The Long War

He heard Jansson, evidently distressed. ‘Joshua? I’m sorry. Sally did talk about you as an emissary. They must have planned this. We never suspected they’d treat you like this—’

He heard no more, as what felt like a very heavy fist slammed into the back of his head, smashing his face into the dirt, and the option to step vanished anyhow.

And the pain began, slicing, piercing, and he fell into oblivion.

64

WHEN HE WOKE, he was sitting on some kind of hard chair, slumped forward. The pain in his back was exquisite, a tapestry.

A face floated before him. A dog, a wolf . . . It showed tenderness.

It was the one called Li-Li. She peered at him, lifted one eyelid with a leathery finger-like extension of one paw. Then she growled, ‘Sorr-hrry.’ She backed away.

Now Sally was here, standing before him.

Beyond her he could make out a room, a big chamber, stone walls and floor, well-built, roomy, drab, undecorated. The air was full of the scent of dog. There were other people here. And dogs. His head was clearing, slowly; he felt like he’d been drugged.

‘Joshua. Don’t step.’

He focused on her with difficulty. ‘Sally?’

‘Don’t step. Whatever you do, don’t step. Well, you’re here at last. You took some tracking down, you and the professional Irishman here, in your travel-trailer in the sky. But I see the clue I had to leave finally percolated through your brain.’

‘The ring . . .’

‘Yes, the ring.’

‘Why’s it so important, suddenly?’

‘You’ll see. Sorry.’

‘Sorry? Why? And why the hell not step?’ He was mumbling, he discovered.

She took his cheeks in her hands, making him face her. He tried to remember the last time she had touched him, save by the scruff of the neck to rescue him from some calamity or other, such as from the wreck of the Pennsylvania. ‘Because if you do, you’ll die.’

He guessed, ‘My back?’

‘It’s a kind of staple, Joshua.’

That was Jansson. He looked around, blearily. He saw Jansson sitting on the ground by the wall, a beefy-looking dog standing over her.

He said, ‘A staple? Like the North Koreans. An iron staple through the hearts of prisoners. So if they step away—’

‘Yeah. In your case it’s a cruder variant, of a type used by some warlords in central Asia, we think. Joshua, don’t sit back. There’s a kind of crossbow fixed to your back. It’s just wood and stone and sinew, but it has an iron pin. You can walk around, you understand? But if you step away—’

‘The pin stays behind, and boing. The bow fires, and the bolt goes straight through the heart, right? I get it.’ He began to drum the message into his own head. Don’t step. Don’t step. He felt at his chest. Under the ruin of his shirt he found a stout leather band. ‘What’s to stop me just cutting this off?’

‘First, that would set it off,’ Sally said. ‘And, second, they sewed the weapon to your skin. I mean it’s supported by the strap around your chest, but . . .’

‘They sewed it?’

‘Sorr-hrry, sorr-hrry,’ Li-Li said. ‘Order-hrrs . . . here.’ She brought Joshua a carved wooden mug, plain but smoothly shaped.

It contained a lukewarm, meaty broth. He drank gratefully. He found he was hungry, thirsty. He couldn’t be that badly hurt. ‘Orders, eh?’

‘It’s not her fault,’ Jansson said. ‘She’s a kind of doctor, I think. She tried to do the work cleanly, competently. Gave you some kind of painkillers. If it had been left to others – Joshua, I’m sorry. I didn’t know they were going to jump you like that.’

‘Nothing you could have done, I suspect, Lieutenant Jansson.’

‘We have a plan, of sorts. Or had one before you showed up. We’ve been trying to adapt . . .’

Sally said, ‘We’re second-guessing the motivation of non-human sapients. We weren’t expecting them to treat you like this. Maybe this is what passes for diplomacy, among beagles. Just attack the ambassador when he shows up. However the staple is our technology, after all. Humans invented this stuff to control other humans.’

Joshua grunted, ‘So I’m learning a moral lesson. But somebody brought it here, right? And somebody had to show these dogs—’

‘Beagles,’ Sally said.

‘How to manufacture the iron components.’

‘That would-ss be me. Hell-llo, pathless-ss one . . .’

Joshua looked around, more carefully, systematically. There was a row of dogs – beagles? – standing as if to attention over one of their number lying on a kind of scrap of lawn, green growing grass, like a carpet. Sally was standing before him, Jansson and Bill sitting on the floor, against one wall. And, in another corner, with a dog guard hovering over him—

‘Finn McCool. I’ve seen you looking better.’