The Narrator

by Michael Cisco

  They must have no medical officer: they won’t kill me. But will they drag me away with them?

  I finish, I do a good job. The guard who handed me my pack is gone. The one I presume to be the one to walk behind me sits now on a box by a lamp, elbows on knees, tired eyes on me. Pale-sallow, with a high square forehead tucked into the black visor, honey-brown hair, aristocratic looking nose. The first soldier returns and roots around in some boxes, festoons of water gushing from him. He’s removing bundles wrapped in rough fabric and tucking them under his arms. Suddenly he turns and crosses the tent in three strides, leaning sideways from the waist to peer down at the injured man, whose groans have subsided. He stares at my eyes sticking his finger into my face and speaks harshly to me, his voice so hoarse he can’t stop it breaking. He speaks Tauride, not Yeseg, but there is one word with a shock I know. It’s “narrator.”

  The first soldier storms out with only a glance at his companion by the flap, who has not moved nor shifted her eyes from me. Naturally, they will have their own narrators. Soldiers come in and out for blankets or rain gear, as the water begins to fall hard again. They are not hostile, and pay me no more attention than seems necessary. Drawn anxious features stretched over their skulls is all I see. I’m a nuisance to them.

  Relentless dripping, tapping on top of the tent.

  Now I am compelled to rise and taken to another, half-collapsed tent, close to the rim. There is not much space in this tent, only enough for me to sit on the low stool that occupies it. The irregular flap has a view of the town below. The soldier walks away; I can see the others before me, huddled in among the rocks, scanning the town.

  With nothing to do I have a harder time keeping the fear from gnawing—I’ve already begun to shiver, my uniform is plastered to my skin with sweat and icy rain. A wave of sharper cold blisters over me from behind ... out of the drumming of the rain comes a whispered roar, like the hooning sound of breath being blown into a bottle. It approaches the tent with steady deliberation—I can’t turn to look. It’s high up ... Nothing I could see anyway, without leaving the tent.

  The roaring stops as something thuds on the canvas right above my head—two puckers where talons clutch the fabric.

  I hear its respiration, regular, painful out of water, a protracted lowing, like a stricken animal moaning out its life in a deep cave. I look forward out the flap, my hands beginning to tremble on my knees. The presence soaks into my back. I can guess what it is—Wacagan have Predicanten.

  The tent creaks. The thing lows just on top of me like a harbinger of doom.

  The rain falls harder still. Though it is louder, it does not overwhelm that other sound ... As it eases again, my eye is drawn to a sprawling activity before me. The grey slopes to my right flap turbid with mud, I see the fumbling, cream-fringed edges of water tumbling over each other in layers as they grapple over rocks, down to the levels. Motion on lower ground now—the water climbs the walls of the houses in Cuttquisqui’s streets—all that landscape we explored and found swept clean of litter and this is why—the mounds of earth at the town’s edges were dykes, abandoned half-built.

  The Predicate’s presence drops down out of it, enveloping me in a pillar of sway and suddenly every muscle in my body strains against itself, my jaw trembles and I am rigid. My spirit leaps against my frozen body—

  They’ll be driven out into the open if the waters keep rising. Something drains out of me as I sit fixed in place watching.

  The water goes higher. The streets are a grey slough.

  Higher, higher—seething ashenness rushing in the doors. It climbs toward the windows.

  Now I see them, dark spots emerging from the town, feet drag and slip and fall in the flow and now the careful enemy aims fires aiming and firing—some of those struggling shapes stop, weave, some fall; they are making for the mounds of displaced earth by the mine. Figures shapes move on the rooftops—with sick impotence I see them picked off, my eyes darting around and finding nothing, nothing, I can’t shout or fling a stone to jog their aiming arms. The breathing grip on me is driving its cold into my body harder and harder and I can only sit, my fingers crimping my knees—bodies of my friends bob and spin, rushing along fast enough now—or they fall wounded and struggling, and drown—and the horror of this thought is enough to wrench me an inch forward on my seat.

