by Lee Abrey
“Good morning!” I shouted, my visor still open. I had remembered one more phrase in Sriaman, “Your mothers do it with cucumbers!”
I wasn’t sure of the grammar, as it was told to me during that extremely busy night with the lovely wife of the Kavar ambassador, who knew only one phrase in Sriaman, a very rude one overheard in a Sriaman market when her husband was briefly a junior envoy there.
Fascinated and intrigued by the insult, and thanks to her husband often being absent, that one curse started her exploration of vegetables as sexual partners.
“Your mothers do it with cucumbers!” I shouted again and staggered roaring at the Sriamans. “Cucumbers!” Accusing a Sriaman woman of doing it with cucumbers was the worst possible insult you could hurl at her. I’m not sure if it was me appearing again or what I said, but some of the Sriamans were coming back towards me, so I figured despite my lack of fluency they had the gist. Griff, yelling again for the sarge, ran towards the enemy.
Then he ran back the other way as more Sriamans loomed out of the undergrowth from almost every direction. Luckily for him, they tried to take him alive. Though he was able to keep them back, he kept decapitating plants, not Sriamans. I had dropped the crossbow bolts and drawn my sword, a knife in the other hand and was running away, though making it look as if I was backing away quickly and that my route happened to take me back to Griff. I skewered a Sriaman and jumped over his body as it fell.
“Polo,” Griff said, panting, “you alright?”
“Aye,” I said, panting too, “you?” He nodded. I remembered at last to shut my visor, thinking we really should run away in a concerted manner, when a Sriaman near us dropped, dead from a bowshot. The sarge and others had arrived. The Sriamans began to leave at speed. I winged one with a thrown knife but he took it out and threw it back at me in an angry fashion, so I dropped into the dirt again. There was a yell.
Griff, his blood up, half-crazy, was running after them. I leapt up and after him. I wasn’t a fast runner but was better than him purely because of my longer legs and speed of reaction. He wouldn’t stop when I shouted so, shouting more, I grabbed him by one shoulder and he nearly skewered me. I yelped, falling over sideways out of his way before he could manage it.
****
Chapter 32 - Aftermath
I was fine but Griff was completely freaked. I rolled onto my back and looked up at the sky through the edge of the forest.
“Blessed Galaia,” I said, quoting a prayer, “Galaia preserve us, Galaia preserves us, we thank you for your shelter.” How many times was that I’d prayed recently? I was worried at how religious I was becoming. Griff was contrite.
“Polo? Galaia’s tits, you’re wounded!”
“Not by you,” I said, but he didn’t hear me through the helmet.
“Gods, I’m sorry,” he said, springing his visor and pushing it back onto the top of his head. He was white as a sheet. I made soothing motions as I tried to get up, trying not to laugh.
“It wasn’t you,” I said, louder, “it’s from when the Sriamans shot me. I’m alright, really.” I giggled. “Cucumbers!” I said. I pushed my visor to halfway. “I’m fine.”
“Oh,” said Griff, “I thought - I - oh.” He dropped to his knees with relief, gave me a weak smile, then started throwing up while I leaned against the massive trunk of a tree and laughed. The sarge shook his head at us.
“Shawcross?” I straightened up and pretended to be a soldier.
“Sarge?” I said.
“You wounded?”
“Aye sarge,” I said, as Griff began heaving again, “but it’s not bad. Only one really got me, and four of them shot me. One missed from about ten feet away. We’re better than them, sarge, why aren’t we winning?” I looked down at myself. “Two of them aren’t wounds, sarge, only punctured armour. That’s a shoddy crossbow, sarge, and badly-trained troops. I shouldn’t be alive. Ten feet!”
“Good lad,” said the sarge, and I resisted the urge to preen. “Now shut up,” he said, “I think you’re in shock. Medic! You’re a good lad too, Tanner,” he said to Griff, “overeager though. Never chase the bastards, understand? Medic! Shawcross needs a dressing!” Griff was trying to stand. He managed it, spat, wiped his mouth, then shut his visor without being reminded just as I opened mine and lit a smoke.
