Chapter Two
He'd surrendered.
Then he'd awoken in a tent, face down in the inexplicably undrying mud of this godforsaken jungle, and they'd shoved a paper under his nose and demanded in terribly accented Midraeic that he sign it, Dux Comidri Dominicus Galen. If it weren't for the Ainjir accents he might've thought he'd been in Hell.
They hit him when he didn't hop to signing it, and he reminded them they'd tied his hands behind his back. They hit him for reminding them, and he signed it, and then they hit him to make sure he was stunned so they could tie him up again, and then they hit him because they didn't like him and they left.
There was a lot of hitting going around. More hitting now than before he'd surrendered. He was sure that was funny to someone.
They did that seven more times, and about around the fifth time he started worrying he'd been sent to a special bureaucratic kind of Hell, which was so cleverly cruel he found himself amazed the priests of the Old Book had never come up with the idea. Of course, by then he'd figured out they were distributing notices of his surrender in an attempt to end the fighting. He blamed the sluggishness of his thoughts blow to the head. Repeated blows. That had continued for some time now.
Though it made him feel better for the sake of his own mental acuity to have something to blame, it did very little good. He let his head loll over the back of the chair he was currently tied to and added the temporary flush of the changing directions of all the blood running out of the various bits of his face to the list of his self-indulgences. It, too, did very little good, though for a moment, it was almost as if his body were intact, like a drop of rain in its brief tumble from the clouds before it shattered itself upon the ground. He shut his eyes.
He prayed to God it would work, the notices. He'd never had much luck praying to God, for several reasons obvious and understandable to him, but it ought to make some difference for his men – not the officers, fuck them, but at least the regular soldiers. Let them stop fighting. Let them believe the Ainjir notices when there was no reason for them to believe them, many good reasons why they shouldn't, and little hope that they would on principle. He had not a single doubt that the notices were Cole's orders and Cole had always had the talent for being believed and beloved, so let him be believed this time.
When someone lifted his head back up, he realized he'd almost passed out. He muttered a gratias that didn't sound like words, even to him, and got hit for it, which, really, at this point, was only reasonable to expect.
Speculation aside, he had no way of knowing anything at the moment, either about his men, or about the war outside this little tent, or about the notices. He was blissfully absent of any essentia whatever. He, after all, had no way of knowing, no idea of what would happen after his surrender. There was damn precious little he could about it anyway. The Ainjir in the field had no idea what he and his men were doing now (other than sitting and being hit, and hopefully surrendering, respectively).
God, please let them surrender. What would his men think, after that reception? Had any of them seen it, when he fell to Cole? He should’ve thought over his words more carefully...
But no; it was perfect. He smiled, if only to himself.
But questions, yes. There was talking, and not with terrible accents, though he wasn't listening to it. His thoughts still trailed somewhere behind the present. He should be paying attention to what was happening in front of him, rather than self-doubting. He renewed his efforts, but politics had always bored him.
“...treason of the highest order...” quivering jowls as well as voice, “I never would have thought it of you as a cadet.”
Oh yes. More of the same shock and confusion and then less confused punching. That was right.
The rebel general smiled at them now, his interrogators, who had once been his teachers – his ollamh at Academy. His smile now was crooked, far more crooked than it had ever been when he was younger, but that could be accounted for by the immobile lump one of his cheekbones had become. He knew that they didn’t really want him to answer them. They wanted him to shut up, and stay shut up, so that the embarrassment he represented could be forgotten. Easy task, but could he let them forget him easily?
“I thought of many things still unaccounted for by yourselves, if you’ll remember, sirs.”
Reflecting, he realized it was probably the ‘sirs’ that did it. They’d wanted his loyalties no more back then than they wanted them now. Still, it was old Durante who looked sorry while Hammerlyn hit him, and that he could feel bad for.
He spat and coughed because it wasn’t the first time someone had tried to make his insides bleed today, and it wouldn’t be the last. It wouldn’t be the last for a long time. It must have shown on his face...
“We warned you as a cadet that war was little like what we taught you, safe at Academy,” Hammerlyn whispered in his ear, bent over with his fist buried under his former student’s rib cage, pretending sympathy. That was enough for Durante, who turned and spoke over his shoulder, his voice sounding as old and defeated as it could sound in victory – over the thundering of his foes in rout.
