"part2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Keith Brooke - Lord of Stone)
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- The Book of the World, ch.8, v.68. |
| They were passing down a wide street with lime trees sprouting from either pavement. Horses dragged loaded wagons along the road, passing with difficulty over the tram-lines cut through the cobbles. A white-haired news-sheet distributor was yelling from the centre of the road while his young assistant worked her way along a queue that led into a bakery's open doorway. Madeleine was telling Bligh of her trips to the city as a teenager, when the railway line through Dona-Jez was new and her parents had been able to afford the fare. "We would go to the Arena and watch children playing football. Afterwards, one time, I went with a friend to the docks and we ate lobster fresh from the baskets. We - " A single gunshot sounded with a metal crash and the whistle of a ricochet and in one movement Bligh's arm was across Madeleine's shoulder and he was dragging her down roughly. They hit the cobbled pavement with a jarring blow and Madeleine gave a soft gasp - surprised, frightened. Bligh's heart thudded explosively as, all around, the street scene froze. Another shot rang out and the queue had suddenly vanished. Women hid in doorways or lay face down on the pavement, clutching children, muttering to themselves and covering their eyes with their hands. The newspaper vendor had sprinted across the street and swept his assistant down behind a stone water trough. Bligh and Madeleine crawled over to join them. The trough afforded protection from one direction, at least. Out in the street a horse pulled its abandoned cart, oblivious to the disturbance. "What are they shooting at?" asked Bligh. "Who can know?" said the newspaper vendor, casually drawing a section of sugar gum out of his coat pocket and sliding it into his mouth. "See the damaged building across there?" Where the man gestured there was what looked like a shop with boards across the windows and rubble heaped about it defensively. "That was once a Syndicalist hall. They still use it sometimes. Maybe there are Army snipers shooting at them. Or maybe the Syndicalists are just trying to keep us on our toes, who can know? Maybe someone doesn't like The Voice - you want one?" He thrust a copy of the news-sheet of the Unification Party of the People at Madeleine. Bligh reached into his pocket for some coins. "No," said the man, stopping him. "It is free, to a Friend of the Revolution." It was now several minutes since there had been any shots. The queue at the bakery had reformed and a man was chasing the horse and wagon along the street. Bligh and Madeleine said their goodbyes to the news-sheet distributor and continued on their way. This time, in unspoken agreement, they stayed closer to the shelter of the buildings. They had come to Anasty on impulse, perhaps the same impulse that had brought Bligh wandering down into war-torn Trace the previous year. He had been in Dona-Jez for over six months - the longest time he had lingered in one place since walking out of school, six years earlier - but finally one morning, as Madeleine sat astride his prostrate body, rubbing his tight shoulders, she had asked him what was wrong. He tried to explain his need to keep moving, to assure her that it was not her fault, that it was a part of the fabric of his being. "Then lets go somewhere," she had said simply. "We could go to Anasty. You must see it before it's all blown down." Walking through the battle-torn streets, still shaky from the sniper shots, Bligh hoped that they had arrived in time. |
| They stood on a crowded tram, hanging on to a broken handrail. The tram had been hastily repainted in United Road Haulage colours, the old state livery still showing in places through the two tones of red. Dribbles of paint ran down the few unbroken windows and UPP news-sheets had been plastered across the ceiling and the backs of the seats. Madeleine rested her head on Bligh's shoulder so that he could feel her breath on his neck. They disembarked at a place called Settlement Square. Here, the cobbled street branched to form the perimeter of a paved rectangle containing two ornate fountains and a statue of a mounted king which had been hauled down and partly dismembered. Bligh remembered seeing a painting of this square, from before the War. They had come here, now, to look for somewhere to stay. To one side of Settlement Square was a low, imposing building, its windows boarded and its brickwork scarred with artillery wounds and scorch marks. It was the Metropolitan Hotel. It looked to be closed but even if it had been open the prices would have been to high for Bligh and Madeleine. They walked across to the fallen, partially dismembered monarch and Madeleine said, "I was five when King Elleo died. All of Dona-Jez went into mourning, but that was only show - for the patricians and their police. Behind closed shutters the men got drunk and the women danced on tables and for months the police picked on people for no reason at all, other than to show that they were still in charge." "And now that is all gone," said Bligh. "The people are in charge and the statues lie broken in the streets. Do you not feel something awakening inside you ... a new spirit trying to break free?" "The fight isn't over yet," said Madeleine. "There's still more blood to flow." "Don't you feel the energy of it all?" He did not know how else to put it, the sense of awakening he had experienced as he first crossed the border into Trace. It had felt like some strange kind of homecoming. He took Madeleine by the hand and led her unsteadily over the remains of the fallen king and across between the two fountains to the street, where they had to slow in order to pass between a tram and a loaded motor wagon. They stopped outside the Hotel Adernis, smaller than the Metropolitan but with a dilapidated air of its own permanence that Bligh sensed instantly was more promising. Inside, there was a cramped lobby with leather upholstered seats and a worn-smooth carpet. A small UPP banner was draped across the front of the reception desk. The price was reasonable, and Bligh chose not to haggle. The manager left them in their top floor room with the recommendation of ear-plugs if the shelling from across the river became too intrusive. By now it was dusk and they stood looking out of the window, across the rooftops to the older quarter of Anasty, where they could just make out the broken top of the Arena. In the dim light Bligh could see what looked like a bank of low cloud but he guessed it must be smoke from fires and the explosions which occasionally grumbled with an insistence that seemed to grab his innards and squeeze. "Bligh," said Madeleine, softly. He turned to her and she continued, "You're very special." Awkward, he looked down into her dark eyes, and said nothing. He traced the line of her nose with a finger, then her cheek, her jaw, her neck. They moved together, in the window recess, and held each other for a long time before they kissed. The bed was old and the mattress sagged towards the middle. Whenever Bligh opened his eyes he saw Madeleine, the bedspread, the walls, all lit up in the gathering darkness by a faint fiery flickering, cast into their room from the battle beyond. |
| The next morning they were hungry. By the time food had occurred to them the previous evening it had been too late to do anything about it. Bligh could have waited longer for his breakfast, but Madeleine was up and dressing before he was awake enough to persuade her to linger. He rolled over to lie in the warm hollow she had left and watched as she used the chamber pot and then washed at the room's cracked porcelain basin. Soon, the sunlight flooding in through the window proved too much for him and he clambered out of bed and into his clothes. "The quiet sounds wrong," said Madeleine, and Bligh realised that there was an absence of gunfire and explosions. "Perhaps we have won," he said. He realised that he had said we and turned awkwardly away to find his shoes. Downstairs in the hotel lobby some guests were milling around as two UPP soldiers went through the reception ledger with the manager. Bligh had thought that he and Madeleine were the only guests, but clearly he was wrong. He said a "Good morning, Friend," to one elderly couple but it only provoked a curious look and a muttering of Feorean. Bligh approached the reception desk and, when he had attracted the manager's attention, he asked about breakfast. The manager gestured at a tall window to one side of his desk and said, "Our kitchen ... my apologies." He turned back to the two soldiers as Bligh walked over to the window and looked out at the shattered walls and heaps of rubble where the hotel kitchen had once stood. They went outside. A small crowd stood on one side of Settlement Square, holding assorted Cooperative and Syndicate pennants over their heads. As Bligh and Madeleine stepped out, a double line of soldiers emerged from a side street, kicking high in the southern style which had looked so comical the first time Bligh witnessed it. The soldiers marched past the crowd, their rear brought up by a single boy carrying a Landworkers' Alliance flag, its pole supported by a sling across his shoulders. In a few minutes the procession had disappeared from sight and the onlookers began to disperse. Madeleine found Bligh's hand and led him away from the square in search of food. After a short time they came across a knot of people gathered outside a church. A wagon was pulled up in the street and a number of men were aloft, sorting bags and parcels thrown up from the crowd. A short distance away, a horse backed up, kicking at the air as a man clung, determinedly, to its harness. Bligh and Madeleine watched for a while, then as the crowd thinned they approached a gowned priest and asked him what was happening. "We are collecting for the soldiers," he said, breathing heavily after his exertions in loading the wagon. His face shone with sweat and he rubbed at it with the carmine sleeve of his gown. "There are coats, boots, trousers. There are tins of milk, cheeses ... oat bread that will keep for weeks and then have to be soaked in water to make it palatable. There are books and razors and many other items, too. We collect them for the Unification Party of the People and we pray to the Lords for Their forbearance." "They bet on both sides," said Madeleine, as they walked away and the priest began the difficult task of harnessing the horse to the front of his heavily laden wagon. "Hmm?" "The Church. In Figuaras and Mountsenys the priests will be collecting for the Army and preaching against the Lordless uprising here in the East. Before the LA took Dona-Jez our priest tried to rally the people against the revolution. He tried to strike the fear of the Lords into them. Now he works in the fields and calls the people 'Friend' but they do not forget." Bligh recalled stories of priests being lynched or driven away, as a succession of towns and villages had been liberated over the three years of the Civil War. Strangely, the churches themselves were largely untouched. There was an echo of this division in Madeleine, herself: her cynicism about the Church could not belie the persistent core of her own faith. They emerged onto a street that was bounded on one side by a narrow strip of parkland and beyond that the River Ana. On the far bank the city took on an entirely different character: the streets were narrow and treeless, the terraces of stone houses and shops had been lower and more haphazard even before large sections had been ruined by the fighting. Church towers were visible over the rooftops and, silhouetted by the morning sun, the curving outer wall of the Arena dominated one section of the skyline. "I lost track of where we were," said Madeleine. Down among the trees, now, Bligh could see gun emplacements shielded behind broken masonry and sandbags. Soldiers lazed in the late summer sun, while their colleagues sat and cleaned their guns or played cards or argued with their friends. The first gunshots of the day broke the peace, but nobody seemed too concerned. "Breakfast?" asked Bligh, setting off towards a nearby eating house. Empty stone tables and chairs were scattered across a paved terrace, but a murmur of conversation escaped through an open door and Bligh could see that there were people inside, eating and drinking and reading the news-sheets. They went in and ordered sweetbreads and anise tea, refusing the horoscope cards the proprietor thrust at them in place of change. The prices were clearly the reason why people chose to queue in the streets rather than eat in places such as this. Later, Madeleine told Bligh that he had only been charged so much because of his Wederian accent. "We will take it outside," said Bligh, smiling at the answering crazy foreigner look on the owner's face. The fighting started up before they had even broken the first sweetbread. Bligh touched the stone of his seat, the stone of his table, finding reassurance in the cold contact. He looked across the river to where the explosion had sounded so close. There was no smoke or falling masonry as he had naively expected. One of the light artillery guns on the riverside sent a shell across into the Old Town but it failed to explode and the soldiers returned to their lazing, their books, their arguments. "Tea?" said Madeleine, holding the pot over a cup. "Hmm. Sweetbread?" said Bligh, breaking the first small loaf and putting half on Madeleine's plate. There was a machine-gun now, stuttering from the depths of the Old Town, and the Cooperative soldiers began to stir again, wandering back to their positions, firing occasional rifle-shots across the river and into the apparently deserted buildings. Once a bullet ricocheted off the road nearby, but Bligh guessed that it was a misfire rather than an answering shot from the Army. He thought perhaps the Government had abandoned Anasty weeks ago and the revolutionaries were firing at memories. A radio came on, adding to the din of conversation from the eating house and Bligh and Madeleine ate breakfast in their own cocoon of silence. |
| They returned to the hotel as dusk was settling, their thoughts turning to food again. They hesitated in Settlement Square, wondering where they could go. "The Metropolitan does a good dinner," said a man, coming down the steps of the Hotel Adernis. He had a haggard face, with short sandy hair and a hook nose that made him appear to squint. His clothes were grubby but made of a northern linen which indicated a sophistication most chose to hide these days. "I thought it was closed," said Bligh. He recognised the man as one of the other guests from this morning. "The windows are boarded over." The man shrugged wearily. "Wood is cheaper than glass," he said. He had the sort of nondescript looks that gave no indication of age: he could have been twenty-five or he could have been twice that. His accent was foreign, but Bligh was unable to place it. "Please. Be my guests for this evening," he said. "Humour me." "We weren't - " Madeleine began, but the man held up his hands to stop her, then changed his gesture into a wave towards the Metropolitan. "Please," he said again. "I've eaten alone too often recently." From the outside, the Metropolitan looked like a ruin, but inside it was as if the War was a continent away. The floor was polished to a near-flawless shine, the chandeliers glittering and complete, the serving staff dressed crisply in dark uniforms. Bligh and Madeleine sat with the man, who called himself Divitt Carew. Their table was covered with a white cotton sheet, and there was silver cutlery and a slender candle and cut crystal glasses for the wine which appeared soon after they were seated. Bligh glanced at Madeleine and saw that she shared his discomfort. The streets today had been overflowing with goodwill and egalitarianism. The war had been responsible for shortages and suffering on a large scale but the spirit it had stirred was constantly a wonder to Bligh. All this finery turned his pangs of hunger to nausea. "So what draws you to the war in Anasty?" said Carew. 'Draw' was a good word for Bligh. "Fate," he said, tentatively. "Chance. I do not know." Somehow it had always seemed inevitable that his travels would bring him here. He had no explanation. "It's a part of me," said Madeleine. "Whether I like it or not." "Ah, but you are a Traian, it's your fight. Bligh, here, is Wederian, no?" "Marish," said Bligh. "But I was schooled with a Jahvean Brotherhood in Stenhoer, so you are partly correct. I do not know. I came here and liked the atmosphere. The people are so welcoming, they are free. It is as if they are waking from a bad dream. That has to be worth something." Their meals arrived, Carew having ordered for them all. He stuck his fork into a piece of meat and said, "So you've been reading the propaganda-sheets. Are you planning to stay here in Anasty? Are you going to join the fight?" Bligh felt cornered and he did not know why. "It's not propaganda," he said. He found that his hunger had returned with the arrival of the food. "I have been talking to the people. There was a priest this morning, collecting gifts for the troops. People will queue for hours in the hope of some food, but the very same people give freely to the soldiers who fight for them. You ask a lot of questions," he finished, accusingly. "You have to forgive me," said Carew. "It's my profession. I'm a journalist, with the Conservative Journal." Carew's paper was one of Feorea's leading national dailies. "I ask questions out of habit. Ignore me. I don't care. Just enjoy your meal." After a while, Madeleine asked, "Have you been in Anasty for long, Divitt?" "On and off," he said. "Near to three years, I suppose. But I'm never in the city for long. The Journal can't afford many of us so I have to cover a lot of territory. You have to forgive my cynicism: I've seen too much of this stinking country. I've seen too much of the fighting for me to believe that it's achieving anything. This war's a racket, just like any other. Some of the people might be happy now, but when the fighting's over and a settlement's reached they'll start feeling the shortages, resenting the queues, mourning their dead. It's just the people who have trying to hang on and the people who want trying to get as big a share as they can. It's an old story." Bligh shook his head but remained silent, staring into his empty plate. He knew better than that: he had been a part of it, working in the transport cooperative and then, later, helping at the school where Madeleine taught. The spirit of resistance had found a resonance somewhere in his head. He had been infected. "Look around you," said Carew, leaning towards Bligh and Madeleine, his eyes flicking conspiratorially from side to side. "Go on. Isn't it nice that so many ordinary people can now eat in the Metropolitan Hotel's grand Dining Room?" Bligh had, indeed, thought it good that so many were now eating so well. "You're a fool if you think everyone's equal now. Where have all the rich gone? Do you think they've fled? Maybe some of them have, but most are still here. All they've done is dress in rags and stand in queues with the peasants. For insurance they'll all have joined the UPP or maybe one of the more benign Cooperatives. But look around you: where do they eat at night? Where do they meet up with their old friends and talk about better times to come? Nobody actually stays in the hotels other than us journalists and a few foreigners with dodgy backgrounds, but see how the dining rooms fill up in the evening." Now Bligh felt awkward again, in the finery of the Metropolitan dining room. After a decent interval he and Madeleine left Carew to his liqueurs and cynicism and headed back across the square to the Hotel Adernis. "He does not see," said Bligh, as they went up the stairs to their room. "See?" "Divitt Carew and his kind can chase the shadows all they like, but it only dulls their perception. He does not see that all his complaints only serve to show how important it is that we hang on to what has been gained." "'We'?" said Madeleine. Bligh shrugged and smiled as he closed the door behind him. Their room was lit up with the flickering explosions from the Old Town again and Bligh's thoughts had turned to the night before. Somewhere, in the walk across Settlement Square, he had come to a decision, but now there was Madeleine and there was their bed with the mattress that sagged towards the centre and he thought that, perhaps, the world could wait until morning. |
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- The Book of the World, ch.2, v.34. |
