“I heard what happened to your friend,” the soldier said confidentially.
Will glanced around the room. Ms. Diane was nowhere to be seen.
“Which friend?” he asked, looking down into his drink.
“The doctor. Martin. I’m sorry.”
“I heard on the news that the King executed Prince Jacob. I keep wondering if Martin died the same way.” He frowned into his beer and swirled it around, as if he was expecting some kind of wisdom to come out of the liquid. “Before he died, Martin started wondering if the rebels were real. He said he’d never even seen a rebel. He started saying... well, maybe it’s got something to do with the King trying to unite us in fear...”
The tall soldier shook his head. “I understand why they killed him, then. But the rebels are real. You can take my word for it. I’ve been stationed on the front line for seven years. I told you, didn’t I? From my posts we can see the rebel positions. They’ve got a perimeter out there... it looks like a wall. And we shoot at them sometimes, and sometimes they shoot back.”
“But Martin was so sure there was something... wrong about all this,” Will continued. He thought of the sacks of grain, where the patches had ripped off to show the flag of the Black Force. “We’ve seen some weird things,” he added.
“I’ve seen some weird things too,” the tall soldier said. “Listen, I was stationed out further north once, and from there, when you looked up and out towards the ceasefire line, you could see a city. Buildings, lights, even cars.”
“A rebel city?” Will asked with surprise. He’d always envisioned the rebels as people lurking in the forest, with villages like his.
“No, not a rebel city,” the soldier answered, shaking his head. “If you were high up and you squinted, maybe with binoculars, you could see some rebel buildings. But that’s not what I’m talking about. This city... It was one of our cities. It was on our side of the line. We’d built it. It was even closer to the front line than my post. This city - it was really right up to the ceasefire line, to the very last millimeter. Anyway, one day we got a report of some rebel activity in that area and my platoon went down there on a foot patrol. We went into the city - and we weren’t usually allowed in there. And...” he paused and frowned, looking down into his drink, just as Will had done a few minutes earlier.
“And?” Will prompted.
“I still don’t understand what I saw out there. There was nobody there. There were no people in the whole city. There were hundreds of buildings. Modern buildings, big buildings, like they have in the capital. Big flags and pictures of the King. Lights flickered on and off. Cars and trollies went around on little rails. There was even a PA system that made announcements every now and then. And there were stores, that looked like they were completely stocked with food and tools and everything else you can imagine. But no people. Some of the building lobbies were furnished, but deeper in than that, they were completely empty. Everything was just... shells. We never did find the rebels we were sent to look for,” he added. “Nothing but the birds in the whole city.”
Will frowned. “Why would there be a whole empty city?”
“I have no idea. But I don’t see why it’s empty. It looked like a pretty nice place to live. And those lights were on at all hours of the day and night so it must have had power, not like our base. We only got power at night, when the factories weren’t using it. They told us that city was evacuated because of the reports of rebels... but I know they weren’t. There was no sign that anyone had ever lived there, not a soul. And there were no trucks or anything coming out before we were deployed, and no people went back in after. It was really weird.”
“Martin would have known what that means. Why there was an empty city... Martin... You know, he died because he tried to treat Nate. My friend - Nate - he was a soldier. He died in battle. They tried to pretend he hadn’t died. I don’t know why. Before he died, Nate told us... he told us that there was no gas in any of the boats except for his, and that’s why they couldn’t send him any reinforcements to help him fight the rebels. And Martin tried to talk about it, and talk about other things... so they killed Martin...”
He frowned.
The tall soldier shifted uncomfortably. “Look, we’re good people. We’re just trying to do our duty for the King. But we make mistakes sometimes. Like when we almost arrested you because those rebel leaflets fell in your friend’s field. And we’re soldiers. We have guns. We’re dangerous. When we make mistakes, people die. I’ll give you an example. Most of the time, you know, we’re not issued live ammunition to conduct drills. The army just figures it’s a waste, I guess. But one day, years ago, the King’s Guard - under General Ganymede at the time - came by our base to conduct a live fire artillery drill. I don’t know why, maybe to scare the rebels or maybe just to give the King’s Guard something to do. But they showed up at our base, just like they came to town a few weeks ago for the parade. And they put on a good show, hauling out these artillery pieces and lining them up in formation and all that, and they were supposed to hit a bunch of targets we’d put out on the range. But they made a mistake and one of their spotters fed them the wrong coordinates. And their shells fell on the village. And they hit some poor kid’s house and killed his parents. And a few of our guys - local boys - in the village started shooting because they thought they were under attack. And when this kid showed up, they didn’t know what to tell him, so the village mother told him - and everyone else - that his parents were killed in a rebel raid. Two people dead. One orphaned. Everyone deceived, all because some dumb spotter in the Royal Guard couldn’t double check his firing coordinates. General Ganymede’s Minister of Defense now,” the scrawny soldier added.
