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

by Walter Blaire

  Diggery kept walking. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the tall figure filling the breadth of the alley. A flowing coat that could hide anything, a brimmed hat that put the man’s face in shadow. He was tall for a Haphan.

  “Hapha says stop,” the man said. “By your love of the empress.”

  “Sessera stops,” said Diggery, finally slowing. “Keep your love.”

  “You will kindly come with me. Eh, first, turn out your pockets—”

  “For something like this?” Diggery drew his dagger and jumped forward.

  The Haphan, although surprised, lowered his body as he reeled away. His head never turned and his eyes stayed on Diggery, a sure sign of combat training. Diggery kept him moving backward, slashing with the dagger, letting himself be parried away from a killing blow by the man’s hands and forearms. Deep cuts opened on the Haphan’s palms. The man never uttered a sound.

  Diggery had never fought a highly trained Haphan before, and it was shamefully easy, almost like sparring with an infant. His nervous fear evaporated, and he concentrated on not being absorbed into the violence. When the man stumbled against the wall, Diggery showed his final thrust as a slow extension, blade angled to catch the light in the alley. The steel glinted and looked dangerous—and utterly obvious. Sure enough, the man tried to bat it away. Diggery deceived the parry, cut under it, and planted the tip into the man’s chest. It was a stroke, not a stab, so he had to push the dagger through layers of clothing and then the tension of the skin. After the tip pierced the layers, the blade sank smoothly into the Haphan’s chest, and only stopped at the hilt.

  The man’s eyes widened.

  “Yes, you’re mortal,” Diggery said. “You’re not in much discomfort, but if I wiggle the blade around I will surely cut an artery. You don’t want to die in this shit-hole alley, do you?”

  “Fuck you,” the man said.

  “You’ll live to see your tiny Haphan family again?” Diggery proposed. Now that he had the blade in, he didn’t quite feel like finishing it. “You’ll live to serve the empress?”

  “Fuck the empress, snappie.”

  “Just tell me why I’m being followed, Haphan, and I’ll pull the blade out.”

  The man hesitated. “You’re just some task, Diggery. I’m to pull you in for a talking-to. You would’ve been released.”

  “Released how?”

  “Not squeezed.” The man looked at him coldly, trying to seem indifferent to the blade and failing.

  Diggery finally pulled the knife out. “Well, since I love the Haphan Imperium, I’m certainly willing to answer some questions. Oh? You’re indisposed? By all means, take a nap. You can find me later, at your convenience.”

  The man slid down the wall, still cursing but with less power as blood pooled at his feet.

  Diggery hurried deeper into the alley, away from any Haphan comrades who might be keeping lookout on the street. He only had to climb one mountain of wet, smoldering debris to get to the street on the other side.

  He circled the block to return to the bridge where his trackers were nowhere to be seen. He neatened his uniform, squared his shoulders, and crossed into the Haphan Quarter.

  Jephia found him on the back stairs.

  “I heard the door open twenty minutes ago,” she said mildly, posing on the landing above his head. She was in street clothes, which for Jephia was an open blouse and a tight knee-length skirt. She had a bottle of liquor in one hand and a heavy set of manacles in the other. Diggery had never seen a more enticing woman.

  He asked her a question in the Haphan style. “You know, I’ve never seen you in uniform. I wonder what a similar women would do for the war effort.”

  She started to answer but was interrupted by a howl of anguish from the darkness behind Diggery’s back. She swirled the bottle, waiting for the noise to fade. “You certainly have an inkling now, don’t you? Follow me.”

  “I got turned around in your little prison. You have at least five floors of pet Tacchies, and they’re all shouting jokes to each other.”

  “We can’t get them to shut up.”

  “They are full of interesting information,” Diggery guessed.

  Jephia shrugged. “Bascht tchaxlach chsaz, bascht tchaxlach tachbavim.”

  “Mmm.”

  She stopped on the stairs and turned to him. “Corpse inhale noise, corpse exhale talk. You have heard that before?”

