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"Lie low and look after him!"
Aral's shout echoed around the bunker as he slammed the door shut. Cordelia fumbled in pitch darkness, her hand landing on something sticky and wet.
"I need to be out there," Captain Illyan gasped. Then, more weakly, "And he needs to be in here."
"You need to lie still," said Cordelia. Even in darkness she could feel the blood flowing, and lacking anything else, she pressed down with her hands. "As for getting him in here, believe me, I tried."
"Fool boy's not that woman-ridden yet," came a low rumble out of the darkness. "He's defending the House." There was a sudden flare, and an archaic chemical match burned brightly in the bunker. Cordelia took the opportunity to get her bearings.
"Miles. Get that box over by the door for me, please. There should be some cold-lights inside, and a first-aid kit."
The match spluttered out, but after some muttered bad language that she would normally have rebuked Miles for, the blue glow of a cold-light filled the bunker. Cordelia reached for the first-aid kit. Illyan's forearm was bleeding fast, but no longer in spurts.
"The quick-seal," Cordelia said. Miles, unfazed by sudden injury and very familiar with the contents of a first-aid kit, pulled out the spray, and Cordelia released the pressure, jerked back the torn fabric of Illyan's tunic, then sprayed the whole thing with the sealant. Quick and dirty, literally, designed to stop bleeding for soldiers in the field, he'd run the risk of infection if it was left for long. But the immediate danger was past. She stared at her bloody hands, then wiped them on her trousers. There was a lot of his blood there already, a bit more wasn't going to make matters any worse.
There were emergency blankets in the medkit too; once she wouldn't leave bloodsmears all over them, Cordelia pulled them out and passed them around, though Count Piotr growled before accepting one. Cordelia wrapped two around Illyan and took the medical scanner to check him over. It didn't give her any surprises: he was in shock, but she'd stopped the bleeding, and the best she could offer now was to keep him warm and quiet until rescue came. Of course, the warped priorities of this planet had already meant that the perfectly healthy, robust teenage boy had been the priority for rescue, and the very elderly man and the injured one would have to wait.
The trouble was, troubles never came on their own, or one by one in a neat line to be dealt with. They flew in flocks, swirling and swooping down around them unpredictably and chaotically, and today was a perfect example: at least four different disasters had landed all at once, and now here she was in the bunker, trying to stop Captain Illyan from bleeding to death.
The first disaster had been more than forty years in the making, when Ezar had decided to step up the efforts to complete the terraforming of Barrayar, but hadn't been able to pay for the full galactic-standard suite of environmental management that Cordelia would have prescribed, had she been in charge of surveying this planet. Instead they'd tendered it to the lowest bidder, and the lowest bidder had talked impressively about the soil alterations to grow Earth crops all across the southern continent, but had been suspiciously quiet about the need to scientifically manage climate and weather patterns. Decades of alternating droughts and floods had finally convinced Aral that he needed to do something about this--alongside Cordelia's own pungent critique of the terraforming issues the planet now faced--but it was a slow process, fixing the mistakes of the past without adding too many new mistakes for their grandchildren's grandchildren to handle.
And so it had rained at Vorkosigan Surleau for the past month, so steadily that it was soon to become Vorkosigan Sousleau in truth, and the rain had been interspersed with sudden shocking gales that damaged houses and blew down trees. Cordelia, Betan-like, considered the latter almost as serious as the former, and was surprised by how casually the Barrayarans treated their fallen trees, chopping them up to burn or for lumber. The Count's residence, built by paranoid Barrayaran warlords, was solid enough and on high ground, but some of the newer security additions were soon going to be swallowed up by the expanding lake, and there were fallen trees and floodwaters blocking the main roads.
And Aral had been anxious about his father alone up here with reports of heavy rain in the Dendarii hills translating to flash floods in the valleys, and had altered his plans at the last minute, coming up to Vorkosigan Surleau three days early. And Miles had agitated to come too, and then Gregor had asked quietly if he was allowed to join them. But the sudden alteration to the plan meant that ImpSec were operating with only a skeleton crew here, so Illyan had ridden along to accompany his Emperor personally and coordinate the rapid calling in of additional guards. Which was in turn hindered by the weather.
