Du Rau was glad of his overcoat almost at once.
The passage between his destroyer and the Verlaker service-cruiser was covered, but the wind rattled its plates, seeking them with its whistling drafts. Du Rau led the way through, followed in train by Captain Speir’s men with Barklay’s bier. They emerged from the half-lit passage into a storage bay, lined with Verlaker navy at strict attention, their faces still but their eyes following them warily. The vessel’s captain greeted them in very brief terms, and guided them into a long cage-lift. As they rose, his escort folded the sheet back over General Barklay and tied it carefully down; warned, du Rau buttoned up the collar of his coat.
They emerged onto the shuttle-deck of the service-cruiser, and the wet wind tore at them at once. Curved wind-breakers had been put up, but the sheet over Barklay’s body flapped madly and du Rau and Alsburg had to brace themselves against the buffets that hit them from the side. By the time they boarded the waiting shuttle, water had beaded on du Rau’s coat and was running down his scalp.
It was very dim in the tiny shuttle: as they lifted from the deck, du Rau realized that this was due not to the black dark of early morning, but to the fact that the porthole windows had been shaded. Of course; he could not have seen much from the shuttle in any case, but keeping the windows on blackout setting would give the Verlakers some comfort.
When they reached land, they were transferred to a larger, better-appointed shuttle; it was clean and in good repair, but its working parts were aged, and so far du Rau had seen no communications equipment that was not at least fifteen years out of date. Not for the first time he raged within himself that he did not have the time to starve Verlac into submission; the war could have been finished with much less mess and bloodshed. But instead of a fine, inexorable strategy he had this: a ride in a Verlaker shuttle, with Thaddeys Barklay’s corpse for companionship, at both their countries’ last bleeding hour.
Du Rau settled against the back of his seat and let his eyelids rest at half-mast. If he was not careful, exhaustion would creep in before he was ready for it. Beside him Alsburg was valiantly attempting not to stare around him, though curiosity rolled off him in waves; he was too young to ever have been to Verlac, and no doubt felt all the fascination of his first encounter with the unremitting assault of rain. Du Rau listened, and picked out the light roar of the storm, saturating the roar of the shuttle’s engines and punctuated by the creaks of equipment with them in the hold. By the sound of the engines, they were flying at low altitude, the better to conceal their trajectory.
On du Rau’s other side, the lieutenant in charge of his escort asked, in a voice pitched just loud enough to reach him over the noise, “Are you in need of anything, sir?”
Du Rau’s eyes opened fully. The yellow beam of the light over his head shone into his lap where his hands were folded, picking out the dark shine of his leather gloves. He was sitting very still, contained to himself; it could well read as discomfort to the soldier.
“No,” du Rau said. “Thank you.”
The lieutenant nodded and sat back; then presently leaned aside to speak to one of the shuttle crew who approached him. Du Rau was increasingly aware that he was well-cocooned by the men of his escort: Captain Speir must have briefed them thoroughly and well, for they were observant and respectful of him as a head of state while at the same time making sure that no unpleasantness—or any agent’s communication—would get through to him. He felt himself begin to relax.
He had chosen this adventure. He would see how it played out.
~*~
By the time they reached Ryswyck, they had crossed the leading edge of the storm. As the shuttle lost height, the native creaks and rattles of its frame rose, until it finally put down with an ungainly clank. Its crew busied themselves confirming the landing and preparing to open the ramp hatch, moving among Captain Speir’s guard, who had sat up ready to spring to attention. Du Rau allowed himself to glance at the porthole behind his shoulder; the shaded glass was not too dark to reveal the deluge outside, pimpling and quaking the puddles on the airfield. As the hatch began to power open, a breath of cold air reached them, a damp cold that would cling to the bones.
Voices from outside; the guard unstrapped themselves and rose. The lieutenant nodded at du Rau. “Sir.” As he and Alsburg got to their feet, the men began to unclip the swathing sheets on the bier and fold them back. It seemed to du Rau that in such a heavy rain, that was premature; but when he reached the head of the ramp to start down, he understood. This funeral was not going to be held indoors.
