Gene Wolfe - New Sun 4 - The Citadel of the Autarch

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Wolfe,_Gene_-_Book_of_the_New_Sun_4_-_The_Citadel_of_the_Autarch

The Citadel of the

Autarch

Volume Three of The Book of the New

Sun

GENE WOLFE

At two o'clock in the morning, if you open your window and listen,

You will hear the feet of the Wind that is going to call the sun. And

the trees in the shadow rustle and the trees in the moonlight glisten,

And though it is deep, dark night, you feel that the night is done.

—Rudyard Kipling

The Dead Soldier

I had never seen war, or even talked of it at length with someone

who had, but I was young and knew something of violence, and so

believed that war would be no more than a new experience for me,

as other things—the possession of authority in Thrax, say, or my

escape from the House Absolute—had been new experiences.

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Wolfe,_Gene_-_Book_of_the_New_Sun_4_-_The_Citadel_of_the_Autarch

War is not a new experience; it is a new world. Its inhabitants are

more different from human beings than Famulimus and her friends.

Its laws are new, and even its geography is new, because it is a

geography in which insignificant hills and hollows are lifted to the

importance of cities. Just as our familiar Urth holds such

monstrosities as Erebus, Abaia, and Arioch, so the world of war is

stalked by the monsters called battles, whose cells are individuals

but who have a life and intelligence of their own, and whom one

approaches through an ever-thickening array of portents.

One night I woke long before dawn. Everything seemed still, and I

was afraid some enemy had come near, so that my mind had stirred

at his malignancy. I rose and looked about. The hills were lost in the

darkness. I was in a nest of long grass, a nest I had trampled flat for

myself. Crickets sang.

Something caught my eye far to the north: a flash, I thought, of

violet just on the horizon. I stared at the point from which it seemed

to have come. Just as I had convinced myself that what I believed I

had seen was no more than a fault of vision, perhaps some lingering

effect of the drug I had been given in the hetman's house, there was

a flare of magenta a trifle to the left of the point I had been staring

at.

I continued to stand there for a watch or more, rewarded from time

to time with these mysteries of light. At last, having satisfied myself

that they were a great way off and came no nearer, and that they did

not appear to change in frequency, coming on the average with each

five hundredth beat of my heart, I lay down again. And because I

was then thoroughly awake, I became aware that the ground was

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Wolfe,_Gene_-_Book_of_the_New_Sun_4_-_The_Citadel_of_the_Autarch

shaking, very slightly, beneath me.

When I woke again in the morning it had stopped. I watched the

horizon diligently for some time as I walked along, but saw nothing

disturbing.

It had been two days since I had eaten, and I was no longer hungry,

though I was aware that I did not have my normal strength. Twice

that day I came upon little houses falling to ruin, and I entered each

to look for food. If anything had been left, it had been taken long

before; even the rats were gone. The second house had a well, but

some dead thing had been thrown down it long ago, and in any case

there was no way to reach the stinking water. I went on, wishing for

something to drink and also for a better staff than the succession of

rotten sticks I had been using. I had learned when I had used

Terminus Est as a staff in the mountains how much easier it is to

walk with one.

About noon I came upon a path and followed it, and a short time

afterward heard the sound of hoofs. I hid where I could look down

the road; a moment later a rider crested the next hill and flashed past

me. From the glimpse I had of him, he wore armor somewhat in the

fashion of the commanders of Abdiesus's dimarchi, but his wind-

stiffened cape was green instead of red and his helmet seemed to

have a visor like the bill of a cap. Whoever he was, he was

magnificently mounted: His destrier's mouth was bearded with foam

and its sides drenched, yet it flew by as though the racing signal had

dropped only an instant before.

Having encountered one rider on the path, I expected others. There

were none. For a long while I walked in tranquillity, hearing the

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Wolfe,_Gene_-_Book_of_the_New_Sun_4_-_The_Citadel_of_the_Autarch

calls of birds and seeing many signs of game. Then (to my

inexpressible delight) the path forded a young stream. I walked up a

dozen strides to a spot where deeper, quieter water flowed over a

bed of white gravel. Minnows skittered away from my boots—

always a sign of good water—and it was still cold from the

mountain peaks and sweet with the memory of snow. I drank and

drank again, and then again, until I could hold no more, then took

off my clothes and washed myself, cold though it was. When I had

finished my bath and dressed and returned to the place where the

path crossed the stream, I saw two pug marks on the other side,

daintily close together, where the animal had crouched to drink.

They overlay the hoofprints of the officer's mount, and each was as

big as a dinner plate, with no claws showing beyond the soft pads of

the toes. Old Midan, who had been my uncle's huntsman when I

was the girl-child Thecla, had told me once that smilodons drink

only after they have gorged themselves, and that when they have

gorged and drunk they are not dangerous unless molested. I went on.

The path wound through a wooded valley, then up into a saddle

between hills. When I was near the highest point, I noticed a tree

two spans in diameter that had been torn in half (as it appeared) at

about the height of my eyes. The ends of both the standing stump

and the felled trunk were ragged, not at all like the smooth chipping

of an ax. In the next two or three leagues I walked, there were

several score like it. Judging from the lack of leaves, and in some

cases of bark, on the fallen parts, and the new shoots the stumps had

put forth, the damage had been done at least a year ago, and perhaps

longer.

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Wolfe,_Gene_-_Book_of_the_New_Sun_4_-_The_Citadel_of_the_Autarch

At last the path joined a true road, something I had heard of often,

but never trodden except in decay. It was much like the old road the

uhlans had been blocking when I had become separated from Dr.

Talos, Baldanders, Jolenta, and Dorcas when we left Nessus, but I

was unprepared for the cloud of dust that hung about it. No grass

grew upon it, though it was wider than most city streets.

I had no choice except to follow it; the trees about it were thick set,

and the spaces between them choked with brush. At first I was

afraid, remembering the burning lances of the uhlans; still, it

seemed probable that the law that prohibited the use of roads no

longer had force here, or this one would not have seen as much

traffic as it clearly had; and when, a short time later, I heard voices

and the sound of many marching feet behind me, I only moved a

pace or two into the trees and watched openly while the column

passed.

An officer came first, riding a fine, champing blue whose fangs had

been left long and set with turquoise to match his bardings and the

hilt of his owner's estoc. The men who followed him on foot were

antepilani of the heavy infantry, big shouldered and narrow waisted,

with sun-bronzed, expressionless faces. They carried three-pointed

korsekes, demilunes, and heavy-headed voulges. This mixture of

armaments, as well as certain discrepancies among their badges and

accouterments, led me to believe that their mora was made up of the

remains of earlier formations. If that were so, the fighting they must

have seen had left them phlegmatic. They swung along, four

thousand or so in all, without excitement, reluctance, or any sign of

fatigue, careless in their bearing but not slovenly, and seemed to

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Wolfe,_Gene_-_Book_of_the_New_Sun_4_-_The_Citadel_of_the_AutarchTheCitadeloftheAutarchVolumeThreeofTheBookoftheNewSunGENEWOLFEAttwoo'clockinthemorning,ifyouopenyourwindowandlisten,YouwillhearthefeetoftheWindthatisgoingtocallthesun.Andthetreesintheshadowrustleandthetreesinthemoonlightglisten,Andthoug...

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Gene Wolfe - New Sun 4 - The Citadel of the Autarch

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