Gene Wolfe: The Claw of the Conciliator

The men were kelau, each armed with a sling with a two-cubit handle and each carrying a painted leather pouch of incendiary bullets. Few looked older than I and most seemed younger, but their gilded brigandines and the rich belts and scabbards of their long daggers proclaimed them members of an elite corps of the erentarii. Their song was not of battle or women as most soldiers’ songs are, but a true slingers’ song. Insofar as I heard it that day, it ran thus:

And so on, verse after verse, some cryptic (as it seemed to me), some merely comic, some clearly assembled purely for the sake of the rhymes, which were repeated again and again.

“A fine sight, aren’t they?” It was the innkeeper, his bald head at my shoulder. “Southerners — notice how many have yellow hair and dotted hides? They’re used to cold down there, and they’ll need to be in the mountains. Still, the singing almost makes you want to join ’em. How many, would you say?”

The baggage mules were just coming into view, laden with rations and prodded forward with the points of swords. “Two thousand. Perhaps twenty-five hundred.”

“Thank you, sieur. I like to keep track of them. You wouldn’t believe how many I’ve seen coming up our road here. But precious few going back. Well, that’s what war is, I believe. I always try to tell myself they’re still there — I mean, wherever it was they went — but you know and I know there’s a lot that have gone to stay. Still, the singing makes a man want to go with ’em.”

I asked if he had news of the war.

“Oh, yes, sieur. I’ve followed it for years and years now, though the battles they fight never seem to make much difference, if you understand me. It never seems to get much closer to us, or much farther off either. What I’ve always supposed was that our Autarch and theirs appoints a spot to fight in, and when it’s over they both go home. My wife, fool that she is, don’t believe there’s a real war at all.”

The crowd had closed behind the last mule driver, and it thickened with every word that passed between us. Bustling men set up stalls and pavilions, narrowing the street and making the press of people greater still; bristling masks on tall poles seemed to have sprouted from the ground like trees.

“Where does your wife think the soldiers are going, then?” I asked the innkeeper.

“Looking for Vodalus, that’s what she says. As if the Autarch — whose hands run with gold and whose enemies kiss his heel — would send his whole army to fetch a bandit!”

I scarcely heard a word beyond Vodalus.

Whatever I possess I would give to become one of you, who complain every day of memories fading. My own do not. They remain always, and always as vivid as at their first impression, so that once summoned they carry me off spellbound. I think I turned from the innkeeper and wandered into the crowd of pushing rustics and chattering vendors, but I saw neither them nor him. Instead I felt the bone-strewn paths of the necropolis under my feet, and saw through the drifting river fog the slender figure of Vodalus as he gave his pistol to his mistress and drew his sword. Now (it is a sad thing to have become a man) I was struck by the extravagance of the gesture. He who had professed in a hundred clandestine placards to be fighting for the old ways, for the ancient high civilization Urth has now lost, has discarded the effectual weapon of that civilization.

If my memories of the past remain intact, perhaps it is only because the past exists only in memory. Vodalus, who wished as I did to summon it again, yet remained a creature of the present. That we are capable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable sin.

No doubt if I had been one of you whose memories fade, I would have rejected him on that morning as I elbowed my way through the crowd, and so in some fashion would have escaped this death in life that grips me even as I write these words. Or perhaps I would not have escaped at all. Yes, more likely not. And in any case, the old, recalled emotions were too strong. I was trapped in admiration for what I had once admired, as a fly in amber remains the captive of some long-vanished pine.

The bandit’s house had differed in no way from the common houses of the village. It was of broken mine-stone, single storied, with a flattish, solid-looking roof of slabs of the same material. The door and the only window I could see from the street had been closed with rough masonry. A hundred or so fair-goers stood before the house now, talking and pointing; but there was no sound from within, and no smoke issuing from the chimney.

“Is this commonly done hereabouts?” I asked Jonas.

“It’s traditional. You’ve heard the saying, ‘A legend, a lie, and a likelihood make a tradition’?”

“It seems to me it would be easy enough to get out. He could break through a window or the wall itself by night, or dig a passage. Of course, if he expected something like this — and if it’s common and he was really engaged in spying for Vodalus, there’s no reason he shouldn’t — he could have supplied himself with tools as well as a quantity of food and drink.”

Jonas shook his head. “Before they close the openings, they go through the house and take everything they can find in the way of food and tools and lights, besides whatever else may be of value.”

A resonant voice said, “Having good sense, as we flatter ourselves, we do indeed.” It was the alcalde, who had come up behind us without either of us noticing his presence in the crowd. We wished him a good day, and he returned the courtesy. He was a solid, square-built man whose open face was marred by something too clever about the eyes. “I thought I recognized you, Master Severian, bright clothes or no. Are these new? They look it. If they don’t give satisfaction, speak out to me about it. We try to keep the traders honest that come to our fairs. It’s only good business. If he doesn’t make them right for you, whoever he is, we’ll duck him in the river, you may be sure. One or two ducked a year keep the rest from feeling too comfortable.”

He paused to step back and examine me more carefully, nodding to himself as though greatly impressed. “They become you. I must say, you’ve a fine figure. A handsome face too, save perhaps for a bit too much pallor, which our hot northern weather will soon make right. Anyway, they become you and look to wear well. If you’re asked where you had them, you might say Saltus Fair. Such talk does no harm.”

I promised I would, though I was far more concerned about the safety of Terminus Est, which I had left hidden in our room at the inn, than about my own appearance or the durability of the lay clothes I had bought from a slopman. “You and your assistant have come to see us draw out the miscreant, I suppose? We’ll be at him as soon as Mesmin and Sebald bring the post. A battering ram is what we called it when we passed the word of what was intended, but I’m afraid the truth is that it’s nothing more than a tree trunk, and not a big one either — otherwise the village would have had to free too many men to handle it. Yet it should do the work. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of the case we had here eighteen years gone?”