Use of Weapons (57 page)

Swaels
bent forward and get slowly out of the car. He stood by the dark roadside for a
moment; the cone of light thrown out by the staff car's interior lights swept
across his face, then disappeared.

Zakalwe
locked the door, 'Drive on,' he told the driver.

They
raced away from the dawn and the
Staberinde
,
before its guns could find and destroy them.

They
had thought they'd won. In the spring they'd had more men and more materiel and
in particular they had more heavy guns; at sea the
Stabennde
lurked as a threat but not a presence, famished of the
fuel it needed for effective raids against their forces and convoys; almost
more of a liability. But then Elethiomel had had the great battleship tugged
and dredged through the seasonal channels, over the ever-changing banks to the
empty dry-dock, where they'd blasted the extra room and somehow got the ship
inside, closed the gates, pumped out the water and pumped in concrete, and - so
his advisors had suggested - probably some sort of shock-absorbing cushion
between the metal and the concrete, or the half-metre calibre guns would have
shaken the vessel to pieces by now. They suspected Elethiomel had used rubbish;
junk, to line the sides of his improvised fortress.

He
found that almost amusing.

The
Staberinde
was not really impregnable
(though it was, now, quite literally unsinkable); it could be taken, but it
would exact a terrible price in the taking.

And
of course, having had their breathing space, and time to re-equip, perhaps the
forces in and around the ship and the city would break out; that possibility
had been discussed, too, and Elethiomel was quite capable of it.

But
whatever he thought about it, however he approached the problem, it always came
back to him. The men would do as he asked; the commandrs would too, or he'd
have them replaced; the politicians and the church had given him a free hand
and would back him in anything he did. He felt secure in that; as secure as any
commander ever could. But what
was
he
to do?

He
had expected to inherit a perfectly drilled peace-time army, splendid and
impressive, and eventually to hand that over to some other young scion of the
Court in the same creditable condition, so that the traditions of honour and
obedience and duty could be continued. Instead he found himself at the head of
an army going to furious war against an enemy he knew was largely made up of
his own countrymen, and commanded by a man he had once thought of as a friend
as well as almost a brother.

So
he had to give orders that meant men died, and sometimes sacrifice hundreds,
thousands of them, knowingly sending them to their near-certain deaths, just to
secure some important position or goal, or protect some vital position. And
always, whether they liked it or not, the civilians suffered too; the very
people they both claimed to be fighting for made up perhaps the bulk of the
casualties in their bloody struggle.

He
had tried to stop it, tried to bargain, from the beginning, but neither side
wanted peace on anything except its own terms, and he had no real political
power, and so had had to fight. His success had amazed him, as it had others,
probably not least Elethiomel, but now, poised on the brink of victory -
perhaps - he just did not know what to do.

More
than anything else now, though, he wanted to save Darckense. He had seen too
many dead, dry eyes, too much air-blackened blood, too much fly-blown flesh, to
be able to relate such ghastly truths to the nebulous ideas of honour and tradition
that people claimed they were fighting for. Only the well-being of one loved
person seemed really worth fighting for now; it was all that seemed real, all
that could save his sanity. To acknowledge the interest millions of other
people had in whatever happened here was to place too great a burden on him; it
would be to admit, by implication, that he was at least partially responsible
for the deaths already of hundreds of thousands, even if nobody else could have
fought more humanely.

So
he waited; held back the commanders and the squadron leaders, and waited for
Elethiomel to reply to his signals.

The
two other commanders said nothing. He put out the lights in the car,
un-shuttered the doors, and looked out at the dark mass of the forest, racing
past under dull dawn skies the colour of steel.

They
moved past dim bunkers, dark trenches, still figures, stopped trucks, sunken
tanks, taped windows, hooded guns, raised poles, grey clearings, wrecked
buildings and slitted lamps; all the paraphernalia of the outskirts of the
headquarters camp. He watched it all and wished - as they moved closer to the
centre, to the old castle that had become his home in all but name over the
last couple of months - he wished that he did not have to stop, and could just
go on driving through the dawn and the day and the night again forever,
cleaving the finally unyielding trees towards nothing and nowhere and no-one -
even if it was in an icy silence - secure in the nadir of his sufferings,
perversely content that at least now they could grow no worse; just to go on
and on and never have to stop and make decisions that would not wait but which
might mean he would commit mistakes he could never forget and would never be
forgiven for...

The
car reached the castle courtyard and he got out. Surrounded by aides, he swept
into the grand old house that had, once, been Elethiomel's HQ.

They
pestered him with a hundred details of logistics and intelligence reports and
skirmishes and small amounts of ground lost or gained; there were requests from
civilians and the foreign press for this and that. He dismissed them all, told
the junior commanders to deal with them. He took the stairs to his offices two
at a time, handed his jacket and cap to his ADC, and closed himself in his
darkened study, his eyes closed, his back against the double doors, the brass
handles still clutched in his hands at the small of his back. The quiet, dark
room was a balm.

'Been
out to gaze upon the beast, have you?'

He
started, then recognized Livueta's voice. He saw her by the windows, a dark
figure. He relaxed. 'Yes,' he said. 'Close the drapes.'

He
turned on the room lights.

'What
are you going to do?' she said, walking slowly closer, her arms folded, her
dark hair gathered up, her face troubled.

'I
don't know,' he admitted, going to the desk and sitting. He put his face in his
hands and rubbed it. 'What would you have me do?'

'Talk
with him,' she said, sitting on the corner of the desk, arms still crossed. She
was dressed in a long dark skirt, dark jacket. She was always in dark clothes
now-days.

