IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume VI: The Rift
Chapter 52
After the Battle
Monday, February 22, 2709 They thought to honor me by
giving me space on a real mattress, in a real bedroom inside the mansion
itself, but I feel sentenced to my bed. The
night crawls on, but I can't sleep. The
sounds of revelry outside seem to taunt me, and the snores around me infuriate
me! Time and again I stop myself from
punching the nearest body stretched out on the floor, reminding myself that no,
they're not thieves of my sleep, it's just that too much residual greenfire still
crackles in me. I can only pass out for
minutes at a time, though everything in me aches for rest. So I rise and in the dark I
step around bodies of all those camping wherever they can spread a mat or
bedroll. I think it's safest for everyone
if I leave. It's not too hard to find
stepping-places, for the mansion hasn't reached full capacity yet; a fair
number still party outdoors. And none sleep so far in the kitchen, so I can
turn on the light there. I tear off a
sheet of cooking-parchment, shove people's random gear out of the way to make
space at the table, and try to put myself to sleep by starting the sketch of a
map of the Altraus Coast that Kiril has asked me for, so that she can better
understand some of my stories and reminiscences. Feverishly I line out the intricate curls and
whorls of the shore, layering detail upon detail obsessively, but sleep only
goes farther and farther away. And as I
draw on years of memories of hiking, my legs scream to lift me up, carry me
anywhere, anywhere, just go! So now, after I have
no more need to move, I can, in fact I must.
I leave the indoor light and the map unfinished, to amble through a
battlefield made pitch-black from all the sulfur-stinking gunsmoke between us
and the moon, far from the circles of lamplight where we divvy up prisoners for
indentured servitude. Yet sometimes a
little wind blows through, and beams of moonlight spill down now and then when
you least expect it. (Ah, breathe that clean mountain air, my fellow climbers! Far above the stink of civilization, pure of
human smoke and dust and tawdriness, the cold, exacting beauty of the
heights! Everyone should climb at least
once by moonlight, and hang the danger!
Leave earthbound cowering to the little chicken-farmers and
cocoa-pickers, content in their simple ways—we are the daring ones who rise by
virtue of our risks. Let's prove our
mettle, brothers of the piton and the rope! Now Alysha and Kiril walk
beside me; I can't quite pinpoint the moment when they joined me. Kiril insisted on coming down in a cart with
the camp-followers, just behind the fighting force, though she's not well
enough even for the lightest medical duty.
I should do medical duty, myself–Alexander always did it after battle,
no matter how tired, and so he won the love of his soldiers beyond all sense. But he didn't have greenfire shivering him so
badly, brain and body. I don't think
Makhliya would risk putting a scalpel in my shaking hand tonight. (Not that way–it's already
claimed. I have it on good information that
smugglers hold that cave above the road.
Come over here a ways. If my
informant drew an accurate map, we should find another, smaller cave, a little
higher up, just right for our number, out of sight of the road and the
smugglers both, perfect for our base camp.
Oh, I have dreamed of this!) Alysha and I pass a
cigarette back and forth between us, but Kiril abstains; she struggles enough
with the lingering smoke all around us.
She wheezes, "I had to see it for myself, where you fought. I would've been right here beside you,
Deirdre, watching your back, if I could.
You know that, don't you?" "You just take care of
yourself, honey, and never mind me." I
read what's in her eyes staring up at me, and it hurts, especially since I did
start to feel annoyed by the slow pace that we have to keep for her—that girl
is too perceptive for her own bloody good!
I take a deep breath, and hope that it doesn't sound like a sigh. "Don't worry, Kiril–I know my friends from my
enemies tonight." I give the back of her
head a caress, the way a mother might.
"You doing everything Makhliya tells you?" Aside from coming down to join us, of course. "Yes." She makes a face. "I never thought I'd learn to hate liver–I
mean it's meat. When did I get so
spoiled that I could turn my nose up at meat?
But she makes me and the other anemia patients eat the livers of every
animal they butcher, and has the smugglers bring in more." "Good for her–and good for
you. Keep it up." Fires still burn here and
there, but the dim red glow doesn't go very far. I feel like that, useless embers still burning
inside me, and I can't smother them, nor can I derive enough light from them, I
can only wait for them to die down. We
walk a ways beyond the torn-up mire that used to be a lawn, into what I
remember as a pleasant little heath.
This didn't start out open land, but it sure looks open now. A tree used to stand right over...there. Stump, now.
I can see the rest of the trunk where a cannonball knocked it down. The smoke parts enough to let a ray of
moonlight sparkle on leaves that still don't yet know they're dead. "Deirdre." I shudder at the sound of Kief's voice, but
turn around and see that Damien spoke, not my ghost. He has blood splashed across the side of his
face, black in the expanding moonlight as the winds clear still more
smoke. "Deirdre. You killed her." His voice sounds tight. "You killed General Abojan." "Yes." I tremble to remember it all over again. "The prisoners say that she
shot Kanarik personally." "Did she?" His voice comes out
choked. "I should have been the one to
kill her." "And so you did, Bard,"
cuts in Cyran's smooth voice, coming up behind my shoulder. "Every victorious stroke in the Charadocian
Revolution comes from you, for your songs inspire us all." Cyran steps around
me to where I can see hir. "And tomorrow
we will hold a proper funeral for Kanarik and all the fallen, so perhaps you
had best get some rest to be fresh for it, if you want to sing for her." Damien stumbles when he
turns to Cyran, and looks confused. I
suddenly realize that more than battle fatigue befuddles him. But then a lot of bottles have passed around
tonight, after the biggest victory in our history–and still nobody seems to
realize that I largely sat it out. "I, I
guess you're right, memsir. Uh, thank
you, Deirdre. It needed done." And with that he hands Cyran the flask that I
didn't see him carrying and totters away into the darkness and the smoke. Since when would I overlook a detail like
that? We wander over and sit on
the trunk of the fallen tree. Cyran
takes a pull on the flask and passes it over to me. "I missed the chance to toast the anniversary
of our meeting. I'd planned to mix the
chaummin with wine coolers for the occasion, but serving it straight'll have to
do." I laugh, raise the flask in
his honor, and tip it back for a sweet, sharp drink before handing it over to
Alysha. What the heck, maybe it'll help
me sleep. "So, Deirdre–how did it
feel, when you arrived in my country?" "Unreal." The flask comes back my way, Kiril having
refused it, so I take a swallow before continuing. "I remember thinking that everything they
showed me at the Peshawr Estate seemed all very lovely, very nice, and yet
frighteningly insubstantial--a pretty veil that could whip away at any moment,
too thin to support me." Whoa–so little liquor
hits me awful hard and fast! E nods, not smiling any
longer. "And now?" "Realer than I want it to be." |
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