Makemin seems to want to break off his conversation with her and resume consultation with Nikhinoch.
Saskia reacts at mention of the Alak army, and her next words are in Alakan, with high-class enunciation.
“You’re off the road, you know. I can show you the way, should you need a guide.”
“I need no guide,” Makemin actually smiles a little. “I am here to recruit.”
Some of the officers standing nearby are visibly taken aback by this and trundle forward, preparing their protests. He is distracted by them and does not hear her insistance that she was wrongfully imprisoned here.
“Surely you don’t propose giving these people arms?” the sergeant asks incredulously.
But Makemin is decided. “I’m damned if I’ll go off short-handed.”
“I volunteer!” Saskia says loudly.
“I wouldn’t trust this bunch with a pile of spoons, let alone with our stocks—we can recruit in town!”
Saskia is striding nearer.
One of the inmates, a small man bald on top, turns excitedly to his neighbor, who has wiry ginger hair.
“They want us to fight! Bring Thrushchurl!”
Ginger nods with a concerned look ploughing his face above the eyebrows and dashes off, back toward the asylum.
“The towns have all been picked dry. What do you think I do with my time?” Makemin asks bitterly. “I’ve written every dispatcher and hamlet within a hundred miles and nobody has anyone to spare. Should we find anyone in town, I’ll bring them on, too, but as I can assure you we won’t, we take them—now.”
He sends Nikhinoch and sergeant Yarn to bring up the carts. Word is already filtering around and a number of inmates are tentatively approaching, listening.
“Sir!”
Saskia thrusts herself forward through the arguing officers at Makemin, her face brilliant with an eager smile.
“Sir, I was formerly retainer to Prince Qiprit in Ziwr’, who fought and bled as I have done for Tewsetonka. You must permit me to join you!”
Ginger trots up to rejoin Bald Spot and they are whispering together. Past them perhaps only I, of our company, see him come from beneath the asylum, loping, glowering and grinning. He is dressed like a mortuary student, complete with his top hat, climbs seemingly on all fours out of total darkness, up the basement steps, through the slanting storm cellar doors. Pausing, he squints in the afternoon light, his eyes pinched into two crescents, his long yellow teeth exposed. Somehow I anticipate learning that this is his habitual expression in almost all circumstances.
Saskia: “The usurper’s men put me here for the trouble I caused them, though they dared not take my life.—I promise you I am not mad! If I were, would they have sent me caparisoned like this? With my sword and my guns?”
“I will take any able fighter,” Makemin says in answer to both her and his clamoring officers, his hands in the air.
At the fretful promptings of Ginger and Bald Spot, who wave with both arms, the man from the cellar ambles in this direction, throwing out one leg after another like a crane and cocking his head. When this man has drawn within about a dozen feet of us, Bald Spot turns to Makemin and holds out his hand sideways.
“Thrushchurl is head of our party,” he says helpfully.
Thrushchurl doffs his hat from his rat tails a moment, then resettles it, his grin fluctuating through a number of expressions without ever disappearing.
“They’re trying to induct us!” Bald Spot tells him.
“Oh, yes?” Thrushchurl says. His voice is unctuous and he pants a little as he speaks.
Saskia: “I was trained as an officer at the Academy in Ziwr’. I do expect to ranked accordingly.”
Makemin’s arm snaps straight up into the air pistol in his grip and fires once; it’s a high-caliber hold-out gun and the shock of its percussion slaps against my ears and makes them ring. The officers crowding Makemin recoil, and the inmates squawk and dodge around, hands to ears.
“All able-bodied inmates will arrange themselves before me in three—equal—ranks!”
Nikhinoch stalks aside rattling his finger in his ear.
“You!”
Makemin points to Megrodowite, who walks forward diffidently. Taking a sabre ferrule and sash in his fist, Makemin drops them into Megrodowite’s arms.
“I’m making you corporal. You will stay here and look after the ones who can’t take care of themselves, hein? Go to the nearest town and show them these things, tell them I gave them to you, and get them to help. Detail porters and bring the weak ones down to the village. See that they are taken care of there. Can you do that?”
