The Regiment-A Trilogy

by John Dalmas

  Viskon regarded him thoughtfully. It sounded reasonable. "That makes four men killed in the unit inside a week. You seem like an intelligent man, Makoor. What do you think is wrong?"

  A slight smile curved Carrmak's mouth before he answered. "Colonel, a dozen or so of 'em are flat crazy, and some of the rest ayn't much better. Put 'em all together and you've got trouble."

  "Hmm. What would you do about that? If it were up to you."

  "Me? I'd cull the outfit. Keep maybe a dozen and a half. That's abawt how many's worth it."

  "Interesting. Are you one we should keep?"

  Carrmak definitely smiled then. "I think so."

  "Given the list of charges against you, when you were brought here, I'd have said you were a violent psychotic. A troublemaker at the very least."

  Carrmak pursed his lips thoughtfully. "At most farms I was their best worker. Where the food and the treatment was even halfway decent. At this one place though— After a few days there, we were all of us like gunpowder. And when the foreman hit this old gaffer in the face with his stick, that was it for me. It was like the gaffer was my dad again."

  "Umm. I suppose you read and write?"

  "Yessir."

  "Sit down and make me a list of who you'd keep and who you'd let go."

  Viskon shoved tablet and pen across his desk. Carrmak sat and wrote. When he was done, Viskon looked the sheet over and almost marveled. The man had not only made the lists; he'd done it alphabetically! "Thank you, Makoor. Return to your barracks now. Stay there until I send for you."

  When Carrmak had gone, Viskon phoned the unit's orderly room and told Fenssen to come over. He told the sergeant what Makoor had suggested, and asked him to provide a list of who he'd cull. Fenssen's list agreed quite closely with Carrmak's.

  The next day, Makoor was promoted to warrant officer third class, and appointed unit commander. The unit, to be culled promptly, would henceforth be known as the Commander's Personal Guard.

  * * *

  Carrmak had a private room again, a place where he could meditate. He discovered that his body wasn't as flexible as it had been; a half-lotus would have to serve for the time being.

  Instead of meditating, he contemplated his situation. Why was he here? What use could he make of his position? Kill the general? There'd be a new commander within a day or two. Listen and learn, and somehow get information to Burnt Woods? To do that, he'd have to make effective contacts. It might be possible. What seemed most feasible, though, was to desert and get back to the regiment. He was sure he could do that.

  On the other hand, it seemed to him that here, he was in a position with potential. The question was, potential for what?

  Relax, he told himself. Don't push it. It'll come to you. It'll show itself.

  After that he did meditate.

  54

  Colonel Ko-Dan and his aide stood by the railing of the excursion liner Linna Princess, watching the farmland of northern Komars passing on both shores of the Linna. They weren't alone; the railings were lined with T'swa troopers in a calm yet somehow festive mood. They were going to war. The contract allowed them two weeks for conditioning and acclimating, orientation and briefings. Ko-Dan had decided that one had been enough.

  The sun was bright, the sky blue between scudding white clouds, but the wind was chill. The trees along the banks and roads and around the farmsteads were mostly bare. There were scattered evergreens, and some species of deciduous trees still bore remnant brown leaves, but overall, the aspect was one of impending winter.

  Ko-Dan had just commented on a dubious Komarsi decision. "But you declined the general's request to advise him," Ibang observed.

  Ko-Dan regarded the surface of the river. "Advice has purposely been omitted from the contracts," he replied. "And we are neither trained nor experienced in directing large units. As I pointed out."

  Ibang's teeth flashed white. "He was disappointed none the less. Particularly since he knows that the Iryalans have been advising and training the Smoleni."

  Ko-Dan's answer was serene as he watched the Maragoran version of a gull dip a small fish from the surface of the river. "We are T'swa, and therefore visibly quite strange. To the general, we are an enigma. As for the barbarous Engwar II Tarsteng, I shall give him everything the contract calls for, but little if anything more."

  Ibang chuckled, then changed the subject. "The Iryalans are sure to challenge us."

