by Gene Wolfe
Vlug swore that he could not.
"Then you I teach. A legerman must cook, and shoot too. Zwaar, Leeuw, to the horses you must see. Well do it! When we have eaten, I will inspect."
Hide said, "I'll take care of ours, Father. My father's a fine cook, Sergeant. I'm sure he'll help you in the kitchen, if you ask him."
I did, of course, warming a pastry of nuts and apples, approving the cheese (these people seem to relish cheese with every meal) and contriving hearth cakes while the sausages and a ground pork and cornmeal mixture were frying.
"Not good food it is," Azijin declared when everything was ready. "For good a kitchen like my mother's we need, and my mother to cook. But worse than this in an inn I have eaten. What is it in these little cakes for us you make, mysire?"
"Honey and poppyseed." I offered a scrap of the pork and cornmeal mixture to Oreb to see whether he would like it.
"Soda, too. Salt, and three kinds of flour. Those I saw you mix. If another I eat, dreams more mad than I have already will it give?"
"Not mad mine was," Vlug insisted. "The finest of my life it was, and more real than this." He speared another sausage; he had been in charge of them and seemed proud of them.
"In a bed on the wall to sleep, and the bedroom has no roof to see!" Azijin shook his head and forked more pickled cabbage onto his plate.
Hide's lips shaped the word where?
"You have asked me to explain your dreams," I began, after sampling the pork and cornmeal mixture for myself. "It would be easy for me to contrive some story for you, as I originally planned to do. It would also be dishonest, as I decided while we were coming downstairs. I am not speaking under duress. You have asked me to help you understand what has happened to you. I have said I will, and am therefore bound to do it faithfully. Are you aware that the spirit leaves the body at death?"
Two nodded. Leeuw said, "With gods to talk."
"Perhaps. In some cases, at least. I must now ask you to acceptto ask you, Sergeant Azijin, and you, Legerman Vlug, particularly-to accept the fact that it can, and does, leave it at other times as well."
I waited for their protests, but none came.
"Let me illustrate my point. A man has a house where he lives for some years with his wife. They are very happy, this man and his wife. They love each other, and whatever else may go amiss, they have each other. Then the man's wife dies, and he leaves the house in which he has had so much happiness. It has become abhorrent to him. Unless the Outsider, the God of gods, restores her to life, he has no wish to see that house ever again. Am I making myself clear?"
Vlug said, "So I think," and Azijin, "To me not."
"I am speaking of the spirit departing the body at death. The body is the house I mentioned, and life was the wife who made it a place of warmth and comfort."
Azijin nodded. "Ah."
"Perhaps her husband goes to the gods, as Legerman Leeuw suggested, perhaps only out into darkness. For the moment, it doesn't matter. My point is that he leaves the home she made for him, never to return."
"Bird go," Oreb declared. He had been hopping around the table, cadging bits of food. "Go Silk."
I told him, "If you mean you wish to die when I do, Oreb, I sincerely hope you don't. In Gaon they tell of dying men who kill some favorite animal, usually a horse or a dog, so it will accompany them in death; and under the Long Sun their rulers went so far as to have their favorite wives burned alive on their funeral pyres. When I die, I sincerely hope no friend or relative of mine will succumb to any such cruel foolishness."
Zwaar, who had been silent until then, said, "When the spirit goes a man dies, I think."
I shook my head. "He dies because you shot him through the heart. Or because he suffered some disease or was kicked by a horse, as a wise friend once suggested to me. But you bring up an important point-that the spirit is not life, nor is life the spirit. And another, that the two together are one. A husband is not his wife, no more than a wife is her husband; but the two in combination are one. What I was going to say was that though the man in my little story left his house once and for all when his wife died, he had left it many times previously. He had gone out to weed their garden, perhaps, or gone to the market to buy shoes. In those cases he left it to return."
Hide said helpfully, "The spirit can leave the same way, can't it, Father?"
