She moaned dramatically. A thin strand of snot detached itself from her nose and fell onto the heavy coat she wore.
He looked away, disgusted.
He heard her sniff, loudly. When he looked back, her eyes were open, and she was staring malevolently at him. She was only slightly cross-eyed, but the imperfection annoyed him more than it should have. Given a bath and a decent set of clothes, he thought, the woman might almost have looked pretty. But right now she was buried inside a greasy green greatcoat smudged all over with mud, and her dirty face was almost completely hidden; partially by the collar of the heavy coat, and partially by her long, filthy hair, which was attached to the green greatcoat in various places by glistening blobs of mud. She moved oddly in the chair, as though scratching her back against the chair. He could not decide whether she was testing the ropes that bound her, or was just troubled by fleas.
He doubted she had been sent to kill him; almost certainly she was what she was dressed as; an auxiliary. Probably she had been left behind in a retreat and had wandered about too frightened or proud or stupid to surrender until she had seen the staff car in difficulties in the storm-washed hollow. Her attempt at killing him had been brave but laughable. By sheer luck she’d killed his driver with one shot; a second had struck him a glancing blow on the side of the head, making him groggy while she threw the empty gun away and leapt into the car with her knife. The driverless car had slid down a greasy grass slope into the brown torrent of the river.
Such a stupid act. Sometimes, heroics revolted him; they seemed like an insult to the soldier who weighed the risks of the situation and made calm, cunning decisions based on experience and imagination; the sort of unshowy soldiering that didn’t win medals but wars.
Still dazed from the bullet-graze, he had fallen into the car’s rear footwell as it pitched and yawed, caught in the swollen force of the river. The woman had nearly buried him in the voluminous thick coat. Stuck like that, head still ringing from the shot that had grazed his skull, he’d been unable to get a good swing at her. For those absurd, confined, frustrating minutes, the struggle with the girl had seemed like a microcosm of the plain-wide muddle his army was now embroiled in; he had the strength to knock her out cold, but the cramped battleground and the hiding weight of her enveloping coat had muffled him and imprisoned him until it was too late.
The car had hit the concrete island and tipped right over, throwing them both out onto the corroded grey surface. The woman had given a little scream; she’d raised the knife that had been caught in the folds of the green greatcoat all that time, but he had finally got his clear punch, and connected satisfyingly with her chin.
She’d thumped back to the concrete; he’d turned round to see the car scraping off the slipway, torn away by the surging brown tide. Still on its side, it had sunk almost immediately.
He’d turned back, and felt tempted to kick the unconscious woman. He’d kicked the knife instead, sending it whirling away into the river, following the drowned staff car.
‘You won’t win,’ the woman said, spitting. ‘You can’t win, against us.’ She shook the little chair, angrily.
‘What?’ he said, shaken from his reverie.
‘We’ll win,’ she said, giving a furious shake that rattled the chair’s legs on the stone floor.
Why did I tie the silly fool to a chair, of all things? he thought. ‘You could well be right,’ he told her, tiredly. ‘Things are looking… damp at the moment. Make you feel any better?’
‘You’re going to die,’ the woman said, staring.
‘Nothing more certain than that,’ he agreed, gazing at the leaking roof above the rag bed.
‘We are invincible. We will never give up.’
‘Well, you’ve proved fairly vincible before.’ He sighed, remembering the history of this place.
‘We were betrayed!’ the woman shouted. ‘Our armies never were defeated; we were -‘
‘Stabbed in the back; I know.’
‘Yes! But our spirit will never die. We -‘
‘Aw, shut up!’ He said, swinging his legs off the narrow bed and facing the woman. ‘I’ve heard that shit before. “We was robbed.” “The folks back home let us down.” “The media were against us.” Shit…’ He ran a hand through his wet hair. ‘Only the very young or the very stupid think wars are waged just by the military. As soon as news travels faster than a despatch rider or a bird’s leg the whole… nation… whatever… is fighting. That’s your spirit; your will. Not the grunt on the ground. If you lose, you lose. Don’t whine about it. You’d have lost this time too if it hadn’t been for this fucking rain.’ He held up a hand as the woman drew breath. ‘And no, I don’t believe God is on your side.’
‘Heretic!’
‘Thank you.’
‘I hope your children die! Slowly!’
‘Hmm,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure I qualify, but if I do it’d be a long spit.’ He collapsed back on the bed, then looked aghast, and levered himself back up again. ‘Shit; they really must get to you people young; that’s a terrible thing for anybody to say, let alone a woman.’
‘Our women are more manly than your men,’ the woman sneered.
‘And still you breed. Choice must be limited, I suppose.’
‘May your children suffer and die horribly!’ the woman shrieked.
‘Well, if that’s really the way you feel,’ he sighed, lying back again, ‘then there’s nothing worse I can wish on you than to be exactly the fuckhead you so obviously are.’
‘Barbarian! Infidel!’
‘You’ll run out of expletives soon; I’d advise saving some for later. Not that keeping forces in reserve has ever been precisely you guys’ strong point, has it?’
‘We will crush you!’
‘Hey; I’m crushed, I’m crushed.’ He waved one hand languidly. ‘Now back off.’
The woman howled and shook the small chair.
Maybe, he thought, I ought to be thankful for the chance to be away from the responsibilities of command, the minute-to-minute changes in conditions that the fools couldn’t deal with themselves and that bogged you down as surely as the mud; the continual flood of reports of units immobilised, washed away, deserting, cut off, retreating from vital positions, yelling for help, for relief, for reinforcements, more trucks, more tanks, more rafts, more food, more radios… past a certain point there was nothing he could do; he could only acknowledge, reply, turn-down, delay, order to make a stand; nothing, nothing. The reports kept on coming in, building up like a one-colour, paper mosaic of a million pieces, the picture of an army, bit-by-bit disintegrating, softened by the rain just like a sheet of paper, made soggy and tearable and gradually coming apart.
That was what he was escaping by being marooned here… yet he was not secretly thankful, he was not actually glad; he was furious and angry at being away, at leaving it all in the hands of others, of being away from the centre, from knowing what was happening. He fretted like a mother for a young son just marched off to war, driven to tears or pointless screams for the powerlessness of it, the heedless unstoppable momentum. (It struck him then that the whole process didn’t really require any enemy forces at all. The battle was him and the army under his command, against the elements. A third party was superfluous.)
First the rains, then their unheard-of severity, then the landslide that had cut them off from the rest of the command convoy, then this bedraggled idiot of a would-be assassin…
He swung back upright again, held his head in his hands.
Had he tried to do too much? He had had ten hours sleep in the last week; had that clouded his mind, impaired his judgement? Or had he slept too much; might that little extra bit of wakefulness have made all the difference?
‘I hope you die!’ the woman’s voice squawked.
He looked at her, frowning, wondering why she had interrupted his thoughts, wishing she’d shut up. Maybe he should gag her.
‘You’re retreating,’ he pointed out. ‘A minute ago you were telling me I would die.’ He slumped back on the bed.
‘Bastard!’ she screamed.
He looked at her, suddenly thinking that he was as much a prisoner where he lay as she was where she sat. Snot gathered under her nose again. He looked away.
He heard her snort back, then spit. He would have smiled if he’d had the strength. She showed contempt with a spit; what was her one dribble compared to the deluge that was drowning a fighting machine he had worked two years to bring together and train?