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

by Walter Blaire

  “Your message is this: Message from Captain Semelon, two-three-zero ticks after launch. Urgent need reinforcement. Imminent counter-attack.”

  “Semelon. Two-three-zero have passed. Reinforcement and counter-attack, right it is.”

  They paused at a distant sound. It was a low mechanical rumbling, nothing like a barrage. It began with a deep metallic growl, and ended with a crash and a howl, before starting over again.

  “Turd,” Sophalon snapped, “get your ass to the top of the trench and tell me what you see.”

  A short silence, and Terde slid back down. With a frown, he said, “Skirmisher Terde reporting, and there are gigantic metal balls rolling toward us from the Haphan line.”

  “Gigantic?” Diggery asked.

  “Bigger’n yours by about four stories. I tell no lies. The size of buildings.”

  “Stay down, scrags!” Sethlan snapped, when everybody leapt to put their heads above the trench.

  The sound grew deafening. Then a vast, rivet-studded surface rolled above them and blotted out the sky behind the trench. It had steel plates bolted onto a spherical frame. Steam belched through mismatched gaps in its construction. It emerged out of the haze of no man’s land with anomalous geometry like an untethered round water-wheel, dripping earth and debris as it rolled.

  It effortlessly crossed their trench twenty yards distant. Up close, its complexity resolved into something simple. The round outer surface was for support, to keep the construct out of the suctioning mud. The rotten, pulverized earth slowed it not at all. It simply rolled into the nearest depression, and then a dark mass in its interior—a steam engine! Diggery realized—crawled up the round inner track. Eventually the weight of the steam engine brought the ball rolling forward again. The whole contrivance worked like a field mouse in an inflated baxxaxx bladder that could cross land and water alike.

  As they watched in awe, the southern cannons quickly targeted the war machines. Southern Tachba spotters were clearly at work, waving coordinates to their artillery. The first Southie shells missed, since the machines were too swift for the regular process. Before long the shells began falling ahead of the machines, in their paths.

  Then, as Diggery watched, a shell plunged through the armor of the nearest machine and exploded near the ground. The beast never stopped. It groaned forward until the wounded armor circled into view, a great gaping hole that showed the mostly empty interior. They watched as the hole came lower to the ground, and then the machine put its weight on the structure, and…rolled on. This raised a cheer from the Sesserans in the trench. At the second trench line, the machines stopped, and the hatches opened to let out a stream of Haphan regular fusiliers with modern weapons.

  “There is our reinforcement, I suppose,” Sethlan announced. He folded the Southie writing into his map case and gave the Haphan war machines a final distasteful glance before he turned away.

  “I’m with the captain,” Terde muttered. “Sharing joy of the victory, but I don’t like no witchcraft.”

  “It’s a contrivance, fool,” said Sophalon. “Any blood-fed can see it’s just a machine.”

  “Think of it like a big slow shell, fired from a bigger cannon,” added Diggery. He filled his pockets with Trench Foot and Salver Forks, whatever those would turn out to be, and kept an eye out for Gawarty, who had disappeared again up the trench.

  Terde gave him a shrewd look. “It may be a contrivance, but who said witchcraft can’t make contrivances?”

  “Turd,” said Sophalon distinctly, “you will spread the word that them is a machine what saved our asses. And we will give the Happies a right cheer when we see them.”

  “If that’s the final word, then a machine and a cheer.” Terde left to pass the message.

  “Is the lieutenant ready to depart?” Diggery asked, when Gawarty returned.

  “Immediately.” The young lieutenant was encumbered with a new satchel over his shoulder. He glanced back and forth, and then paused when he noticed Diggery waiting. “I am turned around. Will you lead?”

  It was nicely put given the circumstances, and Diggery didn’t even smirk. With a quick nod to Sophalon, he went back the way they had come, as he remembered it. There were enough men ambling between the lines that he was able to ask directions whenever he got lost, which was eight times.

  General Tawarna backed out of his gathering of officers only long enough to check on Gawarty. “You are back, Ribbon. You are back.”

