Chapter Five
Line after line of men stood before them, arranged neatly in total, if dirty individually. Three companies were assigned to direct guard duty, and the two active ones now stood arrayed around and between the lines of prisoners, making the Comids look shabbier by comparison with their rigid, superior presence. Despite their defeat, most of the prisoners had hardened, dashed pride on their faces, as securely pasted as if they stood before their own people.
The sad truth was that did not stand before their own people – certainly not any more, if ever. He doubted if they ever would again. Cole had no idea what would be arranged after the war to take care of the Comids, but he doubted it would be forgiving, pitying, or pleasant – or kept to just the Comids, and not rest of the Midraeic people.
The Rebellion hadn't been just the followers of Midras, not that the Ainjir powers would admit it. How hard would it be to argue for blaming them alone? Cole wondered how many of the rebels had spared thought to that – how many had dared wonder what might their people pay for losing? In a rebellion, the cost of failure was high.
Guy had caught up to him and demonstrated his arrangements. In general, they were good (really beyond good, but Guy had a special standard to reach in Cole’s mind). As they spoke, and Cole inevitably thought on other things, Guy showed his tell-tales that he too was distracted, like beginning all of his sentences with just slightly more volume than usual and not trying to discreetly scuff dirt from the sides of his shoes (a gesture he could afford to lose; it made him look as if in urgent need for a privy). When he looked at Cole to relate plans, details, anything, he looked just a little bit over-long, his gaze searching. Cole wondered how long it would take for him to come out and say what was bothering him, guesses at which made him miss some of the finer points of the conversation.
Pointing down the lines, Guy differentiated the sections with gestures, “...and beyond that you have another break of warrant officers. Clerks, I think.”
Cole nodded. “Did you just plan to annoy everyone by putting warrant officers next to colonels and the like?”
“Disparate ranks and specialties being near one another will not be used to each other’s company and will have more trouble collaborating, should they even be able to agree to do so.”
Cole couldn’t help a smile. He had just such fond thoughts for his own clerks. They could use a prisoner’s march, to somewhere far, far away from Cole.
If Guy noticed the approbation, it didn't show. “I did go ahead put the priests together at the head of the column, but I suspect we shouldn’t bother corralling them too much...”
Cole stopped Guy with a hand on his chest, frowning. “No, leave the priests with the infantry men.”
“Sir... technically they're officers, and so need to go with Executive class prisoners.”
Cole smiled a small and troubled smile. “Executive or not, they’ll want them with the infantry. Hammerlyn won't thank me for leaving them behind, but he should. The priests will help keep the regular men pleased with their lot. Allowing the priests to remain with their people will also demonstrate that we are determined to treat them respectfully. And they will make dividing up and controlling the infantry men easier.”
“I’ll arrange it, sir,” Guy said, hurriedly slurring into his next statement, “but tell me, did you gain that knowledge from long association with Midraeic cadets at the Academy?”
‘Midraeic cadets at the Academy’, Cole's ass. Guy knew there had only ever been one. Cole looked at him, but Guy looked at his notes as if he'd forgotten his own question. Guy was too sharp to have missed the gravity of the slander at breakfast about Cole’s ‘conflict of interest,’ but it was a bold move to bring it up in front of three hundred enemy officers. Then again, in their three years together, the number of times Cole had lost his temper could be counted on one hand – and it wouldn’t do any good to threaten him with demotion. It was a default in Cole’s mentoring strategy.
Crafting a frown, Cole stepped before Guy, putting his back to the ranks, and squared his posture as if reprimanding him.
“Is that what is bothering you, Lieutenant? My history with General Galen?”
Guy stared right back at him – respectfully, of course; the man's expression was so innocent he'd put newborn lambs to shame. “Something like that, sir.”
Maybe Cole should demote him anyway… “Something like what?”
Guy patiently interrupted him, tone abjectly humble and obedient. “Something like, having great respect for your instincts, sir, those instincts having saved lives, including my own, on the battlefield a thousand times, a turn back to mercy and honor after the Comid Army – under General Galen’s command, sir – took over half the country, murdered and tortured countless kidnapped nobles and officers alike, instigated riots, burned towns, butchered families, and endeavored to kill many of your men – quite effectively, sir, if I might say so – all while the broadsheets published gloating Comid propaganda at every victory… well…”
Cole cocked his head, his amusement fled.
