Patrol
We held a perimeter no more than a couple of
hundred paces across. For the most part, our enemies had only
knives and axes—the axes and their ragged clothes recalled the
volunteers I had helped Vodalus against in our necropolis—but there
were hundreds of them already, and more coming.
The bacele had saddled up and left camp
before dawn. The shadows were still long, somewhere along the
shifting front, when a scout showed Guasacht the deep ruts of a
coach traveling north. For three watches we tracked
it.
The Ascian raiders who had captured it
fought well, turning south to surprise us, then west, then north
again like a writhing serpent; but always leaving a trail of dead,
caught between our fire and that of the guards inside, who shot
them through the loopholes. It was only toward the end, when the
Ascians could no longer flee, that we grew aware of other
hunters.
By noon, the little valley was
surrounded. The gleaming steel coach with its dead and dying
prisoners stood mired to the axles. Our Ascian prisoners squatted
in front of it, guarded by our wounded. The Ascian officer spoke
our tongue, and a watch earlier Guasacht had ordered him to free
the coach and shot several Ascians when he had failed; thirty or
more remained, nearly naked, listless and empty-eyed. Their weapons
were piled some distance off, near our tethered
mounts.
Now Guasacht was making the rounds, and
I saw him pause at the stump that sheltered the trooper next to me.
One of the enemy put her head from behind a clump of brush some way
up the slope. My contus struck her with a bolt of flame; she leaped
by reflex, then curled up as spiders do when someone tosses them
among the coals of a campfire. She had been whitefaced beneath her
red bandana, and I suddenly understood that she had been made to
look—that there were those behind that brush who had disliked her,
or at least not valued her, and who had forced her to look out. I
fired again, slashing the green growth with the bolt and bringing a
puff of acrid smoke that drifted toward me like her
ghost.
“Don’t waste those charges,” Guasacht
said at my elbow. More from habit, I think, than from fear, he had
thrown himself flat beside me.
I asked if the charges would be
exhausted before night if I fired six times a watch.
He shrugged, then shook his
head.
“That’s how fast I’ve been shooting
this thing, as well as I can judge by the sun. And when night comes
…”
I looked at him, and he could only
shrug again.
“When night comes,” I continued, “we
won’t be able to see them until they’re only a few steps away.
We’ll fire more or less at random and kill a few score, then draw
swords and stand back to back, and they’ll kill us.”
He said, “Help will arrive before
then,” and when he saw I did not believe him, he spat. “I wish I’d
never looked at the damned thing’s track. I wish I’d never heard of
it.”
It was my turn to shrug. “Give it back
to the Ascians, and we’ll break out.”
“It’s coin, I tell you! Gold to pay our
troops. It’s too heavy to be anything else.”
“The armor must weigh a good
deal.”
“Not that much. I’ve seen these coaches
before, and it’s gold from Nessus or the House Absolute. But those
things inside—who’s ever seen such creatures?”
“I have.”
Guasacht stared at me.
“When I went out through the Piteous
Gate in the Wall of Nessus. They are man-beasts, contrived by the
same lost arts that made our destriers faster than the road engines
of old.” I tried to recall what else Jonas had told me of them, and
finished rather weakly by saying, “The Autarch employs them in
duties too laborious for men, or for which men cannot be
trusted.”
“I suppose that might be right enough.
They can’t very well steal the money. Where would they go? Listen,
I’ve had my eye on you.”
“I know,” I said. “I’ve felt
it.”
“I’ve had my eye on you, I say.
Particularly since you made that piebald of yours go for the man
that trained him. Up here in Orithyia we see a lot of strong men
and a lot of brave ones—mostly when we step over their bodies. We
see a lot of smart ones too, and nineteen out of twenty are too
smart to be of use to anybody, including themselves. What’s
valuable are men, and sometimes women, who’ve got a kind of power,
the power that makes other people want to do what they say. I don’t
mean to brag, but I’ve got it. You’ve got it too.”
“It hasn’t been overwhelmingly apparent
in my life before this.”
“Sometimes it takes the war to bring it
out. That’s one of the benefits of the war, and since it hasn’t got
many we ought to appreciate the ones it does. Severian, I want you
to go down to the coach and treat with these man-animals. You say
you know something about them. Get them to come out and help us
fight. We’re both on the same side, after all.”
I nodded. “And if I can get them to
open the doors, we can divide the money among us. Some of us, at
least, may escape.”
Guasacht shook his head in disgust.
“What did I tell you just a moment ago about being too smart? If
you were really smart, you wouldn’t have ignored it. No, you tell
them that even if there’s only three or four of them, every fighter
counts. Besides, there’s at least a chance the sight of them will
frighten these damn freebooters away. Let me have your contus, and
I’ll hold your position for you until you come back.”
I handed over the long weapon. “Who are
these people, anyway?”
“These? Camp followers. Sutlers and
whores—men as well as women. Deserters. Every so often the Autarch
or one of his generals has them rounded up and put to work, but
they slip away before long. Slipping away’s their specialty. They
ought to be wiped out.”
