by L D Inman
“Sparring partner,” Speir explained. “Built like a mountain. Compliment to you both.” Talking was making her tired, but she wasn’t ready to sleep yet. She wondered how soon she might get up. “What’s your name, Corporal?”
“I’m Gill. Changing your bedding now, Captain.” Drawing away her soiled napkins, she realized as his hands rolled aside her covers with deft impersonal movements. She moved her leg to help him.
Or tried to. He was obviously handling the weight of her body, but it felt like there was nowhere for her to apply effort to. Speir drew a slow breath. “Why can’t I move?” she said, calmly.
“Don’t worry, you’ve still got your legs. We had to block the nerves till we could resupply our stock of serum. There’s more dragon mine toxin than serum to go around, truth to say. You were shielded from most of the shrapnel, though.”
Shrapnel. Dragon mine. Even without memory she knew it was wrong, the stillness was wrong, she couldn’t hear—
“—The gun!” Speir jerked her head up and very nearly got the momentum to get her elbows under her and sit up. She fell back again, hyperventilating.
“Easy, Captain—easy!”
“I can’t be in here. I have to get up—”
“It’s all right, Captain! Just lie down easy. You don’t have to be anywhere. The gun’s all right.”
“How can it be?” she croaked. “I can’t hear….” She listened frantically, curbing her breath to extend her hearing. She had seen in that brief moment that she was in a field hospital tent, stable and warm, probably set on a concrete pad hooked up to a GT line. Inland, it would be, but not far; she should be able to hear, even feel, the pumping concussion of the gun. But all she could hear was a distant pattering hiss. Then her awareness took on wider dimension, and she knew the sound. She had never blessed the sound of freezing rain before, but now she closed her eyes and let the panic flow out of her, savoring the density of wet plinks and rattles on the heavy canvas overhead. The gun was all right. They’d made it to icefall.
“The gun’s all right, and the Berenians’ve pulled the scudders off us. They’re the Boundary’s problem now. And that’s down to you. The Hero of Colmhaven, they’re calling you out there.” Corporal Gill finished his work, tucked her blankets down again, and shucked off his gloves.
“That seems a bit excessive,” Speir said faintly, as he checked the IV line in the hollow of her left arm and adjusted the drip. “There were a lot of us protecting that gun.”
“Aye, well. Better to celebrate than fret,” said Corporal Gill, and, “—Be careful with this line, now. Don’t be trying to sit up.”
“Don’t take it personally, you mean?” She felt a new smile tugging at her lips.
“Well, something like that. After all, you were the one who—” he caught himself and turned away to his trolley.
The one who survived, Speir thought grimly. “I don’t remember how I got here,” she said. “Tell me what happened, Corporal.”
He turned around. “Are you sure you—?” But he broke off when he saw her steady look, and told her frankly. “You were with a team, pulling a dragon mine out of the cliffside. You fell with it getting it out, but the concussion blew you back up far enough that your soldiers could get hold of your rig and drag you over. Like I said, most of the shrapnel missed you. You’ll want a surgery or two on your right knee, once they get the toxin under control. Best not to move too much, Captain—it won’t be pretty if another pocket of it breaks into your bloodstream.”
Speir tried to call up a picture of Gill’s tale from her own eyes, but it—wasn’t available, like her legs weren’t available to her at present. She had better not worry about it. But—“What about the others? What about Field-Commander Ansett?”
Gill pursed his lips sympathetically and said nothing.
Speir shut her eyes briefly. She couldn’t feel anything but tired at the moment, but she knew that if she lived long enough, she would have to feel all the horrors she had deferred while fighting. The images of her soldiers dying would come back upon her, and she would have to grieve and make peace with their presence. She had seen her father’s contemporaries deal with it, some better and some worse; but it would have to be done regardless.
If she lived long enough. Corporal Gill was cheerful enough—it was practically a professional requirement for a medic—but the tone of the voices in the other tent rooms had a somber weight that did not seem right in the wake of a defensive victory. Better to celebrate than fret, Gill had said.
