A, B, C: Three Short Novels

  “My prince, truly I thought—”

  “What did you think, Kire? At this point I would like to know if you were thinking at all. Personally, I thought you’d lost your mind. Did you think perhaps it was an accident when a fire started in the horse yard? Did you think perhaps it was happenstance when most of three platoons came down with dysentery in the same hour?”

  “My prince”—the man’s breath came stiffly, hoarsely, uncomfortably in his throat—“all we know is that it was not the villagers I had flogged who did it. What I thought, my prince, I thought we might…learn something from them—who is responsible for the fire, the water.”

  “We could take any one of them from the street and beat that knowledge from him.”

  “You’ve tried that, my prince.” He drew a loud frustrated breath. “Sire, these are a peaceful people. They don’t even have a word for weapons. The tactics we are using here are inappropriate—more than inappropriate: wasteful of our time and energy.”

  “Peaceful, are they? If they have no word for them, that just means they will be that much cleverer in coming up with weapons you or I would never think to name as such. There have already been attempts at sabotage—”

  “But let me at least try a method that seems to me right for this situation. Let me pick out someone, gain his confidence, then send him among them so that we can learn and direct both. Let me select a man who—”

  “Choose a woman.” Nactor’s voice was hard, almost shrill. “A girl, rather. I am not interested in confidences, Kire. I’m interested in terror, fear, and domination. And she must be terrified of you, Kire—she must know that if she displeases you in the slightest thing, then…you will kill her!” (Near Naä’s cheek the canvas snapped once more. She pulled sharply back, though more at the indifferent cruelty than the surprise. Again she moved forward.) “Peaceful! If they seem peaceful, it is because we have given them no opportunity to be otherwise. Peaceful? Ha! Get this woman. Yes—there are three things you must do to her: bed her, beat her, and let her know her life hangs by no more than your whim, a hair…a hair that can break any moment you decide. Then…well then, use her as you will.” (In the pause, Naä tried to picture the lieutenant’s and the prince’s expressions.) “You understand, Kire: this is an order. Break her, violate her. Then, when you’ve done that, you may use her as you wish for whatever spying—or instruction—you can. And when we depart here, you will kill her—like any other soldier finished with an enemy whore. You’ve disobeyed me once, Kire. If you do it again…”

  Naä heard the sounds of boots over matting and hard-packed earth. Canvas scratched against canvas as the flap was pushed back. Kire spoke to a guard: “Go into town, Uk. Take horses and two more men; requisition a portable light from Power Supplies. And bring back some woman of Çiron—”

  The prince laughed: “Go into town and find a young and pretty one. I really think this should be rather fun; I’m going back to my tent.”

  “Obey your prince.” Kire spoke to the big soldier.

  Naä realized she was gripping the edge of the canvas in her fist. Stupid! she thought, and released it, hoping no one within had seen. She moved back into the darkness.

  There—the guard was going toward Supplies.

  Naä backed up half a dozen steps, turned, and sprinted into the trees alongside the drop that in the autumn became a stream, but was now no more than a marshy strip of leaves at the bottom of the night.

  —

  There’d not been much pleasure that day for Uk. In the morning he’d stuck his head out from the warmth of his sleeping bag into mist cut through with birch trees. Squatting by him the tall soldier on cleanup detail, who’d shaken him by the shoulder, said: “Your friend’s over there in the wagon.” Uk had been confused enough to believe for a moment the man was telling him Mrowky’d come back. “If you want to see him, before we put him under.”

  Then, understanding, Uk pushed himself out of the bag to stand in the inverted evening that was dawn. In his brown military underwear, occasionally scratching his stomach, he walked the quarter mile to the casualty wagon.

  The men had already finished the grave pit. The wagon detail had found only three Myetran dead around the village—the perfect average for this operation.

  “You want his armor?” one asked.

