by Candy Rae
Hansei followed his gaze. “See, I speak truth. Now do you understand?”
Zuvavdr did.
* * * * *
Rilla
The weary Rilla and Zawlei stumbled into the midst of an equally tired looking group of soldiers dressed in Garda blue who were sitting on the churned up ground, every one of them but the one grey haired man among them staring into space. He was staring at his boots.
: I do not think she is here :
: Where is she then? : asked Rilla, looking around as if expecting her sister to bounce out from behind one of the boulders and give her a fright as she had done when they were girls.
The grey haired, bleary-eyed man raised his head at their approach. “Can I help you?” he asked.
“I’m looking for my sister,” Rilla answered. “An officer back there told me that this is where the Officer Trainees were.”
: Are these the Trainees? : asked Zawlei.
: I don’t know :
: There are not many of them : observed Zawlei.
: Perhaps she’s been wounded : answered an uneasy Rilla.
“And you are?” asked the bleary-eyed man. “Name’s Taplin by the way, Warrant Officer, Garda Academie.”
: We’re in the right place then :
“Cadet Rilla and Zawlei, Vada,” Rilla answered. “Rilla Talansdochter. My sister is Senis Hilla Talansdochter.”
Warrant Officer Taplin looked at her, this cadet had been fighting - her maroon tunic was dirty and torn and the white of a bandage was showing through her trousers. Her Lind had cuts and scores on his body.
Rilla grew more uneasy.
Wilf Taplin regarded the grimy-faced few sitting around him and sighed. There was no easy way to say it.
“Your sister didn’t make it. I brought over one hundred Trainees up the line with me. I’ll be marching home with eleven.”
A stricken Rilla stared.
“She didn’t make it? Hilla can’t be dead. She is my sister! She’s wounded, isn’t she?”
Wilf Taplin shook his head.
“Senis Hilla Talansdochter was killed yesterday.”
No … not Hilla, she’s so alive, she can’t be dead ... she can’t be. “Are you absolutely sure?”
Wilf Taplin enunciated his next words with care, “I am truly sorry. She fell on the ridge at the time, at the time when the right wing was overrun and everything erupted into chaos.” He coughed, “at the time the Larg broke through. I have her dog-tag here.” He indicated a leather satchel on the ground beside him, “with all the others.” He saw no need to tell Hilla’s sister how she had died.
“Did she suffer?” asked Rilla.
“No, it was quick,” he lied.
“She always wanted to be a soldier,” said Rilla to herself but the Warrant Officer heard her words.
“She was very proud of you,” said Wilf Taplin. “Very proud that she had a sister in the Vada. She spoke about you, these last few days, wondering how you and Zawlei were and how you were coping, would cope with the battle.”
“We survived,” said Rilla in a dry voice. “Where is her body?”
“She was taken to the rear, with the others. I helped place her in the cart.”
“Do you know where exactly?”
“The burial details started working last night,” said Wilf Taplin.
“I thought the Garda always took their dead home.”
“Not this time. Too many and too far. Butchers Bill was high.” The ‘Butchers Bill’ was Garda slang for the death lists. “You’ll be able to visit her grave,” he added, attempting to offer some comfort, “there’s to be a war cemetery.”
“Did her friend Jen Durand make it?” asked Rilla.
“She died on day one. Her brother was here earlier. He’s Captain, Major now, with the Twenty-seventh Foot at the other end of the ridge. If you wanted to talk to him I’m sure he would be happy to talk to you. Jen and Hilla were great friends.”
“Perhaps later,” Rilla answered. “I’ve still got to find my brother. He’s with the Dunetown Militia. Do you know where they are?”
“No idea. They were fighting beside the Second Foot and every man, jack of them was killed. Don’t build your hopes up Cadet Rilla. I’d try the casualty stations. If he’s wounded that’s where he’ll be.”
With that last piece of advice Wild Taplin had shot his bolt. His head sagged forward and he once again began to contemplate his boots.
“Thank you,” said Rilla as she remounted Zawlei with some difficulty. She was very stiff and sore.
As she and Zawlei left, Wilf Taplin raised his head to watch, a despondent yet gallant little figure atop her blue striped Lind and wondered if she would find her brother, but he was really too bone weary to care.
* * * * *
Niaill
Niaill was kneeling on the ground, Deby’s bloodied head on his lap. With one finger he stroked her damp cheek. Deby was crying, the tears were running down her face. She was crying, not with the pain that Niaill knew she must be experiencing but because her Lind Alfei was lying dead on the ground beside her.
She kept murmuring his name as if saying it would bring him back, that she would be able to sense his presence in her mind again.
“Deby,” said a heartbroken Niaill. It could so easily have been him lying here, mourning the death of Taraya.
A Garda medic approached, touched Niaill on his shoulder and he looked up.
“Will I?” asked the man.
Niaill shook his head.
The man understood and with a compassionate look at Deby, moved on.
Deby would die soon. She wanted to die. She could not bear the thought of life without Alfei, it would be an empty life, one without meaning, a half life. All the medics could do in such cases was to ease the pain and move on to try to save someone or somelind who did want to live, who had something to live for.
