“Oh, I heard!” Qualt nodded. “It was a terrifying battle—so says everyone who saw it; and so do a good many more who’ve only heard of it. Thou gavest the Myetrans a show and a fight, ’ey?”
And Rahm, who had heard nothing at all of what Qualt had done (for even the Winged Ones he’d talked to had not mentioned Qualt by name), put his tree trunk of an arm about Qualt’s lean shoulders and, leaning toward the garbage collector, said: “Well, if thou wouldst talk about it to gossipy old men and women from the back of thy cart when thou makest thy next dawn rounds, let me tell thee a little of what it was really like. Here’s how it was, for mayhap thou dost not know; but I have even been to Hi-Vator . . !” and the two youths, Rahm leaning his head down to Qualt’s, with Qualt listening and Rahm explicating and gesturing, walked back toward the common.
*
Minutes later on the same side street, Rimgia and Naä passed Mantice’s wagon. Rimgia stood on tip toes, looked in, then turned away with a sour face. “Guess who’s in that one—” But there was a quick grin, impossible to squelch at the sourness’s end. After all, it was not another villager.
“Who—?” Naä asked. She looked too. “Oh… him! Well, good riddance, I suppose.”
“Naä?” Rimgia walked again as again Naä fell in beside her. “Isn’t it odd? Yesterday, the idea of what happens when we die seemed just the most fascinating thing in the world to think about. And now, with so many dead about us—our people, theirs—it just seems silly. What, today, dost thou think?”
Naä shrugged. “Well, I’ve always thought thinking about how to live was more important than thinking about after we die. One likes to assume death will take care of itself. It’s just a bit disconcerting to see so many other people putting so much energy into taking care of it for you. Life has always been such a surprise, death, I expect—even if it’s nothing—will be one too.”
Which, to Rimgia, sounded very wise. The two women walked on through the late afternoon, looking up in the air again and again.
The shack was dark and hot. At one side of the room, blinking about sullenly, a young soldier lay, his leg in a wad of bloody bandage. At the fire, the old weaver glanced up, then went back to stirring her pot over crackling flames. The smell of wintergreen and something vinegary escaped in the steam whipping from the rim.
Some rural remedy, that—however bitter on the tongue, however turgid in the belly—would return the moribund to life?
Or perhaps a country potion, that—if one was lucky, did nothing or, if one was not—hastened the end?
The pallet on the near side was much bloodier; and when, from where he lay, the prince began to speak, the young soldier turned away, in disinterest or exhaustion.
“Ah, you’ve come—it is you, isn’t it? I can’t see very well. How odd…excuse me; this terrible lack of breath, panting—it’s all I can do. How odd it is that we have come so near to changing places, you and I. What a very little time ago it was, when, here in this shack in which we were keeping you, you knew that you’d be dead in hours… then in minutes… then, when you were led across the grass, in moments—and I looked down on it all. Now I’m the one who knows I have only hours left—perhaps not even that. And there you stand, watching, with not much to say. Come here…come closer. We share a mission, you and I—Ah, when that boy’s blade went into my chest, I could actually feel—beyond the pain, as I fell, not quite unconscious—I could feel the metal inside, against my heart, feel my heart beating against the blade, pushing against the edge that actually touched it, with each pulse, doubtless cutting itself to ribbons, even as he wrested it free of my ribs—if I could only get in a real breath! This panting, like a woman in labor, just to bring forth my death! But I wonder if you’ll ever know how cursedly annoying it is to feel the inside of your body. It’s quite the strangest thing there is. That poor, mad Çironian, with his ax—I liked him, you know? Is it so strange to say? He rather reminded me of myself—myself a long, long time ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if, years from now, he doesn’t begin to remind a few people of me! Give me your hand there—no, take mine. Take it…did you take it? By Kirke, I can’t even feel it! Really, it’s probably him I should be talking to, not you. Though in all likelihood he can make the transition—I trust he can make the transition, without my help. I can’t see him staying on here in this town much longer—any more than I can see it for you! They will be happy to have him, certainly—for a day, a week, a month even. But he will not be able to stay here long. Soon he will have to go—of his own accord, if the town is lucky. Else they will have to drive him out—or kill him: an outlaw in this grotty village with no laws to speak of. For soon they will realize they are harboring that most dangerous creature, a young man who has defied the highest, most rigorous, most rigid law, defied it with mayhem and destruction and most wanton murders—ten, eleven, twelve murders I have heard; thirteen, when I die—and gotten