by Gene Wolfe
Page 36
"Your own men should be planting next years crop already. "
"Theyre mostly city men. " Xanthippos smiled. "You Rope Makers are fond of saying we have no soldiers - only cobblers, masons, blacksmiths, and the like. It sometimes has its advantages. "
"And you," Pasicrates told him, "are found of saying we Rope Makers know nothing of sieges. " He checked himself. "I came to convey the regents respects to you - "
"Consider it done. "
"I do. And to tell you we will have to draw rations with your own men. We brought only a few days
supplies. You would not want to strain our ancient friendship, I think. For a bite of bread and a handful of olives we will lead your assault. You need only follow us. "
Xanthippos was still smiling. "Your heroic offer is duly noted. "
"Youll find your men inspirited by the knowledge that they are led by the shieldmen of Rope. "
Pasicrates stood, and Drakaina and I rose with him. "As for sieges, we know more than you suppose. "
He held out one hand, its fingers outspread. "Count them, Xanthippos. I say Sestos will fall before youre finished. "
Xanthippos remained unruffled. "Then the news you bring is doubly good. Not only have we received reinforcements from Rope, but the city is to fall within five days. You didnt mean five months, I hope?
Before you go, may I ask why you brought this man and this woman when you came to confer with me?"
Without waiting for Pasicratess answer, he turned to Drakaina. "Are you a Babylonian, my dear? A marvelous city, and one justly noted for the beauty of its women. Prior to this unhappy war I had the pleasure of visiting it. I hope to return, should my fellow citizens ostracize me again, which I fear is more than likely. "
"You may ask," Pasicrates told him. "But you will not be answered. "
Outside, Drakaina said, "We should not have come with you. Well be watched after this. "
Pasicrates snorted. "Magical arts, and you cant evade a few of these shopkeepers? How are you going to get into the city?"
"Not by transforming myself into a bat, if thats what youre thinking. Not unless I must, and I havent had a chance to gauge the problem yet. "
"Nor I," Pasicrates admitted. "Youre right; lets make a circuit of the walls. "
The rain had stopped, but clouds hung gray and heavy over Sestos, and we had to pick our way through mud. I noticed some of the soldiers from Thought had winter boots, but all of us were still in sandals. From the walls to the distant hills spread the melancholy ruins of the houses that had once stood outside the city proper. The holes that had been their cellars were full of black water, and broken bricks and charred timbers protruded even where the men from Thought had made crude paths and roads.
We had gone no more than a couple of stades when Io came running up to join us, splashing through the mud in bare feet. "How was Xanthippos?" she asked.
I told her that if he was half as clever with the barbarians as he had been with us, the city would fall within five days, as Pasicrates had promised him it would.
"That was because youre here. Wasnt it, Pasicrates?"
The Roper Maker pretended not to hear her. He was already some way ahead of us.
"We must get inside," Drakaina told her. "Youre a clever child, so keep your eyes open. "
Io whispered, "I have already. I can get you inside any time you want, if nobodys watching. "
Drakaina stared. "How - No, never mind. When were alone. But have you ever seen such walls, either of you? The Great King has made this the lock with which he chains the whole coast. "
Io said, "Then weve brought the key, if the regents dream is true. Pasicrates is going to storm the city in a day or two, thats what the Rope Makers were telling each other while you were gone. "
I said, "But if the key is in the chest, who can unlock it? Im going into the city with Drakaina. "
"Master, the Maiden sent you here. You dont remember, but I do. She said youd find your friends here. If you go inside, it might not work. Besides, Ill have to come with you. I belong to you, and I have to remember things for you. "
Drakaina hissed, "Certainly not!"
"I agree. I wont risk her life like that. Io, Ill bring you to me later if I can. "
Io pointed, no doubt to distract me. "Theres a lake!"
"No," Drakaina told her. "Thats the strait. "
In a few moments we were there. As Io had indicated, the strait was no wider than a small lake - we could watch men working on the wharves of the city on the opposite shore - and though it joined the horizon to the northeast, to the southwest we saw what appeared to be its termination. As we looked over the water, a trireme appeared there as if born of the rocky coast and, beating six white wings, seemed to fly along the waves as it came to join the others blockading Sestos.