  "Very likely, sooner or later. It will be a pleasure to contest with them, especially after the inept drafts we faced on Carjath." The colonel's gaze became remote then, as if contemplating some other realm, some other reality. "This war will be more than strenuous. I believe we will find it stimulating in various respects. There will be surprises, things one can hardly foresee."

  Ibang nodded, his smile beatific now. Meanwhile, perhaps within ten days, they'd test the Smoleni and see what kind of fighting men they were.

  55

  Tomm Grimswal stood by a tree in the darkness. Stood because orders said to; you weren't as likely to fall asleep on your feet.

  Wintry temperatures had arrived on schedule in the Free Lands; nothing severe yet, but seasonable. Only the snow delayed. A cold night wind moaned through the treetops and rattled the leafless roivan branches. Tomm had been a high school student in Rumaros before the war. He didn't like the wind, and he'd decided too late that he didn't like the army. He especially didn't like picket duty at night.

  For one thing it seemed unnecessary. The Komarsi weren't going to come in the night. In fact, they weren't going to move this far from their lines day or night. Besides, clouds hid the stars, and the moons if any of them were up now. You couldn't see ten feet, and all you could hear was the wind.

  He was tired of holding his submachine gun, too. A rifle was long enough that you could lean on it, but on night duty you got SMGs because any fighting would be at short range, and you couldn't aim at night anyway.

  He'd sit down and maybe catch twenty winks, except Marky was on the other side of the tree, and he'd tell the sergeant. Marky Felkor was unreasonable about orders, even when the orders were obvious bullshit. He thought because he'd been in the fighting along the . . .

  From just around the tree from him, Tomm was startled by a burst of submachine gun fire, and then another. His immediate thought was that Marky had fallen asleep and fired by accident, maybe from a dream. He heard Sergeant Tarrbon call out: "What post is that?"

  "Fourteen!" Marky shouted back. It was the last thing Tomm Grimswal ever heard, because just then a large hard hand closed over his mouth, and a razor-sharp knife slit his throat nearly to the spine. It might have been soundless, except that when he'd felt the hand, the youth's thoracic muscles had spasmed, driving air from the severed trachea with a rude and liquid noise. His submachine gun fell to the frozen ground unfired, its safety catch still set, its only sound a thud.

  * * *

  Corporal Il-Dak realized at once that the soldier's comrade had heard the noise, and instead of lowering the body quietly, he dropped it and jumped sideways six feet, landing in a crouch. Overhead a flare popped, and another, flooding the forest with brilliant white light. Though he didn't look up at it, the brightness blinded him, blinded all of them for a moment. Then he spotted his partner, sprawled where the first shots had found him. He bounded forward like a night cat to find and shoot the other picket, but someone fired from behind another tree, a burst needlessly, wastefully long. Five slugs tore into Il-Dak's torso. And his own burst tore into frozen ground as he fell. All around, the T'swa slunk forward, avoiding the glare so far as possible, keeping to the inky shadows. More shots were fired.

  * * *

  From here and there came gunfire. These aren't Komarsi, thought Lieutenant Joran Bannsfor. Not deep in the forest in the dark of night, sixty miles north of the Eel. Which meant the T'swa had arrived! He peered hard and saw nothing.

  The flares, on their parachutes, had been swept southeastward by the wind. Bannsfor fired another
, off somewhat to his right, then glimpsed movement among the trees just ahead, coming toward him as he reloaded the flare pistol. Marsoni's rifle banged beside him. T'swa or whatever, he thought, these people know how to move.

  And thought no more. Some of the T'swa had infiltrated unnoticed, and one of them fired a burst from behind him. Bannsfor fell dying. Private Marsoni spun even though hit, and fired a single round from his bolt action, the bullet finding nothing, before a T'swa round took him in the face.

  * * *

  Major Hober Steeg had wakened to a call of nature, and been standing beside a straddle trench when the first burst had ruptured the night. T'swa, he thought. Before he'd even buttoned his fly, there was firing from here, there, seemingly everywhere, and he dropped into a crouch. The first flares had almost blown away already, but more were being fired; the T'swa night vision, it seemed to him, wasn't an advantage to them any longer.

