Exodus from the Long Sun

Chapter 4 — Swords of Sphigx

Standing stiffly in his official cloak of tea-colored velvet, Calde Silk cursed himself mentally for not providing chairs — or rather, for not seeing to it that chairs were provided. He had supposed (such, he told himself, had been his lamentable innocence, his utter unfitness for the position thrust upon him) that he, with Quetzal, Oosik, and Saba — and Maytera Mint, if she could be found — would take their places on this platform, at which the force dispatched by Trivigaunte to the aid of Viron would appear.

The fact, of course, was otherwise. The fact was that even Generalissimo Siyuf’s highly disciplined horde of seventy-five thousands remained a mass of seventy-five thousand women and men — to say nothing of thousands of horses and none but the Nine knew how many camels.

Camels!

As a precociously pious boy, he had considered Sphigx the least attractive goddess, a tawny-maned virago, more lioness than woman. Now it appeared that real lions had nothing to do with real warfare; horses, mules, and camels were the pets of Stabbing Sphigx, and he would have accepted them happily (or even gerbils, guinea pigs, and geese) if only they would appear in reality.

A freezing gust shook the triumphal arch. It had been hastily erected, and would almost certainly collapse if this winter wind blew even a trifle harder; indeed, it was liable to collapse in any event if Siyuf’s troopers did not put in an appearance soon.

Surely there ought to be somebody in the crowd around the platform who could and would fetch chairs. First, he decided, he would ask that a chair be provided for Quetzal, who was of advanced years and had been standing for the better part of an hour; then, as if it were an afterthought, he could order chairs for Oosik and Saba, and himself as well. Five minutes more and he would leave the platform, collar a commissioner, and demand chairs. He must and he would — that was all there was to it.

The wind rose again, and he clenched his teeth. Yellow dust gave it a score of visible bodies, whirling devils that skated over the Alameda. A streamer of green paper tore free of the arch to mount the wind in sinuous curves, vanishing in a few seconds against the heaving bulk of the tethered airship.

From that airship, he reflected, it should be simple to gauge the advance of Siyuf’s troops. Given just one more day, he might have arranged for signals: a flag hung out from the foremost gondola when her advance guard entered the city, or a smoke-pot lit for an unanticipated delay. To his own surprise, he found that he had lost none of his eagerness to board that airship, in spite of multiplying duties and the winter wind. Like Horn (just the person to find chairs, or boxes at least) he longed to fly as the Fliers did.

There were a lot of them today. More, he decided, than he had ever seen before. An entire flock, like a flight of storks, was just now appearing from behind the airship. What city sent them to patrol the sun, and what good could such patrols do?

A fresh gust roared along the Alameda, shaking its raddled poplars. To his right Saba stiffened, while he himself shivered shamelessly. The Cloak of Lawful Governance tossed like Lake Limna about his shins, and would have streamed behind him like a banner if he had not been holding it with both hands. Hours ago, when he had put it on in the Juzgado, it had carried in its long train a sensation of oppressive and almost suffocating warmth; he had been sorely tempted to substitute a cheap (and therefore thin) augur’s robe for the luxuriously thick one he was wearing under it, although Master Xiphias and Commissioner Trematode had dissuaded him. By this time it should have been soaked with his perspiration; instead he found himself wishing fervently for a head covering of some kind. Saba had her dust-colored military cap, and Oosik a tall helmet of green leather. He had nothing.

The old broad-brimmed straw hat he had worn while repairing the roof was gone — lost at Blood’s, like Maytera Mint. The new broad-brimmed straw he had bought at the lake was gone too, left in the room from which the talus had snatched him. Patera Pike’s cap, the black calotte that Patera had worn in winter, was back at the manse — he had scarcely dared to touch it after Patera’s ghost had dropped it on the landing.

All were dead now, Pike, Blood, and the talus. The second and third by his own hand.

Would this Siyuf and her troopers never come? He searched the clouds beyond the airship for a glimpse of the sun. The dying Flier had said they were losing control. With what chains did one control the sun? With what tiller was it steered?

