Soldier of the mist l-1

by Gene Wolfe

  She shook her head. "It's not that. I ran away, and now I've been punished for it."

  "Did you run away from me, little Io? I wouldn't punish you if you did."

  She shook her head. "From the Bright God. And I lied when I said he'd given me to you."

  "Perhaps he did," I told her. Holding her close, I watched the silent figures in the shadows for some sign, but there was none. "The gods are not at all like us, little Io."

  PART II

  CHAPTER VII-Beside the Beached Ships

  This little tent seems small indeed. When I woke a short time ago, I discovered this scroll. Being barred from leaving by the sentry at the door and not wishing to disturb the black man who shares this tent with me (he was busily carving a doll), I resolved to read it from the beginning.

  I had hardly started when a man in a fine corselet of bronze came in, and I supposed him to be the healer of whom I had just read. He disabused me of that notion at once, saying, "My name's Hypereides, fellow. Hypereides the Trierarch, and I'm your master now. How can you pretend not to know me?"

  I said, "I'm afraid I forget very quickly."

  He scowled ferociously and pointed a finger at me. "Now I've got you! If you forget, how can you remember that?"

  I explained that I had just read it and pointed to the place where it says, "The Healer says I forget very quickly, and that it is because of a wound I suffered in a battle."

  "Wonderful," Hypereides said. "Wonderful! You've an answer for everything."

  "No," I said. "I only wish I did. If you're not the healer, can you tell me where I am now?"

  There was a stool in one corner of the tent. (I am using it now to write this.) He pulled it over and sat down, motioning for me to sit on the ground before him. "Armor's heavy stuff," he said, "something I never considered as a youngster, when I used to watch the soldiers ride past in the Panathenaea. You learn soon enough to sit when you can and as high as you can, so it's not too hard to stand up." He took off his helmet with its gorgeous crest of blue horsehair and scratched his bald head. "I'm too old for this sort of thing, let me tell you. I fought at Fennel Field, my boy, ten years ago. There was a battle! Would you like to hear the story?"

  "Yes," I said. "Very much."

  "You really would? You're not just saying that to please a man older than yourself?"

  "No, I'd like it. Perhaps it would recall to me the battle in which I was wounded."

  "You don't remember my telling you yesterday? No, I see you don't. I didn't mean to cause you such pain." He cleared his throat. "I'll make it up to you, my boy. I'm a wealthy man back home, though you mightn't think it to see me parading about in this stuff. I'm in leather, you see. Everybody in leather knows Hypereides." He paused and his smile faded. "Three ships the Assembly laid on me."

  "Three ships?"

  "Build them, outfit them, pay the rowers. It cost… well, you wouldn't believe what it cost. Want to take a look at them, my boy?"

  "Yes. I'm sure I've seen ships before, somewhere, and they were very interesting."

  "Certainly," Hypereides said. "You too."

  Looking around, I saw that the black man had laid down the doll and his little knife and was asking by signs whether he might go with us.

  "It's all right," Hypereides told the guard at the door. "In fact, I don't think we'll need you here any more. Go find Acetes and ask him what he wants you to do."

  Three ships had been drawn up on the beach, and their red-painted sides were covered with men hammering hair and pine tar into their seams.

  "We were hit by a blow rounding Cape Malea," Hypereides explained. "It loosened them up, and by the time we got to Tower Hill we were taking on more water than I liked. A man does learn a bit about ships in the leather trade, I'll admit; and I thought it better to caulk them now than to try to take them back home as they were, and for all I know be handed some urgent message and told to put to sea again at once. Certainly it wouldn't do to run into a few stray barbarians and find them in better shape than we are."

  "Who are these barbarians?" I asked.

  "Why, the Great King's navy, of course. With the help of Boreas, we beat them in the Strait of Peace, let me tell you. There was a battle! I wish you could see our rams, my boy; the bronze itself is scarred. There was a time-I don't expect you to believe this, yet it's the plain fact-when there was so much blood in the sea we floated a span deeper than usual, just as if we were running up an estuary. I'm telling you, every man you see here fought like a hero and every oar rose like a slaughtering spear."