The medic, a fellow trooper with a few field dressings, sutures, some poppy juice and a tourniquet, slid a wad of dressing under my armour and said to see the fort doctors when I got back. I noted the pupils of his eyes were pinned.
“That medic’s taking the poppy juice,” I said to Griff as we walked back to the path, visors down again.
“Is he?” said Griff, and shook his head.
“Remind me to bring my own pain relief,” I said. He snickered then looked over his shoulder. I looked over mine too. We all were looking around, scared out of our minds.
“You know, Polo,” said Griff, “you’re good for my visibility in the platoon.”
“Me?” I said and laughed. “I’m trying to be low-key.”
“You couldn’t be low-key in a blue fit,” he said. I snorted at him. “Anyway,” he went on, “it’s part of my plan to stay alive. I’m going to be a non-com. Don’t forget, if you get more than one promotion, you have to be transferred out.”
I hadn’t considered that aspect. One might be unlucky and be transferred into a similar platoon of lancers, but odds were you’d go elsewhere. Then you were allowed a promotion within that platoon, but you were transferred out automatically again on your second raising of rank. Griff nodded at the sarge’s back as we regrouped at a brisk pace. “That’s the first time the sarge called me by name,” he whispered. I smiled.
“You want to be visible?” I whispered back. “He saw you throwing up. Though admittedly you were very brave before that. And you got your visor up before you were sick. It might not have looked quite so good if you upchucked inside it.” Griff punched me on my wounded shoulder. Even through armour it hurt. “Ow,” I said, “what? You were brave, all that running at them. I ran away, it just happened to be in your direction.”
“Which reminds me,” he said, “what did you tell the Sriamans? I heard good morning and how are you, and the rest lost me. Though they were really angry, I heard them call you an eggborn lizard boy.” I grinned and told him. We laughed so much the sarge offered to slap us.
Meanwhile, not far ahead, Lance Corporal Dandy saved Lieutenant Porky by knocking him over and out of the way of a Sriaman bolt when Porky walked into an ambush. Dandy fought off a Sriaman attacker who jumped the lieutenant, then kept his head and sat on Porky, something passed off as ‘shielding the downed officer with his body’ in the official report.
Dandy signalled the other two scouts to come in and their return scared off the ambushers. He allegedly coshed Porky to keep him down but, as the sarge told us when we asked, there was no proof of that. The ‘scouts’ then decided a strategic retreat was in order, after Dandy told the slightly-concussed lieutenant to think that, and so they came back to find us, discovering lost members of the troop in the jungle along the way.
Back together, in some disarray, astonished that nobody was dead, we retreated as fast as we could. We had eight wounded, all of us walking. Safe back in the trees, the Sriamans tried to pick us off while we headed for the fort.
I didn’t know how I ignored the bolt penetrating my armour when it first happened. Long before we made it back, the wound site was throbbing and my shoulder hurt to move.
****
Sarge visited the fort hospital, making notes of who would be fit when. He suggested we all say a prayer for transfer.
“This isn’t the place for lancers,” he said, “we should never have got off the boat.” I was thinking the same. It was a miracle it wasn’t worse. The wound was cleaned and dressed, I was shot full of antibiotics then told to take a day off. I couldn’t fight unless it was an emergency. I refused poppy juice.
“I’ll use willow and mindweed,” I sai
d.
“Come back and see me tomorrow during the day for more antibiotics,” said the doctor, “if you’re not dead.” I thought he was joking.
“I’ll try to come back either way, doc,” I said, thinking I’d matched his joke. He gave me a solemn look.
“You’re new here, eh?” I nodded. “Infections come up fast, don’t let it slide. And watch out for jewel snakes, they’re seeing to more men than the Sriamans.”
“Jewel snakes?” I said, which came out a little squeaky.
“Don’t worry,” the doctor said, sounding quite serious, “the convulsions come on very quickly. Once the venom kicks in you’re unlikely to stay conscious long.”
****
My day off was spent amusing my horses before they all went crazy from nothing to do, with exercise in the lunging rings and manege then walks on halters around the grounds.
