On Blue's waters

- 12-
WAR

I am not sure how long it has been since I wrote all this about the breakbull’s head. I might guess, so many days or so many weeks, but what does it matter? A week of war is a year, a month of war a lifetime.

I have been wounded. That is why I am back here now, and why I have had the leisure to read so much of this tissue of half-truths. (Of lies I have told to myself.) And it is why I have the leisure to write.

My wound throbs. A physician has given me a pretty little pot containing some dirty, sticky stuff I am to chew, the dried sap of some plant or other. When I chew it my wound is a drum beaten softly very far away, but I cannot think. Everything flows together, dancing with Seawrack in the swirling waves of my thought and taking on unimaginable colors-the play of candlelight on Pig’s blind face as he ate soup, Babbie rushing upon the devil-fish, Nettle screaming with pain and relief as Hide followed Hoof. If I were to take a pinch from the pink porcelain pot now, the wall of this room would blush for my self-pity.

I do not believe I have written this by daylight before. Why not say that was why I had not noticed how much falsehood is in it.

Where to begin?

Nothing about my travels with Seawrack and Krait today. I have too much to recount that is recent. Let us begin with the war.

No, let me spit my bile. Then I will begin with the river. With the Nadi, the town of Han upriver, Han’s invasion, and the first fighting.

Bile: I finished reading this one hour ago, appalled by my own hypocrisy. Particularly sickened by the last few words I wrote before the outbreak of the war. Did I really think that I could lie like that to myself, and make myself believe it? While all the time I was imagining myself Silk, forever thinking of what Silk would do or say? Silk would have been ruthlessly honest with himself, and worse.

No more. My hand was shaking so badly that I laid down the quill just now, raging against myself. I wanted to get up and retrieve my azoth, to press it against my own breastbone and feel the demon beneath my thumb. Wanted to, I say, but I am too weak to leave my chair. Moti came in with a little brass kettle and mint tea, and I could have killed her, not because I have anything against the sweet child, but as a substitute for myself. I handed her my dagger and told her to stab me between the shoulder blades, because I lacked the courage to drive in the point. Bent my head and shut my eyes. What would I have done if she had obeyed?

Died.

My dagger lies on the carpet now not two cubits from this chair, long, straight, and strong. Thick at the back so that it will not bend when I stab someone.

Someone, I say, and mean someone else.

Not stab myself. I will not do that. If I need more courage than I have to live, I will pretend to have it and live anyway. I did that on the battlefield. How frightened I was afterward, and how ridiculous I feel now!

My hands shook. It was all that I could do to keep my voice steady, and perhaps it was not, or not always. I acted the part of a hero. That is to say, I acted as it seemed to me I would have if I had actually possessed dauntless courage. They believed me. What fools we were, all of us, losing battle after battle!

But O you gods of the Short Sun, what a thing it is! What a thing it is to see frightened men stop and reload, and fight again!

They were too many for us. All you had to do was listen to the shooting, three and four shots from them for each one of ours.

Choora. That is the word they use here for this kind of a dagger. I have been trying to think of it. Choora. It sounds like one of my wives, and no doubt it could be a woman’s name as well, a woman slim and straight, with brown cheeks and golden bangles in her ears and nose. Loyally, Choora remained at my side when we charged and when we broke; and if she never drew a single drop of blood, it was my fault and not hers. All hail Princess Choora!

I traded for the big chopping knives in Pajarocu. Maybe I should have given each a name, but I never did. If Choora is a princess, they were a washerwoman and a maid of all work; but there are times when a sturdy girl who will turn her hand to whatever may be needed is better than a princess with a coral pommel.

A strange expression-“turn her hand.” Did somebody travel once with a woman who had only one arm? Yes, and it was I. And did he sleep with her, and make gentle love to her as I did in our cozy corner under the little foredeck? Were neither of them ever quite able to forget that he had raped her once?

I have tried hard to punish myself for that, and certain other things. No more. Let the Outsider punish me; we deceive ourselves when we think that we can measure out justice to ourselves. I wanted to end my guilt. What was just about that? I should feel guilty. I deserve it.

