by K. J. Parker
Then, remarkably, there was the lieutenant, at his feet; he had to stop sharply and take a knee in his stomach to keep from treading on him. It was bad enough already, so he stooped, put one arm under D’Eteleieto’s knees and the other behind his head, and tried a straight lift. He felt the muscles of his back tear like rotten cloth, but he couldn’t be bothered with that. Now all he had to do was keep his feet as the wedge squashed deeper into the enemy line, and hope he didn’t get them both spitted on a pike. Quite a lot to ask for, and now there really wasn’t anything he could do. He was exhausted, every last scrap of strength gone, his throat rasped raw with forced breathing. Mostly, he was furiously angry, because he’d got this far, and it wasn’t going to be enough.
But it was, somehow. At some point the enemy formation finally splintered and ran, and the Ninth rushed forward into space that wasn’t jammed with bodies, and there was enough room to fall over without being trampled. As he hit the ground, he rolled instinctively on to his side, curling round D’Eteleieto to cover as much of him as he could. His eyes closed, and everything went away.
“Fly,” someone was saying. His name. No, his name was Thouridos Alces. “Fly, for crying out loud wake up.”
Some fool, quite possibly the same fool that was yelling at him, was shaking him about. He lashed out with his arm, but it wouldn’t lash; it was tied to his body. Odd, he thought. Odd enough to merit opening his eyes.
The light hurt, and Aidi Proiapsen was standing over him, his face unnaturally huge, yelling at him: “Fly, come on, wake up. We haven’t got time.”
His right arm was tied to his body with cloth; a sling. But he had the full use of his left.
“Ow,” Aidi said, darting back. “Damn it, Fly, what do you think you’re playing at?”
“Aidi?” He made his voice distant and dreamy. “Is that you?”
“Of course it’s me, you clown. What did you go and hit me for?”
“Did I hit you? Sorry.”
There was blood, he was guiltily pleased to note, smudged on Aidi’s lower lip. “Get up,” Aidi said, and that didn’t make sense at all, because a man lying on a bed in a tent after a battle with his arm in a sling is bound to be ill, and therefore excused getting up. “Come on. For God’s sake, Fly.”
“Where is this?” Alces demanded. “What happened?”
“No time.” Aidi darted in; he was fast, had to give him that. Before Alces could deflect him, Aidi leaned forward, grabbed his left wrist, twisted it into a painful lock and dragged him to his feet. He staggered, throwing his weight on the wrist lock, which hurt. “Aidi,” he protested, but a hand in the small of his back straightened him up, and he found he was being shuffled across the tent alarmingly quickly.
“It’s all right,” he gasped, “you can let go, I’m coming.” But Aidi kept on twisting and pulling, and he stumbled badly, bashing his shin against the leg of a chair and howling. It didn’t make any sense . . .
“Aidi.” It was Muri’s voice, but very high and weak. He looked round, but couldn’t see him; the sound had come from the far corner of the tent, where a group of men were standing round a bed. Then he recognised the back of Kudei’s head, and saw Muri turn and face them, and he was as pale as chalk.
Aidi let go of him and lunged forward, then stopped, as though he’d met an invisible wall. “He never woke up,” Muri was saying. “Just stopped breathing.”
Aidi; Aidi, Nuctos, Muri, Kudei, and on the far side of the bed, just straightening up out of a crouch, Teuche. And he’d saved Lieutenant D’Eteleieto, so who was dead? But Aidi had crumpled up, Kudei was standing perfectly still, Teuche was shaking, and there was someone lying on the bed, and his skin was grey.
“But that’s not right,” he heard himself say. “I got him out of there. He was alive.”
“Well, he’s not now,” Aidi snapped at him. “Quite the bloody opposite.”
“Aidi.” Nuctos sounded tired, distant. “He did his best.”
“Obviously,” Aidi said, and moved violently away, colliding with a chair and smacking it out of his way with the flat of his hand. It was practically a formal challenge, but there was no feeling to it; like a ceremony performed too many times, or a religious service in a dead language.
“Well,” Teuche said, “that’s that, then. We’re screwed.”
