by Kali Altsoba
‘I need to get more sleep, and I have to stay off all the free booze.’
Not knowing where Constance left off he says the next thing that comes into his head.
“Thank you again, sir. For Byers. He’s impressive. I welcome his advice and help.”
“Humph! You do know we moved on from discussing Byers some time ago?”
‘Well done, Jan. You’re making a hell of an impression on your commanding officer.’
“I’ll reassign more junior officers to your command inside the hour. Byers is drafting orders for my signature now, his last official duty on my staff. You needn’t wait. Here are your commissioning papers and those of the new majors. Captains, lieutenants and NCOs to follow.”
She rolls up the graphene sheet and hands it to him. It’s light as feathers and compact. He slips it into a never-before-used shoulder pouch on the arm of his crisp wheat uniform.
“The new 10th Combat Brigade will be fully detached. Autonomous for the most part. You will train as special commandos. Troopers call your company ‘Wysocki’s Wreckers.’ So we’ll call your brigade that as well. The troops will all like that. Toruń will like that.”
Now he does protest, loudly and too vehemently.
“That’s not something I approved in the forest, sir. ‘Wreckers’ I don’t object to, of course. But I don’t want my name in front like that.”
Constance turns instantly and profoundly angry. Jan suddenly senses a powerful scent of burning incense. Stronger even than the salt sea smell he can’t quite shake off.
“You undervalue what you are, colonel. Your excess of humility is no virtue. It grows more tiresome by the hour, which is late. Nor do you wear it as well as you hope or think.”
He winces at the chastisement, like a simple schoolboy. Constance sees it and moves to play the role of headmistress over him, only in that intimidating general’s voice she commands.
“Remember your Aristotle? Courage is the key virtue because without it you cannot practice any of the others. You do not lack courage, colonel. Even if you don’t believe or see it in yourself just now. Nor do you lack leadership. You are overflowing with leadership.”
“I showed none on the first day, at the fight at the MDL when a squad of armtraks broke through my unit. I ran like a rabbit!”
He throws it back in her face, into her plans for his legend.
She knows all about it. He put it in his summary field report about Madjenik in an act of self-destructive honesty in reportage that impressed her hugely. Almost as much as his tactical exploits in the forests and his innovative disobedience of her own direct orders at The Crater.
“You are a special officer.”
He winces again, this time at the praise.
Again he protests.
Again she cuts him off.
“Yes, you are. Your troops all know it and say it. I know it. It’s past time you admitted it to yourself. You are special, and a natural leader.”
“I didn’t lead anyone at the MDL. They came back for me.”
“That was then.”
“But sir, I ran!”
“Yes, you did. And still they came back for you.”
“I don’t know why, I don’t. They shouldn’t have.”
“Colonel Wysocki, do you think the fighters of Madjenik are changed since then? Do you think they’re the same as the day before the whole KRA ran from the broken MDL?”
“No sir. They’re harder, tougher, better. More cruel.”
“So are you. All the ‘Wreckers’ who followed you out of the burnt woods swear they will follow you anywhere. They all believe in you. They’ll never willingly leave your side or command. Thousands of our fighters clamor to serve under you, to fight for you. You have a warrior’s reputation now. You have a name. And perhaps also some small talent for war.”
“Those thousands, they don’t know me. They only know the tall stories.”
“You forget that I also saw you lead, saw you in command and in action at The Crater.”
“Again, that was your plan, sir.”
“Yes, and a damn good one. But it was you who got them through the fight, you who controlled and channeled their hate and inspired them to fight and survive. You have nothing left to prove as a combat commander. Stop trying so hard.”
“Sorry sir. It’s just ... What can I do?”
“A great deal. More than your combat leadership, I need ... our people need every hero we can raise up, every morale boost we can get. For the long fight.”
“You mean for when you lead us outside the berm? I can do that!”
“I already told you, twice, that you are not allowed to go to the berm.”
The smell of incense around her is getting stronger as her anger rises, almost overwhelming his senses, as if it’s really in the room. ‘The kind used in olden days in blood sacrifice,’ Jan thinks darkly.
He’s right about the incense smell but wrong about the source. She smells more like the interior of a Life Temple. A place he never visits, it’s full of death and resignation yet uplifting acceptance of the bonds and debts owed between generations. Old to young and youth to age.
“No, colonel. You have a longer path to walk than out to our doomed berm. A harder destiny and far heavier burden to carry. I repeat, for the last time, I’ll not waste you and your ‘Wreckers’ fighting in a hopeless battle for a city that’s already lost and soon will burn to ash.”
“What then? What do want from me, general?”