  He held his pistol in a white-knuckled fist and peered around with no idea what to do next. Meanwhile the firing increased. "Shit!" he said aloud, and started for his nearby command tent. Then a different sound assaulted his ears as a grenade blasted the tent ahead of him. A bullet plucked his sleeve, and he threw himself onto the ground. He could see his on-duty radioman sprawled in the tent door, and wondered if he'd gotten a message off. A man in black ran past in a crouch, a submachine gun in his hands. The major, prostrate, twisted and fired. The man didn't pause, but before Steeg could shoot again, someone else had, and the man in black fell, half spinning. The face was black too, the eyes large in the flare light: a T'swi for sure! The black man rose to his knees and fired a burst at something, then dropped to his side, drawing another magazine from his belt, slamming it into his weapon. The major shot again, once, twice, and the T'swi went limp.

  The major got to his feet and headed for the radio.

  * * *

  Artus Romlar sat in his winterized command tent at base camp. Morning lit it through the fabric roof. The T'swa were more than an intelligence report now. A force of them, probably a company, had hit 2nd Battalion, 5th Smoleni Infantry, shot it up and withdrawn. Fairly standard T'swa procedure: When you arrive in a war zone, you engage the enemy in a small action to test his fighting quality and learn what you'll be dealing with. Then you plan.

  A stocky, middle-aged Smoleni woman popped into the tent with breakfast. There were snowflakes on her shawl. She put the tray on his table and he thanked her. More bodies might be found later, he thought, and some of the wounded would no doubt die, but the initial count was encouraging: 42 T'swa bodies had been counted. The Smoleni Battalion had lost 96 killed and 152 wounded. The T'swa would be impressed and pleased with the quality of their opposition.

  Where were they quartered? Or bivouacked? He should have something on that soon. Since the big Komarsi strike of Sevendek, Colonel Fossur had set up a field recon network of converted fur trappers, with iron rations and forestry maps. They ranged in threes through the forests in the zone north of the Eel, watching the roads. Each trio had a radio that would reach Shelf Falls.

  This snow, if it stayed, would complicate things for the recon network, disclose its presence and force them to keep moving constantly. But it should make them more effective, too, because enemy movements would leave far more conspicuous tracks. The biggest danger was that the T'swa would hunt them down.

  He had no doubt that as soon as the snow was deep enough, the T'swa would be out learning to snowshoe.

  56

  By day's end there were four inches of snow on the frozen ground. The next morning the weather station at Burnt Woods registered eight below zero, and it had scarcely topped zero at noon. It was sixteen below the next morning, and colder still on the morning following. Test holes found the river ice up to eight inches thick.

  Then the weather moderated. Marine air moved in from the southeast, and midday temperatures rose well above freezing. The next cold front moved in four days later, and before the sky cleared, what was left of the old snow was covered by twenty-five inches of new—an unusually heavy fall—and the temperature was near zero again. It wasn't truly winter yet, the locals assured Romlar, but with the solstice little more than six weeks away, a major thaw was unlikely.

  * * *

  Kelmer Faronya had ridden a freight sleigh thirty-five miles to Jump-Off. This fall no trapping parties had moved into the Great North Wild; most of the trappers were in the army. But several parties of old ex-trappers were preparing to trek north for something more important now than furs. They would hunt meat—erog and porso—and send it back on sleighs. Kelmer was there to record their leaving. Such a hunt was a violation of the rules governing the Confederation reserve, but the meat was badly needed, and the game populations would recover quickly enough from a single year's heavy hunting, just as it recovered from the heavy die-offs of the occasional extreme winter.

  So said his guide, the local fur broker, an old man called Hanni. And Kelmer had no reason to disbelieve; these people had lived intimately with the land and its creatures for generations.

  Each party had a sleigh to haul its supplies and gear. Just now they were parked before the combined store and fur warehouse, loading supplies: flour, beans, and dried fruit mostly, and cartridges. Beyond that they'd live off the land. Most of the village was there: fifty or so besides the hunters.

