But the citizens would not, because the strangers their children were rough-handed and sudden and liked to manage things their own way, which—again ancient experience of them forewarned—led to strangers seeing the beauties of the city; and seeing led to desiring; and desiring led to quarrelsome threats and to disturbances in the city. To call in the starfarers was to invite a horde far greater than that which might gather on the vast plains; and to invite plunder as grievous.
So they did not.
After all, the records indicated that many times in the eons past such intrusion had come, and the city, when well prepared and well led, had prevailed.
Only when the dust took on a stronger color in the west did they take clear alarm. This plume amid the blowing clouds was indeed broader than it had been in living memory and darker. It was their sole warning, with the tribes of the surrounding area gone: they were without eyes and ears now. . . but they were prepared in mind. The soldiers of the Forbidden City decorated their armor with ribbons, and polished their weapons and saw to their supplies of gunpowder. . . for more deadly weapons again involved the thankless and rowdy starfarers, and they would have none of it, as the enemy, they fully trusted, had no such arms. They filed out, great in number, footsoldiers, for the folk of the Forbidden City no longer traveled and preferred the stability of infantry in such few wars as they fought. They prepared to fight as they lived, with precision and elegance, ribbons streaming from armor and weapons and flowers decking their helms.
All the city turned out to see the soldiers on their way, waved gaily embroidered kerchiefs from the beautiful walls, danced dragons in the streets, threw flowers and cheered for the brave defenders of the city.
It was an event, not a crisis. Ah, they knew their danger, but the danger was remote, and their long tranquility behind their walls had made them philosophical and happy.
Nowhere near the whole of the city's young folk marched out. It was in fact only half, the Lion and Phoenix regiments, which went, those forces which this year's turn made active. The rest were spectators.
Such were Tao Hua and Kan Te, of the Dragon. Kan Te was a tall young son of the Guardian of the Morning Gate, an excellent youth of straight limbs and a bright glance, and a brave heart; and Tao Hua, as splendid a young woman as Kan Te was a fine youth, daughter to renewed artists in inks. They were soon to be married. All the world was good to Tao Hua and Kan Te, and along with the rest of the cheering city, they turned out in optimism, standing on the walls by the western gate to wave cheer to their comrades and to take in the spectacle. Their hearts lifted for the brave display. The fighting was something beyond their imaginations, for while they were soldiers, they had never fought in earnest. Usually there were shots fired at a great distance and a few of the barbarians would fall and that would be the end of the war. It was all very tidy and none of the flower-decked armor was sullied; in fact, in the last encounter, much before Tao Hua and Kan Te were born, the army had come back with its flowers unwilled, unstained and victorious.
There were drams and cymbals, and the dragon dancers chained along at the army's side as they passed the gate.
"Perhaps we will be called up," said Tao Hua.
"Perhaps," said Kan Te, marking the size of the cloud; and the least fear was in his heart, for he had heard his greatgrandfather talking with his grandparents and parents after coming from council. "The council was divided about whether to send more."
"Lion and Phoenix are very brave," said Tao Hua.
"They are not enough," said Kan Te, surer and surer of this. He should not bear tales, things heard in family, but Tao Hua bore them no further. He took her hand in his and they watched the dust with the light of the dying sun piercing it with strange colors. "Some wanted to defend the walls from inside and some wanted to march out in all our strength; and the result. . . the council sent only half, and left half behind. To send more, they said, would panic the people unnecessarily."
Tao Hua looked up at him, her face quite serene and golden in the sun, and he thought again how he loved her. He was afraid, perceiving a shaking in his world, as if it were the tramp of hooves and feet, foretold in the dust.
"I dreamed," he said further, "that all the grass of the plains was gone; I dreamed that the Earth swarmed with men and beasts and that they were much alike; I dreamed of tents and campfires like stars across all the plain of the world; I dreamed that the moon fell, and the moon was the hope of the city."
Tao Hua gazed at him, her black eyes reflecting the shifting clouds, and he thought again of the moon which fell, no bit comforted to have told his dream. There had always seemed time enough: the end of the world crept on at a leisurely pace, and in its ending there were beauties enough. There was no ambition left, but there was time. . . all the time human lives needed: it was only the Earth which had grown old. Love had not.
