He turned back to Fava, taking her by the shoulder. "Also we beheld Nessus, the undying city. But we did not see Nessus. No one save Pas, whose true name was known to us all in those glorious days, could behold Nessus."
"We came hoping to make peace," she whispered.
"Exactly," the Duko whispered in return. "Precisely so. Listen now, while I explain. There were many buildings there, countless houses of one and two and three and even four stories, and countless towers of twenty and thirty and three hundred. Of three thousand. Do you grasp it? Why, no one ever succeeded in counting the towers in the Citadel alone. That's what they say, though I never tried, or met anyone who had, and the Citadel itself... I lived near it. Did I tell you?"
Fava shook her head.
"I did, near the river, south of the Necropolis, which was unfortunate because its infinite dead polluted the water after each rain, a sort of sticky black, like tar, that might float or sink. We used to say the women floated and the men sunk, but that was a joke. Only a sort of joke. I doubt that it was true at all."
Valico touched my arm and pointed to the open window, from which a clamor as of contending voices issued. I nodded and put a finger to my lips.
"But one could have walked all around the Citadel in three days, or four," the Duko was saying. "It was only a small area, really so small that people from distant parts of the city, of which there were many thousands, actually doubted that it existed at all. Then underneath all our buildings were cellars and sub-cellars, dungeons and caverns and tunnels without end. The wall around the city, which was taller than its tallest towers, was honeycombed with passages, chambers, gun rooms, barracks, shelters, galleries, armories, cells, chapels, retiring rooms, and compartments of a hundred other sorts. One has only to sum the areas of all these, and the damp mines under Gyoll. But no one could."
I said, "We had hoped, Your Grandeur, to reach some mutually satisfactory arrangement by which our Corpo, while acknowledging your supremacy, might retain some local control over strictly local matters.
That, coupled with your guarantee that property rights would be respected, might be the basis of a lasting peace advantageous to both parties."
The Duko laughed, rose, and walked over to lay a hand as clean and well groomed as any woman's on my arm. "Do you know the definition of peace, my friend?"
"Not the one you are about to quote, I'm sure."
Beyond the Duko, I saw Oreb flash past the windows-and heard him, too: "Here Silk! Silk here!"
"Peace, as you intend peace, is but the slice of cheese in a sandwich, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting. Your peace would endure only until Blanko felt strong enough to throw us off, probably when we were deeply committed elsewhere. No, my friend, Pas would agree to no such peace, and neither will I. Would your Blanko consent to surrender all its weapons, every big gun, every slug gun, every needier, every sword and every knife?"
I said that I did not know, but that I felt sure the Corpo would at least consider such a demand.
"Then I make it. I make it because after you have complied with it, I can do whatever I wish."
Soon there was a hubbub in the hallway outside, over which I heard the voice of the sentry, followed by four or five shots.
"It's time for us to leave," I told Fava urgently. "Think of the hillside, of the snow. Concentrate!"
She closed her eyes, and I would have closed mine as well; but the door burst open, admitting Oreb and a dozen wild-eyed troopers I did not at first recognize as Kupus's mercenaries. One leveled his slug gun at the Duko, and fired. The slug struck the slime-draped wall across the creeping stream of fetid filth into which about a third of the mercenaries had fallen, and ricocheted again and again, echoing and re-echoing up and down the sewer as it screamed through the reeking air.
* * *
When Inclito sent me here, I expected to face a great many difficulties; but never the worst that I have encountered, which is simply that the mercenaries themselves are not here. Because they are not, I am unable to ask them, either collectively or individually, what they might be willing to accept in place of the promised silver. By forming my own auxiliary corps, I have raised a good deal of money. A fortune, although it may seem that I am boasting.
But what confusion! Much of it is in silver-of various grades and alloyed with a variety of other stuffs, generally nickel. Some of it is gold, more or less alloyed with copper and lead. It ranges in hardness from a buttery little ingot contributed by Cantoro (may the Outsider smile upon him, now and forever), to three broad disks as hard as flints.
Nor is that all. There are real cards, too, such as we used to use in the Whorl. How much silver is a card worth? How much gold? I have asked half a dozen merchants, bankers, and moneylenders thus far, and received a full dozen replies. That is scarcely to be wondered at, and not all the cards in circulation here are in serviceable condition. (To think that we used to chop them up into a hundred cardbits, never once considering that they could never be reassembled!)