But no doubt the sun was merely masked by the threatening clouds; it would be childish to complain because winter had come at last when the calendar declared it half over.

Spring soon, unless this winter proved to be as protracted as the summer that had preceded it. If the rains failed then, so would he; if the new corn sprouted and died, Viron’s new god-appointed calde would surely die with it. He pictured himself and Hyacinth fleeing the city on fast horses, but Hyacinth was as lost as Maytera Mint, and he knew nothing about horses save that they might be offered to Pas without impropriety. This though Pas was dead.

Was Hyacinth dead as well? Silk shivered again.

A band struck up in the distance, and ever so faintly his ears caught the clear, brave voices of trumpets and the clatter of cavalry.

Someone, it might have been Oosik, said “Ah!” Silk felt himself smile, happy in the knowledge that he had not been alone in his misery and impatience. On his right Saba murmured, “I can identify the units as they approach, if you want, and tell you a little about their history.”

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.”

“I see,” Silk said. Mentally, he cancelled the beard he had only just resolved to grow.

“These are Princess Silah’s Own Dragoons. You’ll notice—”

Oosik interrupted. “I do not mean to begin an argument, General, but I question that it is actually done. If it is, it cannot be done often. Men are much stronger than women.”

Saba indicated the mounted troopers passing before them. “Horses are stronger than women, Generalissimo.”

Silk chuckled.

“Don’t you believe me, Calde?” Saba was holding back a smile. “It’s true, I swear, in our city. We’ve been breeding chargers since Pas laid his first brick, and our horses are stronger than women and—”

“Wiser than men,” Silk finished for her. “I don’t doubt it for a moment.”

“Who is?” inquired a new voice. “Everyone, I think.”

Silk turned to look as Generalissimo Siyuf stepped onto the reviewing platform. “Here you are.” He offered his hand. “I was afraid you’d be delayed. It’s an honor to greet you at last, and a great pleasure. Welcome to Viron. I’m Calde Silk.”

She shook his hand awkwardly, unsmiling; her own was hard and dry, not quite as strong as he had anticipated. “It is my joy to see your lively city, Calde Silk. Most of my life I have spend in the south. Your Viron is not more than a name on my maps, one week ago. My parade is bad, I know. When they must march they cannot be drilled. When they fight it is the same.”

Silk assured her that he had been enormously impressed by what he had seen, and introduced her to Quetzal and Oosik.

“We will see your troops after mine,” she told Oosik. “We pass them waiting. Ah, you have a stool for me, Calde. Thank you.” She seated herself between Silk and Saba. “This is most welcome. I have been up since three, in the saddle since five. I have tire two horses. I must have a fresh one for this.”

“It was very good of you to join us after you’d marched,” Silk told her sincerely. “We’ve all heard great things about you. We were anxious to meet you.”

Siyuf’s eyes were on her troops. “I do not come for you, Calde Silk. I come for me. Soon we fight together. Is this right? Or does this mean you will fight me and I you?”

“No. That’s perfecfly correct. Together, we’ll fight the Ayuntamiento, if we must. I’d much rather we didn’t have to.”

“And I. Both.” Siyuf pulled her cap down and drew her streaked old cloak over her knees.

For a time, no one spoke. Silk pretended to watch the parade as cavalry gave way to infantry, attractive young women who saluted the reviewing platform by holding their slug guns vertically at their left shoulders and marching with a stiff stride that reminded him of sibyls dancing at a sacrifice.

Mostly, he studied Siyuf and reexamined her remarks, and his own. Her cap was clean and well-shaped, but by no means new, her cloak frankly soiled; no doubt she had changed horses as she had said, but she had not changed clothes. Her boots were slightly scuffed, her spurs (he risked a surreptitious glance at Saba’s feet) markedly larger than her subordinate’s.

She had not hesitated to claim the empty stool. Silk tried to put himself in the place of one of the expressionless women marching past. Would they feel ashamed of their Generalissimo? Would they think her weak?