The only people not hindered by the weather were the protestors. They'd been here all along, and Cordelia understood now that they'd been waiting. There had been pro-democratic protestors chaining themselves to the main gates and throwing rotten fruit and horseshit at groundcars arriving and departing for weeks. Cordelia had felt she ought to be in sympathy with them, horse manure and all, but the problem wasn't so much the protestors as the agitators who had joined them. These, according to Illyan, were hired Jacksonians, but their fees were ultimately paid by the Cetagandan psy-ops agency. And some of their kit was provided that way too. Including the bombs that had gone off not five minutes ago.
"If you'd let me have my way, on my own land," Count Piotr said, "we would have driven those traitors away with horsewhips weeks ago, and none of this would have ever happened."
"The Regent ordered them left--we were trying to infiltrate them," Illyan protested, voice faint.
"If that's what you call infiltrating them, you need to go back to school, boy," Piotr retorted. Cordelia glared at him, and stooped to check on Illyan again.
"Mother," Miles said suddenly from the back of the bunker, where he'd wandered off to explore, "it's really wet back here."
Cordelia lifted the cold light a bit higher, and at the back near Miles's feet, its bluish glow reflected off water. More than a puddle, she thought.
"These bunkers are very prone to flooding when the water is high," Piotr offered, his tone disturbingly helpful, as if this were a training exercise he was running and they weren't doing very well. "I would not have chosen this as a refuge today. But Aral never did pay attention to these matters."
Aral had, in fact, shoved them unceremoniously into the nearest hole in the ground after he saw the spurts of blood rushing from Illyan's arm. Even after being hit by shrapnel, Illyan had first shoved Gregor into the ImpSec rescue groundcar, then turned back to try and force Aral in too, but collapsed in the attempt. ImpSec had ruthlessly abandoned him as they took off with the Emperor. Aral had stashed them all in the bunker, then marched off with a mixed band of his Armsmen and the remaining ImpSec team to tackle the protestors.
"It's further up than it was a minute ago," Miles added cheerfully.
Cordelia watched. The water level was definitely rising, rapidly. Her plan of sitting tight and waiting until it was calm enough aboveground for them to be rescued was starting to display a flaw.
"Yes," Illyan said, staring vacantly up in a way that meant he was working something out on his chip, "we're not much above the level of the lake here. Not good." He reached for his wristcomm, then fell back with a muttered oath. "Smashed," he said. "M'lady, there won't be any resources left, they'll have taken the Emperor--"
Cordelia placed a hand on his shoulder, holding him flat. "We're not underwater yet. Miles, come away from there, stay at this end. I'm going to look outside." Her own wristcomm was somewhere in the mud outside, and the Count never carried one when walking his own lands--another reason Aral had been concerned for him here.
She prised the door open, just an inch. Rain lashed her face, and she blinked it away. The firefight had moved further off now, prudently uphill. The bomb crater by the main gate was starting to fill with water. Flash flooding, indeed. It was traditional, she supposed, a three-way Barrayaran battle between the skeleton guard on Vorkosigan Surleau under Aral's direction, the Cetagandan-equipped protestors, and the rising floodwaters. Cordelia was betting on the water. She contemplated the directions, their options.
This wasn't the main secure room attached to Vorkosigan Surleau, where Gregor undoubtedly was now surrounded by the might of ImpSec, such as it was. Nor was it the second-choice option, nor even the third. This was the old bunker, a pre-Cetagandan construction designed to protect feuding Vor from other Vor mounted on horseback and armed with gunpowder. Its main attraction, a few minutes ago, had been that it was the only vaguely secure location near the main entrance to the Vorkosigan Surleau estate, and that was where they'd all been when the first bomb went off.
"Who knows we're here?" she asked.
