Cole could live on a memory for a long time – living on one for three days was nothing difficult. As he would get back to his cot, the day heavy on his shoulders, he would fold his hands beneath his head, shut his eyes and hope he had time to remember before the heavy sleep he needed so much would take the chance from him. Those were the moments he would live for, as once dreaming he couldn't control where his mind went, and too often, it went back to the day just done.
There wasn't time to go back to Nika, nor was it appropriate. This part of the march required all of his strength, his soldiers needed all of his focus. They even had it at night, in dreams, when he could perhaps have gotten closest to living his memories again... but the supply wagons couldn't crest the ridge – rock fall had closed the path and they jury-rigged a crane to lift the struggling horses and heavy-laden wagons up to where they could walk. He heard again the crack of broken bones as treacherous footing took both men and animals by surprise. Though he had killed many men, he always hated having to kill a horse, even for mercy's sake. There was nothing the creature had done to deserve that; always he stroked its heaving sides like it was a personal pet and felt sorry its pulse would stop.
After filing through the jungle they filed through the hills. After filing through the hills they filed through the broken, hard, rock ground beyond the hills. He had to keep the men sharp, but they were tired. Every foot of land overtaken was a struggle. Supplies were strapped and plain for both men and prisoners. He tried to make it worth it to them now, but it was only thoughts of home that sweetened their sweat. Home was just so far away.
So Cole slept uneasily for three nights in a row, woke early to march, arranged camp, and went back to bed late, and lived for little moments he often slept through, anyway.
Guy didn't sleep, or didn't seem to. He guided the men, ordered watches, observed the prisoners, and spent half his nights up with rolls of paper – the incomplete war records brought by the field clerks who had joined the prisoner transport as the first homeward bound vessel they could latch to. They would gladly have given him whatever he wanted in exchange for the trip home, not that their refusal would've stopped him. Guy was hard as stone, his eyes shadowed like cracks. He would understand. He would find the answer. Cole slipped automatically into controlling more of the camp as Guy slipped out of it.
They compensated for each other. They were a good team. All the more reason to work hard.
Over the hills and through the rock-grounds; then, to the forest. The men were put on double watches, and Guy stood his duty when he couldn't sleep. When he needed to think he let the men go to bed and did it himself. It was precisely here, in the irregular half-woods, where unexpected clearings came up and exposed flanks and confused vanguards that a raid would destroy them. It had happened 250 years ago, during another war, and again 100 years before that. This place was a smattering of points of failure in a hundred previous campaigns. Truth be told, Ainjir couldn't afford it, this time.
Something about looking at the war in papers and reports had driven him above it, and he worried. Guy had been in the midst of things, struggling to keep up with a superior that few could keep up with, who always seemed to be in the center of things, by his own machinations or by sheer accident. This was his first chance, really, to look at the entire picture, and the entire picture scared him. Something had been off in Ainjir, and it had been off for a very long time – though as used to wars as to the seasons, for Ainjir, he could help but feel this war and all its costs were both signs and terrible portents.
So, double watch. Rustling papers, like rustling leaves. Guy wandered through the dark and watched the land around them for tell-tales, seeing the run of battles bygone over it.
He would find the answer.
Nika lay on his back, like the dead.
When he could, he walked among his soldiers. Many of them had tried to harm themselves. Many were afraid. Many didn't like him, but he walked through them anyway, for the sake of those who were afraid. Often he said nothing, just walked. If they asked, he told them where they were. He told the ones who had never seen it what the Capitol was like. A few hesitant young men would have their eyes open, wonder aloud in excitement to see a real city, the real Academy, the famous place of so many histories. Even if they were to die there, couldn't they say they had seen something marvelous?
Nika would tell them they could. It would be fantastic to see. They had traveled far from home to fight, and now would go farther than they had ever imagined. The journeying of the faithful was never done, anyway. What was dying but a journey towards the beyond?
These men had no home.
But often Nika marched silently beside them, each step sure and calm over the rocks. Through the branches. Passing close to the guards like a barrier, keeping the calm in the lines of men between them so his men wouldn't have to pass themselves close to the nervous edges. And keeping the guards safe from the dangerous men they guarded. He showed his how to line up, to march over the plains in columns so they moved like a river, imprisoned by its banks. Here, the under-training of the Comid officers of the end of their rebellion showed brutally apparent. He guarded them all.
And at night, he lay on his back, and folded his hands behind his head, calling up a memory. Though it was the same camp, they might as well be years away from one another. It wouldn't be appropriate, nor was there time for Cole to call him. So he lived there in the selfish moments that no one could see, moments given to him like gifts by someone he held more precious than... more precious than... anything.
More precious than life.
In the dark, he took those moments from sleep, for once he slept he couldn't control where his mind went, just as in death – so like sleep – he couldn't control where his soul went. He could live in his memory for a long time, though, and three days was nothing difficult. At night, though, his dreams were honest, and as Nika lay on his back, he fell into sleep with arms folded over his chest, like the unburned dead.
“Halt!”
