Exodus from the Long Sun tbotls-4

by Gene Wolfe

  Silk, who had been about to speak at length himself, said, “Please do, Generalissimo.”

  “She will fight above ground, not in tunnels. Not in the city, either, or little. Infantry, Calde, for fighting in a city, and to defend one. The guns that so impressed you are for defense also. Mostly she will attack. Thus she brings cavalry, which can go swiftly to a place chosen by herself in her airship and strike without warning. She spoke of mules to free her guns from mud. I overheard your talk, for which I hope you will forgive me.”

  “Of course you did; you were standing beside General Saba.”

  “Exactly so. Why not taluses, Calde? In your Guard, we use our taluses to free mired guns and even wagons, and a talus is stronger than thirty mules. Why will she not use taluses, and tell you so?”

  “Because she hasn’t got any. I noticed it at the time, and before the parade was over I became very conscious of it. It may be that no one in Trivigaunte knows how to make them, though I’d think unemployed taluses would go there seeking work if that were the case.”

  “They have kept their taluses at home to defend their city, Calde. Their floaters, too. Those are best for forcing a city street, however. I would think them best for tunnels, also.”

  “I agree.”

  “They would have been destroyed in the tunnels, fighting the soldiers and taluses of the Ayuntamiento. You see.”

  Silk, who feared that he saw only too well, said, “Not as clearly as I’d like. Go on, Generalissimo.”

  “My wife visits a woman who professes to reveal the future to her.” Oosik tugged his mustache again. “She says she does not believe this, but she does. I have upbraided her without effect. A man without a wife is spared a full half of life’s unpleasantness.”

  “We augurs,” Silk said carefully, “profess to reveal the future, too. That is to say, we profess to read the will of the gods in the entrails of their sacrifices. I admit that the intestines of a sheep seem like an unlikely tablet even for a god, but history records many striking instances of accurate predictions.”

  A slight smile elevated Oosik’s mustache. “My change of topic did not discomfit you, Calde.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Good. I mentioned this woman because she and many like her are false, and I do not wish you to think me a false prophet like them. If I predict, with success, the next event of the war, will that increase my credit with you?”

  “It can go no higher, Generalissimo.”

  “Then this will demonstrate that I deserve the confidence you repose in me. Siyuf will send a force of substance into the tunnels. It will bravely engage the enemy, and there will be terrible fighting. You, I think, Calde, will be taken to see it, if you will go. You will find a tunnel choked with bodies.”

  Silk nodded thoughtfully.

  “Once more in the Juzgado, you will insist that the force be withdrawn, those gallant young girls. Soon it will be, and after that, Siyuf will fight in the tunnels no more.”

  “You are a false prophet, Generalissimo,” Silk told him. “Having heard your prophesy, I won’t permit that to happen.”

  “In which case we must fight there, and because they are narrow, a hundred or two at a time. One by one we will lose our floaters and taluses, and with them scores of troopers. It will be slow work, and while it is done our numbers will grow less each day. These thousands and thousands of troopers of General Mint’s, who constitute so formidable a force. Can you afford to pay them?”

  Silk shook his head.

  “Then what will there be to hold them, if there is little fighting for them? A trooper fights for honor, Calde, whether he is General Skate’s trooper or hers. Or from loyalty. Or for loot sometimes. But he waits for pay. He will not wait without it, because when there is no fighting there is no honor to win, no flag to die for, no loot to gain.”

  “The Trivigauntis are stronger than we are already,” Silk said pensively. “I think so at least, after what I saw today.”

  Oosik shook his head. “Not yet, Calde, though Mint’s ranks have begun to thin, perhaps. By the end of the winter—” Oosik was interrupted by climes, and Horn’s hurrying footsteps.

  The three augurs had agreed that Jerboa would offer the first victim and the largest. The rest — eight had been led through the chill dusk into the old manteion on Brick Street, and more were expected momentarily — would be divided between Incus and Shell, with Incus offering the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth, and each choosing freely from those available, as long as he did not choose the largest.

