In Green's Jungles tbotss-2

by Gene Wolfe

  Kupus snorted. "Not as dangerous as they look, if a man will just stand up to them and shoot." When I did not reply, he added, "What about these women of yours? You think they will?"

  I fingered my beard, recalling the telescope I had on my boat, two lenses united by sliding tubes of brass and wood. I had accepted it reluctantly in trade for paper, and had never valued it as I should have; but I would have given a good deal of our chest for it at that moment.

  "Well," Kupus muttered half humorously, "they haven't run yet, so the war goddess be thanked."

  I nodded, trying to push aside the thought that I might take our lookout's little boat and follow the river to the sea. "I had not considered that Sphigx was our goddess of war under the Long Sun-thank you for reminding me of that. To answer your question, the General wrote me a letter a few days ago in which he said that Blanko's women and over-age men might fight from behind its walls but would not if I marched them out of the city. I'd seen enough by then to know that the men would fight very stubbornly to hold a position, though they would be slow and even hesitant in attacking an enemy position.

  "And it occurred to me that Inclito was probably correct about the women, but that Blanko's walls were not the only walls in the whorl, that walls might be built almost anywhere."

  "No fight," Oreb muttered nervously.

  "You need not," I told him. "No one will accuse you of cowardice if you fly to a place of safety."

  "So you came out here and built these."

  "Yes. My first thought-I'm sorry I didn't have you to advise me then, Captain-was to build a sort of fortress, a square of temporary walls with ditches before them, but Rimando pointed out that our enemies would simply bypass it and go on to the town, and I saw at once that he was right."

  I shaded my eyes with my hand. "The horses are slipping a little in the snow, I believe."

  "They always do. They'll slip more if those fellows charge our flank."

  "They will. I said that Rimando had said they would bypass our fort and ravage the farms on their way to Blanko, but flank was the word he actually employed. It reminded me that in open farming country such as this we would have to be prepared for flanking movements. I once had General Mint say in a book that one could always outflank the enemy in a desert. General Mint was a woman, and I believe she was the bravest person I have ever known."

  "I wish we had her here."

  "So do I, but that was an aside, and one I shouldn't have made. What I should have said is that farms and fields of grain make almost as good a battlefield for cavalry as a desert. The Trivigauntis had a great deal of cavalry. I think I've mentioned them to you before."

  Kupus nodded, and pointed to the sky.

  "Yes, back home. Their Generalissimo was a cavalrywoman too, and it was a long time before I understood that they had specialized in cavalry and cavalry tactics because so much of their territory was desert or semi-desert, and that they had succeeded as well as they had because their women troopers were lighter than men."

  Rimando reported that our gunners were in position and ready to go into action, and asked permission to open fire on the cavalry massing on the slopes to the north.

  I shook my head. "We would only scatter them. Don't fire, don't let even a single gun fire, until I give the order."

  Oreb reinforced it: "No shoot!"

  Kupus cleared his throat. "I hate to say it, Master Incanto, but that cavalry of theirs is the worst risk we face right now."

  "We face many worse things than a few hundred men on horses, Captain. Our own fears may be the worst. You asked me about the women. Men can be panicked as well."

  "I try never to forget it."

  "The women will stand and fight as long as they are behind their walls, and some would stand and fight without them, for which we should be exceedingly grateful. A few – Sphigx is the god of war, as you pointed out, Captain. We say 'the goddess' to be polite, but the principal war god we have. I wonder why she chose that, chose war as her domain."

  Kupus pointed. "Here they come!"

  He might rather have said, "There they go," for it appeared at first that the horsemen were riding away from us, trotting eastward in long, thin columns of crimson and brown.

  He touched his cap. "If you'll excuse me, Master."

  I nodded, and he trotted back toward the troops who made up our reserve, waving his arms and shouting instructions. In a moment more, the boys who had formed our original reserve were moving into position to resist the cavalry, guided and stiffened by his own mercenaries and the troopers who had retreated under Inclito's command.

  "Men fight," Oreb muttered unhappily.

