Gene Wolfe - On Blue's waters

What, you will ask, became of Trooper Darjan? The truth is that I do not know. By the time we had gotten clear of the enemy horsemen, I had forgotten him utterly; and I seem to have been too fatigued last night to spare him a thought, although I was stupidly determined to write down everything before I slept. Silk would have remembered him for the rest of his life.

I stopped writing this long enough to scribble a note to Hari Mau asking about Darjan. I called him “my guide.” Hari Mau should be able to tell me whether he returned safely.

I also asked about the men’s comfort. We knew the rainy season would begin soon and tried to make provision for it. Now that it has begun, I must see that the waterproof cloaks are actually handed out to the men who need them, that they get the meals and hot tea and so on. I will set out for the front this afternoon, assuming I am well enough.

The winter wheat should have been planted before this; now it is too late. Not much was. The shortages will only get worse, although three boadoads of food from Bahar arrived yesterday. Two to the troopers, one sold in the market to help raise money for I more.

We must have an animal of some sort tonight. I meant to take I our milch cow, but with the gardener there I cannot risk it. I should have diought of this sooner. I will have to find something else today if we are to do it tonight. Not my horse, because I cannot spare him. Not the elephant, eidier. We could not control him, and Mahawat sleeps in his stall with him in any case.

No, someone else will have to find a suitable animal for me. I will be too busy, and everything I do is noticed.

Breakfast.

Chandi brought in my breakfast tray, solicitous of my health while trying very hard to keep a scratched cheek turned away from me. I asked her how it happened, expecting her to say she fell. (How long has it been since I thought about old Generalissmo Oosik? Not since Nettle and I wrote, I am sure.) She surprised me by saying she had bent to pick a rose in the garden and the bush scratched her. There is a variety there that blooms almost constantly, so her story was not as absurd as one might think. It was original and imaginative, too.

But not true. She has been fighting with a sister-wife, and I can guess which. I told her to send Pehla in to me, and she went, pale and silent. Chandi thinks she used to be my favorite, so it is easy to see what happened.

Back again. (I almost wrote home .) Two days of rain, wet and mud. My wound throbs and my right ankle hurts, but dry and comfortable otherwise. Evening-nearly eight by the big clock.

Saw the men. It is not as good as I had hoped. I sent a third of them home. Hari Mau objected so violently that I was afraid I was going to have to put him under arrest. He says that if the enemy attacks we are done. I told him the truth, that the enemy will not attack again until the rains end, that in this weather two boys and a dog could hold off a hundred men.

The men I sent home are to come back in a week. (I imagine that at least half will have to be dragged back.) When they return, we will send home another third. I told the men, or at least I told as many as I could reach.

Spoke to the head gardener again before I left. I tried to give him money and asked him to buy a goat. He said a cow would be better, and he would find one. You never know with these people.

Chicken for my supper, chopped up and mixed with fruit and pepper in the usual way. Since I see it like that twice a week at least, it should not have reminded me of anything, but it made me think of the meat pudding we got in the market at Wichote, and I should be writing about that anyway instead of all this day-to-day stuff. Just imagine what this record would be like if I had written about everything in the same way that I have been setting down these daily doings of mine. “I got a splinter in my finger today-left, index-while scraping the third cargo chest on the starboard side, and Seawrack kissed it for me.”

No, it really could not be like that, because we would still be a hundred pages at least from Seawrack, the bat-fish, and the floating isles. Back with Mucor and Maytera, in all likelihood.

At any rate, we-I-bought a species of pudding there on market day. I had never seen one like it before, and the woman selling them said they were good (naturally) so I took a chance and traded a silver earring for one. It was dried meat pounded to powder and mixed with fat and dried berries of several kinds (two black, one red and deliciously tart, and one green and fruity as I remember). Not bad-tasting, but a moderate slice of it left me feeling overfull for two days, and it was too much like what we had been eating, the breakbull meat Seawrack had smoked.

That night-I shall never forget it-Krait woke me. Or it might be better to say that by trying to approach me while I slept he stirred up Babbie enough to wake me. “I’ve found it,” he told me. “Pajarocu.”

I started to reply, but he laid a finger to his lips and motioned toward the stern.

“It’s a long way. It will take ten days or more.”

My heart sank. I had been thinking that Seawrack and I would have another month of travel at least. “The lander’s still there?”

“Yes.” He looked around cautiously at the other boats as he spoke, his reptilian eyes gleaming in the Greenlight; and I wondered why he should be afraid that the people on them might hear him, when I knew that Seawrack could not. “They still have quite a few empty places, too. About half, a woman told me, even though their town is full of men who have come to make the trip.”

“What sort of a town is it? A real town like New Viron? Or is it more like this?” By a gesture I indicated the huts at the water’s edge.

He grinned. “It’s more like one of ours, Father dear. You won’t like it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Why should I tell you and have you call me a liar to my face?”

“You are a liar, Krait. You know that much better than I do.”

He shrugged and looked angry.

“Did you talk to He-hold-fire?”

“No. Just to whoever was still awake and willing to trade a bit of gossip with me.” He watched me silently, weighing me in scales that I could not even imagine. “Are we going to take Seawrack with us?”

I hedged. “Let’s hear what she has to say. I don’t think she wants to go.”

“She wants to do what you want her to do. Why force her to guess what it is you want?”

“Then I won’t. I won’t take Babbie, either. This whole continent seems to be covered with trees.” I was thinking of Babbie living the natural life of his kind in the forest. I did not know whether there were wild hus on Shadelow, but it certainly seemed like a place where he could live happily.

“Was it like this around Pajarocu?”

“More so. The trees are bigger up the river. Bigger and older, and not so sleepy.”

“Then I’ll let him go. Free him. Why shouldn’t he be happy?”

“I should’ve told you we can’t take him anyway. No animals. You could sell him to somebody there, perhaps.”

I shook my head. Babbie was my friend.

“Seawrack’s going to be the problem. I don’t think you realize it yet, Horn, but she is.”

I wanted to say that she had not been a problem until he came, that she had helped me in all sorts of ways, but it would have been such an obvious opening for him that at the last moment I did not speak.

“An aid and a comfort.” He grinned again, fangs out. “Don’t jump like that. I can’t read your mind. I read your face.”

“You saw the truth there,” I told him. “How do we get to Pajarocu?”

“I know something about human ways, as you’ve seen. But you, being human, not only know them but understand them. Or so I assume.”