| Madeleine was not there when he returned to the hotel room for his few possessions. He did not have paper for a note so instead he left a message at reception. Leaving the hotel, he felt relief that he had been excused a messy show of emotions, but guilty nonetheless. He realised that this would not be easy for Madeleine and he felt it wrong that it should have been so easy for him. The Mannarkind Barracks were situated on the eastern fringe of Anasty. It took him nearly an hour to find them, changing trams twice and covering the remaining distance on foot. Eventually he came to a cluster of buildings which looked as if they had once been a school. Now, green and ochre Landworkers' Alliance flags flew from the windows and Bligh could hear men's voices raised from within. He passed through a passageway between two of the buildings and then paused at the edge of a paved playground. An uneven double line of troops stood along one side, chattering and laughing as two men stood in the middle shouting and gesticulating at each other. Bligh felt awkward, as if he was not meant to be there. Some of the men wore a sort of uniform: woollen jackets, LA neck scarves and stout boots being the common feature. The sight of these men made Bligh begin to realise what he had volunteered for. One of the arguing men wandered back to the ranks, muttering and shaking his head, and the other headed straight for Bligh. As he drew near, Bligh realised that he must be an officer and then it appeared that he was about to walk on past. Bligh raised the hand that was clutching his passport and recruitment sheet. "Sir," he said. "I have come to join up." The officer stopped and looked blankly at Bligh. He was stocky, with grey hair and a black moustache, and a smile which mixed good humour with boredom in equal proportions. "We are all Friends here," he said. "No 'Sirs'." He took the papers and glanced through them. For some reason Bligh wondered if the man could actually read. "Please, find somewhere to sleep. You are an International now. We train here for a time. Maybe a week, maybe longer. Then we go." He cracked that enigmatic smile again, then nodded in the Traian greeting. "I am Captain Caballier," he said. "I can only wish you well, Friend. Your luck is your own to make and use." At that he nodded sharply again and then left Bligh clutching his papers. Most of the men had ambled off into the largest of the school buildings. Bligh followed and presently he found himself standing in the entrance to an old classroom. The floor was mostly hidden by mattresses and sleeping bags and scruffy heaps of blankets and possessions. The air smelt of body odours and old food. "A new recruit, I do believe," said a thin, grey-haired man in as close to a full uniform as Bligh had seen. His accent was probably Wederian and he had large, sad eyes and a moustache that drooped around the folds of his mouth. He held out a hand for Bligh to shake and continued, "I'm Bernie Rayner, International Supporter of the Landworkers' Alliance. Have been for over a year, all told. I'm back here for a breather and to give some support to the new boys. What's the name?" Bligh shook Rayner's hand. "Bligh," he said. "I've just joined. The Captain - " he couldn't remember the man's name " - said I should find myself somewhere to sleep." "Is that a first name? A last name?" "Just Bligh." He had never known the identity of his father; all he had had was the suggestion that he might have been a stone merchant. His bastard status had been one of the reasons for his Jahvean schooling, another being that his mother would almost certainly have been unable to cope with the demands of rearing a child. She had never been the sort of person to make sacrifices. Upon leaving the Brotherhood he had immediately dropped her surname. Rayner shrugged and said, "You might as well kip in here. There's still a little space on the floor." Bligh dumped his bag under a shuttered window while Rayner went off in search of some bedding. He looked around and wondered, not for the first time, if he was doing the right thing. Madeleine would be back at the hotel by now. She would know that he had joined the LA. He wondered where she would eat tonight. The soldiers queued in the playground to have their bowls filled with a watery stew. They collected lumps of bread at the door and returned to eat in their classrooms. Bligh traded backgrounds with some of the other recruits, learning that most had already been here for several days. Gradually he found that he was beginning to put his doubts aside. It seemed that there was a number of Internationals at the Mannarkind Barracks. The LA liked to keep them together and Bligh was lucky to have been accepted immediately and not put 'on the list' until a workable number had been reached. Some of the recruits had travelled halfway across the world, only to have to wait for two months to be accepted on an International intake. Many of the men were experienced soldiers, too old for service in their own countries or, Bligh guessed, bored with peacetime soldiering. Others had come because they had heard of the Traian Civil War and had seen it as a real chance for their politics of egalitarianism and socialism to be put into practice. The rest were a mixed group. Most - like himself, he supposed - were here by chance: travelling in the region and swallowed up in the revolutionary atmosphere. He guessed that there must be some with private reasons, too: escape from an unhappy background, criminals on the run, adventurers. The Traians at the Mannarkind Barracks were either here to train the new intake or were fresh recruits themselves, a mixture of ordinary volunteers and those who did not appear to fit elsewhere. The evening was spent in a huge game of football, a minority sport in the north but a national obsession in Trace. There were at least thirty men on Bligh's side and it seemed that there was twice that number in the opposition. The game lasted until night had fallen and in all that time not a goal was scored. Bligh found his heap of blankets in the classroom. He stripped down to his underwear and settled himself, as best he could, on the hard wooden floor. He stared up at the walls, half-expecting the flickering light display from the Old Town. He thought of Madeleine, alone in their hotel bed. Around him, men began to snore and fart and just as he had decided sleep would be impossible under these conditions, he lost track of his thoughts and drifted off. |
| Training was, in the Traian way, a disorganised affair. The soldiers woke when they wanted, which was early for Bligh but as late as mid-morning for some. They washed at a communal tub of chill water and then wandered off to collect breakfast rations of bread and milk from the playground. On his first morning at the Mannarkind Barracks, Bligh joined a group of Internationals in one of the classrooms and asked the nearest man about the daily regime. The man was a brown-skinned Irdeshi with glassy brown eyes and a round face. His name was Sadiq Phelim and he had been on Bligh's football team the previous evening. Sadiq shrugged and said, "What is it that you choose to do?" Bligh felt slightly intimidated by Sadiq. It was not that he was unused to dealing with people of a different race - Jahveism was a predominantly eastern religion and many of the Brothers were Irdeshi or Knessidic - it was something particular about Sadiq himself. Bligh shrugged. "There is no regime here, Friend." Sadiq shook his head. "It is a shambolic way in which to prepare a military. Real training should be a hierarchical construction: it implies the patronising of inferiors by their betters. We do not, apparently, train in the Landworkers' Alliance. We acquire learning by a process akin to osmosis. We mix with those such as Rayner and Ivoriola so that their experience of the fighting will diffuse its way through to us. We debate politics with Caballier or Skett in the wish that we might benefit from their wisdom. Sometimes we will gather in lines in the yard and Captain Caballier will ask us to parade, but if we choose not to we simply walk away or wait until one of the Traian boys decides to argue with Caballier." Sadiq cleared his throat noisily and spat at a wall. "Training for a soldier in the Landworkers' Alliance is a subtle affair," he continued. "One does not acquire the practical skills of soldiering - for that we would require weaponry and that is in very short supply - it is more a matter of attitude. One enters the Alliance an innocent and one leaves still an innocent, but perhaps one with a vaguely improved idea of what is to come. That is the hope, at least." Bligh spent much of his first day in the company of Sadiq and Bernie Rayner, in the hope that some of their experience would rub off on him. He learnt quite quickly that - despite his air of wisdom - Sadiq had never been a soldier before, yet he still seemed better informed than many of those who had. Late in the afternoon, Bligh sought out the first instalment of his uniform: a green cotton neck-scarf which he wore inside his shirt, and a filthy woollen jacket that was too small for one of his heavy build and smelt of damp. Not looking forward to another meal of militia stew, Bligh decided to head back into the city for the evening. On the streets he felt self-conscious in his militia clothing. He sat at the back of each of the two trams, but he still felt that he was being watched. He wondered if the part-uniform would mark him out as a more tempting target for any sniper, and for the last part of his journey on foot he stuck to the sheltered parts of the pavements and alleys. One advantage, he learned, was that he no longer had to fumble for his papers whenever he came to a barricade. A nod and an "Evening, Friend," was always adequate. He hoped the Government was not aware of the military advantages of a stinking woollen jacket and a militia neck-scarf. Madeleine was sitting at the feet of the fallen monarch in Settlement Square. Her head was tipped back so that her tanned face gained full benefit of the evening sun. Her hair hung in a dark cascade behind her and Bligh felt lust taking a rapid hold of his lower body. Madeleine jumped when she opened her eyes and saw Bligh staring down at her. Then she smiled and said, as if it had not been a day and a half since she had seen him, "There's food at the Adernis, now. They've installed a simple preparation area at one end of the dining room. Are you hungry?" He realised that he was. He helped her to her feet and then kissed her savagely. "Is that you?" she said afterwards, a playful tone in her voice. "Or the drains?" He hung his rank jacket at reception. They sat and ordered a simple seafood salad from the two choices on the menu. Minutes later, Divitt Carew arrived clutching a bottle of wine. "Mind if I ... ?" He gestured at one of the two empty seats at their table. Bligh pushed the chair out with the tip of his shoe and Carew sat, placing the bottle in the middle of the bare wood table. "It's the same stuff we drank at the Metropolitan: I bought it from one of their porters. He told me that an ex-mayor of Anasty - some kind of distant relative of Queen Minna, no less, now dresses in rags and dines there. He's going to point him out to me next time I'm there." Carew poured three glasses of wine. "So you've done it then. I knew you would." In answer to two blank stares he pointed at Bligh's LA scarf and said, "Joined up and all that. I hope you do better than a boy I knew a little time ago. He went to fight with the UPP and for his first spell at the Front they sent him down to Caspe ... " Madeleine shuddered and Bligh realised that Carew must be referring to the massacre on the fields near to Caspe that had been all over the news-sheets and on the radio at about the time he had first crossed the border into Trace. "That was particularly tactless," said Madeleine. Bligh watched Carew's face pass through a series of expressions. First, he realised his mistake and then he showed a momentary pang of guilt and maybe some confusion. He settled on a look Bligh had quickly learnt to recognise: a casual sneer that seemed to suggest that no one should take him too seriously. "You have to forgive me," he said. "The boy's getting better now. At least he'll never have to fight again." The two salads arrived and Carew said to the waitress, "I'll have the same. Please. Landworkers' Alliance," he continued, turning back to Bligh. "More harmless than most, I suppose. Why them?" "I know people in the LA." Bligh glanced at Madeleine. She was swirling the wine in her glass and refusing to meet his look. "I have friends there." "Does he have your blessing?" Madeleine looked up at Carew's question, but he cut back in immediately. "No," he said. "You don't have to answer. Just ignore me. I only beg your company, so that I can feel like a social animal again. "The Internationals interest me," he continued. "The foreign press - my own paper at the forefront - depicts them as a vicious gang of cut-throat mercenaries. That, or a bunch of ineffectual retired military administrators out for a little fun, depending on which propaganda angle we're taking: dangerous uprising or the pathetic flapping of a disgruntled minority. One day, I promise myself over a bottle or two, I'm going to go out to the Front and do a tough little piece on the Internationals. I'll sell it to Broad Cast or one of the radical journals of the Left. It'll bugger my career with The Conservative Journal, but what do I care? I've got my novel to write ... we journalists always have our novel to write." Bligh had already noticed how little resemblance there was between the revolution and its depiction in the foreign press. "Why don't you?" he said. "Come to the Front with my Company: let the outside world know what's really happening. Maybe some of them will make their governments support us at last." "It doesn't work that way," said Carew. "The people who read Broad Cast or Left Analysis already have an idea about what's happening. The masses don't read all that over-intellectual drivel. And whoever heard of a government that listened? Anyway," he added, "there's all those bloody bullets and shrapnel to consider ... " Upstairs, a little while later, Madeleine was undoing the buttons of Bligh's shirt. "A double bed is cold when it's half-empty," she said. "I wore the shirt you left under the basin. It kept me warm and it had your smell." She laughed and waved at his new jacket, dumped in the farthest corner of the room. "Now I'll need scent of goat, too." He took her hand and led her across to the bed. The Old Town was quiet tonight. "Stay with me," she said, after a time. "For tonight, at least." He stayed until after midnight and then he crept out from between the sheets. Pulling his jacket across his shoulders, he leaned over and kissed Madeleine on the forehead and then covered her with his spare shirt. |
| Sadiq Phelim was missing from barracks the next morning. Bernie Rayner said he had gone out alone during the night. He had left his possessions, though, so he was not yet considered to be a deserter. "Probably sleeping it off with some little tart," said Rayner. "And where did you get to, my boy? No sooner have you joined up than you're buzzing off again. Getting the wind up already?" "No," said Bligh. "Some little tart." He felt guilty instantly, but Rayner just clicked his tongue and went off to drag some of the late risers out of their bedding. Most of the morning was spent marching around the playground, carrying sticks and spades and broom handles. During this Bligh puffed up his chest and tried to imagine what a real gun would feel like, resting against his shoulder as he marched. All of the Internationals took part in this exercise, although they muttered and grumbled about it being a waste of time. A lot of the Traians just stood and watched, or went off to play cards in the school. That brought forth further grumbles along the lines of Whose war was it anyway? The hard feelings came to a head over lunch and the answer was another mass football match, which lasted right through until the light began to fail. Sadiq returned not long after the game had been abandoned. Immediately he became the centre of attention and it was some minutes before Bligh fought his way close enough to see the thick wad of dressing on the Irdeshi's left hand. "A slight mishap," was all Sadiq would say. Later, a new tension spread through the school house. Many of the Internationals began to slip away, heading into the city or over to another building where Bligh learned there was to be a game of cards. The excitement was strongest among the younger Traians who remained in the main building. "What is it?" Bligh asked of Bernie Rayner, who was hovering in a corridor as if unsure whether to stay or go. "An ancient custom, " he said. "The Prayer of the Body, they call it. They get drunk and they dance and one or two of them will claim to be taken over by the spirit of the dead. It's even more popular here than the football. Have you never seen it before?" Up in Dona-Jez there had been similar rituals, but after his years with the Brotherhood he had acquired a deep aversion to all things religious and, even when Madeleine had participated, Bligh stayed away. He had always been uncomfortable whenever he was forced to acknowledge Madeleine's belief in what to him was a nonsensical and primitive superstition; even more so when someone told him of Hammad Fulke's interest in the arcane. Would he never escape that man's shadow? Tonight, some perverse stubbornness made Bligh decide to stay and watch. There wasn't much to see at first, except that a number of civilians - mainly female - had been invited. As the jugs of wine were passed round and the atmosphere grew more ribald, Bligh wondered if this was just going to be some kind of orgy. He drank from a cup of wine and exchanged awkward small talk with a plain girl from the city. Occasionally, she would tilt towards him and chuckle intimately. It sounded as if she was trying to clear her throat. They were standing at the back of the room, close to a door, and Bligh frequently thought about slipping away. The crowd was focusing its attention on an old woman who sat next to a fire laid on the stone floor of the classroom. He looked at the door, but he could not go yet. Suddenly, he felt a pulse of excitement surge through the gathering and he saw that one of the young recruits was on his knees before the fire, his hands flat on the floor. He was moaning and the crowd began to mimic him, the sound swelling, heaving. Soon the room was bursting with noise. "Mama, mama, mama!" cried the boy, as another, older, soldier fell in beside him. "Mama, mama, mama!" they cried together, and then their chant was taken up by others in the room and Bligh felt the sound as a wave of pressure battering against his skull. He looked around the room at the frantic faces, the pressing bodies. The girl from the city was leaning on his shoulder now, one hand squeezing at his arm in time with the chanting crowd. Bligh could not understand what was happening. He felt drawn towards it, as he would probably feel drawn to any alien spectacle, but at the same time something inside made him hold back. This ritual, more than anything else, reminded him that Trace was a foreign country and Bligh an outsider. Just then, he spotted Sadiq on the far side of the room. The Irdeshi's eyes were streaming and his hands - bandaged and unbandaged - were pressed to either side of his head. Bligh knew that he should go now. No matter how intense the attraction, he knew he could never be a part of a ceremony such as this. After a moment or two to focus his effort, he pushed himself away from the wall. Freeing himself from the girl's tight clutch, he struggled towards the exit. Before the door could swing shut behind him, Sadiq was pushing his way out too, gasping as if he had just come up from under water. In an awkward, mutual silence they headed away from the classroom, pausing only when they had emerged into the night air and the noises of the Prayer of the Body were lost to the night. Bligh vowed never to allow himself to be put in that position again. "What happened?" he asked, breaking their long silence. Sadiq looked abashed. "I was disenchanted with the lack of weapons training," he said. "And so I took it upon myself to undertake some self-education." It took a few seconds for Bligh to realise that Sadiq was telling him the reason for his absence during the day and not explaining what had just taken place. Vaguely relieved, he decided not to pursue the matter. "Last night," continued Sadiq, " I went to a part of the Old Town to where I knew there to be a Section of the LA staffing a barricade. I thought they might let me hold a gun so that I might learn how it felt. It just happened that I chose the night of an assault on an Army stronghold in the Parliament buildings." He shrugged. "I held a gun, yes. I held a stick grenade, too. You remove the safety pin as you approach your target and then, as you are about to throw you remove the second pin. I did as I was told but I did not throw the bomb fast enough, or maybe it was faulty as the healer suggested. I am now short of the middle two fingers of one hand and a great deal wiser in the ways of modern warfare." They parted at the school gates and Bligh headed for the first of the two trams that would take him to Madeleine. She was eating with an old couple in the hotel dining room when he arrived. As soon as she saw him, she made her excuses and then hurried across into his embrace. Gunfire was coming from the Old Town again, and Bligh's mind kept reminding him of Sadiq's bandages as he and Madeleine struggled out of their clothes and tumbled onto the bed. He was like some kind of wild animal - they both were. Suddenly, it was as if they had been parted for a year, not merely a day. With no preliminaries he was inside her, pressing with all of his strength. Their mouths mashed together, teeth drawing blood from each other's lips and gums and almost instantly it was done and Bligh was slumped over his lover, wondering what kind of powerful primitive fear had taken him over for those few minutes since he had met Madeleine's eyes across the hotel dining room. "I ... " he started, but Madeleine kissed him softly on the lips to quiet him, and then kissed him on the shoulders and across the narrow band of hair on his chest. They lay for a time with Madeleine's head resting on Bligh's rib cage, and then she spoke. "I can't stay here for much longer. I'm in limbo. You're a soldier and yet you're not and I just