Nobody said anything, but Alces thought: Aidi tries to pick a fight, Nuctos has run out of steam, Teuche’s thinking about how there’s nobody to lead us any more, Muri looks like his brain’s stopped working, and Kudei’s just slumped. And me? I’m watching the others.
They stayed there for a long time, restless, frustrated, for the first time unable to talk to each other. Then, at last, Kudei said, “I’m going to get some sleep,” and Alces noticed his mouth was bruised and swollen, and blood was seeping through a fat bandage on his hand. Which reminded him.
“Teuche,” he said, “did they say what’s wrong with me?” And he flapped his tied-up arm, like a chicken’s wing.
“Broken,” Teuche replied. “If you look, you’ll see it’s all splinted up.” He paused, looking thoughtful, and said, “You can go home with that, if you want.”
“How long?”
Teuche shook his head. “They didn’t say,” he replied. “Anyway, as far as I can gather, we’re all out of it for a bit. We won, by the way. We bolted them, and they ran smack into Euteuchida’s men on the top road. Couldn’t have been sweeter if they’d tried. So,” he added, picking up the chair Aidi had knocked around and sitting in it, “nobody round here left for us to fight. They’re pleased with us.”
“Teuche, for crying out loud, shut up,” Aidi said. “I couldn’t give a shit about the war right now.”
“But at least we won,” Muri said, lifting his head. “It’d have been really bad if this had happened and we’d lost.”
“If we’d lost we’d all be dead,” Kudei said, and the way he stressed the word “all” made Alces frown. “But we’re not, and I’ve had enough of today. Anybody got any idea where they dumped our stuff ?”
“Hold on, I’ll come with you,” Teuche said. “Best thing would be to find the duty officer. Oh, while I think of it: Fly, they found your kit, I told them to stow it at the tent.”
He couldn’t think what Teuche was talking about; then he realised he must mean the zweyhander sword, and he felt a sudden lurch of panic, because he hadn’t let it out of his sight since he’d been issued with it. And then Muri said, “What about him?”
Nuctos sighed. “We’ll get up early in the morning and dig a grave,” he said. “It’s against regulations, would you believe, individual burials in an active theatre of operations, but I don’t imagine we’ll have any trouble. Pity. I could just feel like assaulting a superior officer right now. Which reminds me,” he added sharply. “The captain didn’t make it either.” No reaction whatsoever to that. “So I spoke to the colonel, and we’ve been officially designated as a freelance; mostly, I think, because nobody’s stupid enough to want to go with us.” He shrugged. “Thought you ought to know.”
Several days later, as they rode in a captured wagon in the rearguard of the reunified army, Teuche very tentatively raised the subject of Lieutenant D’Eteleieto’s share of their account in regimental funds. “It’s just that the bean-counters’ve been bugging me about it,” he explained, “because we’re a free company now. They want to know if we’re tenants in common, a mutual or a tontine.”
Kudei stared at him blankly, but Aidi said, “Tenants in common, I suppose. Really, if there’s any money, we ought to send it back home to his family.”
Teuche shrugged. “We can do,” he said, “but apparently if we want to do that, we’ve all got to sign an indenture and get it registered at Battalion, and it’ll all drag on for months. And, not to put too fine a point on it, since I’m the one who’s got to do all the paperwork . . ”
“What’s a tontine?” Muri asked.
“That’s when everything goes to the last survivor,” Aidi said. �
��A mutual’s where we share it between ourselves as we go along, with dead members’ shares falling in as they crop up. Tenants in common’s where each man’s share goes back to his family if he doesn’t make it.”
“Then let’s make it a mutual,” Kudei said. “I don’t see why my useless brothers should benefit. They’ll get my share of the farm, that’s plenty.”
“Aidi?” Teuche said.
“My lot don’t need the money,” Aidi said, “and presumably we’re only talking about shillings anyway. A mutual sounds about right.”
“Fly?” Teuche said.
“Whatever,” Alces replied.
“Muri?”
“Haven’t got any family I’m on speaking terms with,” Muri replied. “How much are we talking about, anyway?”
“Shillings,” Teuche said, “but who knows, we might get lucky. Nuctos?”
Nuctos looked at him without saying anything, then nodded.
