Soldier's Duty

by Patty Jansen

  Izramith carried the last pieces of fish up the beach, where Wairin had set up a drying rack. Loxa and Dashu on the beach, looking out over the lagoon. Dashu's face displayed the disgust Izramith felt.

  "Not impressed?" Izramith asked while sitting down. She wiped her hands on the ground but sand stuck to the half-dried fishy juice that covered her.

  Dashu said, "I've learned to eat fish here, but this is a bit much."

  "We eat fish at home, but they're not big like this." Or messy. There was something satisfying about deeply agreeing with Dashu.

  "Why don't they cut a part and leave the rest?"

  "It's an insult to the fish not to use it when you've killed it," Eris said, coming up the beach. "Pengali believe this and we live by it. These eels are not common. There are many Pengali legends about them."

  Lucky me then, almost eaten by a rare creature.

  "Don't pull a face like that. Wait until you taste it," Braedon said. He had retrieved his parcel.

  They sat on the beach in front of the cave.

  Eris had brought a light pearl and a stand on a stick that poked into the sand. By its light, they ate. Loxa and Dashu chose to stick to their dried rations, but Izramith tried some fish. It tasted very subtly of salt and herbs, and was very oily. Also very satisfying.

  While it got dark and the group sat at the camp, Izramith kept looking at the motion sensor's screen. If creatures like this lived in the water, what dangerous things would live on the land, in the forest where no one could see it hiding?

  She felt incredibly tired. Now that she had dried herself, her neck was getting very itchy from where that furry flower had fallen. When she scratched, she could feel welts on her skin.

  "You should look at that," Eris said. "Or it will become infected."

  "I've got some stuff for that," Braedon said. He dragged his bag over, opened it and rummaged inside.

  "That's not necessary. It's only itchy."

  "Yes, but you've already broken the skin. Infections are nasty in this place."

  She leaned back and let him wipe the spot with a piece of cloth soaked in fluid that cooled her skin and felt wonderful. He inspected the skin in her neck, close enough for his breath to tickle.

  "What caused this?"

  "One of those long fuzzy things that fell out of a tree when we were going up the hill."

  "You've got little white spines buried in your skin all over."

  Ew. "Can you take them out?"

  He probed carefully with a finger and then rummaged in his bag again. He returned with a pair of tweezers and spent the next while removing spikes from her skin so thin that they were barely visible.

  Sitting there patiently with her head leaning back, Izramith couldn't help but be reminded of Abbasi and how she'd first become involved with him. He'd been teaching her about the kind of landmines used by the rebels, and standing so close to her that in the cold night air of Pataniti, she could feel his warmth on her skin. He'd asked if she was cold and when she said yes, offered her his jacket. The smell of it still hung around her: dry stone, engine oil, dry vegetation. The last time she'd seen him, he'd been wearing that jacket, ripped, blood-smeared and dirty.

  She couldn't control an involuntary shiver.

  "You all right?" Braedon said.

  "Uhm. Yes."

  A moment of panic. He was so close to her. Wairin and Eris sat under the light, playing a game. Dashu and Loxa had gone to the pools to bathe.

  "Sit still. I've almost got them." Braedon shifted so that he didn't cast a shadow on her neck. He continued pulling out spikes with his cool and gentle touch, his brow furrowed in concentration. His hair was not as dead straight as Rehan's, but there was a gentle wave that made different parts reflect the lamp light at a different angle.

  She'd never said goodbye to Abbasi. Presumably, his family had claimed his body and had burned it according to Indrahui customs. She'd been too upset to ask if there was a ceremony. She'd justified it to herself by saying that the relationship was never intended to be serious anyway, and it wasn't, or shouldn't be, because she'd signed with Indor and didn't want to explain to him about an Indrahui lover who probably wouldn't relate to her outside the context of war anyway.

  And damn it, now there was this man so close to her that she could feel his breath on her skin. He'd been oblivious to her insults, oblivious to her strength and oblivious to the fact that for all his scrawny body, he was not unattractive. Most of all, he was cool as a fish. Unflappable and devoid of hysterics or silly displays of emotion that she hated so much.

  Damn it, she hadn't been near a man for so long that if he spent any longer breathing on the sensitive skin in her neck, she was going to flush. Already, her cheeks felt hot. "You finished?"

  "Almost." He put the tweezers away and wiped her neck again. "There. That should be better."

  He packed his things, still oblivious to the cause of her glowing cheeks, then looked up at her.

  "Anything wrong?"

  "No. Let's go to sleep."

  She rolled out her mat and he did the same. Loxa and Dashu came back—walking awfully close together—and Wairin and Eris stopped playing.

  One by one, they settled on their mats.

  But of course as soon as Eris turned off the light, Izramith felt wide awake. She lay on her mat pretending to be asleep for a while, but gave up on that and sat at the entrance to the cave, her knees pulled up against her chest, staring into the darkness. She told herself that someone needed to stay awake for their safety and all these lazy bums were not going to do it. Look at Loxa and Dashu on the same mat, her arm draped over his waist. How could they be serious about their job when all they saw was each other?

