by L D Inman
“He says he’s worked out a logistics plan for transport for the Berenian wounded, and can file it in dispatch as soon as we’re cleared, sir,” Stevens said. “You can make inspection at any time.”
“Very good. Lord Bernhelm, if you are finished, would you care to accompany me across the way?”
“Certainly.” Du Rau took up his napkin and wiped his lips.
“Meanwhile, Stevens, if you would brief Lord Bernhelm’s escort and see them situated for the return journey, I would be obliged. You remember Lieutenant Ell.”
Stevens and the lieutenant nodded at one another.
“With your leave, Lieutenant,” Douglas said, “I will borrow Lord Bernhelm from you briefly. You can send one of your men with us and we’ll brief him subsequently.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll see to your trays, sirs,” Stevens said, as they rose from the table. Du Rau hadn’t exactly been waiting for reassurance on that point, but Captain Stevens seemingly had not been calculating a slight; he had simply begun to take du Rau’s presence for granted as a person to be assimilated in the peristalsis of Ryswyckian hospitality.
Du Rau was determined not to be so easily swallowed. “I thank you, Captain,” he said, putting his napkin down by his empty bowl. Alsburg followed suit silently, leaving his crumbled roll and picked-at stew.
“This way, sir,” Douglas said.
“Lead on.”
~*~
They passed through a cloister that opened on a briefly-uncovered walkway before rejoining the canopy that skirted the now-empty quad, and thence to the doors before which Barklay had lain in state. Immediately inside, du Rau found himself in a large training room whose floor was almost wholly taken up with rows of occupied cots. There was a fug of sweat and sickness overlaid with cleaning solvent. Captain Marag and another navy captain in a medic’s smock were counting folded sheets, but stopped at their approach. “How do you fare?” Douglas asked them.
The medic shrugged one shoulder. “Middling, sir. I think we can get most of the men prepped for transport inside of an hour. All but three of them will need to be carried by litter, though.” As he spoke, du Rau stared out over the ranks of wounded, estimating the number of Berenian men under treatment.
“Did they get the trundler working?” Douglas asked Marag.
“No, sir.”
“Nothing for it but to hand-carry them, I guess.”
“Aye.”
“There’s not room enough in the shuttle for all of these,” du Rau observed.
“No, sir,” Douglas said. “We would have to scramble a larger transport to follow on.” The medic started to say something, but refrained at Douglas’s look.
Du Rau frowned, thinking. “Are these all of them?”
“Yes,” Douglas answered. “We had to burn the dead. We collected as many identities as we could and made up a list; I have a copy to give you for your records.”
“Thank you,” du Rau heard himself say. He was looking down at one of his lieutenants, dozing fitfully in the cot nearest them. As he watched, the man opened his eyes and fixed an unfocused gaze on du Rau’s face. A flicker of confusion; then the man shut his eyes again, unequal to parsing the image of his highest commander here in this place.
“I’ll take them,” he said. “Send them after in your transport, and I’ll hold my ship to take them on board.”
“Very well. Marag, will you oversee their transfer to a shuttle and escort them to the rendezvous?”
“Yes, sir,” Marag said. “I’ll go and transmit the dispatch at once.” He saluted, a plain Verlaker military salute, and went out.
Du Rau thought that he and Douglas would soon follow Marag out the way they had come in, but Douglas had other ideas. “This way, sir,” he said, indicating a curved corridor to the side. Du Rau saw the medic give Douglas a wry, almost sympathetic, look; Douglas pretended to ignore it.
The corridor continued to curve as they followed it; when they came to a tunneled opening, Douglas stopped to look at him. “You should see the arena before you go,” he said, with an unreadable look. If Barklay had been giving this tour, du Rau thought, he would have been expansive and obnoxious about it: Douglas was strangely diffident—as if calculating exactly how much guard to drop for his own purposes. Du Rau had not forgotten Speir, however, and was not going to be drawn twice. “Are you adept with the foil, Admiral?” he asked.