A day later I was pronounced fit. The sergeant managed to get weapons more suited to the jungle than lances and sabres. For our next foray into the border country we were given heavy long-bladed knives along with bows and more arrows than before.
****
Chapter 33 – An Interesting Day
We set out early in the morning.
Thanks to Porky’s inability to read either a compass or a map and his blind belief that he was capable of both, we were soon completely lost and on the wrong mountain.
Despite the sarge’s best efforts to put him right, once we came down that mountain we were miles in the wrong direction. The sarge decided enough was enough and turned us all back the right way. After a few miles heading in what we hoped was the way home, we stumbled across a trail that led down, which was where we needed to go.
From a misty forested hillside we were looking into a steep valley hidden completely by mist, the other side of the valley barely visible and also covered with massive trees. There was a smell coming up from the valley bottom, something so ripe and pungent it caught at the throat. Several men coughed and I sneezed. Just got my visor out of the way in time then snapped it closed quickly.
“This valley’s not on my map, sergeant,” said Lieutenant Porky. The sarge pointed a few inches to the left of where Porky was looking. “Oh,” said the lieutenant. “Oh? Excellent news, men, if we go down this valley to the north-”
“South, sir,” said the sarge, quite softly.
“-to the south,” said Porky, nodding emphatically, “we’re only a mile from the fort.”
We sighed with relief, all of us wet through, the heat out on the open ground so intense we were steaming. I felt like I was wrapped in wet blankets in some kind of over-heated bathhouse.
“What do you think that smell is, sergeant?” said Porky, sniffing the air.
“I don’t like to guess, sir,” said the sarge. He turned to the others. “Dandy, take a man and find out. Whistle if it’s safe to follow. Or scream if it isn’t.”
I was busy trying to be invisible but Dandy grabbed me and we slithered down the mudslide that passed for a track. The smell rose up to meet us with the wreathing mists. At first I thought of a dead cow, maybe a few days in the hot sun, poor thing grossly swollen, smell enough to make you groan and turn your head away. Then it got worse. A breeze picked up, moving the mist and the smell but not completely getting rid of either. Moving downhill while trying not to breathe was hard.
Near a stream down on the valley floor, in a pleasant spot surrounded by a grove of shady trees, someone had built a fire, done some barbecuing then added branches on top. The fire had gone out, leaving a pit covered in charred boughs with withered leaves. Underneath and bubbling up was the source of the smell. Brought up on a farm with all kinds of creatures, I’d smelled some pretty awful things. Nothing prepared me for the stench of people set first to die on a fire then left, half-cooked, to rot in tropical heat for a few days.
“Zol’s bloody balls,” Dandy said softly as we lurked closer, “I think we just found the missing squad. Well, the half-a-squad. Poor, poor bastards.”
“Gods,” I said, gibbering, “what- I mean-” Dandy patted my shoulder.
“What you mean, Shawcross, is ‘May Haka treat them kindly’.”
“Aye,” I said and hiccupped. I wanted to cry. Or be sick. Dandy flicked a finger against my visor, getting my attention.
“Come on,” he said, “let’s whistle the others down. I think we’ll go find a place upwind.” I couldn’t move, staring at the writhing mess under the branches. Dandy thumped my shoulder that time. “Stay with me, boy.” I shook myself. “That’s it,” he said, “you’ve good eyes, Shawcross, you watch out for Sriamans while we wait. I’m thinking they’re maybe up above us.” He gestured at the other flank of the valley. “At least somewhere round. I can feel the evil sons of bitches. But that freaking lieutenant’s brought us so far out of the way, this is the way we’ll go. I don’t want to walk ten miles round a bloody mountain to get back on the other path.”
I didn’t either. I stared at the jungle, refusing to look at what lay unquiet in the pit behind me. Dandy whistled and we heard the reply from above then the noise of the others coming. They arrived, and after one whiff of the pit Lieutenant Porky took a man along the valley floor to scout further.