  She might as well admit it, she was jealous of the way these people trusted each other and they way they talked about personal things. And she couldn't stand why they were all sleeping peacefully while she was feeling terrible and cut up inside. Wanting to scream I lost my lover, I lost my family and I lost my nephew and the chance to have a family. Wanting to grab her gun and shoot things. Wanting to bash something into pulp.

  She rose and clambered up the rocks to the hot water pools. In the serene light of Ceren's two moons, steam rose off the water. It was all too pretty, too peaceful.

  She splashed through the shallow parts, disturbing that image of peace. She kicked the water so a great spray chased away the steam. At the base of a single gnarled tree that grew on the rock platform, she yanked her shirt over her head and flung it on the bank of the creek that fed the pools, and took off her long trousers.

  In just her shorts, she jumped up to the tree branch that hung over the water, and pulled herself up, let herself down and up again. And up and down and up and down and up. Just like she had done for training.

  The higher gravity made the muscles in her arms scream their protest, but she kept going. Up, down, up, down. Eventually, her arms shivered so much that she had to drop herself in the water, panting and shining with sweat.

  The water was warm, and stank of farts.

  Damn it, even the water was hot in this stupid place. Her hand found a rock under the water. She picked it up and flung it to the opposite side of the pool.

  Wait—was that white spot over there the reflection of moonlight in someone's hair?

  No, it was that damn Trader again. Why did he have to keep fussing over her?

  "What are you looking at?" She didn't intend to make it quite as unfriendly as it came out.

  "You should go to sleep. You're not well." He used colloquial pronouns.

  "I can look after myself, thanks."

  "So you've stopped feeling ill, and stopped vomiting?"

  "Just mind your own business. I didn't ask you to come here and babysit me."

  "I know you need no babysitting, but you can't do your job when you're not well."

  She whirled at him. "You don't give up, do you?"

  "Nope. I'm a Trader. Giving up is not part of my vocabulary."

  They
said nothing for a while. Izramith ran her hands through the water, spreading her fingers so that they sliced the surface. She felt like saying, Remember when you came to Hedron, the guard who gave you a really hard time, well that was me, but she didn't. She hadn't come out of that confrontation so well, had she?

  Then he said, "You're really strong. I've never seen anyone pull their entire weight up so many times. Especially not on Ceren."

  She hovered between wanting to run away and wanting to pick him up and bodily deposit him back at the camp. He was poking her, invading the space that she didn't want to share, trying to get a response out of her about subjects she didn't want to talk about.

  Eventually, he spoke. "You seem very… angry, stressed-out."

  "Didn't I tell you to bugger the fuck off?"

  Again, he said nothing and didn't move. He said nothing about the language or about being polite. She snorted, and he met her eyes. His irises were eerie light-coloured. He wasn't afraid of her, like he hadn't been at their first confrontation at Hedron.

  She sighed.

  "Do you ever lose your temper?"

  "I do. I just don't let it show."

  "Part of the Trader ethic, huh?"

  He said nothing and didn't move. She sighed and sat down.

  "You are so angry. I can virtually feel the anger coming off you in waves."

  "That true, huh? I can decide whenever the fuck I get angry."

  "Yes," he said, and then he let another long silence lapse. Izramith was about to get up when he added, "War is not something that can be taken lightly."

  "You tell me about war? Seriously? What do you know about it?"

  "More than I care to remember."

  He was looking ahead, his eyes distant.

  Shit.

  After a long silence, he said, "I killed a man, once."

  Only once? Only one?

  "More than one, but one in particular I remember. He was climbing over the wall of our house. We were hiding in the back alley from a bunch of people who had broken down the gates. All of us were in our nightclothes in the snow. Calliandra and the twins, and Mikandra and her mother and sister. It seemed everything was lost. Rehan had gone into the house to find Mother, and the house was burning. It was burning so much that the entire neighbourhood was glowing with it. And this man climbed up on the wall right where the family was hiding. He was a Mirani Nikala, probably a hired thug. I didn't think, I just shot him. He fell back in the snow. There was no blood. Every time when I think of war, I see his face. He looked… surprised."

  She nodded, but said nothing and trailed her fingers in the water.

  He made to get up. "We should probably try to get some sleep. Things could get hairy any time. I just wanted to make sure you're all right."

  She didn't move. There was no way she could sleep. She'd slept badly enough recently. And she was not all right. All night, she'd be re-playing in her memories of the moment that the flaming aircraft crashed into the enemy camp. The aircraft that she had shot. Who ever thought of using non-impact proof glass in an aircraft anyway?

  It was not her fault, was it?

  "Coming?"

  She let another silence lapse, her throat closing with emotion.

  "Izramith?" It was the first time he'd used her name.

  "You go. I'll just… sit here. Can't sleep."

  "You served at Indrahui recently, didn't you?"

  Izramith nodded.

  He knelt in the sand, facing her.

  Silence lingered.

  Izramith's thoughts whirled. Commander Blue had suggested she go to the clinic. It was normal to feel upset after going to war, she had said. Get into the routine, and the pain will numb and the nightmares stop.

