This big house is full of carpets and all kinds of furniture and pictures, the kind of things Duko Rigoglio has in his house. But when he talks to them, this wise man, the mercenary knows none of it means anything to him. He has silk clothes and jewels, and gold cloth around his head, but they don't mean anything to him. Walking on carpet or grass is all the same to him. After he has talked to all of them a little, he asks each one what he wants the cards he's going to pay them for. This mercenary says he got to know the others on the boat, and there are some real good liars there, but when they try to lie to the wise man they only say, "I-I-I… "

Like that.

Some want the money for good things and some for bad. He talks to all of them, no matter what they want his money for.

This mercenary I talked to, he wants to buy a little piece of good land. All the good land where he was born, somebody owns already. So he wants to get hold of some cards and buy enough that he can build him a little house and get married. He's got a girl back there he hopes will wait for him.

When this wise man is through talking to them he hires them all, and this mercenary goes away to fight for him. Pretty soon they win, and he goes to the enemy town to hold it. The wise man, he sends his own people back to their farms and uses his mercenaries for that. Then he's gone, and nobody knows what happened to him. They got this young general, he loves him like his father, and he searches everyplace. He thinks somebody killed him and hid the body.

Then somebody in the enemy town where the mercenary is sees the wise man's wife. He tells the officer taking care of things there, and this mercenary is one of the ones they send to bring her in. They ask lots of questions, and he gets to hear some of it.

She and the wise man are going to go away and never come back, she says. They get a boat and go down a river that they got down there. Not our river. There's inhumi after him that want to kill him, and his wife is real scared. He tells her not to worry, they only want him, not her. They stop on a island and cook and eat, and there's inhumi all over. Then they get back in their boat and go to sleep. The wise man has this pet bird-

Oreb interrupted Inclito's story here, exclaiming, "Good bird!"

It talks, and the wise man says it will wake them up if the inhumi get too close. She's very scared, but he holds her and after a while she gets to sleep.

When she wakes up, it's still night. This wise man is gone, and the inhumi too. The boat's still tied to a tree or something on the little island, but she sees him over on the bank. He's taken off the head cloth he used to wear, and she sees his white hair shining in the dark. He's going away, and pretty soon she can't see him anymore, so next day she takes their boat and sails it back up the river to the enemy town and sells it.

This mercenary I talked to is one of the men that took her from the enemy town to the big town where this wise man was so the young general can talk to her. But when he gets her there, the young general pays him off and lets him go because they're cutting back now. That's when he comes here. So this is the end of his story, or anyhow it's the end for right now.

Mora gave her father a quizzical look. "Why did the wise man want to go away when they had won the war?"

Inclito's big shoulders rose and fell. "Somebody like Incanto could tell you, maybe. I'm just a farmer. You want to know about pigs and cows, ask me."

"Incanto?"

I shook my head, and Inclito sighed. "All right, I asked the mercenary the same thing, why did he go? He didn't know either. Then I asked about the big town that hired them, and he said things were good there. I said, they don't fight each other anymore? Or steal? And he said no, it was a nice town with honest people, only big. As big as a city inside the Long Sun Whorl is what he said, but how would he know? As big as Grandecitta? I don't believe it!"

Inclito turned to me. "My whole family has told, Mama and Mora, and now me. There's only you and Fava."

I said I would prefer that Fava precede me, and his mother thrust a platter of fresh pork at me. "You haven't eaten anything tonight, you or Fava. How about some bread? Decina baked this morning, and it's our own butter."

I took meat and a slice of bread to satisfy her.

"I'm leaving tomorrow morning, " Fava told Inclito's mother. "Mora knows, and so does Incanto now. I'd like to tell a long story tonight, since I won't be doing this anymore, and I want to make up a specially good one. Anyway, Incanto got to go last when he was here before."

She turned to me. "May I go last this time, Incanto? And will you tell us another one about Green? I'm going to lay mine there too, I think."

8

My Second Story The Man Who Returned

On Green, at the time of which I speak, there was a band of a hundred bad men. A few had slug guns and almost all had knives. With these weapons they fought off the inhumi, and fought among themselves as well, only too often.

Their leaders were a certain man and his son, and though they thought themselves better than the rest, they were much worse because they hated each other. The others did not hate one another, though they fought and sometimes killed one another. It was only that they were proud and reckless, and that each one wanted to be thought very brave.

If they had been wise, they would have tried to recover the lander in which they had come to Green, but they were foolish, and because they feared the inhumi and did not know where in the City of the Inhumi it was, they would not. They felt sure there were other men on Green, and women, too; they wanted very much to find women.

Their leader, the man I spoke of, tried to persuade them to retake the lander; but when they refused, he foolishly agreed to lead them in search of colonists from the Long Sun Whorl. He led them north through the heat and the terrible jungle, feeling that the landers would have chosen a more temperate climate for the colonists they carried.

They traveled a long way, or at least they thought it long, and found a small settlement; but the settlers drove them away, then fled when they returned and attacked. Far though they traveled, it was never far enough to escape the jungle, its fevers, and its insects.

At last their leader gathered his men about him and told them frankly that their only hope was to reclaim the lander in which they had arrived. "If you will not come with me, " he told them, "I will go back alone and take it by stealth, if I can, or die trying. If we continue as we have begun, I will die in any case. I promised the people of my town that I would do my utmost to return to the Whorl. If I am to die here, I prefer to die with honor." They talked long after he spoke to them, eight or ten in support of him and a dozen or a score opposing him. Their wrangling continued for hours…

Here I stopped to listen, for I heard Hyacinth singing to her waves. "What is it?" my host's mother asked me.

"A woman singing in the sea on the other side of the whorl, " I told her. "I doubt that you can hear her, but I do."

While they wrangled in that fashion, I counted them over and over, and the result was always the same, one that I had come to know well since Ushujaa died: sixty-nine. At last even they grew tired and slept, agreeing to settle the matter by a vote in the morning.

As I lay sweating in the darkness, I foresaw what morning would bring. It was neither delusion nor enlightenment from any god; I knew them well by then, how foolish they were and how quick to anger. They would vote, and the sides would be very nearly even, though they could not be precisely even. The winners would demand that the losing side do everything they wished. The losers would defy them, and the sides would fight.