  “Mmm-no. It’s picturesque.”

  “It’s from that most unsettling of Southie corpse arts, the lung balloon. You get a bladder from some lowback—or you pull the gullet from a new ancestor—and blow air into the corpse’s lungs. Then you listen to what the corpse has to say as the air leaks out.”

  “Ah.”

  “Bascht tchaxlach tachbavim; I was being clever. We carefully convince these prisoners they’re already as good as dead, and they will say any idiot thing that comes into their minds, so long as it sounds ancestor-y. You don’t speak Old Tachbavim, do you? The Deep Tongue?”

  Diggery wanted to snap, I don’t speak it to Haphan princesses, but he knew he couldn’t bring it off. “Strangely, it’s not taught in Haphan schools.”

  “God love you, I think I’m more of a Tachba than you are.” She laughed and turned back up the stairs. “They call me a Sessie-lover, and who did I find? A wanna-be Haphan.”

  Diggery kept his eyes on her ass and bit his tongue.

  “My Sergeant Rethla was sent to guide you in, in case you got lost,” she continued.

  Uh-oh. “I gave someone the slip on the way in.”

  “Wasn’t him, then. He would just walk up to you and start giving orders like a right dictator.” She opened a door and stood aside to let him enter. “It’s interesting that you thought you were being followed.”

  “I agree. There were at least two Happies sticking out badly on the streets. They were there when I stepped out of the barracks.”

  “Do not get pulled in by a Haphan these days,” she told him.

  Diggery tried to read her expression. “Don’t worry, you’re perfectly safe.”

  “I’m not worried for myself...though I shouldn’t like my name on your lips.”

  Jephia’s apartment was low-ceilinged, small, and faced with rock on every surface, more a cave than a room. The Haphans always complained about this, but in Sesseran buildings, even the renovated ones, it couldn’t be avoided. She had softened the space with an absurd number of rugs, blankets and throws that coated every surface. The shelves were full of books, and the fire was cheerful and warm. When he completed his turn he faced Jephia again, and she watched him closely.

  He took his first liberty with her Haphan person, running a finger down the neck of her blouse. It scooped quite low. She waited with a slight smile and her eyes on his collar. He drew his hand back. “That was closer than one yard, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh, waived,” she said. “Among friends there is no point.”

  “I’m a safe man,” Diggery added, pro forma.

  “Safe? Don’t spoil it for me.” Her eyes lit on his jacket. “That is blood, isn’t it? A sordid Tacchie duel! You must tell me all the details.”

  Luckily, she quickly interrupted his story and forgot to take it up again. This was a good thing. Diggery could hardly have told her about stabbing Sergeant Rethla after she made such a point to get the blood all over herself. Diggery tsked with concern as she pulled away from their first kiss covered in transferred blood. He stood stock still as her blouse came off and went into the sink. He bit his tongue as she turned back, staring down at herself, and slowly smeared the blood over her body. He remained civilized... until her eyes raised to his with pretend confusion and concern, and she showed him her bloody hands.

  Finally, he just threw her on the bed and let himself be driven by her squeals of mock fright. But even as he tore his clothes off, a recessive, unwholesome part of him whispered, This woman fucks animals. Diggery had finally found a woman who might appreciate him, and she turned out to be som
e kind of Tachba rancher, complete with a herd of captives one flight of stairs away. She knew his behaviors, triggers, and even his very language better than he did.

  “Can’t I know what you are?” Diggery chewed at her complacently. After sex, this astonishing woman had given him a tall, greasy sandwich, and let him eat both halves. Perhaps she was girlfriend material after all.

  She shook her head, smiling. “What if I was married? You would have to leave the moment you—oh, stay, I’m not married. But as it happens, I know of a friend of yours. A Captain Cephas.”

  Diggery rolled his eyes. “Yes, he’s a close friend.”

  “Cephas is old aristocracy, did you know that?” she asked. “And he’s a complete soldier, he’s proven it several times over the years. It’s in his files. He made several sacrifices, and he did the empress many services.”

