The Narrator (34 page)

Today, Makemin is teaching me a
good lesson
about narrating.

Have I explained it? It was murder.

*

We left the path once the rocks thinned out and we were within the ring of fortifications on the slopes, plunging headlong down toward the city. Makemin is determined to get down among the buildings before daylight reveals our presence there, or at least exposes us and our position.

I am determined to get away from Makemin. I can’t run from the Predicanten, but I might hide from them in town. Maybe find a different unit—they wouldn’t care about that, would they? There is no way away for me on land or in town, but the town gives on the sea, and that way I might escape.

I hear a moan ripple through the soldiers around and ahead of me. The grey smoke and the buzzing shot fold around us again. We fling ourselves headlong down the slope. Cries all around me—men flash by in the dark, falling or tumbling down the steep—a confusion of shots—I am running, pass men kneeling and firing off to my left. I still have to attend to any wounded man I find, but I am not searching, only running, looking only along my path. Snap of a shot against a stone not two feet from me—the Yeseg woman who scouted with me coughs once, a stout vocal sound—I hear the thud the bullet makes when it strikes her—my hand comes away from her uniform darkened. Her blood-striped face eyes closed mouth agape receives knowingly the news that she is dead as I tell her you are dead, pick up and go on running as she seems to say save yourself, nothing is worse than this, nothing is.

Flying slope beneath my feet, movement all around me, screams and shots—I am racing toward a few wan lights that illuminate a window with printed gingham curtains, a homely sort of porch with a box planter, pale flowers in the lamp light the petals throwing shadows over their own blossoms. A shriek as a man swings to the ground not far from me his knee blown out. Without a mind I run over haul him up with his arm on my shoulder and propel him down toward the planter and the gingham curtains. He is screaming in my ear so loud I think my head will split. My hand cups his ribs I can feel them pump—he passes out and we both plunge forward. I splint his leg but he remains unconscious—someone ploughs into me from above and we tangle head over heels rolling down the slope. This person kicks loose from me and I am left rubbing my bruises and craning my eyes up.

I try climbing back up to the man I left but bodies whip past me I can feel the thud of their air go by—I can’t see anything. I turn and look again to the porch light, put it due behind me and climb up. I can’t find the wounded man. Hands take hold of me—Silichieh is bellowing in my face, calling me names—I try to explain but my voice is coming out of me by way of the ground and I can’t make myself understood and he is dragging me down the slope toward the city. I am not released.

Now I am sent staggering forward on level ground, I feel cobbles under my feet. I look up at the lamp, the planter and the curtained windows above it; I see two horror-stricken faces there in the glass, staring out at me.

*

The camp is still where it was, everything though is scattered. I look in on Nardac, whom I had entrusted to a trained attendant before I left. Evidently, she has been unconscious for days. Her wound looks like a charred spot in a pile of rags, but it hasn’t festered. Gazing into her eyes I see she is a living corpse.

...

“If they capture you, they’ll kill you.”

“You think Makemin
won’t?”

Thrushchurl sits nearly knee-to-knee with me back in camp, in our tent, on our cots. I’ve told him what I saw.

“But by sea—if I could get a ship, would you come with me?”

He lies down on his side, two black crescents still looking at me.

“They’ll kill you, you know,” he says conversationally, softly. “If you haven’t a pass to leave the harbor, they’ll stop you.”

A scrape on the ground outside and an Edek bursts into the tent, her attendant reelingly visible outside and behind him. She seizes me by the front of my uniform and drags my face near to hers—I hear the faint, quick breath through the fabric—the pits of her eyes bore into me—in panic I feel myself become weightless falling in all directions—the grip on my clothes is gone, and everything else.

I am blind—

This blindness isn’t mine. It occupies me, and gazes unbearably at me from everywhere—the whole world is looking at me. I’m disembodied and struggling like a ghost paralyzed by a charm or trapped in a looking glass—my sense of being stared at is the only one that remains to me and the stare has a
meaning
, I know what it’s saying without speaking, without my hearing it.

