In Green's Jungles (33 page)

The boys fired, a ragged crash followed by the rasping rattle of hundreds of fore-ends pulled back to expel hundreds of empty cartridges and pushed forward again to bring hundreds of fresh rounds into hundreds of chambers.

Adatta tugged at the leg of my trousers to get my attention. "Can I now, sir?"

I nodded, meaning that she should return to the walls; but before I could stop her, she was running down the line of boys, shouting encouragement and patting shoulders.

For a minute or more it seemed that the cavalry might never actually reach our long ditch. The trip ropes delayed it as I had intended, and in fact broke the legs of scores of horses. Against the greater charge of the Soldese cavalry, Atteno's boars made their own lesser charges again and again, working one another into a foaming fury that had many of the horsemen reigning up to shoot at them even as their fellow troopers fell from our fire.

Then a valiant trooper, virtually alone, broke from the rest and charged our line at full gallop. His horse jumped the last of our trip ropes only to plunge headlong into the snow-filled long ditch.

As it did, the hedgerow seemed to explode. Stars flew from it, and devils of red and blue, orange and yellow fire careened among the horses, whining, whizzing, shrieking and howling, lurching, and swerving before detonating in clouds of colored smoke and flying sparks.

"Make bang." Oreb announced self-importantly as he settled upon my staff. "Horse come. Come hole." Or at least that is what I think he said-it was hard to hear him over the noise of the fireworks.

Nor did I greatly care what he had said just then. Grateful for its new warmth, I pushed Hyacinth's azoth back into my waistband; and seeing Rimando running toward me, climbed down from the stile and walked calmly (I hope) toward him, careful to swing my staff and plant it solidly with every step, so that Oreb fidgeted and flapped on the handle, and at last abandoned it for my shoulder.

"May we open fire, sir?" Rimando called.

I waited until we were nearer, then said in a low tone, "Lieutenants may run, Captain. Captains walk."

"Yes, sir." He halted, drew himself up, and saluted. "Shall we open fire, sir?"

"You are sighted on the area behind the line of infantry facing us, as I instructed you?"

"Yes, sir."

"In that case, you may open fire as soon as the enemy's cavalry has been stampeded well into that area, Captain."

"They're in there now, sir." He pointed.

"Then you may open fire."

He spun about and dashed back toward the haystack gun, shouting; even so, it seemed to me a very long time before it spoke, and its first shot set the hay on fire so that half the crew had to fight the fire before it reached the ammunition, leaving only two men to load and fire.

The gun in the barn fired soon afterward-I got the impression that its crew had heard the first shot, and verified its elevation and direction one final time before pulling the lanyard. Almost at once, the gun in the wood by the river, the largest and most distantly sited of all, thundered forth so deeply that it seemed to me that I could feel it shake the ground.

After that, I paid little attention to which gun happened to fire at which time, or which was having the greatest effect on our enemy's troops. Inclito had an officer in the tree in front of the farmhouse, from which he was signaling about such matters with a yellow-and-black flag on a stick; and although I had been told what the two waves overhead meant, and the four waves down, and the rest of it, I had forgotten most of the code already. Whatever signals were sent, our shells were bursting among the enemy, striking stony ground and throwing up geysers of ocher dust and flying rock that only looked small to me as I hurried forward to our walls of earth-filled bags lined with women and elderly men; they were enormous and very dangerous, I knew, to thousands of terrified Soldese troopers, and to hundreds of horses already frantic with fear.

"More bang," Oreb muttered; and a young woman with brawny arms and a broad grin said, "Looks pretty good, don't it, Master Incanto?"

I nodded and told her, "We have to destroy that cavalry before it can make a second attempt," speaking as seriously as I might have to Inclito.

"They know our tricks now, I guess."

"That's so, and there can't be many fireworks left." As I spoke, I was looking for a way to climb over her wall as I had climbed Mattak's on Gold Street, but there was no helpful, murderous sergeant on the other side of this one to give me a hand up, only a deeper ditch full of snow.

Another woman exclaimed, "We've won!"

