by Gene Wolfe
As I have.
Only the largest boys are of use to us, as I soon found; the smaller ones cannot manage a slug gun, not even with the lightly loaded cartridges. In the same way, only the largest, strongest women; and poor young women who have had to work hard are by far the best suited to fighting Duko Rigoglio.
15
Before the Battle
Have I a solitary evening before me? I hope so. The town is celebrating, as well it should; this is not a night for speeches, especially speeches from me. Perhaps I'll be able to get some writing done.
If I were to speak to these citizens of Blanko, I am afraid I would talk mostly about Chaku and Teras, who perished in the sewer fighting the white worm, yet were alive again and walked, speechless and dazed, among us when we woke. Who can plumb the mind of the Outsider, or search out all his ways? Our riches are his dross, and our gods his toys.
The townspeople are shooting off fireworks, and I am sorry to say that a few of my troopers seem to be firing their slug guns into the air. The sky over Blanko is no place for Oreb tonight, and he knows it.
All this because a courier from Olmo arrived at shadelow, a tired man on a blown horse. I cannot help wondering whether either are getting any rest. Perhaps they are-they seemed fatigued enough to sleep through anything. The news, and it is wonderful news indeed, is that the Duko has turned against Olmo, and that Olmo has turned to us in its extremity. We are offered an alliance: Olmo will fight against Soldo and Duko Rigoglio – indeed, Olmo must, since Duko Rigoglio has laid siege to Olmo. Olmo asks only that it be permitted to retain its independence, and begs Blanko's aid.
Eco was captured or killed, and the letter he carried believed; there can be no doubt of it. How I wish Fava were still alive so that I could send her to Soldo to try to secure his release! If the Outsider wills it, Eco should remain safe (although imprisoned) throughout the rest of our small and foolish war.
We will free him when it is over. Was Mora killed or captured too? It seems likely.
I had intended to write about Chaku and Teras, and our joy at waking in the snow and seeing them, whom we had buried upon Green and prayed over, wake with us; and how we had discovered that they could neither speak nor understand what was said to them. It would all be true, but I cannot forget poor Fava. All human semblance was gone; she was an inhuma in a girl's flowered gown, a dead inhuma painted and decked in a wig-nothing more. I covered her as quickly as I could and demanded that the mercenaries who had not allowed us a fire lend me a pick and shovel. A dozen strong men would have helped me, and gladly; but I sent them away and buried her myself near the crest of the hill, beneath a flat stone on which I scratched her name and the sign of addition, not knowing how else to mark it.
Fava, who was well and very happy on Green, is dead here on Blue; and Chaku and Teras, who were dead on Green, are alive here if they have not been killed in one of Inclito's battles.
"Man come," Oreb mutters. I have opened the door and looked outside, but there is no one. I asked him whether it was a good man, but he only clacked his beak and fluttered his wings. Those are generally signs of nervousness, but he was doing both before he announced our visitor, and with all the fireworks and shooting he has more than enough to be nervous about.
I should say here – or at least I certainly ought to say somewhere – that Fava, Valico, and I halted when we heard the mercenaries behind us in the sewer. Oreb did not halt, Molpe bless him, but flew back to investigate.
Several prostrated themselves, which was embarrassing. I told them that I would not talk to them until they bound Sfido and gave me his needier, which they did at once. "We lifted the stone," Kupus explained to me. "There was a sheer drop under it. One by one we jumped, and found ourselves on a dark street in Soldo."
I nodded.
Fava (I intend the human girl whom I have been calling Fava) laughed at him. "Incanto is a strego, didn't I tell you? The best any of us have ever seen."
"I never believed in any of that raff," Kupus said. "It's you women that believe it, mostly. But you women are right, and Kupus wrong."
He drew his sword and raised it, grasping it by the blade, point downward. "I and those who follow me will follow you, Rajan, working and fighting for you wherever you may lead us, loyal as long as the last rogue breathes. We require no pay from you, beyond your good will."