wait here and feel like a displaced spirit. I have work in Dona-Jez, my family ... it gives me something." "The children do not go to school any more. There is a war going on." Bligh was angry, but at the same time he felt a guilty sense of relief. "I am sorry," he added hurriedly. "I understand, I think. But I wish you would stay here in Anasty. Just for a little longer." After another interval, she said, "A little while, Bligh. I wish we could be together always. I love you." He knew she blamed him for joining up. It had spoilt everything. "I have to go soon," he said. "To barracks. I will be back tomorrow." Too late for the trams, Bligh struck out on foot and it was well after midnight before he was within sight of the Mannarkind Barracks. Lanterns were burning in the windows and he wondered if the Prayer of the Body was still taking place. He hoped intensely that it was not. He did not feel that he could face that over-wrought atmosphere again, so soon. At the door to the classroom where he hoped he would sleep he bumped into one of the Traian recruits called Slowly Skett. Slowly was too old to fight, but no one would ever tell him. He had been a political prisoner in Caspe for over ten years before the revolutionary militias had taken the town and set him free. He had volunteered to fight immediately, and now he was looked upon as a father figure by a lot of the local youths who had been recruited alongside him. "What's happening, Slowly?" The classroom was full of activity: soldiers sorting through untidy heaps of uniform, bickering as they packed their bags. "Grab some kit," said Slowly cheerfully. "We're heading up the Line at dawn." Bligh felt a sudden lump in his throat and then he realised why everyone was bustling about and fighting over trivialities. Anything to divert your thoughts. His mind skipped through what news he had picked up in recent days but he could think of no single battle on the scale of Caspe at the start of the year. That did not mean that another large advance was not planned, though. "Where?" hissed Bligh, but there was no more information. He spent some time completing his uniform with a pair of flimsy-looking boots, a back-bag, a cap and a thick woollen muffler. He argued with a Traian whose name he could not recall. The leather belt had been his - he had spotted it first - but he had to settle for a canvas one when he was distracted by a water bottle on a nearby heap. Later he lay, unable to sleep, until the sky started to lighten and then he hurried out to the office, hoping that the telephone would be available. It was, but a blank buzz indicated that there was no line to the Hotel Adernis. It had become quite light outside and there was clearly no time to go there in person. He settled for leaving a note with Captain Caballier, who was to remain at the barracks, but there was little chance that it would ever find its way to Madeleine. He hoped she would realise what had happened. They gathered in the street outside, but it was too early for a flag-waving crowd to see them off. They marched, each to their own rhythm, for nearly an hour, some expressing their nerves in chatter and bad jokes, most remaining grimly silent. An old livestock train was waiting at the station and they filed on in the first semblance of order Bligh had noticed in his Company. After an interminable wait, the train lurched into motion. Bligh looked around at his fellow soldiers. He wondered how anyone could ever think that such a rabble could win a war against a trained, well-equipped Army. The carriage smelt of animals and so the doors had been left partly open. Bligh watched the houses of Anasty rumbling slowly by, his mood sinking lower and lower. This time tomorrow, he wondered, how many of us will be alive? |
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- The Book of the World, ch.18, v.78. |
| The night was broken by the scuttling of mysterious creatures across the barn floor. Rats, Bligh presumed. Once, something cool and smooth brushed past his cheek and it was some time before he could settle again. It might just have been a dream, he decided. He had not been aware of the smell of the place after the exertions of the day. Now, however, as light began to probe the broken roof, he found it overwhelming. Old food, decay, excrement, odours that reminded him of the week he had spent working in refuse transport up in the Feorean port of Eseri City. As the light grew stronger he was able to look around the interior of the barn and then he realised why the smell was so strong. What he had taken for straw and wood chippings the previous night was a thick litter of ancient breadcrusts, dried excrement, torn and soiled news-sheets, bones of dubious origins, dead rats, jagged food cans. Feeling sick, he hurried out into the weak morning sunlight. Only later did he discover that some creature of the night had chewed its way through the pocket of his woollen coat in order to reach a scrap of food he had saved from the evening's meal. As promised, Rayner spent some time with Bligh, Sadiq and Panniker, showing them how to strip their rifles and clean them with a rag soaked in gun oil or, more likely to be available, olive oil. "Most of the cartridges are refills," he said. "They'd jam the best of rifles, let alone the muck we have to use. Oil the cartridges as you load them and keep a clip of your best for when your life depends on your gun not jamming. When you get good you might be able to fire off a clip of ten in half a minute, but I wouldn't try it. The poor thing gets hot, the bolt expands and then even your best cartridges will stick." Bligh followed the instructions closely, until he felt that he was able to load and clean his rifle with a reasonable proficiency. He doubted whether he would be able to fire it anywhere near a target, but the shortage of ammunition ruled out any chance of practice. They marched all day, passing through a hellish, wrecked landscape. At one point, they were ordered to stand aside to let by a column returning from the Front. These men were filthy, their faces grey, the look in their eyes one of deathly fatigue. It seemed that every man was limping or bandaged, some with only one leg, others missing a hand or an arm, yet still they marched. At the back, those unable to walk were piled into wagons, being hauled by skeletal horses. Bligh watched it all and then, for some time afterwards, was unable to speak, was horrified when he realised his own steps had adopted that same funereal rhythm. They came to rest in a small village called Hol, only five miles from the Front. The settlement consisted of a wretched little group of mud and stone houses, huddled around a church with no roof or doors. That evening Bligh investigated the church more closely, finding its interior an impenetrable heap of rubble and debris. The most important feature of the village was the main road. The job of Bligh's Company was to receive and store supplies in the proper order and make daily deliveries to the Line. They were also, Rayner told them, standing by in reserve, should replacements be required in the trenches. The next two days were spent emptying incoming motor wagons and loading up the horse-drawn carts which would go on to the Front. The incoming drivers were a fertile source of rumour and gossip: the people's militias had taken towns Bligh had never heard of, the Queen was abdicating or pregnant or dead, Feorea or Wederia were finally coming to the support of the revolution or the Government. The reliability of such stories was always dubious, but they were the only news that reached the 34th Company of the LA so they spread rapidly. The returning motor wagons were loaded with little but mail from the soldiers. On the second day, Bligh finally found a spare moment in which to write two identical letters to Madeleine. One he addressed to the Hotel Adernis in Anasty. The second, after much hesitation, he addressed care of Madeleine's parents; they disliked him, he knew, but he did not think they would open her mail if she was still away. The next morning Rayner's Guard was allocated a supply run to one of the nearer trench systems. It took them an hour to sort out the supplies and then they set out. The first few miles were relatively easy, most of the supplies having been loaded on a horse-drawn wagon. They followed the road out of Hol, skirting the increasingly frequent shell-holes. They passed between fields where the summer's crops lay unharvested, through craggy woodland devastated by heavy bombardment some time ago, the craters grown over, the broken and fallen trees sprouting afresh. They met a runner from the 12th Company of the UPP just below the crest of a hill and Rayner tied the horse to a stake in the ground. "We're on foot now, my loveys," he said, in an artificially jolly tone. "Load up." Bligh slung the mail-bag over his back and then heaved a water can onto his shoulder. Beyond the crest of the hill the road lost itself in a broken grey prairie which spread as far as he could see. This was the start of the Great Plain, once a vast area of grassland spanning central Trace from north to south, now a huge wasteland which divided the country, scene of some of the worst battles of the Civil War. Progress over the rocky ground was slow and they had to stop several times to catch their breath. Some of the Internationals might be experienced soldiers, Bligh noted, but their age weighed against them for work like this. Ahead, the UPP runner was suddenly swallowed by the ground. When Bligh reached that point he found that they had come to a trench. One by one the Guard lowered themselves into it, recovered their loads and continued on their way. Now, they were not so much hampered by rubble and debris as by several inches of sticky yellow mud. The trench led onto another and here they came across the 12th UPP. They looked exhausted, filthy, utterly dejected. As the Guard dumped their loads and slumped thankfully against the sandbagged walls, Rayner led Bligh through to the entrance of a cramped bunker, a large shell-hole covered over with boards and mud. "Bernie Rayner, 34th LA, Friend." Rayner nodded his head as a man emerged into the trench. "Supplies and mail." At this Bligh held out his mail bag. "Merc Domenech," said the man, accepting the bag. He was a broad man, with long curls of shiny black hair and a thin moustache. His eyes met Bligh's and held them for too long. "Any orders?" Bligh felt compelled to answer, but was beaten by Rayner's "None." "My report," said Domenech, handing over a dirty envelope. He turned and retreated into his bunker, his eyes at last leaving Bligh's face. "You okay?" said Rayner. "Has the smell got to you? Or is it wind up?" Bligh had noticed the smell of the trenches immediately: it was as if the air itself was rotting. But it was more than that. He felt his head pounding, his senses blurring. He felt hot and sick. And then he was sitting in the mud, looking blearily up at Rayner's looming features. His mouth was burning with the vomit of an empty stomach. He smiled uncertainly and forced himself back to his feet. "Okay now," he murmured. "Don't know what it was." But whenever he closed his eyes he saw the laughing face of Merc Domenech. He wondered what was happening, what spell the man had cast. He drank from his water bottle and rubbed his face on the sleeve of his jacket. The rancid smell of wool made him think of Madeleine's reaction to his new uniform and for a moment he was dizzy again. He shook his head in an effort to clear it. They made their way at a leisurely pace back through the trenches and then out into the open, and it was only as they returned along the shell-scarred road that Bligh realised they had spent most of a day at the Front without hearing a single gunshot. |
| Bligh was up for most of the night with diarrhoea and vomiting. Some of the others teased him about getting the wind up, but they stopped after a while when they realised he was genuinely ill. When he managed to sleep, he dreamt of the foul-smelling trenches, of bodies torn to bloody tatters, of Merc Domenech's terrifying laughter echoing across a deserted battlefield. Eventually, he learnt to feel grateful that the sickness kept him awake and free off the awful dreams for so much of the night. He missed supplies duty for two days, spending what time he could in sorting mail and doing odd jobs to make the accommodation a little more bearable. All the time, he tried to convince himself that it was only a bug. He swept the floors and shovelled fresh earth over the latrines to suppress the smell and the flies. He sat outside whenever the failing autumn weather allowed, listening to crakes snuffling from the ditches and watching the mountain swallows wheeling high in the sky. Rayner told him he would have to see it out: he was not ill enough to be sent back. "Everyone gets ill out here," he was told. "It's part of the job description." Next day they marched eight miles north to where the Line snaked down from the hills to begin its meander across the Great Plain. Bligh walked alongside Slowly, neither of them carrying more than a rifle and a back-bag. It was when Bligh relieved the old man of his bag that he realised he was feeling better. They met a Manufactories Cooperative runner at midday, but had to wait until dusk before they could proceed. As the light dropped, rifle fire started up ahead. Occasionally a machine gun tapped away in the distance and the metal crash of trench mortars would add to the din. "Twilights," said Aqbar Emmett, marching with Bligh and Slowly. "It's the best time to launch an attack, so everyone is on duty for an hour at dusk and dawn. And so - " he grinned " - it becomes the most foolish time to launch an attack because everyone is scared and on edge and they fire at shadows and animal noises." Aqbar had seen action with the Tet'qeshi marines, before deserting from his ship in Anasty to join the revolution. As they came around an outcrop of limestone, the plain was suddenly spread out before them. Occasional flickers of light showed where mortars and light artillery were being fired and as they descended onto the field of muddy debris the sounds of fighting rose up around them: gunshots and men's cries and the irregular clatter of trench mortars and grenades. "The ground that I walk upon, The air that I breathe," said Slowly softly. It was an incantation to two of the Lords Elemental: Lord of Stone, Lord of Air. The Traians used these phrases as an automatic response to any adversity, adapting them to circumstance and personal need. There were others for the Lord of Water, the Lord of Fire, Lord of Flux and Lord of the Soul, enough to cover most situations. Bligh felt uncomfortable, as he always did in the presence of religious people, but he said nothing. They covered the remaining distance bent double, nearly a hundred men in single file, struggling in the darkness to keep sight of the man ahead. The shooting had almost come to a stop by the time they dropped into a reserve trench. One Section of Internationals remained here but the other two worked their way along a communications trench which was barely waist-deep until they were in the front line of the defences. At a junction, they split again. The trench here was deep enough to allow even Bligh to stand without stooping too much. There was a dug-out watchpost just by the junction and Bligh waited as the MC troops gratefully gave up their positions to the relieving LAs. A second Guard of LAs took over the main body of the trench and Rayner led his Guard of ten down to the farthest end. "Right," said Rayner quietly, squatting part of the way up a sloping parapet of sandbags and rubble. "We keep our voices and our heads down. We have a row of wire, maybe sixty yards, and then another row of wire before we hit the enemy. Poke your head up in daylight and you're giving them target practice. Make a noise at night and there might just be a patrol a few yards away from you. We're holding ground here and I haven't heard any word that we might be doing any more than that. Questions?" They deposited their kit and took up positions: three in the post, three back in the trench and four trying to sleep on uneven mud shelves cut into the trench wall. Bligh was too big for his shelf and he spent some time digging it deeper with a trench trowel he found lying in the mud. Afterwards he lay there, breathing the foul air as shallowly as he could. He was at the Front and he did not know what he should be feeling. Some of the men were nervous and excitable, others gloomy and resigned. He glanced across and saw that Sadiq was curled up on a mud shelf, fast asleep. It was an example he thought he should follow. Rayner shook him awake some time later. It was still dark and a steady drizzle was falling, making the sloppy trench bottom treacherous and noisy when you tried to walk. As soon as he was standing, another soldier slipped onto his shelf. He followed the others up to the watchpost and waited for Sadiq and Panniker to complete their number. Rayner commenced by passing around a clay bottle of some foul-tasting sweet wine that Bligh vowed he would never touch again. Young Panniker drank long and hard and eventually Sadiq snatched the bottle from him with an ill-tempered grumble of Irdeshi. "Enough," hissed Rayner. He allocated four of the older Internationals to the watchpost and then led Sadiq, Panniker and Bligh to the mouth of the trench and told them he was taking them out on patrol. "The sooner you've had a taste of fear, the better," he said. They were out and through a gap in the wire before Bligh could really think about what was happening. The ground was treacherous, a sticky coating of mud over a solid stony base. The rain soaked through his clothing in minutes and his hands soon became so cold that he doubted he would be able to fire his gun if the need arose. Rayner had mentioned fear, but it felt unreal to Bligh. He just wanted this patrol to be over so that he could cower under some sort of shelter and dry himself out. He searched the darkness as best he could, but the moon was obscured by clouds and he could barely see ten yards ahead. Every few minutes Rayner made them stop and listen but at no time did they hear the sloshing progress of an enemy patrol. At one point, Rayner halted them. He stooped to gather something from the mud, wiped it on his tunic and then held it out for them all to see. Bligh looked, puzzled, at the misshapen grey lump. Then he saw that it was part of a human skull. He swallowed and looked away. He understood. They moved on, quietly. Edging through the night, it took them over two hours to cover a half mile sweep back to the southernmost post of the 34th LA. At the end of it all Bligh and the others were exhausted but Rayner allowed them no break. He marched them back along the trenches, through mud that now came up to their knees, until they collapsed untidily back in their own section of the Line. Bligh must have dozed leaning against a parapet, because when he opened his eyes again the sky had turned grey and everyone was being mustered for Twilights. He stood with his rifle at a loophole for the next hour, but all the gunfire seemed to be coming from the distance. Then, just as Rayner was about to stand them down, there was a deep drone overhead and Bligh watched in appalled fascination as a massive black shell soared ponderously overhead, stalled at the height of its trajectory and tumbled nose over tail until his view of it was blocked by the parados behind. There was no explosion and as Bligh wondered what had happened two more heavy shells hummed over the trench and dropped behind the lines. This time they exploded with heavy booms that shook the ground. Bligh exchanged a nervous glance with Panniker and Aqbar, and then everyone was diving for cover at the bottom of the trenches as a series of smaller, faster shells blasted into the plain all around. Bligh had crammed himself into a sleeping shelf, his arms wrapped around his head. In his mind he was reciting the poems of Emeryck Alther, feeling irrationally that death would be a nobler thing with such lines at the forefront of his thoughts. The barrage lasted for twenty minutes and when Bligh emerged he found that one entire section of the trench had taken a direct hit. He looked at Rayner and then looked away. The man's face was pale with rage. Bligh started to scoop the soil away with his bare hands, flinging handfuls out over the parapet into no-man's land. Others joined him with trench trowels and buckets. After a short time, his hands sore and torn from the digging, Bligh felt a movement in the soil and he jumped back in fear. Then he saw a hand and he was digging again, calling frantically for assistance, forgetting the rule of silence in the trenches. Within minutes a man scrambled free, coughing and spitting mud, rubbing the dirt from his eyes. It was Sadiq Phelim, apparently unhurt, an insane, terrified grin on his face. They dug through the day, finding the mangled body-parts of two young Traians. The twenty yard stretch was cleared by nightfall, although the sides would be unstable until enough sandbags could be filled and lodged into place to retain the loose mud. Bligh, Rayner and a couple of others could not rest even then. All day the remains of the two dead Traians had occupied the sleeping shelves. They were covered with sheets, but Bligh had never escaped the feeling that they were watching his every move. Now that darkness had returned they were able to climb up behind the trench and scoop out a pair of shallow graves. Shovelling mud and stones over the bodies, Bligh eventually paused for a drink. "Right," said Rayner, straightening and stretching. "Time for patrol duty." |
