*
After a time, walking mechanically forward with my eyes on the ground, I glance up and stop so abruptly that Jil Punkinflake collides with my back. A shiver transfixes my whole body from the top down, and my jaws clench so hard I can feel the muscles on my skull push out. A hollow in the mist, like a floating tunnel, drifts past, and through it I see the blue slopes of the mountains, blue as cobalt, seeming as though simply standing there were a shimmering action they took.
“The interior,” Thrushchurl grins at me, nodding, passing, his hands thrust in his pockets and his carbine high on his back.
Jil Punkinflake is shoving me forward high-handedly, as though Saskia were watching.
The sight is gone, and now fog and swaying backs fill my eyes again. I breathe out through my mouth; the mountains I saw there, so briefly, were the mountains of home.
*
Dark bluffs of that iron rock lift up above us and boulders line the road. The rocks are fanning our line out and Makemin is concerned; he is continually calling to his officers to keep everyone together. The bluffs seem to wall off some of the mist.
The path tapers down to a flat clear spot shored with talings and boulders. From there, it angles in forks to the right where it descends, diverted around the high iron promontory facing us. The shoulders on all sides are fringed with enormous basalt rocks. Rounding the shoulder there are other men walking towards us and into our ranks shouts rise on all sides and I see blackbirds’ shocked faces uniforms and the world blows apart in explosions of gunfire as I turn see one of our men run twist in air head whirl on his neck and fall in a heap I scramble to one side ducking my head. The lieutenant is just ahead of me pitching headlong behind the rocks. I shove in behind him and lower my head nearly to the ground, shots rebounding against the stone, spatter the higher boulders behind me, their noise punctuating the more continuous howling of the men who cry in surprise, alarm, dismay, pain, sudden fright. A spray of gravel patters on my back I turn and see Silichieh, who had been relieving himself in among the rocks, dashing forward between them in a crouch, holding his trousers together with one hand and homing in on the lieutenant. Looking about me, I see the captain standing impossibly by the shoulder in firing range posture, left hand on his belt buckle, shoulders and hips following the arm, legs akimbo, aiming firing and aiming his pistol with a kind of shining boldness, golden hair and regimental uniform. I fold myself backwards as the lieutenant continues to crawl for cover and I am on my side, in the dust looking out at chaos of fog and jets of gunsmoke I have for a moment the bizarre thought that I see dawn haze over high tiled roofs, a willow tree glazing with the pale light of a chilly winter sunrise. A moment ago we were simply walking along together—now my friends and companions are lying dead on every side—not ten feet from me a forearm lies spreading blood—I hear screams from forms dashed to the ground, while over me the sky is cool, the day made beautiful by the fog, the hills roll placidly off into the distance. I lie here in a nightmare while all around me the world continues tranquilly.
Saskia races by, barrelling toward the enemy and one of the Specialists staggers forward out of the fog and collapses with a sluicing wound in his thigh—a moment later, his screams begin. I go to him; he lies on his back. I’m bandaging his leg but the blood flows out of him even when I lean forward with all my weight and press both hands to the rags of his thigh even as he is screaming so loud I can’t hear the shots crashing all around me. Now I’m stopping the blood—no, the flow has stopped because his heart has. The ground under my knees thumps like a drum. One of the Expeditionary soldiers lies on his side not ten feet away clutching his arm. I crawl to him he jerks as a bullet ploughs up his body his abdomen splits and I seize him the next moment, holding him as he screams and flails I try to stop him, he’s spilling and spreading his scarlet entrails around. A hammer smashes me on the hip and his body jolts, I am knocked backward. When I rear up again into his abrupt silence I fumble at his neck, he’s dead—my pelvis aches at my left hip—investigating I find the bullet that struck and killed him passed through his body and deflected off the heavy steel holster clip on my belt because fate loves idiots. From everywhere come cries for help. I make for a low rock that’s near and slump behind it stupidly, bullets buzzing on all sides like heavy midges and surrounding them the noise of the Clappers high up on the path in our rear. Men are crying to me, for
my help
. I see another wounded man near me. I’m the only medical officer here and I go quickly to him—
“Wait! Stop shooting!” I scream nonsensically to no one as I flounce on all fours to his side. I am listening to the rhythm the Clappers make up and about the shooting; I look down to bandage my casualty and find I’ve already done it. I follow screams to another man, wafted along I feel light as air, I attend to him and pull him behind the rocks. My head feels turned to light. The world cries “help” to me, and I say to it “I’m coming! I’m coming!” as often as I can, as I dress another wound, as I pull a man to cover, as I catch the next man to be hit before he touches the ground he is in my arms and receiving my help.