I asked how long they bound themselves for, and he and dozens of others answered forever. More would, I think, but those farther back on the narrow walkway cannot have heard what we said.
"Will you still serve me when we return to Blue?" I asked Kupus and Lieutenant Zepter, who was looking over his shoulder.
"Anywhere," they declared; and Zepter used a phrase I had not heard before: "In the three whorls or beyond them." You who will read this in the years to come may call me a fool, but I detect the Outsider's hand in it.
* * *
After midnight, and so a new day.
My visitor arrived. It was Sfido. We talked for an hour or more, and managed with all our talk to rouse my host's wife, who had abandoned the celebration and wisely taken to her bed. She has found a bed for him, and warmed a bowl of the bean soup. He said that he was too tired to eat, but looked half starved and managed to finish the whole bowl quickly enough, dipping the soft white bread that is so much valued here into it and eating like a lost hound.
Let me go back to the beginning.
There was a knock at the door. At first I did not answer, fearing I would quickly have a dozen drunken revelers to deal with; he knocked again, pounding the panels like a man in fear. "Rajan! Dervis!"
No one here calls me either, so I opened. At first I did not recognize him, unshaven, starved and frenetic as he looked; in the ten days since I had last seen him, the dapper officer had vanished. I told him brusquely that Atteno's shop was closed, and asked what he wanted.
"I must talk to you, Rajan. I call you that because it won't put us in a false position now."
I knew him then, but it took me a second or two to recall his name. "Sfido? Captain Sfido?"
"Yes." He drew himself up, heels clicking and shoulders squared, and saluted me. I suppose I must have asked him to come in and sit down; certainly I got out the old wooden chair that my host keeps by the till for him.
"Poor man." Oreb regarded him through one jet-bead eye and snapped his crimson beak as though to say, Behold the straits to which the wicked have fallen!
Sfido tried to smile; I have seldom seen a grown man appear so pathetic. "You have your little pet back, I see."
I told him that Oreb was under no restraint and had returned to me of his own will.
"None save your magic."
"I have none; but if I had any, I surely would not use it for that."
"None at all." It was not a question.
"No. None."
"You transported us to Green in the twinkling of an eye, then to Soldo, then to Green again, and brought us back as soon as it suited your purpose to do so." He sighed. "That sounds as if I'm arguing with you. I suppose I am, but I didn't seek you out to argue. Have you ever heard of a man called Gagliardo, Rajan? He's a citizen of my own Soldo."
"I don't believe so."
"He's rich and can live on his rents, so he studies the stars, which interest him, and he's had some strange instruments built for that purpose. You gave me a horse and sent me home, remember? I was to inform our Duko that Kupus and his troopers had turned coat."
"Certainly."
"I tried to see Duko Rigoglio at once, but he was too busy; so I went to see Gagliardo and asked how far it is to Green. When it's as close as it ever comes, it's thirty-five thousand leagues. I can't understand how anybody can measure a distance that great, and Gagliardo admits he may be in error by a thousand leagues or so, but that's what he said."
I thanked him, adding, "I've wondered about that from time to time, and I'm glad to get the information."
"Talk, talk," Oreb commented dryly.
I said, "It's
astonishing that anybody should be able to make such a measurement, I agree; but I find it still more astonishing that the inhumi should be able to make the crossing from their whorl to ours, hurling their naked bodies thousands of leagues through the abyss."
"Green's nowhere near its closest now," Sfido said. "It's more than eighty thousand leagues away."
I shook my head. "They don't dare attempt such distances. They come only when the two whorls are at their closest, and even then many perish-or so I've been told."
"Bad things," Oreb declared piously.
"No worse than we are," I told him. When Sfido did not speak, I said, "It's true that there are inhumi in the Long Sun Whorl; but they made the trip on board returning landers, apparently."
