The Regiment-A Trilogy

by John Dalmas

  He turned and started off northward across the fen. On the far side, he saw where the troopers had changed from snowshoes to skis. He switched too—he felt steady enough, and on snowshoes he'd fall farther behind instead of catching up. Then he set out following them.

  66

  Briefly the troopers continued northwestward till they hit Road 45, which they followed north till after dark, taking advantage of its freedom from obstacles. Then Romlar had them dig into the snow again and pitch their shelter tents, after posting pickets of course. He'd let them sleep till daylight, assuming that nothing happened, and it seemed to him that nothing would. It was his intuition that the T'swa no longer followed him, and this was supported by several facts or apparent facts: The T'swa must have traveled much of the night before; they'd snowshoed very hard for several hours during the day, in pursuit; and to catch up again, they'd have to snowshoe much of the night without sleep, for their snowshoes were slower than skis.

  No, it seemed highly unlikely that the T'swa still followed.

  He had every reason to be pleased with 1st Battalion, his leadership, and the performance of the Smoleni rangers. But he found no joy in it, which was irrational. With today's casualties, notably the two machine gun platoons, he'd lost 189 troopers on this operation alone. And his White T'swa now numbered fewer than nine hundred.

  Call it wastage or something else, his regiment was shrinking, and rational or not, that troubled him. It didn't keep him awake though; not this night. He was too thoroughly tired. He ate a high-fat ration, stretched out in his sleeping bag, and fell asleep at once.

  To dream. He was in a spaceship, not as a passenger, but as commander. Colonel Voker was with him, looking as he had at graduation, old and wiry and tough. And Varlik Lormagen, as young as he'd been in the old cubeage from the Kettle War. And Dao, his platoon sergeant from basic training, big and hard and black. They all looked serious except Dao, whose mouth and wise T'swa eyes smiled slightly.

  We all have the T'sel now, Romlar thought, but Dao more than the rest of us. Maybe it's something in the T'swa genotype.

  "We are different," Dao answered. "We are the T'swa, the true T'swa. We differ genetically, and especially culturally. But you are as deep in the T'sel as I." He eyed Romlar knowingly, and chuckled. "Though yours has slipped a little lately. That sometimes happens."

  It seemed to Romlar that the others hadn't heard any of this conversation. Voker said, "Artus, the Imperials are out there. You hear them, don't you?"

  He did. They were knocking on the door. He looked out the window, and the front porch was full of imperial marines.

  "I want you to take your regiment and drive them away," Voker ordered.

  "I'm sorry, Colonel, but my regiment is all dead."

  "All dead! What did you do to them?"

  "I got them all killed on Maragor, Colonel."

  The knocking had loudened to booming. In a moment, Romlar thought, the door will burst open, the air will rush out, and we'll all have to recycle as new-born slaves. Not just Voker and Lormagen and I, but everyone in the Confederation.

  There was a gunshot in the dream then, and Romlar jerked awake. To realize immediately what had happened: a tree had split from the intense cold. He'd heard them do that before, here and once at Blue Forest, and in training in the Terfreyan austral taiga after the war.

  He'd been dreaming something unpleasant, and the dregs remained in his subconscious. Something about—Voker. And Dao. He lay silently trying to pull those slight threads and bring the rest to view, but fell asleep again before he'd made any progress.

  * * *

  The sun went down. Dusk faded to twilight, and twilight to dark, and still Kelmer hadn't caught up with the troopers. He was bushed by then, but had only a single shelter panel, not enough for a tent. And as cold as it was . . .

  He pushed on. He'd never felt so alone, so abandoned. After a bit he was wobbling, knees weak, and finally he fell. It seemed to him he could go no farther—that he would die there of the cold. He thought of Weldi. Tears filled his eyes, and he was gripped by a sudden fear that they'd freeze there, perhaps blinding him, so he covered them for a minute with his mittens, blinking furiously.

