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IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume V: Sharing Insanity
Chapter 10
Thursday,
November 5, 2708 (The late frost bites us as
Reno and I slip out in the dark, I think around midnight, to the kitchen tent, right
next to the munitions tent. "I can't tell you how much
I appreciate your helping me out, here, Kiril." "No, that's right—you
can't," I grumble. "You owe me." Stupid lunk, to drunkenly lose his pistol on
the way back from his little unauthorized leave. "If Sarge catches us he'll never let you
drive the cart again. He might even
shoot me." "No! Sarge would never do that." He looks shocked that I would even suggest
such a thing, but I just stare at him.
We slip into the tent before the guard can see that there's two of
us. As soon as Reno hides himself amid
the boxes and barrels, I light a tallow candle from the supply that the dairy
"donated" and set myself to cracking nuts. "Make
your move now," I whisper. "Sarge'll
wake up any minute." "Why?" "Nightmares. Like clockwork. I can cover for you, but make as little noise
as possible." Right, Kiril. Like he's sober enough for discretion—why do
I risk everything for a fool like him?
"And Reno?" "Yeah?" "Shove some ammo and stuff
under the bushes by the tent—we want to make it look like rebels helped
themselves, but they wouldn't risk it for just one gun." "For a child," he says,
"You are almost chillingly smart." "That's how I
survive." I catch the sound of a distant
gasp that others might miss if they didn't know to listen for it. "Now get moving! He's awake." "Kiril?" I hear Sarge
call. "Kiril, where are you?" "In the kitchen," I call out. I crack nuts as loudly as possible to mask
the sound of Reno stumbling into the other tent. I hear Sarge's tramp and I act perfectly
natural as he pokes his head in. "What are you doing, little
girl?" I smile up at him "I wanted to surprise the men with special
biscuits for their breakfast." Maybe
sweetened with some cookies crumbled into the batter? "They've been through so much, I just wanted
to do something nice for them." He grins and looks almost
ready to cry. "Kiril, you are such a
treasure! I don't know what we'd do
without you." I reach for more nuts and
"accidently" knock a whole stack of cans into pans and raise a helacious
clatter right when he'd otherwise hear some commotion in the bushes behind the
tents. Just when Sarge and I have them
almost all stacked back up, I "trip" and bring them crashing down again—loud
enough to cover Reno's escape. "I'm so sorry!" I tell
Sarge. "I've been so clumsy lately—I
don't know what's wrong with me." I
don't let myself grin at the shame flushing his face.) (I turn in my bed, and
something crackles under my pillow. I
grope for the paper underneath. It
shouldn't surprise me, that George slipped in as I slipped out, and left a note
for me, but it does. Have I become that
predictable, sneaking out for a smoke?
Ohhhh Lord—that can only mean one thing. But I have other things to
worry about than nicotine addiction. I
reach over to tap Randy's shoulder in the next bed. Without lifting his head, he notices the
paper in my hand, and nods sleepily, groping for the focus that he never lets
far out of his reach. Then he sends the
tiniest spark of light, barely noticeable even to me as I look for it, to hover
over the page. It only illuminates one
word at a time. I have to move the paper
while Randy holds it steady. "Meet me at next nightfall. Married Teacher's Quarters. No one ever goes there.") * * * Eyes open briefly; dark
still rules, nothing to see, just feel, and feeling just tells me that my arm
burns. Maybe my side as well. Eyes won't stay open. Fine with me.
I slip back into a dream where I dance at a moonlit feast with all my
friends, wild, wild twirls and leaps and flinging back my head while my hair
arcs through the air. Lucinda loves
every minute of it. While grinning Yan
and Yaimis clap the beat, Fatima laughs, delighted; I've never seen her so
happy. I can't remember feeling so
happy, myself. Miko, too; I don't
believe I ever saw him grin before. Sharane comes by with a
pitcher of her very best, but the others urge her to have a seat, relax, the
show's for her as much as anybody, as I whip through spirals around and around
the forest-circled table that glows with candle after candle in fantastic
sculptures of dripping wax, its wood strewn with flowers and heaped with
food. Sharane fills up a cup that Imad
presses to Mischa's lips and she laughs between sips, glowing with health in
the candlelight. Aron hesitates in the
shadows, but I dance out to him, I sweep him up in my arms and we waltz swooping
around and around in each other's embrace; I never knew that the boy could
dance so well! I deposit him at the
table, then lift up a fine loaf of bread and a cup of water, still dancing, and
swing back out again to the nether darkness.