Will was sitting stone still in his chair. He could still see everything so clearly in his mind. His house destroyed, his parents’ bodies, Ms. Diane hugging him and telling him it was a rebel raid. There had been the smell of cordite in the air, the reports of the gunshots, and he had always believed - so naively, so stupidly, even after all that had happened - that the rebels really had killed his parents in a raid. He could see Martin’s dumbstruck face. He could feel Nate’s grip on his shoulder and his young voice, so full of anger. “Don’t worry Will. We’ll get them back for this.” And so Nate had joined the army. And Martin had become a doctor.
“Thanks,” Will said hoarsely.
“For what?” the scrawny soldier asked curiously.
“For telling me that. I never knew.”
The soldier shrugged. “I’m just trying to say, you know, I’m sorry about what happened to your friend. He was probably a good doctor. But the rebels are real - you can take that much from me. I’ve shot at them and they’ve shot back. They really are out there, lined up and waiting, and the attack really could come at any minute.”
“But have they killed as many of us as the army has?” Will asked.
“I don’t know,” said the soldier, rising. “Sorry about your friend.” He clapped Will on the shoulder.
Will staggered back to his house hours later, having drunk heavily. He looked around, trying to find even one artifact of his parents, a picture, a book, a letter, a watch, anything... but there was nothing to find. He remembered how Martin had dug through the ruins of his house, looking for some memento to salvage and found nothing. Will had nothing left of them, nothing except the dream of flight.
Chapter 17
The winter was fast drawing to an end and still there was no rain. This had once again become a matter of concern in the village as the military trains had delivered less food than expected for this month’s rations, and the townsfolk began to wonder aloud if they were facing a new famine. If the food reserves in the capital had run out, then what would they eat in the coming year? For many, the idea of a second famine was shocking. It had not been so long ago that Will had seen the hungriest people boiling their own shoes, just so they could have something to eat. Farmers returned to their fields, but the ground was still cracked and dry, and t
here was no rain to speak of. Will realized that they would soon be turning to the wells that Martin and Harry had dug for water - and that their survival in the coming year would depend very heavily on whether there was enough groundwater to irrigate the fields. Food again appeared in bulk in the markets, which were looking more robust than ever. The prices rose precipitously after the missed ration delivery, as some people began to stockpile food for themselves, but Ms. Diane thoroughly condemned this behavior, and the soldiers began to raid the homes of suspected food-hoarders, confiscating anything they found above the norm.
Will continued working on his airplane. It was almost finished now. He had installed the hydraulics and linked them back up to the refurbished cockpit, although the control surfaces had yet to be placed on the other end. The airframe, cockpit, wings, landing gear, nose, propeller... almost everything was done, but he was still missing an engine. Will had absolutely no idea where he might get an engine from, since the type 4A aircraft engine that the military had confiscated was the only aviation engine he was likely to get hold of. Occasionally he thought of the tobacco-chewing naval officer, who had offered to sell him an engine, but Will’s blood boiled when he thought of the man, and Will doubted he could afford such an engine anyway. Sometimes he contemplated going back to the junkyard, remembering that Brandon had talked about other engines in the huge trash heaps, but a report from mid-winter discouraged him. Ms. Diane, who had not mentioned the issue of the homeless for a long time, suddenly announced that the dump had been cleared of all children, who had been sent back to the orphanages. Will vaguely remembered what Brandon had said about the school, and how they had not given the boys enough to eat and tried to force them to make shoes when funding from the canton ran dry. Regardless, since he had no hope of navigating the junkyard without Brandon, Will was stuck, and his work on the plane slowed considerably.
He tried to drive what the tall, scrawny soldier had said about his parents - that they were killed by a shell misdirected during an exercise - out of his mind, but he couldn’t. It visited him in his dreams, which were consumed with confusing images of parading soldiers in front of his destroyed house. It occupied his waking thoughts too. Will often found it difficult to concentrate on his work or virtually anything else when he remembered what the tall soldier had said. He had not told anyone else, not even Harry.
One afternoon, Will walked back to the ruins of his old house, but found there was simply nothing there to see. The debris had long since been cleared away. He meant to walk to the village cemetery thereafter, but instead found himself in front of the Steagal residence. Martin’s parents lived here, as had Martin himself after the navy had kicked him out of his own surgery. Without quite knowing why, Will approached the front door and knocked.
Martin’s mother answered. She had been Will’s teacher in school when he was a kid, though it seemed like a lifetime ago now. Mrs. Steagal greeted him warmly and ushered him into the house, giving him a warm cup of tea.
“I’m sorry,” Will found himself saying. “I know I should have come by earlier. A long time ago. I - I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for your loss.”
Mrs. Steagal was shaking her head, smiling a sad smile. “Don’t worry about it, Will. I know you were Martin’s friend and that’s enough. I know you miss him. I didn’t need to hear it from you.” Her gaze drifted over to a large collection of books. “Those were all his,” she said blankly. “He read everything. Technical manuals, history, literature, anything he could get his hands on. I could never stop him when he was younger. It always amazed me that he and Harry got on so well, since Harry could barely read at all. I wondered what they talked about.”
“Everyone called me ‘the scholar,’” Will recollected. “Martin was always the scholar.”