“I have your authority to treat with
our prisoners in the coach? You’ll back me up?”
“They’re not prisoners—well, yes, I
suppose they are. You tell them what I said and make the best deal
you can. I’ll back you.”
I looked at him for a moment, trying to
decide whether he meant it. Like so many middle-aged men, he
carried the old man he would become in his face, soured and
obscene, already muttering the objections and complaints that would
be his in the final skirmish.
“You’ve got my word. Go
on.”
“All right.” I rose. The armored coach
resembled the carriages that had been used to bring important
clients to our tower in the Citadel. Its windows were narrow and
barred, its rear wheels as high as a man. The smooth steel sides
suggested those lost arts I had mentioned to Guasacht, and I knew
the man-beasts inside had better weapons than ours. I extended my
hands to show I was unarmed and walked as steadily as I could
toward them until a face showed at one window grill.
When one hears of such creatures, one
imagines something stable, midway between beast and human; but when
one actually sees them—as I now saw this man-beast, and as I had
seen the man-apes in the mine near Saltus—they are not like that at
all. The best comparison I can make is to the flickering of a
silver birch tossed by the wind. At one moment it seems a common
tree, at the next, when the undersides of the leaves appear, a
supernatural creation. So it is with the man-beasts. At first I
thought a mastiff peered at me through the bars; then it seemed
rather a man, nobly ugly, tawny-faced and amber-eyed. I raised my
hands to the grill to give him my scent, thinking of
Triskele.
“What do you want?” His voice was harsh
but not unpleasant.
“I want to save your lives,” I said. It
was the wrong thing to say, and I knew it as soon as the words had
left my mouth.
“We want to save our
honor.”
I nodded. “Honor is the higher
life.”
“If you can tell us how to save our
honor, speak. We will listen. But we will never surrender our
trust.”
“You have already surrendered it,” I
said.
The wind died, and the mastiff was back
in an instant, flashing teeth and blazing eyes.
“It was not to safeguard gold from the
Ascians that you were put into this coach, but to safeguard it from
those of our own Commonwealth who would steal it if they could. The
Ascians are beaten—look at them. We are the Autarch’s loyal humans.
Those you were set to guard against will overwhelm us
soon.”
“They must kill me and my fellows
before they can get the gold.”
It was gold,
then. I said, “They will do so. Come out and help us fight, while
there is still a chance of victory.”
He hesitated, and I was no longer sure
that I had been entirely wrong to speak first of saving his life.
“No,” he said. “We cannot. What you say may be reason, I do not
know. Our law is not the law of reason. Our law is honor and
obedience. We stay.”
“But you know that we are not your
enemies?”
“Anyone seeking what we guard is our
enemy.”
“We’re guarding it too. If these camp
followers and deserters came within range of your weapons, would
you fire on them?”
“Yes, of course.”
I walked over to the spiritless cluster
of Ascians and asked to speak with their commander. The man who
stood was only slightly taller than the rest; the intelligence in
his face was the kind one sometimes sees in cunning madmen. I told
him Guasacht had sent me to treat in his stead because I had often
spoken with Ascian prisoners and knew their ways. This was, as I
intended, overheard by his three wounded guards, who could see
Guasacht manning my position on the perimeter.
“Greetings in the name of the Group of
Seventeen,” the Ascian said.
“In the name of the Group of
Seventeen.”
The Ascian looked startled but
nodded.
“We are surrounded by the disloyal
subjects of our Autarch, who are thus the enemies of both the
Autarch and the Group of Seventeen. Our own commander, Guasacht,
has devised a plan that will leave us all alive and
free.”
“The servants of the Group of Seventeen
must not be expended without purpose.”
“Precisely. Here is the plan. We will
harness some of our destriers to the steel coach—as many as
necessary to pull it free. You and your people must work to free it
too. When it’s free, we’ll return your weapons and help you fight
your way out of this cordon. Your soldiers and ours will go north,
and you can keep the coach and the money inside to take to your
superiors, just as you hoped when you captured it.”
“The light of Correct Thought
penetrates every darkness.”
“No, we haven’t gone over to the Group
of Seventeen. You have to help us in return. In the first place,
help get the coach out of the mud. In the
second, help us fight our way out. In the third, provide us with an
escort that will get us through your army and back to our own
lines.”
The Ascian officer glanced toward the
gleaming coach. “No failure is permanent failure. But inevitable
success may require new plans and greater strength.”
“Then you approve of my new plan?” I
had not been aware that I was perspiring, but now the sweat ran
stinging into my eyes. I wiped my forehead with the edge of my
cloak, just as Master Gurloes used to.
The Ascian officer nodded. “Study of
Correct Thought eventually reveals the path of
success.”
“Yes,” I said. “All right, I’ve studied
it. Behind our efforts, let there be found our
efforts.”
When I returned to the coach, the same
man-beast I had seen before came to the window again, not quite so
hostile this time. I said, “The Ascians have agreed to try to push
this thing out once more. We’re going to have to unload
it.”
