The Eternal Front: A Lines of Thunder Novel (Lines of Thunder Universe)

by Walter Blaire

  She believed him.

  Then she emptied a cup of cleaning lye into his wound.

  Gole collapsed to the ground with a scream.

  Nana dropped on top of him and smothered his convulsions with the weight of her body. He tore her hair and she pinioned his little arms. He bit her neck—she drove her shoulder brutally into his mouth to force his jaw open.

  Gole should have seen this coming. Had he not been lectured endlessly about baxxaxx, oar beetles, killkracken, and bird bears?

  Baxxaxx were grazers and occasional scavengers, but they couldn’t stomach Tachba. For their part, the Tachba found baxxaxx meat perfectly edible, sometimes even palatable. Moreover, baxxaxx muscle segments would fill back in if the family was careful not to over-butcher its animals.

  But not even the most benighted, polluted Tachba would eat near the mouth or throat of a baxxaxx. Their saliva was a weapon in itself. The poisonous mouth of the baxxaxx made them useful as war mounts in pre-Haphan days, and for thinning overpopulated towns. Scrapings off a baxxaxx’s three tongues, when mixed together, glowed iridescently in the night. Tachba girls painted the mixture on trees, where it became a basis for soothsaying by the patterns etched in the bark.

  The caustic saliva of the baxxaxx had to be rinsed from Gole’s wound. Lye was fast and reliable.

  Gole eventually relaxed into the pain, as Nana expected he would. His gasping slowed, and he released her hair.

  She watched the agony unfold off his face and leave calm wonder.

  Papa had explained to Nana what pain meant to boys, and Nana had thought she understood. Now she saw it clearly. Pain was bewitching. Pain was romantic. It arrived with the sound of distant trumpets. The blood, the horror, and the squalid writhing on the ground all became something like joy in the end. Pain held promise—of more pain, but of redemption too. The Pollution worked to return the body to service, and a wounded Tachba would embrace the agony, jump up, and launch back into the fray.

  Gole squirmed out from under her. He rolled to his hands and knees, and pulled himself upright with the bed. He took a hobbling step, his expression thoughtful. The red muscle of his wound flexed, and a gout of blood pulsed down his leg.

  This was her brother, her sweet little boy. Her adorable guardian who loved protecting her from the other little boys. Gole took another step, discovering he was indestructible.

  You’re not indestructible. She thought, her heart bleak. You are merely indifferent. You are polluted.

  This was all Nana’s fault or, at least, she blamed herself. She knew how it would play out. In an hour, Gole would notice Nana’s black eye and demand to know who hit her, and she would not lie. He would be mortified, appalled. The black eye would become a black mark of self-loathing on the balance sheet in Gole’s head. Nana always struggled to keep that balance sheet clean because, Papa told her, the Pollution did not erase regret. The Pollution accrued regrets like Mama accrued gray hair.

  In the coming years—hopefully—Gole would achieve manhood. He’d pack muscle on, and his mind would toggle smoothly between ferocity and cheer. If he survived his youth, he would eventually grow introspective. He would begin to wonder about his fluid unity of muscle, purpose, and violence. His earliest memories of pain would provide clues to his true nature. Gole would remember this wound on his thigh and then remember learning to love the pain.

  Papa explained all of this to Nana at the fire. Papa was old. His passions were packed tightly away like mementoes from the front. When he spoke of the Pollution in the boys, his steady, baffled smile was packed away too.

  On the one hand, Gole wanted to preserve himself. On the other, the Pollution made him savor his own mutilation. What did that make him? Was he a good person with an affliction? Or was he a vicious self-mutilator with bouts of regret?

  This was why Nana made the skin medallion out of Gole’s flesh. When Gole finally reflected on this wound, as Papa said he would, he would hold the medallion in his hand and remember that he was cherished, worthy of love, and worth sistering.

  Gole kicked his leg in a way that made Nana wince. The lye bubbled audibly in his wound, gassing out a rubber smell.

  “That was really, really nasty, Nana.”

  “What are you whining about?” she snapped. “That’s pain and protection all rolled into one. That’s hurt and love. Guess which little berserker taught me that?”

