But finally my eyes opened. I was in my own bed, our bed at the tannery. I spoke Jon’s name, and he fell on me with tears and many kisses. “I like this greeting,” I said in a slurred voice like one that’s drunk too much. “I should go fight another war.”
“You fucking won’t,” Jon said. “Not ever. Not ever again.”
“Well, I’m not altogether set on it. You could talk me around the other way.”
We spent most of that day in bed. Not tumbling – I hurt too much for that – but just lying each in other’s arms and reminding ourselves what that felt like. When Vallen waked, I took her out of her crib and fed her, and then she lay with us too. My hearing had only come partway back, but I kept one hand laid on her chest so I could feel the breath going in and out of her. That gentle rhythm was sweeter than any music I ever heard.
Towards evening, Catrin come by to visit, so we were obliged at last to get up and be in the world again. She said she wanted me on Rampart business if I was well enough to walk.
“She doesn’t need to see it yet,” Jon said quickly. “That’s for another day.”
“How many days do you think we got, Jon?” Catrin asked, without heat but with a heaviness that was not to be gainsaid.
“I’ll come,” I said. “We’ll all of us come. I don’t want to leave Vallen alone again so soon.”
“I brought Ban with me,” Catrin said. “She’ll look after the baby. We’re going out of gates.” I was far from happy to be parted from my little girl, but Rampart Fire’s face told me this was no evening stroll she was purposing.
“I don’t remember much after Challenger charged,” I said as we crossed the gather-ground. “We was hit by something hard and heavy, then I opened my eyes to find I was in my own bed.”
“Challenger found his own way home,” Catrin said. “Which was just as well. In the full dark, we would have had a hard time guiding him.”
“What happened though?” I asked her. My memories were still addled, and would not come when I reached for them. The things I told you of, that happened after I sent Challenger forward along the path, would come back to me slowly, one piece at a time, over the days that followed.
“Well, that’s what I want to show you,” Catrin said. “And I think you got to see it your own self.” Jon said nothing to this, though I knew he did not agree. I squeezed his hand to give him comfort.
I thought a walk might help me sweep my head clean, but I was weaker than I believed I was and the walk was longer. We went out into the half-outside, and most of the way around the fence. Catrin had the firethrower in her hands the whole way, and Jon had drawn his knife, but nothing threatened us. Something big moved in the trees, keeping pace with us awhile until Catrin at last sent up a plume of fire. We heard the branches snapping and the sound of its heavy footsteps as the thing, whatever it was, lumbered away in search of easier meat.
On the west side of the village, about fifty strides out, we came at last to a hole in the ground that was almost perfectly round and big enough to drop a house into. The dirt and grass and weeds that had come out of it were thrown all around in scads and heaps.
I stared at it and found no words to ask, but Catrin told me anyway. “That’s where their first shot hit. Challenger said they was ranging, and would of done better on the second try. Only they never got to send their second try, because you rolled over them and planted them in the ground like they was seedling corn.”
I tried to feel sad at that, but I couldn’t do it. Them fighters had come a long way to hurt us, and did the best they could. Better we buried them than the other way around.
But a ragged-edged piece of memory came back to me of Challenger rearing up and settling down again. I turned to look at Catrin – partly so as not to look at that great pit any more, but partly because I knew she had shown me the good to brace me against the bad. “How did my head get broke?” I asked her. “If there wasn’t no second shot, what was it that hurt me?”
“I didn’t say there was no second shot. Only that it didn’t fly. It went off right under you. I guess it exploded inside their gun, and the metal of the gun took some of the force out of it. Challenger took the rest.”
More memories came loose inside my head. They weren’t in their right places yet, but what they pointed to was nothing good.
“Was he hurt? Was he broke?”
Jon put a hand on my shoulder. “He’s tech, Spinner. Hurt’s the wrong word.”
“Bring me to him.”
They took me to the lade, a closed-off space just inside the village gates with a bench and a horse trough in it. It was meant for visitors to water their beasts and rest from the road when they came to visit us. That hadn’t happened in a long time though, so really the lade wasn’t used for nothing much at all any more. The horse trough was nothing but a shell of red rust. Challenger was sitting right alongside it. His front end was crushed and crumpled as if some giant hand had squeezed it. His gun was sheared off about halfway.
“You did the right thing, Spinner,” Catrin said. “You need to think on that. If their bolt had come down on the gather-ground, or in the Middle, there’s no telling how many we would of lost. A lot more than we could of spared anyway. Dead god knows, we were lucky. Whatever luck was to be had that night, it come to us.”
She said much more besides, and so did Jon. They told me things I knew already. We had gone up against a Half-Ax tally and come back whole, with no lives lost. That was better than we had any right to hope for.
“You got to leave me,” I said at last, when the two of them would not stop talking. “I got things to say to him.” So then they went away and left us together, though Jon gave us many backwards glances as he went.
“I’m sorry,” I told Challenger as soon as we were alone. “I’m so sorry.”
I was afraid for a moment he might not answer. I didn’t know how heavy a hurt it was for him to have his armour scarred and broken that way.
But he spoke up in the calm voice he always used. “Why?”
“Because I throwed you into the fight and you took harm.”
“You used me effectively and intelligently. When order is restored, the interim government will almost certainly recognise your field promotion. They may even raise you to lieutenant.”
I hardly could keep the tears out of my eyes when he said that. It reminded me of a time when I spoiled a good sheep hide with too much lime and my father praised how I used the big shears instead of chiding me for the waste. “But your gun’s ruined. The shells you was growing, you won’t be able to fire them now.”
“Hey,” Elaine said, “you’ve got to survive the battle you’re in before you can get to the next one.”
“But…” I touched my hand to Challenger’s foreshortened gun. The sheared and twisted metal was rough to the touch. It used to be smooth as glass.
“I was made to be a tool,” Challenger said. “An instrument. I’m nothing when I’m not used, sergeant. And I was nothing for a very long time. If I were permitted to like, or dislike, I would say I am happy that you are now putting me to use.”
“Down, boy,” Elaine said sternly.