“I don’t think they—”
“You’ll do it. Write to me in Port Conget and let me know how things go with you. You can write, can’t you?”
“Kind of.”
“Keep it simple. Let me know if you are not receiving cooperation. You will find I am able to enforce my authority through my deputies.” Makemin begins turning away. “Tell them that from the start and you’ll have a better time of it.”
He faces the milling patients.
“Ranks! Ranks! What is this nonsense?! Sergeant!”
The line officers presently put the ranks in order. Thrushchurl and a few others stand off to one side. Saskia stands by herself in front of the leftmost rank, eyes sternly fixed forward. Makemin gives her charge of the group, then calls on Thrushchurl, who lopes forward at once, as servile as a dog.
“You captain that lot,” Makemin says, pointing to the middle rank.
Thrushchurl’s reply is a sort of nasal gasp accompanied by an expansion of his grin. He silkily takes his place there at the head of the column, to the evident satisfaction of the few there who had identified themselves as being of his party. Sergeant Yarn, who, after the full toll of desertions was reckoned, had lost nearly all his men, is assigned the third group.
Tabliq Quibli burps softly and climbs down from his cart, unhurriedly unfolds the canvas coverings from his stores of supplies. There are enough guns but everything else is scarce. The asylum soldiers are randomly accoutered in bits and pieces, a helmet here and a gauntlet there, boots here and hats there. I watch Thrushchurl seize up a carbine in his huge hands, beaming at it.
“I’m an excellent shot,” he croons, rocking the gun this way and that.
Megrodowite puts out his hand with a rueful mouth, something not strong enough to call a smile, and we shake.
“I’m glad you got out of this,” I tell him.
“No, I-I don’t want to fight,” he says sorrowfully.
“Neither do I.”
“Why don’t you run?”
“I was seen by an Edek.”
“What’s that?”
“They’re embodiments of imperial power.”
“And that means you can’t run?”
“It means that,” I say with a sigh, “if you run, there’s no escape.”
“And then jail?”
I shake my head.
“Death.”
His eyes fall, and suddenly fill with tears. He puts his arms around me. Now I’m comforting him.
*
The asylum soldiers are not all that unruly and seem for the most part delighted with the excursion. They make a shapeless larking mass in our rear, with sound corresponding, a jangling of spur-like voices, fragments of songs often belted out in shameless ugliness, laughter and hoots. It’s as though a delirious giant were pushing us along the road, blithering to itself. Makemin doesn’t seem to care, as long as the columns stay together and keep moving. The madmen keep up the pace admirably, and we skirt the mountains in a few days, scavenge a few supplies at an abandoned farm, where Jil Punkinflake befriends a hungry-looking dog, blonde, with two different-colored eyes.
At the heads of our columns, we march in close proximity to Thrushchurl.
“How’d they get you?” Jil Punkinflake asks him.
Thrushchurl just goes on grinning and draws a partial circle in the air with the tip
of his nose. His parents bestowed size on him; proportioned like other men but he is a size or two bigger, with elongated arms and fascinatingly large powerful and beautiful snowy hands. Below the brim of his silk hat, his ears are so white they seem daubed with silver paint. He doesn’t talk about himself. Rifle strap across his chest, his hands are free to rove from pocket to pocket, or to finger an invisible piano. I’ve noticed he has his own anthem, a dismal snatch of song he tirelessly repeats under his breath,
“Little mice, little mice,
Even cats have got their lice,
Run-run-run, get far away—”
When we set camp, we sleep in no particular order, under our makeshift shelters. Thrushchurl matter-of-factly sets his cot down near Jil Punkinflake’s, and seems to enjoy our raillery without much partaking of it. I’ve noticed he keeps turning his head suddenly, and peering at the ground, his vapid smile taking on a weird, predatory look. I’ve seen him start out of his dozing to do it—what does he see? There’s never anything there.