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| Upon being relieved, they marched out under cover of the night and made camp in an old chalk quarry about a mile behind the Line. One Section from the 34th was taken away the next day, to act as reserve for a depleted company of the UPP. Bligh, with the remainder of the Company, found himself on supplies duty at Hol. Within a day they were moved again, into reserve to the 16th up where the Ephedreal Hills started to rise above the Comeran zone of the Great Plain. Here, a little extra altitude gave them all a foretaste of the winter to come. The summer birds - the mountain swallows, the flocks of finches, the ghostly rattling nightjars - had gone now, and what little vegetation remained was wilting and drying up, its life-force retreating into the dormancy of seeds and roots for the months ahead. The days were wet and grey, much as they had been down on the plain, but the nights marked a sharp drop in temperatures. Old black-iron braziers came into use in the trenches and the soldiers were greatly cheered when one of the first supply runs brought them extra clothing and a blanket for every man. The morning after their arrival they sat around the braziers, cleaning their guns and talking. Bligh was being meticulous with his rusty old rifle, as Rayner had promised that he could have some target practice later in the day. It would be the first time he had fired it. "It is time we have some time away," said Sandy Brigg, in his imprecise Traian. Brigg was an old soldier from Wederia. He had fought in the Pharic Campaign over twenty years ago and this had been his last chance for a fling before hanging up his uniform, he had told Bligh. He wondered why Brigg did not speak in his native tongue - he knew Bligh had been schooled in Wederia. "Some leave, do you mean?" said Bligh. "Yes. Leave. A soldier needs some leave. He cannot be moved all over for all time." Bligh, too, had been wondering how long they would be moved from one place to another. Would they be treated in this way until the war was over? It was as if there was a vast intelligence behind it all, a creator of strategy that slotted Companies in here, away from there, all to some grand plan. But Bligh knew that in reality there was nothing so precise involved. He had no doubt that some Companies were being shunted from one end of the war to the other, whilst others sat idle waiting for orders, with gaps going uncovered in the Line for days on end. He wondered if this cynicism was something new for him, or if he had always taken the jaundiced view. He wanted to know what was happening with the war as a whole, but they rarely received more than gossip and old news-sheets whenever there was a supplies delivery. The stories were both fragmentary and contradictory. You could read or hear of a single minor battle down by Seleterra or Haen in different versions over and over from the suppliers or the news-sheets. But what of Caspe or Anasty, or any of the vast sections of the Line that were never mentioned? A paranoid mind could plug the gaps with all sorts of gloomy scenarios: the revolution was crumbling, the loyalist Army was making huge advances with the help of supplies and even manpower from Feorea or elsewhere. Bligh knew that it was far more likely that these numerous tracts of battleground merely went unmentioned because, as on the Comeran Plain, there was little to report. There were occasional, poorly directed artillery barrages, true enough, and a few skirmishes between rival patrols, but in Bligh's experience there was little of significance taking place. Most of a soldier's time seemed to be occupied by standing in the cold and wet on look-out duty, waiting behind the lines for orders, and getting supplies to everyone while they waited. He wondered, at times like this, if the war would ever end. It had lasted for over three years, now, and accounted for maybe four million lives. Before joining up, he had seen how it could almost become a way of life for the civilian populace - perhaps it could also become the norm for the military? He had spoken with the old troops like Sandy Brigg and they all said the stalemate could only be broken by a concerted effort. They were impatient for action, he realised: they had joined up to fight, not sit around waiting. This was not the revolutionary spirit which had inspired Bligh. It was not the spirit that had taken the people onto the streets in all the cities of Trace, protesting about the Army's moves to force the monarchy into conceding yet more power. For days, back then at the start of it all, the country had seized up in a general strike. Finally the Army had decided to reimpose order and the blood had started to flow. The Monarchy and the Church had swallowed their pride and sided with the Army, accepting that their powers would be reduced but sensing that they would be reduced even further if war broke out. But for once the people had not been beaten back down into submission. They had rallied under the banners of their Cooperatives and Syndicates and the newly formed Unification Party of the People. Now, the west of the vast country was a loyalist stronghold while the east had been liberated - all divided by a bloody ribbon of battlefields. "Why do you fight?" asked Brigg, suddenly. Bligh thought for a moment. "For the people," he said, wondering how to do justice to the overwhelming compulsion he felt. "If the Army stay in power, the people will suffer greatly. You?" "The money is no good," said Brigg. "But I have a skill - it is needed. It is my living." |
| Finally, relief came and as the angry dawn sky began to lighten the 34th LAs marched away from the Front. At one point, young Erin Panniker hurried forward to march in step with Captain Elliam. "Is it true?" he demanded. "We're going on leave?" Immediately the attention of those who could eavesdrop was engaged. Elliam glanced up and said, "I can't say. I believe so, but we will have to find out when we arrive at Comeras." Comeras was a medium-sized town about fifteen miles behind the Line. It had been free for over a year now. Elliam may have been unwilling to commit himself, but going to Comeras could only mean that they were to get some leave. Soon a song broke out amongst the dozen Traians who were still with the Company. The words were about a farmer's daughter and what she sold at market and after a few repetitions most of the Internationals were able to join in with the chorus. The road was icy in places and first Panniker and then some others started to skid along it like children on their way to school. The march was fairly easy, but it was past midday before the weary ranks of the 34th LAs came within sight of the first buildings of Comeras. Bligh felt a tiredness that penetrated every joint of his body. Each step was a tremendous effort, each breath. Yet simultaneously he felt invigorated: there was something humming inside his head, an energy that was alien to him. Again, he wondered what this war was doing to him. The very workings of his mind seemed to be subtly changing. The town of Comeras had paid heavily for its freedom. Entire streets had been reduced to rubble and Bligh did not think there was a single place one could stand without being in clear sight of a destroyed building. Glass in a window was a rare sight; an intact, tiled roof almost as infrequent. It was clear which buildings were still in use as they had been patched up with any materials that came to hand: boards, rubble from other buildings, sheets of corrugated tin, tarpaulins, even animal skins in what looked eerily like some kind of return to a barbarism which had died out 5000 years before. At one point Bligh spotted a wall with an iron loop attached at just above a man's head height. The wall was scarred by bullet holes and stained heavily with blood. Bligh wondered if the executions still took place. He had heard stories of deserting conscripts from the Army crossing into the hands of the revolution. Initially they had been welcomed until stories arose of a Section comprising entirely of these deserters, slipping along behind the Line under cover of the night or the heavy hill fogs and doing the work of the Queen. Nowadays deserters were not so eagerly accepted. It was not uncommon for them to be shot immediately, just to be safe. The Company split up before Captain Elliam could check his orders, thus ensuring themselves at least a night of freedom. The streets were busy at this time of day, soldiers outnumbering locals by about two to one. There was an atmosphere about the town which was quick to catch: an excitement, an eagerness. It revitalised Bligh and made him look at the place with new, less critical eyes. He started to head off with Rayner and some of the others, but then he noticed Sadiq Phelim standing alone. He broke away from the group and went over to him. "Come on," he said. "Lets soak away some of this grime." Sadiq smiled instantly and together they followed the tracks of most of the 34th, along a main street and into a dark-stoned building that bore a sign saying 'Public Bathing'. In a room lined with benches and wall hooks, Bligh and Sadiq removed their clothes. As Bligh parted himself from each of the layers that had been a part of him since he had left Anasty, he felt as if he was removing his own skin. Night after night he had fantasised about this moment: the cleansing, the chance to remove those infernal burrowing lice that had moved in before he had even left the troop train in Amere. Standing naked, he was again aware of his own lumbering size and the paleness of his northern skin. The proximity of Sadiq only served to emphasise the latter. They put their uniforms into laundry bags and followed a line of naked men out along a corridor and into the bath hall. The stench was difficult to bear at first. There was the familiar, trenchly smell of decay and human body odour, but on top of all this there was a pungent reek of disinfectant and the gagging humidity of the air. They found a bath at the far end that was only occupied by two others and, before he allowed himself to look too closely at the milky grey of the water, Bligh plunged in. The heat and the disinfectant combined to make him sting all over. It felt as if yet another layer of his skin was being soaked off. Taking a deep breath, he submerged himself for as long as his lungs would allow. With another breath he repeated the action, hoping that any lice with the enterprise to hide on his head would be killed by the disinfectant. "Tell me, Sadiq," he said, as they were joined in the bath by another three men, "how did you end up in the LA?" "It just happened. Like you, I have travelled a lot. The logical conclusion of my journeys seemed to be Trace and so I came." "And found a war." "Oh I knew there was a war," said Sadiq. "But that was not my doing." Bligh borrowed a razor and soap from one of their bath-sharers and proceeded to slice through the growth of beard he had accumulated at the Front. "You had to have a reason to stay here, though," he said. "And one to fight." Sadiq hesitated. "You will not like it," he said, "because I have noticed how you avoid matters of spiritual significance." "Go on." "I had a teacher, back in Ir'hep. Last time I was at home he explained that a recent reading of the Book of the World had led him to believe that we are in the Days of the Awakening. Bligh, he told me that the Lords Elemental will be reincarnated within my lifetime. When I heard of the war in Trace I thought of the passages in the Book that set out the preconditions for the Lords' return: The Earth shall be torn from the Heavens ... Man will reach the brink of destruction and he will hear the word of the Lords and then They will come to stand amongst his kind ... and out of the mayhem the Lords will arise - " "Okay," said Bligh harshly. His head was hurting from Sadiq's words: he resented the mental grip they seemed to impose. He thought of the relentless evensongs where Brother Benjahmine or Brother Joel would make him recite long sections of the Jahvean Bible until the sentences lost all meaning and existed only as random collections of sound. On the few occasions his mother had visited him at the school, the Brothers had made him recite the Bible to her to show that his education was thorough. She had looked at him sadly, as if she had wanted more, as if she would have given all she could to him if only he had given her something of himself to begin with. All he had given her was a jumble of words from the Bible. He looked at Sadiq and all he felt was the anger he had felt in his last years with the Brotherhood. He had already rejected one faith in his short life, he had no need of its main rival to be thrust upon him like this. He dried himself on an old sheet and then dressed in clothes that had been fumigated and scrubbed whilst he had bathed. A wash and a shave should have effected a magical transformation on him, after the long days and nights at the Front. Instead, it felt improper to be clean and in clothes which smelt strange, undergarments that itched abominably. He reached the street before Sadiq and decided not to wait. He needed to clear his head; he needed some way of releasing the pressures that had been building for so long. He had his back pay in his pocket so he decided to look for a hotel. A night in comfort could do a lot for an injured soul, he believed. The alternative would be a night on the floor of a warehouse Rayner had pointed out as their sleeping quarters for the night. He had been wandering for only a few minutes when he spotted a familiar figure. He hesitated, then started to run, regardless of the staring faces all around. He came to a corner, but she was lost in the crowd around a line of street barrows selling clothing and a little food. He ran for a short distance, past the congestion, and then he saw her again. It was ... it was Madeleine. He stopped and struggled for breath. He could not believe that it was her. How could she know to be here in Comeras? He could not believe his senses even when she had coiled her arms around his neck and was kissing him wildly. "How did you find me?" he gasped, after a time. "Your letter. It arrived at the Adernis just as I was about to leave. The manager showed me a map of where it had come from and Comeras was the nearest town. I came out on an awful, crowded train three days ago from Dona-Jez." "What about your teaching?" "They hadn't missed me while I was in Anasty. They don't miss me now. Bligh, I missed you ... I love you." Bligh held her tight again. He would not let himself think for long of the dangers she had put herself through, just for the chance that she would find him. The journey ... staying in a wild, ruined town like Comeras, so close to the Front. He found that there were tears on his face and he wiped them away with a sleeve before releasing Madeleine from his hug. "My hotel isn't far," she said quietly. She led him by the hand, along a busy street, across a square and part of the way down another street to a small, battered guest-house. Bligh was bounding with energy, taking the steps three at a time, laughing as Madeleine hurried up after him. He was halfway up another flight of stairs when Madeleine ran, giggling, down a corridor, forcing him to turn back and chase after her. As he reached the landing again, a door at the far end closed. He ran along and barged in. Madeleine was already stripped to the waist. They kissed and Bligh struggled clumsily out of his clothes. Naked, they fell together onto the bed and in an instant Bligh was lying on top of Madeleine, his face buried in the cavity between her neck and shoulder, his weight crushing her into the mattress. Fast asleep. |
| He was a mountain. He was massive, from the sheer spread-about bulk of his foothills to the jagged, ice-capped heights of his summit. Ravens and stone cats prowled his rocky surfaces high up; countless birds and animals took over where the forest stretched its woody fingers up his flanks. He felt the immense power, the ability to resist all that could be thrown against him, to pass through all trauma unchanged. He tensed his awesome body and suddenly his view was narrowing, plunging and he was a boulder, falling through the air. He could see the ground approaching and there was nothing he could do to stop. Distant grey turned to a rough, textured surface scattered with the specked green of shrubs and stunted trees ... he could see each stone now, each leaf on the plants ... he was approaching so fast - He sat upright in bed and someone was murmuring to him, pulling him back down. His body bore a sheen of cold sweat, his breathing was rapid, his thoughts a messy jumble. He turned to the person, to Madeleine, and buried his face in her chest. He had dreamt this dream before, he realised, although even now the terrible feeling of being something he was not - having it forced upon him - was disappearing from his memory, as his dreams nearly always did. Now, he just felt confused. Something was happening to him, something he was not equipped to understand, yet all he could do was lie alone with the fear, and with Madeleine. Comeras seemed different by morning, although Bligh conceded to himself that it could simply be that he felt less oppressed than on the previous day. There were fewer soldiers on the streets and more of the buildings seemed to be ... if not intact, then at least occupied and in use. It was as if the town was miraculously regenerating itself. A busy market had started up along one main street. People sold crops scavenged from the abandoned fields, household goods and clothing which had probably been looted, but at least there was activity, signs of optimism. "It's like we were when we were first liberated in Dona-Jez," said Madeleine. "The people of Comeras are survivors." Bligh sensed his feelings for the revolution stirring for the first time in days. He saw that there was still something worth defending. He remembered what Sandy Brigg had said about a soldier's need for leave and now he felt that he understood it a little better. The queues for food were even longer in Comeras than they had been in Anasty. "It fills the day," Madeleine said with a shrug. "The waiting." Bligh took out a crust of oat bread from his coat and broke it in two. He had some cheese somewhere, too, he thought, searching his pockets. Then he noticed the look on Madeleine's face and stopped. "It's all right," he said. "I intended to share it with you." "That was my worry." She pushed the bread back into Bligh's coat pocket. "Keep it for when you might need it." Then, with a mischievous look in her eye, she said, "I do have some biscuits we could eat." "Hmm? Do you have them here? Here?" He had caught hold of her and was running his hands over the pockets of her coat, lingering for longer in the folds of her skirt. "Here?" She pulled away, shaking her head. "No," she said. "I'm afraid they're back in my room ... " |
| Bligh checked at the warehouse later in the afternoon, having left Madeleine asleep on her bed. "And where have you been, with a smile from ear to ear?" Rayner was sitting in the wide doorway, chewing some sugar gum and reading through a letter he had just written. His handwriting flowed elegantly across the page, a clear indication of his education. "Oh, you know," said Bligh, vaguely. "Yes I do know. You were seen giving the little tart a body search not four hours ago - don't try and deny it, lovey, I have my sources. Listen to me: you'd better go right back and say your goodbyes as we're moving out at seven. And don't take your time about it, either." Madeleine was upset that he should be returning to action so quickly. This time Bligh was not spared the goodbyes, and he endured her tears for as long as he could manage. Now, he marched alongside Panniker and Aqbar. He thought he should say something to Sadiq before long. He should apologise for abandoning him at the baths. But not now. He was not ready for that now. "We're going right to the Front again," said Panniker. The young Feorean was full of enthusiasm, after leave in Comeras. "We've been given an entire sector - we could be there until it's all over if we are careful." "An entire sector and we're not even a full Company," said Aqbar gloomily. "Correct me if things are not truly as desperate as they appear." The thought had not occurred to Bligh, but it was true: one entire Section of the 34th had been moved into reserve for another Company back on the Comeran Plain and so now they were down to a little over sixty men, instead of the full hundred. "Things are being okay," said Sandy Brigg, moving up to join them. "We have Sadiq, do we not? As Bligh says: nothing kills Sadiq. Me, I would become his closest friend." The march took more than three hours, and it was dark before there was any indication that they were near to their destination. The last half of the walk was an uphill slog and, boosted by the chill night air, Bligh felt the benefits of leave escaping him already. It was a clear night and the moon lit their way. They were on a track that wound around the flank of a hill, dropping away in a steep scree on one side, rising sharply on the other. Eventually Bligh sensed the bulk of another hill across the valley and almost immediately the Company bunched together as those ahead halted. In a short time word was passed back that they were to maintain silence from this point onwards, as the opposite slope was enemy territory and well within range of a rifle or machine gun. They had reached the Front, once again. Ten minutes later they were past this treacherous bottleneck and before long they had arrived at their section of the Line. |