  "Boys, too," I told him, "and women. Horses and even pigs-or so we hope. You have been fighting too, Oreb, and you've been of considerable help to us."

  "Bird fight?"

  I nodded solemnly. "Now I'd like you to help a little bit more. Lieutenant Atteno – the man in whose house we stayed in town-is in charge of the fireworks." With my free hand, I pointed to the straggling hedge well to our right rear behind which Atteno, his fireworks, and the boys who had volunteered to set them off were hidden. "I want you to remind him that he is not to light the first fuse-"

  "No bang."

  "That's right, no bang until the cavalry reach the long ditch."

  "Horse come," Oreb croaked thoughtfully. "Come hole."

  "You've got it. Now make absolutely certain that Atteno has it too, please."

  I gave him a little lift: by raising the handle of my stick, and he flapped upward, vanishing almost at once against the dark sky. It was only an hour or two past noon; but quite dark, as it almost always is when it snows. The fireworks would show up well, I thought, unless the snow had wet them-in which case they would not show up at all.

  For the first time it struck me that the young man who had so closely resembled my sons was with the fireworks detail, and would be in considerable danger from the fireworks themselves and from any cavalry troopers who were able to wheel their mounts and charge their tormentors. No ditch protected the hedgerow, nor had there been time to dig one even if I had been willing to risk the enemy's observing it. Angrily I reminded myself that a dozen other boys who did not in the least resemble my sons were at equal risk, and I did not have the right to get the one who did out of harm's way while leaving the others where they might be killed.

  Inclito strolled over. "Well, we've done our best."

  "Have we?"

  He shrugged, then wiped his nose on his coat sleeve.

  "I keep thinking-"

  "That you should have sat tight in town like I told you to, and Hierax help the farmers. Incanto, there's going to be a hundred people a lot smarter than you are second-guessing you if we lose. Don't make it a hundred and one unless you can't help it. Remember the brothers I told you about? One killed the other one."

  "Yes," I said. How often I had feared that Sinew would kill one of his brothers or his mother! Or that he would kill me, or try to kill me so that I had to kill or cripple him in self-defense. None of which had happened.

  "I got second-guessed about that by everybody for two days' ride, and not a one of them had given me a single word of warning or advice before it happened." Inclito spat. "Mora's a good rider. Very good. You know that?"

  I said Fava had mentioned it.

  "Who do you think taught her? Taught Mora?"

  "You?"

  Inclito nodded. "If I hadn't, would she still have taken that horse and gone off with your letter like she did?"

  "Yes," I said, "but if I had never written those letters, there would have been no horse for her to take."

  "You're lying. How many times since then do you think I've wanted to kick myself for teaching her to ride?"

  "A thousand, I suppose."

  "Eight or ten. But believe me, eight or ten was bad enough. I never commanded our troops in a war before, did you know that?"

  I shook my head.

  "I was always under somebody, trying to carry out his
orders. This is different, and I always thought it would be better, but it's worse. You know?"

  "Very well indeed."

  "I trained our troopers, and I got them the best equipment I could. I decided on the plan, holding the hills against Soldo, moving around and trying to block them no matter what way they tried to come.

  "Then the war. It was like you're out in the field, and you see a big thunderstorm a long way off. You ever do that?"

  "My field was the sea," I told him, "but, yes, I have."

  "Same thing, probably. You see it and it's so much bigger than you that you can't even guess, and unless you plowed right it's going to wash away your topsoil and wash out your seedlings, and maybe it will even if you did, and it's coming on fast, and there's lightning in it, and you know there'll be big winds and you want to run but the sprats and the women are scared already. That's how I saw the war coming at us."

  "I was frightened myself," I admitted. "I kept telling myself that I ought to leave you and Mora, and if things had been only slightly different, I'm sure I would have."

  "That was why you stayed? For Mora and me?"

  I nodded.

  "I want to ask you about that sometime." He pointed. "They're moving again. This is it."

  "They're not galloping," I protested.

  "Trotting. They won't gallop until they're up close. Did you think they would?"

  I nodded. "It would be better if they did."

  "That's why they don't." He nudged me to make sure I understood that he was joking. "You've never seen a charge?"

