In Green's Jungles (29 page)

He sat in silence for a moment, struck by a new thought. "You, with all your magic, Rajan. You should be at the front with the troops. Why are you here?"

"To raise the money I promised the mercenaries. I have enough now, or nearly enough. For one month's pay, that is."

"They offered to serve you for nothing. I was there, and that was when you ordered them to take my needler… "

"Yes?"

"I had it again when we returned to this whorl. You had them take it from me a second time. And those troopers, the great worm tore them to bits. Horrible! But they were alive again, and the General's daughter was dead."

"You said you had come to help me," I reminded him.

"Yes. Can you foresee the future? That's what one of the men from your own town told me."

"Not always."

"But sometimes. Often, I think. Do you agree that Blanko's horde will be defeated?"

I said (patiently, I hope) that he had said so, and that I deferred to his greater knowledge of military matters.

"Girl come," Oreb cautioned us.

"That will be my host's wife," I said. "I hope we haven't disturbed her."

"Who will win the war? You must know! Tell me quickly and truthfully." Sfido swallowed. "I do not plead. Never! Not even when our Duko condemned me. But tell me, Rajan, if you will, and I'll be in your debt till Hierax takes me."

"Blanko."

I had already heard Volanta's feet on the stairs going down into the shop. She came in before I could say more. "Incanto? Is this man bothering you?"

I shook my head. "I'm bothering him, I'm afraid. I've been keeping him from the rest he needs."

"Fish heads?" Oreb suggested.

"And the food too, you're right. I doubt that he can buy anything this late, but a lot of people are still celebrating. Someone might give a hungry man something, if he were approached in the right way."

Volanta had started for her kitchen before I finished. "There's some soup left, I'll heat it up for him. Bread and soup, that's the best supper."

"I'm too tired to eat," Sfido murmured, and licked his lips.

For the first time I was able to make out the narrow mustache that had almost faded into his sprouting beard. I declared that he would have to eat something, a few bites of bread and a little of the soup, so that Volanta would not be disappointed.

"Blanko will win? You're quite sure?"

I shrugged.

"Our best troops are at Olmo. Do you know about that? Olmo was plotting to turn against us, and in war one takes the weaker enemy first, so he can't put his knife in your back while you're fighting the stronger one. Besides, sacking Olmo will steady Novella Citta."

I explained that a messenger who managed to get through the Soldese lines had told me this afternoon that Olmo was besieged, and that was why the town was celebrating.

"We're not going to starve them out." Sfido spoke like a man certain of his information. "The assault must be nearly ready, if it hasn't already begun. Your horde can't hold the passes. They've been driven back twice, and General Morello's merely amusing himself while he waits for the Duko and our professionals. Those are just conscripts your Inclito's been fighting, and he can't hold them."

"It certainly sounds bad," I admitted.

"Why are you paying Kupus's mercenaries?"

"Because I said we would." I had not yet wiped my pen or put away this untidy collection of loose sheets. I did both while I collected my thoughts. "You say that I carried them and you-and Oreb, Fava, and Valico, I suppose-to Green. Fava was the girl you called Mora."

He raised his brows. "She wasn't really General Inclito's daughter?"

I started to explain, then shook my head. If Mora had been captured, as I have been assuming, it seemed likely that Sfido would have learned about it when he returned to Soldo, especially since he had apparently been kept waiting for some time.

"Good girl," Oreb told us. I suppose he meant Mora, but I would like very much to think that he intended Fava.

I told Sfido, "If I had the supernatural powers you credit me with, I wouldn't have taken advantage of them in the way that you propose. They were desperate and believed, quite understandably, that I was a miracle worker who could save them.

"Besides, they fought very well when we cleared the ancient city of inhumi-or at least it appeared to me that they did. You have an eye for strategy, and I'm sure you must know far more than I about every aspect of warfare. What did you think of them?"

"I was proud of them."

"So was I. They earned a better reward than I can give them."

Volanta called to us from the kitchen, and Sfido stood up. "I would have led them, if I could. Thanks to you, I had to watch them with my hands bound behind my back. But I told myself that whatever might happen to me, for a few days Sphigx had given me some of the best troopers who ever squeezed the trigger."

