told him, many, many years ago back in green Glen Lily, in Ulver County: a tale regarding a prince who set out from his father’s red castle bearing nothing but a sword and, and, an owl, in search of the princess, who . . . no, bearing a message for the princess, who . . . the princess was a prisoner, chained in a tower, ebony-skinned, beautiful black hair to her waist, bare-naked . . .
A Linesman stepped over him—black boots momentarily blocked out the stars. The Linesman’s black trousers were worn and smeared gray with dust. The Linesman shouted something, something the General couldn’t understand, and moved on, not looking down.
The General clutched at the scattering dust of himself and recalled that this was not the first time he’d lain outside at night, under the stars, among the dead, bleeding and dying. Indeed, a night like this had been the making of him, once. As a young soldier he had been wounded in the shoulder by a lucky shot at the battle of A . . . at the battle of . . . at the field of gorse and briars, by the stone bridge. He had been left for dead in the first retreat and spent the night among the dead, too weak to walk, strong enough only to hold his jacket to his shoulder and pray for the slow bleed to stop, and to watch the cold stars. He’d been very young then. There he had learned to dedicate his soul and his strength to a bright distant purpose, to lay his course by a remote star. He had learned to be heroic and not to fear death. So he’d told too many generations of fresh young recruits.
The recruits hadn’t been so fresh or so young, or so many, in recent years—not since the horrors of Black Cap Valley. Not since all was lost. Not since the Line drove them into the hills and the woods and the back alleys like bandits, not since the army of the Republic, reduced to a desperate fierce remnant of its former glory, became a matter of secret meetings and disguises and dead-drops and midnight explosions and code words and signals. He remembered! No—he remembered only the codes, not why they were sent. Matters of great weight and significance hidden in the lines of humble everyday domestic correspondence—The children are growing tall and strong meant The weapons are ready to be retrieved—he struggled and grasped at codes and symbols. . . .
He remembered they sent messages encoded, among other things, in fairy tales, in letters that purported to be addressed to much-loved children safe at home. He remembered writing, Once upon a time, the Prince of Birds looked down from the Mountain over his kingdom and was unhappy. It meant something secret; it conveyed maybe good news, more likely bad, because all the news had been bad for ten years; he couldn’t remember what.
He tried to recall the names of some of his men—many of whom, perhaps all of whom, lay scattered on the mountainside around him, their own minds ruined and crumbling like his own. No names came to him. What came to him instead were the faces of three Presidents, three of his masters: Bellow, big-bearded, who was once only Mayor of Morgan, who drafted the Charter; Iredell, little wiry brilliant man, who was the first to sign it at Red Valley; stout but simpleminded Killbuck, who in retrospect was perhaps a sign of the Republic’s rapid decline.
But his memory of Bellow’s bearded face was perhaps confused with an illustrated king from the storybook his nursemaid read to him.
The noise kept sounding in his head, and he forgot Bellow forever. The noise ricocheted madly back and forth against the chamber of his skull like a bullet. The meaninglessness of the noise was its worst quality. He forgot his battle standards. He recalled, then forgot again, the stables at Glen Lily, where he first learned to ride and read and hold a sword. The stables were long since ground under by the Line. He recalled with sudden sickness that he had a daughter of his own, whom he had not seen for years, for all these years of hard campaigning, of hiding in the hills, of raiding and harrowing the Line. He wrote letters; she always waited for him to come home. Now he never would.
He’d sent her a last letter, from the foot of the mountains, just days ago: