Django Wexler - The Thousand Names

“What,” he said, “is going on here?”

Winter saluted. “Remedial drill, sir !”

D’Vries’ lips moved silently as he worked that out. “Remedial drill?”

“Yessir.”

“I received a report from Lieutenant Anders,” d’Vries said. “He was most displeased-”

“Yessir!” Winter cut him off. “Disgraceful behavior, sir! I take full responsibility, sir!”

“You’d damn well better,” the lieutenant said, rallying a little. “And now-”

“The men were clearly in need of a little discipline, sir!”

“Yes,” d’Vries said suspiciously. “Discipline is important. But my drills-”

“They’re not worthy of your attention, sir!” Winter barked. “Bunch of shirkers, sir. But I’ll soon have them whipped into shape!”

“Whipped into shape,” d’Vries repeated. He obviously liked the sound of that. He glanced up the field, where Bobby had just reversed the line and started marching it back toward them. “They certainly deserve a little whipping.”

“As I said, sir, I take full responsibility. Discipline will be restored, sir!”

There was a moment of silence. D’Vries ran his hand along his mustache a few times and decided that, on the balance, he approved.

“Right,” he said, his voice regaining confidence. “Remedial drill. Well done, Sergeant. I expect to see good results.”

“You’ll get them, sir!”

“Keep them at it, keep them at it.” He knocked a dirt clod about with his walking stick. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

“Sir! You may rely on me, sir!”

“Indeed.”

D’Vries turned away, looking a little lost but not altogether unhappy. Bobby arrived beside Winter, signaling the drummers to halt, and Winter favored the corporal with a smile.

“You got rid of him?”

“For the moment,” Winter said. “Nothing confuses an officer like violently agreeing with him.”

She’d learned that from Davis, whose barked affirmations had brought more than one superior nearly to tears. The big sergeant had nearly always gotten his own way, orders or no orders. It pained Winter to think that she’d actually learned something useful from the man, but she supposed she was in no place to complain.

She sighed. “At some point we’re going to have to practice the damned oblique marching. D’Vries will want to see that we can do it properly. We’ve probably got a few days’ grace, though, and I’d rather spend the time on something worthwhile.”

Winter said this with more confidence than she actually felt. For all that she’d been with the Colonials for two years, she had never participated in an actual battle . Her combat experience was limited to marching, parading, and exchanging a few shots with bandits or raiders who invariably fled or surrendered rather than fight it out. For the most part, she was marching blind, but she didn’t dare let on to Bobby.

“Yessir,” the corporal said. Then, a bit diffidently, “I wasn’t aware that forming company square was a standard evolution, sir.”

“It’s not,” Winter said. Normally squares were formed by battalion, a thousand men at a time. “But the old colonel once told me that as long as you’ve got four men left, you ought to be able to form square. Given what happened the other day, I thought we would practice it a bit.”

“Fair enough, sir.” Bobby looked at the men behind her, who were taking advantage of the brief respite to drink from their canteens or fan themselves against the heat. “Shall we get them back to it, sir?”

Winter nodded.

• • •

That evening, Bobby and Graff taught Winter to play cards. It was a traditional soldier’s entertainment, but due to her self-enforced isolation Winter had never learned. When she’d mentioned this, the others had responded with disbelief, and then nothing would do but that they get together a game immediately.

Graff dragged the other two corporals and a couple of soldiers together, while dinner bubbled in the pots, and launched at once into an explanation so complicated that Winter didn’t understand more than one word in three. It didn’t help that Graff mixed his exposition of the rules with lengthy asides about strategy, or that the game he’d chosen apparently had more exceptions and special cases than army regulations did.

“Right, so say he shows a three,” Graff said, oblivious to his audience’s puzzlement. “Or two threes, or two fours, but not two fives, because then he might be working on a turtle. Now you’ve got to either challenge, double, play, or pass. You’re not going to want to challenge, because even if you win all you get is his buy, and with threes against nines you’ve got no better than sixty-forty. If you double, then you both draw another card, and he’s hoping for at least a king so he can threaten an axe, while you want to see more like a six or seven, but not a five, because of the turtle. So say you do. You both throw in another buy-”

He tossed a coin from his own pile into the pot, then took one from the small pile in front of Winter and did likewise. Winter caught Bobby’s eye across the circle. The boy shrugged and gave a wry smile.

“Oh, ho!” said a booming voice from over her shoulder. “Gambling, is it? The Holy Karis isn’t going to like that, Saint. He’s not going to like that at all! See, I let you out of my sight for half a minute and you’re already sliding down the dark path.”

Winter’s heart froze in her chest, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. The others around the circle were all looking at her, and she forced herself to turn and confront the shadow looming up behind her.

“Sergeant Davis,” Winter said stiffly.

The huge man laughed. “Good evening, Sergeant Ihernglass.”

He rounded the little circle, dark eyes never leaving her face. Buck and Peg stood behind him, trailing the big sergeant like dogs. When he was across from her, he pushed his way forward and sat down cross-legged. The soldiers on either side spread out hurriedly to make room.

“I just thought I’d come by,” he announced, “to see how our Saint is getting on. I’m sure he’s told you all about me. Good old Sergeant Davis, and all that. Taught him everything he knows.”

“Welcome to the Seventh, Sergeant Davis!” Bobby said eagerly.

Davis ignored him. “So how are you getting on, Saint?”

The past week seemed to roll away. Davis, flanked by Buck and Peg with their nasty grins, filled the world. He had been a constant in her life for more than a year. Without him pushing down on her, the past few days, she’d felt safe enough to unfold a little. Now here he was again, to mash her flat.

“Fine,” she muttered. “Good.”

“You should have seen what he did yesterday!” Bobby burbled, oblivious to the tension. “Lieutenant d’Vries had told us-”

“Oh, we’ve got all kinds of funny stories about our Saint,” Davis said softly. “Remember that time we all went to the inn, and we all clubbed together to buy him a whore?”

“ I remember,” Buck said. “God, that was a beautiful girl. Standing there wearing not a stitch when we opened the door to his room, and he looks at me, and I said, ‘Go on, friend, all for you!’”

“Then he sends her away,” Peg said. “What a damned waste. And Buck says, ‘Bloody martyrs, Saint, have you even got a cock?’”

Davis just smiled. Winter could well remember what had happened next. Buck, so drunk he could barely stand, had followed his words with a grab for her crotch, presumably to check. When she’d stepped out of the way, Peg had grabbed her from behind. In the ensuing scuffle, she’d kicked Buck in the face and bitten the back of Peg’s hand.