by Gene Wolfe
Page 37
Pasicrates nodded. "Are there any of the other men from his country in the city?"
"He says he doesnt know, but he doesnt think so. He thinks they may have gone south with the army. He says, If they were here, they would show themselves to me on the walls. And I suppose hes right - he was in plain view working on that tower; hundreds of people in the city must have seen him. "
"Tell him I require him to carry a message into the city for me. "
Io protested. "He belongs to Hypereides!" I think she did not want to lose sight of the black man again so soon after we had found him.
"Who will surely consent for the good of our cause. No doubt he will be compensated by his city. "
"He says Latro and this child must come with him. " I smiled and Io giggled, darting a glance at Pasicrates. He ignored her. "And why is that?"
Now the black man spoke at length, touching his chest and pointing with his chin to Io and me, and toward Sestos, and once pretending to draw a bow.
Drakaina told Pasicrates, "He says he wont do what you ask as a slave, that a slave remains a slave only as long as hes watched. If he goes back to the People from Parsa, he will be a soldier again, and as a soldier he wont do what you ask unless you free Latro, and Io too. He says you can force him to go to the city, but that once there he wont deliver your message - only tell lies. "
Even Pasicrates smiled at that.
"For myself," Drakaina added, "I remind you that I am the person sent by your regent to the barbarians - not this black man. Not even you. "
"Yet another messenger may be useful, particularly one who speaks their tongue. His price is too high, but I imagine it can be lowered. "
I said I was willing to go into Sestos if he wished me to.
Pasicrates shook his head. "If you were lost permanently, how could I explain to the regent? No, you must stay with me until the city capitulates and we return home. "
Catching my eye, the black man motioned toward the tower, then spoke to Drakaina.
She said, "He desires to show you what he has been building. "
I said, "And I want to see it. Come along, Io. " Though I did not say so, I suspected the black man wished to put himself under the protection of the man called Hypereides. I do not remember him, but Io seemed to like him, and it appeared likely the black man was right in thinking he would fare better with him than with the Rope Maker.
"You know everything about siegecraft," Pasicrates said as we came near the tower. "Explain this to me. "
I told him that since he could see it himself, there was very little to explain. It was a tower on wheels, built of wood. The back was left open to reduce its weight, but the front and sides were covered with planks to keep out arrows, and with leather to prevent the planks from being set ablaze. Before the tower was pushed against the wall, the leather would be soaked with water by men using rag swabs on long poles. In addition, leather buckets of water would be hung in the tower, to be used by the men inside.
He said, "Our enemies will put their finest troops opposite this tower. "
I answered, "Yes, but good fighters will be put in the tower too. "
The black man had gone around it as we spoke. Now he reappeared, bringing with him a bald man in a leather cuirass. The bald man seemed astonished to see us, then smiled broadly. "Latro and little Io, by the Standing Stone! I didnt think Id be setting eyes on you again till we got back to Thought. How did you get here? Is that fellow Pindaros with you?"
He patted Ios head, and she embraced him and seemed for a moment too moved to speak.
"I dont suppose you remember Pindaros the poet, do you, Latro? Or his wench Hilaeira either. "
The Rope Maker stepped forward. "I am Pasicrates, son of Polydectes. I am here as the representative of Prince Pausanias, son of Cleombrotus, Victor of Clay and Regent of Rope. "
"Hypereides," Hypereides said. "Son of Ion - " Io whispered afterward that he meant he was of the Ionian people and proud of it, and that Pasicrates is a Dorian. " - commander of the Europa, the Eidyia, and the Clytia. Only my ships arent in the water right now. " He jerked his head toward the west.
"Theyre beached, and most of my men are here working on these things. "
Pasicrates said, "Im told you sold this slave to a hetaera in your city. "
"Thats right, to Kalleos. " Hypereides paused, looking from Pasicrates to Drakaina, as though wondering whether either were out to make trouble for him. "Not legally, of course, because women in my city cant hold property. Everythings in the name of a man she calls her nephew. She pays him so much a year for that. "
"We are more reasonable in Rope - we dont love lies. Latro and the child are our regents now, given him by your hetaera. "
Io yelped, "He was supposed to pay!"