  Diggery shrugged.

  “He’s known to be a loyal Sesseran, and he loves the empress. That’s very important nowadays.”

  “Can I believe all that and still not like the man?” Diggery didn’t know what she was getting at, but she had sufficiently raised his guard. “Besides, there is loyal in thought, and loyal in deed. Which do you think Cephas is? “

  “I guess the deed is the only important thing, if you put it that way,” she said.

  “Well, Cephas doesn’t put himself at the front. He generates unrest with his betters—that’s me. He drinks all night on the unit’s account.”

  Jephia stretched against him. “Oh, I know he’s mostly used up, but you must work with what you have in war. I know there must be more than a few intelligent, under-appreciated young men in the Observers who are being overlooked. We just have to discover them.”

  Diggery didn’t answer because she was clearly teasing him. No matter how right she was, she wouldn’t be so clumsy. He knew he had ambition. He knew he was supposed to be something bigger than a mere helpie. He just hadn’t known it was so obvious to other people.

  “I’m glad you chased me in the baths, Diggery. Not two days later did one Dephram Digalon cross my desk in a written-down memo. It was due to your heroism on the front, helping Lieutenant Tawarna find the Tachbavim writing.”

  “It didn’t quite happen that way,” Diggery said, “but I suppose whoever writes the memo writes the facts.”

  “Still, it was an odd coincidence. I suppose that’s why I’m drifting into work, I know it’s tiresome. Here is this brave gem Diggery written on paper, and I’d already made an appointment with him. I could certainly have not justified things better to myself.”

  He was supposed to be flattered, he knew, and he was. “But—?”

  “But? What I’m getting around to, Digalon, is that I don’t frequent the baths. All of this is uncommon for me. I have so little time, and now the big push is coming...I know you know about that, you’re an important figure in the Observers after all. Soon I will have no pretext to take a quiet evening with a special friend.”

  “If you’re sending me away,” Diggery said, “you don’t need to be so delicate.”

  “Do I even have to say it? I didn’t sleep with you out of personal interest. I have too much real work to do, to try to fuck information out of an informant.”

  “Though you are always welcome to try.”

  She smiled again. “I’ll be plain: if you were to return, it would have to be on business. Then it would be the perfect excuse for me to stand up and walk away from my desk—and believe me, I need to do that more often. If there were some professional reason, I could meet you here in these rooms, and we could talk... and if we happen to get distracted, well, it’s not so bad once it’s started. But I won’t budge from my work just to satisfy my need for you.”

  And there he had it. Diggery admired the artistry. Even the clumsy parts were signposts he could follow to the conclusion.

  “What kind of gift would open your door?”

  Jephia quickly laid a hand on his neck. Her cool fingers felt divine; no one had ever touched him like that. His body relaxed immediately, as if she’d thrown a switch. “Nothing like that, Diggery. Isn’t it customary among Sesserans to hold messages, and pass them on, from soldier to soldier?”

  “Customary among boots, the ones that can’t write. I must have a thousand messages I’m supposed to remember.”

  “I would need no more than that. You must withhold anything I don’t deserve to hear; I have no desire for broken confidences. Believe me, Digalon, I already have ways to learn what I need, ways that are more dignified than all of this. I will already know everything you tell me; you would just be confirming my information. Do you understand?”

  “I understand that I’m to carry information to you, which you will already have from a separate source. And comparing them, you can find some inconsistencies.”

  “You’re marvelous,” she said, giving him a long hug. “I must have made it sound so confusing, and then you stated it so plainly. So you see, there are no secrets betrayed, and everything is already known. It is really just the perfect excuse for you to come and see me.”

  “Now I understand all that talk about Cephas’s loyalty,” Diggery said grimly. “I assume he’ll be giving me messages for you.”

  “He may share something in conversation here and there. It is so above-board that he is hardly aware of it. I mean, could you imagine a fat old aristocrat like him muttering secrets in alleyways? We Haphans completely respect the Sesseran notion of propriety.”

