The Truth about Orlik

When it was reported that a lead mine had been discovered in the Galorian foothills, I was tempted to warn potential speculators that the prospectors had probably discovered, splashed into the crevices in the quartz, a few of the many tons of ammunition we wasted there when Orlik "heroically subdued" the mountaineers, 35 years ago.

They made him a general after that, and later a marshal; and now we have an Orlik Square, with a bronze statue of him in the middle of it. At the time of the Mount Galoria operation, he was colonel in command of the 47th Battalion of Heavy Infantry, and I was adjutant. It has occurred to me that my opinion of Orlik may have been overcolored by the impatience and intolerance of youth. But time has not modified it. I have been young, and now I am old, and I have yet to encounter a more heartbreaking example of soulless ineptitude than is offered by Marshal Orlik.

As a soldier, he was a dolt. In another profession--the law, perhaps, or the Church--his kind of witlessness might have passed as juridical exactitude, or shone as canonical probity. I can even picture him in politics, as grand old man of some dying group of diehard reactionaries. In the army, in peacetime, he was a useful man in a training depot where recruits are drilled to perfection for full-dress parades. But in combat, Orlik the monocled martinet was a pestiferous nuisance.

Galoria provides a case in point.

I shall say what I have to say of the high command in another place. It is common (continued on page 302)Truth About Orlik(continued from page 165) knowledge that we were outgeneraled, outmaneuvered, outwitted, outclassed--everything but outnumbered--and deserved to be cut to tassels. Some of us half hoped that we might be; the best of officers is apt to feel that way when orders make neither rhyme nor reason.

A child playing tag could have countered the tactics whereby the 47th Battalion was cut off at Galoria. The enemy led Orlik to believe that he had tempted them out into the open. (I do not say "led us to believe"; the very drummer boys were not deceived.) The fighting on the plateau was fitful and sporadic. I saw that, yard by yard, we were being drawn forward, and mentioned this to Orlik. "I am well aware of it, Major," he said. "We shall charge them at the mouth of Galor Pass and wipe them out in the valley."

I said, "But, sir, Galor Pass, so-called, is not a pass at all, but a cul-de-sac."

"You are mistaken. Ordnance survey has it distinctly as a pass."

"Reconnaissance insists it's a blind alley," I said.

"Ordnance is quite clear on the point. And even if it were a cul-de-sac, Major? So much the better. We shall have them in a trap--one thousand heavy infantry, fully equipped, to their four hundred irregulars. We shall overwhelm them, Major."

In the late afternoon, the Galorians broke and ran. Orlik ordered a charge, and we pursued them through a short, narrow defile, down into a kind of stony amphitheater, roughly oval, about a mile long and half a mile across at its widest part. Ordnance was right; Galor was a pass--for mountaineers who can climb like goats. And reconnaissance was right; Galor was a cul-de-sac--for booted infantrymen. We fired volley after volley after them as they swarmed up the cliffs in the fading light, and brought down half a dozen. Then they were gone. As cease-fire sounded, there was a tremendous explosion in our rear, and a rumble of falling rock.

The Galorians had blown up the mouth of the defile. That is to say, they had toppled down a huge mass of overhanging stone from the lip of a high precipice, and so caught the 47th Battalion bodily; lock, stock and barrel; bag and baggage.

"Well, sir?" I said to Orlik.

He said, "Tomorrow we must look about us and, if necessary, fortify and hold our position until relieved."

"Hold our position, sir?" I said. "Our position is holding us."

"We may congratulate ourselves on having got in our ammunition, provisions and medical supplies," said he.

"I rather imagine, sir, that the Galorians particularly wanted us to bring these things--held the door open for them, so to speak."

"Are you insinuating that I walked into a trap, Major Hieron?"

"I insinuate nothing, sir," I said. "I merely indicate that we are trapped."

"We will fortify and hold until relieved," said Orlik.

I discussed the matter, then, with the lieutenant colonel of engineers, who swore bitterly and said, "What does the madman want? Abatis, scarps and counterscarps, palisades, fraises, parapets and banquettes--or something? Where does he think we are? I can fill a few hundred sandbags if he likes, by scraping these rocks. But...goddamn it all, man, doesn't he know the first thing about the Galorians?"

"Not if it isn't in the official handbooks."

"That sortie of theirs, today, was a joke. It isn't their style at all. A firm rest and a long, cool shot--that's their specialty. You've heard tales of their marksmanship, I dare say?"

I said, "I've heard that at the age of eleven, a Galorian boy is sent out alone with a rifle and four rounds of ammunition. He is expected to bring home a wild goat, a bear, and an eagle shot on the wing. The fourth round is in case of emergencies. If the boy comes home with less than the prescribed bag, he is horribly humiliated. So I've heard."

