by Gene Wolfe
Neither will my sons, except, perhaps, for Sinew. It was very strange-I must remember to write more about this-to come to Pajarocu knowing that Sinew had been there before us. Can he have followed me from Green to the Whorl, and from the Whorl back here? Surely not. Yet stranger things have happened. I almost hope he has.
Bahar came in to tell me we have been pushed back again, nearly to the town. It was an interruption, but not enough of an interruption for me to draw the three whorls again. Or so I judge.
He is a thin and nervous-man, is Bahar. How did he get such a name, which should mean that he is fat? He combed his scraggly beard with his fingers, rolling his eyes to let me know that all is lost, the town will fall within a day or two, we men will be slaughtered like goats, our children enslaved, our women made off with. I chirped at him like a cricket, and heartened him a little, I think. Poor Bahar! What can it be like to be a good man, yet always expect bad luck, and a whorl of thieves and murderers?
I have a wife from Han, if the others haven’t killed her already. We call her Chota. The name (it is “small”) fits her.
Too cruel, maybe.
Just talking to Bahar has made me hungry. He always looks so thin and starved. I cannot remember the last time I was hungry.
* * *
Chandi was slow when I rang the bell. To punish her I told her I wanted someone else to bring my food. If only I had thought, I would have realized that she was afraid I was going to ask her to kill me. Moti will have told her, as I should have realized; they tell each other everything. At any rate, inspiration struck. Everyone has a good idea now and then, I suppose, even me. Nettle had most of ours, except for the paper.
(And yet, the paper was our one great idea.)
She wrote a clearer hand than I did, too, but hated thinking everything out in sentences and paragraphs; left to her, our book would have been nothing but summary.
Like this one. I can hear her say it.
So Chota brought in my wine and fish and fruit, the fresh and the pickled vegetables, the pilav, and the thin panbread that everyone eats here at every meal, as round and flat and sallow as her face. She remained to serve, and I soon realized that she was hungrier than I was. They have not let her eat, or kept her too upset to eat.
I made her sit beside me and scooped up some pilav for her, little balls of boiled dough mixed with chopped nuts and raisins, and made her eat it. Soon she was talking of home and begging me to keep her here with me. She told me her real name, which I have forgotten already. It means music played at shadelow.
I talked to her about the war, and said I hoped that Han would welcome her back if Gaon fell. She insists that her sister-wives would surely kill her the moment they heard I was dead, and that if they did not her own people would cut off her breasts.
What is the matter with us? How can we do such things to each other?
She is asleep now. Poor, poor child! I hope the gods send her peaceful dreams.
Bahar wanted me to sacrifice to Sphigx. Maybe I will. That might hearten our people, too.
It is a weary work, to write about everything. Briefly then, and I will sleep beside Chota.
She begged me to take her with me, so I did. She had never ridden on an elephant. Our troopers were overjoyed to see me, or at any rate they were polite enough to pretend that they were. I think they thought I was dead and that nobody would tell them. I left Chota in the long tent on the elephant’s back and borrowed a horse, and rode up and down our line, smiling and blessing them. Poor, poor spirits! Most had never handled anything more dangerous than a pitchfork. They are brave, but few have any idea what they are about. Their officers have read about Silk, just as Hari Mau and Bahar have, and that is why I am here. These poor troopers have only heard tales-fantastic tales for the most part. Yet they cheered for the one-eyed man with white hair.
We have elephants, but they will not trample our enemies. The booming of the guns frightens them, just as it does me. The elephants frighten our horses, who are not afraid of guns. What a whorl!
Elephants frighten our prisoners as well, as I soon saw. We have twenty-two, everything from grandfathers with wrinkled faces to boys who cannot yet have reached puberty. When I saw that they were afraid of my elephant, I had three of them sent up the ladder one by one, so that I could question them upon its back. Chota helped me greatly at times, explaining the customs and idioms of Han. She had brought along the pickled parsnips, pilav, and some other food; our prisoners’ mouths watered as they watched her eat. They are as hungry as she was, I think. Food is scarce, so Hari Mau has allowed them very little.
Now that I come to think of it, I was told that one had been captured only an hour or so before we got there.
* * *
I have been busy all day, trying to catch up on matters that should have been attended to while I was with our troopers. (What would I not give for Hammerstone now! Olivine, lend us your father, please.) Most important: I have sent Bahar and Namak downriver in a boat, each with his little case of cards. Bahar is to buy rice and beans-whatever is cheap and filling-and he is just the man for it.
Namak will try to hire men who will fight alongside us. They will have to be men who have their own slug guns, since guns are in very short supply. (I wonder how they are coming in New Viron, making their own? Certainly the one that Marrow gave me was serviceable enough.) It is probably for the best-we must have men who can shoot. Hunting can be a cruel amusement and it often is; but it is the best training in the whorl for a trooper.
I hope Bahar sends something back for us soon. Food is very scarce, and of course everything north along the Nadi is gone, all those rich farms.
