I shook my head. "You're not completely serious in what you say, Colonel-"
"But I am!"
"And I am, too. You must know our Colonel Sfido."
His face froze.
"He is one of the two friends I mentioned. He was in command of an advance guard, an advance guard of two hundred mercenaries, before you.
Those mercenaries have come over to us-no doubt you know that, since you've been fighting them in the hills. So has Sfido. If you'd like to speak to him, I can ask him to come out here."
"No." He would not meet my eyes.
"Duko Rigoglio was going to have him shot for reporting the truth, because it was a truth that the Duko did not like hearing."
"A dream," Terzo muttered. "A bad dream."
"He came to us, and we fed him and found him a place to stay, and gave him employment. When Soldo falls, we will give him his property back, so that he may live in his own house with his wife and children as he did before. I sincerely hope that nothing of the kind will ever happen to you. It isn't likely, since your Duko will be deposed soon. But if it does, don't be afraid to come to us. You'll receive a fair trial, I promise."
He drew himself up. "You will not surrender? May I report that you will fight to the death?"
"Why no," I said. "We'll run, I suppose, if the fight goes against us. But we're not going to run now, when it has hardly begun."
I had thought that he would order an attack as soon as he returned to his own line, but he did not. We waited tensely for a time, and I had what little food was available passed out to the troopers along our walls.
"This better work, Incanto," Inclito said, studying them as they leaned against the earth-filled bags or crouched in the snow to eat.
"Will Pas drive us from this whorl if it doesn't?"
He looked around at me, surprised. "I don't think he's even here. We left him up there with the Long Sun."
"In one sense he wasn't there, either. In another he is here with us at this moment, because I am."
Inclito said nothing for a time, but I am not at all sure how long a time it was; I was lost in thought. At last-"Because you pray to him, that's what you mean. He hears you praying."
I nodded. "I hope so at least."
"Me too. You think they'll attack soon?"
I told him I did not know, that a few minutes before I had felt certain that they would attack at once; but that I felt almost equally certain now that they were going to wait for the main body of their horde. "Colonel Terzo spoke so contemptuously of us that I thought he believed what he was saying, and would rush at us when we refused to surrender. It seems he will not."
It was Inclito's turn to nod. "Would you?"
"No. But if I governed Soldo I wouldn't try to conquer Blanko, either."
"Colonel Terzo doesn't govern Soldo, but that's a good answer just the same. Incanto..."
"Yes?"
"Usually when I ask what you're thinking about-"
"Men come!" Overhead Oreb sounded the alarm. "Bad men! Come fast!"
I lifted my staff for him, and he dropped down onto its handle. "On horseback?"
"Come horse! Bird see!"
"That's what he's waiting for." Inclito nodded to himself. "Their cavalry, and somebody else to give the order. You scared him, Incanto, just like you scare me. What did you really mean, when you said that about Pas making us go?"
"Only that he wouldn't, or at least that I don't believe that he will. I've been asking myself what will occur if we lose."
He chuckled dryly. "If she's still alive my Mora will be an orphan, for one thing. They're supposed to ask you nicely if you want a rag tied over your eyes, and you're supposed to say you don't. But I don't think it matters much by then what you say."
I could not help thinking then of Pig, and of everything that had befallen Viron while I had been away. "Soldo will dominate Blanko for a generation or two," I told Inclito, "then Blanko will throw off its domination, and more people will be killed. After that, something else will happen, and still more people will die, and the inhumi will come in the night to drink our blood, carousing upon our hates and fears and lusts. After which still more people will die for other reasons, and no one will be even a little bit wiser."
I took a deep breath. "Inclito, our mercenaries have been with us almost half a month. You have them in back with the reserve, the ones who are still alive?"
He nodded. "A hundred and thirty-seven. That's the number I remember, anyhow. Could be a few less."
"I want to pay them. Half a month's pay before the battle starts. May I do that?"
"You've got the money?"
"Four times enough. May I?"