  Then he forced himself to his feet and pushed onward. The battalion might be camped just ahead; a hundred yards on, he might be challenged by a sentry. He wasn't. At Blue Forest, he reminded himself, they'd spent a night in the snow without any panels at all. They'd dug depressions and lay down in them in their sleeping bags, covering each other with snow. But the last men down were covered by sentries, who were covered in turn by their relief. Here he didn't even have someone to bury him. And that night at Blue Forest hadn't been this cold; not nearly.

  He'd skied only half an hour more when he collapsed again. After lying in the snow for a minute, he unsnapped his pack, and with one of the snowshoes strapped to it, dug himself a narrow hole in the snow, deep into the old base. He lay the panel in it then and sat down on it, wondering what the temperature was. He'd eaten both the T'swa rations already, and it seemed too much work to open one of his own. Instead he took out his sleeping bag and crawled in, leaving one arm free to pull snow over himself. When he was covered, he pulled his arm in and lay there, afraid to go to sleep.

  Nonetheless, within two minutes he slept.

  * * *

  He awoke having to urinate. Faint daylight penetrated the snow. He undertook to sit up, and found himself held. Warmth from his breath had melted a small space around his head, and the cold penetrating from outside had frozen the moisture into a shell of ice. For a moment, fear swelled in his heart, then subsided. He moved his legs; they were free. So was his torso below the chest. He worked his bag open, got his arms out, and with mittened hands broke the ice around his head, then sat up.

  It was another bitter arctic morning, colder, he thought, than the morning before. He broke off a piece of his ice mask and put it in his mouth to melt, surprised that he was no colder than he was. Actually, he thought, I've slept colder when the temperature wasn't nearly this low. Then he dug a ration from his pack, and sitting up in his bag, ate it. Exposed to the air, he was quickly colder than he'd been in the night. He put the rest of his rations inside his coat, crawled out of his bag, put his boots on, and relieved himself against a tree, watching the urine form a mound of amber ice on the bark.

  Finally, working clumsily in mittens, he donned pack, skis, and helmet, then continued on the trail of the battalion. With a remarkably light heart. Not only had he not frozen to death. He'd discovered that the danger was not so great as he'd thought. Half an hour later, he found where the battalion had camped. And decided it was just as well he'd stopped when he had. Otherwise he wouldn't have learned what he had, wouldn't have discovered that he could survive alone.

  67

  First Battalion left Road 45 that morning, angling northeastward toward Road 40 and the Smoleni column. The weather remained brutal. Even near noon, when Romlar spat at a tree, the saliva hit like a pebble, frozen. The cold sucked the heat from them, and the high-fat rations they gnawed from time to time weren't adequate, pressing as they were. By early afternoon they'd eaten the last of them. Such a speed march itself would burn more than ten thousand calories a day, and their bodies carried no fat to draw on.

  More than the virgin snow made travel slow. Instead of roads, they found tangles of blowdown, occasional swamps of bull brush to push through, soft-snowed fens and bogs to cross. Twice they came upon old logging roads, but never in a suitable direction.

  The impulse was to press, press, press, to reach the column and the captured Komarsi rations. Yet they needed to rest from time to time, and no one grumbled when Romlar called a five-minute break each half hour. Five minutes wasn't enough to cool down seriously.

  They reached Road 40 near sundown, and followed the tracks of the column. It did not gladden them to find the bodies of several horses along the way, frozen rock-hard. They kept going until, soon after dark, a sentry challenged them. Min
utes later they saw campfires.

  * * *

  Night held the forest in an arctic fist when Kelmer reached the road. He'd slowed the last hours, his reserves exhausted, and was weary almost to the point of collapse. He might have laid down in the snow an hour earlier, but his confidence had slipped, replaced again by anxiety and thoughts of Weldi. The road gave him new life, and briefly he speeded up, but it was only surface charge, and within the next hour he twice fell to the snow, to struggle up tight-jawed and push on.

  Finally a ranger sentry challenged him. The Smoleni directed him to where the Iryalans had made camp, and trooper sentries directed him to the colonel's buried tent. The camp seemed dead, its fires cold and dark.

  Kelmer stood his skis up by Romlar's and Kantro's, set his pack beside them, then opened the entrance flaps. Romlar wakened when he crawled inside. "Who's that?"