We went into the kitchen, and seated ourselves at the little table there. "I'd carry my soup into the store for Incanto," Volanta informed Sfido severely, "but not for anybody else."

"He won't be staying here," I muttered.

"Well!"

"It would be too great a burden on you and your husband. On you, particularly. He may not wish to remain in Blanko at all."

As Volanta set his soup before him, Sfido murmured, "You are an employer of mercenaries, Rajan."

"Blanko is." (The steaming bowl was followed by a loaf of new bread, a big, curved knife, and a chipped blue plate nearly filled by an immense pat of butter.) "Technically, I act for the town."

He nodded, sipping the smoking soup, then dipped his spoon back into the bowl. "You're collecting funds to pay them, you say, and since General Inclito has sent you to do that, it's an operation of considerable difficulty. Getting money always is."

"I supposed not. But there have been a few setbacks here, I admit."

"Knowing no trade but the trooper's, I am a mercenary now myself." Sfido indicated his own chest with the butter knife. "Will you employ me?"

"Are you serious, Captain?"

"Entirely, Rajan. Also brave, loyal, and experienced."

I smiled. "I'll certainly consider it. Your Duko was going to execute you?"

He nodded again while he chewed his bread and swallowed. "He did not say so, he merely imprisoned me. But that would have been the upshot. You fear that I am a spy."

"I have to consider the possibility."

"Good man," Oreb remarked conversationally. "Fish eggs?" Sfido held out what was left of the slice, and Oreb swooped to snatch it from his fingers.

"What do your arts say, Rajan? Wouldn't they reveal it if I were?"

"I have none," I told him, "and I'm getting weary of saying so. I doubt that you're a spy, but I can't be absolutely certain that you're not."

"Then keep me with you, under your eye. I've seen men my father's age with slug guns here. Women, even. Couldn't you use a good officer?"

I admitted I could.

"As a mercenary colonel," he spooned up soup that looked too hot to swallow, and swallowed it, "I will be entitled to five times the pay of one of your private troopers. I'm going to ask you for much more than that, but you won't have to give it to me until the war's over."

I waited, watching him eat.

"My house and my lands. Our Duko will confiscate them. He probably has already. I'll drill your troops and fight for you as long as this war continues, on your promise to restore them to me when Soldo surrenders."

It was my turn to raise my eyebrows. "Nothing more, Colonel Sfido?"

"Such loot as may fall my way, and that's all." He grinned, white teeth flashing in his dark beard. "I've lost everything, Rajan. All that I worked and fought for here. It didn't seem like a lot when I had it, but I find that it was riches beyond counting now that it's gone. I had a house in town and three farms. May I rely upon you to deal with me as honorably as you are with your other mercenaries?"

I nodded, and we clasped hands.

"I need sleep. If I can't stay here-"

"Urbanita will take you," Volanta volunteered, pointing. "Right next door. I'll go over and talk to her about it, if you want me to."

I said, "Please do."

"I'll tell her Incanto said so," Volanta added as she bustled out.

"She'll be getting the poor woman out of bed, I'm afraid," I remarked to Sfido.

He grinned, and spooned up more soup. "Everyone must make sacrifices in war, Rajan. Can you get us troops from your town, by the way?"

"From Gaon, you mean? It's not my home, though I guided its people for a while. I suppose I probably could, but I won't."

"Because you don't think we need them."

I shook my head. "We do, and badly. Because they don't need us. I could ask them to come here and risk their lives, and I believe that at least a few might come willingly; but one in ten or one in twenty would be killed, and many more wounded. Killed and wounded for what? For my thanks when the war was over?"

"When that woman comes back, I'm going to let her take me next door and sleep." Sfido was buttering another slice of bread. "When I wake up, I want to look over the defenses of this town of yours, if you'll let me."

I said I would, but that this was not my town either-that it was Inclito's, if anyone's.

"After that, I'll tell you what we ought to do. You probably think the town's well fortified already, and it may be. Just the same, there's always something more that can be done."

