Chapter Three
Cole heard footsteps splashing in the mud outside the entrance to his tent, and went on the move. The tent flap spattered rain on him as it was shoved aside, but before the ‘sir’ escaped Lieutenant Guy’s lips, Cole was out, thanking and dismissing him. Guy called something to him, but by the time he'd found something to say, Cole was already out of earshot.
Probably just directions, anyway. Cole knew where to go. He’d helped set up the camp.
He was an Executive officer; of course he would set up camp. Skipping the process of promotion by experience also denied the privilege of hands-off commands granted to regular generalship – not that he wanted such fancy rank. He still got an adjutant officer. Or, rather, because Cole was Cole and gave himself one, he still got an adjutant officer.
Thus, Guy. Updating Cole on things he already knew would happen was part of Guy's duty, and it was Guy's meticulous nature and attention to duty that had caught Cole's eye in the first place. Taking up his well-practiced position of despair and resignation, standing by the mouth of Cole's tent, Guy demonstrated with admirable wisdom that he knew when to argue with Cole.
If Guy never argued with him, there would be no reason to keep him. Though it was a pleasant indulgence, Cole did not need anyone to take over the more banal duties of his rank, like setting up camp. Indeed, he did not want anyone to take them from him.
The camp was his earth, the sod into which he dug his fingers and the tumult from which he coaxed victory. Most generals were satisfied with rows of men in rank and file, content with hives to queen and columns to cap. Cole wanted to breathe the air beaten by swarming wings and carve stone capitals with his fingertips. The camp was a living thing, with sighs and glimmers, guts and ears, and it could be heard to speak secrets if one bothered to train the ear for hearing. Knowing the camp meant Cole knew his men, and knowing his men meant he knew where to lead them, how to lead them, and he led them better than anyone else in the whole of Ainjir. It was what had gotten him his Executive status in the first place.
Other officers tended to think this meant he did not delegate, and they disdained him for it, but as the unfortunate Guy and anyone else who held still too long under his gaze understood, Cole delegated much. Cole knew he was not the head of a body that was the camp, but was separate from it, occupied with duty of understanding it from without. The artisan to its assemblage, as it were.
Nothing in the field happened without his knowledge. He knew every plot and position, and had come up with most of them. Thousands of men crawled like ants across a map of his making. He, quite literally, knew where ever last pile of shit was, because he told the men where to dig latrines.
Which is why he could act only now, stomping across the camp in the bloody rain with night ready to plunge (night did nothing but plunge in the jungle). Executive class meant that High Command had not told him to be there for the questioning, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Administrators, bureaucrats, retired old men brought into service for the country's time of need – they could all step around him. He told the men where to dig latrines, but they ordered the shovels.
His preoccupation with latrines had some basis; he'd ridden in with his Elites on a wave of orders, most of them concerned with how to stretch his camp to accommodate a sizable influx of prisoners, who without latrines would shortly end all possibility of continued fighting with epidemic dysentery. At least his orders to dig had come before the bloody rain. The men setting up tents had been somewhat behind, however, and had only gotten enough tents up for fifty prisoners before the typical afternoon showers had set in.
'Afternoon showers' was a bit misleading. Though well after dark, it was still raining, pissing down on the camp in particular because they’d cut all the trees down to make room for the camp. Annoyance at weather patterns wasn’t something he liked to indulge in, but still. He was going to show up looking like a drowned dog, but had to dismiss the idea of going back for cover. As it was, it would make him smell better. He hadn’t changed clothes since running through the Fortune-blighted jungle for two days. First time seeing him as anything other than a dubiously-identified speck across a long battlefield, and Cole was going to show up stinking and soaked.
Actually rather fitting. For Nika and his men. His men needed to know that he knew: his war had changed, but theirs still lingered in the same uncertain state. They needed to see that he took their war more seriously than his. Other officers could say that surrender meant peace, but Cole and his soldiers, though hopeful, were not yet free. Thinking they were free was dangerous, but denying them hope was deadly. In that way, Cole's barrage of orders had worked; a sense of beleaguered air of duty filled the camp, like the grim sigh of a chambermaid tackling the last of her chores. There were still pockets of resistance to root out, sweeps to be made, officers to guard – and prisoners to keep.
Once, taking prisoners in, Cole had likened his camp to a beast, consuming until fattened and full, and felt proud of its appetite. Now, he found himself entirely occupied with the thought of a single bite.