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- The Book of the World, ch.8, v.68. |
| They were passing down a wide street with lime trees sprouting from either pavement. Horses dragged loaded wagons along the road, passing with difficulty over the tram-lines cut through the cobbles. A white-haired news-sheet distributor was yelling from the centre of the road while his young assistant worked her way along a queue that led into a bakery's open doorway. Madeleine was telling Bligh of her trips to the city as a teenager, when the railway line through Dona-Jez was new and her parents had been able to afford the fare. "We would go to the Arena and watch children playing football. Afterwards, one time, I went with a friend to the docks and we ate lobster fresh from the baskets. We - " A single gunshot sounded with a metal crash and the whistle of a ricochet and in one movement Bligh's arm was across Madeleine's shoulder and he was dragging her down roughly. They hit the cobbled pavement with a jarring blow and Madeleine gave a soft gasp - surprised, frightened. Bligh's heart thudded explosively as, all around, the street scene froze. Another shot rang out and the queue had suddenly vanished. Women hid in doorways or lay face down on the pavement, clutching children, muttering to themselves and covering their eyes with their hands. The newspaper vendor had sprinted across the street and swept his assistant down behind a stone water trough. Bligh and Madeleine crawled over to join them. The trough afforded protection from one direction, at least. Out in the street a horse pulled its abandoned cart, oblivious to the disturbance. "What are they shooting at?" asked Bligh. "Who can know?" said the newspaper vendor, casually drawing a section of sugar gum out of his coat pocket and sliding it into his mouth. "See the damaged building across there?" Where the man gestured there was what looked like a shop with boards across the windows and rubble heaped about it defensively. "That was once a Syndicalist hall. They still use it sometimes. Maybe there are Army snipers shooting at them. Or maybe the Syndicalists are just trying to keep us on our toes, who can know? Maybe someone doesn't like The Voice - you want one?" He thrust a copy of the news-sheet of the Unification Party of the People at Madeleine. Bligh reached into his pocket for some coins. "No," said the man, stopping him. "It is free, to a Friend of the Revolution." It was now several minutes since there had been any shots. The queue at the bakery had reformed and a man was chasing the horse and wagon along the street. Bligh and Madeleine said their goodbyes to the news-sheet distributor and continued on their way. This time, in unspoken agreement, they stayed closer to the shelter of the buildings. They had come to Anasty on impulse, perhaps the same impulse that had brought Bligh wandering down into war-torn Trace the previous year. He had been in Dona-Jez for over six months - the longest time he had lingered in one place since walking out of school, six years earlier - but finally one morning, as Madeleine sat astride his prostrate body, rubbing his tight shoulders, she had asked him what was wrong. He tried to explain his need to keep moving, to assure her that it was not her fault, that it was a part of the fabric of his being. "Then lets go somewhere," she had said simply. "We could go to Anasty. You must see it before it's all blown down." Walking through the battle-torn streets, still shaky from the sniper shots, Bligh hoped that they had arrived in time. |
| They stood on a crowded tram, hanging on to a broken handrail. The tram had been hastily repainted in United Road Haulage colours, the old state livery still showing in places through the two tones of red. Dribbles of paint ran down the few unbroken windows and UPP news-sheets had been plastered across the ceiling and the backs of the seats. Madeleine rested her head on Bligh's shoulder so that he could feel her breath on his neck. They disembarked at a place called Settlement Square. Here, the cobbled street branched to form the perimeter of a paved rectangle containing two ornate fountains and a statue of a mounted king which had been hauled down and partly dismembered. Bligh remembered seeing a painting of this square, from before the War. They had come here, now, to look for somewhere to stay. To one side of Settlement Square was a low, imposing building, its windows boarded and its brickwork scarred with artillery wounds and scorch marks. It was the Metropolitan Hotel. It looked to be closed but even if it had been open the prices would have been to high for Bligh and Madeleine. They walked across to the fallen, partially dismembered monarch and Madeleine said, "I was five when King Elleo died. All of Dona-Jez went into mourning, but that was only show - for the patricians and their police. Behind closed shutters the men got drunk and the women danced on tables and for months the police picked on people for no reason at all, other than to show that they were still in charge." "And now that is all gone," said Bligh. "The people are in charge and the statues lie broken in the streets. Do you not feel something awakening inside you ... a new spirit trying to break free?" "The fight isn't over yet," said Madeleine. "There's still more blood to flow." "Don't you feel the energy of it all?" He did not know how else to put it, the sense of awakening he had experienced as he first crossed the border into Trace. It had felt like some strange kind of homecoming. He took Madeleine by the hand and led her unsteadily over the remains of the fallen king and across between the two fountains to the street, where they had to slow in order to pass between a tram and a loaded motor wagon. They stopped outside the Hotel Adernis, smaller than the Metropolitan but with a dilapidated air of its own permanence that Bligh sensed instantly was more promising. Inside, there was a cramped lobby with leather upholstered seats and a worn-smooth carpet. A small UPP banner was draped across the front of the reception desk. The price was reasonable, and Bligh chose not to haggle. The manager left them in their top floor room with the recommendation of ear-plugs if the shelling from across the river became too intrusive. By now it was dusk and they stood looking out of the window, across the rooftops to the older quarter of Anasty, where they could just make out the broken top of the Arena. In the dim light Bligh could see what looked like a bank of low cloud but he guessed it must be smoke from fires and the explosions which occasionally grumbled with an insistence that seemed to grab his innards and squeeze. "Bligh," said Madeleine, softly. He turned to her and she continued, "You're very special." Awkward, he looked down into her dark eyes, and said nothing. He traced the line of her nose with a finger, then her cheek, her jaw, her neck. They moved together, in the window recess, and held each other for a long time before they kissed. The bed was old and the mattress sagged towards the middle. Whenever Bligh opened his eyes he saw Madeleine, the bedspread, the walls, all lit up in the gathering darkness by a faint fiery flickering, cast into their room from the battle beyond. |
| The next morning they were hungry. By the time food had occurred to them the previous evening it had been too late to do anything about it. Bligh could have waited longer for his breakfast, but Madeleine was up and dressing before he was awake enough to persuade her to linger. He rolled over to lie in the warm hollow she had left and watched as she used the chamber pot and then washed at the room's cracked porcelain basin. Soon, the sunlight flooding in through the window proved too much for him and he clambered out of bed and into his clothes. "The quiet sounds wrong," said Madeleine, and Bligh realised that there was an absence of gunfire and explosions. "Perhaps we have won," he said. He realised that he had said we and turned awkwardly away to find his shoes. Downstairs in the hotel lobby some guests were milling around as two UPP soldiers went through the reception ledger with the manager. Bligh had thought that he and Madeleine were the only guests, but clearly he was wrong. He said a "Good morning, Friend," to one elderly couple but it only provoked a curious look and a muttering of Feorean. Bligh approached the reception desk and, when he had attracted the manager's attention, he asked about breakfast. The manager gestured at a tall window to one side of his desk and said, "Our kitchen ... my apologies." He turned back to the two soldiers as Bligh walked over to the window and looked out at the shattered walls and heaps of rubble where the hotel kitchen had once stood. They went outside. A small crowd stood on one side of Settlement Square, holding assorted Cooperative and Syndicate pennants over their heads. As Bligh and Madeleine stepped out, a double line of soldiers emerged from a side street, kicking high in the southern style which had looked so comical the first time Bligh witnessed it. The soldiers marched past the crowd, their rear brought up by a single boy carrying a Landworkers' Alliance flag, its pole supported by a sling across his shoulders. In a few minutes the procession had disappeared from sight and the onlookers began to disperse. Madeleine found Bligh's hand and led him away from the square in search of food. After a short time they came across a knot of people gathered outside a church. A wagon was pulled up in the street and a number of men were aloft, sorting bags and parcels thrown up from the crowd. A short distance away, a horse backed up, kicking at the air as a man clung, determinedly, to its harness. Bligh and Madeleine watched for a while, then as the crowd thinned they approached a gowned priest and asked him what was happening. "We are collecting for the soldiers," he said, breathing heavily after his exertions in loading the wagon. His face shone with sweat and he rubbed at it with the carmine sleeve of his gown. "There are coats, boots, trousers. There are tins of milk, cheeses ... oat bread that will keep for weeks and then have to be soaked in water to make it palatable. There are books and razors and many other items, too. We collect them for the Unification Party of the People and we pray to the Lords for Their forbearance." "They bet on both sides," said Madeleine, as they walked away and the priest began the difficult task of harnessing the horse to the front of his heavily laden wagon. "Hmm?" "The Church. In Figuaras and Mountsenys the priests will be collecting for the Army and preaching against the Lordless uprising here in the East. Before the LA took Dona-Jez our priest tried to rally the people against the revolution. He tried to strike the fear of the Lords into them. Now he works in the fields and calls the people 'Friend' but they do not forget." Bligh recalled stories of priests being lynched or driven away, as a succession of towns and villages had been liberated over the three years of the Civil War. Strangely, the churches themselves were largely untouched. There was an echo of this division in Madeleine, herself: her cynicism about the Church could not belie the persistent core of her own faith. They emerged onto a street that was bounded on one side by a narrow strip of parkland and beyond that the River Ana. On the far bank the city took on an entirely different character: the streets were narrow and treeless, the terraces of stone houses and shops had been lower and more haphazard even before large sections had been ruined by the fighting. Church towers were visible over the rooftops and, silhouetted by the morning sun, the curving outer wall of the Arena dominated one section of the skyline. "I lost track of where we were," said Madeleine. Down among the trees, now, Bligh could see gun emplacements shielded behind broken masonry and sandbags. Soldiers lazed in the late summer sun, while their colleagues sat and cleaned their guns or played cards or argued with their friends. The first gunshots of the day broke the peace, but nobody seemed too concerned. "Breakfast?" asked Bligh, setting off towards a nearby eating house. Empty stone tables and chairs were scattered across a paved terrace, but a murmur of conversation escaped through an open door and Bligh could see that there were people inside, eating and drinking and reading the news-sheets. They went in and ordered sweetbreads and anise tea, refusing the horoscope cards the proprietor thrust at them in place of change. The prices were clearly the reason why people chose to queue in the streets rather than eat in places such as this. Later, Madeleine told Bligh that he had only been charged so much because of his Wederian accent. "We will take it outside," said Bligh, smiling at the answering crazy foreigner look on the owner's face. The fighting started up before they had even broken the first sweetbread. Bligh touched the stone of his seat, the stone of his table, finding reassurance in the cold contact. He looked across the river to where the explosion had sounded so close. There was no smoke or falling masonry as he had naively expected. One of the light artillery guns on the riverside sent a shell across into the Old Town but it failed to explode and the soldiers returned to their lazing, their books, their arguments. "Tea?" said Madeleine, holding the pot over a cup. "Hmm. Sweetbread?" said Bligh, breaking the first small loaf and putting half on Madeleine's plate. There was a machine-gun now, stuttering from the depths of the Old Town, and the Cooperative soldiers began to stir again, wandering back to their positions, firing occasional rifle-shots across the river and into the apparently deserted buildings. Once a bullet ricocheted off the road nearby, but Bligh guessed that it was a misfire rather than an answering shot from the Army. He thought perhaps the Government had abandoned Anasty weeks ago and the revolutionaries were firing at memories. A radio came on, adding to the din of conversation from the eating house and Bligh and Madeleine ate breakfast in their own cocoon of silence. |
| They returned to the hotel as dusk was settling, their thoughts turning to food again. They hesitated in Settlement Square, wondering where they could go. "The Metropolitan does a good dinner," said a man, coming down the steps of the Hotel Adernis. He had a haggard face, with short sandy hair and a hook nose that made him appear to squint. His clothes were grubby but made of a northern linen which indicated a sophistication most chose to hide these days. "I thought it was closed," said Bligh. He recognised the man as one of the other guests from this morning. "The windows are boarded over." The man shrugged wearily. "Wood is cheaper than glass," he said. He had the sort of nondescript looks that gave no indication of age: he could have been twenty-five or he could have been twice that. His accent was foreign, but Bligh was unable to place it. "Please. Be my guests for this evening," he said. "Humour me." "We weren't - " Madeleine began, but the man held up his hands to stop her, then changed his gesture into a wave towards the Metropolitan. "Please," he said again. "I've eaten alone too often recently." From the outside, the Metropolitan looked like a ruin, but inside it was as if the War was a continent away. The floor was polished to a near-flawless shine, the chandeliers glittering and complete, the serving staff dressed crisply in dark uniforms. Bligh and Madeleine sat with the man, who called himself Divitt Carew. Their table was covered with a white cotton sheet, and there was silver cutlery and a slender candle and cut crystal glasses for the wine which appeared soon after they were seated. Bligh glanced at Madeleine and saw that she shared his discomfort. The streets today had been overflowing with goodwill and egalitarianism. The war had been responsible for shortages and suffering on a large scale but the spirit it had stirred was constantly a wonder to Bligh. All this finery turned his pangs of hunger to nausea. "So what draws you to the war in Anasty?" said Carew. 'Draw' was a good word for Bligh. "Fate," he said, tentatively. "Chance. I do not know." Somehow it had always seemed inevitable that his travels would bring him here. He had no explanation. "It's a part of me," said Madeleine. "Whether I like it or not." "Ah, but you are a Traian, it's your fight. Bligh, here, is Wederian, no?" "Marish," said Bligh. "But I was schooled with a Jahvean Brotherhood in Stenhoer, so you are partly correct. I do not know. I came here and liked the atmosphere. The people are so welcoming, they are free. It is as if they are waking from a bad dream. That has to be worth something." Their meals arrived, Carew having ordered for them all. He stuck his fork into a piece of meat and said, "So you've been reading the propaganda-sheets. Are you planning to stay here in Anasty? Are you going to join the fight?" Bligh felt cornered and he did not know why. "It's not propaganda," he said. He found that his hunger had returned with the arrival of the food. "I have been talking to the people. There was a priest this morning, collecting gifts for the troops. People will queue for hours in the hope of some food, but the very same people give freely to the soldiers who fight for them. You ask a lot of questions," he finished, accusingly. "You have to forgive me," said Carew. "It's my profession. I'm a journalist, with the Conservative Journal." Carew's paper was one of Feorea's leading national dailies. "I ask questions out of habit. Ignore me. I don't care. Just enjoy your meal." After a while, Madeleine asked, "Have you been in Anasty for long, Divitt?" "On and off," he said. "Near to three years, I suppose. But I'm never in the city for long. The Journal can't afford many of us so I have to cover a lot of territory. You have to forgive my cynicism: I've seen too much of this stinking country. I've seen too much of the fighting for me to believe that it's achieving anything. This war's a racket, just like any other. Some of the people might be happy now, but when the fighting's over and a settlement's reached they'll start feeling the shortages, resenting the queues, mourning their dead. It's just the people who have trying to hang on and the people who want trying to get as big a share as they can. It's an old story." Bligh shook his head but remained silent, staring into his empty plate. He knew better than that: he had been a part of it, working in the transport cooperative and then, later, helping at the school where Madeleine taught. The spirit of resistance had found a resonance somewhere in his head. He had been infected. "Look around you," said Carew, leaning towards Bligh and Madeleine, his eyes flicking conspiratorially from side to side. "Go on. Isn't it nice that so many ordinary people can now eat in the Metropolitan Hotel's grand Dining Room?" Bligh had, indeed, thought it good that so many were now eating so well. "You're a fool if you think everyone's equal now. Where have all the rich gone? Do you think they've fled? Maybe some of them have, but most are still here. All they've done is dress in rags and stand in queues with the peasants. For insurance they'll all have joined the UPP or maybe one of the more benign Cooperatives. But look around you: where do they eat at night? Where do they meet up with their old friends and talk about better times to come? Nobody actually stays in the hotels other than us journalists and a few foreigners with dodgy backgrounds, but see how the dining rooms fill up in the evening." Now Bligh felt awkward again, in the finery of the Metropolitan dining room. After a decent interval he and Madeleine left Carew to his liqueurs and cynicism and headed back across the square to the Hotel Adernis. "He does not see," said Bligh, as they went up the stairs to their room. "See?" "Divitt Carew and his kind can chase the shadows all they like, but it only dulls their perception. He does not see that all his complaints only serve to show how important it is that we hang on to what has been gained." "'We'?" said Madeleine. Bligh shrugged and smiled as he closed the door behind him. Their room was lit up with the flickering explosions from the Old Town again and Bligh's thoughts had turned to the night before. Somewhere, in the walk across Settlement Square, he had come to a decision, but now there was Madeleine and there was their bed with the mattress that sagged towards the centre and he thought that, perhaps, the world could wait until morning. |
|
- The Book of the World, ch.2, v.34. |
