Peculiar Soul - Chapter 60: Linchpin

Chapter 60: Linchpin

Great masses of men are predictable in their movements; politics is largely a science if one can manage the proper nuances of data collection and interpretation. The median will of a people is at least theoretically knowable. Yet time and again even those with the data and intellect to parse it are incapable of predicting more than generalities.

This is not a failure of their science, but rather a failure of the masses: they do not exercise their own will in most matters. In isolated experiments, a civic body made of educated men will indeed behave as predictable, rational actors. In practice, however, men prefer to follow the will of another.

The decision is never one of rationality, not a matter of persuasive policy arguments or material gain. These things factor into the equation, of course, but are rarely enough by themselves. No, the primary reason men suborn their will to another is admiration. This man is better than me, they say – therefore, his will must also strive for superior ends.

They may be wrong or right; it does not matter. Men are not rational creatures. We are animals of belief, and will starve with our eyes on the stars if the mood takes us.

– Leire Gabarain, Annals of the Sixteenth Star, 671.

Many years ago, Michael had tried to put on a pair of riding boots and found that he had left the laces knotted tight. Long months of disuse had stiffened and hardened the leather, and though he picked at the knot until his fingers were sore it stubbornly resisted coming free.

Ricard had walked in to find him near tears on the floor, huddled in his stocking feet. The old manservant lowered himself next to Michael with a grunt of effort, taking one of the boots wordlessly into his wrinkled hands.

“Knots are meant to hold against force, milord,” he had said gently, tracing his fingers over the tangle of leather. “Pulling in the wrong place makes your work all the harder. For every knot, though, there will be one place where it comes free.” A smile had creased his face, then, and he handed the boot back to Michael.

One of the knots had a piece pulled free, a loop that now stood out from the rest. Michael tugged at it and felt the other strands move within the knot.

The ghost of that boy’s smile touched Michael’s lips, his teeth bared as he heaved with all of Spark’s weight against the distant Ardan force. The soldiers were staring up at Sobriquet’s avatar, their minds shocked into attention; the obruors who held them had frozen in place, their concentration broken.

Once the lace was free, another strand could move. Michael strained, calling upon the fires within him to help bridge the distance. Clair’s flame leapt to his aid at once, flaring to fill Michael with renewed strength. Vincent, though – under Sofia’s withering gaze he stayed quiescent.

Michael grimaced and pulled at the soldiers with his soul, echoing the stirrings of their fear back at them until they built into a chorus.

It was one of the obruors that broke first, turning to run back into the shelter of Leik’s streets. His troops dissolved into chaos immediately; some dropped to hide in the bottom of their trench, others leapt over its rim to follow their obruor back into the city.

Another obruor from a neighboring group stood watching, wavering as they broke – then breaking himself. He abandoned his post just as another of his fellows turned to flee, and another. Fully a quarter of the Ardan line dissolved into chaos within seconds.

The ache in his chest did not diminish. How could it, when men were dying in their dozens? Ardans threw down their rifles and ran, or fired wildly over their barricades only to meet with unyielding Mendiko armor.

Michael felt his teeth grind together, tears streaming from his eyes. Still he built the fear, grew and spread it. The fear let them run, and hide, and perhaps survive the day. It offered a choice.

Engines rumbled from the tank column as more crested the rise, redoubling their assault on the Ardan fortifications. More than half the trenches had emptied now, troops and their handlers turning away-

There was a blur, so fast that Michael almost missed it; a fleeing soldier stopped in a sudden spray of red, his broken corpse slamming into a nearby wall. The retreating men froze; their avenue of escape was now occupied by ranks of grim-faced soldiers.

Those nearest to the advancing soldiers died instantly, broken by unyielding fists or falling with blood gushing from their necks; the remainder turned and fled back to the relative safety of their trenches.

“Ensouled!” one of the Mendiko observers spat. “Radio-”

His command was drowned out as the tanks volleyed thunder down at the city, shells bursting among the new arrivals even as they continued to shred the frantic infantrymen caught in the middle. The ache in Michael’s chest swelled-

But not by much. He frowned and sharpened his sight on the new arrivals, finding them largely untouched by the barrage. Even as he watched, a powerfully-built man at the fore of their lines brushed debris from his uniform.

Michael’s gut chilled as he recognized Galen, Friedrich’s subordinate. The Ardan captain barked orders that did not carry to Michael’s ears; men dashed out to reinforce the lines in a dozen places.

