Soldier No More

'What question?' Lexy cocked her head. 'How—'

'Sssh, dear!' Jilly hushed her. 'He's about to tell us how he ticks. Go on, David.'

'Barbarians make him tick?' Lexy blundered on. 'Oh—come on, David—'

' Lexy—' Jilly's tone became dangerous.

'Okay! Okay!' Lexy raised her hands. 'Barbarians make you tick, David—anything you say!'

Audley stared at her. 'They did—yes. After the war . . . during the war for that matter . . . they say war's a great leveller, and so it is. It levelled Aachen—Charlemagne's Aix-la-Chapelle . . . and Cologne . . . Colonia Agrippina . . . all in a good cause, of course—I levelled one little Norman church myself, with a few well-placed shots at a discreet distance—

there was this brave bugger with a panzerfaust in it, who'd just incinerated a friend of mine in the tank ahead of me . . .

good causes don't come any better than that.'

'David—' began Lexy.

He was drunk, thought Roche. But not totally drunk, because dummy5

there still wasn't a word out of place, and not stupid drunk either. He simply hadn't liked the drift of Bradford's interrogation—the piling up of circumstantial evidence against him, piece by piece—and was seeking instead to divert it with the one thing he had to give them which might intrigue them more.

'Go on, David,' said Jilly.

'Where was I?' Audley blinked owlishly.

'You were demolishing Germany,' said Stein.

'In a good cause,' said Lexy. 'And it had something to do with barbarians.'

'Ah ... of course, they crossed the Rhine from East to West—

the Franks, and then the Vandals and all the rest ... but we crossed it from West to East, as the Romans did, complete with hostile Germans on the other side.' Audley nodded at Stein. 'And I remember thinking . . . 'This time we'll get it right, the conquest of Germany—we won't fluff it, like the Romans did'. But, of course, it didn't work out like that, with the Russians—I was escorting one of the T Force groups ferreting out German technological secrets, and we ran into them doing the same thing straight off, and I knew then what sort of brave new world we were heading for.' He paused.

'Nine months of fighting Nazis . . . and others . . . and eighteen months of fighting Russians . . . and others— that was my war. Uncomfortable, but highly educational, you might say.' Another pause. 'Then I went up to Cambridge, into the tender care of Professor Archibald Forbes—' he dummy5

raised his glass, only to find that it was empty; and then that the bottles on the table, tested one after another, were also empty, and focussed finally upon Lexy '—another bottle, pot-girl!'

'Don't you think you've had enough, David?' said Jilly.

'Huh!' Audley grunted derisively. 'My dear Gillian, I haven't started to drink yet—not by rugger club standards, anyway.'

Lexy drew another bottle from the rack.

'Make it two—or three, seeing as how the night is yet young . . . Stein—Bradford—Captain Roche ... fill your glasses! Let us drink to our dead youth—you remember your Kipling, Roche? Parnesius and Pertinax on the Great Wall, with the barbarians on the warpath?' Roche held out his glass obediently.

Audley grinned back at him. 'A libation is what we should make—' he looked around, his glance finally settling on the potted plant at his elbow '—just a drop for my lost opportunities, then—' he inclined his glass carefully '— but not too much! Roche?'

Roche leaned forward to bury his own glass among the leaves. 'And for mine too!' He tipped as much of his wine as he dared into the heart of the plant.

'Good man!' Audley beamed at him. 'Stein—Bradford?'

'I don't sacrifice,' said Stein.

'And I don't waste good wine,' said Bradford.

dummy5

Audley shrugged. 'Well. . . that's your funeral. I mocked the gods once, and I was punished for my hubris—appropriately punished, too.'

'What hubris, David?' asked Jilly.

'I thought I knew better,' said Audley. 'I turned Forbes down when he offered me the real world, and chose the other Dark Ages instead. I thought I was uniquely well-placed to interpret them—I thought I had an insight denied to lesser mortals after my wartime education.'

'Why the Dark Ages?' asked Jilly.

'Because that was the other time when the world changed, love—the other barbarian age—from the fall of the Roman Empire to when the Arabs were three days' march from Paris, or thereabouts. After which nothing was ever the same again—I found it fascinating.' Audley shook his head. 'What a time to live in— fascinating—'

'Ugh!' Lexy shivered. 'Sidonius Simplicius didn't think it was fascinating—he thought it was dreadful! Like the beginning of the end of the world, he said.'

'So it was—of his world.' Audley grinned at her. 'But, don't you see, that's what makes it so interesting—the world turned upside down and history speeded up. What an age to live in!'