IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume VI: The Rift
Chapter 48 Touching Base
Sunday, February 21, 2709 Time for it. I return to Merchant's Cavern, just past
midnight. I have to touch base at least
one more time before the end. (Rise and shine, my merry men! Quietly, quietly, we don't want to
disturb the sleeping peons. We won't wait for the dawn, not even first
light. Let us steal out silently while
the camp all sleeps, quickly through the pass and off the road onto the
mountain-trail, as if we simply vanished.
That'll impress the low-castes, that we of nobler blood can have gotten
everything together and left them behind before they could so much as brush
their teeth in the morning. Let them
respect us. The rebels cannot take that
away from us, that a Meritocrat of the highest caste commands respect. Besides, we can always
catch a nap later, in some peaceful dell, far from their noise and commotion, and
they'll be none the wiser.) I hover, unnoticed, just
above and before Merchant Caverns, trying not to shiver too much. Everyone within already stirs, and the smell
and sizzle of potatoes hitting hot sausage grease travels far in the empty air
between us; Cyran has obviously given
orders to fortify the troops. They have
a long march ahead if they want to reach the pass by morning, even by the
swift, direct route, and they will need to rest right before rushing through
it. I know the plan; I penned
parts of it to Cyran already, and received back hir corrections. The sound of battle that my troop will drum
up shall signal them to charge in from the other side. Textbook strategy, that feminine closing of
the nutcracker; the General will expect no less, although she might not know
specifically that we have so many of us holed up in Stovak. Confirming what she expects, she won't even
consider the cliffs. Here at Merchant Caverns, nobody
sees me staring at them from the sky, in my cloudy camouflage. I light with hardly a sound on the far edge
of the ledge, where it's mostly storage, where people rarely have occasion to
go. And yet, just my luck, I can make somebody out anyway: a shadow among
shadows between the stacks of cans and crates. I don't care. I won't care.
I will just sit here on this crate for a moment and catch my
breath. Even for me the air's too thin
up here, and I flew even higher. I see
tanks of oxygen, and they tempt me. "Man, do you ever look
beat!" says the man behind me. I just
shrug. "Greenfire's not really doing it
anymore, huh?" "Not as well as I'd like,"
I admit, too weary to dissemble. Oh
lord, lord do I ever feel it, like every bone in my body's about to tremble
into splinters, or maybe already has, I don't have a skeleton any more, I have
a thousand raw bone needles tearing up my muscles from the inside out. "Smugglers have access to
all kinds of things," he says, and then pauses, before whispering, right into my
ear, "Would you like something stronger?" "You're a spy!" I cry,
leaping up and swinging my fist. "Sanzio
sent you!" I land three punches against metal in the time it takes for the
entire tower of cans to crash loudly down around me, bouncing and denting and
some even rolling over the edge, never to be retrieved. Nobody stands there that eyes can see
anymore. I'd been speaking to a ghost. I hear shouts and running
behind me. "What's happening?" "What's
going on?" "Deirdre! You're back!" "Nothing's going on," I
tell them, "Just clutzy ol' me fumbling in the dark." I try to will my goosebumps down. Cyran reaches me ahead of
all the others. E looks angry; of
course, I expected that. But I don't
expect hir to hug me half to death. "Hoo
boy do you stink!" e gasps, uncharitably.
Then e pushes me back, forcing a grin, telling me, "I can't say that you
look like hell, or the devil would sue me for slander." "Thanks–glad to see you,
too. You've gotten my latest report?" "Yup. Ready to roll. How about your end?" "Bridegrooms don't pine
more for the honeymoon than they do for this battle." "And what was all that
about a spy?" e asks, hir eyes narrowing.
Damn! I'd hoped e hadn't heard
that. "Just a mistake. A simple mistake in the dark." Slowly e says, "I see." Then, taking my measure, "You know, I could
ground you right now, and save your bloody life for battles yet to come." "You could," I say, pushing
hair out of my eyes and rebraiding it uncombed, by hanks and handfuls. "But you won't. They're counting on me to
lead them. You need me out there." "More's the pity." Kiril reaches us, wheezing
and leaning on Lufti, Mahkliya running behind, holding her belly, yelling at
Kiril to get back in bed, and then seeing me.
They all pile onto me at once, squeezing my bone-splinters back together
again. Kiril keeps sobbing, "God,
Deirdre, oh God, I thought I'd never see you again! After they catch their
breath, they escort me deeper into the caves.
Someone adds onions to the cooking food, and the air grows pungent. Marduk comes up, surprisingly shyly, holding
something out to me, saying, "Kiril said that you'd come back today. She always knows, y'know?" To my utter astonishment, he has carved a luck
doll out of bone for me, and Alysha has made a little dress for it, from some
threadbare scrap of a rag too small for any other use. She has returned from missions of her own,
and Marduk will fight under her on the battlefield. The doll has red yarn-fiber
hair, underneath a tiny kerchief; I have mentioned to someone, sometime or
other, that my mother had red hair and (by some reckonings) owned a different
race from mine. The fine, pale features
do remind me uncannily of her–too fine for the material, on the verge of
shattering, just like I remember her. I don't tell them that she
once poisoned me while trying to kidnap me into a cult, I don't think it would matter if I did; more
than half of them come from dysfunctional families anyway, parents and
grandparents trained on generations of internalized discrimination to
self-destruct. I study the little
figurine. Bertha meant well. I suppose we all mean well. No use arguing about it now–I can always use
more folk on my side, living or dead.
