by L D Inman
“Did it get both tunnels?” Ansett bawled the question at the sergeant who stood with them.
A wavering cry rose up from the mass through the pounding rain. The sergeant spoke determinedly over it. “We think the side service tunnel can be cleared. Can’t move the lift, though. It’s stuck fast.”
Speir turned away from the horror below. “Can we dismantle the floor of the lift and run pulley rigs through?”
The sergeant thought they could.
“Right then,” Ansett said. “We’ll need two teams. One to scout for wounded and one to start rigging a supply line through the lift shaft.”
“Three,” Speir said. “The service tunnel will need a crew to dig the path and establish contact with Command.”
They got to work. The pulley rig was finished in time to resupply the guns with ammunition, but the relay had to be interrupted from time to time when another soldier was unearthed, dead or alive, from the muck and rock. Each casualty had to be lugged up to the top in moments of cover, slung in a basket net, and lowered again down the shaft. Speir kept her hands and feet moving, and the soldiers followed her and Ansett’s example, so that by nightfall, Hadley had more or less keeled level.
A basket of hot food and jugs of purified water came up the shaft; Speir was about to stuff half a meat pie in her mouth and mount the ladder again when a hand touched her shoulder. She turned to see the pale, mud-smudged face of Lieutenant Ell.
“I’m spelling you, ma’am,” he said, his voice damped heavily in Speir’s hearing.
About to protest, Speir realized that her muscles were shaking; half an hour from now, her collapse would have come as a total surprise.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Her own voice, too, was hard to hear, as much from fatigue as acoustic concussion. At his nod, she provided herself more fully with tea and a bread-and-cheese roll to go with the meat pie, and retreated to her blanket roll.
She fell asleep sitting up, with the last bite of roll still in her hand.
~*~
Days slipped past. Du Rau twitched, unable to scratch at his stubble as it grew in. He was given one hand free to eat, from time to time; from time to time he was raised to his feet and escorted to a bucket in the corner. Sometimes Barklay was present and sometimes he wasn’t; more usually, it was his second who oversaw these operations, his face stolid and expressionless, his sidearm out and his stance poised. He did not gloat over du Rau’s indignity; he didn’t look away, either.
When Barklay was in the room with him, he talked. Torturously earnest, he described his project of the last twenty years, an attempt, as far as du Rau could tell, to restore honor to fighting and human dignity to warfare. Du Rau tried not to listen, especially since these harangues were interspersed with appeals to call off the invasion as ludicrous as the first.
Sitting in a chair all day and night was taking its toll on his stamina. Du Rau ached everywhere, and he could only hope that Ingrid was more comfortable than he. But whenever he demanded that Barklay let him see her, Barklay answered only with an apologetic smile.
Finally, after the fourth afternoon watching Barklay pace before him, he lost patience.
“Barklay, you surely didn’t come here to talk me to death for days on end. What are you stalling for?”
Barklay stopped to look at him. “Honestly? I really have no idea. I’m simply taking advantage of an opportunity to appeal to the better nature of a man I used to know.” Barklay started pacing again. “How I wish we had been at peace before now. Ryswyck would so have benefited from your contributions.”
“I doubt it,” du Rau said dryly.
“You could have taught my students to love the foil,” Barklay said, with a sidelong smile. “I remember well, you were a great foilsmaster in the days of our youth.”
“If only we had played with sharps,” said du Rau.
“You would have spitted me right enough,” Barklay agreed. “And I wouldn’t be here to trouble you now. Of course, if I hadn’t been here, you wouldn’t be either—you’d likely have been killed, and Ingrid with you.”
Du Rau was not amused. “She is Lady Bernhelm, to you.”
“Of course,” Barklay said; “forgive me. I misspoke.”
Barklay certainly hadn’t lost any of his gallant charm. “That would be the least of your sins, I assure you,” du Rau said.
“I’m well aware of it.” Barklay met his eyes gravely.