| Madeleine was not there when he returned to the hotel room for his few possessions. He did not have paper for a note so instead he left a message at reception. Leaving the hotel, he felt relief that he had been excused a messy show of emotions, but guilty nonetheless. He realised that this would not be easy for Madeleine and he felt it wrong that it should have been so easy for him. The Mannarkind Barracks were situated on the eastern fringe of Anasty. It took him nearly an hour to find them, changing trams twice and covering the remaining distance on foot. Eventually he came to a cluster of buildings which looked as if they had once been a school. Now, green and ochre Landworkers' Alliance flags flew from the windows and Bligh could hear men's voices raised from within. He passed through a passageway between two of the buildings and then paused at the edge of a paved playground. An uneven double line of troops stood along one side, chattering and laughing as two men stood in the middle shouting and gesticulating at each other. Bligh felt awkward, as if he was not meant to be there. Some of the men wore a sort of uniform: woollen jackets, LA neck scarves and stout boots being the common feature. The sight of these men made Bligh begin to realise what he had volunteered for. One of the arguing men wandered back to the ranks, muttering and shaking his head, and the other headed straight for Bligh. As he drew near, Bligh realised that he must be an officer and then it appeared that he was about to walk on past. Bligh raised the hand that was clutching his passport and recruitment sheet. "Sir," he said. "I have come to join up." The officer stopped and looked blankly at Bligh. He was stocky, with grey hair and a black moustache, and a smile which mixed good humour with boredom in equal proportions. "We are all Friends here," he said. "No 'Sirs'." He took the papers and glanced through them. For some reason Bligh wondered if the man could actually read. "Please, find somewhere to sleep. You are an International now. We train here for a time. Maybe a week, maybe longer. Then we go." He cracked that enigmatic smile again, then nodded in the Traian greeting. "I am Captain Caballier," he said. "I can only wish you well, Friend. Your luck is your own to make and use." At that he nodded sharply again and then left Bligh clutching his papers. Most of the men had ambled off into the largest of the school buildings. Bligh followed and presently he found himself standing in the entrance to an old classroom. The floor was mostly hidden by mattresses and sleeping bags and scruffy heaps of blankets and possessions. The air smelt of body odours and old food. "A new recruit, I do believe," said a thin, grey-haired man in as close to a full uniform as Bligh had seen. His accent was probably Wederian and he had large, sad eyes and a moustache that drooped around the folds of his mouth. He held out a hand for Bligh to shake and continued, "I'm Bernie Rayner, International Supporter of the Landworkers' Alliance. Have been for over a year, all told. I'm back here for a breather and to give some support to the new boys. What's the name?" Bligh shook Rayner's hand. "Bligh," he said. "I've just joined. The Captain - " he couldn't remember the man's name " - said I should find myself somewhere to sleep." "Is that a first name? A last name?" "Just Bligh." He had never known the identity of his father; all he had had was the suggestion that he might have been a stone merchant. His bastard status had been one of the reasons for his Jahvean schooling, another being that his mother would almost certainly have been unable to cope with the demands of rearing a child. She had never been the sort of person to make sacrifices. Upon leaving the Brotherhood he had immediately dropped her surname. Rayner shrugged and said, "You might as well kip in here. There's still a little space on the floor." Bligh dumped his bag under a shuttered window while Rayner went off in search of some bedding. He looked around and wondered, not for the first time, if he was doing the right thing. Madeleine would be back at the hotel by now. She would know that he had joined the LA. He wondered where she would eat tonight. The soldiers queued in the playground to have their bowls filled with a watery stew. They collected lumps of bread at the door and returned to eat in their classrooms. Bligh traded backgrounds with some of the other recruits, learning that most had already been here for several days. Gradually he found that he was beginning to put his doubts aside. It seemed that there was a number of Internationals at the Mannarkind Barracks. The LA liked to keep them together and Bligh was lucky to have been accepted immediately and not put 'on the list' until a workable number had been reached. Some of the recruits had travelled halfway across the world, only to have to wait for two months to be accepted on an International intake. Many of the men were experienced soldiers, too old for service in their own countries or, Bligh guessed, bored with peacetime soldiering. Others had come because they had heard of the Traian Civil War and had seen it as a real chance for their politics of egalitarianism and socialism to be put into practice. The rest were a mixed group. Most - like himself, he supposed - were here by chance: travelling in the region and swallowed up in the revolutionary atmosphere. He guessed that there must be some with private reasons, too: escape from an unhappy background, criminals on the run, adventurers. The Traians at the Mannarkind Barracks were either here to train the new intake or were fresh recruits themselves, a mixture of ordinary volunteers and those who did not appear to fit elsewhere. The evening was spent in a huge game of football, a minority sport in the north but a national obsession in Trace. There were at least thirty men on Bligh's side and it seemed that there was twice that number in the opposition. The game lasted until night had fallen and in all that time not a goal was scored. Bligh found his heap of blankets in the classroom. He stripped down to his underwear and settled himself, as best he could, on the hard wooden floor. He stared up at the walls, half-expecting the flickering light display from the Old Town. He thought of Madeleine, alone in their hotel bed. Around him, men began to snore and fart and just as he had decided sleep would be impossible under these conditions, he lost track of his thoughts and drifted off. |
| Training was, in the Traian way, a disorganised affair. The soldiers woke when they wanted, which was early for Bligh but as late as mid-morning for some. They washed at a communal tub of chill water and then wandered off to collect breakfast rations of bread and milk from the playground. On his first morning at the Mannarkind Barracks, Bligh joined a group of Internationals in one of the classrooms and asked the nearest man about the daily regime. The man was a brown-skinned Irdeshi with glassy brown eyes and a round face. His name was Sadiq Phelim and he had been on Bligh's football team the previous evening. Sadiq shrugged and said, "What is it that you choose to do?" Bligh felt slightly intimidated by Sadiq. It was not that he was unused to dealing with people of a different race - Jahveism was a predominantly eastern religion and many of the Brothers were Irdeshi or Knessidic - it was something particular about Sadiq himself. Bligh shrugged. "There is no regime here, Friend." Sadiq shook his head. "It is a shambolic way in which to prepare a military. Real training should be a hierarchical construction: it implies the patronising of inferiors by their betters. We do not, apparently, train in the Landworkers' Alliance. We acquire learning by a process akin to osmosis. We mix with those such as Rayner and Ivoriola so that their experience of the fighting will diffuse its way through to us. We debate politics with Caballier or Skett in the wish that we might benefit from their wisdom. Sometimes we will gather in lines in the yard and Captain Caballier will ask us to parade, but if we choose not to we simply walk away or wait until one of the Traian boys decides to argue with Caballier." Sadiq cleared his throat noisily and spat at a wall. "Training for a soldier in the Landworkers' Alliance is a subtle affair," he continued. "One does not acquire the practical skills of soldiering - for that we would require weaponry and that is in very short supply - it is more a matter of attitude. One enters the Alliance an innocent and one leaves still an innocent, but perhaps one with a vaguely improved idea of what is to come. That is the hope, at least." Bligh spent much of his first day in the company of Sadiq and Bernie Rayner, in the hope that some of their experience would rub off on him. He learnt quite quickly that - despite his air of wisdom - Sadiq had never been a soldier before, yet he still seemed better informed than many of those who had. Late in the afternoon, Bligh sought out the first instalment of his uniform: a green cotton neck-scarf which he wore inside his shirt, and a filthy woollen jacket that was too small for one of his heavy build and smelt of damp. Not looking forward to another meal of militia stew, Bligh decided to head back into the city for the evening. On the streets he felt self-conscious in his militia clothing. He sat at the back of each of the two trams, but he still felt that he was being watched. He wondered if the part-uniform would mark him out as a more tempting target for any sniper, and for the last part of his journey on foot he stuck to the sheltered parts of the pavements and alleys. One advantage, he learned, was that he no longer had to fumble for his papers whenever he came to a barricade. A nod and an "Evening, Friend," was always adequate. He hoped the Government was not aware of the military advantages of a stinking woollen jacket and a militia neck-scarf. Madeleine was sitting at the feet of the fallen monarch in Settlement Square. Her head was tipped back so that her tanned face gained full benefit of the evening sun. Her hair hung in a dark cascade behind her and Bligh felt lust taking a rapid hold of his lower body. Madeleine jumped when she opened her eyes and saw Bligh staring down at her. Then she smiled and said, as if it had not been a day and a half since she had seen him, "There's food at the Adernis, now. They've installed a simple preparation area at one end of the dining room. Are you hungry?" He realised that he was. He helped her to her feet and then kissed her savagely. "Is that you?" she said afterwards, a playful tone in her voice. "Or the drains?" He hung his rank jacket at reception. They sat and ordered a simple seafood salad from the two choices on the menu. Minutes later, Divitt Carew arrived clutching a bottle of wine. "Mind if I ... ?" He gestured at one of the two empty seats at their table. Bligh pushed the chair out with the tip of his shoe and Carew sat, placing the bottle in the middle of the bare wood table. "It's the same stuff we drank at the Metropolitan: I bought it from one of their porters. He told me that an ex-mayor of Anasty - some kind of distant relative of Queen Minna, no less, now dresses in rags and dines there. He's going to point him out to me next time I'm there." Carew poured three glasses of wine. "So you've done it then. I knew you would." In answer to two blank stares he pointed at Bligh's LA scarf and said, "Joined up and all that. I hope you do better than a boy I knew a little time ago. He went to fight with the UPP and for his first spell at the Front they sent him down to Caspe ... " Madeleine shuddered and Bligh realised that Carew must be referring to the massacre on the fields near to Caspe that had been all over the news-sheets and on the radio at about the time he had first crossed the border into Trace. "That was particularly tactless," said Madeleine. Bligh watched Carew's face pass through a series of expressions. First, he realised his mistake and then he showed a momentary pang of guilt and maybe some confusion. He settled on a look Bligh had quickly learnt to recognise: a casual sneer that seemed to suggest that no one should take him too seriously. "You have to forgive me," he said. "The boy's getting better now. At least he'll never have to fight again." The two salads arrived and Carew said to the waitress, "I'll have the same. Please. Landworkers' Alliance," he continued, turning back to Bligh. "More harmless than most, I suppose. Why them?" "I know people in the LA." Bligh glanced at Madeleine. She was swirling the wine in her glass and refusing to meet his look. "I have friends there." "Does he have your blessing?" Madeleine looked up at Carew's question, but he cut back in immediately. "No," he said. "You don't have to answer. Just ignore me. I only beg your company, so that I can feel like a social animal again. "The Internationals interest me," he continued. "The foreign press - my own paper at the forefront - depicts them as a vicious gang of cut-throat mercenaries. That, or a bunch of ineffectual retired military administrators out for a little fun, depending on which propaganda angle we're taking: dangerous uprising or the pathetic flapping of a disgruntled minority. One day, I promise myself over a bottle or two, I'm going to go out to the Front and do a tough little piece on the Internationals. I'll sell it to Broad Cast or one of the radical journals of the Left. It'll bugger my career with The Conservative Journal, but what do I care? I've got my novel to write ... we journalists always have our novel to write." Bligh had already noticed how little resemblance there was between the revolution and its depiction in the foreign press. "Why don't you?" he said. "Come to the Front with my Company: let the outside world know what's really happening. Maybe some of them will make their governments support us at last." "It doesn't work that way," said Carew. "The people who read Broad Cast or Left Analysis already have an idea about what's happening. The masses don't read all that over-intellectual drivel. And whoever heard of a government that listened? Anyway," he added, "there's all those bloody bullets and shrapnel to consider ... " Upstairs, a little while later, Madeleine was undoing the buttons of Bligh's shirt. "A double bed is cold when it's half-empty," she said. "I wore the shirt you left under the basin. It kept me warm and it had your smell." She laughed and waved at his new jacket, dumped in the farthest corner of the room. "Now I'll need scent of goat, too." He took her hand and led her across to the bed. The Old Town was quiet tonight. "Stay with me," she said, after a time. "For tonight, at least." He stayed until after midnight and then he crept out from between the sheets. Pulling his jacket across his shoulders, he leaned over and kissed Madeleine on the forehead and then covered her with his spare shirt. |
| Sadiq Phelim was missing from barracks the next morning. Bernie Rayner said he had gone out alone during the night. He had left his possessions, though, so he was not yet considered to be a deserter. "Probably sleeping it off with some little tart," said Rayner. "And where did you get to, my boy? No sooner have you joined up than you're buzzing off again. Getting the wind up already?" "No," said Bligh. "Some little tart." He felt guilty instantly, but Rayner just clicked his tongue and went off to drag some of the late risers out of their bedding. Most of the morning was spent marching around the playground, carrying sticks and spades and broom handles. During this Bligh puffed up his chest and tried to imagine what a real gun would feel like, resting against his shoulder as he marched. All of the Internationals took part in this exercise, although they muttered and grumbled about it being a waste of time. A lot of the Traians just stood and watched, or went off to play cards in the school. That brought forth further grumbles along the lines of Whose war was it anyway? The hard feelings came to a head over lunch and the answer was another mass football match, which lasted right through until the light began to fail. Sadiq returned not long after the game had been abandoned. Immediately he became the centre of attention and it was some minutes before Bligh fought his way close enough to see the thick wad of dressing on the Irdeshi's left hand. "A slight mishap," was all Sadiq would say. Later, a new tension spread through the school house. Many of the Internationals began to slip away, heading into the city or over to another building where Bligh learned there was to be a game of cards. The excitement was strongest among the younger Traians who remained in the main building. "What is it?" Bligh asked of Bernie Rayner, who was hovering in a corridor as if unsure whether to stay or go. "An ancient custom, " he said. "The Prayer of the Body, they call it. They get drunk and they dance and one or two of them will claim to be taken over by the spirit of the dead. It's even more popular here than the football. Have you never seen it before?" Up in Dona-Jez there had been similar rituals, but after his years with the Brotherhood he had acquired a deep aversion to all things religious and, even when Madeleine had participated, Bligh stayed away. He had always been uncomfortable whenever he was forced to acknowledge Madeleine's belief in what to him was a nonsensical and primitive superstition; even more so when someone told him of Hammad Fulke's interest in the arcane. Would he never escape that man's shadow? Tonight, some perverse stubbornness made Bligh decide to stay and watch. There wasn't much to see at first, except that a number of civilians - mainly female - had been invited. As the jugs of wine were passed round and the atmosphere grew more ribald, Bligh wondered if this was just going to be some kind of orgy. He drank from a cup of wine and exchanged awkward small talk with a plain girl from the city. Occasionally, she would tilt towards him and chuckle intimately. It sounded as if she was trying to clear her throat. They were standing at the back of the room, close to a door, and Bligh frequently thought about slipping away. The crowd was focusing its attention on an old woman who sat next to a fire laid on the stone floor of the classroom. He looked at the door, but he could not go yet. Suddenly, he felt a pulse of excitement surge through the gathering and he saw that one of the young recruits was on his knees before the fire, his hands flat on the floor. He was moaning and the crowd began to mimic him, the sound swelling, heaving. Soon the room was bursting with noise. "Mama, mama, mama!" cried the boy, as another, older, soldier fell in beside him. "Mama, mama, mama!" they cried together, and then their chant was taken up by others in the room and Bligh felt the sound as a wave of pressure battering against his skull. He looked around the room at the frantic faces, the pressing bodies. The girl from the city was leaning on his shoulder now, one hand squeezing at his arm in time with the chanting crowd. Bligh could not understand what was happening. He felt drawn towards it, as he would probably feel drawn to any alien spectacle, but at the same time something inside made him hold back. This ritual, more than anything else, reminded him that Trace was a foreign country and Bligh an outsider. Just then, he spotted Sadiq on the far side of the room. The Irdeshi's eyes were streaming and his hands - bandaged and unbandaged - were pressed to either side of his head. Bligh knew that he should go now. No matter how intense the attraction, he knew he could never be a part of a ceremony such as this. After a moment or two to focus his effort, he pushed himself away from the wall. Freeing himself from the girl's tight clutch, he struggled towards the exit. Before the door could swing shut behind him, Sadiq was pushing his way out too, gasping as if he had just come up from under water. In an awkward, mutual silence they headed away from the classroom, pausing only when they had emerged into the night air and the noises of the Prayer of the Body were lost to the night. Bligh vowed never to allow himself to be put in that position again. "What happened?" he asked, breaking their long silence. Sadiq looked abashed. "I was disenchanted with the lack of weapons training," he said. "And so I took it upon myself to undertake some self-education." It took a few seconds for Bligh to realise that Sadiq was telling him the reason for his absence during the day and not explaining what had just taken place. Vaguely relieved, he decided not to pursue the matter. "Last night," continued Sadiq, " I went to a part of the Old Town to where I knew there to be a Section of the LA staffing a barricade. I thought they might let me hold a gun so that I might learn how it felt. It just happened that I chose the night of an assault on an Army stronghold in the Parliament buildings." He shrugged. "I held a gun, yes. I held a stick grenade, too. You remove the safety pin as you approach your target and then, as you are about to throw you remove the second pin. I did as I was told but I did not throw the bomb fast enough, or maybe it was faulty as the healer suggested. I am now short of the middle two fingers of one hand and a great deal wiser in the ways of modern warfare." They parted at the school gates and Bligh headed for the first of the two trams that would take him to Madeleine. She was eating with an old couple in the hotel dining room when he arrived. As soon as she saw him, she made her excuses and then hurried across into his embrace. Gunfire was coming from the Old Town again, and Bligh's mind kept reminding him of Sadiq's bandages as he and Madeleine struggled out of their clothes and tumbled onto the bed. He was like some kind of wild animal - they both were. Suddenly, it was as if they had been parted for a year, not merely a day. With no preliminaries he was inside her, pressing with all of his strength. Their mouths mashed together, teeth drawing blood from each other's lips and gums and almost instantly it was done and Bligh was slumped over his lover, wondering what kind of powerful primitive fear had taken him over for those few minutes since he had met Madeleine's eyes across the hotel dining room. "I ... " he started, but Madeleine kissed him softly on the lips to quiet him, and then kissed him on the shoulders and across the narrow band of hair on his chest. They lay for a time with Madeleine's head resting on Bligh's rib cage, and then she spoke. "I can't stay here for much longer. I'm in limbo. You're a soldier and yet you're not and I just wait here and feel like a displaced spirit. I have work in Dona-Jez, my family ... it gives me something." "The