by Gene Wolfe
Page 50
After that, it was easy. I dropped the girl, caught his halter, twisted his head, and kicked his forefeet from under him as we were taught to do with unruly clients. With a high-pitched, animal scream he came crashing down. I was in the saddle before he could get his legs beneath him, and from there I lashed his flanks with the long reins and sent him bolting through the crowd, then turned him and charged them again.
All my life I had heard of the excitement of this kind of fighting, though I had never experienced it. Now I found everything more than true. The troopers and their women were yelling and running, and a few flourished swords. They might have threatened a thunderstorm with more effect - I rode over half a dozen at a sweep. The girls red hair flew like a banner as she fled, but no human legs could have outdistanced that steed. We flashed past her, and I caught her by that flaming banner and threw her over the arcione before me.
A twisting trail led to a dark ravine, and that ravine to another. Deer scattered ahead of us; in three bounds we overtook a buck in velvet and shouldered him out of the way. While I had been Lictor of Thrax, I had heard that the eclectics often raced game and leaped from their mounts to stab it. I believed those stories now - I could have cut the bucks throat with a butcher knife.
We left him behind, crested a new hill and dashed down into a silent, wooded valley. When the piebald had run himself out, I let him find his own path among the trees, which were the largest I had seen since leaving Saltus; and when he stopped to crop the sparse, tender grass that grew between their roots, I halted and threw the reins on the ground as I had seen Guasacht do, then dismounted and helped the red-haired girl off.
"Thanks," she said. And then, "You did it. I didnt think you could. "
"Or you wouldnt have agreed to this? I had supposed they made you. "
"I wouldnt have given you that cut with the whip. Youll want to repay me now, wont you? With the reins, I suppose. "
"What makes you think that?" I was tired and sat down. Yellow flowers, each blossom no bigger than a drop of water, grew in the grass; I picked a few and found they smelled of calambac.
"You look the type. Besides, you carried me bottom up, and men who do that always want to hit it. "
"I never knew that. Its an interesting thought. "
"I have a lot of them - that kind. " Quickly and gracefully she seated herself beside me and put a hand on my knee. "Listen, it was the initiation, thats all. We take turns, and it was my turn and I was supposed to hit you. Now its over. "
"I understand. "
"Then you wont hurt me? Thats wonderful. We can have a good time here, really. Whatever you want and as much as you want, and we wont go back until its time to eat. "
"I didnt say I wouldnt hurt you. "
Her face, which had been wreathed with forced smiles, fell, and she looked at the ground. I suggested that she might ruaway.
"That would only make it more fun for you, and youd hurt me more before we were through. " Her hand crept up my thigh as she spoke.
"Youre nice looking, you know. And so tall. " She made a sitting bow, pressing her face into my lap to give me a tingling kiss, then straightening up at once. "It could be nice. Really it could. "
"Or you could kill yourself. Have you a knife?" For an instant, her mouth formed a perfect little circle. "Youre crazy, arent you? I should have known. " She leaped to her feet. I caught her by one ankle and sent her sprawling to the soft forest floor. Her shift was rotten with wear - a pull and it fell away. "You said you wouldnt run. "
She looked over her shoulder at me with large eyes. I said, "You have no power over me, neither you nor they. I am not afraid of pain, or of death. There is only one living woman I desire, and no man but myself. "
CHAPTER TWENTY - PATROL
We held a perimeter no more than a couple of hundred paces across. For the most part, our enemies had only knives and axes - the axes and their ragged clothes recalled the volunteers I had helped Vodalus against in our necropolis - but there were hundreds of them already, and more coming.
The bacele had saddled up and left camp before dawn. The shadows were still long, somewhere along the shifting front, when a scout showed Guasacht the deep ruts of a coach traveling north. For three watches we tracked it.
The Ascian raiders who had captured it fought well, turning south to surprise us, then west, then north again like a writhing serpent; but always leaving a trail of dead, caught between our fire and that of the guards inside, who shot them through the loopholes. It was only toward the end, when the Ascians could no longer flee, that we grew aware of other hunters.