  Auk, who had been a silent witness to their discussion, watched with interest as Jerboa tottered to the ambion; this feeble frame, this snowy-haired, half-naked skull, contained a tiny fragment of Great Pas, Lord of the Whorl and Father of the Seven. Did it know it was about to be reclaimed?

  Shag yes, Auk told himself, it was bound to. He, Auk, had explained the whole thing to old Jerboa, hadn’t he? How gods could tear chunks off themselves without getting smaller, and how they could slip those into a cull. The chunk could be jefe then if it wanted to, but it didn’t have to. It could, as he had been at pains to make clear, just go along. It was like a buck on a donkey. Sure, he could order it around, make it trot or stop, turn one way or the other — only he didn’t have to. Maybe he’d just let go of the reins, hook a leg over the pommel, and snoodge, letting his donkey graze or look for water, or whatever it wanted to. That was what Pas had done for years and years, but how long would he keep it up?

  “My very dear new friends,” Jerboa began, “I know you have not, any of you—” He coughed and clearly wished to spit, but swallowed. “That you haven’t come out here and brought the gods more fine offerings than we’ve seen since… I don’t know.”

  Benevolently, he looked toward the sibyls gathered about the fire that the youngest was kindling on the altar. “Maytera Wood, you’ve a better memory. They just brought another calf. That makes three. No, four. Four nice calves and four lambs, and a colt. We’ll have a bull before we’re done, I declare… What was I going to ask you about, Maytera?”

  “When we’d had better animals,” the oldest sibyl told him. “It was when you came from the schola, Patera. Your parents and your aunt bought a bullock and a peacock, and — oh, dear. It was Maytera Salvia who told me. What else did she say?”

  “A monkey,” Jerboa informed her. “I recollect the monkey, Maytera.” He had not liked offering the monkey, and something of that showed in his face after sixty-one years. “It doesn’t matter. There were nine, one for each of the Nine.”

  As if they were a backward class, he fixed his eyes on Auk and Hammerstone, and those of Auk’s followers who had returned. “There are nine great gods, as all you young people should know. That’s Pas and Echidna, and their children. What my father and my aunt did was to buy a gift for each, for me to give them the first time I sacrificed. On that altar right over there it was. Most were small. Some kind of a singing bird for Molpe, and a mole for Tartaros, and the monkey. I recollect those.”

  Incus, waiting with Shell, stirred impatiently.

  If Jerboa noticed, he did not betray it. “What they were doing was a very important thing. They were starting a young man off—” He coughed again. “Excuse it. The gods’ will, I’m sure. I just want to say it’s a more important thing that we’re doing tonight. A god, not just any god but Lord Pas himself, they say, has told these new gentlemen and Patera — Patera — ?”

  “Incus,” Hammerstone prompted from a front seat.

  “What’s an incus anyway? I don’t think I’ve offered an incus in all my years. Well, never mind. One of those little things that live in trees and eat the birds’ eggs, I imagine.” Another cough. “Told them if they’d find me… Is that right?”

  Incus, who had been on the point of objecting violently a moment before, exerted self-control. “You are indeed the augur whom Pas himself designated, Patera, if you are that Jerboa whom he intended.”

  Shell added encouragingly, “I’m sure yo
u are, Patera.”

  “If they’d find me and sacrifice, he’d come again, he said. Have I got that right?”

  Hammerstone, Incus, and even Shell nodded confirmation, as did most of those assembled; there was a stir at the back of the manteion as an immensely tall worshipper led in a tame baboon.

  “What I wanted to say while our good sibyls get the fire going is that it’s not a little thing. Not a little thing at all. Theophanies over on Sun Street lately, and this you’ve come from makes three. But I’m no stranger to them, not what you could call a stranger at all.”

  He turned, shuffling around behind his ambion to address Incus. “You talked to Pas, did you?”

  “I did.” Incus swelled with pride.

  Jerboa faced about again. “He said he was going to come. Well, we’ll see. It’ll be a great thing, a tremendous thing. If it happens.”