  He pointed. "That's my personal command in the middle there, Europa. A hundred and ninety-five men to pull her oars. A dozen soldiers besides myself, and four Sons of Scoloti to draw the bow. The soldiers don't have to be paid, being citizens like me or foreigners who live with us. But the rowers, my boy! Great gods, the rowers! Three obols a day for every stick, and their food. And wine for their water! A drachma every day for each Son of Scoloti. Two for the kybernetes. That's almost a dozen owls a day, just for Europa. With the other ships, it comes to twenty."

  He paused, frowning down at the sandy ground, then looked up and smiled. "Did you catch the signification of her name, my boy? Europa was carried off by the Thunderer in the shape of a bull. So when people see Europa, they think of a bull-wait till you see her mainsail! And what does a bull make them think of? Why, leather, of course. Because the best and strongest leather is bull's hide. And let me tell you, my boy, there'll be a lot of shields to be refitted when this war's over. Leather-bull, bull-Europa, Europa-Hypereides. Besides, Europa gave her name to the whole continent, bigger than her brother's place and Libya's combined, and the barbarians come from the other side. Europe-Europa. Europa-Hypereides. So who're you going to buy your leather from when the war's over?"

  "You, sir, I promise." But I was looking at the ships and thinking I could never have seen anything made by men half so lovely, though they smelled of tar and lay on their sides like three beached logs. I said, "If Europa the woman was as slender and graceful as your ships, it's no wonder the Thunderer ran away with her. Any man would want to." I did not want him to guess I could not remember who the Thunderer might be.

  Hypereides had put his helmet on, pushed back so the visor seemed the bill of a cap. Now he took it off again to rub his head. "I've always thought she must have been on the weighty side, myself," he said. "I mean, what sort of woman would a god want to turn himself into a bull for? Besides, he carried her on his back, and his choosing a bull's shape for that makes it appear cargo was a consideration."

  He laid his arm across my shoulders. "It's quite wrong, my boy, to think that for a woman to give you pleasure she has to be as lissome as a lad from the palaestra. When we get back home, I'll introduce you to a hetaera called Kalleos. Then you'll see. Besides, a girl with some flesh on her is easier to catch; when you get to be my age you'll appreciate the importance of that."

  While we stood looking at the ships from a distance, the black man had run down to them and poked about. As Hypereides spoke of the hetaera, he came leaping back to squat before us, pointing with his chin to the ships and the sparkling sea and making many little marks in the sand with his fingers.

  "Look there," Hypereides said. "This fellow's seen the barbarian navy. Both of you must have, because you were with their army, and their ships followed it clear around the Water."

  "Were there really so many?" I asked him.

  "More than a thousand, and that's not counting the traders that carried food for the troops, or the special ships the Great King had built for his cavalry horses. Why, in the Strait of Peace you couldn't see the water for blood and wreckage."

  He squatted beside the black man. "Here's the Long Coast. Right here's Tieup, where my old warehouse stood before they burned it; Megareos, my manager, is captain of Eidyia now. The man I had on Ceos has Clytia.

  "Tieup's where our navy was before it went up to Artemisium. Here's the island of Peace over here, and here's Peace. We only had ab
out three hundred ships, and we beached 'em in these three bays on the island the night before. Mine were in this bay here-all our city's were. You can keep a trader at sea half a month, my boy, but a warship has to touch land nearly every night, because there's so many aboard you can't carry enough water for 'em."

  I said, "I see."

  "Themistocles was with the navy, and he had a slave of his swim the channel and demand an audience with the Great King. This slave said Themistocles had sent him, which was true enough, and Themistocles wanted to be satrap of the Long Coast. Then he warned the Great King that our navy was going to slip off the next day to reinforce Tower Hill." Hypereides chuckled. "And the Great King believed it, too. He sent all the ships from Riverland around to the other end of the bay to cut us off.