“We’ll take you back to the Capitol for trial. You will be faced, as the law requires, with a jury of officers of similar rank. It’s the only place that enough of the right rank could be found... for you to be tried as Executive General of the Comid Republic.”
Of course they would. They would not call him Dux; the Ainjir did not bow to the terminology of others. Regardless of what he had been, he would be 'Executive General' now, a proper Ainjir term for a proper Ainjir trial.
That meant full honors, full accolade and full mockery and punishment and a full guarantee: they would level whatever powers they could against him, and those powers were considerable. The trials of war were still run with barbarian rites and rituals of blood, and he’d be a grand sacrifice, traitor and king. It was nothing, he knew, what they would do to him now, but the barbarity of men far from their homes. The barbarity of civilization – that would be pain in its most refined flavors.
This time, he hung his head, letting the blood clear from his ears and nose in tickling little streams. Still he saw; the old man left, his posture wanting to say so much more, to ask so many questions that would come from his heart, and not from his rank.
He was sorry to see Durante go, because he knew what was next. Part of why even a ‘rebel general’ could respect Durante, could even feel sorry to be himself, was that his forthright sense of decency made him turn away and leave the tent, lest he be witness.
For the first time in a very long time, the Executive General of the Comid Republic let himself think of a poem.
‘Now began the long night...’
He tried to remember more, but his head was starting to truly hurt. This time he could not blame his sluggish mind, though; he'd never had a head for verse. That was Cole's talent. He spat out whatever mixture of vitals it was that had gathered in his mouth. Hammerlyn’s hand was on his stomach, with the palm flat, face pressing close to his ear as the old man left.
“Boy, I have always known what rank you were...”
He remembered the point of the poem, anyway. War was bitter, bitter and young.
Such a bitter war.
***
Cole sat on his campstool (which wasn’t actually his campstool but his folding table; he’d unfolded his campstool, paced, forgotten what he’d done with his stool, and sat on his table), and tried to wrap his mind around it.
Dominicus Galen had fled at the start of the war – disappeared utterly, even his estranged family. The choice was reasonable; Galen was solidly Midraeic, and the Rebellion was an outgrowth of Midraeic fanaticism. Midraeic or not, Dominicus Galen was no fanatic, and the Comid Republic liked the moderate faithful little more than nonbelievers. Cole had thought him gone.
Cole had thought him safe. He shifted, his body, if not his mind, aware of physical discomfort. He knew it had not been more than five years – it couldn't be, because the war was in its fifth year now – but it felt as if he were digging into years beyond his lifetime just to remember he shouldn't be surprised – shouldn't have been surprised. Cole believed now, as he had then, that it was only because of Dominicus Galen that the war had lasted five years in the first place.
'Believed' because in five years of war, Dominicus Galen hadn't once been unquestionably sighted. He was invisible as the Comid Hierarchy. Cole hadn't needed to see him; he had undeniable proof. Galen hadn't showed up in person, but in maneuvers.
The Comid Republic appeared almost overnight, centered over Bran in Ainjir's rich southern coal region. From there, it spread to the fields and rivers, territorial borders revealed like troops springing from ambush. The Ainjir military had known of Midraeic unrest for years, but they had not accounted for its influence on Ainjir neighbors. Though based in the teaching of Midras and his scattered people, one mouth of the Republic's rhetorical triumvirate spoke to the disenfranchised Ainjir far too fluently. Still, the poor, the laborers, and the fanatic Midraeic troops shouldn't have had the power to overtake so much of Ainjir's well-trained army.
Certainly not when burdened by a god. Then again, it was very like the military to forget that not everyone took the Founder's example so to heart. Cole knew it personally; it was not so long ago Keadar-Ainjir had scoured the country of its priests that the people had forgotten. Broken though they might be, the Old Gods of Ainjir still echoed through the land when the nation was shaken.