'He
won't talk to me,' he said, sitting back in the ornate chair he knew the junior
officers called his throne. 'I can't make him reply.'

'You
can't be saying the right things,' she said.

'I
don't know what to say, then,' he said, closing his eyes again. 'Why don't you
compose the next message?'

'You
wouldn't let me say what I'd want to say, or if you let me say it, you wouldn't
live up to it.'

'We
can't just all lay down our weapons, Livvy, and I don't think anything else would
work; he wouldn't pay any attention.'

'You
could meet face to face; that might be the way to settle things.'

'Livvy;
the first messenger we sent personally came back without his SKIN!' He screamed
the last word, suddenly losing all patience and control. Livueta flinched, and
stepped away from the desk. She sat in an ornamental winged couch, her long
fingers rubbing at the gold thread sewn into an arm.

'I'm
sorry,' he said quietly. 'I didn't mean to shout.'

'She's
our sister, Cheradenine. There must be more we can do.'

He
looked about the room, as though for some fresh inspiration, 'Livvy; we have
been over this and over this and over this; don't you... can't I get it
through? Isn't it clear?' He slapped both hands on the desk. 'I am doing all I
can. I want her out of there as much as you do, but while he has her, there is
just nothing more I can do; except attack, and that probably would be the death
of her.'

She
shook her head. 'What is it between you two?' she asked. 'Why won't you talk to
each other? How can you forget everything from when we were children?'

He
shook his head, pushed himself up from the desk, turned to the book-lined wall
behind, gaze running over the hundreds of titles without really seeing them.
'Oh,' he said tiredly, 'I haven't forgotten, Livueta.' He felt a terrible
sadness then, as though the extent of what he felt they had all lost only
became real to him when there was somebody else there to acknowledge it. 'I
haven't forgotten anything.'

'There
must be something else you can do,' she insisted.

'Livueta,
please believe me; there isn't.'

'I
believed you when you told me she was safe and well,' the woman said, looking
down at the arm of the couch, where her long nails had started to pick at the
precious thread. Her mouth was a tight line.

'You
were ill,' he sighed.

'What
difference does that make?'

'You
might have died!' he said. He went to the curtains and began straightening
them. 'Livueta; I couldn't have told you they had Darckle; the shock -'

'The
shock for this poor, weak woman,' Livueta said, shaking her head, still tearing
at the threads on the couch arm. 'I'd rather you spared me that insulting
nonsense than spare me the truth about my own sister.'

'I
was only trying to do what was best,' he told her, starting towards her, then
stopping, retreating to the corner of the desk where she had sat.

'I'm
sure,' she said laconically. 'The habit of taking responsibility comes with
your exalted position, I suppose. I am expected to be grateful, no doubt.'

'Livvy,
please, must you -?'

'Must
I what?' She looked at him, eyes sparkling. 'Must I make life difficult for
you? Yes?'

'All
I want,' he said slowly, trying to control himself. 'Is for you to try... and
understand. We need to... to stick together, to support each other right now.'

'You
mean I have to support you even though you won't support Darckle,' Livueta
said.

'Dammit,
Livvy!' he shouted. 'I am doing my best! There isn't just her; there's a lot of
other people I have to worry about. All my men; the civilians in the city; the
whole damn country!' He went forward to her, knelt in front of the winged
couch, put his hand on the same arm that her long-nailed hand picked at.
'Livueta; please. I am doing all it is possible to do. Help me in this. Back me
up. The other commanders want to attack; I'm all there is between Darckense and
-'

'Maybe
you should attack,' she said suddenly. 'Maybe that's the one thing he isn't
expecting.'

He
shook his head. 'He has her in the ship; we'd have to destroy that before we
can take the city.' He looked her in the eye. 'Do you trust him not to kill
her, even if she isn't killed in the attack?'

'Yes,'
Livueta said. 'Yes, I do.'

He
held her gaze for a while, certain that she would recant or at least look away,
but she just kept looking straight back at him. 'Well,' he said eventually, 'I
can't take that risk.' He sighed, closing his eyes, resting his head against
the arm of the couch. 'There's so much... pressure on me.' He tried to take her
hand, but she pulled it away. 'Livueta, don't you think I
feel
?
Don't you think I
care about what happens to Darckle? Do you think that I'm not still the brother
you knew as well as the soldier they made me? Do you think that because I have
an army to do my bidding, and ADCs and junior officers to obey every whim, I don't
get
lonely
?'

She
stood up suddenly, without touching him. 'Yes,' she said, looking down at him,
while he looked at the threads of gold on the couch arm. 'You are lonely, and I
am lonely, and Darckense is lonely, and he is lonely, and everybody is
lonely
!'

She
turned quickly, the long skirt briefly belling, and walked to the door and out.
He heard the doors slam, and stayed where he was, kneeling in front of the
abandoned couch like some rejected suitor. He pushed his smallest finger
through a loop in the gold thread Livueta had teased from the couch arm, and
pulled at it until it burst.

He
got up slowly, walked to the window, slipped through the drapes and stood
looking out at the grey dawn. Men and machines moved through the vague wisps of
mist, grey skeins like nature's own gauzy camouflage nets.

He
envied the men he could see. He was sure most of them envied him, in return; he
was in control, he had the soft bed and did not have to tread through trench
mud, or deliberately stub his toes against rocks to keep awake on guard duty...
But he envied them, nevertheless, because they only had to do what they were
told. And - he admitted to himself - he envied Elethiomel.

Would
that he were more like him, he thought, all too often. To have that ruthless
cunning, that extemporising guile;
he
wanted that.