Soldier of Sidon l-3

by Gene Wolfe

  19

  THE HEALER'S GOD

  THE GREAT GOD of the South wishes to speak with me. The healer told me this, and it may be that it is true. We were fencing in the manner of Kemet with sticks the captain found for us. There are only four, so no more than two could fence at once.

  Aahmes told me of this exercise. It is the way soldiers are trained in the army of Kemet. A stick is bound to the left forearm. It is the "shield." The stick in the right hand is the "sword." The point is forbidden-there is great danger if it is used. I fought each in turn, beginning with the soldiers of Kemet. They had done it before, and it seemed best to me if Qanju's three from Parsa saw it five times before they fought. Aahmes wanted to fight last. I took him last among those of Kemet, but not last of all as he wished.

  Myt-ser'eu has a headache. She makes light of it, saying that she always has a headache in the morning. I set Uraeus to mixing wine and water for her, and Neht-nefret to coaxing her to drink it. I let each soldier drink too after he had fought.

  When you fight a man with a shield, you try to get him to raise it so as to blind himself. This is much harder in the stick game, which may be good. I am not sure about that.

  The men of Kemet fought well, all of them, as soon as they saw I would not strike soft. Uro fought first and nearly beat me. I had thought he would know less than he did, and was striving not to discourage him. He may have been trying not to embarrass me in the same way, and so we played at it for a time. Then he came at me in earnest and nearly won. I hit his head and stretched him on the deck.

  And Myt-ser'eu cheered.

  I am not sure why it has made me feel so much love for her, perhaps it is because I know how sick she felt. I forget. She and Muslak have told me, and Uraeus confirms it. So does this scroll. I can no longer remember Charthi's walled house and his gardens, which I read about before I began to write; but I have asked the healer, and he says it is only the head that forgets. The head is the seat of reason, the heart the seat of our feelings, pounding when we are moved. My heart will never forget Myt-ser'eu's cheering.

  After that I fought the rest one by one. Aahmes was the best, the only one better than Uro. He is taller than I, a great advantage in this game. At last I tripped him, threw him down, and feigned to lop off his head.

  The men of Parsa knew far less. They watched my face, not my stick, and my stick punished them for it. We will fence again when their bruises have healed.

  The healer watched us just as the captain did. Neither offered to take part. When our fencing was done and we had washed away our sweat, the healer spoke to me privately, saying, "Is there anyone on board you would fear to fight with those sticks?"

  I said of course that there was not, that I might be beaten but that no one who fears trivial defeats can ever learn.

  "Suppose the swords were real?"

  His question gave me pause. At last I said, "My slave Uraeus."

  He laughed. "Not many men fear their slaves."

  "Not enough, perhaps." I shrugged. "Have I offered to free him?"

  "I don't know."

  "Then I will tell him he is free today," I said.

  "In that case you have," the healer told me. "You are so willing to free him that you will surely have offered him his freedom before."

  I said I would ask him, and added that I had learned something new about myself that day.

  "Not because I taught you." He shook his head. "All those who teach are hated."

  "You mean my soldiers will hate me for teaching them the sword."

  "No, that they hated you before it." (I do not credit this.) "I myself teach no one, knowing I would make my students stronger to destroy me. I advise you to follow the same course."

  "So you don't teach me."

  He smiled and shook his head.

  "My men will follow me in battle," I told him. "You'll see."

  "Of course they will. They know you're a fine fighter. But where there is no danger, your danger will be from them."

  I thanked him for the warning, and said I would tell Uraeus to remind me of it.

  "Who will warn you of him?"

  I considered that and said, "You will-or Myt-ser'eu."

  The healer chuckled, recalling unpleasantly the chattering of his pet. "Next you will say that we will warn you of each other."

  "If necessary, I'm sure you will." I turned to go.

  He stopped me. "These things were not what I wished to tell you. The Red One would speak with you. When we met I promised you I would take you to his temple. You will have long forgotten our talk, unless you read it in the scroll you carry."