“I prefer the baton,” Douglas said, as they started up the dark incline of the tunnel.
They emerged into a spacious combat theatre, domed above, with facets of curved glass in the center to collect what natural light was available and shed it to the deep, sawdust-lined pit below. Bench seats lined the space all around, interspersed with entrances like the one they’d just come out of.
“It’s dormant just now,” Douglas said, a little wistfully. “Match schedule’s off for the duration.” His eyes were on the rail above the pit. Du Rau became aware that they had been gravitating toward a place for a private conversation. Did he want to speak to Douglas alone? Yes, he decided.
He turned to Alsburg as he started after them. “Alsburg, you may wait here. And the corporal with you.”
Alsburg stiffened, balking at last. “My lord!”
“You can stay within eyeshot,” du Rau cut across this. “It’s perfectly safe. I won’t be long.”
Alsburg had no choice but to obey, but let his look of dismay stand as a continued protest. As he watched from the entryway, du Rau followed Douglas down level by level to fetch up at the rail, looking down into the pit. The polished steel panels took the light from the dome and magnified it, so that the sawdust, raked smooth and pristine, shone brighter than the white paint on the seating aisles. He took note of the perch for the judge and the platform positioned behind it in the midst of the ranks of benches; then looked back at Douglas.
He was staring down into the sawdust as if seeing through it to something else. A memory, perhaps. “You are standing at the soul and center of Ryswyck Academy,” he said, with a faint, sad smile. “In the arena, everything is magnified to the height of its compass. Lethal danger; exalted joy; outpoured humility. We all wanted to be here, and nowhere else.”
“Innocence without naivety,” du Rau quoted, with only a breath of irony. “Honor without contumely. Force without cruelty.”
Douglas looked up. In his expectant glance du Rau saw no recognition. “Barklay said those words to me,” du Rau said. “You are not familiar with them?”
The same little smile returned to Douglas’s lips. “He must have made up a new slogan for the occasion,” he said.
“Are all his slogans so obnoxiously earnest?” du Rau inquired.
“That’s one of his better ones. If it’s not costly, it’s not courtesy was the one I particularly—appreciated.”
“It does carry a bit of irony,” du Rau agreed. “Captain Ahrens quoted that one to me. At a point when he had paid a very steep cost indeed. I asked him,” he sighed, “if he thought Ryswyck was the answer to all of this. And he referred the question to you.” He looked at Douglas levelly.
Douglas looked away and gave a breathless, sickened laugh. “Ach, Ahrens,” he murmured. “Why did you think I was wiser than you?”
“You don’t have to be wiser than he,” du Rau said. “But you might have to be wiser than Barklay.”
Douglas nodded absently, staring down into the combat pit. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Been thinking about that. Barklay did all this—” he gestured briefly— “because he had a vision. But he never did take a good account of his blind side. If it was in his shadow, he couldn’t see it. Vision isn’t enough for this.”
It was clear enough to du Rau why Ahrens had referred him to Douglas. Somehow, in the midst of scandal and heartbreak and fighting for his life, Douglas had found time to think about this. He had been planning for Ryswyck’s future despite knowing that Ryswyck likely had no future at all. And why not, after all? Why not hazard everything, a
t a time like this?
And he could benefit from Douglas’s thinking labors, if he knew what to ask. “Tell me how a match is played here,” he said.
“Three formats,” Douglas answered, eyes cast down into the bright pit. “Baton, open-hand, foil. Lethal force is allowed, even expected. The least breath of insult to your opponent is never allowed.”
“You play with sharps?” Du Rau raised his eyebrows.
“Alas, no. Too wasteful. Perforate too many good students. I suspect that’s why most Ryswyckians don’t favor foils—no bite; no danger. Three rounds. All very standard. The real innovation,” Douglas said, warming to it, “is the arbitrary fault. If you can learn to accept a fault without actually having committed one, you find that courtesy is easier to keep in general.”
A pang he could not immediately interpret hit du Rau under the breastbone. “And is the arbitrary fault often given?”