I shook my head and frowned at her. "Not yet, though we will win."

Like ghosts, I could see their corpses at the foot of the wall, dead women with open staring eyes, and dead men, their gray beards (their white beards) dyed with their own blood. Auk had taken off his undershirt to hang it out of the window of the Juz- gado; but that undershirt had been as red as the old men's beards, and I had none, red or white, although a woolen undershirt would have been a comfort that day in that wind.

Another woman said, "They'll still come at us, won't they?," and this woman had her hair bound up in a white cloth and stood beside a wooden case of slug-gun cartridges. I got her to give me her cloth and tied it around my staff, and went to the end of the wall, where at Sfido's insistence we had left a narrow space between walls and between ditches.

Someone-I think the first woman to whom I had spokencalled, "They'll shoot you," and Oreb muttered uneasily, "No bang."

Each step was harder than the last. I reached the point I had marked with my eye as the midpoint and realized that it was not, and advanced step by uneasy step after that, waving my flag to signal one thing and one thing only, over and over. Had Maytera Marble felt like this while I, from a place of relative safety, watched her advance with steady strides toward Blood's villa?

"I have her new eye in my pocket," I told Oreb. "Maytera Marble's. You recall Maytera Marble, I hope?"

"Iron girl."

"That's the one. If I'm killed, you are to take her new eye to her."

I got it from my pocket to show to him, and he said, "Man come. No shoot."

Colonel Terzo was advancing toward me. He had a needler in his hand instead of a flag of truce. "You are killing our men," he said, "killing our horses."

"We will gladly stop," (I am afraid I sounded apologetic) "as soon as you give us any reason to do so."

"I should shoot you where you stand!"

"I have been shot before," I told him, and it affected him more than I would have anticipated; the hand that held the needler shook visibly, and although he was still too distant for me to be certain it appeared to me that he turned pale.

I advanced until we stood face-to-face, as two men might talk in the street. The sound of the bursting shells was louder there, and reports of the big guns that fired them hardly more than distant thunder. I cocked my head, hearkening to Seawrack's seasong in that field of stubble, smoke, and death.

"The Duko didn't send me out here," Terzo said angrily. "Neither did General Morello. I came out of friendship for you."

I nodded my thanks.

"You've brought your artillery outside your town, in violation of the laws of war. If you're captured you'll be shot, and I thought I should tell you."

"I didn't know that there was any such law," I said. "Where are these laws written, and by what courts are they enforced?"

"Everyone knows!"

"You mean that you make some excuse to shoot those prisoners you wish to kill. No doubt you always have."

"We're going to attack you within an hour, Incanto. You'll be-" He fell silent, staring at me. "Can you hear something I don't?"

"Sing song," Oreb suggested; and I did, following Seawrack's own intonation and pronunciation to the best of my very limited ability. The lapping of the waves was in her song, and the eerie cries of seabirds, and the lonely whistling of the wind.

"That is in the language of the Neighbors, whom you call the Vanished People," I said when I could no longer sing for weeping.

"I can-" Terzo began. Then again, "I can almost hear it myself." He fell silent.

I put my hand upon his shoulder. "Listen, and you will hear her. Those who truly listen do."

He heard the music then, I know; he stared at me with bulging eyes.

"Seawrack is singing in the place that lies beyond this place. Listen there, and you cannot help but hear her." With her I sang a few more words in the language of those whom Mora had once called the People of That Town. " `In our small house with shining windows, I waited till the tide brought your wreck through. Lie here beside me in the darkness. I'll wake to life the corpse I say is you.' That isn't exactly right, but it's as close as I can come in the Common Tongue."

I spoke the final words to his back as he sprinted for his own lines.

* * *

A representative from Novella Citta has reached us! The news is so good that I hesitate to record it. His name is Legaro, and he is a tall and very dignified man with graying hair, an assessor (he says) of his town, which is governed by such assessors.

"So you're Master Incanto," he ventured when we had been introduced, and seemed almost afraid to accept my hand. "Donna Mora and her consort have told us a great deal about you."

