In Green's Jungles (The Book of the Short Sun #2)

In Green's Jungles (The Book of the Short Sun #2) Page 5

"That was a very good story, " Fava told Mora. "I'll vote for it, and I think you might win."

Mora shook her head.

"The giant won't say anything, " Inclito told his daughter. "He's got troubles of his own, and maybe he hasn't paid enough attention to the troubles others have. Just the same, I'd like to hear what our guest has to say. Incanto?"

Thinking of my own account of Patera Silk's career in Viron, I said, "I believe that the best stories are those that are true, and those that the teller feels most deeply. Thus yours was one of the best I have heard, Mora."

Nodding sagely, Inclito turned to his mother. "You want to go next? Or me?"

"You, " she told him.

Inclito's Witness: The Sentry and His Brother.

This was ten years ago, when we fought Heleno. I had a hundred men in that, and in my hundred were two brothers. The names were Volto and Mano, and they hated each other. When I found out how much I tried to keep them apart, but with only a hundred you can only separate two men so much.

Volto was tall and skinny, with a ugly, sour face. Not ugly like me, this is the face Pas gave me. Ugly because he's got ugly thoughts. He was one of them that it's more work to get them to work than the work that they do is, but he was a good fighter.

The young one, Mano, he's like day instead of night. Always happy, works hard, everybody likes him, and he's brave, too. A brave young man. Just the same it makes no difference. He hates Volto as much as Volto hates him. Once he tells me that when he was a little sprat Volto would beat him every time the mother and father got busy someplace else, and three, four times Volto about kills him.

We beat Heleno and for a while we stayed in their town trying to take back all they stole. There's a curfew, none of the people can go outside after dark, and I got troopers all over to keep them in, on every corner, almost, one man. Then it is like with my daughter, I think too much about my own troubles. Mano is on a corner and somebody is sick, so my sergeant has Volto take his place. He's got to take Mano's corner at the end of Mano's watch.

There's a shot and everybody comes running to see what the trouble is, and Volto's dead, too far gone to talk when I got to him. Everybody thinks Mano waits until he comes to take his place, and then he shoots him. Everybody but me thinks that. They don't blame Mano much, but it's murder just the same.

They bring in a new officer that doesn't know either of them to be the judge, a major. Now I would say it's fair, but then I thought the other way. I go to see Mano where we got him locked up, and I say, "Why did you do this thing? They're going to hang you. What can I tell them?"

It takes a long time to get the story out.

"He wanted to kill me, " Mano says, "and he told me he was going to do it so our whole family would pretend afterward that I'd never been alive. 'No stone for your grave' is what he said. I'll never forget that. I thought it was just more lying, more bluff. Lying was something you had to expect if you were going to talk to Volto, just like you got to know that a horse doesn't ever forget a thing that hurt it if you're going to train horses. With Volto it was that he'd rather lie than tell the truth. If he didn't have to, he'd lie anyway. It made him feel like he was smarter than you."

"He was going to shoot you?" I said. "You had to shoot first?"

He wouldn't answer, just shook his head.

"I'll tell this major that's going to be the judge, " I say. "Everybody likes you, everybody knows you're a good trooper. They're talking to him already. He's heard about you and your brother, too. He says he hasn't, but he's bound to have heard something. This town we got down here, it's too small for that. Everybody hears something."

"No, " Mano says.

"Sure, " I tell him. "You're tired, you just want to get back to your cantonment and go to sleep. The new man comes, and it's him. You see his face, his eyes. He's raising his slug gun to shoot you, so you shoot him."

"No, " Mano says. "It would be a lie. The gods would know, Captain, and the judge would, too."

I go away, and my sergeant comes to me. He's looked at their guns, Volto's has been fired, there's still a empty in the chamber, and he can smell the powder smoke. Mano's wasn't fired. He says, "Do I tell the major?" and I tell him he's got to, because what if it comes out later?

Then I go back to Mano like before and I say, "Why did you change the guns? It looks so bad."