"Then he will, you may be sure. But in Rope, children who speak out of turn are whipped for it.
Remember that. " Pasicrates had never taken his eyes from Hypereides. "As the strategist of the Rope Makers here, Im interested in your tower, Commander. How could you make it so the top was level with the top of the wall, when you couldnt measure the wall?"
Hypereides cleared his throat. "With all due respect, Strategist, neither one of those is exactly true.
We want the top higher than the wall, so we can put bowmen there to shoot down on the enemy. And we could measure the wall. We did. Come around to the front here. " He led the way and pointed upward. "See that door? It swings down, and itll be level with the merlons. Theres a stair in the back, as you probably saw, so all our men will have to do is run up the steps and step off onto the wall. "
"It must have taken a brave man to carry a measuring pole to the base," Pasicrates said, "even late at night. "
"Oh, no. " Hypereidess mouth twitched with amusement. "I measured it myself, and in broad daylight too. First I had a bowman - there he is. Come here, Oior. "
A big, bearded man in loose trousers shambled over. He had a hammer in his hand and there was no bowcase at his back and no quiver at his waist; yet I knew the bald man was correct, for the bearded man had the look of a bowman.
"We tied a thread to an arrow," Hypereides continued. "Oior shot the arrow so it stuck in the ground at the foot of the wall. Then we cut the thread and pulled the arrow in so we could measure the thread.
That gave us the distance from the place where Oior stood to the base of the wall. "
Pasicrates said, "Which is not the height of the wall, unless you were very lucky. "
"No, certainly not. Then we stuck a sword in the ground so it was exactly a cubit high. When the shadow of the wall touched the place where Oior had stood, we measured the shadow of the sword and divided the length of the thread by the length of the shadow. The answer was the height of the wall: forty-seven cubits. "
Oior the bowman smiled at me and touched his forehead in greeting.
When we returned to Pasicratess tent, he sent Drakaina and Io away, then held out his hand. "I see youre wearing your sword, Latro," he said. "Give it to me. "
I unfastened the catch of my belt. "Youre welcome to look at it," I said, "as long as you mean me no harm. "
"Give it to me," he said again.
The very flatness of his voice told me what he meant to do. "No," I said. I refastened the catch.
He whistled. I suppose he must have decided I required correction before we left to make our circuit of the walls and perhaps even before we called upon Xanthippos, because his slaves appeared at once, one carrying two javelins and the other a whip, a scorpion of three tails. They entered through the back of the tent, and Pasicrates moved to block the front, his hand upon his sword hilt.
"These men may kill me," I told him, "but they will not beat me. " I recalled that he had said a woman sold me to the regent. "And if they kill me, what will you tell your master?"
"The truth," Pasicrates murmured. "Sestos did not fall, you were lazy and insolent, I tried to discipline you, and you resisted. "
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nbsp; His hoplon leaned against the tent wall near the entrance. With a practiced motion, he slipped his arm through its leather loop and grasped the handle. "Now take off that sword, and your cloak and chiton, like a sensible man. "
I said, "No one thinks you Rope Makers sensible men. "
"And so they are our slaves, or they soon will be. " He glanced at the slaves that were truly his.
"Keiros, Tekmaros, dont kill him. "
Neither was well equipped to capture an armed man alive, and what happened next would have been ludicrous, had it not been terrible. The slave with the scorpion advanced first, lashing the air to make a savage sound he must have hoped would frighten me. I stepped forward and slashed at the rawhide lashes. He jumped back and in so doing impaled himself on one of the javelins held by the man behind him.
The terrible thing was not that it killed him, but that it did not. With the head of the javelin in his back, he remained alive, bleeding and gasping like a fish on a gig as he dropped the scorpion and flailed about with his arms.
I caught it up - and as I did so, saw that Pasicrates was almost upon me. Its stock was of some heavy wood, and the lead-tipped lashes looked as though they might easily entangle a man; I threw it at his legs.
