Gene Wolfe - Soldier of the mist

"Wait a minute! I thought this was hundreds and hundreds of years ago."

"We live many different lives," Drakaina told Io, "in many different bodies. Or at least some of us do. I was a princess in Aea, and a priestess of Enodia just as I am now. I told my father quite truthfully that the goddess said he would be killed by a stranger. Since Phrixos was the only stranger around, that did for him. And I set my pet python to guard the golden fleece. Then-"

We had caught up with Pasicrates, who had stopped to examine one of the ramps the men from Thought were building. It was of earth, with logs laid in crisscross layers to reinforce it. "Childish," he said.

I ventured that it looked well constructed to me.

"Yes? How would you continue it when it nears the wall? It must be highest of all there, and the defenders will rain down stones and spears upon your head. Burning pitch too, perhaps."

"I'd assign a shield bearer to each workman," I told him. "A hoplon's big enough to protect two men from stones and spears from above. For that matter a strongly roofed wagon could be used to move the logs, and much of the work could be done from inside it with the floorboards taken out. And I'd station every archer and slinger I had about halfway from here to the wall to make my enemies think twice about showing themselves to throw stones and spears. They could only form a single line along the parapet there, but my archers and slingers would be able to form four or five lines, so that for every missile of theirs we'd return four or five."

Pasicrates stroked his chin and did not answer.

We soon came to just such a roofed wagon as I had spoken of, with a splintered battering ram slung in it; no doubt I had seen it on our way to the strait, and it was the unconscious recollection of it that had made me speak as I did. I stopped and asked the men repairing the battering ram how it had been broken, and one pointed to one of the narrow doors in the base of the wall. "We tried to knock on that, but they've got a log three times as big as this up there. It's hooked to a chain so they can swing it down and pull it back up. When the old ram came out of the barn here, down she swung and snapped it right off in back of the bronze, like you see."

Young though Pasicrates is, he had not seemed boyish to me until then. "Tell them what to do, Latro. I'm sure you know."

I said, "Fundamentally, they have to catch either the log or its chain, holding it with something too heavy for the men on the wall to draw up. This wagon they call the barn seems heavy enough to me; there's a lot of thick wood in the roof, and those wheels are solid oak and as wide as both my legs. The men are putting a stouter timber in the ram already. If I were in command, I'd put spikes on its sides, and on the sides of the wagon too. Then the log would nail itself to one or the other as soon as it struck."

One of the men who had been fitting the new beam into its slings stopped work and stepped over to us. "I'm Ialtos. I'm in charge here, and I thank you for the advice; we'll make use of it. Did I hear the Rope Maker call you Latro?"

I nodded. "That's my name. Or at least, that's what I'm called among your people."

"We've got a captain here-" He pointed. "See that tower on wheels? They're putting leather on the front and sides so it can't be set on fire, and he's superintending the job. He'll talk you deaf, do you know what I mean? But he knows leather and how to get it."

Io shouted, "Hypereides!"

"That's the man-I see you've met him. He goes on sometimes about a slave he used to have called Latro. Sort of a simple-minded fellow according to Hypereides, but you could tell he liked him. He traded him to a hetaera for a series of dinners-mostly, I think, to keep him away from the fighting."

Drakaina said, "I wouldn't call Latro simple-minded, but he forgets from one day to the next." She shot a mocking glance at the Rope Maker. "He's unusual in some other respects too, wouldn't you say, Pasicrates?"

"Even women who speak little talk too much." He took her arm to draw her away from Ialtos.

Io had been studying the tower on wheels. Now she tugged at my cloak. "Look, master! Up on that ladder. It's the black man!"

The heart remembers, even when no trace of face or voice remains. The black man came running to us, shouting, his arms in the air; and though I do not know where we met or why I love him (though no doubt those things are written somewhere on this scroll), I could not stop smiling. Without thinking at all about what I should do, I embraced him as a brother.

When we had shouted together and pounded each other on the back and hugged with all our strength like two wrestlers, Pasicrates tried to question him; but he only smiled and shook his head.

Io explained, "He understands-most of it, anyway. But he can't talk, or he won't."

Drakaina said something then in a harsh and rapid way that seemed to me no better than the creaking and grinding of mill stones; and to Io's amazement and my own, the black man answered her at once in the same language. "Your friend speaks the tongue of Aram," Drakaina told Io. "Not as well as the People from Parsa, but nearly as well as I do myself."

Pasicrates said, "Then ask him how he came to learn it."

She spoke to him again, and when he had replied she said, "He says, 'For three years I was with the army. We marched from Nysa to Riverland, from Riverland over the desert to the Crimson Country, then through many other countries.' He also says, 'My king is not subject to the Great King; but the Great King gave him gold and many fine things, and swore there would be peace between our lands forever if he would send a thousand men. I walked before a hundred and twenty, all young men from my own district, and I learned to talk in this way that I might know the wishes of the Lords of Parsa.' " Drakaina added, "I'm shortening this a little."

Io demanded, "Ask how he met Latro."

" 'I saw a god had touched him. Such people are holy; someone must care for them.' "

Io started to ask where Hypereides was, but Pasicrates silenced her. "Does he want to go back to his own country?"

Before Drakaina spoke, the black man nodded and began to speak. She said, "Yes, very much. He says, 'My father and mother are there, both my wives, and my son, who is very small.' "

Pasicrates nodded. "Are there any of the other men from his country in the city?"

"He says he doesn't know, but he doesn't think so. He thinks they may have gone south with the army. He says, 'If they were here, they would show themselves to me on the walls.' And I suppose he's right-he was in plain view working on that tower; hundreds of people in the city must have seen him."

"Tell him I require him to carry a message into the city for me."

Io protested. "He belongs to Hypereides!" I think she did not want to lose sight of the black man again so soon after we had found him.

"Who will surely consent for the good of our cause. No doubt he will be compensated by his city."

"He says Latro and this child must come with him." I smiled and Io giggled, darting a glance at Pasicrates. He ignored her. "And why is that?"

Now the black man spoke at length, touching his chest and pointing with his chin to Io and me, and toward Sestos, and once pretending to draw a bow.

Drakaina told Pasicrates, "He says he won't do what you ask as a slave, that a slave remains a slave only as long as he's watched. If he goes back to the People from Parsa, he will be a soldier again, and as a soldier he won't do what you ask unless you free Latro, and Io too. He says you can force him to go to the city, but that once there he won't deliver your message-only tell lies."

Even Pasicrates smiled at that.