by Andy Graham
Gusts of air tugged at Stann’s hair, at the shadows on the ground. “Yeah, well, your wife’s a bit odd round the edges.”
Rick’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Off limits, remember? Thryn made her choice. Let it go.”
The squawk of birds filtered through the mist that was creeping in around the tree trunks. Both men leant over the battlements, studying the thick forest that was threatening to drown the old fort their unit had taken over a few weeks back. Fallen clouds — slow, grey flames that licked at the base of the stone walls — seeped through the trees.
Stann prodded Rick in the side with his rifle butt. “How did you keep your wife out of the immigration camps?” he asked. “You’ve always been cagey about that.”
Rick reached for the burn marks around his wrists. The prickling sensation was getting worse. They hurt now, a dull pain, a good pain, a pain with a purpose. It wasn’t very scientific, but it made sense. “An ex of mine returned a favour,” he said. “I threw in some extra wiring in for a new camera system of hers, and she pressed the right buttons.”
“Beth?”
Rick nodded.
“Always the same story,” Stann said, throwing his hands up. “Bribes, barter, and blackmail, the oldest currencies in the world. Guaranteed they’ll outlive this new swipe-card currency the government is planning. “Well, let’s hope for Thryn’s sake you love her more than you did Beth, your first true love.” He clutched his hands to his chest and sighed like a bad actor. “You loved her so much that you were married to Thryn, and expecting a baby, within a year of Beth dumping you.” The words dissolved into a deep chuckle. “Jilting the jerk, Private Lee called it before he got sent home.”
“She didn’t jilt me. We were only engaged.”
Stann slapped his thigh, his barrel chest juddering as he cackled. “Lee said you run like your knees are allergic to your feet, too.”
Rick felt his cheeks colouring in the night air.
“Now get a move on, sir, shift’s almost up,” Stann said.
They moved along the battlements. Rick squatted to double-check the cables on another camera closer to the watchtower. “I don’t get it. This camera’s fine too,” he said. He pushed himself to his feet and put his helmet on. “Let’s do one more round.”
“Too late. Time’s up. I’m hungry, it’s slop o’ clock.” Stann replied. “Let’s go.”
He loped towards the wooden door of the watchtower, rifle slung over his shoulder. Rick followed. The itch that was never in the same place grew stronger. He’d missed something; he knew he had. He just couldn’t remember what or where.
“Finish this shift, eat, and then start by checking the monitor room again,” he said. “It’ll be a simple solution. Most answers are.”
Stann slipped through the door. He slammed it shut and forced the squealing bolt home. Rick hammered on the wood, calling for Stann to open up.
High above them, hanging proud amongst the constellations, the two moons were now clear of each other. Lesau and Melesau, fated to constantly chase the same golden-skinned woman for eternity. The moonlight glinted off the cracked tiles on the turret roof of the watchtower that Stann had just locked from the inside. It danced off the leaves of the oak, lime, and wolf bark trees. It filtered down to the quiet forest floor, where the animals scurried away from the rustle of dark leather boots.
III - Surprise
Rick collapsed into the beaten-up armchair. It was more springs than stuffing, but right now, those springs were as welcoming as bubbles in a bath.
Between backpacks and rolled up mattresses, an assortment of foldaway green canvas chairs dotted the room. Everything was immaculate. Sleeping bags were stowed. Eating utensils sparkled as best as dull steel could, and the castle had been picked clean of as much grime as the off-duty squaddies could manage. Eight hours sleep. Eight hours patrol. The same again for food and chores. It never felt like an even split.
The armchair Rick was sitting in was a puzzle: not what you expect to find in a deserted, though well-preserved, castle. It was on the scrawny side, but otherwise dry and smell-free, as long as you didn’t breathe in too hard. The soldiers had appropriated it, and named it the throne. There were days when they squabbled over it like muscular two-year-olds.
The rest of the castle had been filled with scraps of cloth, mould, mildew, and the random detritus of forgotten inhabitants. There were other things in the corridors that the soldiers ignored: lost things, whispers, memories, and glimpses of movement that were never anything more than they should be. Then Stann had found a family of coffins in a hidden crypt. They had led to a series of predictable jokes about creatures of the night, and a dare. Private Lee had lost that dare.