Teuche licked his lips, like a cat. “So, we’re all agreed, then. A mutual.”
Aidi looked up at him. “Do we need any documentation for that?”
Teuche shook his head. “An oral agreement suffices,” he said. “That’s what the adjutant’s office told me, anyway. Apparently it’s the default position for free units; we only have to sign things if we want something different.”
“A mutual sounds like it’s the fairest way,” Muri said. “Not that I’m in any hurry to contribute.”
Nuctos suddenly grinned. “Right now, I’d settle for a new pair of boots,” he said. “Without prejudice, in full and final settlement. These ones I’ve got on now are cut to ribbons.”
“What is it with the army and boots, anyway?” Aidi demanded. “In the nature of things a soldier does a lot of walking, so obviously his boots wear out. You’d have thought your bloody generals would’ve realised that by now.”
Muri nodded vigorously. “I asked the supply sergeant about that, just before we left Penna. He said we were second from top on his list, and we’d have them the day after tomorrow.”
Kudei scowled horribly. “We ought to raise hell about that, now we’re heroes,” he said. “What we need is a company supply officer.”
“We’ve got one,” Aidi pointed out. “Teuche, didn’t they saddle you with that?”
Teuche nodded. “Not a great deal I can do about it, though,” he said. “I wrote Supply a snotty memo about it when we reached Silam Bet, but I don’t suppose it even got there to be fair; it’s not like we’re still in barracks. The war gets in the way, you know.”
“Even so,” Aidi said. “I was talking to a couple of men from C Company, and they got new boots at Silam Bet. And I’d have thought we had priority over them.”
Teuche shrugged. “You want the job, you can have it. Mine are size ten, with studs if they’ve got them.”
“No chance.” Aidi shook his head vigorously. “I don’t work well with military bureaucracy, I tend to lose my temper and say things.”
“Don’t look at me,” Kudei said. “I’m just a farm boy.”
“I’m sure Teuche’s doing everything he can,” Muri said. “Maybe you can try again once we get back to the coast. I’m hoping we won’t have much marching to do before then.”
After that, the conversation veered away, somewhat to Teuche’s relief. With luck, he told himself, they’d have forgotten all about it by the time they reached the fort, and he wouldn’t be faced with the prospect of explaining to Supply why his company needed new boots when they’d been issued with two pairs each at Silam Bet. He’d sold them, of course, along with the clothing, bedding and eating utensils; they’d gone to auction along with the last consignment of enemy salvage from Regimental, and nobody seemed to have noticed that they were unissued regulation stores rather than bloodstained battlefield plunder. He made a resolution not to try it again for a while; no real need, now that there was likely to be a steady supply of salvage, and there were just the six of them.
Aidi was wrong. As the sailing master had promised, they made landfall on Sphoe just after dawn on the sixth day out from Faralia. A dense white fog kept them out of the harbour till mid-morning; it lifted quite suddenly, like a curtain.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” Aidi asked.
The harbour was a grey shale mouth wide open to swallow them. Beyond it, they could see the truncated cone of the dead volcano, scruffy with trees like an unshaven chin. A brown stone watchtower stuck up out of a huge fuzz of briars, next to the rotten remains of a jetty; from its top, a green and blue flag sagged on an ash-limb flagpole. There was a revolting decaying-seaweed smell.
Kunessin was leaning over the prow rail, as if he wanted to pounce on Sphoe and catch it before it could get away. “This is it,” he said.
Alces pointed at the flagpole. “There’s someone here,” he said.
Green and blue: navy colours. “There’s nobody here,” Kunessin said. “If there was anyone here, there’d be a ship.”
They could hear the distant shrieking of a large colony of gulls. “Then someone’s been here recently,” Aidi said. “Or that flag’d have rotted away.”
Kunessin straightened his back. “I personally am not afraid of a bit of old cloth,” he said. “We might as well drop anchor here and take the boat in. I don’t like the look of that jetty.”
She came up behind him and looked round him. It reminded her a little of Chora Oudemia, ten miles down the coast from Faralia, where the old whaling station used to be. “Is it how you remember it?” she asked.
He hadn’t realised she was there. “More or less,” he said. “A bit fallen-down and overgrown, but that’s only to be expected. We’ll soon lick it into shape.”