  "Kelmer Faronya reporting, sir."

  "Great Tunis!" A moment later a battery lamp lit the tent. "What happened to you?"

  Kelmer took his helmet off. "I got hit. It was superficial. Enough to knock me out though."

  There was a moment's silence. "Who bandaged you?"

  "The T'swa. They found me unconscious, and recognized me as a noncombatant, so they let me go. Colonel Ko-Dan asked me to congratulate you for him. He said—" Suddenly Kelmer found himself thick-witted again, from exhaustion. "It's all on cube. He said fighting you had been a pleasure."

  Romlar chuckled. "He would." Then, "You're bushed. Drag in your pack and bed down with us."

  Kelmer found it a heavy effort to crawl back out and get it. When he'd laid his sleeping bag out, he saw the colonel's boots standing by the end wall, and took off his own. Romlar watched. "Here," he said when Kelmer had crawled half into his bag, and handed him a ration. Kelmer stared. He was so tired, he was asleep before he'd finished eating it.

  68

  They suffered two more days of arctic cold, though that second day was the worst. Almost a third of their horses died from the combination of cold and exhaustion, contributed to by the total lack of grain. Brigadier Carnfor did not press for speed, but he kept the pace steady.

  At first, when a horse died, it was hastily cut up before it froze solid, but that slowed the column. After that, when a horse went down, it was simply dragged out of the way and gutted; it could be salvaged later. Horses from the replacement herd replaced them, and when there were no more replacements, sleighs without a team were left by the road. They too could be picked up later, in weather less severe, with fresher horses.

  The constant brutal cold numbed the minds of some men, and there were suicides, none of them troopers and none rangers. Frostbitten noses and cheeks were general. The medics cursed men who froze their fingers, for they'd been given procedures to avoid the problem. They cut off fingertips, even whole fingers, so they wouldn't become gangrenous when they thawed.

  A few men, discovering their fingers frozen, hid the fact to avoid the knife, keeping them secret till they began to rot and stink. As a result, several hands had to be cut off. Even before the weather eased, though, morale was improving. Jokes could be heard, coarser than usual. Fires were made at night, and horse meat stewed. It was tough and stringy, and lacked fat, but it was edible, and the broth was hot.

  * * *

  The regiment stayed with the column for those two days, the easier pace resting them. Then they left it behind, speed-marching to Burnt Woods. En route they passed horses being driven south to begin the recovery of abandoned carcasses and sleighs. Nothing was to be wasted.

  Although the supply situation, critical in the long run, was not so severe as earlier forecast. Once The Archipelago had committed itself and began to send supplies, it had been relatively easy to send more of them than originally planned. Thus long trains of sleighs arrived at Jump-Off fairly frequently. Not enough to cover needs, but enough to stave off, somewhat, the time of serious hunger.

  The Krentorfi ambassador would be leaving for Faersteth in three days, and the president asked Romlar that Kelmer be allowed to accompany the ambassador in his floater, taking video cubes and an audio report of the depot raid to the queen and her court. After that they'd be made available to theaters in a number of countries.

  Kelmer asked that Weldi go with him; the ambassador said it was an excellent idea. Kelmer spent the three days editing and narrating. But he worked only till eight in the evening. He would not neglect his bride.

  69

  Despite the cold of northern Smolen, the troopers wore their hair short. Thus when Kelmer sat at his keyboard, and Weldi came into the one-time storeroom assigned him to edit in, she would eye the broad, still-livid scar that parted his scalp from the right rear almost to his forehead. She'd been that close to widowhood! She didn't consciously intend to interrupt his work, but on one occasion she allowed her finger to trace gently the path across his crown.

  He turned and smiled, then stood and kissed her. She looked at him thoughtfully. "You're a very brave man, Kelmer," she said, "and I'm proud of you."

  He kissed her again, partly to cover his discomfort at her words.