  “I was just surprised, is all.”

  That brought her up short.

  Gole hobbled out of the room before she could answer.

  “Damn right you’re surprised,” she murmured. Slight girls had to be full of surprises, or they wouldn’t last long.

  7

  Sethlan

  Tejj and Diggery had rare luck that evening. Instead of the usual rickshaw or farm wagon, they scared up a steam cart with a civilian driver. The contraption clanked over Emsa’s cobblestone streets with metallic shrieks and a deep limp, as if it had never been designed to actually move. Any progress it made felt like an excruciating accident. It entombed its passengers in an armored cabin full of sharp metal edges and then bathed them with superheated jets of mis-vented steam.

  The steam cart was embarrassing—but it was also fast. They soon passed out of the granite buildings of Ville Emsa and into the surrounding farmland.

  The farmland decayed into something poor and unkempt until they arrived at the main rails that brought men and materiel to the front. Mud, washed across the road in a recent storm, threatened to mire the cart. The three passengers alighted and heaved the machine onto the track. It rolled more freely and their ride turned tolerable.

  “How do you derail this thing?” Diggery asked.

  The driver was perched like a coachman on an exposed seat at the front of the machine. He leaned to the side so Diggery could see through the communication transom. “See these controls? Get you a good speed up. Yank the column fiercely, thus. Piss yourself, then open your eyes. You’re off the rail and back on the road.”

  Diggery was always talkative on the way to the front. Because Tejj was always disapproving of Diggery and Sethlan rarely spoke, Diggery told the driver to slow for two soldiers walking beside the rail. In full gear, they folded into the open cargo bed behind the armored cabin and spoke through the gun slits.

  “We reported for sick list, due to the odd food you eat around here,” said the older soldier. “We met with nothing but rejection.”

  “Now we return to the big squeeze, la,” the younger added.

  The night’s barrage commenced with a muted roar. That it was audible over the steam cart meant it would be a large one.

  One of the soldiers sang:

  Hey friend falling—

  There’s a bird in the sky.

  I’m the ground, la.

  Tossed around, la.

  “That’s a timing song, for gauging the intensity of the shelling,” Diggery told Tejj, who didn’t need to be told and merely rolled his eyes. Diggery turned back to the soldiers. “What’s it sound like to you?”

  The younger soldier broke off. “South is pre-firing, la. Range finding. Warming the metal, clearing the throat-geh.”

  The older added, “They’re scratching up something for later tonight. I’m guessing the atmospherics have changed, it being so unseasonable cold these days. There’s also that new wind from the south. They’re trying out the new air. They expect to lob some heavy shit tonight, stuff that goes high and comes down angry.”

  The younger pressed his eyes into the gun-slit and picked them out of the darkness. “Is there an action tonight?”

  He clearly knew the answer already. Diggery said, “There’s a hill we want to get. South will want to keep it.”

  “We know that fucking hill.”

  “Nice place?” Diggery grinned.

  The older soldier spat over the edge of the cart. “Big-ass artillery monsters in that sector. Never seen the like. South has a hardened platform, nothing else would hold up guns that are big enough for tha
t. They couldn’t fire such big-ass shells without big-asser guns.”

  “You mean ‘bigger-ass,’” Tejj said. “Have you seen the shells up close?”

  “You don’t see them up close. They’re big enough they usually find something to detonate against, even if they have to go through fifty feet of mud first. The ones that don’t explode, they’re deep underground. They’ll blow when the earth hardens in deep winter.”

  “What’s their shape?”

  “Look like skull-cracker shells, but with deep grooves to spin them in flight.”

  “I heard they’re precise,” Tejj prompted.

  “They have that fucking hill targeted, that’s for sure. They don’t miss. I hope the Happies learn how they target. We could finally steal an idea from them, instead of the other way.”

  “Maybe we’ll bring some POWs up and open one of the unexploded shells,” said Tejj. “See how they’re made.”

  The soldiers nodded. “Make sure them POWs don’t mind a big bang.”

  “We’ll give them ear-plugs,” said Diggery.