Meeting the ramp and stretching away from it was a line of soldiers in dress uniform, black and blue and gray, in two ranks on either side. When he reached the bottom, he saw the tall man in army dress black waiting directly in front of him some meters away, with two of his staff behind him, and at the back, a rank of drums in scarlet harness, black mallets at the ready. The gray uniforms already showed dark spots of saturated wool: not one of the Verlakers present wore their hoods up, and their hair was half-plastered to their brows in dark locks. Several of them blinked droplets off their eyelashes, but Admiral Douglas stood still and waited, gaze oak-steady.
“Lord Bernhelm,” he called, in a voice pitched to carry through the plashing of the rain. There was no other sound. No soldier moved. If Captain Speir’s men had stood attuned to her example, the spirit of these Ryswyckians was unitary and palpable, like the interlocked roots of trees below the ground. That unitary spirit breathed with the dignity of the man who commanded them. No man that young ought to be able to project such weight, but Admiral Douglas seemed to hold down the entire airfield with no visible effort.
“Admiral Douglas,” du Rau replied.
“We bid you welcome to Ryswyck,” he answered in turn, and as if it were a signal, Captain Speir’s men moved, half to flank him and Alsburg along the ramp, and the other half, judging from the noises he could hear behind him, lifting the bier.
Du Rau stepped off the bottom of the ramp onto puddled Verlaker soil, for the first time in over twenty years. He’d seen his shoes waterproofed, but could tell from the first moment that it would make no difference. The only thing to do was follow the Verlakers’ cue and take no notice. He stepped forward, out of the shelter of the shuttle’s fuselage, and managed to hold himself to a brief initial flinch as the downpour hit his face.
He approached Douglas where he waited, Alsburg behind at his shoulder studiously not crowding him, and stopped just out of reach. Their eyes met in solemn challenge. Then Douglas offered him a slow blink coupled with a nod, and managed to make it formal; neither social nor military greetings would be adequate to the fiction of their equality here. Du Rau nodded back, and accepted Douglas’s gestured offer of a place to stand at his right. There was enough calculated space for him and Alsburg to stand without adjustment of the ranks. He could see the boots of the bier-bearers at the top of the ramp. They began to move down; at an unseen signal, the drummers in his peripheral vision poised their mallets in a series of drill movements, simple and precise. A slow rim-tap began, loud enough to cut through the noise of the rain.
The bier-bearers moved carefully, adjusting the height of their lift to keep it as level as possible as they descended. When they reached the ground, the lining ranks at du Rau’s right moved neatly to open as a gate so the bier could lead them across the airfield toward Ryswyck Academy, a blocky shadow shrouded by the rain.
Du Rau watched Douglas from the corner of his eye. Douglas’s glance fell upon General Barklay as the bier approached, encompassing the beads of rain gathering on the black dress uniform identical to the one Douglas wore, up to the dead man’s face; then his gaze lifted calmly and did not follow the bier when it turned. There was no change in the tranquil solemnity of his face in profile: but it was as if a light had been blown out in the man as Barklay was carried past him.
Behind the bier, the drummers filed into position, all of them now keeping slow rhythm on their rims. Then the inward ranks of gray-clad cadets fell in and followed; and the seniors after them. Then at last the remainder of Captain Speir’s guard. Douglas, denuded of his staff, took up the rear, walking with du Rau abreast.
By the time they reached the school, not only du Rau’s shoes but his trouser-cuffs were saturated, heavy and sopping. Their every step splashed. He maintained a show of indifference—behind him, Alsburg was doing the same—but Admiral Douglas was actually indifferent, walking in long slow strides that would be longer, du Rau thought, if they had not been at the tail end of a procession.
The gray stone building loomed up before them, but du Rau was unsurprised when they did not go inside. Instead the procession snaked around the pile and came out into a neat quad girt with canopied walkways. Here, as his view cleared, du Rau saw that more soldiers waited, many of them in the clean pressed fatigues that his escort wore. Ryswyck, he was reminded, currently hosted a few companies of the Verlaker army in addition to their student body. Together they filled the quad, but the net effect was of intimacy, not broad public ceremony. Either this was all there was to defend this sector, or Admiral Douglas was camouflaging their numbers. It didn’t matter; nothing changed the basic position. But again du Rau was privately angered at his inability to annihilate such a small, impoverished force.
