"He was very tired. His clothes were in rags and his shoes worn out. He had no food and nothing to trade."
"It is better to be just than to be kind, but only good judges can be just; let those who cannot be just be kind."
"In the capital he lived by begging."
At this point I could not help but interrupt. I told Foila that I thought it was wonderful that she understood so well what each of the stock phrases the Ascian used meant in the context of his story, but that I could not understand how she did it how she knew, for example, that the phrase about kindness and justice meant that the hero had become a beggar.
"Well, suppose that someone else Melito, perhaps were telling a story, and at some point in it he thrust out his hand and began to ask for alms. You'd know what that meant, wouldn't you?"
I agreed that I would.
"It's just the same here. Sometimes we find Ascian soldiers who are too hungry or too sick to keep up with the rest, and after they understand we aren't going to kill them, that business about kindness and justice is what they say. In Ascian, of course. It's what beggars say in Ascia."
"Those who cry longest shall be heard, and justice shall be done to them."
"This time he had to wait a long while before he was admitted to the palace, but at last they let him in and heard what he had to say."
"Those who will not serve the populace shall serve the populace."
"They said they would put the bad men in prison."
"Let there be clean water for those who toil. Let there be hot food for them, and a clean bed."
"He went back home."
"No one is to receive more than a hundred blows."
"He was beaten again."
"Behind our efforts, let there be found our efforts."
"But he did not give up. Once more he set off for the capital to complain."
"Those who fight for the populace fight with a thousand hearts. Those who fight against them with none."
"Now the bad men were afraid."
"Let no one oppose the decisions of the Group of Seventeen."
"They said to themselves, 'He has gone to the palace again and again, and each time he must have told the rulers there that we did not obey their earlier commands. Surely, this time they will send soldiers to kill us."
"If their wounds are in their backs, who shall stanch their blood?"
"The bad men ran away."
"Where are those who in times past have opposed the decisions of the Group of Seventeen?"
"They were never seen again."
"Let there be clean water for those who toil. Let there be hot food for them, and a clean bed. Then they will sing at their work, and their work will be light to them. Then they will sing at the harvest, and the harvest will be heavy."
"The just man returned home and lived happily ever after."
Everyone applauded this story, moved by the story itself, by the ingenuity of the Ascian prisoner, by the glimpse it had afforded us of life in Ascia, and most of all, I think, by the graciousness and wit Foila had brought to her translation.
I have no way of knowing whether you, who eventually will read this record, like stories or not. If you do not, no doubt you have turned these pages without attention. I confess that I love them. Indeed, it often seems to me that of all the good things in the world, the only ones humanity can claim for itself are stories and music; the rest, mercy, beauty, sleep, clean water and hot food (as the Ascian would have said) are all the work of the Increate. Thus, stories are small things indeed in the scheme of the universe, but it is hard not to love best what is our own hard for me, at least.
From this story, though it was the shortest and the most simple too of all those I have recorded in this book, I feel that I learned several things of some importance. First of all, how much of our speech, which we think freshly minted in our own mouths, consists of set locutions. The Ascian seemed to speak only in sentences he had learned by rote, though until he used each for the first time we had never heard them. Foila seemed to speak as women commonly do, and if I had been asked whether she employed such tags, I would have said that she did not but how often one might have predicted the ends of her sentences from their beginnings.
Second, I learned how difficult it is to eliminate the urge for expression. The people of Ascia were reduced to speaking only with their masters' voice; but they had made of it a new tongue, and I had no doubt, after hearing the Ascian, that by it he could express whatever thought he wished.
And third, I learned once again what a many-sided thing is the telling of any tale. None, surely, could be plainer than the Ascian's, yet what did it mean?
Was it intended to praise the Group of Seventeen? The mere terror of their name had routed the evildoers. Was it intended to condemn them?
They had heard the complaints of the just man, and yet they had done nothing for him beyond giving him their verbal support. There had been no indication they would ever do more.
But I had not learned those things I had most wished to learn as I listened to the Ascian and to Foila. What had been her motive in agreeing to allow the Ascian to compete? Mere mischief? From her laughing eyes I could easily believe it. Was she perhaps in truth attracted to him? I found that more difficult to credit, but it was surely not impossible. Who has not seen women attracted to men lacking every attractive quality? She had clearly had much to do with Ascians, and he was clearly no ordinary soldier, since he had been taught our language. Did she hope to wring some secret from him?
And what of him? Melito and Hallvard had accused each other of telling tales with an ulterior purpose. Had he done so as well? If he had, it had surely been to tell Foila and the rest of us too that he would never give up.
XII
Winnoc
That evening I had yet another visitor: one of the shaven-headed male slaves. I had been sitting up and attempting to talk with the Ascian, and he seated himself beside me. "Do you remember me, Lictor?" he asked. "My name is Winnoc."
I shook my head.
"It was I who bathed you and cared for you on the night you arrived," he told me. "I have been waiting until you were well enough to speak. I would have come last night, but you were deep in talk already with one of our postulants."
I asked what he wished to speak to me about.
"A moment ago I called you Lictor, and you did not deny it. Are you indeed a lictor? You were dressed as one that night."
"I have been a lictor," I said. "Those are the only clothes I own."
"But you are a lictor no longer?"
I shook my head. "I came north to enter the army."
"Ah," he said. For a moment he looked away.
"Surely others do the same."
"A few, yes. Most join in the south, or are made to join. A few come north like you, because they want some special unit where a friend or relation is already.
A soldier's life "
I waited for him to continue.
"It's a lot like a slave's, I think. I've never been a soldier myself, but I've talked to a lot of them."
"Is your life so miserable? I would have thought the Pelerines kind mistresses.
Do they beat you?"
He smiled at that and turned until I could see his back. "You've been a lictor.
What do you think of my scars?"
In the fading light I could scarcely make them out. I ran my fingers across them. "Only that they are very old and were made with the lash," I said.
"I got them before I was twenty, and I'm nearly fifty now. A man with black clothes like yours made them. Were you a lictor for long?"
"No, not long."
"Then you don't know much of the business?"
"Enough to practice it."
"And that's all? The man who whipped me told me he was from the guild of torturers. I thought maybe you might have heard of them."
"I have."
"Are they real? Some people have told me they died out a long time ago, but that isn't what the man who whipped me said."