“Are you?” Du Rau relaxed as well as he could into the hard seat. “Then why do you expect me to take any of this seriously? I know all I need to know about Ryswyck Academy. It’s not worth the ground it sits on, and I could easily call Lord Selkirk for corroboration. Hasn’t he been trying to shut it down for more than a year? Though from my point of view he’d be wasting his time trying to purify his forces. There’s not one of them but would show your colors when put to the test.”
Barklay had taken every single one of du Rau’s insults with breezy acceptance, but now his eyes narrowed. “I believe you’re wrong about that,” he said quietly.
Du Rau suddenly felt a claustrophobic clench upon his breath. He had been here for days being forced to listen to this idiocy, and wisdom only knew what was happening outside these walls. He was desperately tired, and cramped, and sick of being nibbled by low-grade fear—not for his life, but for his careful handiwork. With an effort he disciplined his breathing, drawing each inhale from low in his belly and pressing it out slowly.
“Not that they’ll get the chance,” he said, pleased with the inexorable calm in his voice. “With me or without me, my forces will overrun you. They’re probably doing so this very minute. I will see slaughtered every fatherless wretch from the south coast to the North Circle. And good riddance.”
“That’s an impressive promise,” Barklay said lightly. “You almost had me believing it for a moment. If you’re not like me, then why would you take such a course?”
“It’s not possible for me to lower myself to your stature.”
Even this, Barklay received with relative equanimity. “I do have a father, you know,” he said. “Or—I did. He was even my contracted sponsor. He and my mother were made fast for many years.”
“How fortunate for you.” Sardonic insult was a paltry pleasure, but du Rau would take what he could find.
“They’d have enjoyed their companionship for longer,” Barklay went on, “but he was killed in the defense of the south coast, and then my mother was humiliated in her own village square and put to death, without rite or interment. I could still visit the ground of my birthplace in her honor, but it’s a bomb crater now.” His voice was still light, but du Rau heard the deadly edge beneath.
“Are you claiming that for your justification?” he said.
“Not at all. I’m merely pointing out that the only thing uncommon about my parents’ lives is the way they ended.”
He could goad Barklay just a little more. “Oh, I’m aware of how common they were. Just like the names you take from your virtueless mothers.”
“At least,” Barklay said mildly, “I know my name matches my genetic material.”
Du Rau’s feet pressed flat on the floor, and his hands clenched. “Unbind me and say that,” he snarled.
“As fun as that would be,” Barklay said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to decline.”
~*~
Amity’s fighters couldn’t hold off all the scudders and attack the approaching troopships at the same time. So Stevens and his team of cadets put off mounting the rigged comm spire, and mounted a ruse instead. After climbing the tower to secure an oilcloth over the top to stem any leaks, two cadets fastened a brazier to the roof, filled it with pressed fuel bricks, and lit it. Checking to be sure the coals would not fall or fly against the vulnerable tower roof, they climbed down again, and Ryswyck watched its tower “burn,” the smoke from the fuel bricks mixing with steam from the rain and billowing out in a white-and-black plume.
Douglas made no objection to this ruse, but he thought
it would do little good if the enemy wanted to raid Ryswyck again for good measure. Neither the major nor Rose had come in from the field; the encroaching Berenian troops had gained a sight-line for fire between their position and the farm site, and they had been forced to shelter in place. From the field, the major had planned a push to drive them back against their own mines, using Ryswyck’s comms to coordinate his troops. Douglas was waiting to hear about the results before his shift ended. He’d abandoned Barklay’s desk, sitting as it did with its back to the now-taped windows, and was running his operations from the conference table.
The cadet runner duly appeared in the doorway, his pale face drawn, his hood askew around his neck. “Sir.”
“Cadet. Report?”
“They’ve got back some ground below the farm, sir. They’re trying to consolidate the position now.”
“What does Major Grier say?”
The cadet gulped. “He got too close to one of the mines, sir, when they were reconnoitering. We’ve evacuated all the wounded we could, but the major…,” the cadet took a breath, “is not going to make it, sir.”
