Powers

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  I don't know whether Everra realised that most of his punishments were rewards, to me. Probably he knew it. But at the time I saw our teacher as old and wise beyond mere human feeling; it didn't occur to me that he thought about me at all or could care what I felt. And because he called copying poetry punishment, I tried to believe that it was. In fact, I was clamping my tongue between my teeth most of the time I was writing out the lines. My writing was scrabbly and irregular. The fair-copy book would be used in future classes, just as we used the books that previous generations of students had copied out when they were children in this schoolroom. Astano had copied the last passage in this book. Under her small, elegant writing, almost as clear as the printed books from Mesun, my lines went scrawling and straggling pitifully along. Looking at how messy they were was my real punishment. As for memorising them, I'd already done that.

  My memory is unusually exact and complete. When I was a child and adolescent, I could call up a page of a book, or a room I'd seen, or a face, if I'd looked at it with any attention at all, and look at it again as if it were in front of me. So it was, perhaps, that I confused my memories with what I called "remembering," which was not memory but something else.

  Tib and Hoby ran outdoors, putting off their tasks till later; I stayed in the schoolroom and finished mine. Then I went to help Sallo with sweeping the halls and courtyards, which was our perpetual task. After we'd swept the silk-room courts we went for a piece of bread and cheese at the pantry handout, and I would have gone back to sweeping, but Torm had sent Tib to tell me to come and be soldiers.

  Sweeping the courts and corridors of that enormous house was no small job; it was expected that they be clean always, and it took Sallo and me a good part of the day to keep them that way. I didn't like to leave Sallo with all the rest of it, when she'd already done a lot while I did my punishment, but I couldn't disobey Torm. "Oh, you go on," she said, lazily pushing her broom along in the shade of the arches of the central atrium, "it's all done but this." So I ran out happily to the sycamore park under the city walls a few streets south of Arcamand, where Torm was already drilling Tib and Hoby. I loved being soldiers.

  Yaven was tall and lithe like his sister Astano and the Mother, but Torm took after the Father, compact and muscular. There was something a little amiss with Torm, something askew. He didn't limp, but he walked with a kind of awkward plunge. The two sides of his face didn't quite seem to fit together, so he looked lopsided. And he had unpredictable rages, sometimes real fits, screaming, hitting out wildly or tearing at his own clothes and body. Coming into adolescence now, he seemed to be growing together. His furies had calmed down, and he was making an excellent athlete of himself. All his thoughts were about the army, being a soldier, going to fight with Etra's legions. The army wouldn't take him even as a cadet for two years yet, so he made Hoby and Tib and me into his army. He'd been drilling us for months.

  We kept our wooden swords and shields in a secret cache under one of the big old sycamores in the park, along with the greaves and helmets of leather scraps Sallo and I had made under Torm's direction. His helmet had a plume of reddish horse-hairs which Sallo had picked up in the stables and sewn in, so it looked quite grand. We always drilled in a long grass-alley deep in the grove, right under the wall, a secluded place. I saw the three of them marching down the alley as I came running through the trees. I snatched up my cap and shield and sword and fell in with them, panting. We drilled for a while, practicing turning and halting at Torm's orders; then we had to stand at attention while our eagle-eyed commander strode up and down his regiment, berating a man here for having his helmet on crooked and a man there for not standing up straight, or changing his expression, or letting his eyes move. "A shoddy lot of troops," he growled. "Damned civilians. How can Etra ever defeat the Votusans with a rabble like this?" We stood expressionless staring straight ahead, resolving in our hearts to defeat the Votusans come what might.

  "All right," Torm said at last. "Tib, you and Gav are the Votusans. Me and Hoby are Etra. You go man the earthworks, and we'll do a cavalry attack."

  "They always get to be the Etrans," Tib said to me as we ran off to man the earthworks, an old, half-overgrown drainage ditch that led out from the wall nearby. "Why can't we be the Etrans sometimes?"

  It was a ritual question; there was no answer. We scuttled into the ditch and prepared to meet the onslaught of the cavalry of Etra.