But before he could speak, Guy snapped a salute so thoroughly sharp it was as if he'd been slapped. “If things must move quickly, please don’t leave us behind…”
He stepped back and pulled even further to attention – the perfect imitation of one who had just received an ass-chewing. Loudly, he barked, “Sir!”
As Guy bustled away, Cole reflected. It wasn’t every day he got dressed down by a junior officer – rather, that would be never, and never in front of enemies, and had it ever happened, it certainly wouldn’t ever have happened with nobody noticing. But they didn’t.
Cole ought to consider this carefully... perhaps this was promotion-worthy – or perhaps he’d trained Guy too well.
The good-will gestures – leaving the Covid regulars their priests, letting Nika speak to his officers, taking over the transport himself – these were all part and parcel of the reputation of antiquated honorability he cultivated as an officer. Guy had never fully understood the maintenance of his classically heroic image, though by now he knew its value. He knew the balance Cole maintained between cloaking himself in a sense of past greatness and promising the vitality and innovation of a new way, though he had no eye for self-image himself.
So, unfortunately, he had to take Guy seriously. It was necessary that Cole moved quickly, but was he moving too quickly? If he was, how could he slow it down, and stay ahead of Nika?
It was too late to stop what he had already set in motion, but he turned his eye towards the weaknesses in it as it unfolded before him.
The escorts bringing Nika gave the confused, half-respectful, half-familiar gesture determined to be the appropriate response to his awkward rank – something between a wave, a bow, and a salute, with a friendly but deferential smile to it. It was, if nothing else, interesting to watch.
Watching over two-hundred and sixty five enemy men on a weeklong march back to the Capitol was exactly the sort of task he would have gladly left to someone as disagreeable as Hammerlyn. A limited number of the soldiers he now commanded were his – most would be provost soldiers, used to Hammerlyn – and that, too, would require an unpleasant period of adaptation. Hammerlyn was an unpleasant person, but a bog-standard officer; his soldiers would be obedient and quick, which was all that was needed of them.
Yet here he was. He had leapt into action – as he often did, rarely with bad results – but inarguably the decision had been quick.
The decision had needed to be quick, though. No doubt Nika needed him, but the question was still ‘for what’? He was often a fool, but he wasn’t fool enough to think it was simply sentimental.
Cole was careful to not look directly at him, but he could see Nika frown at him as he was brought alongside. The comfrey had helped the bruising significantly, but he still looked as if he had come out the wrong end of... well, a war. Cole smiled, and from the corner of his eye examined the faces of his escorts. They were... unhappy. He tried to judge whether it was because of Nika, or not.
Nika was unhappy as well. He rubbed his wrists. “I don’t know what you mean to get by this.”
Cole gestured out at the prisoners, and spoke loudly enough for them to hear. “Good behavior from you, under surrender, yields good behavior from us. The ways of war shall not be the ways of peace. I hope to demonstrate mercy,” and to Nika, under his breath, “speak reassuringly.”
What Cole meant to get was a chance to see Nika in action, as Comid leader; the calming of his prisoners would be a side benefit. The fidgeting of soldiers and guards nurtured doubt. As a cadet, Nika had never been known for his speeches, but these were his people. Nervousness was to be expected from them after both sides participated in wartime atrocities.
With great reluctance Nika turned, stepping forward and squinting at the men in the full clearing. He held himself well, proudly, but his battered face was worn and his voice hollow when it rang out. “You may have preferred death to surrender, but such was not my decision to make. I did what I could, always, to assure as many of your lives, and the lives of our men, as I could. Do not doubt that, at least.”
He stopped. Cole held still, waiting for more, but it never came.
But the effect of the speech’s end was immediate; waves of disorder rippled over the assembly. Grumbling and shifting passed through them like ground tremors. Finally, just as Cole was raising a hand to end the farce, a man from the front dashed forward, and spat – at Nika. The guards took the surprise badly, and though he made no more move to escape, threw him back to his place and began to beat him. Half the assembled rose in cheers, half in angry shouts – Midraeic words Cole couldn’t understand, but which were obviously not endearments. Cole didn’t have to signal, though he raised his hands, for his soldiers to urge quiet – and there wasn’t time to define ‘urging quiet’ versus ‘beating into silence.’