Here, Madame; I understand why you feel ashamed to share a table with
the rest of us, but you did save Teo and I won't see you go without. As I skip back into the light Gaziley glares
with his ocelot eyes, but Lucinda pours him a draft and he lightens up. Oh and there's Kief, dear handsome Kief; he
starts to rise to say something, but Lucinda pulls him down to her in a
passionate kiss; ever the man to delight in the moment, he forgets all about
everything else. Nothing can go wrong,
here. I could dance forever! But why does Fatima sit so oddly? As I swing past her I see how a sheet of
metal almost slices her in two—I stumble in my shock. The candles flicker because I stopped
dancing; they threaten to go out. Just
then I sense someone coming up behind me.
I turn to the boy who offers me a flagon of wine, the boy without a
head... A hand shoves my mouth to
keep the scream inside. "Hush!" Bijal
hisses. "Easy, girl. Tell us what happened to you." "Happened?" I feel a burning pain. "Tanjin called me when he
came to wake you and saw your blanket soaked in blood." "It is?" I look down to the wet, dark wool that clings
to my right side. Whatever possessed me
to just fall into sleep with my wounds untended? "Oh yeah.
That. It's just birdshot." They did this—that's what
happened. They muddled my mind,
to leave me at risk for sepsis. Lucinda
and Aron protect me! "I ran into a
farmer who thought I was a thief." Bijal grins in a slightly
annoyed way as he helps me to sit up and see the damage by the light of
day. "And just how drunk were you?" "Not at all! I had nothing but fresh cider all night
long." "Fresh, huh?" He starts to chuckle and then stops, suddenly
grim. "Ghosts?" he asks. If I say yes, no one will
trust my judgment as commanding officer until I placate the spirits of the
enemy. Already kids crawl through the
bushes and the tarps to gather around us, wide-eyed and silent. "I, I think so." Kief, you can have your revenge on me the day
that I lead while unfit. Until then, if
you love your rebels as much as I think you do, guard me from your errors! Bijal pulls the blanket off
me with a sticky sound, and hands it over to our most muscular trooper. "Can you backtrack and find where the cart
went over the cliff, Dosh?" "It shouldn't be too
hard. Carts break things on their way
down." "Good. I want you to take this there. When you find the spot, wrap stones in the
blanket and gather the ends, then swing it as hard as you can and let go, so
that it sails down over the cliff, too, where the bodies went. Betany, blow tobacco on him before he
leaves. Come back as fast as you can,
Dosh." Bijal turns back to me,
twisting my arm to get the best light as he sponges it off with some boiled
water that Tanjin brought. "Your blood
ought to do the trick—that's usually the price that the dead demand." Yes, I agree, though it leaves us short a
blanket. "Now tell me what I need to
know about digging these things out of your hide before I knock you out with
happy-tea." "I can't let you knock..." "I'm in charge until Dosh
gets the ghosts off your back. Now help
me take care of you." Tanjin's already
right there with the cup; he'd started brewing it as soon as he'd fetched
Bijal. Not bad, kind of sweet, though it
has a bitter aftertaste. "First you'll have to wash
everything off, and then flush it all out with the antiseptic in the blue
jar..." ("You're looking better all
the time, son." Benomi Marst pours me a
big glass of buttermilk to go with my breakfast beans. "Here—best thing for a growing boy's bones." "Thanks." Another time I might have found the little
mushy flecks in the drink hard to swallow, too much like milk gone bad, but
right now everything they give me tastes good.) (Has the milk that I mixed
from dry soured overnight? Good. Buttermilk's better for biscuits, but we take
what we can get.) "...an' then, once you're
sure you've picked out every one o' the little beasts, boil the wounds out good
with peroxide...uh, we don't have peroxide.
Tha's right." Already the
bittersweet tea makes my tongue feel numb, as it tingles in my fingers and
toes. "Boil?" Bijal sounds
horrified. "You sure?" "No, no! Technic'l term. Not what it soun's like. Never mind.
Jus' make sure you scrub out all the dirt, then bathe everything in
ant'septic or salt or soda or somethin' again, then...um, then..." (I measure out the baking
soda and salt...) "Yes?" "Uh, wrap ‘er up." "Bandage, you mean." "Yeah." ("You know," Benomi says,
"the Missus has finally begun to take a shine to you." "I'm grateful, sir," I say
between mouthfuls.) I sink my head back onto my
bag of clothes and I feel like I slip down onto a deep feather bed. Not bad... (...then I reach for some
cookies to pick through. "Hi, Kiril!" Uh oh.
