More than anything else now, though, he wanted to save Darckense. He had seen too many dead, dry eyes, too much air-blackened blood, too much fly-blown flesh, to be able to relate such ghastly truths to the nebulous ideas of honour and tradition that people claimed they were fighting for. Only the well-being of one loved person seemed really worth fighting for now; it was all that seemed real, all that could save his sanity. To acknowledge the interest millions of other people had in whatever happened here was to place too great a burden on him; it would be to admit, by implication, that he was at least partially responsible for the deaths already of hundreds of thousands, even if nobody else could have fought more humanely.
So he waited; held back the commanders and the squadron leaders, and waited for Elethiomel to reply to his signals.
The two other commanders said nothing. He put out the lights in the car, un-shuttered the doors, and looked out at the dark mass of the forest, racing past under dull dawn skies the colour of steel.
They moved past dim bunkers, dark trenches, still figures, stopped trucks, sunken tanks, taped windows, hooded guns, raised poles, grey clearings, wrecked buildings and slitted lamps; all the paraphernalia of the outskirts of the headquarters camp. He watched it all and wished – as they moved closer to the centre, to the old castle that had become his home in all but name over the last couple of months – he wished that he did not have to stop, and could just go on driving through the dawn and the day and the night again forever, cleaving the finally unyielding trees towards nothing and nowhere and no-one – even if it was in an icy silence – secure in the nadir of his sufferings, perversely content that at least now they could grow no worse; just to go on and on and never have to stop and make decisions that would not wait but which might mean he would commit mistakes he could never forget and would never be forgiven for…
The car reached the castle courtyard and he got out. Surrounded by aides, he swept into the grand old house that had, once, been Elethiomel’s HQ.
They pestered him with a hundred details of logistics and intelligence reports and skirmishes and small amounts of ground lost or gained; there were requests from civilians and the foreign press for this and that. He dismissed them all, told the junior commanders to deal with them. He took the stairs to his offices two at a time, handed his jacket and cap to his ADC, and closed himself in his darkened study, his eyes closed, his back against the double doors, the brass handles still clutched in his hands at the small of his back. The quiet, dark room was a balm.
‘Been out to gaze upon the beast, have you?’
He started, then recognized Livueta’s voice. He saw her by the windows, a dark figure. He relaxed. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Close the drapes.’
He turned on the room lights.
‘What are you going to do?’ she said, walking slowly closer, her arms folded, her dark hair gathered up, her face troubled.
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted, going to the desk and sitting. He put his face in his hands and rubbed it. ‘What would you have me do?’
‘Talk with him,’ she said, sitting on the corner of the desk, arms still crossed. She was dressed in a long dark skirt, dark jacket. She was always in dark clothes now-days.
‘He won’t talk to me,’ he said, sitting back in the ornate chair he knew the junior officers called his throne. ‘I can’t make him reply.’
‘You can’t be saying the right things,’ she said.
‘I don’t know what to say, then,’ he said, closing his eyes again. ‘Why don’t you compose the next message?’
‘You wouldn’t let me say what I’d want to say, or if you let me say it, you wouldn’t live up to it.’
‘We can’t just all lay down our weapons, Livvy, and I don’t think anything else would work; he wouldn’t pay any attention.’
‘You could meet face to face; that might be the way to settle things.’
‘Livvy; the first messenger we sent personally came back without his SKIN!’ He screamed the last word, suddenly losing all patience and control. Livueta flinched, and stepped away from the desk. She sat in an ornamental winged couch, her long fingers rubbing at the gold thread sewn into an arm.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘I didn’t mean to shout.’
‘She’s our sister, Cheradenine. There must be more we can do.’
He looked about the room, as though for some fresh inspiration, ‘Livvy; we have been over this and over this and over this; don’t you… can’t I get it through? Isn’t it clear?’ He slapped both hands on the desk. ‘I am doing all I can. I want her out of there as much as you do, but while he has her, there is just nothing more I can do; except attack, and that probably would be the death of her.’
She shook her head. ‘What is it between you two?’ she asked. ‘Why won’t you talk to each other? How can you forget everything from when we were children?’
He shook his head, pushed himself up from the desk, turned to the book-lined wall behind, gaze running over the hundreds of titles without really seeing them. ‘Oh,’ he said tiredly, ‘I haven’t forgotten, Livueta.’ He felt a terrible sadness then, as though the extent of what he felt they had all lost only became real to him when there was somebody else there to acknowledge it. ‘I haven’t forgotten anything.’
‘There must be something else you can do,’ she insisted.
‘Livueta, please believe me; there isn’t.’
‘I believed you when you told me she was safe and well,’ the woman said, looking down at the arm of the couch, where her long nails had started to pick at the precious thread. Her mouth was a tight line.
‘You were ill,’ he sighed.
‘What difference does that make?’
‘You might have died!’ he said. He went to the curtains and began straightening them. ‘Livueta; I couldn’t have told you they had Darckle; the shock -‘
‘The shock for this poor, weak woman,’ Livueta said, shaking her head, still tearing at the threads on the couch arm. ‘I’d rather you spared me that insulting nonsense than spare me the truth about my own sister.’
‘I was only trying to do what was best,’ he told her, starting towards her, then stopping, retreating to the corner of the desk where she had sat.
‘I’m sure,’ she said laconically. ‘The habit of taking responsibility comes with your exalted position, I suppose. I am expected to be grateful, no doubt.’
‘Livvy, please, must you -?’
‘Must I what?’ She looked at him, eyes sparkling. ‘Must I make life difficult for you? Yes?’
‘All I want,’ he said slowly, trying to control himself. ‘Is for you to try… and understand. We need to… to stick together, to support each other right now.’
‘You mean I have to support you even though you won’t support Darckle,’ Livueta said.
‘Dammit, Livvy!’ he shouted. ‘I am doing my best! There isn’t just her; there’s a lot of other people I have to worry about. All my men; the civilians in the city; the whole damn country!’ He went forward to her, knelt in front of the winged couch, put his hand on the same arm that her long-nailed hand picked at. ‘Livueta; please. I am doing all it is possible to do. Help me in this. Back me up. The other commanders want to attack; I’m all there is between Darckense and -‘
‘Maybe you should attack,’ she said suddenly. ‘Maybe that’s the one thing he isn’t expecting.’
He shook his head. ‘He has her in the ship; we’d have to destroy that before we can take the city.’ He looked her in the eye. ‘Do you trust him not to kill her, even if she isn’t killed in the attack?’
‘Yes,’ Livueta said. ‘Yes, I do.’
He held her gaze for a while, certain that she would recant or at least look away, but she just kept looking straight back at him. ‘Well,’ he said eventually, ‘I can’t take that risk.’ He sighed, closing his eyes, resting his head against the arm of the couch. ‘There’s so much… pressure on me.’ He tried to take her hand, but she pulled it away. ‘Livueta, don’t you think I feel? Don’t you think I care about what happens to Darckle? Do you think that I’m not still the brother you knew as well as the soldier they made me? Do you think that because I have an army to do my bidding, and ADCs and junior officers to obey every whim, I don’t get lonely?’