Ryswyck

by L D Inman

  “It daunts the imagination,” he said aloud.

  “That Barklay could make a friend?” Speir answered him, her smile unexpectedly wry. “Or that he could keep one?”

  Innocence without naivety. “The first is no mystery,” du Rau said. “I knew him before we were enemies.”

  She looked at him with interest, tilting her head. “Did you? I didn’t know that.” Her expression was unguarded, a deceptively pellucid mildness. “I don’t doubt he had amends to make. It would be very like Barklay to wage peace under cover of war.”

  Du Rau answered coldly: “His life is not satisfaction enough for his wrongs.”

  “The forgiver so often has to make up the difference,” she sighed, her eyes on Barklay again.

  Fascinated by her insight, he was a belated moment taking offense. —As if he had ever intended to forgive Barklay. —As if what he had done in his country’s name could be settled on a personal level.

  But to say so would be to yield her a point and possibly even the bout. Du Rau felt suddenly as if he had been shaken from a sound sleep to find himself thrusting and parrying by blind rote. She had just beguiled him within distance, and with an effort he recollected himself.

  “It is General Barklay, I suppose,” he said, “who taught you the use of the foil.”

  Her glance showed she had taken his meaning. “It was my mother who taught me the use of the foil,” she said. “Though General Barklay did teach me a great deal. Along with all his own weaknesses, I am sure.”

  “Your mother’s teaching does you credit,” du Rau said, with dry gallantry. “And was your mother a soldier before you?”

  “No, sir. She was a submarine commander. Lost with all her crew in an action ten…no, fifteen years ago now.”

  Du Rau was familiar with the action in question, though he had not designed or led the operation. But perhaps it would not have mattered if he had. Captain Speir grieved for Barklay, had no doubt grieved for her mother as a child, would aim lethal force at du Rau without hesitation: but if asked to wage peace under cover of war, she would do it with equal firmness. The forgiver so often has to make up the difference. Du Rau’s indignation at being hypothetically offered Speir’s forgiveness gave way and he suddenly grasped the meaning of what she had said. She understood how Barklay could strain a friendship to breaking point. She had something to forgive Barklay for, herself. She had come here to make up the difference.

  He is not worthy of your efforts. Du Rau said instead: “Are you aware of the crimes General Barklay committed?”

  The silence in the bay went instantly taut, the undiplomacy of du Rau’s question like a concussion in the air. Only Speir remained undisturbed. “Yes, he explained it to me,” she said tranquilly. “No doubt he attempted to explain it to you. But from my point of view it’s simple enough. He did to Berenians what Berenians did to my father.”

  Her words did not ease the air they breathed. Du Rau felt the precarious balance of the room begin to tip. But Speir went on.

  “We have neither of us honored prisoners of war, or noncombatants, or the dead.” As if unaware of the motionless fury she was stirring in the men behind her and the men behind du Rau. “We have given back wrong for wrong for my whole lifetime. It is a great weight we all bear.” A fault too heavy. Too heavy for one. “But it has to stop somewhere. So if you give it back to me,” she said, and her brushed-wale voice suddenly masked steel— “I promise you: I will keep it.”

  She made it sound more a threat than a promise. A mother’s threat to quarrelling children, only fivefold more dangerous. It was so quiet in the bay du Rau could almost hear himself sweating. He looked at Speir, eyes heavy-lidded, and their gazes locked.

  “I presume,” he said into the silence, “that that does not necessarily mean you won’t fight back.”

  “I can oblige you all ways, sir,” Speir said. “With a foil; with ordnance; or with my death.”

  Du Rau raised an eyebrow. “Would you really give me your death if I asked for it?”

  “Are you asking for it, sir?” There was no compromise in the captain’s gaze. No backing down. Yes: this was why Verlac had sent her to represent them. It was laughable to imagine one of the High Council saying what Speir had just said, with utter conviction.

  “Another time, perhaps,” said du Rau coolly. And Captain Speir broke into a grin. She touched her hand to her heart—not open, as their shared custom was, but closed. Men were breathing again; Speir’s corporal cast his eyes down and suppressed a shudder, and her men behind her lifted chins and straightened spines. The conjoined ships rose on a swell of the sea, and fell again.

