Atlan saga omnibus, p.18
Atlan Saga Omnibus, page 18
“I can’t, sir.”
Clor stopped chewing and stared at the surgeon and the surgeon gulped again and started stroking, cursing faster and softer than ever.
I wondered why the pain in my hand had gone and realized Smahil’s gouging nails had at last numbed my palm.
“Nothing’s moving,” Narra said.
“You see, sir?” the surgeon said. “The way isn’t open. It’s no good.”
“I told you to do it and you’ll obey,” Clor repeated, unfairly.
“But if I puncture it again and go up his throat, I’ll kill him outright,” the surgeon protested frantically.
“Will he die anyway?”
“Probably, sir.”
“Then try it. Control your damned hand, don’t go so deep.”
The ears of the surgeon’s bent head reddened angrily. He made another tiny incision, in Smahil’s taut throat. Smahil breathed through his mouth, his eyes closed. He seemed quite calm except for the quivering in his arm as he directed all his pain into the hand that gripped on mine. The lancet drove slowly up under the ugly skin. It stopped; it was drawn out backwards. The surgeon stroked downwards, and the thick poison bubbled out of the hole.
The surgeon brushed away more flies, wiping his sweating hand on the seat of his trousers, wiped away the poison on a piece of linen, did more stroking, wiped away more poison.
“The patch has shrunk a little,” Narra whispered.
Smahil’s eyelids quivered.
“It’ll never all come at this rate,” I said.
There was the sound of bustle near outside. The surgeon continued stroking. A slave put his head in the tent, and backed out again with an apology.
“We’ll be moving off soon, sir,” the surgeon said to Clor.
“Is he all right now?” Clor asked, hesitating.
“If the poison is regularly stroked out, and the hole is kept open.”
“Isn’t there any quicker way?”
“Only if someone puts their lips to it and sucks it all out,” the surgeon snapped. “Sir.”
Clor looked at me.
“You wanted him saved. Might as well get it done.”
The surgeon, folding up his things, looked at me and grinned.
“All right,” I said. Without giving myself time to flinch I bent down, set my lips to the hole and began to suck. I heard Narra gasp.
“Don’t swallow any,” Clor said.
I heard the doctor go out. I brought up my head, spat, sucked again, spat. When I looked down Smahil’s skin was nearly all white again, or rather pink, and sore-looking. I set my lips to the next hole.
After what seemed a long time the blue was gone. I stood up, feeling dizzy. Smahil was unconscious. Clor steadied me. There was a hideous taste in my mouth, and I was terrified I had swallowed some. “Have some cheese,” he said. I shook my head. I thought I wanted to be sick. He looked closely at me, shook his head, and again shook the cheese in front of me. I took it and felt better. “Narra’s gone?” I said.
“She went out to arrange things with a wagoner. Well, you’ve won.”
I smiled up at him but he looked serious, which seemed strange on Clor’s face which is usually placid or bluff. He slapped me on the shoulder. “All right now?” he said. “I’ve got to go. He’ll do.”
The theft of the water was discovered but suspicion didn’t fall on me. I was obviously as dusty and thirsty as everyone else.
I gave the bottle to Smahil, who hid it in the straw on which he lies jolting under a rough awning. He finished it the first day, proving how much he’d needed it, and I was glad I hadn’t had more than a sip or two to mobilize my parched tongue, though he’d offered me some whenever I rode up to see how he was doing. He didn’t even ask for any more for two days, aware that he’d already caused me trouble by pleading for water, and had to make do with the ordinary water ration, not half enough to do him any good. He has fever; most of his water goes not on drinking but on cooling his bandage and forehead. He spends a lot of the time unconscious or semi-conscious, and the rest of the time tossing. His hands, always wet with sweat, will clench and unclench, spasmodically, over and over again till I want to scream.
The boredom must be almost worse than the jolting, the heat and the pain. I ride beside him to talk to him whenever I can nip away from the entourage, though lately I’ve had to curtail the visits to quite an extent because she was furious when I kept not being in my place.