"It's true. They use a small hard-nosed bullet and a whacking great charge of powder. Half a mile is spitting distance to a Galorian sharpshooter. Did you hear any bullets whistling past your ear today?"

"Now that I come to think of it, no."

"You wouldn't have, because they simply don't miss. They aren't a bloodthirsty people. They just want our ammunition, and some sugar and flour and stuff. That ape of an Orlik has violated what they call 'immemorial usage.' Everybody who passes this way gives the Galorians something or other--if only a handful of salt. It wouldn't be too late now, I imagine."

"I can just see Orlik 'paying tribute' to mountaineers!" I said.

"Well," said the engineer, "we don't stand a dog's chance. We can't climb those cliffs, and it'll take me a month to shift that rockfall. The quartermaster tells me we have grub enough for about a fortnight, stretching it a bit...There's plenty of water, if that's any consolation. Listen, Hieron, why don't you have an accident cleaning your pistol, and shoot him in the head? We'll stand by you."

"I can't," I said. "Much as I personally despise the man, I've sworn my oath."

"I was only joking," the lieutenant colonel said. But I knew that he was not joking.

• • •

As the sun came over the rim of the stone fish kettle in which we were imprisoned, a brown-clad man seemed to run like a fly down the sheer face of the rock, and came toward us. He was a typical Galorian--tall, thin, pale-eyed and dignified--but was unarmed. In the lingua franca of the Combined Nations, he asked to speak to our commander. Colonel Orlik looked at him with distaste and asked him what he wanted.

The Galorian said, "You have violated our neutrality, but perhaps it was a mistake. You have killed one hundred and three of our men. We shall therefore kill one hundred and three of your men--no less, but no more. Then, if you will pay us a little compensation, we will convey you with ropes over the cliffs and set you down safely on the western plateau."

"What?" shouted Colonel Orlik.

"A hundred thousand rounds of ammunition, and whatever salt, sugar, flour and tobacco you can spare. If you wish us not to take life for life, you will please pay us double this quantity of goods."

Orlik said, "A lucky day, indeed, when a colonel of the Combined Nations discusses terms with a dirty hillman! Take him away."

"But, sir, please to reconsider. Your main column is twenty days' march away. Tomorrow, the next day, it will be engaged, left, right and center by shock troops of the Allied Powers--with artillery. You cannot be relieved for a month, two months; and if we choose, we can--

"Not another word! If you were not a messenger, I'd have you shot like a dog. Away with him!"

The Galorian sighed, bowed and left the tent.

Two hours later, the sniping began. There never was such marksmanship. Between seven o'clock and noon, the Galorians fired some 40 shots from extreme range, and every shot told. We counted 36 dead--shot clean through the head--and 4 wounded. I told the company commanders to let their men reply with an occasional volley, for morale's sake; but it was powder and shot thrown away. The mountaineers were picking us off at their leisure. Soon, the entire battalion was cringing behind whatever cover we could improvise, praying for nightfall. The lieutenant colonel of engineers said to me, "Orlik really is out of his mind. He's walking around with the executive sergeant, poking his fingers into messtins and asking, 'Any complaints?' It's all over the battalion that he could settle for some ammo and provisions, and the temper of the men's ugly, damned ugly."

An old senior captain said, "I can hold my fellows another day, perhaps two. After that, I can't answer for 'em. I hope I know my duty; but frankly, Adjutant, my heart isn't in this. It's womanish perversity, wanton waste of life!"

I told him that he was wasting his breath. "Law and tradition will justify our staying and getting wiped out; whereas capitulation is open to criticism. You've been in hopeless situations before. Make the best of this one. Keep your men to whatever dead ground you can find, and keep your fingers crossed."

The senior captain growled that it was not a question of making the best of a bad job. "Orlik hasn't merely thrown us away--he's given the enemy a new ally, and a valuable ally; and he's lost us the whole campaign, most likely."

The captain of reconnaissance said, "I've been over this terrain with a fine comb, and there's no way out. I could climb some of those cliffs if I were making a holiday of it, with alpenstocks and ropes, and hooks and stuff. But not otherwise. For God's sake, Hieron, see what you can do with Orlik. Otherwise, we'll have no alternative but to protest enmasse, every man jack of us officers. Do something--anything!"

By the end of the following day, our casualties numbered 103.

The sniping stopped. The thin brown mountaineer came into camp again and, bowing to Orlik, said, "The blood count is even. Must this go on, sir? We can still be friends."

