Soldier, ask not

Chapter 12

I had expected them to appear in answer to my shouts even more quickly. The Friendly skirmishers were naturally all around us almost from the moment we left the hill to its dead, under the command of their dead Force-Leader. These two might have been among the same Friendlies who had discovered the patrol dug in on the hill in the first place. But, having found it, they had moved on.

For it was their job to discover important pockets of Cassidan resistance, so that they could call for strength to eliminate those points. They would be carrying listening devices as part of their equipment, but they would pay little attention if those devices picked up merely the sound of two men arguing. Two men were game too small for their orders to concern themselves with.

But one man deliberately calling for help - that was an occurrence unusual enough to be worth investigating. A Soldier of the Lord should not be weak enough to be so calling, whether he needed personal assistance or not. And why should a Cassidan be appealing for aid in this area where no fighting had been going on? And who other than Soldiers of the Lord or their weaponed enemies might be in this zone of battle?

Now they knew who might be- a Newsman and his assistant. Both noncombatants, as I was quick to point out to them. Nevertheless the spring-rifles remained steadily aimed at us.

"Damn your eyes!" I told them. "Can't you see I need medical attention? Get me to one of your field hospitals right away!"

They looked back at me with startlingly innocent eyes in smooth young faces. The one on the right wore the single collar mark of a lance-private, the other was an ordinary battle-class private soldier. Neither one of them was out of his teens.

"We have no orders to turn aside and return to a field hospital," said the lance-private, speaking for both of them, as the - barely - superior in rank. "I can only conduct you to a gathering spot for prisoners, where no doubt other measures will be taken for your care." He stepped back, his rifle still aimed at us. "Do thou help the other to aid this wounded man along, Greten," he said dropping into the cant to speak to his partner. "Take his other side and I will follow with both our weapons."

The other soldier passed over his spring-rifle and between him and Dave, I began getting over the ground a little more comfortably, although the rage still seethed and bubbled in me. They brought us to a clearing finally, not an actual grass-filled clearing exposed to the sun, but a spot where one huge tree had fallen and left open a sort of glade among the other giants. Here, there were perhaps twenty or so dejected-looking Cassidans, disarmed and being held under guard by four young Friendlies like those who had captured us.

Dave and the young Friendly soldier sat me down carefully with my back to the stump of the huge fallen tree. Then Dave was herded over to join the rest of the uniformed Cassidans, who were backed against the tall trunk of the fallen and moldering tree itself, with the four armed Friendly guards facing them. I shouted that Dave should be left with me as a non-combatant, pointing out his white armband and lack of insignia. But all six of the men in black uniforms ignored me.

"Who hath rank here?" asked the lance-private of the four guards.

"I am senior," answered one of them, "but my rank is less than thine."

He was, in fact, a plain battle-private. However, he was well into his twenties, plainly older than the rest of them, and his quick disclaimer of authority had the ring of the experienced soldier, who has learned not to volunteer for things.

"This man is a Newsman," said the lance-private, indicating me, "and does claim the other under his protection. Certain the Newsman needeth medical attention; and though none of us can take him to the nearest field hospital, maybe thou canst call his case to the attention of higher authority over thy communicator,"

"We have none," said the older soldier, "Message center is two hundred meters distant."

"I and Greten will remain to assist thy guard while one of you go to your message center."

"There was no provision " - the older, battle-private looked stubborn - "in our orders for one of us to leave for such a purpose."

"Surely this is a special case and situation?"

"There was no provision."

"But-"

"I tell thee, there was no provision made for this!" the battle-private shouted at him. "We can do nothing until an officer or a Groupman comes!"

"Will he come shortly?" The lance-private had been shaken by the vehemence of the objections of the older man. He glanced over at me worriedly; and I thought that perhaps he was beginning to think he had made a mistake in even mentioning medical help for us. But I had underestimated him. His face was a little pale, but he spoke evenly enough to the older man.

"I do not know," answered the other.

"Then I myself will go to your message center. Wait here, Greten."

He shouldered his spring-rifle and went off. We never saw him again.

Meanwhile, the fury and the body adrenalin that had helped me fight the pain of the hole drilled through my kneecap and the flesh and nerves and bone beyond it were beginning to wear off. I no longer felt the recurrent stab of agony as I tried to move the leg, but a swelling, steady ache was beginning to send billows of pain up my thigh from it - or so it seemed - and this was making me lightheaded. I began to wonder if I could stand it - and then, suddenly, with the feeling of stupidity that hits you when you realize all at once that what you have been searching for has been right before your eyes all this time, I remembered my belt.