Tired soldiers and prisoners didn't take much convincing, and they stopped almost before the syllable was done being said. Not so much obedient as expectant, almost too tired to be surprised, though the reason for the halt traveled like wildfire down the lines.
“You can see it!”
“Stand on your toes...”
“It's fog, don't taunt us like that...”
“Look! Look!”
“The Towers!”
“The Capitol!”
Nika's eyes shot up from their long fixation on the ground in front of him. He pointed his chin towards the guard next to him. His name was Heary.
“Can I see?” Nika asked.
“Sure!” Heary said, overtaken by enthusiasm (he flinched when Nika stepped out of line to look towards the horizon).
To his great relief, Nika took a few steps out, then turned around and walked right back, shoving his hands into his ragged jacket pockets. Brows bunched, he looked at the men who had been marching calmly beside him for the last few hours. They were struck with sudden fear. They might never have seen the Towers, but they knew what their nearness meant:
However hard, the march was respite. They were going to the Capitol.
They were going to die.
Nika took their fear in hand quickly. “The towers are not equal in height, though they look it.”
Their eyes swerved to him, faces pale. He scuffed the ground with his foot, looking unconcerned.
“The Academy Tower is taller, but the Palace Tower is on a hill – the whole palace is on the hill. The Academy Tower is the one farther away; they’ll start to look uneven as we get closer.”
The soldiers – both sides – stared at him. Wouldn't this be a good time for... something inspiring? Perhaps consoling?
But there was no consolation to offer. Nika glanced up at them. He spoke very quietly. “Don't get too used to this rest, we march again soon. We must get to the Ring so that they may start the process of verifying the force, if there is any daylight left. The ring is marked by big, stone hitching posts,” he raised his hands to try to describe them, but thought better of it and dropped them, “you’ll have to see them, I think, to understand – but no large group gets any nearer the city than the Ring without being verified. Keadar-Ainjir thought of that himself. You'll see far more of the city then.”
He put forward a strange calm, but it spread. The excited Ainjir soldiers could take or leave his little introduction of the city – just as many of them had never been to the Capitol as had. But few of the Midraic soldiers would have any more knowledge of the Capitol than they did of the fabled Comidras, desert seat of the last Midraeic empire. And he knew – he knew better than anyone – that there was no reason to fear, or despair their arrival there than at any previous battlefield – if anything, they had more certainty here, and therefore less cause for fear and despair. Let such feelings wait. Be calm. Do your duty, as you did it before.
Ordered again to march, that Nika’s prediction came true bolstered their confidence in him, drawing them further into his calm. He turned, as if speaking to the questions of the man next to him, though that soldier had said nothing at all.
“There are basalt caves under the city – very secret, as that’s also where the water supply comes in, through underground streams. The Palace Tower was originally a watchtower, for hunting, as this was originally an area reserved for royal hunts. When Keadar-Ainjir took the city, he founded the Academy, and said it would have a real tower, for defensive purposes, and based it on the basalt columns of the underground caves. The Palace Tower was rebuilt – and made much taller – many years after Keadar-Ainjir had died. Much of the Academy Tower’s look, though, is an illusion.”
The man next to him raised his brows. “Really?”
Nika nodded back, kicking along a dirt clod as they marched. “Some of the outside is still basalt, near the ground, and all of the inside walls, but much of the basalt went into facing and covering granite. It is supposed to look like a basalt column, rising out of the earth, but it was too risky to dig out the caves under the city, so much of the actual structure is granite, shipped in from the Ards.”
Now he had a small audience – slightly bigger, if one counted the ones only glancing from the corner of their eye as they marched.
“The Palace Tower has more rock from the caves at its base, but that’s because it was originally built with stone mixed with serpentine, peridot – they could it polish it, bring out the green and make it shine. Parts of it look like marble, with green running through it. They couldn't find enough of that either, though, so most of it is just common stones and they put the green ones in special places. Green became the royal color because of the Palace Tower, not the other way around.”
Another soldier piped up. “The King lives there?”
Nika smiled. “No – the King is an old man, and never liked the city. He spends his dotage in the North Palace, and leaves his son as Prince Regent to mind the kingdom. But you likely won’t see him, either. Prince Regent is rarely in town, having many 'affairs' to handle.”
One of their Ainjir guardians laughed, and Nika smiled again. He spoke conspiratorially, “The Prince Regent is well known for his dalliances around the kingdom, and fondness for the hunt, but not so much for his attention to politics. He's responsible for the renewal of the 'Relay' system, and the swift post – he needed ways to get about the kingdom quickly. Us coming in may be important enough to call him off from his 'foxes', but I almost doubt it.”
“The Prince doesn't like to leave a single hill un-mounted in search of his foxtails,” one of the guards added, gamely.
“Well, I don't know about that,” Nika said, “but when I was at Academy... let's just say that the city's history seemed not as long a tale to tell as some of the stories of the Prince's exploits.”
Nika fell silent.
“But... well...?” The soldier next to him looked nervously about at his fellows who nodded him encouragement. “You can't just... say so and not tell us.”
Nika smiled, but this time it was mostly to himself.
“Well, I suppose I can share a few stories while we march,” he said.
That would last them until the Ring.