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He pulled his helmet off and set it on the ground. The river bank was covered in a low, soft ground cover, somewhat like short clover, under the shade of a massive jungle giant. It was as comfortable a place as any on the planet to deal with bleak despair.
"I didn't know what the relationship was between my mother and the bastard formerly known as 'my father,' " he said. "But I did know that wondering what the relationship was, and blaming myself for whatever it wasn't, had to be the worst way for a kid to grow up. And there are places in the Empire where it matters how 'pure' you've been, and I had to think about that, too. Most people think I never gave a good goddamn about my obligations as a prince, but that's not true, either. Of course, it's not surprising they think that way-I managed to screw up those obligations, too, after all. But that didn't mean I didn't care, or that I didn't recognize that the risk was too great for me to justify fooling around."
"At all?" the incredulous sergeant asked. "For how long? And, I mean, uh ..."
"I lost my virginity when I was fifteen. To a younger daughter of the Duke of New Antioch. A very ambitious daughter."
"I've heard about that one," Despreaux said carefully. The "scene" was a minor legend in the Emperor's Own and the cause of one of the few resignations of a company commander in its history. "And I've heard that nobody had ever seen you 'with' anyone else. But, I mean, what do you-I mean, that's a looong time."
"Yes, it is. Thank you for pointing that out."
"It's not good for you, you know," the Marine said. "It's not healthy. You can develop an enlarged prostate even while you're young. Sure, they can fix it, but prevention is a much, much better alternative."
"Do I really have to discuss the details of my non-sex life with you?" the prince asked. "Especially right now?"
"No, you don't," Despreaux admitted. "But didn't anybody ever talk to you about it? Didn't you have a counselor?"
"Oh, sure. Plenty of them. And they all took the same position: I needed to release my bonds to my father, put my sense of his betrayal of me behind me, and take responsibility for my own life. This is referred to as 'reality therapy' or 'quit being such a fucking whiner.' Which would have worked real well, except that it wasn't my father I resented the hell out of."
"Oh." The sergeant tugged at an earlobe. "That has to be weird. Everybody in the Empire regards the Empress like, well, like a goddess, I guess."
"Yep," Roger said bitterly. "Everyone but her son. I never, ever forgave her for the fact that I didn't have a dad. She at least could have remarried or something. I finally figured out that was one of the reasons I went into sports-look at all those father figures."
"Oh," Despreaux said again, and then, very, very carefully, "And Kostas?"
"Sort of," Roger said with something halfway between a chuckle and a sob, then drew a deep breath. "Kostas was hard to see as the kind of larger-than-life pattern kids want in their fathers, I guess. But in every other way that counted, he was the closest I ever got. Could have gotten, maybe. He was always there when I needed him ... and I wasn't there when he needed me. Of course."
Despreaux's arms twitched as she listened to his ragged breathing, but she made herself pause and think very carefully about what she was going to do. The intensity of Roger's emotions, and the jagged edges of his grief and self-hatred hit her like a fist, and she was more than a little frightened by the dark, pain-filled depths which stretched out before her. But fear was only a part of what she felt, and not the greatest part, and so, finally, she gave a slight shrug and gently took the rifle out of his hands and set it on the ground. Wordlessly, she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him down to lie with his head on her lap ... and ran her fingers through his sweaty hair as he began, very quietly, to cry.
Her own eyes burned, and she wondered how many lonely years it had been since he had ever let anyone see him weep. Her heart ached with the need to reach out to him, but she was a Marine, a warrior. She knew what needed to be said, but not how to say it, and so she crooned wordlessly to him, instead, and somehow, he seemed to understand the words she couldn't find.
"I don't know what to do, Nimashet," he told her. "I ... I just can't kill anybody else. I've killed so many of you already. I just can't do that anymore."
"You didn't kill anybody, Roger," she said gently, the words coming at last because she needed them so very badly. "We're Marines. We all volunteered for the Corps, and we volunteered again for the Empress' Own. We knew the score when we signed up, and we could've quit at any time."
"You didn't sign up to be marooned on a planet full of four-armed barbarians while trying to protect a deadbeat prince!"
She smiled, and if that smile was a bit misty, that was her own business.
"Not a deadbeat-more like a dead-shot. Your Highness, there are so many ways to die as a Marine that it's not really fu
"Kostas didn't sign up to be a Marine," he said softly. "He didn't sign on to die."