I should feel a lot more guilty about having had other women while I was (as I still am) wed to poor Nettle. When I read that business about my thoughts flying around her bed, I was sickened.

Sickened!

For all our lives I have been a false lover and a false friend. I would beg her to forgive me if I could. If only I could. I do not dream about her anymore.

Is that bile enough? No, but there will be more later as the occasion demands. As the mood strikes. Let us move on to the river.

That is what I would have called this half-baked book of mine, if only I had thought of it in time: The River. The title would stand equally for the great river on Shadelow-the river on whose bank we found Pajarocu-and for our own much smaller Nadi. (Another wife, a temptress in a swirling skirt, with flashing eyes and hurrying feet, sensuous and tempestuous, suddenly languid and lazily thrilling; a woman like gold at evening, full of blood and crocodiles.)

Anyway, it was my fault. No doubt it always is.

I had set some men to work to tame Nadi’s Lesser Cataracts. First, because I knew we would become richer if we could trade more with the towns nearer the sea, and second because we had men who needed work and could find none except at harvest. To raise the money, I made every foreign merchant who came to our market pay a tax, so much for each man and so much for each beast.

I also lopped the heads of two men who had collected the tax for me and kept part of the money for themselves. I was proud then, and talked to myself about “iron justice.” Yes, iron justice, and I killed two men who had been boys in the Whorl when I myself was a boy there. I do not mean I killed them with my own hands; I did not, but they died at my order, and would have lived without it. What else can you call it? Steely justice from the big, curved blade of my executioner’s sword. How does he feel, that hulking, hard-faced man, slaying men who have done him no harm? Chopping off hands? No worse than I, I hope. Better. I would not want an innocent man to feel the way I do.

I have been away a long time. Will my wives expect me to sleep with them tonight? What will I say to them?

The work went far faster than I had imagined. Our men dug, they blew rock to rubble with powder from the armory, and soon there was a second Nadi, slower, longer, and narrower, looping around the rapids, a Nadi only just deep enough for small boats; but Nadi herself is taking care of that, and quickly, cutting into the red clay and bearing it off. She is still swift in both her divided selves, but not so swift in her new one that boats cannot be hauled around the rapids with bullocks. The Man of Han asked us to cut another such channel around the Cataracts upriver so that boats that reached Gaon could reach Han also. Our merchants were against it, as was only to be expected.

So was I. Hari Mau and I made a trip with the surveyors to look at possible routes, and everything was much worse-steeper slopes, and a lot more rock. All of us agreed it would take a long time and might never be suitable for boats of any size, which would have to be hauled along a lengthy ladder of sharp bends. I told the Man of Han that he would have to pay our workers, and that the work would take years. He offered to send men of his own, which we refused.

As you see, I have made the old design. Does it mean that I am going to continue this folly? No doubt. Nettle will never read it, I know. Neither will my sons. Or I should say, neither will the sons I left behind on Lizard Island. [Nettle has read it. So have Hoof and I.-Hide]

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-

I do not know what word to use.

The pet? The adopted daughter? The hook-studded lure of the old sea goddess? Very likely she was all three. Why should the sea call to her then? It had her. Only after she had left it, only when she was trying to put it behind her in that crude and dirty little village on the bank of the great river, did the sea sing to Seawrack as Seawrack herself sings to me tonight.

Up there I wrote that I could close my eyes and see the great river again. I can, and hear it again, too: the nearly stagnant water whispering as it slips past, the narrow little boat that holds only a single paddler, the mournful cries of the snake-necked seabirds (for there were still seabirds aplenty, although we were leagues from the sea), the rising mist, and the distant howl of a felwolf. The vast and empty flatness of it, so lonely and so desolate.

All that has vanished now. When I try to summon it again as I sit here between the lampstands, I see only Seawrack, the long, supple line of her legs, hips, and back.