children do not go to school any more. There is a war going on." Bligh was angry, but at the same time he felt a guilty sense of relief. "I am sorry," he added hurriedly. "I understand, I think. But I wish you would stay here in Anasty. Just for a little longer." After another interval, she said, "A little while, Bligh. I wish we could be together always. I love you." He knew she blamed him for joining up. It had spoilt everything. "I have to go soon," he said. "To barracks. I will be back tomorrow." Too late for the trams, Bligh struck out on foot and it was well after midnight before he was within sight of the Mannarkind Barracks. Lanterns were burning in the windows and he wondered if the Prayer of the Body was still taking place. He hoped intensely that it was not. He did not feel that he could face that over-wrought atmosphere again, so soon. At the door to the classroom where he hoped he would sleep he bumped into one of the Traian recruits called Slowly Skett. Slowly was too old to fight, but no one would ever tell him. He had been a political prisoner in Caspe for over ten years before the revolutionary militias had taken the town and set him free. He had volunteered to fight immediately, and now he was looked upon as a father figure by a lot of the local youths who had been recruited alongside him. "What's happening, Slowly?" The classroom was full of activity: soldiers sorting through untidy heaps of uniform, bickering as they packed their bags. "Grab some kit," said Slowly cheerfully. "We're heading up the Line at dawn." Bligh felt a sudden lump in his throat and then he realised why everyone was bustling about and fighting over trivialities. Anything to divert your thoughts. His mind skipped through what news he had picked up in recent days but he could think of no single battle on the scale of Caspe at the start of the year. That did not mean that another large advance was not planned, though. "Where?" hissed Bligh, but there was no more information. He spent some time completing his uniform with a pair of flimsy-looking boots, a back-bag, a cap and a thick woollen muffler. He argued with a Traian whose name he could not recall. The leather belt had been his - he had spotted it first - but he had to settle for a canvas one when he was distracted by a water bottle on a nearby heap. Later he lay, unable to sleep, until the sky started to lighten and then he hurried out to the office, hoping that the telephone would be available. It was, but a blank buzz indicated that there was no line to the Hotel Adernis. It had become quite light outside and there was clearly no time to go there in person. He settled for leaving a note with Captain Caballier, who was to remain at the barracks, but there was little chance that it would ever find its way to Madeleine. He hoped she would realise what had happened. They gathered in the street outside, but it was too early for a flag-waving crowd to see them off. They marched, each to their own rhythm, for nearly an hour, some expressing their nerves in chatter and bad jokes, most remaining grimly silent. An old livestock train was waiting at the station and they filed on in the first semblance of order Bligh had noticed in his Company. After an interminable wait, the train lurched into motion. Bligh looked around at his fellow soldiers. He wondered how anyone could ever think that such a rabble could win a war against a trained, well-equipped Army. The carriage smelt of animals and so the doors had been left partly open. Bligh watched the houses of Anasty rumbling slowly by, his mood sinking lower and lower. This time tomorrow, he wondered, how many of us will be alive? |
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- The Book of the World, ch.18, v.78. |
| The night was broken by the scuttling of mysterious creatures across the barn floor. Rats, Bligh presumed. Once, something cool and smooth brushed past his cheek and it was some time before he could settle again. It might just have been a dream, he decided. He had not been aware of the smell of the place after the exertions of the day. Now, however, as light began to probe the broken roof, he found it overwhelming. Old food, decay, excrement, odours that reminded him of the week he had spent working in refuse transport up in the Feorean port of Eseri City. As the light grew stronger he was able to look around the interior of the barn and then he realised why the smell was so strong. What he had taken for straw and wood chippings the previous night was a thick litter of ancient breadcrusts, dried excrement, torn and soiled news-sheets, bones of dubious origins, dead rats, jagged food cans. Feeling sick, he hurried out into the weak morning sunlight. Only later did he discover that some creature of the night had chewed its way through the pocket of his woollen coat in order to reach a scrap of food he had saved from the evening's meal. As promised, Rayner spent some time with Bligh, Sadiq and Panniker, showing them how to strip their rifles and clean them with a rag soaked in gun oil or, more likely to be available, olive oil. "Most of the cartridges are refills," he said. "They'd jam the best of rifles, let alone the muck we have to use. Oil the cartridges as you load them and keep a clip of your best for when your life depends on your gun not jamming. When you get good you might be able to fire off a clip of ten in half a minute, but I wouldn't try it. The poor thing gets hot, the bolt expands and then even your best cartridges will stick." Bligh followed the instructions closely, until he felt that he was able to load and clean his rifle with a reasonable proficiency. He doubted whether he would be able to fire it anywhere near a target, but the shortage of ammunition ruled out any chance of practice. They marched all day, passing through a hellish, wrecked landscape. At one point, they were ordered to stand aside to let by a column returning from the Front. These men were filthy, their faces grey, the look in their eyes one of deathly fatigue. It seemed that every man was limping or bandaged, some with only one leg, others missing a hand or an arm, yet still they marched. At the back, those unable to walk were piled into wagons, being hauled by skeletal horses. Bligh watched it all and then, for some time afterwards, was unable to speak, was horrified when he realised his own steps had adopted that same funereal rhythm. They came to rest in a small village called Hol, only five miles from the Front. The settlement consisted of a wretched little group of mud and stone houses, huddled around a church with no roof or doors. That evening Bligh investigated the church more closely, finding its interior an impenetrable heap of rubble and debris. The most important feature of the village was the main road. The job of Bligh's Company was to receive and store supplies in the proper order and make daily deliveries to the Line. They were also, Rayner told them, standing by in reserve, should replacements be required in the trenches. The next two days were spent emptying incoming motor wagons and loading up the horse-drawn carts which would go on to the Front. The incoming drivers were a fertile source of rumour and gossip: the people's militias had taken towns Bligh had never heard of, the Queen was abdicating or pregnant or dead, Feorea or Wederia were finally coming to the support of the revolution or the Government. The reliability of such stories was always dubious, but they were the only news that reached the 34th Company of the LA so they spread rapidly. The returning motor wagons were loaded with little but mail from the soldiers. On the second day, Bligh finally found a spare moment in which to write two identical letters to Madeleine. One he addressed to the Hotel Adernis in Anasty. The second, after much hesitation, he addressed care of Madeleine's parents; they disliked him, he knew, but he did not think they would open her mail if she was still away. The next morning Rayner's Guard was allocated a supply run to one of the nearer trench systems. It took them an hour to sort out the supplies and then they set out. The first few miles were relatively easy, most of the supplies having been loaded on a horse-drawn wagon. They followed the road out of Hol, skirting the increasingly frequent shell-holes. They passed between fields where the summer's crops lay unharvested, through craggy woodland devastated by heavy bombardment some time ago, the craters grown over, the broken and fallen trees sprouting afresh. They met a runner from the 12th Company of the UPP just below the crest of a hill and Rayner tied the horse to a stake in the ground. "We're on foot now, my loveys," he said, in an artificially jolly tone. "Load up." Bligh slung the mail-bag over his back and then heaved a water can onto his shoulder. Beyond the crest of the hill the road lost itself in a broken grey prairie which spread as far as he could see. This was the start of the Great Plain, once a vast area of grassland spanning central Trace from north to south, now a huge wasteland which divided the country, scene of some of the worst battles of the Civil War. Progress over the rocky ground was slow and they had to stop several times to catch their breath. Some of the Internationals might be experienced soldiers, Bligh noted, but their age weighed against them for work like this. Ahead, the UPP runner was suddenly swallowed by the ground. When Bligh reached that point he found that they had come to a trench. One by one the Guard lowered themselves into it, recovered their loads and continued on their way. Now, they were not so much hampered by rubble and debris as by several inches of sticky yellow mud. The trench led onto another and here they came across the 12th UPP. They looked exhausted, filthy, utterly dejected. As the Guard dumped their loads and slumped thankfully against the sandbagged walls, Rayner led Bligh through to the entrance of a cramped bunker, a large shell-hole covered over with boards and mud. "Bernie Rayner, 34th LA, Friend." Rayner nodded his head as a man emerged into the trench. "Supplies and mail." At this Bligh held out his mail bag. "Merc Domenech," said the man, accepting the bag. He was a broad man, with long curls of shiny black hair and a thin moustache. His eyes met Bligh's and held them for too long. "Any orders?" Bligh felt compelled to answer, but was beaten by Rayner's "None." "My report," said Domenech, handing over a dirty envelope. He turned and retreated into his bunker, his eyes at last leaving Bligh's face. "You okay?" said Rayner. "Has the smell got to you? Or is it wind up?" Bligh had noticed the smell of the trenches immediately: it was as if the air itself was rotting. But it was more than that. He felt his head pounding, his senses blurring. He felt hot and sick. And then he was sitting in the mud, looking blearily up at Rayner's looming features. His mouth was burning with the vomit of an empty stomach. He smiled uncertainly and forced himself back to his feet. "Okay now," he murmured. "Don't know what it was." But whenever he closed his eyes he saw the laughing face of Merc Domenech. He wondered what was happening, what spell the man had cast. He drank from his water bottle and rubbed his face on the sleeve of his jacket. The rancid smell of wool made him think of Madeleine's reaction to his new uniform and for a moment he was dizzy again. He shook his head in an effort to clear it. They made their way at a leisurely pace back through the trenches and then out into the open, and it was only as they returned along the shell-scarred road that Bligh realised they had spent most of a day at the Front without hearing a single gunshot. |
| Bligh was up for most of the night with diarrhoea and vomiting. Some of the others teased him about getting the wind up, but they stopped after a while when they realised he was genuinely ill. When he managed to sleep, he dreamt of the foul-smelling trenches, of bodies torn to bloody tatters, of Merc Domenech's terrifying laughter echoing across a deserted battlefield. Eventually, he learnt to feel grateful that the sickness kept him awake and free off the awful dreams for so much of the night. He missed supplies duty for two days, spending what time he could in sorting mail and doing odd jobs to make the accommodation a little more bearable. All the time, he tried to convince himself that it was only a bug. He swept the floors and shovelled fresh earth over the latrines to suppress the smell and the flies. He sat outside whenever the failing autumn weather allowed, listening to crakes snuffling from the ditches and watching the mountain swallows wheeling high in the sky. Rayner told him he would have to see it out: he was not ill enough to be sent back. "Everyone gets ill out here," he was told. "It's part of the job description." Next day they marched eight miles north to where the Line snaked down from the hills to begin its meander across the Great Plain. Bligh walked alongside Slowly, neither of them carrying more than a rifle and a back-bag. It was when Bligh relieved the old man of his bag that he realised he was feeling better. They met a Manufactories Cooperative runner at midday, but had to wait until dusk before they could proceed. As the light dropped, rifle fire started up ahead. Occasionally a machine gun tapped away in the distance and the metal crash of trench mortars would add to the din. "Twilights," said Aqbar Emmett, marching with Bligh and Slowly. "It's the best time to launch an attack, so everyone is on duty for an hour at dusk and dawn. And so - " he grinned " - it becomes the most foolish time to launch an attack because everyone is scared and on edge and they fire at shadows and animal noises." Aqbar had seen action with the Tet'qeshi marines, before deserting from his ship in Anasty to join the revolution. As they came around an outcrop of limestone, the plain was suddenly spread out before them. Occasional flickers of light showed where mortars and light artillery were being fired and as they descended onto the field of muddy debris the sounds of fighting rose up around them: gunshots and men's cries and the irregular clatter of trench mortars and grenades. "The ground that I walk upon, The air that I breathe," said Slowly softly. It was an incantation to two of the Lords Elemental: Lord of Stone, Lord of Air. The Traians used these phrases as an automatic response to any adversity, adapting them to circumstance and personal need. There were others for the Lord of Water, the Lord of Fire, Lord of Flux and Lord of the Soul, enough to cover most situations. Bligh felt uncomfortable, as he always did in the presence of religious people, but he said nothing. They covered the remaining distance bent double, nearly a hundred men in single file, struggling in the darkness to keep sight of the man ahead. The shooting had almost come to a stop by the time they dropped into a reserve trench. One Section of Internationals remained here but the other two worked their way along a communications trench which was barely waist-deep until they were in the front line of the defences. At a junction, they split again. The trench here was deep enough to allow even Bligh to stand without stooping too much. There was a dug-out watchpost just by the junction and Bligh waited as the MC troops gratefully gave up their positions to the relieving LAs. A second Guard of LAs took over the main body of the trench and Rayner led his Guard of ten down to the farthest end. "Right," said Rayner quietly, squatting part of the way up a sloping parapet of sandbags and rubble. "We keep our voices and our heads down. We have a row of wire, maybe sixty yards, and then another row of wire before we hit the enemy. Poke your head up in daylight and you're giving them target practice. Make a noise at night and there might just be a patrol a few yards away from you. We're holding ground here and I haven't heard any word that we might be doing any more than that. Questions?" They deposited their kit and took up positions: three in the post, three back in the trench and four trying to sleep on uneven mud shelves cut into the trench wall. Bligh was too big for his shelf and he spent some time digging it deeper with a trench trowel he found lying in the mud. Afterwards he lay there, breathing the foul air as shallowly as he could. He was at the Front and he did not know what he should be feeling. Some of the men were nervous and excitable, others gloomy and resigned. He glanced across and saw that Sadiq was curled up on a mud shelf, fast asleep. It was an example he thought he should follow. Rayner shook him awake some time later. It was still dark and a steady drizzle was falling, making the sloppy trench bottom treacherous and noisy when you tried to walk. As soon as he was standing, another soldier slipped onto his shelf. He followed the others up to the watchpost and waited for Sadiq and Panniker to complete their number. Rayner commenced by passing around a clay bottle of some foul-tasting sweet wine that Bligh vowed he would never touch again. Young Panniker drank long and hard and eventually Sadiq snatched the bottle from him with an ill-tempered grumble of Irdeshi. "Enough," hissed Rayner. He allocated four of the older Internationals to the watchpost and then led Sadiq, Panniker and Bligh to the mouth of the trench and told them he was taking them out on patrol. "The sooner you've had a taste of fear, the better," he said. They were out and through a gap in the wire before Bligh could really think about what was happening. The ground was treacherous, a sticky coating of mud over a solid stony base. The rain soaked through his clothing in minutes and his hands soon became so cold that he doubted he would be able to fire his gun if the need arose. Rayner had mentioned fear, but it felt unreal to Bligh. He just wanted this patrol to be over so that he could cower under some sort of shelter and dry himself out. He searched the darkness as best he could, but the moon was obscured by clouds and he could barely see ten yards ahead. Every few minutes Rayner made them stop and listen but at no time did they hear the sloshing progress of an enemy patrol. At one point, Rayner halted them. He stooped to gather something from the mud, wiped it on his tunic and then held it out for them all to see. Bligh looked, puzzled, at the misshapen grey lump. Then he saw that it was part of a human skull. He swallowed and looked away. He understood. They moved on, quietly. Edging through the night, it took them over two hours to cover a half mile sweep back to the southernmost post of the 34th LA. At the end of it all Bligh and the others were exhausted but Rayner allowed them no break. He marched them back along the trenches, through mud that now came up to their knees, until they collapsed untidily back in their own section of the Line. Bligh must have dozed leaning against a parapet, because when he opened his eyes again the sky had turned grey and everyone was being mustered for Twilights. He stood with his rifle at a loophole for the next hour, but all the gunfire seemed to be coming from the distance. Then, just as Rayner was about to stand them down, there was a deep drone overhead and Bligh watched in appalled fascination as a massive black shell soared ponderously overhead, stalled at the height of its trajectory and tumbled nose over tail until his view of it was blocked by the parados behind. There was no explosion and as Bligh wondered what had happened two more heavy shells hummed over the trench and dropped behind the lines. This time they exploded with heavy booms that shook the ground. Bligh exchanged a nervous glance with Panniker and Aqbar, and then everyone was diving for cover at the bottom of the trenches as a series of smaller, faster shells blasted into the plain all around. Bligh had crammed himself into a sleeping shelf, his arms wrapped around his head. In his mind he was reciting the poems of Emeryck Alther, feeling irrationally that death would be a nobler thing with such lines at the forefront of his thoughts. The barrage lasted for twenty minutes and when Bligh emerged he found that one entire section of the trench had taken a direct hit. He looked at Rayner and then looked away. The man's face was pale with rage. Bligh started to scoop the soil away with his bare hands, flinging handfuls out over the parapet into no-man's land. Others joined him with trench trowels and buckets. After a short time, his hands sore and torn from the digging, Bligh felt a movement in the soil and he jumped back in fear. Then he saw a hand and he was digging again, calling frantically for assistance, forgetting the rule of silence in the trenches. Within minutes a man scrambled free, coughing and spitting mud, rubbing the dirt from his eyes. It was Sadiq Phelim, apparently unhurt, an insane, terrified grin on his face. They dug through the day, finding the mangled body-parts of two young Traians. The twenty yard stretch was cleared by nightfall, although the sides would be unstable until enough sandbags could be filled and lodged into place to retain the loose mud. Bligh, Rayner and a couple of others could not rest even then. All day the remains of the two dead Traians had occupied the sleeping shelves. They were covered with sheets, but Bligh had never escaped the feeling that they were watching his every move. Now that darkness had returned they were able to climb up behind the trench and scoop out a pair of shallow graves. Shovelling mud and stones over the bodies, Bligh eventually paused for a drink. "Right," said Rayner, straightening and stretching. "Time for patrol duty." |
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- proverb. |
