Crispin's Army

Tana awoke with a start. was lying beside her, with her face close to the skin flap of the mammoth’s belly. She turned as Tana stretched awkwardly within the close confines of their curious bivouac, seeking to ease the aching which racked her whole body.

“Good morning,” she said coldly.

Tana made to reply, and realised she was still wearing the Breathaid. She pulled it off her face. “Good morning.” She gagged on the stench of the mammoth.

“Keep it, Tana dear,” Elizabeth said, indicating the Breathaid. “As you can see, I’m coping without it by keeping my nose out in the fresh air. And believe me, the air is very fresh.”

Tana put on the Breathaid again.

Elizabeth opened the skin flap a little wider. Weak sunshine filtered in at one small spot.

“I used the blaster,” Elizabeth explained, “to cut a breathing hole to the surface, as we became well and truly snowed in.”

Tana stared at the blaster lying between them. She pulled off the Breathaid once more. “But why didn’t you...?”

“Use it on you?” smiled. “The thought did cross my mind. But whatever you may think, Tana dear, I’m not so totally ruthless as to kill someone who is defenceless.”

“You could have stunned me and made your getaway.”

“You were dead to the world already. I could have made my getaway hours ago.”

Tana was flabbergasted. “Why didn’t you?”

“For one thing,” Elizabeth replied, “you seem to have some survival skills. And I certainly don’t. I thought my chances of staying alive might be a little better if I stayed with you. And for another thing, I’m curious. Curious to know why you are going to so much trouble to keep me alive.”

“Let’s get moving,” said Tana. “I want to get down below the snow line as quickly as possible. We can talk as we walk.”

Enlarging Elizabeth’s air hole, they climbed up onto the mammoth’s flank. The sun had risen high into a clear blue sky, and reflected off the smooth blanket of snow left by the storm with dazzling intensity.

Kicking with her boots and scraping with her hands, Tana cleared the snow away to reveal what she judged to be a portion of the mammoth’s fore quarter. With the blaster on reduced power, she cut out a slab of meat, skin and thick hairy coat. She laid it on the snow and singed off the hair, then played the blaster over both sides of it until she deemed it well done.

She picked it up and handed it to Elizabeth. “Breakfast,” she beamed. “Mammoth steak a la mode.”

Elizabeth bit into it. As an Urbian, she was a stranger to meat, and in spite of the thorough barbecueing, the mammoth meat was extremely tough. She worked it until her jaw ached, and finally forced down a mouthful.

“At home,” Tana explained, “we’d let it cure for a while, then smoke it, or else marinade it in beer and slow roast it on a spit.” She took the steak from ’s fingers and bit into it. “Otherwise, it’s a tough old chew.”

“A tough old chew!” exclaimed. “I’d use it to make shoes.”

“Well, we do that too,” said Tana, her mouth full. “With the hide.” She offered the meat again to . declined.

They got down from the mammoth into waist-deep powdery snow and began making stumbling progress down the slope, Elizabeth leading, Tana following in her furrow, making heavy work of the meat, which was now cold as well as leathery.

They moved out into the open plain.

“What happened to Brandt?” called over her shoulder. “You killed him, I suppose?”

“Indirectly,” said Tana. She told about the avalanche, and how she had had to dig her out of the snow.

“You pulled me out?” said , incredulously. “Why?”

“Because I think you’re going to be useful,” said Tana. “More useful alive than dead.”

“Useful?” said nervously. “What for?”

Tana sighed. “In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a civil war going on back there. You, thanks to your little subterfuge, taking your brother’s place, are Leader of the Presidium. That makes you very important, lady. And when the radioactive dust has settled, the city is going to need to be rebuilt, morally if not physically. With you running the show. Isn’t that what you always wanted?”

“But not as your puppet!”

“Why not?” said Tana. “You’d have all the trappings and show of power. That’s what really appeals to you, isn’t it? We’d just be in the background, acting as advisers.”

“And what,” said Elizabeth, her accent etched in vitriol, “if I don’t take your advice?”

“You lose everything that’s dear to you,” said Tana in a matter of fact tone. “Status, esteem...”

“I see,” said Elizabeth shortly. “Blackmail.”

“Of a sort,” said Tana. “But for the good of the people.”

“The good of the people,” Elizabeth chuckled. “Do you really think the people care what happens in the Presidium, so long as they’re okay?”

“It depends what you mean by okay,” said Tana. “Poverty for some, exploitation for others, especially women. And you, a woman, as their leader. How does your conscience allow you...?”

“I had my conscience surgically removed,” said Elizabeth. “At an early age. Don’t preach to me about injustice to women. All my life I’ve stood by and watched my brother being groomed for a career in the Presidium, while I was just supposed to hang on some man’s arm, with no ambitions of my own.”