  Du Rau saw Speir’s eyes check something over his shoulder. He glanced back with one eye himself, and saw that a comms officer had swung into the doorway, only to freeze at the conversation within. Now that he had the attention of both principals in the room, he came forward between the ranks of Estuary Guard (still miraculously at perfect attention) and saluted du Rau. “My lord. They are waiting for the go-ahead from Captain Speir.”

  Du Rau opened his hand toward the captain. “Give her the comm, Lieutenant.”

  The lieutenant approached Speir with an air of respecting her for his commander’s sake. She accepted the comm from him with an amused look. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  She keyed the line open. “Speir,” she said, and listened for a moment. Her eyes traveled the bay—bulkheads, doorways, the Guardsmen facing her—and came back to rest on du Rau’s face.

  “All’s well,” she answered at last. “You can take them in.”

  13

  Du Rau was glad of his overcoat almost at once.

  The passage between his destroyer and the Verlaker service-cruiser was covered, but the wind rattled its plates, seeking them with its whistling drafts. Du Rau led the way through, followed in train by Captain Speir’s men with Barklay’s bier. They emerged from the half-lit passage into a storage bay, lined with Verlaker navy at strict attention, their faces still but their eyes following them warily. The vessel’s captain greeted them in very brief terms, and guided them into a long cage-lift. As they rose, his escort folded the sheet back over General Barklay and tied it carefully down; warned, du Rau buttoned up the collar of his coat.

  They emerged onto the shuttle-deck of the service-cruiser, and the wet wind tore at them at once. Curved wind-breakers had been put up, but the sheet over Barklay’s body flapped madly and du Rau and Alsburg had to brace themselves against the buffets that hit them from the side. By the time they boarded the waiting shuttle, water had beaded on du Rau’s coat and was running down his scalp.

  It was very dim in the tiny shuttle: as they lifted from the deck, du Rau realized that this was due not to the black dark of early morning, but to the fact that the porthole windows had been shaded. Of course; he could not have seen much from the shuttle in any case, but keeping the windows on blackout setting would give the Verlakers some comfort.

  When they reached land, they were transferred to a larger, better-appointed shuttle; it was clean and in good repair, but its working parts were aged, and so far du Rau had seen no communications equipment that was not at least fifteen years out of date. Not for the first time he raged within himself that he did not have the time to starve Verlac into submission; the war could have been finished with much less mess and bloodshed. But instead of a fine, inexorable strategy he had this: a ride in a Verlaker shuttle, with Thaddeys Barklay’s corpse for companionship, at both their countries’ last bleeding hour.

  Du Rau settled against the back of his seat and let his eyelids rest at half-mast. If he was not careful, exhaustion would creep in before he was ready for it. Beside him Alsburg was valiantly attempting not to stare around him, though curiosity rolled off him in waves; he was too young to ever have been to Verlac, and no doubt felt all the fascination of his first encounter with the unremitting assault of rain. Du Rau listened, and picked out the light roar of the storm, saturating the roar of the shuttle’s engines and punct
uated by the creaks of equipment with them in the hold. By the sound of the engines, they were flying at low altitude, the better to conceal their trajectory.

  On du Rau’s other side, the lieutenant in charge of his escort asked, in a voice pitched just loud enough to reach him over the noise, “Are you in need of anything, sir?”

  Du Rau’s eyes opened fully. The yellow beam of the light over his head shone into his lap where his hands were folded, picking out the dark shine of his leather gloves. He was sitting very still, contained to himself; it could well read as discomfort to the soldier.

  “No,” du Rau said. “Thank you.”

  The lieutenant nodded and sat back; then presently leaned aside to speak to one of the shuttle crew who approached him. Du Rau was increasingly aware that he was well-cocooned by the men of his escort: Captain Speir must have briefed them thoroughly and well, for they were observant and respectful of him as a head of state while at the same time making sure that no unpleasantness—or any agent’s communication—would get through to him. He felt himself begin to relax.