Orlik replied, "Go back and tell your verminous friends that if they do not show us a way out of this rattrap, I shall come up there and kill every male member of your tribe over the age of fourteen. Go!"

This brings me to that part of the Galorian affair to which I am the only living witness, and concerning which I have until now kept a tight mouth.

• • •

The battalion executive sergeant came to me and gave me a bit of paper upon which one Rifleman Sant, No. 228-9892, had written a request for a private interview with the commanding officer. The document was initialed by the company sergeant and the company officer. According to procedure--upon which Orlik insisted even in these circumstances--I, as adjutant, was to have Sant marched in and then, if I saw fit, put him on C.O.'s orders.

I said, "Any idea of what this man wants, Executive Sergeant?"

"No, sir. According to regulations, the man's entitled to a private interview. Legally entitled."

"Yes. Is he one of these barrack-room lawyers? He'd better not be, for his own sake, you know."

"Yes, sir, I know. No, sir, I don't think he is. I'm told he's funny in the head."

"In what way?"

"He has dreams, sir, that sometimes come true."

"Piffle!"

"Yes, sir. It seems he's had a dream about the commanding officer. Won't say what it is, sir, but insists it's very important."

"Do his dreams come true, Executive Sergeant?"

"I don't know, sir. They say so. But a rifleman will say anything."

"March him in, anyway."

Sant marched in smartly enough and stood at attention, a big blond fellow with a great broad face and simple gray eyes. I said to him, "You must first state your business to me."

"Sir." He looked troubled. "Permission to speak, sir?"

"Go on, man, go on."

"It's about a dream I had last night, sir."

"Last night. June third. Proceed. But if this is frivolous, I'll have your hide."

"Yes, sir. I dreamed that I was walking about the camp here with you, sir. Only I wasn't me--I was Colonel Orlik."

"Oh, indeed? And what were you thinking of?"

The man's embarrassment was painful to see. He said, "Nothing, sir. I was trying to think of something, but I couldn't think of anything at all. I...it was only in the dream, sir...I, I mean the colonel, was thinking of my mother. Beg pardon, sir; I was saying to myself, 'Mummy, help me, help me,' and playing with a picture of an old lady."

"You are out of your mind."

"Yes, sir. The picture was in a locket. My identity disk on a gold chain was a locket. My identity disk on a gold chain was a locket, and this colored picture of this pretty old lady inside it was my mother. My hands were behind my back, and I was turning the locket round and round, and saying, 'Mummy, help me.' You, sir, excuse me, sir, were walking behind me. We went left, and then right to where some new sandbags were up, and I noticed that one of the top bags was torn. The dirt had run out and there was a kind of hollow place on top, about as big as my two hands. And I said, 'Slovenly, that!' Then my identity bracelet fell off and came open. You picked it up and handed it to me. I said, 'That is a portrait of my mother, Major Hieron.' Then I turned to look over the parapet where the bag was torn..."

I asked, "And then?"

"Then I wasn't there anymore. I was somebody else, somewhere else, thinking in a different language."

"What language?"

"I don't know, sir. I was only thinking in it. I was--I'm sorry, sir, it was only in the dream--a Galorian, up there in the rocks. But I was an outlaw Galorian, a thief, one of a little tribe of bandits, sir. And I was hidden in the rocks, looking down the barrel of a long rifle. The sun was at my back, and going down, and I was thinking to myself that soon it wouldn't be light enough to shoot by; but I'd killed five of us that day, I was thinking. I was uncomfortable, sir, and thirsty. I had been eating goat-meat sausage and sheep's-milk cheese, and drinking some kind of honey beer, and I wanted a cold drink of water. I looked at that little waterfall at the narrow end of this valley, sir, and wanted some of it."

"And woke up thirsty, I dare say?"

"No, sir. I found myself laughing to myself and thinking what fools we--the 47th Heavies, sir--were. What fools we were. And what fools the other Galorians were, too. Because I knew a secret only the outlaws knew. I saw in my mind's eye--that is, the mind's eye of the person I was inside of in my dream--the back of the waterfall. Behind the waterfall I saw a cave with two branches. One branch--the one on the right--led down into an underground lake. But the other went up and up. Thousands and thousands of years ago, the people who built the ruined temple above the citadel--"

I said, "What the devil is the man talking about?"

"Beg pardon, sir," he said. "I knew that above the citadel up there, there's a ruined temple, avoided because it is haunted. The people who built that, ever so long ago, cut a back way in and out of the temple, leading to a long, long cave that led right down the mountain to here, sir. They even cut steps in the rock, sir. The cave leads from here to a stone door in the courtyard of the temple. The bandit tribe know of it, sir--it's their secret, handed down from father to son. But nobody else knows. And so I was thinking that if the people in the valley knew about this, they could come up quietly by night and a couple of hundred men could take Galoria. Then I saw a star."

