MARCH 3, 2014 ATB
BRITANNIAN ARMED SERVICES RECRUITING OFFICE, PORTSMOUTH, DUCHY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, HOMELAND
"Sorry, Mister Coffin," the recruiter said with a professional smile, not sounding the least bit apologetic, "but His Majesty has no need of your services at present. Thank you for your interest in national defense."
"Are…" hearing the tremor in his own voice, Roger Coffin stopped, swallowed, and tried again. "Are you certain? If it's a matter of seniority, I'd be willing to relinquish any claim to time in grade, and as for physical fitness, well… I could make it work. By the time I'm out of the refresher, I'd be back to fighting trim!"
"Not interested." The recruiter, by long tradition a sergeant, was unmoved, and indeed seemed well on his way to dismissing Roger entirely as he shuffled the papers on his desk. "If you were five years younger, you might have had a chance. But a re-enlistment at thirty one?" He looked up from his stack of forms to give Roger an incredulous look. "Who do you think you're fooling, old man?"
The slight twinkle of sympathy in the sergeant's eyes was the most galling part, far moreso than the "old man" comment. Roger was certain that the recruiter was probably at least his age, if not older, but those years hung far lighter on his shoulders than they did on Roger.
Probably because he's spent them sitting behind a desk instead of humping a R-4 across three Areas, Roger thought uncharitably, before a nagging internal voice added, not to mention that he's probably been working out regularly and eating well instead of drinking himself under the table for the last three years.
"Fine," Roger stood, drawing the tattered shreds of his dignity around him like a coat, sheltering against the winds of time. "Fine. Thank you for your time, Sergeant."
A different Roger would have stayed and fought it out with the recruiter. Young Roger Coffin had been a pugnacious fighter, hard as nails in his own opinion and eager to prove it. Indeed, that need to prove himself had led a seventeen year old Roger to take up the Oath and to make his mark in the regimental books of the 3rd New Hampshire Fusiliers.
That combative urge, that hunger for the respect and acknowledgement of his peers, hadn't survived Roger Coffin's twelve year stint with the 3rd. After seeing all he had seen in Area 5, 10, and most especially 11, and after all that he had done in the course of fulfilling his oath, very little of that young Roger had remained intact when he had finally been honorably discharged from the ranks.
What had remained of that contentious prick of a boy had drowned in the vat of booze the former sergeant had spent his meager pension on.
And now, Roger thought, a sour smile twisting on his lips as he pulled his hat firmly down, anticipating the cold northern air waiting for him outside the warmth of the recruiting office, even the Army's not willing to take me back… And considering some of the privates I've seen…
Roger snorted ruefully. Done was done, and he was done here. Perhaps, he considered, he was done in general; nobody was waiting for him back at his rented rooms, neither of his ex-wives had contacted him in over a year, and in another month his brother would have been interred in the New Haven Military Cemetery for five years.
Go home and relax, he told himself. You've still got half of a fifth of Appalachia Farm left. Just… let it all wait for another day.
But, just as Roger reached for the handle to the door out of the office, his moping was disturbed by a cry of "Hey, wait!" from the desks behind him.
Turning, he saw the recruiting sergeant standing behind his desk, his less-than-trim belly pushing against the neat lines of his uniform as he gestured for Roger to come back over.
Not like I've got anything else happening today, Roger thought as he dutifully obeyed, sitting back down in the chair he had so recently vacated.
"I just remembered something," the recruiter said, pawing through a filing cabinet drawer crammed to bursting with swollen folders. "Something that might interest you… Hold on…"
After a moment, the overweight recruiting sergeant dropped back into his desk chair with a folder in hand. He quickly looked down at the file already open in front of him, Roger's name clearly visible at the top, and then opened his new folder to check some detail.
"You were in Area 11," the sergeant stated.
"For the initial Conquest, and for a few months afterwards," Roger agreed, already knowing that his sleep tonight would be even more troubled than usual. The mere mention of his last duty station was already raising a host of unpleasant memories from shallow graves.
There had been a reason he had opted not to extend his term of service for another two years after the stint in His Majesty's newest Area, and why he had crawled into a bottle as soon as he was back in the Homeland and officially a civilian once more.
