Into The Darkness

He wasn't one of the first men back out to the parade ground. But he wasn't one of the last men out, either, the men at whom his superiors screamed. He enjoyed people screaming at him no more than he enjoyed endless practice. Practice he couldn't escape. He could keep people from screaming at him, could and did.

"Form by companies!" Colonel Ombruno shouted: a useless order, since the regiment always formed by companies. "Form by companies, and report to your designated practice locations."

The company commanders shepherded the men off to their own areas.

Soon, when a new practice field combined all those areas, they would work together. In the meanwhile…

In the meanwhile, the company commanders got to puff out their chests and strut, like so many pigeons trying to impress mates. Captain Larbino's strut and his shouted orders did not impress Tealdo: he was no dimwitted female pigeon. But he had to obey, which a female pigeon did not.

Larbino led his company to a cramped underground chamber that had two stairways leading down into it, one broad, the other narrow. The men entered the chamber by the broad stairway. Only a few lanterns, stinking of fish oil, cast a dim, flickering glow there. "Powers above, it's like failing back through a thousand years of time," Tealdo muttered.

"Take your places!" Larbino's loud voice dinned in the small, crowded chamber. "Five minutes till the exercise begins! Take your places! No mercy on any man who's out of place when the whistle blows." [..is re out re. hen e. It ting ot a t he nors rder, nies, areas. ould chests at had . The terns, e, it's ed. wded es! No..]

The soldiers were already taking their places. They had been doing this for three weeks. They knew, or were convinced they knew, at least as much about their part of the operation as did Larbino. They formed a single serpentine line that led to the bottom of the narrow stairway and kinked at each earthen wall. Seen from above, it would have looked like a long string of gut twisted to fit into the abdominal cavity.

Shrill and deafeningly loud, the brass whistle screeched. "I love running in full kit," Trasone said through the blast, and then, in a lower voice, "In a pig's arse I do." Tealdo chuckled. He felt the same way.

"Out! Out! Out!" Larbino was screaming. "They'll be blazing at you when you do this for real! Don't stand around playing with yourselves."

"I'd rather be playing with myself than doing this," Tealdo said. He didn't think anyone heard him. The line was uncoiling rapidly as soldier after soldier dashed up the narrow stairs. They'd had dreadful tangles the first few times they tried it. They'd got better with practice. Tealdo declined to [..adnu't...] that, even to himself

His feet thudded on the timbers of the narrow stairway. Up he went.

Anyone who tripped here was a cork in the bottle for everyone behind him. Panfilo had a more expressive term for it: as far as he was concerned, anyone who tripped on the narrow stairway was a dead man.

Tealdo emerged into daylight. Before long, they'd be running the exercise at night, which would make it even more delightful. He dashed to a broad plank that spanned a deep trench and raced across it. Two men from his company had fallen into the trench. One managed to escape without being hurt. The other broke his leg.

Cloth flags on stakes marked the narrow way he and his comrades had to take. He rushed along that narrow way till it suddenly widened out.

Where it did, buildings - or rather, false fronts - defined streets through which they had to run. Soldiers with uncharged sticks "fought" from those false fronts, trying to impede the company's progress. Umpires with green ribbons tied to their tunic sleeves signaled theoretical casualties.

Tealdo "blazed" back at the defenders. One after another, the umpires ruled them deceased. But Tealdo's comrades were taken out of action, too. He rather hoped he would be, as had happened during a couple of practice runs. Then he could lie down and grab a breather, and no sergeant would be able to complain.

But, at the umpires' whim, he was allowed to survive. Panting, he raced left, right, and then left again before coming to the gateway for whose capture his company was responsible. More soldiers tried to keep the company from seizing the gate. The umpires ruled those soldiers failed and fell.

The egg one of Captain Larbino's soldiers set against the gateway was only a wooden simulacrum. An umpire's whistle blew, signaling a blast of energy. A couple of defenders, miraculously revived from their "deaths", opened the gate to let the "survivors" of the company inside.

More narrow ways lay beyond, some as twisted as the paths in a maze.

Still more soldiers tried to keep Tealdo and his comrades from passing those ways to the end. Again, they failed. More whistles shrilled. Tealdo raised a weary cheer. He and enough of the other soldiers had reached the end of the practice area to have succeeded were this actual battle.