He went to the two army packs and scouted the contents, found the mapbooks and suspected what they meant.

  Then he waited, letting the women help each other, not questioning them. For whatever reason, they'd been peeling the bark from happa trees. Apparently the two men, seemingly Komarsi infiltrators, had heard them.

  He relaxed, and undertook to commune with the spirits of the three dead. He could sense them in the vicinity of their bodies, but at first none of the three acknowledged him. They were too deeply in shock.

  Then the spirit of the woman responded, and he perceived through her what had happened. They'd been collecting bark for bark flour, only a mile or so from home, when they'd been attacked. She was older, an aunt. When she'd tried to stand the two men off with an axe, they'd gut-shot her. She might have lived, but the bullet had cut a major artery, and she'd bled to death internally.

  She gave her attention to the surviving women then, but they weren't aware of her, and after another minute she left. Varky didn't notice when the spirits of the two men left. They'd been there, then were gone.

  The girl with the broken teeth helped the naked girl put on her cut and torn clothing, and when they were done, they all started home. None of them said a word to Varky till they stopped a
t a creek to wash the blood off. Then the girl with the broken nose came over to him. The blow had caused her eyes to swell; she peered through slits now. She told him essentially what the dead woman had shown him. She also said that the men weren't Smoleni, she'd known that at once from their speech. "Komarsi," she said. "They'd got to be Komarsi."

  They passed the first farm, going on to the one the two sisters were from. The people there had heard the shots, but occasional gunshots weren't alarming in the backcountry.

  At the farm the girls were from, Varky was an instant hero, the man who, with a pistol, had shot two Komarsi soldiers armed with submachine guns. And saved the girls' lives, there was little doubt.

  They questioned him more from curiosity than any demand to know. He sounded Smoleni, but his work clothes weren't those of a woodsman, and his accent wasn't quite what they were used to. He told them a version of the truth: that he was one of the Iryalan mercenaries, "the white T'swa." He'd been spying in Komars, and was returning to Burnt Woods when he heard the shot and investigated.

  * * *

  Varky would not have to run the last thirty-four miles to Burnt Woods. After they fed him, they put him on a horse, and two men rode with him, rifles across their horses' withers, in case they ran into any more infiltrators.

  36

  The Smoleni platoon sergeant dismissed his men to wash up for supper, and went to his lieutenant. "Lieutenant, you know the new man? Kro? I had 'em all to the range, shootin' at jump-up targets, and that son of a gun shot a perfect score. Tough-lookin' cuss, too, but he seems to get along all right. Just don't talk much. And gettin' here like he did, all those miles through Komarsi territory . . ."

  "So?"

  "Him already havin' sergeant's stripes, I heard the cap'n say he was gonna make a squad leader out of him, if he worked in all right. But seems to me he might better be transferred to one of the ranger units the mercs are trainin'. They're trainin' up officers from scratch, in the ways they do things, and from the way Kro acts, and what little he says, seems like he'd make a good one. Appears to be smart, and he's the kind that, if he told me somethin', I'd pay attention. A born leader's what he is."

  The lieutenant shook his head. "If he's that good, I'd hate to lose him. And we're short now; two men killed moppin' up infiltrators, and already seven gone to the mercs for trainin'."

  The sergeant nodded. "But we're gonna lose him anyways. We don't need a squad leader. He'll get assigned to some other platoon; maybe even some other company."

  The lieutenant looked at that for a few seconds, turning it over in his mind. "Mm-m. I'll talk to the captain about it. If he's willin', I suppose that might be best. If this Kro is that good, that's prob'ly where he oughta be."

  37

  Romlar had read Fingas Kelromak's letter and carried it personally to President Lanks. Lanks had read it, gone over it with Elyas Fossur, then radioed Romlar's headquarters: He wanted him to attend a War Council meeting in the morning, and he wanted Corporal Graymar there to describe personally what had happened.

  Scrubbed, shaved, and wearing a clean field uniform, Varky described his experience briefly to the council. Then the president spoke. "I'll read the letter to you," he said, and adjusting his half-moon spectacles, he began. After brief self-identification, Kelromak had written that a large part of the Komarsi public—perhaps a majority—were badly disillusioned with the war, and that numerous persons of economic and political influence even said as much. But not publicly; their discontent was not strong enough to make them so bold.

  And if the wealthy were unhappy with the war, the laboring classes would be at least equally unhappy, for they were particularly hurt by the shortages and currency inflation of war time. Thus there seemed to be a potential for civil disorders that could well bring agitation by the nobility and merchants to end the war.

  After that, the letter included pages cut from a Reform Party journal, reviewing the class of freedmen. Serfs were bound by law to the estate they were born on, and under ordinary circumstances were not accepted by the armed forces. But commonly during war and the preparations for war, they were, and satisfactory completion of their military service gained for them the status of freedmen.