  This brought a belly-laugh from the soldiers. The older said, “Thou cleavest joy from the anvil of pain, kin.”

  Deep. The soldier had spoken the Deep Tongue.

  Sethlan lurched out of his seat, but not fast enough to keep Diggery from answering. “I don’t have the Tongue.”

  “Guns down!” Sethlan shouted. The soldiers already had their weapons pointed toward Diggery through the gun slit. Sethlan shouted again. “Stop! Guns down!”

  The soldiers froze as if turned off by a switch.

  “But that abomination don’t have the Tongue,” the older soldier said, through gritted teeth.

  “I say guns down,” Sethlan repeated, softer. A stop order could be a slap in the face to a Tachba. The proper follow-up was firm but conciliatory. Sethlan was glad to see the soldier’s stop-training still held. Hard discipline was crucial to the polluted mind, especially at the front. They couldn’t spend all their time shooting each other, not with the enemy only yards away.

  “He don’t have Tongue,” the soldier repeated. “He’s unnatural, sir. He’s already dead. It’s on us to stop him moving.”

  “You just try to stop me moving,” Diggery said.

  “He has a tongue,” Sethlan said. “You hear him talking. Does he look dead to you?”

  The soldier studied Diggery and grudged, “Which he looks alive, yet.”

  Tejj said, “Get used to Tachba who don’t speak the Deep Tongue. Where there are Haphans, there are orphaned Tachba who were raised by Haphans. Obviously the orphans won’t learn the Tongue.”

  “It’s unsavory.”

  “Certainly, Diggery is deeply unsavory, we all agree.” Tejj’s face was deadpan. “But not because of the Deep Tongue. We have many better reasons to hate him.”

  “Go tongue yourself,” Diggery said, trying not to grin.

  The older soldier stared at Diggery through the gun slit. “Orphans, allowed to live! We don’t have such abomination in Sheflis province.”

  “Well, Sheflis is far away, isn’t it?” Tejj said. “This is Sessera and we’re lousy with Haphans. Ville Emsa has a Haphan quarter where they walk around acting superior to each other.”

  “But…someone brought his tongue,” the younger soldier insisted.

  Tejj gave a high sniff, full of judgment, very nearly like a Haphan Overlord. “Bootie, ‘bringing tongues’ is merely an old way of saying ‘dead.’ Don’t trot out your provincial ideas in Sessera. You’ll be called a simpleton.”

  Sethlan sensed the conversation going off the rails again. He sat up and turned to the gun slit. “Why is a unit from Sheflis province fighting on the Sesseran front?”

  “Orders, sir,” the younger shrugged.

  The older added, “Which our whole sector was ordered out of the trench la-Sheflis, and packed on the train going East. We were a brick wall against the South, no ground lost for a hundred years. I wonder how they’re getting on without us.”

  “Where are you billeted? Which staging area?”

  “Middle of fucking nowhere. A field of tree stumps—” The younger soldier stopped when the other soldier jabbed him.

  “Which you can’t be told. It’s a ‘need to know,’ sir, your pardon.”

  “Are all the Sheflis units billeted where you are?” Sethlan asked.

  “Nah. We mixed in with the other provinces.”

  “The other provinces…” Sethlan nodded, as if he already knew what the soldier meant. It was sometimes the best way to wrest information from a boot. “Units from across the entire front.”

  “Ed-homse. Ed-brache. Sellamon. We have everybody but the South itself. To a man, they’re all annoying, and only good for dying. You’ve never seen such a collection of Pretty Polly.”

  “Did they tell you the rule about not killing fellow soldiers at the front?” Diggery needled.

  “You’re the worst yet,” the younger soldier shot back. “Pretending to be Tachba. Tricking us into this horrible steam cart.”

  The driver heard that. “Don’t blame the steam cart for all of you being simpletons. Take your argument and go. Tongueless! Sheflis! I’ve never heard such blather.”

  “I paid you to bring us to the front,” Tejj said.

  “And look where you are.” The driver jerked his chin ahead. They were opening a wide, dimly lit staging area. In the gloom on the far side was the massive wet black earthworks that marked the beginning of the trenches.