"Only Aral," Illyan answered. "Good security." That was security for her and Miles, Cordelia reflected. Not him.
It had been a family stroll. Piotr had said he needed to inspect the stables and paddocks, see how bad the flooding was getting. Her father-in-law was deeply scornful of his own increasing infirmity, and the only way Aral had persuaded him to take anyone with him had been by going himself, and of course Miles and Gregor had wanted to see the horses too, and where Gregor went, Illyan went. Cordelia had succumbed to Aral's pleading expression.
They'd been walking the edge of the further paddock, near to the gate, when the first bomb went off. The second had followed as Illyan started shouting into his wrist-comm and the ImpSec flyer came screaming in. Then Illyan had gone down, and Aral had gone back for him while Cordelia bundled Miles into the bunker. Piotr had drawn a weapon and coolly returned fire, until Aral forced him into the bunker as well. She'd seen Aral linking up with the Vorkosigan Armsmen and the remaining ImpSec men, no doubt telling them that the Emperor had been evacuated and his family was in a secure location. How long before they figured out that the secure location was rapidly going to be underwater? The water level was distinctly higher at the back of the bunker, and Cordelia felt no inclination to wait and find out how quickly it could rise.
"Well, Captain Naismith?" Piotr's voice was deeply ironic. Cordelia didn't bother to glare at him.
"We can't stay in here. The trouble's all away to the west, we can get up the hill to the stables and stay well away from it all. Simon--"
Illyan was struggling to sit up. "I'll be fine, take Miles and the Count."
"Don't be an idiot," she said fondly. "Miles can take himself. If you think I'm going to leave you in here or out there, that chip must have addled your brain." She considered her troops. "Miles, look after your grandfather."
Miles scrambled out of the bunker first, and Cordelia saw that someone, probably the Count, had given him a stunner at some point during the chaos. He was holding it and grinning from ear to ear. The Count went next, refusing Cordelia's hand and leaning on his stick with a glare that seemed the precise inversion of Miles's grin. "All right, Simon, let's get out of here." The water had nearly reached him by now.
Illyan muttered something under his breath that Cordelia didn't catch, and pushed himself into a sitting position. Cordelia got her arm around him as he swayed back again, and he gritted his teeth and blinked rapidly. She waited until he was steady, then eased him up onto his feet. "I'll be okay," he muttered as he stood. "It's not far." She thought he was talking to himself rather than her.
"It's not far," she agreed softly. She got his good arm across her shoulders and steadied him through the hatch and out into the driving rain.
"We need to get up off this low ground," Cordelia said. "Miles, you know the way, lead on." She scanned her little band. The Count had retained his stick and had Miles next to him, brandishing his stunner. Piotr said something to him, and Miles changed his grip on the weapon. They'd be fine. Illyan raised his head stiffly into the rain.
The ground was muddy and difficult to cross, even though they were all kitted out for the weather. Cordelia tried to keep one eye on their surroundings, just in case the protestors had any further attacks up their sleeve, but between keeping an eye on the Count and Miles, and more than half holding Illyan up, it was as much as she could do to glance around every few moments. Illyan was also trying to keep watch, the actions obviously ingrained deep.
But while the wind carried the sounds of shouts and the occasional crackle of a weapon, Cordelia saw nothing. She looked ahead. From here, the only way up onto high, dry ground involved a steep scramble up a two-metre muddy bank.
"This will be a little tricky," she muttered to herself. "Miles. Where's the best way up this?"
It was perhaps a tall order for an eight-year-old to identify the route, but if you didn't give Miles jobs to do he found jobs for himself. Illyan lost his footing in the mud and nearly went down, and they slowed further. Cordelia tightened her hold on him.
"No, that way's no good," Miles said, coming back again from his explore ahead. "The best spot is just round there."
He pointed at some bushes. Cordelia and Illyan went around them first, then stopped short.
Crouched behind the bushes was a grubby youth, head shielded in a balaclava. Illyan swore and lurched forwards, trying to put himself between them all and the kid. Cordelia had to wrap both arms around him to stop him falling face-first in the mud. "Will you stop being such an idiot," she muttered to him. Then she smiled at the youth. "Hi. Are you one of the protestors?"