  Diggery almost began to tell her the kind of conversations he shared with Cephas, but then he noticed her awkward, suffering look. Was she blushing? About asking him for information? Honestly, Diggery had expected nothing less: Haphans were nosy, Tachba loved to explain. They were perfect companions—indeed, Tachba in service were forever having to explain themselves to dumbstruck Haphans. She would only look this uncomfortable if she thought of him differently, in the way that Haphans thought of each other: as having an opinion that mattered. This softened his heart, minutely. Not, he told himself, that this manipulating creature will ever learn a single thing from my lips.

  He realized he should have answered already. She watched him closely, as if she could read his thoughts by the flow of expressions on his face.

  “That is quite enough business,” she decided. “I’m coming off like a spiderfish in the middle of a web, a perfect old-time manleader. All I wanted was a plausible reason to see you again (perhaps next week at this exact time) and I see I’ve upset you.” Her eyes lowered. “It’s just hard for me to concentrate because I’m in so much pain.”

  “Pain?”

  “I cut my finger while making the sandwich. See my finger? It must be sliced to the bone. It hurts, it hurts very much.” Her voice turned husky.

  She held her hand out to him. Diggery stared at the nick in fascination, and allowed himself be pulled down onto the bed. She was different this time. She was more urgent and hurried, while he had more endurance. When she finally lost her composure, Diggery saw the concern in her eyes. Concern, and... worry? And then, immediately afterward, she told him to leave.

  Diggery finally turned angry when he reached the street. It was almost rage, and he wasn’t sure where it came from. Was it all the new insults piled on him? Or just the regular ones?

  He barely kept himself from knocking aside the little Haphans on the sidewalk. He wanted to get away from these evil duplicitous craven little soft-haired scrags. He wanted to pull his boots out of this mulch and fly into a proper crowd of Sesserans who could take a pummeling like the honest fence posts they were.

  Let’s just take stock, Diggery told himself, struggling for calm.

  An “unappreciated, overlooked” young man, coming to the attention of someone obviously quite elevated. Providing information with some sliding scale of reward, measured in sheet-time with Jephia No-Name. Getting screwed and then getting thrown out—not thrown out of her apartment, no, she had called them “these rooms.” Those were her special play rooms, kept stocked wi
th blankets and finger-lacerating foreplay knives, and maybe even a servant to straighten up afterward. And all of that could be his again, if only he could milk a nugget of wisdom out of Captain Cry-Face.

  Angry as he was, Diggery didn’t think it sounded too bad. Certainly an Affront to the Exterior, if he was going to Sessie-up about it. But he’d never cared for all that pious claptrap. So why was he so damn angry?

  The Haphans on the sidewalk darted out of his path, spinning to keep him in view as he stormed past. They had better make way. Diggery glanced back and saw he had accumulated a string of Haphan constables behind him. When he laughed aloud at that, he sounded menacing even to himself. He wanted to turn and ask who they thought were following, and hadn’t he just knifed an uppity Haphan that night, and then seduced one of their women? But there was the bridge just ahead, and beyond it in the darkness, the blurred smudges of the huge crowds of Sesseran Emsa. As long as he headed for that bridge, he would not be delayed.

  The bridge was empty, and someone coming out of the Haphan Quarter at night would cause notice. As he crossed, Diggery saw the white oval of a face among the throng, a face turned his way. Someone looked at him! Of all the insults. He broke into a run.

  Diggery finished the bridge and threw himself at the soldier, raining fists on his face and shoulders. The soldier spun to the side, blocking, and jostled a swaggering trio just as they passed. Soon a right skirmish developed, with the soldiers giving good-natured whoops and cheers, and even Diggery grinning madly.

  The soldier was of regular Tachba height, and he outreached Diggery by several inches. He eventually landed a roundhouse on Diggery’s cheek that left him staggering in a circle, laughing as his head rang like a bell.

  “Oh, I know that laugh-meh,” the boot said. “I know that sound.”

  Diggery spat blood. “Then do share, while I look for my head on the ground...”