I advanced until we stood face-to-face, as two men might talk in the street. The sound of the bursting shells was louder there, and reports of the big guns that fired them hardly more than distant thunder. I cocked my head, hearkening to Seawrack's sea-song in that field of stubble, smoke, and death.

"The Duko didn't send me out here," Terzo said angrily. "Neither did General Morello. I came out of friendship for you."

I nodded my thanks.

"You've brought your artillery outside your town, in violation of the laws of war. If you're captured you'll be shot, and I thought I should tell you."

"I didn't know that there was any such law," I said. "Where are these laws written, and by what courts are they enforced?"

"Everyone knows!"

"You mean that you make some excuse to shoot those prisoners you wish to kill. No doubt you always have."

"We're going to attack you within an hour, Incanto. You'll be-" He fell silent, staring at me. "Can you hear something I don't?"

"Sing song," Oreb suggested; and I did, following Seawrack's own intonation and pronunciation to the best of my very limited ability. The lapping of the waves was in her song, and the eerie cries of seabirds, and the lonely whistling of the wind.

"That is in the language of the Neighbors, whom you call the Vanished People," I said when I could no longer sing for weeping.

"I can-" Terzo began. Then again, "I can almost hear it myself." He fell silent.

I put my hand upon his shoulder. "Listen, and you will hear her. Those who truly listen do."

He heard the music then, I know; he stared at me with bulging eyes.

"Seawrack is singing in the place that lies beyond this place. Listen there, and you cannot help but hear her." With her I sang a few more words in the language of those whom Mora had once called the People of That Town." 'In our small house with shining windows, I waited till the tide brought your wreck through. Lie here beside me in the darkness. I'll wake to life the corpse I say is you.' That isn't exactly right, but it's as close as I can come in the Common Tongue."

I spoke the final words to his back as he sprinted for his own lines.

A representative from Novella Citta has reached us! The news is so good that I hesitate to record it. His name is Legaro, and he is a tall and very dignified man with graying hair, an assessor (he says) of his town, which is governed by such assessors.

"So you're Master Incanto," he ventured when we had been introduced, and seemed almost afraid to accept my hand. "Donna Mora and her consort have told us a great deal about you."

"You have her?" I asked. "I know she's still alive, but is she well?"

Oreb added his voice to mine. "Girl safe? No shoot?"

"She is well and safe in our peel house in Novella Citta," Legaro declared. "But I should be telling all this to the Duko, her father. Is he here?"

"He went out with one of our patrols," I explained, "but he should be back within an hour." And I told Oreb to find Inclito and tell him that there was someone here with news of his daughter.

"You're his brother, Donna Mora's uncle?"

"If she awarded me that honor, it would be uncivil of me to refuse it. A tall, sturdy girl, quite dark, with a mole here?" I touched my cheek.

He nodded. "A very stately and forceful young lady. She has made a distinct impression on everyone." He leaned toward me and his voice became confidential. "Duko Inclito is marrying a woman from Novella Citta?"

"He intends to, certainly. The ceremony will not take place until after the war."

Another nod. "Naturally. I understand."

"Her name is Torda; but beyond the fact that she is both gracious and beautiful, and a distant relation-a second cousin by marriage, or something of that kind-I really know nothing about her. Inclito has been a widower for many years. No doubt Donna Mora told you."

"Oh, yes. And I should tell you that though I came alone save for my servant, our horde is not far behind me. We have four hundred and fifty under arms. It's a small force to you, I understand. But it's a well-trained and well-armed one, I assure you."

I thanked him, and said we welcomed whatever reinforcements Novella Citta could provide to us.

"We expected to find Blanko besieged, and hoped we might accomplish something by taking the besiegers in the rear." He rubbed his hands and smiled. "You can imagine how we feel now that you've won. Will you tell me about your victory? I've been talking to troopers on both sides, you see. I had to convince every party we encountered that I wasn't a Soldese or a Blankonian, and in the course of our conversations I've picked up a good deal of information. You and your brother were in command?"

I tried to explain that Inclito was our commander, and that I had merely deployed the fresh troops I had brought up from Blanko and endeavored to assist him.

"The guns, too. You brought out your guns?"

"I have been told that it is contrary to the usages of war, but-"

"It's too dangerous. I mean that it's usually judged to be. No one can argue with victory, of course. Now tell me everything that happened, please. Every detail. I've been learning about it in bits and pieces, and I'm as anxious to have a rational overview as a man can possibly be. You shattered the Dragoons and wiped out the Bodyguard?"

And so I described the entire affair for him, finding the partial account I had written here already a great help. I will finish it when next I write, and perhaps find room somewhere to add a few words about my experiences on Green, which is what I am supposed to be describing, after all.

18

The End and Afterward

The next Soldese attack came a quarter of an hour after Colonel Terzo and I separated, a wave of troopers running, throwing themselves flat in the stubble to shoot, and springing up to dash forward again until they fell. A second wave came behind the first, and a third behind the second.

There were no more after that.

Only a few weeks ago I watched a massed attack by the men of Han. The field of battle was black with them, and a trooper who shot one saw another appear at once in his place, and another in his and another his, man succeeding man as raindrops do. Because I had seen that, the Soldese troopers seemed less dangerous, perhaps, than they really were. I would never deny their courage and discipline; but I feared at first that they were no more than a diversion; and when at last I realized that there was to be no other attack, I felt a vast relief. Our veterans could no longer run and jump like the young men they had once been, but they could and would stand behind the walls and shoot all afternoon if need be. Some of our women still shut their eyes when they drew the trigger, as I saw, but it hardly mattered at that point; and although I saw tears here and there, I saw them through my own.

The second wave got as far as the deep ditches before our walls, and a few men leaped into them and tried to climb up the other side, but a more hopeless enterprise could not be imagined. I struck one on the head with my staff, and so saved him from having his brains blown out, which would have happened in another half second.

The third and final wave got no nearer than half a chain, I believe. For the space of a breath the troopers who composed it wavered there, firing and falling; then they turned and fled. Inclito led our reserve after them-such cavalry as we had, most of the boys, and the troopers who had been with him in the hills.

I watched them then, climbing up onto one of our walls as I had stood upon the stile and wishing again for the clumsy wood-and-brass telescope I had left behind on Lizard. The horde that had sifted through the hills was melting into them again, pursued not so much by our reserve as by striding shell-bursts from our big guns, distant dots of sullen black smoke and short-lived fountains of what at that distance seemed a yellowish water, like urine.