"Right," the recruiter nodded, following a line on Roger's service record with his finger. "Did you pick up any of the local lingo, by any chance? Even a few words?"
"Enough," Roger shrugged. "You know, the basics. 'Stop or I'll shoot,' 'surrender now,' 'get me a beer,' and 'where are the whores.' Not much else."
Not that we bothered using them very much, he added silently, and then forced his treacherous monologue to shut up.
He had heard plenty of Elevenese, and while he hadn't understood any of it, he hadn't really needed to.
Some things were universal.
"Good enough," the recruiter concluded with a shrug. "Got any opinions about Honoraries?"
"Depends on the Honorary," Roger hedged. "In general? I mean, the ones from the Heartland, the ones that are left, are just as Britannian as you or I. Most of the ones hailing from the Old Areas are more or less decent. A bit lazy, mind you, and prickly at the best of times, but generally decent."
"Fine." The recruiting sergeant leaned back in his chair, hands folded across his mildly pudgy midriff. "So, you want back into the old gray and black? And you say you'd be willing to take a pay cut?"
"Yes," Roger bobbed his head, refusing to acknowledge the frail hope lighting his heart. "If that's what it takes…"
"Well, in that case, I can give you your rank back, Sergeant Coffin," the recruiter's eyes were shrewd and clever. "Your seniority too. You wouldn't even lose a grade in rank."
"But I'd be taking a paycut?" Roger frowned, not seeing the connection. Base pay was determined by rank, but the higher your internal grade and time in rank was, the greater the net became. "What's the catch here?"
"You'd be in an Honorary Legion," the recruiting sergeant revealed, eyes still glued to Roger as he spoke with the air of a poker player laying his cards down one by one, searching for any hint of a reaction. "They're raising a few new ones, over in Area 11. Prince Clovis has expanded the intake for Elevens into the ranks, to gain their Honorary Citizenships via service."
"The Prince is still the governor of Area 11?" Roger asked, and whistled with slight surprise when the recruiter nodded. "Guess it was too much of a sweet plum for him to let go."
"Well," the recruiting sergeant shrugged, "maybe the Elevens don't want to see him go, and that's why they're still pitching their tantrums. Doesn't really matter, but what does matter is that Prince Clovis got permission to commission two new honorary legions, full strength and all, to help maintain order. They probably won't be filled-out for a few years, but the point remains that there's going to be a ton of green troops all flooding in."
Roger whistled again. An honorary legion had the same paper strength as a regular division, fifteen thousand men, and like a division was commanded by a Major General.
"A full corps of vegetables, huh?" He said out loud, marveling at the sheer scale of the probable incompetency of such a formation. "And I'm guessing the command will be the usual for Honorary formations?"
"In all likelihood," the recruiter said, with an expression that spoke volumes. "Apparently, the lieutenancies are going for a bargain price."
The tradition of purchased ranks had been quite thoroughly crushed within the regular Army, and among the more elite and longstanding of the Honorary formations. Those were very much the exception, however; in most units drawn from the honorary citizens of the Empire, the old English tradition of selling commissions was alive and well, if entirely unofficial.
In a way, Roger could understand why the tradition had been allowed to continue.
To be a "proper noble", a scion of an aristocratic family hoping to succeed to their father or mother's titles had to serve at least a short time in the military. The Army, however, needed competent officers. Moreover, the Commoner Magnate families wouldn't stand for a noble monopoly of the military; nor, Roger suspected, would the Emperor.
So, there had to be some space made available for young nobles in need of military credentials, some space where they wouldn't endanger anything or anybody too important. Hence, the quietly brokered sale of commands in Honorary formations. Roger was quite sure that the Army's clerks were pleased to charge the wealthy noble families trying to spruce up their unimpressive offspring's resumes for the privilege.
"But," the recruiter continued, "that means that the Powers That Be have let it be known that experienced noncoms have a place in the new legions, if they want it."
Roger very much didn't want that place, certainly not back in Area 11, where the ghosts of the Conquest weren't even four years buried yet.
But I want to die of exposure or cirrosis even less…
"Cadre duty, huh?" Roger asked rhetorically, buying time as he tried to come to terms with what he had already decided to do. "I guess I could manage that… Someone's got to ride herd on the produce section, eh… And God knows I've had to deal with plenty of troublesome or outright braindead privates over the years…"
"It's a five year stint," the recruiter warned, "and the pay's on the Honorary chart, since you'd be in a legion as an enlisted."
