In Green's Jungles (34 page)

I watched them then, climbing up onto one of our walls as I had stood upon the stile and wishing again for the clumsy woodand-brass telescope I had left behind on Lizard. The horde that had sifted through the hills was melting into them again, pursued not so much by our reserve as by striding shell-bursts from our big guns, distant dots of sullen black smoke and short-lived fountains of what at that distance seemed a yellowish water, like urine.

After that, there was nothing more to do except clean up. A few uninjured Soldese surrendered; they had to be herded together and searched for weapons. Our own wounded had to be bandaged and given what comfort and treatment we could muster. Two of the elderly men who had agreed to fight for their town one more time were physicians. The one who had examined and re-bandaged my own wound the day before the battle had been wounded himself, his right arm smashed so badly by a Soldese slug that it had to be taken off just below the shoulder. When that had been done, he helped with the rest, doing what he could with his left hand, and directing a woman he found who had an aptitude for the work.

If our own plight was bad, that of the Soldese wounded was far worse, for we could give them little attention until our own wounded were taken care of. Our wounds were to the head, arms, and shoulders almost entirely; that was fortunate, since many of our wounded women objected, in the most pathetic and ingrained fashion imaginable, to having their gowns and camisoles cut away, as often had to be done.

Our dead we laid out as decently as we could; and since we could not spare blankets for the task, we covered them with straw, hay, and brush. By that time the short, dark day had ended, and the snow had ceased to fall. It was cold, the wounded (the Soldese wounded particularly) were dying with every breath, and we were all too tired, almost, to move. A few of us built little fires and ate rations taken from the Soldese dead. Most, and I was one of them, wanted only to lie down-anywhere-and sleep.

I was about to go into the farmhouse when the first party from the town arrived. It was made up of men who had been with Inclito in the hills, mostly. Of men, in other words, who had run, had in nine cases out of ten thrown away their weapons, and had taken refuge behind the walls of Blanko. Many, I do not doubt, had passed through our position or skirted it only a day or two before. There were a few officers among them, and I placed them under arrest, had their hands bound, and made them sit in the snow under guard with our Soldese prisoners. The rest I told to take slug guns (we had come into a plentiful supply) and join us.

No sooner was one group thus disposed of than another arrived, and by that time it had been disposed of as well, a third had come. Sfido and I went to the farmhouse at last, too weary almost to speak, and discovered to our great pleasure that the old woman had built a fire in our room. He slept at once; but I, finding that as tired as I was I could not sleep, sat up for a time and wrote about noticing the boy who looks like Hoof and Hide, then rose and went to the door of the old woman's bedroom, and knocked when I could not hear her breathing inside. But got no reply.

I was returning to our room, stepping as softly as I could manage across the bodies of the many sleepers who had thrown down their blankets and themselves upon her floors, when I heard distant shots, screams, and shouts. I gave the alarm and ran myself, when I had thought myself too tired to walk, and in that desperate fight in the dark wood by the river did what I could with my voice and the azoth.

As we learned later from our prisoners, fewer than a hundred men of the Ducal Bodyguard had found a point at which they could ford the river, wading in freezing water up to their necks while holding their slug guns and ammunition pouches over their heads. I cannot help thinking that if the leaders of the Horde of Soldo had employed that sort of enterprise and imagination against us while their horde was still intact, things might have gone very badly indeed for us. During the battle, I was constantly afraid that a second flanking attack would be attempted on our right, either by fresh cavalry (I could not be sure the Soldese had none) or by foot soldiers. Two hundred men there would have made things difficult indeed for us, and there must have been far more than that in each of the three waves that attacked our front.

I lay down a moment ago to look at the stars. How cold they are, how lovely, and how remote! Green, which is just setting, looks as cold as any and almost as distant; but I can never forget its steaming heat. Our wounded here were in danger of dying from shock and the cold; but wounds there are attacked at once by strange diseases. I remember far too vividly rotting wounds, and dead men whose rotting wounds still lived, seething with blue and yellow slugs, and striped creatures that resembled tiny squid.

