forbarrayar | [ january i log: barrayar ]

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[ january i log: barrayar ]

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.

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"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.

"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."

"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?"

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."

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

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?"

"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."

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?"

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."

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."

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."

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."

"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."

"Billions." Sonia's gaze drifts into empty space. "Billions of them on every planet, and they have eight. And it isn't enough for them."

"Then they don't need another," she says, though she privately has the feeling that having billions of people across eight planets mashes them think they need dozens more. And then, after a moment, she adds, "You're not doing a bad job, if they haven't taken this one yet. Ten years is a long time to survive."

Even if they aren't winning, they're putting up a good fight, by Beth's measure. That must mean something.

A small smile touches Sonia's face. "I suppose. Thank you." It seems to be the appropriate thing to say, one survivor to another. Mostly it's just been tiring is what she almost says, but just thinking that makes her tired. She keeps the smile instead.

"The village nearby is nice," she says diffidently. "The hill villages always are. It's not like they're not affected, but, you know -- they still have their daily lives...they're still living like they always have. It's just nice to...see that life goes on, sometimes."

There's not much else to say, not least when they can look at each other with a tired sort of understanding born of too much time spent fighting. One look at Sonia's face tells Beth she's not alone.

"It's easier to keep going when there aren't a lot of you." Atlanta is like a sprawling ghost town but their prison--well, for a while, their prison was a living community. Even if it was more like roommates in a huge house (in which everyone had cells instead of rooms), it was probably closer to a village than anything else she's seen since the turn. "It sounds nice."

Her voice turns pensive. "Guess it'll be a while before we see it, huh?"

Sonia presses her lips together. "I'm not sure," she admits slowly. Piotr doesn't want the outsiders knowing anything crucial, not yet, but Sonia's not sure she really knows anything crucial. "I mean, I don't think Count Vorkosigan means to keep you under guard forever or anything. But I don't know what he does mean to do."

"Which one is he?" she asks, trying to remember all the guards and soldiers who've poked their heads in the tent. There have been enough that she hasn't been anywhere close to getting all their names--and even if she had, none of them referred to each other as Count Vorkosigan.

"I think you'd know him if you saw him," Sonia says, rubbing her cheek. "He's sort of hard to miss. It's not that he looks a particular way or anything, just...you know how some people, when they walk into a room, everything just kind of stops for a second?"

"Yeah." In her experience, it's usually not a good thing when someone does that. It means they're dangerous. She shrugs, adding, "Maybe he hasn't come to see us yet."

Sonia shakes her head. "He hasn't, no. The Countess has been by a few times, though -- she's hard to miss, too. Always wearing her husband's greatcoat -- she practically swims in it, but she manages to make it look dignified."

Her sister manages to make almost anything look dignified. Count Piotr -- dignity, sure, but he was mostly hard-faced and, at times, terrifying. "The General Count's a busy man, but I'd be surprised if he never came by at all. Although," she adds, making a face, "you're not missing much."

Beth's seen the countess around, she realizes, and nods in recognition. When it comes to the General Count, she laughs a little. The face Sonia makes gives her a younger look; as weary as the war must have made her, it hasn't broken her.

"Some people are too busy to be interesting." She doesn't know a lot of them, these days, but the kind of war they fought at home was a very different one. "Guess he's one."

"Mmm." Sonia's lips twist, and she wobbles her hand in ambivalence. "It's not that he's not interesting. The Countess thinks he must be, anyway." She smiles wryly, then scrunches her nose. "No, he's just such a stuffed shirt. You'd think he's twice as old as he looks. He's always so -- " She makes a face in impersonation of Piotr's usual hard-faced, impassive look, brows drawn down and lips pursed. Mostly, it just looks funny on Sonia.

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[ january i log: barrayar ]

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