Shadows of the New Sun: Stories in Honor of Gene Wolfe (11 page)

A
fter the tumble I’d taken when the horse bunted me out of the way, I let Diccon do more than his share of stretching out the balloon to fill evenly. The boy was willing, full marks to him for that, and as strong as a draft horse. That was all this job required.

Fighting needed more, though. I’ve known draft horses smarter than Diccon, and I’m not saying that I’ve known any smart horses. The Captain was half his size, but the boy wouldn’t last three seconds with him; and even banged up like I was, he wouldn’t give me much trouble either.

Siltsy moaned; he was coming awake again. Birgitta had bought all the lettuce cake in the village, but the biggest dose she could give Siltsy wasn’t enough to let him sleep. The saber had cut so deep into his upper arm that it had cracked the bone. The drug might help with pain, but the ache wouldn’t go away until he died.

“Bagnell?” he called. He sounded like an old man. “You won’t leave me here, will you? We’re buddies, right? You wouldn’t leave a buddy!”

“Hush,” said Birgitta. She’d been wiping Siltsy’s forehead with a wet cloth; now she slid it down to cover his eyes. “Just go to sleep, darling. Just go to sleep.”

“Hey, don’t you worry, Siltsy,” I said. His face was red as fire; an infection must already have started biting. “You’ll load for me on our next contract, but you’ll have your job back after that.”

Siltsy was going to lose the arm if he didn’t die. Most likely he was going to lose the arm and then die. Even if he lived, a one- armed crossbowman wasn’t much use.

But it wasn’t my place to say that, not now and not ever. I wasn’t afraid of Birgitta, but I don’t pick fights where nobody’s going to pay me.

The Captain had a fire already. I’ve never known a man with such a talent for lighting charcoal. It wasn’t glowing, but I could see the air wriggle above the brazier.

He nodded toward the brightness in the east and said, “It won’t be long now.”

“It’ll be at least an hour before we start getting updrafts,” I said. “I’ve got some business to take care of.”

“You’re favoring your left leg,” the Captain said. “Should Birgitta take a look at you?”

“Fat chance that,” I said, but I kept my voice low. “She’d like to wring my neck for taking over as shooter. If she could’ve figured out a way to blame me for Siltsy, she’d have come at me with her halberd already.”

“You could’ve taken the shot yourself instead of passing the loaded bow, you know,” the Captain said. He spoke so softly that the only reason I knew what he was saying was that I’d been thinking the same thing ever since Siltsy went down.

“You’re the one who kept me loader!” I said, angry because half of me thought he was right. “I passed the bow to the shooter, because that was my job!”

I kept an eye on Birgitta, but she was so lost in coddling Siltsy that she didn’t hear—or anyway, she pretended not to hear. Dropping my voice again, I said, “He wouldn’t thank me, Captain. Not even now he wouldn’t.”

The Baron—that’s what he called himself, anyway—had placed the five of us at the ford. Our crossbows would’ve had better targets from a flank, but he was looking at the two halberds and figuring that we wouldn’t flinch the way his peasants with knives tied to poles would. He was paying, so we danced to his tune.

Four horse men had come at us out of a stand of birches fifty yards away. There was a swale in back of it. They must’ve led their mounts, then swung into their saddles and charged straightaway. Maybe we should’ve seen them earlier, but things had gotten hot on the left. Anyway, we didn’t.

Siltsy took the leader’s horse in the shoulder. It reared. The rider kept his seat for a moment, but then the horse went down and the rider still had his feet in the stirrups.

Diccon and Birgitta were ready with their halberds. I took the bow from Siltsy and handed him the one I’d just loaded. He shot as I put my left foot in the stirrup of the empty and brought the cocking lever back.

He didn’t miss, exactly, but he shot at the rider instead of the mount, and the fellow had a steel cap. The helmet spun off— I saw sparks where the quarrel glanced from just above the ear— but the fellow didn’t drop.

The Captain uses two swords, a straight one in his left to thrust with and in his right a yataghan sharpened on the inside curve. He could trim an anvil when he put all the strength of his right arm into a stroke.

This time he took the outside horse’s muzzle off. There was more blood than I’d ever seen, and a gurgling scream that was louder than all the rest of the battle. The rider went backwards over his crupper and broke his neck when he hit, though we didn’t learn that till things had quieted down.