He likes to have someone beside him, to talk to, but the only person who talks to him, the wagoner’s mate, sometimes talks incessantly about nothing, certain he’s “taking Smahil’s mind off it,” in reality driving him to screaming-point.
Sometimes it is wearing simply to watch Smahil. His hands, brow and mouth twitch, even his cheeks under their sweat seem drawn merely by incessant muzzy pain. Today I said, “I wish I could bear some of your pain, it would be easier in a way for both of us then.”
He said, “Think what the world would be like if that were possible. Acquaintances you met in the street would say, ‘Got a cold today’ when you greeted them with ‘How are you?’ And instead of replying, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry’ it would be expected of you to say politely ‘Oh, let me take some of it for you.’ ”
“But,” I said sensibly, “perhaps people would have the sense not to make that an accepted convention when it would be so inconvenient to them?”
Smahil replied, “You are too idealistic, you don’t know the world.”
I was quite taken aback as I thought I already knew everything about the world.
Blob, who said he would tend Smahil when I could not, has utterly gone back on his word. He does nothing, and the wagoner does as much as he can without anyone ever asking him to. I’ve reproached Blob and he glared at me, said he hated the army, had contempt for trollops, and refused to foul himself by tending their lemans, surely tending the leman’s bird was enough for anyone, wasn’t it, and if not, so what?
“But you promised,” “I’m busy, go to hell.”
It’s a good thing my mother taught me never to really trust anyone.
I must get more water for Smahil, he must have it
Last night I tried to get water but there was no chance. Blob was hanging round the tent in the early evening and later I could not get in anyway because Lara and Zerd were in there.
Tonight I shall try as hard as I can, all today I have to watch Smahil lying feverish, tossing on the soiled straw, his hands clenching, his dry mouth twisted. His skin is peeling, the lips seem to be composed of hanging shreds. When I changed his bandage I found the place from which the poison was drained has come up in large blisters which I keep picking so they shall stay flat. They look quite ordinary healthy blisters; I suppose it is all right.
This morning in those dreary hours when I always used to think all the healthy world must sleep, I woke myself almost forcibly, crawled among the sleeping winegirls with my head nodding like a wounded bear’s, and out through the white ashes of countless fires guarded by sentries in their last defeat by sleep—to the tent.
I skirted the late-placed guards before it, and crawled silently under the wall in the place steadily frayed by Narra and I in the days when it was the Beauty’s tent.
Everything inside was dark.
I crept to the table where I know the water is kept.
Now I swear I made no sound whatsoever, not one that a mouse could have heard—for my feet know how to take the floor lightly and swiftly but ball first, testing the ground for potential sound, then the toes, and at last the heel while the ball of the other foot is already testing for the next step. But he has the senses of a lynx, I have often thought that.
“Ah,” said a voice, bland and terrifyingly loud in a darkness where all one’s instinct was to whisper, if one must speak. His hand, I would know the touch of it anywhere, closed round my waist.
A light was struck.
She had lit it, leaning over in her bed, smiling at me. She was wearing her frothy night-shift and trousers, white decorated with pink and blue flowers, rather dishevelled now as her things always are in the morning. Zerd, holding me, wore nothing. My glance flickered at him and away. I should have known better, but I am afraid I was embarrassed. I wondered if men all look like that, when they’e naked.
“We thought we’d be honoured by a visit from you some time tonight,” he said.
“How could you know?”
“Didn’t your amiable accomplice tell you we caught him last night?”
“I have no accomplice.”
“A short, large-bellied man, creeping in here for water last night, as you do tonight, and when we caught him he blurted that he was doing it for you, otherwise you threatened him with awful threats.”
“I know who the man is, Immense One, Blob, a groom. But I never sent him to do anything for me. He wanted the water for himself, and blamed me when you caught him. He hates me.”
“Interesting, though squalid, to find out what petty hates go on among our servants,” commented Lara.
The General answered me, grinning with his mouth closed. “Yet you come for water. You’re a thief whether or not you have an accomplice.”
“I need the water for my friend who has fever.”
“Who?”
“The lord Smahil.”
“Then let him die, if he can’t manage without being a receiver of stolen water. I told you, hostages are useless.”