Niaill dribbled some sedative into Deby’s mouth and continued to stroke her cheek.
He would stay with her until the end. It would not be far away. She was bleeding to death, the rents up her side oozing blood and with the blood flowed the unpleasantly smelling contents of her intestines. The Larg who had killed Alfei had ripped his rider apart.
Deby’s eyes flickered. “Did we win?” she croaked.
“Yes we did.”
“Good. It wasn’t for nothing then.”
“No it wasn’t,” confirmed Niaill.
She began to groan, heart-rending groans of indescribable loss.
“Let go Deby. Join Alfei in the blue pastures. He’s waiting for you. If you hurry you can go together.”
“Nice,” she whispered and took a breath out.
Niaill waited for the struggling breath in.
It never came.
Her face stared up, unseeing. Niaill closed her eyes. He picked her body up and carried it over to where Alfei lay. He laid her on top and he stood silent and unmoving as he looked round at what the Lind called ‘after-battle’.
What a bloody waste.
He felt the mental nudge that was Taraya and looked over to where she lay, licking at the wound in her leg. She looked up and her face was full of pity. The Lind could not cry tears but her eyes were moist with emotion.
During that last quarter bell of the battle, Niaill had thought it all over. The kohorts had been breaking through all along the ridge. That had been when Taraya’s leg had been bitten and the two of them had crashed to the ground in a tangle, the Larg warrior, his teeth embedded in her leg, tugging and worrying at it.
He had believed then that both his and Taraya’s deaths were only a heartbeat away but the Larg had let go and had raised his blood-dripping head to the sky with an anguished howl. He had sprung away.
The Dglai had turned on the Larg lin and eln in time to save him and Taraya but not in time to save Deby, Alfei and a good many other vadeln-pairs of the First Ryzck.
: Taraya, can you hear Teriyei? Is Nadala safe? :
: Wounded but they
will be fine : she answered after a moment.
Then, standing amongst the dead and the dying, he heard it, the lament sung by every Lind after a battle, the saddest song Niaill would ever hear.
Tears fell and he and Taraya joined in the lament for Deby, Alfei and all the hundreds of others who were no longer alive, who would never walk through the lian and the nadlian again.
‘No more shalt thee run, hunt and play,
Under the soft warm sun of day.
He who has died, he has gone away,
She who has fallen, she can not stay.
Midst trees tall,
We mourn thee all.
Midst mountains high,
We for thee sigh,
Midst rivers fast,
We sing of seasons past.
Midst valleys deep,
We thy memory keep.
Midst meadows bare,
Thy deaths we will share.
He who has died has gone away,
She who has fallen can not stay.
Be still, mine rtathen.’
* * * * *
Danal
“So what do we do now?” asked Grainne.
“I suppose we return to the Electra, pick up Philip and the others,” he answered without much interest. Nothing interested him any more.
“Then?” pressed Grainne, shaking him.
“Then?”
“There is the little matter of the promise you made to Padrig,” she said, her voice sharp, “remember, a place to live where we can be free?”
“I hadn’t forgotten,” Danal said with a little more interest in his voice. “I think we shall go to Duchesne, yes, that would be best. You can all take ship from there.”
“Take ship?”
“I don’t reckon you’ll want to stay here in Murdoch. From Port Duchesne you can be taken to anywhere in the north. Vadath would welcome you and there are the islands, plenty of them are still uninhabited.”
“It’s not for me to decide,” said Grainne. “Padrig and the others elders will choose for themselves, not me.”
“Them, not me?”
“I’m not going with them.”
“Where are you going?”
“With you and Asya. I want to see the world. I don’t want to just settle on one of the islands and stay there my whole life. I’ve been talking to Asya. She says I can.”
“She did, did she?”
Grainne nodded. “She says it will be good for you if I tag along for a while, so that’s okay, isn’t it?” She waited anxiously for his reply.
His answer was important to her but Danal had a suspicion that if he said no then she would come along anyway.
“Inalei says I can ride him,” she added.
Now there was the rub, as Danal realised. Asya and Inalei had been sharing paw space for a while now and Asya had declared that very morning that she and Inalei were now eln.
Lind mated for life and Danal was delighted for them both. He had lost his love but he was glad that Asya and Inalei would get their chance of happiness.
Inalei would not want to leave Asya for any length of time and if he had volunteered to take Grainne to Vadath then he did not have any choice in the matter. In fact, Danal was rather pleased, in a distant sort of way that Grainne would be with them during the journey home.
He gathered himself together.
“That’s settled then,” he told her and her thin face broke into a smile. “You come with us to Vadath and then we’ll see. You never know, you might get chosen by one of the Lind and join the Vada yourself.”
“I don’t think so,” was her enigmatic reply as she smiled a slow, secret smile. Danal didn’t see it, he was looking to the south again.
* * * * *
Rilla and Zilla
Rilla approached the severe looking Garda nurse who looked up as she entered the tent. The woman was sitting at a desk and had what Rilla could only describe not as a mountain but as a mountain range of paperwork in front of her.
“Ma’am?”