"You carried a couple of hundred men across eighty thousand leagues, four times, in the winking of an eye." Sfido sighed. "That's what I told Duko Rigoglio. I said that he had seen you himself and had to know that as long as Blanko had you on its side it was suicide to fight."
"Did he agree to peace?"
Sfido shook his head.
"So he sent you here to kill me," I hazarded.
"When will you make the attempt?"
"No cut!" Oreb exclaimed.
Sfido took up the word, after a momentary pause repeating, "No."
"Then he will send someone else, I presume. He tried to have Fava poison Inclito."
"I wanted him to bribe you, that was my suggestion. I told him that I doubted you could be killed at all, and an assassin would just lose his own life and whatever part of his reward the Duko had advanced him. But I said that you might help us for gold and power, and that he should offer you a great deal of both. Women, horses, troopers, and whatever his emissary sensed you wanted. A throne in Blanko or Olmo."
"You were wrong," I said, "since I have already died once. But you proposed that Duko Rigoglio offer me a throne?"
Sfido nodded.
"You're too old to have been born here. How old were you when you left Grandecitta?"
"Fifteen."
"That was my own age at the time I left Viron. You should remember boarding the lander and crossing the abyss, exactly as I do. Were any of you rich?"
He laughed, the weary laugh of one who has witnessed the ironic conclusion of his efforts. "We thought then that some of us were, Rajan. And there were others that we thought were. Neighborhood rich. Do you know what I mean?"
"I think so. My father owned a little shop very much like this in a poor neighborhood."
"That's it. Some of us were as rich as this."
"How long ago, Captain Sfido? Twenty years?"
"Not quite."
"And now we, who complained so bitterly about the rich when we were poor, have taken up every practice and custom we hated in them. Thrones! One for Duko Rigoglio and another for me. I can't begin to tell you how many complaints I heard about the rich when I was growing up, Captain."
"Don't call me that anymore, Rajan." He smiled bitterly. "It puts us in a false position."
I smiled back at him, while laughing to myself at myself.
"Certainly I've put myself in the reprehensible position of keeping a tired man talking because I wanted to. You've come to me for help, obviously, and I'll give it to you if I can. How can I help you?"
He squared his shoulders again and threw his head back. "Sfido needs no one's help. I'm here to help you."
I said that it was good of him, and waited.
"General Inclito will be defeated. You may deny it, but it's true."
"I believe it's true that you believe it. Can we leave it at that?"
"No. I've been in the hills and watched the fighting. I have no supernatural powers, but I've an eye for war. It was not for nothing that I was chosen to command our advance guard."
I said truthfully that I had never supposed it was.
He sat in silence for a moment, struck by a new thought. "You, with all your magic, Rajan. You should be at the front with the troops. Why are you here?"
"To raise the money I promised the mercenaries. I have enough now, or nearly enough. For one month's pay, that is."
"They offered to serve you for nothing. I was there, and that was when you ordered them to take my needier…"
"Yes?"
"I had it again when we returned to this whorl. You had them take it from me a second time. And those troopers, the great worm tore them to bits. Horrible! But they were alive again, and the General's daughter was dead."
"You said you had come to help me," I reminded him.
"Yes. Can you foresee the future? That's what one of the men from your own town told me."
"Not always."
"But sometimes. Often, I think. Do you agree that Blanko's horde will be defeated?"
I said (patiently, I hope) that he had said so, and that I deferred to his greater knowledge of military matters.
"Girl come," Oreb cautioned us.
"That will be my host's wife," I said. "I hope we haven't disturbed her."
"Who will win the war? You must know! Tell me quickly and truthfully." Sfido swallowed. "I do not plead. Never! Not even when our Duko condemned me. But tell me, Rajan, if you will, and I'll be in your debt till Hierax takes me."
"Blanko."
I had already heard Volanta's feet on the stairs going down into the shop. She came in before I could say more. "Incanto? Is this man bothering you?"
I shook my head. "I'm bothering him, I'm afraid. I've been keeping him from the rest he needs."
