" 'Now,' said the angel, addressing all the assembled birds, 'you have seen justice done. Be not proud! Be not boastful, for surely retribution will be visited upon you. You thought your champion invincible. There he lies, the victim not of this eagle but of pride, beaten and destroyed.'
"Then the cock, whom they had all thought dead, lifted his head. 'You are doubtless very wise, Angel,' he said. 'But you know nothing of the ways of cocks. A cock is not beaten until he turns tail and shows the white feather that lies beneath his tail feathers. My strength, which I made myself by flying and running, and in many battles, has failed me. My spirit, which I received from the hand of your master the Pancreator, has not failed me. Eagle, I ask no quarter from you. Come here and kill me now. But as you value your honor, never say that you have beaten me.'
"The eagle looked at the angel when he heard what the cock said, and the angel looked at the eagle. 'The Pancreator is infinitely far from us,' the angel said.
'And thus infinitely far from me, though I fly so much higher than you. I guess at his desires no one can do otherwise.'
He opened his chest once more and replaced the ability he had for a time surrendered. Then he and the eagle flew away, and for a time the salt goose followed them. That is the end of the story."
Melito had lain upon his back as he spoke, looking up at the canvas stretched overhead. I had the feeling he was too weak even to raise himself on one elbow.
The rest of the wounded had been as quiet for his story as for Hallvard's.
At last I said, "That is a fine tale. It will be very hard for me to judge between the two, and if it is agreeable to you and Hallvard, and to Foila, I would like to give myself time to think about them both."
Foila, who was sitting up with her knees drawn under her chin, called, "Don't judge at all. The contest isn't over yet." Everyone looked at her.
"I'll explain tomorrow," she said. "Just don't judge, Severian. But what did you think of that story?"
Hallvard rumbled, "I will tell you what I think. I think Melito is clever the way he claimed I was. He is not so well as I am, not so strong, and in this way he has drawn a woman's sympathy to himself. It was cunningly done, little cock."
Melito's voice seemed weaker than it had while he was recounting the battle of the birds. "It is the worst story I know."
"The worst?" I asked. We were all surprised.
"Yes, the worst. It is a foolish tale we tell our little children, who know nothing but the dust and the farm animals and the sky they see above them.
Surely every word of it must make that clear."
Hallvard asked, "Don't you want to win, Melito?"
"Certainly I do. You don't love Foila as I love her. I would die to possess her, but I would sooner die than disappoint her. If the story I have just told can win, then I shall never disappoint her, at least with my stories. I have a thousand that are better than that."
Hallvard got up and came to sit on rny cot as he had the day before, and I swung my legs over the edge to sit beside him. To me he said, "What Melito says is very clever. Everything he says is very clever. Still, you must judge us by the tales we told, and not by the ones we say we know but did not tell. I, too, know many other stories. Our winter nights are the longest in the Commonwealth."
I answered that according to Foila, who had originally thought of the contest and who was herself the prize, I was not yet to judge at all.
The Ascian said, "All who speak Correct Thought speak well. Where then is the superiority of some students to others? It is in the speaking. Intelligent students speak Correct Thought intelligently. The hearer knows by the intonation of their voices that they understand. By this superior speaking of intelligent students, Correct Thought is passed, like fire, from one to another."
I think that none of us had realized he was listening. We were all a trifle startled to hear him speak now. After a moment, Foila said, "He means you should not judge by the content of the stories, but by how well each was told. I'm not sure I agree with that still, there may be something in it."
"I do not agree," Hallvard grumbled. "Those who listen soon tire of storyteller tricks. The best telling is the plainest."
Others joined in the argument, and we talked about it and about the little cock for a long time.
X
Ava
While I was ill I had never paid much attention to the people who brought our food, though when I reflected on it I was able to recall them clearly, as I recall everything. Once our server had been a Pelerine she who had talked to me the night before. At other times they had been the shaven-headed male slaves, or postulants in brown. This evening, the evening of the day on which Melito had told his story, our suppers were carried in by a postulant I had not seen before, a slender, gray-eyed girl. I got up and helped her to pass around the trays.
When we were finished, she thanked me and said, "You will not be here much longer."
I told her I had something to do here, and nowhere else to go.
"You have your legion. If it has been destroyed, you will be assigned to a new one."
"I am not a soldier. I came north with some thought of enlisting, but I fell sick before I got the opportunity."
"You could have waited in your native town. I'm told that recruiting parties go to all the towns, twice a year at least."
"My native town is Nessus, I'm afraid." I saw her smile.
"But I left it some time ago, and I wouldn't have wanted to sit around someplace else for half a year waiting. Anyway, I never thought of it. Are you from Nessus too?"
"You're having trouble standing up."
"No, I'm fine."
She touched my arm, a timid gesture that somehow reminded me of the tame deer in the Autarch's garden. "You're swaying. Even if your fever is gone, you're no longer used to being on your feet. You have to realize that. You've been abed for several days. I want you to lie down again now."
"If I do that, there'll be no one to talk to except the people I've been talking with all day. The man on my right is an Ascian prisoner, and the man on my left comes from some village neither you nor I ever heard of."
"All right, if you'll lie down I'll sit and talk to you for a while. I've nothing more to do until the nocturne must be played anyway. What quarter of Nessus do you come from?"
As she escorted me to my cot, I told her that I did not want to talk, but to listen; and I asked her what quarter she herself called home.
"When you're with the Pelerines, that's your home wherever the tents are set up.
The order becomes your family and your friends, just as if all your friends had suddenly become your sisters too. But before I came here, I lived in the far northwestern part of the city, within easy sight of the Wall."
"Near the Sanguinary Field?"
"Yes, very near it. Do you know the place?"
"I fought there once."
Her eyes widened. "Did you, really? We used to go there and watch. We weren't supposed to, but we did anyway. Did you win?"
I had never thought about that and had to consider it.
"No," I said after a moment. "I lost."
"But you lived. It's better, surely, to lose and live than to take another man's life."
I opened my robe and showed her the scar on my chest that Agilus's avern leaf had made.
"You were very lucky. Often they bring in soldiers with chest wounds like that, but we are seldom able to save them." Hesitantly she touched my chest. There was a sweetness in her face that I have not seen in the faces of other women. For a moment she stroked my skin, then she jerked her hand away. "It could not have been very deep."
"It wasn't," I told her.
"Once I saw a combat between an officer and an exultant in masquerade. They used poisoned plants for weapons I suppose because the officer would have had an unfair advantage with the sword. The exultant was killed and I left, but afterward there was a great hullabaloo because the officer had run amok. He came dashing by me, striking out with his plant, but someone threw a cudgel at his legs and knocked him down. I think that was the most exciting fight I ever saw."