In spite of herself, Tana felt a spark of fellow feeling for this embittered woman. “So when your brother died, you kept it a secret, known only to Dashwood, who is now dead. And you stepped into Edward’s shoes as Leader of the Presidium.”

“The infighting which would otherwise have taken place would have been acrimonious and destructive,” said Elizabeth defensively. “I was looking for time to establish my credentials, then I would have stepped into the open, and would have been accepted as the new Leader.”

“You’re sure of that?” said Tana.

“Edward was Leader for five years. I watched him closely during that time. I could have been the finest Leader the Presidium has ever had. I know it.”

“Well,” said Tana, “you may yet get your chance.”

The land dropped away steeply, requiring the two women’s full concentration, and precluding further conversation. They had passed across the snowfield and into denser forest, where they were thankful to find that the snow was not so thick, rising only to calf height, and making progress easier.

They were in a heavily forested gully, out of the warming sunshine. They had raised a thick lather of sweat, and the sudden chill air had them both sneezing violently. They were also in danger of dehydration.

They were relieved, therefore, to arrive at the bank of a small frozen stream that had carved strange sculptural shapes into the snow. A shot from the blaster melted a hole in the ice crust of the stream. The women knelt, removed their gloves, and drew water in their cupped hands. They drank deeply, then smeared their cold wet hands on each other’s grimy perspiring faces.

“It’s too bad we didn’t bring anything to carry water in,” said Tana.

“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “We didn’t exactly come prepared for this kind of expedition.”

They jumped the stream and moved on, continuing downwards through the woods. At one point Elizabeth was gripped with another sneezing fit, startling a crow that took off from a branch, protesting loudly. This sign of animal life encouraged Tana. She felt they must be descending into a more habitable clime, leaving the most hostile elements behind. She was further heartened when the snow rapidly began to thin out, and as it did so it became punctuated with the tracks of birds and small mammals.

As the afternoon progressed, and their thirst grew greater, they heard the sound of rushing water, and found themselves slipping down a steep muddy incline into a small valley which had been carved by a fast flowing river between levee-like embankments.

“Thank goodness,” exclaimed Elizabeth, and scurried towards it.

“Don’t drink it,” Tana commanded.

Elizabeth looked at her, bemused. “Why ever not?”

“See how cloudy it is?” said Tana, pointing at the milky bluish water. “It’s glacial meltwater. It’s full of powdered rock that won’t do your insides any good at all.”

“So what do we do?” said testily.

“What we do,” Tana replied, unable to keep herself from mimicking her, “is we move on till we find clear water.”

“And how, pray, do we get across the river?”

Tana sighed, regarding her as an obdurate child. “We walk downstream until we find a fallen tree.”

They began moving along the water’s edge.

“Tell me,” said Elizabeth. “How do you know all this about surviving in the wild?”

“Much of it,” said Tana, “I have learned from my husband. He was the finest hunter in our village.”

Elizabeth’s eyebrow twitched. “Was?”

“When I was taken, he came to the city to find me. He became involved with the Underground.”

“As you did,” Elizabeth said with a grimace. “What a noble pair you are. Well, he’ll have cashed in his chips.”

Tana looked daggers at her.

“I’m sorry,” said Elizabeth. “You had deep feelings for a man? In spite of being a dyke?”

“A what?”

“A dyke. A lesbian. A woman who has sex with other women.”

“I never knew there was a name for it,” said Tana. “I never even knew it was common. But yes, I had... have deep feelings for Crispin. He... he was a good man. A gentle man.”

Tana’s eyes watered. She turned her back on and leaned against a tree. The tree shifted alarmingly. Tana leaned against it again, careful this time not to put all her weight on it. It shifted again, leaning further towards the river. One glance established that the tree was dead, and another that the bank on which it stood had been undermined by the flow of the waters, leaving much of its root system hanging in space.

“Here,” said Tana, “do something useful. Help me push this tree over.”

Elizabeth looked at her for a moment as if she thought she’d gone insane, then merely shrugged, as if determined to humour her. Together they set up a rocking motion, gradually easing the tree out of what soil was left to it, until with a sorrowing creak it fell, bridging the river.

Tana jumped onto the trunk and danced across, scarcely feeling it giving under her. She hopped onto the opposite bank and stood waiting with her arms folded and a defiant look on her face.

Elizabeth was more chary, eyeing suspiciously the turbulent waters just below. She edged forward, one step at a time. When she was in midstream, she heard the ominous sound of the dead wood cracking beneath her.

“Tana!” she cried in alarm. “It’s giving way!”

“Well, hurry up then!” Tana laughed.

It was too late. With a resounding snap, the trunk broke in two. found herself standing astride it, up to her thighs in frigid water.