"You have her?" I asked. "I know she's still alive, but is she well?"

Oreb added his voice to mine. "Girl safe? No shoot?"

"She is well and safe in our peel house in Novella Citta," Legaro declared. "But I should be telling all this to the Duko, her father. Is he here?"

"He went out with one of our patrols," I explained, "but he should be back within an hour." And I told Oreb to find Inclito and tell him that there was someone here with news of his daughter.

"You're his brother, Donna Mora's uncle?"

"If she awarded me that honor, it would be uncivil of me to refuse it. A tall, sturdy girl, quite dark, with a mole here?" I touched my cheek.

He nodded. "A very stately and forceful young lady. She has made a distinct impression on everyone." He leaned toward me and his voice became confidential. "Duko Inclito is marrying a woman from Novella Citta?"

"He intends to, certainly. The ceremony will not take place until after the war."

Another nod. "Naturally. I understand."

"Her name is Torda; but beyond the fact that she is both gracious and beautiful, and a distant relation-a second cousin by marriage, or something of that kind-I really know nothing about her. Inclito has been a widower for many years. No doubt Donna Mora told you."

"Oh, yes. And I should tell you that though I came alone save for my servant, our horde is not far behind me. We have four hundred and fifty under arms. It's a small force to you, I understand. But it's a well-trained and well-armed one, I assure you."

I thanked him, and said we welcomed whatever reinforcements Novella Citta could provide to us.

"We expected to find Blanko besieged, and hoped we might accomplish something by taking the besiegers in the rear." He rubbed his hands and smiled. "You can imagine how we feel now that you've won. Will you tell me about your victory? I've been talking to troopers on both sides, you see. I had to convince every party we encountered that I wasn't a Soldese or a Blankonian, and in the course of our conversations I've picked up a good deal of information. You and your brother were in command?"

I tried to explain that Inclito was our commander, and that I had merely deployed the fresh troops I had brought up from Blanko and endeavored to assist him.

"The guns, too. You brought out your guns?"

"I have been told that it is contrary to the usages of war, but-"

"It's too dangerous. I mean that it's usually judged to be. No one can argue with victory, of course. Now tell me everything that happened, please. Every detail. I've been learning about it in bits and pieces, and I'm as anxious to have a rational overview as a man can possibly be. You shattered the Dragoons and wiped out the Bodyguard?"

And so I described the entire affair for him, finding the partial account I had written here already a great help. I will finish it when next I write, and perhaps find room somewhere to add a few words about my experiences on Green, which is what I am supposed to be describing, after all.

THE END AND AFTERWARD

T
he next Soldese attack came a quarter of an hour after Colonel Terzo and I separated, a wave of troopers running, throwing themselves flat in the stubble to shoot, and springing up to dash forward again until they fell. A second wave came behind the first, and a third behind the second.

There were no more after that.

Only a few weeks ago I watched a massed attack by the men of Han. The field of battle was black with them, and a trooper who shot one saw another appear at once in his place, and another in his and another his, man succeeding man as raindrops do. Because I had seen that, the Soldese troopers seemed less dangerous, perhaps, than they really were. I would never deny their courage and discipline; but I feared at first that they were no more than a diversion; and when at last I realized that there was to be no other attack, I felt a vast relief. Our veterans could no longer run and jump like the young men they had once been, but they could and would stand behind the walls and shoot all afternoon if need be. Some of our women still shut their eyes when they drew the trigger, as I saw, but it hardly mattered at that point; and although I saw tears here and there, I saw them through my own.

The second wave got as far as the deep ditches before our walls, and a few men leaped into them and tried to climb up the other side, but a more hopeless enterprise could not be imagined. I struck one on the head with my staff, and so saved him from having his brains blown out, which would have happened in another half second.

The third and final wave got no nearer than half a chain, I believe. For the space of a breath the troopers who composed it wavered there, firing and falling; then they turned and fled. Inclito led our reserve after them-such cavalry as we had, most of the boys, and the troopers who had been with him in the hills.