The Value of Peace by Dawn Lloyd

These confessions will likely be meaningless. I’ve said many times that actions are the only things that matter in this. Once, I pounded my fist down against the bear statue with such force that a trickle of red ran down my wrist and vanished into my black sleeve. I waved the hand at the crowd. Blood meant nothing.

Tonight, sitting in this dank cell with the water dribbling down the walls, that day seems far away. Is it true that revolutionaries are merely cowards, afraid to face the reality in which they live, preferring instead to live in the dream they create? Perhaps. I would not know. My claims to be a revolutionary were a lie. I possess only their cowardice. Probably cowardice will overcome me again and I will destroy these confessions. Nevertheless, having wielded the weapon of words for the last decade, I take them up one last time in hopes of redeeming myself.

I have always claimed my passion stems from the Isberians killing my father. It’s true my father’s death changed me, but a fraction of the truth is no less a lie than a complete fabrication. So at last, now that I will soon be dead, I write the truth.

#

Lord Iscah had just received an Isberian peace envoy seeking our help against Korad, and the senior officers had gathered at our camp to discuss it. Trying to stay away from the war talk, I had gone to visit friends on the other side of the mountains and was only just returning.

It was a little after sundown, when the last of the purple streaked the sky, that I reached the edge of the camp. Clutching only a copy of the poems I’d been working on (the rest of my belongings could be retrieved later) I hiked the last few kilometers; the uneven boulders were too large for my horse, and a lone girl on foot could travel far more safely than on horseback. Captain Harraras had let me stable her at his camp. There are advantages to being the colonel’s daughter.

I stopped at the edge of the small grass clearing where we’d dug holes for the rough-hewn tent poles only a month before. The voices inside raged through the canvas. I pictured them gathered. Father and Colonel Azuria would be seated across from each other, a large map stretched across the sawed off log we’d rolled in for a table. Major Pharos would be seated on a mat, eyes closed as he envisioned the entire mountain range in his head. Captain Leora would be sitting on another log stool by the fire, cleaning her musket or sharpening a knife.

From the edge of the clearing, Father’s voice boomed the loudest. “They don’t even know we’re on this side of the mountains. What if they really did come for peace?”

Snorts rang from the opposite side of the tent, and I knew my father was no more likely to win the argument to meet with them than if I had come in waving my poems.

I slipped back several paces into the woods, far enough that the voices faded to an angry murmur, then to nothing at all. I sat on a rotting log, tearing off chunks of the soft, cold bark and crushing them between my fingers. Minutes and then what must have been an hour passed, and I started to wonder if the log would make an adequate bed. It was easier than going back to the tent and facing their barely concealed contempt at my opposition to their war and attempts to get them to stop fighting. To Colonel Azuria, I was a traitor. To the rest, whose lives were less closely entwined with my own, I was an intrusion at best, but far more often ignorant and simple minded. Father had tried to convince them, tried to make them understand that I simply had no interest in the war. And out of respect for his station, they did nothing more than glare at me or stage whisper their opinions to each other.

Hoping they would leave, but knowing they would not now that night had settled and they still seemed no closer to deciding what to do about the peace envoy, I leafed through the leather bound papers. By now, it was too dark to read, but I replayed the words in my head, searching for the sounds and phrases that would make the ideas spring to life.

Perhaps another hour passed and I shivered as the cool night air began sinking through the long sleeves of my wool shirt. Straining my eyes open, I searched against the blackness for a more sheltered resting place. I waved my hand in front of my eyes, but even my fingers were hidden. Wrapping my arms around my legs, I debated. It was too cold to sleep here, but I couldn’t face the war council gathered in the tent. I could stay at Harraras’ camp and return the next evening in hopes that they had left. Captain Harraras would scoff at my inability to find my way home before dark, but it was better than facing their frozen conversations. It was only three kilometers back to Harraras’ camp by the trail, but retracing my footsteps was impossible now. The road lay only a few hundred meters down the hill. It was a longer route, but at least navigable on this cloud-covered night. So long as I climbed steadily downward, it would be easy to find.

It must have taken half an hour trudging through the forest, waving my hands before my face to guard against invisible trees. If I had walked a straight path (I was sure I had) the hill should drop abruptly, sinking into the large ditch flanking the road. I stepped on the edge of a stick, snapping it up to hit my face. I decided to use it to feel the ground ahead of me like a cane. A few minutes later, the stick landed in air. I crept carefully forward, feeling for the drop-off and assuring that it was, indeed, the edge.

Having nearly reached the road, I sat down to rest before the last twenty meters. Sitting there, I heard the voices across the road. We didn’t have many people on this side of the mountains, and I knew them all. These were strangers. I crouched, remembering the angry discussion of the spies that had come in the name of peace. It was then that I heard something else. A little to my right, parallel to the road, a snap, then the slap of a branch against cloth, closer.