  Above me I hear a studiously adjusted clench on the canvas. That breathing makes the canvas sputter as it rakes it with its grip—I will make that thing move drive it off strike it—I’ve seen mountain snow and I call that snow to mind as I drop my eyes to the fist-sized flat stone that weighs down one corner of the tent flap near my right foot—tears burst like acid from my eyes.

  Still, white-clotted pelts of shaggy evergreens on the far side of a field of blue snow.

  And then night, the flakes spin bright past my face and vanish in the gloom, fluffed and weightless in filmy air and a cold that polishes me.

  My fingers have opened and my hand slides heavy as a millstone from my leg my arm drops to my side nearly numb.

  Lighter than feathers, the snow flakes dance to the ground, weaving and looping with no breeze, no palpable influence, with only their own native frivolity. My hand stretches toward the stone with a feeling like the grating of rust on rust in my elbow in my shoulder. I am pulling madly against my lower back that is rigid as if I wore a corset, but I say I. am. in. the. snow. which scatters in high plumes with one half-hearted kick of my foot, which wafts back up from the ground like it’s not done playing.

  The rock presses my palm and my fingers snap shut around it I swing straightening my legs and strike at the puckered canvas. The tent roof plunges violently, a hoarse indrawn moan erupts, breaking the breathing and that yawning roar takes its place again. The blow felt weak, useless. But perhaps it wasn’t.

  My body snaps out of its confinement and in my tremor I lurch against the wall of the tent, bringing it down on top of me. I flounder there, pulling the canvas this way and that, struggling to free myself.

  Now I am kneeling in the wreckage of the tent, facing a soldier who stands with his knees flexed before me bayonet levelled. He charges me with a high wail like something out of a madhouse and I throw my arms in the air. He stops short the bayonet only a foot away from me, but he wails again and again, glaring at me eyes white, his howls more terrifying than any attack.

  Voices speaking normally—men walking along the height—the shots have stopped. Their assault is over, and whatever I was just a moment before, I am only a captive now. The first soldier to take me comes up, looking sternly at the ruined tent, but he says something to the other, who stops voice at his approach. With a start I hear the man who nearly bayonetted me exchange words calmly in a voice that is even rather beautiful with the other. They turn to me at once, and motioned me to stand.

  The rain abates. They march me to a small clear spot by the top of the slope, hemmed in with big rocks. I am made to sit with my back to one, by the very top of the slope, and bayonet will stay to keep an eye on me, sitting on a stone by the aperture in the rock ring where the path threads.

  I hear their voices move off, and then nothing but the crumpling sound of water draining among the stones, down the slope. I sit on the wet ground numb as a stone. Bayonet seems preoccupied, his eyes remote. Suddenly all my vitality is gone, and I nod.

  A hiss explodes my sleep—bayonet bolts white faced to his feet barking out with fright as the lieutenant steps into the circle ... dew dropping onto the front of his uniform from his dangling end of his jaw, his own blood.

  “Xupí!” the guard breathes, and runs away, footfalls scraping on the ground.

  The lieutenant is walking away from me, arms at his sides. He dwindles into the shade at the edge of the circle. Unshackled, my life leaps into my legs and I get up, scramble down the slope from one rock to another my feet slip crazily but I keep my balance—now I’m in the passageways between the boulders—now flying down the mushy slope somehow keeping my fee
t beneath me and not behind me.

  Ground flattens and my legs bend—I run for the mounds, splashing across the distance the water already subsided into the myriad puddles reflecting the sky as they did when we first arrived. Xupí is their word for ghost, isn’t it? How do I know? How do I know? I’m drawing near, and shots thump into the ground by my feet, a stone chip flaked off by a bullet cuts my cheek—

  “It’s me you idiots! Stop shooting!”

  I stand in my place holding my head in my hands with my elbows in the air shout my name again and again—the shots have stopped, hands on my shoulders, I am being brought forward. I see Jil Punkinflake’s glowing face, smiles and shakings. So I’m back, I’m safe, self-saved safe.