“Get me out!” she wailed.

Chortling with glee, Tana remounted the end of the trunk and pulled Elizabeth up onto dry land. “You’re not going to cash in your chips just yet,” she remarked drily to the bedraggled .

They continued walking, but now with Tana side by side with Elizabeth, who dripped and squelched through the carpet of pine needles underfoot. The forest was thickly dotted with house-sized boulders and great bare outcrops of rock.

As they walked, they became aware again of the sound of fast flowing water ahead of them, the deep sound of a powerful torrent.

“Not another river to cross,” moaned Elizabeth, still cold and miserable.

“I think so,” said Tana. “And a big one by the sound of it.”

Another twenty minutes brought them to the lip of a gorge. Before them, the land dropped away precipitously for fifty metres to the rim of a perpendicular sided chasm, the depth of which they could not estimate from their standpoint. Invisible, the river could nevertheless be heard, surging through the bottom of the chasm.

Elizabeth sat down on a flat rock, her shoulders hunched, and stared at the barrier ahead.

“How are we going to get across that?” she demanded. “You’re certainly not going to just push a tree across it.”

“Just stop whining for a moment and let me think,” Tana insisted.

She looked around. To either side of them the land rode up another thirty or forty metres to a crest. This had clearly once been the valley of the river. Then it had found a fault in the underlying bedrock, and, down the ages, had carved its way down to its present level. Absently, Tana wondered where it might stop.

Along the ridge to left and right were scattered chunks of rock of varying sizes, eroded by wind, rain, frost and ice, at first into columns and then into pieces separated from the mother massif. One particularly huge piece of rock teetering precariously on the brink caught Tana’s eye. She looked at it carefully, trying to estimate its size, and then looked downwards at the chasm below, and wondered if it would be big enough to wedge in the gap.

“Come on,” she said, and began toiling up the hillside. Bewildered, followed.

Breathless, Elizabeth arrived at the top in time to see a young larch, felled by Tana’s blaster, fall to the ground.

“Give me a hand with this, will you?” Tana called, picking up one end of the trunk. Mutely, approached and picked up the other end.

Tana led the way to where the great rock she had her eye on stood. Putting the tree down, she pulled her gloves off and began digging in the thin earth at its base. In a few minutes she had excavated a hole deep enough to accept the roughly hacked and charred end of the tree trunk.

“All right,” she sighed, brushing the dirt from her hands, “let’s put the tree in position.”

Together they lifted the tree trunk. Tana inserted the end as deeply as possible into the hole, and then while supported the trunk on her shoulder, she sought out an appropriate sized rock to place beneath the trunk as a fulcrum.

“Okay,” said Tana, wincing as she straightened her back. She studied the arrangement for a moment. “Now comes the hard bit,” she smiled.

She unzipped her tunic and pulled her arms out of the sleeves, then peeled off her undershirt. Stripped to the waist she flexed her muscles and stooped to pick up her gloves.

She saw that Elizabeth was staring at her. “What’s up?”

“You have a magnificent body,” said Elizabeth.

Tana said nothing. She pulled on her gloves and turned to the rock, leaning against it with outstretched arms, and ground her boots into the soil. “While I push,” she commanded, “you lean down on the tree with all your might. And with any luck, we’ll shift the bastard.”

Elizabeth watched as Tana’s shoulders tensed and her legs braced.

“Okay,” said Tana, “Heave!”

She leaned all her weight against the rock, while Elizabeth threw herself at the lever, pivoting on her hips like a gymnast on the beam, her legs dangling and her arms thrusting down. The rock scarcely budged.

“And again!” Again Tana threw herself at the rock, grunting and straining, willing the rock out of its seat, while bounced up and down on the tree trunk. The monolith shifted its position a little more.

“Again.” The action was repeated. “Come on, woman,” Tana hissed between gritted teeth. “Put your bloody back into it!”

Gradually the rock began to shift significantly. The two women managed to synchronise their efforts into something approaching rhythm, edging it forward by degrees.

At last, when it seemed that their combined strength would ultimately prove insufficient, the rock’s centre of gravity changed crucially, and it did the rest itself, tipping, tipping, then falling, crashing down to the gorge below.

Tana watched with bated breath. The massive granite boulder bounced and tumbled noisily down amid billowing dust, toppled over the lip of the gorge... and stopped. It was wedged three metres below the precipice.

“We did it!” Tana yelled joyfully. She jammed her fists into her sides and stood triumphant, black snakes of hair plastered to her crimson forehead and cheeks, her torso glistening with sweat, her chest heaving.

Elizabeth stood and faced her, panting and her eyelids drooping. Her clothes showed great wet patches. “We did it,” she echoed weakly. Then her eyes closed and she collapsed in a heap.