In Green's Jungles (24 page)

I spoke to Kupus again. "Captain, I would like to make you an offer, one that will keep friend from killing friend. Colonel Bello, Colonel Vivo, and I came here with you, unarmed and under a flag of truce. I'm sure you won't deny that; you know it's true."

He nodded.

"Very well. I want to exchange myself for General Inclito and his daughter. If-"

The burly officer with the blond mustache interrupted me. "When you were listing your reasons for thinking your town might win, you didn't say anything about your magic."

"It is not my town," I told him, "and I have no magic to threaten you with."

That set off a buzz of talk.

Fava shouted to make herself heard. "My grandmother's an old, old woman. She was nearly fifty when she came here to Blue, and she knows a lot about stregos. She says Incanto's the greatest strego she's ever seen." More loudly still, she shrieked, "Don't say you weren't warned!"

Kupus stepped near enough that he could speak almost normally. "You'll exchange for Inclito?"

I nodded. "And his daughter. I want to be with you to keep you from killing one another."

"Not the daughter." Holstering his needler, he took a slug gun from one of the bystanders and fired it into the air for silence. "She came on her own to try and get her father out, and we're keeping her."

That was how our meeting ended. Before Inclito left, he tried to have a word with me in private but was prevented by Kupus and the guards. He told Kupus, "Take a tip from someone who knows, Captain. It's over. You and your men will be part of Blanko's horde before long. You may not think so, but you don't know Incanto like I do." He kissed Fava before he rode off with Bello and Vivo.

Our hands were free until nightfall; then Sfido ordered us bound. Our guards took my staff, and chased Oreb away.

ESCAPE TO GREEN

O
nce again I have let this account fall behind events. I am back in Blanko, and staying once more with my friends Atteno the stationer and his wife; he has let me refill this little ink bottle, and given me a great deal of paper-more, surely, than I will ever need. My task here is to raise enough money to pay our mercenaries, and I am finding it far from easy; but before I get into that, I should explain how we came to have them, although I can scarcely expect anyone who reads this to believe me.

They had no tent for Fava and me, the only tent in their whole encampment being the one Sfido had brought. The snow, which I had borne easily at first, became a sort of torture after sunset, wetting and chilling everyone. I huddled under some thornbushes with Fava; and although she may have gotten some warmth from me, I got none from her. For hours I lay there shivering while four troopers with slug guns stood guard over us, my freezing fingers grasping one another inside my robe; but eventually I fell asleep.

Or woke.

I was lying upon stone instead of stones, a level stone floor that felt blessedly cool although the steaming air I breathed might have come from a bathhouse. A man with a cloth around his head in the Gaonese fashion crouched beside me. He shook my shoulder, saying softly, "Rajan, Rajan."

I sat up, sensing somehow that the perspiring girl who lay at my side was a human being, although the light was so dim that I could only just make out the face of the man who had shaken my shoulder. "Yes, Chaku, I'm awake. What do you want with me?"

"Rajan, where are we?"

I had no idea; but I held my finger to my lips, fearing that he would wake Fava.

One of the troopers who had been set to guard us stepped over to stand next to Chaku. His name was Schreiner, and he asked "Have you done this to us?" in a voice that trembled with fear.

"Done what to you?" When I do not have the answer, I find it best to ask another question.

Chaku turned to him. "Am I dreaming?"

When Schreiner did not answer him, I asked, "Do you usually ask others whether you're dreaming in your dreams, Chaku?"

"Never!"

"Then I doubt that you're dreaming now," I told him.

The door was flung back by a burly human slave, and a small but handsome man in rich robes came in, followed by three naked muscular human slaves. Iron bands encircled their wrists, bands joined by heavy chains they swung like weapons. The robed master pointed to Chaku; sensing what was about to happen, I hurried over to stand before him with outspread arms.

The slaves hesitated; then the largest, a graying man with protruding ears and a lantern jaw, indicated Schreiner.

His master nodded.