| Upon being relieved, they marched out under cover of the night and made camp in an old chalk quarry about a mile behind the Line. One Section from the 34th was taken away the next day, to act as reserve for a depleted company of the UPP. Bligh, with the remainder of the Company, found himself on supplies duty at Hol. Within a day they were moved again, into reserve to the 16th up where the Ephedreal Hills started to rise above the Comeran zone of the Great Plain. Here, a little extra altitude gave them all a foretaste of the winter to come. The summer birds - the mountain swallows, the flocks of finches, the ghostly rattling nightjars - had gone now, and what little vegetation remained was wilting and drying up, its life-force retreating into the dormancy of seeds and roots for the months ahead. The days were wet and grey, much as they had been down on the plain, but the nights marked a sharp drop in temperatures. Old black-iron braziers came into use in the trenches and the soldiers were greatly cheered when one of the first supply runs brought them extra clothing and a blanket for every man. The morning after their arrival they sat around the braziers, cleaning their guns and talking. Bligh was being meticulous with his rusty old rifle, as Rayner had promised that he could have some target practice later in the day. It would be the first time he had fired it. "It is time we have some time away," said Sandy Brigg, in his imprecise Traian. Brigg was an old soldier from Wederia. He had fought in the Pharic Campaign over twenty years ago and this had been his last chance for a fling before hanging up his uniform, he had told Bligh. He wondered why Brigg did not speak in his native tongue - he knew Bligh had been schooled in Wederia. "Some leave, do you mean?" said Bligh. "Yes. Leave. A soldier needs some leave. He cannot be moved all over for all time." Bligh, too, had been wondering how long they would be moved from one place to another. Would they be treated in this way until the war was over? It was as if there was a vast intelligence behind it all, a creator of strategy that slotted Companies in here, away from there, all to some grand plan. But Bligh knew that in reality there was nothing so precise involved. He had no doubt that some Companies were being shunted from one end of the war to the other, whilst others sat idle waiting for orders, with gaps going uncovered in the Line for days on end. He wondered if this cynicism was something new for him, or if he had always taken the jaundiced view. He wanted to know what was happening with the war as a whole, but they rarely received more than gossip and old news-sheets whenever there was a supplies delivery. The stories were both fragmentary and contradictory. You could read or hear of a single minor battle down by Seleterra or Haen in different versions over and over from the suppliers or the news-sheets. But what of Caspe or Anasty, or any of the vast sections of the Line that were never mentioned? A paranoid mind could plug the gaps with all sorts of gloomy scenarios: the revolution was crumbling, the loyalist Army was making huge advances with the help of supplies and even manpower from Feorea or elsewhere. Bligh knew that it was far more likely that these numerous tracts of battleground merely went unmentioned because, as on the Comeran Plain, there was little to report. There were occasional, poorly directed artillery barrages, true enough, and a few skirmishes between rival patrols, but in Bligh's experience there was little of significance taking place. Most of a soldier's time seemed to be occupied by standing in the cold and wet on look-out duty, waiting behind the lines for orders, and getting supplies to everyone while they waited. He wondered, at times like this, if the war would ever end. It had lasted for over three years, now, and accounted for maybe four million lives. Before joining up, he had seen how it could almost become a way of life for the civilian populace - perhaps it could also become the norm for the military? He had spoken with the old troops like Sandy Brigg and they all said the stalemate could only be broken by a concerted effort. They were impatient for action, he realised: they had joined up to fight, not sit around waiting. This was not the revolutionary spirit which had inspired Bligh. It was not the spirit that had taken the people onto the streets in all the cities of Trace, protesting about the Army's moves to force the monarchy into conceding yet more power. For days, back then at the start of it all, the country had seized up in a general strike. Finally the Army had decided to reimpose order and the blood had started to flow. The Monarchy and the Church had swallowed their pride and sided with the Army, accepting that their powers would be reduced but sensing that they would be reduced even further if war broke out. But for once the people had not been beaten back down into submission. They had rallied under the banners of their Cooperatives and Syndicates and the newly formed Unification Party of the People. Now, the west of the vast country was a loyalist stronghold while the east had been liberated - all divided by a bloody ribbon of battlefields. "Why do you fight?" asked Brigg, suddenly. Bligh thought for a moment. "For the people," he said, wondering how to do justice to the overwhelming compulsion he felt. "If the Army stay in power, the people will suffer greatly. You?" "The money is no good," said Brigg. "But I have a skill - it is needed. It is my living." |
| Finally, relief came and as the angry dawn sky began to lighten the 34th LAs marched away from the Front. At one point, young Erin Panniker hurried forward to march in step with Captain Elliam. "Is it true?" he demanded. "We're going on leave?" Immediately the attention of those who could eavesdrop was engaged. Elliam glanced up and said, "I can't say. I believe so, but we will have to find out when we arrive at Comeras." Comeras was a medium-sized town about fifteen miles behind the Line. It had been free for over a year now. Elliam may have been unwilling to commit himself, but going to Comeras could only mean that they were to get some leave. Soon a song broke out amongst the dozen Traians who were still with the Company. The words were about a farmer's daughter and what she sold at market and after a few repetitions most of the Internationals were able to join in with the chorus. The road was icy in places and first Panniker and then some others started to skid along it like children on their way to school. The march was fairly easy, but it was past midday before the weary ranks of the 34th LAs came within sight of the first buildings of Comeras. Bligh felt a tiredness that penetrated every joint of his body. Each step was a tremendous effort, each breath. Yet simultaneously he felt invigorated: there was something humming inside his head, an energy that was alien to him. Again, he wondered what this war was doing to him. The very workings of his mind seemed to be subtly changing. The town of Comeras had paid heavily for its freedom. Entire streets had been reduced to rubble and Bligh did not think there was a single place one could stand without being in clear sight of a destroyed building. Glass in a window was a rare sight; an intact, tiled roof almost as infrequent. It was clear which buildings were still in use as they had been patched up with any materials that came to hand: boards, rubble from other buildings, sheets of corrugated tin, tarpaulins, even animal skins in what looked eerily like some kind of return to a barbarism which had died out 5000 years before. At one point Bligh spotted a wall with an iron loop attached at just above a man's head height. The wall was scarred by bullet holes and stained heavily with blood. Bligh wondered if the executions still took place. He had heard stories of deserting conscripts from the Army crossing into the hands of the revolution. Initially they had been welcomed until stories arose of a Section comprising entirely of these deserters, slipping along behind the Line under cover of the night or the heavy hill fogs and doing the work of the Queen. Nowadays deserters were not so eagerly accepted. It was not uncommon for them to be shot immediately, just to be safe. The Company split up before Captain Elliam could check his orders, thus ensuring themselves at least a night of freedom. The streets were busy at this time of day, soldiers outnumbering locals by about two to one. There was an atmosphere about the town which was quick to catch: an excitement, an eagerness. It revitalised Bligh and made him look at the place with new, less critical eyes. He started to head off with Rayner and some of the others, but then he noticed Sadiq Phelim standing alone. He broke away from the group and went over to him. "Come on," he said. "Lets soak away some of this grime." Sadiq smiled instantly and together they followed the tracks of most of the 34th, along a main street and into a dark-stoned building that bore a sign saying 'Public Bathing'. In a room lined with benches and wall hooks, Bligh and Sadiq removed their clothes. As Bligh parted himself from each of the layers that had been a part of him since he had left Anasty, he felt as if he was removing his own skin. Night after night he had fantasised about this moment: the cleansing, the chance to remove those infernal burrowing lice that had moved in before he had even left the troop train in Amere. Standing naked, he was again aware of his own lumbering size and the paleness of his northern skin. The proximity of Sadiq only served to emphasise the latter. They put their uniforms into laundry bags and followed a line of naked men out along a corridor and into the bath hall. The stench was difficult to bear at first. There was the familiar, trenchly smell of decay and human body odour, but on top of all this there was a pungent reek of disinfectant and the gagging humidity of the air. They found a bath at the far end that was only occupied by two others and, before he allowed himself to look too closely at the milky grey of the water, Bligh plunged in. The heat and the disinfectant combined to make him sting all over. It felt as if yet another layer of his skin was being soaked off. Taking a deep breath, he submerged himself for as long as his lungs would allow. With another breath he repeated the action, hoping that any lice with the enterprise to hide on his head would be killed by the disinfectant. "Tell me, Sadiq," he said, as they were joined in the bath by another three men, "how did you end up in the LA?" "It just happened. Like you, I have travelled a lot. The logical conclusion of my journeys seemed to be Trace and so I came." "And found a war." "Oh I knew there was a war," said Sadiq. "But that was not my doing." Bligh borrowed a razor and soap from one of their bath-sharers and proceeded to slice through the growth of beard he had accumulated at the Front. "You had to have a reason to stay here, though," he said. "And one to fight." Sadiq hesitated. "You will not like it," he said, "because I have noticed how you avoid matters of spiritual significance." "Go on." "I had a teacher, back in Ir'hep. Last time I was at home he explained that a recent reading of the Book of the World had led him to believe that we are in the Days of the Awakening. Bligh, he told me that the Lords Elemental will be reincarnated within my lifetime. When I heard of the war in Trace I thought of the passages in the Book that set out the preconditions for the Lords' return: The Earth shall be torn from the Heavens ... Man will reach the brink of destruction and he will hear the word of the Lords and then They will come to stand amongst his kind ... and out of the mayhem the Lords will arise - " "Okay," said Bligh harshly. His head was hurting from Sadiq's words: he resented the mental grip they seemed to impose. He thought of the relentless evensongs where Brother Benjahmine or Brother Joel would make him recite long sections of the Jahvean Bible until the sentences lost all meaning and existed only as random collections of sound. On the few occasions his mother had visited him at the school, the Brothers had made him recite the Bible to her to show that his education was thorough. She had looked at him sadly, as if she had wanted more, as if she would have given all she could to him if only he had given her something of himself to begin with. All he had given her was a jumble of words from the Bible. He looked at Sadiq and all he felt was the anger he had felt in his last years with the Brotherhood. He had already rejected one faith in his short life, he had no need of its main rival to be thrust upon him like this. He dried himself on an old sheet and then dressed in clothes that had been fumigated and scrubbed whilst he had bathed. A wash and a shave should have effected a magical transformation on him, after the long days and nights at the Front. Instead, it felt improper to be clean and in clothes which smelt strange, undergarments that itched abominably. He reached the street before Sadiq and decided not to wait. He needed to clear his head; he needed some way of releasing the pressures that had been building for so long. He had his back pay in his pocket so he decided to look for a hotel. A night in comfort could do a lot for an injured soul, he believed. The alternative would be a night on the floor of a warehouse Rayner had pointed out as their sleeping quarters for the night. He had been wandering for only a few minutes when he spotted a familiar figure. He hesitated, then started to run, regardless of the staring faces all around. He came to a corner, but she was lost in the crowd around a line of street barrows selling clothing and a little food. He ran for a short distance, past the congestion, and then he saw her again. It was ... it was Madeleine. He stopped and struggled for breath. He could not believe that it was her. How could she know to be here in Comeras? He could not believe his senses even when she had coiled her arms around his neck and was kissing him wildly. "How did you find me?" he gasped, after a time. "Your letter. It arrived at the Adernis just as I was about to leave. The manager showed me a map of where it had come from and Comeras was the nearest town. I came out on an awful, crowded train three days ago from Dona-Jez." "What about your teaching?" "They hadn't missed me while I was in Anasty. They don't miss me now. Bligh, I missed you ... I love you." Bligh held her tight again. He would not let himself think for long of the dangers she had put herself through, just for the chance that she would find him. The journey ... staying in a wild, ruined town like Comeras, so close to the Front. He found that there were tears on his face and he wiped them away with a sleeve before releasing Madeleine from his hug. "My hotel isn't far," she said quietly. She led him by the hand, along a busy street, across a square and part of the way down another street to a small, battered guest-house. Bligh was bounding with energy, taking the steps three at a time, laughing as Madeleine hurried up after him. He was halfway up another flight of stairs when Madeleine ran, giggling, down a corridor, forcing him to turn back and chase after her. As he reached the landing again, a door at the far end closed. He ran along and barged in. Madeleine was already stripped to the waist. They kissed and Bligh struggled clumsily out of his clothes. Naked, they fell together onto the bed and in an instant Bligh was lying on top of Madeleine, his face buried in the cavity between her neck and shoulder, his weight crushing her into the mattress. Fast asleep. |
| He was a mountain. He was massive, from the sheer spread-about bulk of his foothills to the jagged, ice-capped heights of his summit. Ravens and stone cats prowled his rocky surfaces high up; countless birds and animals took over where the forest stretched its woody fingers up his flanks. He felt the immense power, the ability to resist all that could be thrown against him, to pass through all trauma unchanged. He tensed his awesome body and suddenly his view was narrowing, plunging and he was a boulder, falling through the air. He could see the ground approaching and there was nothing he could do to stop. Distant grey turned to a rough, textured surface scattered with the specked green of shrubs and stunted trees ... he could see each stone now, each leaf on the plants ... he was approaching so fast - He sat upright in bed and someone was murmuring to him, pulling him back down. His body bore a sheen of cold sweat, his breathing was rapid, his thoughts a messy jumble. He turned to the person, to Madeleine, and buried his face in her chest. He had dreamt this dream before, he realised, although even now the terrible feeling of being something he was not - having it forced upon him - was disappearing from his memory, as his dreams nearly always did. Now, he just felt confused. Something was happening to him, something he was not equipped to understand, yet all he could do was lie alone with the fear, and with Madeleine. Comeras seemed different by morning, although Bligh conceded to himself that it could simply be that he felt less oppressed than on the previous day. There were fewer soldiers on the streets and more of the buildings seemed to be ... if not intact, then at least occupied and in use. It was as if the town was miraculously regenerating itself. A busy market had started up along one main street. People sold crops scavenged from the abandoned fields, household goods and clothing which had probably been looted, but at least there was activity, signs of optimism. "It's like we were when we were first liberated in Dona-Jez," said Madeleine. "The people of Comeras are survivors." Bligh sensed his feelings for the revolution stirring for the first time in days. He saw that there was still something worth defending. He remembered what Sandy Brigg had said about a soldier's need for leave and now he felt that he understood it a little better. The queues for food were even longer in Comeras than they had been in Anasty. "It fills the day," Madeleine said with a shrug. "The waiting." Bligh took out a crust of oat bread from his coat and broke it in two. He had some cheese somewhere, too, he thought, searching his pockets. Then he noticed the look on Madeleine's face and stopped. "It's all right," he said. "I intended to share it with you." "That was my worry." She pushed the bread back into Bligh's coat pocket. "Keep it for when you might need it." Then, with a mischievous look in her eye, she said, "I do have some biscuits we could eat." "Hmm? Do you have them here? Here?" He had caught hold of her and was running his hands over the pockets of her coat, lingering for longer in the folds of her skirt. "Here?" She pulled away, shaking her head. "No," she said. "I'm afraid they're back in my room ... " |
| Bligh checked at the warehouse later in the afternoon, having left Madeleine asleep on her bed. "And where have you been, with a smile from ear to ear?" Rayner was sitting in the wide doorway, chewing some sugar gum and reading through a letter he had just written. His handwriting flowed elegantly across the page, a clear indication of his education. "Oh, you know," said Bligh, vaguely. "Yes I do know. You were seen giving the little tart a body search not four hours ago - don't try and deny it, lovey, I have my sources. Listen to me: you'd better go right back and say your goodbyes as we're moving out at seven. And don't take your time about it, either." Madeleine was upset that he should be returning to action so quickly. This time Bligh was not spared the goodbyes, and he endured her tears for as long as he could manage. Now, he marched alongside Panniker and Aqbar. He thought he should say something to Sadiq before long. He should apologise for abandoning him at the baths. But not now. He was not ready for that now. "We're going right to the Front again," said Panniker. The young Feorean was full of enthusiasm, after leave in Comeras. "We've been given an entire sector - we could be there until it's all over if we are careful." "An entire sector and we're not even a full Company," said Aqbar gloomily. "Correct me if things are not truly as desperate as they appear." The thought had not occurred to Bligh, but it was true: one entire Section of the 34th had been moved into reserve for another Company back on the Comeran Plain and so now they were down to a little over sixty men, instead of the full hundred. "Things are being okay," said Sandy Brigg, moving up to join them. "We have Sadiq, do we not? As Bligh says: nothing kills Sadiq. Me, I would become his closest friend." The march took more than three hours, and it was dark before there was any indication that they were near to their destination. The last half of the walk was an uphill slog and, boosted by the chill night air, Bligh felt the benefits of leave escaping him already. It was a clear night and the moon lit their way. They were on a track that wound around the flank of a hill, dropping away in a steep scree on one side, rising sharply on the other. Eventually Bligh sensed the bulk of another hill across the valley and almost immediately the Company bunched together as those ahead halted. In a short time word was passed back that they were to maintain silence from this point onwards, as the opposite slope was enemy territory and well within range of a rifle or machine gun. They had reached the Front, once again. Ten minutes later they were past this treacherous bottleneck and before long they had arrived at their section of the Line. |
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