The horns of the Clappers blat out loud. Now I see Makemin in a knot of sharpshooters firing from a heap of rocks an explosion from the path ahead cuffs me with its noise and I lunge for Makemin’s cover. I see one of the blackbirds pick up and pitch back one of our bombs, and it detonates close enough to me to shower me with particles of stone. Makemin orders the grenadiers to stop throwing. I’m looking around this way and that—I see Jil Punkinflake flat on the ground with his hands clutching his head and his dog tugging insistently at his coat tails. Going to him I find him unhurt, sobbing and rigid with fear, drag him to cover. Now I see Thrushchurl high up behind the rocks, grinning and methodically loading and emptying his gun without pointing it at much of anything. The fog is lifting a little. Silichieh comes from Makemin’s direction and slides in beside me in a hail of gravel, his face drawn, eyes dull and blank like a doll’s eyes.
“They’re falling back. Makemin wants us to regroup.”
He bustles on past me his sweater brushing over the dog’s head. I don’t know what to do so I stay put and watch. No sign of any regrouping. Another fusillade of shots spatter all around, one of the loonies falls a few dozen yards from me, face down in a mound of black earth. He’s dead when I reach him. I run again for cover, the same stones that sheltered me at the start, years ago. I can see the lieutenant is still there, the whites of his eyes as he peers at me, rigid, breathing hard, face in the grey.
The ground around me stutters with shot like cracking whips and I’m pelted with grit. There are enemy rifles sparking from stones just down the path from me. Saskia is suddenly there between the riflemen and me; she bounds up on their cover and kicks one of the blackbirds in the face the pistol in her left hand is pointing and firing and the sabre in her right swings up and down. She’s leapt right among them—I can’t see—one of them backs into view with his rifle flung up her sabre shears it in two and hacks him so that he is driven back, tumbles over a boulder and falls sluicing blood to the ground. Another is coming up the path rifle level she bounds over the barrier thrusting out her legs and kicks him in the chest. He lands prone and spins but she swifter than thought is upon him and spits his throat, pulls the blade out and chops him across his adam’s apple. Never stopping she flies up the opposite declivity of the path following a broken defile along which some of the enemy are retreating. Up the slope weightless she goes and slices a man’s legs out from under him from below, impaling him in the chest when he falls. The soldier ahead of him she shoots as he crests the grade, the bullet blowing his hat up and off his head. She climbs to him and stabs him, then vanishes over the declivity, firing her pistol. Last I see of her, she is charging down after them, now both hands on her sabre she lifts it over her head again and again, hacking at them like a crazed woodsman chopping logs.
The Clappers suddenly call
congregate
. The shooting has stopped. Only now do I realize it has been over for a while. My ears are ringing.
Men are timidly emerging from cover and gathering in
the flat spot where the road forks. Makemin and Nikhinoch stand there impatiently. As I approach, and the lieutenant, looking grim, comes behind me, the captain strides up lightly but out of breath and reports to Makemin, pointing down the path. Makemin nods. Presently I hear him asking after Saskia. I point down the path myself, explaining where she went. Makemin frowns and pulls the havelock from his helmet angrily wadding it in his hands. I can’t yet follow entirely what is being discussed—I look back and see one of the blackbirds scrambling at the top of the declivity on the path ahead. Before I can cry out, I see him slip and drop. When he emerges from the stones among which he fell, he is staggering in obvious pain and clutching his right arm. Saskia appears at the top of the declivity and shouts. The enemy soldier sees her and flees, heading down to the base of the slope. She is on him, but ungainly, colliding with him she knocks him to the path, where he falls on his side. Saskia, regaining her balance, strides up to him and kicks him in the stomach hard enough I can hear it all these yards away.
