Chapter Fourteen
The rustling of the tent-flap the next morning didn't bring Cole's head up from his ruminations, nor did Guy clearing his throat, nor Guy snapping his heels together a bit. Guy was beginning to wonder if maybe he was being ignored for a reason, when Cole's attention finally wandered upward, and his face opened with surprise.
“Ah, Guy, I'm sorry. I hadn't seen you there. Is there something we need to do?”
His voice was distant, but Guy figured he was formulating some plan. He desperately hoped it was a plan that didn't involve keeping him up tonight. Already, today, he planned on working well into night, as it would be the last best chance to do so. They would march through meals to reach Stag Lake by late afternoon.
It was the unusual feature of this path that the part through the jungle was the easiest. After the lake, in the turn east, rocky terrain would break the jungle into forest, until the forest broke the rocks into grassland. They would be climbing up to reach the high plain holding Ainjir’s capitol city for most of the last day. One more long march, and they would be able to the city’s high towers in the distance.
Guy hadn’t told General Cole about last night. He hadn’t had time to, for one – Cole hadn’t asked, for another – and he wasn’t sure he should, for a third. It would certainly save him some embarrassment if he didn’t, and maybe that was a very distant fourth.
“Sir, General Galen requests an audience with his men before we reach the lake today.”
Cole seemed to have slipped away again, but he returned with a questioning look. Under raised brows, his keen gaze forced a little less formality out of Guy, who dropped his salute.
“Did he say why?”
Guy shook his head, “Seemed to think you'd've already thought of it, actually. I didn't say anything.”
Cole rubbed a scruffy sideburn unhappily while he thought. “Ah. Ah, I'd almost forgotten. Two days from now we won't be near any water, and it's a festival day.”
Guy didn't think it politic to mention that there were no upcoming festivals, as far as he knew. “Sir?”
“The Feast of Midras is coming up so this is probably... hm... the Dolorosa, if I remember right. A cleansing of sorrows in the name of the prophet's mother. Water is a sort of cleaning element in the worship of Midras; they think it's good to wash. I suspect it's something about that.”
He sighed heavily, but smiled at Guy. “He caught us with this one. Make the arrangements.”
A nod served as dismissal. Guy didn’t relish the opportunity to try to explain Midraeic festivals he knew nothing about to Ainjir soldiers, who probably knew even less, but if he pointed out that it was General Cole’s genius knowledge of the enemy it would probably go all right. He thought about asking Galen for tips, but the very idea made his leg tingle threateningly, so he saluted, and left the tent, headed distinctly away from the Comid general’s tent.
Cole, meanwhile, fell back into rumination. His thoughts didn't quite make it back to the festival, which, indeed, no other Ainjir officer would have considered, except perhaps Horace. Knowledge of Midraeic customs, though incomplete, had served him well in the war. Using the patient and welcoming teaching of his lover's faith to wreak havoc both physical and psychological on Comid forces was one kind of betrayal.
A treasonous lie was another.
Faith was a funny thing. The concept had no place in Ainjir anymore – if, indeed, whatever had held the nation to its demanding and visceral gods could even be called ‘faith’ in the first place. It made sense to him, in a way that ensured he knew he only half-understood, when Nika had explained to him… Well, in fact, Nika had shown him – no explanation would have done it justice, if he even would have taken it seriously.
What Nika had shown him was the weight of the abuse of faith between lovers. Cole didn’t understand the Midraeic god, his prophet, or his books and laws, but he understood that he had loved Nika. Only then had Cole understand that that love was different – particular – as Cole believed in Nika with a depth of feeling – a faith – never spared on any other of his numerous lovers. He understood it when his own carelessness, the arrogant and torrid casualness of youth, drove Nika into the arms of another.
Even thinking about it still hurt, and he had long since stopped blaming any part of that hurt on pride. At the time, they had hardly known what they meant to each other – Nika was not disowned, Cole was obviously not ready – so, in a way, they had discovered it together. The blame rested on Cole, though, who had somehow felt the growing preciousness of Nika to him, and decided that it meant he could be crushed, like a picked flower in a book, to be preserved. Nika, who knew nothing about lovers, at least knew that there were others. And Nika knew, too, immediately, once he had done it, that he had broken faith. If he knew nothing about lovers, he knew everything about faith.
