It was at that moment Deep State Volman decided to show up and start shouting at our new friend and possible ally. The hot elf girl. To be honest… it wasn’t a real good look for us.
He immediately identified her as a “friendly,” probably because we weren’t shooting at her, and instead of attempting to ascertain not just how, but also why she’d threaded the gauntlet of enemy orcs hiding out there beyond the river’s edge and waiting for another night to attack, he decided to co-opt her for his little power struggle. The one he was waging all alone, internally, against everyone else in the detachment.
“Excuse me,” said Volman, with all the statecraft and ceremony of a New York City subway operator as he pushed past the Ranger perimeter security team who’d tried to stop him. The command sergeant major gave a tired nod to let him pass un-throat-punched. He came tramping through the tall grass toward our hopefully new friend. Intent on ruining that as quickly as possible.
He was shouting questions and orders in every direction at everyone in an attempt to seem “in charge.” His sudden attack was stunning and divisive, and truth be told, I could see it caught the captain and the command sergeant major off guard for a moment. Or at least they seemed unsure how to proceed when the bureaucratic chaos ensued.
I was pretty clear on how the command sergeant major wanted to proceed.
Retirement. Cleaned. Dead. Which I was supposed to have done by now. Bad look for me.
“Who is she?” shouted Volman as he came close to her. “Who is she exactly, gentlemen?”
It was clear he didn’t think any of us were actually gentlemen.
Including the captain and the pilot who were officially supposed to be.
And then…
“Ma’am. Ma’am. Ma’am,” he barked at her. His voice was like an annoying dog late in the night. “I’m with the US government, and I’m the ranking diplomatic authority here.” Emphasis on the personal pronouns. “Disregard these men. They work for me. Can you tell me where your
superiors are so I can open diplomatic relations?”
To the captain he shouted at almost the same moment, “I’m in charge here now, Captain.” All of this with an intense hostility we would have found useful on the line last night at Oh-Dark Murder when the hordes were trying to overrun us all and slit our throats.
To me, as he got close, he jabbed his finger and barked, “You. You do languages, Private First Class. Start translating exactly what I say. Verbatim. Right now, or I will have charges preferred against you and you’ll be shot immediately for treason. Try me, PFC! Just try me and see.”
The command sergeant major gave me a look, and honestly, I wasn’t all that sure what it meant. It was a combination of Don’t do it and You’re on your own now.
The captain looked like he was ready to throat-punch Deep State Guy. Repeatedly. Not a muscle moved on old Knife Hand, but you could tell his whole body was coiled with rage ready to be unleashed violently. And that he didn’t need to visualize how it would be done. How he would crush Deep State’s larynx with one rapid-fire punch fired like a jackhammer. And then continue to do it just for fun or because he had some issues he needed to work out. Because that was just automatic for him. Other people dying at his hands was something he had no trouble visualizing. He just needed to decide that beast mode was socially or conditionally acceptable with regard to the mission, and then it would happen.
It had been a long three days for all of us.
“Tell her this…” continued Deep State Volman, failing to notice the exchange of murder-looks currently surrounding and regarding him. He was truly the most clueless person I’d ever met. It was obvious he’d sensed that his moment to take control was right about now. That there was a new element involved and in play, and he needed to be in complete charge, and this was it. If he could bring external pressures to bear against the captain, then maybe things might start to go the way he wanted them to go. Which, as far as he was concerned, was the only way they could possibly go. There was no room for any other decisions than his. We were not to be trusted at all.
Only his elite brilliance could manage this current crisis, and now was the moment to start crisis-managing.
Typical government.
“Tell her I am the duly appointed representative of the president of the United States of America,” Volman said, his voice strident and barking in the fly-buzzing silence. “And that… tell her… that we need to open diplomatic relations with her people immediately. Does she have people? Tell her she and her people are to deal only with me, directly, from now on! Is that clear, PFC?”
He’d passed some kind of edge of sanity. His voice was ragged and hoarse as he practically shouted at me what he wanted translated. There was spittle. He was heaving with rage and sweating, and I could tell the events of the last three days, and most likely last night specifically, had severely messed with his head. Fried a wire. He was afraid. He was all alone. And he was desperate to be in control.
He was also surrounded by Rangers. People who, had their energies not been channeled positively, relatively speaking, would have been problems back on the block for law enforcement and government authorities. Not the kind of people you’d want for enemies.
That should have been Deep State Volman’s biggest concern, but the clueless idiot he was, he wasn’t concerned at all. Didn’t even think about the highly trained killers surrounding him.
Imagine being that dumb.
He was going to be in charge from now on even if it meant all of us getting killed. That was clear.
