[ january i log: barrayar ]

[barrayarmods]

Who: Everyone
What: Arrival on Barrayar and what follows
When: January 2nd - January 17th
Where: Barrayaran guerrilla camp
Warnings: None (at the moment)


welcome to barrayar.
It's the dark of night when you come to in the foothills. Snow on the ground, chill winter wind whistling. A steep mountain range towers just ahead, its peaks illuminated by the light of two moons. Whatever you last remember, it isn't how you got here, and you feel oddly jetlagged, slightly queasy.

And you're not alone. There are nine other people close by, all looking equally lost and confused. But before any of you have a chance to figure out what's going on, the soldiers arrive.

They're dressed in weather-worn green uniforms, bearing swords and bows, and they surround you immediately, poised to attack. But they quickly realize you're not their enemy, the ones they call Cetagandans. They're just as confused as you are, but rather than hanging around to puzzle it out, they start shepherding you toward their camp in the mountains while it's still dark. There's a war on, they say, and you unlucky bastards have just been dropped right smack in the middle of it.

the guerrilla camp
It's a few hours' hike through the mountains to get to their hidden camp, set up in a clearing framed by dense, hard forestry and backed against a rock face. Daylight is finally dawning when you make it there. You and your fellow sudden arrivals are ushered to an empty tent on the far end of the camp, just big enough to fit all ten of you. You can't help but notice they've posted guards all around it. You aren't under arrest – they just don't know what else to do with you.

You are able to glean, from hearsay and what the soldiers are willing to share with you, that you are on a planet called Barrayar, and this is their home, and ten years ago they were attacked without warning by the Cetagandan Empire. They've been holed up in the mountains fighting against their invaders ever since, outgunned and outmanned, but scoring little victories where they can. They don't tell you much more than that. Some dialect of Russian seems to be one of the predominant languages of the camp, but for the most part they all speak English too, if with an accent. They're gruff and wary, and if you look a little less – or more – than human, they'll eye you with suspicion, maybe even make obscure hex signs at you that seem intended to ward off evil or disease. But they aren't hostile to you, not unless you start something with them.

the outsiders' tent
It's not in the greatest shape, but if you look around the camp, the rest aren't much better off. It's cramped, but you've at least been provided with bedrolls and heavy wool blankets to ward off the frozen chill, and if you're in need of clothing, they'll provide it, although it probably hasn't been washed in…a while. The soldiers bring you food at mealtimes -- not very good food, mostly tough meat and groats, and they keep you your own campfire, just to keep you warm. They've also hastily dug you your own latrine area at the edge of the perimeter, just behind the treeline. No private bathroom stalls in this outfit, unfortunately. The entire camp seems tense and wary, and the soldiers are alert, but they don't talk much. You could try sneaking past them, but you probably won't get far.

Well, at least you've got each other for company: the outsiders on Barrayar.

Comments

[littlemissfutility]

Beth's spent a lot of her time sitting quietly under a blanket caped around her shoulders, trying to decide just what her options are here. Every time the tent flap opens, she looks up, a little startled. Usually, it's another of the stone-faced soldiers; when a woman dressed in thick woolen clothes pokes her head in, Beth's made a little more curious.

Besides, she's given the tent the once-over and thought through everything she could be doing right now to get home, and the list is a lot shorter than she'd like. If she can get any more information on this planet (planet, it still sounds crazy thinking it), she'll take it. So, wrapped up in her blanket, she gets up to help the woman with the food she's bringing in.

"Thank you," she says, doing her best to keep her attention on the woman who brought the meal rather than the meal itself. It's probably the same thing they've been brought every time, anyway: already prepared, nothing that can be stored up in case their hosts stop being gracious about feeding them or they have to get out of here in a hurry. "It, um. It smells great."

[vorbratta]

Sonia puffs out a dry laugh. "No it doesn't. It's just hot groats and cured mutton." She crouches and sets the food down on the ground next to Beth. She looks to be a few years older than Beth, lean and a little worn as much as you could expect any girl would look after ten years of war, but she's retained a certain softness about her. "It doesn't even have any maple syrup. Sorry about that. The mess officer wasn't in a sharing mood."

[littlemissfutility]

"Smells like food." Beth shrugs, picking a little piece of mutton out of a bowl. She already knows before popping it in her mouth that it's going to be as tough as every other piece of meat they've been fed. But at least it doesn't come from a can. "That's pretty good, right?"

[vorbratta]

The corner of Sonia's mouth turns up. "I think so, yes."