Io said, "If this goes to the sea, Im surprised they dont land the supplies here. It would be a lot safer. "
I said, "It would be a great deal more dangerous, if that coast to the east still acknowledges the rule of the Great King. "
Pasicrates had been studying the scene in silence. Now he said, "It was here, little Io, that the brave Leander swam from shore to shore to visit his beloved. I see you know the story. "
Io nodded. "But he drowned one night, and she threw herself from the top of the tower. Only I didnt know this was the place. "
Pasicrates favored her with his bitter smile. "Im sure that if you were to go into the city, theyd point out the precise tower - her bloodstains in the street too, very likely. "
"It doesnt look so far. I bet I could swim it. "
I cautioned her, "Dont try. Havent you noticed how fast that ships coming? There must be a strong current. "
Drakaina added, "You may try for all I care, Io; but your masters correct, and there are frequent storms as well. Pasicrates, you too were thinking that where one swam, another may swim, werent you?"
The Rope Maker nodded slowly.
"But swimmers could carry only daggers. A dozen shieldmen would be more than a match for a hundred of them. "
"I wasnt thinking of storming the city with swimmers," Pasicrates told her. "I was wondering how Xanthippos gets his information. " He turned on his heel and started back the way we had come.
Drakaina said, "The lovely Helle drowned here too, giving her name to the place, when she fell from the back of the Golden Ram. These are dangerous waters, you see. " She smiled at Io as a stoat might smile at a starling, though I sensed she was trying to seem kind.
"I dont know that story," Io said. "Would you tell me about the Golden Ram, please?"
"With pleasure. It belongs to the Warrior, and it lives in the sky between the Bull and the Fish.
Remind me on some clear night, and Ill point it out to you. Once, long ago, it came to earth to interfere in the matter of two children, Phrixos and Helle, who had become a burden to their stepmother, Ino. No doubt the Warrior had planned to make Phrixos a hero, or something of that kind. Inos called the White Goddess now, by the way, and shes an aspect of the Triple Goddess. Anyway, the Ram was determined to frustrate her, so it got itself a golden coat and joined the children as they were playing in a meadow, promising them a ride on its back. As soon as they were on, it sprang into the air, and at the highest point of its leap, right here, Helle fell off and drowned as I told you. "
Io asked, "What happened to her brother?"
"The Ram carried him to Aea, at the east end of the Euxine, thinking hed be safe there. After putting in a good word for him with the king, it hung its golden coat in a tree and returned to the sky. I was a princess in Aea - "
"Wait a minute! I thought this was hundreds and hundreds of years ago. "
"We live many different lives," Drakaina told Io, "in many different bodies. Or at least some of us do.
I was a princess in Aea, and a priestess of Enodia just as I am now. I told my father quite truthfully that the goddess said he would be killed by a stranger. Since
Phrixos was the only stranger around, that did for him. And I set my pet python to guard the golden fleece. Then - "
We had caught up with Pasicrates, who had stopped to examine one of the ramps the men from Thought were building. It was of earth, with logs laid in crisscross layers to reinforce it. "Childish," he said.
I ventured that it looked well constructed to me.
"Yes? How would you continue it when it nears the wall? It must be highest of all there, and the defenders will rain down stones and spears upon your head. Burning pitch too, perhaps. "
"Id assign a shield bearer to each workman," I told him. "A hoplons big enough to protect two men from stones and spears from above. For that matter a strongly roofed wagon could be used to move the logs, and much of the work could be done from inside it with the floorboards taken out. And Id station every archer and slinger I had about halfway from here to the wall to make my enemies think twice about showing themselves to throw stones and spears. They could only form a single line along the parapet there, but my archers and slingers would be able to form four or five lines, so that for every missile of theirs wed return four or five. "
Pasicrates stroked his chin and did not answer.