"That's…" a part of Roger rebelled at being lumped in with the newly minted Honorary Citizens, but he pushed it down with the ease of long experience. Pride was a luxury he hadn't been able to afford in years. "...Fine," he finished. "I'd be able to handle it somehow, I'm sure."
"Well then," the recruiter leaned forwards, hand extended, "allow me to be the first to welcome you back to His Majesty's Army with welcoming arms, Sergeant Coffin."
MAY 29, 2016 ATB
ALBERT'S TAPHOUSE, KITA WARD, TOKYO SETTLEMENT
1305
Roger Coffin, Color Sergeant of His Majesty's 32nd Honorary Legion, 1st Brigade, 3rd Regiment, 1st Battalion, stared blankly down into the cup of pale yellow liquid sweating on the bar in front of him.
He looked at the drink. He drank the drink. The thankfully quiet bartender poured him another drink as Roger slid another pair of pound coins across the bar's sticky surface.
He looked at the drink. He drank the drink. He tried to forget.
The bar, located in a working-class Commoner district that reminded Roger of the old industrial town he had grown up in, was all but empty this Sunday afternoon. Only a handful of other derelicts had joined him in escaping the heat of the outside world, a pair of men who both had at least two decades on him worn thin and gray and an equally haggard old woman. Each was slumped over their own table, their faces buried in their beer, leaving Roger alone at the bar with the silent barman.
Alone with his thoughts, with the memories that the weak local beer was doing nothing to soften or blur.
It had been just over two years since Roger had set foot in Area 11 for the second time. After a quick month and a half of hellish physical training to whip him back into shape and a quick two week course on the finer points of his duties as a cadre sergeant, Sergeant Coffin had stepped off a transport plane and onto the tarmac of Tokyo International Airport in the company of thirty other over-age NCOs returning to His Majesty's colors.
That, in Roger's opinion, had been when the "good times", such as they were, ended.
The frustrations had been endless. The captain in command of his new company had served in the regular Army as an infantry lieutenant before "graciously accepting" an offer to transfer to the open captaincy in the newly-formed Honorary legion. The way his new commanding officer had told it, Sergeant Coffin would have thought that he had been handpicked by the Brigadier himself for the assignment. Considering the man's incompetency, it seemed much more likely that his family had purchased his rank to move their disappointing relative to a place where he could do less damage to their reputation.
The four lieutenants heading up the platoons of 1st Company were marginally better; their chief sin was a degree of inexperience almost incomprehensible to Roger. Not one of them was over the age of twenty and none could so much as grow a decent mustache, to say nothing about leading men effectively.
As for the men themselves, Sergeant Coffin couldn't remember the last time he had encountered such a dispirited, browbeaten lot. The only thing worse than their morale was their training in the basics of soldiering, which was slapshod at best. There were a few exceptions, a handful of the Honorary citizen-soldiers whose enthusiasm for their newly sworn allegiance was disconcerting in its intensity, but by and large the men of the 32nd Honorary Legion were depressed, sullen, and shiftless.
Roger couldn't find it in himself to blame the layabouts. The men were obviously aware of how little regard their masters had for them, and just how little faith anybody in the Area Administration had put in their services. It was, after all, hard to feel like a soldier when your superiors didn't trust you to carry a weapon greater than a knife, and when the MPs at the gate to the barracks were facing inwards instead of out towards the street.
Sergeant Coffin had done his best to fulfill his duty. He had conducted informal "advisory seminars" with the lieutenants, trying to make his wealth of experience available to the teenaged officers. He had taken the captain aside "for a private word" on an almost daily basis, although most of his advice had been waved off. He had gathered the rapidly expanding ranks of newly minted Honorary noncoms in the company around him and had taught them the basic lessons of officer wrangling and in keeping discipline among the men.
All of this had been at his own recognizance. Nobody, it seemed, had cared what the Honorary soldiers or their minders were doing, provided they stayed quiet and kept the Honorary neighborhoods docile. So long as they stayed out of their betters way, and so long as the sectors of the Tokyo Settlement zoned for Honorary families maintained their shows of ardent Britannian patriotism and swallowed the casual abuse with a smile, nobody cared.