Drinking rainwater from cupped leaves, and finding it alive already with the threadlike green worms.

The Whorl is high in the sky, yet another cold whorl of stifling heat, one in which I wandered through nights that lasted for days.

Nights in which neither these beckoning stars nor the skylands shone.

Nettle will never read this, I know-indeed, I would keep it from her if she were sitting at my right hand-but might I not communicate with Nettle if I chose, giving Oreb some message to carry to her? It is a thought I have had and pushed aside ever since he sought Seawrack for me. If I were to speak to her, I would not say that I was still alive, which could only fill her with false hope; rather I would say to her that the Outsider, the god who brought our race into being on some unthinkable short-sun whorl circling one of the myriad stars that I have been staring at, is no less present for her-or for me-tonight.

The Neighbors must have worshipped him here, under whatever name. When I sacrificed for Inclito's sake and was told that Mora was still alive (which Legaro now confirms), I was as eager for information and divine favors as Inclito himself. Tomorrowor if not tomorrow, someday soon-I hope to learn of an altar of theirs in these hills. If not, I will build one and sacrifice to him there. Or merely worship him without offering any sacrifice, which I know that Oreb will greatly prefer.

* * *

I have news good beyond hope, but before I write about it I should say (as I had planned to last night) that I faced some hard decisions on the morning after the battle. Whether I decided well or ill, I still cannot say. You may judge, Nettle-or whoever reads this may.

Sfido urged me to follow Inclito with our entire force. He argued, I think rightly, that a war is never really won until the enemy's ability to wage war no longer exists. He said that even if Inclito succeeded in overtaking our enemies and bringing them to battle, he might not be able to defeat and destroy them, and would very probably need every man and woman who could pull a trigger to do so.

Rimando urged me to send all the women back to Blanko with his big guns, since it would clearly be impossible to take the guns into the hills with us no matter how useful they might be there when we encountered the Soldese. Our guns would be of no use in Blanko, he said, without troopers to line the town walls; and the women would never attack the enemy with fortitude and resolution, no matter what orders I gave. They might well serve to protect the town, however, given leadership; and if the town were lost all was lost with it. In this last at least, he was indubitably correct.

I thanked them both for their advice and made the decision myself, as it seems I always must.

First I disposed of the rest of the money we had collected in Blanko. Since I hardly dared let it out of my sight, and the chest in which Sfido and I had kept it was weighty, I felt that it was clearly best to rid ourselves of it before we broke camp. I called our people together, explained that I had already given the mercenaries a half month's pay, and distributed the rest among all those who had fought the day before, giving officers double shares. Each ordinary trooper got almost as much silver as the mercenaries had.

Then I made a second speech, resolved to do better than I had in my first. The guns had to be pulled back to Blanko, I explained, and since we had eaten our oxen, they would have to be pulled by human muscles, unless more oxen or mules could be found. On the other hand, Inclito would surely need every possible assistance in cementing the victory that we had won yesterday. Those who wished to return to Blanko were free to do so. They would remain with Major Adatta-whom I was promoting on the spot-and Captain Rimando, help pull the guns, bring back our prisoners and wounded, and defend the town should the enemy defeat Inclito in the hills. "As for Colonel Sfido and me, we are returning to the hills to prevent any such defeat. Those who wish to come with us may do so."

All of the men who had come out from the town after the battle joined us, with about a third of the women and the boys Inclito had left behind, and two-thirds of the veterans. I can only say that all three groups surprised me. On the second day we overtook Inclito, and I have already recorded the rest. Or at least, recorded those events which matter most.

Here is my good news: We have captured the Duko, General Morello, and Colonel Terzo. All three were uniformed as ordinary troopers of the Ducal Bodyguard, but the behavior of the other prisoners toward them-one spat in the Duko's face-called Sfido's attention to them. He and I are taking them back to Blanko, escorted by four men on horseback. We are camped in the open tonight, but tomorrow I hope to return to the site of the battle; I would like to conduct an experiment.