By noon, the little valley was surrounded. The gleaming steel coach with its dead and dying prisoners stood mired to the axles. Our Ascian prisoners squatted in front of it, guarded by our wounded. The Ascian officer spoke our tongue, and a watch earlier Guasacht had ordered him to free the coach and shot several Ascians when he had failed; thirty or more remained, nearly naked, listless and emptyeyed. Their weapons were piled some distance off, near our tethered mounts.
Now Guasacht was making the rounds, and I saw him pause at the stump that sheltered the trooper next to me. One of the enemy put her head from behind a clump of brush some way up the slope. My contus struck her with a bolt of flame; she leaped by reflex, then curled up as spiders do when someone tosses them among the coals of a campfire. She had been white-faced beneath her red bandana, and I suddenly understood that she had been made to look - that there were those behind that brush who had disliked her, or at least not valued her, and who had forced her to look out. I fired again, slashing the green growth with the bolt and bringing a puff of acrid smoke that drifted toward me like her ghost.
"Dont waste those charges," Guasacht said at my elbow. More from habit, I think, than from fear, he had thrown himself flat beside me. I asked if the charges would be exhausted before night if I fired six times a watch.
He shrugged, then shook his head.
"Thats how fast Ive been shooting this thing, as well as I can judge by the sun. And when night comes. . . "
I looked at him, and he could only shrug again.
"When night comes," I continued, "we wont be able to see them until theyre only a few steps away. Well fire more or less at random and kill a few score, then draw swords and stand back to back, and theyll kill us. "
He said, "Help will arrive before then," and when he saw I did not believe him, he spat. "I wish Id never looked at the damned things track. I wish Id never heard of it. "
It was my turn to shrug. "Give it back to the Ascians, and well break out. "
"Its coin, I tell you! Gold to pay our troops. Its too heavy to be anything else. "
"The armor must weigh a good deal. "
"Not that much. Ive seen these coaches before, and its gold from Nessus or the House Absolute. But those things inside - whos ever seen such creatures?"
"I have. "
Guasacht stared at me.
"When I went out through the Piteous Gate in the Wall of Nessus. They are man-beasts, contrived by the same lost arts that made our destriers faster than the road engines of old. " I tried to recall what else Jonas had told me of them, and finished rather weakly by saying, "The Autarch employs them in duties too laborious for men, or for which men cannot be trusted. "
"I suppose that might be right enough. They cant very well steal the money. Where would they go? Listen, Ive had my eye on you. "
"I know," I said. "Ive felt it. "
"Ive had my eye on you, I say. Particularly since you made that piebald of yours go for the man that trained him. Up here in Orithyia we see a lot of strong men and a lot of brave ones - mostly when we step over their bodies. We see a lot of smart ones too, and nineteen out of twenty are too smart to be of use to anybody, including themselves. Whats valuable are men, and sometimes women, whove got a kind of power, the power that makes other people want to do what they say. I dont mean to brag, but Ive got it. Youve got it too. "
"It hasnt been overwhelmingly apparent in my life before this. "
"Sometimes it takes the war to bring it out. Thats one of the benefits of the war, and since it hasnt got many we ought to appreciate the ones it does. Severian, I want you to go down to the coach and treat with these man-animals. You say you know something about them. Get them to come out and help us fight. Were both on the same side, after all. "
I nodded. "And if I can get them to open the doors, we can divide the money among us. Some of us, at least, may escape. " Guasacht shook his head in disgust. "What did I tell you just a moment ago about being too smart? If you were really smart, you wouldnt have ignored it. No, you tell them that even if theres only three or four of them, every fighter counts. Besides, theres at least a chance the sight of them will frighten these damn freebooters away. Let me have your contus, and Ill hold your position for you until you come back. " I handed over the long weapon. "Who are these people, anyway?"
"These? Camp followers. Sutlers and whores - men as well as women. Deserters. Every so often the Autarch or one of his generals has them rounded up and put to work, but they slip away before long. Slipping aways their specialty. They ought to be wiped out. "
"I have your authority to treat with our prisoners in the coach?
