Use of Weapons (56 page)

Eventually,
near the breach, he fell, and thought he might just lie here for a while. The
light was better, and he felt tired. The dust drifted like pale shrouds. He
looked up at the sky, pale blue, and thought how beautiful it was, even through
all this dust, and, listening to the tanks as they came crunching up through
the slope of wrecked stones, reflected that, like tanks everywhere, they
squeaked more than they roared.

'Gentlemen,'
(he whispered to the rabid blue sky) 'I am reminded of something the worshipful
Sma said to me once, on the subject of heroism, which was something like:
"Zakalwe, in all the human societies we have ever reviewed, in every age
and every state, there has seldom if ever been a shortage of eager young males
prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of
their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this simple
fact; there is never a scarcity of idiots."' He sighed. 'Well, no doubt
she didn't say
every
age and
every
state, because the Culture just
loves there to be exceptions to everything, but... that was the gist of it... I
think...'

He
rolled over, away from the achingly blue sky, to stare at the blurred dust.

Eventually,
reluctantly, he pushed himself over, and then half up, then to his knees, then
clutched at the tent-pole crutch and forced down on it, and got to his feet,
ignoring all the pestering aches and pains, and staggered for the piled wreckage
of the walls, and somehow dragged and hauled and scraped his way to the top,
where the walls ran smooth and wide for a way, like roadways in the sky, and
the bodies of a dozen or so soldiers lay, blood pooling, the ramparts around
them scarred with bullet holes and grey with dust.

He
staggered towards them, as though anxious to be one of their number. He scanned
the skies for the module.

It
was some time before they spotted the "Z" sign he made from the
bodies on the top of the walls, but in that language it was a complicated
letter, and he kept getting mixed up.

I

No
lights burned on the
Staberinde.
It
sat squat against the grey leechings of the false dawn, its dim silhouette a
piled cone which only hinted at the concentric loops and lines of its decks and
guns. Some effect of the marsh mists between him and the ziggurat of the ship
made it look as though its black shape was not attached to the land at all, but
floated over it, poised like some threatening dark cloud.

He
watched with tired eyes, stood on tired feet. This close to the city and the
ship, he could smell the sea, and - nose this close to the concrete of the
bunker - a limey scent, acrid and bitter. He tried to remember the garden and
the smell of flowers, the way he sometimes did whenever the fighting started to
seem just too futile and cruel to have any point whatsoever, but for once he
could not conjure up that faintly-remembered, beguilingly poignant perfume, or
recall anything good that had come out of that garden (instead he saw again those
sun-tanned hands on his sister's pale hips, the ridiculous little chair they'd
chosen for their fornication... and he remembered the last time he had seen the
garden, the last time he'd been to the estate; with the tank corps, and he'd
seen the chaos and ruin Elethiomel had visited upon the place that had been the
cradle for both of them; the great house gutted, the stone boat wrecked, the
woods burned... and his last glimpse of the hateful little summer house where
he'd found them, as he took his own retaliatory action against the tyranny of
memory; the tank rocking beneath him, the already flare-lit clearing whiting
out with bright flame, his ears ringing with a sound that was no sound, and the
little house... was still there; the shot had gone right through, exploded
somewhere in the woods behind, and he'd wanted to weep and scream and tear it
all down with his own hands... but then had remembered the man who had sat
there, and thought how he might treat something like this, and so had gathered
the strength to laugh at it, and ordered the gunner to aim at the top step
beneath the little house, and saw it all finally lift and burst into the air.
The debris fell around the tank, sprinkling him with earth and wood and ripped
bundles of thatch).

The
night beyond the bunker was warm and oppressive, the land's day-time heat
trapped and pressed to the ground by the weight of clouds above, sticking
against the skin of the land like some sweat-soaked shirt. Perhaps the wind
changed then, for he thought he detected the smell of the grass and the hay in
the air, swept hundreds of kilometres from the great prairies inland by some
wind since spent, the old fragrance going stale now. He closed his eyes and
leant his forehead against the rough concrete of the bunker wall, beneath the
slit he'd been looking through; his fingers splayed out lightly on the hard,
grainy surface, and he felt the warm material press into his flesh.

Sometimes
all he wanted was for it all to be over, and the way of it did not really seem
to matter. Cessation was all, simple and demanding and seductive, and worth
almost anything. That was when he had to think of Darckense, trapped on the
ship, held captive by Elethiomel. He knew she didn't love their cousin any
more; that had been something brief and juvenile, something she'd used in her
adolescence to get back at the family for some imagined slight, some favouring
of Livueta over her. It might have seemed like love at the time, but he
suspected even she knew it was not, now. He believed that Darckense really was
an unwilling hostage; many people had been taken by surprise when Elethiomel
attacked the city; just the speed of the advance had trapped half the
population, and Darckense had been unlucky to be discovered trying to leave
from the chaos of the airport; Elethiomel had had agents out looking for her.

So
for her he had to go on fighting, even if he had almost worn away the hate in
his heart for Elethiomel, the hate that had kept him fighting these last years,
but now was running out, just worn down by the abrading course of the long war.

How
could Elethiomel do it? Even if he didn't still love her (and the monster
claimed that Livueta was his real desire), how could he use her like another
shell stored in the battleship's cavernous magazines?

