In Green's Jungles (31 page)

We still have not found Mora and Eco, but I have high hopes for tomorrow. It is possible, of course, that they are already with Inclito. I pray that is the case.

And now I would like to launch into my account of the battle, which had interest, excitement, and heroism enough for every quill in both Oreb's wings; but first I must mention (and truthfully, although it is difficult to be truthful here) what happened just before I went to bed last night.

I had promised you a rational account of the battle and risen, and was corking the ink bottle and wiping my pen when the old woman knocked as she did every night that I stayed in that house to ask whether we wanted anything and announce that she was about to retire.

I told her we were fine, much better off than those who had fought so gallantly and lacked the comfort of her roof. She thanked me and began moving about the room, straightening small items as women will, snuffling to herself and coughing much as I do, but moving (although it did not strike me at the time) gracefully nonetheless, so that I was reminded vaguely of you, Nettle; and then more vaguely still of Evensong, Tansy, Seawrack, Hyacinth, and various others-or perhaps simply of all the women-or of all the young women, at least-that I have known at various times in diverse places, and fell to thinking (as I pulled off my boots and removed my robe) that it was a pity, a great pity, that we had no daughter-although it was so often all that we could do to feed the children we had, boys but good boys all of them, at least until Sinew was older.

All that we could do, and more.

And then I thought about Sinew and Krait, and the time-I hesitate to mention it, knowing it will pain you-when the house was building and the inhumu got into our little tent and drank blood from our child. The inhuma, I really ought to say, although at the time you and I assumed it had been male.

"I'm keeping you from undressing," the old woman said when I had washed and dried my feet.

I slid between the sheets and closed my eyes, seeing at once the flashes of Soldese slug guns. "I have been going to bed in my trousers and tunic every night," I told her, yawning, "and spreading my robe over me for additional warmth." I had given all my bedclothes except one old quilt to others who were forced to sleep outdoors, or in unheated sheds, and needed them much more than I did.

She muttered something in reply, wished me a good night, and blew out the lamp; and I, without thinking, said, "Thank you, Jahlee." It was a strange thing to say, surely, but even now I am not entirely certain I was wrong.

For two hours that seemed whole years, the new advance guard of the Horde of Soldo ranged up and down the wide U of our walls and ditches, firing from time to time and taking our measure; then a Soldese officer advanced carrying a flag of truce, and Inclito sent me out to talk with him.

He smiled and offered me his hand, saying, "I'm Colonel Terzo."

I accepted it, and we shook hands. I introduced myself and explained that I was not formally a member of the Horde of Blanko, merely a friend of its commander trying to give him what help I could.

"You are a combatant, eh? Do you fight, Incanto?"

"Not so far; and I have no slug gun, though I admit I have directed others who have fought you." It was all true, although as I spoke I was very conscious of the azoth in my waistband.

He shook his head, looking very gloomy indeed. "It will go hard with you if you are captured."

I said I would endeavor not to be.

"There are times, Incanto, and I speak as one who has seen a great deal of war, when one can't avoid it."

I told him I understood that, and explained that back in the Whorl I had once been captured by the Trivigauntis.

"Ah, you saw them? You fought them?"

I nodded.

"In Grandecitta we thought they were legendary. Women troopers? Not even Pas would attempt such a thing! That was what we said."

"They fought very well," I told him. "I realize now that they fought better than I did, although I wasn't aware of it at the time. We-Nettle and I and many others-had been fighting our own Civil Guard before, and they'd been very good fighters indeed, so that when we came to fight Trivigauntis we were only conscious that these new opponents were not quite up to the measure of our old ones."

"Someday you and I will speak of this all afternoon over a bottle of wine," he told me solemnly. "I have a place on the Bacherozzolo, and grow good grapes there. South-facing hillsides, eh? But at present it is my unpleasant duty to require your surrender, upon the authority of the Duko."

I pointed out that since I was not in Soldo and was not a citizen of Soldo, its Duko had no authority over me.

"Not only you." Terzo shook his head sadly. "Not just you, Incanto, but those pitiful grandfathers I see, and those unlucky women. The boys, too. You have boys? We dislodged a few on our march."

