by Trish Mercer
“What do you mean?” Deck asked nervously.
“I may be as old as the both of you put together, but you would have never stood a chance against me,” Perrin said. “Deck, you gripped that knife like it was an udder!”
Deck blushed. “It’s all I know!”
“Considering the circumstances, beginning tomorrow both of you should begin some basic training. I seem to have a surplus of time on my hands now.” More gravely, Perrin added, “I simply don’t know who the soldiers are fighting for anymore. We can’t assume it will be for us. And Deckett, maybe starting tomorrow you can teach me how to hold an udder. I understand that since your wife has been slowing down, you’ve been looking for another farmhand?”
Chapter 32 ~ “And next is . . . ?”
Thorne’s gait had flagged a few times on the way back to the fort, and as he stared at Shin’s career in his hands he felt Zenos come up beside him.
For the first time ever Lemuel let his guard down in front of a mere enlisted man and spoke to Zenos as if he were nearly an equal. “How could he do this? There’s no other life for him—”
“Pick up the pace there, Captain. No other life? Thorne, there are always options.” He sounded far too cheerful.
That put Lemuel on edge as he scoffed. “The only options are general or . . . or nothing!”
Zenos actually chuckled at that. “There are always more options. Always.”
The fort was charged like lightning with activity when their group arrived, the news of the resignation spreading so quickly that there was no need to post a notice.
But everyone fell deathly silent in the command tower when Captain Thorne trudged up to the offices. All but one soldier ran down the stairs to avoid the inevitable confrontation.
In disgust, Thorne dropped the ex-general’s effects on the forward office desk and ordered the staff sergeant that didn’t escape quickly enough to retrieve a file hidden in the captain’s quarters.
In the command office Thorne sat down without hesitation in the forbidden big chair, and pulled out paper and a quill. He thought for a moment, then began to write. The more he wrote the more enraged he became, referring frequently to the file the sergeant brought him. Half an hour later he rolled up the sheets of paper, hastily sealed them together with sloppy gobs of wax, and sent for a messenger.
While he waited, Lemuel looked around the office that Shin would never come to again. The desk he would never again sit behind, and the chair he would never angrily pull Thorne out of.
How could he do it? How could he give it all up, after all these years, after all this work? Just give it all up for . . . a woman?
That woman!
Lemuel ran a finger along a report Shin had completed just yesterday, waiting to be filed. He touched the signature of Colonel Perrin Shin with pangs of remorse. He felt worse about losing Colonel Shin than he was about his grandfather dying.
Then again, General Cush had never saved his grandson’s life.
Lemuel briskly rubbed his eyes to reduce the water building in them. Stupid woman, he thought angrily. Stupid, selfish woman. She ruined him.
The messenger appeared at the door. “Captain?”
Thorne got to his feet, gingerly picked up the roll of sealed pages, and placed them himself in the messenger’s bag. “These need to get to General Thorne and the Chairman, immediately. Take an escort with you.”
“Yes, sir,” said the private. “We’ll leave first thing in the morning . . .” his voice trailed off as he realized that was the wrong thing to say.
“Private, I said immediately. You’ll leave now for Idumea. The safety of this fort, and perhaps all of the world, rests in that bag. If it’s too heavy a burden, I can find someone else!”
The private stood taller. “I am on my way now, sir!” He saluted and ran down the stairs.
Lemuel glanced back at the colonel’s chair. During his first year serving in Edge he saw that chair as his sole goal. But for the past two years he saw it as a representing everything Colonel Shin was—strong, solid, imposing, reliable.
But tonight the chair had a different quality.
It seemed lonely.
His scanned the broad desk with its several drawers, meticulously organized, on each side. There was even a skinny drawer that no one, not even the captain, was to touch. Only Zenos, and only in the event of the death of the colonel.
Lemuel rubbed his palms together. He was, after all, the highest ranking officer now at Fort Shin. The Fort at Edge.
He made his way around the desk, his finger dragging along the edge of it longingly, almost sensuously. Behind the desk he pulled out the chair that desperately desired a body to fill it.
A smile spread across his face as he sat down and pulled opened the narrow “death drawer.” He was momentarily disappointed that all he saw was one parchment envelope, sealed with wax. It was addressed to Shem Zenos, in Perrin Shin’s hand.
Intrigued, Thorne picked it up. “And what is Shem Zenos to do when Perrin Shin is no longer here?”
He broke open the seal.
---
Lieutenant Offra sat down hard on his bunk.
He was gone. Colonel Shin had quit the army, and it was over. No more races. No one to ever call him “son” again. His only real friend in the army was no longer in the army.
Jon Offra was alone again.
He glanced up to make sure the door was locked.
Then he held his head and silently wept like a toddler.
---
When the men are distressed there’s nothing like a little bit of drilling to get them focused again. That was why Sergeant Major Zenos lined up his newest recruits for one of his infamous Know the Forest at Night tours.
“We don’t have raids in broad daylight,” he’d remind them. “They come at night. They sit at the edge of the forest and wait for an opening. You need to know the edge of that forest in the dark.”
