Context (71 page)

Before
the young officers left, Tom called to them.

‘You want to learn how to think
strategically?’

‘Why we’re here, sir.’

Their faces were expectant.

‘Here, tomorrow, same time.’ Tom
paused, then continued, ‘You can each present a poem entitled “Freedom”, which
I’ll expect you to write tonight.’

One of the young officers
laughed.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

‘Sir.’

The group bowed to Tom and Jay,
then filed out quietly, failing to hide their dismay.

After they had left, and the
daistral house was deserted save for a few older officers breakfasting at the
rear, Jay chuckled.

‘You’re an evil bastard, my Lord.’

‘And you, my Lord’—Tom raised a
daistral cup in toast—’set me up very nicely.’

I
am not a soldier.

Nor had he ever wanted to be one.
But Tom felt strangely isolated, sitting in a rear booth in a tavern that
evening, as he watched carousing troops, smiling at their songs—traditional
melodies, with words their composers would not have recognized.

The bar counter was circular,
surrounding a thick round pillar of raw grey stone decorated with a collection
of flasks and decanters of every hue. Around the bar, the crowd was a mass of
energy; at least half of them were belting out the lyrics of ‘The Sergeant’s
Weapon Is Fully Charged (Fastened to a Sticky Tag)’ to the tune of ‘The Ducal
March’.

In an alcove on the far side, Tom
glimpsed Jay A’Khelikov, hunched over a solitary holodisplay.

But then, as Tom stood up, a
grizzled old sergeant-maximus called Gieson—a few people murmured his name—rubbed
his big square hand across his scarred face, the stubble on his scalp, adjusted
his eyepatch, then put down his tankard and began to sing in a soft sweet voice
which carried through the tavern and brought every conversation to a
standstill.

It was a ballad—a young man
sickened by horror, his comrades fallen and his best friend’s blood still warm
upon his tunic, remembers the soft white arms of his true love as she ladles
out rations in the Aqua Hall back home—and even Tom, threading his way through
the crowd, stopped and held his breath as the sergeant drew his song to its
bittersweet conclusion.

In the silence, Tom blinked away
moisture from his eyes.

Then thunderous applause echoed
around the tavern, delivered by soldiers young and old, of both sexes, who were
unashamed of the tears which ran glistening down their faces.

A hubbub grew then, as the
emotional release spilled over into raucous conversation and renewed bouts of
drinking. As the crowd’s boisterousness returned, Tom reached Jay’s alcove.

‘Greetings, my Lord A’Khelikov.’

‘Tom!’ Jay looked up hurriedly,
wiping the holo with a cutting gesture. ‘I’m surprised to see you here.’

‘May I?’ Tom gestured towards the
seat opposite Jay. ‘Or should I leave you to your inspiration?’

For he had glimpsed the verse
which Jay was writing. From choice?

Perhaps it was just that he would
not have his officers-in-training put through anything he could not achieve
himself.

‘Ha. See him?’ Jay pointed
towards a scowling, blocky-shouldered sergeant-minor. ‘His cadets call him
Bastard Benjil, especially after punishment runs.’

‘A charming fellow.’

‘Yes? Well, compared to you ...What
do you think my young officers are calling you right now?’

Tom picked up a decanut from a
bowl on the table.

‘Well, so long as they’re doing
it in rhyming couplets’—he popped the nut into his mouth, and spoke while
chewing—‘I really don’t give a damn.’

His
dreams that night were haunted by desires unfulfilled, hopes unrealized,
through which eerily paranoid images flitted: women who called to him but
slipped away through solid stone; crowds of pale strangers feasting on
corpse-grey fleischbloc; inhuman high-shouldered warriors, taller than a man,
with granulated faces and fiery vertical-slit eyes, behind whom butchered
humans hung from ceiling hooks, their pale glistening torsos axed open to drain
the blood…

When he jerked into wakefulness
next morning, he recalled nothing save the touch of women’s fingertips, their
fading cries, and the febrile beating of his own heart.

On black smartsatin sheets which
folded back as they sensed his waking, Tom lay there, reflected in the
bronze-tinged smoky ceiling-mirrorfield. His pale image stared back: a
one-armed warrior with haunted eyes, and an air of not knowing where the Chaos
life was taking him.

He felt exhausted.

It
was early, but he dragged himself outside to run, knowing he would feel worse
if he slacked off in training.

Tom passed through a glimmering,
milk-white membrane, along a short round tunnel, and came out onto a long
esplanade. Beyond, the small sea’s mint-green waves gently lapped against shore
and pillars, their reflections swimming upon the high cavern ceiling.

But it was not the tranquil water
or the clean, energizing air which stopped Tom dead.

He was used to being the solitary
runner, the obsessive athlete training in deserted corridors and caverns; but
here, now, there were two hundred—no, three hundred or more -men and women
running hard in small teams beside the waves, throwing themselves through
gymnastic groundwork, scrambling across obstacle courses or climbing the cavern
walls.

Interesting place.

Then he stretched lightly, jogged
onto the esplanade, and began to run.

Afterwards,
as he stripped off his sweat-sodden clothes, Tom waved his bedchamber’s
holodisplay into life. He was certain there would be no message from Corduven.

Yet the minimized tricon which
hung there was enough to make him shiver.

When he pointed, the intricate
knot of multi-hued light magnified, unfurled to deliver its many-layered
semantic content, full of ironic overtones: exquisite topography, for a message
which was so simple at its heart.

The Lady Sylvana would be taking
breakfast in one hour’s time, in the Wyvern Gardens off Promenade Excandior,
and she hoped he would be able to join her there.

Elva...

But the image he saw in his mind
was of a pale-skinned noble beauty with upswept golden hair, who moved with a
soft and easy grace, and whose blue eyes sparkled brighter than any sea, alive
with intellectual energy and a subtle humour which could never fade.

There
had been times, when climbing, that Tom had thought he was about to die. But
the body, flooded by adrenaline from the suprarenal glands, can deal with such
emergencies on the spot.

It would be hard to reconcile the
image of that fast-reacting athlete to this dithering man, fidgeting before his
wardrobe-alcove, trying to decide what he should wear.

Get a grip, will you ?

And then he was rushing to get
ready, having left it strictly too late; perhaps it was a subconscious strategy
to get his body moving fast, to deal with the heart-pounding fear.