Hari Mau came from the front to confer. It is an hour’s ride now. He had made sketch maps. Our left flank is quite secure, he says, an impenetrable marshy forest. (What can a man who has not been on Green know about that?) Our right is on the river, and in spite of all that he says I am worried about both.
He was worried about Chota, so much so that I made her go back to the women’s quarters for a while. Nobody trusts her, poor child.
Nobody but me.
Prisoners in despair, he says.
* * *
Even war has benefits, even being wounded and more than half expected to die. Maybe nothing real is wholly good or bad. (But real is not the word. Tangible?) I still long for home and Nettle’s pardon, should she be so moved as to give it; but the pain in my side kills the pain of that, and I have been mercifully busy. Which is the god of busyness? Scylla, perhaps, if there is one. Scylla tossing up waves to dance in sunlight and starlight. I have written so much about our life on the sloop, and nothing about that, yet aside from Seawrack of the golden hair it is what I recall the best from all those days-the ceaseless, restless waves gleaming with reflected stars and dyed by Green. What blessings mere busyness brings us!
I have hatched a plan and have been seeing that it is carried out for half the day. We have been driven back again and again. Several of our river workers were injured by flying rock, and one died. Both those are facts. We are trying to combine them.
A note reports that four of our prisoners have killed themselves. This must be stopped. I have ordered the remaining prisoners brought here to me by noon tomorrow. I want another look at them.
* * *
Talked to the prisoners with Chota present as before. At first we learned nothing new. I ordered a good hot meal prepared for them and spoke to them again afterward, and was lucky enough to get to the bottom of it.
First, food is scarce on their side. It must be brought from Han on pack animals, horses and mules, because of the Cataracts. They think that we have plenty, and that they have been starved on Hari Mau’s orders.
Second, they think the whole war is a plot to make them lose their land. They are small farmers for the most part, just like our own troopers, and one of them accused Evensong (Chota) to her face, calling her the Man’s woman and making her furiously angry. She tried to get me to have him killed.
I told her he is precious to me, and have asked for a truce instead.
* * *
Truce agreed to. I sent Rajya Mantri to tell the Hannese we wanted to exchange prisoners, all that we have for all they have. They would not agree, but we got eighteen of ours for eighteen of theirs. The important thing is that those men are back where they can talk to their fellow troopers. The retreat is all arranged, and should be just far enough to get them over the buried kegs.
At every odd moment I find myself thinking about that “impenetrable” forest, and remembering the forest at the mouth of the big river, the jungles on Green, and so forth-the tangled trees on the big sandspit I was writing about before Han invaded us.
When we found the mouth of the river, all three of us thought that the search was almost over. I got out the map Wijzer had drawn for me and showed it to Krait, and he agreed to search for Pajarocu whenever he went hunting. Supposing that we would be there in another week at most, Seawrack and I agreed that she would remain behind to look after the sloop. I explained at some length that a great deal might still go wrong even if the lander flew into the sky without crashing and told her to assume me dead if I had not returned within a month.
It has been nearly two years now, I believe. More, perhaps. How is it that her song reaches me?
The river was broad and slow, but after three days’ sailing it became obvious that the stretch before the first fork was a good deal longer than Wijzer had indicated. When I saw a town (a cluster of huts, really) on the south bank, I put in there, intending to barter for blankets and a few other things we needed, and sail on that day. We ended by staying four. Once you stop, you and your journey are at the mercy of the god of the place. I have learned that, at least, from all my traveling. Nevertheless, I must stop this writing right now and get a little sleep.
Wound healing, I believe. I feel better (less feverish) and there is certainly less inflammation. Less drainage, too. Phaea be thanked. Or whomever.
* * *
All the temple bells are ringing. A great day! We have driven them back.
The retreat did not go quite as planned, but it was good enough. I stood upon the head of my elephant and watched the whole battle, although everyone said that was too dangerous, even Mahawat, who drives him for me and stood beside me dancing with excitement.
The Hannese rushed forward as we had hoped, waving knives and swords, yelling and shooting. Our men ran, then turned and fired when they reached their new positions. That was the point that had worried me. I had been afraid they would keep on running, but only a handful did. There was a hot fight then for about an hour before the buried powder went off.
They were very big charges, much bigger than we had ever used in blasting rock, and we had packed jagged flints around the kegs. The plan was to have our men rush the enemy after the explosions, and send in the horsemen only if the enemy broke; but Hari Mau sent them in at once, seeing that the enemy would break at once. It was very strange for me, standing high up there in front of the long platform that holds my silk tent, because I could see that the horsemen should go immediately. I had no way to give the order, but trumpets blew as if I had, with the final notes lost in the thunder of the hooves, and after that it was lances and swords and needlers and dust, the flag dipping and leaning and always seeming about to fall, but advancing! Advancing! Advancing!
And blood, always blood, although there was great deal of that already.
But the important point is that I must not let myself get caught like that again. I must always have some means of relaying my orders immediately, or if not immediately as fast as possible.
I have sent for the armorer. He is to bring me a needier and several short swords, so that I can choose the one I like. We need slug guns and ammunition badly, but we have plenty of knives and swords at least.