Will plucked a single book off the book shelf. It was a population survey from the Bureau of Statistics. He opened it to a random page to find a handwritten note from Martin amidst the typeface, with an arrow pointing to a single line of data and the words, “people are not having as many children,” in the margin.
Mrs. Steagal watched him and smiled. Her hands shook a little on the sides of her teacup as she put it to her lips. There was a silence. “At least he died in the service of the King.”
Images of Martin, and Will’s own decimated house accompanied by the parading soldiers flashed through Will’s mind.
“I was meaning to ask you,” Will said. “How did the King’s War start?”
Mrs. Steagal looked surprised at the question but began to recite her speech, the same speech that Martin had heard so many times when he was in school. It had seemed so unimportant to him then. Verbose. Monotonous. But now he saw how utterly inadequate an explanation it was.
“The King’s War started years ago as a rebel uprising that aimed to overthrow His Majesty the King and put an end to his rightful rule in the Kingdom and the prosperous national order that we have all come to enjoy. The rebels were met by the patriotic forces of the Royal Army, who, outraged by the treachery of the ungrateful rebels, quickly drove them east. The valor of the Royal Army would have eradicated them entirely were it not for the Black Force who-”
“How many years ago did the war start?” Will asked calmly.
Mrs. Steagal looked surprised by the question. “I don’t know. It was a very long time ago - before the reign of King Samuel, maybe even before that.”
“What were the rebels rebelling over? I mean, why is the war being fought?”
“They were trying to overthrow the King,” she recalled.
Will tapped his foot impatiently.
“But why were they trying to overthrow him? A large rebellion with lots of people wouldn’t have just started for no reason. Was it started by one of the King’s brothers?” he asked, remembering the news about Prince Jacob. “Or were the people angry for some reason, and that’s why they rebelled?”
“Insidious forces turned the people against the King,” Mrs. Steagal answered, but her own answer sounded uncertain.
“What forces? The Black Force? Who are the Black Force?”
Mrs. Steagal stared at him blankly and Will stared back at her in frustration. He picked the demographic survey back up and flipped it to another random page.
“Why is it that I know -” he picked off a random line “-how many shepherds there were in a canton across the Kingdom fifty years ago, but I don’t know how the King’s War started?”
Still, Mrs. Steagal could not answer him.
Will sighed and put the book down.
“Who was Prince Jacob?” he asked calmly. “He and the King... their father was the King before them?”
“Yes. King James - King Edward’s father.”
“And the King’s War was fought in his time?”
“Yes. At least since King Samuel before him - he was King James’ father. Old Pete fought in King Samuel’s reign. Hundreds of thousands of people died.”
“And before that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Has it always been fought?”
Mrs. Steagal just shook her head.
“I’m just trying to understand why the rebels are fighting us,” Will said. “They killed my parents - Martin - Nate... I just want to...”
“I know dear,” she said quietly. “But I’m afraid I just don’t know.”
Will thanked her for the tea and left. As he walked outside, a military bomber flew low over the town, the roar of its four state-of-the-art engines and propellers rattling windows as it went. Will watched it for a time, then returned to his shop to continue work on his own aircraft.
Chapter 18
The winter gave way to spring a few weeks later, but it didn’t get any warmer, nor was there much more rain. The farmers rapidly plowed the fields and sowed them for the planting season, but they were left looking dubiously at the cracked ground. Water was pumped out of the wells and poured into the irrigation trenches, but Will realized without a more efficient method for pumping the wat
er, there would never be enough to make a difference. There could be an ocean of water in the aquifers but it wouldn’t matter without a larger pump. He wasn’t the only one to realize this, as some of the farmers started petitioning Ms. Diane to requisition a larger coal-powered steam pump, which could produce water at the rates required, from the canton or the capital. She had promised to look into it, but so far no steam pump had come, and thus almost nothing grew. Food got scarcer as ration deliveries decreased for the second and then the third month running, and people began wearing their belts tighter again. They sensed, as Will already had, that the famine was not yet over. Even the soldiers, who always seemed to be able to find grain to turn into alcohol via their still were running out of material to ferment. Instead, one of them had gotten his hands on a new-model gramophone, which Will had only ever seen in the capital. Many of them now spent their afternoons huddled around the thing, listening to strange and scratchy but comprehensible tunes recorded far away.
Will continued to work on his aircraft. He added a suitable windshield, stripped and adapted from an old automobile, to protect the pilot from the oncoming rush of air. While the solution of the engine problem eluded him, he was determined to finish every other last piece of the plane. One afternoon, he was sitting in Harry’s barn on a cart underneath the plane, tinkering with the hydraulics. Harry stood to one side, chewing on his straw and watching.
“What are you doing?” he asked eventually.
“I’m just adding the control surfaces. I’m hooking up the ailerons to the steering wheel,” Will said matter-of-factly. “There. Done. Look.” He slid out from under the plane, reached over into the cockpit, and turned the steering wheel. The surfaces on the wings, which guided the plane through the air, shifted. “And you can push back and forth to change them too,” Will added. “And the pedals control the rudder, and that’s the clutch, and that’s the throttle,” he continued, tapping on a lever and a choke in the cockpit.
The King's War Page 13