  First Battalion was on light duty for a few days, resting from their mission, and that evening after supper, Kelmer took time to ski to the Iryalan camp and visit Jerym Alsnor. The evening was balmy, about 20 degrees, with a very few snowflakes drifting down lazily. Jerym put aside the tattered book he was reading—he was perhaps the thirtieth to read it—and grinned at Kelmer when he came into the winterized squad tent that housed A Company's six officers.

  "Just couldn't stand it, eh? Had to get back to bachelor quarters."

  Kelmer smiled back, then glanced around at the four other officers there at the time, two reading, two meditating. "Actually I came to talk to you," he said. "Is there somewhere we can go?"

  Jerym stood up and took his garrison jacket from its peg. "Yeah. We can go for a walk." They left the tent, with its snowbanked outer walls of small logs, to saunter the well-packed snow between the rows. When, after a minute or two, Kelmer had said nothing, Jerym took the initiative. "What can I do for you?" he asked. "I warn you though, all I know about married life is what I saw growing up."

  Though your sister and I discussed it seriously enough. But I'm not going to talk to you about that.

  "You know how I used to wonder how I'd react to combat, to the danger of getting killed."

  "Yeah. It seems to me you've done pretty well."

  Kelmer grunted. "Jerym, it scared the shit out of me. One time literally, when a dud grenade landed almost at my feet. And I still get scared. Really scared."

  The White T'swi shrugged. "There's nothing wrong with that. You've been in combat a number of times, and did what you were there to do." Jerym looked him over. Tain had been the warrior in the family, he had no doubt, though when he'd known her, he didn't see auras, except perhaps subliminally. "You weren't born to be a warrior," he went on. "Your aura shows it. And you haven't had the Ostrak Procedures or Ka-Shok training." He paused. "Why do you doubt your bravery?"

  "Because I feel so damned afraid sometimes."

  "Okay. Could it be that bravery has to do with action, with behavior, instead of with feelings?"

  They continued walking, the photojournalist thoughtful now. "How do you feel," Kelmer asked, "when you're in combat? Or getting ready to go into combat."

  "Differently than I did on Terfreya. On Terfreya, getting ready, I'd get excited. I lost that doing Ka-Shok meditation. In general, in combat, I feel highly alert, very quick and responsive, very vital and alive. But that's a consequence of having been born a warrior, and six years of learning how to handle it and do it right."

  From a mile or more off to the west came the howl of a loper, the Maragorn great wolf. The sound was a high-pitched keening, as sharp-edged as the ringing of a wine glass tapped by a spoon, belying the long-legged, thick-necked, two-hundred-pound predator that voiced it. It was answered by another almost at the edge of hearing. The two men stopped to listen. The reclus
ive gray predators were uncommon, perhaps had always been. When the brief duet was over, their listeners walked on in silence for a bit.

  It was Jerym who broke it. "So you came out here to talk about bravery and fearfulness?"

  Kelmer nodded.

  "What specifically brought it up?"

  "Weldi told me I'm a very brave man. It made me feel like a phony."

  Jerym grinned, and suddenly hugged Tain's brother. "She's right, Kelmer! She's right!" He thumped the journalist's shoulder. "It's okay not to believe her, but she's right!" He looked around. "Come on to the messhall with me. There's always a kettle of hot water on the stove, and canisters of fex buds. We'll have a cup of tea and talk about other stuff. Then you can go find someone prettier than me to be around."

  * * *

  That night after Weldi had fallen asleep, Kelmer lay thinking for a while. He'd come to the conclusion that he was, if not actually brave, at least no coward. Jerym had been right: men differed, and the proper criterion was behavior, not emotion.

  Part Four

  T‚SWA VICTORY

  70

  The latter part of the winter alternated between further extreme cold and unseasonably mild weather. Neither of the combatants showed any interest even in minor harassments, let alone substantial operations. Fossur's spy network had little to report, nor did Undsvin's, though Fossur continued to get political information via the Krentorfi ambassador.

  The word was that General Lord Undsvin Tarsteng was in disgrace again, but that Engwar had left him in command, perhaps because of political agitation for his replacement. At any rate, Undsvin was his cousin, and no one else had demonstrated particular promise in a command role.