Birgitta had the butt of her halberd in the ground and a foot on it to brace it there. She leaned the blade straight at the middle horse. It shied, like they mostly do. By the time the rider got it under control, the best choice he had was to gallop back the way he’d come. That’s what he did.

If Diccon had just done the same thing as Birgitta, there wouldn’t have been a problem. Instead he had swung his halberd like an axe and missed his timing, like you’d expect from a newbie. A halberd’s edge is out on a long pole and takes longer to get moving than an axe does.

Siltsy threw the bow, which didn’t help, and put his arm up, which meant the rider’s saber didn’t take his head off. That probably would’ve been a mercy, but I might’ve done the same if it’d been me.

The horse slammed Siltsy one way and me the other, but not before I got the spike of the bow I was trying to load in under the rider’s rib cage. I went ass over teacup, but the horse’s saddle was empty when I got a look at it again.

Now the Captain shrugged and made a face that could’ve meant anything. “I suppose you’re right,” he said, but he knew I was right. He turned his head slightly and said, “Diccon will load for you. We won’t make any other changes right now.”

“Right,” I said. That was going to slow our rate of fire, but the boy did okay with anything that didn’t require thinking. I could train him up. “Leaves us short a halberd, though.”

“I said we’ll leave it there for now!” the Captain said, angry that I was prodding him about Siltsy, and angry about Siltsy, too.

Hell, so was I. We hadn’t been buddies, whatever Siltsy said now, but we’d been some hard places together and come through the other side. Until this time.

“You could’ve made that shot, couldn’t you?” the Captain said in his quiet voice again.

“I wouldn’t have tried!” I said. “I’d have dropped the horse, the big target. If the rider decided to get up again when he untangled himself, well, I’d have another quarrel ready. I didn’t have anything to prove.”

And that was the cold truth of it: Siltsy had wanted to show us all that he was as good a shot as I was, that the Captain wasn’t just keeping him as shooter for old time’s sake. Siltsy was going to die now, because he’d been wrong about both those things.

The Captain made that sour face again. He looked to the east and said, “Start rounding up locals for the ropes. There’s not much breeze now, but it’s likely to pick up. I want at least eight on each rope.”

“We can belay one rope around the well curb,” I said, nodding. I’d paced the distance off last month, when we moved the balloon here to the village in two of the Baron’s ox wagons. “That’s as good as four men. But you’re going to have to find them yourself. Like I told you, I’ve got business.”

The Captain looked at me sharply. “You’d be better off just leaving, you know,” he said. “Everybody would.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But I’m going to see her.”

He shrugged. “I always did, too,” he said to my back. “Which is how I know it’s a bad idea.”

I let myself back in without a fuss. Tige, the guard dog, was on the stoop, but he’d gotten to know me over the past three weeks; I think maybe he even approved. He didn’t bark or even raise his shaggy head, though his tail shook the boards with quick, soft thumps.

Janelle’s father—Janelle and Perley’s—had been Speaker of the village, which meant he talked to the Baron when there was something to talk about. Pretty much that meant saying, “Yes, sir,” but the title meant something anyway.

The house was wood frame, not wattle and daub, and had a half loft besides a shed for the animals so that the family didn’t have to sleep with their livestock. Ordinarily, at least: Perley had been in the shed since I moved in with his sister.

He’d been trying to be the man of the house since their father died last year. I’d done the same when I was his age—but that age was ten, and there’s a lot you don’t understand when you’re ten. I was glad he hadn’t made a fuss when Janelle told him to move out for a while. Sure, he wasn’t that little; but I didn’t want to rub his nose in what was going on, either.

“Chris, is that you?” Janelle called. There was more relief than question in her voice.

The bedroom door was open, so she’d wakened since I slipped out and closed it behind me. She was sitting up in bed. When I came through the door she held out her arms.

I had the purse in my left hand. I set it on top of the chest beside the bed while I put the other hand beside her head. I kissed her hard, then straightened.

“You’re a hero, darling,” she said. She tossed the cover back; the mattress, waxed linen stuffed with straw, creaked as she moved. “Come, let me give you your reward.” She giggled. “Your reward again, I mean.”

“I’ve got to go, darling,” I said. “You’re a lovely girl.”

