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“It hasn’t been overwhelmingly apparent in my life before this.”
“Sometimes it takes the war to bring it out. That’s one of the benefits of the war, and since it hasn’t got many we ought to appreciate the ones it does. Severian, I want you to go down to the coach and treat with these man-animals. You say you know something about them. Get them to come out and help us fight. We’re both on the same side, after all.” I nodded. “And if I can get them to open the doors, we can divide the money among us. Some of us, at least, may escape.”
Guasacht shook his head in disgust. “What did I tell you just a moment ago about being too smart? If you were really smart, you wouldn’t have ignored it. No, you tell them that even if there’s only three or four of them, every fighter counts. Besides, there’s at least a chance the sight of them will frighten these damn freebooters away.. Let me have your contus, and I’ll hold your position for you until you come back.”
I handed over the long weapon, “Who are these people, anyway?”
“These? Camp followers. Sutlers and whores—men as well as women. Deserters. Every so often the Autarch or one of his generals has them rounded up and put to work, but they slip away before long.
Slipping away’s their specialty. They ought to be wiped out.”
“I have your authority to treat with our prisoners in the coach? You’ll back me up?”
“They’re not prisoners—well, yes, I suppose they are. You tell them what I said and make the best deal you can. I’ll back you.”
I looked at him for a moment, trying to decide whether he meant it. Like so many middle-aged men, he carried the old man he would become in his face, soured and obscene, already muttering the objections and complaints that would be his in the final skirmish.
“You’ve got my word. Go on.”
“All right.” I rose. The armoured coach resembled the carriages that had been used to bring important clients to our tower in the Citadel. Its windows were narrow and barred, its rear wheels as high as a man. The smooth steel sides suggested those lost arts I had mentioned to Guasacht, and I knew the man-beasts inside had better weapons than ours. I extended my hands to show I was unarmed and walked as steadily as I could toward them until a face showed at one window grill.
When one hears of such creatures, one imagines something stable, midway between beast and human; but when one actually sees them—as I now saw this man-beast, and as I had seen the man-apes in the mine near Saltus—they are not like that at a11. The best comparison I can make is to the flickering of a silver birch tossed by the wind. At one moment it seems a common tree, at the next, when the undersides of the leaves appear, a supernatural creation. So it is with the man-beasts. At first I thought a mastiff peered at me through the bars; then it seemed rather a man, nobly ugly, tawnyfaced and amber-eyed. I raised my hands to the grill to give him my scent, thinking of Triskele.
“What do you want?” His voice was harsh but not unpleasant.
“I want to save your lives,” I said. It was the wrong thing to say, and I knew it as soon as the words had left my mouth.
“We want to save our honour.”
I nodded. “Honour is the higher life.”
“If you can tell us how to save our honour, speak. We will listen. But we will never surrender our trust.”
“You have already surrendered it,” I said.
The wind died, and the mastiff was back in an instant, flashing teeth arid blazing eyes.
“It was not’ to safeguard gold from the Ascians that you were put into this coach, but to safeguard it from those of our own Commonwealth who would steal it if they could. The Ascians are beaten—look at them. We are the Autarch’s loyal humans. Those you were set to guard against will overwhelm us soon.”
“They must kill me and my fellows before they can get the gold.”
It was gold, then. I said, “They will do so. Come out and help us fight, while there is still a chance of victory.”
He hesitated, and I was no longer sure that I had been entirely wrong to speak first of saving his life.
“No,” he said. “We ca
“But you know that we are not your enemies?”
“Anyone seeking what we guard is our enemy.”
“We re guarding it too. If these camp followers and deserters came within range of your weapons, would you fire on them?”
“Yes, of course.”
I walked over to the spiritless cluster of Ascians and asked to speak with their commander. The man who stood was only slightly taller than the rest; the intelligence in his face was the kind one sometimes sees in cu
“Greetings in the name of the Group of Seventeen,” the Ascian said.
“In the name of the Group of Seventeen.” The Ascian looked startled but nodded.
“We are surrounded by the disloyal subjects of our Autarch, who are thus the enemies of both the Autarch and the Group of Seventeen. Our own commander, Guasacht, has devised a plan that will leave us all alive and free.”
“The servants of the Group of Seventeen must not be expended without purpose.”
“Precisely. Here is the plan. We will harness some of our destriers to the steel coach—as many as necessary to pull it free. You and your people must work to free it too. When it’s free, well return your weapons and help you fight your way out of this cordon. Your soldiers and ours will go north, and you can keep the coach and the money inside to take to your superiors, just as you hoped when you captured it.”
“The light of Correct Thought penetrates every darkness.”
“No, we haven’t gone over to the Group of Seventeen. You have to help us in return. In the first place, help get the coach out of the mud. In the second, help us fight our way out. In the third, provide us with an escort that will get us through your army and back to our own lines.”
The Ascian officer glanced toward the gleaming coach. “No failure is permanent failure. But inevitable success may require new plans and greater strength.”
“Then you approve of my new plan?” I had not been aware that I was perspiring, but now the sweat ran stinging into my eyes. I wiped my forehead with the edge of my cloak, just as Master Gurloes used to.
The Ascian officer nodded. “Study of Correct Thought eventually reveals the path of success.”
“Yes,” I said. “All right, I’ve studied it. Behind our efforts, let there be found our efforts.”
When I returned to the coach, the same man-beast I had seen before came to the window again, not quite so hostile this time. I said, “The Ascians have agreed to try to push this thing out once more. We’re going to have to unload it.”
“That is impossible.”
“If we don’t, the gold will be lost with the sun. I’m not asking you to give it up—just take it out and mount guard over it. You’ll have your weapons, and if any human bearing arms comes close to you, you can kill him. I’ll be with you, unarmed. You can kill me too.”
It took a great deal more talking, but eventually they did it. I got the wounded who had been watching the Ascians to lay down their conti and harness eight of our destriers to the coach, and got the Ascians positioned to pull on the harness and heave at the wheels. Then the door in the side of the steel coach swung open and the man-beasts carried out small metal chests, two working while the one I had spoken to stood guard. They were taller than I had expected and had fusils, with pistols in their belts to supplement them—the first pistols I had seen since I had watched the Hierodules use them to turn Baldsnders’s charges in the gardens of the House Absolute.