For the first time the thought of death came between them.
The column moved slowly, inexorable in its flow across the plain of the world, a flow which had begun years ago in the Tarim and surged to the western rim of the world-plain; which now flowed back again multiplied until the eye could not span its breadth, let alone its length.
The general rode at the head of the column: Yilan Baba, his men called him, Father Serpent, but snake he had been from his youth, cunning and deadly in his strike. Now he was very old, braced in the saddle with furs and the habit of years on horseback. It was an old pony that carried him, a beast he called Horse, which was one in a long succession of shaggy high-tempered beasts of similar bay color. . . how many, Yilan had forgotten; and this one had grown patient over the long traveling, and quiet of manner, tired, perhaps, as Yilan was tired, and old, as Yilan had gotten old. . . but that was not the complaint which gnawed at Yilan. He was thin beneath the quilted coats and leathers and furs, thin to the point of gauntness. His mustaches were grizzled; his braids were gray, his narrow eyes were lost in sun-wrinkles and his cheeks were seamed and hollowed by age and by the wasting disease which had come on him in this last year.
But if he looked, squinting, through the sun-colored dust which swirled about them, it seemed that he could see this place of his dreams, the Forbidden City, the City of Heaven. He imagined that he could see it, as he imagined it each dawning, when the sun rose out of the east and the colors streamed through the dusty wind. The wind out of the east breathed of green lands, of beauty, of wealth. . .
. . . of ending. A place to rest. Beyond, was only the sea.
"Give me the city," he had asked of the hordes which he had gathered. For all of a lifetime he had gathered them, he, Yilan, the Snake, from his mastery of his own tribe to mastery of all the tribes which rode the world-plain.
They came with tents and with wagons, with oxen and with swift horses and with patient feet, men and women and children of the hordes. With the drought on the plains he might have lost them, but he stirred them now with visions of final paradise, with a dream which he had prised from the lips of a man who had actually seen the City of Heaven.
He had gathered power all his life, which had been fifty-nine seasons, and which—he knew—would not be another. He wanted this thing, he wanted it—ah, beyond telling.
And the flesh grew thinner and the pain of his bones against the saddle grew all but unbearable; he bled from the saddlegalls, he was so thin, and his eyes watered so that much of the time he rode with the shame of tears on his cheeks.
"Drink, Yilan Baba," said a voice by his side. He looked into the young face of Shimshek, dark and fierce as a kite, who offered him kumiss and rode his pony close to Horse, so that he might steady him. He drank, and the liquor warmed him, but his hand was now so weak that he could not stopper the skin or long hold it. Shimshek caught it from him in time, and reached to grip his shoulder as they rode knee against knee. "Hold firm, Father, we will stop soon."
"The City will be in sight," he said, and comforted by the presence of his young lieutenant, he focused his mind and his eyes, and thought how l
ong by now the plume of their dust might have been seen. "Hawk and Fox will go out with all others you can persuade," he said, his voice cracking; he steadied it and lifted his hand eastward, where he would send the forces. "And you must lead them. I no longer can, Shimshek."
"Father," Shimshek mourned. There was great sadness in his eyes, a genuine sorrow.
"I have taught you," said Yilan. Shimshek was not, in fact, his son; he had no son, though his wife's belly swelled with life. He loved this man as if he were a son, and trusted him with all that mattered. "Go," he said. "This time you lead."
Shimshek looked behind them, at the column of wagons which groaned after them, having in his eyes that look which was for the woman they both loved, and for things he could not say. There was fear in Shimshek's eyes that was not for the enemy, not for anything that he would yet name. Good, thought Yilan. Good, he knows; and yet Shimshek said nothing, because there was nothing which could be said. The task was for doing, and there was no help for it: he had himself fought his last battle, and knew it; and Horse knew it, who was also aging. . . by now Horse would have known the enemy, would have flared his nostrils and thrown his head and walked warily and eagerly with the scent of strangers and strange land coming on the winds. But he plodded, head hanging.
