Gene Wolfe - In Green's Jungles

"No fight," Oreb muttered nervously.

"You need not," I told him. "No one will accuse you of cowardice if you fly to a place of safety."

"So you came out here and built these."

"Yes. My first thought-I'm sorry I didn't have you to advise me then, Captain-was to build a sort of fortress, a square of temporary walls with ditches before them, but Rimando pointed out that our enemies would simply bypass it and go on to the town, and I saw at once that he was right."

I shaded my eyes with my hand. "The horses are slipping a little in the snow, I believe."

"They always do. They'll slip more if those fellows charge our flank."

"They will. I said that Rimando had said they would bypass our fort and ravage the farms on their way to Blanko, but flank was the word he actually employed. It reminded me that in open farming country such as this we would have to be prepared for flanking movements. I once had General Mint say in a book that one could always outflank the enemy in a desert. General Mint was a woman, and I believe she was the bravest person I have ever known."

"I wish we had her here."

"So do I, but that was an aside, and one I shouldn't have made. What I should have said is that farms and fields of grain make almost as good a battlefield for cavalry as a desert. The Trivigauntis had a great deal of cavalry. I think I've mentioned them to you before."

Kupus nodded, and pointed to the sky.

"Yes, back home. Their Generalissimo was a cavalrywoman too, and it was a long time before I understood that they had specialized in cavalry and cavalry tactics because so much of their territory was desert or semi-desert, and that they had succeeded as well as they had because their women troopers were lighter than men."

Rimando reported that our gunners were in position and ready to go into action, and asked permission to open fire on the cavalry massing on the slopes to the north.

I shook my head. "We would only scatter them. Don't fire, don't let even a single gun fire, until I give the order."

Oreb reinforced it: "No shoot!"

Kupus cleared his throat. "I hate to say it, Master Incanto, but that cavalry of theirs is the worst risk we face right now."

"We face many worse things than a few hundred men on horses, Captain. Our own fears may be the worst. You asked me about the women. Men can be panicked as well."

"I try never to forget it."

"The women will stand and fight as long as they are behind their walls, and some would stand and fight without them, for which we should be exceedingly grateful. A few – Sphigx is the god of war, as you pointed out, Captain. We say 'the goddess' to be polite, but the principal war god we have. I wonder why she chose that, chose war as her domain."

Kupus pointed. "Here they come!"

He might rather have said, "There they go," for it appeared at first that the horsemen were riding away from us, trotting eastward in long, thin columns of crimson and brown.

He touched his cap. "If you'll excuse me, Master."

I nodded, and he trotted back toward the troops who made up our reserve, waving his arms and shouting instructions. In a moment more, the boys who had formed our original reserve were moving into position to resist the cavalry, guided and stiffened by his own mercenaries and the troopers who had retreated under Inclito's command.

"Men fight," Oreb muttered unhappily.

"Boys, too," I told him, "and women. Horses and even pigs-or so we hope. You have been fighting too, Oreb, and you've been of considerable help to us."

"Bird fight?"

I nodded solemnly. "Now I'd like you to help a little bit more. Lieutenant Atteno – the man in whose house we stayed in town-is in charge of the fireworks." With my free hand, I pointed to the straggling hedge well to our right rear behind which Atteno, his fireworks, and the boys who had volunteered to set them off were hidden. "I want you to remind him that he is not to light the first fuse-"

"No bang."

"That's right, no bang until the cavalry reach the long ditch."

"Horse come," Oreb croaked thoughtfully. "Come hole."

"You've got it. Now make absolutely certain that Atteno has it too, please."

I gave him a little lift: by raising the handle of my stick, and he flapped upward, vanishing almost at once against the dark sky. It was only an hour or two past noon; but quite dark, as it almost always is when it snows. The fireworks would show up well, I thought, unless the snow had wet them-in which case they would not show up at all.

For the first time it struck me that the young man who had so closely resembled my sons was with the fireworks detail, and would be in considerable danger from the fireworks themselves and from any cavalry troopers who were able to wheel their mounts and charge their tormentors. No ditch protected the hedgerow, nor had there been time to dig one even if I had been willing to risk the enemy's observing it. Angrily I reminded myself that a dozen other boys who did not in the least resemble my sons were at equal risk, and I did not have the right to get the one who did out of harm's way while leaving the others where they might be killed.

Inclito strolled over. "Well, we've done our best."

"Have we?"

He shrugged, then wiped his nose on his coat sleeve.

"I keep thinking-"

"That you should have sat tight in town like I told you to, and Hierax help the farmers. Incanto, there's going to be a hundred people a lot smarter than you are second-guessing you if we lose. Don't make it a hundred and one unless you can't help it. Remember the brothers I told you about? One killed the other one."

"Yes," I said. How often I had feared that Sinew would kill one of his brothers or his mother! Or that he would kill me, or try to kill me so that I had to kill or cripple him in self-defense. None of which had happened.

"I got second-guessed about that by everybody for two days' ride, and not a one of them had given me a single word of warning or advice before it happened." Inclito spat. "Mora's a good rider. Very good. You know that?"

I said Fava had mentioned it.

"Who do you think taught her? Taught Mora?"

"You?"

Inclito nodded. "If I hadn't, would she still have taken that horse and gone off with your letter like she did?"

"Yes," I said, "but if I had never written those letters, there would have been no horse for her to take."

"You're lying. How many times since then do you think I've wanted to kick myself for teaching her to ride?"

"A thousand, I suppose."

"Eight or ten. But believe me, eight or ten was bad enough. I never commanded our troops in a war before, did you know that?"

I shook my head.

"I was always under somebody, trying to carry out his orders. This is different, and I always thought it would be better, but it's worse. You know?"

"Very well indeed."

"I trained our troopers, and I got them the best equipment I could. I decided on the plan, holding the hills against Soldo, moving around and trying to block them no matter what way they tried to come.

"Then the war. It was like you're out in the field, and you see a big thunderstorm a long way off. You ever do that?"

"My field was the sea," I told him, "but, yes, I have."

"Same thing, probably. You see it and it's so much bigger than you that you can't even guess, and unless you plowed right it's going to wash away your topsoil and wash out your seedlings, and maybe it will even if you did, and it's coming on fast, and there's lightning in it, and you know there'll be big winds and you want to run but the sprats and the women are scared already. That's how I saw the war coming at us."

"I was frightened myself," I admitted. "I kept telling myself that I ought to leave you and Mora, and if things had been only slightly different, I'm sure I would have."