She kicks, kicks again. I am running toward them. She kicks him mechanically, and steadily. With each kick I see blood spurt from his lips two feet. I call to her to stop, but nothing changes.
Now she stops, and walks a little down the path, picks up his hat and tears the emblem from it, pockets the emblem. I am at his side now. His ghostly pulse gives out beneath my fingers.
“What’s the matter with you?!” I shout at her as she walks to Makemin, passing me. No sign that she hears me. The features on the ground are so badly broken no amount of mental effort could reassemble them into a face; not a real face.
I follow her back.
Makemin is fuming.
“That’s the last time you run off on your own!” he says harshly. She seems not to mind him. Her front is butcher-bloody from her head to her feet; she seems winded. Makemin inclines his head and seems to gather up her gaze.
“And we need
prisoners
, you understand?”
Saskia purses and unpurses her lips and nods wearily, putting her hand to her head. Makemin sends scouts forward and continues to gather the men; I gather the casualties.
“How many?” I am asked.
“Sixteen dead, eight injured, don’t know how many minor hurts yet.”
“We leave the injured here with two of the asylum soldiers to tend them. Silichieh will erect the tent. You select the two attendants, tell them what to do and supply them. Make certain you strip the injured and give their supplies to Nikhinoch. Get your funeral friends to strip and burn the bodies.”
Crossing the flat area, my face feels intensely cold as the wind comes up. I have to keep helplessly dashing tears from my face.
*
Faint cries of enervated surprise break our monotonous rattle; on the slope rising in an acute curve to the left a black piglet stands watching us sidelong. It soon trots away beneath the rise.
Now, as the slope levels a bit, a house is coming into view on the left side. It stands out, a peaked blue angle against the high arc of the horizon that no other thing breaks. The hill is all packed earth, and I can’t see a single stone or so much as a pebble on it, not a twig or blade of grass. This is the first house we’ve come across, and after bringing it a few dozen feet further out of the mist I see a dark activity flurry the air above it. The gaunt stone pipe of its chimney dribbles smoke into the fog. As I hold my gaze on the house I remember a line of verse, “an orphan fang in gums of clay.” Terrible. I wish I had forgotten it.
I can’t run. Where would I go? The land is barren, and I don’t know it. Makemin would shoot a deserter. What do I do?
The path will pass close to the house. Two or three black hogs are drowsing in a stone sty adjoining it. Makemin halts the column and beckons me to accompany him to the house. As we plod up to the door, he informs me I am to identify him to the occupants if any by the rank of brevet colonel. He is less peremptory with me than usual and I am ashamed of the idiot child of pride this stirs in me, as I imagine I have acquitted myself well in his eyes.
A confined, level spot has been cleared before the front of the house, which faces the path. Two windows with big shutters now shut, and another set of shut shutters directly over the sturdy-looking front door. By their regularity, I can tell these fittings are made of metal, not wood. The house is black brick with coal colored mortar, and a slate roof. Makemin raps noisily on the door with his knuckles, stands back and waits. After a moment, the upper half of the door is swung back by a lackadaisacal-looking woman with poached-egg eyes and her black hair is a little frizzled. Her sleepy face is sallow and vaguely made, but there’s something even sly in the way she takes us in, resting her forearms on the lower half of the door casually.
I greet her and reveal to her our amazing identities. Behind her, I can see a strangely inviting, limpid darkness, through which a fire sends flitting rays like the setting sun streaking thick and agitated clouds. Two old men are irrigating soup into their beards at a burnished wooden table with a single empty seat and a bowl waiting. Tin tram signs hang from the walls. Makemin asks me to ask her if she’s seen any men in black uniforms or groups of Yesegs pass this way. She addresses her response to me, her voice is caressing, shrill but quiet.