  *

  Makemin’s face shifts and then hardens again as I tell him about the skirmishing party, the signs of general withdrawal. He turns from me the next moment orders already shrilling from his slot-like mouth. We march back the way we came, at once. Daybreak is mired in yellow fog, and the sun’s heat does not penetrate the chill rising from the bare black earth of the hills we pass.

  Vscriathjadze is too well defended a port to take by sea: the difficult passage into the estuary, impossible by night and slow by day; the city’s defenders have ample time in which to spot and prepare for a seaborne enemy. The port itself is high-walled, and really can only be entered either very slowly or with the assistance of a pilot. Once within the confines of the harbor the enemy ship is vulnerable to fire from above, and so are the troops as they ascend the long steps to the level of the city. Impracticable. But Vscriathjadze is strategically vital as the only proper port on Meqhasset’s southern coast, where troops and supplies can be deposited in any quantity. It is also the island’s only city. So Wacagan set their troops down elsewhere in small groups on strips of empty stone beach and direct them to travel inland. Their Predicate tells them to go to Cuttquisqui, where they may dig in and wait in some security as these smaller bands come together to form a body of soldiers large enough to take Vscriathjadze.

  Makemin speculates that the first band, their Predicate being away providing guidance for some other newly-arrived group, misnavigated and overshot the town. They pressed on down the road, ran into us, were routed, and fled; their only hope being to find another group of their own. A Predicate most likely arranged such a rendezvous and it was from this mass of Wacagan troops that the skirmishing group was selected, set to mislead us into remaining in Cuttquisqui. Makemin had hoped to find the enemy remnant there, and finish them.

  A runner, a drawn-faced boy trembling with fatigue, meets us on the road. Makemin gives me the message to keep—Wacagan have attacked Vscriathjadze and occupied the outskirts, but they are momentarily in disarray. The assault came, not from the slopes, which would have given them an immense advantage although at some expense of time, but from the flat open land on the far side of the city from the port. It appears they underestimated the number of defenders, assuming Makemin had taken most of the army with him to Cuttquisqui, and had decided to take advantage of his absence for a rapid assault.

  “But wouldn’t their Predicate have been able to make out the strength of the city’s defenses?”

  “Our Predicanten would have interfered with that, and the Edeks can mask the numbers. Perhaps the ones we met on the road exaggerated our strength, to cover their own failure.”

  Wacagan casualties were not heavy but apparently far more than were expected. In the time the enemy lost reorganizing themselves, the city’s defenders were able to take up positions on the slopes, from which they might survey almost the entire city. Now Wacagan are stalled; their attempts to dislodge some of the defenders from the heights were all repulsed.

  “They’ll know we’re coming. If I were their commander, I would pull out, head into the mountains, and come down on the defenders and the city from above. It would be best for us to arrive before they can try this.”

  We take those paths that angle up into the mountains; voices peter out as we climb and soon there is only the sound of heavy breathing. Jil Punkinflake is looking a little greener than usual and wheezing with his tongue against his lower lip. I watch this transformation with complacency; the lighter air here refreshes me, and may account for the giddy, brittle hilarity I feel. My capture seems like an accelerated dream.

  Even Saskia seems out of sorts. She looks at me, her brow bunched over her eyes. Her face seems to conceal something crude, like an elusively roving phantom feature disrupting the harmony of the others from behind.

  Makemin calls me forward and points to the conical peak adjacent the path. For all his stamina even he is a little short of breath.

  “Someone must go up there and get a good look. You don’t seem affected by heights.”

  “Affected?” I laugh. “Certainly not! I’ve lived my whole life up twice as high as this!”

  I leave my wan-faced lowland companions standing lopsided on the path and trip lightly up the rocks to a high spot where I can survey the mountains and the sweep of the far edge of the city, beyond the lower folds.

  “Now if only you could fight!” Makemin calls thickly to my backside. I suspect this is his idea of being friendly.

  The sun shines there more strongly, on the water and on the town, so that I can see some smoke trickling against the shadows. But here even the light is thin. I report back to Makemin.

