The boss looked down at his female man, and she said, “I like the part about chopping oafs, boss. Don’t you?”
He smiled back uncertainly. The usual weariness in her eyes was replaced by a twinkle that could be taken for playfulness, or malice. He could not decide which.
Another oaf said to the wide one, “It’s time.”
The wide oaf commanded, “Hurry now! Grab a sword as you pass. Chop anybody not wearing your standard. The enemy is poor, he is savage, and he is polluting the earth with his foul presence. They want what we’ve got, and we’re not going to give it to them, and that’s why we must win this war. Nobody wants to live in a world where the poor don’t know their place. All praise be to the great leader! Now bow your heads!”
The oafs bowed their heads.
“Oh great creator, protect us as we do your will. And if we fall in battle, remember us evermore in your kingdom to come!”
“Verily in your name!” the others said as one.
“Verily in your name!” the wide oaf said. “Now move out! Fight for freedom! Fight for your side!”
The boss was first among poets, and he whispered to his female man: “A slayer of the innocent and the merciful of heart, is war. Stay close to me and you shall live. Ah, war. When this is over, there are more battles to be won in the fight yard. There is more silver to be taken from the careless and the unwary.”
Then the mighty host of mans and oafs hoisted the standard of the black eight-pointed star and lumbered off to war, their scarlet tunics of brass singing.
And the female man came to know what war was, if war was shivering in the cold dark morning as she followed the standard for two hours up a steep mountain trail.
If war was metal projectiles pinging and popping all around her like angry applause.
If war was fire sprouting like bright red flowers too hot for fingers to pick.
They came to a broad, wooden bridge and made it halfway across. Over the noise of battle, there rose the pounding of drums, the pealing of trumpets, and a battle cry like a great screeching fowl, as tunics of black swarmed down the mountain. The enemy!
War had become bursting shells, foul smells, and bodies pressing against bodies, each side thrusting with sword and bullying with battle axe to establish a position of dominance on the bridge. The bodies were packed in tight and were heavy. The bridge, weighted to its limit, swayed. They pressed against each other, metal clanging against metal, each side pushing forward with javelin, battle hammer, pick-stick, and bludgeon to drive the other back or knock the other off the bridge.
As the bridge swayed, the female man’s side was pushed back and back and back. She struggled to hold her position as well as keep her balance. The strain was too much. Twisted slantwise, she was still falling. She would tumble into the murky water. And her side was still being pushed back. Back.
Just as she felt herself going over the edge, her feet met solid ground again. But it was muddy ground, and slippery. She swung her blade and lost her footing. The blade was whacked from her hand. She reached down to retrieve it and could not believe her eyes. Where was the earth? Where was the earth? The fertile earth had been turned to crimson mud.
“Oh lord great creator, not this!” she wailed.
To her right, the female man Gold Braid was felled by an arrow. To her left, the musical man Yellow Fellow was trampled underfoot by sandals of brass. Ahead of her, the wide oaf stepped into a nest of bursting shells and was set ablaze. As all around her oafs and mans fell, she took a blow and went down.
But the boss was first among gamblers, and he raised his sword. “After war there is much silver! Rise up! Strive on!”
The female man climbed back to her feet.
The boss clanked his sword on his shield proudly. “That’s how it is with war, my little red top! The battle is not to those who fall last, but to those who rise back up first.”
Then he felt a sudden pain as his belly was torn by a blade thrust into it. He shouted a profane oath and cried: “Undone — and on the first day of battle!”
His belly was split in two. All that had been in it was coming out. Ideas rampaging through his brain, he struggled to come up with an adage to sum up the strange quality of his situation, but he found it difficult to organize his thoughts. A battle raging in the belly is war? War is a belly split in twain? War is a belly with its silver spilling out?
When he went down, he scowled as the enemy who had felled him extended a hand to his little female man. He grimaced as she grabbed back. He shouted, “No, little man! That’s not how it’s done!”
He looked on helplessly as the enemy lifted her, kissed her cheek, and carried her back across the bridge, sheltered within his brass tunic of war. The boss did not know what to make of the scene. It was difficult to think with his stomach on the ground beside him. The words to describe it he struggled to find. Just before he died they came to his lips: “Compassion for one’s enemy is a most rare and beautiful thing.”
And the poet closed his eyes.
Almost as soon as he had closed them, he revised the adage: “Compassion for one’s enemy is rare, beautiful, and almost as wondrous as a belly full of silver.”
And the gambler opened his eyes nevermore.
7
Man at War
She knew caves, so she knew that she was in a cave, a cave lit by waxen candles, and gathered around a table studying a map were the leaders of the oafs with the tunics of a different standard.
And the different standard was a scarlet eight-pointed star on black.
In the cave there were other oafs. Many of them had deep cuts and frightful scars. All of them had swords. Many of them lay on cots. Those who had not cots were seated on the ground on rocks, and they leaned against their swords. Their eyes were closed. They were resting while waiting for the war to continue.
On the floor of the cave were the bones of mans. The bones were picked clean.
There was a fire and a spit.
There was a man roasting on the spit while an injured oaf slowly turned him by winding the handle. The man was charred already. One of his charred legs was missing. The injured oaf slowly turning the spit was nibbling on a charred leg of man. He sniffed the man on the spit to see if he was done being cooked. From her years in the mines, she knew the smell of well-cooked man. The smell turned her stomach. This man on the spit was well cooked.
The oaf turning the spit saw the red-haired female man looking and leered at her with an open mouth that was missing all but three of its teeth. “The red-haired one awakens.”
The others looked at her with bored indifference and went back to resting on their cots or against their swords, or studying the map.
Now she knew another quality of war. War was when oafs were so tired from fighting each other that they would rather rest against their swords than torment you.
She was in a cave of the east, where she had toiled for two years, and she ate from the bowl of grains they had set out for her and drank from the bowl of water beside it. She must be a favorite again, she thought.
The other mans in the cave were each bound together or caged together or roasting on the spit or littering the ground as bones and blood.
But she was left unbound, uncaged, and uneaten. Where was the boy of her childhood who had rescued her from the battlefield? Where was he?
She slept and then she awoke and then she slept again. When she awoke the second time she observed that the cave was being used as a place to care for the sick and as a place to plan the battles. All day long new oafs with new injuries came and were tended to and then went back to the war. Some came to eat from whatever meat the three-toothed oaf was roasting on the spit. Some came to rest. Some came to lay their bodies down and die. At the end of the day, the first boy of her childhood, the boy of the wealthy, came, laid his body down, and died.