Before he could turn his head back, he felt the horse swerve. Not the best time to lose a stirrup. Without thinking, he grabbed for the pommel of the saddle with both hands, dropping his sword and the reins (panic reaction; haven't done that for twenty years, since I was first learning to ride). It would probably have been all right if someone hadn't hit him.
He felt no pain from the blow itself, but the ground hitting his shoulder was another matter. Bad, he thought, in the split second before the horse's back hoofs kicked him in the head.
When he woke up, he was flat on his back. He remembered that he was in danger and tried to get up, but found he couldn't. Ropes; no ropes. No need for ropes. Very bad indeed.
He could move his head, though; and he saw dead bodies, men and horses; spears sticking in the ground like vine-props blown over in a high wind. Plenty of dead people (nearly all his men, he realized, and was surprised at how little that affected him), but nobody alive that he could see.
His neck was tired and getting cramped, and on balance he'd rather look at the sky than the consequences of his own negligence. He rested his head on the turf, but that turned out to be a bad idea. He let it flop sideways instead. The picture in front of his eyes was blurring up. Well, he thought.
Some time later he felt a shadow on his face, and something nudged him; he couldn't feel it, but he deduced it from the fact that he moved a little.
"Live one," someone said.
He thought about the words, because they didn't seem to mean anything, but after a while he figured it out. Inaccurate, in any case.
Whoever it was said something else, but it didn't have proper words in it, just bulving and roaring, like livestock far away. He decided he couldn't be bothered with people talking anymore. If he just lay still they'd go away and leave him in peace.
"I said, can you hear me?"
No, he thought; but instead he forced his mouth open and said something. It came out as meaningless noise. A very slight increase in the warmth of the sun on his cheek suggested that the shadow-caster had gone away. Good riddance.
So, I won't be going back to camp to tell them about the Vadani, or hunting manuals. I suppose I'll just have to write them a letter. Can you write letters when you're… (what's the word? Begins with D), and will there be someone to carry it for me once I've written it?
Suddenly there were two faces directly above him; the ugliest, scariest faces he'd ever seen. He wanted to kick, fight and scream, but apparently that wasn't possible. Then everything hurt at the same time, and while it was hurting he left the ground and was raised up into the air. Angels, he thought; no, not angels, I think we can be quite definite about that. Demons. They come and rip your soul out of your body at the moment of the thing that begins with D, except that we don't believe in demons and all that superstilious nonsense in our family.
Wrong about that, apparently. Shame.
The demons were carrying him; and he thought, I must have led a very evil life, to have deserved this. He couldn't see them anymore because his head was lolling back. All he could see was a cart-plain old farm cart; apparently there're no fine social distinctions in the place where you go when you've been bad, and the fiends that torment you forever have pale skin, like the Eremians-and he was being loaded onto it, like any old junk.
"Get a move on," someone was saying. "Jarnac's men'll be back any time."
He thought about that, but it didn't make any sense. Technical demon talk, he assumed; and then it occurred to him that he hadn't died after all. Now that was unsettling.
He was alive, then; alive, paralyzed and lying in a dirty old cart along with weapons, boots, soldiers' clothes, belts, ration bags and water bottles. He thought of the phrase they used at country auctions back home, when a farm was being sold up: the live and dead stock. From where he was lying, there didn't seem to be much in it, but such subtle distinctions define the world.
Fine, he told the universe. If it's all the same to you, I'd prefer to die now, please. Apparently the universe wasn't listening.
He'd often ridden in carts, of course. As a boy he'd loved haymaking, riding in the wain as the men pitched the hay up. His job had been to compress it by trampling it down; he could remember how it yielded and bounced under his feet like a flexing muscle, as if it was trying to trick him into falling over. He'd loved the view, the fact that for two weeks a year he could be taller than the grownups and see further. He'd imagined himself in a chariot, not a cart, bringing home the spoils of war in a grand procession.
He flicked his eyes sideways and saw the junk heaped up all round him; spoils of war. An ambition fulfilled, he thought, and passed out.
He woke up because something hurt; in fact, he came out of sleep trying very hard to scream, but he didn't seem able to make any sound. Very bad indeed.
"Splint," someone said. He tried to remember what a splint was, but there were holes in his memory large enough for words to fall through. Anyway, whoever it was didn't seem to be talking to him. It hurt, though, and he clenched his hands to work out the pain.
Oh, he thought. Maybe not so bad after all.
"He's awake," someone said, and a face appeared above him; huge and round, like an ugly brick-red sun. Its eyes, round and watery blue, looked at him as if he was a thing rather than a human being; then the head lifted and looked away. "He'll keep," the voice said.
He cleared his throat, but he couldn't think of the right words; he felt awkward, because this was a social situation his upbringing hadn't prepared him for. "Excuse me," he said.
The eyes narrowed a little, as if seeing a man inside the body for the first time. "It's all right," the man said. "You'll be fine. You had a bash on the head, and your arm's busted. Nothing as won't mend."
"Thanks," he replied. "Where is this?"
The man hadn't heard him, or wasn't prepared to acknowledge his question. "You got a name, then?"
Yes, but it's slipped my mind. "Gyges," he heard himself say. It took him a moment to realize he was telling the truth.
"Gyges," the man repeated. "What unit were you with?"
"Fourteenth Cavalry." Also true. Fancy me knowing that.
"Rank." A different voice; someone talking over the man's shoulder.
Oh well, he thought. "Lieutenant colonel," he said.
The man's left eyebrow raised. "Well now," he said-he was talking to his friend, the man behind him. "Not so bad after all."
"Excuse me," he said-that ridiculous phrase again, like a small boy in school asking permission to go to the toilet. "Who are you?"
The man smiled. "Nobody important. Don't worry, we'll get you back to your people, soon as you're fit to be moved."
That didn't make sense; they were Eremians, he was an officer in the Mezentine army, so surely he was a prisoner of war. "Thank you," he said, nevertheless.
The man made a tiny effort at a laugh. "No bother," he said. "Lie still, get some rest."
"What happened in the battle?" he asked, but the man had gone. Besides, he realized, he wasn't all that interested in the narrative. He knew the gist of it already.
Lieutenant Colonel Phrastus Gyges, formerly of the Seventeenth Mercenary Division, currently on detached service with the Fourteenth Cavalry. He remembered it now-not clearly, not yet; it was like thinking what to say in a foreign language. But at least he had a name now, and a body to feel pain with, and possibly even a future; there was a remote chance that, sooner or later, he'd once again be the man whose name he'd just remembered, rather than an item of damaged stock in the back of a wagon. Well; he'd come a long way in a short time.