The Lens of the World Trilogy

by MacAvoy, R. A. ;

  There came an order from the sergeant of dragoons, and his men surged forward. In order to prevent losing them entirely, I had to grab a horse’s tail and be dragged. It was God’s mercy I was not kicked in the head. “Where is the king?” I shouted to the rider, and he saw me there, attached to his mount in this ignoble manner, and he slashed me across the face with his steel-weighted crop, opening the skin under one eye and across the bridge of my nose. The sting of it was terrible, and I smelled and tasted blood again.

  “I’m sorry, boy. I did not recognize you as the king’s man,” the dragoon said calmly, but I was not calm. I don’t believe I was even human as I leaped to grab the man’s saddle cantle, hauled myself up behind the dragoon, and took the man by his collar and sash and hauled him above my head and into the air. He landed on the pavement badly, and I took his saddle.

  There in the midst of the dragoons rode the king, astride but still seeking his stirrups. The blades of his bodyguard flashed in the sun and the surrounding infantry did not yet challenge them. Though I could not reach my own stirrups by a good four inches, I kicked the horse forward and he shoved his body next to King Benar’s horse.

  The king was flushed: with anger or the euphoria of battle I could not tell. He looked at my bloody face and scowled. “Damn you, Nazhuret Eydlson; what have you gotten me into? They will kill me and it will be for nothing at all.”

  At that moment I wished I had succeeded in killing the brat earlier, regardless what became of Velonya. That this pouting politician should be the son of his gallant father seemed impossible. It occurred to me that were it not for the red hair, I could kill Benar now, here in the square. I answered him nothing at all, but drove my stolen horse to the front of the wedge and bellowed to be heard above the noise of the crowd.

  “Citizens of Velonya! Stand by your king! Not the blue and white, but the king! The king! The king!”

  A musket ball sang by my ear, and as though that was a signal, the crowd took up my chant. I felt another leg nudge mine as a horse was pressed close.

  Dinaos had either doffed his hat or lost it. He, too, scowled at me, but meditatively. “You don’t even like my nephew, Nazhuret. Why take his insults, instead of his crown?”

  I had to spit blood from my lips in order to answer. “Because I love Velonya, my lord. And I am not Velonyan enough to stand as its king. I am what I am.” I had to spit again.

  “What you are is scarred, my dear savage. Unless you have that quickly tended. Such a shame: a slave’s wound. I presume you killed the man?”

  I told Dinaos to let it be. That I might well not have to worry about scars in the future, nor did I care about the quality of the damage, save that it stung.

  The battle was not between armed horsemen and infantry; it was between infantry and the mass of unarmed flesh, as the citizens who stood yards away angrily shoved the bodies of the citizens who stood closer onto the blades of the regulars. I heard a woman shriek, “My babies! Let us out of here!” and I felt perfectly how I had caused this situation: this carnage. I grabbed for the king’s horse’s bridle, to pull him forward. At the moment I was more concerned with getting his dangerous presence away from the unarmed marketers than I was with saving him from capture, but no matter—I missed the catch anyway.

  Benar was going fast, even without my help. He clung to the neck of his horse, which was a courtly beast and not battle hardened at all. It hopped and kicked at each report of powder, but that same fear made the horse plunge through the crowd, which a fine hack like that one surely would not otherwise have done.

  My own cavalry mount had no compunctions about trampling things. We went over what had been a fish barrow, and my nose was hit by the stink of smashed trout as well as human blood. The cold had already closed off the bleeding of my face. Both the king’s horse and mine were caught briefly in the torn canvas of a stall, and brassware rolled and clanged around us, and then I could see the other side of the square, where the shops we call “red brick palaces” stood in the glassy rows, with the shop owner’s establishments above them. For a moment I saw myself in what I thought was a broken window, but then I recognized the diagonal break as being on my face instead of in the glass. Once past a florist, with its winter display of hellebore and straw bouquets, and we were on Grand Avenue, where to my relief and amazement the thoroughfare was not being held against us. The king was on his way.

