Lines of Thunder: The First Days on the Front (Lines of Thunder Universe)

by Walter Blaire

  A full water skin, bulging and damp, rested against his thigh.

  “Where does the blood come from?”

  “Ah, scrag, that’s something you must never ask.”

  Gole shrugged and drank. The mixture was warm, with a distinct ferrous tang, but it spread quickly through his limbs. He drained half the skin and leaned against the trench wall with a sigh.

  “Malley,” he said presently, “I’m under a summary.”

  The old-timer was sprawled like Gole, looking almost as much like a corpse. He grinned without opening his eyes. “You don’t say?”

  “It’s an unofficial summary,” Gole amended. “The Haphans never ordered it, never said the word officially. We all heard it though. Corphy heard it.”

  “That’s all that counts.”

  “Malley, has anybody ever survived something like this?”

  Malley opened his eyes and looked Gole up and down before answering. “If you call this surviving, you have a generous soul. Anyway the answer is no. I’ve never seen a summary commuted once it gets rolling, and you’re rolling like you started at the top of a mountain.”

  “Well, there it is,” Gole said, trying to sound glum. The Pollution worked against him, tainting his mood with optimism. He was too frustrated to fight it. The frustration faded quickly, replaced with more optimism. It never ended. It never would.

  “I’ve never seen someone survive a summary, but I’ve heard about it,” Malley said. “It all centers on rest leave, when we pull out of the trench. That’s when everything can be reset, so long as nobody presses the matter. Once the unit is off the line, the summary is the Haphan’s business, and they have little stomach for it. There might be a transfer, and the condemned scrag at the root of the problem is sorted sideways to some other unit. The Haphans are too soft-hearted.”

  “Isn’t it easier to simply do the execution?”

  Malley shook his head. “Just like an official summary at the front will ruin the unit’s morale, an official summary behind the lines ruins the Haphan’s morale.”

  “We can’t have that, can we?”

  “That’s right, get all your sarcasm out before Dephic comes back.” Malley smirked. “Dephic is hunting for your blood-fed, by the way. In case Grulle is lost or stuck between the lines. That boy is too good to waste.”

  Gole had a sudden, dizzying spurt of hope. “Grulle? You think he’s alive?”

  Malley shook his head.

  “Could you be wrong?”

  Malley shook his head again, but then shrugged. “Since your latest adventure, a few things have come to light. The tape that Sergeant Nadros followed for the night patrol, that wasn’t our tape. It was a bunch of collected fragments, tied together. It wasn’t our scouts what laid it out, it was the South being clever again. That added some weight to your version of the events.”

  “So the other soldiers believe me?”

  “Of course they do, no matter what Corphy says. We all know he hates you. You’re a master at spotting traps as far as everybody else is concerned.”

  “So the summary is off?”

  “Of course not!” Malley chuckled. “A summary is a summary. Therefore, we want Grulle back with us. That way when you die we’ll still have him, at least.”

  “But…I don’t…None of that makes sense.”

  “You have some thoughtfulness to you, Gole. Maybe Grulle will also, after you die. He sees you plinked, there’s a good chance he will bolt and turn normal. Maybe he’ll start thinking complete thoughts at that point. It’s very common in blood-feds, and wouldn’t I know? I’m blood-fed myself. We need all the brains we can get, with South being so clever now.”

  “What…” Gole swallowed his frustration and tried for calm. “What if you idiots don’t kill me, and you sip my wisdom straight from the source?”

  Malley mulled this over as if were actually a new idea. “Wouldn’t work.”

  “I disagree,” Gole shot back. “And so does my valuable brain.”

  “I know you’re confused, scrag.” Malley sighed. “You’re confused because you want everybody else to make perfect sense, even though we’re all fighting madness just like you. The answer is utterly obvious, but only if you permit us to be flawed creatures.”

  “So explain, Malley.”

  “We Tachba can believe and feel at the same time. We can believe something is right, and feel something else is right—even if it’s the complete opposite. On the one hand, we have wisdom received from our fellow boots, our officers, and the Haphans. On the other hand, there is the wisdom from our own minds and from Pretty Polly. Ask yourself, Gole, which of those two is more visceral to us? Which of those two is the bedrock?”

