“When was that,” Chernon had asked, “when was it only five in a hundred?”
“In my grandfather’s time,” Casimur had said. “He told me himself. In my grandfather’s time.”
When they formed up on the parade ground, the wind slashing at their long cloaks, turning their noses red, and bringing tears to their eyes, Chernon thought of what Casimur had said, as he waited for the twenty-four century to march around, keeping his eyes front, away from Habby at his side. When the twenty-fours went by, he blinked back the wind-whipped tears and counted. Twenty-one spaces in the ranks. Seventy-nine men. Casimur had been right. Say that five left at age fifteen, then another one or two each year thereafter until the century came of fighting age. It would be century twenty-five next year, and there would be fewer than eighty of them left.
“But it will be the best men who stay,” Chernon assured himself, repeating what the centurion had told him. “The best warriors. Better have eighty good men than a hundred where twenty are cowards….”
“STAND FORWARD,” cried the centurion. “THOSE WHO CHOOSE HONOR, STAND FORWARD!”
“Good-bye,” whispered Habby from his place beside Chernon.
Together with ninety-four other fifteen-year-olds, Chernon marched forward, leaving the five to strip off their tunics and stand naked in the chill wind. By the time the century had marched once around, eyes front, the five naked boys were gone, escorted into the gatehouse by the ceremonial company.
No one took any notice. No one would ever mention their names again. The fifteen century wheeled and marched, coming up before the reviewing stand where the Commander stood, his bearers on either side of him holding tall poles streaming with honors.
“Century Fifteen,” the Commander roared, his voice cutting through the wind like a knife through soft cheese. “Honorable warriors of the garrison of Marthatown. We welcome you to the ranks of duty, discipline, and danger. We welcome you to the company of glory. We welcome you as companions in honor, and to you we award the first honor of many, the blue knots of honorable choice!”
Then all the centuries drawn up around the parade ground were cheering and the bearers were coming down the ranks, pinning the blue knots onto every man of the fifteen, holding the cup of honeyed wine to their lips. Chernon felt tears on his cheeks and was ashamed until he saw that both the men on either side of him were crying, too. Poor Habby. Poor Habby, not to have realized what he was giving up. And for what?
Then they wheeled to one side. The drums began the funeral beat. Casimur had died yesterday, and they paraded Casimur’s century, the thirty-one. Forty-five men missing: twenty holes left by tit-suckers, and twenty-four honorable deaths filled by boys carrying the honor ribbons of the slain.
“The honorable Chernon,” the Commander bellowed. “Chernon to parade the honors of Casimur!”
And there it was, thrust into Chernon’s hands, Casimur’s tall staff with the carved crossbar, bright ribbons dangling from it, so many they were like a fringe, lashing like cats’ tails in the wind, and Chernon himself filling that empty place in the thirty-one like a reserve warrior into a hole left by a man fallen. Trumpets then, and drums, and the thirty-one parading before the army, up to strength again, those alive and those dead marching along together, the only holes in it the ones the tit-sucking Women’s Gaters had left.
The assembled centuries cheered, their voices rising in a cyclone of sound. Bells rang. Trumpeters cried to the heavens. The ribbons whipped in Chernon’s face like little hands, slapping him, saying, “Pay attention.” Blood boiled out from the center of him to simmer in his veins. The music of the trumpets filled him. The hammer of the drums became the hammer of his own heart. The feet of the men falling in unison, the whip and snap of the banners, the ribbons, the plumes, and the drums, the drums. Honor, the trumpets cried. Honor, the drums beat home. Power, the garrison cried. And it was Casimur’s honor that was evident at last as Casimur marched with honor, his place honorably filled. He had not sought the Women’s Cup or the Women’s Gate!
It was as though Chernon’s veins had been filled with fire. This was the reason he was still here! He was here to learn of this, this mighty fabric of motion and sound, this tapestry with Chernon moving as a thread within it, bright as gold, the threads of all the garrison around him, the centurions, the fifteens, the twenty-fours, the thirty-ones, all of them up to the seventies, one old man by himself and all the rest living in bright ribbons which would never fade….
It was a thundering glory and he was part of it. Now he was suddenly part of it.
If he could have been in the ceremonial room at that moment, he would have stripped Habby and spit on him and hissed him and then helped to beat him, too, and he would not have cared what stories were carried back to Women’s Country.
IN HIS SIXTY-SOMETHINGTH YEAR, SEPTEMIUS BIRD had entered Marthatown through the itinerants’ gate, showing his passbook, which was stamped and countersigned by the gate guards of a dozen cities. He had no idea at the time that he had come to stay.
“Septemius Bird?” The guardswoman had been only slightly incredulous.
“The late Septemius Bird,” he said with a quirk, finger laid along his nose as though to stop a sneeze, eyebrows tilted up and outward in a Mephistophelian mask, showing his dark side, the one he favored for usages like these.
“Late?”
“Always, inevitably!” He had sighed. “Looking upon your beauty, I should have been here a week ago,