The youth stared at her, eyes wide behind the balaclava, then mumbled, "Fascist scum," and Cordelia realised it was a girl.
"Nice to meet you," Cordelia said. "I take it you're for democracy, then? Well, me too, but here we are all the same. I could use a hand here."
"You--you're--you--" The girl stared from one to the other. On both sides, Cordelia saw Piotr and Miles aiming weapons at the girl, bracketing her from each side. Barrayarans.
"If you're for democracy," Cordelia said before this went downhill and she had another casualty to care for, "then right here we have an old man who should never have gone out in this weather in the first place, a kid, and one injured. Everything else is just nonsense in your collective heads. And the water's rising. So will you please lend a hand here?"
The girl stared a moment longer, and whatever lingering adrenalin that was driving Illyan began to fade. He slumped against Cordelia, and she braced herself with her back to a tree. "Take his other side, come on, make yourself useful," she said to the girl, and blinking in confusion, the girl came around. Cordelia saw her throat work as she got a good look at the amount of blood soaking Illyan's clothes. But she got an arm around him, and Cordelia sighed in relief as the weight was shared. "Thank you. Now, we've got to get them up this bank and away from the water."
Miles was right: it was easier here, a metre and a half instead of two metres, sloping rather than completely vertical, and with some scrubby bushes to provide grips. Miles scrambled up first, with the excessive energy of eight-year-olds everywhere, getting covered with mud in the process. Cordelia watched him and tried not to worry about how much worse all this would be if he fell and broke his legs. Once he was up, Cordelia let herself slide down the tree until she was seated at the bottom, propping Illyan against her with his head in her lap. "Go make yourself useful," she said to the protestor, nodding to Count Piotr. The girl stared at her, at the rising floodwaters, at the Count. "Imagine he's your grandfather," Cordelia muttered to her. "Use your eyes, not whatever feudal nonsense they drum into your head at school."
Illyan began to blink back into awareness while the girl awkwardly went over and began to assist Piotr up the bank. "Nearly there, Simon," Cordelia said to him. "One more effort and we'll be home. And do not say anything ridiculous, because I'd no more leave you behind than Miles and you know it."
"I do know, m'lady," he mumbled.
Cordelia pulled the fastener higher on his coat, to keep what warmth he had in, and turned up the collar. His skin was pale, and she couldn't tell if it was clammy with shock or with the rain. The Count reached the top of the bank and the girl turned back to look at them a little wild-eyed. One wrong word and she'd bolt, Cordelia thought, and then they'd be stuck. She infused her voice with command, but mother rather than Captain Naismith.
"Come on back down and give me a hand, then."
The girl blinked, then skidded back down the bank obediently and came over. The edge of the lake was half a metre closer than it had been when they'd arrived.
"Who--this isn't the Regent--" The girl frowned in perplexity at Illyan.
"He's hurt and he needs to get out of here," was all Cordelia said. "Ready, Simon?" She cupped his cheek in her hand for a moment, and he focussed on her and gave a shallow nod.
They got him to his feet between them, and more than half carried him up the bank, skidding and slipping in the mud. At the top they all collapsed in a heap. Cordelia shuffled around so that she was holding Illyan again, catching her breath, bending over him to block the driving rain as much as she could. "I'm sorry, Simon," she said to him. "You do go through hell for us. We'll get you home safe."
"I know who he is," the girl said suddenly, her voice sharpening in a sudden resurgence of anger, or political feeling, or some other reaction Cordelia didn't have time for right now.
"No," said Cordelia, and if the girl's voice had been sharp, hers was like a hammer. "You don't. You may know his name and his job description, but you don't know who he is. How could you? You only met him a few minutes ago."
"Is this really the time?" Count Piotr said across this. "Keep moving."