Clipped to my belt, as to the belt of all soldiers, was a field-medication kit. Almost ready to laugh in spite of the pain, I reached for it now, fumbled it open, thumbed out two of the octagonal pills I found there - unaccountably, it was growing dark under the trees where we were, so that I could not make out their red color, but their shape was identity enough. It had been designed for just that purpose.

I chewed and swallowed them dry. Off in the distance, it seemed, I heard Dave's voice, unaccountably shouting. But, swift as cyanide on the tongue, the anesthetic, tranquilizing effect of the pain pills was sweeping through me. The pain was washed away before it, leaving me feeling whole, and clean and new - and unconcerned about anything beyond the peace and comfort of my own body.

Once more I heard Dave shouting. This time I understood him, but the message of his shouting had no power to disturb me. He was calling that he had already given me the pain pills from his own kit, when I had passed out twice before. He was shouting that I had now laken an overdose, that someone should help me. Distant, also, at the same time, the grove grew quite dark and there was a roll like thunder overhead, and then I heard, as one hears some distant, charming symphony, the patter of millions of raindrops on the millions of leaves far overhead.

***

When I came back to myself again, for a while I paid very little attention to anything around me, for I was cramped and nauseated, with the aftereffects of the drug overdose. My knee no longer hurt if it was not moved, but it had swollen and grown stiff as a steel rod; and the slightest movement of it brought a jolt of pain that shook me like a blow.

I vomited and began slowly to feel better internally. Slowly, I began to be aware once more of what was going on around me. I was wet to the skin, for the rain, after being held up a little by the leaves overhead, had worked its way down to us. Off a little way by the trees, both the prisoners and the guards made a sodden group. There was a newcomer in the black uniform of the Friendlies. He was a Groupman, middle-aged, lean and lined heavily in the face; and he had taken the battle-private called Greten aside in my direction, evidently to argue with him.

Above us, in the little openings between the tree branches that had been left by the falling of the giant tree that had produced the forest glade, the sky had lightened after the thunderstorm; but though it was cloudless, it was all flushed now with the crimson of sunset. To my drug-distorted vision, that red came down and painted the outlines of the wet - dark figures of the gray-clad prisoners, and glittered the soaked black uniforms of the Friendlies.

Red and black, black and red, they were like some figures in a stained-glass window, under the huge, over-arching frame of the shadow - dark giants that were the trees. I sat there, chilled by my own heavy, damp clothes, staring at the Groupman and the battle-private in their argument. And gradually their words, low-pitched so that they would not carry to the prisoners, but plain to my closer ears, began to make sense to me.

"Thou art a child!" the Groupman was snarling. He lifted his head a little with the vehemence of his emotion; and the sunset sky reached down to illuminate his face with red, so that I saw it clearly for the first time - and saw in its starved features and graven lines the same sort of harsh and utter fanaticism I had found in the Groupman at Friendly Battle Headquarters who had turned down the chance of a pass for Dave.

"Thou art a child!" he repeated. "Young thou art! What dost thou know of the struggle to gain sustenance, generation on generation, on our harsh and stony worlds, as I have known it? What dost thou know of hunger and want, even to the women and babes, I say it, among the Children of the Lord? What dost thou know of the purposes of them who send us to battle, that our people may live and flourish when all men elsewhere would gladly see us dead and our faith dead and buried with us?''

"I know something," retorted the younger soldier, though his voice showed its youth and trembled a little even as he answered. "I know that we have a duty to the right, and that we have sworn to the Mercenaries' Code, and-"

"Shut thy milk-babe mouth!" hissed the Groupman. "What are Codes before the Code of the Almighty? What are oaths other than our oath to the God of Battles? Lo, our Eldest of our Council of Elders, he who is called Bright, hath said that this day bears hard upon the future of our people, and the winning of this day's war is a need that we must meet. Therefore shall we win! And nothing else!"

"But still I tell thee-"

"Thou shall tell me nothing! I am thy superior! I tell thee. Our orders are to regroup for another attack upon the enemy. Thou and these four with thee are to report now, to their message center. It recks not that thou art not of their unit. Thou hast been called and will obey!''

"Then we shall take the prisoners safely with us-"

"Thou shalt obey!" The Groupman was carrying his spring-gun slung under one arm. He swung it around into his grasp so that the barrel pointed at the private. The Groupman's thumb pushed the control of the weapon to automatic fire. I saw Greten's eyes close for a second and his throat worked; but when his voice came out, it was still steady.

