Phantom (17 page)

Jebra nodded. “Yes. I believe that a few made it out but, of course, I had no real way to know for sure.”

“There were enough who escaped,” Nicci said in a quiet voice.

“Enough?” Richard shouted as he turned his fury on her. He caught the flash of rage that had slipped through his control and brought his voice back down. “Enough for what?”

“Enough for their purpose,” Nicci said, gazing into his eyes, solemnly enduring what she saw there. “The Order knows that there are people who escape. During the height of the brutality, the worst of the horrors, they deliberately relax security so as to be sure that a few, at least, will escape.”

Richard’s mind felt as if it were hopelessly adrift in a thousand scattered, disheartened thoughts. “Why?”

Nicci shared a long look with him before she finally answered. “To spread such a fear that it will grip the next city in terror. That terror will insure that people in the path of the advancing army will surrender rather than face the same brutal treatment. In this way victory comes without the Order having to fight every inch of the way. The terror that is spread by escaping people who tell others what they saw is a powerful weapon that crumbles the courage of those yet to be attacked.”

With the way his heart was pounding, Richard could understand the terror of waiting for the Order to attack. He raked his fingers back through his hair as he redirected his attention to Jebra. “Did they murder all the captives?”

“A few of the men—ones who were deemed not a threat for one reason or another—were sent with other people from the city out into the countryside in gangs to work the farms. I never knew what happened to these people, but I presume that they are still there, toiling as slaves to raise food for the Order.”

Jebra’s gaze sank as she pulled some strands of hair back from her face. “Most of the women who survived became the property of the troops. Some of the younger and more attractive women had a copper ring put through their lower lips and were reserved for the men of rank.
Carts frequently prowled the camp, collecting the bodies of women who had died during their abuse. No officer ever raised any objection to the brutal treatment these women received out in the tents among the troops. The dead were taken to the pits and thrown in. No one, not even Imperial Order soldiers who died, were ever buried with their name on a marker. They were all thrown in the mass graves. The Order does not believe in the significance of any individual and does not mark their passing.”

“What of the children?” Richard asked. “You said that they didn’t kill the younger boys.”

Jebra took a deep breath before she began again. “Well, from the very first, the boys had been gathered together and organized by age into groups of what I can only describe as boy recruits. They were regarded, not as captured Galeans, not as the conquered, but as young members of the Imperial Order liberated from people who would only have oppressed them and corrupted their minds. The blame for the wickedness that necessitated the invasion was placed on the older generations, not these young people who were said to be innocent of their elders’ sins. Thus they were separated, physically and spiritually, from the adults, and thus was begun their training.

“The boys were drilled in a manner that was like playing games, grim as it must have been to many. They were treated relatively well and kept occupied every moment in contests of strength and skill. They were not allowed to pine for their families—that was described as showing weakness. The Order became their families, whether they liked it or not.

“At night, while I could hear the cries of women, I could also hear the boys as they sang together, under the leadership of special training officers.” She gestured as an aside. “I had to bring these officers food and such, so I had a chance to see what was happening to these boys as the weeks and then the months passed.

“After training for a time the boys began to earn rank and standing within their group for a variety of things—whether it be in games of skill and strength, or in memorizing their lessons in the righteous ways of the Order. As I would rush about in my duties for the officers I would see the boys standing at attention before their groups, reciting back the things they had been taught, speaking of the glory of being part of the Order, of their honorable duty to be part of a new world dedicated to the advancement of mankind, and of their willingness to sacrifice for that greater good.

“Even though I never really had the chance to learn the specifics of what these boys were being taught, I remember a line shouted incessantly as they stood at attention: ‘I can be nothing alone. My life has meaning only through dedication to others. Together we all are one, of one mind, for one purpose.’