  Battle was still behind us, and the intersection was corked by the people we had swept along, either by force or by enthusiasm. I felt a tentative tapping on my ankle and looked down to see Sieben, looking no worse for his passage. He motioned that he would come up behind me, and that and our location gave me an idea. I swung down from the horse.

  “Take it. I’ll be back in five minutes.”

  I tried to say the same to Dinaos or the king, but the whipslash made it impossible for me to screw up my face enough to shout. I ran between horses and off the avenue, where one block away stood the stable where I had left Sabia.

  The stablehands were all out, probably gaping at the melee in the square. I found the mare chewing the door of her stall; she had done a bit of damage already. In the cleaning room I also found alcohol and ointment for saddle sores. I splashed both over my face and screamed at the result. I had the gray mare saddled within two minutes and rode her out. There was no one to take the money.

  The king’s dragoons were not where I had left them. Taking advantage of the open road, they were galloping over the flagstones. The mare from Rezhmia, having just this day finished a week of abusive work, took their flight as challenge. She caught up with them within sixty seconds.

  The rear guard spun around to face me with sabers raised before they recognized my face—or at least recognized the slash across it. I was permitted to pass up between their ordered line to the king.

  “So you didn’t run,” he said.

  I found I could not use my face for expression, and could only speak in a mumble. “You didn’t think I had,” I said.

  Count Dinaos was still by Benar’s side, riding as for a jolly hunt. He glanced at me, winced sympathetically, and then his attention was caught by the mare. His black eyes first shone with surprise and then avidity. “I thought she was dead,” he whispered. “Dead these twenty-five years. Or is this her daughter?”

  The gaunt mare was dancing between the horses of the king and the count, seeming to disdain them. “I don’t know who or what she is, my lord,” I told him. “I call her Sabia, and she can outgo anything without wings.”

  He nodded. “And what do you call the dog?”

  I did not look down, though I felt the same sweat come over me as I had each time the inexplicable animal had appeared. I thought of a dozen cowardly explanations, and almost said the white dog was from the livery where I had kept the mare and would doubtless return home after a block or so. What I did say was “I have no dog,” and Dinaos did not pursue the subject.

  That afternoon’s action is now called in histories “The Battle of Tuesday Market” by some, and in other places, “The Battle for Kingly Loyalty.” If I had to pick between the two, I like the “Market” title better, because I instigated the damned thing, and I had no loyalty to the king at all. But I’d rather name it “The Battle of Bloody Cobbles” or, better yet, “The Battle of Armed versus Unarmed.” At the time, we were aware of blood and slaughter, but would not have called it a battle.

  What happened during that long afternoon as we rode from the city is harder yet to explain. I ask the reader, if despite me there comes a reader, to reflect upon human nature and human habit, and perhaps he or she will understand. I admit I don’t.

  We left the city as a small troop of cavalry surrounding the king, accompanied by burghers and peasants on foot, and all of us assailed periodically by three brigades of infantry: Gorham’s first, fourth, and eighth regiments, The King’s Own, and the much smaller City Zouaves, to whom Colonel Kinnett was attached. Their form of assault was to press heavily against the dragoon
s, using nothing but their bayonet points lightly against the flanks of the horses, to get close enough to influence the king. With the peasantry the soldiers were not so considerate.

  We were in the river suburb, where as a child I had saved my pennies to ride the swanboats with my ragamuffin-love Charlan, when a great roar of enthusiasm rang through the dragoons, and at least two thousand horsemen swept through infantry and peasantry alike and joined with our little bodyguard. I did not know whether this was catastrophe or rescue, and I believe neither did the king, but they made around the royal person a ring of protection much larger than before, and the blue and white was fluttering at our head.

  “We have a chance,” shouted Benar into my ear. “I didn’t believe it until now, but we have a chance.” Then he added, “I have to piss. I have had to since we left the square. How can I stop all these?”