She doubted that. “Where are all the buildings?” she asked.
He pointed. “See that big sand dune? Behind there. You won’t be able to see them till we’re right up close.”
“It’s a decent enough harbour, anyway,” Aidi was saying. “It’s a bit like Chora Bay, back home. And we won’t be short of building material, with all that shingle.”
“They shipped in bricks,” Kunessin said, “at vast expense. That’s the military for you.”
“I think there’s someone already here,” Alces said. “That flag . . ”
“Well, we’ll know soon enough,” Kunessin said, and she could tell he wasn’t happy. He’s told lies to someone about something, she decided, and he’s worried about being found out. She found that puzzling. What was there to lie about? It was the flag, she assumed, because there couldn’t be anything else.
They lowered the boat, and Kunessin scrambled awkwardly down a rope ladder into it, followed by the other four. (He’s not extravagantly fond of water, either, she thought, but that just made her want to smile.) Kudei and Muri took the oars. Naturally, Kunessin steered. Now, she thought, if that boat were to sink and all five of them drowned, we could go home. She thought about that, but came to the conclusion that she’d rather they didn’t. That caused her a degree of mild surprise, and also a very slight amount of pleasure.
“This is it, then.” She hadn’t noticed that Chaere was there. “Our new home.”
She laughed. “Try and sound a bit more enthusiastic.”
“It’s a dump.”
“Yes,” she admitted. “Right now it is. We’ll soon get it into shape.”
Chaere sighed. “Optimism,” she said. “Enthusiasm. Why do I always have to be surrounded with optimism and enthusiasm? Look at it, it’s horrible.”
So Dorun looked; and she saw a grey shingle beach sloping gently up to a tangle of furze and briars, with a few thin, wind-gnawed elms sticking up out of the mess, like an old man’s remaining teeth. Behind rose a flat-topped mountain, grey and unfinished-looking in the mist. “It’s not so bad,” she said brightly. “You’ve seen the map.”
“Actually no, I haven’t,” Chaere said. “I don’t suppose anybody thought it was worth showing me.”
“Well,” Dorun said, “the buildings, where we’ll
be living, are just over there - you can’t see them from here, the dunes are in the way. Then there’s a wide, flat plain that goes all the way to the foot of that mountain over there. The foothills are covered in woods: oaks and beech on the lower slopes, pine and fir a bit further up; on the other side of the mountain, it’s more hilly, quite like home, and there’s more mountains over the other side. There’s a river which—”
“Yes, all right, thank you.” Chaere sighed again. “It’s horrible barren wilderness, and we’re going to be reduced to living like savages. And it’s so cold. I feel the cold terribly. I bet you the wind comes howling in off the sea, and if we’re going to be cooped up right on the edge here, it’ll be bitter. Bitter,” she repeated, and shivered. “It’s all right for the rest of you, you were brought up on farms, you’re used to cold and damp and squalor and brown muddy water to wash in. I want to live in a town, where it’s warm and clean.”
They hauled the boat up on to the beach, and looked around.
“Well,” Aidi said, “here we are.”
“We’d better take a look at the jetty,” Kunessin said briskly. “If it’s still in one piece, we can start unloading straight away. I want to get the livestock ashore before dark.”
They trudged up the beach to the jetty, or what was left of it. Most of the planking had rotted through and fallen into the sea. Muri scrambled up and started poking about; Kunessin got the map out. “There’s a cove about quarter of a mile down the coast where we should be able to beach the ship,” he said. “It’s pretty open, but if the weather stays like this it won’t matter. It’ll mean having to haul everything overland, but that can’t be helped. It’ll be better than trying to ferry all our stuff across a boatload at a time.”
“We can patch it up,” Muri called down. “There’s enough sound boards here to make a walkway. It’ll be a bit narrow, but we’ll just have to look where we’re going.”
“Can we get out again?” Aidi said. “We’re too far into the harbour; we’ll have to wait till the wind changes. Besides,” he added, peering over Kunessin’s shoulder, “this cove of yours is down the coast; we’ll have a hell of a job tacking against the wind. Hold on, Muri,” he called out. “I’m coming up.”