She hasn't been brushed off or getting any go away signals, so Sonia seats herself on the ground near Beth, her legs tucked under her. Her heavy wool skirt spreads around her, keeping her nicely warm, or as close to it as it gets around here. "My name is Sonia. Have the guards been treating you alright?"

[littlemissfutility]

"I'm Beth." As they settle back down on the floor, she shrugs. The guards have been guards--not friendly, but nowhere near as bad as anything at Grady. Not so far, anyway. They're still trapped in this tent, and there's plenty of time for prisoners to become free labor or worse. Either way, though, she's not about to complain to someone who belongs to their people. So she just says, "They don't say much."

[vorbratta]

"They obey orders," Sonia says with a shrug. Certainly Count Piotr doesn't want these total unknowns to come into any important information.

"Guards never are very talkative. Just as long as they aren't doing anything untoward..." She raises a hand and dangles it in there, then drops it after a moment with a little breath, and she gives Beth a tilted smile. "Well, it's a pleasure to meet you, Beth."

[littlemissfutility]

"No." She forces down a shudder at the memory of Gorman's hand moving up her side. Shaking her head, she tries again, without that kneejerk vehemence. "No, they haven't done anything."

Casting a glance over toward the food, she realizes she isn't hungry enough to justify starting in on a bowl. It'd give her something to do, but she doesn't really want much more than the bite of meat she took earlier. "You, too. I hope we're not making things hard on you, being here."

[vorbratta]

Sonia sees that shudder and knows that Beth knows what she meant, maybe a little too well, and she bites her lip. But she doesn't seem to have greatly offended the outsider. She shakes her head.

"Well, you're not making things hard on me. You just caught us in a...bumpy period, is all." But she probably ought not to say more than that. Count Piotr's been insistent on maintaining control of information. "Not that anyone on the planet would be prepared for something like this. But we'll be alright. There's a hill village nearby. They've been helping us with supplies."

[littlemissfutility]

Any time you're out in the middle of nowhere, especially when it's wintertime, you have to think about food and water. Having almost a dozen people show up out of nowhere throws a wrench in plans like those, even if there's a village with stores of food available.

But Sonia probably knows that, and if she doesn't, Beth's not going to put the thought in her head. If things get bad later, they'll deal with it then.

"With the war," Beth supplies, filling in the few details she's picked up from the guards that brought them here. "With the...Cetas?"

[vorbratta]

Sonia's mouth tightens at the name, pure reflex, and she nods. Her eyes are darker now.

"Yes. The Cetagandan Empire. Since ten years ago." She knows Count Piotr doesn't want the outsiders knowing too much, and she gets it, but it doesn't completely stay her tongue. "They showed up without word or warning. We didn't even know they were coming until they were already on this side of the wormhole."

[littlemissfutility]

"I'm sorry." Without word or warning, she says, and Beth remembers the way Mama started getting feverish a little while after the first reports of walkers. If she knew Sonia a little better, she'd be tempted to reach over and squeeze her hand. As it is, she just shifts "Do you know what they want?"

Having that doesn't promise they can chase them off, but it has to help. She's not sure there's anything more frightening than being hunted by something with completely opaque motivations.

[vorbratta]

Sonia lets out a dry laugh. Bitterness doesn't suit her, but it's been a long ten years and a difficult coming of age.

"They want us. They want the planet. They want it for their own." She rubs her hands over her lap, ostensibly trying to warm them, but she rocks a little where she sits. "They don't want to kill us all -- they want us to surrender. Some districts already have."

The look of disgust on her face is pretty clear: those Counts, as far as she and the rest of the Barrayarans around here, are tantamount to traitors.

[littlemissfutility]

"It's yours." Beth's expression turns sour. Of course, little issues like ownership don't matter if the other guy is willing to spill blood to get what he wants, but the principle still leaves a bad taste in her mouth. "No wonder you're at war."

Anyone who cared about their home would be. She hopes it goes better for Barrayar than it has for her people.

[vorbratta]

"It is," Sonia mutters through her teeth, strengthened by Beth's conviction. It touches her in a way she can't articulate. "We don't want to be at war. We just want them to leave."

[littlemissfutility]

"You'd have to be crazy to want to be at war." Hiding out in tents among huge drifts of snow and eating nothing but oats and mutton--it's been okay so far, but ten years of it?--while other people try to shoot at you sounds like a terrible way to spend a decade. Maybe the Cetagandans are enjoying themselves more, but they're also trying to steal an entire planet out from the people it belongs to. It's not even a warm planet. Not here or now, anyway. "Who's winning?"

