Chapter 11
General Risdel Dalacott uncorked the tiny poison bottle and smelled its contents.
The clear fluid had a curious aroma, honeyed and peppery at the same time. It was a distillation of extracts of maidenfriend, the herb which when chewed regularly by women prevented them from conceiving children. In its concentrated form it was even more inimical to life, providing a gentle, painless and absolutely certain escape from all the troubles of the flesh. It was greatly treasured among those of the Kolcorronian aristocracy who had no taste for the more honourable but very bloody traditional methods of committing suicide.
Dalacott emptied the bottle into his cup of wine and, after only the slightest hesitation, took a tentative sip. The poison was scarcely detectable and might even have been said to have improved the rough wine, adding a hint of spicy sweetness to it. He took another sip and set the cup aside, not wishing to slip away too quickly. There was a final self-imposed duty he had yet to perform.
He looked around his tent, which was furnished with only a narrow bed, a trunk, his portable desk and some folding chairs on straw matting. Other officers of staff rank liked to surround themselves with luxury to ease the rigours of campaign, but that had never been Dalacott’s way. He had always been a soldier and had lived as a soldier should, and the reason he was choosing to die by poison instead of the blade was that he no longer regarded himself as worthy of a soldier’s death.
It was dim inside the tent, the only light coming from a single military field lantern of the type which fuelled itself by attracting oilbugs. He lit a second lantern and placed it on his desk, still finding it a little strange that such measures should be necessary for reading at night. This far west in Chamteth, across the Orange River, Overland was out of sight beneath the horizon and the diurnal cycle consisted of twelve hours of uninterrupted daylight followed by twelve hours of unrelieved darkness. Had Kolcorron been in this hemisphere its scientists would probably have devised an efficient lighting system long ago.
Dalacott raised the lid of his desk and took out the last volume of his diary, the one for the year 2629. It was bound in limp green leather and had a separate sheet for each day of the year. He opened the book and slowly turned its pages, compacting the entire Chamteth campaign into a matter of minutes, picking out the key events which — insensibly at first — had led to his personal disintegration as a soldier and as a man.… DAY 84. Prince Leddravohr was in a strange mood at the staff conference today. I sensed that he was keyed-up and elated, in spite of the news of heavy losses on the southern front. Time and time again he made reference to the fact thatptertha appear to be so few in this part of Land. He is not given to confiding his innermost thoughts, but by piecing together fragmentary and oblique remarks I received the impression that he entertained visions of persuading the King to abandon the whole idea of migrating to Overland.
His rationale seemed to be that such desperate measures would be unnecessary if it were established that, for some unguessable reason, conditions in the Land of the Long Days were unfavourable to ptertha. That being the case, it would only be necessary for Kolcorron to subjugate Chamteth and transfer the seat of power and the remaining population to this continent — a much more logical and natural process than trying to reach another planet… DAY 93. The war is going badly. These people are determined, brave and gifted fighters. I cannot bring myself to contemplate the possibility of our eventual defeat, but the truth is that we would have been severely tested in going against Chamteth even in the days when we could have fielded close on a million fully trained men. Today we have only a third of that number, an uncomfortably high proportion of them raw conscripts, and we are going to need luck in addition to all our skill and courage if the war is to be successfully prosecuted.
An important factor in our favour is that this country is so rich in resources, particularly in brakka and edible crops. The sound of brakka pollination discharges is constantly being mistaken by my men for enemy cannon fire or bombs, and we have an abundance of power crystals for our heavy weaponry. There is no difficulty in keeping the armies well fed, in spite of the Chamtethans’ efforts to burn the crops they are forced to abandon.
The Chamtethan women, and even quite small children, will indulge in that form of destruction if left to their own devices. With our manpower stretched to the limit, we are unable to divert combat troops into guard duties and for that reason Leddravohr has decreed that we take no prisoners, regardless of age or sex.
It is sound military thinking, but I have been sickened by the amount of butchery I have witnessed of late. Even the most hardened of the soldiery go about their business with set grey faces, and in the encampments at night there is a contrived and unnatural quality to the little merriment that one overhears.
This is a seditious thought, one I would not express anywhere except in the privacy of these pages, but it is one thing to spread the benefits of the empire to unenlightened and squabbling tribes — and quite another to undertake the annihilation of a great nation whose sole offence was to husband its resources of brakka.
I have never had time for religion, but now — for the first time — I am beginning to comprehend the meaning of the word “sin”…
Dalacott paused in his reading and picked up the enamelled cup of wine. He stared into its beaded depths for a moment, resisting the urge to drink deeply, then took a controlled sip. So many people seemed to be calling to him from the far side of that barrier which separated the living from the dead — his wife Toriane, Aytha Maraquine, his son Oderan, Conna Dalacott and little Hallie.…
Why had he been chosen to go on and on for more than seventy years, with the false blessing of the immunity, when others could have made much better use of the gift of life? Without any conscious thought on his part, Dalacott’s right hand slipped into a pocket and located the curious object he had found on the banks of the Bes-Undar all those years ago. He stroked his thumb in a circular motion over its mirrorlike surface as he again began to turn the pages of his diary. DAY 102. How does one account for the machinations of fate?
This morning, after having put off doing so for many days, I began signing the sheaf of award citations on my desk and discovered that my own son — Toller Maraquine — is serving as an ordinary soldier in one of the regiments directly under my control!
It appears that he has been recommended for valour disks no less than three times in spite of the brevity of his service and lack of formal training. In theory a conscript, as he must be, should not be spending so much time in the front line, but perhaps the Maraquine family has used its intimate connections with the court to enable Toller to advance his belated military career. This is something I must enquire into if I ever have some freedom from the pressures of my command.
Truly these are changed times, when the military caste not only calls upon outsiders to swell its ranks, but catapults them into the utmost danger and what passes for glory.
I will do my best to see my son, if it can be arranged without exciting suspicion in him and comment from others. A meeting with Toller would be the one gleam of brightness in the deepnight of this criminal war. DAY 103. A company of the 8th Battalion was completely overrun in a surprise attack today in sector C11. Only a handful of men escaped the slaughter and many of those were so severely wounded that there was no option for them but the Bright Road. Disasters like that are becoming almost commonplace, so much so that I find myself more preoccupied with the reports which arrived this morning suggesting that our respite from the ptertha will soon come to an end.