Gene Wolfe: Exodus from the Long Sun

Scleroderma shook her head.

“But His Cognizance was here?”

The fat man said, “Stopped an’ had a chat, nice as anybody. I wouldn’t of known, only the wife, she knows all that. Goes twice, three times most weeks. Just a little man older’n my pa. Had on a plain black whatchacallit, like any other augur.” He paused, his eyes following Maytera Marble and Mucor. “Crowd around any harder, an’ they’ll shove somebody in.”

“You’re right.” Maytera Mint trotted through the snow to the fire. “People! This little fire can’t warm even half of you. Collect more wood. Build another! You can light it from this one.” They dispersed with an alacrity that surprised her.

“Now then!” She whirled upon Scleroderma and Shrike. “If His Cognizance is here, I must speak to him. As a courtesy, if for no other reason. Where did he go?”

Shrike shrugged; Scleroderma said, “I don’t know, General,” and her husband added, “Said we’d have to leave this whorl, then the Calde come an’ got him. First time I ever seen him.”

“Calde Silk?”

Scleroderma nodded. “He didn’t know him either.”

The Trivigauntis had released their prisoners, as General Saba had promised; no other explanation made sense, and it was vitally important. Maytera Mint looked around frantically for the messenger Bison would surely have dispatched minutes ago.

“He was lookin’ for the calde,” Shrike explained, “only it was Calde Silk what found him .”

“There aren’t as many as there were.” Maytera Mint stood on tiptoe, blinking away snow.

“You told ’em to go find wood, General.”

“General! General!” Beneath the shouted words, she heard the stumbling clatter of a horse ridden too fast across littered ground. “This way!” She waved blindly.

Scleroderma muttered, “Just listen to those drums. Makes me want to go myself.”

“Drums?” Maytera Mint laughed nervously, and was ashamed of it at once. “I thought it was my heart. I really did.”

Through the snow, Bison’s messenger called, “General?” She waved as before, listening. Not the cadent rattle of the thin cylindrical drums the Trivigauntis used, but the steady thumpa-thumpa-thump of Vironese war drums, drums that suggested the palaestra’s big copper stew-pot whenever she saw them, war drums beating out the quickstep used to draw up troops in order of battle. Bison was about to attack, and was letting both the enemy and his own troopers know it.

“General!” The messenger dismounted, half falling off his rawboned brown pony. “Colonel Bison says we got to take it to ’em. The airship’s back. Probably you heard it, sir.”

Maytera Mint nodded. “I suppose I did.”

“They been droppin’ mortar bombs on us out of it all up and down the line, sir. Colonel says we got to get in close and mix up with ’em so they can’t.”

“Where is he? Didn’t you bring a horse for me?”

“Yes, sir, only the calde took it. Maybe I shouldn’t of let him, sir, but—”

“Certainly you should, if he wanted it.” She pushed the messenger out of her way and swung into the saddle. “I’ll have to take yours. Return on foot. Where’s Bison?”

“In the old boathouse, sir.” The messenger pointed vaguely through the twilit snow, leaving her by no means certain that he was not as lost as she felt.

“Good luck,” Scleroderma called. And then, “I’m coming.”

“You are not!” Maytera Mint locked her knees around the hard-used pony, heedless of the way the saddle hiked her wide black skirt past her knees. “You stay right here and take care of your husband. Help Maytera — I mean Maggie — with the mad girl.” She pointed to the messenger, realizing too late that she was doing it with the hilt of her azoth. “Are you certain he’s in the boathouse? I ordered him to stay back and not get himself killed.”

“Safest place, sir, with them bombs droppin’ on us.”

A floating blur resolved itself into two riders in dark clothing upon a single white horse. A familiar voice shouted, “Go! Follow that officer — he’ll take you to shelter. Get away from that fire!”

The voice was Silk’s. As she watched in utter disbelief he galloped through the fire. For a moment she hesitated; then the boom of slug guns decided her.

“I like this part though,” Hyacinth whispered, hugging Silk tighter than ever, “just don’t let it trot again.”

He did not, but lacked the breath to say so. Reining up, he shielded his eyes with the right hand that snatched at the pommel whenever he was distracted; the group he had glimpsed through the snow might be a woman with children, and probably was. Gritting his teeth, he slammed his heels into the white gelding’s flanks. It was essential not to trot — trotting shook them helpless. More essential not to lose the stirrups that fought free of his shoes whenever they were not gouging his ankles. The gelding slipped in the snow; for an instant he was sure.

Behind him, Hyacinth shrieked, “Up, stand up! That way!” She sounded angry; and briefly and disloyally, he wished that she possessed the clarion voice that Kypris had bestowed upon Maytera Mint — though it would have been still more useful to have it himself.

“My Calde!” A snow-speckled figure had caught the bridle.

“Yes, what is it?”

“All are within, My Calde. They are gone. You must too, before you die.”

He shook his head.

“But a few remain, I swear. I shall send them. You must compel him, Madame.”

Then the captain was running and the gelding trotting after him, and they were being shaken as if by a terrier.

“Here is the entrance, My Calde. I regret I cannot assist you and your lady to dismount.”

Too shaken even to think of disobeying, Silk slid from the gelding’s back and helped Hyacinth down. The captain pointed to a deep crater almost at his feet; its bottom gleamed with greenish light.

Too sharply for comfort, Silk recalled the grave he had been shown in a dream. “We got to ride on a deadcoach the first time,” he told Hyacinth. It was difficult to keep his voice casual. “That was a lot more comfortable, but there was dust instead of snow.” She stared at him.

“You must climb down.” The captain pointed again. “The climb is somewhat difficult. Several have fallen, though none were injured seriously.” He produced a needler, fumbling the safety with his left thumb.

Silk said, “You’re about to join the fighting.”

“Yes, My Calde. If you permit it.”

Silk shook his head. “I won’t. I have a message for you to give to General Mint. Do you know where Hyacinth and I are going?”

“Into this tunnel below the city, My Calde, to preserve yourself for Viron, as is proper.”

Hyacinth smoothed her gown. “We’re supposed to leave the whole whorl with thousands and thousands of cards. If we get to whatever it is, we’ll be rich.” She spat into the snow.

“I’ve taken all the funds I could out of the fisc,” Silk explained, “and His Cognizance has emptied the burse — the Chapter’s funds. I’m telling you this so you can tell General Mint what’s become of us, and what’s happened to the money. Do you know which Siyuf you’re fighting?”

A voice called, “Calde!”

“Is that you down there, Horn?”

“Yes, Calde.” Horn climbed toward him, his feet loosening stones that rattled down the slope to fall into the tunnel.

“Go back down,” Silk told him.

“My Calde, we have been so fortunate as to chance upon this refuge opened for the defenseless by the enemy’s bombs. I thank the good gods for it. You and your lady must employ it as well. Her airship cannot but see the fire.”