The Shadow of the Torturer

27. IS HE DEAD?

The Sanguinary Field, of which all my readers will have heard, though some, I hope, will never have visited it, lies northwest of the built sections of our capital of Nessus, between a residential enclave of city armigers and the barracks and stables of the Xenagie of the Blue Dimarchi. It is near enough the Wall to seem very near to someone like myself, who had never been near it at all, yet still leagues of hard walking by twisted avenues from the actual base. How many combats can be accommodated I do not know. It may be that the railings that delimit the grounds of each—upon which the spectators lean or sit as the fancy takes them—can be moved, and are adjusted to suit the evening’s needs. I have only visited the spot once, but it seemed to me, with its trampled grass and silent, languid watchers, a strange and melancholy one. During the brief time I have occupied the throne, many issues have been of more immediate concern than monomachy. Whether it is good or evil (as I am inclined to think), it is surely ineradicable in a society such as ours, which must for its own survival hold the military virtues higher than any others, and in which so few of the armed retainers of the state can be spared to police the populace. Yet is it evil?

Those ages that have outlawed it (and many hundreds have, by my reading) have replaced it largely with murder—and with just such murders, by and large, as monomachy seems designed to prevent: murders resulting from quarrels among families, friends, and acquaintances. In these cases two die instead of one, for the law tracks down the slayer (a person not by disposition a criminal but by chance) and slays him, as though his death would restore his victim’s life. Thus if, say, a thousand legal combats between individuals resulted in a thousand deaths (which is very unlikely, since most such combats do not terminate in death) but prevented five hundred murders, the state would be no worse. Further, the survivor of such a combat is likely to be the individual most suited to defending the state, and also the most suited to engendering healthy children; while there is no survivor of most murders, and the murderer (were he to survive) is likely to be only vicious, and not strong, quick, or intelligent. And yet how readily this practice lends itself to intrigue.

We heard the shouted names when we were still a hundred strides away, loudly and formally announced above the trilling of the hylas.

“Cadroe of the Seventeen Stones!”

“Sabas of the Parted Meadow!”

“Laurentia of the House of the Harp!” (This in a woman’s voice.)

“Cadroe of the Seventeen Stones!”

I asked Agia who it was who thus called.

“They have given challenges, or have been challenged themselves. By bawling their names—or having a servant do it for them—they advertise that they have come, and to the world that their opponent has not.”

“Cadroe of the Seventeen Stones!”

The vanishing sun, whose disc was now a quarter concealed behind the impenetrable blackness of the Wall, had dyed the sky with gamboge and cerise, vermillion and lurid violet. These colors, falling upon the throng of monomachists and loungers much as we see the aureate beams of divine favor fall on hierarchs in art, lent them an appearance insubstantial and thaumaturgic, as though they had all been produced a moment before by the flourish of a cloth and would vanish into the air again at a whistie.

“Laurentia of the House of the Harp!”

“Agia,” I said, and from somewhere nearby we heard the choking death makes in a man’s throat. “Agia, you are to call out, ‘Severian of the Matachin Tower.’ “ “I’m not your servant. Bawl it yourself if you want it bawled.”

“Cadroe of the Seventeen Stones!”

“Don’t look at me like that, Severian. I wish we hadn’t come! Severian! Severian of the Torturers! Severian of the Citadel! Of the Tower of Pain! Death! Death is come! “ My hand caught her just below the ear and she went sprawling, the avern on its pole beside her.

Dorcas gripped my arm. “You ought not have done that, Severian.”

“It was only the flat of my hand. She’ll be all right.”

“She will hate you even more.”

“Then you think she hates me now?”

Dorcas did not answer, and a moment later I myself forgot for the time being that I had asked the question—some distance away among the crowd, I had seen an avern.

The ground was a level circle some fifteen strides across, railed off save for an entrance at either end.

The ephor called: “The adjudication of the avern has been offered and accepted. Here is the place. The time is now. It only remains to be decided whether you will engage as you are, naked, or otherwise. How say you?” Before I could speak, Dorcas called, “Naked. That man is in armor.” The Septentrion’s grotesque helm swung from side to side in negation. Like most cavalry helmets it left the ears bare to better hear the graisle and the shouted orders of the wearer’s superiors; in the shadow behind the cheekpiece I thought I saw a narrow band of black, and tried to recall where I had seen such a thing before.

The ephor asked, “You refuse, hipparch?”

“The men of my country do not go naked save in the presence of women alone.”

“He wears armor,” Dorcas called again. “This man has not even a shirt.” Her voice, always so soft before, rang in the twilight like a bell. “I will remove it.” The Septentrion threw back his cape and raised a gauntleted hand to the shoulder of his cuirass. It slipped from him and fell at his feet. I had expected a chest as massive as Master Gurloes’s, but the one I saw was narrower than my own.