  Maytera Wood presented him with the knife of sacrifice, the signal that the sacred fire was burning satisfactorily. “I’ll have that black calf with the white face,” he decided.

  * * *

  “Bird back!”

  Bison halted before Silk’s table and saluted at the very moment that Oreb, who had been riding on Horn’s shoulder, landed upon Silk’s head; no slightest twitching of Bison’s thick black beard betrayed amusement, although it seemed to Silk that there had been the briefest possible flicker of hilarity in Bison’s dark and darting eyes. “I’m early, Calde,” Bison confessed. “I came beforehand because I want to talk to you. If you object, I understand. Go ahead and tell me. But I have to talk to you, and I hope you’ll let me when you’re through.”

  “We could have talked at dinner.” Silk was thinking about Bison’s salute. Bison had not tried to imitate a Guardsman’s click, snap, and flourish, which would almost certainly have rendered him ridiculous; yet the salute had conveyed respect for order and the office of calde, plainly and even attractively.

  “Not alone. Part of what I’m going to say…” Bison let the thought trail off.

  Oosik rose. “We must speak more upon our topic, Calde. Not now, but soon. I hope you agree.”

  Silk nodded, causing Oreb to hop from his head to his left shoulder.

  “With your permission, I shall look in on my son. I hope he is well enough to attend. I will return at eight.”

  Silk glanced at the clock; it was after seven. “Of course. Tell your son, please, that all of us hold high hopes for his recovery.” Oosik saluted and made an about face.

  Stepping aside for Oosik, Horn put in, “Willet’s back with Master Xiphias, Calde. He asked me to tell you.”

  Silk was on the point of instructing Horn to call Hossaan by his true name, but thought better of it. If Hossaan had called himself Willet, Hossaan had no doubt had a reason.

  “Master Xiphias’s in the Blue Room. He says he doesn’t have to see you before dinner unless you want to see him.”

  “That’s good.” Silk smiled. “I’m in dire need of people who don’t have to see me. I wish that there were more. You’d better go home now, Horn, or you’ll miss supper.”

  “Nettle and me are going to help. We’ll get something.”

  “Fish heads?” Oreb inquired.

  “If there are any, I’ll save them for you,” Horn promised.

  “Very well, Horn, and thank you.” Silk returned to Bison. “When I heard you were here early, I hoped that you had come to tell me you’d found Maytera Mint. I take it you haven’t.”

  “No, Calde, but that’s what I want to talk to you about.”

  “Then sit down and do it. I don’t have long before dinner — the other guests will be here soon — but we can finish up afterward if we must.”

  Bison sat; like Oosik, he seemed too large for the chair. “You’ve talked to Loris and Potto on a glass, Calde.”

  Silk nodded.

  “They won’t talk to me. I know, because I tried before I came here. But they talked to you, and they might talk to you again. I want you to ask them to let you see General Mint for yourself. They say they’ve got her. Make them prove it.”

  “Why do you doubt them, Colonel?”

  Bison sighed and leaned back. “I knew you’d ask that. I don’t blame you, I would too. Just the same, I kept hoping you wouldn’t.”

  “Poor man!” Oreb commiserated.

  “When I ask to see her, they’ll want to know why. I must have something to tell them, and the more compelling it is, the more likely it will be that they’ll show her to us — assuming that they have her.”

  “You’ll let me watch?”

  “Certainly.” Silk paused, his forefinger tracing circles on his cheek. “You’re emotionally involved. Oreb senses it, and so do I. I hope you won’t let your attachment to Maytera Mint, one that I feel myself, goad you into acting rashly.

  “I hope so, too, Calde.” Bison clenched hairy fists that looked as big as hams. “You’ve been down in the tunnels. You said so during that meeting.”

  “Bad hole!”

  “Well, so have I. Maybe I should’ve told you then, but I didn’t because it didn’t seem relevant and I didn’t want you to think I was showing off. There’s a way down in the Orilla, and I’m pretty sure there’s more, besides the one under the Juzgado that Sand and his soldiers used.”

  Silk nodded. It had not occurred to him that Bison might be a thief, and he adjusted his mind to the new information as Bison spoke again.