[vorbratta]

Barrayarans are crazy when they're at war, too, Sonia thinks dryly, but she bites her tongue on that, managing only a small, bitter smile instead.

"Not us."

[littlemissfutility]

"I'm sorry." She reaches out to touch Sonia's shoulder, a little hesitant but unquestionably sincere. "Losing your home sucks."

[vorbratta]

Sonia leans into the touch a little, grateful. She doesn't get much of it aside from her sister. Everyone else is too afraid to touch her, because of honor or propriety. It's nice to be touched like you're a person and not a...mascot, or whatever. She manages a slightly rueful quirk of her mouth, but her eyebrows are knit, her eyes serious.

"Did you lose yours?"

[littlemissfutility]

"Two of them." Beth draws her hand back again, pulling her blanket back tight around her. Sonia's told her something of what she needs to know about this place. She might as well tell her a little in turn. "My daddy's farm was in our family for a hundred-sixty years. We stayed there as long as we could, but..."

More than anything from that night, she remembers Patricia's hand tightening and weakening in hers when the walkers caught up to them. She doesn't want to share that with Sonia.

"Then we lived at a prison for a while, but that fell, too. Got us all split up that time." Somehow, parts of that were good, even though everything was awful. But those are memories she wants to keep to herself. She shrugs, a little wry. "Saw them for the first time since we left the prison, and then I was here."

[vorbratta]

Sonia's face falls a little -- not in disappointment, but plain, clear heartbreak, because this is a complete stranger, but she's someone who knows about losing home -- way too much about it. And now she's here. At least Sonia knows that Barrayar, too, is her home, however war torn. She reaches for Beth's shoulder in a mirror of her gesture.

"I'm sorry," is all she manages, unusually diffident. She hesitates. Maybe the outsider wouldn't want to tell a stranger the whole truth about it. It's different when Sonia shares her own truths, she knows; they're not hers alone. But she can't keep from asking. "What happened?"

[littlemissfutility]

Sonia's touch is light on her shoulder. There are too many layers between her skin and that gentle hand--people just keep offering her blankets--to feel any of its warmth, but it's still kind of her. Beth smiles a little at her.

By now, she's learned enough not to be surprised that Sonia doesn't already know the answer to that question. Too bad it means having to tell her.

"There's this--this sickness. Everybody has it, but it doesn't do anything unless you die...or you're bit by somebody who already did." She's going to have to explain and re-explain this, she's starting to realize. It's so much a part of what life is at home that it's impossible to say anything without mentioning it. "We call 'em walkers. Your body gets up again, and all it wants is to eat people."

[vorbratta]

Sonia feels a little wrench in her gut. That's...nothing short of horrifying, almost beyond comprehension. Sure, there were stories, old Earth legends, about dead that rose back to life and became undead cannibals, but they were myths. Nothing so real or devastating. Sonia's hand tightens on Beth's shoulder.

"I'm so sorry," she says again, but the words feel somehow empty and inadequate, and she bites her lip. "I wish things were better here."

[littlemissfutility]

Beth starts to shrug, then realizes it might seem like she doesn't want Sonia's hand on her shoulder. (Really, she's not sure she cares much one way or another. This is a story everyone living shares, back home; it feels a little strange to be comforted over something that happens to everyone who's unlucky enough not to die by a blow to the head.) So she nods instead, a sort of thanks without quite saying it.

And instead, she looks for something nice to say about Barrayar. Nicer than you must really appreciate it once spring comes. "You don't have walkers here. Means you're a little safer."

[vorbratta]

Sonia's hand does fall away from Beth's shoulder, eventually, if only because it seems rude to touch a stranger for too long. She smiles, tiny, rueful.

"I think it's a different kind of dangerous." She sits back on her heels, fisting her hands in her skirt. "I am glad that the dead stay dead. There are just...so many of them." And war -- war is so much more personal, even on the biggest of scales. "At least with...with them, it isn't because they hate you, or...want to control you. There's no greed or spite or vengeance in it."

[littlemissfutility]

"No," she agrees. It's hard to mean anything personally when you can't actually mean anything at all. "They can't help what they are. But there are thousands of them out there. Maybe millions."

And hardly any of us. Never mind what it is to look at all those corpses and know they used to be people. You can reason with people on the other side of a war. You can only burn the dead.

But it's not a competition. Both situations are awful, even if she prefers the look of all this pristine countryside. "I guess there are millions of Cetagandans, too."