“Do you? Who sent you—Edmund, who stole my lady from me, and then the city itself?”
I spoke bitterly. Martin shook his head.
“I have not seen them, except at a distance. Would a noble send a Christian to plead on his behalf? I can tell you they are thin from hunger. There is no one in the city who is not. There has been great suffering, Luke.”
“If there has been suffering it was freely chosen. It does not take much to open a gate.”
“If tyranny is waiting to come in, it does.”
“Do you call me tyrant?”
“Whoever takes what a man will not freely give is that. A tyrant or a thief.”
“You use harsh words, old friend,” I said. “This thief, this tyrant, once saved you when you hung in chains, awaiting death by fire.”
“Yes. For that, you may demand anything of me. But not of the city.”
There was a sharpness in the air, almost of frost. Summer was giving way to autumn. Winter would follow soon.
I said: “The suffering is almost at an end. I do not need a gate to be opened now. Before the day is over my soldiers will walk through the shattered wall into the streets of Winchester. Or will your stable-god who worked such miracles work one here?”
“It may be. Through the weak bodies of his servants.”
I laughed. “The Christians will build the wall again? I do not think they can build as fast as my mortar breaks it down.”
Martin took off his spectacles and wiped his eyes. I saw that his hand trembled.
“You are not a cruel man, Luke,” he said. “Only blind. If you could see them starving, all those you knew—men and women, dwarf and human and polymuf—you would have pity. No, do not say it. They have only to open a gate. They can get bread in exchange for freedom. And meanwhile they are behind walls and you do not see them. But we will make you see.”
“You waste your time,” I said. “It is almost over. And I have won.”
“Not yet.” He pushed the spectacles back onto his nose. “I said the truth I have found gives a meaning to life. To death, also. I will leave you now. When I return to the city I will stand in the breach of the wall. I fear the thought as much as any man would, maybe more than most, but I think God will give me strength. Your bombs will shatter flesh and bone as well as stone.” He smiled. “You have reminded me that I owe you a death. I am glad to repay it in this fashion.”
“You speak bravely,” I said, “and I believe that you would do it, with or without the help of your god. But I win here also. I have guards within call. You will not go back to the city until I am master of it.”
“Imprison me if you wish,” Martin said. “It makes no difference. I was sent here because I was your friend. There are others who will do this task, many others. The High Seers have brought you field glasses, I see, as well as a mortar. Use them to look at the wall.”
The light was feeble still. With the naked eye one saw only the wall’s gray shape, with the ragged V where the mortar bombs had crumbled it. But the glasses showed me other things. Small figures stood in the embrasure or clung to the broken edges of the wall. I counted a score of them, and more. I thought I saw the bald head of the Bishop. I remembered his words in Blodwen’s apartment:
“If killing there must be I would rather it were done by a warrior who kills with his own hand, and knows what bloody corpse he leaves behind.”
While I watched they began singing. One of their dirge-like hymns; it sifted thinly down through the cold dawn air.
“Give the order to fire whenever you choose,” Martin said. “But this time you will not be blind. This time you will see what it is you do.”
• • •
Men came from their tents, attracted by the singing. Cymru and Snake and Kluellan came to me, and the High Seers. They watched the singing Christians in the breach, and watched me also. Other figures appeared on top of the walls. They lined the parapets, in scores, in hundreds. There were not so many Christians in Winchester. These were the people of the city, human and dwarf and polymuf, offering their bodies as its bulwark.
I said to Martin: “Go back to them. Tell them they can keep their freedom.”
TEN
THE SWORD OF THE SPIRITS
IN SLEEP LAST NIGHT I was in Winchester. I dreamed of an afternoon when Edmund and Martin and I climbed Catherine’s Hill together, with the sun burning out of blue gulfs of sky and the clouds huge and white and slow-sailing. We had taken nets with us to catch butterflies, but all we saw were cabbage whites which were not worth taking. So we lay on the grass, under the shade of the trees which cover the hilltop, and talked idly as boys will talk on hot summer days: of dreams and hopes and nonsense. And when it was time to go home for tea we started down the hill, and Edmund cried: “Race you to the bottom!” and we began to run. Edmund and I left Martin behind and Edmund began to outdistance me also. So I ran faster and faster, taking giant strides, and then as the descent grew steeper I was skipping over the grass, unable to stop or check myself, until my feet left the ground altogether and I cartwheeled through the air, and the whole earth seemed to rise up and crash against me.
All this was as it happened. I remembered lying on the ground, dazed, my head throbbing savagely with pain, and Edmund and Martin coming to pick me up. I remembered the concern in their faces and even the shirt Edmund was wearing, blue with a patch at the elbow.
But there the dream changed. I was in bed and smarting from different wounds—the burns I got in my struggle with the Bayemot. And Blodwen stood by me, in her dress that was the color of beech leaves in winter. She took my bandaged hand and said: “You are a fool, Luke. But very brave . . .” She said: “There is to be a banquet where my father will give you a great honor. A prize. Do you want to know what prize it is, brave, foolish Luke?” She leaned forward, laughing, her golden hair falling almost to touch my face. “A prize . . . ,” she whispered.
My heart was open and easy. In my dream I said what I had never been able to say in life:
“I love you, Blodwen.”
As I spoke the words she drifted from me. I called after her and she smiled and shook her head. I tried to rise and follow, but could not. Her figure faded in the distance, and I awoke and found my pillow wet with tears, and the high towers of Klan Gothlen framed in the window opposite my bed.
• • •
It is three years since I led the army of the Wilsh back across the Burning Lands. Cymru calls me his son. He governs in name but leaves the exercise of authority to me. I am to be Cymru after him, and the people applaud this. Although a foreigner, I am their hero. The great painting of Luke and the Bayemot covers one wall of the throne room, and Gwulum and his apprentice artists have nearly finished the other one that faces it. It is called “The Conquest of the South” and shows me at Cymru’s side in the Battle of the Itchen. My sword is raised to strike down a Captain who menaces him.
The High Seers came with us to Klan Gothlen. They do not call themselves High Seers any longer and do not practice mumbo jumbo and give messages from the Spirits in darkened halls. They are scientists. They have set up schools and a university, at which the ancient knowledge is freely taught.
The Wilsh take gladly to this learning. Almost every day, it seems, there are new machines and devices to change our way of life. Last week a motor car chugged uneasily along the main street of the city, to the cheers of the onlookers. There is talk of building a railway to make easier our conquest and development of the savage lands. As soon as the engineers can make up their minds as to whether it will be twin-rail or monorail, the project will be put underway.
My people are happy and contented. Snake is a good Chancellor and Kluellan keeps the army at a high pitch of ceremonial drilclass="underline" there is no real need for anything else. Hans is busily occupied with this notion of a railway. He has married a girl of human stock, though not much taller than he is, and they have a human child, a daughter.