The day after his release, as the fires on the mountainside burned themselves out, Rann wandered through the encampment’s main gate under a bright afternoon sun. Ilath was out in the pristine blue sky, a faint disc blemished by its crater-seas. Thain wasn’t visible yet; the lesser moon always rode lower in the heavens than its sibling.
The battle had split the valley into two starkly contrasting halves. The seaward side was still green, the long grass dotted with summer flowers, while tufty saplings grew in rows on the higher slopes. As the valley rose toward the mountainside, though, the greenery swiftly disappeared. A thousand deep-dug trackmarks defaced the valley floor. The marshland closer to the mountain had been cratered into muddy ruination. The forest was little more than a stubble of blackened stumps, still smouldering here and there. The sight of it brought to mind a vast, gaping wound, crudely cauterised and left to scar.
Iva and the others were back at their tent, dicing with some marines from another platoon. They’d been released from their own debriefings shortly before him. They had greeted his return cheerfully enough, though he’d noticed the tense, guarded looks in their eyes. Dauman had put the same fear in all of them.
He hadn’t told them where he was going. He knew they would have asked to come too, and he wouldn’t have been able to turn them down. Call it duty, call it selfishness, but this was something he had to do alone.
The muddy, wheel-rutted ground outside the main gate squelched under his boots. Even with the fighting as good as over, there was no shortage of activity around him. Engineering teams and squads of regulars streamed in and out of the encampment, accompanied by vehicles heading towards – or returning from – the battlefield uphill. The warm air was full of dust and engine fumes. He had to dodge out of the path of a heavy recovery crawler towing a thoroughly mangled tank.
He tried to keep his expression neutral as he passed a young commissary smoking next to a parked truck. Once, he’d all but ignored the black-capped patrolmen, dismissing them with a serving soldier’s easy contempt for noncombatants. Now they seemed to be everywhere. He had no doubt his movements were being watched, and jotted down in some dry personnel file that could easily double as a death warrant.
Let them watch, he thought. He didn’t hate them. Hatred would be a greater courtesy than they deserved.
He left the noise of the encampment behind and followed a branching track into the trees to the northwest. The track was busy as well, but not with troops or armour. A long queue of armoured ambulances was working its way through the forest. The drivers were not in any obvious hurry, grinding in stops and starts along the sun-dappled path the engineers had cleared for them. They weren’t carrying living patients, after all.
A temporary mortuary had been established in a scrubby meadow in the lower valley, half a mile from the encampment. It was a single huge canopy raised on steel poles, beneath which hundreds of wooden trestle tables had been arrayed in neat rows. Each table bore a single body bag, a nondescript sack of off-white canvas. There were so many of them it was dizzying to see, yet Rann knew this was only a fraction of the dead. Every inbound ambulance was laden with a dozen more.
Corpsmen and army medics moved between the tables in near-silence, opening and closing the bags, inspecting and logging the bodies with detached efficiency. He wasn’t surprised to find he was one of the only visitors. The weather had been heating up for days. A sharp whiff of formaldehyde hung in the air, and beneath it he could smell the metallic reek of decay.
He asked one of the corpsmen, a skinny auburn-haired woman in her forties, if he could look for a body. She looked him up and down skeptically, then said, “If you’d come yesterday, I’d have said no. But most of these are getting shipped out tomorrow, so I guess you won’t have another chance. Who are you looking for?”
He told her.
She consulted a dog-eared registry book, then led him to a body bag near the centre of the canopy. Rann looked on silently as she untied the straps and peeled back the canvas. The acrid smell of formaldehyde filled Rann’s nostrils, and he had to fight the urge to recoil. He exhaled sharply.
Someone had closed Lidaro’s blue eyes and wiped most of the trench mud from his hair and cheek. He looked so young, even for nineteen. He could almost have been sleeping, mouth slightly ajar, except for the dried blood blackening his chin and top lip. His skin was beginning to mottle and darken in places, the rot slowed but not halted. He still wore his marine jacket, bullet-torn and muddied, a crushed packet of cigarettes peeking out from the breast pocket.
There was a sound like faint roaring in Rann’s ears. His eyes were suddenly burning. He dug his cracked nails into his palms and blinked hard.
“Is he going tomorrow?” he asked the corpsman quietly.
“Yes. He’s on the schedule.”
Rann reached down, trying to stop his hands from trembling, to the pale hollow of Lidaro’s neck. The steel dogtags still hung on their little chain, tucked under the collar of the boy’s jacket. They came free at a tug. He wrapped the snapped chain around his fingers and gripped the tags tight. The corpsman gave him a queer look, but didn’t try to stop him.
“For his mother,” he told her. She nodded minutely before going on her way.
He stood there and looked at that still white face, at the thing that had been Mazayal Lidaro, King’s Marine First Class, for what felt like forever. At last, he carefully closed the bag and retied the straps to seal it. The body became just a shapeless mass under the canvas. Nothing to distinguish it from the hundreds of others lined up on every side.
Rann tucked the dogtags into his trouser pocket and walked back to the sunlight, winding his way slowly along the avenues of dead. He didn’t look back.