“The helmet also.”

Again the Septentrion shook his head, and the ephor asked, “Your refusal is absolute?”

“It is.” There was a barely perceptible hesitation. “I can only say that I am instructed not to remove it.”

The ephor turned to me. “We none of us would desire, I think, to embarrass the hipparch, and still less the personage—I do not say whom it may be—that he serves. I believe the wisest course would be to allow you, sieur, some compensating advantage. Have you one to suggest?” Agia, who had been silent since I had struck her, said, “Refuse the combat, Severian. Or reserve your advantage until you need it.” Dorcas, who was loosening the strips of rag that bound the avern, said also, “Refuse the combat.”

“I’ve come too far to turn back now.”

The ephor asked pointedly, “Have you decided, sieur?”

“I think I have.” My mask was in my sabretache. Like all those used in the guild it was of thin leather stiffened with strips of bone. Whether it would keep out the thrown leaves of the avern I had no way of knowing—but it was satisfying to hear the lookers—on draw breath when I snapped it open. “You are ready now? Hipparch? Sieur? Sieur, you must give that sword to someone to hold for you. No weapon but the avern may be carried.” I looked about for Agia, but she had vanished into the crowd. Dorcas handed me the deadly blossom, and I gave her Terminus Est.

“Begin!”

A leaf whizzed close to my ear. The Septentrion was advancing with an irregular motion, his avern gripped beneath the lowest leaves by his left hand, and his right thrust forward as though to wrestle mine from me. I recalled that Agia had warned me of the danger of this, and clasped it as close as I dared. For the space of five breaths we circled. Then I struck at his outstretched hand. He countered with his plant. I raised my own above my head like a sword, and as I did so realized the position was an ideal one—it put the vulnerable stem out of my opponent’s reach, permitted me to slash downward with the whole plant at will, yet allowed me to detach leaves with my right hand. This last discovery I put to the test at once, snapping off a leaf and sending it skimming toward his face. Despite the protection his helm gave him he ducked, and the crowd behind him scattered to avoid the missile. I followed it with another. And then another, which struck his own in flight. The result was remarkable. Instead of absorbing the other’s momentum and clattering down together as inanimate blades would, the leaves appeared to writhe and wind their edged lengths about each other, slashing and striking with their points so rapidly that before they had fallen a cubit they were no more than ragged strips of blackish-green that turned to a hundred colors and spun like a child’s top…

Something, or someone, was pressing against my back. It was as though an unknown stood close behind me, his spine against mine, exerting a slight pressure. I felt cold, and was grateful for the warmth of his body. “Severian! “ The voice was Dorcas’s, but she seemed to have wandered away.

“Severian! Won’t anyone help him? Let me go! “

The peal of a carillon. The colors, which I had taken to be those of the struggling leaves, were in the sky instead, where a rainbow unrolled beneath the aurora. The world was a great paschal egg, crowded with all the colors of the palette. Near my head a voice inquired, “Is he dead?” and someone answered matter-of-factly, “That’s it. Those things always kill. Unless you want to see them drag him off?”

The Septentrion’s voice (oddly familiar) said, “I claim victor right to his clothing and weapons. Give me that sword.”

I sat up. The leaves were still faintly struggling wisps a few paces from my boots. The Septentrion stood beyond them, still holding his avern. I drew breath to ask what had happened, and something fell from my chest to my lap; it was a leaf with a bloodstained tip.

Seeing me, the Septentrion whirled and lifted his avern. The ephor stepped between us, arms extended. From the railings some spectator called, “Gentle right! Gentle right, soldier! Let him stand up and get his weapon.” My legs would hardly bear me. I looked around stupidly for my own avern, and found it at last only because it lay near the feet of Dorcas, who was struggling with Agia. The Septentrion shouted, “He should be dead!” The ephor said, “He is not, hipparch. When he regains his weapon, you may pursue the combat.” I touched the stem of my avern, and for an instant felt I had grasped the tail of some cold-blooded but living animal. It seemed to stir in my hand, and the leaves rattled. Agia was shouting, “Sacrilege!” and I paused to look at her, then picked up the avern and turned to face the Septentrion. His eyes were shadowed by his helmet, but there was terror in every line of his body. For a moment he seemed to look from me to Agia. Then he turned and fled toward the opening in the rails at his end of the arena. The spectators blocked his way and he used his avern like a scourge, striking to right and left. There was a scream, then a crescendo of screams. My own avern was pulling me backward, or rather, my avern was gone and someone gripped me by the hand. Dorcas. Somewhere far away Agia shrieked, “Agilus!” and another woman called, “Laurentia of the House of the Harp!”