"Sure, go ahead. You think it'll make them fight better? They've been fighting real good already."
"It will make me fight better," I said, "because I won't dislike myself quite so much for fighting."
"Good man," Oreb assured Inclito.
"I try. I want to promise those who are attempting to earn enough to buy land that we'll try to provide farms for them after the war. The rich in
Soldo own a great deal of land-that's the impression I get, at least."
"Sure." Inclito stroked his jaw. "That way they'd stay right there in Soldo. I see. And if the Soldese - all right, go ahead and tell them, Incanto. I'll make it happen if we win."
We were going to, I knew, although I did not say so then. I found Sfido, and the two of us brought out the chest that we had hidden when we arrived. I gave every mercenary thirty silver bits, half of the sixty that we had paid every four weeks in Gaon, and told them about the farms Inclito had promised them.
Captain Kupus took me aside. "You're giving every man one? Enough land for a man to feed a family?"
"That's correct," I told him. "The Duko's chief supporters seem to own a great deal of good land around Soldo. It will be taken from them, of course, and Inclito has decided to give it-some of it at least-to your mercenaries, who have fought so valiantly for Blanko and suffered so much."
Atteno interrupted us to report that all his pigs were tied and positioned at last. When he had gone, Kupus asked, "Four for me? Four farms?"
I shook my head. "This is a bonus, not the promised pay. I'll try to see to it that you get first choice, however."
He is not a man who smiles often, but he smiled then. "I didn't think so, but I hadn't thought about first choice. They can't be exactly equal, after all, can they?"
I admitted that I did not see how it could be done.
"But we've got to beat them first. What was that little fellow saying about pigs?"
"Boars in pairs. A mature boar is a dangerous animal, nearly as dangerous as a hus."
He nodded.
"With a long rope stretched between them-" Just then, I sighted the first cavalry, tiny figures in wine-red jackets sifting down through the dry brown hills behind them. Sunlight winked on what I took to be silver cap badges but later found were plumed helmets of polished steel, on the blades of the officers' swords, and on the black well-oiled barrels of their slug guns.
Kupus snorted. "Not as dangerous as they look, if a man will just stand up to them and shoot." When I did not reply, he added, "What about these women of yours? You think they will?"
I fingered my beard, recalling the telescope I had on my boat, two lenses united by sliding tubes of brass and wood. I had accepted it reluctantly in trade for paper, and had never valued it as I should have; but I would have given a good deal of our chest for it at that moment.
"Well," Kupus muttered half humorously, "they haven't run yet, so the war goddess be thanked."
I nodded, trying to push aside the thought that I might take our lookout's little boat and follow the river to the sea. "I had not considered that Sphigx was our goddess of war under the Long Sun-thank you for reminding me of that. To answer your question, the General wrote me a letter a few days ago in which he said that Blanko's women and over-age men might fight from behind its walls but would not if I marched them out of the city. I'd seen enough by then to know that the men would fight very stubbornly to hold a position, though they would be slow and even hesitant in attacking an enemy position.
"And it occurred to me that Inclito was probably correct about the women, but that Blanko's walls were not the only walls in the whorl, that walls might be built almost anywhere."
"No fight," Oreb muttered nervously.
"You need not," I told him. "No one will accuse you of cowardice if you fly to a place of safety."
"So you came out here and built these."
"Yes. My first thought-I'm sorry I didn't have you to advise me then, Captain-was to build a sort of fortress, a square of temporary walls with ditches before them, but Rimando pointed out that our enemies would simply bypass it and go on to the town, and I saw at once that he was right."
I shaded my eyes with my hand. "The horses are slipping a little in the snow, I believe."
"They always do. They'll slip more if those fellows charge our flank."
"They will. I said that Rimando had said they would bypass our fort and ravage the farms on their way to Blanko, but flank was the word he actually employed. It reminded me that in open farming country such as this we would have to be prepared for flanking movements. I once had General Mint say in a book that one could always outflank the enemy in a desert. General Mint was a woman, and I believe she was the bravest person I have ever known."