* * *

I have been talking to the Duko. What an extraordinary man he is, and what a dunce I am not to have guessed that he must be long ago!

He was a sleeper, like Mamelta. I asked whether he had known her, but he explained what I would have realized without prompting if I had my wits about me. "I may have known your friend under that name or some other," he said, "but I have no way of telling. It was a long time, years in fact, before I understood that I did not remember everything, and that not everything I remembered had actually taken place."

"We had a great many of you with us when we left the whorl," I told him. "So many that we had to take two landers, and could barely fit everybody into those two. Those of us who had grown up in Viron wanted to stay together, so all of us got on the same lander. We filled the remaining places with sleepers like you, and the rest boarded the other lander. Our sleepers-I don't quite know how to say this…"

"They have come to resemble you, dressing and talking as you do. Believing whatever it is you believe in your town of New Viron."

It was not what I had nearly said, but I seized upon it eagerly.

"I have seen it myself, and in fact I have done it myself," the Duko declared. "Our memories are less trustworthy even than yours. At first we try to live in accordance with them, but sooner or later we learn very painfully that they lead us astray." He paused to look at his fellow prisoners, General Morello and Colonel Terzo, who certainly appeared to be asleep and probably were.

"I wouldn't want them to hear this," he said. "There is no good reason for it. All such things have ceased to matter. Yet I retain my pride, though I'd like to rid myself of it once and for all."

Oreb sympathized. "Poor man!"

The Duko pointed to him. "There is the chief reason that everyone thinks you're a powerful magician, Master Incanto. That, and your power to appear in dreams as you did in mine, and to take him with you. They had no such talking birds on the Whorl, and there cannot be many here."

I explained that Oreb had come from there, exactly as I had myself.

"All right, but they can't have been known in Grandecitta. Before your bird entertained us, I was about to say that the false memories Pas gave me had one final defeat stored up for me. But it's time that I stopped laying my own shortcomings at his door."

He sat in silence for some while after that, rubbing his big chin. With his noble head and broad shoulders, and the pronounced ridge of bone beneath his thick, black brows, he seems the last person in the whorl to try to shift the blame for his own failures to an external cause.

"I trusted Morello. He'd been here all the time I'd been pacifying Olmo. He said he knew you people, that he understood your capabilities. They have clever leaders, he told me, and if we try to out-maneuver them, we'll be doing what they want. Fence with them, and you fence all day. But if we go straight at them, hammer and tongs and the anvil, they'll break, he said." The Duko laughed bitterly. "You didn't break, and I should've known better."

I pointed out that General Morello had tried to outflank us.

"But openly. He let you watch us do it, thinking it would frighten you. Pas alone knows what he thought when your troopers met our horse in a long thin line that stood its ground shooting. That you'd put a spell on them." He laughed again. "Terzo's terrified of you. He's in agony of every time you speak to him. You must have noticed it."

"Poor man!" Oreb muttered sympathetically.

"There. Did you hear that?" For a moment I thought that Duko Rigoglio was about to smile. "You have a percipient bird, Master Incanto. Someone always wins, so someone else always loses. He repeats poor man, and doesn't need to bother his head about our conversation. Say poor man again, bird."

"No, no."

"More words of universal utility. What were we talking about?"

I said that I would be delighted to talk about any subject he wished to discuss, that the privilege of conversing with him was more than enough for me.

"Then let us consider the desirability of adding a few more sticks to our fire. I would do it if you compelled me. I would have to. But with my hands and feet hobbled like this, well, you comprehend my difficulty, I'm sure."

"Poor man!"

When I had added firewood, I held the wine bottle to his mouth again, and he drank deeply, contriving to wipe his mouth upon the shoulder of his coat. "Thank you. You've been decent. You don't have to address me as Your Grandeur anymore, you know. Your brother didn't."

"Inclito prides himself on his incivility," I explained, "and I think he might very well have called you Rigoglio while you sat your throne; it would be quite in character. If he were to call you `Your Grandeur' now, he would intend it as an insult."