“Often enough to bite,” Douglas answered.
Testing Douglas’s dignity would require a subtler touch. “That sort of rule could lend itself to exploitation,” du Rau said.
“Yes.” Simple agreement, without surprise. Douglas had been thinking about this too. “But Speir thinks it cuts both ways. A way to take degradation and torture and still keep your own soul.” And even, du Rau thought, issue a challenge while doing it. “I can see she’s right up to a point,” Douglas went on. “But I don’t think its limits have been tested.”
“It seemed to work for Captain Ahrens,” du Rau murmured. “Or at least,” he added as sorrow crossed Douglas’s face, “it got him to his death with his soul intact. Long-term survival would be the real test, I think.”
“An experiment we are unlikely to get to make,” Douglas said calmly. It was indeed a memory he gazed at in the combat pit, du Rau decided. He had no memories of this place to contemplate, but the smoothed sawdust seemed to invite memories of his own, and du Rau was growing too tired to resist them. The face of his infantryman they had just left behind in the foyer; the cold fever-glints in Captain Ahrens’s steady eyes; Speir’s little smile as she straightened Barklay’s collar. Another generation of children consigned to the fire, children he could only have, and only sacrifice, by proxy. For the first time in years he was visited with a memory of the day the doctor had given him and Ingrid the news that neither of them could be made fertile. The doctor had left the room, and they had clung together and wept. I’m sorry, they had said to one another, as if either or both of them really had done something wrong. The cruelty of arbitrary faults, he thought. His eyes burned, and the light on the sawdust flared and magnified through his rising tears.
He turned his face away to recover, only to find that Douglas was looking at him, head tilted, lips slightly parted, gaze curious. Drinking him in. Du Rau’s tears subsided instantly, and his spine straightened.
“Damn you,” he grated, “do you think I love cruelty and savagery?”
“No, sir,” Douglas said quietly, unabashed. “You clearly don’t.” Then he said, even quieter: “But cruelty and savagery is all that is left to you now. It’s all that is left to us.”
That was true. Du Rau had no stomach for it. If he were going to go on as he began, he would have to do it with his insides burned out. “Then to your view,” he said slowly, “what would it take to make peace?”
Douglas looked away; looked back. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know if it can be done. You cannot draw back your hand without something to show for it. And we cannot allow our sovereignty to be violated without reprisal.”
Succinctly put. “Why not?” du Rau said. “I have killed your countrymen, laid waste to your superior officers, seen your friends put to torture and death. And yet instead of reviling me you bring me here at great personal cost and show me the best hospitality at your disposal. Why not?”
Douglas’s eyes were intent. “Because reviling you is too small a privilege to purchase with the lives of my friends,” he said. “But I cannot speak for Ilona in this. I can’t even speak for Ryswyck Academy. I can delay our reprisal; I can’t stop it.”
“This can’t go on,” du Rau said. “As word gets out about your missile program, we’ll have arbitrating nations beating down both our doors. And both our sovereignties will be vapor within weeks.”
“But we’ll be alive to appreciate the loss,” Douglas said. “Is that better or worse, I wonder. Worse, I suppose. I could not live in my own home by a stranger’s sufferance.”
“At least Berenians are your cousins and speak your language. Why not use your considerable powers of persuasion, Douglas, and convince your people to surrender.”
“Why not use the powers of your command and convince your people to desist?” Douglas countered.
Du Rau sighed. “The powers of my command only stretch so far. As Barklay’s mission proved.”
“It seems to me you regained your footing very quickly,” Douglas said. “And surely you are not the only one of your people who does not love cruelty and savagery.”
“Mm. Would it be harder for you to get Lord Commander Selkirk to pursue terms of surrender—or admit that Barklay was right?”
“I have made some headway on the latter,” Douglas said, with a crooked smile. “But if bringing you here hadn’t held some promise of keeping us all alive for another six to twelve hours, I wouldn’t have had a chance of convincing him anything. Would you even have accepted a surrender two days ago?”
