The Crimson Skew (The Mapmakers Trilogy) by S. E. Grove (8)

7

The Lesson

MAJOR MERRET HAD been raised in a military family. Both he and his father had attended the military academy in Virginia. His grandfather had fought against the rebellion that had earned New Akan its statehood. And now Merret was battling New Akan himself, more than ninety years later and in far more dangerous circumstances: that state had allied with the vast Indian Territories, a polity of unpredictable strength and resources.

Major Merret was inclined to think little of that strength and those resources, because in general he thought little of people outside of New Occident. In fact, he thought little of people beyond southern Virginia, his home turf. But he was also a cautious man, and though he might privately think the Indian Territories a dusty wasteland and New Akan a damp one, each populated by ragtag bands of cowards, he would professionally treat them as formidable enemies. For this reason, it infuriated him that he had to face the enemy with his own band of what he knew were ragtag cowards: the “blocks”—former inmates of the prison system who hardly knew the proper handling of a weapon, and whose experience of fighting had been motivated by greed, or viciousness, or bumbling self-defense. Merret brooded over the speculation that he had done something—he could not fathom what—to displease his superiors, and it had landed him in charge of this collection of loafers and scoundrels.

Major Merret’s contempt was no secret. In fact, it became more and more evident by the day, so that on the morning of August fourth, when his troops found themselves nearing the edge of New Occident and thereby on the very threshold of enemy lines, it fell upon them like burning walls that had smoldered slowly for hours.

Despite his attempts to teach them discipline, Major Merret realized, the blocks had learned nothing. He said as much to them now, as they stood before him, awkward and disheveled in their uneven rows. Days of humid weather had tried what little discipline he had been able to instill in them. The heavy, yellow clouds that sat motionless overhead made the air rancid. Occasional rumbles brought no rain, only heavier humidity, and the troops were not coping with it well. Their clothes were rumpled. Hardly anyone had slept peacefully, and more than one fight had broken out the night before. Instead of orderly, obedient faces, Merret saw men that were unkempt, underslept, and on edge. The sight filled him with furious despair.

His voice carried and he spoke with control. “I have wasted weeks attempting to pound into your imbecilic skulls that in a few days you may be fighting for your lives against people who actually chose to fight in this war. And because you are too rock-headed to understand this, you fight with each other instead of preparing to fight the battle that awaits you.” He looked at the two men who stood beside him, the culprits who had most recently provoked his outrage and who now faced the entire company. One of them, MacWilliams, looked bored. His massive hands rested at his sides, his knuckles red from where he had hit the other man. Trembling, his blackened eye trained on the ground, Collins could hardly stand up straight; he seemed on the verge of collapse. Merret considered them judiciously and decided to make an example of them: the bully and the weakling. They both had their uses.

“If it were up to me,” Major Merret snarled, “I would gladly send you across that border to meet your incompetent deaths. But, unfortunately, I have a job to do, and you are the inadequate tools with which I must do it.” He turned sharply to Collins, the trembling soldier. “Are you afraid of what awaits you in the Indian Territories, Collins?”

Collins startled. He gave Merret a fearful sidelong glance. He had no idea what answer the major wanted.

“Answer me, Collins,” barked Major Merret.

Collins drew himself up and clenched his jaw in what he hoped was an impression of staunchness. He did his best to stop trembling, balling his thin fingers into fists and locking his narrow knees. At home, in Philadelphia, Collins was a printer, and he had been thrown in prison for publishing a satirical cartoon of Gordon Broadgirdle. Before being incarcerated, the most violent altercation Collins had ever experienced was an amicable dispute with his brother over the cost of a new printing press. He had no place in the Western War, and he knew it. “No, sir?” he lied.

“And are you afraid of MacWilliams?”

Collins swallowed, baffled once again. “I can try not to be, sir,” he said.

“And are you afraid of me, Collins?”

Collins took a deep breath. He had thought that his answers were somehow, miraculously proving correct, but now he feared that he was being led into a trap, and he could not imagine how to get out of it because he had no idea what the trap even was. He decided to be truthful, because he had already tried lying. “Yes, sir,” he said. Suddenly, so suddenly that he had no idea how it had happened, Collins found himself sprawled on the ground with the damp earth inches from his face, and he realized that there was something holding him down.