I myself must go to bed now. It is very late. Good night, Nettle. A good night to all of you.

A YOUNG MAN FROM THE SOUTH

W
hen we had gained the jungle at last, and the mercenaries had seen our human dead scattered all along the sewer and crushed in the streaming jaws of huge and deadly river-beasts, I called them together. "Once I tried to destroy the City of the Inhumi," I told them. "I had fewer than a hundred men, braggarts and cowards for the most part, untrained, badly disciplined, and worse armed. I dreamed then of leading troopers like you against it, and I am going to do it now."

To my surprise, they cheered.

"I'm not going to try to tell you how to fight. You and your officers know far more about that than I. But Lieutenant Valico and I will fight beside you, and help you however we can.

"Fava, if you'd like to leave us and warn the City, this is the time."

"I'm no inhuma! Look at me!"

"As you wish," I told her, and turned back to Kupus's troopers. "The inhumi have human slaves, as you have seen. Don't kill them unless they resist you."

Several nodded.

"When the last inhumu is dead," I promised them, "we'll go home."

Fava, Valico, and I went with Kupus and the other mercenary officers when they reconnoitered the city. "We'll have to fight from building to building," Kupus told me. "It will be an ugly business. Are you in a hurry?"

I shook my head.

"Then I suggest we wait till morning. We're going to need all the daylight we can get for this, and it will be an all-day job."

"Or more," Zepter added gloomily.

I protested that I had no food to give them, and was told that the men carried emergency rations, which Fava, Valico and I might share.

Not even in the pit have I spent a more nightmarish night. You may say if you like that I did not spend that one at all, that I was in fact hugging Fava's icy corpse under the arching canes of the snow-laden thornbushes; but I recall every moment of it, and find that I still cannot write about it without a shudder. After the rest had laid themselves down to sleep, I went around our impromptu camp warning everyone about the insects. (They are not like the insects of the Long Sun Whorl or the somewhat different insects here that are so often blind; but I know not what else to call them.) I had hardly begun when I was stung by one of the scarlet-and-yellow creatures that we called firesnakes-a flying worm, like a little viper with a scorpion's tail.

Thereafter I spoke to one small group after another, and it seemed to me that there was always another waiting, and sleepers, too, whom I had not yet warned and could not warn without waking. And I went from sleeper to sleeper, examining their faces as I had so many years ago in the tunnel, always looking for His Cognizance and always hoping-although I knew how absurd it wasthat I would find Silk, that Silk had left Hyacinth and would be going with us after all, that Silk had rejoined us when I was inattentive, talking to Scleroderma and Shrike, and lagging behind the slowest walkers to talk to His Cognizance, whom I sought without finding on that nightmare night under the cloud-capped trees that outreach all our towers, so that at last I called out softly "Silk? Silk?" as I walked among the sleepers until Oreb grasped my hand with fingers that were in fact feathers, repeating, "Here Silk. Good Silk," and I took my own advice and found the numbing fruit, cut one in two with the gold-chased black blade of the sword that I had imagined for myself and pressed a half against the sting on my arm, weeping.

But none of that is to the point, except for being a part of the story I have set myself to tell, my own long story of the tangled paths by which I failed to find the hero Marrow and the others sent me to find.

What is to the point is the way in which the mercenaries attacked and cleared the buildings of the City of the Inhumi the next day, working in pairs or in paired groups, so that one group occupied the inhumi with their fire while the other advanced to a place from which it could fire more effectively. We have been teaching that to our troopers, Sfido and I, for the past two daysalong with much else, and drill, and some marksmanship, although we are too short of cartridges to spare many for that.

I should say, too, that scarcely a day has passed on which we have not received a request for food and ammunition, blankets and clothing from Inclito, a request delivered by some weary officer or sergeant who has brought back mules insufficient to carry the eighteen or twenty or thirty loads of whatever it is that he has been sent to get, but who knows just as we do that it does not matter since we have not half as much as his letter asks us to give him. troopers for pack animals and food," Sfido told me when we met "You can spend some of that money you raised to pay Kupus's today.