Only the thrust of her pink-tipped breasts and the whiteness of her flesh, when first she left the sea.

The head gardener came yesterday after I had stopped writing. He was tired and so was I, yet we talked for over an hour. I believe I can trust him if I can trust anybody; and I have already resolved to trust Chota, so as to have somebody to keep watch. I might not be able to move the stone by myself, and might re-open the wound in my side if I try. Two of us should be able to move it pretty easily.

If I am any judge, Mehman is not one to flinch, but I wish that Krait and Sinew were here with me.

The armorer came this morning with a dozen swords, most far too long, and no needier. He had given all the needlers out to our officers, he said. I told him that he had kept one for himself and ordered him to give it to me, but he wept and groveled, swearing that he had not. One of my guards may have one. I hope so. If not, the short sword and Choora, with Hyacinth’s azoth hidden under my tunic, to be used only in the gravest extreme.

Tonight I called a meeting: wives, guards, and servants. I told them that I was going out tomorrow and taking Mahawat and the remaining guards with me. (There are only half a dozen.) Pehla will be in charge, as she was when I was upriver before I was wounded. Mehman and his assistants are to guard the palace. (I solemnly handed out the rest of the swords to the old men and boys he has found to help him.) We leave at shadeup, so I had better get some sleep.

What a day! What a night, for that matter. I have never been so tired.

I had just gotten into bed and closed my eyes, when here was Evensong slipping under the bedclothes beside me, quite naked except for a good deal of the sandlewood scent I gave her the other day. I thought that she must have hidden in my room when I believed she had gone out, and told her sternly that she must not do it; but she says she climbed in through a window. She wanted to go too, and since I had already told her something about the other matter I said she could. Her gratitude knew no bounds.

We rose before the sun, dressed, got a little fruit to eat on the way, and were off. I had asked Hari Mau to find me a trooper who knew the forest, and he had-but Merciful Molpe, he was only a boy. He had a slug gun and swore that he was fifteen, but I would guess him thirteen at most. It was crowded on the elephant with my six guards (all big men) and their weapons, Evensong, “Trooper“ Darjan, and me. I was glad to get off.

Darjan made a little speech when we reached the forest, inspired by Hari Mau I feel quite sure. How thick the growth, how low and wet the ground, how many thorns-no one could go through. When he had finished, I asked whether he had ever gone through it.

“Not through, Rajan.”

“Well, did you ever go in there?”

“Yes, Rajan, I used to play in there when I was smaller.” (By which he must have meant before he learned to walk.)

I told him to start in, and I would follow him. We would go two leagues north, then turn east and see what we could. He nodded and began to pick his way through the tangle. I told Mahawat to follow me, but to keep some distance.

In the beginning I kept my eyes on Darjan and walked where he had, snagging my tough cotton military tunic at every step and mightily tempted to use the azoth-but also determined not to reveal to anyone, including him, that I had it. After about an hour of that the Neighbors’ gift came back to me, as it had on Green. Perhaps I had never really lost it, but only lost sight of it.

Whether or not that last is true, it became apparent to me that Darjan was not choosing the best way. I took it, and was soon so far ahead that I was forced to stop and wait for him. After that, we both had to wait for my elephant.

I had been of two minds about that elephant. To begin with, on Green I had seen that even the largest animals can penetrate thick cover, as the wallowers we hunted here had. (If elephants can be domesticated, why not wallowers? We must try it.) Their size and strength let them force the heaviest growth, while their leathery skins protect them from all but the worst scratches.

On the other hand you have warts, as my father used to say, the wart in this case being that these large animals are too big to pass between big, solid trunks growing close together. Fortunately this forest has only a few large trees, and a great many bushes and saplings.

It seemed that the elephant had little experience of such places, but he learned his business quickly. After the first hour or so, he was going faster than Darjan, so that Darjan, whom we had brought along to guide us, was in danger of being trodden flat. I had told Mahawat to watch me and go where I did, but the elephant learned how to do that before Mahawat did, keeping the tip of one trunk touching my headcloth and padding along behind me with surprisingly little noise. We had struck the tent before setting out; but Evensong and my guards had a rough time of it just the same, having to lie flat on the platform and fend off the limbs and twigs any way they could.