"People die all the time, Roger." The sergeant combed the tangles out of his hair with her fingers. "They die in aircar accidents, and of old age. They die from too much parsan, and from falling in the shower. They die in shipwrecks, and from radiation poisoning, and by drowning. Kostas didn't have a monopoly on dying."
"He had a monopoly on dying from my mistake," Roger said in tones of quiet, utter bitterness. "I made a simple request and didn't think about the consequences. How many times have I done that-and not just to him? How many times on this march have you Marines been put in jeopardy-or killed-because of my stupid actions? My stupid unthinking actions?"
"Quite a few," Despreaux said. "But I think you're being a bit unfair to yourself. For one thing, I've talked to Turkol and Chim. You didn't ask Kostas to get you water; he offered. I know, I know," she said, laying one hand lightly across his mouth in what wasn't quite a caress. "That doesn't change what he was doing, or the fact that-just like always-he was doing it for you. But I think it does matter that it was his choice, not yours. And while we're on the subject of fairness, do you really think Kostas didn't know about the risks? Know the jungle is dangerous? Roger, he was along for every single step of the march. He was the one who oversaw the mahouts butchering the damncrocs when you and Julian had that shoot-off crossing the damned river before Voitan-you think he didn't know they lived in rivers? For God's sake, he's the one who was on safari with you on all those godforsaken planets none of the rest of us ever even heard of!"
"What are you saying? That it was his fault?"
"I'm saying it wasn't anyone's fault. Not his, not yours. He went to perform a routine task-not just for you, but for Chim Pri-and somehow, for some reason, he was too distracted to pay attention. It happens, Roger. It happens all the time, every day of our lives. It's just that here on Marduk, if your attention wanders at the wrong moment, you end up dead. You didn't kill him, and he didn't kill himself-the fucking planet did."
"And the Marines? What about them?" Roger demanded in a harsh, almost spiteful tone.
"Two things," Despreaux told him calmly. "One, every time you've 'put us in jeopardy' it was a relative danger. This planet is no place for a right-thinking Marine who wants to die in bed, preferably while getting a leg-over, but you didn't pick it, and you certainly didn't order us to come here. Second, a lot of those 'stupid unthinking actions' are the reason we love you. Looking at it sensibly, I guess it really isn't very smart of you, but you just throw yourself at the enemy and keep moving forward until you come out on the other side, and in some ways, Marines aren't all that different from Mardukans. We know the object is to kill the other guy and come home afterward, and we don't have any use at all for officers who keep hanging themselves-and us-out just to prove what great big brass ones they have. But for all that, we respond to COs who lead us a thousand times better than we do to those who send us out ahead. And whatever other faults you may have, we've discovered on this shit ball of a planet that you're one hell of a leader. You've got a lot to learn, maybe, about thinking your way through problems-I swear, if you ever faced a Rasthaus wartbeast, you'd throw yourself into its mouth and try to tu
"Seriously?" Roger rolled over on his back and looked up at her, and she stroked his face and smiled.
"Seriously. The only thing a Marine truly hates is a coward. Hold still." She leaned down and kissed him. It was a hell of a bend, but she was limber, and Roger released her lips reluctantly.
"What are we doing? And how did we get from Kostas to here?"
"What? They didn't cover that in the Academy?" she asked with a soft laugh. "Call it the desire for life renewal in the face of death. A strong desire. The need to hold back the ferryman in the only way we know." She paused and ran a hand down his side. "Ten years, huh?"
Roger sat up and wrapped his arms around her. As he did, he noted that his tactful bodyguards had discreetly withdrawn out of sight of himself and their squad leader. Which made him wonder what would happen if another damncroc, assuming there were any left in the entire river after his extermination efforts, slipped up out of the water while they were engaged. Which made him wonder where his cavalry detachment had gotten to. He remembered giving the infantry to Ther Ganau, which made him wonder who was covering the supply convoys.
Which made him groan.
"What?" Despreaux asked huskily.
"Oh, God, Nimashet. We just don't have time. Where's my cavalry? How are Rus From's engineers doing at Sindi? What's happening with Rastar? Are the barges all in place, and who in hell is covering Ther's caravans?"
Her eyes flared, and she grabbed him by the front of his chameleon suit.