Ruthless V4Ch10-Funeral Oration

This is an old version of this chapter.

Dave looked around the packed room.

He was surrounded by a crowd of people, all waiting with rapt attention for the Fisher King to emerge from behind the stage. Yet he felt alone, uniquely burdened.

How many other people in the audience could say that they personally were responsible for one of the coffins at the front of the room?

He could try to tell himself he’d had no choice, but that hadn’t worked any of the previous times he had thought about her. It didn’t seem likely to work now. So he wallowed in the feeling.

Only by really feeling the sense of loss and regret can you purge yourself of it.

The coffins had the names of the dead engraved on them.

“Amalia Rosario” was the one that kept drawing his eye.

“Are you afraid to kill us, Dave? It’s the only way you’ll escape this place alive…”

Amalia’s voice—no, the voice of the vicious thing that had possessed her body—ran through his mind again. He closed his eyes and forced himself to picture her as she had been in life. The lively, courageous, perhaps overconfident woman who had eagerly rushed into the forest.

She’s not your fault, Dave, he told himself. You didn’t have a choice.

But the weight still felt heavy on his shoulders, if somewhat less so than it had immediately after he had awakened following the battle.

His eyes jerked open at a sudden sound from ahead of him. A door opening.

Dave saw James step out of the back room and onto the stage. Mina followed close behind her husband, almost protectively.

Dave recognized on James’s face the same haunted feeling that had persisted within himself over the last several days. He felt slightly lighter at seeing that. He had not seen much of James since the battle, but of course, this was someone else who shared Dave’s responsibilities—and his loss.

Amalia and Dave had discussed James when they hunted together, so Dave knew that the two knew each other, if only slightly. She had been very impressed with James and happy to join the Fisher Kingdom. Dave remembered with a dull surprise that she had actually spoken up on James’s behalf when he declared himself King and received pledges of allegiance.

Dave felt James’s eyes meet his, and the officer forced himself to smile—probably more of a grimace, but he could not see his own face—and nod at the commander in chief.

I know you’ll do your best to honor them.

He wondered if James felt as badly about the way events had played out as Dave did.

Maybe that’s why he seemed to work himself half to death reviving people. Dave had heard about that from his friend Sam. The way Sam had described it, James’s blessing started to look like he was giving up some of his life force after he had done a few of them.

Whether the Fisher King was feeling guilty about the battle or not, he certainly gave a damn.

James pressed close to the podium and began to speak.

“Friends, citizens, we gather here today to mourn the deaths of twenty-six brave soldiers. Brothers and sisters, sons and daughters. Valued friends and neighbors.”

His voice boomed out all through the room and beyond. Dave could hear it coming from outside of the room as well as inside. James must be using his powers to broadcast it to the portion of the crowd that had been unable to fit inside the community center. Even the courtyard between the community center and the apartments was full of people today. Despite losses, it seemed the Fisher Kingdom just kept growing.

The King continued. “They fought to protect our young country from invasion by evil spirits. I won’t talk about the specifics of the battle aside from that today. I know that many of you are still feeling the impact of the fight, or of the presence of those spirits.” He seemed to make eye contact with Dave for a moment as he spoke those words, but it was hard to be certain.

He was distracted, because at the same time that he thought James had looked at him, a murmur had risen from the crowd. The word “miracle,” in a dozen or more different voices, was the only thing Dave heard distinctly. These were some of those who had been revived, Dave recognized. One of the side effects of having one’s life saved by the Fisher King seemed to be a new, slightly more fanatical level of loyalty.

James seemed to ignore the interruption. His voice continued at the same cadence and volume.

Dave ignored it too, as best he could. His survival felt less like a miracle and more like a burden, given that he was responsible for the death of one of his own soldiers and had led twenty-five others to their deaths. He was the wrong person to be in command of soldiers. He knew that now.

He had decided a long time ago that he would never willingly take his own life, but the last few days had pushed him into the sort of depression that he had not known since the last war he fought.

“I know that some of you will be feeling lost right now,” James said. “We’ve lost a group of valuable, irreplaceable people. I know what it is to lose someone important. My father died when I was a kid.” He sighed. “Since the world changed, it seems the losses just keep coming. But I can tell you from personal experience that those who have died are still with us, in a sense. I want to share a little about the people we’re saying farewell to.”

James began telling anecdotes about each of the dead.

Dave was surprised to find that James seemed to have some touching snippet about each person who had died. It seemed unlikely that the Fisher King could have known all those who had lain down their lives.

As the stories went on, it became clearer that he had not known all of them. In several cases, he was clearly repeating a story that a friend or family member must have relayed to him. There were a couple of stories from Orientation about people with whom James had not shared an Orientation, for instance.

They were effective nevertheless in restoring some humanity to the humans in the closed caskets.