And how good is the silver you want to change them for, Incanto? Let me see it.
Well, I would if I could.
I've jumped far ahead of myself, however. Let me say here quickly what our situation is. Then I will write more about all that befell Fava, Oreb, and me on Green, and how Kupus's mercenaries discovered the corpse hatch and followed us to Soldo. I still do not understand why they did not disappear into some dream of their own when Fava and I left, or why all of us returned to the sewer we hoped to have left behind us forever; but I find so many other mysteries there that I am scarcely troubled by that one. (Why did not the Duko accompany us? And was he shot, and what was the result of that shot, a visionary slug fired by an unreal trooper from an equally chimerical slug gun.)
It is only too easy to ask whether we were actually on Green-I should know, since I have been asking it ever since I returned. But what is meant by actually? Our physical bodies were not there: Valico saw them asleep in the snow. Equally, something else was or imagined it was. Our minds? Our spirits? Both, and some third and fourth things as well? At what point did Fava (I cannot, will not, write "poor Fava") die?
When I arrived, I had little idea how I might raise the large sum we require. Inclito had suggested that I assemble the leading men of the town, and provided me with a list. I did; but the topic of our deliberations was quickly changed to how we might best cheat the mercenaries of the money Inclito and I had promised them, in spite of all that I could do to prevent it.
At last I rose and slammed the table with my staff. "You are thieves," I told them. "I had thought you worthy of respect. The more fool I! You have made yourselves rich by robbing your fellow citizens-"
They protested this so loudly that it was a full minute at least until I could continue. Doubtless that was for the best; I felt my hot rage turn icy cold while they shouted and pounded the table.
"You think you have escaped the gods and the punishments gods mete out to such as you. You are mistaken. The Outsider is sitting among you unseen, and he has given his judgment. He has appointed a scourge fit for you. I will not call you together again, and it may be that no one will ever summon you a second time. I think it very likely. If you wish to speak with me again, come to me singly. Perhaps I'll find time for you, if you do. Perhaps not."
I went out of Ugolo's house then without a thought in my head, and saw five boys in the street playing trooper, and two old men laughing and advising them. I called all seven to me and introduced myself, although I soon found that all of them knew very well who I was. I said nothing to them of money; it was clear enough that none had much. But I told them in some detail how desperate the battles in the hills were liable to be, and spoke as eloquently as I could of the need to defend Blanko should the enemy break through. Then I showed them the keys to the armory and ordered them to come with me.
The people laughed at us at first, a straggling company of boys and old men; and they laughed louder still when I enlisted women. There came a moment, however, when I had to order my troops not to fire upon a jeering crowd unless they offered us violence. That quieted them, and I was able to arrest the ringleaders. We have driven spikes into the walls of the dry sewer Inclito told me of-a much more comfortable place, certainly, than the sewer I opened for the Neighbors-and chained them to the spikes. Ugolo is there now with a few of the others.
In the Long Sun Whorl, bio troopers were called auxiliaries because the fighting forces there had originally been composed of soldiers alone. They were the Army, which is to say the arm of the city. The armed bios enlisted to assist and augment them were designated auxiliaries, and their assembled strength (which in Viron included my Guard) the Horde. Together, the army and the horde composed the Host.
Even there, hordes increased in importance, while armies dwindled as their soldiers perished. Here the horde - Inclito's for example-is the entire force. Surely then I can take that term auxiliary for my old men, women, and boys.
As I have.
Only the largest boys are of use to us, as I soon found; the smaller ones cannot manage a slug gun, not even with the lightly loaded cartridges. In the same way, only the largest, strongest women; and poor young women who have had to work hard are by far the best suited to fighting Duko Rigoglio.
Chapter 15
Before the Battle
Have I a solitary evening before me? I hope so. The town is celebrating, as well it should; this is not a night for speeches, especially speeches from me. Perhaps I'll be able to get some writing done.