That was the standard speech new recruits were warned to expect. The call came just as the men were still talking past lights-out hours about the colonel’s—the general’s—resignation, and were pretending to bunk down.
So at a little past midnight, Zenos and a group of recruits who couldn’t sleep anyway set out on horseback to let the cool air settle their minds. Once out of the confines of the compound, several soldiers asked the sergeant major what the resignation meant.
“It means his name is now just Perrin Shin,” Shem told them, slowing his horse to allow all the soldiers to hear him. Whatever he said that night would be spread to the rest of the fort by dawn; their attitude would be the fort’s attitude. “It means we’ll get a new commander, and all will be well.” He tried to sound convincing.
“But Sarge, why? Why did the colonel—general—resign? Did it have something to do with his wife? I heard she really started a commotion at the amphitheater.”
“Just comes a time, boys,” Shem answered breezily. “He’s been at it for over twenty-five years. Gets a little boring, doing the same work for so long. Maybe he’ll become a builder.”
“Sarge, there’s got to be more to it than that. Come on, you can tell us. You were there, weren’t you? So—”
“Just comes a time, men,” he cut off the inquiry, his tone turning sharp. “Nothing more, nothing to worry about. Actually, now you need to worry about the forest. Fall in!”
Zenos guided the recruits along the edge of the forest and began his cadence.
“What is this, men?”
In unison they responded, “Marshes, sir!”
“Do we like marshes, men?”
“No, sir!”
“Why do we not like marshes, men?”
“They eat horses, sir!”
“Do we like our horses, men?”
“Yes sir!”
“So what do we do with marshes?”
“Avoid them, sir!”
A little further down Zenos called again. “What is this, men?”
“A sinkhole, sir!”
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“Do we like sinkholes, men?”
“No sir!”
“Why do we not like sinkholes, men?”
“They eat horses, sir!”
As they drilled about the dangers of the mud pits, steam vents, and the occasional water spouts they passed, Shem fretted again about the timing of his upcoming leave.
Three weeks.
He was leaving tomorrow for three weeks to visit his father.
He told Thorne he could rescind it, considering the situation, but Thorne just gave him his simpering smile and assured him the fort would be just fine. He shouldn’t not leave.
Shem sighed. If the Shins ever needed an alert set of ears in the fort, it was now. And none would be available for them.
“What is this, men?” he called.
“A fresh spring, sir!”
“Do we like fresh springs, men?”
“Yes sir!”
“Why do we like fresh springs, men?”
“They don’t kill the horses, sir!”
In the dark, none of the soldiers noticed a fist-sized rock drop to the ground from the sergeant major’s saddle.
“What do we do about fresh springs, men?”
“Remember where they are, sir!”
“What is this, men?”
“A gulley, sir!”
“Do we like gullies, men?”
“Depends sir!”
“Depends on what, men?”
“Who’s hiding in the gully, sir!”
Five minutes later, after the horses and cadence faded off into the distance, a dark figure dropped from a tree by the spring. It picked up the rock and noiselessly untied the string around it that held a dark and sooty piece of paper. The figure carefully unwrapped the paper and could just make out the words in the darkness.
“Five Plus Out. DTBD.”
He frowned at the writing, pocketed the message, and jogged noiselessly into the forest. A few minutes later he reached other men dressed in green and brown mottled clothing. In the cover of a gully they lit a small lantern and read the message.
“Zenos dropped it?” a man asked, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Unusual. How would he know of anyone?”
The man who discovered the note shrugged. “There’s only been a few other times he’s dropped a note like this.”
“DTBD,” a third man said quietly. “Date to be decided. Why? He knows how important it is to know the date.”
“We can ask him tomorrow,” the first man suggested. “He’s on leave in the morning. We can plan the details then.”
A fourth man, larger and quieter than the rest, broke his pensive silence. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”
The group of men looked at him.
Jothan stood up and took the note. “I think I know who he’s talking about. And if that’s the case, we need to be prepared at every moment for any contingency. This will be unlike anything we’ve ever done before.”
The men regarded their massive leader with surprise and fascination. But before any of them could ask who he was talking about, they were startled by a movement in the forest behind them. Bounding through the trees a bit too noisily were three more men in brown and green. Breathless, they nearly fell into the cluster of men.
“My wife!” one of them gasped, “my wife contacted me!”
“What’s wrong, Braxhicks?” Jothan gripped his arm.
“She was at the meeting they had at the amphitheater,” he sat on the ground, trying to slow his breathing. “Did Zenos tell you yet what happened? Or Yung?”
“Yung rarely comes up here, but Zenos will be here tomorrow—”
“They named him general!” Braxhicks burst out.
“Who, Zenos?”
“No, of course not. Shin! They announced it earlier, along with the declaration that the ruins are still poisonous, and the Creator was merely a man who led them all away from there. Here,” and he handed the startled men a few wrinkled pages. “They gave these out to everyone, explaining the . . . the whatever lies they’re trying to call it.” Braxhicks slumped against a stump to catch his breath. “Mrs. Shin tried to argue it in front of everyone, but her husband forced her off the platform. The representative of the Administrators called him ‘General.’”