I had intended to stop at the edge of the forest and wait for one of the Hannese trains of mules and pack horses to pass, then attack it from behind; but in that I had not counted on the elephant. He was so happy to see an open space that he ran past us and out onto the road before Mahawat could get him stopped.

I got back up then, very glad of a chance to sit down after all the walking I had done, and told Mahawat he would have to get us back under the trees where we could not be seen. Mahawat agreed, but the elephant did not. When he realized that we wanted him to go back into the forest, he rebelled, charging up the road like an eight-legged talus while trumpeting with both trunks in a way that I found frightening myself and that absolutely terrified poor Evensong. I suppose I have heard as many women scream as most men have, and I may even have heard more than most men, having heard a good many wounded Trivigaunti troopers when Nettle and I fought for General Mint; but Evensong’s scream is in a class by itself. It is louder and shriller than the scream of any other woman I have ever met with, and it lasts two or three times longer.

Nettle, I know that you will never read this, nor would I wish you to; but I am going to pretend you will. Try to imagine us, my six guards, Evensong, Mahawat, and me (with Darjan lost in the dust behind us), holding on to anything and everything in reach and every one of us about to fall off, as we rounded a turn in the road and found ourselves among three or four hundred Hannese lancers.

A few days ago I wrote that our elephants could not be induced to charge the enemy. I was wrong. This one did, and you have never seen so many shaggy little ponies thrown into such a state of abject panic. Perhaps no one has.

When I think back on it, it seems miraculous that even one of us escaped alive. Riders were being thrown left and right, and few of those who stayed in their saddles seemed to have slug guns or needlers. The road turned again, but my elephant kept running in a straight line, into a sort of cleft between two masses of rock. Before long his sides were scraping and Mahawat got him back under control. A handful of horsemen tried to follow us in, but a few shots from my guards quickly put an end to that. Eventually we found our way onto a gende slope dotted with brambles. It became lower and wetter, trees took the place of the brambles, and we were back in the familiar “impassable” forest.

By that time all of us were very glad to be there, even my elephant.

Morning, but dark as night with pounding rain. No one came to awaken me-or what is more likely, Pehla did but the guard at my door would not admit her. Very late morning, I ought to have said. I have slept twelve hours at least.

I would like some tea and something to eat, but I wanted to read over what I wrote last night first, and make a few corrections. (I seldom correct anything, as you will have seen, but in this case there were far too many simple errors in spelling and the like. I have recopied one whole sheet, and thrown the old one away.)

But before I tell the guard I am awake and send him for some breakfast, I cannot resist speculating a little. Was what we did of any real value? If it simply shows the enemy that the “impassable” forest is indeed passable, it may have been worse than useless. If it teaches us (and compels them) to watch that flank, it will have been well worth doing. I must see that it does, and that further raids are organized and carried out.

What, you will ask, became of Trooper Darjan? The truth is that I do not know. By the time we had gotten clear of the enemy horsemen, I had forgotten him utterly; and I seem to have been too fatigued last night to spare him a thought, although I was stupidly determined to write down everything before I slept. Silk would have remembered him for the rest of his life.

I stopped writing this long enough to scribble a note to Hari Mau asking about Darjan. I called him “my guide.” Hari Mau should be able to tell me whether he returned safely.

I also asked about the men’s comfort. We knew the rainy season would begin soon and tried to make provision for it. Now that it has begun, I must see that the waterproof cloaks are actually handed out to the men who need them, that they get the meals and hot tea and so on. I will set out for the front this afternoon, assuming I am well enough.

The winter wheat should have been planted before this; now it is too late. Not much was. The shortages will only get worse, although three boadoads of food from Bahar arrived yesterday. Two to the troopers, one sold in the market to help raise money for I more.

