Episode 90
[Author’s Note: We’ve now jumped back 10 years from episode 89.]
(Yemen, April 19, 2009)
“Still a sniveling little coward,” Matt laughed, pulling Victor from the debris. It was a few moments before the intense waves of pain subsided enough to admit a reply. They were nothing new to Victor but never grew less unpleasant. It was what his body would have endured had he been human, and he felt every ounce of it.
With offended dignity, he brushed off the tattered remnants of his pants. The horizon had been clear a moment earlier, and nothing heralded the mortar until it exploded in their midst. Then again, unheralded was often preferable to the alternative. Even after thousands of years, Victor hadn’t decided which was worse: seeing the pain coming or a sudden plunge into agony. Sometimes he wondered whether he should have chosen differently, like Matt. However, he had long ago concluded that the choice was part and parcel of the person. He could no more choose like Matt than think like him, nor would he wish to.
Every bout of pain forced him to revisit this exercise and reach that same conclusion anew. He glared at his commander — he refused to call the man his superior — and quietly retrieved a nearby shoe. It was pointless, of course. The shoe was doomed, along with everything else he had on. His attention returned to Matt.
“Which is more cowardly,” Victor asked, “to choose wisely and embrace pain or risk your life in the service of comfort?”
Matt inspected his face closely. “People don’t speak like that anymore. You’re at least sixty years out of date. I suggest you study up when we get back.” He looked at Wen and then himself. “As for this ‘choice’ you’re obsessed with, I’d say our protections work just fine — and we don’t get to experience the joy of squirming around like a maggot whose bowels are being extruded.”
“Maggots don’t have bowels,” Victor observed with a scowl.
Matt smiled. “Oh lighten up. Besides, not all of us got to pick our protections.”
“I did,” Wen offered.
Victor rounded on him. “Shut the fuck up, you useless fucktard.”
Matt slapped Victor on the back. “There you go. That’s more with the times.” He looked at one companion, then the other. “Well, shall we have some fun?” He limply pumped his arm into the air. “For victory and honor and all that happy horseshit.”
“It’s a job,” Victor grumbled as he made his way toward the bunker under increasing fire, wincing at each hit. “And what would you know about honor?”
“What’s that? I can’t hear you,” Matt shouted.
“I hope he gets blown up again soon,” he muttered to Wen. “Shuts him up every time.”
Wen only replied with an uncomprehending look.
Matt rolled his eyes. “It’s bad enough working for these guys, but why the fuck did they have to stick me with you two?”
“It’s so I can kill you if you get out of line,” Victor shouted over the gunfire. He grinned at Matt. “Since, you know, I can.”
Matt laughed, dodging left and right. “Nah, I’d just kick you in the balls and you’d be useless.”
Despite the banter, both Matt and Wen were clearly doing their best to shield Victor from gunfire. He knew this wasn’t from any sense of comradery. They needed him. Even a relatively weak enemy could kill the two of them, if they allowed themselves to be caught. A simple plastic bag would do the trick. Or — out here — burial in the sand.
Victor was their trump card. He was much hardier, but if the enemy knew he was weak to pain they could incapacitate him for as long as needed. Wen and Matt did their best to keep that fact from becoming obvious. The more invincible the three of them seemed, the better their chance of success. Victor already had saved Wen’s life on two occasions — and regretted it both times. The man was an insipid weakling, and Victor had no stomach for his kind. Matt, he actually didn’t mind. Most of their friction came from their long history together.
It all stemmed from a matter of station. Victor knew that it was absurd to dwell on such things millennia after the country which birthed him had vanished, but he had come to accept that this too was part of who he was. However, it still made him feel petty at times. And stagnant.
Victor had been a senior general in the old days, the type of superior next to whom Matt was an anonymous, fungible grunt. Back then, he wouldn’t have even acknowledged someone of such low standing, let alone spoken with him. Now, he reported to the man. It was a perennial mystery how such a nobody had managed to become immortal. What could he possibly have offered her?
Even for someone as renowned as Victor, it had been anything but certain. He was remarkably fortunate. The future Queen desperately needed his support, but that alone would not have sufficed. He would have allowed himself to be bought by conventional means or, worse, tricked like the Prince. In hindsight, that much was clear. He knew others who had frittered away the same golden opportunity for a mere pittance. What was gold against eternity? No treasure could bribe death. Victor had avoided such an irredeemable mistake, though not by any virtue of his own.
