Arslan. Part 20

I checked my gun-Arslan's gun-and stood up.

I knew my road now, and followed faithfully along it; up the hill, down the slope, across the creek, and upstream beside it. Below the head of the gorge I stood awhile, staring at the grape-eyed vine under the oak. He had his paths as well as I, and this was our only proven crossroads. But I did not meet him there, nor, working my way downhill, in the next valley. The lower reaches of the third were broad and ruggedly flat, a section that had been cut over more than once when this land belonged to somebody. Clumps of crimson sumac and little cedars made a low forest among the stumps and tall saplings. I stood for a long time surveying the gaps among the foliage. I could not afford another mistake. Slow waves of certainty succeeded one another: he would be here; he would not; he would be. Without surprise I grew aware of a certain brownness among the browns and reds and muted greens. I eased my head sideward a little, and made out the sleeping deer, folded snugly as a cat. A deer, but not my buck. One of his harem, perhaps; and in that hope, and expert with desire, I trod Indian-soft among the leaves, too busy to be moved by the intimacy of the scene that revealed itself to me.

He lay among his loves, his splendorous head resting at ease along his foreleg. Moving with the faint pulses of the breeze that washed in slow ripples down the valley, I found my way to a vantage point against an ash tree and raised Arslan's gun. Heat throbbed in my face, nested my heart. He had been hunted before, this stag. But who, even in his incautious youth, had seen him thus helplessly abandoned to peace? I would have wagered my life, at that moment, that no one, since the Shawnee had tracked his ancestors through the virgin scrub of aboriginal forests, had witnessed this secret domesticity in the woods. His ancestors, not mine; immigrant in my very homeland, I could only imitate the ancient lords of the land. But the unbroken stream of his breed ran back, birth by birth, through wooded centuries before the first footfall of those first immigrants of whom the Shawnee had been the illegitimate heirs. I lowered the gun.

I could not take him so. In the end, I could not take him unawares. It was not, certainly, the cla.s.sic perversion of sportsmen, obsolete from the moment of its conception, that morality demanded for the victim some chance of escape. No, my morality was older, more cla.s.sic yet, the morality that distinguished between sacrifice and slaughter and had not yet dreamed of sport. In the end, it seemed to me, no death could be so cruelly unfair as the unfelt death in sleep. I leaned against the ash and waited. Time was my ally. Time: not the fourth dimension, but the first, the essential, without which the mere dimensions of s.p.a.ce could not be born. Time: the matrix wherein we traced the shapes of beauty and of power. For it was shape that gave significance. Form was beauty-the cla.s.sicists were right-and power was form. Starlight swept along the curve lanes of the closed universe; planets wheeled in the grooves that Newton had not seen. Swinging down the paths of time, my deer and I would meet-rightly, as our predecessors had met, here beneath other trees, round centuries ago.

And after all, I was not simply an imitator-or not, at least, an imitation. If I wore moccasins, they were of my own design and making; and though for years past I had delighted to play with bows (making of civilization's wreck an excuse to return to my childhood's toys), for this hunt I chose a graver weapon. It added both power and risk. Arslan's gun had not been fired for many months, though he cleaned and nursed it beyond all practical need; and the cartridges, however lovingly they had been guarded against a.s.saults of weather, were older than Sanjar-twice, three times, perhaps, the age of the buck they were to kill. But in return for such precision and potency, it was only fair to accept the risk of a misfire.

Fair: a sweeter, truer word than just. All justice aside, was it not keenly unfair that I had scrambled for crumbs beneath his table with his other minions?-that the place I had earned by such fierce apprentices.h.i.+p was reserved to that mindless salamandrine queen of fire and earth? What had she to offer him, beside the match of pa.s.sion? Where could they meet, but in the furious and volcanic dark? What, in simple fact, could they talk about?

It was absurd, of course, to be still wrestling with the gorgeous shade of Rusudan-Rusudan whom Arslan had forgotten. But I wrestled now not for his affection (had that ever been the prize?) but for understanding. By what right had he suffered for Rusudan? It was I, not Rusudan, whom he had led through Karcher's woods, to whom he had whispered, "Look."

And now, leaning in the very heart of the still circle, looking with wordless patience upon the nested deer, I turned the curve of recollection for the thousandth time, and saw, for the first time, everything in its place. Yes. It was I whom he had led through Karcher's woods, to whom he had whispered, "Look."