“Your name. Your reputation. The magnificent story of your trek to Toruń. The legend of the ‘Ghost of the Wood.’ I want all that for our people. I want to give your name to Krevans everywhere, suffering and dying in this dark hour. To give it to Orion. Your name, your legend is a green shoot of hope arising out of all the gloom and ash and death on all our lost worlds.”
“My name? What use is that? Please sir, I don’t understand talk of legends and names. Just let me fight. I’ll lead your brigade if I must, but I don’t know politics. I only want to fight.”
She wheels on him with real harshness in her voice, in a cloud of choking burnt incense, with shocking vehemence and volume. Almost roaring into his face, like an aroused lioness.
“Politics?! Damn your selfishness!”
Two young staff officers standing by the holomap in the nearby antechamber look over in concern and surprise at her outburst. They’ve never heard or seen their general so animate.
Jan is profoundly shocked by the threat in her voice and deeply hurt by the harsh words. But he won’t back off, either. Something important is changing between them, and in him.
“Selfish? What do you mean, selfish?”
“Why not let us borrow your name? ‘What’s in a name?’ An ancient poet asked that once. I’ll tell you: faith, hope, duty, honor. It’s not the title of the new brigade that honors you Colonel Wysocki, but you who must honor the title.”
Jan is taken aback. He feels chastened, humbled. And all alone.
“You must ask yourself the same question that I ask of Toruń, that Aral asks all of us now: how can Krevo live if we decide to die? You will lend me and all of us your strong name so that we may take up the heavy burden that all Krevans will bear far into the future.”
Powerful emotion shows in her face. Flashes from her smoke-hazel eyes glower at him like a wood-fire under a bellows, narrowing to predator-like slits of red accusation, of reproach and even of menace. Her darkening visage and emotion is so sudden and strong it overmatches his own anger, also rising in a complex of fear and humiliation that nearly overwhelms him.
Then Jan gains control. He finally sets it all aside to really listen to what she’s saying. Listen without self-loathing or ego of any kind. Listen for the first time. Listen to the strong voice of his people calling to him from history and to make history.
“Do you not understand that we Krevans are already adrift? That even if we hold some worlds a few months more, keep back the locust swarms another season, our e
nd is written?”
“Do you not know that we shall be imprisoned in our homes or exiled from them? That we shall be first among the unwelcome wanderers this war will surely make, always pushed on to trouble another’s door. Poor and unwanted for the secret shame our exile brings to others.”
“Do not doubt it. For not even the decent star nations have moved to help us in this hour of our greatest need. We must survive, alone and unaided. Only by surviving can we preserve our past and future. We must and will survive, or we shall expire from history and from Orion.”
“All is lost, then?”
“All, yes, but not everything. Ships will leave Toruń, ships are leaving all our worlds. They depart for an aeonian odyssey among the stars. As individuals we shall live and die as exiles far from the memory and comfort of our homes, knowing they were stolen from us. As a people, we shall survive in exile to make peace no more, forever. Until our friends remember.”
Piercing wood-ember eyes stare through him, burning down to the essence of things, as fire always does.
“Yes, you and I might avoid this fate by choosing to stay behind, to die here on Toruń, wanting and thinking only that ‘she who dies fighting pays all outstanding debts.’ Our burden is greater than that, you and I. We are required to lead.”
He looks hard at her and she back at him. Her gaze is firmer.
“That’s not my choice, or my reason. I stay only so that some will not quail in the last fight on Genève, but far more so that others like you will accept to live and to leave. Personal choice is done for us Krevans, colonel, Only as a people may we choose to live or to die.”
He’s overborne by her force of personality, her authority and sure strategic knowledge. He submits to her judgment.
“Is the war over, then? Is saving those we can all that’s left to us?”
“No! I do not propose to you a leper’s exile, to ‘wander as dumb beggars with no bells,’ intending no harm but unwelcome everywhere nonetheless. I do not propose to live as refugees who bore the young and too kind strangers with tired tales of our forgotten war and woes.”
“We are defeated, yet we are not dissuaded. We will fight on, forever. We shall wander the starry seas, knowing that on a future carmine morning we will return to cut the throats of the thieves and murderers who stole into our lives to force us from our homes. Then we shall have our vengeance, as a people. It shall be red and gory and complete. As it was for Ulysses.”
He remembers the story vaguely from college. An ancient tale of shipwreck and lust and war, of wandering through wonders, of love and monsters and long exile. All leading back to terrible justice and frenzied slaughter and revenge.
‘Was it justice, or just more grim and bloody murder? An eye for an eye, and all the worlds will be governed by blind cyclops.’
Again he feels transported, that he’s drowning in a premonition. He can really smell salt air this time, and hear the hoarse cries of sea gulls that seem to call to him from just outside the wood tower window. It’s not possible this high up or so far inland. It’s real to him nonetheless.