So the battle had gone all right, but the war….
“You rest yourself, Captain,” Gill was saying, “and I’ll bring you some farina by and by.” Speir didn’t argue. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to doze.
She woke again, feeling a wealth of bruises even without access to her lower half, to see a knot of medics talking in low voices just beyond the flap of her room’s doorway. She was both thirsty and hungry, but instead of stirring to gain their attention, she kept still to listen.
“…heard we took out a major reservoir with a guided missile.”
“That’s some return for what they did to the southern Boundary—”
“It’s no return at all. Did you see that image that came across?”
“What do you expect? They’re all savage war-lords over there. And he’s the worst.”
“Aye, it’s a shame General Barklay didn’t manage to kill him after all. But hanging his body up on a tower to wisdom….”
“And burning our soldiers like trash! I’d take out every last one of their reservoirs for that.”
“We may have to, just to get the vermin off the southern coast—sh! The captain’s coming.”
The medics melted off in various directions. Speir lay back, appetite suddenly diminished. Barklay dead. The south coast fallen. And herself pinned to a hospital cot. The Hero of Colmhaven. A low little cry issued from her throat, without her willing it.
The medic captain’s steps drew nearer, and then the captain herself appeared around the canvas wall and approached Speir’s bedside.
“Well, now, Captain Speir,” she said briskly. Speir looked up: she had motherly curves and a weatherbeaten face with starkly blue eyes. Like the rest of the medical outfit at Colmhaven, she was probably local; Speir wouldn’t be surprised to hear she had a civilian medical practice somewhere in the district. “I’m glad to report there’s a resupply shuttle inbound. We’ll get you stabilized here, and once we’re cleared, ship you down to Central Med for surgery. Meanwhile, we’ll keep you comfortable as we can. Try to keep as still as possible: even after the toxin clears, your nerves’ll conduct pain signals for hours, and we’d like to keep Corporal Gill in one piece.” The rough grin she delivered with this was well calculated to draw soldiers into battlefield humor. But with Speir it went wide of the mark.
“Is it really true?” she heard herself asking. “Is General Barklay really dead?”
The medic captain frowned. “Who’s been gossiping in here? Ach, has no one heard of operational security?” She caught sight of Speir’s face, looking up at her. “That’s right, you’re from Ryswyck, aren’t you? I’m sorry. It’s true right enough. He didn’t make it, but he bought us time up here, anyway. Thought he had us in a pincer, du Rau—well, he doesn’t. Our job now is to put up ice shields and burn lights for the Boundary.” She looked at Speir ruefully. “I was sure your first question was going to be if you’d walk again.”
Oh, I’ll walk again, would have been Speir’s sure response; but she didn’t say it. What good would hobbling be, if she couldn’t fight at full speed, if her country was lost before she could recover? She thought of Mulhall twitting her about taking the enemy one by one in single combat: Mulhall was dead, and she wished she could.
“I try to take one thing at a time,” Speir said aloud.
~*~
It was not yet dawn when Captain Marag appeared in the doorway of the headmaster’s office. Douglas glanced at him briefly: he had shaved
and changed into fresh fatigues, but he still looked underslept. It was no use chiding him, though—after all, Douglas hadn’t so much as cleaned himself up. The trail of thought ribboned away like smoke, so that when Marag spoke, Douglas had almost forgotten he was there.
“Admiral,” Marag said, “I’ve made the rounds and come to spell you.”
Douglas didn’t answer.
“Sir?”
Inevitably, Marag came around to Douglas’s side of the desk, and saw that he still had the image from Bernhelm up on the low projection, was still staring at it in the same attitude in which Marag had left him last night. He felt Marag’s hand grip his shoulder gently.
“Douglas.” There was a deep reservoir of grief under Marag’s quiet voice. “Douglas, put it away.”
“Look at Barklay’s wound,” Douglas said. He had studied the image in its detail so long that the afterimage blinked with him when he looked away, Barklay’s naked body dangling by one foot over an unearthly pyre of bodies. “What do you see?”