  Except they didn't. Her thoughts kept getting tangled in webs of awful memories. Everything she did caused flashbacks. People with normal lives were too far away from her to understand. And she kept getting these horrible, nasty flashes of jealousy.

  There was a time for "getting over" things, and a time to get help. The first was fast regressing and the second was becoming inevitable.

  She said, her voice soft, "I worked as a contracted communication officer for the Indrahui consolidated army. At first I was stationed in Pataniti and would direct logistics and transport. But then the rebels attacked Pataniti and we were surrounded, and everyone was called up to fight. The rebels advanced on the town and captured an outlying community. They slaughtered families, killed the men, raped the women and killed their children before their eyes. We organised at attack to break out of the blockade. There was no other option, because no one seemed to care about liberating the town, and we were fast running out of food and water."

  She shuddered at memories of the despair, of the dust, of the stink of garbage and unwashed bodies.

  "We were ridiculously under-equipped. We only had our personal weapons, but little else. Many of us were Coldi, and we voted down the proposal to attack at night, because, you know—we can't see too well." Or at least not as good as others.

  "So we attacked early in the morning. It was a mess right from the beginning. I saw three partners killed before my eyes. There was no time to even check if they were dead. You know, when you go to war, the supervisors drill into you: if someone falls, take their weapon and keep going. So that's what we were doing. I had about four or five guns. One of them was wet with blood. But we were fucked, basically. They had more weapons and more people. Then an aircraft joined their side.

  "It was a merchant-style craft, a battered-up thing, but it had a large cargo door and people were throwing explosives on our line. I was doing tech at the back, and I'd just been unjamming this beast of a rocket launcher. It was an old-fashioned thing, no idea who owned it or where it came from. I don't know what I was doing, but I loaded the thing and fired at the craft. It was a dumb move, because the kickback would have hit the troops badly, but it happened not be armoured, and the craft exploded in a huge fireball…"

  She had to stop talking to regain her composure.

  "And everyone around me was cheering. I mean—if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't be sitting here now."

  She let a silence stretch on.

  "The worst thing was, that as it began to fall, I realised that it was going to fall in the rebel camp. And all these people inside the camp realised that too. I could see them running. But of course there was a barrier around the camp—to keep us out—and people couldn't get out quickly. So it fell, in a huge flaming explosion. I don't know how many explosives they had in the hold, but the ground shook and everything in the camp burnt. Tents, people, vehicles, everything. No one knows exact numbers, but they said there were at least a thousand people in the camp."

  "Crap." That one word was full of understanding. Whatever he had done in his life, and however sheltered he had grown up, he knew about war.

  "Yes. Crap. You know, you go to war and you expect to kill people. That's part of the job. I'd seen people killed and maimed many times. I thought I was used to it. But this…" Her eyes pricked. She wiped them with the back of her hand, but that did nothing. It just would not do. Guards did not cry.

  "… this was senseless. The whole war at Indrahui is senseless. They don't even remember what they're fighting for. It's just one war lord against another for the sake of old family vendettas, and if it suits them, they'll align themselves with either the government or the rebels. There is no point to the conflict. There is no way to solve it. There is no need for pointless deaths."

  Her vision went blurry. She wiped her eyes again.

  "It's all right." His voice was soft.

  She shook her head, furiously. The tear escaped her eye and rolled over her cheek. "It's not all right. All those people are dead, and they'd done nothing to me. I know about war and all that, but not… not… this. Mass slaughter. Almost a thousand people died because I launched that rocket—"

  He opened his mouth—

  "No, don't tell me that a thousand different people would have died
had I not done it."

  Silence.

  Then he said, "I was going to say that you cannot un-change what has happened. You have to learn to live with it." His voice was soft.

  "But life is pointless. My family doesn't care. They…" hate me. They don't even care about a baby. Her voice caught. Her mind flooded with awful thoughts. Her family hated her because of what she'd done. They hated her because she always got into fights. They knew that she displayed some remnants of sheya behaviour, which was a character trait and not learned, and because of that, she was dirty, unclean.

  She bit her lip. Her shoulders shook. Her breath jerked in a sob. Another tear leaked out of her eyes and ran down her nose.

  "Shh." He placed an arm on her shoulders and pulled her into his warmth.

  She turned into him and buried her face in his tunic.

  And burst into tears.

  She cried and cried, her body shaking.

  He said nothing, asked her nothing. Just held her, the palm of his hand describing small circles on her shoulder blade.

  Izramith had no idea how long they sat there, but slowly she calmed down, leaning into him.

  "I don't know what I'll do when I finish this contract. I'll never again make a good guard." Her voice had gone hoarse.

  "You'll make a better guard. There is nothing shameful about feeling like this over terrible things. It would be more worrying if you didn't have these feelings. Someone at the guards should have offered you and other returnees debriefing, but, knowing Hedron, I'm not surprised that they left you to handle it on your own. You'll probably find that most of you have trouble."

  "I haven't seen any of the others since returning." Although that wasn't entirely the guards' fault. She hadn't wanted to be reminded of the war by serving with people who had been there—who knew what she had done.