  "Then the strategists-mostly Themistocles and Eurybiades the Rope Maker, from what I've heard-sent the ships from Tower Hill to make sure the Riverlanders, over there, didn't come up behind us. A lot of people in the city still think the ships from Tower Hill deserted, and you can see why: the rumor the slave started, and then their leaving the rest of the fleet."

  The black man pointed with his chin, and I saw a sailor striding up the beach toward us. Hypereides conferred with him for a moment, then told us to return to this tent. "I'm putting you on your honor," he said. "I don't want to have to keep you two chained like the others, but if you try to leave, I'll have to do it. Understand?"

  I told him I did.

  "But you'll forget-I forgot that." He turned to the sailor and said, "Stay with them until I send somebody to relieve you. I don't think you'll have any trouble; just don't let them wander away."

  He is with us now; his name is Lyson. He asked whether Hypereides had told me about the Battle of Peace. I said he had begun but had been called away, and I was eager to hear the rest.

  Lyson grinned at that and said Hypereides had taken us to see his ships the day before as well and had recounted the events of the battle while we looked at them. Lyson had been whittling pegs then and had heard most of it. "He took you to see the other prisoners too, because he wanted to ask them questions about you. The little girl gave you that book, and Hypereides let you keep it; and he let that fellow have a knife like mine because he showed he wanted to whittle."

  I asked why these other prisoners were kept chained when we were not.

  "Because they're from Cowland, of course. But you, you're Hypereides's ideal audience, one he can tell his stories to over and over." Lyson laughed.

  I said, "I suppose the crews of all three ships are making fun of me."

  "Oh, no. We've got too much to do for that. Anyway, we're mostly laughing at Hypereides, not at you. And we wouldn't laugh at him if we didn't like him."

  "Is he a good commander?"

  "He worries too much," Lyson said. "But yes, he is. He knows a lot about winds and currents, and it's good to have somebody on a ship who worries too much. He's an able merchant too-that's why we were sent here-and so he gets good food for us cheap and doesn't stint as much as most of them."

  "It seems strange to have a merchant commanding warships," I said. "I'd think a horseman would do it."

  "Is that how it would be in your own country?"

  "I don't know. Perhaps."

  "In Thought we keep the horsemen on their horses where they belong. But listen here, if you weren't lying to Hypereides and you really don't know where you're from, you've only to look for a city where a horseman would be put in charge of warships. It's someplace in the Empire, I suppose."

  I asked where that lay.

  "To the east. Who'd you think we were fighting in the Strait of Peace, anyway?"

  "The Great King, so Hypereides said."

  "And the Great King rules the Empire. You were in his army. We've got your sword and pot-lids now. How'd you think you got that wound?"

  I shook my head and somewhere found the memory that had once been painful to do so, though it was no longer. "In a battle. Other than that, I don't know."

  "Of course not, poor stick. Somebody ought to look at it for you, though. Those bandages are dirty enough to beach on."

  The black man had been listening to us, and though he did not speak, he seemed to understand what he heard. Now he said by signs that if he were allowed to, he would take off my bandages, wash them (vividly pantomiming how he would scrub them on a stone and beat them with another), dry them in the sun, and replace them.

  "Ah," Lyson said, "but if I go with you, this one'll wander off."

  The black man denied it, clasping my hand and saying by signs that he would not leave me, nor I him.

  "He'll forget."

  The black man cocked his head to show he did not understand the word.

  Lyson pointed to his own head and traced the ground with his finger as though writing or drawing, then smoothed the imaginary scratches away.

  The black man nodded and pretended to draw too, then with his finger indicated the course of the sun across the vault of heaven, and when it had set rubbed the drawing out. "Ah, it takes all day."

  The black man nodded again and unwound my bandages, and the two of them went off together, fast becoming friends.