“Potentes, fortimentes,” the observer beside him called into the radio, his eyes never leaving the Ardan lines. “At least one squad of Swordsmen-”

The ridgeline to Michael’s right exploded. The concussion hit him like a fist to the chest, and he staggered back a step before one of his escorts caught him with a steadying hand. The two fortimentes drew close to Michael, their eyes wary as more shells burst along the ridge.

Michael shook his head against the ringing in his ears and redoubled his focus. This was Antolin’s plan. Draw the Ardans forward, keep the fighting out of the city. He ducked his head as another artillery strike detonated behind him – and the Ardans kept pouring forth, hundreds of ensouled troops taking positions along their perimeter.

He watched a Mendiko shell detonate mere inches from a squad of soldiers, only for the men to pick themselves up and nod gratefully back to a fortimens standing behind them. The distinctive black-clad Swordsmen took their positions at the line; Michael saw traces of their blades as they tore through gunsmoke and underbrush to draw gouges upon tank armor.

The air seemed to twist and heave, the sounds blurring into one great rumbling roar that churned down from the sky; Michael could no longer pick the noise of Mendiko and Ardan guns apart. This was chaos, battle raised to its highest pitch.

This was War.

He let one of the fortimentes push him lower, behind the observation post’s forward barricade; he sharpened his eyes on the lead squad of potentes. Galen was there, looking as calm as he had when Michael had first seen him in Friedrich’s encampment, his soul proof against the bullets that rained down on his position.

Under his direction still more men reinforced the Ardan lines. Distortions sprang up, the defensive lines vanishing into blackness or eye-straining blurs; where gaps remained in their cover, beams of light began to lance out towards the Mendiko tanks.

Michael ducked down at the first blast, keeping his sight up to see the light strike a tank; its battered front armor glowed cherry-red as the turret swiveled to return fire. Another Ardan lucigens struck out, and another – some barely powerful enough to heat the tanks’ armor, others burning through to leave the vehicles a smoldering wreck.

One of the beams swept past Michael’s position; the spector beside him gave a strangled yell and fell backward, clutching at his eyes. Michael spun to catch the man. Red, burned skin showed between the observer’s fingers. The soldier writhed in pain until another man pulled him from Michael’s arms, back from the line.

Michael’s arms seemed to vibrate with the contact, the intense pain and fear from the wounded man shattering what was left of his focus on the front. For a moment he drifted, lost in overwhelming sensation. It was too much. The chaos around him was more than he could bear, death and pain radiating in an inescapable, hot haze.

His vision blurred; his breath came in gasping fits. Another barrage of artillery struck amid the tanks. Men scrambled from burning hulks of armor, their clothes ablaze and flesh torn by shrapnel, minds pulsing with animal fear. Michael drowned in it, sinking slowly into that steep-sided well as the sky receded away.

“You can’t lie down here,” Jeorg said, raising an eyebrow under his rumpled cap.

Michael sat up slowly, looking around; the trees of the orchard stretched out around him in neat rows, their branches shading his face from the noonday sun. “Sorry,” he replied. “I was-” He paused, raising a hand to brush stray leaves from his hair. His fingers trembled. “I don’t know what I was doing.”

Jeorg snorted. “Can’t lie to me,” he said. The old man looked down at him for a moment, then sighed and slowly lowered himself down to the ground. He sat beside Michael with his back against a tree, regarding him with narrowed eyes. “Tell me why you’re here.”

Words died on the tip of Michael’s tongue, his hands clenching. “Because I’ve been lying,” he murmured. “This person that Leire and Antolin need me to be, I’m not – it’s not me, Jeorg.” Michael looked up, his vision blurring with tears. “What’s going on right now, it’s madness. So much death and pain. If this is what lies down that path, I’m not sure that I can walk it.”

“Hmm,” Jeorg replied. He leaned back against the tree, taking his pipe out. Michael said nothing as he packed and lit it. Jeorg took a long, slow pull, closing his eyes as he exhaled fragrant smoke. When he opened them again, they were fixed on Michael. “So who are you?”

Michael gave a small, choking laugh. “Just Michael,” he said. “It’s all I ever have been.”

“We’re always ourselves,” Jeorg said. “You think I was ever anything other than Jeorg?”

