The Citadel of the Autarch by Gene Wolfe Read Free Book Online Page A

sometime during the preceding night. I was very hungry then, and I cut his pack straps and ate most of the food he had been carrying with him. Then I felt guilty about doing that and got out the talisman and tried to restore him to life. It has failed Wolfe,_Gene_-_Book_of_the_New_Sun_4_-_The_Citadel_of_the_Autarch often before, and this time I thought for a while it was going to fail again. It didn't, although he returned to life slowly and for a long time did not seem to know where he was or what was happening to him."
    "And I was that soldier?"
    I nodded, looking into his honest blue eyes.
    "May I see the talisman?"
    I took it out and held it in the palm of my hand. He took it from me, examined both sides carefully, and tested the point against the ball of his finger. "It doesn't look magical,"
    he said.
    "I'm not sure magical is the right term for it. I've met magicians, and nothing they did reminded me of this or the way it acts. Sometimes it glows with light—it's very faint now, and I doubt if you can see it."
    "I can't. There doesn't seem to be any writing on it."
    "You mean spells or prayers. No, I've never noticed any, and I've carried it a long way. I don't really know anything about it except that it acts at times; but I think it is probably the kind of thing spells and prayers are made with, and not the kind that is made with them."
    "You said it didn't belong to you."
    I nodded again. "It belongs to the priestesses here, the Pelerines."
    "You just came here. Two nights ago, when I did."
    "I came looking for them, to give it back. It was taken from them—
    not by me—some time ago, in Nessus."

    Wolfe,_Gene_-_Book_of_the_New_Sun_4_-_The_Citadel_of_the_Autarch
    "And you're going to return it?" He looked at me as though he somehow doubted it.
    "Yes, eventually."
    He stood up, smoothing his robe with his hands.
    I said, "You don't believe me, do you? Not about any of it."
    "When I came here, you introduced me to the others nearby, the ones you'd talked with while you lay here on your cot." He spoke slowly, seeming to ponder every word. "Of course I've met some people too, where they put me. There's one who isn't really wounded very badly. He's just a boy, a youngster off some small holding a long way from here, and he mostly sits on his cot and looks at the floor."
    "Homesick?" I asked.
    The soldier shook his head. "He had an energy weapon. A korseke—
    that's what somebody told me. Are you familiar with them?"
    "Not very."
    "They project a beam straight forward, and at the same time two quartering beams, forward left and forward right. Their range isn't great, but they say they're very good for dealing with mass attacks, and I suppose they are."
    He looked about for a moment to see if anyone was listening, but it is a point of honor in the lazaret to disregard completely any conversation not intended for oneself. If it were not so, the patients would soon be at each other's throats.
    "His hundred was the target of one of those attacks. Most of the others broke and ran. He didn't, and they didn't get him. Another Wolfe,_Gene_-_Book_of_the_New_Sun_4_-_The_Citadel_of_the_Autarch man told me there were three walls of bodies in front of him. He had dropped them until the Ascians were climbing up to the top and jumping down at him. Then he had backed away and piled them up again."
    I said, "I suppose he got a medal and a promotion." I could not be sure if it was my fever returning or merely the heat of the day, but I felt sticky and somehow suffocated.
    "No, they sent him here. I told you he was only a boy from the country. He had killed more people that day than he had ever seen up to the time a few months before when he went into the army. He still hasn't gotten over it, and maybe he never will."
    "Yes?"
    "It seems to me you might be like that."
    "I don't understand you," I said.
    "You talk as if you've just come here from the south, and I suppose that if you've left your legion that's the safest way to talk. Just