Schreiner raised his slug gun, but it was knocked out of his hands before he could fire; a second blow from the big slave's chain followed like lightning, dashing Schreiner to the stone floor.

At once the robed master threw himself on top of him, and appeared to kiss his neck. His slave whispered, "You shaggy well better beat hoof, Patera."

Chaku fired as he spoke. The robed master's head seemed almost to explode, wetting my face with blood and brains flung hard enough to sting. From other parts of the huge room, others fired, slugs shrieking as they ricocheted from walls, ceiling, and floor. The slaves shouted and raised their hands, then snatched up their master's body and ran, slamming the iron door behind them.

Fava sat up screaming.

By then I had recognized the place. Overcome with wonder and awe, I muttered, "I am asleep and dreaming, and they are in my dream." Fortunately, Chaku did not overhear me.

The chamber that confined us was so dimly lit that I could scarcely make out its walls; but as well as I could judge, only Fava had changed at all. And even Fava had changed only subtly, for she had always seemed an apple-cheeked child just short of puberty, with long, light brown hair and a winning smile.

Thinking about this, and what had just occurred, and certain other things, I sat down upon the cool flagstones again, my right forefinger drawing circles on my cheek.

While I sat lost in thought, Schreiner, our guard, recovered consciousness; his head was bandaged with strips torn from his tunic, and then, because he seemed not to like my company, he was helped to his feet and led away. I saw these things, but they made little impression on me. The dream, I felt, must surely end soon, as our earlier dream of Green had when it was interrupted by the cook. The various difficulties that I had tried to think of some way of confronting as I lay beside Fava under the snow-covered thornbushes would be pressing again, and I struggled against them with little hope, while wondering whether I was not in fact freezing to death while I wiped the sweat from my face with the sleeve of my robe.

I wanted to prevent the mercenaries from murdering one another, and I could see no way to do it other than by bringing them all to Blanko's side, meanwhile stepping in to smooth such quarrels as I chanced to witness.

Very well, they had to be brought to Blanko's side-but it seemed out of the question until enough time had passed to show the falsity of the Duko's promises clearly-and by that time the war would more than likely have been lost. I reproached myself bitterly for pretending to agree when Inclito spoke of intercepting the mule-loads of silver the Duko had promised to send, since by nodding as I had, I had appeared to accept the idea that Duko Rigoglio had such a sum at his disposal and would pay it out. I had nodded so it would seem that Inclito and I were in agreement on all questions. Still it had been a mistake, and one I continue to regret.

(As I write, it strikes me that there is a chance, however slight, that Inclito was correct and I mistaken. The tenth is only three days distant. It would be well to send horsemen to intercept the silver, if it exists; but I have no horses here to speak of, and I feel sure Inclito will do it himself if he is not hotly engaged.)

How could Duko Rigoglio be persuaded to abandon his war? I had sent Fava with that hope, and had likewise written those letters to Olmo and Novella Citta, hoping that the messengers would be captured by the Soldese-all in order that Rigoglio, fearing that his allies were not as reliable as he had supposed, would cancel his invasion. Both my tricks had clearly failed, and as I sat on the stone floor of that sweltering room in which I could not possibly be again, I could devise no fresh scheme that seemed apt to succeed.

What was worse, Mora had made herself one of the messengers whose lives I had risked in the hope of securing peace. By this time she had presumably been captured and raped, I reflected, and was weeping in a dungeon much worse than this dream dungeon of mine.

Behind these lurked the greater problem: how could I make my way back to New Viron and you, Nettle, as I long to, without abandoning my friends here? All these problems plague me still, and none more than that.

Fava came to sit by me; and I, looking around at her and smiling, realized with a start that we had half the chamber to ourselves.

"I thought you might like some company." She returned my smile. "Somebody to talk to, even me."

"You think I'm your enemy." I shook my head. "I never was, Fava. While we were where we were, I could not be your friend; but I was never your enemy."

"That's what Mora said once."

"Mora was right. If we're going to be friends, tell me something now. Are you as young as you look?"

After a moment, she shook her head.