I could see the sergeant major and the captain watching me. Seeing what I would do. Reading my mind as best they could because I seemed to be a critical part of the interaction. Then I saw the sergeant major give me a slight nod. And I thought I knew what that meant. Or at least… I hoped I did. And now it was time to see if my guess was right.
“This is our village madman,” I said in Korean to the hot elf girl. Then I turned and bowed reverently toward Idiot Volman. Indicating to her, hopefully, that he was who I was referring to as the “village madman.” Volman stopped heaving and swelled with sudden pride at having been acknowledged as an obviously important person. A look of naked superiority crossed his face as he basked in my faux adulation. He had finally won. In his mind. Even though he had no idea what I was saying because he didn’t speak Korean.
I turned back to her and continued “translating.”
“Where we come from, we consider these sad unfortunates… worthy of our care and respect. They often rant incoherently like this when not defecating on themselves, or trying stare at the sun until they go blind. I deeply apologize for this interruption, Miss. If you will bear with us, he will shortly find some ridiculous invisible goat to chase around, claiming it will give him a magic horn full of beans. It is his way. He is simple and has always been so.”
She looked at me with slight amazement. Just a touch. And then she turned and bowed to Deep State Volman, joining the pantomime.
I’ll confess the slight amazement she cast my way was pretty s*xy.
Volman didn’t stop her, and he only barely told me to stop her. “Tell her not to do that,” he said without conviction, feigning irritation. “We are a democracy. We don’t do bowing. Though you should probably thank her for coming to rescue us.”
I nodded to Volman that I would indeed translate all this. Faithfully.
Then I turned to the elf and said, “Everyone calls me Talker. I speak for my people when they don’t understand languages we encounter. What is your name? He asks if you’ve seen his magical goat. There is no magical goat. He’s an idiot who falls into deep holes and doesn’t have the sense to climb out. Pity him. We do.”
She stared at me for a long moment. Then spoke. “I am called… Last of Autumn… among my people. Tell him… I haven’t seen any… goat. I would know a… magical goat… if I saw one.”
I turned to Volman.
“She agrees to negotiations with you. Her people are not with the enemies that have attacked us over the last three nights. I have no idea what her intentions are.”
Deep State Volman thought about this for a moment. Then barked, “Ask her if there is someplace nearby, a city, a, uh, a refugee camp, or some ’civilized’ place where we can get behind some walls and find safety until I can open formal negotiations. Tell her the Rangers are out of ammunition and no longer combat-effective. We have wounded and we need food and safety immediately. Tell her our situation is extremely dire.”
Then he grabbed my shoulder, and his hand was like an iron claw. “You’d better be telling her this verbatim, Private, because I’ll find
out.”
Excuse me. I’m a PFC. A private first class, buddy. See that rocker?
They don’t just give those away to anybody. “Got it,” I replied. “A-firmative.”
A-firmative is the unofficial, and still official, way to indicate how much you really don’t like someone of a higher rank right to their face. Either over comms or in person. That’s because you can’t get in trouble for saying it, but everyone knows exactly what it means by the way it’s said.
He shot me a look of that pure contempt he constantly distilled. If I had been a cockroach, he wouldn’t have hesitated to stomp me flat and brush me off with the side of his adventure-guy Timberlands.
I turned back to Autumn. Last of Autumn.
“He’s having one of his bad days. He claims the goat he is seeking grants magic wishes and that when he finds it, he will wish for all the cheese there ever was… and also, to fly like a bird so he can touch the moon. He was dropped on his head as a small child.”
I smiled, hoping Deep State Volman didn’t see the slight jerk of my head and bare widening of my eyes to indicate that everything coming out of his mouth was silly nonsense and needed to be treated as such by her.
Did facial expressions in non-humans such as elves approximate our own? I had no idea. But she seemed to go along with it for the moment.
“We…” I pointed at everyone else except Volman, and he didn’t catch that. “We’re wondering what… you’re doing here. We are very pleased to meet you.” I continued acting as though I were communicating what I’d been instructed to say by the Deep State guy. “As you can see, we have fought a great battle here. We have no idea why these…” I pointed at the maimed corpses of the orcs floating in the river and shot to pieces along the banks, “have attacked us.”
I nodded to Volman to indicate I’d finished a faithful and verbatim translation of his words. Which I hadn’t in the least.
Autumn, Last of Autumn, looked around and began to speak.
“My people are in hiding from… same foes who have… come against you. I do not know who you are. You are strange… and not from any of the lands… known to us. That is… plain to see. But… we are… foes of the Black Prince… any that are foemen to him may… possibly… becoming allies to us? I have to ascertain your… intentions.”