  I said, “You can’t. You don’t, sir. You lean over one stirrup, unbutton, and try not to dirty your own horse. Nor my leg, if you please.”

  As he continued to stare at me, I nodded my head forcefully. “That is how it is done. Among the Naiish they even… well, no matter. No one will see but me.”

  I was inaccurate in that, for Count Dinaos noticed and he laughed in the rudest fashion. But he is the king’s uncle.

  Before the early dusk of winter we received a letter, passed from horseman to horseman, that General Degump of the Zouaves wished the king to understand that his allegiance in this matter was not at all in question; they were all king’s men. Benar showed this missive to Dinaos and myself. “How can I ever trust the man?” he asked.

  It was Count Dinaos who answered, his mouth as bright with teeth as any shark’s . “You don’t trust him, Bennie. You use him. Put his men between your cavalry and the rest, where they will be first hit if there is a strike against you. See if they obey.”

  The Zouaves did obey, and I watched their blousy, brilliant uniforms and their black horses make a border around our strange assemblage.

  The speed at which a mass of soldiery can move seems to be inverse to its number, and my mare rested as she carried me. By dark—and marching men call it dark earlier than do riders—the crimson wagons of the City Zouaves had forced themselves forward to meet the king, filled with the finest of fine gear for winter camping. As it turned out, Benar commandeered an estate on the banks of the Velon River, and it was the Zouaves themselves who camped in the snow around it, making a circle of bright campfires around the bright windows of the mansion.

  I got to dine with the king and bunk with him as well, and I do not know whether this was from royal favor, or to make certain I was subject to the maximum risk.

  By now the cold had numbed my twice-damaged nose, but there were military doctors to see to the wound, and but for the interference of Count Dinaos I might have been subject to them, and perhaps had my nose amputated. Sieben the pirate stitched it up with fine silk thread he raided from the ladies’ chambers, and he used very small stitches, each of which hurt.

  “You may be presentable after all,” said the count, who watched all while swishing brandy in a blown snifter. “But if you are not, at least we will still have the painting. I am glad of that.”

  The pain of the needle brought tears to my eyes, and I was surprised to hear his voice very close in my ear. “It was you, wasn’t it, who thought to bring me along on this promenade? Not my nephew, but you?”

  I admitted as much.

  “Why?” he asked, and I could feel his breath in my right ear, and smell the fine old brandy he was holding to my lips. Blinking, I whispered that I didn’t know why, and he held the glass up for me to drink, and took it away again and kissed me. Through fumes and tears I could not see him at all.

  “Not that I feel that you owe me for the deed, Nazhuret. I am immensely amused by everything today except your Velonyan weather.”

  I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and then I could see him again, swirling his brandy, looking more bored than amused, and not at all like a man who had just kissed another man on the lips.

  “One by one,” he said, in the same languid tone, “your regimental and brigade commanders are coming to visit the king, explaining that any conflict was a hideous misunderstanding. The problem now will be to explain this crowd to your rebels as a mediation for peace.”

  “And the people? The commoners who followed us? Now that it’s cold and we’re…” I found it almost impossible to talk with the new stitches.

  Dinaos shrugged, and this gesture was freakishly like one of Arlin’s shrugs. I took the brandy from his hand without invitation and downed the glass. He looked less bored and more amused. “The peasants are gone, to wherever peasants go at night. Like birds, I suppose, they have their nests. Perhaps they will accompany us again tomorrow, if we strew crumbs of rhetoric.”

  I rose from the stool where Sieben had placed me, and it was in my mind to tread out into the snow and go “wherever the peasants go.” It seemed that there, finally, was my loyalty, and if their use in this expedition led to death by freezing, then I ought to freeze with them. I found my head a bit light, however, and my vision a bit speckled. The pirate took me by both shoulders.

  “Oh, and your dog is being warmed in the kitchen,” said Dinaos, still calmly. “Though if that is a dog, I am an Ighelun fisherman.”

