Gene Wolfe - Exodus from the Long Sun

He nodded. “Please do, General. I’d appreciate it very much.” He was tempted to ask her about the Fliers, as commander of the airship, she might know something of interest — possibly even of value. But it would be the height of bad manners for him to display curiosity about anything other than the military might of Trivigaunte at this moment.

A young woman’s dark face (after a brief uncertainty he recognized Horn’s sweetheart Nettle) appeared at the left side of the platform. Loudly enough for him to overhear, she asked, “Wouldn’t you like to sit down, Your Cognizance? There’s a man renting folding stools.”

Quetzal beamed. “How kind you are, my daughter! No, I’ve got my baculus, so I’m better off than the others.” (It was not entirely true; Oosik had his heavy sword in front of him and was leaning upon it as if it were a walking stick.) “Patera Calde isn’t as lucky,” Quetzal continued. “Would you like this kind girl to rent you a stool, Patera Calde?”

It would be unthinkable, of course, for him to sit while the Prolocutor stood. Silk said, “Thank you very much,. Nettle. But no. It’s not necessary.”

“I’ve just decided,” Quetzal told Nettle, “that though I wouldn’t like one stool, I’d like two. One for me and one for Patera Calde. Have you enough money for two?”

Nettle assured him she had, and disappeared in the crowd.

On Silk’s right Saba muttered, “You men lack the stamina of women. It’s biology and nothing to be ashamed of, but it shows why we make the best troopers.” His cheeks burned; a subtle alteration in Quetzal’s posture hinted that he too had heard, and was awaiting Silk’s reply.

What would Quetzal himself have replied? Saba’s remark bordered on inexcusable arrogance, surely, and such arrogance was punished by the just gods — or so he had been taught in the schola. Reflecting, he decided it was one of the few things he had been taught that seemed undeniably true.

He smiled. “You’re entirely correct, General, as always. No observer can help noticing that women endure far more than men, and with greater fortitude.”

On Saba’s right, Oosik muttered, “Our calde has a broken ankle. Haven’t you seen how he limps?”

“It had slipped my mind, Calde.” Saba sounded honestly contrite. “Please accept my apologies.”

“You have nothing to apologize for, General. You stated an inarguable fact. Sphigx and Scylla might apologize for facts, I suppose — but a mortal?”

“Just the same, I — here they come.”

The first riders, tall women on spirited horses, could be seen through the arch. Each bore a slender lance, and a yellow pennant stood out below the head of each lance. “The Companion Cavalry,” Saba told Silk in a low voice. “All are wellborn, and in addition to their regular duties, they supply bodyguards to the Rani.”

“I know nothing about these matters,” Silk leaned toward her, “but wouldn’t slug guns be more effective than lances?”

“You’ll be able to see them better in a moment. They have slug guns in scabbards, left of their saddles. Their lances are used in a charge. You can’t fire a slug gun with its muzzle at the horse’s ears without panicking the horse.”

Silk nodded, but could not help thinking that from the accounts he had been given, Maytera Mint and her volunteers had fired needlers when they charged the floaters in Cage Street. Presumably, the moderate crack of a needler did not disturb a horse like the boom of a slug gun. To him at least, it seemed that even a small needler like Hyacinth’s, with a capacity of fifty or a hundred needles, would be a superior weapon.

Nettle reappeared, holding up folding stools with canvas seats. Quetzal accepted one, and Nettle went to the front of the platform to pass the other to Silk.

He took it and exhibited it to Saba. “Wouldn’t you like this, General? You’re welcome to it.”

“Absolutely not!”

“We could sit alternately, if you like,” Silk persevered. “You could rest a while, then return it to me.”

She shook her head, her lips tight; and Silk put down the stool, empty, between them.

The Companions had ridden in threes and had appeared to be scanning the crowd; having kept a rough count, Silk felt sure there had been no more than two hundred. The troopers behind them bore no lances and were neither so regular in size nor so well mounted; but they rode ten abreast, led by an officer in a dusty old cloak on the finest horse that he had ever seen.

“Generalissimo Siyuf,” Saba muttered. “She’s related to the Rani on her father’s side, as well as her mother’s.”

“Your supreme military commander.”

Saba nodded. “A military genius.”

Surveying that hawk-like profile, he decided it might well be true, and was certainly true enough to make Siyuf a valuable ally; genius or not, she radiated resolution and intelligence. He could not help wondering what she had been told about him, and what she thought of him now, the insecure young ruler of a foreign city; the urge to comb his untidy hair with his fingers, as he would have in a conversation with Quetzal, was practically irresistible. For half a second, his eyes locked with hers.

Then Saba saluted, and her salute was returned negligently by Siyuf; at once Oosik saluted her, in accord with the protocol agreed to Tarsday. Behind her, rank after rank of disciplined young women drew sabers and faced right, seemingly oblivious to the swirling dust and biting wind.

“Generalissimo Siyuf rides at the head of her own regiment. She joined eighteen years ago as a brevet lieutenant, and it’s known now as the Generalissimo’s Auxiliary Light Horse…”

Saba fell silent; shivering, Silk murmured, “Yes?”

“Your people aren’t cheering, Calde. Not nearly enough. The Generalissimo won’t be pleased.”

He seized the opportunity. “Perhaps they’re afraid they may panic your horses.” It had been juvenile, but for a minute or more he enjoyed it.

A wide break in what had threatened to become an infinite succession of mounted troopers apparently marked the end of the Generalissimo’s Auxiliary Light Horse. It was followed by the yellow, brown, and red flag of Trivigaunte, borne by an officer on horseback and escorted by an honor guard clearly drawn from the Companion Cavalry, and the banner by the band whose martial music had been the first indication that the Rani’s troops were near. The musicians, marching with the precision of a picture in a drill book, were all men and all bearded; the onlookers’ cheers increased noticeably as they passed.

“They’re really very good,” Silk told Saba, hoping to restore friendly relations. “Very skillful indeed, and our people seem to love their music.”

“I’m an old campaigner, Calde.”

Privately wondering what the campaigns had been, and how Generalissimo Siyuf had revealed her military genius in them, Silk ventured, “So I understand.”

“Your people are cheering because they’re men. You think we keep our men chained in the cellar, but most of our support troops are men.”

“With beards,” Silk commented; it seemed safe.

“Exactly. You shave yours off to make yourself look more like a woman. I’m not criticizing you for it, in your position I’d do the same thing. But we don’t let our men do it at home. They can trim their beards with scissors if they want to, and these support troops are required to. But they can’t shave, or pull the hairs out.”

Silk felt himself wince and hoped she had not noticed it.

“We’ve only let them use scissors for about twenty years,” she continued. “When I was a lieutenant they couldn’t, and you saw a good many with beards below their waists. We let them tuck them into their belts, and some people felt that was going too far. The idea is that a beard makes it easy to cut a man’s throat. You grab it and jerk his head up.”