She didn’t say “ascertain.” Or “foemen.” Not those particular words
anyway. Remember, she was speaking not-Korean. Pidgin Shadow Cant. And translation isn’t just a matter of swapping out words. You have to capture nuance, connotation. Even style. It’s as much art as it is science. Not to oversell it.
But this is the gist of what she said, as best I can represent it. I turned back to Volman.
“She says we’re in trouble, sir. She and her people are enemies of the… orcs.”
Volman made a face.
“First of all… Private. ’Orc’ isn’t an official term. I’ve designated it a racial slur and I’d prefer to refer to them as ’insurgents’ until we properly identify their culture. Slang and slurs start us off on the wrong foot with a people who may one day be our ally despite your captain’s best efforts to make them our present enemies.”
“Her words.”
Volman looked directly at Autumn and started talking loudly like she was both deaf and stupid. I used this opportunity to wink at the sergeant major and the captain. Letting them know I wasn’t translating for Volman. Or at least that’s what I wanted them to understand via a single quick wink. I was pretty sure the captain had never been winked at by a PFC and that if he ever had been, that PFC was now buried in a shallow grave out in the woods.
Even now, as I write this, I feel ashamed of the wink. However, there is no hand and arm signal in the Ranger handbook that conveys “Don’t worry, I’m not actually translating this lunatic.”
Maybe in the updated version there will be.
“I need to meet with your ’head person’ immediately,” said Volman as loudly and as stridently as possible. Like he was now ordering her around too. “Can you take me to her or him—I’m deeply sorry if I don’t understand your pronouns—so I can request assistance for my people.”
He was making hand signs. Two fingers “walking” back and forth to indicate movement. His fingers up around his head like a crown to indicate someone in charge, including himself. When he said “my people,” he swept one arm out to indicate both the corpses and soldiers under “his command.” He did this with all the warmth of a used car salesman at one of those shady lots just off base of every military installation. The places we’re forbidden
to go and where everyone spends their re-enlistment bonus on a new (used) Camaro for four more years of going to exciting places and killing interesting people with your best friends.
I “translated” this again.
“What’s our situation?” I asked her, and didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m pretty sure my leaders would like to work with your people. But… I don’t know if we can survive another attack.”
“They will come… tonight again,” she said, looking seriously around at the dead orcs. Then: “I offer you… the fellowship of my people and a place around our… cookfires. Our hidden home is… day’s march… if we move through the night. Yes. Your… situation… here is most… dire. They will be back tonight with even more warriors. The tribes of the Nether Sorcerer, who is… ally to the Black Prince… are many and… unending. They will never stop. My people have greatly… suffered. In the deserts of the east they say they,” she pointed at the orcs once again, “are as numerous as the sands of the sea. They will lay you waste… in time… if you do not… escape this place. Now.”
I turned back to Volman.
“She says we must leave soon to reach her people and that they will give us friendship and protection. She says the or—” I caught myself, but not quickly enough. “The insurgents will be back again to hit us even harder. Tonight, most likely.”
“Good,” said Volman, slapping both hands together like he’d just closed a deal on someone’s soul. Or a new (used) Camaro. “Tell her I’ll be ready to leave within the hour. I just need to get my stuff from the top of the hill.”
Then he turned to the captain.
“I order you to wait here and hold this position until I can negotiate with these people and arrange for our further relations. Then I’ll return.”
Back to me.
“You’re with me, Private.”
Without waiting for an answer from the Ranger captain, he was off and stomping through the woods again, pushing past the Ranger security cordon who got the wave from the command sergeant major to just let the man go. Un-throat-punched.
I turned to the elf named Last of Autumn.
“He says he’s seen that magic goat just now and that he will go and capture it for you. He thanks you for helping him on his quest and considers you a princess. If you will excuse me, for a moment, I need to take him somewhere before he soils himself. I’ll be back in a few minutes. You’ll be safe with my friends here. I think we will very much want your assistance. And friendship, Autumn.”
She made a face I read easily. A blush. The color in her cheeks was amazing to see. It made her come alive, more alive than she had been before. She was embarrassed. Like I’d used the familiar instead of the proper version of her name. Autumn instead of Last of Autumn. That was an easy linguist spot.
“I mean… Last of Autumn.”
She nodded formally and then bowed her head.
I was following Volman back off to the hill. Tanner made to go with me, but I waved him off, shrugging my shoulders like I had no idea what was up. But I knew what was up. I knew more than anybody what was about to be up. Except maybe the command sergeant major.
Tanner stayed and watched me go.
“It’s time, son,” muttered the command sergeant major as I passed.