Say you’ll go.

“I won’t say it!”

Say you’ll go.

“I won’t say it! I won’t say it! I won’t say it!”

It repeats itself without the slightest alteration. The repetition is or wants to seem simultaneous, one utterance said once and an infinity of times at once, and that repetition also says something of its own in reply to me.

“I won’t go!”

Then this will go on.

“Then I’ll get used to it!”

The feeling lasts and lasts—it’s going to break me, but I am pouring myself into my own words and thoughts for refuge.

I feel myself drop onto my cot. The gaze is lapsing. This is the retirement of a resourceful enemy, who will find another way. It wants to wring something from me, even something easy, an acquiescent appearance will do. Will do what?

Thrushchurl is sleeping across from me. The tent flap unscrolls lazily in an empty breath of air.

*

Trumpets wail.

Day dawns.

Drums drum.

Feet drum.

Guns wail.

The city groans.

Movement fills out scurrying legs and hands.

Eyes dart.

Saskia has smeared her eyes with kohl.

Orders are barked, or sonorously called.

The captain directs me to go with a group of militia men toward the slopes; I am supposed to climb with them to a fortified place.

“But, my medicine ...”

“There are other medics here,” the Captain says, putting his hand warmly on my shoulder, putting his eyes warmly on my eyes, putting his voice warmly in my ears and even my mouth. “Don’t worry about that.”

I follow the militia men toward the fortified place. The buildings subside and we leave cobbled streets for packed clay and heaped rocks.

When I get to my feet again they are lying all around me—

I rush to one who screams and claws his abdomen, dies under my hands with one last cry. The others are dead as well. I alone escaped, because I was hindmost and only just emerging from the rocks. Dancing forms veer away the bright sun gold on their black shoulders and hats. Though uninjured I moan as I go forward uncertainly to look round me because I am ringing through and through as if a huge hammer had just banged me like a bell. No fear, nothing but a stupid animal with a silly name distraught and puking in shock. I stand over my reeking vomit and dash the water from my cheeks, cold dawn air harsh on my face, hearing shots from all around, a gathering bellow that seems unreal like a memory in the mind against the unchanging calm of the slopes, the dawn.

There near me is Thrushchurl scrambling like a stick insect; he disappears with a few powerful strides. He looks unreal. There’s an apron of mottled white and black stone flakes emerging from some bracken near me; that means a trail or dry streambed begins there—I’m right. I push through the brush and climb away from the noise. As though a voice called to me from it I glance up and see a shallow depression lined with stones: a good hiding place. I hide there. I keep my back to the rock and huddle there, feeling chill and watery inside. But the noise from below forces me to turn on my knees and look down. The grenadiers rush out from cover, heading for the slope and suddenly the blackbirds drop down on them in two flying ranks catching them in a dip in the ground. The grenadiers draw their pistols and fire. Wacagan swirl around the rim of the dip mowing them down, and Saskia streaks out from the walls like a comet—

She’s not fast enough—the grenadiers are blasted to bits in the bottom of the dip. Saskia flashes in among the ranks of Wacagan now and even from here and through the shooting I hear her voice—she catches three of them from behind firing her pistol as she comes and weaves in among them hacking wildly, using her sword like a meat cleaver. Some fire at her but the others are startled back—she drives her knee into the chest of one who levels his rifle at her pinning him instantly to the ground she takes her sword in both hands and stabs his face again and again, leaves his body gun drawn again firing at the others who curve around her, charging them—one raises an arm in fear and she hacks it off, another she seizes by the uniform and chops at randomly across the chest and shoulder.