  I confessed that I remembered nothing of it, and asked who the Red One was.

  "He has many names."

  The healer's monkey dropped from the rigging to his shoulder, but he paid no heed to it or its noise.

  "You and I may call him Seth. I am one of his priests."

  "He is a god?"

  The healer nodded. "The Desert God and the Dark God, the god of night and storm, the son of Heaven's Vault. Tonight, when everyone is asleep, you are to come here, to the bow, to await his coming. If he does not appear before sunrise, he will not come."

  It was already evening when the healer said this. We soon put in at this town. I ate with our captain, whose name is Muslak, and his wife, Neht-nefret. Myt-ser'eu drank more beer than Muslak, beer I bought her freely. I lay beside her on the roof of our inn until she slept, then crept away to this ship.

  The sailor Muslak had left to watch it soon slept. I waited, sleepy and too full of beer and barley cakes, until a tap on my shoulder made me turn about quickly.

  It was a woman, tall and beautiful. She smiled at me, and held up her hands to show that she held no weapon. "I am Sabra, and your friend. Did you leave Myt-ser'eu alone, Latro?"

  I nodded.

  "Let us hope no evil befalls her. May I ask why you are here?"

  I said that the healer had told me to wait here for the Red One.

  She laid her hand upon mine, and her hand was cold and hard. "Should he appear, Latro, you must make certain that he is indeed the Red One."

  I slept and woke, and slept and woke. Walked the ship from end to end many times, sat, and slept again.

  At last I was joined by a man I did not know. He looked tired, and I supposed he wished to sleep. I talked with him for a while even so, for I wished to remain awake and was finding it difficult. I said that he seemed to have had a bad night of it at the inn.

  "Oh, I did!" He laughed, laughing at his own misfortune, which made me like him. "I paid to sleep on the roof. A woman woke me-it must have been very late-and offered to lie with me. One of these Riverland women." He extended his hand, palm up. "You know."

  I said I did, since he clearly expected it.

  "I asked how much, and she said she'd do it for whatever I was willing to give. Like any fool I said all right. Her head was shaved, so she wasn't a low-class woman. She had no wig, which made me wonder." Laughing at his own folly, he shook his head. "I like to think I'm a knowing man. This ought to be a lesson to me.

  "I told her to lie down, and lay down beside her, and explained a few things I wanted her to do as well as I could in the barbarous speech of this land. She didn't speak our tongue as well as you do, but she had a few words, the kinds of things they talk about in Tower Hill. So we understood each other well enough.

  "Things were starting to get interesting when I looked up and saw another woman with a knife. I couldn't see her face, but the moonlight gleamed on the blade and that was all I needed to know. I yelled, the woman on top of me rolled off, and the other woman slashed at us. She missed me, but she cut the woman who'd been lying with me-caught both hips."

  He sighed and fell silent, and I asked what had happened next.

  "You won't believe this, but I suppose you'll forget it anyway, so it doesn't matter. This woman wiped her knife on her face." He illustrated the motion, left cheek and right. "Have you ever heard of anybody doing that?"
>
  I said I did not know.

  "Well, I haven't, and it wasn't over yet. Some man grabbed this woman and began threatening her. He had a voice like a snake. I was trying to get on my feet, and it scared the life out of me, just hearing him. There was more, too. A lot more that you wouldn't believe."

  "I believe everything I've heard so far," I told him, "and I might even know who the man was."

  "All right. A lion snarled. That was what it sounded like. I looked around, and there was a man there in a mask, a dog's head or something like that. The cat was with him. It was big, very big, but I don't think it was really a lion. The woman I'd been lying with started having hysterics; and the man who'd been holding the other one, the one with the knife, let her go and prostrated himself." He sighed again.

  "What happened after that?" I asked.

  He began to speak, fell silent, and at last said, "Have you got any wine, Latros?"

  We looked for the jars from which Uraeus had mixed wine for Myt-ser'eu, but those we found were empty.