“After emotionally charged rallies the boys were brought in their groups to watch executions of ‘traitors to mankind.’ They were encouraged to cheer when each ‘traitor’ died. Their Order leaders stood proud and tall before the boys, backs to the bloodbath, saying, ‘Be strong young heroes. This is what happens to the selfish betrayers of mankind. You are mankind’s future saviors. You are the future heroes of the Order, so be strong.’

“Whatever trepidation the boys may have had at first, under the long and ceaseless indoctrination, guidance, and constant encouragement of the officers, those boys cheered. Even if it was not sincere at first, it seemed to become so in the end. I saw how the boys began to believe—with real fervor—the things they were being taught by adults.

“The boys were encouraged to use knives issued them to stab the freshly killed ‘traitors.’ This was only one of the ways they were systematically desensitized to death. In the end, the boys were earning rank by participating in the executions. They stood before empty-eyed captives and lectured them on their selfish ways, their treason to their fellow man and the Creator. The boy then condemned that individual captive to death and on occasion even carried out the deed. Their fellows applauded their zeal for helping to purge mankind of those who had resisted the holy teachings of the Order, those who had turned away from their Creator and their divine duty of service to their fellow man.

“Before it was over, almost every one of those boys had a hand in the butchering of the captives. They were praised as ‘heroes’ of the Order. At night, in their barracks, the few boys who would not go along with participating in the executions became outcasts and were eventually stigmatized as cowards or even sympathizers of the old ways, for being selfish and unwilling to support their fellow man—or, in this case, boy. They were most often beaten to death by their group.

“These few boys, in my eyes, were the heroes. They died alone at the hands of their fellow boys, boys who had once played and laughed with them but had now become the enemy. I would have given nearly anything
to have been able to give these few noble souls at least a hug and a whisper of my thanks that they had not joined in, but I could not, so they died alone as outcasts among former friends.

“It was madness. It seemed to me that the whole world had gone insane, that nothing made sense anymore, that life itself made no sense anymore. Pain and suffering became the definition of life; there was nothing else. Memories of any kind of joy seemed like dim dreams and no longer real. Life dragged on, day after day, season after season, but it was life that revolved around death in one way or another.

“In the end, the only people of Galea left alive were the boys and the women who didn’t die during the brutal rapes and then as whores for the soldiers. In the end, the older boys were participating in the rapes as part of their initiation and as rewards for their enthusiasm during their assignments, including the executions.

“Many of the women, of course, managed to kill themselves. Every morning, on the cobblestone streets at the foot of the taller buildings, were found the broken bodies of women who, seeing no future but degrading abuse, had managed to throw themselves out of windows or off roofs. I don’t know how many times I would happen on a woman off in some dark corner, her wrists slashed by her own hand, her lifeblood having drained away along with any hope. I couldn’t say that I blamed them for their choice.”

Richard stood with his hands clasped behind his back, staring into the still waters of the fountain, as Jebra went on in endless detail of the events following the great victory by the brave men of the Imperial Order. The senselessness of it was almost too monumental to comprehend, much less endure.

The slashes of sunlight coming in through the skylights above slowly crept across the marble bench around the pool, across the expanse of floor, up and across the granite steps. The bloodred stone of the columns glowed as the sunlight ceaselessly, incrementally, advanced up their length while Jebra chronicled everything she knew of what had happened while she had been a captive of the Order.

Shota stood unmoving nearly the entire time, usually with her arms folded, her fair features fixed in a vaguely grim cast, watching Jebra tell her story, or watching Richard listen to it, as if making sure that his attention didn’t wander.

“Galea had reserves of food aplenty for their citizens,” Jebra said, “but not for anything like the numbers of invaders now occupying the city, who themselves did not have plentiful supplies with them. The troops stripped every storehouse of food. They emptied every larder, every warehouse. Every animal for miles around, including the great many sheep that were raised for wool and the milk cows, were butchered for food. Rather than keep the chickens for a steady supply of eggs, they, too, were killed and eaten.

“As the food ran low the officers sent off messengers with ever more urgent requests for resupply. For months the supplies did not come—no doubt in good part because winter had set in and slowed them.”