“I won’t let him die.”
“Sick men who are not even soldiers are a drag on a campaign. If the maps can be believed—and they should be, where patches of civilization are concerned—we should be reaching a town in the foothills in a week’s time. Since we aren’t going to pillage it, it should be a safe harbour. Leave him there.”
“I won’t. I presume there’ll be a lot of water there. He can last till then.”
“On stolen water?”
“He’ll manage somehow, thank you, Your Mightiness. I’ll take no more of your water.”
“Good.”
He loosened my wrist and turned back to the bed, ignoring me, to show that I could go.
“I’m glad you’ve shown me in time how untrustworthy you are,” said Lara.
I turned. “Princess, you’ve shown me you despise me—” “Yes, I do.” “—Surely you no longer want me as your slave? Can’t I go back to my own rank of hostage?”
“I shall do nothing to please you. You are my winegirl, from now on, no longer my personal maid. It is no fit punishment for all your deceit.”
“He called this a town?” I said as Narra and I, in the baggage-train, rode side by side up the street.
The street was narrow and stinking, littered with refuse. The central drain was uncovered, and more like a sewer than a drain. Furtive faces watched us from windows and doorways like rat-holes. The tramp of the army echoed like endless roars from gigantic lions. At first, reaching a town by a pure river at which everyone had first slaked their thirst, the men had sung marching-songs. But now they did not sing. The march-echo was bad enough.
“But it is a town, Cija, a big town. That’s why a whole regiment is taking up cantonments near the palace instead of us all being camped outside the walls—and that’s why there is a palace anyway, with the town’s governor living in it, where the General and his staff and household can be lodged. This isn’t just a village, Cija.”
“But the squalor!”
As I spoke, a ball of muck, which the feet of the men before us had been idly kicking along, one after another, now bowled against Urn’s claws. He shied indignantly.
“Urns has got worse, Cija, he was so well-trained when you got him. Now that he knows you, he obeys no one else and shies when he wants to. And to get back to what we were saying, this is obviously a prosperous town!”
“Hold your nose, we’re coming to a bad part!” I called back to Smahil in the wagon behind us. “Prosperous!” I snorted to Narra.
“I’ve seen really poor towns,” Narra said, “and in those the streets are as clean as a lady’s rug. Every twig and nail and scrap of paper is picked up and polished and straightened, and made some use of. Old men crouch on street corners with two nails for sale; boxes can be made from old chips of wood.”
However, the higher parts of the town near the palace improved quite a bit.
Later Zerd reined in beside me for a moment.
“Glad of civilization again?”
“Civilization! The lower parts are slums, and these streets are avenues, with trees all along them!”
“Different from your mother’s slagheap, eh?”
“Who made it a slagheap?” I muttered under my breath.
“Your friend nicely buried?”
“He’s in that wagon.”
“Dead?”
“No, better.”
He sat upright in surprise and his hand tightened on the rein so that his bird curvetted. “Whose water have you been getting at to steal now? By the World’s First Quiet Midnight, the water ration wouldn’t have tided over a man with fever. When you left that night I was certain you’d reach here mourning him.”
“Commander Clor has sent a boy each morning with a halffull water-skin.”
“C/or?”
“Yes.”
“But he’s not in his dotage yet.”
“Well, he seems to be capable of kindness.”
“Come, I thought we were friends.”
“I dare not hope so, Your Mightiness, after the other night.” He glanced at me sideways under the black bar of his brows. The brows rose. “She’s been treating you like a winegirl, I suppose, since she demoted you to one? Been beaten again?”
“Not quite, my lord.”
“I see.”
I looked ahead. From the corner of my eye I saw him beside me. He rubbed two fingers across his long chin, eyeing me steadily all the time. “I don’t think you should remain either a winegirl or a hostage,” he remarked at last.
“I haven’t much choice, my lord.”
“Come to my room tomorrow night.”
I looked up. He smiled. One corner of his mouth went up. He knew, of course, I would accept. Suddenly I felt happier than ever before. I forgot everything, forgot Smahil, forgot Narra, forgot the strangeness of the streets, forgot the marching troops, forgot the agonies of the plain-journey, forgot the weary months.