Reaching for my dagger, I froze. Had the Isberians heard me coming and sent a scout into the darkness? Did they know of our camp and send an assassin? Another snap. The movements were slow, even for the night. A minute passed. From the other side of the road, the voices continued, muffled but unhindered. My fist and arm ached, and I forced myself to relax them. Minutes that were probably only seconds passed and I could hear footsteps on the soft earth. Three meters. Two meters. I imagined I could see a vague outline towering above me. He faced me directly, shifting slowly from one side to the other as he crept forward. If I waited much longer, he’d see me. One meter.

I lunged.

My head ducked instinctively, protecting my throat. From this angle, his stomach was the best target. The knife struck flesh and I yanked it back, twisting it before striking again. He grunted and stumbled back. I bolted forward to attack again. Then he let out a groan.

I recognized my father’s voice.

Forgetting the enemies on the far side of the road, I cried out.

He could barely speak my name; his voice was already choked.

I yanked off my outer shirt, trying to stop the bleeding, stammering, “I’m sorry,” and, “I love you.” He didn’t speak. I suppose he couldn’t. I kept trying to close the wounds, but the warm blood spurted over my hands. I stayed with him. It wouldn’t have mattered even if I had been able to find my way home. The blood soon stopped.

#

The next morning, as the sun lit the forest, I waited until the group across the road broke camp. They talked and laughed loudly. Unable to stare down at him, I watched. My thoughts alternated between fury at their cheerfulness and the nothingness of disbelief that pulsed from the same place in my stomach that the knife had struck. An ant crept up one of his shoes. I knocked it off with a leaf and then crushed it with the heel of my hand, pounding it again and again.

When my arm grew tired, I shifted and my hand brushed his pocket. Paper crinkled. I pulled it out and forced my eyes to the lines. The writing curved downward as if written in bad light. Boundary—South Fork of Stone River, east to the Straight Canyon. Farmers not to be harassed. Guard posts on Korad’s border. I skimmed the rest of the page. A peace treaty. He hadn’t been speculating during the war council. He’d been trying to buy time to finish the negotiations.

As the sun began to rise toward the treetops, I tried to focus my thoughts. I knew I wouldn’t be able to force the truth out of my mouth. So as I stared between the red puddle and my feet, I composed the story. Finally, only after the sun had marched over the last of the treetops, I walked back. How could the forest have been so dark only a few hours before?

When I reached home, the tent was quiet. For the second time, I stopped to wait outside the clearing. I tried to order my thoughts and rehearse the words. If I said them often enough, would they become true? Instead, they pounded the reality through my head and my vision blurred. I yelled for their attention. No sound came from inside. I raced toward the tent, still yelling as I threw open the flap. Col. Azuria was the first to turn on his mat. He saw me and was on his feet. “What happened?”

“Father… He’s… They… The Isberians. They were camped across the road.” I let my voice trail off. The rest were awake by now, staring in sleep-heavy confusion.

Colonel Azuria took command. What else could one expect from him? He sent half the party to warn the outposts. He and the others followed me to where it had happened. When we reached him, his muscles were stiff and the flies had gathered.

I was raised the daughter of a soldier. It was sights like this that had turned me against the whole lot of them in the first place. But when it’s your own father, it’s not the same. It’s not the same at all.

#

That is the story. The rest has been told at every campfire and gathering since. How the Isberian troop was captured that day and executed that night, claiming innocence and ignorance the whole time. I was there, watching with teeth clenched in feigned hatred as they were tied against the wall and the shots rang out. The oath I swore standing over my father’s grave has long since spread through the camps. With Colonel Azuria and even Lord Iscah himself at the funeral, how could I do anything else?

Now, looking back, my cell doesn’t seem nearly as cold as did that night, nor is it as dark. I wonder still if I will send this letter. Would it be believed, or has the battle gone on so long that the cause has been lost to the fight? Were I standing in front of some statue, I would yell that there could be nothing to justify giving up the war. That we should fight on—must fight on—no matter the cost. But I am not standing before a sculpture carved in rock. I am sitting on a cold slab in a stone cell thinking of the past. And the pacifist that I once was, and the coward that I want not to be, and the pacifist that I wish to become again, compels me to write. I pray I will send this letter, but the habits of cowardice don’t die nearly as easily as the ideals of pacifism.

This story is a prequel to a “Learning To Fight”, published in Kzine, issue 10. Available from Amazon here: Kzine Issue 10.

—

Dawn Lloyd is an American who got bored and set out across the world looking for adventure. Four continents and six countries later, she teaches at St. Constantine’s International School in Tanzania.  More information about her adventures can be found at http://dawnlloyd.wikispaces.com/ .  Her work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in a variety of magazines including Space and Time, Triangulation:  Last Contact, and Metaphorosis.

She is the Editor in Chief of The Colored Lens speculative magazine, www.thecoloredlens.com.