We must have an animal of some sort tonight. I meant to take I our milch cow, but with the gardener there I cannot risk it. I should have diought of this sooner. I will have to find something else today if we are to do it tonight. Not my horse, because I cannot spare him. Not the elephant, eidier. We could not control him, and Mahawat sleeps in his stall with him in any case.

No, someone else will have to find a suitable animal for me. I will be too busy, and everything I do is noticed.

Breakfast.

Chandi brought in my breakfast tray, solicitous of my health while trying very hard to keep a scratched cheek turned away from me. I asked her how it happened, expecting her to say she fell. (How long has it been since I thought about old Generalissmo Oosik? Not since Nettle and I wrote, I am sure.) She surprised me by saying she had bent to pick a rose in the garden and the bush scratched her. There is a variety there that blooms almost constantly, so her story was not as absurd as one might think. It was original and imaginative, too.

But not true. She has been fighting with a sister-wife, and I can guess which. I told her to send Pehla in to me, and she went, pale and silent. Chandi thinks she used to be my favorite, so it is easy to see what happened.

Back again. (I almost wrote home.) Two days of rain, wet and mud. My wound throbs and my right ankle hurts, but dry and comfortable otherwise. Evening-nearly eight by the big clock.

Saw the men. It is not as good as I had hoped. I sent a third of them home. Hari Mau objected so violently that I was afraid I was going to have to put him under arrest. He says that if the enemy attacks we are done. I told him the truth, that the enemy will not attack again until the rains end, that in this weather two boys and a dog could hold off a hundred men.

The men I sent home are to come back in a week. (I imagine that at least half will have to be dragged back.) When they return, we will send home another third. I told the men, or at least I told as many as I could reach.

Spoke to the head gardener again before I left. I tried to give him money and asked him to buy a goat. He said a cow would be better, and he would find one. You never know with these people.

Chicken for my supper, chopped up and mixed with fruit and pepper in the usual way. Since I see it like that twice a week at least, it should not have reminded me of anything, but it made me think of the meat pudding we got in the market at Wichote, and I should be writing about that anyway instead of all this day-to-day stuff. Just imagine what this record would be like if I had written about everything in the same way that I have been setting down these daily doings of mine. “I got a splinter in my finger today-left, index-while scraping the third cargo chest on the starboard side, and Seawrack kissed it for me.”

No, it really could not be like that, because we would still be a hundred pages at least from Seawrack, the bat-fish, and the floating isles. Back with Mucor and Maytera, in all likelihood.

At any rate, we-I-bought a species of pudding there on market day. I had never seen one like it before, and the woman selling them said they were good (naturally) so I took a chance and traded a silver earring for one. It was dried meat pounded to powder and mixed with fat and dried berries of several kinds (two black, one red and deliciously tart, and one green and fruity as I remember). Not bad-tasting, but a moderate slice of it left me feeling overfull for two days, and it was too much like what we had been eating, the breakbull meat Seawrack had smoked.

That night-I shall never forget it-Krait woke me. Or it might be better to say that by trying to approach me while I slept he stirred up Babbie enough to wake me. “I’ve found it,” he told me. “Pajarocu.”

I started to reply, but he laid a finger to his lips and motioned toward the stern.

“It’s a long way. It will take ten days or more.”

My heart sank. I had been thinking that Seawrack and I would have another month of travel at least. “The lander’s still there?”

“Yes.” He looked around cautiously at the other boats as he spoke, his reptilian eyes gleaming in the Greenlight; and I wondered why he should be afraid that the people on them might hear him, when I knew that Seawrack could not. “They still have quite a few empty places, too. About half, a woman told me, even though their town is full of men who have come to make the trip.”

“What sort of a town is it? A real town like New Viron? Or is it more like this?” By a gesture I indicated the huts at the water’s edge.

He grinned. “It’s more like one of ours, Father dear. You won’t like it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Why should I tell you and have you call me a liar to my face?”

“You are a liar, Krait. You know that much better than I do.”

He shrugged and looked angry.

“Did you talk to He-hold-fire?”