“Your wife will expect you,” I said.
“She is not my wife,” the General said, “and she can wait.” Suddenly I laughed and flung my arms wide. The General laughed, threw back his beautiful head on the strong arch of his throat and laughed, and the troops looked round curiously at us as we spurred our birds.
The regiment with us made camp in and about the courtyard of the town-governor’s palace. Officers found billets in the houses nearby, but strict orders were given that the native civilians were to be treated with courtesy if not respect, and that any man found committing rape, manslaughter or anything approaching it, or plundering would be hanged high in the courtyard before everybody.
The Golds, one of the smartest regiments, should have been chosen, but that would have been disaster, the non-existent Moon alone knew how many fights would have broken out in the Blues and the Golds if the latter had been chosen. So the men in the town are the 19th foot, with whom I was unfamiliar. There is a large percentage of old campaigners in this regiment.
When, to a certain extent, living off the land—for the town is having to feed us—it being, at the same time, land we wish more or less to conciliate, old campaigners are, apart from anything else, more economical. It’s astonishing how, whenever possible, the men prefer a bedstead of any sort to their sleeping-bags, even if it’s only a few planks under their palliasse. The raw soldiers are inclined to chop up any wooden boxes they can find, for bedsteads, only to find they were valuable. And young soldiers never believe that very little hay is needed inside a sleeping-bag. They will stuff themselves in like field-mice, waking up later cramped and chilled instead of warmed.
But veterans have more nerve.
Unpacking the tents for the courtyard, it was discovered that one of the poles was broken. They went to the Accoutrements Master but there was already a long queue and that side of the army is always anguish to deal with, you have to prove in triplicate that you really need a new tent-pole, and when at last you’re told to come back for it at noon tomorrow exactly, everyone’s on the march again anyway. So three men went down to the encampment outside the town where everyone was dashing about settling in. They marched up to an empty tent, all nicely set up, and two of them measured the pole while the other took an official-looking little black notebook from his tunic-pocket and busily scribbled in it. They then removed the pole, left the tent to collapse behind them, and marched back with it to their own camp. Nobody accosted them; they looked exactly as if they knew what they were doing (which they did) and as if they knew that they had been ordered to do it by thirteen commanders in person (which they didn’t).
Their officer, when he found out about it, kept his mouth shut. He now had the requisite number of poles, that was all he cared about.
We were only told of this later, with many guffaws. Meanwhile we were being rather Hurriedly welcomed in the palace hall.
The hall is more an inner courtyard. It must usually be very quiet but for the plashings of the fountain. It is partially unroofed. Curiously enough, by coincidence in this elegant hall there is a tree growing, just as trees grew in the foresters’ hall. But this is a rarely-bred, exquisite deformity of a tree, bearing many different fruits all together. It is small and slender, just as this hall is polite and airy and a hundred times lighter than the hall in the forest. There is a beautiful marble staircase leading up to the upper floor.
The town-governor and his household were lined up to greet us. They wore their stiffest clothes and bowed deep and creakily as we entered. They must have been astonished at our rough, careless, boisterous entry. We also wore our best clothes, but they are mostly stained and badly-creased, and the commanders yelled any remark they made as if it were a battle-command, and pushed each other into the fountain, while the grooms ran in with birds to be told where the stables were. The General, after bowing courteously, cut short a long-prepared speech from the governor and introduced his wife and his principal commanders. The governor and his little lot bowed decorously to each person as he was named, but began to blink nervously as Isad and Clor were indicated. It is difficult to bow to someone who is pushing someone else into a fountain and completely ignoring you. Lara and the staff secretaries wandered round looking at the bright wall-panels. The winegirls stood chattering and glancing around, clustered together. The governor, quite bewildered by so many people taking no notice of him, grew purple in the face. He is a big thickset man with a bull neck and protuberant greenish eyes. He is about fifty, and exudes a feeling of aggressive masculinity. I don’t know why, he is the sort of man who makes me shudder a little.