Most of Sergeant Coffin's peers had taken the opportunity presented by that neglect to embrace the same malingering lifestyle as their officers and their men. Sergeant Coffin and a handful of others, men who, like him, had returned to the colors after finding the taste of civilian life bitter, had done their best to actually make the Honoraries into something close to real soldiers.
For a moment, it had seemed like his efforts weren't entirely in vain. A year into his assignment, Sergeant Coffin had been pleased and gratified to find out that his name had been entered for a promotion. As he had stitched the crown of a Color Sergeant onto his sleeve over the trio of chevrons, Roger had even gone as far as to promise himself that he would start going easy on the bottle.
He didn't need it anymore, Roger had assured himself. Things had taken a turn, and he had a new lease on life.
And then, Christmas had come, and everything had gone to hell.
"Another one?"
Roger looked up from his contemplation of the bar's whorled surface to give the bartender a jerky nod. The man's thick Pendragon accent wasn't so different from his own Maine accent. "If you'd be so kind," he croaked, passing over another pair of pound coins. "Just keep 'em coming, in fact. I'll settle at the end."
"...As you say, Sergeant," the bartender said after a moment, reminding Roger that he had come straight here from Outpost #2 as soon as his shift on duty ended.
He'd even taken a bus to get to this particular bar, although really any in the neighborhood would have done just as well; he had just wanted to drink far enough away from his post in the Chuo Ward that nobody would recognize him.
"Do you… That is to say, would you like some water as well? It's looking to be quite the scorcher."
Before Roger could retort that he could hold his beer just fine, he realized how cottony and dry his gums were, how his tongue felt swollen in his mouth, and how he could already feel the first strains of painful tension at his temples. "If you would, please," he said, trying to sound as gracious as possible. "Thanks."
The bartender shuffled off without a reply, returning soon after with a pint glass in each hand. Roger barely waited for the man to deposit the cups in front of him before taking a long pull on the water. It tasted delicious in his mouth, new life leaching into sour flesh.
"Good afternoon, Fred. Quite the warm day today, isn't it?"
A new presence dropped down into the bar stool immediately to Roger's left, much to his surprise. He'd heard the bar door creak open a moment earlier, but he'd anticipated another shambling shell to shuffle over to claim a table of their own like the rest. Instead, a startlingly young man was sitting next to him, his face alive and animated as he greeted the bartender. Just the momentary glance was enough to send Roger's eyes darting back into his beer; the boy couldn't be any older than half the men in his battalion.
"Ah, it certainly is at that, Leland," came Fred's rumbling reply. "If you came looking for Old Tim or for some calamari rings, you'll be disappointed, I'm afraid. Haven't seen the old man all day and kitchen service ain't starting until four."
"No worries," came the smooth reply, and to Roger's shock he could hear just the slightest touches of an aristocratic accent in the young man's voice, wildly out of place here in a Commoner bar. "I'm just here to relax in peace for the day. Busy morning, you know."
"Oh?" The bartender slid a glass of water in front of the newcomer, "that so? And yer sure that yah aren't just trying to avoid Miss Milly? She'll be mad if you are, and so will be Goodwife Hilda."
"Sufficient unto the day are the troubles thereof," came Leland's pious reply, and the young man grinned as the bartender, Fred, rolled his eyes. "In the meantime, can I get a Moxie? I know you've still got a few cans back there somewhere, Fred."
That reminder of home made Roger turn around in his chair to get a good look at Leland for the first time. The new arrival was a sharp-faced boy, with a narrow chin and high cheeks, with a thick mop of black hair barely suppressed under a battered cap. The youth wore the white collared shirt of an office worker under a neat waistcoat, with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and ink staining the side of his left arm where he'd leaned against some not-quite-dry paper.
Taken together, Leland was almost the picture of a junior clerk or office-drudge, although one that kept odd hours if he was off the clock at three in the afternoon.
A picture that doesn't match the voice at all, Roger decided.
He blinked and found Leland looking back at him, the young man's deep purple eyes, the color of the emperor's, a part of Roger noticed, meeting his own over a welcoming smile. "Hello there, Sergeant! Haven't seen you here before. Just assigned to Area 11?"