So, while Nika had worked it out, eventually explained and returned, Cole had just… well, Nika called him the passionate one for a reason. But that time, it had been Cole’s ignorance and Nika’s inexperience driving the division. This time, if Nika did it, he did it knowing full well how much it would hurt.
The deep and poisonous burn of finding his own emotions false filled him; it burned to discover his own comforts to be pleasantries, indulgences calculated to make Nika's treason easier to bear. All foolish, faithful lies. Nothing for which Cole felt sorry was quite enough to balm that searing anger from his heart.
In fact, since the suspicion had awoken, he could feel nothing else. It was behind all of his gestures, behind every shielded response, bitter and burning and passionate, making all of his waking life slow and drifting. He would say it was behind his thoughts, but...
In truth, since yesterday, he had thought of nothing else.
Nika marched between his guards all day, noticing that they didn't have their staffs quite so at-the-ready. Though it was tempting, he kept his smile to himself. In the dark and quiet, it had been easy to hear Guy's reprimand through the hole in his tent roof.
Maybe that boy would turn into an officer, at some point.
Marching all day wasn't as bad as it could have been, and his navigations proved correct. They reached Stag Lake with a mid-afternoon sun still blazing, just passed into the western sky. He tested his body; the beating last night hadn't been bad, and the guards leaving him alone today meant he had a day of healing – appropriate to the season, if not purposefully so.
He was tired, still, but he wasn't so tired that he lost all of his jittery nerves. Nika hated speaking to crowds, and it didn't very much soothe him that this crowd disliked him. His guards let him nervously straighten himself, even pace a bit while they rested, and run over what he meant to say. They didn't even once snap at him. It was practically peace time.
What was left of his uniform wasn't impressive, but he wore it with the pride his officers would expect of him – his infantrymen had been more understanding. His one hope, that he would see blue damselflower on the way, the sign of their Gracious Lady, hadn't quite come true. Though there was plenty of blue cloth about, he figured it would be near blasphemous to the men if he fabricated one from Ainjir cloth. He didn't need any help damning himself. Unfortunately, that left him nothing more to do. He could polish his buttons for the dozenth time, but other than that, his fidgeting hands would find no purchase.
He thanked God for Guy's reprimand, because the guards letting him fidget in peace meant he didn't start the speech angry.
They had orders not to let him speak until a solid and controllable camp was established to allow for everyone to wash at the Lake. With this sort of thing, even Nika could see that Guy was really quite skilled. Never once was there bustle or confusion around Nika as he waited. So the man couldn't deliver a letter – he could certainly organize a camp. Having met officers for whom that thought went vice versa, Nika knew which he much preferred.
Perhaps an hour after they stopped, half of the Ainjir forces had changed to their second-best uniforms, first ones sent to be washed, and they had gotten a quick bath in. The first set would guard the prisoners, who bathed last of all, while Nika spoke to them so their mates could take their turn at the lake. Nika hoped whatever godforsaken thing he was going to say wouldn't set the fanatics to foaming. If everything went smoothly, then it promised to be an evening of lax enjoyment for both the Ainjir and the Comids. Actual peace, if only for a moment, not this nervous pause, full of the expectation of betrayal.
Considering the number of his men that were sure to be hanged, Nika considered it a duty to try to let them enjoy what they could. Officers or not.
“Scum,” came a flat voice, as both of his guards stood. This time, their staffs were at the ready.
Nika held still. They came up on either side, and he matched his march to theirs. It was time.
The sun had just begun to turn its light from white to yellow, falling into the precipitous sink of the afternoon. Nika could watch it over his right shoulder – just a perfect sort of metaphor if he could think of how to phrase it. Guy had provided a box to stand on, as a block of near three hundred bodies is not an easy thing to speak through. Nika, in part, wished Guy hadn't been so thoughtful, as now, he could see them all. Near three hundred faces, all mixed with fear and despair and hate and turned towards him in the figuratively-apt, but unhelpful, dying sunlight.
They could hear the laughing of the exchanged guards at the lake, the splashes of water, and the grumbling it caused from those that had to return to guard them. Even if Nika hated it, speaking was the right thing to do.
“We have come to a lake,” he began, “which shall be our last stop for water for bathing. In two days it is Dolorosa, but there will not be a chance to observe. I recommend those of you that wish to, do so now, and do not fast that day, as we will be marching over rough ground. I know it feels strange, but if you must perform the rites, do them now.”
He waited. He knew it was coming.
“Heretic.”