“No. Just to whoever was still awake and willing to trade a bit of gossip with me.” He watched me silently, weighing me in scales that I could not even imagine. “Are we going to take Seawrack with us?”

I hedged. “Let’s hear what she has to say. I don’t think she wants to go.”

“She wants to do what you want her to do. Why force her to guess what it is you want?”

“Then I won’t. I won’t take Babbie, either. This whole continent seems to be covered with trees.” I was thinking of Babbie living the natural life of his kind in the forest. I did not know whether there were wild hus on Shadelow, but it certainly seemed like a place where he could live happily.

“Was it like this around Pajarocu?”

“More so. The trees are bigger up the river. Bigger and older, and not so sleepy.”

“Then I’ll let him go. Free him. Why shouldn’t he be happy?”

“I should’ve told you we can’t take him anyway. No animals. You could sell him to somebody there, perhaps.”

I shook my head. Babbie was my friend.

“Seawrack’s going to be the problem. I don’t think you realize it yet, Horn, but she is.”

I wanted to say that she had not been a problem until he came, that she had helped me in all sorts of ways, but it would have been such an obvious opening for him that at the last moment I did not speak.

“An aid and a comfort.” He grinned again, fangs out. “Don’t jump like that. I can’t read your mind. I read your face.”

“You saw the truth there,” I told him. “How do we get to Pajarocu?”

“I know something about human ways, as you’ve seen. But you, being human, not only know them but understand them. Or so I assume.”

“Sometimes,” I said.

“Sometimes. I like that. Have I ever told you how much I like you, Horn?”

I nodded. “More often than I’ve believed it.”

“I do. The thing that I like is that I can never tell when you’re being truthful. Most of you lie constantly, as Seawrack does. A few of you are practically always truthful, this Silk you like to talk about would seem to have been one of those. Both are boring, but you aren’t. You make me guess over and over.”

I asked what his own practice was, although I knew.

“The same as yours. That’s another reason to like you. Seriously now, you need to think about your woman, not as I would but as you would. She’s a human being, exactly as you are. Don’t settle for an easy answer and put it out of your mind.”

“I do that too much.”

“I’m glad you know it.”

I sat on the gunwale. “What is it you’re trying to get me to say? That I need your advice?”

“I doubt that you do. I merely think that you haven’t thought as much as you should about the situation she’ll face, left alone in Pajarocu.”

“She’ll have Babbie to protect her.”

“So much for a life of woodsy freedom. You wanted to know how to get there. Up the river, right at the first fork and left at the second. I know that’s not what your map shows, but I followed the rivers to get back here. That’s it, and a long fly it was.”

“Do you think they’ll let three of us, all supposedly from New Viron, have places on the lander?”

Krait nodded. “It’s barely half full, I told you that, and they’ll want to go before winter, since nobody’s likely to come after the bad weather sets in. The ones who are there already are getting impatient, too. If they wait much longer, they’ll be losing more than they gain.”

Evensong came. This time I watched her slip through my window. When peace returns (if it does) I’m going to have another sentry in the garden. Or bars on these windows. Bars would be more practical, I suppose, but I cannot forget how I hated the bars on the windows of my manse.

I told her that it would be hours yet, and I wanted to get a few hours sleep before we went out. She said she did, too, but her sister-wives would not let her. She asked who would wake us when it was time, and I told her I would wake myself.

As I now have. We will go soon. I will wake Evensong and give her the note I have prepared, a blank piece of paper with a seal. She will leave by the window, bring her note to the sentry at my door, and demand to be admitted. He will refuse. I will open my door (pretending that their voices have awakened me), look at her paper, get dressed, and leave with her. We will meet the head gardener at the lower gate.

Just writing those words made me think of the garden at my manteion at home. We sprats said Patera Pike’s garden, and then almost without a pause to catch breath, Patera Silk’s. With barely another pause, we are old, the garden a ruin (I sat there for a while just the same), and that spot, in which some nameless much earlier augur had made his garden, a hundred thousand leagues away or some such ridiculous number. “Do you imagine that a man of your age will find another woman as young as she is?” Krait asked me. He wanted her on the lander, of course; I know that now. “Or one as beautiful?” Trying to be gallant, I told him there were no other women as beautiful as Seawrack.