"Afraid not," Roger replied, his voice gruff in his dry throat. He took another sip of water. "Been here for two years now."
Two long years… Two years on, and I'm just where I started, full of booze and wasting my time.
"You must be almost up for rotation, then," Leland noted. "Are you eager to leave? I wouldn't blame you if you are; it seems like the price of living here gets higher each day."
Fred grunted in sour acknowledgement as he passed by again, leaving a can of Moxie and a glass full of ice in front of Leland. Roger didn't know if the barman owned the dingy little pub or not, but if he did he could fully understand the man's irritation. Everything was expensive lately, and the Viceregal Administration's attempt to rectify the matter by just increasing the supply of money had done nothing but swell the already inflated prices.
Not a good time to rely on customers with fat wallets… Although I guess as long as people have two shillings to rub together, they'll still be lining up to buy beer.
And besides… Roger's hand clenched around his cup as he remembered why inflation had jumped so steeply in recent months, there's steeper prices to pay than a few extra pounds for groceries…
"No such luck," Roger replied, but somehow felt compelled to add, "I'm with the Honoraries. Full term contract," to his explanation. Something about Leland's eyes welcomed the detail. "Signed up for another hitch after I got discharged from the Fusiliers, so I'll be here for the duration."
"Ah," Leland's expression, suddenly saddened, spoke volumes that Roger couldn't read, the details lost in the blur. The eyes stayed the same though. "I understand. You chose a hard time to sign up for another tour, Sergeant. First the Purists, then Christmas…" Those eyes sharpened, and Roger suddenly felt like he couldn't look away. "And then the business up in Niigata. You were dragged into that, weren't you, Sergeant? What was it like?"
It might have been the beer that loosened his lips, or it might have been the distance from anyone who would know him, or perhaps it was the suddenly inescapable impression that Leland somehow already knew everything he would say, but Roger found himself speaking freely and all together too frankly before he knew it.
"It was bad, real bad. I was in Hanoi back in '09, coming ashore in Saigon when we pushed the Chinese back… And I was here back in 2010, back when we first took this place for our own. But…" Roger licked his lips, and took a deep drink off his fresh pint. Even as he wiped the foam away from face, he felt those prying purple eyes upon him, forcing the words out.
"The Conquest was nothing, nothing at all. Walk in the bleedin' park. At least where I was, since some of the landings down south ran into resistance, but up north of here where my regiment landed, the naval artillery had broken the Elevens up before we set boot on sand. Dead simple. I don't think more than half of us fired our guns in anger. Indochina was worse, but not by much. The Chinese are only worth half a damn when there's a whole pack, or when they've got a good leader, and the Tens were only too happy to help us kick them out…"
That didn't last long, though.
Roger slammed another mouthful down, trying to wash away the memories. As soon as he gulped the watery beer down, his tongue was moving again, his sotted ramblings pouring out like a ruptured cask.
"That was all fun and games. The usual stuff, you know. Shoot a few, the noisy ones, have some fun with the girls, leave a few coins for the breakage. You know, the usual. Well… Maybe you don't; age aside, you don't look like a man who's seen a uniform, but take my word for it. But… That was all invasion, you see? Even when we came by here last time. We were taking our claim, making the place ours. But Niigata? That was rebellion. Whole different story."
The pressure of those eyes was inexorable, and Roger found himself squirming in his chair like he was a fifteen year old delinquent again, powerless in the face of his old grammar school's headmaster. That old withered stick of a man could silence an assembly of the entire student body with a single sweep of his eyes, and now, two decades on, this youth had somehow taken on the same mien of the long dead teacher.
Master Reynauld had the same cheekbones, a crazy thought spurred through his mind. He was a son of some minor house, wasn't he? It must be an aristocrat trick, somehow.
"Not that I ever got to Niigata," Roger admitted, feeling a lunatic need to explain himself, to whom he didn't really know. "We were on a holding operation in Toyama, at the prefect's behest. He was shit scared of the refugees coming across the border from the prefecture to the north. Thought they'd bring rebellion with them, and even if they didn't he was scared all the new Numbers would eat up the food or start robbing the good folk's houses. He paid someone high up to bring us up to interdict traffic and to weed out any malcontents that might cause trouble in his fief."