"Exactly. We have all had daydreams. We imagine we're sailing the new boat we're in fact building, for example, or riding a prancing horse we don't actually possess. Most of the dreams we have at night are of the same kind, and `dreams' is the right name for them. There are others, however. Dreams-we call them that, at least-which are in fact memories returned to the sleeping body by the spirit, which left it for a while and went elsewhere."
Azijin was grinning, although he looked a bit uncomfortable; Vlug, Leeuw, and Zwaar heard me with wide eyes and open mouths.
"That is what befell you and Private Vlug," I told Azijin. "Your sprits departed while you slept, and went to sleep in another place. There Vlug's spirit-"
I rose. "Excuse me for a moment. I took off Oreb's ring while I was cooking and laid it on a shelf in the kitchen."
Before they could protest, I hurried out. The ring was where I had left it earlier when I decided I might require some such excuse. I put it on and went through the kitchen and into the private quarters of the innkeeper and his wife, finding him just struggling into his trousers.
"I heard you were ill," I said, "and thought it might be wise for someone to look in on you. If you and your wife would like a bite to eat, I would be happy to prepare something."
"So weak we are, mysire." He sat down upon the conjugal bed. "Thank you. Thank you. Anything."
I explained matters to Azijin and his troopers, and Hide and I looked after the innkeeper and his wife. As I feared, both have been bitten by Jahlee. They should recover, provided she does not return for a few days. She is still asleep at present, although it is well past noon. "Girl sleep," reports Oreb, who just flew up to our room to look; he and I are agreed that it is best to leave it so. I have arranged the blankets so that her face is scarcely visible, and of course the shutters are closed. Azijin and Vlug promise not to disturb her.
Azijin has decided not to travel today. "The cause of justice and good order," he says, "we serve as well in comfort here as by in this snow dying and the horses crippling." I second him in that with all my heart.
The ring will no longer fit my thumb, which seems very odd. I have been wearing it on the third finger.
4. HE IS SILK
He felt Pig's hand close on his shoulder. "Hooses, bucky. Trust ter Pig. Hooses Nall 'round."
At that moment, he was too tired to wonder how Pig knew. "Then let's stop here and ask, if they'll talk to us."
"Pockets runnin' h'over wi' cards, bucky?"
"No," he said. "Not running over."
"Nor me. Nor H'oreb, Pig wagers. Got a card, do yer, H'oreb? Yer do nae!"
"Poor bird."
"Yet good people can be moved by charity, sometimes, and all we want is a place to rest and a little information."
"H'all yer want." The tap-tap-tap of Pig's sheathed sword was moving away, as was Pig's towering bulk, visible in the light of the glowing skylands. "H'oreb's hungry though. H'ain't yer, H'oreb? A bite a' een, noo. Dinna say yer never Nate nae een, H'oreb. Pig knows yer breed."
Oreb fluttered to Pig's shoulder. "Fish heads?"
"Aye! Comin', bucky?" Pig's leather-covered scabbard rapped wood.
Silence followed, save for the tapping of his own staff and the shuffle of his feet. "Yes," he said. "I had misjudged your position a bit. How did you know there were houses here? I couldn't see them myself until you told me they were present."
"Feel 'em." The scabbard rapped the door again. "Feel 'em h'on me clock."
It seemed impossible that they had reached the outskirts of Viron already. "Are there many?"
"Both sides a' ther road. 'Tis Nall Pig can tell yer."
"Blind, aye. H'oreb can tell yer more. How many, H'oreb? Let's hear yer count 'em."
"Many house." Oreb's bill rattled.
"There yer have h'it." The leather-covered scabbard pounded the door. "'Tis listenin' does h'it, bucky. Most dinna. Take 'em h'inside. Think they hears us knockin' sae polite? If Pig was ter kick ther door h'in, they'd have ter listen, wouldn't they? They would." A explosive thump was presumably Pig's boot striking the door.
"Don't! Please don't. We can go on to the next house."
"Aye." Another violent kick, so loud that it seemed it must surely attract the attention of the godling at the bridge, a full league off.
From inside a voice called, "Go away!"
"Soon Was she's stove h'in," Pig rumbled. "Gae smash h'in ther next. Winna take ter lang." To prove his point, he followed the words with another tremendous kick.