  “Driver, what’s your name?” Tejj asked.

  “I’m the driver, damn you, so call me Drivvy.”

  “Drivvy, you heard about tonight’s action. You cannot return to Ville Emsa until the assault starts. It’s simple security. Go find a field hospital and load up with wounded.”

  The driver was silent for a moment, and Sethlan half expected yet another argument. He wondered if life had been easier in the days when Tachba could simply kill each other on a whim.

  Finally, Drivvy said, “I know where the hospital is. I spent twenty years in this sector, before my Z-9 wound. Good memories of the war. Good, good memories.”

  8

  Sethlan

  “Welcome, welcome to my humble bunker!”

  The Haphan was a Duke, a pure-blood Haphan aristocrat. Usually this indicated a restive and peevish old man surrounded by lower-caste interpreters. Sethlan was surprised to see General Sec Tawarna leap to his own feet and extend his own hand when they came down the stairs.

  He noticed Sethlan’s surprise. “Captain Semelon, I can’t be your first charming Haphan general.”

  “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  “Well, I know you. Colonel Goldros turns positively chatty when he mentions your name. So I pulled your personnel file, with its fabulous new photograph. It seems you’ve kept our trust.”

  That could only refer to the question of Sethlan’s fitness for duty. He waited stiffly while the general fiddled with the file.

  “It’s meant sardonical,” said a grizzled Tachba orderly from the shadows. “The general is a wit.”

  The general glanced back with a cheerful frown. “I may have just been insulted. Thache is my demonstration that your kind may speak freely.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Fine. So captain, you’re tasked here for a month at least, to observe an interesting development. We have ‘big shell bastards’ landing in our trench, and you Tacchies can’t scare them away with an angry glare like you usually do. Do you drink tea? Of course you do. Some tea here, Thache. We generals run on tea, or the Empire falls. Now look at this.”

  Sethlan doffed his gloves and leaned over the map table. Tejj shadowed him, while Diggery followed more slowly, wooden-faced.

  On a map covered with stains and cup rings, Tawarna slid his finger over an arc of front. “My pure Haphan units are only placeholders. They keep the trenches warm, but they’re not Tachba. They’re draftees, barely soldiers, simple boys and girls. Not ‘twitch trained’ o
r ‘stop trained,’ as you would say. We’ve backed out to make room for the Sheflis regiment. We’ll fill in again after they go over and then feed the casualties to hospital.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I don’t know your plans, captain, or what you’ve been told by Colonel Goldros. So, I will merely indicate our target here.” He tapped the map between the lines. “High ground, as high as it gets on the eternal front. It will be interesting to capture. To capture, but not to keep. We’re not holding this target. Do you know what I mean by ‘interesting?’”

  “Hardly worthwhile.”

  “We will not see your Sheflis brothers again. I checked the unit history: No trophies nor accolades. Carefully selected for sacrifice. They can be fought and forgotten.”

  Tejj sniffed.

  Sethlan said, “Yes, sir.”

  “You boys don’t believe me? Tachba pride, maybe? Tonight they are going up against a detachment of heavy Southern regulars. You know how irregular the South is, so let us respect their regulars. Even without your help, we have gathered some intelligence on them. The Southies are on rest leave. If you can believe it, they came to this line for relaxation. It’s humbling, but then, they’re the 1424th Hutmoses. That’s the unit that gut-punched us out of Ville Tiremsa. They are the real war.”

  “Ah,” said Sethlan. He found it concerning to have such history in their neighborhood. What were they doing here? It wouldn’t be about rest leave.

  “We’re attacking them with a sacrificial offering. It will be a massacre.” The general turned to the door again. “Here’s the long-delayed tea. Thache must be using the old water. It’s so slow to boil, ha.”

  “Which the tea service had been taken out to wash,” Thache grated. “And not yet come back.”

  “Fair enough.” The general poured out tea for everyone. The porcelain cups looked ludicrous in the shovel-like Tachba hands, and they all noticed it. “Come this way, boys. Tonight we have something odd.”

  He carried his teacup up the stairs of the bunker. The night’s barrage was still coughing along, ready to start but waiting for cooler night air.