More wisely, the barrel-chested leader had thrown himself to the floor at the first shot, an ell or so from my feet. Now he sprang for me. The mace head was a gear wheel; it struck him where the shoulder joins the neck, with every ounce of strength I possessed behind it.

I might as effectively have clubbed an arsinoither. Still conscious and still strong, he struck me as that animal strikes a dire-wolf. The mace flew from my hands, and his weight crushed the breath from my body.

There was a blinding flash. I saw his seven-fingered hands upraised, but there was between them only the stump of a neck that smoldered as stumps do where a forest has burned. He charged again — not at me but at the wall, crashed into it, and charged once more, wildly, blindly.

A second shot nearly cleaved him in two.

I tried to rise and found my hands slippery with his blood. An arm, immensely strong, circled my waist and lifted me. A familiar voice asked, “Can you stand?”

It was Sidero, and quite suddenly he seemed an old friend. “I think so,” I said. “Thank you.”

“You fought them.”

“Not successfully.” I recalled my days of generalship. “Not well.”

“But you fought.”

“If you like,” I said. Sailors boiled around us now, some flourishing fusils, some bloody knives.

“Will you fight them again? Wait!” He moved his own fusil in a gesture meant to silence me. “I kept the knife and the pistol. Take them now.” He was still wearing my belt, with my weapons on it. Clamping the fusil under what remained of his right arm, he released the buckle and handed the whole to me.

“Thank you,” I repeated. I did not know what else to say; and I wondered whether he had indeed struck me unconscious, as I had supposed.

The metal vizard that was his face provided no clues to his feelings, his harsh voice hardly more. “Rest now. Eat, and we will talk later. We must fight again later.” He turned to face the milling hands. “Rest! Eat!”

I felt like doing both. I had no intention of fighting for Sidero, but the thought of a meal shared with comrades who would guard me while I slept was irresistible. It would be easy (so I supposed) to slip off afterward.

The hands had carried rations, and we soon turned up more, the stores of the jibers whom we had killed. In a short time, we were sitting down to a fragrant dinner of lentils boiled with pork and accompanied by fiery herbs, bread, and wine.

Perhaps there were beds or hammocks nearby, as well as the food and the stove, but I for one was too exhausted to look for them. Though my right arm still pained me, I knew it could not do so severely enough to keep me awake; my aching head had been soothed by the wine I had drunk. I was about to stretch myself where I sat — though I wished that Sidero had preserved my cloak too — when a strongly built sailor squatted beside me.

“Remember me, Severian?”

“I should,” I said, “since you know my name.” The fact was that I did not, though there was something familiar in his face.

“You used to call me Zak.”

I stared. The light was dim, but even after allowance had been made for that, I could hardly believe him the Zak I had known. At last I said, “Without mentioning a matter neither of us wishes to discuss, I cannot help but remark that you appear to have changed a great deal.”

“It’s the clothes — I took them from a dead man. I’ve shaved my face too. And Gunnie has scissors. She cut off some of my hair.”

“Gunnie’s here?”

Zak indicated the direction with a motion of his head. “You want to talk to her. She’d like to talk too, I think.”

“No,” I said. “Tell her I’ll talk with her in the morning.” I tried to think of something more to say, but all I could manage was, “Tell her what she did for me more than repaid any harm.”

Zak nodded and moved away.

Mention of Gunnie had reminded me of Idas’s chrisos. I opened the pocket of the sheath and glanced inside to establish that they were still there, then lay down and slept.

When I woke — I hesitate to call it morning because there was no true morning — most of the hands were already up and eating such food as remained after the feast of the night before. Sidero had been joined by two slender automatons, such creatures as I believe Jonas must once have been. The three stood some distance apart from the rest of us, talking in tones too low for me to overhear.

I could not be sure if these volitional mechanisms were nearer the captain and the upper officers than Sidero, and as I was debating whether to approach them and identify myself, they left us, disappearing at once in the maze of passages. As if he had read my thoughts, Sidero walked over to me.

“We can talk now,” he said.

I nodded and explained that I had been about to tell him and the others who I was.

“It would do no good. I called when first we met. You are not what you say. The Autarch is secure.”

I began to expostulate with him, but he held up his hand to silence me. “Let us not quarrel now. I know what I was told. Let me explain before we argue again. I hurt you. It is my right and duty to correct and chastise. Then I had joy of it.”

I asked him if he referred to his striking me when I lay unconscious, and he nodded. “I must not.” He seemed about to speak further, but did not. After a moment he said, “I cannot explain.”

“We know what moral considerations are,” I told him.

“Not as we. You believe you do. We know, and yet often make mistakes. We may sacrifice men to save our own existence. We may transmit and originate instructions to men. We may correct and chastise. But we may not become as you are. That is what I did. I must repay.”

I told him he had already, that he had repaid me in full when he saved me from the jibers.

“No. You fought and I fought. This is my payment. We go to a greater fight, perhaps the last. The jibers stole before. Now they rise to kill, to take the ship. The captain tolerated jibers for too long.”

I sensed how hard it was for him to speak critically of his captain, and how much he wished to turn away.

“I excuse you,” he said. “That is my payment to you.”

I asked, “You mean I don’t have to join you and your seamen in the battle unless I want to?”

Sidero nodded. “We will fight soon. Get away quickly.”

That was, of course, what I had intended, but I could not do so now. To escape by my own cunning, in the face of danger and by my own will, was one thing — to be ordered away from the battle like a spado was quite another.

In a few moments, our metal leader commanded us to fall in. When we did, the sight of my assembled comrades entirely failed to fill me with confidence; Guasacht’s irregulars had been crack troops by comparison. A few had fusils like Sidero’s, and a few bore calivers like those we had used to capture Zak. (It amused me to see Zak himself so armed now.) A sprinkling of others had pikes or spears; most, including Gunnie, who stood some distance from me and would not look toward me, had only their knives.

And yet all of them marched forward readily enough and gave the impression they would fight, though I knew that as likely as not half or all would run at the first shot. I sought and got a position well in the rear of their straggling column, so that I could better judge the number of deserters. There seemed to be none, and most of these sailors turned warriors appeared to find the prospect of a pitched battle a welcome change from their usual drudging.

As always in every sort of war I have known, there was delay in place of the expected fight. For a watch or more, we trooped through the bewildering interior of the ship, once entering a vast, echoing space that must have been an empty hold, once halting for an unexplained and unnecessary rest, twice joined by smaller parties of sailors who appeared human, or nearly so.