Daniel Polansky - Tomorrow, the Killing

Everyone was dead, dying, or gone, the strange vagaries of combat aligning to ensure a moment of surreal tranquility. If you could ignore the screams of the wounded that is, and I’d had long practice at that. Our defenses had collapsed completely – the next wave of Dren would be able to occupy the position without drawing a blade, and from what little I could tell things were even worse to our right. The scaffolding was well used and sturdy. It had held for the rest of the platoon. It would hold for me.

I don’t know why I stayed. Wasn’t any sense of duty, Śakra knows. I was an ant, and no ant suffers under delusions of their own importance. The battle was lost, me sticking around wasn’t going to salvage anything. Wasn’t pride neither – I’d run before when it had made sense, I’d do it again without any regrets.

I guess I’d say I was just tired. Tired of the whole thing – the weather and the rats, the blood and the shit, death all the time, death everywhere. Maybe the runners had been braver than me. Four years I’d been doing this. Can you imagine? Four fucking years.

The pause lasted only a moment. Then a squad of them came out from the defile to my right, and the window slammed shut, and I readied myself for the end.

The transport trench was too cramped to allow them to swarm me, and I wedged myself into it. The hilt of my trench blade was slippery with mud, or maybe brain, I wasn’t sure. The last of my black-powder grenades was in my other hand – worse came to worst I figured I could set it off and take a few with me. They were thinking the same thing I guess, because they were slow to get moving.

But not too slow. One went off, rashly as it turned out, tripping over the outstretched hand of a corpse, stumbling toward me headfirst. A quick chop creased his brain pan, but it didn’t do anything to slow his momentum and I had to scramble backwards to keep from falling. A second followed close on the first, and we struggled awkwardly in the narrow, and then he was dying at my feet. After that they got hesitant. A few words in clipped gutter Dren that I couldn’t make out and they fell back. Grabbing a missilist, I assumed – no point in losing anyone else.

Dimly I realized that they were taking longer than they should have, that if they were out of black powder they could have just stripped one off the dozens of surrounding corpses. In different circumstances I might have wondered about it. As it was the observation itself represented the absolute apex of what I was then capable – drawing conclusions was as far beyond me as the sky is to a fish.

A soldier came into view, blue trim faint beneath the layer of mud. I blinked away the dust in my eyes and looked again. Still blue trim. My first thought was that I’d gone crazy – no way there were any of us left. I realized belatedly that he was saying something to me, screaming it, and I struggled to make out what it was.

‘Bess,’ I yelled back finally, dragging the day’s password from some hidden corner of my mind.

He bobbed over to me, the mud barely covering his parade-ground polish. ‘We thought they’d taken this sector.’ Silver clustered on his lapel, but he was young. By Prachetas he was young, too young and too excited to have been at this long.

‘What are you . . .’ I stammered. ‘How did you . . .’

‘Make it through the mud? Some new trick of the sorcerers,’ he said. ‘Real hush-hush. They didn’t tell anybody it was coming – firms up the terrain into something you can move over. Marched two companies right around their flanks. Broke their sides while you boys held them.’ The rest of his unit started spreading into our trench. Their uniforms were fresh blue, and they went about their business with a purpose. ‘Buck up, soldier!’ The officer slapped me on the back. ‘You’ll get the Star of Maletus for this – I’ll put you in myself. What’s your name?’

He stood next to a pile of corpses nearly as high as his knees. Behind him a Dren bled out from his gut, frothy pink bubbling out his lips. He begged for water with the rain falling on his face, until one of our reinforcements finished him off.

‘Adolphus,’ I said. ‘Sergeant Adolphus Gustav.’

‘Gustav, huh? Hell of a fight, soldier. Hell of a fight. Why don’t you fall back? We’ll take care of the clean up. Get yourself some rest – the Firstborn knows you’ve earned it.’

Whatever had carried me through the day was gone, even the memory of it, and I was so tired I would have collapsed right there, used the nearest body as a pillow. But the boy officer helped hoist me up, and I managed to make it back to the support trench, and from there the next half mile to headquarters.

It was some kind of victory. The flower of ‘A’ company lay dead on the field. The survivors were only barely that – I doubted two in three would ever see service again, so utterly had three months at Aunis wrecked their bodies and snapped their minds. Then I altered my assessment. The Empire needed men. The remnants would be scraped together and thrust into action soon enough.

I found my best friend huddled with the scattered remains of a dozen platoons – refugees from the madness of the battlefield, one spot of blasted earth as good as any other. His eyes took up most of his head. They’d passed out hot rum, but his hands shook terribly, and he couldn’t bring the cup to his mouth. He stared up at me without a glimmer of recognition, mute and uncomprehending. I commandeered a greatcoat from the nearest corpse and wrapped him up in it.

No man is all one thing or another, an undiluted well-spring of bravery or a broke-down craven. I don’t know what a hero is, but I’ve met a lot of cowards, and Adolphus isn’t one of them. Nine days out of ten he was the furthest thing from it, cold as tempered steel and savage as the frost. But that day . . .

That day he wasn’t.

I figured whoever they gave the Star of Maletus to was pretty well guaranteed a free ticket back to Rigus, and I was pretty sure Adolphus could use it more than I could. That was part of it. But most of it was that I didn’t want a fucking medal, didn’t want any part of legitimizing what they’d done. What I’d done. Corpses and corpses and corpses, and they pin something shiny to your lapel and you puff out your chest and tell them it was an honor. Even now I think about it and my fists clench and I start gnashing my teeth.

Of course, it didn’t end up mattering. It was two weeks before the announcement came down that Adolphus was to receive the Star. A week before he’d taken a bolt in the eye during a routine patrol, and that was the end of his military career, invalided home.

We hadn’t spoken of it since. There hadn’t ever been a reason. There wasn’t a reason for it that night either, beyond the common instinct to spark fire with those things we’ve decided we love.

44

I spent that night in the apartment in Offbend, the same as I had the evening before. As a rule I don’t do that, and morning had barely broken through the windows when I was reminded why.

Footfalls up the stairs pulled me awake, loud with an even rhythm, four or five men moving with purpose. I figured whoever was coming could kill me as well in bed as out, and I pulled the covers up around my ears.

A little while later I was on the floor, somewhat the worse for wear. The three men standing over me came from that branch of law enforcement that swell knuckles on jaws. Though insistent I dress they took my attempts to stand with great umbrage, and were quick to display their displeasure. Their leader waited in the doorway, just out of sight, though I was pretty sure I recognized the outline.

They let me get my pants on before he came into the arc of the light, which was kind of them. I hadn’t thought there was enough left of me to be scared, but as it turned out my reserves are somewhat deeper than I’d realized.