"I didn't, " he says, and that's when he tells me. His brother gets close enough that he can see him, and points his slug gun up against his own chest. "He's got those long arms, " Mano says. "I didn't think he could do it, I didn't think he could reach the trigger. I started to laugh. I'll never forgive myself. I laughed at him, and that gave him the nerve to push on the trigger."

We hadn't buried Volto yet, and he's been dead long enough that he wasn't stiff anymore. I got his slug gun and held it to his chest and stretched out his dead arm. It was short-barreled gun, and he was a tall man with long arms. Holding his hand out real straight-look here. Like this he could have done it.

Mano told the judge at his trial, and I spoke for him. Against us, a dozen said the brothers had been enemies. Many times, each had threatened to kill the other one. They liked him and didn't like saying it, but it was the truth and they'd taken the oath. The major thought it was a simple case and told me to hang Mano.

The next day was the one when we learned that war wasn't over. Poliso hit us soon as the shade's up. I put off the hanging, not because I was hoping to save Mano but because I couldn't spare the men. For two days they got us surrounded. It was the worst time for me since my Zitta died. We thought we'd all get killed, but we're going to fight to the end. But it's better if you fight to somebody else's end. We needed to send a message back to Blanko and ask for help, but they were strangling us, shoulder- to-shoulder around our position. Nobody could see how it could be done.

I went to the major. "That man that shot his brother I still got locked up, " I told him. It never does to argue with people like that once they have made up their minds. "Let me turn him loose and send him back with a letter. If they kill him, they'll have done a dirty job for us. If he gets through, he'll deserve a pardon."

The major makes all kinds of objections the way I'd expected. "All right, " I say, "if you won't send him, let me turn him loose and give back his slug gun. I need every man, and he's a good one."

That did it like I knew it would. We sent him and he got through, but he took a slug in the guts. By the time I got home he was dying. I went to see him, and if I'd been a day later that would've been too late. I told him he was a hero, he saved us all, and his family's going to brag about him till Molpe married. "Till Molpe gets married and a year past that." Those were my words exactly. I still remember them. And I tell him, "Twenty years, and I'll be bragging to my Mora's children that I was your officer."

The pardon came while I sat beside his bed, a big white envelope from the corpo with a white silk ribbon and a big, thick red seal that Mano was too weak to break. I opened it for him and read it to him, and he smiled. Already his face was yellow like butter in a churn, but that smile, it was a knife in my heart.

"Anybody could've got through, sir, " he whispers to me. "It wasn't anything."

It was not nothing. It was as brave as I'd ever seen, and I told him.

"But to shoot a brother, " he whispers, "and get let off for it afterward... How many have done that?"

"That's a terrible story, my son, " Inclito's mother told him. "Incanto will think we're beasts here."

"Some are." He sipped his wine. "There's beasts in every town."

"So there are. So there are." The old woman nodded, her face somber, and patted her hair with a hand so white and thin that I felt I could almost see through it. "I'm glad that you mentioned it, Inclito my son. I've been racking my brain for a story that you and Mora haven't heard over and over, and it reminded me of one."

She spoke to me. "This will be a story of the old time in Grandecitta. These young people think we lie when we talk about those days, but you, Incanto, you will know better. I was a year older than Mora and Fava are now, I think. Perhaps two, but no more than that. This you will disbelieve, too, just as they do. But I was quite good-looking then."

"You are good-looking now, " I told her truthfully. "At your granddaughter's age you must have been ravishing."

Chapter 3

The Mother's reminiscence: From the Grave

My son has told a story of a war we all remember. This is from an older one, a war under the Long Sun. I myself was scarcely more than a child when it happened.

I was scarcely more than a child, and yet I was courted in those days by two fine young men, Turco and Casco were their names. Turco was my favorite, and to this day I can't forget how we sat under the orange trees and spoke of love and the family we would make together. When I think back on it now, it seems to me that we must have sat and talked like that often. But it cannot be, because the trees I remember are always in bloom. The years were so much longer then!