A Yeseg fires at her and she spins to the side—she is getting up again, the Yeseg who shot fell backwards onto her backside when the gun went off and is getting to
her
feet again. Saskia, without straightening up entirely, veers on her lightened feet toward the Yeseg woman Saskia strikes her in the chest with the hilt sending her sprawling, flailing out her arms for her rifle. Another soldier fires at Saskia and she turns and shoots him—I see her pistol jump again and again in her hand—the soldier falls like a sack of meal—Saskia turns to the woman on the ground who has her rifle and flips onto her back to fire it—Saskia kicks her in the face so hard her head snaps back the crown striking the ground. Saskia kicks her in the abdomen twice more and Saskia slashes her throat.

One of the grenadiers pulls himself out from beneath the bodies of his comrades and runs back—coming this way.

Blackbirds swing down toward Saskia and the dip. I hear cries from men on rooftops—Makemin is there among them and with a loud command they open fire. The blackbirds fly apart and scatter, tumble down the slope, others rush for the fortified rocks. Saskia charges after them alone—she flashes over the stones and down behind the fortifications as a deafening shout rises in the air and a numberless wave of enemy come crashing down the slopes like an avalanche. One wave descends toward the city and two others swarm and proliferate to either side along the slopes like a pot overboiling down its sides and along its rim at once—I see it all from here. Wacagan swoop, bobbing on many legs, the terrible shrilling of their guns tears loose in a seething ring.

A mass of our men, the asylum soldiers, rushes out to meet them, clotting up along a line formed by the foundations of a ruined aqueduct, now just a low strip of black stone and mortar not a foot high. They gather there firing into the encroaching enemy they are jumping in place waving their guns hooting and firing they are being shot down on all sides but they don’t waver, they don’t move, they stand and fire reload and fire barking with murderous ecstasy roaring from swollen throats, and the enemy, so much more numerous, shrinks from them—they are being blown to pieces on all sides but they do not move, they do not pause in their firing—they fire, and the enemy scatters in front of them. I see half a dozen drop at once nearly all in a row—I see another standing by himself surrounded by his dead comrades howling wildly his gun butt braced against his stomach wheeling this way and that shooting and reloading and shooting. His head twitches as though he’d sneezed, and he collapses on the spot—but more asylum soldiers rush to the front with terrifying cries. They can’t retreat, they can’t move, they are held there by madness that teems through the air turning men into shrieking—they can only stand and shoot their eyes streaming with thick tears of rage.

The onflow of the enemy reverses and they are regrouping now out of range on the heights not far from me—fast!—and the single remaining grenadier hurries by below my position, heading toward them. As I look in the direction he’s taking I see Jil Punkinflake there ahead and below me; he’s in a wide hollow hidden from the enemy, slumping down in my direction so I can see him there. He’s dithering back and forth, maybe wondering whether or not it’s safe to come out. The grenadier enters my view, rushing awkwardly up along the ridge above the hollow, leaning nearly double as he tries to get up among the rocks. Jil Punkinflake puts his hands to his mouth and calls, the grenadier pauses and looks down and the back of his uniform emits a single sheet of dust in a plume—he flops to the ground where he is and I hear Jil Punkinflake scream. He drops to his knees and onto the ground, curling up. I can’t get to him from here. He is lying on his side in the dirt, shaking. His face, chin down on his chest, is almost unrecognizeably distorted with terror; sobs expand and contract it without let up.

The dull booming on the heights grows louder, the blackbirds are gathering and I see them swinging back and forth there as though a huge invisible pendulum were throwing them this way and that. The grenadier’s weight has been slowly shifting since he fell, and now his body slides down toward Jil Punkinflake on its back, turning in circles the arms and legs limply spiralling. It stops only a few feet from Jil Punkinflake, who stares at it.

No point in calling to him, though I do, unheard. He is reaching for the body. He takes the bag. Jil Punkinflake sits up slowly, puts the bag in his lap, holding it open and peering down into it. He is shaking again. A ragged opening in the noise flits past, and through it I hear his laughter, that makes his head jostle back and forth.