“Let’s go see,” Dar Oakley says. “It’s beyond that ridge, I bet. Whatever it is.”
“You go see,” Toebone says, and the others agree. “Come back and tell us.”
As always.
The earth’s obscure beneath Dar Oakley as he flies, mist, low light. He’s high enough that he can look down on the road that passes through the lowlands. Along the road a mass is moving that soon proves to be People, lots of them, all going one way, all taking their steps together, so many that as he descends he can hear the striking of their boots on the road. The sound Toebone heard grows consistently louder as he approaches it, which thunder wouldn’t do, and the smell of smoke carried on the damp breeze is stronger too, and familiar now.
Winging and gliding, Dar Oakley reaches a winter-leafless tree well ahead of those People, and from there watches them pass by below him. Around them, leading, following, on either side, are others on Horses. Then more Horses and Mules pulling carts, whipped along. All of them moving as fast as so many can.
How can this be told about? He’d tell the other Crows: Think of all the wagons and all the Horses and the People riding on them on all the days you’ve ever seen them, and put them all together on one and the same day, all walking daywise. But of course they wouldn’t be able to think of any such thing as that; he can hardly think it himself even with all of them passing beneath him where he sits. Each of them carries on his shoulder what is unmistakably a gun. The bitter smell in the air is gun smoke.
Crows are afraid of very little, though they are wary of a lot of things. One thing that does frighten them, that they can never get used to, is a sudden, sharp, loud noise. Not long before, a new species of People engine had appeared in Dar Oakley’s lands: a string of great carts pulled at headlong speed without Horses or Oxen on special roads that nothing else uses—alarming at first to Crows for its long, piercing cries and the dense smoke it produced, a People fire on the move. But its noise begins faint and far away and only grows loud as it comes closer, like thunder. Harmless. They stayed away from it for a long time though, just in case.
They know about guns, too, by now: they’ve had guns fired at them, and now and then a Crow will be killed by one. Not often; Crows learn young to distinguish a man carrying a gun from a man carrying a shovel or an ax, and just how far to stay away from a gun to be safe. Still, the nearby bang of one can make Crows take to the air even in the midst of a conversation—they just can’t help it. A whiff of gun smoke can also be good, though: it can mean that nearby something’s been killed.
Dar Oakley knows where this road runs, and sees a faster way to get to where it’ll come out beyond the far ridge. That’s where a cloud of yellow fog he can see now has settled: but it’s not a cloud, and it’s rising. The noise has resolved itself into individual thumps and bangs. The smell is huge.
Along the crest of the low ridge is a row of trees where Dar Oakley alights to look down on what is taking place in the meadows and brown fields beyond.
A crowd of People larger than any he’s ever seen, far larger than the line of them he’d watched moving all together on the road. They are facing another group just as large not far off. Lines of wagonlike things, each bearing what looks like a fire-blackened log; they belch smoke like a gun, but much more, and then a huge gun-noise reaches Dar Oakley. At first he thinks it’s simply the noise that knocks down the ones moving toward the wagon-thing, but no: the black log is a hollow gun, from which a ball as big as a People head is flung. The wagon and gun leap in a spasm to eject it.
The line of People he first saw is now reaching the field; they have banners and drums, the ones riding Horses are waving weapons and urging the rest into a run, and then a black ball is thrown into their midst too and immediately more than one of the People falls, and also one of the shouting ones on a Horse, Horse screaming, People blown into parts.
There’s no describing this. Not even he could make Crows see this by his tale-telling. He’ll have to return and say, Follow me.
“What is it?” they cry. “What? Why?” The Crows that Dar Oakley has brought to the ridgeline row of trees can see how many People and Horses have fallen down, can see the balls fly into the lines of advancing People and strike down several at once. Some balls fall short or long and drive into earth, or they land and bounce high—Crows fly up in alarm as they see that—and still do damage to People too crowded together to avoid them. The Crows look this way and that, fly off and return, baffled by the questions that only People can answer, if even they can: Why can’t they, with all their awful noise, just drive the others away? Why do they kill what they can’t eat, or won’t eat? What are they doing, Dar Oakley?
Dar Oakley just then experiences a new memory, a thing not remembered since it first happened: sitting in an Oak in a thunderstorm with a rain-wet Raven, who gave him a word for an inexplicable People thing that he, Dar Oakley, had seen. It’s a Battle, the Raven said.
“It’s a Battle,” Dar Oakley says.
They stay in trees far from it, examining with Crow-sight the details. They are Crows of peaceable times; they’ve seen fights but not murders among People, and down there are more People dead than they have ever seen in any one place alive.
The short winter day is ending. Before the light is gone, it seems that one of the two masses of People is drawing away from the other. A roar like the roar of a train begins and rises among the opposing mass, who begin to move, the ones on Horses directing them by waving their swords and hats and crying out.
“Those,” Dar Oakley says, “are the winners. The others the losers.” The Crows ponder the words.
It seems that the winners will pursue the losers up the wooded slope and kill more, but after a time they cease, and turn back. Night thickens; the Crows retreat to farther trees, deep evergreens where they feel safe. Through the dark hours one or another will wake, startled by far-off cries and screams, animal and People. Many dull fires can be seen; the crackle of guns from nearby or farther off.
By dawn there are no more cries. The mass of those who fought have moved away. The fires gutter out. The dead remain, and they lie out on that field for days; the Crows return each dawn to find the wealth still there. It’s unsettling, so much of it, so violently produced; they take their time to approach it. Easiest to get at are the bodies smashed apart by the flying balls. Dar Oakley takes his turn as a Bigger to watch over the field (but watch for what?). The hum of flies is loud; soon enough these bodies will be white with maggots.
The Biggers call warnings: There are living People going among the dead, opening their clothes and digging in their pockets and taking away paper or other things—the Crows see them take shiny things on chains from around some necks, and that interests them, but the People keep all these. For some of the dead they dig holes through the day and put one of the dead in each, and then hammer crossed sticks there to mark the spot, stand staring at it a time with hats in hands. The Crows avoid them and gather around the disemboweled Horses and the Mules that are waiting to be thrown on piles of burning logs.
Through the next days, other People come onto the field bringing oxcarts, which they fill with their dead. The task seems hateful to them; they wrap their faces in cloth, and often turn away as though unable to keep doing it. Sometimes an arm or a foot in its boot will drop away from a body as it is hoisted onto the cart, and the Crows will draw closer. By now Vultures, who hunt by smell as well as sight, circle high up, waiting their turn. Within days the feasting Crows have grown so used to the carts that they hardly look up even when one draws up near them, and once one of those who’ve come to collect the bodies cries out in rage or loathing and takes out a small gun and shoots at them. The Crows fly up, scolding, and go on to the next nearest. The masked People lift up the Crow-picked body.