  “The war machines were a nice trick, General,” said Sethlan, “but I’m afraid they will play only once. As you guessed, South has started writing their language. They’ve moved up from Tacchie glyphs painted on boxes to actual writing, it looks like.” He produced a sheet of the southscript, but pulled it away from the general’s hand. “This is an Observer find, and it comes with us.”

  “I am your Haphan superior,” the general said.

  “I apologize, sir,” Sethlan said. “But I’m following Haphan policy.”

  “Is that right? At least wave it slowly, then, so I can see it. Yes, it’s at least as bad as I thought. South has always had writing, but that sample there looks like some pidgin for front line troops. Could I not have copies fair-made for our ciphers?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but I must answer to Colonel Trappia for this.”

  Gawarty spoke up, his voice on the edge of exhaustion. “Father, after the machines rolled over us, it was very quiet on the front. I took a slight risk with myself, on a hunch. Captain Semelon told us the Tacchie officers had fled or died fighting, so I crawled out of the trench and searched overland. I found a wounded messenger with this bag of dispatches.”

  He opened the satchel and pulled out a sheaf of the writing.

  Sethlan started forward and then paused.

  “This is not an Observer find,” Gawarty told him. “This can go to the Haphans.”

  “And the Southie messenger?” Sethlan said, stalling.

  Gawarty’s eyes flicked to his father and then back. “I lightened the messenger’s load,” he said stolidly.

  Sethlan gestured at the papers, “Sesseran intelligence will be much better able to exploit what might be in that satchel.”

  The general smiled blandly. “Believe me, I understand how it feels when crucial intelligence is snatched from your grasp. But I cannot allow this to be directed anywhere except our people. This will have to be a case of two minds better than one.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Sethlan.

  “Never be glum, captain. There is now a bridge between the Observers and Haphan Southern Intelligence, and his name is Gawarty. What luck, eh? We’ll put our heads together like a pair of twins, milk-fed and blood-fed.”

  9

  Sethlan

  Sethlan, Diggery, and Gawarty rode back from the front with the steam cart’s armored doors thrown carelessly open to the sky. It was an entrancingly peaceful five-mile ride away from the carnage, noise and confusion of the trenches. Sethlan glanced between Diggery and Gawarty without having to say the words they were thinking: We’re coming back, aren’t we? The satisfaction of seeing a day through, despite knowing that the feeling shouldn’t be so wholesome, because the front would continue to convulse long past their meager existence. But still.

  The countryside rolled brightly outside, going slowly from the dingy gray of the front to the livelier, invigorating greens and purples of trees and fields. They passed groups of soldiers perched on stone fences, shoveling down stew and passing bottles of Fall wine. Even the smallest three-house hamlets had cavalry lowbacks tied to hitching posts, or officers’ carriages with blood-fed helpies holding the reins and tables set out in front. It wasn’t a holiday, but it felt like it should be one.

  Drivvy unloaded them at the Advanced Rear Hospital outside of Ville Emsa, where Sethlan sent for a messenger from the Planners. He found it difficult to unclench his hands from the map case, so he ordered Diggery to accompany the messenger and make sure the case was delivered. After that, he had no duties left.
All responsibility was expelled; nothing more was expected of him.

  Yet he still almost turned toward the club when he reached Sell Street. The arched throughway to the club beckoned, a dark hole in the monolithic building two blocks away. Nana would be there. If he went home, he would be alone, and he would eventually have to sleep—and then dream. Worse, the Voice might come back. And could peace and solitude even be achieved without the guiding repression of alcohol? When was the last night he hadn’t drunk? He finally looked down at himself, since passers-by had been staring at him along his walk.

  He was caked in mud up to his waist. It flaked as it dried, and he could trace his straight, undeflected passage down the sidewalk by the trail of dirt behind him. Even worse, his left arm was soaked with blood and starting to stiffen. On his way into the Tachba trench, an errant shell had landed in the soldier next to him, sending meat and bone everywhere. He imagined the horrors of the fighting were written across his face. He was a walking miasma.

