“I have nothing,” Vera said slowly. Falco had never frightened her before; indeed, in her month in his house, she had come to like him very much, to honor him. There was a change in him now; not the pain and rage that had been visible, and understandable, since Luz’s flight; not an emotion, but a change in the man, an evidence of destruction, as in one deathly ill or injured. She sought somehow to reach him, and did not know how. “You gave me clothes, Don Luis, and all the rest,” she said. The clothes she wore now had been his wife’s, she knew that; he had had a chest of clothing brought to her room, beautiful fine-woven skirts and blouses and shawls, all folded away carefully, leaves of the sweet lavender scattered among them so long ago that all their scent was gone. “Shall I go change to my own things?” she asked.
“No.—Yes, if you wish. As you like.—Come back here as quickly as possible, please.”
When she returned in five minutes, in her own suit of white treesilk, he was again sitting motionless in the window seat, gazing out over the great silver cloud-hung bay.
Again he rose when she approached him, again he did not look at her. “Come with me, please, senhora.”
“Where are you going?” Vera asked, not moving.
“To the Town.” He added, as if he had forgotten to mention it, thinking of something entirely different, “I hope it will be possible for you to rejoin your people there.”
“I hope so too. What would make it impossible, Don Luis?”
He did not answer. She felt that he was not evading her question, only that the labor of answering it was beyond him. He stood aside for her to precede him. She looked around the big room that she had come to know so well, and at his face. “I will thank you now for your kindness to me, Don Luis,” she said with formality. “I will remember the true hospitality, that made a prisoner a guest.”
His tired face did not change; he shook his head, and waited for her.
She passed him, and he followed her through the hall and out onto the street. She had not set foot across that doorway since the day she was brought to the house.
She had hoped that Jan and Hari and the others might be there, but there was no sign of them. A dozen men, whom she recognized as Falco’s personal guards and servants, were waiting in a group, and there was another group of middle-aged men, among them Councillor Marquez and Falco’s brother-in-law Cooper, with some of their retinue, perhaps thirty in all. Falco looked them all over with a rapid glance, then, still with mechanical deference to Vera, letting her precede him by a step, set off down the steep street, with a gesture to the others to follow him.
As they walked she heard old Marquez talking to Falco, but did not hear what they said. Scarface, Anibal, gave her the faintest shadow of a wink as he stepped smartly by with his brother. The force and brightness of the wind and sunlight, after so long indoors or in the walled garden of the house, bewildered her; she felt unsteady walking, as if she had been sick in bed a long time.
In front of the Capitol a larger group was waiting, about forty men, perhaps fifty, all of them fairly young, all of them wearing the same kind of coat, a heavy blackish-brown material; the cottonwool mills must have worked overtime to make so much cloth all the same, Vera thought. The coats were belted and had big metal buttons, so that they all looked pretty much alike. All the men had both whips and muskets. They looked like one of the murals inside the Capitol. Herman Macmilan stepped forward from among them, tall, broad-shouldered, smiling. “At your service, Don Luis!”
“Good morning, Don Herman. All ready?” Falco said in his stifled voice.
“All ready, senhor. To the Town, men!” And he swung round and led the column of men straight up Seaward Street, not waiting for Falco, who took Vera by the arm and hurried forward with her among the dark-coated men to join Macmilan at the head of the troop. His own followers tried to press in behind him. Vera was jostled among the men, their guns and whipstocks, their hard arms, their faces glancing down at her, young and hostile. The street was narrow and Falco shoved his way by main force, pulling Vera along with him. But the instant he came out abreast of Macmilan at the head of the troop he let go Vera’s arm and walked sedately, as if he had been there at the head all along.
Macmilan glanced at him and smiled, his usual tight, pleased smile. He then pantomimed surprise at the sight of Vera. “Who is that, Don Luis? Have you brought a duenna along?”
“Any more reports of the Town this last hour?”
“Still gathering; not on the move yet, at last report.”
“The City Guard will meet us at the Monument?”
The young man nodded. “With some reinforcements Angel rounded up. High time we got moving! These men have been kept waiting too long.”
“They’re your men, I expect you to keep them in order,” Falco said.
“They’re so keen for action,” Macmilan said with pretended confidentiality. Vera saw Falco shoot him one quick, black glance.
“Listen, Don Herman. If your men won’t take orders—if you won’t take orders—then we stop here: now.” Falco stopped, and the force of his personality was such that Vera, Macmilan, and the men behind them stopped with him, as if they were all tied to him on one string.
Macmilan’s smile was gone. “You are in command, Councillor,” he said, with a flourish that did not hide the sullenness beneath.
Falco nodded and strode on. It was now he who set the pace, Vera noticed.
As they approached the bluffs she saw at the top, near the Monument, a still larger body of men waiting for them; and when they reached the top and passed under the shadow of the spectral, dingy space ship, this troop joined in behind Falco’s men and Macmilan’s browncoats, so that as they went on along the Road there were two hundred or more of them.
But what are they doing? Vera thought. Is this the attack on Shantih? But why would they bring me? What are they going to do? Falco is mad with pain and Macmilan is mad with envy, and then these men, all these men, all so big, with their guns and their coats and striding along like this, I can’t keep up, if only Hari and the others were here so I could see a human face! Why have they brought only me, where are the other hostages, have they killed them? They’re all mad, you can smell them, they smell like blood—Do they know they’re coming, in Shantih? Do they know? What will they do? Elia! Andre! Lev my dear! What are you going to do, what are you going to do? Can you hold fast? I can’t keep up, they walk so fast, I can’t keep up.
Though the people of Shantih and the villages had begun gathering—for the Short March, as Sasha unsmilingly described it—early in the morning, they did not get under way until nearly noon; and being a large crowd, unwieldy, and rendered somewhat chaotic by the presence of many children and by the constant arrival of stragglers seeking for friends to walk with, they did not move very quickly down the road toward the City.
Falco and Macmilan, on the contrary, had moved very quickly when they were brought word of a great massing of Shanty-Towners on the road. They had their troop—Macmilan’s army, City Guards, the private bodyguards of several Bosses, and a mixed lot of volunteers—out on the Road by noon, and moving fast.
So the two groups met on the road at Rocktop Hill, closer to the Town than to the City. The vanguard of the People of the Peace came over the low crest of the hill and saw the City men just starting up the rise toward them. They halted at once. They had the advantage of superior height where they stood, but a disadvantage too, in that most of them were still on the eastern side of the hill, and so could not see what was going on, nor be seen. Elia suggested to Andre and Lev that they withdraw a hundred meters or so, to meet the City on equal footing at the hilltop; and though this withdrawal might be construed as yielding or weakness, they decided it was best. It was worth it to see Herman Macmilan’s face when he swaggered up to the hilltop and saw for the first time what he was facing: some four thousand people massed along the road down the whole slope of the hill and far back along the flat, children and women and men, the greatest gathering of human beings ever to take place on that world; and they were singing. Macmilan’s ruddy face lost its color. He gave some order to his men, the ones in brown coats, and they all did something with their guns, and then held them ready in their hands. Many of the guards and volunteers began yelling and shouting to drown out the singing, and it was some while before they could be brought to silence so that the leaders of the two groups could speak.