by Paul Park
Later they had seen the colonel stand up, surrounded by a circle of his family, his steel fist raised to the sky, and they had heard some of his talking, too, a low toneless whisper. It had no words or voice. Yet still it wasn’t buried among all the other sounds, the shouts, barking laughter, people ringing saucepans like gongs, people making music. It rose above those noises like a kind of vapor, like the distilled essence of all the sounds in that disordered camp. It seemed to distill what all of them evoked in different ways, a yearning for something out of reach, and the defiant joy that comes from never settling for anything less.
“I have to get back as quickly as I can,” Thanakar was saying. “I’m the only one who can redo hands. Bloodstar gets to the wrist all right, but the fingers turn out webbed, like a fin or a flipper. Not that we have the materials to do a careful job. Still, they must be wondering where I am.”
“We’ll go back in the morning,” said the commissar, half-listening. “We’ll all go back. The guns are impregnable from this side.”
The bonfires had burned low, and before long everything was dark. But tracer shells still drew occasional parabolas across the sky. They fell short, noiselessly, and flared up.
The two men heard footsteps coming up the slope, and Aspe stepped into their lamplight, carrying a bottle. He was smiling and flushed. Exultation freed his movement and the gestures of his hands, and made him seem bigger even than he was. The air was cool, yet his face shone with sweat, the seams and scars standing out in silver lines along his cheeks.
“I have come to see if you are comfortable,” he said. “I’m going back.” He paused when they said nothing, then continued. “I should have brought the horse. I was a fool. I have to walk, but I feel like walking. I have them,” he exulted. “I have them in my hand.”
“What do you mean?” asked Thanakar.
“Tonight they swore to follow me. Me. They swore to obey me for one month. It’s not long enough, for a long journey. It doesn’t matter. What is a month to them? A word. I will make it long enough.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, of course not. Why should you? When have you ever understood anything of importance?” Aspe sprawled down heavily on the stones in front of the tent, and his bottle made a chink as he put it down. He took out his knife and made a line in the dirt. “This is the valley,” he said. “North and south. The guns are at this end,” he said, touching the north end with his knife. “The guns and the monastery. We are here,” he continued, bisecting the line with a small mark. “Just north of this notch, facing the guns. The army is here, where we left them on the other side. Tonight I go back to join them, and tomorrow morning we must circle round, out of the valley onto the ridge. I know the way.” A tracer lit the sky, and lit the valley from the monastery to the notch, and showed the escarpment on either side. “I will meet King Argon there.” Aspe pointed with his knife to the top of the ridge northeast of where they sat. “I know the place. But I must keep men here. Otherwise the King will try and move his guns. But when he shoots those flares, he thinks he sees my army. My brothers and sisters will stay here all day. They have given their word.”
He paused, then went on. “No, not that. They have no word to give. I don’t want that. But I have given them a symbol.” He reached into his breast and pulled out a white silk scarf. “They will follow this, and the man who carries it. And I will burn it one month from tonight, when I have led them home.”
“I don’t understand,” said Thanakar.
“Then it is too hard to explain to you.” Aspe turned to the commissar. “Old man,” he said. “It is a sin to try and break the unbreakable horse. So it is. But I found this horse shackled and bound, and I broke the chain and loosened the rope. Only, I must lead it for a time. I too have my obligations. But when King Argon’s head is on a pole and I have sent it to the emperor, then I ride north, and my family rides with me. They follow me because of a memory I gave them. I can make pictures in the air. Have you seen it? No? Barbarians! No matter, it’s a trick I have. It is a magic that I learned long ago. I have given them a memory of freedom. Every night I have sung it in their ear. But I will not betray them, not this time. North, north above Rangriver, where the grass grows, and there’s fish in the water and snow on the hill. In the house where I was born, I will sing my music. I have pledged my word. I will not break it. One week from tonight I ride. And my people will ride with me.”
“The savior of his race,” muttered the commissar.
“Ah yes, a biter,” said Aspe, smiling viciously. “And maybe hoping is the sharpest bite of all. But there is beauty in the heart of ugliness—I learned that from your bishop. You know she has true power, that one. All the rest are conjurers and charlatans—your priests are masters of illusion, as I am. But she has a true power. When I saw her in the center of that circle of old priests, it made me think that there was hope, for me and all of us, and that a man could change. It made me hope I had some beauty of my own. A biter, yes. But look you, Starbridge, look. We can’t all keep our fingers clean. Maybe I have been ambition’s slave, and worse than that, a slave to other people. But without me, my brothers and my sisters would still be stinking in your filthy slum, because sometimes it takes a man with dirt on his hands.”
“I don’t deny it,” said the commissar. “The hands don’t matter, nor the dirt, nor the man. Only if you keep this clean.” He pulled the white scarf from the colonel’s fist, and smoothed out its wrinkles. “Only if you never let it drop. But I believe you are what I would call a man of honor. Otherwise you would have broken them to your own will, and not to this.”
“They would not have been fit to lead, if they had followed me,” muttered Aspe, grabbing back his scarf.
“Remember that,” said the commissar, “and you may do some good.”