As an officer, Nika would be granted privileges equivalent to, but undoubtedly not in the spirit of, the respect due his rank. As the only Comid High Command officer captured, he'd have his own tent, separate from the rest of the prisoners. In the old days, his status as “prisoner” would be nominal, at best, his rank marking him a trustworthy equal kept prisoner by the burden of maintaining his honor. But things had changed.
He caught sight of the triangle of light before him as the two provost escorts dawdled long enough to laugh as they left the prisoner's tent. Some part of Cole felt a little guilty for ignoring Guy; it appeared he had run over to inform Cole as soon as he saw the escorts lead him out of questioning.
The other parts of Cole were primarily distracted by the sinking of his gut. The laughing of the escorts rang out loud as the pouring rain. A tightness in his chest told him to walk faster, an urgency, a worry... a worry mechanical and old. If he had been doing any thinking, he would have realized just how old. Outdated.
The escorts caught him running, and stopped, fearful of trouble, but his blindness to them hurried them along. Cole put a hand to the tent flap... but he wasn’t sixteen; he didn’t hesitate anymore.
He stepped inside, brow immediately awash with the close heat of a high-hung oil dish. The smell was overpowering, even to someone as used to bivouac as Cole. The cheap oil didn’t help. Still, it wasn’t the smell that froze the breath in his lungs. Hunched on the floor, the rebel general lay as much at his feet now as he had when he surrendered. Hands and elbows bound tight behind his back, he struggled with slow, numbed legs to turn himself over, to bring himself and some new tormentor face to face.
Nika fell back, sleeping cushions helping to hold him up, and smiled as his eyes cleared.
“Esras Cole. A surprise and an honor.”
Though hoarse, the voice rang in Cole's ears like a bell. Cole saw the bruised and battered surface, of course, but both of them had seen much brutality in the last few years. Underneath was what he wanted to see, what his eyes searched for, and underneath proved frighteningly familiar and as bitterly unchanging as ideals.
He could see the rise of Nika's high cheekbones under the bruises that spread over them. The swell that closed his right eye didn’t hide the familiar narrowing, making a sharp gaze sharper, that came with his smile. He had seen cleaner days, but the dirt and blood and leaves that clung to him were no more or less than they had seen on long marches, combat drills out in the temperate forests behind the Academy. His hair hung limp from moisture, stringy and oiled, too unwashed to have the brown shine he remembered. It, too, held too much familiarity; it was just slightly over his ears, like the daringly outgrown school cut that had gotten him suspended Second Year.
Nika's body twisted, ranging for what comfort could be scrounged. New blood ran down his face over old, dried tracks. New sweat stained what was left of his clothes, rain unable to wash it away. New mud wore patches over long-dried smears. Of course, the escorts got to have their say, as well, and they had said it; added the marks of their fists to what unhurt parts of him remained. If any. Cole resolved to do something nasty to them, and with his rank, that was nasty indeed.
The dripping rain through holes in the tent marked time. Nika sighed, renewing the effort to find some position to sit in that didn’t hurt. “You’re the one with a way with words, Cole. I’m just the brutal accessory, remember? Or has that changed, too?”
Cole opened his mouth, half a dozen phrases popping to mind. Instead, he let his consternation break into a smile.
“At thy sight I am undone
As if eyes were mouths to be struck dumb.”
Nika snorted a laugh, and spat out some of the red that lined his teeth. “That's awful. Some things don't change.”
Cole started forward, reaching out for the ropes that bound him down. Nika’s foot hit his chest, shoving him off. “Come on! Don’t be an idiot, Cole, we haven’t seen each other in years! I could be dangerous! What are you doing, stulte?”
Having seized the foot in his chest by reflex, Cole said nothing, but kept his hold. Nika frowned at him, tugging it. “You’re in very deep trouble if this a clever assassination plan.”
Cole stared at him, big blue eyes wide, and a surrendering smile crept over his features. “Silly me, acting on instinct. Though you should know I’m not important enough to end the war, anyway. I'm just Executive. I suppose it could still be an assassination; you were never were one for clever plans, Nika.”
“Eha! 'Executive'!” Nika snorted. Cole could see the tell-tale signs of blush crawling through the bruises, and Nika looked away from him. “No wonder just 'Executive' – your bloody instinct will get you killed. Think before you act.”
