Ursula Le Guin - The Eye of the Heron

Captain Eden set his men on watch and watch; he himself did not sleep that night.

In the morning the whole lot of them, his men and the villagers, still seemed to be there; everyone was slow-moving in the misty cold, and it took hours to get fires lighted and some kind of breakfast cooked and served out. Then the tools must be distributed again, the long hoes, the wicked steel brush-knives, mattocks, machetes. A hundred and twenty men armed with those, against thirty with whips and muskets. Didn’t they see what they could so easily do? Under Captain Eden’s disbelieving gaze the villagers filed past the heap of tools, just as they had done yesterday, took what they needed, and set to work again clearing the brush and undergrowth off the slope down to the river. They worked hard and well; they knew this kind of work; without paying much heed to the guards’ commands, they divided themselves into teams, rotating the hardest labor. Most of the guards both looked and felt bored, cold, and superfluous; their mood was sullen, as it had been ever since the brief and unfulfilled excitement of raiding the villages and rounding up the men.

The sun came out late in the morning, but by midday the clouds had thickened and the rain was beginning again. Captain Eden ordered a break for a meal—another ration of ruined bread—and was talking with two guards he was sending back to the City to request fresh supplies and some canvas to use for tents and groundcloths, when Lev came over to him.

“One of our people needs a doctor, and two of them are too old for this kind of work.” He pointed to Pamplona, who sat, his head bandaged with a torn shirt, talking with Lyons and two gray-headed men. “They should be sent back to their village.”

Lev’s manner, though not that of an inferior addressing an officer, was perfectly civil. The captain looked at him appraisingly, but not with prejudice. Angel had pointed out this wiry little fellow last night as one of the Shanty Town ringleaders, and it was evident that the villagers tended to look at Lev whenever an order was given or a threat made, as if for direction. How they got it the captain did not know, for he had not seen Lev giving them any orders himself; but if the boy was, in some fashion, a leader, Captain Eden was willing to deal with him as such. The most unnerving element in the situation to the captain was its lack of structure. He was in charge, yet he had no authority beyond what these men, and his own men, were willing to allow him. His men were rough customers at best, and now felt frustrated and ill-used; the Shanty people were an unknown quantity. In the last analysis he had nothing completely dependable except his musket; and nine of his men were also armed.

Whether the odds were thirty against a hundred and twenty, or one against a hundred and forty-nine, the wise course was evidently reasonable firmness without bullying. “It’s just a whip cut,” he said quietly to the young man. “He can lay off work for a couple of days. The old men can look after the food, dry out this bread, keep the fires going. No one is allowed to leave until the work is done.”

“The cut’s deep. He’ll lose his eye if it isn’t looked after. And he’s in pain. He has got to go home.”

The captain considered. “All right,” he said. “If he can’t work, he can go. Alone.”

“It’s too far for him to walk without help.”

“Then he stays.”

“He’ll have to be carried. It’ll take four men to carry a stretcher.”

Captain Eden shrugged and turned away.

“Senhor, we’ve agreed not to work until Pamplona’s taken care of.”

The captain turned to face Lev again, not impatiently, but with a steady gaze. “‘Agreed’—?”

“When he and the old men are sent home, we’ll get back to work.”

“My orders are from the Council,” the captain said, “and your orders are from me. You must make that clear to these men.”

“Look,” the young man said, with a little warmth but no anger, “we’ve decided to go ahead, at least temporarily. The work’s worth doing, the community does need new farmlands; this is a good location for a village. But we’re not obeying orders. We’re yielding to your threat of force, in order to spare ourselves, and you, injury or murder. But right now the man whose life’s at stake is Pamplona there, and if you won’t act to save him, then we have to. The two old men, too; they can’t stay here with no shelter. Old Sun has arthritis. Until they’re sent home, we can’t go on with the work.”

Captain Eden’s round, swarthy face had gone rather pale. Young Boss Macmilan had told him, “Round up a couple of hundred peasants and get them clearing the west bank of Mill River below the ford,” and that had sounded straightforward, not an easy job but a man’s job, a real responsibility with reward to follow. But he seemed to be the only one responsible. His men were barely under control, and these Shanty-Towners were incomprehensible. First they were frightened and incredibly meek, now they were trying to give orders to him. If in fact they weren’t afraid of his guards, why did they waste time talking? If he was one of them he’d say the hell with it, and make sure he had a machete; they were four to one, and ten at most would be shot before they pulled down and pitchforked the guards who had muskets. There was no sense to their behavior, but it was shameful, unmanly. Where was he to find his own self-respect, in this damned wilderness? The gray river smoking with rain, the tangled, soggy valley, the moldy porridge that was supposed to be bread, the cold down his back where his soaked tunic clung to him, the sullen faces of his men, the voice of this queer boy telling him what to do, it was all too much. He shifted his musket around into his hands. “Listen,” he said. “You, and the rest, get back to work. Now. Or I’ll have you tied and taken back to the City, to jail. Take your pick.”

He had not spoken loudly, but all the others, guards and villagers, were aware of the confrontation. Many stood up from the campfires, knots and clumps of men, mud-blackened, wet hair lank on their foreheads. A while passed, a few seconds, half a minute at most, very long, silent, except for the sound of rain on the raw dirt around them and on the tangled brush sloping down to the river and the leaves of the cottonwool trees by the river, a fine, soft, vast pattering.

The captain’s eyes, trying to watch everything at once, his men, the villagers, the pile of tools, met Lev’s eyes and were held.

“We’re stuck, senhor,” the young man said almost in a whisper. “What now?”

“Tell them to get to work.”

“All right!” Lev said, and turning, “Rolf, Adi, will you start making a stretcher? You and two of the City men will carry Pamplona back to Shantih. Thomas and Sun will go with them. The rest of us back to the job, right?” He and the rest of them went to the pile of hoes and mattocks, picked up their tools, and unhurriedly strung out across the slope again, chopping at the mats of bramble, digging at the roots of shrubs.

Captain Eden, with a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach, turned to his men. The two to whom he had been giving orders stood nearest. “You’ll escort the sick ones to their village, before going to the City. And be back with the two able-bodied ones by nightfall. Understand?” He saw Angel, musket in hand, looking at him. “You’ll go with them, lieutenant,” he said crisply. The two guards, looking blank, saluted; Angel’s gaze was openly insolent, jeering.

That evening, by the cooking fire, Lev and three other villagers came to the captain again. “Senhor,” said one of the older men, “we’ve decided, see, that we’ll work here for a week, as community labor, if you City men work along with us. It won’t do, see, twenty or thirty of you just standing around doing nothing while we work.”