The bier had been placed before the main entrance of a larger, newer building that du Rau knew from surveillance images to be the school’s training complex. Between the doors and the bier, the drummers kept up their tapping rhythm; they were flanked by a cadre of skirlers, who instead of playing carried their instruments hanging downward in their harness, a silent symbol of grief. When Douglas and du Rau reached their place facing the bier across the quad, a full rank of senior staff at their back, the drums moved into a brief burr and then stopped. In the silence the rain pelted down even harder.
A gray-clad soldier with lieutenant’s ribbons emerged from his rank, paused to give Douglas the same salute Captain Speir had demonstrated, and moved at quick step to take his place near where the bearers stood, on the side near to Barklay’s head. Cold rain dripped from the bier’s struts; the lieutenant launched into a hum and then opened his mouth so that the assembled could catch the pitch. The hum swelled to fill the quad, then divided into a chord.
The Verlaker form of the funeral rite was just enough like the Berenian form to be teasing. The opening responsory was familiar enough, though delivered in an accent even he, who had been familiar with it in his youth, found difficult to penetrate. Verlac in their generations of isolation had kept many of the older forms of their common language, which still survived in formal rites; the dialect had evolved in parallel with Berenia’s, intelligible if one listened closely but still rather barbaric to his ears. He glanced at Alsburg, who was frowning in incomprehension. Probably the accent alone was defeating him; having heard smooth, even Berenian phrases all his life, he would likely find neither the needle-claws of Speir’s lilting speech nor the trimmed thorns of Douglas’s brief words easy to interpret.
Du Rau followed the responsory easily, though he could not have joined in even if he had wanted to. Then it ended, and after a bowed silence in which the Ryswyckians all laid closed hands over their hearts, the dirge proper began, and he was left wholly behind. The cantor sang words too archaic to comprehend, in a tune unlike the traditional one sung at home; one drum gave a soft burr; then the whole assembly sang a refrain equally obscure; then the cantor took up the chant again.
At home, it was part of the traditional rite to give the chief mourner right of refusal to sing the dirge, even in a formal situation; but, he thought, perhaps Ryswyck Academy itself was Barklay’s chief mourner. Who else would stand as chief mourner for Barklay? Du Rau looked up at Douglas beside him.
Douglas was not singing. He kept his hand closed against his heart and stared ahead; strain had crept into the lines of his face, and it was impossible to tell if the water streaming down his face was rain only, or mixed with tears. Presently he became aware of du Rau’s gaze; his own shifted, not quite to look aside at him, but with an air of waiting in case he should want to speak.
Du Rau took the invitation. “Tell me,” he said, “what is the refrain you sing? I cannot make out the words.”
“The words are in the archaic form,” Douglas said in a low voice, and repeated them. “We would say today:
Ash and earth bear witness
Sky and stream bear witness
Light and darkness bear witness
Every voice bear—”
But Douglas’s voice broke. In one instant, all that serene reserve, that preternatural self-possession, was torn from him: his hand against his breast spasmed and clutched his sodden black tunic, and his voice hitched on a sob, then burst out in a wail. The wail rose to a high keening cry that rode the dirge’s refrain like a kestrel on an updraft. Then he dragged in a breath and did it again. At the sound, a visible tremor shook the Ryswyckians, and some of the voices faltered. Half the seniors behind them stiffened; the largest of them shuddered and caught back his hand in its reach toward Douglas.
Du Rau had never made such a sound himself, but he recognized it instantly, could taste it in himself like the memory of a bruise: grief at a pitch indistinguishable from rage. His scalp prickled against the rain crawling through his hair. He would never grieve for Barklay, and did not belong in this place where Barklay was being mourned. But he did belong in the presence of that cry. Like all helplessly genuine things, it could easily attract mockery, provoke an equally helpless retaliation; du Rau stood there, with the rain soaking inexorably down to the lining of his overcoat, and kept silent till Douglas had finished.