None of the men around him could speak for several moments.
Finally one of them broke their stunned silence by saying, “That’s it, then, isn’t it? They’ve named him a general . . . so . . .”
“A few more things have to fall into place, though, before . . .”
“But, but how can . . .”
“We’ve been waiting for this moment for . . . for almost twenty years, so now what are supposed . . . what should we . . .”
None of the men could finish their sentences, too taken aback by the news.
But Jothan slowly nodded. “As I was about to say, men: this one will be anything but routine.”
---
It took them a long time to finally fall asleep that night, if they actually did. Perrin and Mahrree laid next to each other in bed trying to make sense of what everything might mean now. They had no idea.
“At least we have another supply of gold and silver slips in the cellar,” Mahrree said sometime after midnight. “I had been thinking we should find someone to donate it to, but now I think we’ll need to donate it to ourselves.”
“Yes—we have a bit to get us by for several seasons,” Perrin said, “until we figure out what’s next.”
“And next is . . . ?”
Perrin exhaled loudly and pulled her closer. “A very good question.”
They lay in silence, pondering.
“Remember the wall you showed me in Idumea?” Mahrree said after a while. “Around Chairman Mal’s mansion?”
“The wall that kept in all the servants?”
“We now know what’s on the other side of it, don’t we?”
“Pretty much nothing at all, is there?” Perrin stroked his wife’s hair. “When you stood up on that platform and said that the whole world was the barn, you actually gave me goose bumps. In fact, the moment you stood up in the audience, I knew everything was about to change, and drastically.”
“Sorry,” she whispered.
He kissed her head. “Don’t be. I was hoping someone would be brave enough to challenge the findings. I just really didn’t expect it would be you. Then again, Hogal did warn me about you, many years ago. Who else would it have been if not you?” He chuckled tensely for a moment, but then he grew somber. “As I sat up there watching you trying to debate Kori, I knew what I had always suspected: we’ve been kept confined just like the servants.”
Mahrree shivered in his arms. “Do you think they ever suspected the truth themselves? Did they ever think, ‘Hey, it’s been awfully quiet on the other side. I don’t think there’s any danger’?”
“I have no idea,” Perrin whispered. “But consider this: if they did, what did the Queruls do to then keep them away from the wall again? What horror did they throw over to keep them contained?”
Mahrree snuggled closer to him. “What you really mean is, what will happen next to the world because we know the truth?”
He cleared his throat gently. “Uh . . . sure.”
“Oh, no,” she whispered. “That’s not what you meant. What you really meant is, what will happen next to us, because I tried to declare the truth?”
He squeezed her tighter and kissed her again. “Remember, tonight I erased much of what could happen because I’m no longer in the army. In a way, it is like dices; we have to see what Idumea proclaims about us, then we throw the dices and see what happens.”
Mahrree considered that. “I don’t think that’s quite right,” she decided. “We did the right things, I’m sure of it. And I believe the Creator will help us, no matter what comes back to us.”
He squeezed her again. “Of course you’re right,” he said with genuine confidence. “Did you see the look Shem gave me, just before he left with Thorne?”
“I did, but I didn’t recognize it.”
“It’s a look he made up in Idumea,” Perrin explained. “Before we were to hear what my punishment would be for the stolen caravan. He told me it was something his rector told him before he signed on with me long term. Shem even twitched the message to me several times while they read my long list of offenses, just to keep me calm.”
Intrigued, and growing a bit impatient, Mahrree said, “So what did that expression mean?”
“‘You were in the Creator’s army long before you were ever in Idumea’s. And the Creator takes care of His own.’”
Mahrree closed her eyes, feeling another wave of peace pass over her as it had a few times already that night. The insistent sense of calm seemed to both of them an odd sensation considering that never before had their future been so uncertain. Yet still the tranquility filled their home, and only then did Mahrree realize how chaotic their lives had been before.
“The Creator takes care of His own,” Mahrree murmured. “We’re His own, aren’t we?”
“We’ve never been anyone else’s,” Perrin shrugged.
Hours later, when Mahrree eventually drifted into unconsciousness, she dreamed of a large home with faded gray wood, window boxes, gardens, and mountains. She chuckled in her sleep.
And when Perrin finally surrendered to the exhaustion of the day, he saw in his dreams a mass of Guarders run straight for his house, but continue on to another target.
He didn’t hear that annoying knocking on his door, either. He wouldn’t, ever again.
Instead he saw a little face looking up at him, smiling.
The child had perfectly squishy cheeks.
---
Rector Yung sat patiently in his old cushioned chair. It had been dark for many hours, but he knew the back door would soon be opening—
“I didn’t think you’d still be up,” said the voice that came through the door and silently closed it behind him. “I tried to get here earlier, but there’s a remarkable amount of activity for so late at night.”