Douglas stood up. “When are they expected at the infirmary?”
“They’re there now, sir. Captain Tallis needs orders, and reinforcements too if we’ve got them.”
“Find Commodore Beathas and give her Tallis’s code. Then if she has anyone to send back with you, take them to our holding position.”
The cadet darted out. Douglas headed grimly for the arena complex.
There were too many people boiling around the entrance to the infirmary. “We can’t pause, comrades,” Douglas said. “If you haven’t got a task here, go help Beathas support the push.” Those who heard him obeyed, but slowly and with backward looks; some didn’t hear him at all.
“Where’s Captain Stevens?” Douglas asked a lieutenant.
“He’s in there, sir,” said the lieutenant, backing away from the doorway. Douglas turned and strode quickly inside.
The infirmary was full of clinical white light, soldiers in wet fatigues, and strained voices. And sobbing, which presently rocketed to screaming. Douglas passed a gurney on which rested a wrapped body; blood had seeped in spots through the white sheets, darkening around the edges of each stain. He cleared a knot of anxious soldiers around the bed where the screaming was.
Lieutenant Rose was the patient, but Douglas only knew that from split-second intuition: he was almost unrecognizable. His body seemed to be all intact within his tattered fatigues, but he was covered in blood, and his face was so taut with the rictus of pain that it seemed more a strained web of tendons than a face.
Captain Wallis was at his head, barking volleys of orders at his subordinates. He had commandeered Stevens’s strength to hold Rose down, and three others grasped him with all their might; Rose could only arch against the bed convulsively.
“Hold him, I said!” Wallis was filling a syringe with miraculously steady hands. “And get that pack of serum, quick.”
He must have picked up toxic shrapnel, Douglas thought, as a lieutenant burst in among them and rattled a pack and two syringe bottles onto the tray at Wallis’s side. His hands were shaking; Douglas looked at his white face and realized it was Lieutenant Corda.
There were five people holding Rose down now. They got him steady enough for Wallis to inject him, but it seemed forever before the sedative took hold. “I need saline and a surgery tray,” Wallis said crisply, once the screams subsided and the patient fell limp. Stevens had straightened up and backed away, his ungloved hands bloody, his face blank.
“I need everyone who’s not assisting Captain Wallis to clear the room,” Douglas said, into the shock of quiet. “There’s no time for a pause. Keep moving with your tasks.”
“Yes, sir,” came a murmur, pitched to match Douglas’s own calm voice. One by one the non-essential soldiers dispersed, but it did not reduce the number of people in the room by much; soldiers were carrying supplies and attending sedated patients and mopping up blood, and though their movements and voices were subdued, there was still a thrum of anxious tension in the air.
For once, Douglas couldn’t tell what it was he felt. He thought it might be anger, looking down at Rose’s drawn features: but not a kind of anger that he had ever known before. “How many are there like this?” he asked Wallis in a low voice.
Wallis did not look up from his work, or slow his moving hands. “Nobody this bad who’s still alive,” he answered, “mercifully.”
“Get me the casualty report when you’re able,” Douglas sighed, “and I’ll pass it on to Central.”
“Yes, sir,” Wallis said calmly.
Corda had not left Rose’s bedside with the others. He was perched on a stool, stroking Rose’s unresponsive hand, his lips moving voicelessly. Douglas did not want to disturb him, but he had to: quite apart from the heavy tasks of B Rota waiting outside, Corda would glaze over if he continued to sit here.
“Lieutenant Corda,” he said, with as much gentleness as he could muster. “There’s nothing more you can do for Rose right now. Except see that his duties are taken care of. You are his second. Your rota needs you.”
“I know,” Corda said, making an impatient movement. He did not look up.
“Which means you need to get up,” Douglas said, inexorably. “Now. Not later.”
“I’m not ready!” he snapped, like a cat swiping at a nuisance.
Douglas was aware of heads turning. Even Wallis’s eyes checked Douglas briefly while he worked. It was not a good idea to get into a battle of wills with a grieving soldier. Better to win before the battle got started. “Corda,” he said: a last quiet warning.