He was too quick for me. The stock rang against the bronze facing of his hoplon. I swung Falcata in the downward stroke that is most powerful of all. Again he was too quick, raising his hoplon to block her blade; but it bit the bronze like cheese, cut the hoplon to its center, and leaped free as a lynx springs from a rock.
Pasicrates screamed. It was a high, shrill cry like a womans, though he thrust at me like a man even as he screamed, and made me skip aside.
The wall of the tent was at my elbow then; this scroll lay on my pallet not far from my left hand. I stooped to pick it up. That saved me, I think. A javelin passed so near my head that the sound was like a blow. Blood streamed from my ear.
The javelin had pierced the side of the tent. A slash laid it wide. I stumbled out and ran east, past the tents and through the little fields toward Parsa and Persepolis - toward the heart of the Empire, though I cannot say how it is I know the names of those places.
When I had reached the hills and could run no more, I found this hollow in the rocks and stopped to rest, the pulse pounding in my head like the laughter of some great river in flood. Soon the gray clouds hanging over the land parted. The sun appeared, a crimson coin set on the horizon behind me. I staunched the blood from my ear with moss, wiped Falcatas smeared blade on fallen leaves, and unrolling this scroll read enough to learn that I must write.
Writing has given me time to catch my breath and listen for pursuit. There has been none. When the moon rises, I will run again. It is important, so very important, that I do not forget I am fleeing, and what it is I fly from. "I have to remember things for you," the child, Io, told me as we wandered among the soldiers and siege engines of Thought. I wish she were with me now.
Chapter 41 We Are in Sestos
The goddess sent me here, and it was no dream. How easy it would be to write that I dreamed, as so many have written in so many other places. Yet I know I did not, for I dreamed before the goddess came.
It was a dream of love. The woman was raven-haired, or so it seemed in the moonlight, with eyes that flashed with desire. How she clutched me and drove my loins into her own! A lake, dark and still, mirrored silver stars; all along the shore men in horned and leering masks capered with women crowned with the vine, to the thudding of timbrels and the rattle of crotali.
Then I woke.
The woman had vanished, the instruments fallen silent. My torn ear burned and throbbed. The stones stood about me, hard and dark. The air was cold, heavy with snow. I heard the wind muttering among the oaks, and I knew it - though I do not know how - for the thought of Jove, the god who rules the gods and cares little for men. It seemed to me that he was mad, black thoughts repeating one or two words again and again as they brooded upon revenge.
I sat up, and the night was like any other. A wind walked among the trees, and an increscent moon hung low in the west. Far off a wolf howled. My limbs were stiff with cold, but I felt no desire to roll myself in my cloak again; I felt instead that I should rise and fly from some danger, and though I no longer recalled what it was from which I had fled earlier, I sensed a menace that was no less now. Stretching, I looked down to find this scroll, which I recalled having pushed into a hiding place among the rocks.
At once I gasped and nearly cried out, staggering backward from the lip of an abyss beside which I had slept only a few moments before. It seemed a pit without a bottom, or at least without any bottom the silver radiance of moon or stars could ever reach. Trembling, I cast a stone into it and listened. I heard nothing, though I strained to hear for many thuddings of my fearful heart.
Though perhaps my stone is still falling, falling always and without end, something moved in the abyss.
If it lacked any termination, still it had sides; and blurs of white and palest green, tiny and remote, swarmed over them as ants may creep across the walls in a sealed tomb. Sometimes it appeared that they flew from one side to another, flitting like bats and flickering like rushlights.
"You would find me," someone behind me said. "I have come already. "
I turned and saw a girl of perhaps fifteen sitting on a stone behind me. Her gown was woven of somber autumn foliage, yellow, gridelin, and russet, and a stephane with an ebon gem was on her brow.
Though she sat with her back to the moon, I could see her face clearly; it seemed hungry and ill, like the faces of the children who sell their bodies in the poor quarters of cities.
"Soon you will wonder what became of your book," she said. "I will keep it for you; now take it, and leave my door. "
When she spoke, I was more afraid of her than of the abyss; perhaps if I had not feared her so, I could not have done as she instructed me.