I had cut a length of fishline for my luck-charm, but found the cord unpleasantly rough at my neck, so again I put the charm in the sack, along with the horn. And forgot I had done so — you might remember that. Later, when it was important to me, to save me I couldn’t recollect if I had put the charm in the sack or continued to wear it a while longer in spite of the chafing. If you exist, your memory has probably goofed you the same way. If you don’t exist, why don’t you give me a breakdown on that too?
Everything looked simpler to me that evening, when I had buried my horn. I was not daydreaming nor building my fortunes on a chip of the moon. I just wanted Emmia.
I hid again in the brush near the stockade, and after I heard the change of guards — they were late — I crept close to the palings and continued to wait, for I was sure I hadn’t heard the new guard march down the street in the usual way. And I must have been more exhausted than I knew, for I fell stupidly asleep.
I’d never done it before in such a dangerous spot, and haven’t since. But I did then. When I came to myself it was night, with a pallor of early moonlight in the east. Now I had no way of guessing about the guard until I heard him, and waited another dreary while. A pig wandered along the avenue inside the stockade, passing private remarks to his gut about the low quality of the street garbage. Nobody shied a rock at him, as a guard would almost certainly have done to keep off dull times. Sick of waiting, I took a chance and climbed.
The guard let me scramble over and down on the city side. Then I heard his quick step behind me and a bang on the head toppled me. As I rolled over his expensive cowhide boot was churning my belly. “Where you from, bond-servant?” My gray loin-rag told him that about me — we were required to wear them, as slaves wear black ones and freemen white; only the nobility is allowed to wear a loin-rag or britches of interesting color.
“I work at the Bull-and-Iron. Lost my way.”
“Likely tell. They never teach you to say ‘sir’?” Lamplight from down the street showed me a tight skinny face set in the sour look that means a man won’t heed anything you say because his mind was all made up about everything long ago when you weren’t around. He fingered his club; his boot was hurting me. “Kay, let’s see your pass.”
Anyone entering or leaving Skoar at night had to have a pass with the stamp of the City Council, unless he was a uniformed soldier of the garrison, a priest, or a member of the upper nobility with a shoulder-tattoo to prove it. Of course freemen and the lower nobility — (Misters like Old Jon and such-like) — didn’t go off down the roads after dark except in large armed groups with torchlight and foofaraw to keep off wolf and tiger, but there were enough of those traveling groups — caravans they’re called — to keep the City Council happy stamping things. However — oh, in the spring after the weather settled to sweet starry nights, and hunting beasts were unlikely to come near human settlements because food was easy elsewhere, boys with their wenches would be slipping over the palisade all the time. Scare-screwing, the kids called it. I never heard of such parties getting killed and eaten, but maybe it does something for a girl if she can imagine that with a boy on top of her. And the guards were expected, almost officially, to look the other way, for as I wrote a while back, even the Church admits that breeding must be encouraged, especially among the working classes. On June mornings the grass just outside the stockade was apt to be squashed flat as a battlefield, which in a way it was.
“A’n’t got a pass, sir. You know how it is.”
“Don’t give me that. You know everybody got to have a pass now, with a war on.”
“War?” I’d grown so used to the yak about possible war with Katskil I’d given it no more heed than mosquito-buzz.
“Declared yesterday. Everyone knows about it.”
“Not me, sir. Lost in the woods yesterday.”
“Likely tell,” he said, and we were back where we started. If war had been declared yesterday, wouldn’t Emmia have spoken of it to me? Maybe she had, while my wits were wandering. “Kay, so wha’d you do at this ’ere wha’d you say the God-damn name of the place was?”
“Bull-and-Iron, sir. Yard-boy. You ask Mister Jon Robson. Mister. Member of the City Council too.”
I didn’t blame him for not being impressed. Misters are a nickel a pair. Even Esquires don’t have the important shoulder-tattoo, and Esquire was the biggest Old Jon would ever get to be. The guard’s foot rolled me from side to side, hurting and churning. “Hear tell they’s lots of redheaded scum in Katskil. No pass. Doing a sneak-in. And bearin’ down on this crap about Mister like I needed a sumbitch like you to teach me manners, little snotnose fart that a high wind’d blow away. Aw, even if you a’n’t lyin’ you got to be reamed out some. Take you to the Captain is what I got to do. By him, being Mister Jon Whosit’s pansy a’n’t helping you.”
I called him a bald-assed son of a whore, and now that I look back on it I believe that was almost the wrong thing to say. “Give y’self away then, Katskil. You be a Katskil spy. No b.s. is going to talk thataway to a bejasus member of the city gov’ment. Git up!”
He had become an obstacle between me and Emmia, just that, hardly anything more. He’d told me to get up, but his foot was still grinding me. I grabbed it, heaved, and he went flying ass over brisket.
My beef does get underestimated because of my pidlin size and natural-born goofy look. His brass helmet slammed the palings, a bone snapped in his neck, and when he spread out on the ground he was dead as ever a man needs to be.
No pulse at his throat; his head flopped when I shook him. I caught the death smell — the poor jo’s bowels had let go. Not a soul near; shadows lay heavy, with only one dull lamp down the street. The noise of the helmet on the logs had been small. I could have climbed back over the stockade and been gone for good, but that’s not what I did.
As I knelt staring at him the universe was still full to bursting with the hunger for Emmia that had drawn me back. There seemed to be some connection as I looked at the dead guard, my love-rod stiffening like a fool, as if he’d been a rival. Why, I’m no rutting stag that needs to crash horns into another male to make himself ready for the does. I wasn’t heartless either. I recall thinking there’d be others — wife, children, friends — whose lives would be jolted by what I’d done. That pale brown fitfully illuminated thing beside my knee was a human hand, with dirty fingernails, an old scar in the crotch between thumb and forefinger; maybe it could play a mandolin once. But it was dead, dead as the mue, and I was alive and hot for Emmia.
I left him, not hating him at all, nor myself too much. Nor did I think once, as I stole across the city, of the Eye of God beholding every act, the way the church teaching had told me it does, and this seems curious to me, for at that time I was by no means free for any clear thinking.
Nobody was abroad now except the watch, a few idlers and drunks and fifty-cent prosties, all of whom I could avoid. In the more respectable region where the Bull-andIron stood there wasn’t a cat stirring. The only light at the inn was in the tap room; I caught the drone of Old Jon talkmg along to some polite guest who likely wanted to go to bed. The moon was fairly high. I saw glints of light from it on the jinny-creeper leaves. I climbed softly, easily, and let myself over the sill.
The moonlight gave me faint shapes: a chair, a bit of angular darkness probably a table, and a pale motion near at hand — why, that was myself, my image in the wall mirror by this window. I watched the image slip off shirt and loin-rag and lay the knife-belt on them, and stand naked as if held fast by its own quietness. Emmia stirred then, murmuring, and I went to her.