Cole's quickly-shouted orders seemed to barely hold them back. They were too eager, bitter in their swift response. Having barely reacted to the spit, Nika stepped back into the custody of his escorts.
Nika raised his eyes to Cole’s, his face clear of feeling. “That is all the reassurance I have for them.”
Cole had to signal them away, and then gave orders for the rest to move immediately. Action would wear away the brutal nerves of soldiers and prisoners – and generals. Cole waved off his horseman and began the hike to the head of the column.
For now he would walk; Guy had been right. And Nika had been right, that talk seemed to have been a bad idea. But Cole had learned a few things, all the same. 'Been reminded of', might have been a better phrase for it, as he'd known the guard troops were Hammerlyn's men, and he'd known Nika had a unique ability to infuriate officers of any rank, and he should have known better to conflate Midraeic people with Comid officers – just because these were 'his people' didn't meant Nika was any less abrasive.
Guy was right, Nika was right... but could Cole still be right, too?
He needed a plan. The walk would be long, but there was much to think on.
***
Marching all day, lounging all night
Such was the something something soldier’s life.
Something like that. Cole would know. His head hurt. Always bad at self-rationing, he had split his ration of water into halves, and tried to stave off the effects of thirst that way. Apparently, he was unsuccessful.
The break he had been given at midday proved futile, as he was served last, and the guard had given him only minutes to eat what he’d been given. He shouldn’t complain; at least the prisoners were being fed. That alone marked an extreme change in what had been the policy of the late war. The stew of vegetables and flour dumplings had been blisteringly hot, and now his mouth hurt in addition to everything else. He half hoped he had surprised them by just shoving the food down his throat rather than starve, but the thrill of outwitting guards who wished to afflict him made very little headway against his aches.
Two days ago he’d marched this distance and more, and happily. Now he hurt. Beat upon by one set of guards, then another, then a set of former ollamh, and then humiliated... Though still young, he wasn’t as young as he used to be. His head pounded from lack of water. He could only expect a week more of this. Then, of course, worse.
He lay back on the cushion provided, and temporarily allowed himself self-pity. Parts of him hurt that he didn’t want to acknowledge. He didn’t have to worry about appearing weak in front of the guards, because he had been brought to Cole’s tent, presumably for questioning. The guards wouldn’t poke their nose into their own general’s business. Cole was always insistent upon his privacy, when he could get it. Nika rather counted on the fact that insistence hadn't changed. Cole's tent was pitched far enough away from everything – which was ridiculously far for an officer of his import – that he was confident it hadn't.
Some part of his heart woke and warned him that his highest hope had been to march beside Cole today, if only for sentiment's sake. He murdered that part of his heart. Crushed it. Held pillows over its mouth until it ceased breathing.
He sat up the Dux Comidri Galen, General of the Comid Army again.
Then again, Cole had seen all that ‘General of the Comid Army’ meant. What was a General of the Comid Army, anyway?
He sat and played games of strategy in his head.
There was a loud clap outside, and the tent flap moved and by then he was sitting on folded legs, calm again. He didn’t even flinch. Good thing, too, as it was only the guard, and to leap up would’ve been embarrassing. The guard brought forth an earthenware jug and glass. Setting them on the low table, he poured a brimming glass of clear water.
“Lieutenant Guy says you are to be given courtesy, and refreshment.”
The guard held the glass out very carefully, but Nika watched his eyes. He didn’t reach his hand out, as the glass had not been offered as it should be (Ainjir custom was that glasses were passed, he reminded himself. Midraeic custom was that glasses were emptied, and quickly). The guard brought it up to his lips and, pulling from the throat, spat into the water. He offered it to Nika, who had no option but to take it from his hand, lest he earn another beating for discourtesy.
The whole time the guard held his eyes. “Enjoy it, scum.”
The guard left with pitcher. Nika was thirsty. He had been given worse, and taken it gladly. He could expect worse in the weeks to come.
He sat in Cole’s tent. He set the glass in front of him, and couldn’t bring himself to drink it, thirsty or no. Eha... was it pride that afflicted him?
No. His insides hurt too much for pride. It was hope. He hoped for Cole.