It had been two weeks since Torrin had last checked in with anyone. In Arron's last correspondence, he warned against replying, saying communications within the capital were likely being watched.
Along with the final message, Arron had sent something.
An artifact of the builder. A camera that could make moving pictures, hold time, and sound within. It was weighty, a metal box with a circle of glass on the front. A single button was on top.
Simple for once. He thought, turning the box in his hands. It was about the size of his fist. Inside the box it had come in, a piece of paper lay.
One click - start.
Two clicks - stop.
Twist the lens and press twice - project.
can hold an hour, use sparingly.
He sat for a while trying to open the thing; unlike his arm, there wasn't even a hint of how it worked visible. They didn't explain how they got it, frankly, at this point Torrin thought he was better off not knowing. He had made his deal, so had Arron.
Maybe Marie finally went for a holy reception. It made the most sense; he doubted most of the Conclave knew all the details about the builder. He knew little himself, and he imagined Arron was the same.
Not that he would ever admit he was wrong. Torrin tried to imagine Marie in those white corridors. In his mind, his old mentor had seemed far more at home there.
He left the device in his quarters, made his way through the winding concrete catacombs to the surface. He had seen little of his minders the last few days; Joyce and Russel were presumably tied up in prisoner shipment. Many had died since he first docked.
Where do they all come from? He made a mental note to ask the prisoners that question. He thought, perhaps, he could interview a few of them. It would of been useful when the barbarians were still alive but little could be done about that now. Best he could do was gather intel.
In his free time, he had talked to the staff, men-at-arms, medics, cooks, and cleaners. It had never fully set into his mind how many people were here till he did. Across a battlefield stretching dozens of miles, nearly one million people called that wasteland home, by Torrin's estimate at least.
Barely three hundred thousand soldiers were if the captains were to be believed.
He loomed around like a specter, trying to pretend a purpose. The men he had been sent to interpret were dead. Their corpses sent off for study by 'Captain Lancass's order.' One swallowed his tongue, the other was beaten by an overzealous guard. Torrin had made sure that man had been beaten in turn.
What we get for placing faith in soldiers. He sighed. The small tick of 'they'll be remembered' clicked away at his mind spitefully. Ego so veracious.
To Torrin, ego was like a clock. It's lows and highs were like his moods, ever fleeting but always bound to return.
He pushed these thoughts away with those of longing, for kinship. Even if he wanted to process them he couldn't. If he broke character he'd lose credibility, and officers are not known as empathic. He thought he'd pushed his luck already with some more heated conversations with Joyce. Their treatment of prisoners had grown to sicken him.
He had found out they were giving ration packs, that those packs were years beyond their date. But only one a day, it just didn't make sense to Torrin.
A heavy night drinking with Marcus, or a light night of talk with Rebekah, that would help. He yearned for those things so greatly. He could pretend to be strong around them, but who was there to act big too now? He may even die here.
How long would it take them to forget me? He wondered as he peered into the gunmetal clouds. He knew the thought was stupid.
Arron doesn't forget useless assets. Markus likes the expensive bottles I buy him.
On second thought kinship hadn't served him, at least not recently. Kinship hadn't carried him, utility did. The empire cared little more than that. And so it's people cared little too.
He spent the morning talking to the a few of the guards, asking where they were from and why they came here. The sorry lot had little for conversation. They all had someone waiting though, someone who needed them, a wife in waiting. Did Torrin have that?
Battered, second-hand uniforms and the stink of refuse were the fashion of the soldiers. Half were drunk and even more had the lucid demeanours of something stronger.
He had been walking down the trench to the rear again when he saw Joyce wave at him ahead. He looked polarising in the painting ahead of Torrin, a statement to his class. Clean that is. His blonde hair and blue eyes highlighted by the cold sun, skin dulled by the same light.
"How are you today?" He asked as Torrin drew near.
Torrin nodding, told the man he was well.
Joyce stood with two men, presumably from their uniforms. Still grey but with an individual red stripe around their collars, they were a couple of his corporals. They scurried off at Joyce's command as Torrin came close.
"Another shipment for the front coming in." Joyce said loathesomely. "Can barely find anywhere to cram them." He ticked off a box as a group passed.
"I thought you said we didn't have enough?" Torrin asked confused.
"We don't." Joyce chuckled grimly, tapping his pen on his ledger. "Ironic, isn't it? Fucking commanders."