The morning after Lee had spent eight hours trying to sleep in a coffin, the jokes stopped. He was sent back to Aijlan-Karth, the capital city of Aijlan, for a psych assessment. The wide-eyed drooling hadn’t been a problem, nor the gibbering, but Lieutenant Chel had drawn the line when the snaggletoothed private had professed an allergy to sunlight. It had thrown the squad off for days, and brought Chel’s muscular brand of discipline thudding home.
Chel had the dubious epithet of being both the youngest person to make lieutenant in the army, and now the oldest person to still hold that rank. He was steeped in old-school, patriarchal values that would use the carrot to beat you with once the stick had broken. With breath that stank of stale coffee, he had shouted himself hoarse at their indiscipline: at their games and lapses in concentration. He had been right. It made a mockery of the military for the soldiers to lose it because one of their colleagues was a few bullets short of a bandolier. The predictable digs about sexuality and parenthood hadn’t been a problem. But when Chel had resorted to cliches and stereotypes about the Bucket Towns, it hadn’t gone down well with the unit.
Rick settled back into the chair. Good-natured taunts drifted across from a game of cards. Another soldier burst in, displaying the tobacco he’d just won off one of the new sub-lieutenants, who was known behind his back as Chel’s cherry. The gloating corporal stashed his winnings, and high-fived all the soldiers.
His palm still smarting, Rick watched the corporal giving his audience a card-by-card account of how he had beaten the sub-lieutenant. Chel’s cherry — his real name was Lacky, which made even Chel cringe — and the rest of the officer class were mainly drawn from the cities. The front-line soldiers hailed from the towns and villages. The latter two referred to themselves as the Free Towns. The city-born called them the Bucket Towns, after a few practices that still lived on in more isolated areas.
Private Lee had been that rare thing, a city-born soldier who had ended up a private on the front line. The rumour was that this posting to the disputed Somerian border area that Aijlan had claimed was a punishment. His parents had made a public stand over the government reneging on a pre-election promise not to raise taxes.
Lee, as belligerent as a cockerel in the neighbour’s yard, had jumped at the coffin dare, unaware that Stann and the others had set him up. Lee had been desperate to prove to Stann that the government’s new directives banning myths and legends were justified, that the Free Towns’ traditions were as substantial and welcome as a freezing fog.
Rick shifted in the armchair, rubbing his temples. As his daughter, Rose, got older, he found this constant competition wearing. It didn’t make sense anymore. They were all supposed to be on the same side, but everyone was always trying to outgun everyone else. These overlapping circles of competition and webs of allegiances constantly shifted. They depended on a mix of history, territory, weather, culture, food, drinks, and myths that would confuse any non-local. Cities competed, Free Towns like his Tear and Stann’s Old Town tried to outdo each other, siblings fought, neighbours compared, streets bragged, and countries tried to bury each other.
Foreign policy was reduced to slapping the itinerant country you wanted to browbeat. When that didn’t work you slapped it harder. When that didn’t work you got your neighbour
s to line up and have a go, too. It didn’t work with kids, so why would it work with adults? What worried him, almost as much as the damage being done, the resentment being slapped into generations of societies, was the amount of people willing to take their place in that queue. There was an infinite supply of people eager to slap whoever or whatever was put in front of them with no understanding of the reason.
The need to win was there between him and Stann, grudgingly inseparable since they first met as toddlers. They denied the competition, but both embraced it. Thryn was an obvious example. She’d forced Rick to admit that he was more competitive than he liked to think. Rick had then accused Stann of the same with his vanity over his physical prowess. That had not ended well. On a late, drunken Sunday night in Old Town, Stann had hopped off the bar stool he had claimed after his father’s unexplained disappearance, and followed through on his promise to literally kick Rick’s arse into next week.
Rick’s toes were tingling. He shifted in the armchair. The throne was not as comfortable as it looked, but he was not going to give it up now. A draft of cold air wafted over him. The door squeaked on its hinges.
Stann strutted in. “Guess what?”
“Lieutenant Chel’s been promoted, and we’re rid of him?”