  “I got a hunch after a while. I remembered a place down there, an old guardroom that they used when there were soldiers underneath the city all the time. I had a feeling they might have taken her there, and went in with thirty of my troopers to check it out myself.”

  “Bad hole!” Oreb repeated; and Silk nodded again. “It is a bad hole, and I’m not in the least sure that what you did was wise, Colonel. I understand why you did it, however.

  “We found the place all right.” The big hands clasped and seemed intent upon pulling each other’s fingers off “The door was open, and there were bloodstains all over the floor. Fresh blood, Calde.”

  “Which could have been anybody’s.” Silk hoped that his expression did not reveal the dismay he felt. “Horn! Horn, would you come back in here for a moment, please?”

  “When we got back to the sufface, I tried to talk to the Ayuntamiento on a glass,” Bison continued. “There used to be one in that old guardroom, I think, but it was stolen a long time ago, if there was. Anyway, I tried to talk to Potto, and when he wouldn’t, to Loris. Then to Tarsier or Galago. None of them would speak to me. That was when I came here.”

  “Did you ask your glass to find Maytera for you?”

  Bison shook his head. “It didn’t occur to me. Do you think they might have her where there’s a glass?”

  Horn burst in. “Yes, Patera? I mean Calde.

  “It’s late,” Silk said, “and I’m getting tired. It seems to me that I’ve been inviting people to dinner all day long, and relying on Maytera to keep track of everybody. Would you ask her, please, as soon as she has time, to write me a complete list of the guests we expect?”

  “I can tell you, Calde. Or write it out for you if you’d rather. I wrote the placecards and put them around.”

  “Tell me then. If I need a written list afterward, I’ll have you do it.”

  “You, Calde, at the head of the table. On your right will be Generalissimo Siyuf. Maytera said we had to put her there because the dinner was to welcome her to the city.”

  Silk nodded. “Quite right.”

  “Then His Cognizance. She’ll be between you and him.”

  Oreb fluttered uncomfortably; Silk said, “Go on.”

  “Then General Saba, she’s the captain of their airship. Then Colonel Bison.”

  “I’m Colonel Bison,” Bison explained. “I came a little early to speak to the Calde.”

  “Good man!” Oreb assured Horn.

  “Horn is one of the boys at our palaestra,” Silk told Bison. “The leader of the boys at our palaestra, I ought to
say, and he’s been worth a hundred cards to us. Continue, if you please, Horn.”

  “Sure. Colonel Bison, then Generalissimo Siyuf’s staff officer, whoever she is. And then Maytera at the foot of the table, only I don’t think she’s going to sit down there much and talk to people, Calde. She’s too excited and worried about something going wrong in the kitchen. That’s the chair closest to the kitchen.”

  “Of course.

  “On her right there’ll be General Saba’s staff officer, then Chenille, then Master Xiphias.”

  “I’m beginning to lose track,” Silk told him. “Where will Generalissimo Oosik sit?”

  “On your left, Calde. Then his son. When he got here, he said please put his son right beside him, because he’s been so sick. He’s worried about him.”

  “Naturally,” Silk said.

  “Then Master Xiphias on the Generalissimo’s son’s left.”

  “If I’ve been following you, there should be five people on the right side of the table and five on the left.” Silk counted on his fingers. “Right — Siyuf, His Cognizance, Saba, Colonel Bison here, and Siyufs staff officer. Left — Oosik, his son, Xiphias, Chenille, and Saba’s staff officer.

  “That’s right, Calde, and you and Maytera make twelve.”

  “Bird eat?”

  “Yes indeed.” Silk smiled, glancing sidelong at Oreb. “I wouldn’t think of dining without your company. Unfortunately you’d make thirteen at table the way things stand; you won’t, however, because I’m asking Horn to ask Maytera to set one more place to my immediate left — a place for General Mint. Please letter a card for her as well, Horn, and set her place exactly like all the others. It will make the left side a trifle more crowded than the right, but the guests on that side will have to bear it.”