A Mist of Grit and Splinters Read online

  Copyright 2020 Graydon Saunders

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN 978-0-9937126-5-4

  Copy-editing courtesy of the splendid Marna Nightingale.

  Much thanks to the thoughtful James Burbidge for reading the initial draft and asking helpful questions.

  Cover art by Alex Beecroft

  Any incomprehension, doubt, or bewilderment you suffer is and remains my fault.

  Authorial mood adjustment chiefly via Two Steps From Hell‘s The Power of Darkness collection.

  If you go looking for Squinting Ariston, you’re after the MacCrimmon pibroch A Flame of Wrath For Squinting Patrick, and could do worse than to try to find recordings of the 78th Fraser Highlander’s Flame of Wrath concert.

  Guide

  Table of Contents

  Start of Content

  Contents

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Thread 1

  Thread 2

  Thread 3

  Thread 4

  Thread 5

  Thread 6

  Thread 7

  Thread 8

  Thread 1

  Slow’s memoirs

  White tags are counted as dead once tagged. When the press of circumstances make it necessary to apply triage to the hurt no one has leisure to wait and note specific times of death. Now and again it happens that someone white-tagged fails to die, through luck or error, and should some time pass without indications of possession the funny looks wear off.

  I was conscious enough for Shadow to ask me if I would live. The funny looks have yet to go away.

  Neither witness describes the events in similar fashion. There is effectively no description from the witness who fled, while the complete description comes from a doctor about whom their friends continue to express concern. My experience of the events was entirely coloured by having been given the large dose of happy-juice customarily applied to those certain to die in circumstances where happy-juice remains in plentiful supply.

  The sensation of having material parts of myself return from dead demons and passed time I would lack the words to describe had I been fully conscious while the events were occurring. The texture of Shadow’s will must first admit in the hearer the possibility that anyone’s will has a texture before I might strive to describe it, and then I must struggle with the problem of the texture being that of no material thing with which I am in any way familiar.

  I will say that while Shadow’s material presence has not altered, I have not since that day again apprehended them as one might apprehend one’s youthful cousin, a thing I had commonly done before that time.

  That my unexpected — and entire — recovery led to the irritating circumstance of being hale and confined to a hospital I do not lay to Shadow’s responsibility, but rather to the caution of the medical profession.

  This enforced stay did provide me with more than a sufficiency of time to prepare my report on the action Below the Edge and to that purpose I put as much of my attention as I could. As that action was a short one, the report could not absorb especially much time.

  Parliament having granted the desire of the surviving Cousins to be admitted to the Commonweal, the First Battalion was in place below the Edge to provide security against the possibility of a renewed assault upon that remnant. While present we were also to assist in the recovery of persons and food supplies.

  It was the Captain’s expectation that the greater threat would arrive by water: the supply of City-State sorcerers — so the Cousins called their attackers — seemed entirely likely to be less than the supply of Sea People, whose conquest the City-Staters had fled. Certainly as a matter of general expectation one will find the conqueror a greater threat than the conquered. So it proved to be; Sea People arrived in some force up the River of Mists on the twenty-eighth day of Prairial in the five-hundredth and forty-second Year of the Peace Established.

  The River of Mists is a substantial river, combining the outflow of all the watery Creeks and running from the Southern Edge to the Sea in perhaps two hundred straight-line kilometres and not very many more as the river flows, as it flows in a deep and ancient canyon which may reflect the drainage of the eastern half of this continent prior to the creation of the Northern Hills.

  This course does not align with any of the Creeks, and while it arises between the longitudes of the Wet Westcreek and Blue Creek at the base of the Edge and flows nearly due east for a time, once it turns south it runs for the sea straight as a road.

  This river runs swift and strong in all seasons. And while it is a substantial river, the walls of the ancient canyon — which the river seldom overtops — keep it from being a wide one, even in the rumpled lowlands Below the Edge. This makes sailing up the river difficult. The City-State traders who the Cousins tell us were accustomed to come never came far; they would get about fifty kilometres in from the sea, just enough to reach the first plausible anchorage, and stop there.

  As this anchorage was far from any settlement of Cousins, all commerce between the Cousins and the City-States was carried on by delivery of furs to this place by the Cousins and the recovery of those trade goods purchased to their settlements. The required arduous effort of returning upstream was reduced in some degree by the trade goods having much less weight than the furs sufficient to purchase them. This was also the only portion of the country of which the City Staters possessed any knowledge, and the Sea People took their first knowledge of the country from the City States. So it was to this customary anchorage that the Sea People first came.