"What star?"

"I was looking down my rifle, toward our camp, sir; and just at the top of a parapet of sandbags, where there was a tiny little hollow, I saw a gold star, which I knew was a badge on an officer's helmet. My sights were on this star, sir. My rifle was on a rest of rock, and perfectly steady. I couldn't miss. I fired, and as I fired I knew that my bullet would hit that star dead center...And then I--me, myself, you see, sir--I knew that that star was the colonel's star, and the mountaineer's bullet had hit it clean in the middle and gone right through."

"And then?"

"Then I woke up, sir."

"And you felt a need to tell us all about this, is that it?"

"I don't know, sir...I just thought..."

"You thought what?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Do you often dream like that?"

"Sometimes, sir."

"And...?"

"I don't know, sir."

I thought, It doesn't take a fortuneteller to interpret that dream of yours, my friend. You want to get out of this valley. I don't blame you. You want to shoot the colonel. I don't blame you. I said, "You are a half-witted fool. You will keep this balderdash to yourself and not repeat it to a living soul."

"Yes, sir."

"It is lucky for you that I do not permit you to take up the commanding officer's morning with this tripe. He'd put you on field punishment for wasting his time."

"Yes, sir."

"Report to the medical officer and ask him to give you a powerful purgative."

"Yes, sir."

"Fall in!"

When the rifleman was gone, the executive sergeant said, "I warned him to think better of it, sir."

"A fine time for dreaming!"

"Those were my words to the man, sir."

We listened. The 47th was pouring bullets into the surrounding crags. Tension was drawing tighter. The executive sergeant said, "We can't take very many more days of this, sir, can we?"

I said, "I am sure that Colonel Orlik has a plan maturing."

"Yes, sir," said he, knowing as well as I that, behind Orlik's square, stern, handsome, brooding face, there was something like the Nothing the rifleman had felt in his dream.

Late that afternoon, Orlik said to me, "Let us have a look at our defenses." He led me from barricade to makeshift barricade. It was impossible not to envy his air of assured knowledge and his confident demeanor. He strode ahead, his hands behind him under the skirt of his tunic. We were approaching H Company's lines when I saw something flash and heard it tinkle on the dusty ground.

"Excuse me, sir," I said, and stooped to pick it up. It was Orlik's identity bracelet. The chain was of gold, as I had often observed; but I had never guessed that the tag was a hinged locket. It had come open in falling, and I saw that it contained a pretty miniature, in oils, of a doll-like old lady, all pink and silvery white, with turquoise eyes.

As I handed it to him he reddened, snapped the locket shut, replaced the bracelet on his right wrist and said, coloring slightly, "That is a portrait of my mother, Major Hieron."

"A most charming--" I began.

But Orlik shouted, "Hey! What's this? What the devil's this?" And he pointed to one of the top sandbags on a parapet. It had been carelessly packed, in the first place. Now, a rip in the sacking had let out a quantity of earth, so that the bag was slightly indented in the middle. As a sergeant sprang to attention, and several riflemen stood, staring, Orlik said, "Slovenly! Slovenly!"

As he turned back to the parapet to point, I said, "Pardon me, sir. May I borrow your helmet for a moment?" Instinct made me blurt it out; if I had thought twice, I might have kept silent. He took off his helmet and handed it to me. Orlik preferred to be seen bareheaded, having a lofty, leonine head. Feeling slightly foolish, I hung the helmet on the little vinewood cane officers always carried in those days, and raised it to cover the indentation in the sandbag.

Orlik opened his mouth to speak, but then there was a loud clank! as of a cowbell, and the helmet went spinning away. A soldier picked it up and brought it back to Orlik, who turned it over and over in his hands. A mountaineer's bullet had struck it in the center of the gold-painted star in front and passed right through. Orlik said, "You see the danger of slovenliness. You see the necessity of keeping your heads down. I hope this demonstration convinces you." And they gaped at him as if he had arranged the whole matter.

Walking on, carrying the perforated helmet by its chin strap (the ragged edge of the bullet hole in front would have scratched his forehead), he said, "I'll have it filed smooth, but I shall leave the holes. It will be a memento."

I think I knew, in that moment, that Orlik was earmarked for the Hall of Fame. I simply said, "After sunset, Colonel, I think I'll sniff around a little with reccy."

He said, "Yes, Hieron, try your luck with reconnaissance, by all means. But take care. I can't afford to lose you just yet."