"Fish heads?" Oreb suggested.
"And the food too, you're right. I doubt that he can buy anything this late, but a lot of people are still celebrating. Someone might give a hungry man something, if he were approached in the right way."
Volanta had started for her kitchen before I finished. "There's some soup left, I'll heat it up for him. Bread and soup, that's the best supper."
"I'm too tired to eat," Sfido murmured, and licked his lips.
For the first time I was able to make out the narrow mustache that had almost faded into his sprouting beard. I declared that he would have to eat something, a few bites of bread and a little of the soup, so that Volanta would not be disappointed.
"Blanko will win? You're quite sure?"
I shrugged.
"Our best troops are at Olmo. Do you know about that? Olmo was plotting to turn against us, and in war one takes the weaker enemy first, so he can't put his knife in your back while you're fighting the stronger one. Besides, sacking Olmo will steady Novella Citta."
I explained that a messenger who managed to get through the Soldese lines had told me this afternoon that Olmo was besieged, and that was why the town was celebrating.
"We're not going to starve them out." Sfido spoke like a man certain of his information. "The assault must be nearly ready, if it hasn't already begun. Your horde can't hold the passes. They've been driven back twice, and General Morello's merely amusing himself while he waits for the Duko and our professionals. Those are just conscripts your Inclito's been fighting, and he can't hold them."
"It certainly sounds bad," I admitted.
"Why are you paying Kupus's mercenaries?"
"Because I said we would." I had not yet wiped my pen or put away this untidy collection of loose sheets. I did both while I collected my thoughts.
"You say that I carried them and you-and Oreb, Fava, and Valico, I suppose-to Green. Fava was the girl you called Mora."
He raised his brows. "She wasn't really General Inclito's daughter?"
I started to explain, then shook my head. If Mora had been captured, as I have been assuming, it seemed likely that Sfido would have learned about it when he returned to Soldo, especially since he had apparently been kept waiting for some time.
"Good girl," Oreb told us. I suppose he meant Mora, but I would like very much to think that he intended Fava.
I told Sfido, "If I had the supernatural powers you credit me with, I wouldn't have taken advantage of them in the way that you propo
se. They were desperate and believed, quite understandably, that I was a miracle worker who could save them.
"Besides, they fought very well when we cleared the ancient city of inhumi-or at least it appeared to me that they did. You have an eye for strategy, and I'm sure you must know far more than I about every aspect of warfare. What did you think of them?"
"I was proud of them."
"So was I. They earned a better reward than I can give them."
Volanta called to us from the kitchen, and Sfido stood up. "I would have led them, if I could. Thanks to you, I had to watch them with my hands bound behind my back. But I told myself that whatever might happen to me, for a few days Sphigx had given me some of the best troopers who ever squeezed the trigger."
We went into the kitchen, and seated ourselves at the little table there. "I'd carry my soup into the store for Incanto," Volanta informed Sfido severely, "but not for anybody else."
"He won't be staying here," I muttered. "Well!"
"It would be too great a burden on you and your husband. On you, particularly. He may not wish to remain in Blanko at all."
As Volanta set his soup before him, Sfido murmured, "You are an employer of mercenaries, Rajan."
"Blanko is." (The steaming bowl was followed by a loaf of new bread, a big, curved knife, and a chipped blue plate nearly filled by an immense pat of butter.) "Technically, I act for the town."
He nodded, sipping the smoking soup, then dipped his spoon back into the bowl. "You're collecting funds to pay them, you say, and since General Inclito has sent you to do that, it's an operation of considerable difficulty. Getting money always is."
"I supposed not. But there have been a few setbacks here, I admit."
"Knowing no trade but the trooper's, I am a mercenary now myself." Sfido indicated his own chest with the butter knife. "Will you employ me?"
"Are you serious, Captain?"
"Entirely, Rajan. Also brave, loyal, and experienced."
I smiled. "I'll certainly consider it. Your Duko was going to execute you?"