“I see that he was stabbed,” Marag said flatly. His grip on Douglas’s shoulder tightened, and he would have spoken again, but Douglas went on.
“A single killing blow. And from the front, not the back.”
Marag sighed.
“He was killed cleanly,” Douglas said. “He wasn’t degraded first.”
“Maybe they didn’t have the chance.”
“Then why not shoot him? Why stab him instead?”
“Does it matter?” Douglas heard desperate impatience creeping into Marag’s voice. “Sir…I think you’re seeing meaning where there is none.”
“He was dead before they did this to him,” Douglas said, steadily. “And I’m willing to bet that his team were dead before they were set fire to. Probably they were dead even before they were stripped.”
“And their ashes left to the winds, far away from their place of birth! It’s monstrous—and he knows it’s monstrous.”
“Yes, that’s the point,” said Douglas. “This picture is carefully arranged. Lord Bernhelm wants us to look at a monstrosity and despair. It’s the only advantage he has, because these men were killed in clean battle.”
“Douglas—do you think this is the handiwork of a man of reason? How does that make it better?”
“It doesn’t,” Douglas said grimly.
He fully expected Marag to press the point, but he was silent, his hand quiescent on Douglas’s shoulder. Then he said: “What exactly are you planning?” and Douglas realized that he had, in fact, been planning for hours.
Douglas said: “I’m going to ask Lord Bernhelm to give us Barklay’s body under the general code.”
A longer silence this time. “You can’t,” Marag said. “Lord Selkirk will never agree to that.”
“Yes, he’ll take some convincing,” Douglas said with a sigh.
“Convincing! Sir—”
“And I’d better clean up for the interview. While I’m doing that, Captain, go up the tower and get me a secure line to Central One.” He turned to look up at Marag: their eyes met, and Marag blinked.
“Yes, sir.” He withdrew reluctantly and started toward the door, but paused one last time. “But I feel obliged to say, sir, that you are putting too much weight on a slim hope.”
“It’s not hope I’m acting on,” Dougals answered calmly. “It’s power. Stone is hard, but it’s not fast.”
Not water-fast; not impregnable. He didn’t specify whether he was applying the proverb to Selkirk or Emmerich du Rau, and Marag didn’t try to parse it.
“Then I guess we’ll see,” he said, “who’s the better channel engineer.”
~*~
“Admiral.” Lord Selkirk, Douglas suspected, had also shaved and changed without sleeping. “What news?”
“No change, my lord,” Douglas said. “No movements have been made on either side.”
Selkirk grunted. “What, then?”
Douglas had already chosen his tactic. “I want to ask Lord Bernhelm for Barklay’s body under the general code,” he said, without heat or preamble.
Selkirk’s gaze became very fixed. Then he pinched the bridge of his nose for a long moment. “Why are you wasting my time with this?” he said wearily at last. “You know what I’m going to say.”
Douglas did. He waited.
Selkirk took his hand away. “No, in case you were wondering. No is my answer. Now, was there anything else?”
“Yes,” Douglas said steadily. “I want to ask Lord Bernhelm for Barklay’s body under the general—”
“I heard you the first time,” Selkirk snapped. “And I haven’t changed my mind since ten seconds ago. Did you not hear me?”
“Yes, my lord, I heard you.”
“Well, then. Consider the matter closed.”
“All right,” said Douglas. “I’ll call back in ten minutes.”
Selkirk couldn’t afford to refuse a call from a commander at a front line, and they both knew it. He dry-washed his face and fixed Douglas with a glare. “You want me to reason with you. Is that it?”
“No, my lord,” Douglas said. “I just want to make contact with Lord Bernhelm so I can ask him—”
“Douglas,” Selkirk said heavily, “Barklay is dead. His team is dead. As expected. They achieved more than we could ever have hoped, but we were never going to get them back. You have to acc—”
“We can get Barklay back,” Douglas said, “if Lord Bernhelm will release him to us.”
“He’s not going to do that! Did you not see that cursed image he sent?”
