In Green's Jungles (28 page)

"You think you have escaped the gods and the punishments gods mete out to such as you. You are mistaken. The Outsider is sitting among you unseen, and he has given his judgment. He has appointed a scourge fit for you. I will not call you together again, and it may be that no one will ever summon you a second time. I think it very likely. If you wish to speak with me again, come to me singly. Perhaps I'll find time for you, if you do. Perhaps not."

I went out of Ugolo's house then without a thought in my head, and saw five boys in the street playing trooper, and two old men laughing and advising them. I called all seven to me and introduced myself, although I soon found that all of them knew very well who I was. I said nothing to them of money; it was clear enough that none had much. But I told them in some detail how desperate the battles in the hills were liable to be, and spoke as eloquently as I could of the need to defend Blanko should the enemy break through. Then I showed them the keys to the armory and ordered them to come with me.

The people laughed at us at first, a straggling company of boys and old men; and they laughed louder still when I enlisted women. There came a moment, however, when I had to order my troops not to fire upon a jeering crowd unless they offered us violence. That quieted them, and I was able to arrest the ringleaders. We have driven spikes into the walls of the dry sewer Inclito told me of-a much more comfortable place, certainly, than the sewer I opened for the Neighbors-and chained them to the spikes. Ugolo is there now with a few of the others.

In the Long Sun Whorl, bio troopers were called auxiliaries because the fighting forces there had originally been composed of soldiers alone. They were the Army, which is to say the arm of the city. The armed bios enlisted to assist and augment them were designated auxiliaries, and their assembled strength (which in Viron included my Guard) the Horde. Together, the army and the horde composed the Host.

Even there, hordes increased in importance, while armies dwindled as their soldiers perished. Here the horde-Inclito's for example-is the entire force. Surely then I can take that term auxiliary for my old men, women, and boys.

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.

BEFORE THE BATTLE

H
ave 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 needler, 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.