Саймон Морден - Down Station

Luiza threw her club next to him. She was right: it was either that or the knife. He snatched it up, got his arm around Stanislav’s neck and smashed the club against the crown of his head. The first strike seemed to have little effect. The second knocked him back flat against the floor. The third was ill-timed and weakly done, and only the fourth, where he was able to get a better swing and connect with the wound already on Stanislav’s temple, stunned him.

‘Get him out of here,’ demanded Mama. ‘Just get him out before he does that again. And when he comes to his senses, tell him we do not do that◦– to anyone! That man is becoming too much of a liability to have around.’

Dalip threw the club aside and dragged Stanislav by his collar to the stairs, then bundled him down them and into the room he’d first entered via the window. He slammed the door shut and put his back against it, bracing himself upright. He swung wildly between shock and fury.

‘What was that? What did you think you were doing?’

Stanislav, sprawling half under the table that still held the specimen tray, groggily put his hand to his head where Dalip had coshed him.

‘Answer me!’ He thought of all the words that the other boys at school used, openly, between themselves. ‘You were… you were…’

‘You don’t understand,’ slurred Stanislav.

‘That, at least, is right. Mary◦– Mary can do magic now. The geomancer wasn’t a threat any more. She was beaten. She was our prisoner.’

‘She is still dangerous—’

‘No. She isn’t. It’s you who’s too dangerous. You’ve already killed two people tonight. One of them in cold blood. And then you want to kill the steward, and the geomancer, and then you, you were tearing her clothes off. That’s just not…’ All the long words had failed him. ‘That’s just not right.’

‘She is dangerous,’ roared Stanislav. ‘She needs to be, needs to be◦– subdued. Conquered. Looted. Like a city. Her walls must come down, yes? It is not enough to force her to her knees, she needs to remember why she is there.’

‘That’s—’

‘She was using you to fight animals to the death. Have you forgotten that?’

‘No, I haven’t, but—’

‘She deserves to be trampled into the dust. We were slaves! We were owned! She is beaten, but she is not humiliated like we were. Make her cower. Make her flinch when we raise our hand to her. That is all she understands, that the strong do what they want, and the weak have to suffer what they will.’ Stanislav sat up, back to the table. ‘She will try to kill us if we do not do these things. Break her will, and we will be safe.’

‘I can’t go along with that.’

‘Then you are one of the weak, and you will always be a slave.’

Dalip stared at the man, who’d he’d spent hours with. He knew Stanislav was hard, driven, and unsympathetic, but as long as he’d worked hard and not spared his effort, his teacher had seemed not just satisfied, but actually pleased. Yes, he’d had moments where he’d disliked the man, but they were fleeting, because he could see the point to his training◦– staying alive long enough to escape.

It had turned out that Stanislav wasn’t putting on an act, and that he was actually like that.

‘Mary had it all under control, and look, I’m not the only one who thinks you went too far.’

‘Not far enough, I say.’

‘You were trying to rape her in front of everyone! What the hell did you expect us to do? Watch?’

‘That is how humiliation works.’

Now Dalip slipped into despair. ‘Where did you learn this stuff, Stanislav? Normal people don’t think like this. They don’t. They just don’t.’

‘This is war, you stupid boy. This is anarchy. This is all the places you read about in the newspapers and see on the television and are glad that you do not live there. Do you think normal, civilised, nice people live in such places? No, only two sorts of creatures: wolves and sheep. No shepherds. The wolves eat the sheep whenever and wherever they like.’ He snorted. ‘And now the sheep have the chance to kill one of the wolves and still they bleat.’

‘So which are you?’

‘I had to become a wolf because I did not want to be a sheep. You, you were becoming a wolf too, but no. The sheep have dragged you back into their fold.’ Stanislav screwed his face up in disgust. ‘Baaaaa.’

Dalip slid down the door, still barring the man opposite from leaving.

‘Where were you?’

Stanislav equivocated for a moment, pressing at the various lumps on his head.

‘Bosnia.’

Dalip had heard about it, briefly and in passing, but it had started before he was born, and ended when he was still a baby. That some of those responsible had gone on trial later was the only reason he knew there’d even been a war. His parents had been uncomfortable enough about what had gone on that they’d talk over the reporting, exchanging family gossip until the report had finished.

The images, however, remained: mass graves, shattered buildings, haunted people in the backs of cars and trucks piled high with their belongings.

Stanislav had been there. More than been there: had fought there, and it didn’t really matter for who, or why. What was important was that he’d brought that war with him to Down; in the same way, Dalip supposed, that everyone who came to Down brought only what they were with them. Their hopes and dreams, their fears and nightmares, the past they’d lived and the future they were destined to live.

‘You have to leave that behind,’ said Dalip. ‘It’s destroying you, and us.’

‘Do you know what it is like, to be weak?’ asked Stanislav.

‘Not until recently. I only got through that because of you.’

‘Do you want to be that weak ever again?’

‘No, of course not—’

‘Can you not see that if we fail to act now, then we are condemning ourselves to always being that weak?’

After everything that had gone on that night, Dalip was abruptly exhausted. He’d done everything asked of him, and more. His head sagged, and he gathered up his loose hair and dragged it over one shoulder.

‘We cannot do a deal with our former owners,’ said Stanislav. ‘They are not people we can trust. They will seek to own us again, and they must be stopped.’

‘We have stopped them.’

‘For now. When they regroup, they will try again.’

‘Then we’ll fight them again. Stanislav, it doesn’t have to be like this.’

‘Tell them that and see if they agree with you. They did not have to take us as slaves, but they did. They did not have to make you fight in the pit, but they did. They will do it again unless we◦– you and me◦– finish it now. There is no one else: even if we walk out of here, they will take others. Do you want that? Do you want to say to yourself, “We let the slavers go”, knowing that you have condemned others to the same state as you were?’

‘I know we have to do something.’

‘You know what you have to do. You know!’

Dalip scrubbed his face with his fingers. ‘We don’t have to do that. We don’t. We just don’t.’

‘You know the right thing to do. You refuse to do it.’ Stanislav pulled himself up by the table-top. ‘I will have to do it myself. To protect the sheep.’

‘You’re staying here. The others don’t trust you for the moment.’ He got to his feet too, and they were both as uncertain of vertical as each other. ‘Give it time, and we’ll work something out.’

He left him there, and closed the door. Stanislav wasn’t a prisoner, and there was nothing but words keeping him in the store room. Dalip hoped all the same that he’d stay there.

Truth be told, the man had a point. They’d been tricked and trapped and enslaved, and they had a moral duty to make sure that it didn’t happen to anyone else. There was no justice in Down, no higher authority to appeal to. It was the strong against the weak, or the strong for the weak: what other way was there?