“Well, you’ll be back soon, won’t you?” Janelle said. “After you’ve said good- bye to your friends.”

“Love,” I said, “I’m not coming back. The Baron doesn’t want us around now that the trouble’s over. He’s given us fuel to get plenty far away, and it’s healthier all round if we take the hint. Ah—I left a purse on the hamper there.”

It was the equivalent of a gold piece, but I’d found it in copper so that she wouldn’t have trouble spending it. It was half my own share of the contract—and more ready money than anybody else in the village had ever seen. Siltsy would have told me I was crazy, and even the Captain would raise an eyebrow.

I wouldn’t miss the money once it was gone. And maybe I’d sleep better, or at least have less reason to sleep badly.

“You can’t leave,” Janelle said. Her voice was going up. “Chris, what if I’m pregnant?”

“Marry a local boy,” I said. I almost said, “Marry Kettler,” her father’s hired man and now hers. He was a solid sort, and I could tell from his eyes when he looked at me that it was more than the farm that he resented me for. “I’d never make a farmer. I had enough years of it to know that for a fact.”

I stepped sideways toward the bedroom door, still looking at her. She got up like I’d hoped she wouldn’t and said, “Chris, you can’t do this to me! You can’t just leave!”

“Love, you don’t know who I am or what I am,” I said, not trying to keep my tone sweet anymore. “Whatever happens to you now, it’d be worse if I stayed. But that doesn’t matter, since I’m not going to stay.”

Janelle started screaming. There wasn’t anything to be gained by hanging around, so I walked across the front room—walked fast, but I wasn’t running. I had my hand on the latch just as Perley jerked the door open from the outside.

“Chris, what’s the matter?” he said, looking as wild as his sister did.

I blinked when I saw his outfit. He was wearing a leather jerkin, cut to look like my jack but not boiled in wax to harden it, and a leather cap like mine, too. He had a harness strap over his shoulder for a bandolier, and from it hung the holstered revolver I’d given him when he agreed to go out into the shed at night.

I’d asked him to sleep in the shed “to keep watch on things,” and I’d given him the gun. And, okay, it had been a dumb thing to do, but I liked the boy.

“Perley, go help your sister,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. Then I was through the front door and heading back to where I belonged.

The Captain saw me coming but didn’t say anything, just nodded from the car. Diccon brightened like a lamp being turned up and said, “I thought you was gonna stay, Chris. Gee, I’m glad you’re not.”

If it’d been anybody but Diccon, I’d have gone for him; but the boy really was that dumb, and I needed him for a loader. I just said, “Nope. We ready to lift, Captain?”

There were nine local men on the ropes. That would’ve been okay, but most of them hadn’t come through the fight yesterday any better than I had. Well, peasant farmers had as much experience in working hurt as we floating swords did. They’d be all right for as long as we needed them to steady our rise.

“The fire’s ready,” the Captain said. He’d laid more charcoal on the brazier when the original sticks were well alight. “We just need to get Siltsy aboard.”

“Right,” I said. “Birgitta, get into the car. I’ll lift him up to you.”

“I’ll—” Birgitta said. She was in a mood to argue with anything I said. But she really did care about Siltsy, and that shut her mouth when she took time to think.

“I’m taller than you are,” I said, squatting by Siltsy across from her. He wasn’t sleeping, exactly, but his eyes were closed and what he mumbled didn’t seem to be words. “And you can’t be both places.”

“I can help!” said Diccon.

I raised an eyebrow to Birgitta. She grimaced and stood. “Get in the car with me, Diccon,” she said. “We need you to pull the balloon over the brazier when Bagnell and I get Siltsy aboard.” She had to make the choice, but again she’d made the smart one.

The boy was strong and not particularly clumsy, but his own mother wouldn’t have called him gentle. I’d seen him crack the handle off a stoneware tankard, just holding it in his hands.

The Baron and four of his men were mounted and watching from the other end of the ridge. They were making sure we were on our way as agreed.

There wouldn’t be a problem, though I noticed the Captain had cocked both the crossbows in the car with him. The bows weren’t a threat till quarrels were nocked; but leave-taking was a nervous business for both sides.

The Baron had captured horses and armor yesterday, but that didn’t make riders out of footmen or a warrior out of the peasant he’d just promoted to House Man. It had been a great victory by his standards, but he’d lost people, too.