The reason he stood here now was his master, a man of unimpeachable penetration. It was no accident that he had risen to be Vizier. If his ambition did not crave loftier heights, it was from an abundance of good sense. He chose to enjoy power unadorned and preferred the abacus to the sceptre, he once explained to Victor. Most of his advice came in the form of such pithy sayings. Kings were cadavers waiting to be made. What sane man would desire a position in which his own children cheered his death? Nothing attracted a stray arrow like royalty. Victor regretted that he did not know how to write at the time. He wished he could have been the man’s scribe as well as his sword.
He always wondered whether it was the Vizier who changed or just the words he spoke. Perhaps time made a liar of every man. Victor smiled. That sounded like something his master would have said. Had he? It would be irreverent to conflate his own trite sentiment with that of a great sage. How could he even determine whether it was trite, unless he knew who had said it? Once again, he wished he had recorded the man’s wisdom. At least, he would know what was his and what was not.
Nobody was more likely than the Vizier to negotiate a successful deal with the Queen. Circumstances also favored him, and the timing was propitious. The Queen was just a fledgling and still uncertain of herself. For all the man’s savvy, Victor wondered whether the Vizier would have stood a chance against the formidable woman she soon became.
Though, he sometimes wondered whether he gave her too much credit. Maybe she just had seemed larger than life back then. That same Queen had offered the gift to Matt as well, and somehow managed to get herself killed by that conniving husband of hers. Victor really had admired the man, though he didn’t like what happened afterward. Of course, he hadn’t known about the Queen’s death back then. In light of the King’s subsequent behavior, it wasn’t all that surprising. At the time, Victor thought she had been captured or sold off. The King played the part of a desperate husband quite well. There even was mention of a ransom, if he remembered correctly.
As it happened, the Vizier had driven a hard bargain — and not just for himself. He had navigated both Victor and Victor’s twin brother to immortality as well, while somehow managing to circumvent the Prince’s fate. Victor still did not understand how the man had done it — or why. Both he and his brother were unflinchingly loyal to the Vizier, but so were the other generals.
The prospect of immortality hadn’t even occurred to Victor. At that time, the Queen’s ability was unknown beyond a small inner circle. Acquiring such a thing for them had been uncharacteristically generous of the Vizier, even if Victor and his brother were only Fours to his Eight. The man’s reasons remained a mystery.
Victor once had asked him directly about this, but the Vizier gently evaded the question. It seemed ungrateful to press the man, and it didn’t really matter. By then most of their remaining countrymen had scattered, and the fact of immortality was all that mattered. How each had come by it was irrelevant. Every immortal had a reason, and none meant anything. Nevertheless, Victor continued to ponder his own. What else was there to do with unlimited time?
The most plausible theory was that the Vizier feared he would have to face the Queen herself someday, and wanted to empower his staunchest supporters. If so, it had proven unnecessary. As they learned later, she was only a Four. Irrespective of this, it was unclear to Victor what advantage two Fours could offer an Eight in such a conflict. It also was unclear why the Queen hadn’t made herself stronger.
Anyone who knew the Vizier understood what making him an Eight would precipitate. He had lacked the wherewithal or courage to seek the throne while mortal, but now there was no fetter on his ambition. It was clear to Victor that, despite his aphorisms and denials and protestations of disinterest, the Vizier inevitably would revolt against the Queen.
However, the inevitable never came to pass. Her husband beat him to it. He was not somebody who could be overthrown, and the Vizier was wise enough not to try. Even so, it wasn’t long before he and Victor and the rest were forced to flee anyway.
Victor sometimes wondered where the Vizier was now, but never resented that his old master had not sought him out. In some sense, it was a relief. The Vizier had done enough to earn a lifetime of gratitude, even an endless one. If the man turned up, Victor would feel obligated to follow him. At least, now he had his freedom. Victor sighed. No, he just had a different master. But this was merely a temporary, if contemptible, one. There was only one man Victor truly respected, and that was from the distance of several thousand years. He was certain that the real Vizier would prove disappointing in the harsh light of the present. Victor’s reverence for him required the man’s absence. He owed him that much.