He did, after a moment—swallowed, and gulped several long breaths. Then he let the last one out in a small, shuddering sigh, and finished hoarsely:
“Every voice bear witness,
Holy Wisdom bear witness,
For this sorrow this day,
As a consecrated gift.”
“Thank you,” du Rau said quietly.
After that, Douglas wept silently, with his head bowed.
The dirge wound on; it sounded less foreign to du Rau now that he knew some of its content. He could even discern the signs that it was coming to its close—not too soon, he thought. He was wet through, and cold to the marrow; his hair was flattened and his moustache heavy. On his other side Alsburg was clenching his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. Alsburg’s overcoat was not as warm as du Rau’s—army-issue coats in Berenia did not need to be waterproofed, and bore only a brief lining. Du Rau tried not to think about what would remain of a funeral at home: after the dirge, the recession; after the recession, the long slow line to pay respects to the bereaved, the ceremonial kindling of lights.
Sure enough, the dirge came to an end; the drums flourished and battered out a salute with water sputtering in coronas from the drumheads; a drowned, solemn toll floated in from the tower carillon; and the drumming resolved into a single rim-tap. The ranks of the assembled, roused to full parade attention by the drum salute, began an orderly dispersal as the cantor guided Barklay’s bier-bearers where to carry him away. Douglas and the senior staff behind them remained stiff at attention. Du Rau suppressed a sigh, firmed his spine, and prepared himself to endure.
But Douglas again surprised him; as soon as Barklay’s bier had cleared the quad, he turned swiftly to them. “Let me offer you the use of an officer’s suite to take your ease and make use of a drying-cupboard, before you return home,” he said.
Du Rau paused, his thoughts sluggish: it had been so long since he had made use of a drying-cupboard that he had to call back his memory of what a drying-cupboard was. But he didn’t have to look at Alsburg to know that Alsburg was staring at him beseechingly. “Thank you,” du Rau said. “I am much obliged.”
“Not at all,” Douglas said. “We will break our fast directly after. You are welcome to join us at table; the fare is simple but sustaining.” Field-kitchen fare, du Rau interpreted this. Douglas showed no embarrassment at offering it; in fact, he thought he saw a slip of humor in Douglas’s eyes. This was a man who could appreciate a ridiculous situation. But he was not going to out-grace du Rau.
“My field days are not so far behind me as all that,” he said. “I will accept your invitation to dine.” Neither of them was averse to dragging out the cessation of hostilities, and if Douglas didn’t mind exposing more of Ryswyck to du Rau’s strategic observation, du Rau was not going to argue him out of it.
Alsburg was evidently less eager to eat with the Verlakers than to get in out of the rain. He cleared his throat tentatively. “My lord…?”
“The flight back is long, Captain,” du Rau said calmly. “We’ll want something to eat.” Then a thought occurred to him. “Although I would prefer not to linger overmuch. Captain Speir’s endurance is formidable, but I would not test its limits.”
The smile in Admiral Douglas’s eyes flashed to true warmth for a moment. “Thank you for reminding me,” he said, and gestured to a lieutenant who waited nearby. “If you would, Lieutenant,” Douglas said to him, “show Lord Bernhelm and his aide and escort to the quarters we’ve prepared.”
The lieutenant snapped Douglas a sharp Ryswyckian salute. “Yes, sir,” and to du Rau, “If you would follow me, sir.”
“I will meet you at the walkway when you are ready,” Douglas said as they began to follow in the lieutenant’s wake. He stood calmly watching them trundle away through the splashing grass, but after a moment du Rau glanced back to see Douglas in the act of turning away. His shoulders were bowed taut as if under an ox’s yoke, and the large captain in army blacks fell in with him, not touching him but gesturing close in a way that reminded du Rau of Speir’s boy corporal. They stepped through the mist of rain into the doorway of a shaded cloister, and were lost to view.