  Uk glanced over the wagon’s edge, where—with the two other corpses—Mrowky sprawled, hair plastered to his head with mud, mud dried over one side of his face, neck swollen, purple and black, bulging over the rim of his breastplate. Uk started to say he’d take the armor till he realized he’d have to take it from the corpse himself. “Naw. Naw, you bury him in it. He was a good soldier. He was a good—” Uk turned from the cart abruptly, to start back, thinking: Mrowky was a stupid, lecherous pest who’d talked too loud and too much.

  Was Mrowky a bad man? he let himself wonder. Then, thirty meters from the wagon, Uk said out loud: “Mrowky was the best!” because a friend seemed somehow such a rare and valuable and important thing in the hazed-over dawn by the trees at the edge of this ragged village who knew where. He thought (and knew it was true, thinking it): Mrowky would have killed for me. I would have killed for him….There in the wet road, the fact stopped him, struck his eyes to tears, then, moments on, dried them. He took a loud, ragged breath and walked back among the morning cook fires.

  Some hours later, on a patrol through town, when the dozen of them were a street away from the market common, just across from the well, Uk glanced aside to see the redheaded girl, being hurried by her equally redheaded brother up some low steps and through a shack door. And that’s the woman Mrowky died for, Uk thought. No, it wasn’t fair.

  And what about the crazed peasant who’d murdered Mrowky? Would I even recognize him, Uk had pondered, his face once more returned to normal, after that murderous frenzy?

  Later, cross-legged on the ground, while he was eating his dinner, Uk was called for guard duty at Lieutenant Kire’s tent. And the lieutenant himself, on going out, stopped in a swag of black, his cloak a dark tongue thrust straight down behind, to ask in the evening’s slant-light: “How’s it going for you there, Uk?”

  Clearly the lieutenant had heard the others speak of the big soldier’s loss. “I’m all right, sir,” Uk answered, and wondered why even that absurdly small bit of concern made him feel better. Perhaps, he reflected, as, in the east, indigo darkened the village roofs, it’s because any and all concern in this landscape—by anyone or for anyone—was so rare.

  Only a bit of light lit a few western clouds as Prince Nactor had marched up to Kire’s tent flap; when, outside, Uk heard the altercation within, he did not exactly listen to their conversation. (That’s what Mrowky would have done—then been back to whisper about it half the night…) Not that it kept their words from him. But while they’d talked, voices rising and lowering, he tried to move his mind years and miles away, to fix on a stream in his own village, with its dark and muddy bank rich in frogs and dragonflies.

  Then light fell in his eyes, and Kire was saying: “Go into town, Uk. Take horses and two more men—requisition a portable light from Power Supplies. And bring back some woman of Çiron.”

  Behind Kire, the prince laughed: “Go into town and find a young and pretty one. I really think this should be rather fun. I’m going back to my tent.”

  Kire said: “Obey your prince.”

  Surprised, the big soldier threw up his fist in salute.

  Minutes later, with two other soldiers, their mounts stepping carefully in the dark, Uk rode off between the last of the cook fires, red and wobbling against a black so intense it was blue. One of the riders, the box holding the illuminating filament slung around his neck, reached down now and clicked it on. A beam of white fanned to the left of his horse. (In the bushes to the right, with twigs pricking her thighs and wrists, Naä pulled back in loud leaves—and stopped breathing.) Clucking at his stallion, while some animal thrashed to his right in the brush, Uk glanced over at the beam. “Douse t
hat. We don’t need it.”

  The light died.

  What had been in Uk’s mind was that the moon’s sliver from the previous night should have grown a bit by this evening. But either the world had moved from crescent moon to moon’s dark, or overcast hid all illumination. Probably they could have used a light, Uk decided, as the horses left the smell of burning for the town’s dark streets. But that only resolved him, out of whatever stubbornness, not to have it on at all.

  Really, he thought, later, it was not so much a conscious decision. Rather, as Uk led the other two soldiers through the night village, at a certain point he simply realized where he was going, what he had already started to do, and let himself go on to do it. The lieutenant had told him to bring back a village woman. What other woman should he bring? He knew where this one lived. If he started looking in houses at random, it could take forever. Between the dark shacks of the village, he let his horse take him out of the market square. “Break her, violate her!” the prince had ordered. Well, he thought, reining to the left, it was only what had already started to happen to her.