Immortality wasn’t the only boon the Vizier had obtained for Victor. It was by his counsel that Victor chose to be protected from want rather than pain. This would not have been his first instinct, but the years had proved it to be the right decision. Matt and Wen were exceedingly lucky. Most Twos and Fours had perished by mischance or by one another’s hands or sometimes even by human hands. Victor merely had suffered. Suffered and endured.
He once had heard that men feared pain rather than death. It made sense that mortals would think this way. If the choice was between pain and death or just death, it was simple. For immortals, the calculus was quite different. Only a fool feared pain more than death. Pain ends, death does not.
A second mortar round exploded next to Wen’s head and knocked the group off their feet. For some reason, Victor felt no discomfort. Maybe the thing had missed. A quick look at his companions revealed that it had not. They were ten feet away in a crater, coughing heavily. Victor smiled. Even in war — especially in war — there was serendipity. A fragile human body could escape harm, narrowly missed by a thousand pieces of shrapnel. A man would call it a miracle, but there were no miracles for Victor. Just chance. This time he had escaped the agony, next time he wouldn’t.
“Hey Matt,” he shouted over the din.
Matt looked up, his face red with irritation. Of course. His late hubris had been thrown back in his face. The last thing Matt wanted was to be humiliated like this after arguing how great his protections were. Victor laughed, reddening his companion’s face even further. He abruptly stopped. This was counterproductive. He had nothing to gain by antagonizing Matt, especially under the circumstances.
“Thanks for blocking for me,” he said, offering Matt a hand.
“Fucking better be,” Matt grunted as he pulled himself to his feet.
Victor grinned. “Not much mortar fire, is there?”
Matt’s face darkened.
“I’m being serious. That was only the second round.”
“So?” Matt barked.
“Well, doesn’t it seem a bit odd that they only fired two rounds over the last …” — Victor surveyed the distance they had covered — “… ten blocks or so?”
“Blocks?” Matt snorted. “What the hell are you, some city puke?”
“And what are you, some redneck? You do recall that we’re both from the same place, right?”
“But not the same station,” Matt helpfully pointed out.
“Clearly.”
Matt scowled, but seemed to be considering the point.
“What am I supposed to use?” Victor continued, “Clicks? Some bullshit military jargon? Just because you play at being the soldier-boy doesn’t mean I have to.”
Matt spat on the ground. “Oh no, you only play at being the general. That or nothing. We’re all here for the same reason, asshole. You gave in just like the rest of us, probably quicker.”
Victor laughed. “Doesn’t it get heavy, carrying that huge chip on your shoulder all the time?”
Matt just glared at him. Was he trying to hide how scared he was?
Victor sighed. “You do realize that what separates us isn’t some insignia or emblem of command. It’s that I’m simply superior. Not your superior. Just superior. To you.” He leaned in and whispered in Matt’s ear. “I always have been, I am now, and I always will be. There’s no need to fight it or resent it. We are what we are.”
Matt made as if to kick Victor in the nuts, but stopped short. “We’ll pick this up later,” he countered, lightly smacking Victor on the back. “You know about frogs in a barrel, right?”
Victor had heard it before, but this was a good sign. Matt was mellowing. “I’m sure you’ve mentioned it.”
A flicker of annoyance crossed Matt’s face, but he continued anyway. “If a bunch of frogs are in a barrel and one looks like it will manage to climb out, the others drag it back down.”
“Sounds plausible.”
Matt grinned. “Well, there’s one way to get rid of your airs and prove you’re a frog like the rest of us. I just need to drag you down into the gutter.”
“And how would you manage that?”
“Beer. Lots and lots of beer,” Matt laughed, slapping Victor on the back again. He pointed vaguely in the direction from which they had come. “That’s what’s waiting for us back there.”
Victor’s face lit up. “Well why didn’t you fucking say so?”
“See. You’re becoming one of us already.” Matt glanced in Wen’s direction. “C’mon, V, let’s give him a hand. I swear, I think he’s pretending to be down so he doesn’t have to say anything.”
“Better than anything he would say,” Victor replied, lifting Wen’s limp body. Suddenly it grew taut, and Wen freed himself from their grip.
“Fooled you,” he laughed.
“As I said,” Victor muttered.
“It wasn’t funny the first two thousand times either,” Matt snapped. “Now get your useless ass over here.”
Victor smiled at him. “It’s fun to be in charge, eh?”
Matt replied with a smirk.