  For some reason they took quite a while coming, and Tib and I had time to build up a good supply of missiles: small clods of hard dry dirt from the side of the ditch. When we finally heard the neighing and snorting of the horses, we stood up and hurled our missiles furiously. Most of them fell short or missed, but one clod happened to hit Hoby smack on the forehead. I don't know whether Tib or I threw it. It stopped him short for a moment, stunned him; his head bobbed strangely back and forth and he stood staring. Torm was charging on, shouting, "At them, men! For the Ancestors! Etra! Etra!"—and came leaping down into the ditch. He remembered to whinny as he leaped. Tib and I fell back before the furious onslaught, naturally, which gave Torm time to look around for Hoby.

  Hoby was coming at a dead run. His face was black with dirt and rage. He jumped into the ditch and ran straight at me with his wooden sword lifted up to slash down at me. Backed up against bushes in the ditch, I had nowhere to go; all I could do was raise my shield and strike out with my sword as best I could, parrying his blow.

  The wooden blades slid against each other, and mine, turned aside by his much stronger blow, flicked up against his face. His came down hard on my hand and wrist. I dropped my sword and howled with pain. "Hey!"Torm shouted. "No hitting!" For he had given us very strict rules of how to use our weapons. We were to dance-fight with our swords: we could thrust and parry, but were never to strike home with them.

  Torm came between us now, and I had his attention first because I was crying and holding out my hand, which hurt fiercely—then he turned to Hoby. Hoby stood holding his hands over his face, blood welling between his fingers.

  "What's wrong, let me look," Torm said, and Hoby said, "I can't see, I'm blind."

  There wasn't any water nearer than the Arca Fountain. Our commander kept his head: he ordered Tib and me to hide the weapons in the usual place and follow at once, while he led Hoby home. We caught up to them at the fountain in the square in front of Arcamand. Torm was washing the dirt and blood off Hoby's face. "It didn't hit your eye," he said, "I'm sure it didn't. Not quite." It was not possible to be sure. The rough point of my wooden sword, driven upward by Hoby's, had made a ragged cut above or on the eye, and blood was still pouring out of it. Torm wadded up a strip torn from his tunic and had Hoby press it against the wound. "It's all right," he said to Hoby. "It'll be all right. An honorable wound, soldier!" And Hoby, discovering that he could see from his left eye at least, now the blood and dirt was no longer blinding him, stopped crying.

  I stood at attention nearby, frozen with dread. When I saw that Hoby could see, it was a huge relief. I said, "I'm sorry, Hoby."

  He looked round at me, glaring with the eye that wasn't hidden by the wad of cloth. "You little sneak," he said. "You threw that rock, then you went for my face!"

  "It wasn't a rock! It was just dirt! And I didn't try to hit you, with the sword I mean—it just flew up—when you hit—"

  "Did you throw a rock?" Torm demanded of me, and both Tib and I were denying it, saying we had just thrown clods, when suddenly Torm's face changed, and he too stood at attention.

  His father, our Father, the Father of Arcamand, Altan Serpesco Arca, walking home from the Senate, had seen us by the fountain. He now stood a yard or two away, looking at the four of us. His bodyguard Metter stood behind him.

  The Father was a broad-shouldered man with strong arms and hands. His features—round forehead and cheeks, snub nose, narrow eyes—were full of energy and assertive power. We reverenced him and stood still.

  "What is this?" he said. "Is the boy hurt?"

&
nbsp; "We were playing, Father," Torm said. "He got a cut."

  "Is the eye hurt?"

  "No, sir. I don't think so, sir."

  "Send him to Remen at once. What is that?"

  Tib and I had tossed our headgear into the weapon cache, but Torm's crested helmet was still on his head, and so was Hoby's less ornate one.

  "Cap, sir."

  "It's a helmet. Have you been playing at soldiers? With these boys?"

  He looked us three over once more, a flick of the eye.

  Torm stood mute.

  "You," the Father said, to me—no doubt assessing me as the youngest, feeblest, and most overawed—"were you playing at soldiers?"

  I looked in terror to Torm for guidance, but he stood mute and stiff-faced.

  "Drilling, Altan-dí," I whispered.

  "Fighting, it looks like. Show me that hand." He did not speak threateningly or angrily, but with perfect, cold authority.

  I held out my hand, puffed up red and purple around the base of the thumb and the wrist by now.

  "What weapons?"