Cole held up a hand to placate Nika, and settled himself cross-legged before him. With some help (namely Cole letting go of his foot), Nika rolled up to sit as well as he could. Cole smiled. “You know, Nika, these days, sometimes I do.”
“Things do change.” The green-brown gaze turned cold, if only for a moment, as Nika looked back up at Cole. “I thought I was the one who joked.”
Cole laughed quietly, but couldn’t find anger, or even words – not any words that weren’t silly poetry, anyway. That much of who he had been still lingered, that gaze bringing him in his awkward glory back up to the forefront. Had he thought that would change, because of years of distance? Was he any less a victim to that look, far away from where he first saw it? At the very least, he was a wiser victim. Despite their jesting, now was too grim for that. Now he couldn’t force the humbling little lines and similes out of his mouth, though they flocked to the fore of his mind in as great a number as they ever had.
Nika waited for him, but Cole said nothing. A little laugh, and that was the end. Nika cursed himself as lucky: he didn’t have any skin unbruised enough to show how red his face would’ve gotten. He wasn’t usually the one forced into speaking, and he had gotten quite used to remaining completely silent, but come on. It had been years, couldn’t Cole conjure something? Hadn't he always been the more vocal one?
Nika tried to make it sound jesting, but, of course, he failed and it came out as warbling and sentimental as he meant it. “Come, 'Ras, say something. Or did they finally tame your poetic tongue?”
Cole was a fool, and Nika was double that. In seconds Cole was near crushing him, free arms wrapped around his bound ones. Nika felt more than heard him speak.
“I missed you.”
Nika took the moment they had and leaned on him. He hated that it was both painful and assuaging.
“Now you could untie me...”
Cole chuckled. “Now that would be treason.”
“No, that would be comfortable.” Released, Nika fell back into holding himself up less than gracefully. He grimaced. “What would it have been before? Statesmanship?”
Cole rumpled up his chin in thought. “Foolishness, I think, but entirely personal foolishness. Risking myself and risking the state are two different things.”
Nika snorted disdainfully, still trying to work feeling into his lower extremities. “Risking you is risking the state. Any moron could’ve marched and army right in before you took command.”
“But did no moron did. Why fear what didn’t happen? Don’t be such a worrier.” Cole smiled.
Looking pained, Nika's brows contracted skyward. “Many morons did try.”
Cole’s face got stuck between continuing to smile and losing all mirth. “When exactly did they put you in command?”
Their joviality fell away, sure as slaked thirst. Nika’s mouth quirked bitterly, but it was as unlike the smile before as fire as to water. “Finally. Someone asks me a question that actually has bearing. Our old ollamh hadn’t quite the ‘questioning’ part of interrogation down.”
Cole frowned, reaching forward, but Nika brought his face away before he could lay hands on it. “Grace and goodness, Durante did this to you?”
“Ha!” Nika shook his head, “Since when did Ancient Languages become important in the field? It was Hammerlyn, Hammerlyn, that... that...” Nika’s words failed him, whether from fury or disdain, it was difficult to tell. He took a deep breath and eased himself. “The old man just watched. Couldn’t form a decent question. Kept... ah...”
He looked away, and Cole knew why; though Cole was his protégé, both of them had admired Durante at Academy. Hammerlyn had taught Ancient Languages, and he and Nika shared a particular hatred for another in no small part due to Nika's Midraeic-accented Ainjir. Receiving a beating from him must have been like being shoved back into the Academy, having all of those unfair punishments heaped upon him again.
Cole let the silence linger, listening to the spit and burn of the rotten oil and the pattering of raindrops. Strange as it was, sitting complaining of their ollamh here was much the same as it had been as cadets, a feeling so familiar when it should be so foreign. He knew the cadences of Nika’s speech, another poetry he'd memorized, and both of them knew when to hold their tongues. He missed that silence they could share.
How much he could allow himself to miss depended, though – on one answer, to one question only.
“He kept asking me why I had turned traitor,” Nika said. “He, unlike Hammerlyn, never thought that it could be only a difference of religion. Poor old man... he just wanted to know why.”
The steady green-brown gaze was all question, and all accusation. Cole held it, quiet as a millpond, a wall, a rock, as he always was. The rock did have cracks. Nika knew.