  “First one, then the other,” Gole sighed. “And then the reverse.”

  “Exactly. You’re the same as the rest of us, Gole. I’ve seen you work against your own interests time and again.”

  “But I’m a dumb kid,” Gole said. “I have an excuse.”

  “You’re only dumb when it suits you. No, we all butt up against these little problems of the Pollution.” Malley chuckled again. “You’ve simply elevated it to a new level.”

  “So I’m not under a summary, except I am under a summary. I’m right, but I’m not right. I’m clever, so you’ll do away with me and hope to find my blood-fed.”

  “Now you’re getting it.”

  Gole shook his head. “Malley, talking to you is an emotional journey.”

  The old-timer laughed outright. “You haven’t heard the best part.”

  “What do you mean?” Gole went on guard again.

  “Well, you slept peacefully through the night, didn’t you? Your precious high-functioning brain doesn’t have a bullet in it. The chance to kill you last night was forsaken.”

  An odd word to use, but he had a point. Gole said, “They had every chance to end it. Why didn’t they?”

  “Rest your mind. Those boots aren’t killing you anymore.”

  “Why?” Gole pivoted back to him. “Malley, you just said the summary is a summary.”

  “The consensus is that I will kill you. Since you and I have had a few chats, it won’t be as abrupt if it comes from me. It’s often left to the friends to finish off a troublemaker, but you don’t have any friends, so you know…”

  “You’re here to kill me?”

  The old-timer met Gole’s eyes. His expression was hard, and Gole belatedly saw the trenching shovel in his hand. One swat from that would cave in his skull.

  “When you became my problem, Gole, I had to think it over.” Malley let him hang a moment longer. “I decided you won’t be killed. You’ll get your chance to go on rest leave, and maybe you’ll wriggle through. You’re safe from all of us, starting now. Corphy be damned.”

  Gole waited for more, and nothing came. In the whole frustrating conversation, only the last part sounded definitive. If it was, then the death of an informal summary execution was no longer hanging over Gole. He was back to regular, trench-warfare death hanging over him, and a few days after that, a formal summary execution. It was strange how much relief Gole nonetheless felt.

  “Malley, I’m glad to hear this news.”

  “I thought you would be.” Malley closed his eyes again, and nestled down to nap.

  Gole plucked the trench shovel out of Malley’s hand.

  The old-timer’s eyes bolted open. “What the fu—”

  Gole swung the shovel with both hands. He hit Malley’s forehead and knocked him to the floor of the trench. Malley kicked once and went slack, still swearing even while unconscious.

  V

  Red Cap

  20

  In which Gole Naremsa finally learns wisdom.

  The attack on his friend was wonderfully bracing—or at least the Pollution thought so. With a burst of manic energy, Gole vaulted directly to the top of the parapet, slapping the sandbags with his hands and landing on his feet. He was into the shell-pocked landscape and darting into the darkness before he remembere
d he was still without a rifle or any other weapon.

  Too late to return now! He kept his eyes on the ground for telltale signs of dead bodies and soon found some…northerners and southerners lying in strata, facing different directions. The weapons beside them were covered and clotted with soil, and Gole passed them over. The last thing he wanted was another explosion in his face, no matter how the Pollution might juice him for it.

  Finally, from a recent and not very stiff corpse he found a boot sword, and inside the corpse’s jacket was a double-barreled pistol with one round. This area was a pillager’s dream—he felt a tangible pull toward another cluster of bodies and whatever they might be hiding.

  Instead, he cast about in the darkness until his hand found the scout’s tape. Though it was obviously false—knotted links of irregular length—it was also clearly newer than the tape he’d followed with Sergeant Nadros two nights earlier. Also, this tape didn’t have two days of dust, debris, and dirt covering it. In fact, if Gole had to guess, it had only been laid a few hours ago.

  Perfect.

