by Kali Altsoba
“All of his fighters know
their captain has blundered.
Theirs not to question why,
theirs to follow him, and die,
all of his three hundred.”
The old lines come to him again, as they did that first time while standing in the bloody sweetgrass meadow, shocked at what he had just done and seen Zofia do and uncertain what to do next. Where to go next or how to get there. Once again he’s wrong. He doesn’t understand his fighters yet. They’re not thinking that at all.
Not any of Madjenik’s oddball veterans. Their shoulder flashes say they come from a dozen different broken companies, these 268 survivors who march past Jan over the bridge, through the tunnel and into the city. Today, not one thinks of themselves as anything other than Madjenik Company. More even than that, they’re all proud to be “Wysocki’s Wreckers.”
Jan’s right about one thing: he and they all look like hell, shuffling wearily out of the tunnel mouth, passing by the sullen, wan refugees hunkered in guarded pens beside the squat inner berm line. Then past a smaller crowd clapping too wildly. Guards’ families, mostly.
They stop at the exit of the brown tunnel, readying to step from its dim light into a crisp autumn morning. An hour after they were in ash and battle they’ll enter a golden city of wood.
Without asking, Zofia suddenly takes charge of Madjenik. “Company, fall in by platoon. Parade formation. Sir, you need to take point on this one.”
***
She got the idea and the order from General Constance, delivered to her and the NCOs directly by Lt. Byers. Jan thinks she’s acting a little odd but assumes his position at Madjenik’s head. Zofia knows what he doesn’t: millions of Toruńites are waiting to cheer the Ghost.
At first it’s not much of a parade as Jan and Madjenik move out of the dark tunnel. It seems like it will be scruffy and short and therefore to his liking. He wants no fuss. He just wants to get the company quartered and settled in. So he’s glad that Relief One leads the way, marching crisply, rightfully proud of its actions at the crater. Then comes shambolic Madjenik. As it shuffles out of the tunnel into breaking sunlight and the view of an immense and cheering crowd, not just Jan but all Madjenik hesitates. Some stumble and blink uncomprehendingly.
The crowd is immense and stretches straight ahead as far as natural eyes can see. But that’s not the most astonishing thing to Jan and Madjenik. An honor guard in dress gold-and-white uniforms from the prewar KRA lines both sides of the Grand Boulevard. No one back in the forest ever imagined such a scene. No one thinks they deserve it, least of all Jan Wysocki.
General Constance ordered the uniforms and route “readied for a square bashing” less than an hour after learning that Madjenik was alive outside the berm. Byers worked it all out in secret while she worked on the crater mine plan, and organized the barrage and Relief One.
“Really general? You want me to plan a parade? Shouldn’t we wait to see if your plan actually works and we get the Lost Company back inside the berm?”
“Usually I appreciate your candor and your keen instincts, lieutenant. You surprise me on both scores this time. I confess, I’m a little disappointed.”
“I’m sorry sir, I just don’t understand. Not fully, anyway.”
“You will when you see how our people react tomorrow. They need this. We need this. You can’t fight a war without hope. Especially a hopeless one.”
“Well general, I’ll get right on it. The route is obvious: the Grand Boulevard. The full trimmings might take some work, given that we’re so short of fighters around the berm wall.”
“Take as many as you need to do the parade route right. Make it a show for the history books. No, make it one for the Ages. I’m trying to create a living legend, you know.”
“Yes general. And if off-world reports are anything to go by, you’re already halfway there. Who knew the Ghost of the stories and your dispatches to Aral would actually return?”
“I did.”
***
Dylan Byers gets it now, watching the faces in the crowd, seeing hope where he has seen nothing but deepening despair and desolation over loss after loss ever since the war began.
‘She might be right about him. And about us. What a remarkable woman, my general.’
Jubilant crowds erupt into cheers all along the route into the city center, jostling to get close enough to see the ‘Ghost of the Wood.’ To see the legend who brings hope, if only for a moment, to part the overcast gloom of a defeat all know is coming. They waive little wheat-sheave flags, cheer “Vive Madjenik!” and “Vive Genève!” They clap and stamp as tired and filthy survivors pass before them, chests out now in spite of themselves, eyes up and proud.
Millions of tramping feet make thunder rolls that vibrate down the thick wooden streets, echo in canyon side streets, and climb oak and teak and redwood walls of bronzed towers. In an open park hosting a big refugee camp by one of the artificial lakes, a stray dog feels the strange vibrations through its paws. It hears cloudless thunder and howls to the moons, loud and low.
Now the crowd starts to sing. A million voices take up the familiar old songs praising Genève’s beauty, its golden forests and high mountains and foamy seas. Like all sentimental local songs, they assert that their world is the envy of Orion.
“Golden boughs, golden boughs,
rising wood towers above me.
Aged and wide, roof of the night,
a hundred generations before me.
Cathedrals growing in panes of gold,
silver pine pillars upholding.