Michael gave him a flat look. “You were never Jeorg at all.” He levered himself upright, leaning back against his own tree. “I may be talking to myself, but I’m at least aware of it. I’m not mad.”

“Look who you’re trying to convince,” Jeorg grunted. “Can’t avoid my question on a technicality. Jeorg, Leire, Saleh – you met them later in their lives. A long way down their path.” He dragged his heel through the dirt, drawing a line. “They didn’t start life with a soul. Each was a person, whole and entire.” He tapped his foot at the center of the line. “Until one day they were more.”

Michael looked at the line in the dirt, then back up at Jeorg. “They got their souls.”

Jeorg chuckled around his pipe stem. “You make it sound like they bought some cabbage at the market. Remember what I told you – souls remake a person. Yet the person remains continuous. You’re still Michael, but that means more than it used to. It must mean more.”

“I still maintain that a voice in my own head should make more sense than this,” Michael muttered. “I have no notion of why I should invent a version of Jeorg that remains as infuriatingly cryptic as the original.”

“Authenticity,” Jeorg said, grinning amicably. “Or you’ve realized that Jeorg had his reasons for never handing you the answers.” The smile faded. “His answers weren’t yours. Never were. You knew that even before he died.”

Michael met Jeorg’s suddenly-grim eyes. “I suppose I did,” he admitted, looking up at the sky where it peeked through the branches. “Though mine seem to have turned out similarly. Here I am, hiding in the orchard while the world burns around me.”

Jeorg nodded and stood. “It has a symmetry,” he conceded. “But just like Jeorg’s orchard, this one can’t last forever. You need to get up.”

Michael stood as well, dusting his trousers. He rolled his neck, then let out a long sigh. “I’m not sure what I can do,” he said. “I was overwhelmed. Leire as much as predicted it, earlier; she said I would crumble under the toll of using my soul in war. The pain, the fear, the inhumanity of it – it’s worse than anything I’ve felt before.”

“You think it’s too much?” Jeorg asked.

He leaned back against his tree. “It’s not that I don’t think I could survive it,” he said. “It’s that I’m not sure I would like the man who walked out the other side. The others all see him more clearly than I do. Antolin and Leire want him to lead Mendian into a new future. Sera-”

Michael broke off, his eyes dropping down. “I’ve felt her grieve before. When she talks about ending the War in Daressa, and what we’ll have to – become accustomed to, before the end. She mourns for the man I am today.” He shook his head. “And she has expertise. She knows more than I do about war.”

“More about war, yes,” Jeorg said. “But not about you. Others see only the parts of you they know. You decide who you are. What that means. It is always a choice, Michael.” He walked over and jabbed a finger in the center of Michael’s chest. “Always.”

Michael scowled and rubbed at his sternum. “I note you stop short of any useful advice about said choice,” he said.

A sly smile played over the old man’s face. “Jeorg would want me to exercise your higher faculties,” he said. “But you already know one of the answers you’re looking for. You called on Spark just now, strained it to its utmost. Spark is the same soul letting you feel these emotions.”

“I – oh,” Michael groaned. “Of course. I didn’t consider that it would grow stronger in every respect.” He frowned. “That’s inconvenient.”

Jeorg took a drag on his pipe and shrugged. “You’ll manage,” he said. “Now get up. Waited too long already.”

Michael blinked, then looked down; he was already standing. “Um,” he said. “I don’t suppose-”

A concussion thudded in his chest, the pinging spray of shrapnel nearly inaudible after its report. Michael’s ears were ringing, his shoulder pressed painfully-hard against the floor of the observation post – and the world around him was exploding. Shells detonated like the beating of a great heart, seizing the air in their inexorable grip with a rhythm that surpassed sound.

Dazed, Michael sent his sight upward. He was lying on the ground, the two fortimens escorts huddled atop him. Aside from that, only two men in the post were left alive. One, a spector, was prone on the ground as close to the fortimentes as the debris would allow. The other was an enlisted man, gasping for breath with a shard of metal jutting from his stomach.

The initial shock passed, and the emotions came flooding back – fear, pain, panic, even the acrid grind of annoyance from his escorts. Michael grimaced and pushed it aside. He had not rejected Spark in weeks – in fact, he had grown to rely upon it in conversation. It felt odd and unnatural to distance himself from that part of his soul, now, but as he did the cacophony of human suffering around him faded into something he could bear.