  He gave it a shake and watched the tape undulate through the pock-marked landscape. As far as Gole could tell, the false tape went where he hoped it would, following a plausible path south. He trailed it, but not directly. He kept a dozen yards to the side. When he lost the tape in the falling darkness, he crept sideways until he found it again.

  Each yard deeper into the darkness brought him closer to the waiting South. If they had laid this tape, as they clearly had, then he was closing on their next clever trap. Something was waiting for him out there—

  Gole’s hand fell on a living boot in the dark.

  It jerked under his weight but didn’t withdraw. Even as Gole registered the limb beneath him, his other hand arced in an overhead swing with the boot sword. He plunged it into the mass of the body—or he would have, but the stranger squirmed aside at the last moment. Gole’s blade entered the soft dirt without resistance. Before he could pull back and stab again, the stranger rolled over it and trapped the blade, yanking the weapon out of Gole’s three-fingered grasp.

  Gole finally noticed something odd about his adversary. He scooted out of reach and said, “Why are you staked on the ground like drying meat?”

  The figure stopped thrashing.

  “Dancypants?” it asked.

  For a full second, Gole swelled with relief. The Pollution may have minimized his concern, but it couldn’t stop his joy when it unleashed.

  “Grulle!” Gole launched onto his brother and hugged him. “I thought you were dead. Were you here the whole time, simply asleep?”

  “Asleep!” Grulle laughed. “I disarmed you, and I am-tied to planet! What you-tied to?”

  Gole tested the rope that had his brother spread-eagled on the ground. Like most things southern, it was irregular and imperfect but it accomplished the task, and there was a lot of it. The rope wound tightly around each of Gulle’s limbs and stretched to four separate stakes. The stakes must have been of epic length to find any purchase in the soft dirt.

  “I am surprised you couldn’t squirm out of these,” Gole muttered, trying to shift responsibility while he waited for an idea.

  “Tied to planet!”

  “Where is the boot sword?” Gole groped around his brother but couldn’t find it. The earth in this area was strangely soft and loose, even for this sector. When he rose to his hands and knees he quickly sank into it. Gole could effortlessly reach into the soil to his elbows. He plumbed the area but still failed to find the blade. He felt deeper, and his fingers met a wooden surface.

  He explored it by touch, wishing his hands were still whole. It felt like a lattice of crossed wood scraps, like a crate or a barrel had been broken to pieces. He knocked the wood with his knuckles, and the entire bed of soil under Grulle seemed to jump. Whatever was down there, it was big. Grulle had been staked out on top of something large that had been buried shallow.

  “We have to get you out of here,” Gole said, “but I can’t find the boot sword.”

  “My boot sword,” Grulle said. “Won it off ye.”

  “Well, I can’t cut the ropes without it.”

  Grulle was unconcerned. “I will ask-meh for something sharp. When my friend comes back.”

  “Your friend, huh?”

  “I can make friends, you scrag. Chatted all day with the Southies-geh, ere they-working.”

  Gole cast around in the soft earth again, hoping his hands would land on something that might cut the rope. A casing fragment, a bit of shrapnel, even a shard of bone. The problem with the interminable shelling, however, was that each explosion sent dirt into the air, and the larger debris settled lower. Like separating the wheat from the chaff, all the useful trinkets that Gole might have used had sifted year-over-year lower in the strata. After years of tilling from the artillery he had powder at the top and who-knew-what ten or more feet underneath. Probably a trove of interesting things.

  “What were the Southies doing?”

  “Fun tricks,” Grulle snickered. “We’em should-stealing some of the good ideas, Gole. I thought them into my head so I can pull them out.”

  “Like what?”

  “I forget.” Grulle looked caught out. “Pull them out later.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Gole spared a moment to pat Gulle’s shoulder. “Besides, the last thing I need are more good ideas. Ask everybody who knows me in the war.”

  Gole shifted further away from his brother, probing the soft earth with his hands.

  Grulle said, “My friend returning.”

  Gole froze. He heard it now, too. The stealthy thrush-thrush of a body squirming over the dirt. It was coming from the south. Gole nearly groaned with frustration. In this whole cursed world he had four ropes to cut and no way to cut them.