“Yes?”
Her voice was forbidding, severe and she regarded Rilla and her battle-stained uniform with what Rilla interpreted as disapproval.
Rilla was wrong in her assumption and Zilla could have told her that Sister Harrisdochter had a heart of gold under her forbidding exterior.
Rilla gulped, this was almost as bad as the fighting and she still had to speak to Zilla about Hilla’s death.
“What do you want Cadet?” the woman said, her eyes softening a little as she recognised the distress in Rilla’s face. “I am a busy woman. Are you wounded?”
“No Ma’am,” answered Rilla. “I need to … need to …” Rilla tried to gather together her dissipating courage and failed.
“Well, what is it?” Sister Harrisdochter asked in a gentle voice, realising that the young woman standing in front of her was losing her self control. “Are you trying to trace one of the wounded?”
Rilla pulled herself together.
“I need to speak to Nurse Volunteer Zilla Talansdochter.”
“I see.” Sister Harrisdochter looked over at the rota. “Well, Nurse Talansdochter is working at present. Do you have to speak to her now?”
“I think I do Ma’am.”
“Will you tell me what it is about? I can’t just pull her from her ward for any little thing. We’re very short staffed.”
“I am her sister.”
“I understand. You wish to tell her that you have made it through the battle do you? Well, I can tell her that and will do so when she comes off duty, which won’t be for some time.”
“Yes, no, that’s not all,” floundered poor Rilla, who was finding it difficult to put the awful news into words in front of a stranger. The hurt was too new and raw.
“There is more? Tell me.” Sister Harrisdochter put down her pen.
Rilla took a gulp of air.
“Hilla, Zilla and me, are, were, triplets. I’m the middle one, Zilla’s the youngest.”
“Were?”
“Hilla was with the Garda and now she’s dead.”
“You wish to tell her yourself.” It was a statement and not a question.
Rilla nodded, “and that’s not even it all. Our brother Zak is dead too. I’ve just found out and I came straight here. I don’t … I don’t know how to tell her.” She burst into tears.
Sister Harrisdochter let her cry herself out, leading her towards an empty chair and pushing her unresisting body down into it. She handed Rilla her own mug of sweetened kala.
“Drink it all up there’s a good girl,” she commanded, waiting until Rilla had gulped it down before uttering another word. Sister Harrisdochter was by now very experienced in this sort of thing.
“You sit there pet,” she said, taking the empty mug and patting Rilla on the shoulder, “while I go and fetch your sister.”
“But that’s not all Ma’am, Hilla and Zak, well, that’s bad enough. I sort of expected that they might not make it. We were all there on the right wing you see.”
The Sister nodded. The right wing had experienced the heaviest casualties of all. She wondered how this slip of a girl had managed to get through almost unscathed.
“Tell me.”
“I’ve been hearing rumours Ma’am, about our older sister Tala. I’ve heard that she was involved with the destruction of the Dglai’s big space ship. The rumours are saying that she’s dead too.”
Rilla burst into a fresh bout of racking sobs. Sister Harrisdochter felt desperately sorry for her if this was true. Three from one family at one fell swoop.
“It’s only a rumour. It might not be true.”
“I feel in my bones that it is true,” sobbed Rilla. “Zawlei, he’s my Lind, he thinks so. I don’t know how I’m going to tell Zilla, I just don’t. She’s so gentle and I’m afraid the shock will be too much for her.”
The Sister didn’t agree with Rilla’s assessment of Zilla’s character but she said nothing.
“I’ll tell your sister,�
� she said at last. “I’ll go get someone to take over her ward and bring her here to you.”
“Zilla’s got a ward of her own?” an amazed Rilla stopped crying.
“I told you we were short staffed,” Sister Harrisdochter said, “and your sister is a very competent nurse. You sit here and wait. Try to stop crying, it won’t help Zilla if she finds you like this. Here is a kerchief, dry your tears. I won’t be long.”
She wasn’t, leading a pale faced Zilla in a scant half bell later.
To Rilla’s surprise, but not Sister Harrisdochter’s, Zilla wasn’t crying.
Rilla had always looked out for Zilla, protected her. Now their roles were reversed. It was Zilla who took Rilla in her arms, let her sob out her grief on her shoulder.
Zilla, in this time of her sister’s need, was the stronger of the two remaining triplets. Rilla had stared death in the face on the battlefield but Zilla had been dealing with a string of individual battle aftermaths for the last three days. Her latent inner strength had grown and she had learned how to control her grief.
Sister Harrisdochter nodded to herself and left them to it. She made her way back to the tent that was Zilla’s ward. As she had told Rilla, they were very short staffed, a number of medical personnel had been killed when the Quorko had attacked.
Sister Harrisdochter would finish Zilla’s shift for her. The paperwork could wait until later but before the shift was over, Zilla reappeared, gliding down the ward and smiling at the patients.
Sister Harrisdochter felt so proud of her she felt she could burst.
* * * * *
Julia and Niaill
The command tent was stuffy, for all that there were only four individuals occupying it.
Julia looked tired, Niaill thought as he stood in front of her. About as tired as I feel.