And
what was
he
supposed to do in reply?
Use Livueta against Elethiomel? Attempt the same level of cunning cruelty?

Already
Livueta blamed
him
, not Elethiomel,
for all that had happened. What was he supposed to do? Surrender? Barter sister
for sister? Mount some mad, doomed rescue attempt? Simply attack?

He
had tried to explain that only a prolonged siege guaranteed success, but
argued about it so often now that he was starting to wonder if he was right.

'Sir?'

He
turned, looked at the dim figures of the commanders behind him. 'What?' he
snapped.

'Sir,'
- it was Swaels - 'Sir, perhaps we should be setting off now, back to
headquarters. The cloud is breaking from the east, and it will be dawn soon...
we shouldn't be caught in range.'

'I
know that,' he said. He glanced out at the dark outline of the
Staberinde
, and felt himself flinch a
little, as though he expected its huge guns to belch flame right there and
then, straight at him. He drew a metal shutter across the concrete slit. It was
very dark in the bunker for a second, then somebody switched on the harsh
yellow lights and they all stood there, blinking in the glare.

They
left the bunker; the long mass of the armoured staff car waited in the
darkness. Assorted aides and junior officers leapt to attention, straightened
caps, saluted and opened doors. He climbed into the car, sitting on the
fur-covered rear bench, watching as three of the other commanders followed,
sitting in a line opposite him. The armoured door clanged shut; the car growled
and moved, bumping over the uneven ground and back into the forest, away from
the dark shape resting in the night behind.

'Sir,'
Swaels said, exchanging looks with the other two commanders. 'The other
commanders and I have discussed -'

'You
are going to tell me that we should attack; bomb and shell the
Staberinde
until it is a flaming hulk
and then storm it with troop hovers,' he said, holding up one hand, 'I know
what you've been discussing and I know what... decisions you think you've
arrived at. They do not interest me.'

'Sir,
we all realise the strain you are under because your sister is held on the
ship, but -'

'That
has nothing to do with it, Swaels,' he told the other man. 'You insult me by
implying that I even consider that a reason for holding off. My reasons are
sound military reasons, and foremost of those is that the enemy has succeeded
in creating a fortress that is, at the moment, almost impregnable. We must wait
until the winner floods, when the fleet can negotiate the estuary and the
channel, and engage the
Staberinde
on
equal terms; to send in aircraft or attempt to engage in an artillery duel
would be the height of folly.'

'Sir,'
Swaels said. 'Much as we are distressed at having to disagree with you, we
nevertheless -'

'You
will be silent, Commander Swaels,' he said icily. The other man swallowed. 'I
have sufficient matters to worry about without having to concern myself with
the drivel that passes for serious military planning between my senior
officers, or, I might add, with replacing any of those senior officers.'

For
a while there was only the distant grumbling noise of the car engine. Swaels
looked shocked; the other two commanders were staring at the rug floor. Swaels'
face looked shiny. He swallowed again. The voice of the labouring car seemed to
emphasize the silence in the rear compartment as the four men were jostled and
shaken; then the car found a metalled road, and roared off, pressing him back
in the seat, making the other three sway towards him before sitting back again.

'Sir,
I am ready to lea -'

'Must
this go on?' he complained, hoping to stop Swaels. 'Can't you lift even this
small burden from me? All I ask is that you do as you ought. Let there be no
disagreement; let us fight the enemy, not amongst ourselves.'

'...
to leave your staff, if you so wish,' Swaels continued.

Now
it was as though the noise of the engine did not intrude inside the passenger
cell at all; a frozen silence - held not in the air, but in the expression of
Swaels' face and the still, tensed bodies of the other two commanders - seemed
to settle over the four, like some prescient breath of a winter that was still
half a year away. He wanted to close his eyes, but could not show such
weakness. He kept his gaze fixed on the man directly across from him.

'Sir,
I have to tell you that I disagree with the course you are pursuing, and I am
not alone. Sir, please believe me that I and the other commanders love you as
we love our country; with all our hearts. But because of that love, we cannot
stand by while you throw away everything you stand for and all we believe in
trying to defend a mistaken decision.'

He
saw Swaels' hands knit together, as though in supplication. No gentleman of
breeding, he thought, almost dreamily, ought to begin a sentence with the
unfortunate word "but"...

'Sir,
believe me I wish that I was wrong. I and the other commanders have done
everything to try to accommodate your views, but we cannot. Sir, if you have
any love for any of your commanders, we beseech you; think again. Remove me if
you feel you must, sir, for having spoken like this; court-martial me, demote
me, execute me, forbid my name, but, sir; reconsider, while there is still
time.'

They
sat still, as the car hummed along the road, swerving occasionally for corners,
jiggling left-right or right-left to avoid craters, and... and we must all
look, he thought, as we sit here, frozen in the weak yellow light, like the
stiffening dead.

'Stop
the car,' he heard himself saying. His finger was already depressing the
intercom button. The car rumbled down through the gears and came to a halt. He
opened the door. Swaels' eyes were closed.

'Get
out,' he told him.

Swaels
looked suddenly like an old man hit by the first of many blows. It was as
though he had shrunk, collapsed inside. A warm gust of wind threatened to close
the door again; he held it open with one hand.