"Go," he said again, and Shimshek pressed his shoulder and then raced off full tilt, drumming his heels into his pony's side, shouting and kicking up the dust. "Hai ahi hai," he yelled, and the Wolf standard moved to Shimshek's summons, for Wolf was Shimshek's clan. Hawk and Fox moved when Yilan lifted his arm and waved those units toward; the warriors thundered past to the Wolf banner. More couriers went out on their swift ponies, rallying the others, a vast horde gathering to the command of Shimshek the Wolf in this the first skirmish of the campaign.
Another horseman rode to be near Yilan, dour and frowning, of Yilan's own years, but hale and powerful. Yilan envied him the power and the years yet left to him and looked him in the eyes. Boga was this one's name, gray and broad: bull was his name, and he had led all the hordes of the Danube.
Once.
"You send the Wolf. . . where?"
"To command." Again the hoarseness, which robbed his voice of the command it had once had. He was doubly grateful for the loyalty of Shimshek: his back would be cold indeed with Boga at it. "To lead , Boga. And your men will guard the column."
Hate burned in the old man's eyes, deep and vengeful. Yes, Yilan thought, and now even Shimshek fears this man. Advisedly, if yet without knowledge.
Boga rode away. Yilan watched the gathering of chiefs which instantly surrounded him. "Come on, Horse," he said, and thumped the bony sides and rode toward the group, rode among them, gaining guilty looks as he shouldered in. "Move," he said, "back to your troops," he ordered some; and "Go with Shimshek," he ordered others. He commanded, and heads bowed and riders hurried off, and Boga was left to ride beside him. The gesture had tired him. He stared into the shifting light and the dust raised by Shimshek's swirling horsemen, and knew that hate was beside him.
"We camp in another degree of the sun," he said. He knew for a certainty what Shimshek had perhaps come to suspect in recent days, that he was dying quickly. That Boga wished the process hastened. "We have the city all but in sight," he said, to prod at Boga, for a perversity that he himself did not understand, except that in war, too, he had had such a habit, to draw the enemy out, and never to let him lie concealed.
"I did not believe you could do it, Yilan Baba. I did not, but you've proved me wrong."
Boga had resisted. He followed because his tribe could not hold apart from the other tribes; because he had commanded the Danube hordes and could still, if he went where they went. Inevitably in council there was Boga standing up and saying that the tribes must keep their independence each from the other. It sounded noble and traditional. It meant another thing; for the more he weakened, the more Boga had stopped saying such things. The more he began to die, the more a look was born in Boga's slitted eyes, like the look of a hungry beast.
"I know you," Yilan Baba said hoarsely.
"You should know me well by these many years, Father. We have had our differences, but indeed, have I not followed you?"
"I know you," Yilan said again, turning his head to look into Boga's eyes a second time; and this time something in Boga looked out of those eyes and seemed to go very cold. "We are old," said Yilan. "Very old, Boga. I know you."
The look became fear. Perhaps he should have feared in turn, but instead he smiled at Boga, and watched the fear grow, the certainty in Boga's mind that he was indeed known, and that the whispers which Boga whispered with others in the far places of the column were heard.
They rode side by side, he and his murderer, while Shimshek and much of the vanguard rode away to crush the forces which the city might send against them, which could not possibly stand against the might of all the tribes of the plain of the world.
His eyes wept, and this time not from the wind. He cherished a selfish hope that he might be able to see the city before he died. He did not speak of it in those terms, far from it. He acknowledged no weakness to Boga and his lot. He knew, in fact, that by challenging Boga he had just hastened the hour of his death. He should not have done it, perhaps, but he had commanded all his life, and he would not allow another to choose for him. Tonight then, likely tonight. Boga was thinking and planning and when Boga was sure then Boga would strike.