away scot free! No, he must go—even if it takes him a month, a year, five years to be on his way. Really, I would like to be around to observe what happens… Come closer, closer. We must be closer, you and I. I can’t even see the color of your eyes. Please, you must come closer… excuse me for whispering. But I have to conserve my strength—though, for what, I cannot guess. But still—I still feel something separates us, like…like what? Like a blood drop run down a…Oh, I cannot tell you how the notion of eternity bores me—not to mention all the silly stories we’re always making up to render the idea palatable! A universe where one has to die is so uninteresting—you can understand how we’re always flirting with the idea of letting in a bit more evil, then just a bit more—to liven things up. No, come closer. Closer—no… this place, in its stinking particularity, doesn’t have much of the eternal about it. We’re probably in one of those benighted little cultures where every three, five, or seven years, the locals go off on a journey in the wilds, in hopes of becoming a little less local after all. Well, I think that’s what you probably need, just about now. You were not a good officer. But you might still make a good man. I think you would like to be a certain sort of man—even, yes, I dare to say it, a good one. But, no, you aren’t now. At least not yet. Just ask that boy staring at the thatch, across the room. Or any one of them down in the council-house cellar. Still, to be the man you want to be, you have merely to pursue yourself—passionately, brutally, blindly, looking for no thanks! It means, yes, doing what you feel is right—I have always tried to do what was right. But long ago I learned that being right was a brutal, cruel, and thankless position. Ah—I wish I could see you more clearly! If you pursue yourself in that manner, your friends will criticize you for it, call you a fool—as I have called you. But then, with only a few unhappy moments, I’ve always considered myself your friend. The things that made you hate me, I only did to shock you, to wake you up, to make you become yourself… and you are chuckling bitterly now, saying: Yes, that’s why he condemned me to death! Well, what we criticize in you, cultivate. That’s you. And promise me—promise me, that you will, indeed . . you will go on to pursue the person you are so close to becoming yet are so far away from. It isn’t a very big promise; but I want that promise to fall, like a severing blade, between you and your ever taking the notion for granted that, finally, you have achieved it. For then, my friend, you will be in my position—I promise you. So, we have promises to exchange, you and I. Oh, I would love to be able to promise you more than that—more than what is simply inevitable. Come closer, please… hold my hand tighter. Don’t let anything hold us apart—not now. Let me do this. Let me…I can’t feel you at all. Tighter! A little tighter? Oh…!” The prince made a sudden attempt to pull air into his ruined ribs that would not respond. And another. Then, he whispered: “It’s going to happen! It’s going to—” For choking moments behind the beard, his face took on a look of pained surprise, that, slowly, subsided—till the head dropped to the side. Bubbles in the red froth at his mouth’s corner burst against beard hair. Breath was gone.
At the fire, the
weaver tapped her long-handled spoon on the cauldron’s rim and looked up. A naked back, with its small, sharp vertebrae curved toward the room—the young soldier sighed, but did not even glance around.
Across the commons a dog pranced and, its head back, yipped, till, loping past, Rahm turned and called jocularly: “Come on, there—cut it out now, Mouse!”
A child standing near turned to declare: “His name isn’t ‘Mouse’—and you know it, Rahm!”
Then both laughed—the girl’s, a brief, high sound, like a single note of the dog’s yipping, and Rahm’s, a broad-chested, doubled-over, head-shaking, arm-waving, hand-clapping, loud-then-high-then-low-again laugh, that took him three, four, five steps along, going on and on and on—so that, for uncomfortable moments, he looked like a man with a creature clutching his shoulders whom he was trying to shake free.
Again seated on the edge of the blackened wood, Kire looked at his hysterical savior, as if Kire himself were hundreds of feet above and Rahm, dog, and child were on the ground. His miraculous rescue that dawn had catapulted Kire to some altitude from which, like a man afraid of heights, he could appreciate none of the view for the vertigo. Kire was still trying to recall the names of his units’ dead—unhappily aware that he could, now, really, remember only one: Nactor, off in the shack. Then, of course, there was his big guard, in the wagon. And what had been the name of his little friend, the one with the freckled shoulders—a soldier Kire knew had died early in the operation, but to whom, for his life, he could now fix neither face nor name. Somehow what had happened to him had so immersed him in life that little of death would stick to him—for which he felt awkward, uncomfortable, and inadequate.