We soon came to just such a roofed wagon as I had spoken of, with a splintered battering ram slung in it; no doubt I had seen it on our way to the strait, and it was the unconscious recollection of it that had made me speak as I did. I stopped and asked the men repairing the battering ram how it had been broken, and one pointed to one of the narrow doors in the base of the wall. "We tried to knock on that, but theyve got a log three times as big as this up there. Its hooked to a chain so they can swing it down and pull it back up. When the old ram came out of the barn here, down she swung and snapped it right off in back of the bronze, like you see. "
Young though Pasicrates is, he had not seemed boyish to me until then. "Tell them what to do, Latro.
Im sure you know. "
I said, "Fundamentally, they have to catch either the log or its chain, holding it with something too heavy for the men on the wall to draw up. This wagon they call the barn seems heavy enough to me; theres a lot of thick wood in the roof, and those wheels are solid oak and as wide as both my legs. The men are putting a stouter timber in the ram already. If I were in command, Id put spikes on its sides, and on the sides of the wagon too. Then the log would nail itself to one or the other as soon as it struck. "
One of the men who had been fitting the new beam into its slings stopped work and stepped over to us. "Im Ialtos. Im in charge here, and I thank you for the advice; well make use of it. Did I hear the Rope Maker call you Latro?"
I nodded. "Thats my name. Or at least, thats what Im called among your people. "
"Weve got a captain here - " He pointed. "See that tower on wheels? Theyre putting leather on the front and sides so it cant be set on fire, and hes superintending the job. Hell talk you deaf, do you know what I mean? But he knows leather and how to get it. "
Io shouted, "Hypereides!"
"Thats the man - I see youve met him. He goes on sometimes about a slave he used to have called Latro. Sort of a simple-minded fellow according to Hypereides, but you could tell he liked him. He traded him to a hetaera for a series of dinners - mostly, I think, to keep him away from the fighting. "
Drakaina said, "I wouldnt call Latro simple-minded, but he forgets from one day to the next. " She shot a mocking glance at the Rope Maker. "Hes unusual in some other respects too, wouldnt you say, Pasicrates?"
"Even women who speak little talk too much. " He took her arm to draw her away from Ialtos.
Io had been studying the tower on wheels. Now she tugged at my cloak. "Look, master! Up on that ladder. Its the black man!"
Chapter 40 Among Forgotten Friends
The heart remembers, even when no trace of face or voice remains. The black man came running to us, shouting, his arms in the air; and though I do not know where we met or why I love him (though no doubt those things are written somewhere on this scroll), I could not stop smiling. Without thinking at all about what I should do, I embraced him as a brother.
When we had shouted together and pounded each other on the back and hugged with all our strength like two wrestlers, Pasicrates tried to question him; but he only smiled and shook his head.
Io explained, "He understands - most of it, anyway. But he cant talk, or he wont. "
Drakaina said something then in a harsh and rapid way that seemed to me no better than the creaking and grinding of mill stones; and to Ios amazement and my own, the black man answered her at once in the same language. "Your friend speaks the tongue of Aram," Drakaina told Io. "Not as well as the People from Parsa, but nearly as well as I do myself. "
Pasicrates said, "Then ask him how he came to learn it. "
She spoke to him again, and when he had replied she said, "He says, For three years I was with the army. We marched from Nysa to Riverland, from Riverland over the desert to the Crimson Country, then through many other countries. He also says, My king is not subject to the Great King; but the Great King gave him gold and many fine things, and swore there would be peace between our lands forever if he would send a thousand men. I walked before a hundred and twenty, all young men from my own district, and I learned to talk in this way that I might know the wishes of the Lords of Parsa. " Drakaina added, "Im shortening this a little. "
Io demanded, "Ask how he met Latro. "
" I saw a god had touched him. Such people are holy; someone must care for them. "
Io started to ask where Hypereides was, but Pasicrates silenced her. "Does he want to go back to his own country?"
Before Drakaina spoke, the black man nodded and began to speak. She said, "Yes, very much. He says, My father and mother are there, both my wives, and my son, who is very small. "