"Maybe build them quarters? Could improve the prisoners moods." Torrin suggested around a cigarette he was lighting. "It'd make your commanders happy. Winning and all."
"Prisoners can't have moral." Joyce said discomfortingly fast. "If they did they'd try and escape and believe me Lord commander Chrey is hateful on a good day."
Torrin knew. He'd gathered information on the man once, for Arron. Blackmail, the gear oil of society.
Torrin tried to push the man but he wasn't having it. "Surely you can do better than this for them.
"We gave them an area to themselves, once." Joyce sighed, flicking ash flecks from his glove. "They gave us three dead guards and a man who'll have to live as a cripple. We feed them better they get stronger. They get privacy they abuse that space." He waved his hand frankly. "We've done studies on it man."
"You could at least feed them better." Torrin said voice heavier. "How many of the Dreggs die each week from starvation? Or from exposure alone? You think all of them deserve to be here?"
We shouldn't be having this conversation here. People are noticing.
"Your not any better than us Lancass." The shorter man said squaring off to Torrin with unnerving confidence. "Hinding in that bunker all night. You want to be the good guy? Grab a fucking rifle." Joyce was roaring by the end, and Torrin used every ounce of his strength not to flatten the man.
He settled for a low growl instead. "I'll say this quietly out of respect for your leadership." Torrin lied. "Have you ever spoken to those men? When was the last time you actually fought yourself? Or was that down south?"
He stepped in closer to Joyce and to his credit he didn't step back.
Only then had Torrin noticed the quiet. Everyone in the yard, maybe ten people were listening.
This is bad.
"You have no right to judge me."
"Don't I?" Torrin asked sardonically, slipping into his killer persona. "Then who? The commander?" He almost laughed. "He could give two shits less what you do and you know it. And he knows too that a pile of corpses still smells when you put the mattress over. Why do you think he hides in his meetings? Or at his dinners?"
"I protect my men." Joyce says doggedly. "There maybe some who don't deserve this. But do my men deserve to die in there place? How long do you think the war would last if the rear lines were all we had?"
"How long do you think those men will last against an army of desperate men?"
"That's what the cannons are for." The stood in silence. Smoke trickling slowly from Torrin's mouth. The inches between their faces feeling like miles. He may have just given himself away.
"I want you gone."
"That's not your choice to make." Torrin bites back. "I am a captain of the military police." He said, feigning proudness.
"A capital man." Joyce almost laughed. "You have no right to criticise me. It was capital soldiers who gave us these guidlines in the first place."
Torrin said coldly. "I was here to interpret. Now I'm here to report. It's a long journey and I refuse to leave empty handed. One day this war will be over. The wolves will come looking, protecting your men or not."
Joyce scoffed.
"It will be over." Torrin declared again. "Someday, they will look at what you did."
The air almost drowned Torrin in that moment. The silence hung like a choir bell.
"Who do you report too?" Joyce asked. Levelling Torrin with a glare.
"That doesn't concern you." Torrin replied sharply. Deciding no good could come from this conversation continuing, he left.
***
Bowman left quickly down a trench back north, arguments between captains weren't meant to be heard by men. He had recruits to transfer also.
But that was definitely the man that came to see them.
Later he would ask William for another time how he knew the captain. He still wouldn't say though.
The bunker they were in was a slightly friendlier one one for once, the men here were still talkative. They had found a spot and were sat playing cards again, a few were lost now, replaced with paper they had stolen. Drawn the markings on them.
It had been nearly two weeks since the last attack. Too long.
"Usually every week." Bowman said, picking at a frayed corner on one of his cards. "If they skip a week that means their planning to hit big." He went on. The silence that day was making him paranoid. wind streaming through the bunker; followed by the taste of death and cold like knives. Winter was coming.
"No point doom saying. They'll come when they come, for now, we have a card game." He says back taking a card from the stack.
Bowman shrugged. "Doesn't matter how big they are really I guess, small groups will still kill us if they can." He didn't think he would die, even when he wanted too. But now, he couldn't deny the likelihood.
Two years of warfar and by some mirical he was alive. How long would his luck last?
"Exactly." William says. "It's your hand."
The sat in quiet playing on for a time.
"I'm more worried about the cold." A bearded man, in middle years, finally said. "Winter shouldn't be so early." He looked out into the clouded sky, hints of purple and blue breaking through.