A woman's frightened voice sounded from inside the house.
"What's she sayin'? Yer make h'it h'out, bucky?"
"No." The end of his staff had found one of Pig's massive boots. Raising his voice slightly, he said, "Open the door, please. I swear we won't harm you."
Golden light appeared at a crack, followed by the scrape and thump of a heavy bar lifted from its fittings and set aside.
"Ah," Pig said, "maire like, 'tis."
The door opened a thumb's width, then swung back as Pig dropped to one knee and threw his shoulder against it. The woman inside screamed.
"Please, there's nothing to be afraid of. If you'd opened when we knocked, all this fuss would have been prevented."
"Who are you, sir?" The voice that had ordered them to go away was tremulous now.
He stepped inside and laid his hand on the householder's arm, calming him as if he were a dog or a horse. "My friend is blind. You're not afraid of a blind man, are you? And certainly you shouldn't be afraid of me. We haven't come to rob you. Put away that knife, please. Someone might be hurt."
The householder stepped back, evoking a terrified squeal from his wife. He held a candle in one hand and a butcher knife of substantial proportions in the other, and seemed inclined to surrender neither one.
"That's much better. May the Outsider, Pas, and every other god bless this house." Smiling, their visitor traced the sign of addition before turning back to Pig and wincing at his first real sight of that exceedingly large face, all dirty rag, straggling hair, and curling black beard. Pig was preparing to enter the house on his knees, ducking under the lintel and working his shoulders through the doorway.
"We're looking for eyes." It seemed a happy inspiration under the circumstances. "Eyes for my friend here. Do you know of a physician capable of replacing a blind man's eyes?"
"In the city," the householder managed. "In Viron, it might be done."
It was progress of a sort. "Good. What is his name?"
"I don't know, but-but…"
"But they might have someone?"
The householder nodded eagerly.
"I see-though my unfortunate friend does not. We must go to the city in that case."
The householder nodded again, more eagerly than ever.
"We shall. But we must rest first." He tried to recall when he had last slept, and failed. "We must find a place to sleep, and beg food-"
Oreb lit on his shoulder. "Fish heads?"
"Something for my bird, at least, and something-I'm afraid it will have to be quite a lot-for my friend Pig. We're sorry to have frightened you; but we could hear you inside, and when you wouldn't come to the door it made Pig angry."
The householder muttered something unintelligible.
"Thank you. Thank you very much. We really do appreciate it."
Loudly enough to be overheard, the householder's wife whispered, "… doesn't look like an augur."
"I am not. I'm a layman, just as your husband is, and have a wife of my own at home. Does it bother you that I blessed you? A layman may bless, I assure you; so may a laywoman."
"I'm Hound," the householder said. "My wife's Tansy." He tried to give his butcher knife to her, and when she would not take it, tossed it onto a chair and offered his hand.
"My own name is Horn." They shook hands, and Pig extended his, the size of a grocer's scoop. "Sorry ter a' scared yer."
"And my bird is-"
"Oreb!"
Tansy smiled, and her smile lit her small, pale face. "I'll get you some soup."
"You can sleep here," Hound told them. "In the house here, or… Would you like to eat out back? It's going to be a little cramped in here. There's a big tree in back, and there's a table there, and benches."
There were. Pig sat on the ground, and the other two on the benches Hound had mentioned. "We've beer." Hound sounded apologetic. "No wine, I'm sorry to say."
"How's yer water?"
"Oh, we've a good well. Would you prefer water?"
"Aye. Thank yer."
Hound, who had just sat down, rose with alacrity. "Horn, what about you? Beer?"
"Water, please. You might bring some sort of small container that Oreb could drink from, too, if it isn't too much trouble."
Tansy arrived with bulging pockets and a steaming tureen. "I try to keep fire in the stove, you know, so I don't have to lay a new one for every meal. I'll bet your wife does the same thing."
He nodded. "You'd win that bet."
"So when we have soup, why not keep it there so it stays warm? That way I can have some hot quickly. It-it really isn't any particular kind of soup, I suppose. Just what Hound and I eat ourselves. There's beans in it, and potatoes, and carrots for flavor."