  "I sell wine," he said, "and now that I want some myself there isn't any. I suppose it would take me a week to walk back to my shop."

  When I asked where it was, he said it was right off the market. It was late when we landed, so I have not been to the market here.

  He asked whether I wanted to lie down and sleep. I said that I did not, that I was hoping someone who had said he would meet me here would come. He said he did not want to sleep either, that he was still afraid to be alone. The woman with the knife had jumped off the roof, he said. The man in the mask had gestured, and she had jumped from the roof, although it was four floors up. Thus we sat talking, though I felt sure the healer's god would not come unless I was alone. This man's name is Agathocles, and he is from Hellas. He is older than Muslak, sought for ways to compliment me, and has a soft voice. I think it will be well not to trust him.

  The healer's god did not come, but the healer himself did, his face the mask of sorrow. He went into the hold as if going there to sleep, but soon came up again carrying a box as large as himself. Seeing he meant to take it off the ship, I told him he could not. He said it was his own property and so marked. He showed us the writing, but neither of us could read it. Agathocles wisely said that if it was his, he must know what it contained. He said it was empty, and opened it to show us. He explained that some property of his had been taken ashore, and that he intended to put it in the box so that he could carry everything back to the ship together. We allowed him to take it.

  He soon returned carrying a lamp, with which he lighted the way of two other men of Kemet, peasants (as Agathocles told me) since their heads were not shaved. I went into the hold and received the box when they passed it down the hatch, though they would, perhaps, have stolen nothing. Its weight made me wonder about its contents, and although others say I forget quickly I had not forgotten that the healer had removed its lid easily. I did the same, and saw a battered image of wax. Both hands had been broken off, and the face smashed. Then I wanted to ask the healer who had done such a thing, and why; but I did not do so, only replacing the lid and asking him where he wished me to put it. He said that I might leave it where it was and put down his lamp on the lid. I warned him of the danger of fire, and went up on deck again.

  Now I shall set down a strange thing. This is the truth, whatever I may think when I read this scroll in the future. The lid of the healer's box has two handles, not on the outside where anyone would expect them to be, but inside. The wax hands grasped these handles.

  The sun has risen, and I have written all I know, writing nothing but the truth. I will try to sleep. I have been awake all night.

  20

  SABRA

  THE WOMAN OF WAX Sahuset has been shaping in the hold is complete. Thotmaktef and I marveled at his skill. Such figures, he explained, are useful in healing; a woman who hesitates to show a healer the site of her pain may indicate it on the wax figure without shame.

  "No doubt you have had such figures before," Thotmaktef remarked, "since you speak confidently of their use."

  "I have a fine one at home," Sahuset told him, "and I am sorry now that I left it behind. When I agreed to come, I did not envision treating women on the trip. Now I find that Myt-ser'eu and Neht-nefret occupy me more than all these men."

  "Magicians are said to animate figures of wax and wood. I have never seen it done, I confess."

  The healer smiled. "Nor will you ever see me do it."

  "But could you? If you wished?"

  "Am I a magician, Holy Thotmaktef?"

  "You are, or so I've been informed."

  The healer shrugged. "So are you. That's what the sailors say. You're forever poring over old scrolls-or so I've been informed. I don't doubt that you and Qanju know more magic than anyone else on this ship. Would you like to try to animate her? When I've finished her?"

  While they spoke, I was looking at the wax woman whose arm the healer had been shaping. She blinked and looked at me, and smiled, I believe, ever so slightly. I do not know what this may mean. I HAVE SLEPT through most of the day, the woman who attends me says. Her name is Myt-ser'eu-I just asked her. She is young, hardly more than a girl. I thought her a friend at first, then my slave. She says she is no slave but my wife. I do not believe that I would take as wife a woman of a nation not my own. I cannot recall the name of my own. (Myt-ser'eu says I forget, and that this is to be expected.) Yet I know that I have a nation. It speaks the tongue in which I write, and not the tongue in which she and I speak.