“I’m not leaving him.” I’m not leaving him, said his emphasis. Whom Corda might be accusing of abandonment at this moment, Douglas didn’t know. Nor did he care. Almost before he could register his own actions, Douglas was reaching for Corda with both hands. He took fistfuls of Corda’s fatigue jacket, yanked him swiftly to his feet, and pinned him with a loud thump against the wall. Corda didn’t have time to struggle before he met Douglas’s eyes at close range and froze.
“I have heard you,” Douglas said, so softly that no one but Corda should have picked up the words, except that the room had gone utterly silent. “You have been heard. Now do as you’re told.”
He released Corda and put an arm’s length between them without letting go of his gaze, daring his response.
For a moment Corda said nothing, breathing hard, his flushed face screwed up in speechless fury. Then he snapped Douglas an irate Ryswyckian salute and flung himself out of the room. Interesting, a part of Douglas noted clinically as he watched Corda go, and wondered whether the Ryswyckian salute had been to acknowledge that he was only momentarily vanquished, or because he was simply too overcome to contain himself in military protocol. But he was moving, at least. And so was the rest of the room, the instant his glance swept over them. Definitely some kind of anger, Douglas thought. He looked round for Stevens.
Stevens wasn’t there. “Excuse me,” Douglas said quietly, and went out into the corridor.
He found Stevens in a lavatory with the door open, vomiting violently into the sink. Douglas rested a hand on his back, briefly, and waited for him to recover. When Stevens had washed his hands for what looked like the third time, and started fervidly swilling out the sink, Douglas said: “When you’re ready, I need you on roving executive duty. We’ve got to keep momentum or we’ll lose morale.”
Stevens hadn’t done anything about the tears streaming down his face. Possibly he didn’t even know they were there. “Yes, sir,” he whispered. As Douglas watched, he ratcheted in a breath and straightened to his full height.
“Thank you,” Douglas said. He gripped Stevens’s arm for a moment and then went away.
Back at his office, he found that Marag had taken his post unasked. He looked up from the conference table, and the sight of Douglas’s face forestalled whatever he was about to say.
“Capta
in,” Douglas acknowledged. “Casualty report yet?”
“Yes, Admiral,” Marag said. “I can file it if you want. Do you want me to spell you now?”
Yes, he wanted Marag to spell him. But there was nowhere for him to go: not to the tower, which was half-crippled; not to this office, which had never been a haven even when it was quiet; not to his quarters, which were not his; not even to the farm, which was now a battlefield.
He opened his mouth to tell Marag no. But what he heard himself say was: “Thank you, Marag. Help Stevens with what he needs and switch posts with him in a little while, after he’s had his meal break. If you want me I’ll be in the chapel.”
Marag nodded, with a tightening of lips that was not really a smile.
There were two pairs of boots standing empty in the chapel vestibule. A cadet emerged while Douglas was removing his own: Douglas recognized her as one of those who had been in the infirmary, just as their eyes touched. They nodded to one another, equals in grief.
The other occupant of the chapel did not register Douglas’s entrance. He was rock-still on his cushion, his head bowed and his closed hand upon his breast, as if he thought holy wisdom might let him assume the whole fault of this day and quench it. If only one could. Douglas kindled a prayer light from the lantern and anchored it, then found a place on the smooth, cool floor and settled on his knees. Then, driven by his unnameable urge, he curled forward and laid his brow against the floor; he saw the lights glimmering in the reflection of the floor’s polish before he closed his eyes.
His consciousness remained hopelessly unelevated, but Douglas was past caring whether his actions would do any good. He stretched out his hands on the floor past his head, toward the frieze of lights. Then he turned them up, and yielded them open.
~*~
“How are our rations?” Barklay asked the team leader.
He shrugged. “The agent got us enough for twenty days. It’ll come a little short of that, with Lady Bernhelm here, but we’ve still plenty.”