I took a deep breath that swelled my chest like pride, and my eyes focused to a new intensity on the great stag. A thrill, slow but electric, pa.s.sed through me. He was awake. I must have moved (perhaps I had breathed too vehemently), for he was aware of me. By infinite split seconds, time was draining past us.

Then he rose. One fused sequence of movements, heavy and lunging and yet effectively graceful, brought him to his feet and on his way. I had swung the gun up with all my speed, guessed an aim. It jerked against my hands; the cartridge had been good. He sprang.

Aborted and perfect, like the eternal gasp of violent art, his final spring hung before the leather-colored brushwood of his bed-hung, altered, and fell. I pushed forward, afire with the one hope that he would need no second shot, while my provident hands prepared the gun for it. The woods around me burst with exploding deer, the does scattering in panic out of the depths of sleep. He lay crashed upon the broken underbush. The dark vast eye loomed above his cheek. The sinewy p.r.o.ngs of his antlers (woodlike neither dead nor living) skewed his head into an awkwardness that seemed to guarantee the honesty of his proposition: I am dead. I squatted beside him and drew my knife, holding it ready to the warm, golden throat. Death, in theory so final and so certain, had mocked me before. His legs were stretched, a little more than half tense. I lifted one of the beautiful cloven forefeet and teased my knife into its depths, grazing the point against the black quick, but I did not plunge, not pry. I would not force him to betray his life, if he lived. Only, I gazed into the round brown eyes. There, if he lived, he would betray himself. There life would gleam, or flicker, or deeply glow, or fire up at me some uncontrollable bolt of intelligence or enmity. So I gazed into that dark globe, dived it, navigated it, sank and surfaced and swept along its curve. He was dead.

And I remembered only then to notice the wound. My bullet had pierced the skull at its vulnerable point and thrust into the secret soft core of his brain. My right hand had brushed, unknowing, the little unsealed opening in the warm pelt, and small dark clots of his blood clung to me. He had been dead already when he sank upon the leaves.

I rode into town against the light of the setting sun. Market Street was afire. A narrow blaze stretched down the long block of the schoolyard. From the slopes, with hilarious whoops, Arslan's boys were hurtling blunt missiles into the flames. Behind them, and on the other sides of the school, lesser demons tended lesser fires. On the walk near the eastern one, a thin swarm of old men hovered about the naked carca.s.ses of three hogs, ritually waving their flywhisk hands.

I rode up the low east face of the yard, where Arslan waited, fists on hips. He laid his hand on the dun's nose and walked past me to the packhorse. Turning in the saddle, I watched him inspect the buck, saw his eyes seek and find and judge the wound. When he began to untie the ropes, I dismounted. Together we heaved the s.h.i.+ning body up and off and let its sudden bulk pour between us to the ground.

"Good enough?"

He grinned at me in silence and turned away, calling for volunteers to butcher the deer. I headed for the school, to return his rifle to its place.

Inside and out, the feast was under way. The chickens were already cooked and the pork was roasting. My deer would be the final surfeiting course, toothsome and succulent. Kegs of beer stood open, for anyone with a cup or a cupped hand to help himself, and more were being hauled out. The town was gathering to the school, as it had gathered before.

Beside me on the east walk, Franklin swung his spread hand in a slow horizontal arc, taking in the fires, the feasters, and the rolling kegs. "Do you know what this is, Hunt?"

A wake? A jubilee? "The winter stores," I said.

"Exactly. Our food and fuel supply for the winter, going up in one big blaze."

"Plus the liquor supply. All the renewable resources."

"I don't take it as a joke. We'll have a hard time renewing them by December."

Hard times come again. But the fact was that they were renewable, as we were not, and my deer had planted his seed already in Karcher's woods. "The sabbath was made for man," I said.

The indigo twilight deepened, deeper already than the hearts of jewels. Arslan strode to the eastern fire, his last limp dipping into a swoop, and lifted a long brand. In stately loops, trailing a fiery friz, it traced his path to the steps. And standing where he had stood to pa.s.s sentence on Kraftsville's martyrs, he whirled the torch around his head once, twice, and pealed the undisobeyable order, "Listen!" At that enormous shout, the trivial shouts below subsided in a rush. There was no sound louder than the crackling of the fires, until he cried his ringing cry, "Is it good?"