He shook off the weight of the two fortimentes, ignoring their surprised shouts as he crawled over to the wounded Mendiko soldier. The man was pale, his uniform bloody; Michael snaked one hand in to press against the wound while the other yanked the shrapnel free.

The man stiffened and screamed, then again as Michael called upon Stanza to stanch the blood coming from the man’s gut. He would need a real anatomens, or at least a mundane physician – but he wouldn’t bleed out in the next few minutes, at least.

He sent his sight up higher still, surveying the battlefield. Things were largely as they had been, save for a few more shellbursts and burning tanks. Michael doubted that he had been in his fugue for more than a handful of seconds.

Michael drew in a long breath of acrid, smoky air, calling Stanza’s power close to him. The battlefield regained its gilded glow, the chaos blending into a stream that flowed and ebbed across the field. At its headwaters lay Sibyl’s watchful eye, still glaring balefully across the city at him; it quivered with something like frustration as he stood to face it.

“I don’t want to be enemies,” he said, not bothering to raise the volume of his voice; he knew Sofia could hear. “Go back to Ardalt. Let the Daressans have their country.”

The web of light around the eye flexed and quivered; Michael once again had the impression of changes happening beyond his sight. He sighed, imagining that he had just doomed this particular spot on the ridge to further artillery strikes.

“We should move soon!” he shouted to his escorts, pointing to the two survivors from the post. “Make sure they’re ready to travel.”

One of the fortimentes – Zabala, Michael thought – grabbed his arm. “We should move now, jauna. They have us ranged.”

Michael nodded. “Just a moment.” He stood and looked over the fracas playing out on the field, the smoldering wrecks of Mendiko armor belching smoke even as their fellows hammered the Ardan trench lines. He sharpened his sight on the trenches, his spector soul straining to bridge the distance.

He had accomplished the main part of his task; the Ardans were pulled forward and engaged with the Mendiko outside of the city. Antolin’s next command had been to find the areas of special resistance among the Ardan forces and-

Disrupt or destroy. Michael shuddered, but kept his eyes up and focused on the front. The Swordsmen were there, anchoring one flank of the Ardan defense. Lucigentes were scattered along the remainder, striking out with dazzling beams of light. Removing those two threats would clear the way for Leire.

And Leire would kill them all.

Michael pressed his lips together. This would end in a massacre unless the Ardans surrendered, but – that wouldn’t happen while they were under the heel of the obruors. The obruors had broken before, only to be rallied by-

“Galen,” Michael muttered, turning his attention to where the Ardan commander stood in the center. His men had largely dispersed to reinforce other sections of the line, while he strolled back and forth along the center as if enjoying a day at the park. The occasional bullet that passed his way seemed to trouble him no more than a thrown pebble, and though his uniform bore rips and scorch marks he seemed completely uninjured.

He had rallied the men when they were breaking. He led the reinforcements to the line. While Galen was there, the Ardans would fight. If he were to fall…

“Okay,” Michael whispered. “Okay.”

He stretched out his hand, fingers splayed, and told himself that he was saving lives. Light rippled around him, and he saw lines form between him and Galen, drawing taut.

“For some to live, one must fall,” Michael said. “Burn now, and save-” He stumbled, his breath catching; his words found no purchase. Galen’s soul stood resolute and unchanged, a mountain weathering a storm. The commander did stop, however, and turn to look up the slope.

Directly at Michael.

“Ah,” Michael said, turning to his escorts. “Time to go. Help me carry-”

“Jauna!” the observer shouted, pointing down the hill. “Badatoz!”

Michael spun to look and saw Galen charging up the hill, impossibly fast; a retainer of six men keeping pace behind him. A spike of ice lanced through Michael’s gut, his heart hammering with sudden panic. “Sera!” he called. “Could use some help!”

Her avatar blurred into view a moment later just behind the rearmost of Galen’s men, her hands clamping around the man’s head. He stumbled and let out a strangled yell; Sobriquet redoubled her efforts and the man fell to the dirt.

“Run!” she said, her voice echoing from close by. “They’re all potentes, I can’t stop them before they reach you. I’ll veil you, go-”

Her voice cut off as the avatar began wrestling with another of Galen’s men. He stumbled to the side as the rest of them slowed, their eyes combing the area around the observation post.