It was a mutter, from just in front. A man with a sullen face, heavy-chinned and bruised, who Nika couldn't tell from any other officer. Someone he didn't know. Exactly who he would expect.
There were so many he didn’t know, though. He had been kept from knowing. Not always through the machinations of command – sometimes, like now, a word or two was enough to keep them from ever being interested in knowing him better. A mutter went through them all, the repetition of the word back, so all could hear.
They fell silent when the muttering made their guards shift.
“Say what you will,” Nika replied, “but in two days there will be no water, and holiness isn't going to get it for you.”
‘Not so good with people’ both Guy and Cole had said. The sullen man shifted his feet, and looked at Nika the way one looks at mud on clean boots. Nika didn't care. He had learned things, after all, from Cole; he just didn’t often choose to apply them. But now, he searched the faces for another expression; he would see it on the young – the pale mask of fear.
There it was. A young man just a row back from the front, whose hands were clutched nervously together and whose black hair fell like shadow streaks across a pale and sweating face. Nika stared at him, willing him to speak. Nika softened his eyes, letting a smile come, but not stay, turning his palms up as they hung by his sides, opening h is posture to help the young man's words out, without seeming to do anything at all. Yes, it was a trick he had learned, once, from a man much better at earning admiration.
“What if they drown us?”
His voice cracked. The young man almost didn't seem to know what had come out of his mouth, but the rustling that went through the men wasn't hostile; it was fearful. The Comid forces had always tended towards the young, the untrained – and the too-ready. Yes, there were fanatics, but the wild thing which drove many of them was fear – fear of a multitude of things, including Comid command itself. With the silence broken, the other frightened ones could speak now, and there would be plenty.
The young man stuttered, elaborating with their quiet, rustling support. “That's what they did at the Hollow. Two hundred prisoners of war drowned in cave lakes and left to rot. They're bringing us here to drown us.”
The crowd split into those who knew the story, and who feared, and those who knew the story and felt fear was a thing to be disdained. Nika knew the story. Unlike most, he knew how much of it was true, not that the truth of it mattered. It seemed suspicious to them, coming to a lake, right now. Many had never been to the Capitol, and running across a large lake on the way there was just too convenient. Their heretic, surrendering general telling them there was nothing to fear didn't help. Even those who believed in him would have a hard time. He had to make it easier.
Nika shook his head. “They won't drown you. The Conventions won't allow it.”
At this there was a great rumbling, uniting the angry and the afraid. He heard another voice call up that was not the trembling boy. “Conventions be damned! They have broken them before!”
Nika nodded. “So have we. They will not drown you, still. Not when it seems the war can be over.”
More anger. Who would believe a heretic? How dare he speak against the Comid Army? Everyone knew they had a traitorous general, but he should at least have the pride of his people – but who would expect a heretic to have pride? They rumbled and anger built until others called out, with little variance exactly what Nika expected them to call out.
He held up a hand before things got too out of control; by force of their menacing and unhappy guardians and his quietness, they stilled. “I have spoken with this general. I know him. Conventions will be followed, just as he promised. He let me speak to you, not once, but twice, to the purpose of keeping you informed and ensuring you’re well-treated. Take yourselves to the lake, be obedient to the guards, and prepare yourself for our Lady's day.”
Be assholes some other time, he thought, but didn’t say, though he could see it wasn’t working yet.
“Liar!”
The angry ones shouted, the sudden bubbling over of rumors and plans and events beyond their control. “Liar! Liar and heretic! You blaspheme, and you work to your own ends! You have arranged not to be executed by giving us up to the Ainjir army! You've been in league with them for ages! You're trying to escape their justice by cooperating! You have no pride, you have no honor, and you have no faith!”
It didn't matter whether one or many called it out – they spoke for a mass of the angry and united. Nika kept his hands up as they shouted and boiled. The guards menaced with their weapons, and uneasy quiet spread from the edges inwards, then back out again, like a ripple. He was glad the guards likely didn't understand the Midraeic words shouted at him.
“No one escapes justice,” Nika said, catching their faces, searing them into his mind. “Do you think I’m marching beside you just to get somewhere else? Justice falls upon all.”
This was more than a few of them could take, though most found themselves quieted. The heavy-chinned man burst out, jabbing his finger up at Nika on the box. “You are faithless! We have no cause to believe you! You bring shame to the name of Midras!”