  What impressed Kelmer most about the hunting parties were the animals hitched to their sleighs: long-legged erog geldings, their heavy shoulders higher than a man's head, with long necks that raised their antlers ten feet above the ground, and prehensile noses to aid in browsing. He'd glimpsed them before, in the forest and along the roads farther south, and been awed. They were even more impressive up close.

  "What's their advantage over horses?" Kelmer asked.

  "Well, first off their legs are so much longer. Helps in deep snow. But mostly, horses need hay in winter; they can't make do on twigs, 'specially jall 'n fex twigs, which along with kren is what we mostly got up 'round here."

  "Why don't the farmers use erog?"

  "They ain't no farmers up here."

  "I mean farther south. Around Burnt Woods, for example."

  "Ah. Erog ain't no way tame as horses. These here was either took as foals or dropped by a penned mare. And gelded. Ain't nobody could harness an erog stallion; the geldings are bad enough. One of them big old hooves hits a loper, his head is broke right then, maybe 'long with his neck. They'd do the same to you. And they bites worser'n a horse. Horses'll bite, sure, but them boogers"—he gestured at an erog calmly chewing its cud—"can truly take a chunk outta you. You don't go up to him and stroke his nose."

  "Do people ever ride them?"

  Hanni crowed with laughter. "No how! Too mean!"

  "Horses can be mean, but people ride them."

  "Sure. But these long-neck critters could reach around 'n bite you in the saddle. Maybe take yer knee off!"

  Kelmer nodded thoughtfully. "I don't suppose all the hunters will go to the same place."

  "No no. They'll go up the river together 'bout thirty mile, then a party'll peel off every ten, twelve mile up different side branches to different trapping bounds. All told, they'll hunt over a big territory. They'll hunt porso a lot more 'n erog, 'cause porso runs in bands of twenty or thirty, sometimes more.

  "One man in each party'll keep camp while three cast around till they come on tracks. Then one'll go back 'n fetch the gelding and sleigh, while the other two catches up to the porso and kills all they can of 'em—maybe five or six—'fore they scatter too bad. Then they'll leave the guts and heads for the jackwolves, use the gelding to drag the carcasses to the sleigh, and haul 'em to the river, where one man'll camp by 'em. Some fellers'll go up the river every couple weeks with big sleighs and teams, and bring back what's out."

  The sleighs were ready, and the hunters. Men who seemed mostly to be in their sixties, tough old men with their earlappers up in the zero cold. They climbed together onto the sleighs, and the men at the reins slap
ped their geldings on the rump. The erog started off, mostly with a jerk, drawing the sleighs down the riverbank and onto the ice. Kelmer watched them through his visor, recording.

  And wished he were going with them, to live and record a week in their life. He wasn't a warrior, he told himself, he was a photojournalist. He'd gotten into this job to record an interesting way of life—interesting and exciting scenes and events.

  "And they'll hunt all winter?" he asked.

  The old fur broker raised an eyebrow at the question. "Not likely. They'll come out when they ain't much porso or erog left 'round where they're huntin'. When what they ain't killed has scattered, maybe moved out of the district."

  Kelmer lost himself in visualization for a moment. "They'll have killed a lot of animals."

  "Son," Hanni said, "with all the folks down in them refugee camps, all we can kill won't begin to be enough. All we can do is help. Make a difference."

  57

  Colonel Ko-Dan and Captain Ibang walked into the reception room outside Undsvin's office. Both of them saw the guard standing beside his door, and knew him at once. He knew them, too, and knew he'd been recognized. They saw it in his aura, though he never twitched.

  Twenty minutes later they'd finished their business, and started back to their billet in the GPV assigned to them by the general. "You noticed Undsvin's guard," Ibang said.

  "Yes. Major Carrmak. I must say I was surprised."

  "The Iryalans are remarkably resourceful. I take it you don't intend to tell the general who his guard is."

  "We are contracted in a military role, not as a counterespionage service. If his cousin was a different kind of man, and I thought better of their cause . . . As it is, we will give Engwar his money's worth of fighting—show him the value of a T'swa regiment—but provide him no bonuses." Ko-Dan chuckled. "Whatever Carrmak is doing, it's nothing he learned in the lodge. His commander had a reputation for imagination."