Gene Wolfe - In Green's Jungles

"That was why you stayed? For Mora and me?"

I nodded.

"I want to ask you about that sometime." He pointed. "They're moving again. This is it."

"They're not galloping," I protested.

"Trotting. They won't gallop until they're up close. Did you think they would?"

I nodded. "It would be better if they did."

"That's why they don't." He nudged me to make sure I understood that he was joking. "You've never seen a charge?"

"I have, but they were much closer."

"They will be."

I started for Kupus's uneven line of men and boys with slug guns, but Inclito caught my elbow. "The women and sprats are scared already, remember? The men are, too, and I mean you and me. So walk."

He was right, of course. I walked slowly toward our right flank, and even permitted myself to limp a little. From the top of a stile I studied the field of green, snow-spotted winter wheat, and the crimson, brown, and silver cavalry approaching it, spirited horses and expert riders obscured by wind-driven snow. From our viewpoint, it would have been better beyond all question had the rippling wheat been higher. I could see Atteno's pigs moving through it, and even the long waves when a pig's motions twitched the finger-thick rope that united him to his partner. They were mature boars for the most part, and big ones. I had been afraid that they would fight each other, bound together as they were; apparently the lack of sows and the length of the ropes had prevented or at least postponed it.

Something-some stir, perhaps, among the women and elderly men along the walls-made me turn and look north. Soldese infantry were advancing from the hills, only fitfully visible through the snow. Looking at those dark trickles of marching men, I felt I understood how Inclito had been forced out of a whole series of good defensive positions. There must have been a thousand troopers there for every hundred Blanko possessed when the fighting began; and from the top of that stile, I was tempted to believe that there were a thousand now for every ten.

"Master?" It was Adatta, with snow in her hair and on the lashes of her remarkable eyes. "Colonel Sfido sent me. He'll send some of our people to strengthen this flank, if you want them."

I pointed to the hills.

"Yes, sir, I know. So does he, I'm sure."

"I have been studying them, Adatta, and wondering where you people in Blanko ever found the courage to defy them and their Duko."

She hesitated so long that I concluded she would never reply and turned my attention to the swarming infantry again. At last she said, "We make our own laws, sir. In the Corpo. Lots of us are old enough to remember how it was in Grandecitta, when we didn't."

I turned once more to face her. "Are you, Adatto? You don't look it."

"Yes, sir."

"I don't believe you. Twenty years ago you can hardly have been old enough to walk."

"Thank you, sir. Sir…?"

"What is it?"

"General Inclito's going up and down the walls, sir, talking to everybody. It might help if you did that, too."

"Did he or Colonel Sfido ask you to ask me?"

"No, sir. I just thought of it."

By a gesture I indicated the long thin line of men and boys in ragged coats. "We have no wall here, Captain."

"Yes, sir. Just this fence and the long ditch."

"Exactly, just the fence and the ditch. Colonel Sfido is offering to send them reinforcements deducted from your own rather slight strength. There would be women among them, I assume, as well as men. Would you go, Captain, if you were ordered to? Stand here at the edge of the long ditch with your slug gun, waiting for charging cavalry to get near enough to shoot at?"

(When I said that-I shall never forget it, Nettle – my heart sunk within me; the leading line of the Soldese cavalry were past the first trip rope, I felt sure, which meant that they had seen it in the wheat and cut it without my having observed the operation, and could very well have cut the others in just the same way.)

"Of course, sir."

I swallowed, knowing that it was useless to try to forget the crimson horsemen who would so quickly overwhelm us. "Suppose that I were to order you-you alone-to do it now. Would you, Captain Adatta?"

"Of course," she repeated. "My son's there, sir."

"I see. You don't need me to go along the walls behind General Inclito, Captain. Do it yourself. No better example of courage is to be had."

The silver notes of a bugle sounded far off.

Adatta unslung her slug gun. "Here they come, Master. You'd better get down."

The cavalry surged forward, and almost at once a score of horses fell. Rimando was waving to me frantically, but I shook my head while sympathizing with what he must have felt. I heard Adatta say "Shoot! Why don't they shoot?" under her breath.

The first trip rope had been cut or broken. More crimson-and-purple horsemen surged forward. Some were slashing at the winter wheat with their swords, and I saw one horse leap a fallen horse and rider magnificently. Two fell together almost at once; the indignant squeals of Atteno's pigs carried across the wheat field to us as clearly as the bugle.

The boys fired, a ragged crash followed by the rasping rattle of hundreds of fore-ends pulled back to expel hundreds of empty cartridges and pushed forward again to bring hundreds of fresh rounds into hundreds of chambers.

Adatta tugged at the leg of my trousers to get my attention. "Can I now, sir?"

I nodded, meaning that she should return to the walls; but before I could stop her, she was running down the line of boys, shouting encouragement and patting shoulders.

For a minute or more it seemed that the cavalry might never actually reach our long ditch. The trip ropes delayed it as I had intended, and in fact broke the legs of scores of horses. Against the greater charge of the Soldese cavalry, Atteno's boars made their own lesser charges again and again, working one another into a foaming fury that had many of the horsemen reigning up to shoot at them even as their fellow troopers fell from our fire.

Then a valiant trooper, virtually alone, broke from the rest and charged our line at full gallop. His horse jumped the last of our trip ropes only to plunge headlong into the snow-filled long ditch.

As it did, the hedgerow seemed to explode. Stars flew from it, and devils of red and blue, orange and yellow fire careened among the horses, whining, whizzing, shrieking and howling, lurching, and swerving before detonating in clouds of colored smoke and flying sparks.

"Make bang." Oreb announced self-importantly as he settled upon my staff. "Horse come. Come hole." Or at least that is what I think he said-it was hard to hear him over the noise of the fireworks.

Nor did I greatly care what he had said just then. Grateful for its new warmth, I pushed Hyacinth's azoth back into my waistband; and seeing Rimando running toward me, climbed down from the stile and walked calmly (I hope) toward him, careful to swing my staff and plant it solidly with every step, so that Oreb fidgeted and flapped on the handle, and at last abandoned it for my shoulder.

"May we open fire, sir?" Rimando called.

I waited until we were nearer, then said in a low tone, "Lieutenants may run, Captain. Captains walk."

"Yes, sir." He halted, drew himself up, and saluted. "Shall we open fire, sir?"

"You are sighted on the area behind the line of infantry facing us, as I instructed you?"

"Yes, sir."

"In that case, you may open fire as soon as the enemy's cavalry has been stampeded well into that area, Captain."

"They're in there now, sir." He pointed.

"Then you may open fire."

He spun about and dashed back toward the haystack gun, shouting; even so, it seemed to me a very long time before it spoke, and its first shot set the hay on fire so that half the crew had to fight the fire before it reached the ammunition, leaving only two men to load and fire.