Youll back me up?"
"Theyre not prisoners - well, yes, I suppose they are. You tell them what I said and make the best deal you can. Ill back you. " I looked at him for a moment, trying to decide whether he meant it. Like so many middle-aged men, he carried the old man he would become in his face, soured and obscene, already muttering the objections and complaints that would be his in the final skirmish.
"Youve got my word. Go on. "
"All right. " I rose. The armored coach resembled the carriages that had been used to bring important clients to our tower in the Citadel. Its windows were narrow and barred, its rear wheels as high as a man. The smooth steel sides suggested those lost arts I had mentioned to Guasacht, and I knew the man-beasts inside had better weapons than ours. I extended my hands to show I was unarmed and walked as steadily as I could toward them until a face showed at one window grill.
When one hears of such creatures, one imagines something stable, midway between beast and human; but when one actually sees them
- as I now saw this man-beast, and as I had seen the man-apes in the mine near Saltus - they are not like that at all. The best comparison I can make is to the flickering of a silver birch tossed by the wind. At one moment it seems a common tree, at the next, when the undersides of the leaves appear, a supernatural creation. So it is with the man-beasts. At first I thought a mastiff peered at me through the bars; then it seemed rather a man, nobly ugly, tawnyfaced and amber-eyed. I raised my hands to the grill to give him my scent, thinking of Triskele.
"What do you want?" His voice was harsh but not unpleasant.
"I want to save your lives," I said. It was the wrong thing to say, and I knew it as soon as the words had left my mouth.
"We want to save our honor. "
I nodded. "Honor is the higher life. "
"If you can tell us how to save our honor, speak. We will listen. But we will never surrender our trust. "
"You have already surrendered it," I said. The wind died, and the mastiff was back in an instant, flashing teeth and blazing eyes.
"It was not to safeguard gold from the Ascians that you were put into this coach, but to safeguard it from those of our own Commonwealth who would steal it if they could. The Ascians are beaten - look at them. We are the Autarchs loyal humans. Those you were set to guard against will overwhelm us soon. "
"They must kill me and my fellows before they can get the gold. " It was gold, then. I said, "They will do so. Come out and help us fight, while there is still a chance of victory. " He hesitated, and I was no longer sure that I had been entirely wrong to speak first of saving his life. "No," he said. "We cannot. What you say may be reason, I do not know. Our law is not the law of reason. Our law is honor and obedience. We stay. "
"But you know that we are not your enemies?"
"Anyone seeking what we guard is our enemy. "
"Were guarding it too. If these camp followers and deserters came within range of your weapons, would you fire on them?"
"Yes, of course. "
I walked over to the spiritless cluster of Ascians and asked to speak with their commander. The man who stood was only slightly taller than the rest; the intelligence in his face was the kind one sometimes sees in cunning madmen. I told him Guasacht had sent me to treat in his stead because I had often spoken with Ascian prisoners and knew their ways. This was, as I intended, overheard by his three wounded guards, who could see Guasacht manning my position on the perimeter.
"Greetings in the name of the Group of Seventeen," the Ascian said.
"In the name of the Group of Seventeen. " The Ascian looked startled but nodded.
"We are surrounded by the disloyal subjects of our Autarch, who are thus the enemies of both the Autarch and the Group of Seventeen. Our own commander, Guasacht, has devised a plan that will leave us all alive and free. "
"The servants of the Group of Seventeen must not be expended without purpose. "
"Precisely. Here is the plan. We will harness some of our destriers to the steel coach - as many as necessary to pull it free. You and your people must work to free it too. When its free, well return your weapons and help you fight your way out of this cordon. Your soldiers and ours will go north, and you can keep the coach and the money inside to take to your superiors, just as you hoped when you captured it. "
"The light of Correct Thought penetrates every darkness. "
"No, we havent gone over to the Group of Seventeen. You have to help us in return. In the first place, help get the coach out of the mud. In the second, help us fight our way out. In the third, provide us with an escort that will get us through your army and back to our own lines. "