  Again I looked to Torm in an agony of appeal. Should I lie to the Father?

  Torm stared straight ahead. I had to answer.

  "Wooden, Altan-dí."

  "Wooden swords? What else?"

  "Shields, Altan-dí."

  "He's lying," Torm said suddenly, "he doesn't even drill with us, he's just a kid. We were trying to climb some trees in the sycamore grove and Hoby fell and a branch gashed him."

  Altan Arca stood silent for a while, and I felt the strangest mixture of wild hope and utter dread thrill through me, running on the track of Torm's lie.

  The Father spoke slowly. "But you were drilling?"

  "Sometimes,"Torm said and paused—"sometimes I drill them."

  "With weapons?"

  He stood mute again. The silence stretched on to the limit of endurance.

  "You," the Father said to Tib and me. "Bring the weapons to the back courtyard. Torm, take this boy to Remen and get him looked after. Then come to the back courtyard."

  We all ducked in reverence and got away as fast as we could. Tib was crying and chattering with fear, but I was in a queer, sick state, like a fever, and nothing seemed very real;I felt calm enough but could not speak. We went to the cache and hauled out the wooden swords and shields, the helmets and greaves, and carried them round the back way to the rear courtyard of Arcamand. We made a little pile of them there and stood by them waiting.

  The Father came out, having changed into house clothes. He strode over to us and I could feel Tib shrinking into himself with terror. I reverenced and stood still. I was not afraid of the Father, not as I was afraid of Hoby. I was in awe of him. I trusted him. He was completely powerful, and he was just. He would do what was right, and if we had to suffer, we had to suffer.

  Torm came out, striding along like a short edition of his father. He halted by the sad little heap of wooden weapons and saluted him. He kept his chin up.

  "You know that to give a slave any weapon is a crime, Torm."

  Torm mumbled, "Yes, sir."

  "You know there are no slaves in the army of Etra. Soldiers are free men. To treat a slave as a soldier is an offense, a disrespect to the army, to the Ancestors. You know that."

  "Yes, sir."

  "You are guilty of that crime, that offense, that disrespect."

  Torm stood still, though his face was quivering terribly.

  "So. Shall the slaves be punished for it, or you?" Torm's eyes opened wide at that—a possibility that clearly had not occurred to him. He still said nothing. There was a long pause.

  "Who commanded?" the Father said at last.

  "Me, sir."

  "So?"

  Another long pause.

  "So I should be punished."

  Altan Arca nodded very briefly.

  "And they?" he asked.

  Torm struggled, and finally muttered, "They were doing what I told them to, sir."

  "Are they to be punished for following your orders?"

  "No, sir."

  The brief nod again. He looked at Tib and me as if from a great distance. "Burn that trash," he told us. "Consider this, you boys: obeying a criminal order is a crime. Only because your master takes the responsibility do you go free.— You're the Marsh boy— Gav, is it?— And you?"

  "Tib, sir, kitchen, sir," Tib whispered.

  "Burn that stuff and get back to work. Come," he said to Torm, and the two of them marched off side by side under the long arcade. They looked like soldiers on parade.

  We went to the kitchen for fire, brought back a burning stick from the hearth there, and laboriously got the wooden swords and shields to burn, but then we put the leather caps and greaves on the fire and they smothered it. We scraped up the half-burnt pieces of wood and stinking leather, getting a lot of small burns on our hands, and buried the mess in the kitchen midden. By then we were both sniveling. Being soldiers had been hard, frightening, glorious, we had been proud to be soldiers. I had loved my wooden sword. I used to go out alone to the cache to take it out and sing to it, smooth its rough splintery blade with a stone, polish it with grease saved from my dinner. But it was all lies. We had never been soldiers, only slaves. Slaves and cowards. I had betrayed our commander. I was sick with defeat and shame.

  We were late for afternoon lessons. We ran through the house to the schoolroom and rushed in panting. The teacher looked at us with disgust. "Go wash," was all he said. We hadn't looked at our filthy hands and clothes; now I saw Tib's face all smeared with soot and snot and knew mine was like it. "Go with them and get them clean, Sallo," Everra added. I think he sent her with us out of kindness, seeing we were both badly upset.