  “Both paths will take us to the city.”

  “Which is shorter?”

  “I’d say they’re both about as short. But the lower one looks slide prone to me.”

  “Which will put us nearer the enemy?”

  “The lower.”

  “Then we take it; you will go with the scouts and alert us about slides.”

  “It’s more time if we have to double back.”

  “Yes but we’re not mountain goats like you. The men need to get down soon or they won’t be in condition to fight.”

  I am paired with two of the more reliable scouts, a terse, dark-skinned man from the asylum, and a brisk woman from the Yeseg militia. We go ahead, picking the path among the rocks.

  By nightfall we traverse the short pass that brings us out onto the slopes above Vscriathjadze’s paltry few lamps. We begin our descent, using a switchback path among boulders. I perk up hearing an unfamiliar sound, like insects, heavy beetles flying by on thick wings that wouldn’t be up here it’s not a kind of place for beetles—a far away pinging noise like tiny metal hammers—Makemin’s voice booms out—

  “Under cover!”

  —as a bank of shot rolls in over us in the dark. I throw myself on the ground and drag sideways toward the rocks—peering up eyes against brows I see the fleeting shapes of the enemy soldiers sweeping pendulously from side to side. They form a whirlpool around us; Makemin is doing something, calling his men together. A sweet-heavy fatigue is pouring down on me like a stream of sand weighting me to the ground. With effort I get myself under cover and let my head droop against the stone. In among the noise, now compounded by the sound of Makemin’s thunderbolt and the rifles of his sharpshooters, comes a concatenation of raving and sobbing, mournful and mirthless laughter from the asylum soldiers. They are floundering in helpless panic. The noise grates intolerably on me. I try to rouse myself, but even from here I can see the enemy circling, one rank flashing between me and another, space opening and closing between them as they dance past, guns cracking without a single flash, nothing to make anything more than silhouettes out of them.

  ... A voice repeats the same phrase, moving from place to place. After a while I make out the “All clear” and so out I come, numbly scanning the ground for bodies. I walk neither quickly nor slowly to a crumpled shape—dead. Another, also dead. There are at least a dozen. Who knows how many, if any, lie dead up there and around us, where the enemy were. Our number is patently less again.

  Makemin urges us together, to regroup and proceed, get out of the open before another attack. Behind us the asylum soldiers make a terrible sound of lamentat
ion in as many ways as can be imagined; loud prayers, sobs, a motley demoralizing sound. Makemin is earnestly badgering the officers to quiet the noise and calm the asylum men; the noise only begins to ebb and surge as they listen only to break out again, listen and break out again. It isn’t stopping—the sound is nettling Makemin—something serious is happening to his command.

  Makemin calls the officers together and we hurry forward to a ledge from which to survey the field. In my rush to catch up with him, my pack slips from my shoulder and tumbles into the bracken fringing the ledge.

  “Get it later!” Makemin says impatiently, waving me forward.

  Below us, I can see a number of fortified positions, small ledges fringed with heavy rocks and sandbags. In the one nearest us I can see two men in civilian clothes huddled there behind their cover, occasionally lowering a lean barrel level and firing toward the enemy. Makemin makes a quick survey and then dispatches each officer to some task taking them away until we are alone together.

  One of the defenders below us calls up, waving furtively.

  “Help us!” he calls.

  “There are still a few injured men back there, among the asylum men,” Makemin tells me. “Go see to them.”

  “I’ll need to move them. If you could spare me a few hands—”

  Makemin turns and slaps me.

  “Why don’t you act like an officer?” he snaps. “Attend to your patients!”

  He turns away.

  *

  The loonies moan and cry behind us. Makemin stands in the little enclosure of the fortified spot. The two men I’d seen earlier, one of whom called to us for help, both lie dead. One is sprawled on his back, draped over one of the stones of the rampart. The other is curled into a letter C on the ground.

  Makemin has turned to speak to us. The men are livid with terror, and seem ready at any moment to dash back up the slope. The asylum soldiers, or I presume they were, are moaning and wringing their hands.