“I wish, but nope. Sub-Colonel Chester’s been at it again.”
Rick groaned. “What now?”
“C’mon, Chester’s not all bad.” Stann leant closer and tapped the side of his nose. “The barracks are buzzing with rumours she’s about to be promoted again. That and a new off-the-books arm of the military.”
“Promoted? She’s not much older than us.”
“So? Age doesn’t guarantee wisdom, my old man was proof of that, and Chester’s proved herself already. Splitting the working day into three equal parts was a good idea. Now we actually get some rest.” He frowned. “Well, some of us. Last I heard, Lee’s still refusing to sleep. Word is he’s going to be sent to some kind of camp. Apparently, they were specially interested in him as he’s a leftie.”
“Sub-Colonel Chester’s new change?” Rick asked. He screwed an eye shut and wiggled his toes. One of the chair’s springs was digging into a buttock, sending a burning pain radiating down his thigh.
“Gyms for each regiment with new equipment. Not these antique banana barbells we’ve been using. They’re more use as macho fishing rods than anything else.” Stann held both hands up high, fists clenched, eyes wide and beaming. “When we get home tomorrow, I will be even more invincibler than I am now!”
“Invincible, not invincibler.”
“Nope. Invincibler. It’s even more than invincible,” Stann said. He was grinning from temple to top hat.
Rick couldn’t help but smile back. “It doesn’t work like that. That makes as much sense as saying you’ll give something 110 percent. If you’re invincible that’s already kind of finite, Stann. I don’t think—”
“Franklin!” a voice bellowed from the corridor.
A series of hurried curses snapped round the room. Squaddies jumped up and gave each other a quick buddy check, straightening collars, and doing up buttons.
Stann’s smile vanished. “If you’ve done anything that gets us all stuck here any longer than we need to be, you’ll be begging to sleep in those coffins of Lee’s.”
“Chel wouldn’t keep us here,” Rick replied, hurrying over to his bedroll.
“Damn right he would. He’s a vindictive little sod, the bald ones always are.”
“Maybe you should introduce him to your mother. Her testosterone could sort him out.” Rick winked at his friend just before the wooden door slammed open.
“Corporal Richard Franklin,” Lieutenant Chel said in a voice like a dry shave.
“Frederick Franklin, sir. Not Richard. That was my late uncle’s name.” Rick stared at a point just over Chel’s shoulder.
The lieutenant smiled up at him, face gleaming as if it had been polished with sweat. “If I say your name’s Richard, then your name’s Richard.” Chel’s reedy voice just disguised his lisp. He looked at the bedding next to Rick’s feet. “This your bedding, Richard?”
“My name is Frederick, sir.”
Chel paused. “Still pushing it, Franklin. Haven’t you learnt yet? Or maybe you want some of what Lee got? I hear he’s going to get some special treatment now. I can put in a word for you too.”
Stann shook his head a fraction. The other soldiers stood stock still.
Rick could feel his heart pounding in his chest. “It is my bedding, sir.”
Chel walked up the length of the mat and kicked Rick’s cooking cans over. “It’s dirty. Got footprints on it. Seems that bruises aren’t good teachers. Maybe I should use my belt.” He stuck his thumbs behind the large brass buckle, perfectly aligned with the buttons of his trousers, and grinned. “Don’t worry, Richard, that’s against regs for some reason, another change that has got Sub-Colonel Chester written all over it.” He splayed two fingers into a V shape and pressed them into his throat. “That and the parade pins.” He scowled and glared at the soldiers. “I got taught my lessons with a switch. You whelps have it easy. There wouldn’t be all this trouble back in the capital if we were allowed proper discipline.”
Rick clasped his hands tight behind his back. The burn scars on each wrist were taut and sweaty. He was here for Thryn and Rose. Every day he put in here was another day of credit for his wife and daughter.
“I’ll clean it up,” he said.
Chel’s head tilted to one side. He cupped a hand to his ear.
“I’ll clean it up, sir.”
The lieutenant smiled. “Of course you will, Franklin. But first, remind me. Why are you here?”
“We’re here monitoring separatist activity in Somer, sir.” A rustling noise in the corridor stopped as quickly as it started. Rick swallowed. Damn Private Lee and those ghost stories.