"Guid ter smell h'all ther same. Ham, ter. Pig winds h'it."
The tureen received a place of honor in the center of the table next to Hound's candle. Four large bowls clattered down, followed by rattling spoons. "I'll get some bread. What's her name, Horn?"
He looked up, surprised.
"Your wife's?"
"Oh. Nettle. Her name is Nettle. I don't suppose you knew her as a child? Years ago in the city?"
"No. It's not a common name. I don't think I've ever known a Nettle." Tansy backed away, paused for a hurried conversation with her husband at the well, and retreated to her kitchen.
"She'll bring cups or something," Hound explained, setting his water bucket on the table beside the soup tureen, "and beer for me. I hope you don't mind."
"Not at all." He paused, trying to collect his thoughts. "May Imight we, I ought to say-begin by telling each other who we are? I realize it's not the conventional way to start a conversation; but you see, I need information badly and hope that when the three of you know why I need it as badly as I do, you'll be more inclined to give it to me."
Tansy set a bread board, a big loaf of dark bread, and the butcher knife on the table, and handed pannikins around. "I can tell you who Hound and I are, and I will too, unless he wants to. Shall I?"
"Go ahead," Hound said.
Pig found his pannikin and pushed it across the table. "Better h'if yer fill h'it fer me."
"You know our names," Tansy began. "You wanted to know if I knew your wife in the city when I was a little girl, and I didn't. I grew up right here in Endroad. So did Hound. We did live in the city up until about five years ago, though. There wasn't any work out here then."
Hound said, "There isn't any now, or very little."
"So we went to the city and worked there till my father passed away, and then my mother wrote and said we could have the shop." Tansy began ladling out soup.
"Mother lives next door," Hound explained, "that's why it bothered Tansy so much when you said you'd kick in her door too."
"So that's what we do now. Hound goes into the city, mostly, and tries to find things people want that we can buy at a good price, and he's very good at it. Mother and I stay in the store, mostly, and sell the things. We have hammers and nails, we sell a lot of those. And tacks and screws, and then general tinware, and crockery."
Hound add
ed, "We have drills, planes, and saws, all of which my wife forgot to mention. I did cabinet work before we got the shop. We own our little house. Mother owns her house and the shop. We give her so much each week from what the shop takes in, and she helps Tansy there sometimes. So that's who we are, Horn, unless you want to hear about brothers and sisters."
He shook his head. "Thank you. By rights, we strangers should have gone first. It was gracious of you to give the example yourselves." He returned the pannikin, which he had filled with well water. "Here you are, Pig. It's good water, I'm sure. When we met, you told me you were journeying west, I believe."
"Aye."
He ladled water into his own, then held the ladle so that Oreb could drink from it. "Are you willing to tell us anything more? If you aren't, that should be sufficient, surely."
"Ho, aye. Dinna like ter snivel's h'all. What yer want ter know?"
Tansy ventured, "What happened to you? How…?"
Pig laughed, a deep booming. "How come yer nae sae big h'as me? Freak's what Ma said."
"How you…" Tansy's voice fell away. "We-we'd like to have a child, and I worry, you know, that something might be wrong with it. Not… Not that it would grow up big and strong. I'd like that."
Hound said, "Without offense. Could you see, when you were a boy? "
"Ho, aye. Was a trooper's h'all. Got caught, an' they dinna like me. Seen a dagger comin' h'at me een, an' 'twas ther last. Took me 'round h'after, h'only Pig canna see 'em nae mair. Heard 'em, though. Threw things h'at me, ter. 'Twas h'in ther light lands, ther mountings. Doon here's flatlands." Pig spooned up more soup and swallowed noisily. "Yer nae eatin' naethin', bucky. What's wrong wi' yer?"
"I-" He picked up his spoon. "Because you would have heard me, I suppose, if I had been-though I try to make as little noise as I can, eating soup. You came here seeking new eyes, Pig?"
"Aye. Yer knows a' ther wee folk, bucky?"
"Children, you mean? Or us? We must seem very small indeed to you."