Nika took a deep breath, but he never was good at containing his anger. “Am I so important I can shame the name of the Prophet? How you flatter a heretic, to say I can bring down He who God exalted! What power a faithless liar has that he can convince the Midraeic people their Prophet is shameful! And just by telling them today we have a lake, and for Dolorosa we will have no lake, you fool!”
This didn’t please them, but nor did it please Nika. His urge was to hop off the box, speech be damned, and let them fester, but he couldn't do that. He forced another deep breath down into his lungs, and tried to hold it like he would hold a baby bird, gently letting free.
Most of these men were not angry. Most of them were scared, and letting the loud and angry ones stand in front so they seemed something other than scared. Most of them had thought that their God would rescue them and lead them to victory, but instead they had been put into the hands of a disloyal heretic with unnatural urges and fought a grisly war, at the end of which they had lost. Most of them weren't even those who had begun the fight, but like Abban, were only their descendants. They were the little brothers, the second, third and fourth sons, whose brothers and fathers had been brutally killed, and whose war had begun with the ringing rumors in their ears at every second of the torturous deaths of those they replaced. The Conventions – which, in their fanaticism, many of these Comid officers had declared were never part of their own creed, only Ainjir’s, and thus started this brutal, retaliatory mess – the Ainjir Conventions of War were dead things long before some of these ones had showed up to fight. They who had never seen them could be forgiven for not believing in them. The irony wasn't lost on Nika, there.
“So, I have no power before God, I have power as your general. You're here under my surrender – my terms, my orders. The Conventions will be mine to uphold, and uphold them I shall, at all costs.”
He paused; something raw and unpracticed always interfered with his words when he spoke to crowds, it slipped out instead of whatever he wanted to say. He always said what he meant, instead. Twisting a thread from his ratty coat, he knew he spoke so now.
“You who followed me into battle ought to know better than this. Those of you who fought at my side ought to know better than to let your fellows be afraid in the face of circumstances beyond their control. I will be accountable.”
He had to smile, even if it was bitter and small as an unripe fruit. “If not here, then before the Prophet, I will be held accountable. Justice falls upon all.”
They rumbled, a quiet shifting of pebbles under a footstep, and Nika was the one laying his foot down upon them. “You who know that ought to be ashamed of allowing your comrades to fear. Dolorosa is coming. Those who wish to, now is the time to cleanse before Our Lady.”
That was it. He had no more. He turned away from them and hopped from the box, his guards coming to his sides. He had to admit, he was surprised they didn't hit him. It would've been welcome, at this point. Physical violence he understood. Speeches? No. The guards’ strange staring? No.
A faceless man in the guise of an Ainjir officer stepped up to them. Nika could hear the shouting and herding behind him of the officers of what had once been his army. He hoped they showed at least as much aplomb as this one did, flashing insignia in his emotionless salute. He neither hated nor disdained Nika; Nika was faceless to him as well.
“General Cole requests your presence, General Galen.”
Nika chuckled. 'Requests his presence,' indeed. Cole was evidently pissed at him. If he wasn't, he would've sent Guy.
Nika returned the salute with a smile, noting the unhappy surprise his Ainjir styling put on the faces of the guards. “Lead away, then, sir. I am done here.”
The officer nodded to his two guards, who came up beside him like it was an official progress. They exchanged curt nods. As the officer turned to lead them on, Nika caught the wandering eye of the guard to the left of him – he recognized the face, but men who are beating you rarely stop to give their proper names, so that was all the remembrance he had.
Were his guards surprised? By the yelling and the dissent and the heresy and, in the end, by a smile and an Ainjir salute from a traitor? The betrayals of which his officers had accused him had themselves been rumors from others in the Hierarchy, eager themselves to betray their late-come Dux and spread his rumored blasphemies for the sake of their own advancement. But Gaius had chosen him personally, and none disobeyed Gaius – and then again, Gaius didn’t mind that the officers hated the Dux.
It relieved him; in a way, the open dissent of his men was an expression of feeling freer, becoming detached from the Comid Republic. Though they would've grumbled, back-talked, and spread poisonous rumors, they never would have shouted at someone of Nika's rank before. Not someone who had spoken to Vox Populi Gaius personally.
Everyone could hate him all they wanted, as long as it all resolved at the end.
Well, shouldn’t he try to explain it, a little, if his nice, newly-beating-averse guard was confused?
Nika smiled into his guard's wandering gaze, muttering just for him to hear, “We who are about to die salute you.”