One night, I am trammled along in dreams of love. I draw her back onto my lap and press my lips to her throat. In the shadowy obscurity of my dream sight I see her face both as it is and stylized at once: the exquisitely molded nose whose curve is asymptotic to that of her nearly circular cheeks, and the sail-shaped eye above and the thrilling scalloped lips below. The skin of her back slides along my lips trailing grated nerves, and more intense than life I feel the warmth and smell the fragrance of her hair, which only becomes more intense as I sit up awake, wondering how the mountain, the wind, the camp can bear her fragrance or press her warmth to my face. And there I see Thrushchurl sitting furtively hunched on his cot, doing something sloppy with his hands in his lap. I am yet too dazed to think to look away, but now I realize he’s fondling and playing with something that shimmers like mirage through his fingers. It’s mercury. He has a pool of it in the hollow of his blanket and he’s running it through his fingers, and chasing beads of it across the cloth. I lie back and watch. His face is stark in the moonlight, the eyes are hollow, his grin unvaryingly fixed. I may or may not nod, but I see him collect the mercury and transfer it swiftly to various of his pockets, trousers jacket and vest. Like a cadaver he now reclines flat on his back, and his hands droop over each other on his chest like swan’s wings.
Jil Punkinflake is doing everything he can to get next to Saskia, but she is repellently brisk and busy, not unlike the deputies of Tref. So naturally he turns to me for help—few people can resist the temptation to tell their stories. Most people are their stories. How wise that makes me feel, but I doubt that feeling. I am obliged to her or to fate for this story, in that she presented me with occasion to hear it.
“Medic, what’s that star?” she asks me sharply, pointing to my armband. I explain, and an interest shimmers in her lovely eyes.
“Ah,” she says, preludally.
Then: “No, I didn’t belong there.”
Jil Punkinflake, marching uncoordinatedly next to me, pipes up before I can ask anything.
“How did you come to be there?”
“I was abducted by my cowardly enemies, who thought to put me out of their way without daring to face me. The administrator was related to one or the other of them. I will find that one out, I assure you.”
The way she says it, I believe it.
“How did it happen?”
“In Ziwr’,” she says, as though a different question had been asked. “Prince Qiprit was my foster father, and Tewsetonta’s Sattvi had him killed when he took Tewsetonka’s side. He was stifled in bed, with a pillow,” she adds bitterly.
“I knew who to blame, and I and my retainers went to the Sattvi’s house. His courtiers came out to protect him, and we slew them. But then more arrived from other parts of the city, and at once they were like wind all around us. They killed my men on their knees, in the street, in front of me. But the Sattvi directed them to spare me, because he had moved too quickly to kill Prince Qiprit, and so had made more enemies than he could handle, faster than he had expected. As usual, he was afraid, and thought that killing me would set more faces against him. They jailed me instead.”
It’s almost too compressed to follow. Plainly, she has been working and reworking this account—in her cell, probably.
A sinister and understated smile appears on her lips, beneath her eyes hard and clear as crystal.
“I strangled my guard and got away. The Sattvi had already left Ziwr’, but he had left his son behind. My knife parted his throat like it was water. I put ribbons in his hair, and put his head into a pillow case. I spread the rest of him around the garden,” she gestures as though she were arranging small objects on a mantlepiece.
“One by one, Prince Qiprit’s old friends turned me down when I asked them for help in putting down this mutiny. I wanted to take the town for Tewsetonka, but only a handful had spirit enough to stand with me. Now of course I realize the sattvi’s friends wanted to get me out of there before his return, because they knew I would kill him. So they set a pack of skulking quakers on me.”
Muscles work in her face.
“I let myself be distracted—next thing, I’m off my feet and flung into a closed cart, like a bale of hay. They brought me to the asylum.”
“That’s when your voice changed,” Thrushchurl says. I hadn’t noticed him creep up.
“I have Prince Qiprit’s voice now,” she says lividly, without turning to look at Thrushchurl. “And I’ll keep it until His Travesty is dead and the true King of the Yesegs is restored.”
So, there’s her mission, in black and white. Jil Punkinflake is beside himself with admiration.
*
Now we are on the far skirts of the mountains, and Makemin is tightening up discipline, setting pickets and look outs.