  As for me, I finished the reading of this scroll I had earlier begun. Now they have returned, and I write but feel I know less than ever. So many strange things-events I cannot credit-are described here. So many people are mentioned whom I have forgotten. Surely Io was the little girl who gave me this yesterday; but where are Pindaros, Hilaeira, and Cerdon? Where is the serpent woman, and how did the black man and I come to be where we are?

  CHAPTER VIII-At Sea

  Our ship rolls in a way that makes it hard to write, but I am learning to allow for it. The sailors say it is often much worse and I must walk and write and drink on board, and do everything else, before the sea grows rougher. "When we round Cape Malea, forget your home," they say; but I remember it, though I have forgotten every other place.

  Our ship is the Europa, the largest of the three, with triple-banked oars. The men who sit highest have the longest oars, and they think themselves the best because they can spit on the rest; but all get the same pay. Now we are under sail, and they have no work, save for one or two who are bailing and the like. Soon there will be work enough, they say. Some are sleeping on the rowing benches, though all slept, I think, last night.

  I am writing in the bow, leaning comfortably back against the high, straight post that marks the front of our ship. Below it (I remember, though I cannot see it from where I sit) is our ram. It does not look like a real ram at all-the dark eyes painted on the bow make the green metal look like the bill of an angry bird, at least to me. I can see the ram through the water when I stand and look over the bow. The water is sky-colored and very clear; but there is a second sky below, and I cannot see to the bottom.

  A big rope runs from my bow post to the very top of the mast, and there are more such ropes there, going to both sides of the ship and to the stern, all to brace the mast against the pull of the sail. The one above my head bends a trifle, but the rest are stretched as straight as spears; the wind is behind us now, and our rowers are idling on their benches while the wide sail labors for them.

  This sail hangs from a long, tapered yard raised almost to the top of the mast. There is a bull painted on it, not just a head like the carved bull's head on the sternpost, but every part; and I think I like him best of all our decorations. He is black, his nose is gold, and his blue eye rolls to see the woman sitting on his back. He has a brave tail, and it seems to me that if I were on one of the other ships it would appear that his golden hoofs ran upon the sea.

  The woman who rides him has red hair and blue eyes, and two chins. She smiles as she rides; her hands stroke the bull's horns.

  The long, narrow deck runs from the place where I sit to the stern, where two sailors hold the steering oars and the kybernetes watches them and the sail. The prisoners are chained to the mast where it goes through the deck.

  Our captain
's name is Hypereides. He is a man of middle years, bald and thick at the waist but erect and energetic. Not as tall as I. He came to talk with me, and I asked him the name of the country to our left. He said, "That's Redface Island, my boy."

  It surprised me and I laughed.

  "Not much of a name, is it? But that's all the name it has. Named for old Pelops, who was king there hundreds and hundreds of years ago."

  "Did he have a red face?"

  "That's what they say. The satirists make jokes about him, saying it was red from drinking, or that he was always angry, stamping up and down and sneezing. If you ask me, neither can be right. How could his mother know he was going to drink too much? Maybe he was angry all the time as a baby-the gods know a lot of them are-but who ever heard of one's being named for it? If you ask me, my boy, he was born with one of those red patches on his face that some children have. Anyway, that's where Tower Hill is, and the Rope Makers' city."

  Then he told me about the Battle of Peace and how his ships had been hidden in a bay on the isle of Peace. Very early in the morning, when there was still fog on the water, the barbarians' ships had come into the strait. A lookout had seen them through the fog and heard the chants of their rowers, and he sent a signal. Hypereides and his ships, and all the other ships of the city came out then, and the Rope Makers' ships too. "You should have seen us, my boy-every man shouting out the Victory Hymn, and every oar bent like a bow!"

  They met the barbarians ram to ram, and the ships from Peace came out of the bay behind the Dog's Tail and caught the barbarians in the flank; but there were so many barbarian ships that even when they fled they were a great fleet. No one knows where they are now, and most of the ships from Thought and Rope, and all the ships from Tower Hill, are hunting them among the islands.