War came. Casco was rich enough to ride a fine horse, so he became a cavalryman. He rode out to see me one last time before he went away to fight. It was about noon, I think, and I had been lying down in my room. I can hear his knock, even now, and our old servant grumbling to herself as she goes to answer it. I knew who it was without looking and got up and went out to speak to him. "I will come back to you, " he told me, "and I tell you now that if your sneaking, lying Turco is with you, I will lay his body at your feet. You have been warned."

Casco was a strong, brave man, but he was wounded almost at once. He had only just ridden away to fight, that was how it seemed to me, when I got his first letter from the hospital. I do not remember now exactly all that first letter said, but all of his letters were very much alike. He worshipped me, he adored me, and if I so much as looked at any other man he would cut my nose off. And worse. I hope that neither of you girls ever receives letters like those. They are not pleasant, believe me.

As you would expect, he begged me again and again to come to see him in the hospital, and on my wedding day I did. He was unconscious and did not see me, however. You cannot imagine what a relief it was. I sought out the nurse who cared for him and asked if he would recover, and she said that he would not. What joy I felt!

Yet he did. The black wreath was still hanging on our door when he came stamping down the road in his big boots, with the end of his saber trailing in the dust. His cavalry uniform hung on him like the clothes of a scarecrow, yet he was polite when he saw the wreath and my black gown. "Your father?" he asked me.

"My husband, " I told him, and he stared at me, dumbfounded.

I asked him, "Did you think yourself the only trooper to suffer, Casco? The patre united us not twenty beds from the one in which you lay, and after the ceremony they let me bring him here and nurse him myself."

How he glared! I thought he was about to fly at my throat.

"They needed the bed, you see, and they knew that my husband was going to die in spite of all that they or I could do. So they let us bring him here, and when the end came we buried him in our family plot, next to the orchard in which he and I used to sit, and not a day has passed on which I have not knelt weeping on his grave."

"Show me."

I shook my head. "If you want to see it and say a prayer for him, you may. But I won't go there with you."

Casco nodded and went through the house, and I returned to my room and locked the door. It was not until later that I learned what he had done.

He had been raging when he left me, but he was quiet when he returned, quiet and polite. I was watching from my window, and he seemed so weak and sick then that my heart went out to him. He loved me, after all, and that I did not wish to have the only kind of love he had to give was neither my fault nor his. Furthermore, he had gone out bravely to defend Grandecitta, and had suffered a terrible wound.

I went downstairs again and invited him to sit down, and offered to bring him a glass of wine and some fruit so that he might refresh himself before he returned to the city.

He thanked me and sat, and told me that he was feeling unwell, which I had seen for myself already. "A glass of wine, please." (I will never forget how pale he was under his beard, or the skull that grinned behind his face.) "A glass of any wine you have, " he said, "and when I have drunk it I will trouble you no longer."

I did not believe him. I felt sure that as soon as he felt better he would pay court to me as before, and I steeled myself to refuse him. But I hurried away just the same, and filled the little glass that I had used until I was old enough to eat my dinner with Mama and Papa, and brought it back to him.

How long was I gone? I have wondered often. Half a minute, perhaps. Or a minute. Or two. No longer than that, I am sure. And yet it was long enough. He had fallen from his chair and lay dead on the floor. I dropped his wine and screamed, but it seemed a very long time before anyone came. I had gotten over the worst of my fear by then, and was on my knees picking up the pieces of broken glass and wiping up the spilled wine. It was while I was doing it that I noticed that his saber was missing. He was still wearing his sword belt and the empty scabbard.

Now I will tell you what our old servant, Schiamazza, revealed to me the next day. She had been afraid that Casco would dishonor my husband's grave, you see, and had followed him at a distance.

He had gone to the grave and stood staring down at it for a minute or two. The stone had not been erected then, and Schiamazza said he had not been certain then that it was in fact my husband's grave, in spite of the mountain of flowers I had left on it. He had looked all around him, searching everywhere with his eyes, and she was afraid he would see her, though she had hidden herself behind a tree some distance away. She thought that he was looking for another fresh grave. I myself think that he was making certain he was unobserved.