Rimando urged me to send all the women back to Blanko with his big guns, since it would clearly be impossible to take the guns into the hills with us no matter how useful they might be there when we encountered the Soldese. Our guns would be of no use in Blanko, he said, without troopers to line the town walls; and the women would never attack the enemy with fortitude and resolution, no matter what orders I gave. They might well serve to protect the town, however, given leadership; and if the town were lost all was lost with it. In this last at least, he was indubitably correct.
I thanked them both for their advice and made the decision myself, as it seems I always must.
First I disposed of the rest of the money we had collected in Blanko. Since I hardly dared let it out of my sight, and the chest in which Sfido and I had kept it was weighty, I felt that it was clearly best to rid ourselves of it before we broke camp. I called our people together, explained that I had already given the mercenaries a half month's pay, and distributed the rest among all those who had fought the day before, giving officers double shares. Each ordinary trooper got almost as much silver as the mercenaries had.
Then I made a second speech, resolved to do better than I had in my first. The guns had to be pulled back to Blanko, I explained, and since we had eaten our oxen, they would have to be pulled by human muscles, unless more oxen or mules could be found. On the other hand, Inclito would surely need every possible assistance in cementing the victory that we had won yesterday. Those who wished to return to Blanko were free to do so. They would remain with Major Adatta - whom I was promoting on the spot-and Captain Rimando, help pull the guns, bring back our prisoners and wounded, and defend the town should the enemy defeat Inclito in the hills. "As for Colonel Sfido and me, we are returning to the hills to prevent any such defeat. Those who wish to come with us may do so."
All of the men who had come out from the town after the battle joined us, with about a third of the women and the boys Inclito had left behind, and two-thirds of the veterans. I can only say that all three groups surprised me. On the second day we overtook Inclito, and I have already recorded the rest. Or at least, recorded those events which matter most.
Here is my good news: We have captured the Duko, General Morello, and Colonel Terzo. All three were uniformed as ordinary troopers of the Ducal Bodyguard, but the behavior of the other prisoners toward them-one spat in the Duko's face-called Sfido's attention to them. He and I are taking them back to Blanko, escorted by four men on horseback. We are camped in the open tonight, but tomorrow I hope to return to the site of the battle; I would like to conduct an experiment.
* * *
I have been talking to the Duko. What an extraordinary man he is, and what a dunce I am not to have guessed that he must be long ago!
He was a sleeper, like Mamelta. I asked whether he had known her, but he explained what I would have realized without prompting if I had my wits about me. "I may have known your friend under that name or some other," he said, "but I have no way of telling. It was a long time, years in fact, before I understood that I did not remember everything, and that not everything I remembered had actually taken place."
"We had a great many of you with us when we left the whorl," I told him. "So many that we had to take two landers, and could barely fit everybody into those two. Those of us who had grown up in Viron wanted to stay together, so all of us got on the same lander. We filled the remaining places with sleepers like you, and the rest boarded the other lander. Our sleepers-I don't quite know how to say this..."
"They have come to resemble you, dressing and talking as you do. Believing whatever it is you believe in your town of New Viron."
It was not what I had nearly said, but I seized upon it eagerly.
"I have seen it myself, and in fact I have done it myself," the Duko declared. "Our memories are less trustworthy even than yours. At first we try to live in accordance with them, but sooner or later we learn very painfully that they lead us astray." He paused to look at his fellow prisoners, General Morello and Colonel Terzo, who certainly appeared to be asleep and probably were.
"I wouldn't want them to hear this," he said. "There is no good reason for it. All such things have ceased to matter. Yet I retain my pride, though I'd like to rid myself of it once and for all."
Oreb sympathized. "Poor man!"
The Duko pointed to him. "There is the chief reason that everyone thinks you're a powerful magician, Master Incanto. That, and your power to appear in dreams as you did in mine, and to take him with you. They had no such talking birds on the Whorl, and there cannot be many here."
I explained that Oreb had come from there, exactly as I had myself.
"All right, but they can't have been known in Grandecitta. Before your bird entertained us, I was about to say that the false memories Pas gave me had one final defeat stored up for me. But it's time that I stopped laying my own shortcomings at his door."
He sat in silence for some while after that, rubbing his big chin. With his noble head and broad shoulders, and the pronounced ridge of bone beneath his thick, black brows, he seems the last person in the whorl to try to shift the blame for his own failures to an external cause.
"I trusted Morello. He'd been here all the time I'd been pacifying Olmo. He said he knew you people, that he understood your capabilities. They have clever leaders, he told me, and if we try to out-maneuver them, we'll be doing what they want. Fence with them, and you fence all day. But if we go straight at them, hammer and tongs and the anvil, they'll break, he said." The Duko laughed bitterly. "You didn't break, and I should've known better."
I pointed out that General Morello had tried to outflank us.
"But openly. He let you watch us do it, thinking it would frighten you. Pas alone knows what he thought when your troopers met our horse in a long thin line that stood its ground shooting. That you'd put a spell on them." He laughed again. "Terzo's terrified of you. He's in agony of every time you speak to him. You must have noticed it."
"Poor man!" Oreb muttered sympathetically.
"There. Did you hear that?" For a moment I thought that Duko Rigoglio was about to smile. "You have a percipient bird, Master Incanto. Someone always wins, so someone else always loses. He repeats poor man, and doesn't need to bother his head about our conversation. Say poor man again, bird."
"No, no."
"More words of universal utility. What were we talking about?"
I said that I would be delighted to talk about any subject he wished to discuss, that the privilege of conversing with him was more than enough for me.
"Then let us consider the desirability of adding a few more sticks to our fire. I would do it if you compelled me. I would have to. But with my hands and feet hobbled like this, well, you comprehend my difficulty, I'm sure."
"Poor man!"
When I had added firewood, I held the wine bottle to his mouth again, and he drank deeply, contriving to wipe his mouth upon the shoulder of his coat. "Thank you. You've been decent. You don't have to address me as Your Grandeur anymore, you know. Your brother didn't."
"Inclito prides himself on his incivility," I explained, "and I think he might very well have called you Rigoglio while you sat your throne; it would be quite in character. If he were to call you 'Your Grandeur' now, he would intend it as an insult."
"He has enough common decency not to insult a man about to die? That's rarer than you might think. He could simply have had me shot. I realize that."
"No cut," Oreb cautioned.
"You'll be tried by the Corpo, I suppose. I doubt that they'll sentence you to death."
"They'll have to." The Duko shook his head gloomily. "Not that I could return to power after this. And Pas knows-" He paused in the midst of his thought. "It is Pas, isn't it, here? Our god-in-chief?"
"No, it isn't, Your Grandeur. Or at least I do not believe so."
"Poor man!"
"I probed a nerve, didn't I? Let's talk about something else. You speak of me as Duko Rigoglio, I've heard you. It must have struck you by now that Rigoglio can't have been my name originally."