*
It is one of those unspoken, immutable laws of war that, wherever an army is gathered for long enough, someone will start brewing moonshine. Rann never found out where Geddan got that little tin flask, nor did he particularly want to know.
The four of them sat around their tent and watched the sun sink in the east. They passed the flask between them, sipping carefully so as not to waste the stuff. It tasted horrendous, burning down the throat and leaving a queasy metallic aftertaste. They drank it all the same.
The shadows were deepening on the mountain’s scarred flanks in the waning light. There were still teams of combat engineers and minesweepers crawling over it. Rann didn’t envy them their task. There were countless Salv mines and booby-traps to clear out, wrecked vehicles to drag away for repair or scrapping. And more bodies to retrieve, thousands of bodies, slowly rotting away in the mud.
None of them mentioned their debriefings, or Dauman. It was odd to think they all shared that secret now, a secret that they would have to take to their graves. An invisible thing weighing them down through the years to come.
Rann wondered what Lidaro would have said about it. The boy could turn anything into a joke.
They’d been sitting there for a while, smoking and swatting at insects, before Wace broke the silence. “I got a letter from my sister. She’s moved back to our old village in Esuloa. She’s going to rebuild our parents’ croft.” He gulped down some of the spirit before passing the flask to Iva. “The Salv burned their bodies, but she said she raised stones for them. I need to go make my grave-offering. After that...I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go out to the steppes.”
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“The herder lands? There’s nothing there,” Geddan said. He flicked ash from his dying cigarette.
“There’s nothing in Esuloa any more, either. Not for me. We kept cattle when I was growing up. I could see myself a herdsman. Driving longhorns around under the big open skies, with nobody to bother me.”
“Have you been to the steppes, Wace?” Rann asked, perhaps a little more bluntly than he’d intended. “My mother grew up in a herder village, in the Inandica country. She couldn’t wait to leave. It’s hard living.”
Wace shrugged. “Soldiering’s hard, too.”
Iva drank deep from the flask, visibly wincing at the taste. “I can think of worse places than the steppes. Better than picking through what’s left of the Crown City. Or staying here on the Rock.” She glanced up uneasily at the dark shape of the mountain.
They all followed her gaze. Nobody spoke. Rann thought of a great dark hall, silent figures looming out of it.
At length, Geddan lit another cigarette. He took the flask back from Iva and swigged. “Me, I’m going to the Bay of Ralka,” he said, blowing smoke. “Or Tletora, maybe. Wherever the work is. They’ve got new factories springing up left and right. Places that used to turn a Forester away aren’t so picky now. Had my fill of the bloody mines.”
Iva relaxed back against the tentpost, cushioning her head with her forearms. “I want to open a schoolhouse. Somewhere by the sea, in the old Salv heartlands,” she said. “They’ll be needing teachers. There are a lot of kids who have to unlearn the shit Nilen taught them. So we don’t end up with another like him, twenty years from now.”
“You won’t have to wait that long. There’s more like Nilen born every day,” Wace muttered.
Iva fixed him with a level stare, a half-smile on her face. “Then there’ll need to be more like us, won’t there?”
They sat and drank together until the flask was empty. Rann’s head throbbed slightly from the moonshine, and he could feel his cheeks colouring. Almighty only knew what was in that stuff. It was probably best not to think about it.
He stubbed out his cigarette and stood up. “I’m going for a walk,” he told his squad. “Some air. Might go find somewhere with a sea view.”
“Drink gone to your head, sergeant?” Geddan smirked, holding up the empty flask.
“I don’t blame him. That shit was heinous,” Wace said. “We should go find some of the navy lads. They’ll have rum.”
Rann left them to smoke. As he walked off, he overheard Geddan humming a few bars of his Forester bloodsong.
*
To Rann’s surprise, Iva came with him. She caught up with him near the main gate, with a smile that almost challenged him to turn her away.
“I could use a stroll, myself,” she told him brightly. Though he could see in her hazel eyes that there was rather more to it than that.
They headed away from the encampment, in the direction of the shoreline, up and over the forested slope of the valley. The commissaries did not waylay them, to Rann’s relief. Perhaps that was Dauman’s little gesture of magnanimity.
“Did you mean what you said?” he asked her as they walked together in the deepening sunset. Here among the rustling trees, out of sight of the devastated mountain, Delan’s Rock was a green and peaceful place. “You want to teach again?”
“Again?” She laughed. It was an oddly sweet laugh, without bitterness. “I never stopped. War’s just another kind of schoolroom. And you men aren’t much different from my old pupils. Certainly no cleverer.”
“Better behaved, I’d hope.”
“Some of you. Lidaro would have got the cane.” Iva glanced downward, her face growing solemn.
Rann felt that awful burning in his eyes again. Through the faint alcohol haze, the hard knot of guilt he’d been suppressing since the battle rose to the surface, suddenly unstoppable. Words came out, ugly and unbidden. “Lidaro’s dead because of me, isn’t he?”