His big body still lost in its laugh, again Rahm glanced at the seated Myetran. Kire looked out with green, distant eyes. Somehow, the dark clothing, with the puma skin around them, had come all askew. I call him ‘friend,’ Rahm thought. We have now each helped the other; yet I don’t know him—at all, And Rahm was glad the laugh’s remains kept the thought’s discomfort from his face.
The day of the Winged One’s coming and their routing of the Myetrans was a day of wonder—wonder that spread from the town dump, where Qualt finally drew up his own wagon with baskets of yellow rinds and chicken feathers and milkslops and egg shells and corn shucks, to go once more, stiff-legged and leaning back against them, over the gravel to dump them from the ravine precipice into the soggy and steaming gully; wonder that spread over the common at the village center, where the grassy expanse was worn away down the middle by the daily set-up of the barter market’s stalls just before the council house, where most of the women and many of the men mentioned in these chapters came to walk, judge, and trade; wonder that spread to the outlying grain fields and cane fields and corn fields and kale fields, in one of which Gargula stood, calf deep in greens, beside his plow, rubbing his nose and not quite ready to work, because he’d taken Tenuk’s mule from its shed under the thatched-out roof that day, fed it, watered it, and brought it to the field without asking anyone—because there’d been no one to ask; and the whole silent operation had left him with a tongue too heavy to speak.
The wonder and the mystery, as the village children would remember it, was that over all, now on the ground, and more and more frequently in the air, the great shapes, like flitting shadows, moved, awkwardly on the earth and gracefully through the sky, translucent ears cocked left or right to hear, it seemed, everything, their little eyes fixed (it seemed) on little for very long. Thus, as had Naä and Rimgia, one walked about the streets—or the common, or the refuse pit, or the fields—with eyes continually lifting.
Back at the ravine, Qualt smacked the bottom of his last basket, turned it up to peer within its smelly slats, then dragged it behind him, rasping on rock, toward the dozen others, and looked up—as Rimgia came out into the clearing that held his hut as well as his yard full of odd, awkward, and broken things.
She walked thoughtfully, glanced up casually: a dozen Winged Ones circled above the ravine.
Have we mentioned that Qualt, even before the coming of the Myetrans, had for a while, now, been the most respected young man in town? In such a village, the garbage man knows more about what goes on (and goes out) than anyone else. As garbage man, Qualt was expected not just to know this, but to study it, and to record anything about it of interest, which he did two or three evenings a week, on parchment scrolls, with great diligence. It was Qualt who, rather than Rahm, as a child had pestered Old Ienbar to teach him his writing system. In the course of learning it years ago, Qualt had copied out, several times over, almost the whole of the death scrolls on store in Ienbar’s shack (he still had those early exercises in trunks piled beneath his grandmothers’ marriage blankets in his back storage room), and it was he to whom would soon fall the task of reconstructing them. Hara’s jokes with Rahm about a possible seat on the elders’ council was a gesture simply to make the big youth feel better. Hara’s jokes with Qualt, though they took the same form, were signs of a foregone conclusion of the whole Çiron council, that the lean youth would have the next seat that came vacant—and would be the youngest “elder” ever to sit with them.
Over the next weeks as his various accomplishments during the Myetran siege (from his gathering of information, to his help to Naä, to the water for the prisoners, to the multiple garbage peltings, and finally his own night-journey to Hi-Vator) would come to general awareness, they would make this modest young man into a true town hero—and the already high respect and regard in which he was held would become something quite stellar. What Rahm and Naä had done was the stuff of song. But what Qualt had done was finally the stuff of myth.
At this moment, however, neither Qualt nor Rimgia knew the reputation for heroism that was to accrue. Right now, Qualt was moody, because an hour back he’d had to take his garbage wagon, along with ten other carts (along with Mantice and Brumer and some others), full of corpses, piled so high one or two regularly fell off—soldiers and villagers both—down some two-hundred yards, to dump them into a part of the ravine his predecessor at the dump, years ago, had told him about—the safest place to put corpses when, through man-made or natural catastrophe, the death toll exceeded what the burial meadow might reasonably hold.