Aspe grinned. “Tomorrow you’ll see me on the ridge.” He pointed with his knife. “Watch for my standard. Tomorrow I’ll break him, by God I will. I’ll take him on the flank. I’ll have King Argon’s head upon a pole. And his guns won’t shoot one shell.” He got to his feet, and took his scarf and his bottle down the slope into the dark.
“What does he mean, ‘by God’?” asked Thanakar.
“He’s caught between two worlds. He is the saddest man I ever saw, to talk to us like that. His own people are beyond his comprehension.” The commissar shivered. “I feel a presentiment of death,” he said.
It rained all night, without managing to launder morning, which was neither crisp, nor fresh, nor clean. The sun peered dubiously through a damp mist, and the sky seemed full of illusions—clouds in the shape of continents and monsters as the commissar looked out, and once his mother’s profile drifted by. An expression of sternness changed to surprise as the clouds lifted her eyebrows, and then she blew apart.
Commissar Micum sniffed the air. “Sugar rain,” he said.
“People have been saying that for weeks,” yawned Thanakar behind him.
“It’ll come.” The commissar stooped and picked up a stone from the ground, and tested it between his fingers. Perhaps it was his imagination, but it seemed a little slippery, and it seemed as if some residue was left on his fingers. When the rain came, these stones would shine like mica, and it would be hard to stand upright.
The camp was hidden by a tattered mist, but through its rents they could see parts of the river, and antinomials washing horses. And in one place they could see a gathering of people, standing gray and dispirited, and curiously still. The sight depressed them, though they caught no shreds of talk. So they packed quickly, leaving most of what they had. Skirting the camp and meeting no one, they set out on foot, back through the Keyhole towards where the regular army had camped the night before. Doubtless the army was gone by now, thought Thanakar, up with Aspe before daybreak, circling round out of the valley to attack the monastery along the ridge, but the camp would still be there, and the hospital.
The rocks looked ghostly in the mist, along the road where they
had passed on elephantback. Leaving the antinomials they had met no one, and there was no one on the road, yet still they were always turning to look behind them, and peering around boulders and up along the cliffs that closed in on either side. For random sounds seemed to metamorphose into footsteps, and the hissing of the river seemed like voices calling. Once they saw someone, an antinomial woman standing motionless by the water’s edge, barefoot in the water. And in the misty morning she looked dark and hard as a tall pile of rocks, her pack of muscles and her small hard breasts, her hair cut short around her broken face; she was not young. She looked at them as they passed. They mumbled and bowed their heads, and hugged their cloaks around them, for her expression was at once scornful, thoughtful, and immeasurably sad, and it made them feel nervous and unclean.
“I feel a presentiment of death,” the commissar said again, after they had passed. Thanakar would remember the words, because at that moment death followed close behind them, and in a little while, when the way broadened out and the cliffs started to spread away, death called out to them, and they turned to wait for him to gather form out of the mist. He was dressed, as he so often was in those days, in the red robes of a priest.
“Wait!” he called in his shrill voice, and they turned back. It was the bishop’s liaison, a thin handsome man with laughing eyes. “Wait up,” he said, leaning on a rock to catch his breath.
They waited, and he stood before them, a handsome man with thick black hair, his hands on his hips, taller than either of them. “I looked for you,” he said. “Where were you? How was your night among the heathen?”
“Happy,” said the commissar.
“Then it was better than my morning. One of them touched me. Pah!” He spit onto the road. “I washed, but nothing takes away the smell.”
“What were you doing there so early?” asked Thanakar. “Making converts?”
The priest frowned. Thanakar had an uneasy reputation among Starbridges, but the priest could understand it, given his obligations and his leg. Any differences between them were nothing compared with what they shared, the same blood, the same duty, the same family, bonds that mere hatred could never dissolve. “Preaching,” he answered. “Of a kind. More effective than any I’ve ever done before, I think. Yes. They’ve been a scourge to this whole countryside, and flouted God’s most cherished laws, but now I think we’ve seen the last of them.”
“What do you mean?” asked the commissar.
The priest marched past them a few steps. “You’ll find out,” he said. “No, I’ll tell you. I am triumphant. I never expected it to be easy, or even possible. Yet it was so easy.” He laughed, a shrill raw sound.
“Tell me,” said the commissar.
For an answer, the priest pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket and smoothed it out for them to see. In spidery Starbridge pictographs, it read:
Find me a way to hang these cannibals and spare me the expense of rope.
Chrism Demiurge, episcopal secretary.
Kindness and Repair
Spring 8, Oct. 19, 00016
“God save us,” said the commissar quietly.
“Aspe came back late last night,” continued the priest. “The problem was always how to separate the atheists from the rest of the army, but he took care of that. He woke us up for a council of war. Then he roused his regiment, and they were up and away long before dawn. I left as soon as he was gone.”
“To do what?”
“I confess, at first I didn’t know. I thought it was an opportunity not to be missed. I thought of bringing them false orders, but Aspe can’t write, and they can’t read. I didn’t know what I was going to say. But the problem resolved itself. God found a way. Aspe was swaggering and boasting last night. I think he was drunk. And something he said . . . I stole his scarf. The fool didn’t even notice.”