If I were to speak to these citizens of Blanko, I am afraid I would talk mostly about Chaku and Teras, who perished in the sewer fighting the white worm, yet were alive again and walked, speechless and dazed, among us when we woke. Who can plumb the mind of the Outsider, or search out all his ways? Our riches are his dross, and our gods his toys.
The townspeople are shooting off fireworks, and I am sorry to say that a few of my troopers seem to be firing their slug guns into the air. The sky over Blanko is no place for Oreb tonight, and he knows it.
All this because a courier from Olmo arrived at shadelow, a tired man on a blown horse. I cannot help wondering whether either are getting any rest. Perhaps they are-they seemed fatigued enough to sleep through anything. The news, and it is wonderful news indeed, is that the Duko has turned against Olmo, and that Olmo has turned to us in its extremity. We are offered an alliance: Olmo will fight against Soldo and Duko Rigoglio - indeed, Olmo must, since Duko Rigoglio has laid siege to Olmo. Olmo asks only that it be permitted to retain its independence, and begs Blanko's aid.
Eco was captured or killed, and the letter he carried believed; there can be no doubt of it. How I wish Fava were still alive so that I could send her to Soldo to try to secure his release! If the Outsider wills it, Eco should remain safe (although imprisoned) throughout the rest of our small and foolish war.
We will free him when it is over. Was Mora killed or captured too? It seems likely.
I had intended to write about Chaku and Teras, and our joy at waking in the snow and seeing them, whom we had buried upon Green and prayed over, wake with us; and how we had discovered that they could neither speak nor understand what was said to them. It would all be true, but I cannot forget poor Fava. All human semblance was gone; she was an inhuma in a girl's flowered gown, a dead inhuma painted and decked in a wig-nothing more. I covered her as quickly as I could and demanded that the mercenaries who had not allowed us a fire lend me a pick and shovel. A dozen strong men would have helped me, and gladly; but I sent them away and buried her myself near the crest of the hill, beneath a flat stone on which I scratched her name and the sign of addition, not knowing how else to mark it.
Fava, who was well and very happy on Green, is dead here on Blue; and Chaku and Teras, who were dead on Green, are alive here if they have not been killed in one of Inclito's battles.
"Man come," Oreb mutters. I have opened the door and looked outside, but there is no one. I asked him whether it was a good man, but he only clacked his beak and fluttered his wings. Those are generally signs of nervousness, but he was doing both before he announced our visitor, and with all the fireworks and shooting he has more than enough to be nervous about.
I should say here - or at least I certainly ought to say somewhere - that Fava, Valico, and I halted when we heard the mercenaries behind us in the sewer. Oreb did not halt, Molpe bless him, but flew back to investigate.
Several prostrated themselves, which was embarrassing. I told them that I would not talk to them until they bound Sfido and gave me his needier, which they did at once. "We lifted the stone," Kupus explained to me. "There was a sheer drop under it. One by one we jumped, and found ourselves on a dark street in Soldo."
I nodded.
Fava (I intend the human girl whom I have been calling Fava) laughed at him. "Incanto is a strego, didn't I tell you? The best any of us have ever seen."
"I never believed in any of that raff," Kupus said. "It's you women that believe it, mostly. But you women are right, and Kupus wrong."
He drew his sword and raised it, grasping it by the blade, point downward. "I and those who follow me will follow you, Rajan, working and fighting for you wherever you may lead us, loyal as long as the last rogue breathes. We require no pay from you, beyond your good will."
I asked how long they bound themselves for, and he and dozens of others answered forever. More would, I think, but those farther back on the narrow walkway cannot have heard what we said.
"Will you still serve me when we return to Blue?" I asked Kupus and Lieutenant Zepter, who was looking over his shoulder.
"Anywhere," they declared; and Zepter used a phrase I had not heard before: "In the three whorls or beyond them." You who will read this in the years to come may call me a fool, but I detect the Outsider's hand in it.
* * *
After midnight, and so a new day.
My visitor arrived. It was Sfido. We talked for an hour or more, and managed with all our talk to rouse my host's wife, who had abandoned the celebration and wisely taken to her bed. She has found a bed for him, and warmed a bowl of the bean soup. He said that he was too tired to eat, but looked half starved and managed to finish the whole bowl quickly enough, dipping the soft white bread that is so much valued here into it and eating like a lost hound.