  At his building, the cranky street door fought against his key. He entered the cloakroom, whose stone walls still bore the nooks and ledges for weapons and armor from pre-Haphan days, and then he passed through three more heavy doors, each with its own key, until he entered the small fiefdom controlled by his landlord.

  There was a figure in the hall by his door. Sethlan stopped, squinted.

  “Nana. You’ll be missed.”

  She looked him up and down, expressionless. “Which I’m on leave-meh. An’ my boots won’t miss a slight girl none.”

  “I doubt that.” He was surprised to find he didn’t like her putting on trench talk.

  “To doubt me would be an Affront to the Exterior, and I certainly don’t expect any affronts from you.” She added a fetching smile. “My shift really is over, and when you didn’t return with Drivvy, well, I guessed you would be washing up.”

  “I’m amazed you got this deep into the building.”

  “That’s like a question.” Her voice was light. La, he could feel her standing next to him, so close, as he wrestled with his door. “You’ve been picking up habits from the Happie lieutenant.”

  “He’s not so bad,” said Sethlan. “He caught me out today, on his first day in the field.”

  “Well, they’re clever, aren’t they? Person for person, more clever than we can hope to be.” He heard a touch of bitterness in her voice. Before he could answer, she continued. “To answer your not-question, I have made fast friends with your landlord. I couldn’t get him to stop talking. In fact, I might have accidentally promised my hand in marriage.”

  When he took her basket from her arm—it was a picnic basket—he looked at her more closely. She was wearing something he’d seen before, a multi-layered, gossamer dress with slits for her legs, shot through with pink and yellow ribbon. This one was a cast-off, the undergarment of some fancier Haphan outfit, though it wore on her like an elegant smock. Dashtas dressed in rags as a sign of austerity, but Nana would never look austere.

  “I think I understand his friendliness,” Sethlan let them into his apartment. “I’ve always liked that dress on you.”

  Whatever she had been about to say froze on her lips. He quickly turned his back and unpeeled his battlefield press. He bothered to hang nothing, the clothes would have to be flogged for days before the dirt and the lice were out.

  Her reply was a long time in coming. Lightly: “That was almost an observation of me! You’re a married man.”

  “I am sorry, Nana,” he said. “I am not fit for man nor beast. If you are willing to wait, I will clean up quickly.”

  Moving, not quite fleeing, to the bathroom, he caught a glimpse of her face. A moue of confusion as she stared after him.

  He was down to his breeches when she appeared by the door, not stepping in just yet. “Sethlan, am I safe with you?”

  He knew what she meant. “Yes, of course.”

  ~Liar.~

  “I’m just distracted. A buzzing in my head, a near miss on the front. I apologize again.”

  “You hardly speak at the club. But here, when we’re alone, you flatter me and then apologize twice?”

  ~Let’s stop apologizing, why not?~

  He replayed the conversation in his mind. Yes, his behavior could be considered strange, but then, there was a woman in his apartment following him around. He was backpedaling because if she sensed it had been a heartfelt compliment about her dress, their conversation would enter an elevated new realm of awkwardness.

  Before she could look too deeply into him, he continued, “You keep bringing it back. Is it my dullness or your prettiness you want to hear about?”

  “I rather like you in this state,” she said and laughed when he looked down at himself. “Unguarded. Prone to error. You know, a dashta thrives on error.”

  He ignored the warning in her voice, because she finally entered the bathroom and pulled the chain that hung over the tub. After some coughs and rattles, it filled with steaming hot water. Steam!

  “I didn’t know it could do hot,” Sethlan said, staring.

  “It takes talking to the pensioner. Then it takes some tea with the little old woman in the basement of the building. And money, lots of that.” She laughed a little loudly, turning to fiddle with the chain as he stepped forward. “You will get in.”

  “I will,” he said, hesitating.

  “With all possible speed. See, the hot is already running out.”