  He had chosen this adventure. He would see how it played out.

  ~*~

  By the time they reached Ryswyck, they had crossed the leading edge of the storm. As the shuttle lost height, the native creaks and rattles of its frame rose, until it finally put down with an ungainly clank. Its crew busied themselves confirming the landing and preparing to open the ramp hatch, moving among Captain Speir’s guard, who had sat up ready to spring to attention. Du Rau allowed himself to glance at the porthole behind his shoulder; the shaded glass was not too dark to reveal the deluge outside, pimpling and quaking the puddles on the airfield. As the hatch began to power open, a breath of cold air reached them, a damp cold that would cling to the bones.

  Voices from outside; the guard unstrapped themselves and rose. The lieutenant nodded at du Rau. “Sir.” As he and Alsburg got to their feet, the men began to unclip the swathing sheets on the bier and fold them back. It seemed to du Rau that in such a heavy rain, that was premature; but when he reached the head of the ramp to start down, he understood. This funeral was not going to be held indoors.

  Meeting the ramp and stretching away from it was a line of soldiers in dress uniform, black and blue and gray, in two ranks on either side. When he reached the bottom, he saw the tall man in army dress black waiting directly in front of him some meters away, with two of his staff behind him, and at the back, a rank of drums in scarlet harness, black mallets at the ready. The gray uniforms already showed dark spots of saturated wool: not one of the Verlakers present wore their hoods up, and their hair was half-plastered to their brows in dark locks. Several of them blinked droplets off their eyelashes, but Admiral Douglas stood still and waited, gaze oak-steady.

  “Lord Bernhelm,” he called, in a voice pitched to carry through the plashing of the rain. There was no other sound. No soldier moved. If Captain Speir’s men had stood attuned to her example, the spirit of these Ryswyckians was unitary and palpable, like the interlocked roots of trees below the ground. That unitary spirit breathed with the dignity of the man who commanded them. No man that young ought to be able to project such weight, but Admiral Douglas seemed to hold down the entire airfield with no visible effort.

  “Admiral Douglas,” du Rau replied.

  “We bid you welcome to Ryswyck,” he answered in turn, and as if it were a signal, Captain Speir’s men moved, half to flank him and Alsburg along the ramp, and the other half, judging from the noises he could hear behind him, lifting the bier.

  Du Rau stepped off the bottom of the ramp onto puddled Verlaker soil, for the first time in over twenty years. He’d seen his shoes waterproofed, but could tell from the first moment that it would make no difference. The only thing to do was follow the Verlakers’ cue and take no notice. He stepped forward, out of the shelter of the shuttle’s fuselage, and managed to hold himself to a brief initial flinch as the downpour hit his face.

  He approached Douglas where he waited, Alsburg behind at his shoulder studiously not crowding him, and stopped just out of reach. Their eyes met in solemn challenge. Then Douglas offered him a slow blink coupled with a nod, and managed to make it formal; neither social nor military greetings would be adequate to the fiction of their equality here. Du Rau nodded back, and accepted Douglas’s gestured offer of a place to stand at his right. There was enough calculated space for him and Alsburg to stand without adjustment of the ranks. He could see the boots of the bier-bearers at the top of the ramp. They began to move down; at an unseen signal, the drummers in his peripheral vision poised their mallets in a series of drill movements, simple and precise. A slow rim-tap began, loud enough to cut through the noise of the rain.

  The bier-bearers moved carefully, adjusting the height of their lift to keep it as level as possible as they descended. When they reached the ground, the lining ranks at du Rau’s right moved neatly to open as a gate so the bier could lead them across the airfield toward Ryswyck Academy, a blocky shadow shrouded by the rain.

  Du Rau watched Douglas from the corner of his eye. Douglas’s glance fell upon General Barklay as the bier approached, encompassing the beads of rain gathering on the black dress uniform identical to the one Douglas wore, up to the dead man’s face; then his gaze lifted calmly and did not follow the bier when it turned. There was no change in the tranquil solemnity of his face in profile: but it was as if a light had been blown out in the man as Barklay was carried past him.