But the story about Amalia was a personal anecdote.

“I knew Amalia Rosario was a soldier when I first met her,” James said, smiling sadly. “The group I was with was fighting a pack of wolves at that time. We were pursuing them across hostile terrain, into the unknown. Amalia was the first to volunteer to scout the placement of our enemies. I remember how she rushed into close range with them, practically running toward danger, so she could get us the best possible intelligence. She moved carefully once she got close, and she managed to get away without being seen. When she got back, she gave us a detailed report on what was waiting for us. We thought, based on her scouting expertise, that the wolves were setting a trap. Nevertheless, she still stood beside me at the front when we advanced on their position. I didn’t need to ask her to. I wouldn’t have asked her to. But that was just the kind of person Amalia was. First into danger. Consistently. Even when no one could argue she had anything to prove.” He shook his head with an obvious look of admiration. Then his expression turned somber again.

“So many different stories,” he said. “The one constant we see with all the dead here is their courage. We lost some of our best in this battle. But as I said, they’re still with us in a sense. They will never be completely gone. Not as long as we remember them. Not as long as we’re still here.” He pounded chest with one hand as he spoke. “Those we have lost will always be with us. They have watered the earth with their blood, so that their bodies have become a part of it. And their spirits will live on in our hearts and in the spirit of this place. They died out of love for family, friends, and neighbors. That love lives on, too. And we will never forget their names.”

He listed the names of the dead in a low, reverent voice that nevertheless made its way to all parts of the room. Then he cleared his throat and seemed somehow to make eye contact with everyone in the room at once.

“We have entered into a world of conflict. These brave individuals will not be the last to die to preserve our peace. Survival will require the best and most committed efforts from all of us. The men and women we bury here today—” He turned to the coffins at those last words—“gave the last full measure of their devotion for us. To give us the chance to live. It is up to us to continue forward and ensure that those losses mean something. For those who feel touched by these losses, whether you knew the deceased or not, there are therapists who have volunteered to be of counsel.” Dave sensed rather than saw that a handful of people somewhere behind him were moving as if to indicate that yes, they were the therapists. He thought maybe he would talk to one of them himself.

“I hope you will also take comfort in family, friends, and neighbors. The lost live on in all of us.” James paused for a moment as if weighing his next words carefully. “But if you have feelings that you cannot share with anyone, or that you believe you can’t overcome in any other way, you can also come and share them with me. I made all of the decisions on the evening of the battle. Every single choice that led to this outcome was mine. I believed, and still believe, that what we did was necessary to stop pure evil from swamping our country.” He made definite eye contact with Dave then.

It would sound hyperbolic, except I was there, Dave thought. I know what those things were like. Pure evil is an understatement.

“The weight of the responsibility rests squarely on my shoulders—and only on my shoulders,” James said.

Dave felt the words were aimed at him, though he knew it was absurd.

Whatever the truth of the matter, it did feel as though a weight partially lifted from his shoulders. He was not burden-free, but then, he had not felt truly light in many years. But he knew instinctively that what was left was something he could carry.

“Let us have a moment of silence, and then our pallbearers will begin moving the first of the coffins to their graves.”

The room became so quiet that Dave imagined people might be holding their breath rather than break the sudden stillness.

Then James made a hand motion of some sort, the pallbearers stepped forward, and the world seemed to start moving again.

Dave watched as the rest of the funeral played out as expected. The coffins were relocated to their permanent homes in the ground, and loved ones were invited to step forward, say a few words, and shovel soil onto the remains before James buried them the rest of the way. His control over the earth allowed him to smoothly shift the ground to cover over the tops of the coffins with just a wave of his hand.

There were not many people to step forward as bereaved, and most of them did not say much, but there was a quiet dignity to the process. Like reclaiming some sense of normalcy.

When it was Amalia’s turn to go into the ground, Dave found that he was one of the only people who stepped forward. The other two were from his squad as well. But none of them felt comfortable speaking up. She seemed to have no family or close friends here. That was what the System’s arrival had wrought, killing off relatives and breaking up communities.

Dave was glad that he could be there to do this, at least. To give Amalia rest in the soil. It was surprisingly comforting to scoop that shovelful of soil onto her coffin. Like tucking her into bed.

He did not know what the afterlife of this strange and frightening universe would have in store for her. He was not one of the elect, like James, who had been given the opportunity to walk and talk with gods.

But the ritual of burying and honoring the dead would always have a certain power to it for Dave, as it undoubtedly did for the hundreds of other people who took part in the ceremony.

It struck him, as the earth moved to cover Amalia’s coffin, that these dead would be remembered for at least as long as the founding generation of this new country lived. Probably for as long as James himself was remembered.

The Fisher Kingdom had its first martyrs.