"Thanks," I said, and went to see the captain. I said to him, "Reccy, I have an idea, a wild idea. Something about that waterfall--perhaps the way it falls, I don't know what--suggests to my mind the possibility of a cave behind it. Can we go and look?"

He replied, "I don't see why not. I've often come across caves behind waterfalls. I don't see what good it'd do us if there were such a cave. Still, let's go and have a look."

After dark, the mountaineers fired only at exposed lights. We made our way to the waterfall at the narrow end of the valley. The reconnaissance captain went through the waterfall first, with a rope about his waist and a waterproof ground sheet over his head. I followed. We found ourselves in a low, damp cave. The falling water formed a curtain behind which it was safe to strike a light.

"Goddamn me to hell!" cried reccy. "Do you see what I see?"

I said, "I see stairs."

"Come on, then!"

Thus, before dawn, I shook Orlik awake and whispered, "I've found a way through. Beyond the waterfall--a series of passages that lead up to a place with-in the walls of the Galoria citadel itself! Let me pick three hundred men and I can take it tomorrow night."

"Why only three hundred?" he asked.

"Because," I said, "if the Galorians see that the whole battalion has disappeared, they'll wonder where to. Let the majority keep up a noisy fire from down here. Pretend to storm one of the slopes. When I break out our flag up there, then you follow with the rest--"

"Yes, yes, yes," said this extraordinary fellow, testily, as if I were interrupting some well-conceived train of thought. "Yes, yes, yes. I had considered that. It is a question of detail, of detail, of that minute detail without close attention to which the most deeply laid plan may miscarry..."

So I planted the green-and-gold banner of the Combined Nations in the Galorian citadel. Orlik followed with the rest of the 47th Heavy Infantry.

And in Galoria, Orlik and I quarreled. His imbecile condescension was more than I could bear. I said to him, at last, "You utter ass, you are not even entitled to wear those holes in your sillyhelmet! I wish I had dropped dead before I remembered Sant's dream and acted on it!"

"Remembered what?"

I told him, then, of that strange double-bodied--or disembodied--vision of Rifleman Sant on the night of June third. He said, "And Executive Sergeant Allory was a witness to this most unlikely business, Major Hieron?"

"He was."

"Inconveniently for you, he was killed in the first assault on the citadel."

"Are you calling me a liar, sir?"

"No, no. I think you are a little excited. You have no other witnesses, then?"

"There's Sant himself, of course, if he's still alive."

Orlik sent for an executive sergeant. "Find one Rifleman Sant."

"That would be the one they call 'Dreamer' Sant, sir? H Company. Number 228-9892."

I said, "That is he."

Sant came at last. "Stand easy," said Orlik. "Major Hieron tells me that you have been in the habit of dreaming about me. Eh?"

"Not in the habit, sir. Only that once."

"Only which once?"

Sant counted on his fingers, and said, "June third, sir."

"Oh," said Orlik, turning over a little pile of duty sheets. "I do not ask you, Sant, what you dreamed. I only ask you if you did."

"Yes, sir."

"Did you?"

"Yes, sir."

"On the night of June third?"

"Yes, sir."

"Attention!" Orlik shouted, and the unhappy rifleman stiffened. "Executive Sergeant, I call you to witness that this impudent fellow actually affirms that he dreamed dreams on the night of June third!"

"Yes, sir," said the executive sergeant.

"And at what time did you dream these dreams of yours, Sant? Speak up!"

"Around about one in the morning, I think, sir."

"You were asleep, then?"

"Well, yes, sir."

"But I have it here in the duty sheet that you were on guard duty at Subsection F on that date, from 2400 to 0400 hours."

"Ye...yes, sir."

"Then you confess that you were asleep on sentry duty whilst on active service?"

"I...I must have dozed off for a minute, sir. I'd had a double spell--"

"I'm sorry to hear it, very sorry, indeed. You know that the law provides only one punishment for the offense you confess to having committed?"

Sant said, hoarsely, "Yes, sir."

"Executive Sergeant," said Orlik, "take away this man's side arms and place him under close arrest. Charge: sleeping on sentry duty whilst on active service and in line of battle. He has pleaded guilty. Have you anything to say, Sant?"

"It was only for a minute, sir. Please, sir, I've got an old mother."

"Take him away."

Alone with Orlik, I said, "You swine! And at the sandbags you were whimpering to yourself, 'Help me, Mummy, help me!'"

His face became damp and gray. He moistened his lips and said, "Hieron, I have given you ample credit in dispatches. What is it you want of me?"

The anger was drained out of me. I said, "Let that poor devil go, and let us say no more about the matter."

"So be it," he said and did as I asked. And I have said nothing but good of Orlik until this moment