"Yet all my life have I walked in the shadow of the Lord which is truth and faith-" I heard him say, and the barrel came up. I shouted at the Groupman.

"You! Hey, you - Groupman!"

He jerked about like a timber wolf at the sound of a snapping twig under a hunter's boot - and I was looking down the pinhole muzzle of his automatic-set spring-rifle myself. Then he came toward me, gun still aimed, and the axe blade of his starved fanatic's face above it looked down at me.

"Thou art sensible, then?" he said. And the words were like a sneer. I read in them a contempt for anyone weak enough to take a pain-killer for the relief of any physical discomfort.

"Sensible enough to tell you a few things," I croaked. My throat was dry and my leg was beginning to stir to an ache again, but he was good medicine for me, reawakening my anger, so that the returning hurt could feed the fury that rose easily in me. "Listen to me. I'm a Newsman. You've been around long enough to know that nobody wears this cape and beret who isn't entitled to them. But just to make sure" - I dug into my jacket and produced them-" here are my papers. Look them over."

He took them and glanced through them.

"All right now," I said, when he had looked at the last of them. "I'm a Newsman and you're a Groupman. And I'm not asking you anything - I'm telling you! I want transportation to a field hospital immediately, and I want my assistant over there" - and I pointed at Dave - "returned to me. Now! Not ten minutes from now, or two minutes from now; but now! These privates who've been on guard here may not think they have the authority to get me and my assistant out of here and me to a hospital, but you know you have. And I want it done!"

He stared from the papers to me and there came over his face a peculiar grimness of cast, the sort of look a man might get as he shakes off the grasp of those escorting him to a gallows and strides forward to the place of his execution contemptuously under his own power.

"Thou art a Newsman," he said, and drew a deep breath. "Aye, thou art one of Anarch's breed, who with lies and false report spreads hatred of our people and our faith throughout the worlds of men. I know thee well, Newsman" - he stared at me with black, hollowed eyes - "and thy papers to me are but trash and nonsense. But I will humor thee, and show thee how little thou weighest in the balance, with all thy foul reports. I will give thee a story to write, and thou shalt write it, and thou shall see how it is less than dry leaves blowing before the marching feet of the Anointed of the Lord.''

"Get me to a field hospital," I said.

"Thou shalt wait for that," he said. "Further" - and he waved the papers at me - "I see here thy pass, but no pass signed by one of authority in our ranks that gives free passage to the one thou callest thy assistant. Therefore he shall not come to thee, but remain with those prisoners of like uniform, to meet what the Lord shall send them."

He threw the papers down into my lap, turned and stalked off, back toward the prisoners. I shouted after him, telling him to come back; but he paid me no attention.

But Greten ran after him, caught him by the arm and murmured something in his ear, meanwhile gesturing sharply toward the group of prisoners. The Groupman shoved him off with a thrust of his arm that sent Greten staggering.

"Are they of the Chosen?" the Groupman shouted. "Are they Chosen of God?"

And he whirled about in fury, with his spring-rifle still set on automatic menacing not merely Greten, but the other guards as well.

"Fall in!" he shouted.

Some slowly, some hastily, they left off guarding the prisoners and fell into line, facing the Groupman.

"You shall all report to the Message Center - now!" the Groupman snapped. "Right face!" And they turned. "Move out!"

And so they left us, moving off out of my sight among the shadows of the trees.

The Groupman watched after them for a second, then turned his attention and his rifle back on the Cassidan prisoners. They shrank a little from him; and I saw the white, indistinct outline of Dave's face turned momentarily in my direction.

"Now, your guards are gone," the Groupman said to them slowly and grimly. "For an assault begins that will wipe your forces from the field. In that assault every soldier of the Lord is needed, for a call has been placed upon us by our Eldest in Council. Even I must go - and I cannot leave enemies like yourselves unguarded behind our lines, to do mischief against our victory. Therefore, I send you now to a place from which you cannot harm the Anointed of the Lord."

In that moment, in that moment only, for the first time, I understood what he meant. And I opened my mouth to shout; but nothing came out. I tried to rise, but my stiff leg would not let me. And I hung there, mouth open, frozen in the act of half-rising.

He opened fire at full automatic upon the unarmed men before him. And they fell - Dave among them - they dropped and fell, and died.