Would he, if he were somehow a member of Siyuf’s horde? After arguing the point with himself; he decided that he would not. Sitting when others had to stand was one of the surest signs of rank, and her clothes proclaimed that she need answer to no one, that no bullying sergeant or trumpeting colonel dared rebuke her. In imagination, Silk soared from the platform to a gondola of the airship, and from it scanned the parade. There was the reviewing platform, on it various dignitaries of Viron and Trivigaunte. Who was in charge? Who commanded the rest?

It was unquestionably Siyuf, who was seated with Quetzal and himself to her left and Saba and Oosik to her fight — the civil authorities, religious and civic, on one side in other words; and the military, Trivigaunti and Vironese, on the other. When Viron’s own troopers marched past, they would receive the same impression.

“Is it always so cold here in the north?” Siyuf pulled her cloak more tightly about her.

“No,” Silk told her. “We had a very long summer this year, and a very warm one.”

“I wish we have come to your city then, Calde. When I was small my teachers told me this north was cold. I learn to write it on examinations, but I do not believe. Why should it be so?”

“I have no idea.” Silk considered. “I learned it just as you did, and I don’t believe I ever thought of questioning it. To tell you the truth, I accepted just about everything I was taught, including many things I ought to have questioned.”

“The sun.” Siyuf pointed up without looking upward. “This begin at the east and end at the west. That is only because we say it so, I know. Here you may speak different. But from East Pole to West Pole or West Pole to East. Your day in Viron is soon our day in Trivigaunte. Is that true?”

“Yes,” Silk said. “Of course.”

“Then what do you do to make your day so cold?”

Saba laughed, and Silk and Oosik joined her.

Quetzal seemed not to have heard, contemplating the ranked women passing before him through half-closed eyes. Studying him sidelong, Silk sensed a need, a longing, that he himself did not feel, and puzzled over it until he recalled that Saba had said that sacrifices were not offered in her city. The Chapter would be different there, quite possibly known by another name; each of the marching women was, in that case, a potential convert to Viron’s more dignified mode of worship. No wonder then that Quetzal eyed them so hungrily. To amend the religious thinking of even a few would be a signal accomplishment and a glorious conclusion to his long, meritorious career. Furthermore, there were thousands and thousands of them, the vast majority still young, still malleable, as Saba for example was not.

As if the comparison had stirred her to speech, Saba asked, “What do you think, Generalissimo? A fine body of women?”

Oosik declared that he had been favorably impressed.

“How old are they?” Silk inquired suddenly; he had not intended to speak.

“We take them at seventeen,” Saba told him. “There’s a year of training before they’re assigned to permanent units. After that we keep them four years.”

“Do you mean that they have to become troopers? What if one doesn’t want to?”

Saba pointed. “See that one with the big feet? And her over there, the tall one with a stripe?”

“At the end of the line? Yes, I see her.”

Saba pointed again. “There, that little fat one. None of them wanted to.”

“I see. I’m surprised you know these troopers so well, General. Is this group a part of your airship’s crew?”

“No, Calde.” Saba glanced across Siyuf’s head with the suppressed smile he had noticed earlier. “In weather like this we need everybody on board. I picked them by chance, but that’s the truth about them. Who’d want to be a trooper?”

Silk glanced at Oosik, who was looking at him; troopers in Viron served voluntarily.

Another band, then hundreds of saddleless horses herded by mounted men. Seeing Silk’s puzzled expression, Saba explained, “They’re remounts. When a trooper’s horse is shot, she has to fight on foot unless there’s a remount for her.”

Siyuf looked up at him. “Do you not have remounts for your own cavalry?” He found her steady eyes disconcerting.

Oosik said quickly, “Our practice is to issue two horses to each mounted trooper. He is responsible for their care, and is to ride them alternately unless one goes lame. In peacetime he rides one on one day and the other on the next.”

“You, Generalissimo. Were you a horse officer? We say cavalrywoman, but I do not think you will say that here. A cavalryman, I think?”

Oosik made her a small bow. “Correct, Generalissimo. No, I was not, nor are most of our officers. We have only one mounted company per brigade, though the second has two at present. My son is a cavalryman, however.”