  Some newly freed serfs found employment quickly enough, and became part of the general commons, more or less, though there tended to be a lingering prejudice against them. Most however, gathered in shanty settlements at the edges of the larger towns, where they provided a body of casual labor, and made a more or less precarious living. The movement of shanty-towners into the population of general commoners was slow, and in general they were chronically discontented.

  The freedmen also provided most of the subclass called "drifters," men who drifted about the country doing casual labor wherever they could find it. Shanty-towners and drifters contributed much, and probably most, of the crime in Komars.

  Following the cutout pages, Kelromak suggested an action; the raiders who'd struck targets in and around Linnasteth had proven themselves resourceful men who could pass for Komarsi. Judging by the courier, they were also bold, physically impressive, and had presence—the sort of men who could become dominant in harvest crews, which consisted mostly of drifters. And Kelromak believed that, properly incited and led, the freedmen could be brought to disorders, even insurrections here and there. Which might be as effective as an army in bringing the war to an end with Smolen surviving.

  His final item was quite different. And troublesome. It was rumored, he said, that Engwar had sent an agent to The Archipelago to contract for a pair of T'swa regiments. He considered the source reliable.

  * * *

  When the president had finished reading, the room was quiet for long seconds. Then Vestur Marlim had a question for Varky Graymar: "What do you think of this Lord Kelromak?"

  "I trust him. And the people who work for him like and respect him. Also, he was injured during our hit on the War Ministry, so apparently he has business with them."

  Fossur spoke then. "Kelromak's a leader of the Reform Party. His father was Marn Kelromak, who led the party till he got so radical he frightened them—worried them at least—and they elected someone else to the job. The family has a history of reformist causes."

  The president looked thoughtfully at the tabletop, then across at Varky. "And he gave you his pistol. Did you have the slightest urge to shoot him?"

  Varky looked surprised at the question. "None whatever, Mr. President."

  "Any discomfort at being given the gun?"

  "No, sir. I wasn't even surprised at it, though I hadn't foreseen the possibility."

  Lanks looked at his council. "It is my observation that our mercenaries are unusually perceptive. I give Corporal Graymar's impressions more than a little weight."

  Belser looked at Fossur and spoke. "Elyas, have your agents picked up anything about a T'swa contract?"

  Fossur shook his head. "Not a hint of it. All we have is this letter."

  "Perhaps it's not true then."

  "Possibly not. But given Komarsi wealth and Engwar's pride, and their recent embarrassments, I rather suspect it is."

  Heber Lanks spoke then: "Colonel Romlar, do you have any comments?"

  "Yes. Regarding the T'swa: They won't send him two regiments, unless they're greatly reduced regiments, somewhat smaller than mine. It's lodge policy. And considering scheduled graduations, they're very unlikely to get a new and unreduced regiment. In fact, they may very well have to wait a bit for any at all. What they can expect is a short regiment—at least somewhat short."

  Belser interrupted. "Colonel," he said slowly, "could you defeat a T'swa regiment?"

  Romlar leaned back and folded thick arms over a thick chest. "One not much larger than mine—maybe. Note that I didn't say probably. I also consider the reverse to be true: they could quite possibly defeat us. But I don't consider that the key issue here. They can play a more important role by attacking you, and I have little doubt they'll tell Engwar that. Just as I can make the great
est difference by attacking the Komarsi.

  "Regarding their importance to this war: They are very good, very dangerous. But their advantage over you is less than our advantage over the Komarsi." Romlar paused, looking the room over, and repeated himself before elaborating. "You have many troops well suited to traveling and maneuvering in the forest, troops who respond quickly to situations. They're not likely to panic or freeze if surprised. All in all, they're a lot better suited to fighting the T'swa than the Komarsi are to fighting my men. This is particularly true of the units we're training now, the ranger units. They're not equal to the T'swa, not at all. But the T'swa will find them dangerous opponents, opponents to tell stories about in their old age—those few who live to old age.

  "The T'swa can't destroy you by fighting us. They can only destroy you by fighting you. And we cannot defeat Komars by fighting the T'swa, but we can strike the Komarsi and hurt them deeply."

  It was Belser again who questioned. "Then you don't expect to fight the T'swa?"

  "I don't expect to seek out the T'swa. Nor do I expect them to seek us out. But will we fight each other? I have no doubt of it. Circumstances will see to that. We'll meet; sooner or later we'll meet. And then we'll fight."

  He leaned forward now, resting his elbows on the table. "We haven't talked about Kelromak's suggestions yet. If Colonel Fossur thinks they might be worthwhile, we need to act, to get agitators into Komars before harvest."

  * * *

  The meeting went on to other matters then. When it ended, Heber Lanks watched thoughtfully as the others left. His mind was on the comment he'd made after listening to Corporal Graymar: that the mercenaries seemed exceptionally perceptive.

  No doubt it was that perceptivity, as much as their fighting skills, that made them so effective—enabled them to do what they had. It would be useful in battle and in planning. And Colonel Romlar—so often when he thought of him, it was with the shadow label "the boy colonel"—Colonel Romlar undoubtedly brought that perceptivity to the War Council.