  “I won’t get you out in time,” Gole finally admitted. “I must hide. Don’t tell your friend about me, okay? Keep me as a surprise.”

  “Friend-meh likes surprise.”

  Gole pushed backwards, sweeping the dirt to obscure his prints. The oncoming sound was now just over the next crest of dirt, but he forced himself to be methodical and not make mistakes.

  Gole had backed only halfway around a tall pile of dirt when Red Cap appeared beside Grulle.

  Gole scrambled faster, right into the dirt pile—and delivered a powerful knock with his knee. He froze, waiting for it to cascade down and draw Red Cap’s attention. Damn this dirt for hating me. But the pile, steep as it was, didn’t collapse. Looking closer, Gole saw why. The pile was actually a cluster of corpses thrown together by chance artillery shell explosions—they wouldn’t have died in that knot. Their limbs entwined and then spread like tree roots to give the pile structure. A group of bodies, knotted together like that, was called a ‘corpse king.’ In time, it would catch more bodies and grow quite large.

  Red Cap’s attention remained on Grulle, and Gole quietly pulled his limbs out of view. Then for good measure, he retreated another ten yards. He still had his brother in sight, but was distant enough that another trivial error wouldn’t betray his presence.

  When it came down to it, Gole reasoned, Grulle was probably safer from Red Cap than he was. This was yet another trap set by the South, and Grulle wouldn’t be harmed until he could fulfill his role as bait.

  Grulle said something to the Southie and laughed. Red Cap whispered something back and lifted something in his hand.

  Really? The Southie held something that looked like food. A rations tin, cut in half, with visible steam rising out of it. Stew.

  Gole had grown up with veterans of the eternal front. The few that returned to the family were either too old to fight, or more typically disabled. The veterans had little to talk about except the war, and for those soldiers the war took place in the home trench and in episodes between fellow boots. The Southies were mentioned less in the stories than Gole had always wished.

  Still, Gole had heard enough to know that the Southies were not vicious. They could be brut
al and indifferent, but never merely cruel for the sake of cruelty. When they were called ‘monsters’ it was a joke, one the Haphans never understood. On the other hand, the Southies were never called kind. To see Red Cap treating Grulle with kindness was the last thing he expected.

  For a moment, Gole stopped trying to plan and let his mind go quiet. The eternal front kept topping itself. Really, why train his ass off growing up, and why listen to war stories at all, if none of it translated to reality? Red Cap’s strangeness didn’t end at his size or his cleverness; there was now this tenderness to consider too. Gole watched the Southie hold the can to Gulle’s lips and tip it into his mouth. Even as a captive of the South, the blood-fed was getting more food than Gole ever had.

  He knew what he was supposed to do. He knew what Corphy would probably scream at him in this situation, and he knew what the Haphan Overlords generally advised when the enemy was in view. Gole had one round in a pistol, and he really should have killed Red Cap already. Moreover, there would be something on the man’s body to cut the twine and free his brother.

  Gole slowly drew his pistol. This time he checked it, and sure enough it had more of the omnipresent dirt clogging its barrel. He blew into the breach to clear it, then scooped more blockage out of the funnel-like muzzle with his longest remaining fingers.

  Even when the pistol was clean and ready, he still hesitated. He didn’t want to shoot, and at the moment it was his choice. He was in no present danger, and nothing in the environment promised death, pain, or similar other satisfaction that would trigger the Pollution. There was only food being shared, a kindness occurring.

  Even better, he needed to confirm that Red Cap was indeed alone, and that the other fingers of his hand squad weren’t lurking just out of sight. Gole only had a single round and he couldn’t fight a whole squad. It was a plausible excuse, but Gole knew he was only waiting for more food to be put into his brother.

  Red Cap and Grulle were whispering back and forth like old gossips when a chrysanthemum flare lit the sky. It bloomed with spears of light into a minor new sun, and sparkled as it floated on its parachute. Chrysanthemum flares were used by the North and they sometimes presaged an attack. On quiet nights like tonight, however, they usually indicated a bored northern Tachba, or a nervous Haphan line officer “with a feeling” about the looming darkness.