A, B, C: Three Short Novels

  Rather, she reached down to her hip and loosed the knife from her sash. “This is…this was Ienbar’s.” Clearly unsure what to do with it, she held it out to him. “Rahm?”

  He didn’t take it; so she put it on the log.

  “The children.” Rahm nodded across the field. “Rimgia and Abrid. They’re all right. A Winged One found them.”

  “Oh!” Suddenly she stood. “They found them!” She smiled at him, looked across the field, at Rahm again—then called: “Rimgia, Abrid!” Pushing her arm through the strap, shrugging the instrument to her back, with Rahm following, Naä began to run across the charred grass.

  —

  Elbows forward on his knees and gazing at nothing, Lieutenant Kire sat on the blackened block, where he’d been sitting, silent on the common, forty minutes now. The villagers moving about sometimes glanced at him, then—a few and a few more—moved about him without looking at all.

  On foot or in air, passing Winged Ones ignored him.

  Mantice was chattering away at Rahm as they came across the grass: “Four of them we bandaged up and sent south on their way—though, phew!—they’d only been down there six hours, and already it was halfway between a cesspit and a shambles. One of them, a young fellow, was cut bad in the leg and already down with a fever. But Hara took him into her hut and says she can nurse him back to his feet—although, I allow, he’ll limp the rest of his life. But that woman’s as wise with medicinal weeds as she is at weaving. If anyone can save him, it’ll be she. Three, now, I’m sorry to say it, were too far gone. Two of those were already dead when we went in there. And one died even as we were carrying him up the steps and out into the clear air. Thou wouldst have thought the ones alive and turned loose would have had some gratitude—or at least a smile for the favor. But all of them were sullen fellows. Well, they’d been through it too, I suppose. I had them put the dead ones back over in my water wagon.”

  Here the lieutenant looked around, got to his feet heavily, and turned. “Rahm, he says there are more dead about. Myetran dead. In his wagon. May I see them? I…” His rough voice snagged on itself. “I’ve been trying to get an idea whom we lost—among the men I knew, I mean.”

  “Of course,” Rahm said, though, from report, the lieutenant had not done much of anything in the past hour. “Mantice, canst thou take me and friend Kire to see?”

  “But only come thou along,” said the stocky water-cart driver. “My cart is this way.”

  Five minutes later, off on a side street, with one hand on the wagon’s edge, the lieutenant peered within. The puma’s head beside his, save for its sealed eyes, might have been peering too. Standing at Kire’s shoulder, Rahm looked in. The lieutenant’s next breath was a little louder than the one before it. But the one after was quiet again.

  On his back at the cart’s far side by three other bodies, the big soldier had a gaping slash along his flank, through which, beneath a carapace of flies, you could see both meat and bone. Rahm recognized him more from his size. The full features, unshaven, held a slight grimace in death.

  “Friend Kire?”

  “Yes?” The lieutenant looked over across the lion’s muzzle.

  “That one there,” Rahm said. “Didst thou know him? Was he a bad man?” though, even as he asked it, the idea of this dead soldier with his annoyed expression, as the evil figure he remembered, seemed ludicrous.

  “A bad man?” The lieutenant gave a kind of snort. “Uk there? Uk was the best—he was a very good man. Or at least a good soldier.”

  “Ah,” Rahm said. “I see.”

  The lieutenant took another, louder breath, dropped his hand, and turned from the cart. “Rahm, I want to thank you, for…for my life. Though I guess there’s no proper way to give such thanks formally now, is there?”

  Rahm grinned. Then he said: “Friend Kire…” but nothing else.

  So finally Kire said, “I must go and look about among the other men, to see whom I can recognize.”

  “Certainly.”

  As the two men turned again toward the common, a young man with his hair tied back hurried up toward them. “Art thou the one they call Lieutenant Kire?” He was a lean-flanked youth, with big ears and big hands. (Rahm grinned at Qualt.) “I was just back at Hara’s and Jallet told me—thy prince, he wishes to see thee. Then Hara asked me if I would…” While Kire looked uncomfortable, Qualt glanced at Rahm.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Thou knowest the house—it’s the one they kept thee in, earlier?”

  “Of course,” the lieutenant repeated in his unnaturally rough voice, then started back along the street.

  When the lieutenant was gone, Qualt resumed his quiet smile. “Hey, Rahm, I heard about him and thee, what thou didst together at the common this morning!”

  “And what are we supposed to have done that anyone wouldn’t do who had to save himself and a friend?”

  “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 tiptoes, 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 forward once more 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 a lack of interest 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 ax 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 only I could 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. 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 did only 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, which 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 whom Kire knew had died early in the operation, but for his life he could not remember a name or a face for the man. Somehow what had happened to Kire had so immersed him in life that little of death would stay with him—which made him feel 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 Ones’ 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 full of baskets of yellow rinds and chicken feathers and milk slops and eggshells 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 setup 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 cornfields 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 garbageman knows more about what goes on (and goes out) than anyone else. As garbageman, 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, rather than Rahm, who 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 joking with Rahm about a possible seat on the council of elders 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 get the next seat—and would be the youngest “elder” ever to sit with them.