  When he’d shed his clothes and lay back, she pressed a cool bottle of Spring Wine against his chest. “For the hero of the day. We all heard about your intelligence find of the century.”

  She squeezed a sponge over his head, and ran it over his neck and shoulders. He tipped the bottle against his lips, and the bitter wine rushed down to clear his throat. It spread into his chest like ice. Cold on the inside, while the water melted his limbs.

  “Briff,” he said softly. Briff was the name under Nana’s name. “I should have turned into a hero sooner.”

  “You can thank your wife,” she said. “Was you some ruffian bachelor, I could never scrub you down.”

  She covered her embarrassment by scrubbing his blood-soaked arm. He was adult enough that he only registered the pain and didn’t let himself sink into it. The wayward shell had turned the scrag next to him into fragments of flying death. He flexed his wrist to expel the Nestored bone shards embedded in the muscle.

  When the Spring Wine slipped from his grip, Nana caught it and gave it back to him.

  “There is an art to giving comfort,” she continued. “And art must have some limits to press against. Like packing clothes into a small suitcase, follow? You learn how to fold. It’s the same for art, else there is nothing new found.”

  Sethlan had no idea what she was saying. Anyone else, he would have thought they were babbling. “Who am I to complain? My clothes are folded for me by the pensioner.”

  “…And here I am, some mere slight girl,” she added.

  He cracked an eye and tried to find her face in her hanging hair. She sat on the edge of the tub with her feet in the water. She had one of his legs on her knee, and was scouring his foot.

  “A slight girl can expect very little,” he agreed.

  She hunched a little more.

  “Not like us soldiers, who have a place to be useful. A slight girl would have no place, would she? Not bearing little babies, not always welcome where there are secrets kept. But smart. Smarter, I expect, than anyone knows.”

  She let his leg down, indifferent to the water she scattered around, and pulled the other up. She still didn’t reply.

  “Unthanked. Over-worked.” Sethlan’s head lolled. The bottle felt so heavy in his hand, and his mind was so scattered and useless. “But a beautiful, beautiful girl. So kind-hearted with a word. So clever at knowing and fixing.”

  She finally stopped and looked at him. First with concern, a quizzical examination that traveled up his chest and lingered on his eyes.

  “You would make a marv
elous wife,” he told her.

  ~Sethlan, the bitch has poisoned you.~

  I think she’s crying.

  ~There’s something in the wine.~

  Look at her, Voice. Is her cheek damp?

  ~Fine, so she’s crying and poisoning you at the same time.~

  Don’t worry, it’s all under control. I know the wine is tampered. I’ll think a way out of this.

  ~Sethlan, you’ll think us into the grave. You must take her neck, and bash her into that brass fixture while you still have strength. You can pull yourself into the hall and be discovered before the poison takes effect.~

  Nana tipped the bottle against his lips. “Sethlan, you’re not going to die.” Her voice sounded far away. “But I like you best unguarded.”

  “You should have done my back first,” he said. “I will never be moved now.”

  She huffed. “Here I scrub you like a washerwoman, and what do I hear? Sweet words, crafted just for me. Your mind is smoothed over and uncovered, and I find you’re nothing but a flatterer.”

  “Affront to the Image. I would never...”

  “But you are still working, aren’t you?” she said. With tenderness, she brushed his hair back from his forehead, and then frowned at all the dirt this uncovered. His vision was covered by the sponge.

  ~Hold your breath!~

  Calm down, Voice. Can’t you just…enjoy the rare attention?

  “You would make a marvelous wife,” she parroted, cleaning his face.

  “I know I’m married, in a way. And I know you won’t be married. That doesn’t change what I think. I never said I was smart.”

  “Oh,” she paused. “You are adequate.”

  He told the Voice: “See? Now she’s confused.”

  ~You just said that aloud, genius.~

  “How am I confused?” Nana asked.

  “Have I never mentioned it? I was the blood-fed twin. My brother was a burning star, compared to me. If you like adequate boys, then you really should have met my brother.”