“Wacagan are moving through this area in quick bands,” he says, always broadcasting his eyes, goggles tight against his sockets.
“—They come up fast. No straggling. Keep together. Don’t thin the line.”
We camp in the hollow of three hills, gather in tents to watch night come on. I am in my tent, resting after mess with the others. Thrushchurl gives me his piece of jelly. I chew it gingerly, having bitten my tongue rather badly the night before.
I chew slower and slower ... the flavor is numbing out of my mouth, the cake is turning to sawdust in my mouth. Out of the stillness a feeling sinks long feelers into me, into my bladder, my intestines, creeping up into my heart and lungs, shortening my breath, tingling sick feeling in the scalp ...
“There’s something ...” I look around meaninglessly at the others, who blink at me in innocent incomprehension as I stand up.
“I think ...”
I can’t finish the sentence. My mouth is bone dry; it’s a struggle to swallow.
Then Thrushchurl looks up at me, and says, “Yes ...” with a sort of listening hoist of his upper lip.
Silichieh’s brows contract, looking from one of us to the other.
Rapid footfalls—we all turn our heads at once and there’s Nikhinoch dashing for Makemin’s tent.
Silichieh bolts to his feet saying, “It’s trouble.”
He lunges through the tent flap and hurries off somewhere, shouting—“It’s trouble! Get up! Get up!”
We look at each other. Thrushchurl snatches up his carbine and clutches it. His whole body vibrates with nervous energy like a frightened animal and that song trembles in and out the brink of his lips. Nikhinoch emerges from Makemin’s tent, puts the alarm to his lips and blows an endless fixed ringing note like a baby wailing in a cistern, and Makemin erupts helmeted from the flaps, holding his rifle.
“Soldiers!” he roars. “Soldiers! Get to the edges of camp! Under cover!”
Sergeant Kaladze races by clapping on his helmet stops when he sees us.
“Come on!” he screams. He looks at Thrushchurl—“Get to your column!”
Thrushchurl immediately lopes out into the night. Kaladze runs to a cart near our tent
and overturns it, waving us to join him behind it. Other men are now doing the same all around us, stumbling out of tents pulling up trousers and fumbling with their guns, their eyes stark white in the dark as lamps all over are extinguished.
I hear cries.
Screams, from the forward margin of the camp. Without thinking I pop up, trying to drill my vision into the dark.
“Drop down!” Kaladze barks at me as something that whirs like a giant bumblebee passes me on the right. I cower behind the cart, Jil Punkinflake’s grip convulsively tight on my arm, and bullets whack into the wood by our faces. His face seeks mine and he has become a petrified creature, starts to shake, shakes so hard it’s turning into a fit.
A strangled cry from close by us. Kaladze points and I automatically follow his arm. One of the asylum inmates is curled up on the ground there, covered in blood, pain locked up in knots all over his face.
“Get him! Be quick! I’ll keep them off you!”
With empty mind I dart out to the wounded man, feeling myself tear loose from Jil Punkinflake’s grip. Resounding crashes from where I came, and another flash whir bare inches from my nose. I awkwardly drag the man, who cries out as I pull him, back under cover, and begin to tend him. He relaxes as I do my work, and dies.
A shout from somewhere cut off in the middle, and more voices raised in pain. The dark crawls with screams.
“This is a bad spot,” Kaladze says. “Come on!”
“He won’t go,” I point to Jil Punkinflake, who has shrunk into a ball.
Kaladze takes me roughly by the shoulder and drags me to a heap of stones, so that my legs whip up into the air as I am yanked along. He rushes back and overturns the cart on top of Jil Punkinflake, covering him like a turtle in a shell, and somehow gets back to me in one piece. The rock I hide behind snaps hard against my hand and stone chips flicker everywhere.
I follow Kaladze through the stones and trunks in toward the front where the cover is best. What I pass on the way I barely see and can’t describe.
Now I am flung into an enclosure of carts and barrels and I don’t know what, making a hasty barricade. Makemin has hacked a thin slit in the enclosure and snipes through it.
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