I confessed that our reserve was made up largely of those boys.

"Then you have no reserve." He spread his hands, appalled at our weakness but unable to help us. "Your women will run screaming as soon as the fighting is serious. I have never seen women cut down with the saber, and do not wish to see it. There will be sickening bloodshed. Incanto…"

He attempted to put his arm over my shoulders, but I shook it off.

"I like you, Incanto, and I'll try to do what I can for you. You have a horse?"

I confessed that I did not.

"I see a few country louts on horseback behind your line. Six, seven? How many?"

"We are short of cavalry," I admitted.

"Borrow a horse from one anyway. Surrender, and ride off as soon as we begin disarming the poor women that scoundrel General Inclito has forced out of their kitchens. I will see to it that you escape."

I thanked him for his good wishes, but repeated that we had no intention of surrendering.

"Incanto, you are unfamiliar with the rules of war."

"Yes, but I have two friends, one a very experienced officer, who advise me."

"You have three. I am the third, and you need all of us more than you know. It is one of the rules of war that untenable positions may not be held. Do you understand? Suppose, and I saw this only today, that some graybeard fool and three children attempt to hold a little mud-brick shed against an army. That is an untenable position, since the four greatest heroes mankind has ever seen could not maintain such a place against a hundred ordinary troopers. Do you understand me, Incanto?"

"Very well," I said.

"But they are stubborn, eh? Even fools can be heroes, just as the greatest heroes can be fools. We invited their surrender, they refused, and we stormed their little cowshed. Soon I was handed two little boys, boys of twelve or thirteen, which is about the age of my younger son, bleeding and weeping. You would have bandaged their wounds, eh? Waved your hands through the air and recited spells of healing?"

"Prayed over them, perhaps," I told him.

"Exactly. But I am a trooper, and I had no choice. They have tried to hold an indefensible position. You see what I'm getting at, eh? I had to shoot them both, and I did."

I was too shocked to say anything.

"I would hate to shoot you, Incanto. Possibly I would try, but I don't think I'd have the stomach for it. I'd call in some subordinate and have him do it, and turn my head away. I beg you not to give me so much pain."

I shook my head. "You're not completely serious in what you say, Colonel-"

"But I am!"

"And I am, too. You must know our Colonel Sfido."

His face froze.

"He is one of the two friends I mentioned. He was in command of an advance guard, an advance guard of two hundred mercenaries, before you. Those mercenaries have come over to us-no doubt you know that, since you've been fighting them in the hills. So has Sfido. If you'd like to speak to him, I can ask him to come out here."

"No." He would not meet my eyes.

"Duko Rigoglio was going to have him shot for reporting the truth, because it was a truth that the Duko did not like hearing."

"A dream," Terzo muttered. "A bad dream."

"He came to us, and we fed him and found him a place to stay, and gave him employment. When Soldo falls, we will give him his property back, so that he may live in his own house with his wife and children as he did before. I sincerely hope that nothing of the kind will ever happen to you. It isn't likely, since your Duko will be deposed soon. But if it does, don't be afraid to come to us. You'll receive a fair trial, I promise."

He drew himself up. "You will not surrender? May I report that you will fight to the death?"

"Why no," I said. "We'll run, I suppose, if the fight goes against us. But we're not going to run now, when it has hardly begun."

I had thought that he would order an attack as soon as he returned to his own line, but he did not. We waited tensely for a time, and I had what little food was available passed out to the troopers along our walls.

"This better work, Incanto," Inclito said, studying them as they leaned against the earth-filled bags or crouched in the snow to eat.

"Will Pas drive us from this whorl if it doesn't?"

He looked around at me, surprised. "I don't think he's even here. We left him up there with the Long Sun."

"In one sense he wasn't there, either. In another he is here with us at this moment, because I am."

Inclito said nothing for a time, but I am not at all sure how long a time it was; I was lost in thought. At last-"Because you pray to him, that's what you mean. He hears you praying."

I nodded. "I hope so at least."

"Me too. You think they'll attack soon?"