The fact and the location were always with him; but this was the first he’d ever had to use it.
Rimgia wandered toward Qualt. Three days ago, she had wanted to make her questions interesting for Naä; but she’d wanted to take the most interesting of their answers to Qualt. Now, however, as she’d explained to Naä only a bit before, those answers in the aftermath of the violence seemed somehow irrelevant, and so she’d come here feeling oddly empty—yet had come just the same.
Between her fingers, she turned the stem of a black-eyed flower with yellow petals she’d thought to show him; but then, because even that seemed so childish, she threw it to the gravel. And Qualt, because he had seen her father burned down on the common the night before last and had wondered at her mourning, looked at her seriously and said: “Wouldst thou come in? I have some broth heating—I’ve knocked the marrow from half a dozen pork bones into it . . ?”
She stepped within the curve of the lean arm he held out, and they walked between the odd junk about his yard. From the Winged Ones flying above, shadows passed and pulled away from them, till, at the door hanging, she turned and looked up, shifting her shoulders under his grip—which he loosened, but did not release. “Qualt, isn’t it odd?” she said. “The Winged Ones saved us—saved our whole village. They turned out to be brave and wonderful and generous. Yet we’ve always been taught to fear them; and now it seems there was no reason to fear. All this time, perhaps we could have been friends with them, learning from them, enjoying their ways and wonders while they benefited from ours. Doesn’t that make us seem like a very small-minded little village!”
“Perhaps,” said thoughtful Qualt. He squeezed her shoulder with his hard, large hand, near permanent in its glove of dirt.
; “Dost thou not think so?” she asked, looking up—at him and at three (then three more) Winged Ones passing through the luminous space between his long curly hair and the roof’s edge.
“Perhaps,” he said. “But there still might be reason to fear.”
“To fear? The Winged Ones—who saved us? But why?”
Qualt took in a breath, squeezed her shoulder again, and looked slowly at the flying figures around them. “Maybe it’s only a little thing—but when it happened, it made me afraid. There was a Winged One who was with me, and whom I thought my friend. And when the Winged Ones came down at our request and were triumphant, and the soldiers had all surrendered, he was with us when we penned some of the Myetrans up in the corral of crossed wires they’d imprisoned some of our people in before. I’d put in both soldiers and officers. And my winged friend now called through the wires, to one of the officers, standing just inside, all in black, still in his hood, with that straight, straight cloak they wear lapping smack to the earth—the only thing that let you know he was a prisoner, really, was that his powergun sling was empty; I’d taken it away from him and smashed it. Well, the Winged One wanted to know, how do you like being a prisoner? Wouldn’t it be better to be free? And wouldn’t you like to fly, loosed from this cage, free of the fetters of the earth itself? He kept on teasing him, in his little scrap of a voice. Then, with three flaps to take off, he was up, and inside. Wouldn’t the officer climb on my back, just put an arm around my neck and hold to my shoulder? I stood outside, grinning as broadly as a child, watching and wishing it was me who’d been offered the ride—that I could change places with him. Myself, I think the officer was afraid at first; and the other soldiers inside the enclosure only looked at the ground. But finally, perhaps because he was also afraid not to, the officer stepped up and put his arms around the Winged One’s neck; and, with a few beats of those great wings, making the leaves both inside and outside the fence spin up into the air, they were up among those leaves, then above them, then above the corral itself, .moving into the sky, higher, and higher, toward the sun. In less than a minute, they were small as a bird, flying now this way, now that way, against the sky’s burning white. Because of the scale, it was hard to tell what was happening; but, I remember, as I watched them, it seemed that the backwards and forwards turnings of that Winged One were awfully quick—dazzlingly fast, faster than I’d seen any of the others fly: a moth about a fire, darting back and about before the sun. Then, I realized the speed was not seemed, but was—for the officer’s cape spread and billowed and fluttered and flapped, for the world like a third wing! Had the officer tried to choke the Winged One, perhaps, in his flight? For the Winged One, I realized, was trying to dislodge the man and throw him loose! He flew sideways, he dove head first, then whirled about and rose, now flew upside down, now back again! One thought the officer’s cape had gone mad! In no more than thirty seconds, I saw the man tear loose—and fall!