  The captain's wife came. She sat and asked whether Myt-ser'eu could sit down. Myt-ser'eu said she preferred to stand, as she was doing at the time. The captain's wife introduced herself with the manner of one who jests, saying her name was Tall Sycamore. When she had gone, I asked Myt-ser'eu what her own name meant. She laughed and teased me until I recalled that it is kitten. I find that it is not at all unpleasant to be laughed at by Myt-ser'eu. Or to be teased by her.

  Two men of her nation came. The older, a tall, stooped man with a tame monkey, is Sahuset. The younger, as young as any of the soldiers Myt-ser'eu says are mine, Thotmaktef. He told me I had slept long and asked whether I had been awake last night. I said I had been, because I could remember the boat that brought the sun. Sahuset said he had slept a lot too, and that it was normal for those on board to do so. Our captain and crew sailed the ship, which is easy as long as the north wind holds and there is no work to do. He sat and suggested a game that is played with the fingers. I did not know how to play, so he and Myt-ser'eu taught me. Myt-ser'eu did not sit, but reclined on the deck, propped on her elbows. Soon Thotmaktef grew tired of watching and left.

  When he had gone, Sahuset said, "You sat up waiting for the Red God, Latro. The Red One has said he wishes to speak with you, and you waited for him. You must wait again tonight."

  I promised I would, feeling that it would be a long time before I needed to sleep.

  Myt-ser'eu very sensibly asked how I was to know the Red God when I saw him. Sahuset said he took many forms. He might appear as a boar, as a water-horse, or as a crocodile. He named other animals I have forgotten. He described the great statue of the Red God in the temple to which he was once attached, in his city of Miam-a red man with the head of a wild dog.

  He stood, yawned, and stretched. "Just smell this air! Isn't it wonderful?"

  Myt-ser'eu made a face, but to be polite I said it was.

  "The land is rising," Sahuset said. "We near my home. It can't be far to Abu."

  The captain overheard him and joined us. He said, "It isn't. I'm hoping to make Abu tonight. It's a wild, foreign sort of place, from what I hear of it." He turned to me, smiling. "I know you don't remember me, Lewqys, but I'm Muslak, the oldest friend you've got."

  He is older than I and far from handsome; but when I looked him in the eye, I knew what he had said was the truth. He and Myt-ser'eu are truly my friends. So too is the tall soldier from Kemet, I think. I do not think the young scribe is a frien
d to any of us, and although I would like to make a friend of the tall, lean healer, Sahuset, I do not feel I have done so. His cold eyes rest upon me without gladness, and dart away.

  "Abu is on the southern frontier of Kemet now," he told our captain, "but Kemet extended a hundred days' travel to the south only a few centuries ago. Many families there are descended from settlers from Wast, just as I am."

  Myt-ser'eu asked, "Have you cousins in Wast, Healer?"

  He shook his head. "I have no family even in Miam, and certainly none in Wast."

  "It's the same with me. My husband Latro's all the family I have these days, and that's only for the trip south and back. What about you, Captain?"

  "A wife and three concubines, and seventeen children." He grinned. "Seventeen when I left home. There should be more now."

  Myt-ser'eu laughed; she has a pretty laugh, and seems to laugh often. "You could surely spare us a few relatives. Then we'd all have families."

  "I might give you a concubine," he told her, "if I had her here."

  I said, "But you've a wife here. She was speaking with us not long ago."

  "Right. Two wives, seventeen children, and three concubines."

  A thickset man as old as the captain joined us. He must have been listening, though I had not been aware of it. He speaks the tongue of Kemet worse even than I. "In that case, one concubine must go to this kind young lady, isn't that right? I'm sure she can make use of her."

  "Indeed!" Myt-ser'eu laughed again. "I'll hire her out and live on her wages."

  "Women enjoy themselves frequently with other women in my country," the stranger told her, "and Lesbos is famous for it. But, Captain, I wanted to tell you that this learned gentleman is right about the land south of the second cataract. It belonged to the pharaoh. So did the mines, though the king of Nubia claims everything now."