Hey, her outlaw street-smarts might give me exactly the edge I need! So I string the ribbon
around my neck and tuck the doll into my shirt (and hey, when did my breasts
disappear?) It prickles a bit; most
people make their luck dolls out of straw or husks or twigs, something like
that, not bone. But after awhile I don't
even notice anymore. I see Damien slip on a
doll, himself, a thread-wrapped straw one with just one arm, the belly visibly
plumped-out with a cotton-ball–two ghosts in one, so to speak. He catches my eye–you could chip cold steel
on a face that hard. But he nods my way
and forces a phantom-smile, saying, "Give me something to sing about, Deirdre." "I'll do my best." And off we go to Mass, with murder on our
minds. The service follows all the
right order. I close my eyes to the
alien face of Father Mykolas and listen to the gravelly voice of Father
Man. "Then the Lord said, I have seen
the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and I have heard their cry
because of their taskmasters." Oh yes, tell us that God
favors our side! Tell us what we need to
believe to go out there and face the guns again, we who have suffered wounds
already of body and of mind, tell us anything that makes it tolerable that we
could die. My lips move over the
familiar words, spoken in different languages in different countries as my
profession has driven me, yet always at heart the same, always a comfort. I link hands with my fellow rebels as
together we recite the Lord's prayer, earnestly declaring, "Thy kingdom come!"
and mumbling over the bit about forgiving those who trespass against us. I accept the Body and Blood, which will
either nourish my soul or bring my condemnation, I can't tell anymore which
one, maybe in some way both at once. I
made the best confession that I could.
In war we all have to take our chances. And then, before anyone
could make a move to the breakfast waiting for them, our chaplain adds a part
not in the mass, yet not incompatible with it.
He anoints each and every one of us with oil, murmuring over us the
prayers for extreme unction, for surely revolution has become a
life-threatening disease which fevers us all.
And then our moment of peace on earth ends as we all say, "Thanks be to
God!" and go back to the preparations for war. I shoulder my pack. Cyran smacks its back, grinning. "After trying the life of a stonemason, I'm
looking forward to a little gunslinging.
You too?" I smile back and say "mmm,"
wondering why I ever became an agent, when I could have spent my life happily
engaged in manual labor. Or maybe
raising children, and cooking good, nutritious meals for a stone-hauling man,
whose face would light up as soon as he'd come home and see me: some lanky
mixed-blood like myself, his smile shy in his high-cheekboned, light-olive
face, above his bright red shirt and his dirty brocade vest. Cyran doesn't actually have
that much to boast about. E only worked
intermittently on some of the nearest steps, and in between slept like a lord. Everybody
saw me work. Maybe after this battle,
after I truly impress them, I'll have a chance to supplant hir and show the
Charadoc some real leadership! But not yet. Now comes the hardest parting of all, driving
whatever I thought before immediately from my head—the ones I truly fight for,
the ones who embody the Charadoc for me.
I open my arms one last time to Kiril and Lufti. I want to embrace them forever, nuzzle their
tousled, sandy heads, breathe in the scent of their familiarity. If I let go, someone among us may die. "I've given up smoking for
good," Kiril tells me. "Regardless of what you do." "Good for you, dear!" I wish I didn't, right at that moment, feel
an overpowering urge to light up, myself.
But so long as I hold them I can't, of course–another reason to not let
go. "I hear it hurts babies." "Oh Kiril, no! Don't think that your smoking had anything to
do with..." "Hush," she says, reaching
fingers up to my lips. "You know my
plans." "And I can't dissuade you?" "Nope." I kiss her brow. "At least your lungs will thank you–I wish I
had your strength." "After this battle, will
you...um...give the greenfire a rest for awhile?" I nod. "One way or another." Her face falls; I shouldn't
have said that. But then Lufti gives us
both an extra squeeze. "We will all
gather together in the stone's embrace," he says. "We have some future left, no matter how cold
the wind may blow. The stars aren't done
with us yet." Time to go already. I hope he's right. But just as I let go of my loves, someone
says, "Hey, you're going to need a little something extra to help..." and I
slug him, shouting, "No I do NOT need your filthy powder!" as I keep on
striking, then struggle to shake off Marduk and Nishka tackling me, trying
again and again to wriggle out of their grip. "You just try and ground me!" I shout back.
"You just bloody well try!" Then I see Baruch on the
ground, his nose and lips bleeding and his eyes glaring, next to the trampled
sausage and potatoes that he'd tried to give me. Quietly but clearly and with acid in his
voice the boy says, "You're going as crazy as my Dad did. Go ahead and starve for all I care." For
a moment I can't say anything. Then I
tell Cyran, in a chastened voice, "You can't ground me. You've got nobody to replace me." and I take
off before anything more can go wrong. My
heart pounds. It wasn't supposed to go
that way! It just...God I hate this
war! I struggle even as I fly to get my
mind back in the game. It wasn't...how
dare they treat me like that! How, how
can I ever impress anyone now? My eyes
sting with wind-burned tears. I
veer away from a rock-face just in time.
I'm losing altitude. If I don't make myself eat something soon I'm going
to plummet to my death. Not a bad idea,
that...but no. They need me. That's why Cyran can't ground me, after
all. They must need me. And why didn't I eat something back at
Merchant's Cavern when I had a chance? Without
a word I drop into Cantunta's base, accept whatever the soup of the day is, and
force it down without tasting it. I take
bread too, and continue nibbling it as I fly out of there, up into the sky
beyond the reach of Sanzio or any of his minions, where no one can offer me the
hopelessly alluring dust. (Off the road at last! Time to leave the cares and coddling of civilization
behind, to test ourselves against the mountain!) |
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