"I didn't think so. You're older, and very cunning-"

She laughed at that, and it was a girl's clear laughter.

"Too often, you let it show. Did you really try to free Inclito?"

She nodded. "He'd been nice to me. He let me live with his daughter in his house, and treated me almost as well as her. I'd hurt him and his mother, and if I could I wanted to make amends."

I smiled again, and tried not to let my smile become bitter. "Very few of us are that honorable."

"I'm not fooling you for a minute, am I?"

"To the contrary," I said. "I very much hoped that you were telling the truth."

"Well, I was. But I wanted to get even with Duko Rigoglio too. That message you gave me, I'll bet you thought I wouldn't deliver it."

"I hoped you would, and thought you very well might."

"I did. He had me arrested and was going to chop my head off for it."

I apologized and told her that I had not considered that he might react violently.

"You think I'm clever because you are. You think everybody against you must be clever too. If the Duko had been clever, he'd have wanted to keep me as a spy. I was counting on it, but everybody says he's more than half mad, and he got furiously angry when he thought I'd brought bad news."

I said that I would like to speak with him sometime.

"No you wouldn't." Fava sounded positive.

"So he was going to have you killed. I take it you escaped?"

She laughed again. "Did you think I couldn't? They put me in a little room with bars on the window, and as soon as they weren't looking, I went out between them. We can change our bodies a lot. You know that. I know you do, because you put it into my story that time."

I nodded. "I know you can lengthen your legs and widen your arms into wings."

"We can do lots of other things, too. Remember how Flosser tied my hands? I could have pulled them right out! Don't think I wasn't tempted to, either, just to see his face. We can even slip under doors if there's a big crack there. Want to see me make my neck long and open my hood? It's something we do here to make animals think we're bigger than we are."

I told her it was something that I would like very much to see, if she was confident that no one else would see it too.

"They're afraid even to look at you, and my hair will cover it. I'll only do it a little bit."

She turned to face me squarely, raised her head, and grinned. Nothing happened, and I told her, "We need not worry about their seeing that."

"I can't!"

"Neither can you fly," I said. I was guessing, but I was quite certain my guess was correct. "You can run and jump now, however; and if there were horses here, you might even learn to ride like Mora."

She stared. "What's happened?"

"I have fallen asleep, that's all. You and I sit talking in my dream, and you are as I think of you."

She threw her arms around my neck and kissed me.

When I had freed myself again I said that Krait had told me once that his life was a nightmare in which he was trapped in the body of a blood-drinking reptile.

"That's it! That's it exactly!"

"I don't think so, but I am not your judge. What you must realize-what we both need to realize-is that this really is a nightmare, whether it is mine alone or ours. Your mind has joined my own to produce it. I thought of you as a girl often, though I knew what you really were. And you must think of yourself as a girl frequently as well. Thus in our shared nightmare you actually-"

She had leaped to her feet and raced away, her long hair streaming behind her like a banner. I watched her, recalling how Mamelta had run in the Hall of Sleepers, possessed by a girl locked in a small and stinking bedroom-a girl far too starved and sick to run even if she had been free.

A second more, and Fava had disappeared into the dim farther reaches of the chamber. Another, and she was returning. I had said that she could no longer fly, but she seemed to fly as she raced back to me.

"Some men-" She dropped breathless to the floor. "Are coming. They saw me kiss you. The Soldese-" She pointed.

I looked. "Captain Sfido and Captain Kupus, and another officer."

"Zepter." She gasped. "He doesn't like us."

Zepter was the burly officer with the blond mustache. I muttered that under the circumstances I could hardly blame him, but I am not sure Fava heard me.

Sfido called, "May we speak to you, Rajan?"

"You may speak with me, of course; but I would rather you didn't address me like that."

"What should we call you?" He was advancing hesitantly; even so, he was well in front of the other two.

"In Blanko, the people call me Incanto."

They halted, the three of them looking at one another. "Call him Dervis," Fava suggested impishly. "It's a good name, and I don't think he'll mind."