Gene Wolfe - Return to the Whorl

"Nae ter speak a'."

"We could only catch a word here and there, but we knew from your voices that it wasn't going to hurt you. So Pig put away his sword again and came back here."

"Good Silk!"

"He most certainly is, Oreb, which is why we must find him. But you and Hound and Pig are good, too, each in your own wayfriends far better than I deserve. You came to me while I sat in the godling's hand, and that took a great deal of courage. Hound's hiding in here was merely good sense, since he couldn't have achieved anything if he had tried to save me from what was actually a nonexistent threat. When there was a life to be saved, he acted as courageously as any man could.

"As for Pig, what he was ready to do leaves me speechless. I've sat cross-legged in the palm of that godling's hand, Pig, and the mere notion of attacking it in any way, of firing on it with a slug gun from a window of this house, for example, much less rushing at it with a sword…" He shook his head.

Pig chuckled. "Candy fer me, bucky. Could nae see h'it."

"But you saw Mucor? I mean the second time, when I sent her out to you?"

"Ho, aye." Pig's tone was no longer bantering.

Hound said, "Without offense, Horn. I hesitate to ask, but… I was terrified. I admit it."

"So was I," he said.

"I still am." Hound looked him in the face for the first time. "I'd like to know what the two of you were talking about. It wasn't… It isn't going to kill us or anything?"

He shook his head. "It's trying to help us, actually."

"Auld Pig'd like ter hear ter, bucky."

"I'll be happy to tell you, and in fact it's my duty to; but there are other questions. Perhaps Hound has asked them already. If so, I didn't get to hear your answers."

Hound said, "I haven't."

"Then I will. Can you tell us what Mucor said to you, Pig? It may be important."

There was a silence so long that Oreb croaked, "Pig talk!"

"Nae easy ter get h'it right," Pig muttered apologetically. "H'asked h'about me een. Knew I would, dinna yer?"

"Yes, I assumed so."

"Said she dinna know. A wee chat then, an' she said ter stay wi' yer, an' I might get 'em. Sae when Hound said h'it had yer, 'twas hoot sword, an' h'at 'em."

"I understand-or at least I understand more than I did. Did she tell you why she thought you might regain your sight in my company?"

"Did she, bucky? She did nae."

"After I left Mucor's room, Pig, I wanted to go into the suite that Silk's wife Hyacinth once occupied. It took me some while to find it, and when I did you were already there. You were angry, I believe, because I threatened to intrude."

"Aye, bucky."

For a moment or two he stared at the broad, fleshy face, made pitiable by the damp gray rag across its eyes. "May I ask what you were doing there, Pig?"

"A place ter think's h'all."

"You didn't know that the room you chose to think in had been Hyacinth's bedroom?"

"Did he? He dinna."

"You were outdoors, standing on the lawn, when you spoke with Mucor."

"Aye."

"It wasn't raining then-it can't have been, because it hadn't begun to rain yet when Hound and I went out to look for firewood sometime later. Why did you go back into the house, Pig? Was it to get out of the wind?"

"Why, bucky? Why nae? Dinna think h'about h'it."

"Did you come back here where Hound was waiting for us?"

Hound touched his knee and mouthed the word no.

"Dinna think sac," Pig murmured. "Crawlt h'in a winder."

"And went up to the second floor, which is where Hyacinth's suite was, to think?"

"Aye, bucky."

He felt his face and found that it had been dried by the fire, then ran his hand through his untidy hair, which was damp still. "You're fencing with me, Pig."

"H'is he?" It was not followed by the expected "he h'is nae!"

"Yes, he is. You are, and I'm too tired to fence. I've never taken fencing lessons, Pig, but Silk did and I got to know his fencing teacher, an old man named Xiphias. It seemed a glamorous business then, fencing."

"Did h'it noo?"

"Yes. Yes, it did." He recalled the ruined sword-stick, leaning forgotten in a corner of the Calde's Palace. He (or had it been Silk?) had drawn its hidden blade to feel the place where Blood's azoth had notched it. He recalled the moment, and with it the texture of a bamboo practice sword and the swift pattering steps when there was no time to boast, time only for the mock-deadly business of winning or losing, thrust and parry, advance and retreat. "Later," he said, "when I was building my mill, I wondered why anyone bothered. Other than by arrangement, the occasions when two combatants with swords fight it out must be very rare. On Green-have I told you I went to Green, Pig?"

"Aye."

He lay down, hands behind his head. "I got a sword there; and after I had used it to clear a sewer clogged with corpses, I used it to kill red leapers and animals of that kind. There's an art to that, if you will allow-but it isn't fencing."

Pig's deep, rough voice seemed to come from very far away. "Want ter tell yer, bucky. Truly do."

"You've sworn not to?"

"Dinna know meself. Somethin' h'inside, ca'in' me. Kept goin' an' goin', till h'it felt hamy. Believe h'in ghaists?"

Hound said, "No."

"Yes. Certainly."

"Ane h'in there, bucky. Felt a' her."

A half-strangled sob elicited, "Poor Pig," from Oreb.

"Winded perfume. Kissed me, ter. Believe h'it?"

"Yes. She kissed a great many men in there, Pig."

"If yer'd come h'in…" The long, brass-tipped scabbard stirred, scraping the hearthstone.

There was a long silence, broken by Hound. "You said you'd tell us what the godling told you."

"So I did. It's bad news for you, I'm afraid; and bad news for me as well. I should tell you first, however, that I haven't the least intention of doing what I was instructed to do."

"You're going to disobey it?"

"I am indeed. What right has it to expect obedience from me?" Again he felt the pelting rain, the freezing wind that had driven it like sleet, and the faint warmth of the huge hand. He opened his eyes. "It is not a rhetorical question, Hound. Pig, I ask it of you, too. What gives that godling-or any other-a moral right to our obedience? You've been here for the past twenty years, as I have not. Answer me if you can."

"They speak for the gods." Hound sounded more diffident than ever.

"They say they do, perhaps; but the one who spoke to me didn't even bother to say it. I might add that augurs often make the same assertion, on dubious grounds."

"Holdin' yer, wasn't h'it, bucky? Could a' killed yer."

"That's correct. I was seated on the palm of its hand, and if I had jumped, I might've been badly hurt."

"Be dead, bucky."

"I doubt it. The distance from his palm to the ground must have been two or three times my height-approximately the fall Silk suffered when he drove through Hyacinth's window. Do you know about that, either of you?"

Hound said, "No."

"I won't bore you with the details, but Silk jumped out of her window and landed on flagstones, breaking his ankle. If I'd jumped from the godling's hand, I would've landed on wet ground. That might have been almost as bad-I doubt very much, however, that it could have been worse."

"S'pose h'it'd shut h'its han' h'on yer?"

Oreb squawked in dismay.

"I would've been crushed, no doubt. Still, I doubt that it could have. They move slowly. Even in the short time I talked with it, I couldn't help noticing that. Each of its fingers must weigh as much as you do. If that's correct, closing its hand entails moving the weight of four very large men."

" "Bucky…

He chuckled. "Oreb told me a big man was behind the house. I thought he meant you, and Hound and I had been worried about you, so I went with him. Afterward-while I was sitting in the handI was inclined to be angry with him for saying big man instead of godling, giant, or something of that kind that would've told me what I was to encounter. Then I realized that to him we're as gigantic as a godling is to us-that Oreb sees little difference between a large man like you and a larger one like the godling because there really isn't much, from his standpoint. What could a godling do to him that you couldn't?"