  I had seen Torm in his usual place on the schoolroom bench, but Hoby had not been there. "What happened?" Sallo asked us as we went to wash, and at the same time I asked, "What did Torm say?"

  "He said the Father ordered you to burn some toys, so you might be late to class."

  Torm had covered for us, made us an excuse. It was a great relief, and so undeserved, after my betrayal of him, that I could have cried in gratitude.

  "But what toys? What were you doing?"

  I shook my head.

  Tib said, "Being soldiers for Torm-dí."

  "Shut up, Tib!" I said too late.

  "Why should I?"

  "It makes trouble."

  "It wasn't our fault. The Father said so. He said it was Torm-dí's fault."

  "It wasn't. Just don't talk about it! You're betraying him!"

  "Well, he lied," Tib said. "He said we were climbing trees."

  "He was trying to keep us out of trouble!"

  "Or himself," Tib said.

  We had got to the courtyard fountain by now, and Sallo more or less pushed our heads underwater and rubbed and scrubbed us clean. It took a while. The water stung and then felt cool on my various burns and my puffy, aching hand. Between scrubs and rinses Sallo got the story out of us. She didn't say much, except, to Tib, "Gav is right. Don't talk about it."

  Going back to the schoolroom, I asked, "Is Hoby going to be blind in that eye?"

  "Torm-dí just said he was hurt," Sallo said.

  "Hoby's really angry at me," I said.

  "So?" Sallo said, fierce. "You didn't mean to hurt him, and he did mean to hurt you. If he tries it again he'll get into some real trouble." She spoke the truth. Gentle and easygoing as she was, she'd fire up and fight for me like a mother cat for her kittens—everybody knew that. And she'd never liked Hoby.

  She put her arm around me for a moment before we got back to the schoolroom, leaning on me and bumping me, and I leaned on her and bumped her, and everything was all right again, almost.

  2

  Hoby's eye wasn't hurt. The ugly wound had cut his eyebrow in half, but as Torm put it, he didn't have much beauty to be spoiled. When he came back to the schoolroom the next day he was joking and stoical about his bandaged head, and cheerful with everyone—except me. Whatever the real sou
rce of his rivalry and humiliation, whether or not he really thought I'd thrown a rock at his face, he'd chosen to see me as an enemy, and was set against me from then on.

  In a big household like Arcamand, a slave who wants to get another slave in trouble has plenty of opportunities. Luckily Hoby slept in the barrack while I was still in the house. —But as I write this story now, for you, my dear wife, and anybody else who may want to read it, I find myself thinking the way I thought back then, twenty years ago, as a boy, as a slave. My memory brings me the past as if it were present, here, now, and I forget that there are things to explain, not only to you but maybe also to myself. Writing about our life in the House of Arcamand in the City State of Etra, I fall back into it and see it as I saw it then, from inside and from below, with nothing to compare it to, and as if it were the only way things could possibly be. Children see the world that way. So do most slaves. Freedom is largely a matter of seeing that there are alternatives.

  Etra was all I knew then, and this is how it was. The City States are almost constantly at war, so soldiers are important there. Soldiers are men of the two upper classes, the wellborn, from whom the governing Senate is elected, and the freemen—farmers, merchants, contractors, architects, and such. Male freemen have the right to vote on some laws, but not to hold office. Among the freemen is a small number of freedmen. Below them are the slaves.

  Physical work is done by women of all classes in the house and by slaves in the house and outdoors. Slaves are captured in battle or raids, or bred at home, and are bought or given by families of the two upper classes. A slave has no legal rights, cannot marry, and can claim no parents and no children.

  The people of the City States worship the ancestors of those now living. People without ancestors—freedmen and slaves—can only worship the forebears of the family that owns them or the Forefathers of the City, great spirits of the days long ago. And the slaves love some of the gods known elsewhere in the lands of the Western Shore: Ennu, and Raniu's Lord, and Luck.

  It's plain that I was born a slave, because here I am talking mostly about them. If you read a history of Etra or any other of the City States, it'll be about kings, senators, generals, valiant soldiers, rich merchants—the acts of people of power, free to act—not about slaves. The quality and virtue of a slave is invisibility. The powerless need to be invisible even to themselves. That was something Sallo already knew, and I was learning it.