Nor are there.

Evensong is as young-I would not be surprised if she were a year or two younger. Nettle was never beautiful or even pretty, but my heart melted each time she smiled. It would melt again if I could see her smile tonight.

I must have a needier, and get it without taking it from someone who will use it against the enemy.

We cannot surrender. I cannot. Because I could not leave Pig blind, these people were able to bring me here, and so ended any chance of success I might have had. You could argue that I owe them nothing, and in a sense I believe that it is true; but to say that I owe them nothing is one thing, and to say that they deserve to be despoiled, raped, and enslaved is another and a very different thing.

All this time I have tried to be Silk for them. I have thought of Silk day and night-what would he do? What would he say under these circumstances? On what principles would he make his decision? Yet to every such question there is just the one answer: he would do what was right and good, and in doubt, he would side against his own interests. That is what I must do.

What I will do. I will try to be what he tried to be. He succeeded, after all.

I have been pacing up and down this big bedroom. This palatial bedroom my oppressors built for me. Pacing in my slippers, so as not to wake Evensong or let the guard at my door know I am awake. When I came here I was a prisoner-a prisoner who was respected, true. I was treated with great kindness and even reverence by Hari Mau and his friends, but I was a prisoner just the same. I knew it, and so did they.

Let me be honest with myself, tonight and always. With myself most of all. That has changed, had changed even before the war. I am their ruler, their caldé. I could leave here at any time, simply by putting a few things into saddlebags, mounting, and riding away. No one would lift a finger to stop me. Who would dare?

I said I could; but I cannot. A prisoner is free to get away if he can. I am no prisoner, and so I cannot. I said I owed them nothing; let that stand. Better-I owe this town and its collective population nothing, because I was taken from the Whorl against my will. But what about the individuals who make up the town? Do I owe Hari Mau and my troopers nothing? Men I have bled with?

What about Bahar? (I take one example where I might have a hundred.) He was one of those who forced me to come here. At my order he bought a boat, boarded it, and left his native place, reminding me forcefully of a man named Horn I used to know. I have not the slightest doubt that he has been working at his task, and doing it as well as it can be done. Three boatloads of good, simple, cheap food so far, and it would not surprise me if three more docked tomorrow. At my order he went without a word of protest, leaving his shop to his apprentices. Do I owe Bahar nothing?

Say I do. It is wrong, but say it.

What about my wives? Pehla and Alubukhara are with child. I have lain beside every one of them, and whispered words of love that to many men mean nothing at all. Am I, their husband, to be numbered among those men?

I say that I am not. Neither were the teachings I tried to pass along to my sons things that I myself did not believe. I am a bad man, granted. Sinew always thought so, and Sinew was right. I am no Silk, but am I as bad as that? I left Nettle, but I did not leave her to be raped and murdered.

Lastly, Evensong and all the people of Han. Say that she counts only as a wife, that she means no more to me than Chandi. Does she mean less? She has a mother and a father, brothers and sisters, two uncles and three aunts, all of whom she loves. They are at the mercy of a tyrant, and if Gaon loses or surrenders they will remain at his mercy.

If we win, there will be no difficulty about getting a needier, or anything.

I have been writing here, I see, about that town on the river. It seems so very long ago.

Where did I put Maytera’s eye? In the top drawer at the back, to be sure. Should I put it in a saddlebag now? How happy she will be!

And my robe. I must have my robe and the corn. Where is that?

Found it-back of wardrobe. I put Olivine’s eye in the pocket. On Green I learned the secret the inhumi wish nobody to know. I promised not to reveal it, but who will ever read this, besides me? Although I swore, I did not swear not to reveal my oath. I can threaten them as well as save them, and I will do both.

We must win this war.

Then I will go home.