Sarge squats down beside me. "I
just had to watch you fix this special recipe of yours.") "Ouch!" I jolt back awake. "What the hell are you...oh. Oh yeah." Bijal holds up a tiny metal
bead. "One down, twenty-three to
go. You need more tea." "I don' need more..." "Here." (Sarge sees my hand frozen
over the cookies. "Don't mind me,
sweetie. Help yourself. All you want." Now I have to eat the stupid thing.) ("You remind us of our
boy. Light haired, like my
grandfather." Ben gives me a yearning,
tired stare. I just keep eating while I
can. "I think that's what threw Marta
off, at first, like maybe you were him come back—it does no good when the Dead
take their day so seriously that they try to come back for good." "No sir, I guess it
don't. But I'm not him.") I still feel the pain,
vaguely, as Bijal digs shot out of my arm, but in a disconnected kind of
way. "Twenty, uh, twenty-some
shot?" Maybe he took my arm over to a
table for better light or something, that's why it feels so far away. "How'd all that fit?" "You got some in your side,
too. What are you doing still
awake? You keep twitching every time I
dig, and I want you limp. I feel the warm
cup held to my lips again. "I jus' wanna stay..." but
then I sip instead of talk. ("Still...you gonna stay
around awhile?" "Can't," I say,
fidgeting. I feel like I cheat the
Marsts for all their hospitality. "I got
messages to carry." He sighs, and suddenly I
realize it's a sigh of relief. "That's
good, boy—you're not trying to tempt us to let you into our household. That's real good." His wife puts out biscuits hot from the oven,
and smiles shyly. Both of them! Both of them had their doubts about me—and
yet risked it anyway, all because of some words that I knew. I've got to tell them.) I try to speak. I have to tell Bijal something about the
codes being compromised. He has to
know. But he must've taken away my whole
body, everything shot to pieces, because I sure can't reach my lips. ("Sour milk? Sarge scowls.
"Buttermilk would be better; a pity we don't have it." "You're right," I say, then
rise. "Excuse me, Sarge, but nature
calls.") I hear the calls of nature,
all the happy, singing birds spinning pleasantly around me. But wait...doesn't that one call say "Stashed
Loot", with other whistles giving directions to a bush? No affair of mine...let someone else worry
about it—they all know the codes...something about the codes... ("Uh, Mr. and Mrs. Marst, I
have something to tell you." They stiffen where they stand. "You know that ‘Who do you serve?' question?" "Yeah? It's a good one," Benomi says. "Sounds so innocent to ears that don't know." "Well, it's not safe
anymore—that's one of my messages. The
Purple Mantles know all about it, though not the whole army." Marta says "But you used
it." "I was half dead and not
thinking clear. I'm not saying don't
believe it ever, just be careful, make other tests as come to mind. We had a good man tortured for taking it on
faith." They nod slowly. "It's a dangerous world out
there," says Benomi Marst as he gazes out the window.) He keeps shaking my
shoulder, but he must have forgotten to reattach it, because I couldn't care
less. "Come on, Deirdre, stay with me,
girl. I need you to check the bandages—did
I wrap them all right?" "Surrre," I murmur with my
eyes closed. "Fine." (Sarge still squats by my
pots and pans when I return. "I dunno,
Kiril," he says. "Don't you need some
kind of shortening in the batter?" "Nope. The dark tinge in the flour comes from ground
stapleseed—it's got its own oil in it." "Stapleseed? From the oxen-feed? You're kidding!" I grin up at Sarge. "My secret ingredient. Makes the flavor robust." "Ain't you somethin'!" He ruffles my hair and hugs me, and I feel
good. "What'll you think up next?" Seems the more I try to fight these feelings,
the more I lose the battle. I keep
eating right out of his hand, filling up on affection that I got no business
having, and if I don't learn to control myself, it's gonna make my soul fat and
sluggish.) ("Lufti, there's someone
I'm going to want you to meet. Come on
out here and let me hook up the cart—we've a ways to go, and I might as well
pick up some things when we get there.") "Tanjin, come over here,"
Bijal calls. "You've seen her work. Do these bandages look okay to you?" I hear the dear boy kneel
down beside me and say, "Mostly, yeah.
That looks a bit too tight, there; you want a firm seal, but you don't
want to cut off the circulation." I feel
adjustments made somewhere far away.
Sweet, sweet Tanjin. But don't
think like that, Deirdre, not even now, not even feeling too good to worry
about...all of the whatever I'm supposed to worry about. Don't fall in love. How will I ever... (How will I ever do what I
have to do, if I keep on loving Sarge?) |
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