  We were in one of the smaller dining rooms, where the rug had been rolled up to prevent the spatter of my blood in this surgery. I had forgotten the animal, but as Dinaos spoke I became aware of it, I don’t know how, and I pointed to the place from where I felt it. “There?”

  The count nodded. “Yes. The dragoons had a hard time with it, but it is locked away now.”

  “It—attacked them?”

  He made a face. “No, no, Nazhuret. It whined and wiggled and squirmed to be with you. They might have let it in out of compassion, but I said no, lest it joggle my man’s hand.”

  I saw the terrible creature in my mind’s eye, sliced open in the snow, and then rollicking, unharmed, behind me. “Tell me, my friend. This dog. Is its coat somewhat… pink?”

  “Pink? Oh, yes, I see what you mean. Yes, it bears all its wounds. What have you done to it?”

  Now I could stand without help. “I killed it.” I stepped in the direction of a white wooden door, and I felt strong enough to make the little journey to the kitchen.

  “And now you must kill it again?” he asked lightly. Sieben just stood there, one hand holding a bloody needle.

  “No,” I answered. “I don’t think so. Not anymore.”

  Behind the white door was an oven room, now cold, and behind it another door, this with a chair propped against it. I removed the chair and stepped into the lightless kitchen.

  I could hear it; a scraping over the tiles and a whine. There were two windows and only the light of campfires far below. “What this time?” I whispered to the wolf. “Do you try to kill me or do I try to kill you? Do you follow or… or do you lead?”

  Its nails clicked over the floor in a path that hugged the walls. It seemed about as eager to come to me as any wild beast is when locked in a room with man. “They said you loved me, you… thing. Or at least were firmly attached to me. Maybe the latter is more true. Maybe you like it as little as I do. Maybe you, too, have no choice in the matter.”

  Now I could see the pale form, so tall, so long, like a caricature of a starved dog. Its head was almost on the tiles, and its tail between its hind legs. It sought to hide under the iron stove, but I could still see it, and it knew.

  I was suddenly as weary as I deserved to be, and I sat down on the cold kitchen floor. I stopped looking at the wolf. “Once, we might have been very simple friends, you and I. I shared my food with you, but you wouldn’t share yours with me. Remember?

  “You took up with the werewolf. Or were you the werewolf? I ask you, was there a werewolf at all, or only a sick man?” I glanced up, and the wolf had crawled half out from under the stove, and its eyes shone at me green as beech leaves. I couldn’t
bear that beauty, so. I looked at my worn old hands instead.

  “Every time I have seen a ghost, and that is about every time I have killed a man, I have seen you, too. Yet I hadn’t killed you then. Only tossed a stone at you. In fact, weren’t you the ghost of the first man I killed? I thought so once.

  “Since then, I admit I have killed you. It was legitimate, for you were trying to kill me, or my horse. Weren’t you?”

  I looked up again and the eyes were very close to me. Green as jade. “Are you death, Whitey? My own private death, which has never found me, but which I am so good at inflicting upon others?

  “How do I come to have a white death that follows me? How do I come to create a banner for other men—to be a banner for men I cannot understand and who cannot understand me?” My eyes were filling with tears.

  “Whitey, I wish I had stayed a servant at Sordaling School all the days of my life. I wish with all my heart I had died with Arlin. I wish I could die now, and let all the world find its own way out of its mess. Even Navvie. I wish she were rid of me and could go her own lonely way.

  “If you’re here for revenge, Whitey, if you’re here to kill me as I killed you, then I will be very grateful.”

  I felt breath like hot brandy on my face and the white wolf licked both my eyes and the wound upon my face. It did not hurt at all, but shocked me like the kiss of Count Dinaos.

  The king found me just before daylight, still sitting on the cold kitchen floor, sound asleep. “Are you in ‘the belly of the wolf’?” he asked with heavy sarcasm. Climbing out of some dream I don’t remember, I answered, “No. He didn’t even bite.” On my hands and knees I looked around the room, but there was no beast there.