  We had no immediate awareness of them there. The First Battalion was sited at the one substantial settlement of the Cousins remaining in a serviceable condition, and that settlement was in its beginnings and up to those days — it is not there now — hard under the Edge near the end of the Blue Creek. This put it north of the east-west course of the River of Mists, fifteen kilometres east of where Blue Creek reaches the Edge, and about twenty-five kilometres west of the place where the River of Mists turns through five-sixteenths of a circle to flow just west of south to the sea. When maintaining the regulation hundred-kilometre watch radius the First Battalion did not observe so far as this anchorage, and was not concerned that this should be so. The main concern at that time was recovering the living Cousins and since we had no particular expectation of attack, nor at that time any habit of being concerned for attacks conducted by means of distant ritual workings, an anchorage out of our sight was not a source of concern to us.

  That there were persons present who were not Cousins was known, but this did not much concern us either. Small expeditions of City Staters and other hopeful persons have come up to the land Below the Edge time out of mind, seeking to find there safety or overlooked riches. That there are no riches is not an answer that sort of person readily accepts merely because no one else in a thousand years has found any trace of the treasure ships they hope were sunk when the sea was higher. That some such persons might try to present themselves as Cousins and join the Commonweal was a matter for the Cousins, who could vouch for whom they chose. That some others might be there as spies seemed possible, but also not a matter of great concern. They would see the Cousins leaving; they would see the presence of troops. They would not be witness to any important details of constructing a company-sized fortification. Attempting to creep up on a company camp in the dank forests north of the River of Mists would not profit them; that country is dim and cool and so we must conclude by the vigorous activity of the enormous and voracious turtles which abound in its streams that these are creatures and not natural animals. (This question is as easily concluded concerning the wild kine upon which the
turtles seldom feed; those have no difficulty walking over water or through fire, and their shaggy coats consume any small organism which passes within them.)

  In these dispositions we were warned by our lookouts of the Sea People sailing up the river. The Captain ordered Thorn Company to maintain possession of the fort and to avoid, if it could, any direct conflict. A situation where all sat down and stared for some days would be ideal. The remainder of the battalion was situated in four companies along the east-west line of the River of Mists in the narrow country to the north of that watercourse. These were positions from which they could achieve the east bank of the north-south portion of that river without any major river crossing, by no accidental disposition; the Captain had been most concerned, should the Sea People arrive, that news of a battle should not come back to their distant commanders after it should be concluded, and the customary anchorage is located on the east bank of the River of Mists.

  Thorn Company’s task did not prove achievable; the Sea People arrived promptly, and gave just as promptly formal challenge. I am sure they expected complete success from applying some fifty demons to a small fort, and in another time they should have been correct. In this time they were not; the banner focus and a plentitude of demon-specific pointy sticks sufficed us, despite a platoon’s worth of dead and down as some few of the more skilled demons succeeded in infiltrating the bubble before they could be dispatched.

  As I was myself one of those casualties Thorn Company’s operations were subsequently directed by its signaller, known in the Line as Duckling. This was not in accordance to Line regulation, while it did conform to custom. With the part-captain, sergeant-major, and two of the five sergeants unavailable, it mattered more that the focus-nodes not shift than that the senior functional sergeant be determined and take operational control.

  Duckling did a skillful job; the second wave of demons was as numerous but weaker by half, and of them Thorn Company was soon disposed. At which juncture the Sea People force was out of demons and Thorn Company was by no means out of pointy sticks or Power; the initial engagement had been sharp, but not prolonged. The Sea People having made a close approach to the fort, Thorn Company did not need to exit the fort to accomplish their destruction.

  The battalion did not reach the fort until late afternoon the next day, having made a night march down to the anchorage, destroyed all the Sea People there, crossed two companies over the River of Mists, and then come back up both sides of the river destroying Sea People shipping as they came.

  The Captain sent Shadow to assess Thorn Company’s position after the battalion’s initial engagement at the anchorage. This was perhaps two hours after the Sea People attack on Thorn Company’s position began. Due to the distance, Thorn Company was out of direct communication with the battalion standard and while the battalion could observe that there had been a battle they could not readily observe conditions inside the fort. The Captain forbore to make any visible signal, while we for our part did not know the location of the First’s standard prior to Shadow’s arrival.

  I did not resume command due to the unanimous opposition of the medics. They did not understand what Shadow had done and were not convinced that I was an entity continuous with my prior history. Thorn Company had suffered fifty-one dead and down; the great majority of the dead remained with the banner, and those up were all in fit condition.

  With the company in good order and unthreatened, I saw no sufficient reason to object. The regulations of the Line do grant that medics may forbid the injured from returning to their duty, and do specifically empower any medic to address such difficulties as they believed then applied. It would have required strait circumstances indeed for it to have been appropriate for me to put the matter to the consensus of the banner focus.

  Such provision of the regulations extended so far as to require my return with the other injured to Westcreek Town and an established hospital. There was not there much use to which I could find to put myself; being officially, if not practically, injured, the doctors required me to act as though I was not hale. Beyond completing my reports, I could read to Meek — even very prompt hospital treatment would not have sufficed Meek’s injuries a generation ago — but was not permitted even to move freely about the hospital.