There were no words distinguishable, or needed, in the cheer that answered him. It was good. He stretched his torch out over them, a fiery shepherd's blessing, and they hushed-docile, expectant, and eager. "Enjoy it!" he sang at them. "Enjoy it! This is for Sanjar!" It was a voice that called and celebrated, that might conjure Sanjar himself out of the twilight. "Whatever you drink tonight, you drink to Sanjar. Whatever you eat tonight is the gift of Sanjar. All your games tonight are in honor of Sanjar. All your songs are in praise of Sanjar. Tonight you laugh for Sanjar. You make love for Sanjar. Remember! Remember! This is the Feast of Sanjar!" Again the firebrand circled, this time a wide slow curve, and flew meteorlike across the yard to plunge with a golden burst of sparks upon the street.

Reluctantly, in the new darkness, the sounds surged up again. A mutter of talk, peaked with soft yells; the songs beginning anew, a little self-conscious now and defiantly obscene; the light thuds of running feet; and-crown and seal of all, Sanjar's invest.i.ture, Arslan's mandate-the many-keyed concord of laughter.

I waited as he came down the east steps. He threw his arm around my shoulders and steered me toward the south side. He said nothing, only waved and grinned to the groups we threaded through. The grip of his good hand on my moving shoulder was comfortable, fond, the limping swing of his body beside me easy. I walked carefully, not to lose my balance upon the precious knife-edge of tranquillity. I saw that Franklin had started home and that we were unhastily following him. In the street he turned and waited.

Here the moonlight fell upon our faces, but we stood in a moat of darkness. The glow of the nearer fire cast moving hues of yellow-red over the bright black of Arslan's hair and the hard planes of Franklin's temples. "Now what?" Franklin asked. Unexpectedly his voice was rough and bitter.

Now what? It was a question to be answered with panoramas, not with sentences. "I stay here," Arslan said, as if his staying had been the point in question. He tightened his arm about my shoulders for a moment, and let me go, and took out his pipe, and began to fill it-gently, casually, fondly, gently.

"Why? To wait for Sanjar?"

"To wait for Sanjar." He was tamping his tobacco with his thumb. "Also, I am a citizen of Kraftsville." He put the pipe in his mouth, took an experimental pull, and tamped again.

"Also, sir, I am your friend."

"I wish I could be yours." He said it very soberly. The authentic voice of Franklin L. Bond. I wish I could be your friend. I wish I could be your father. But this inconstancy is such As you too must adore.

"Will he come?" I asked.

Arslan shrugged. "Will tomorrow come? Who knows?" He was still looking at Franklin.

One of the groups on the south bank began to sing again, meltingly out of the darkness. "He's a good boy," Franklin said abruptly, and he turned again toward the old house.

"Sir!" Arslan called softly. And Franklin turned once more, a little ponderous and square, making a full half-cycle where Arslan would have pivoted dancer-like far enough and no farther. Now Arslan swung forward a step, and I knew by the movement of his shoulders that he held out his left hand. "On that?" When I ask, I do not dictate the answer.

"On that." The clasp of their hands was in darkness. Then the granite head nodded, the portentous budge of the cliff. At three paces, in the trivial moonlight, his eyes were too shadowed. I would have given something-say a hand-to know if he was looking into my eyes or Arslan's. "Good night."

And Arslan, who had not watched his only son ride out of sight into the wilderness of earth, stood silently gazing while the Supervisor of Kraft County finished crossing the narrow street and mounted the broken walk and blackened into the darker darkness of his porch.

I hadn't moved. Arslan threw his right arm around me in pa.s.sing-the clawed clasp, the soldier's caress-and released me, and moved on. Up out of the moon-defined moat, up the black bank, up into the harvest light of bonfires, where his citizens crunched their feast bones and licked their fingers, where his boys and girls sported in the moonlight and fornicated in the shadows in the purity of their young l.u.s.t, he walked with his dancer's limp, red Arslan, Arslan; and quietly I followed him.

About the Author.

M. J. Engh (b.1933) is a science fiction author and independent Roman scholar. In 2009, Engh was named Author emerita by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

She is best known for her 1976 novel Arslan, about an invasion of the United States.

She lives in Was.h.i.+ngton, USA.

end.