Брайан Макклеллан: War Cry

The war began before I was born, and for as long as I can remember, someone had been telling us it’s almost over.

When I was a kid, sitting in the factories, using my smaller hands to help put together the engine components of our bombers, the radio crackled peace talks half a world away in Ven. I can still recall the newspapers and their inky headlines, when I was a teenager, promising us we were just months away from forcing the enemy’s surrender.

And now? Now it’s their leaflets, dropped by the millions, coating every inch of our bombed-out cities and pitted wildernesses, telling us to give up because defeat is minutes away. On good days we use the leaflets for toilet paper or to start our cookfires. On bad days… on bad days each of us silently considers the offers of amnesty, sees the desperation in the eyes of our friends, and tries to remember the faces of the people we’re fighting for back home.

It’s early morning as Aleta and I crouch over our tiny campfire, hands practically buried in the flames for warmth while she coaxes the last bit of flavor from month-old coffee grounds. We shelter in the shade of a narrow canyon, cold but safe, and listen to the distant drone of enemy bombers heading toward Bava while the rest of the platoon gets some rest inside the caves we’ve called home for the last six months.

Aleta takes her pewter pitcher off the fire and sniffs the contents, giving me a hopeful smile. “It’ll be good today,” she says.

Coffee hasn’t been good for years, I want to respond. I bite my tongue. Aleta is twenty-nine, an old woman as far as the war is concerned, and widowed three times over. She can shoot better than anyone in the platoon, and sometimes her cooking actually has some zing to it. Unlike mine. Mine’s always shit.

Aleta has earned a little respect. I keep my bitter comments to myself and listen to the distant bombers. I haven’t heard the report of an explosion today, which means they’re dropping leaflets again.

Aleta can see my tilted head, and cocks her own to listen. “Nine days in a row,” she says. “No bombs. Just paper.”

“Think they’re out of bombs?” I ask.

Aleta shrugs. “We can hope.”

“There’s always hope,” I echo, though I don’t feel much. Nine days is a long time to go between bombings, especially when the enemy has the upper hand. I wonder what it means. Last month the radio claimed that the enemy was out of some kind of chemical they used to make their explosives. Who knows? Whatever the cause of their leaflet campaign, I won’t argue.

I belong to a tiny platoon of rangers stationed in the Bavares high plains. We protect a vast stretch of scrubland between Bava in the south and enemy territory in the north. There are twenty of us left. Eighteen, maybe? It’s been a while since I bothered to count. We have one radio with a broken antenna. From time to time it spits out propaganda, news, coded messages. It goes in and out depending on whether the enemy has managed to bomb our radio towers in Bava faster than we can rebuild them.

We have enough carbines to arm the platoon twice over: a few good rifles, and one machine gun. We have ammunition from the last supply run. We have some fuel for our little one-seater, open-cockpit fighter that the crew affectionately calls Benny. We even have a pilot and a runway, which if the enemy propaganda is to be believed may be the last functioning runway our side controls within six hundred miles.

Our mission is to harass the enemy, to keep them on their toes while the hats back in Bava try to work out a strategy to push them back. We are very good at our jobs. The hats are less so at theirs.

My mind is wandering again, and it takes Aleta several moments to get my attention.

“Teado,” she repeats, finally reaching across and tapping me on the shoulder.

I come out of my reverie. “Eh?”

“What are you thinking about?”

“Bread,” I lie, giving her a smile. “The kind of bread my mother used to make with the braided dough. Soft like a cloud. Spread with orange marmalade.”

“Ach,” Aleta responds, touching two fingers to her stomach and falling backwards on her haunches. “You’re making me hungry.”

I’m making myself hungry. She hands me a cup of coffee. It tastes like slightly bitter water, but I thank her because it’s hot. Aleta is a good woman, and I think she’s been flirting with me.

“Teado,” she says.

I look up from my coffee. “Hmm?”

“Did you…” She pauses, as if searching for the right words. “Did you have midnight watch at the radio?”

“Yes.” She knows I did. The watch roster is written beside the radio. Her face is serious and this puts me on edge. “Did I do something wrong?” I try to think back on the previous night, and wonder why Aleta makes me feel like a schoolboy. Technically, I outrank her. But out here, a platoon of rangers on the enemy line, rank means very little.

She continues on. “I had it after you,” she says. “The radio was tuned to enemy propaganda.”

I freeze, coffee halfway to my mouth, tongue suddenly dry.

I’ve spent every night for two weeks hunched over our equipment, earphones pressed against the sides of my head, listening to enemy propaganda during my shift. I try to smile. “Their music is better,” I say, waving a hand in dismissal. I hunch closer to the fire, feeling suddenly defensive, hoping she does not prod further.

“Their music is better,” Aleta says.

This makes me glance up. Back in Bava, listening to enemy propaganda is a shooting offense, and we both know it. “You…?” I ask.

Aleta stirs her pot of coffee and gives a little shrug. “By accident, of course.” There is a long, drawn-out silence. I glance furtively at Aleta till she sighs and continues on, “No, not by accident. We all listen, Teado. We all wonder if their food is better, or their beds and clothes warmer. We all look toward the enemy air base and wonder if we could make it there without one of our friends shooting us in the back for desertion.”

This admission startles me and makes me feel guilty, all at once. I’ve been considering those very things for weeks. I’m not sure what to say. She looks me in the eye. “Commander Giado took me aside last month and told me that if any of us makes a run for it while I’m on duty, he would not question me if I miss.” She mimes making a rifle shot.

I can hear nothing but my heart beating, and I look around to make sure everyone is still asleep. This is treason. She has as good as told me that I could make it to the enemy if I wanted. I wonder if this is some kind of test, but I think I know Aleta better than that. And she has been flirting with me. She wouldn’t flirt with someone she might have to kill.

She stares at me expectantly, and I realize that I made up my mind about the amnesty days ago.

“If I took their offer,” I say carefully, “they would make me turn over the location of our platoon.”

“Likely,” she agrees.

“I think… I think that I could betray my country. But I could not betray my friends.”

This last bit brings a smile to her face, and she reaches out to clink her coffee cup against mine. She gives a happy sigh, and I can sense the issue has been settled. A great weight lifts from my shoulders.

“They really do have better music,” I say.

She laughs. “Just make sure you change the radio when your shift is over. We should be a good example for the others.”

We fall into a companionable silence. I turn my attention away from propaganda and toward the scorch marks on the canyon walls above us. I can tell by their inconsistent pattern that they don’t come from bombs, but rather sorcery, and I wonder what kind it is. The Fire-Spitters on both sides are all dead. There are just a handful of Wormers left in the world. They say the only wizards to survive this long into the war are the Smiling Toms and the Changers.