Jebra hesitated, and then swallowed, before going on. “I remember the day—it was during a heavy snowstorm—when we were ordered to cook some fresh meat the Imperial Order soldiers delivered to the kitchens. It was freshly killed, headless, gutted human carcasses.”

Richard abruptly turned to stare at Jebra. She gazed up at him as if from a place of insanity, as if in fear that she would be condemned for what she knew was beyond the pale. Her blue eyes brimmed with tears of supplication for forgiveness, as if she feared he would strike her dead for what she was about to confess.

“Have you ever had to butcher a human body for cooking? We had to. We roasted the meat, or stripped it from the bones to make stews. We dried rack upon rack upon rack of the meat for the regular soldiers. If the soldiers were hungry and there was nothing to feed them, bodies would be delivered to the kitchens. We went to extraordinary lengths to stretch what supplies of food we had. We made soups and stews with weeds, if we could find them beneath the snow. But there was just not enough food to feed all the men.

“I witnessed many things that will give me nightmares the rest of my life. Seeing those remorseless soldiers standing in the open doorway, the snow blowing in behind them, as they dumped those bodies on the floor of the kitchen will be one of the things that forever haunts me.”

Richard nodded and whispered, “I understand.”

“And then, early this past spring, the supply wagons finally began arriving. They brought great quantities of foodstuffs for the soldiers. I knew, despite the seemingly endless wagons full of supplies, that it would not last a long time.

“Beside the supplies, there were also reinforcements to replace the men who had been killed in the battle to crush Galea. The numbers of Order troops occupying Ebinissia were already overwhelming; the extra soldiers seemed to add to my numb sense of hopelessness.

“I overheard newly arrived officers reporting that more supplies would be coming, along with yet more men. As they streamed in from the south, many were sent on missions to secure other areas of the Midlands. There were other cities to be taken, other places to be captured, other pockets of resistance to be crushed, other people to be enslaved.

“Along with the supplies and the fresh troops came letters from the people back home in the Old World. They were not letters to any specific soldiers, of course, since the Imperial Order had no way of knowing how to find any individual soldier within their vast armies, nor would they have cared to, since individuals, as such, were unimportant in their eyes. Rather, they were letters sent to the general delivery of the ‘brave men’ fighting for the people back home, fighting on behalf of their Creator, fighting to defeat the heathens to the north, fighting to bring backward-thinking people the salvation of the Order’s ways.

“At night, every night for weeks, the letters that had come with the supply wagons would be read to assembled groups of men—most of whom couldn’t read themselves. They were letters of every kind, from people telling of the great sacrifices they had made in order to send food and goods north to their fighting men, to letters extolling the great sacrifices the soldiers were making to advance the divine teaching of the Order, to letters from young women promising their bodies in service to brave soldiers when they returned from vanquishing the uncivilized and backward enemy to the north. As you can imagine, this last kind of letter was quite popular and they were read over and over to hoots and wild cheering.

“The people of the Old World even sent mementos: talismans to bring victory; drawings to decorate the tents of their fighters; cookies and cakes that had long ago rotted; socks, mittens, shirts, and caps; herbs for everything from tea to bandages; scented handkerchiefs from enraptured women eager to offer themselves in duty to the soldiers; weapons belts and such made by the corps of young boys who trained with groups of other boys their own age until the day they could also go north to smite the people who resisted the Creator’s wisdom and the Imperial Order’s justice.

“The long trains of supply wagons, before they went back to the Old World to get more of the supplies necessary to support the enormous army up in the New World, were loaded down with loot to be taken back to the cities of the Old World that were supplying the food and goods needed by the army. It was like a loop of trade—booty for supplies, supplies for booty. I suppose that seeing endless wagonloads of plundered riches streaming south was also intended to be a great incentive for the people back home to continue to support what has to be the enormous cost of the war effort.