Prophetically he said. "Two weeks I'd give it."
Another man laughed, sat on a crate near the door.
"You can tell that's from the bloody sky?" He asked, he was smaller than the bearded man, maybe near Bowman's age.
"I farmed these lands down west before the war took em' boy," the man said with pride. "I know its weather."
"Only the Builder could predict that for sure." An older man battered and Hunched with a group of other greybeards said. "Not right knowing the future. Even something so fickle as the sky."
"The builder can't see the future." The man by the door laughed again. He was a skeptic, Bowman supposed.
"He's god, of course he can see the future." The grey beard said determinedly. "You youngsters abandon him more with each generation."
"We abandoned him?" Bowman scoffed, surprising himself. He shook his head. "He abandoned us."
"Where has that thought got you boy?" The old man said. His tattered, plain, uniform hung off his haggard frame.
"Where it has gotten me doesn't matter." Bowman said. "But what that hope took from me. From us." He amended. "We fight for out redemption yet who tells us we are redeemed?"
"God does." Grey beard said. Bowman decided that was his name now.
"When we die?" Bowman asked again. "Can't you see the double standard?"
"Your asking the wrong question." Lancass said as his frame filled the rear entrance. He held a cigarette in one hand and a bottle in another, the inside pockets of his uniform bulged out like he'd hidden something large there. His hair was disheveled and beneath those obsidian eyes Bowman saw an emotion he couldn't pinpoint. Pity, fury, maybe both.
"If your in the army of god," The captain exhaled smoke. " Then why haven't you won?"
Nobody answered. The question had occurred to non of them.
"If there are men like us." Bowman said, after a long brittle silence. "A place like this will exist."
Captain Lancass stared at the younger man.
Clearly, he thought his question would go unanswered. "Men like you all? All of you are monsters then."
"Our god decided we are monsters. So did our people." Bowman confirmed, voice not angry or annoyed, just matter of fact.
"And your content with that?" Lancass asked with real curiosity at the statement.
"No." Bowman said. "But your lot are, aren't they? Captain." This revelation caught the attention of every man and the accused knew it.
He looked as if he'd been caught in a trap for a second, a second of wild eyed panic before settling one again. Then he smiled.
"I'm not as clever as I think I am then." He said, almost sounding relieved. "And the answer to that is no, I don't like it. That's part of why I am here." He said.
Bowman was off put by the man's casual behaviour. Any man he'd met if an officers uniform before this was a pompous wretch.
There's something unusual about him.
William had warned Bowman not to trust this man. That just made Bowman want to know why not.
"Why are you here." William asked for the crowd, captain Lancass took a seat by there ammo box table, rounds depleted from them months ago.
"Call it a capital audit if you want." The captain said dismissively, sipping at his bottle. "Really, it's not very important. Also, I found something that interests me."
"And that is?" The greybeard from before asked.
"You." The drunk man said with a grin. "All of you." He gestured. He leaned back on his crate pulling a small box from within. It was silver, more a gunmetal in the night time. A ring of glass protruded from the front by half a thumb.
It to Bowman a moment to realise what it was. until he saw the mark of the builder etched into the side.
"A relic of the builder." One of the older guard said. "What does it do?"
The capital man smiled. clicked a button on the back, in return the box gave a repetitive sound; a low tender sound like flickering through pages, but constant. Always in the same intervals never changing pace.
All night he listened to their stories, all night he drank. He took small breaks always staying level. Or at least appearing so.
He asked questions. Of how they got there more than the fighting itself, though he did ask about that. The night droned on as he asked his questions and filmed the men for a minute or two a piece.
For the most part Bowman listened to them, nearly forgetting the dark eyed enigma that sat before them. He tried to learn names, details.
Eventually the 'artifact' whatever the device was, seemed to overheat. Bowman figured he only had a limited time using it.
Bowman managed to avoid talking to the captain with his strange artifact. He had only shared details with William. Bowman wanted to keep it that way.
William and he had that one thing between them, that he could call there's. Even things so small as secrets carried weight on the front. Not a currency, but a sense of self.
Bowman leaned to a wall stubbing out his cigarette, watching the smoke raise out from the front. Glimpses of life signaled by small flames. Out in the distance.
We may not be hero's. We can still be human. We may not get redemption, but at least we can still be us.
The captain left and soon after the sun rose. Life went on.