  "I have, but they were much closer."

  "They will be."

  I started for Kupus's uneven line of men and boys with slug guns, but Inclito caught my elbow. "The women and sprats are scared already, remember? The men are, too, and I mean you and me. So walk."

  He was right, of course. I walked slowly toward our right flank, and even permitted myself to limp a little. From the top of a stile I studied the field of green, snow-spotted winter wheat, and the crimson, brown, and silver cavalry approaching it, spirited horses and expert riders obscured by wind-driven snow. From our viewpoint, it would have been better beyond all question had the rippling wheat been higher. I could see Atteno's pigs moving through it, and even the long waves when a pig's motions twitched the finger-thick rope that united him to his partner. They were mature boars for the most part, and big ones. I had been afraid that they would fight each other, bound together as they were; apparently the lack of sows and the length of the ropes had prevented or at least postponed it.

  Something-some stir, perhaps, among the women and elderly men along the walls-made me turn and look north. Soldese infantry were advancing from the hills, only fitfully visible through the snow. Looking at those dark trickles of marching men, I felt I understood how Inclito had been forced out of a whole series of good defensive positions. There must have been a thousand troopers there for every hundred Blanko possessed when the fighting began; and from the top of that stile, I was tempted to believe that there were a thousand now for every ten.

  "Master?" It was Adatta, with snow in her hair and on the lashes of her remarkable eyes. "Colonel Sfido sent me. He'll send some of our people to strengthen this flank, if you want them."

  I pointed to the hills.

  "Yes, sir, I know. So does he, I'm sure."

  "I have been studying them, Adatta, and wondering where you people in Blanko ever found the courage to defy them and their Duko."

  She hesitated so long that I concluded she would never reply and turned my attention to the swarming infantry again. At last she said, "We make our own laws, sir. In the Corpo. Lots of us are old enough to remember how it was in Grandecitta, when we didn't."

  I turned once more to face her. "Are you, Adatto? You don't look it."

  "Yes, sir."

  "I don't believe you. Twenty years ago you can hardly have been old enough to walk."

  "Thank you, sir. Sir…?"

  "What is it?"

  "General Inclito's going up and down the walls, sir, talking to everybody. It might help if you did that, too."

  "Did he or Colonel Sfido ask you to ask me?"

  "No, sir. I just thought of it."

  By a gesture I indicated the long thin line of men and boys in ragged coats. "We have no wall here, Captain."

  "Yes, sir. Just this fence and the long ditch."

  "Exactly, just the fence and the ditch. Colonel Sfido is offering to send them reinforcements deducted from your own rather slight strength. There would be women among them, I assume, as well as men. Would you go, Captain, if you were ordered to? Stand here at the edge of the long ditch with your slug gun, waiting for charging cavalry to get near enough to shoot at?"

  (When I said that-I shall never forget it, Nettle – my heart sunk within me; the leading line of the Soldese cavalry were past the first trip rope, I felt sure, which meant that they had seen it in the wheat and cut it without my having observed the operation, and could very well have cut the others in just the same way.)

  "Of course, sir."

  I swallowed, knowing that it was useless to try to forget the crimson horsemen who would so quickly overwhelm us. "Suppose that I were to order you-you alone-to do it now. Would you, Captain Adatta?"

  "Of course," she repeated. "My son's there, sir."

  "I see. You don't need me to go along the walls behind General Inclito, Captain. Do it yourself. No better example of courage is to be had."

  The silver notes of a bugle sounded far off.

  Adatta unslung her slug gun. "Here they come, Master. You'd better get down."

  The cavalry surged forward, and almost at once a score of horses fell. Rimando was waving to me frantically, but I shook my head while sympathizing with what he must have felt. I heard Adatta say "Shoot! Why don't they shoot?" under her breath.

  The first trip rope had been cut or broken. More crimson-and-purple horsemen surged forward. Some were slashing at the winter wheat with their swords, and I saw one horse leap a fallen horse and rider magnificently. Two fell together almost at once; the indignant squeals of Atteno's pigs carried across the wheat field to us as clearly as the bugle.

  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.