"I wish we had her here."
"So do I, but that was an aside, and one I shouldn't have made. What I should have said is that farms and fields of grain make almost as good a battlefield for cavalry as a desert. The Trivigauntis had a great deal of cavalry. I think I've mentioned them to you before."
Kupus nodded, and pointed to the sky.
"Yes, back home. Their Generalissimo was a cavalrywoman too, and it was a long time before I understood that they had specialized in cavalry and cavalry tactics because so much of their territory was desert or semi-desert, and that they had succeeded as well as they had because their women troopers were lighter than men."
Rimando reported that our gunners were in position and ready to go into action, and asked permission to open fire on the cavalry massing on the slopes to the north.
I shook my head. "We would only scatter them. Don't fire, don't let even a single gun fire, until I give the order."
Oreb reinforced it: "No shoot!"
Kupus cleared his throat. "I hate to say it, Master Incanto, but that cavalry of theirs is the worst risk we face right now."
"We face many worse things than a few hundred men on horses, Captain. Our own fears may be the worst. You asked me about the women. Men can be panicked as well."
"I try never to forget it."
"The women will stand and fight as long as they are behind their walls, and some would stand and fight without them, for which we should be exceedingly grateful. A few - Sphigx is the god of war, as you pointed out, Captain. We say 'the goddess' to be polite, but the principal war god we have. I wonder why she chose that, chose war as her domain."
Kupus pointed. "Here they come!"
He might rather have said, "There they go," for it appeared at first that the horsemen were riding away from us, trotting eastward in long, thin columns of crimson and brown.
He touched his cap. "If you'll excuse me, Master."
I nodded, and he trotted back toward the troops who made up our reserve, waving his arms and shouting instructions. In a moment more, the boys who had formed our original reserve were moving into position to resist the cavalry, guided and stiffened by his own mercenaries and the troopers who had retreated under Inclito's command.
"Men fight," Oreb muttered unhappily.
"Boys, too," I told him, "and women. Horses and even pigs-or so we hope. You have been fighting too, Oreb, and you've been of considerable help to us."
"Bird fight?"
I nodded solemnly. "Now I'd like you to help a little bit more. Lieutenant Atteno - the man in whose house we stayed in town-is in charge of the fireworks." With my free hand, I pointed to the straggling hedge well to our right rear behind which Atteno, his fireworks, and the boys who had volunteered to set them off were hidden. "I want you to remind him that he is not to light the first fuse-"
"No bang."
"That's right, no bang until the cavalry reach the long ditch."
"Horse come," Oreb croaked thoughtfully. "Come hole."
"You've got it. Now make absolutely certain that Atteno has it too, please."
I gave him a little lift: by raising the handle of my stick, and he flapped upward, vanishing almost at once against the dark sky. It was only an hour or two past noon; but quite dark, as it almost always is when it snows. The fireworks would show up well, I thought, unless the snow had wet them-in which case they would not show up at all.
For the first time it struck me that the young man who had so closely resembled my sons was with the fireworks detail, and would be in considerable danger from the fireworks themselves and from any cavalry troopers who were able to wheel their mounts and charge their tormentors. No ditch protected the hedgerow, nor had there been time to dig one even if I had been willing to risk the enemy's observing it. Angrily I reminded myself that a dozen other boys who did not in the least resemble my sons were at equal risk, and I did not have the right to get the one who did out of harm's way while leaving the others where they might be killed.
Inclito strolled over. "Well, we've done our best."
"Have we?"
He shrugged, then wiped his nose on his coat sleeve.
"I keep thinking-"
"That you should have sat tight in town like I told you to, and Hierax help the farmers. Incanto, there's going to be a hundred people a lot smarter than you are second-guessing you if we lose. Don't make it a hundred and one unless you can't help it. Remember the brothers I told you about? One killed the other one."