Daniel Polansky - Tomorrow, the Killing

The orderly came by, a Nestrian, native to the country, one of that proud race whose freedoms I had killed to protect. ‘Liquor?’ he asked in mangled Rigun, and tilted a glass jug of yellow liquid towards me, the rim stained by what I hoped was only dirt.

I shook my head.

He shrugged and downed my ration. I turned myself towards the wall and passed into a fitful sleep.

My dreams were bitter and clouded, and they hung thick as smoke, staying with me even when I lurched up from bed and sprawled my way to the nearest outhouse. Contra the doctor’s promise, no one came by with any soup.

I was ripped firmly back to consciousness by screams and cannon fire. Night had fallen. The only illumination in the tent was provided by a heavy lantern set on a pole in the center. Its light didn’t reach me, but towards the front I could make out the frantic movements of the staff, broken out of their lethargy by an unexpected rash of casualties.

They’d attacked at supper, making us pay for our hubris, for thinking we could stroll toward the Republic without forward pickets and scouts clearing the way. They hit us that night all across the front, the entire retreat revealed to be a feint, our optimism premature and quickly ended. The Dren were proving better than us when it came to grand strategy. The Dren were proving better than us when it came to virtually everything.

The rest are scraps of images out of order, dealt from a shuffled deck, my illness and their own nightmarish quality breaking chronology.

A limbless boy, nubs of flesh waggling at me, begging for someone to kill him, the doctors too busy or foolish to oblige him.

A blood-spattered saw next to stacks of arms and legs set atop each other like children’s blocks, so high that the nurse has to stretch to add another.

The two doctors who’d signed me in, the younger white as the bone he’d been cutting, slack-jawed at the horror, the elder trying to slap him back to consciousness, three sharp retorts without effect.

Them doubling up on beds by the end of the night, waking from a stupor to find a corpse beside me, too weak to roll him off my slab.

A man across the aisle pulling at my shirt, pleading for something, his voice stolen by a sucking chest wound. Getting more animated as he slips away, his pleas violent and unanswerable, having to near break his hand to get him off.

The orderly stripping the bodies, rifling pockets, picking off wedding rings and prayer medals. He sees me looking and brings a dirty finger to a guilty smile.

The screams, an untidy hymn of misery, voices dropping away from the chorus, silenced forever.

Many other things also, things that kept me up late into the night, that keep me up today.

The next morning I hobbled my way back to lines, and when the lieutenant came out to inspect us he slid his eyes over my shaky salute like I belonged there, and I thanked Melatus and every one of his siblings for it.

A day or two after, I managed to start keeping down water, and a few days after that I could eat solid food. I have never swallowed another cherry, and feel confident I will die in that same state.

The Association orator could talk about honor, he could talk about pride in country and the nobility of sacrifice. As far as I’m concerned, war is shitting out your insides while boys die in the dark around you. Everything else is storybook fantasy, and you can leave it there.

21

Wren was out back, hunched up in the thin line of shade provided by the wall. His spindly legs straddled an empty beer crate, and he was flipping a knife into the ground.

I reached down and picked it up. Double-edged, four solid inches – standard issue during the war, though I’d long lost track of mine. Another gift from Adolphus, or his Association chums. ‘Say thank you.’

My back was against the sun, and he squinted up at me. ‘For what?’

‘For providing you with a roof, and food while you sit beneath it.’

‘Thanks,’ he said, but I didn’t think he really meant it.

‘Thank me again.’

‘I think once was enough.’

‘I got you a tutor.’

Wren was not prone to strong displays of emotion. Frankly, it was one of the things I liked about him. But still I was expecting something more than nothing, which was pretty much what I got. ‘Yeah?’

‘She’s an Islander, supposed to know her craft. Name of Mazzie.’

‘Mazzie of the Stained Bone?’ he asked, suddenly wary.

‘You’ve got your first meeting with her in four days.’

‘The veterans are having a big rally, getting ready for their march. I told Adolphus I’d come along and help out.’

‘When I first picked you up, you couldn’t pass an apple cart without knocking it over – now you’re happy playing regimental mascot.’

‘He’s going to give a speech.’

I hadn’t expected that. ‘A speech?’

Wren nodded.

‘I’ve heard that man stutter through his name. What’s it on?’

‘The war.’

‘It’s over. We won. Sorry to spoil it.’ The glare reflected off everything, off the windows and the ground and the clouds. I envied Wren his cover. ‘You been bugging me about this for years – don’t tell me your feet have gone cold all of a sudden.’

He ran his hand through an ungainly mess of hair. ‘I’ve . . . heard things about Mazzie.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Those things weren’t nice.’ It was as close as the boy would get to admitting he was nervous.

‘You like it here?’

‘Well enough.’

‘You think you’d prefer a spot in the Academy, locked up for the next ten years, brainwashed till you walk in lockstep?’

‘No.’

‘Then we’ve got a limited slate of options. Whatever else Mazzie is, she’s not working for the Crown, and that’s the most important thing. Listen to what she has to say, follow her directions, and don’t offer no lip – but keep your ears open and your eyes up. She does anything that seems off, don’t be slow telling me.’

‘And?’

I tossed the knife into the dust. ‘And I’ll handle it.’

I guess that was enough for him, ’cause he nodded and went back to his game. Like I said, Wren wasn’t big on histrionics.

My room was hot as an oven, stagnant even with the windows open. I’d have given ten ochres for a fresh breeze, had there been someone to accept the offer. I stripped off my shirt and tried to catch a few hours of sleep, but between the day and the breath I wasn’t having much luck. I pinched a spread of dreamvine across a layer of tobacco and puffed it into the sour air. When it was out I rolled another. It wasn’t quite slumber I fell into, more a state of pleasant catatonia, but I was happy enough to have found it just the same. Time slumped against itself. It was late afternoon when a rumbling from the floor below brought me up from my stupor. After a few wasted minutes trying to recover it I put my shirt back on and descended to the kitchen.

Adolphus was down to his skivvies, restocking supplies we didn’t need, a happy pretext by which to cause a great deal of commotion.

‘You can stop. I’m here.’

He turned a scowl on me. Above it his one eye leered angrily. Normally he bowed to etiquette with a stretch of cloth over his empty socket, but today he hadn’t. It’s not such an easy thing to argue with a man while you’re staring at the inside of his head, and I’d come off second best on more than one conversation because of it. I think he planned it that way – Adolphus was better at guile than he liked to let on. ‘Gotta get ready for tonight.’

‘Yeah, I’m sure we’ll have a run on sherry. You gonna tell me what’s wrong, or I am going to have to guess?’

He grunted but kept to his work.

‘You miss your mother. You lost your half of the bar at dice. You’ve fallen in love with a dancing boy and want to run off to the Free Cities. Stop me if I’m close.’