  In the light from one window, he made out the well and turned toward where the door to the house should be—yes; there were the steps. He gave the order to dismount, dropped to the ground himself, stepped up on the porch, and with his fist hammered on the door.

  Then he hammered again.

  When he struck the door a third time, a voice within, like a child’s, asked: “Yes? Who—” so that, when light rose up along the crack in the door, he expected the figure standing behind it to be her.

  But it was the boy, his hair coppery in the firelight inside, one braid falling in front of his strong little shoulders, one behind.

  Uk pushed the door in. “Where’s the girl, Çironian?”

  Stepping back, the boy said, “Sir?”

  “Where’s the girl who lives here…your sister?” Certainly in a village like this, she must be his sister.

  “What wouldst thou—?”

  Surprised at his own impatience, with the heel of his hand Uk hit the boy’s naked shoulder. “Call her!”

  A girl’s voice came, somewhere from within: “Abrid?”

  The boy’s fearful face looking up at Uk seemed wholly absurd. Behind, one of the other soldiers moved closer.

  The frightened boy called over his shoulder: “Rimgia?”

  In the part of the room that, outside the firelight’s immediate range, was shadow, a hanging moved. The girl stepped hesitantly in. The first thing Uk thought was how ridiculously young they both were! Surely this afternoon, when he’d glimpsed them in the glaring street, they’d been older than this?

  Her bright hair, unbraided, was tousled; her eyes looked sleepy—swollen with tiredness? Or was it something else? She came forward, her face full of questioning.

  Uk stepped, reached out, and grabbed Rimgia’s arm. Her eyes came immediately awake, as he said, “Come on! You’re wanted at Lieutenant Kire’s tent.”

  Abrid said, “Touch her gently or not at all!”

  While the girl said, “Please, let me get my—”

  Where the rage came from, Uk didn’t know. Really, they were only kids. But he released the girl, turned, and gave the boy the back of his hand, against his cheek and neck. Abrid went stumbling back and sat down hard, his head cracking against the wall—sat blinking, terrified. “I have no patience with a silly boy’s playing at being a man!” Uk growled.

  Rimgia, who had grabbed a shawl from some peg on the wall, froze where she had started to wrap it around herself.

  “Go on!” Uk barked. “Cover yourself, you dirty hussy! If you’d done that last night—” The hand with which he had struck the boy was shaking. What he’d started to say was that the little guy might be alive now! But that was stupid. They’d never known his friend—even the girl. “Come on!”

  The cloth went over her head, wrapped down tight on her shoulders. Her blinking eyes were suddenly shadowed by the indifferent print covering her hair.

  Uk took her by the arm and pulled her outside, while she kept trying to look back over her shoulder at her brother within still sitting on the floor. “Rimgia?” That was the boy.

  She called out once: “Abrid!”

  Which made one of the other soldiers with them grab her and push her farther into the dark: “Come on, now!” which, Uk realized a moment later, might have been to keep him from hitting her; for at her cry, Uk had raised his shaking hand again.

  Why could he not control this absurd anger at these silly, frightened children?

  One of the other soldiers gave him the rope when he asked for it. He and the one with the light over his shoulder bound her clumsily in the dark; then the soldier who’d pushed her said, “Come, behind the horse—and don’t dawdle. If you’re thinking about running, forget it. We’ll just come back and kill your brother—before we catch you again!”

  And a moment later, they were riding through the town, while, now and again, Uk heard—or felt—the girl at the tether’s end stumble or, once, cry out.

  —

  She’d winced with each of big Uk’s barks. She’d bitten down hard as he’d struck Abrid. Now, from doorway to doorway, Naä hurried on beside the three mounted soldiers, with Rimgia going, bound, behind. And Naä thought, as she had thought before: They really don’t look back.

  And then: Suppose I did it?

  Fool, she thought. This isn’t some ballad or folktale about some bit of birdbrained bravery! This is my life…But, she thought, it’s her life too.