“Yes. But why are you here, Franklin? Why were you parachuted into my unit?”
“Sci-Corps. Tech support, sir.” His knuckles cracked. Heat soaked up his neck from under his shirt.
“Ah yes, of course. You’re the computer genius who’s supposed to make sure this new gear’s working.”
“Sir?”
“You’re the camera geek, Franklin. Highly recommended too. Worked on the lunar mining mission, various jobs for the big dogs in Aijlan-Karth, blah blah blah.” He put one immaculate fingernail on Rick’s shirt and walked his fingers up to the collar.
Stann’s eyes cut to the corridor.
Chel wiggled a plug out of his back pocket. A number was written on its back.
Rick stared at the black lines, his breath quickening. “Plug seven — that’s the socket to the monitor bank for the north wall of the castle, sir.”
“Oh, plug seven,” said Chel. “For the north wall, you say? You mean the wall that faces Somer, our enemy, Franklin? The wall you and Sub-Corporal Taille were just checking?” Chel’s voice was sickly sweet.
He teased open the plug. Like a cheap illusionist playing to a crowd of bored drunks, he snapped it shut again. With a flourish, Chel separated the two halves. “Now, you’re the expert, not me. So maybe you could correct me. But shouldn’t that wire actually connect to that terminal there?” Chel pointed.
Rick screwed his feet into the ground and pulled his shoulders back, fighting the feeling of his gullet sinking through his stomach. One of the wires was hanging off its terminal by a thread of copper. The rest of the frayed metal was splayed out in a ragged fan.
The nagging memory he’d been looking for came crashing back. With the unit’s captain recalled to the capital, Chel had ordered them on a twenty-four hour endurance march, daring them to report him for breaking the new eight-hour shift system. He’d wanted ‘to keep them sharp, while blunt with fatigue’. The lieutenant had tagged an emergency shift on the end of that march, claiming it didn’t count as part of their eight hours’ work, that they had hours to make up because of the march. It had been the day after Lee h
ad been sent home. Everyone had been jumping at nothing. As cold sweat prickled though his skin, Rick remembered seeing the worn cable, but the problem failing to register.
“You don’t feel your clothes once you’re wearing them,” he’d been told by one of his instructors. “Your job as an electrician is to make sure you always see and feel everything to do with any job, even something as simple as screwing in a light bulb. That way you’re less likely to make mistakes.”
Rick stared at a point beyond the lieutenant. He felt as if someone had filled his mouth with sand. He fought down the urge to work some moisture back into his throat. He wasn’t going to let Chel see that, no matter how bad the mistake.
The lieutenant cupped his own face in his hands, and made an O-shape with his lips. Stann, fidgeting on the spot, looked away from the door, and frowned.
“Sir, permission to speak, sir?” Stann’s voice rapped off the walls.
Chel turned and wagged his finger at Stann. “Not now, Sub-Corporal, I’m just getting to the good bit.”
“Sir, the corridor, I heard—”
Chel put a finger to his lips, formed the other hand into the shape of a gun, and fired an imaginary bullet at Stann. “One more word, Taille, and everyone here gets rat rations for the week.”
Stann saluted, eyes front, shoulders rigid. Chel pivoted back, and held the plug up in front of Rick’s face. He opened and closed it in time to his words. “Maybe that’s why the monitors for the north wall are blank again today.” The click-clack of the plastic echoed around the room. “You wanted to check the wall, Franklin, ‘cos you said you’d recently checked the monitor room.”
“Sir—”
“I’m guessing the cameras were fine, Franklin.” Chel cut in, dropping his arms to his side. His face contorted into a grimace. “You people from the Bucket Towns are all the same.”
“Free Towns, sir.”
“The Buckets. You do not answer back to a senior officer!” he shouted. “If boot camp didn’t get that message through to you, I will, by any means necessary. I’ll make you cut your own switch from that forest outside if I have to.” Chel’s nostrils flared, his hand gripping the plug. “Or maybe you left your brains in the same bucket you bucketheads all used to shit and wash in? You’re as dull as the animals you live with.”