“That is impossible.”
“If we don’t, the gold will be lost
with the sun. I’m not asking you to give it up—just take it out and
mount guard over it. You’ll have your weapons, and if any human
bearing arms comes close to you, you can kill him. I’ll be with
you, unarmed. You can kill me too.”
It took a great deal more talking, but
eventually they did it. I got the wounded who had been watching the
Ascians to lay down their conti and harness eight of our destriers
to the coach, and got the Ascians positioned to pull on the harness
and heave at the wheels. Then the door in the side of the steel
coach swung open and the man-beasts carried out small metal chests,
two working while the one I had spoken to stood guard, They were
taller than I had expected and had fusils, with pistols in their
belts to supplement them—the first pistols I had seen since I had
watched the Hierodules use them to turn Baldanders’s charges in the
gardens of the House Absolute.
When all the chests were out and the
three man-beasts were standing around them with their weapons at
the ready, I shouted. The wounded troopers lashed every destrier in
the new team, the Ascians heaved until their eyes started from
their straining faces … and just when we all thought it would not,
the steel coach lifted itself from the mud and lumbered half a
chain before the wounded could bring it to a halt. Guasacht nearly
got us both killed by running down from the perimeter waving my
contus, but the man-beasts had just sense enough to see that he was
merely excited and not dangerous.
He got a great deal more excited when
he saw the man-beasts carry their gold inside again, and when he
heard what I had promised the Ascians. I reminded him that he had
given me leave to act in his name.
“When I act,” he sputtered, “it’s with
the idea of winning.”
I confessed I lacked his military
experience, but told him I had found that in some situations
winning consisted of disentangling oneself.
“Just the same, I had hoped you would
work out something better.”
Rising inexorably while we remained
unaware of their motion, the mountain peaks to the west were
already clawing for the lower edge of the sun; I pointed to
it.
Suddenly, Guasacht smiled. “After all,
these are the same Ascians we took it from before.”
He called the Ascian officer over and
told him our mounted troopers would lead the attack, and that his
soldiers could follow the steel coach on foot. The Ascian agreed,
but when his soldiers had rearmed themselves, he insisted on
placing half a dozen on top of the coach and leading the attack
himself with the rest. Guasacht agreed with an apparent bad grace
that seemed to me entirely assumed. We put an armed trooper astride
each of the eight destriers of the new team, and I saw Guasacht
conversing earnestly with their cornet.
I had promised the Ascian we would
break through the cordon of deserters to the north, but the ground
in that direction proved to be unsuited to the steel coach, and in
the end a route north by northwest was agreed upon. The Ascian
infantry advanced at a pace not much short of a full run, firing as
they came. The coach followed. The narrow, enduring bolts of the
troopers’ conti stabbed at the ragged mob who tried to close about
it, and the Ascian arquebuses on its roof sent gouts of violet
energy crashing among them. The man-beasts fired their fusils from
the barred windows, slaughtering half a dozen with a single
blast.
The remainder of our troops (I among
them) followed the coach, having maintained our perimeter until it
was gone. To save precious charges, many put their conti through
the saddle rings, drew their swords, and rode down the straggling
remnant the Ascians and the coach had left behind.
Then the enemy was past, and the ground
clearer. At once the troopers whose mounts pulled the coach clapped
spurs to them, and Guasacht, Erblon, and several others who were
riding just behind it swept the Ascians from its top in a cloud of
crimson flame and reeking smoke. Those on foot scattered, then
turned to fire.
It was a fight I did not feel I could
take part in. I reined up, and so saw—I believe, before any of the
others—the first of the anpiels who dropped, like the angel in
Melito’s fable, from the sun-dyed clouds. They were fair to look
upon, naked and having the slender bodies of young women; but their
rainbow wings spread wider than any teratornis’s, and each anpiel
held a pistol in either hand.
Late that night, when we were back in camp and
the wounded had been cared for, I asked Guasacht if he would do as
he had again.
He thought for a moment. “I hadn’t any
way of knowing those flying girls would come. Looking at it from
this end, it’s natural enough—there must have been enough in that
coach to pay half the army, and they wouldn’t hesitate to send
elite troops looking for it. But before it happened, would you have
guessed it?”
I shook my head.
“Listen, Severian, I shouldn’t be
talking to you like this. But you did what you could, and you’re
the best leech I ever saw. Anyway, it came out all right in the
end, didn’t it? You saw how friendly their seraph was. What did she
see, after all? Plucky lads trying to save the coach from the
Ascians. We’ll get a commendation, I should think. Maybe a
reward.”
I said, “You could have killed the
man-beasts, and the Ascians too, when the gold was out of the
coach. You didn’t because I would have died with them. I think you
deserve a commendation. From me, at least.”
He rubbed his drawn face with both
hands. “Well, I’m just as happy. It would have been the end of the
Eighteenth; in another watch we’d have been killing each other for
the money.”