Etxarte, the other fortimens, grabbed his shoulder tightly enough that Michael had to restrain a gasp. “We have to go,” he hissed. “Now. Follow me.”

Michael darted a look back at the wounded soldier; Etxarte shook his head. “Leave him,” he said. “We’ll-”

“Baumgart!” Galen called out. “Hiding again?”

Sobriquet blurred into being beside him, the avatar looking somewhat ragged. “They’re not your usual potentes,” she gasped, gesturing towards the two men she had attacked; her latest victim was still walking, helping the first man to stand groggily upright. “I’d need time for each of them, and you don’t have it. Get out of here.”

Michael looked at Galen, who had turned irritably towards a nearby Mendiko position that had opened fire on him; he stared at them for a moment as bullets struck around him. A few bounced from his chest and legs, steaming where they fell to the dirt.

“Galen is the linchpin,” Michael hissed. “If he falls, the city falls. Tell Antolin-”

“Tell him what?” Sobriquet hissed. “The man ran out here because he knows the Mendiko can’t put a scratch on him. He’d need Leire, and the airship is grounded while the battle is on.”

“He’ll figure something out.” Michael stood. “Galen was keeping the Ardan lines together, but he ran out here after me. We’re not going to get this chance again. If he returns to rally his troops, the obruors will keep them fighting until the last man drops. Thousands will die. Without Galen, they might surrender.”

Sobriquet’s avatar had no face, but Michael read the expression on it quite clearly from the set of her shoulders. “Michael,” she said flatly. “You are a noble and impressive man, but you cannot win this fight. He will rip you in half before you can touch him with your soul, potentes are infamously hard to stop – and he’s a strong one.”

“Amira thought I could challenge her,” Michael pointed out.

“Michael, my love – Amira is crazy.” Sobriquet leaned closer, her avatar rippling the air just in front of Michael’s eyes. “Don’t do this.”

“Baumgart!” Galen called out. His eyes raked the seemingly-empty ridge, flashing with annoyance.

“I’m going to try and stall him for as long as I can,” Michael said. “Tell Antolin to hurry.” He stood. “I love you too. Be quick.”

Sobriquet’s eyeless face regarded him wordlessly for a long moment, then disappeared. Michael felt Galen’s eyes on him in an instant; he turned to find the man staring at him across the wreckage of the observation post.

“Get the others out of here,” Michael murmured to Etxarte. “He’ll focus on me.”

“We’re your escort,” Etxarte replied, sounding deeply unhappy.

Zabala walked up to stand on his other side. “Tamalez. Did you mean everything you just said?”

“I did,” Michael said.

“Then we’re here. Just don’t go thinking we can help you fistfight a potens.” Zabala gave Michael a look. “We can’t. You’d die.”

Michael nodded grimly. “So everyone keeps telling me.” He turned back towards Galen and walked forward. The six men that had accompanied him had fallen into a rough formation to either side of the Ardan commander; Galen stood at the center with an unreadable expression on his face.

“So you do know how to show your face,” Galen said. “I thought maybe you’d forgotten what it was to be Ardan, after all this time on the continent.”

Michael stopped some distance away, just close enough to shout over the roar of guns around them. He kept his face equally expressionless despite the acid hammer of his heart within his chest. “I didn’t learn that from Ardalt,” he replied. “You seem rather familiar with me considering that we’ve only met the once before, and that quite briefly.”

Galen nodded. “I did my research,” he said. “I had to know what sort of person could best Friedrich.” He took a step forward. “I had to know what sort of person would leave him shattered. A shell of the man who was once Ardalt’s greatest soldier.”

Despite himself, Michael hesitated; Galen’s words came as too much of a surprise for him to have a rejoinder at hand. He looked up at Galen’s eyes and found nothing there but hard flint. “I admit we fought,” Michael said slowly. “But that was the extent of it. He tracked me, he caught me, we fought – and he lost.”

“Is that so.” Galen drew himself upright, taking a step forward. “Try as I might, I was never able to defeat Friedrich in single combat. If you bested him, then you should have no trouble defeating me.” He took another step forward. “But if your victory came about by trickery and deceit, then it will be my pleasure to kill you for what you did to my friend.”

Michael forced himself to meet the other man’s eyes. “Straight to the point,” he said, widening his stance. Behind him, he heard Etxarte and Zabala take a step backward. “I should have expected that. Friedrich was the same way.”

Galen bared his teeth in a smile.