“Probably not,” du Rau murmured.
“So then.” Douglas made an indeterminate gesture toward the combat pit. Whatever he meant by it, du Rau understood one thing: Douglas, like Speir, was playing offense. Why fight your way to surrender when you could fight your way to entente?
Honor without contumely. “How did he achieve you?” du Rau said, musingly. “I still can’t figure it.”
“If I knew that,” Douglas sighed, “I’d know how to plan for the future.”
“So your default plan is to pick up where he left off.”
Douglas made a thoughtful moue, but gave no other answer.
“His last dying act was an attempt to give me your honor salute,” du Rau told him. “Captain Speir tells me it is given by the loser to the winner at the end of a round.”
Douglas went still for a moment. “Yes, that’s true.” He hesitated, but then lifted his gaze to meet du Rau’s eye directly. “It is also,” he said carefully, “given by the victor to the loser at the end of the match.”
And which did Barklay think it was, in his dying breath? Du Rau had a suspicion. You bastard.
“You killed him cleanly.” Douglas’s voice was soft. “You didn’t have to.”
“A weakness,” du Rau said coolly.
“A risk.”
“I won’t trouble you for your thanks,” said du Rau.
“Oh, I’m not going to thank you,” Douglas said. This time his smile was broad and full, and at the same time it revealed a weariness du Rau recognized. “Unless you meant it as a favor.”
“I’ve done one favor for a Ryswyckian,” du Rau said dryly. “It wasn’t Barklay, and it isn’t you.” And I haven’t stopped paying for it even yet.
“Then the day you ask me for a favor,” Douglas said, “is the day I’ll thank you.”
He closed his battered hand and laid it against his heart.
15
The return journey felt longer than the journey in. They had had to splash their way back out to the shuttle, but Admiral Douglas had walked them informally across the airfield with the loan of a couple of rainshades; so, other than their trouser-cuffs, du Rau and Alsburg escaped a second drenching. The transport of his wounded infantrymen was set to follow in a couple of hours. Du Rau dreaded the extra wait, but it couldn’t be helped. Nor had he been able to hurry the transaction as it was planned and put into action: he had forgotten the Verlaker habit of tarrying for consensus even when some authority had made a decision. It was well past midday before they were in the air and on their way.
The day’s light had risen enough to overcome the blackout screens a little; flying low, they were suspended in a gray nimbus with only the streak of water across the porthole windows to tell they were moving at all. Alsburg sat watching the beads of rain lance across the porthole between them. His expression was now almost wholly troubled.
“They can’t even use it all,” he said presently in a low voice. “Why would they deny us?”
The question was half-rhetorical, but du Rau chose to answer it. “No one wants an invader’s boots marching across their home ground.”
Alsburg frowned. “You’d think they’d welcome the chance to acquire a bit of civilization,” he muttered.
“Civilization at gunpoint?” Du Rau edged him a sardonic look. “I don’t think so.”
Alsburg would have answered, but he was caught in his frowning thought. Du Rau went on.
“It is not wise to be misled by one’s own propaganda. Lose track of reality that way and you develop a blind side from which you can be attacked. This war began as a war of conquest; and when you tally all the wrongs and put them away, that is what remains.”
Alsburg flinched slightly at the word conquest. For Berenians, that word was loaded with the dark memory of warring factions scorching what little arable earth their borders still contained: would-be tyrants throwing away their piecemeal gains in rebuilt infrastructure and medical advancement, all for the chance of slashing their way to the top of Berenia’s post-nuclear heap. Verlac had been their ally then: giving sanctuary and arms to whole families, who gradually allied house to house and locked the warlords out. Verlac had helped them repel invaders, too, with a little judicious saber-rattling as Berenia gained its footing and developed assets. In turn Berenia had given Verlac medicine and engineers and access to trade routes; but though its population eventually stabilized, Verlac retained its insular local-council system of government and its reliance on the female line for social structure. This war, and all that had gone before it, was a stream of cause and effect; Alsburg spoke of it as a matter of static national identity.