“What are you talking about?” Iva said. He’d expected her to be sympathetic, or mournful, or even to agree. But she just sounded surprised, even disappointed.
“I couldn’t discipline him. He ran ahead because he didn’t trust me to lead. If I’d been...” Rann searched lamely for the right word. “Stronger, he would have obeyed me. He’d still be alive.”
“No, Rann, that’s bullshit,” Iva said firmly. “He didn’t disobey because he didn’t trust you. He did it because he was born impatient. He wanted revenge, and glory. That’s what boys like him want. I’ve seen it a hundred times before. It’s what gets them killed.”
“That’s not what his mother will think, Iva. When I go bring her his tags, and tell her how he died, she’ll blame me. Both her sons gone. I can’t even tell her what he died for.” Rann drew in a shuddering breath. His eyes were still dry, and it occurred to him that he hadn’t wept in years. Maybe he couldn’t, any more. The thought didn’t make him feel any better.
“She’ll know he died fighting, and you cared about him to the last. Any mother would be glad to know that. He Above, Rann, it’s war. You can’t save the whole world.”
“I could have saved him, though. I could have stopped him. It’s my fault he died like that.”
“No, it isn’t. Lidaro killed himself, running ahead. A Salv killed him with a machine-gun. Nilen killed him by starting the fucking war. Some things are beyond your control, or anyone’s.”
“I was his sergeant. He was my responsibility. I can’t get away from that, Iva, you know I can’t.”
“I’m not asking you to. Just listen to me, will you? You led us through the Blacksands. You led us all the way to the Crown City. We lived when a million others didn’t. Because you were strong, but more than that, because you gave a damn about us. You led from the front, and you never threw us away like the Salv threw away their conscript boys. Lidaro never would have lived so long without you.” Iva reached out and took Rann’s hand, a quick and deft movement that nearly startled him. It reminded him of the way Teina had once done the same. “You did all you could for him, Rann. And for us. Don’t forget that.”
“It...” Rann swallowed hard. “It wasn’t enough.”
“Maybe not to you. But we’re still here, aren’t we? Not dead yet.”
They stared at each other for a long moment, the evening light filtering through the leaves and dappling their skin. Rann had a hundred things he wanted to say to her, things he wanted to confess, fears and hopes and sorrows. He could not find the words. At the same time, he felt a sudden strange relief, a quiet relaxation in his chest. It wasn’t that the weight of it all had lifted. It was simply that, for the moment, with his hand in Iva’s, the weight was bearable.
Iva gave him a gently understanding smile, the smile of a teacher comforting her distraught pupil. To his astonishment, he found himself smiling back.
“I’m going to head back to the others. Come find me,” she said softly. She squeezed his hand, and turned to go.
After her footsteps had faded away, he walked on a little further, picking his way among the hooks and whorls of protruding roots, Lidaro’s tags jangling in his pocket. When he was clear of the trees, he sat down cross-legged on the dry grass to look out over the bay.
On the darkening western horizon, he saw funnel-smoke rising in wispy columns. Reinforcements from the liberated kingdom. Young men and women, relieved and elated at having survived the final advance, ready for the comparatively easy assignment of securing a conquered island. Looking forward to the coming peace. Knowing nothing of what lay beneath the mountain.
The burn of guilt may have lessened, but the fear was still there, a grey presence beyond Iva’s power to banish. At the sight of those funnels, that fear grew and grew, setting Rann’s heart racing and his mind spinning. He saw the path ahead with a terrible clarity. The secret would not be kept for long, in this army of boasters and chatterers. The new arrivals would learn the truth soon enough, and take it back to Greater Kauln in their thousands. Dauman couldn’t silence them all. It might be a month, a year, but word would get out.
The revelation of the machines would shake the world. Millions would abandon their faith in the Almighty. Millions more might cling to that faith all the more tightly, even fanatically. There would be new cults and philosophies, worshipping or demonising or denying the ancients that had brought mankind to Aede. Radicals and demagogues would seize the chance to sow fresh division. New wars would come. More children like Lidaro would be sent out to die.
Even that was not the worst of it. One thought, above all, would not leave Rann alone. The giants had been buried in the mountain, to wait through the dark centuries hidden from human eyes. They had not been awakened by the Salvators’ clumsy intrusions, or by the thunder of war above them. No doubt it was all as inconsequential to them as a battle between colonies of termites. They must have been designed to wake themselves, and only when they were truly needed.
But what need could be great enough for such an army? Had the ancients faced some threat – some monstrous enemy – that had driven them to abandon Aede? Why had they erased every trace of themselves, leaving humanity so blind and primitive in their wake? Why had they never returned?
What nightmares lurked among the stars, waiting to fall upon the ignorant world?
He sat there a long time, watching the last light of the sun give way to a clear summer night. He listened to the wind soughing in the treetops, the insects chittering in the undergrowth, the hiss and boom of the waves on the shore. The moons were rising bright over the calm ocean. Beyond them, the stars were a spray of pale gems. He had the sense of standing on the lip of a colossal precipice, gazing down into the black.