Gene Wolfe - In Green's Jungles

The gun in the barn fired soon afterward-I got the impression that its crew had heard the first shot, and verified its elevation and direction one final time before pulling the lanyard. Almost at once, the gun in the wood by the river, the largest and most distantly sited of all, thundered forth so deeply that it seemed to me that I could feel it shake the ground.

After that, I paid little attention to which gun happened to fire at which time, or which was having the greatest effect on our enemy's troops. Inclito had an officer in the tree in front of the farmhouse, from which he was signaling about such matters with a yellow-and-black flag on a stick; and although I had been told what the two waves overhead meant, and the four waves down, and the rest of it, I had forgotten most of the code already. Whatever signals were sent, our shells were bursting among the enemy, striking stony ground and throwing up geysers of ocher dust and flying rock that only looked small to me as I hurried forward to our walls of earth-filled bags lined with women and elderly men; they were enormous and very dangerous, I knew, to thousands of terrified Soldese troopers, and to hundreds of horses already frantic with fear.

"More bang," Oreb muttered; and a young woman with brawny arms and a broad grin said, "Looks pretty good, don't it, Master Incanto?"

I nodded and told her, "We have to destroy that cavalry before it can make a second attempt," speaking as seriously as I might have to Inclito.

"They know our tricks now, I guess."

"That's so, and there can't be many fireworks left." As I spoke, I was looking for a way to climb over her wall as I had climbed Mattak's on Gold Street, but there was no helpful, murderous sergeant on the other side of this one to give me a hand up, only a deeper ditch full of snow.

Another woman exclaimed, "We've won!"

I shook my head and frowned at her. "Not yet, though we will win."

Like ghosts, I could see their corpses at the foot of the wall, dead women with open staring eyes, and dead men, their gray beards (their white beards) dyed with their own blood. Auk had taken off his undershirt to hang it out of the window of the Juzgado; but that undershirt had been as red as the old men's beards, and I had none, red or white, although a woolen undershirt would have been a comfort that day in that wind.

Another woman said, "They'll still come at us, won't they?," and this woman had her hair bound up in a white cloth and stood beside a wooden case of slug-gun cartridges. I got her to give me her cloth and tied it around my staff, and went to the end of the wall, where at Sfido's insistence we had left a narrow space between walls and between ditches.

Someone-I think the first woman to whom I had spoken-called, "They'll shoot you," and Oreb muttered uneasily, "No bang."

Each step was harder than the last. I reached the point I had marked with my eye as the midpoint and realized that it was not, and advanced step by uneasy step after that, waving my flag to signal one thing and one thing only, over and over. Had Maytera Marble felt like this while I, from a place of relative safety, watched her advance with steady strides toward Blood's villa?

"I have her new eye in my pocket," I told Oreb. "Maytera Marble's. You recall Maytera Marble, I hope?"

"Iron girl."

"That's the one. If I'm killed, you are to take her new eye to her."

I got it from my pocket to show to him, and he said, "Man come. No shoot."

Colonel Terzo was advancing toward me. He had a needier in his hand instead of a flag of truce. "You are killing our men," he said, "killing our horses."

"We will gladly stop," (I am afraid I sounded apologetic) "as soon as you give us any reason to do so."

"I should shoot you where you stand!"

"I have been shot before," I told him, and it affected him more than I would have anticipated; the hand that held the needier shook visibly, and although he was still too distant for me to be certain it appeared to me that he turned pale.

I advanced until we stood face-to-face, as two men might talk in the street. The sound of the bursting shells was louder there, and reports of the big guns that fired them hardly more than distant thunder. I cocked my head, hearkening to Seawrack's sea-song in that field of stubble, smoke, and death.

"The Duko didn't send me out here," Terzo said angrily. "Neither did General Morello. I came out of friendship for you."

I nodded my thanks.

"You've brought your artillery outside your town, in violation of the laws of war. If you're captured you'll be shot, and I thought I should tell you."

"I didn't know that there was any such law," I said. "Where are these laws written, and by what courts are they enforced?"

"Everyone knows!"

"You mean that you make some excuse to shoot those prisoners you wish to kill. No doubt you always have."

"We're going to attack you within an hour, Incanto. You'll be-" He fell silent, staring at me. "Can you hear something I don't?"

"Sing song," Oreb suggested; and I did, following Seawrack's own intonation and pronunciation to the best of my very limited ability. The lapping of the waves was in her song, and the eerie cries of seabirds, and the lonely whistling of the wind.

"That is in the language of the Neighbors, whom you call the Vanished People," I said when I could no longer sing for weeping.

"I can-" Terzo began. Then again, "I can almost hear it myself." He fell silent.

I put my hand upon his shoulder. "Listen, and you will hear her. Those who truly listen do."

He heard the music then, I know; he stared at me with bulging eyes.

"Seawrack is singing in the place that lies beyond this place. Listen there, and you cannot help but hear her." With her I sang a few more words in the language of those whom Mora had once called the People of That Town." 'In our small house with shining windows, I waited till the tide brought your wreck through. Lie here beside me in the darkness. I'll wake to life the corpse I say is you.' That isn't exactly right, but it's as close as I can come in the Common Tongue."

I spoke the final words to his back as he sprinted for his own lines.

A representative from Novella Citta has reached us! The news is so good that I hesitate to record it. His name is Legaro, and he is a tall and very dignified man with graying hair, an assessor (he says) of his town, which is governed by such assessors.

"So you're Master Incanto," he ventured when we had been introduced, and seemed almost afraid to accept my hand. "Donna Mora and her consort have told us a great deal about you."

"You have her?" I asked. "I know she's still alive, but is she well?"

Oreb added his voice to mine. "Girl safe? No shoot?"

"She is well and safe in our peel house in Novella Citta," Legaro declared. "But I should be telling all this to the Duko, her father. Is he here?"

"He went out with one of our patrols," I explained, "but he should be back within an hour." And I told Oreb to find Inclito and tell him that there was someone here with news of his daughter.

"You're his brother, Donna Mora's uncle?"

"If she awarded me that honor, it would be uncivil of me to refuse it. A tall, sturdy girl, quite dark, with a mole here?" I touched my cheek.

He nodded. "A very stately and forceful young lady. She has made a distinct impression on everyone." He leaned toward me and his voice became confidential. "Duko Inclito is marrying a woman from Novella Citta?"

"He intends to, certainly. The ceremony will not take place until after the war."

Another nod. "Naturally. I understand."

"Her name is Torda; but beyond the fact that she is both gracious and beautiful, and a distant relation-a second cousin by marriage, or something of that kind-I really know nothing about her. Inclito has been a widower for many years. No doubt Donna Mora told you."