“My God,” whispered the commissar.
“Pah!” continued the priest. “It was as much as I could stand to touch something that belonged to him. But something he said last night . . . I confess, I underestimated the power it would give me. At first when I got there they took no notice of me. You know what they’re like. But I was talking to a group of them by a bonfire, and frankly I was about to give up. They weren’t even looking at me. But then one of them noticed the scarf around my arm. I took it off and gave it to him, and after that, everything was different. It was like a magic talisman. Some savage symbol. They passed it from hand to hand, and the whole crowd came to stand around me, listening to every word I said. They seemed . . . very subdued. Then at the end, one of them took the scarf and wound it round the point of a spear, as if it were a kind of flag. Nobody said a word. Of course, I can’t be sure they’ll do it—who can be sure? But I really think they might. When I left, they were saddling the horses.”
“What did you tell them?” asked the commissar.
The priest laughed. “It’s so simple. I gave them a message from Aspe. ‘When you see my standard, come meet me up the road.’ That’s all.”
“My God,” said the commissar. “They’re going to charge the guns.”
“Yes, isn’t it priceless? A fly couldn’t live in that barrage. And Aspe—I thought it so appropriate that he should give the signal. My only fear is, if the mist holds, they might not see his flag.”
Thanakar looked up. The clifftops to the east were still invisible. “It’s a chance,” he said. He looked back down the Keyhole towards the antinomial camp. “I’ll go back,” he said.
“No,” said the commissar. “That’s no use. It’s a decision they have made. They’re not stupid. No. You’ve got to go the other way. Find the colonel. Find Aspe.”
The priest squinted. “Here,” he said. “What do you mean?” But before he could move, the commissar pushed him in the chest, and he tripped over a rock and fell down backward.
“Damn you!” shouted the old man, standing over him. “Damn your eyes, Gorfang Starbridge. Traitor!” And to the doctor, he said, “Go on, my boy. Hurry. I’ll keep this bastard back.”
But the priest drew a knife from his boot and lunged at him, and stabbed him through the chest. The commissar seized him by the arms as he tried to jump away, and Thanakar moved behind them, and snatched up a rock, and battered the priest’s head in from behind. Then he pried him loose from the commissar’s arms and flung him aside.
The commissar stood, swaying slightly in the middle of the road, his hands clasped around the knife haft, which protruded just below his breastbone. He grunted as he drew it out, and the blood poured down his chest. Thanakar went to him, but the old man pushed him away and sat down heavily on some rocks, stanching the bloodflow with one hand. “No time,” he said. “Hurry.”
Thanakar knelt beside him, but again he shook his head. “No time. No. Damn you,” he said gently. “No matter. Done for. Find Aspe.”
“Don’t talk,” said Thanakar, and put his hand out, but the old man pushed it away. “Nothing to say. Do it. Please. I’ll be fine. Just sit here.” His features were set in an expression of piglike obstinacy, a caricature of stubbornness. But the melancholy in his eyes was already a little unreal, a little glazed, as if the secret fire which had always burned behind them was now hardening them from within.
“No talk,” said the commissar finally. “They’ll be cut to pieces. God’s soldiers. Women, too.”
Then he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Thanakar was gone. “Damn you,” said the old man, very gently, with the last of his breath. He looked down over his chest, where the doctor had drawn on the flap of his white shirt over his heart, in blood, the mark of Paradise. “Damn you,” said the old man. “Go.”
The doctor stumbled down the road, and he found the refuse of the army still sprawled in camp: wounded, unfit, noncombatant; men sitting, drunk already, playing cards with insufficient fingers; two hundred men with dysentery from drinking river water; priests cavorting around a collapsible battlefield temple. Some people called to him and stretched out their hands, but he
ignored them, and with the breath already hot and rasping in his throat, he found a horse, and pitched into the saddle, and kicked it up along the army’s track. A narrow defile led up from the valley onto the eastern ridge. The way was hard, and at the top it was choked with figures of the dead and dying, and the mist had lessened too, so that when he reached the ridge he could look out east and north over the plain, and in sudden gaps of light and sunlight he could see huge masses of men and horses clashing underneath the monastery walls.
He heard the noise, too, a roaring like the sea, and he could hear the voices of the drowning in it, for wounded men recognized him and called out to him as he rode past. He saw the hospital, and files of wounded men and stretcherbearers converging on it from all over the field, like tentacles to bring it food. He saw Creston Bile in his shirtsleeves, for the sun was burning through the mist, and it was hot. “My God, Doctor, where have you been?” the man called out, his forehead badged with blood where he had tried to wipe the sweat away. Thanakar didn’t stop.
Amid endlesly repeating scenes, he searched for Aspe. And up to the very instant, he thought he might not be too late, until, through a break in the mist, he saw the black flag fluttering at the topmost pinnacle of the ridge overlooking the river, and the colonel standing in a group of officers. Yet still the guns hadn’t spoken. Thanakar spurred his horse up the slope, shouting and yelling. He could see the colonel striding back and forth, eating an orange and giving dispatches with his mouth full.