"The filtering operations," Leland mused, the hint of nobility bleeding over into his voice as he rolled the words over in his mouth.
"Right," Roger agreed, "that's what they called them. Pass the refugees through the wringer to weed out any guerrillas slipping in with the swarm, and yank any suspected sympathizers out of the villages and towns near the border so they couldn't link up with their bastard friends squatting in the mountains."
His questing hand found a fresh, cold glass of beer sitting where his almost drained pint had been; Fred must have passed by. Sergeant Coffin lifted the frosted glass to his lips and took a long pull, soothing his rasping throat.
"Hard times indeed, Sergeant." Leland's voice was sympathetic, full of understanding. "But, I am sure you are proud, proud that you did as you were commanded… Aren't you?"
"I…" The immediate, instinctual response caught between his teeth, and Roger realized that the kneejerk confirmation had been a lie, even if he hadn't really known it to be one a moment earlier. "I… wasn't proud…" he said slowly, thinking out loud as he tried to impose order on his muddled thoughts. He belatedly realized that he was drunk. "I mean… I didn't… object, not really, but… It seemed… Empty?"
"A curious choice of words, Sergeant," came Leland's smooth reply.
"Roger," Sergeant Coffin corrected. "I'm off duty… And I'm tired of hearing my rank repeated back all day, every day.. 'Yes sergeant,' 'no sergeant…' It's all an act… Who gives a shit…"
"Roger then," Leland agreed easily. "Was it the act that felt empty, handling the dirty work the Prefect was too afraid to deal with himself… Or were you already empty, and it just became impossible to overlook past that point?"
"Both," Roger replied, suddenly certain of his reply. "There's… Well, there was a point to what we were doing. Obviously, there was a point! But…" He felt like he was pawing at something he couldn't quite wrap his hands around. "Why? Why are we here? The Sakuradite? Why the fuck aren't we just focusing on that? The Elevens were selling it to us! Why is the Administration being so fucking incompetent? We know how to run Areas! The Old Areas are doing great! What the hell is the problem?"
He knew he should shut up, but he couldn't get his mouth to close. "I spent a decade in the uniform! My little brother died in it! And what the fuck was the point? We keep conquering Areas but we can't be bothered to manage them worth half a damn! Did the Emperor just get so used to fighting back during the Emblem of Blood that he can't stop, and since he wheeled everybody in the other factions and gave their fiefs out to his men, nobody wants to say boo to him?"
It was impossible to stop the surge of memories now. Village upon village heaped with the dead and the dying. A woman screaming, broken arms reaching for a child in the arms of a laughing soldier. Endless trenches packed with the dead and the soon to be dead, naked limbs writhing among the blood-laced flesh as the unlucky survivors were crushed under the weight of their relatives. Fiveish militias waging their private wars against the insurrectos and the narcos, the lines between all three vague. The blackened skeleton of Hanoi, incinerated under two days of firebombing.
And over it all, the lion and serpent over Saint George's Cross as he marched forth with his regiment at Emperor Charles zi Britannia's merciless command.
"What…" Roger muttered, feeling just as spent and worn out as the handful of derelicts he vaguely remembered were sitting in the shadowed corners of the taphouse, "what was the point, really? What was the point of any of it? Two decades… Two wives… a brother… all for what?"
"Not for anything worth the cost of your service, sergeant," the man said. The lights were somehow dimmer and the taphouse far away, and Roger could barely see the sharp lines of his face through the haze growing in his vision anymore. Nothing but phoenician eyes glinting in darkened hollows... "Not for any Emperor worthy of your loyalty, Roger, astride the Throne of Pendragon. Nor for a House worthy of your worship, sullied as its hands are with all that is unclean."
Roger blinked, thinking, quietly, yes. How long had it been since he'd set foot inside a house of worship? He had never been a patriot; he had made his mark and kissed the flag because he wanted to prove he was more than another lost soul, and had never thought much of the claims of divine right trumpeted from the throne and its servants at the pulpit...