  Then she thought: this time I am going to do it.

  And as she thought it, she realized she was, rather, going to do something else!

  The web was bound wholly around her now, glittering against her back, her cheeks, her calves, her forehead, her thighs. (Let it, she thought, be an energy flowing into me, not a draining!)

  Naä thought: If I do what I know I’m about to, I am going to be killed. If I do what I know I’m about to, I’m going to be…I’m going to be killed. She repeated it in the darkness until it meant nothing to her. And dashed for the next doorway. But I have a knife—and so I will kill one or three or, who knows, even more of them. Maybe I’ll get away. And Rimgia will get free. That’s what’s important. That’s—

  Then, in a movement that was beyond thought, she sprinted out to Rimgia, reached the stumbling girl, put one arm firmly around Rimgia’s shoulder and her other hand over Rimgia’s mouth, and kept her pace moving forward. “It’s Naä!” she whispered—less than whispered: mouthed rather, with just the faintest trace of breath, her lips touching Rimgia’s ear; and she was still sure the girl didn’t hear.

  With her free hand, Naä tugged at the rope, loosening it, pulling it up to Rimgia’s shoulders. In the faintest light from some passing shutter, Naä saw Rimgia staring at her (their faces were only inches from each other’s) in terror; yet her head shook a moment, with some recognition of what was happening. As Naä got the rope free, she glanced toward the horses before her, where none of the men had as yet looked back. “I’m changing places with you!” she whispered suddenly to Rimgia.

  There was a convulsive movement from the girl beneath Naä’s arm, which, though it was wholly without sound, might as easily have been a laugh as a quiver of fear.

  “Go!” Naä went on. “Get Abrid. Take him somewhere out of the village, into the hills, the both of you!” She had gotten the rope over her own shoulder when from Rimgia, still against her, clinging to Naä even though she was no longer bound, there was abrupt movement—for a moment Naä was confused and frightened and sure that, in a moment, the whole thing would end. But Rimgia was pushing her shawl over Naä’s head, pulling it forward, tucking it down under the rope, now here, now there, all the time half running along beside her in the dark. “All right!” Naä whispered again, in that whisper less than sound.

  Now, at once, Rimgia pulled away—or perhaps Naä pulled from Rimgia. Naä stumbled for real, but did not fall. Ahead, the horse to whom she was b
ound made a corresponding adjustment in his step. And the big soldier astride him—once again—did not turn around to look! Beneath Rimgia’s shawl, Naä felt the length of blade at her belt; it seemed small and silly and the idea of killing somebody with it even sillier. Her mouth had gone dry. Her heart was thudding loud enough to make her stagger in her tracks. At least the children might actually get away—

  I will be killed, Naä thought once more. But, blessedly, it was still without meaning.

  They crossed a stretch that, from the smell and the stubble underfoot, was a burnt field. Fires were burning in the distance. Then other fires were closer. The black-cut gray of birches leaned off into the dark. In front of a tent, the soldiers stopped the horses, dismounted—and, believe it or not, still did not bother to look at her!

  The big soldier whose horse she was tied to pushed back the flap and, leaning within, said, “I’ve got your girl for you, lieutenant.”

  The voice she’d heard before, the one called Kire, said: “Bring her in and leave us, Uk.”

  Naä clamped her jaw, clutched the shawl tight over her hair, her other hand on the knife hilt under the long cloth, under the rope. Strike, she thought. Who? Which one? Would it be the brutal, vicious soldier who’d struck Abrid and bound Rimgia? Or the lieutenant? Or maybe the prince, if he was still there? If things had gone this well so far, perhaps it was not so foolish to expect success after all? But she mustn’t get cocky. Bravery, daring, courage, yes—but don’t abandon common care and sense—though, she wondered, was there anything of sense about this? Remember, she thought, men who do what these men have done are not human, are without feelings, are dogs, are maggots, are worms.

  Who will it be first? she thought. Will it be the lieutenant or one of his hulking, beer-gutted guards?