I told him I did not know, that a few minutes before I had felt certain that they would attack at once; but that I felt almost equally certain now that they were going to wait for the main body of their horde. "Colonel Terzo spoke so contemptuously of us that I thought he believed what he was saying, and would rush at us when we refused to surrender. It seems he will not."

It was Inclito's turn to nod. "Would you?"

"No. But if I governed Soldo I wouldn't try to conquer Blanko, either."

"Colonel Terzo doesn't govern Soldo, but that's a good answer just the same. Incanto…"

"Yes?"

"Usually when I ask what you're thinking about-"

"Men come!" Overhead Oreb sounded the alarm. "Bad men! Come fast!"

I lifted my staff for him, and he dropped down onto its handle. "On horseback?"

"Come horse! Bird see!"

"That's what he's waiting for." Inclito nodded to himself. "Their cavalry, and somebody else to give the order. You scared him, Incanto, just like you scare me. What did you really mean, when you said that about Pas making us go?"

"Only that he wouldn't, or at least that I don't believe that he will. I've been asking myself what will occur if we lose."

He chuckled dryly. "If she's still alive my Mora will be an orphan, for one thing. They're supposed to ask you nicely if you want a rag tied over your eyes, and you're supposed to say you don't. But I don't think it matters much by then what you say."

I could not help thinking then of Pig, and of everything that had befallen Viron while I had been away. "Soldo will dominate Blanko for a generation or two," I told Inclito, "then Blanko will throw off its domination, and more people will be killed. After that, something else will happen, and still more people will die, and the inhumi will come in the night to drink our blood, carousing upon our hates and fears and lusts. After which still more people will die for other reasons, and no one will be even a little bit wiser."

I took a deep breath. "Inclito, our mercenaries have been with us almost half a month. You have them in back with the reserve, the ones who are still alive?"

He nodded. "A hundred and thirty-seven. That's the number I remember, anyhow. Could be a few less."

"I want to pay them. Half a month's pay before the battle starts. May I do that?"

"You've got the money?"

"Four times enough. May l?"

"Sure, go ahead. You think it'll make them fight better? They've been fighting real good already."

"It will make me fight better," I said, "because I won't dislike myself quite so much for fighting."

"Good man," Oreb assured Inclito.

"I try. I want to promise those who are attempting to earn enough to buy land that we'll try to provide farms for them after the war. The rich in Soldo own a great deal of land-that's the impression I get, at least."

"Sure." Inclito stroked his jaw. "That way they'd stay right there in Soldo. I see. And if the Soldese-all right, go ahead and tell them, Incanto. I'll make it happen if we win."

We were going to, I knew, although I did not say so then. I found Sfido, and the two of us brought out the chest that we had hidden when we arrived. I gave every mercenary thirty silver bits, half of the sixty that we had paid every four weeks in Gaon, and told them about the farms Inclito had promised them.

Captain Kupus took me aside. "You're giving every man one? Enough land for a man to feed a family?"

"That's correct," I told him. "The Duko's chief supporters seem to own a great deal of good land around Soldo. It will be taken from them, of course, and Inclito has decided to give itsome of it at least-to your mercenaries, who have fought so valiantly for Blanko and suffered so much."

Atteno interrupted us to report that all his pigs were tied and positioned at last. When he had gone, Kupus asked, "Four for me? Four farms?"

I shook my head. "This is a bonus, not the promised pay. I'll try to see to it that you get first choice, however."

He is not a man who smiles often, but he smiled then. "I didn't think so, but I hadn't thought about first choice. They can't be exactly equal, after all, can they?"

I admitted that I did not see how it could be done.

"But we've got to beat them first. What was that little fellow saying about pigs?"

"Boars in pairs. A mature boar is a dangerous animal, nearly as dangerous as a hus."

He nodded.

"With a long rope stretched between them-" Just then, I sighted the first cavalry, tiny figures in wine-red jackets sifting down through the dry brown hills behind them. Sunlight winked on what I took to be silver cap badges but later found were plumed helmets of polished steel, on the blades of the officers' swords, and on the black well-oiled barrels of their slug guns.