Golden boughs, golden boughs,
rise o’er my homeworld forever.”
Lots more like that. The usual pastoral stuff. The local songs people learn in childhood and turn to later in times of worry and woe, in times of war. Songs they really love and remember.
The Grand Boulevard slices through wooden canyons of residential towers designed to remind Toruńites of the great oak and teak forests from which they were hewn. Jan focuses on the wooden street beams, looking away from the varnished towers rising overhead and the huge crowd lined up as far ahead as he can see, for at least three klics. He only thinks:
‘How oddly firm the street is underfoot, after months of walking only on deep windfall or ash. I forgot what it felt like, to have firmness under my boots. It feels good. It feels right.’
Little girls in their best print dresses and small boys wearing bow ties, all holding stiff childish salutes, are pushed to the front of the happy crowd. Mothers and fathers farther back hold up dopey, drooling toddlers to see the “heroes of the forest.” It’s the first public celebration of anything in Toruń since before the war.
Jan hates it all. Really hates it.
“How can they pull troops off the berm wall for this?”
“I’m sure we’re safe, sir.” Zofia slips into her natural mode: sarcasm. Then she corrects herself. “The enemy is still absorbing what we did to him at the crater. The berm is solid, sir.”
“What the hell?”
A color troop and two regimental bands slide out of side streets and onto the main boulevard, inserting themselves ahead of and between Madjenik and Relief One. The color guard carries every flag of every battalion in Toruń. The bands are playing martial songs. And as the last troopers in Madjenik pass by each squad in gold and white, all the full-dress color guard lining the long boulevard step into the middle and form ranks. Now a long regiment in gorgeous uniforms brings up the rear in brass and braid. It’s a proper military parade, now.
“Gods, this general thinks of everything!” Jan laments to Zofia.
“Doesn’t she just?”
“You like this?”
“No, not really. But I understand it.”
“Well I don’t.”
Zofia can’t help prodding him.
“To like it I’d have to shower first, hot and long, with lots of suds. Then I’d step out and slow walk over to where I left my brand new, clean dres
s uniform. Just like all those very pretty boys and girls are wearing, all lined up along the roadside. I’d pull it on really slowly, you know, to feel clean cloth on my naked skin again. It’s been a long time … ”
“Puleeezz!”
But he can’t help himself, either. Not triggered seductively like that: he imagines Zofia soaping herself all over in a steamy shower, then languidly dressing in a fresh wheat uniform.
“Captain? Are you still with us?”
She really is a terrible tease.
“Right then. There’s nothing for it but to bear up and get it over with.” He sends out what he thinks might be his last command to Madjenik.
“Attention! Tighten up this parade formation, Madjenik! You look like lost ducks in a thunderstorm! Straighten ranks, march!”
It doesn’t matter that among the paraders are walking wounded and several severely hurt and suspends carried on stretchers on low hovers, medics working on them as they pass the cheering, laughing and clapping crowds who choose not to see the wounds or feel their pain.
It doesn’t matter that the women of Madjenik are all wan and filthy, with ash-matted hair and shapeless weaves covered in shit and blood and ash. It doesn’t matter that the men are dirty, over-bearded, too thin and stooped low with bone-weary cares and real combat trauma.
No one in the cheering millions minds at all that Zofia looks like something the cat vomited. No one cares that scruffy, bearded and brooding Jan hardly looks a hero. More like the bandit captain out of General Brusilov’s and RIK milneb propaganda.
It only matters that Madjenik is in Toruń at this moment, that Genèvens have heroes again and a reason to clap and sing. That for once the war has not gone in favor of the invader. That just once they got the upper hand on the brutal army that descended on harmless Genève in blood and rape and murder and crime. With its death squads and petty bullies, setting fire to the most beloved forests in all Orion for no greater reason than oily Pyotr’s lusts and vanity.
Madjenik limps and struts at the same time, picking up the pace with eyes only to the front, ignoring the bands, ignoring the crowds, ignoring honor and glory and all that other shit its fighters were taught since preschool. They march briskly to the city center not to please the millions but because their captain said to stand straighter and step faster and prouder. Madjenik does it for Jan Wysocki. It does it because its fighters call themselves “Wysocki’s Wreckers.”
After a mercifully short welcoming ceremony, everyone in the company simply drops in place and falls asleep right there on the ground in Governance Square. They just drop weps and gear and then themselves, curling atop near-empty field pack pillows as they are long used to doing. The whole company falls into instant slumber, and stays asleep for a day and a night.
General Constance protects them from benevolent molestation with a ring of shushing guards all around the square. All still dressed in prewar gold-and-white uniforms, keeping back too friendly crowds that press close to see the sleeping heroes.
“My, such perfect toy soldiers,” Zofia sneers before she, too, falls asleep on the ground.
“Ah, don’t be such a...”