General Amiya Constance leans forward over her thick oak desktop to speak sotto voce, urging him like a dread conspirator to agree to murders yet to come.
“You will be our Ulysses.”
‘What does that mean? Ulysses?’
He wants to protest, but her presence is too commanding, her authority too enveloping. None of his protests this hour have worked or mattered anyway. Not with her. Never with her.
“You’ll be a stoic hero for all our people. Wandering with them, leading by reminding them always that hatred is the only sure path home, back to their anointed day of red revenge.”
‘Why me? What does she see in me to make her think I can do this dreadful thing?’
“We need legends. We need heroes if we are to survive as a people in exile. We need you, Jan Wysocki. We need you to agree to this hard burden. We need you to lead us in the darkness of exile so that you may lead us out of the dark.”
‘I might be a legend as she says, but I’m no hero. She must know that, too. Shouldn’t a legend also be a hero? I’ll ask her that! It’s not too late! She must see that I’m the wrong man.’
“We will wander so that we may fight, so that our children return one day to bolt the door with iron and murder our enemies in their sloth and vanity. Come home to reclaim their inheritance, however many years it takes. Come home to exact dread vengeance and reclaim all our rightful worlds.”
‘Wander? Vengeance? Ulysses?’
“So be it. I pick you. I order you to leave Toruń. I order you to live.”
Nobody gives a damn about his secret fears, his Hamlet complex. Constance has made that much clear. Lots of officers might feel the same, for all he knows. So he decides to shut up, raises no questions, registers no protest to her impossible expectations. That’s when it hits him.
He senses her words pulling him far from shore. Feels the undertow take hold of him. Hears cries of gulls all around. Smells salt air and incense. Sees long sacrifice decades ahead.
Only he’s not drifting away on a fragile and useless punt this time. He’s on a massive warship, four-masts-to-the-wind, sheets billowing with power overhead and broadside cannon sending red-and-white pufferies of death hurtling at his enemies. And all around, a mighty fleet flies proud flags of all the free nations of Orion: Calmaris, Helvetics, Krevans, Threes, others.
‘Is this my fate, to sail the stars with gulls alongside? Must I lift up sheets of hate to ride the winds of war, blown hither and yon, never to chart my own course? Can I do it?’
Constance lets him think in silence, seeing the dark thoughts flit across his face like starlings outside a high window. She watches him intently, with vital purpose. Every plan she has, everything left to her, the fate of Genève and all Krevo is riding on what he says next.
‘Is he the one? Can he lead our people? Have I chosen well? Ahh Amiya, it was never your choice to make. He chose this path, starting in the sweetgrass meadow, then in the forests as the Ghost. Just as he’ll choose to walk it tomorrow and all tomorrows to come, in exile.’
Jan watched her fateful speech to the city before he came to this wood-oiled room that smells like the Old Forest, and burning sandalwood and salt air. So he knows that he can’t win a contest of wills about whether to stay to die or leave to fly her flag of hate to the stars.
‘Others are getting the same order I am, to board the Exodus ships carrying Genève into exile. So why do I feel so ashamed? Damn, but I resent her imposition! What is it about this stern, gold-braided, deep-voiced woman that makes me feel that whatever I say or think is wrong? It’s like being a cadet in the KRA Academy on Aral all over again.’
He did that for a year as a kid, at age 18. Sure that he’d achieve a brilliant academic result and then embark on an adventuresome career, launched from the finest military school in all the dozen systems and worlds of Krevo. Then he got hung up on a sour romance halfway through his first year, went all on in a girl who never went all in on him.
He performed so poorly in every subject he just had to quit. Was forced out, actually. In disgrace. He lied to all his cadet friends, saying that he was going home to Genève “to help the old man bring in the harvest. He’s not too well, you know.” Lied to everyone back home about what happened on Aral. Lied to everyone and himself. Until he thought he was nothing but lies.
Back at Toruń Teacher’s College, where he enrolled for want of any other choice, Jan pretended nothing bad happened on Aral. He always said when asked that “I came back to help my dad.” Sure, he finished Officer Training part time. Yes, they made him Madjenik Reserve Company CO when he excelled in tactical and leadership courses.
‘I was popular, that’s all. Not a real leader. Anyway, that was peacetime and there was no real competition for the job.’
He thinks everything he ever achieved is mirage. He believes, really believes, that he’s just a stumble of character waiting to happe
n in front of all the worlds. He knows his limits, or thinks he does. He lives inside fear that everyone else knows them, too, secretly laughs at him, waiting for his inevitable fall. And now his general asks him to be a leader and a hero in Orion.
‘They’ll all find me out, expose me,’ he thought before the war. ‘Call me out as the fraud I am. Then I’ll lose Madjenik for sure and forever.’