Major Merret looked with concealed satisfaction at the surprised faces of his company. Even MacWilliams was a little startled. With his boot planted firmly on Collins’s back, the major pressed down—hard. “You are not nearly afraid enough, Collins,” he said, his voice steely. “Let me tell you why. The Indians might kill you. And MacWilliams might give you a black eye every morning for the next month. But they can’t do what I can. They can’t destroy your self-respect, making you wish you’d never survived that prison in Philadelphia.”

Collins coughed. He tried to lift his head just a little, but the boot pressed down harder.

Merret waited, allowing the company to absorb Collins’s humiliation. MacWilliams, he noticed, had exchanged his boredom for smugness. “They can’t make you eat dirt the way I can,” Merret finally said. He looked down at the pitifully thin man. Collins’s uniform was ripped, no doubt from the altercation with MacWilliams. The skin of his hands was pinched, as if worn to the bone. Merret felt a shudder of disgust. “Eat dirt, soldier,” he said, saying each word clearly.

He heard a murmur moving through the company, and he pointedly ignored it. “I said, Collins, eat dirt.” He pressed his boot down and waited.

Slowly, hesitantly, Collins turned his face toward the ground. The boot let up slightly. Then he opened his mouth and took a small mouthful of dirt between his teeth. The boot pressed down again.

“I said eat dirt,” Merret said. “Swallow it.” He looked at MacWilliams; the smugness had been replaced by an air of discomfort. Merret felt Collins’s ribs rise underneath his boot. “Again,” he said. Then he lifted his boot so that Collins could once again turn his face to the ground.

Theo stood in the second row, watching Merret’s lesson in discipline. He felt as sick to his stomach as if he, too, were eating the soil. Beside him, Casanova radiated rage. All of them did. But Theo could sense something else, along with the rage: fear. It was like being in a dark cave, where the smell of damp hung all around, and then the smell of something rotten slithered out from within it: part and parcel of the damp, one made by the other, until the scent of mold overpowered the damp and they became an indistinguishable whole. Theo couldn’t tell if the fear was in him, too, or if it just filled the air so thickly that he was surrounded by it. He watched as Merret forced Collins to eat mouthful after mouthful of earth. And in the midst of that lesson in fear, Theo felt something unexpected: a wish to defend Collins, no matter what the cost. For a moment, the wish felt good, like a flare of clean, bright fire in the dank cave.

“Well, MacWilliams?” Major Merret asked, into the still silence.

MacWilliams was looking at him now with open hatred. His boredom-turned-smugness-turned-discomfort had crystalized into something else.

“Are you going to do anything about it?” the major prodded, his tone insolent. “Do you have the decency and common sense to help a fellow soldier being made to eat dirt? A soldier who might well be you next time? Or don’t you?” He stared at MacWilliams, a sneering smile on his face. Then he lifted his boot and stepped back.

Collins coughed. A moment later he began retching. MacWilliams, with a final look of loathing at Merret, crouched down and gently helped Collins to his knees. He kept his hand on the man’s back as Collins vomited.

Theo’s brief flare of good feeling evaporated. Instead, he felt a cold repellence at how Merret had manipulated MacWilliams—and the entire company. He had intentionally brought about the anger, the fear, and finally the wish to defend Collins.

Merret’s lesson had succeeded. They would not fight one another again. They had a common enemy now.

As the major gave them leave to begin breaking camp, and the soldiers dispersed, fleeing as quickly as possible, Theo stood rooted to the spot. The clouds overhead rumbled, and Theo wiped sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his uniform. “Hey,” Casanova said, putting his hand on Theo’s shoulder. “Come on.” Theo didn’t respond. “I know. Merret is a brute. But there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Theo blinked and turned to look at Casanova. “He’s not a brute. He’s a clown. That’s what this company needs to see.”

Casanova shook his head. “What do you mean?”

“He’s a joke. What we have to do is laugh at him. If we can laugh at him, we won’t be afraid of him.”

Casanova’s good eye narrowed. “I don’t know what you’re planning, Theo, but don’t plan it. Just let it pass.” He pulled Theo back to their tent, a worried look on his scarred face.