The violet eyes blinked, and before Roger could follow, they were gone, leaving him alone in the blurry haze of confusion and memory. But the voice, its aristocratic notes and Pendragon accent growing more pronounced by the word, continued, urging him on a dark path as he stumbled forwards without ever standing from the barstool.
"The Emblem of Blood. Do you recall?"
"I remember the Emblem of Blood… The last years of it," Roger rasped, scanning the filmy gray fog, memory thickened with alcohol and filled with past ghosts, desperate to find those imperious, understanding eyes in the miasma, "when Brandon and his faction and Charles and his had it out at last. The Church said that God's will had been done when it was all over, that it was all God's will, and that everything would change… From where I'm standing, nothing has. Nothing that matters. The Emperor's never done shit for me, nor have any of his officers or his priests… And what the fuck do I care if we unite the world but the Emperor can't be arsed to rule it for shit? No wonder the Elevens rose up, with Clovis in charge."
"You are a man who needs someone to follow, aren't you, Sergeant? A man who craves authority, who must have a banner to follow, a sigil to guide him through the night..." The voice was suddenly all around him, telling him who he was, and the eyes opened before him, radiant and loving in their purple glory. "A true cause, in the service of the holy and unsullied truth. The princely truth."
"A true prince…" Roger said, remembering as he spoke the hopes people had pinned on Brandon, back in the day, hopes that Brandon would usher in a new age of liberty in Britannia. Hopes that had been crushed once Charles cemented his rule by killing as many of the surviving scions of the Imperial House as he could. "A true cause…" To make the Holy Empire the land of God on Earth as promised. "One worthy of all the blood."
"And one worthy of your devotion," Leland added, unobtrusively as Roger nodded, his drunken mind piecing things together bit by bit, slowly arriving at a conclusion as the fog receded before him, leaving only Leland, staring unblinkingly into his soul. "The Church lied to you only in who they claimed God spoke through, Roger. You remember how the true sons of the Church, the ones who actually served, were driven out. You remember how the righteous princes were murdered. Surely no good could come from following a kinslayer."
Now that Leland had mentioned it, Roger remembered those things. How the old rector at Saint James had always been generous with the aid funds, how so many of the old Imperial Family who had been executed for treason had been so young… It was all so wrong, so monstrously wrong…
"They were his own blood," Roger mumbled, "and that's who my brother died for? Who I gave my years for? Who I swore my oath to?"
"Emperor Charles's name might have filled the space in your oath," Leland replied, his voice armored in certainty as he shook his head, "but you didn't really swear your oath to him, did you? How could any oath sworn to a kinslayer, to a heretic who declares himself to be God in all but name, be binding? No, you swore your loyalty to the true ruler of Britannia, didn't you? The True Prince, no matter who might be on the throne now."
"Right!" That had been the final piece, the conclusion Roger had been building towards! That had been why he had felt so empty for so long! It all made sense now! It wasn't that he had done anything wrong, made any mistake! He had followed his orders faithfully and loyally! It was just that those orders had their ultimate source in a serpent undeserving of his imperial robes!
"The True Prince!" he gasped, suddenly armored in conviction, the last vestiges of his old certainties dripping away and the rotten cords of misbegotten oaths falling from his shoulders, "that is who I serve!"
"Then come," and suddenly Leland was standing, the sunlight streaming through the open door outlining him in a corona of gold, "come with me, brother. Come and hear the word, and then go back to your base a new man. Come and be made new, full of a new purpose. An old bottle refilled with fresh-pressed wine. Come with me."
And for a moment, it wasn't Leland guiding Sergeant Roger Coffin to his feet and leading him out the door, but rather Robert, his brother two years his junior, who had always been so eager to do everything Roger had done. His little brother, who had signed up for the Army at sixteen, one year after Roger had taken up the oath.
His little brother, who had died in the Cambodian jungle while his elder brother had lived it up in the newly established Saigon Settlement on a rec leave pass, all because that bastard Charles could never be satisfied, would never be satisfied. The Man of Blood had taken Robert away, had sown the seeds that led to his wives leaving him, who had left Roger with nothing but the bottle.
Nothing but an empty bottle, to be filled with new and consecrated wine.
Squinting against the blinding light and the purifying heat, a scorcher just as Fred had said, Roger Coffin followed Leland out of the bar, eager for purpose and ready to be made into a new man.