He thought of Gunesh riding behind him in the wagon, thought of her with the only pain he felt. Gunesh loved him; Shimshek did; and they were all the world. A baby grew in Gunesh's belly. . . not his son, but Shimshek's. He knew that. Of course he knew it. His health made other answers impossible. That even Shimshek and Gunesh betrayed him in this regard did not matter, because they were the two he loved best, and he could not wish better for her than she had for that young man, or he in her, or himself, in them. Sex had never been a matter of pride with him. It had never been, from his youth. He had gone through the motions, enjoyed a bawdy joke—but that part of his instincts was subordinated to his obsessions: not power, not precisely that—in fact, power bored him—hunger, perhaps, but he never wanted it sated. Nor was it vague or formless. He knew himself, ah, very well—and loved, and even hurt for the pain he caused, but he went on causing it.
Had prepared more of it, maneuvering Shimshek into command above Boga. But it was the right thing. Shimshek now had troops with him, tribe upon tribe. . . so it would be disaster for them to present Shimshek and the returning troops with the murdered body of Yilan Baba. Ah, no. They would do that only if they must.
He smiled to himself and stared into the dust with the wind cold on his cheeks, feeling the brush of Boga's knee against his as the ponies walked side by side, and the standard of the conquering hordes went before, the banner of the dying sun.
He still ruled, even making them kill him when he chose. That was always his power, that he chose everything he could, and gambled the rest.
And by the hour of camp the city appeared to them. A cry went up from the column which stretched as far as the mind could imagine. Ah, the tribes moaned. Ah, the women and children said, and it was the sighing of the rumored sea, and the rush of wind, and the breaking of thunder. Ah . The city shimmered like a mirage, its roofs shone with gold and with beauty in the light, and dust veiled it, which was the place of Shimshek and the others, where battle raged. Yilan had no doubt of the battle; had these not sufficed, he could have sent more. They might crush the city with the wagons of women and children alone, if they simply moved forward.
He wept, which he did continually, but it had meaning in this moment; and in truth many of the warriors wept, and waved their lances and raced their ponies. Here and there a rider wasted precious gunpowder, which he did not reprimand, for after this there were no more battles for the horde, because they should have conquered the whole of the known world, and there was nothing more but the sea.
"Do we camp?" asked a young rider from Fox. He nodd
ed and looked at Boga. "Give the orders," he said. Boga rode off to do so. The column halted, the wagons were unhitched, the animals picketed. Yilan sat his horse and waited as he would do every evening, until all was in order, until firepots were brought from the wagons and cooking began.
The place of the wagon-tents was not chance; it was a matter of precedence. His own was central to the camp; and those of his chieftains of the Hawk and Fox touching his. . . but they were with Shimshek; and those of the Wolf himself, but Shimshek was not there, and his underchiefs were gone, so that there were only the families, wagons without defenders. Indeed, on his left was Boga's lynx standard, and near it the standards of chiefs who had not gone with Shimshek—all his enemies.
Boga's hour at last, Yilan thought to himself, riding slowly into the trap, that harmless-looking area by his own wagon, where Gunesh should be waiting. But there indeed Boga and the others, who stood with their horses, dismounted, beside the ladder of his wagon. He watched for blades, his heart paining him for Gunesh, who might be dead; but no, not yet, not until he should die. They would not dare, for fear of having all misfire. Cut off the snake's head before risking other provocations. Boga was not stupid; thus, he was predictable.
It was a simple drink they gave him, a skin of kumiss, and from Boga's own hand, while he was still in the saddle. He looked at Boga, and there was a fearsome silence despite all the noise and bustle of the camp. . . a silence and stark fear in the faces all about that circle as he sat Horse with that deadly gift in hand and looked from Boga to the rest of them.
"I know you," he said again, and watched the hate in Boga's eyes grow and the fear in the others' eyes increase.
He drank. He looked at them afterwards. Saw the fear no whit abated. It was a different fear, perhaps, that of men who suddenly felt transparent, and wondered if they had not walked into some unnamed trap in which the stakes were not quite as they had thought.
"Help me down," he said, and swung a leg over, used Boga's arms to steady him, let Boga help him to the steps of his wagon. Boga helped him up slowly, into the carpeted, dark interior. "Light the lamps," he ordered, and Boga uncovered the firepot and did so, a servant's duty; but Boga let him exact this of him, enduring anything he might wish. . . this night.
The Collected Short Fiction of C J Cherryh Page 16