Sergeant Billings let him go. Face solemn, Billings pointed out how the eleven prisoners were bound with wire and tortured before they were thrown into the fire pit. We were all variously sick, horrified and moved. I imagined being in the group waiting to be tortured and die. I was trying not to imagine being cooked. Despite a pretty full-blown panic attack on the wall I hadn’t thrown up on duty yet and didn’t want this to be my first time.
One of the sub lieutenants lost it right next to me and threw up in his helmet. The poor man seemed completely paralysed. For a moment we all stared, fascinated, as the visor let the liquid out quite slowly, the officer’s face literally up to his eyes in it. It bubbled as he retched again.
“Shawcross!” the sergeant snapped, and I looked to see what he wanted. “Open his bloody visor before he drowns!” Gingerly but briskly I did so, leaping back out of the way. The officer finally dropped to his knees and hurled properly. “The idea is,” the sergeant said with a heavy sigh, “that through the purifying aspects of pain, we Kingdom men can ascend to a higher life form in the next incarnation, back to human. They burn us at the end to make it more intense, so the not-human can return to Galaia.”
“How do we know, sarge?” Griff said suddenly, and kicked at the dirt. “Maybe they’re just evil creatures who do this for pleasure?” His voice was full of unshed tears. We all knew how he felt.
“Deserters and captives tell us,” said the sarge, “remember, not everyone’s happy with the regime. Crazy religion’s got them all by the balls.” He sighed. “We’re all people, lads. Misguided, stupid, ignorant people.” He shook his head at the pit. “Can you imagine what it’s like for their boys? They get caught by us and think we’re going to do that to them. They think we think that they’re the sub-humans, or sub-Dragon, and we’ll burn them to make them better people next time round. Just by coming into contact with us and not dying bravely, their own fellows will burn them if they return.”
He popped his visor and spat in the stream. The second lieutenant was already there, head rinsed, trying to get the vomit out of his nose and helmet. Several of the others were smoking so I lit a quick pipe.
“The smell,” I said, trying not to breathe, which was tricky as I sucked hits of mindweed, “I thought it was supposed to smell like pork.”
At the mention of pork, several of the others started heaving or restarted. The sub lieutenant lost his balance and fell into the stream. The ones who weren’t heaving laughed at the others. The sergeant shook his head at me.
“It only smells like pork when it’s cooking, Shawcross. To be honest, it didn’t smell that way to me, the times I smelled it. More like burning bioplas. These lads, it’s been what, four days?” I shrugged, lost in time. Life was easier that way. “Had time to get ripe.
Corporal,” said the sergeant, “get them back together. Come on then, who’s going to volunteer to get these poor bastards’ dog-tags?”
Several men projectile-vomited, fortunately not into the pit, two men tried to do that old trick of sliding backwards to make a fellow soldier look like a volunteer. They misjudged it, went so fast they cracked their heads on the same tree. I was left standing there, sucking down a pipe. I knew I was in front of a tree or would also have tried to sidle backwards.
“Kitchen duty, sarge?” said the corporal. He took his helmet off a moment, wiping the sweat with a handkerchief. Sergeant Billings shook his head. One of the tree-struck men was unconscious. The other was trying to rise but seemed addled and kept falling down again. I tried not to giggle but several of the others were laughing so much they couldn’t stand. The sarge popped his visor and spat again then closed the mesh. He didn’t seem amused and I was right next to him so held the laughter in. “I’m thinking the grooms can use someone to shovel manure for a week,” the sarge said, “teach them to be smart. They can bury the bodies too, see if you can bring ‘em round.” I had my pipe smoked, visor snapped down, was looking at the jungle, bow at the ready, hoping that if I appeared to be a useful and alert trooper the sarge wouldn’t make me part of the burial detail.
Parrots suddenly screamed behind me. I glanced over my right shoulder and up the side of the valley. The Sriaman, camouflaged in a leafy nest some fifty feet up, was a shadowed movement in the corner of my eye more sensed than seen. I loosed off a shot in his general direction as I shouted a too-late warning,
‘’Ware sniper! My four o’clock!”
“Aye sarge,” the corporal was saying as my shout registered. I turned, looking for cover, shouting again to look out.