“Yes, my lord. I did see it.” It would be no use repeating his analysis of Barklay’s wound; if Marag hadn’t been convinced, still less would Selkirk be. “It’s funny he decided to contrive a horrifying image instead of resuming the attack on the Boundary. He hasn’t, has he?”
Selkirk answered this only with a malevolent glare.
“And you haven’t fired another missile,” Douglas went on, acutely. “We’ve reached full standoff. If Lord Bernhelm decided he had nothing left to lose, he’d press forward, occupy Ryswyck, and strike for the capital, no matter what we fired at Berenia’s reservoirs.” He took a breath. “And you don’t need me to tell you that we can’t stop him if he does. But he hasn’t.”
“And you think that means he can be reasoned with.”
“It means we have a window of opportunity to change the script, my lord. We don’t have much to lose either.”
“So you mean to appeal to, what—his sense of mercy? His honor? You actually think he has either of those things?”
“His sense of superiority would do,” Douglas said mildly. “But that’s getting ahead of things.”
“Oh, you think so?” Selkirk wasn’t above sarcasm. “And how do you think the rest of the High Council would like our appealing to Lord Bernhelm’s sense of superiority?”
“You wouldn’t need to get the Council’s approval to contact Bernhelm under military code, my lord.”
“What about my council, then? What do you think Central Command would say if I let you go hand to heart asking du Rau to oblige you for a bloody Ryswyckian favor?” Selkirk was truly angry now.
“It depends on what you tell them, my lord,” Douglas said. “But—if you happen to be looking for one more misdirection—I’m your man.” Selkirk gave him a level look, and Douglas went on. “And every second I spend talking to him is a second he’s not ordering our mutual destruction.”
“Supposing you even get so far. To risk all our hopes on one conversation.”
“Undefendedness is an offensive strategy.” The last time Douglas had said that, it was to General Inslee. His anger must have showed in his face, because Selkirk’s gaze turned speculative. “And what’s the worst case—he says no?”
“I’m sure Emmerich du Rau can think of something,” Selkirk said darkly. “Listen, Douglas—I’ve been fighting the man for twenty years. You haven’t. You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I am asking,”
Douglas said, “to get Barklay’s body back—”
“—under the general military code. Yes. I know. Has it occurred to you,” Selkirk inquired, “that du Rau is probably not well disposed to Ryswyck after his little adventure in Barklay’s company? You may be overestimating the force of your appeal.”
“I have formed no estimate of the force of my appeal yet, my lord. And it’s not Ryswyckian principles I intend to appeal to.”
Selkirk groaned and tented his forehead on his fingertips. “Damn you and your offensive strategy.” Abruptly he lifted his head: his eyes were bright and hard, and his color was high. “Very well, Douglas. You may put your boots back on. I’ll call you back in ten minutes.”
Douglas kept his face and voice carefully colorless. “Thank you, my lord.”
“Selkirk out,” he snapped, and the projection went blank.
Douglas leaned back in his chair and opened his hand, looking at Marag where he sat silently listening in a chair across the desk.
“Very impressive, sir,” Marag admitted. “You won the argument in one round. But he’s going to resent you badly for it.”
“Mm,” Douglas agreed. “Especially when he realizes it was Barklay who showed me the technique.” He reached for the cup of tea he’d kept waiting out of the projection’s view. “When Selkirk detached me from my chain of command, he made himself vulnerable as well as me. He can end my career with a word. But he also doesn’t have anyone below him to murmur, ‘Well, we’ll think about it,’ and put my request in a drawer.”
“And what leverage do you have with du Rau?” Marag asked.
Anticipation. Thanks to Commander Jarrow. “I have a map,” Douglas said, sipping his tea. “And time.”
~*~
Du Rau woke some time after midnight to find that a blanket had been tucked over his lap where he slept in his chair. The lamps on his desk were on low, casting a dark golden light over the room. On the table next to him an upturned wineglass glinted; it stood with a small flagon on a tray, and next to it was a covered dish. In the other chair Ingrid sat reading: a few dark swallows remained in her wineglass, half-forgotten in her hand. He stirred, and she looked up.