It’s just as well they drop, since there’s no place to put Madjenik. Every tower, every room and public space in Toruń is already packed with refugees from across Genève. So the next morning Jan and Zofia go to see Dylan to find quarters. He offers them 60 small rooms in a corner of a building that holds 600 Grün internees from the two impounded cruise ships.
“Don’t worry. We’ll kick them into one of the internee camps by the lakes, or maybe move them to the berm ring. Should’ve done it long ago, actually. Now, let’s talk about food and fresh uniforms. And I think you’ve all got back pay coming, too. I’ll see the troops get it.”
That’s a mistake. Already the town is buying everyone in Madjenik free drinks. Now, with credits in hand and both officers away, the rougher sorts get drunk on bitter pine ale and eat themselves sick on juhtúró and sour kissel. Five are in jail before noon, 50 by that evening. All are released by the MPs once sobered up, just in time to get drunk and in trouble again.
In fact, everyone gets royally pissed except the two officers. Jan and Zofia eat their fill, then head to the city quartermaster to get medical supplies, replacement weps and a new batch of clean weaves and uniforms. But first they visit their wounded from the Long Trek and The Crater. Not all will make it. Jan feels responsible for every wound and each pending death.
He signs papers moving his able-bodied fighters into the lower four floors of a small, backstreet tourist hotel from which farfolk cruise ship passengers are expelled, told to find a place in one of the tent camps by the lakes. With Madjenik settled in and their duty done by the end of the second day, and officially given a week’s leave, Jan and Zofia get as well-lubricated on pine ale and Baku liquor as all the rest of Madjenik. Then they head back to the hotel.
They’re shown their quarters, a small all-teak room in the lower quadrant. The maître d'hôtel insists they must have it, beaming as if he’s escorting them to a royal suite. The small, bronzed room has a compact night desk, a single clothes bureau, a night table and lamp, and a single bed. Jan and Zofia both pretend to protest against being forced to share it.
“Are you sure you don’t have two rooms? I don’t want to pull rank, but each officer is entitled by regulations to separate quarters ..
“That was prewar, sir. Everybody’s double-bunking now, or more. Best we can do with all the refugees here. And it really is all that I have, sirs, if you want to be near your company.”
“Well, fine then. I suppose it is what it is. Lt. Jablonski, do you agree?”
“It’ll have to do, sir. We’ve had a lot worse under us these past several months. As long as there’s a shower...”
“Alright, it’s your official officer’s quarters now. Here’s the only key, sirs.”
Well fed and drunk and showered and alone at last, they stop pretending and make love for the first time. Then again and again. It’s everything they expected and hoped for, Jan in his most erotic forest dreams, Zofia in her long-secret and fondest wishes. They molt uniforms and cares onto the dark wood floor and pour themselves into kama and each other, melding bodies and souls, uniting as never before with any partner, far beyond what either thought possible.
They fit together naturally, physically and emotionally. Almost perfectly, from the first touch and time to every time. It’s a rare thing. Afterward, they spoon and curl in long, languid physical and loving satisfaction, soft-stroking affection and a sublimity of newly-paired lovers’ contentment. They’ve survived combat and the great trek and are for a day at least alive and together, sharing an intimate string of moments like neither has before.
Then Jan ruins it all.
When dawn comes he can’t make direct eye contact with the pretty ginger lying beside him in a teak bed, half-draped by clean cotton sheets that feel like the richest silk beneath his naked and battle-worn body. In full retreat from himself more than her, running as he ran from the MDL, he tells himself how he must see her. Not as his lover Zofia, but only as his second-in-command, Lieutenant Jablonski. He curses his own weakness at sleeping with a subordinate.
“We can’t ... Madjenik ... the rules ... I can’t let this happen again.”
He says it right as she awakens and smiles up at him, with that radiant full-lipped smile and those bright shining, always slightly mocking and intelligent green eyes she has. The look nearly melts afresh his self-control as it once again, and always, warms his groin. He fumbles the explanation badly.
Zofia is deeply hurt. She tries to hide it from him, but fails. She retreats into formality, refuses to cry. Erects ramparts of regulation to oppose the fool’s barricade on which he stands.
“You’re right, sir. It’s not proper. Against the KRA code. It won’t happen again.”
She speaks in a clipped and respectful tone, only and fully professional. The same voice she uses to address her captain
on the field of battle, in front of a company of always watching fighters. Though without the touch of affectionate sarcasm and gentle mockery she used even in the forest to goad and guide him. On the officer-link only. Never in front of the troops.
“Zofia, I’m sorry. I just don’t think we can...”
“I’ll get dressed now, sir. If you’ll just turn around, captain.”
He does, without speaking. She’s lying with the sheets pulled up around her, in oddly awkward modesty after what they’ve done. As she rises from the bed she tosses them aside and strides deliberately, almost brazenly, naked to the tiny antechamber of the bathing room where her clothes and his lie haphazardly on the ruby, polished hardwood floor.