  Behind the bier, the drummers filed into position, all of them now keeping slow rhythm on their rims. Then the inward ranks of gray-clad cadets fell in and followed; and the seniors after them. Then at last the remainder of Captain Speir’s guard. Douglas, denuded of his staff, took up the rear, walking with du Rau abreast.

  By the time they reached the school, not only du Rau’s shoes but his trouser-cuffs were saturated, heavy and sopping. Their every step splashed. He maintained a show of indifference—behind him, Alsburg was doing the same—but Admiral Douglas was actually indifferent, walking in long slow strides that would be longer, du Rau thought, if they had not been at the tail end of a procession.

  The gray stone building loomed up before them, but du Rau was unsurprised when they did not go inside. Instead the procession snaked around the pile and came out into a neat quad girt with canopied walkways. Here, as his view cleared, du Rau saw that more soldiers waited, many of them in the clean pressed fatigues that his escort wore. Ryswyck, he was reminded, currently hosted a few companies of the Verlaker army in addition to their student body. Together they filled the quad, but the net effect was of intimacy, not broad public ceremony. Either this was all there was to defend this sector, or Admiral Douglas was camouflaging their numbers. It didn’t matter; nothing changed the basic position. But again du Rau was privately angered at his inability to annihilate such a small, impoverished force.

  The bier had been placed before the main entrance of a larger, newer building that du Rau knew from surveillance images to be the school’s training complex. Between the doors and the bier, the drummers kept up their tapping rhythm; they were flanked by a cadre of skirlers, who instead of playing carried their instruments hanging downward in their harness, a silent symbol of grief. When Douglas and du Rau reached their place facing the bier across the quad, a full rank of senior staff at their back, the drums moved into a brief burr and then stopped. In the silence the rain pelted down even harder.

  A gray-clad soldier with lieutenant’s ribbons emerged from his rank, paused to give Douglas the same salute Captain Speir had demonstrated, and moved at quick step to take his place near where the bearers stood, on the side near to Barklay’s head. Cold rain dripped from the bier’s struts; the lieutenant launched into a hum and then opened his mouth so that the assembled could catch the pitch. The hum swelled to fill the quad, then divided into a chord.

  The Verlaker form of the funeral rite was just enough like the Berenian form to be teasing. The opening responsory was familiar enough,
though delivered in an accent even he, who had been familiar with it in his youth, found difficult to penetrate. Verlac in their generations of isolation had kept many of the older forms of their common language, which still survived in formal rites; the dialect had evolved in parallel with Berenia’s, intelligible if one listened closely but still rather barbaric to his ears. He glanced at Alsburg, who was frowning in incomprehension. Probably the accent alone was defeating him; having heard smooth, even Berenian phrases all his life, he would likely find neither the needle-claws of Speir’s lilting speech nor the trimmed thorns of Douglas’s brief words easy to interpret.

  Du Rau followed the responsory easily, though he could not have joined in even if he had wanted to. Then it ended, and after a bowed silence in which the Ryswyckians all laid closed hands over their hearts, the dirge proper began, and he was left wholly behind. The cantor sang words too archaic to comprehend, in a tune unlike the traditional one sung at home; one drum gave a soft burr; then the whole assembly sang a refrain equally obscure; then the cantor took up the chant again.

  At home, it was part of the traditional rite to give the chief mourner right of refusal to sing the dirge, even in a formal situation; but, he thought, perhaps Ryswyck Academy itself was Barklay’s chief mourner. Who else would stand as chief mourner for Barklay? Du Rau looked up at Douglas beside him.

  Douglas was not singing. He kept his hand closed against his heart and stared ahead; strain had crept into the lines of his face, and it was impossible to tell if the water streaming down his face was rain only, or mixed with tears. Presently he became aware of du Rau’s gaze; his own shifted, not quite to look aside at him, but with an air of waiting in case he should want to speak.

  Du Rau took the invitation. “Tell me,” he said, “what is the refrain you sing? I cannot make out the words.”