For the first time, Siyuf smiled; seeing it, Silk could readily imagine her subordinates risking their lives to earn that smile. She said, “I hope to meet him. Tomorrow or the day after. We shall speak of horses.”

“He will be honored, Generalissimo. Unfortunately he is unwell at present.”

“I see.” She turned back to the parade, and her voice became indifferent. “It is sad that boys must fight here.”

Mules hauling cannon followed the horse herd. “I expected camels,” Silk told her.

“Horses and camels do not make friends,” she said absently. “It is best we hold them apart. Mules are more…” She snapped her fingers.

“Easygoing,” Saba supplied. “They don’t mind camels as much as most horses do.”

“Does it really take eight to pull one of these big guns?”

“On your street of fine stones? No. But over our desert where is no road, many more sometimes. Then one must lend to another its mules and wait. I have seen sixteen unable to pull a single howitzer from the mud. That was not on this march, or we would not be here.”

Saba asked, “Didn’t you notice the mixed gun crews, Calde? I expected you to ask about them.”

Already the last cannon was rumbling past. After it came a long triple line of small carts with male drivers; each cart was drawn by a pair of mules.

Silk said, “I’m accustomed to working with women, General. With Maytera Marble and Maytera Mint at my manteion, before I became calde — with Maytera Rose as well until she left us. Your mixed crews seem more normal to me than,” he groped for an inoffensive phrase, ending lamely, “than the other thing, just women or just men.”

“Men drive the mules and hump shells. They do those almost as well as women could. Women lay the guns and fire them.”

Siyuf asked, “Where is General Mint? Did you not call her Mother Mint just now? Or are there two of this name?”

“No, they’re the same person. She’s a sibyl as well as a general, just as I’m an augur as well as calde.” Silk was tempted to add that he hoped to drop the first soon.

“She marches with her troops today?”

“I’m afraid not.” A bare-faced lie would serve best, but he was unwilling to provide one. “We’re still engaged with the enemy, Generalissimo.”

If Siyuf suspected, nothing in her face revealed it. “I am sorry I do not meet her. Next you see camels.”

Silk, who had seen camels singly or in small caravans of a dozen or a score, had scarcely imagined that there were so many in the whorl — not hundreds but thousands, innumerable camels tied one behind another in strings of thirty or more, each such string led by a single camel-driver riding its big lead camel. They grunted continually as they walked, peering at everything with haughty eyes in faces that recalled Remora’s.

“They carried food, mostly,” Saba explained, “and oats and barley for the horses and mules. They’re lightly loaded now.”

Here was one of the most sensitive points. “You have to realize there’s very little food in Viron.” Silk picked his way among snares. “We’re delighted to have you, and we’ll do our best to feed you and your troops; but the harvest was bad, and our farmers have been hoarding food because of the fighting.”

“We know your difficulties.” Siyuf’s dust-colored cap and hunched shoulders spoke. “We will send out foraging parties.”

“Thank you,” Silk said. “That’s extremely kind of you.”

Oosik stared.

“Which reminds me,” Silk hurried on, “I’ve planned a small, informal dinner tonight at the Calde’s Palace.” (He found he could not bring himself to say, “At my palace.”) “You’re all invited, and I hope that all of you can attend. We haven’t got a real kitchen yet, but I’ve arranged to have Ermine’s cater our dinner; Ermine’s serves the best food in our city, or at least it has that reputation.”

“I must bring with me a staff officer.” Siyuf turned to face him. “This our custom demands. May I do this?”

“Of course. She will be very welcome.”

“Then I come. Saba also, if you wish it.”

“I certainly do,” Silk assured Siyuf.

Saba nodded reluctandy.

Oosik said, “You may rely upon me, Calde.”

“Thank you. And you, Your Cognizance?”

With the help of the baculus, Quetzal rose. “I’ve no food, Patera Calde. That’s what you’ll talk about, isn’t it?”

“I’m sure we will; we have that to discuss, along with many other things. You have wisdom, Your Cognizance, and we may need it more than food.”

“Then I’ll be there. I may even have suggestions.”