“I won’t ask why,” Cole said, nigh speaking to himself. “I don’t need to know. It wasn’t religion.” He picked at a piece of mud stuck to his knee. “I know it wasn’t.”
“You know nothing, Esras Cole,” Nika snapped. “Did you forget we almost... I almost renounced you for my faith? Did that not make you doubt?”
Cole stayed easy as a shepherd in the field, hearing howls but fearing no wolf. He looked down at the mud, hesitant to look up again. “But you didn't. You wouldn’t. The Nika I know wouldn’t have let it happen that way.” When Nika opened his mouth again, Cole spoke over him. “The Dominicus Galen I know wouldn’t have let it happen that way. There was some other reason. You did not betray me.”
When he did look, Cole was surprised to see that Nika was not preparing for a fight. He was not readying a test for Cole. He did not look relieved that Cole's faith had stayed true. Nika’s gaze was at the floor, watching rain drip from the roof of his prisoners’ tent, onto the stain of his own dried blood on his knee. “Things change. Let it go, Cole.”
Things had changed. But not so much. Cole stared at him, silently begging him to look up and meet it. “I won’t ask that question, because you did not betray me. You aren’t a traitor.”
Nike refused. “Let it go.”
Cole touched his knee, and prepared himself to go. “There was some other reason. And I’ll find it.”
He paused, hoping Nika would look up, but knowing he wouldn't.
Nika fought, always fought, rather than allowed. There was a problem here, a plan afoot, one of Nika's famous ruses, because Nika would fight to his last breath. It had been true then, it was true now; Cole couldn’t conceive of a circumstance that would change it. He had only needed to see him again to be certain. Cole took his hand away and walked from the tent, knowing, as well, that despite all that had changed, one thing still remained the same.
He would fight until he died for Nika’s sake. He had known it the moment he had walked into the tent, and seen him again. Not acting on instinct, as Nika would accuse, but on something far greater – and worse.
It was just... politics. Military politics were his politics – ranks and orders and fighting. Judicial politics, administrative politics, and – worst of all – national politics. He wasn’t as good at those politics – or at least, wasn't so headily self-confident he thought he could play them all at once. He was better at any politics than Nika, but still – that was like saying he was better at walking than a snake. Regardless, all those years of fearing and searching and anger... he would have to resolve them, yes, but he certainly could try resolving them while also helping Nika prepare for his trial. And it would be an incredible trial.
He needed to brush up on his ‘walking’.
***
Dominicus Galen fell back on his pillows and allowed himself to be in pain.
God. If only he’d thrown himself on Cole during the fight, and let himself die there. Wouldn’t that have been infinitely better? Of course, then Cole would feel bad for having killed him, and there just wouldn’t be time for explaining things, and it was truly bad form to depend on his death-grimace to show quite the mixture of emotions he really wanted to Cole to know about before he died. He guessed that if he had fallen on Cole’s sword, all the poor man would’ve gotten was ‘wracking pain and general panic’. No, no – he wasn’t poetic, but he could manage better than that.
So he supposed he would get his chance. At least they allowed a man one last conjugal visit, didn’t they? If the very thought didn’t make his spine shiver at the moment, it would’ve been wonderful.
Damn them. All of them. Damn every ache, too.
This was the only way to do it. That’s why he had done it this way – master strategist, sitting here lamenting what he knew would come. Lamenting that he had seen 'Ras at all, and glad, so glad, so pathetically, humbly, soothingly glad.
God, he had looked just the same. And he felt just the same, for which Nika had hardly allowed himself to hope... and, of course, for which he had failed to prepare. He didn’t know whether he could or couldn’t let himself return to the way he had felt before, or if it was too dangerous, if it could ruin all that he worked so hard to do.
Re-learning how to harden his heart had been easier when Cole was only imagined, far away, and never to be seen again. That ache had been worse than any, and to feel it healed while the rest of him was split open, used as a rag-doll, beaten.
Tears actually beaded up at the bottoms of his eyes and he wished he could feel the cool tracks of them down his cheeks, but he knew it would only be as rainfall: emotionless, undeserved, a poor, misguided indulgence, all the less meaningful because he would do it for himself, out of selfishness. No emotion guided whatever tears he made. He had run them all out.
But still, but still...
His whole body ached. He would piss blood for weeks. God keep his wounds clean enough not to die from infection on the road. He wondered if any of the saints had wept at their own beatification?
Those fuckers would probably call it divine humility.