  Some news did arrive through this time, some of which I shall come to later and some of which concerned Parliament’s eventual judgement of my condition. In such terms as I comprehend, Shadow’s application of the Power to my injuries involved a form of name magic sensitive to the specifics of an ancient and particular language. The errors of inexperience Shadow entirely avoided; I was not made to have health in the abstract nor wholeness in some future perfect tense. Despite a focused personal interest, I was not able to understand precisely what Shadow had done. Shadow did their best to explain; the Independent Halt explained that they could not explain; various learned persons pounced on Halt’s lack of explanation and eventually retreated in bewilderment.

  Meek and I both were Fire’s file-closers at a time when Fire was a platoon sergeant in the Second Heavy of the Seventieth. It made their visit during my supposed and Meek’s actual convalescence so entirely within custom that none of the hospital staff could properly look askance. The five-litre jar of experimental topical salve could not be customary but was supposed to kill the itching. Meek’s attempts to joke about the itching were never convincing and had stopped entirely more than a décade prior. Anyone who has ever had any portion of their flesh regrown can speak eloquently and at length about the itching if they can bear to speak on the subject at all.

  Meek did not stay awake long enough for the medic with the sponge to take it away; the medic tightened the jar lid and set the salve down where Meek would see it when they woke again, gave Fire an approving nod, and went out again looking hopeful. All the medics were careful, the whole time, not to let the hopeful looks show where Meek could see them. Medical persons strive to present an impression that your recovery is a matter of certainty, and all those who treated Meek were scrupulous and successful in this.

  Fire had patted Meek’s sleeping shoulder and looked at me and said, “Do you really want to know?”

  I continue to hope that I managed a firm nod in response, though I could not in conscience attest that I did.

  “Shadow got the verbs right,” Fire said. “Ongoing pattern of health and wholeness.” ‘Modifying your substance’ does not need elaboration, though Fire produced the kind of terrible smile they smiled when they were a sergeant and the odds had removed victory from any plausible expectation. “Lots of your substance was hell-bound — ” it is unwise to contemplate what specific fraction of one’s body has been devoured by demons, what happens to that flesh, or what it means when the demon dies with your flesh not all digested within it — “and the rest was dying.”

  Fire stopped speaking, and let me think. If Shadow had not altered my substance from a time when either dying or in demons applied to all of it, for me to be in an ongoing state of health and wholeness raised many questions.

  “It’s subtle stuff,” Fire says. “Halt says you got the proper version.” That smile of Fire’s was gentle, and they waved as they walked out.

  Once I was able to get leave to depart the hospital, I found nothing to complain of and only small strangenesses of physicality. I should have been weak and unsupple from the enforced idleness, and yet I was not. It was no more difficult to run twenty kilometres than it had been at the peak of my youth, and while that was welcome, it was strange in its particulars as well as an event. There is a sensation of muscular effort associated with putting forth such effort as you understand you can continue to make for some time while perceiving it as effortful, and I did not feel this while running nor while exercising with weights. I did not feel it when I arranged with two of the doctors to be let run the length of the West Wetcreek from Westcreek Town to the end of the tow road at Longbarns and then back up to Westcreek Town again, and I most certainly should ha
ve done. So that was more strange than somewhat.

  It did much good that I had gone no swifter, if more steadily, than I might have before the Fight Below the Edge. More good was done by Shadow having asked my prior consent to their restorative attempt and having waited with gravity and seriousness for an — only just — audible answer. My consent was not held operant, as no one’s would have been while dosed with such a dose of happy-juice, but it had been asked and there were witnesses to it. So also did the suicide rule apply: I had had no chance of survival without sorcerous intervention. Parliament muttered to itself for some while and then concluded that there was nothing to object to in a sorcerer seeking by licit hasty means to save life in circumstances of emergency. Parliament even forbore to require of Shadow that they do no such thing again.

  The Line is not obliged to accept Parliament’s positive judgement of any of its officers. The Line in the Second Commonweal had not yet established stable customs for maintaining the consensus of the standard-captains, which lack further complicated matters. What was customarily achieved by a combination of rotating battalions between brigades and travel by adjutants has not yet been done in the Second Commonweal.

  The brigades in the Folded Hills had been fixed in place and losing troops and readiness. The agriculture and industry of the Folded Hills did not yet support recruitment beyond that necessary to keep the army pennon and the Fourth of the Twelfth supplied with their nominal strength. The need to cover the First Valley retained the standards of battalions as the banners of companies; in great need, such a company can provide the direction required for an effective volunteer battalion. This was still too great a count of troops for the existing agriculture in the First (and Fourth) valleys, and the First Valley, bordering on the expanded Paingyre, was and is where troops are required. The remainder of the Army of the Iron Bridge had disbanded, lost to age or a greater need of other tasks. What remained was by administrative designation the Army of the Western Hills.