Cordelia hadn't thought Illyan was tracking any of this, but at the Count's words he began to struggle up. Cordelia nodded to the girl. She cast a wary eye at Illyan, as if the very Horus-eyes on his uniform were watching her. "Come on," Cordelia said to her, and with a furrow between her eyes she went to support him on the other side.
They skirted the edge of the paddock, moving more quickly now, and headed up the hill. "Any of your lot around here, then?" she asked the girl, in lieu of a better way of finding out what was ahead.
"Um. I don't think so." The girl looked sidelong at Illyan, at the blood. "I--I didn't think it was going to be like this, you know. It never was before."
"Horseshit and bad slogans," Cordelia said. "You've got Cetagandan ringers in your group, kiddo. Clever ones, I have to admit. They're doing their best to poison the well here for generations." She glanced up. Count Piotr and Miles were stumping along, and Miles was ostentatiously scanning the surroundings, stunner in hand. They were fine. Illyan was stumbling, his eyes kept drifting closed and he was shivering violently; he wasn't fine but this was the quickest way they would find help for him.
They reached the ridge and Cordelia stopped, scanning ahead, squinting through the rain. The protestors had been forced back, and the stables seemed clear. "Any nasty surprises for us in there?" Cordelia asked the girl.
"I--I don't think so."
"She can go first," Piotr said from behind. "Just in case."
"No, she can't, I need her help," Cordelia retorted.
The only enemy they faced, however, was the weather. Cordelia sighed with relief as they reached the lee of the big barn, and then got properly into the shelter of the building. There were no booby-traps, nothing but the warm smell of horse and hay. She eased Illyan on the straw and propped his feet up on a bale, and collapsed down beside him.
"Do you think ImpSec will be able to spare anyone to collect us yet?" she asked, more of a rhetorical question than anything, but to her surprise Illyan said faintly, "They ought to. Should be a comm over there." He moved his good arm in a weak gesture. Miles, who had briefly sat down next to them too, jumped up again and dashed off to retrieve it.
Cordelia entered the ImpSec code and waited for a response.
"Captain! Where are you?" came a flustered-sounding voice.
"Naismith here," she said, automatically. "Simon's hurt. We're in the stables, we need immediate medical attention for Simon. I've got Miles and the Count here too, they're both fine."
"Naismith? Oh. Milady. Yes. We'll be right there."
Cordelia leaned back on the straw by Illyan's head and took his good hand. "Hear that, Simon? Your fellows are all on their way. I'm afraid life might get a bit exciting for you," she added to the girl. "If you stay, I'll speak for you, but I can't say how much good it'll do you. If you want to run for it, the door's over there, I won't stop you, but there's not much I can do about the overexcited ImpSec guys out there."
"She's one of them," Miles objected. "You can't let her go!" He brandished his stunner as punctuation.
"There's going to be a power vacuum with the democratic types from tomorrow, I think," Cordelia said. "It's always better to have decent opponents, if you can get them. Scram, if you want to, and when you get back to your group, dig out the Cetas and send them Simon's way, he'll handle them for you. They're not backing you because they want a brighter future for Barrayar, believe me."
The girl swallowed. "Yes--no--I understand. Thank you, um--"
"Cordelia," she supplied. "Democratic, remember? I'm on your side really, kiddo. But these are my family here." She squeezed Illyan's hand. "Even this one. Now run."
"Towards the plantation is best," put in Piotr, completely unexpectedly. "ImpSec's perimeter was too thin around there. Get going."
The girl blinked, nodded, then bobbed out the door and was gone.
"Decent enemies are good," he said, "but ones in your debt are even better, Captain Naismith."
"Shouldn't have let you do that," Illyan whispered. "Witnesses. Evidence."
"Think long-term, Simon. Besides, how would you have stopped me?"
Illyan's hand twitched in hers. "Asked you."
"Ah. Yes. That might have worked. But you know I was right."
Illyan said nothing, but a faint smile touched his lips. Cordelia folded his cold hand between both of hers, settled back on her heels and listened keenly for the sound of the approaching ImpSec rescue.