But he couldn't have said so then, any more than he could say so now. He'd be laughed out of the tent. Then, Cole had been a newly-minted adjutant officer, ankle-biting to get up to tables full of maps where his ideas were turned down out of hand. General Durante had taken pity on him, watching his bright young protégé languish under the drinks tray, and let him see what marvelous defeats were being sent their way. Cole had known the patterns he saw in the men, the maneuvers, at once. He’d fought them, and fought in them, hundreds of times, at Academy.
Cole had spoken up, called High Command on is foolishness for ignoring his insight, and gotten a promotion for it (a disastrous loss – that day he was sad to be right). He vowed he would never stay silent again, not when what he knew could change the course of events so drastically. He had worked his way up, and taken command out of the hands of an inept classmate in a brevet action that had put him on the road to Executive-class promotions (he didn’t like remembering that either). Next time he saw a maneuver he knew, he had countered the way he knew he should, and the battle had collapsed. They had halted the Comids' eastern onslaught. Some weeks later they had been flanked and had to crawl back home because the too much of the division had failed to achieve their goals, but Cole’s brigade had temporarily halted them.
Brigadier Cole became a hero, in the broadsheets in the Capitol. Brigadier Cole had grown furious. Dominicus Galen was supposed to be gone, safe and fled. But Cole knew that it had to be him; it was Nika behind the enemy lines.
His fury made him dangerous, but luckily, Cole no longer had to finagle his way up to Command. He’d proven himself, and now slammed his way through the Executive ranks unfettered by proper lines of promotion.
With the rebels’ secrecy broken, they were no longer fighting faceless demons, masked behind the Smiling Peasant of the Comid propaganda. The Ainjir forces calculated better, moved more cautiously, acted with grace. High Command had retreated from the field, back to comfortable quarters in the Capitol, and at Durante's insistence, Cole had gone with them. A hero's welcome and its constant distractions had been ample solace for the pain of his heart. It was almost like being a cadet again, going home every night as if the war was only inside the Academy classrooms' walls. From the perspective of the ruthless, back in a comfy room staring at nothing but maps and charts, the war was beautiful.
He had mellowed; two years of dragging warfare had a tendency to do that to an officer. With rank came ease, and once he didn’t have to fight to get his commands heard, he saw the brilliance, he saw the familiar play of ideas.
He enjoyed himself.
Cole put his head in his hands and fought back something like anger or tears. He shifted and stood and heard the table collapse from under him. It clattered in on itself, settled into a heap and he couldn’t even figure out what to feel about it. Tables and chairs and the comforts of home, all brought into the field by other men, because a general didn’t have to carry his own kit. He looked back out of his tent. Rain fell outside.
Things had changed.
Too late, he had realized how far he had retreated from the front. He spent the third year of the war at the Capitol, Command convinced that once they had freed that city from direct threats, the war could not possibly last much longer. There could not be more Comid forces; there could not be more fighting – there could not be more Midraeics or peasants to sway into rebellion.
The city walls protected them, but no such walls protected the rest of Ainjir, which fell before the Comids in parts and parcels like a body dying of leprosy. Nika conquered, sometimes by force and infection, sometimes letting regions drop to the persuasion of Comid rhetoric. Cole hacked back like a surgeon content to saw ahead of creeping gangrene.
The war failed to end. Generals woke as if from slumber. They took to the fields again. In two years, Cole had seen things that made him regret that man was born of flesh.
They could not go on this way. They were not friends any longer. If Cole had risen to the top because of his knowledge of Nika’s tactics, then there was no doubt Cole’s handily dealt setbacks would bring Nika to the head of the Comids, if he were not already there. Against each other they had always dealt the harshest blows.
Even in his mind, he said ‘they’ like Nika had been in on it with him, had known somehow. Could he have known? If Cole had known, then of course Nika couldn’t have failed to know as well. But had it mattered?
That he didn’t know. He said that they had broken Comid secrecy, but no one had ever laid eyes on the Comid Hierarchy, or Comid High Command – before now. Some part of him still wanted to doubt it was Nika at all, wanted to think that he had made it to safety and never been involved in the war. Nika had just never written or communicated with him because... because of something.
Because he was keeping his head down, which the Dominicus Galen that Cole had known had never done in the entirety of his life.
Cole returned to pacing, as he had begun, now crushing broken furniture under his boots. The questioning had to be over soon. He needed to see Nika.