As I penned that last, it struck me that I ought to send for the head gardener as well. I have been wondering how I could get a spade, and a bar of some kind to pry up the stones. He can supply them both, and it should be safer than having Evensong buy them for me in the market. I have seen him at work often, a silent old man with a faded blue headcloth and a big white mustache. Both the younger gardeners are away fighting, and he will be having a difficult time of it, poor old fellow. He should be eager to get on my good side.
This may be the most dangerous thing I have ever done. But I am going to do it. Not tonight, however, because the weather is clear and Green will light up everything. On the first dark night, I shall see how effectual Krait’s secret is. I will be confiding it to someone who knows it already, after all. That cannot be betrayal.
The town on the river consisted of twenty or thirty rough wooden houses and a hundred or so crude little huts covered with bark and hides. Nobody there would sell anything except on market day. I had never heard of such a custom, and went around complaining, and demanding things that I did not get. Eventually Krait and Seawrack persuaded me that it was better to be patient, to get to know the people and find out all we could. We ate Seawrack’s smoked meat, mostly, chopped and stewed with pepper and some local wild garlic I found, and drank river water before we found the little stream from which the people of the town got their own drinking water. I felt sure that the muddy river water would make us sick, but it did not.
The people looked like He-pen-sheep and She-pick-berry for the most part, lean and muscular with bandy legs, big shoulders, and noses like hawks. They all have long, straight hair, glossy black and really quite beautiful. All the women braid it; so do some of the men. Their complexions are dark yet translucent, so that the brown is touched with pink and red from the blood beneath; it can be very attractive, particularly in the children and the young women.
They are silent and suspicious in the presence of strangers, although the women seem to chatter incessantly when they are by themselves. Like She-pick-berry, they frequently pretended not to understand the Common Tongue. I was angry already (no doubt they saw it) and that made me angrier still.
Another traveler, also bound for Pajarocu he said, told me that the town (it was called Wichote) was the last outpost of civilization. I asked how he could be sure of that if he had gone no farther, and he claimed that he had gone much farther, together with a young man older than my son (by which he meant Krait) whom he had rescued at sea.
“He looked like you.” The traveler grinned. “But with more hair.”
Here I would like very much to be able to say that I knew at once, but it would not be true. I asked whether the young man he had rescued had known the way to Pajarocu.
“He thought he did,” the traveler said, “and got us lost a couple of thousand times.”
Thinking that the young man’s information might be of value, I asked to speak with him.
“He wouldn’t come back with me.” The traveler grinned again. “I wouldn’t worry about him, if I were you.”
“I won’t, if he’s not in Wichote; but I’d like to have a talk with him. You and he separated, up the river? How far was it?”
The traveler shrugged. “Two weeks’ travel, or about that.”
“You left him alone?”
“Sure. He’ll be all right. He’s a little raw at the edges, but you can’t break him. Or bend him very much, either. And he’s got a needier. He can take care of himself.”
We parted, and he must have gone back to his boat and put out, afraid that I would reach Pajarocu before him and take the last seat. (He was not on the lander, however.) After it occurred to me-very late-that the young man he had traveled with had certainly been Sinew, I was never able to find the traveler again, although I walked up and down those muddy little streets for hours and looked in at every open door, questioning everyone who would talk to me. When at last I accepted the fact that he had gone, I went back to the sloop, half minded to leave Seawrack ashore for the time being and go after him. But if I had caught up with him, and he had told me that the young man’s name had indeed been Sinew, what would I have learned? And
what could I do when I had confirmed it, except continue searching for Pajarocu, which Sinew was searching for as well? We would meet in Pajarocu, wherever that was-or we would not meet at all.
Seawrack was ashore then, as I have said; we had not yet come to terms with the intractable necessity of waiting until market day, and she had taken a few of my silver trinkets in the hope of trading them for warmer and more durable clothing. I sat with Babbie in the stern of the sloop, thinking back upon the days when Sinew was small and looking at the big, slow river until shadelow. Now, if I shut my eyes, I see it still, a far larger and more sluggish river than our Nadi, with wide stretches of mud visible in many places. The setting of the Short Sun on Shadelow is never as dramatic as it is here.
I ought to have said the setting of the Short Sun as seen in and around New Viron-on the coast, in other words. Here the sun comes up out of the mountains late in the morning, and sets among mountains, too, briefly painting their snowy peaks with purple and flame (or is that the brush of Wijzer’s Maker?) and giving us a long twilight.
In New Viron, the Short Sun sinks into the sea, a wonderful sight when the weather is calm. Nettle used to make me go out onto the beach to watch it with her, and I was impatient much too often. I would give a great deal to stand beside her once more and hold her hand while we wait for the momentary flash of limpid emerald that appears as if by sorcery as the last fragment of the Short Sun vanishes behind the swelling waves, a green so pure that it cannot possibly have anything to do with the evil, festering whorl of that name. I, who never saw the sea until I was almost grown, did not come to love it until I left it. So, too, with Seawrack, or so I have reason to believe. The sea did not call to her while she lived in it as the-