Avram Davidson - The Kar-Chee Reign

“This is Lehi.”

“This is Nephi.”

“This is Moroni.”

And again there was a silence. Then Liam said, “It’s been told you what is wanted of you. You are not obliged to agree. You may answer Yes , you may answer No , you may answer Maybe . But, persons, before the sun is warm enough and the air is dry enough for you to have safely re-strung your bows, persons, you will have answered.” And he touched his breast and said, “This is Liam.”

And he was correct. They thought him perhaps the only sane man among madmen — but only perhaps — but they were willing to provide the live guanacos… for a consideration. For what consideration? That, it was stated clearly, would have to await further thought.

“Three men alone cannot catch the wild ones alive, person. Many men will be needed to catch the wild ones alive. Some to creep up on them… slowly… slowly… so… dressed in the skins of the wild ones. They will be suspicious at first”—Lehi mimed how the wild guanaco would lift up his head and look dubiously at the odd “guanacos” so slowly “grazing” and advancing—”but by and by and little by little, they get used to it. They forget.”

“Only maybe not,” said Moroni.

“They never get completely used to us, they never completely forget their suspicions of us,” Nephi conceded. “To hunt them to the death is difficult, yet we must do it, for such is their fate and such, for that matter, is ours.”

And then the three of them, with words, with gesture, mime, and dance, enacted for them the rest of the hunt of the wild guanaco: concealment and disguise, gradual approach from all sides, the off-throwing of disguise by one group, the blowing of the horns, the swift flight of the alarmed animals, the rising up of another group waving flags, the wheeling and turning and the fleetly flying yet again of the wild ones until, their sides turned most advantageously to the hidden archers lying low, they were at length shot to death.

“We do not slay them all, hey, person,” said Lehi.

“We spare the colts and the mares, eh, person,” said Nephi.

And Moroni said, “Only maybe not.”

The other two conceded that such conservation represented the ideal, but not, invariably, the actual practice. “But capturing the wild ones alive, hey, this is something else. We must build corrals, eh, and station many men with horns and banners. But we will do it, persons; tell us how many you want, and we will supply them, every one of them.”

“Send us someone in a week’s time to tell us the news you have to tell, Liam said. “Meanwhile, what do you intend to do about the Kar-chee and about the dragons?”

They shrugged. They mimed the stooping gait of the Kar-chee, the dragon on four feet and the dragon on two. They would deal with them as they dealt with the wild guanaco: hunt them — confuse them — destroy them. So. That was what they would do. Moroni as usual had the last word. “Only maybe not,” he said.

One last question they had for Liam as he and his friends prepared to go. “You are not of this island-place, person. How did you get here?”

“I came on a raft with others,” he said.

The sun’s rays came slanting through the clouds, and the hunters looked slantingly at each other. “Persons have ventured far on rafts before,” one said. “And perhaps will venture far again,” said another. And the third said, “There is no end; there are only beginnings.”

They strung their bows and hefted their spears and strode away across the moor and rolling hills, upward, upward, and up. Mists closed in, parted, rallied a last time, were burned off by the sun. And when Liam last looked back there was no one in sight.

Long, long, on the long downward way, with Fateem silent but serene by his side, he considered. What was his duty toward these hunters, for example? For even if their wild, free life on the open heights were doomed, surely they themselves need not be? That is, not unless the whole house of mankind need be… That is, unless their own stubborn intransigence might turn their fate to need be . What was his, Liam’s, own duty toward them?

Toward those who had followed him from Britland on the terrible raft?

Toward those who followed the Knowers?

Toward Lors and Tom and their fellow-islanders?

Toward Cerry, who followed him and asked for nothing and had received little more? Toward Fateem, who had asked for that which he had determined not to give… and yet had, like any other man, gladly in the moment given?

And — for that matter — toward himself?

The moors gave way to farmlands, fields, forests, thickets, rocks and sand; and all the time his thoughts roamed and prowled and always they came out the same door they had come in.

His duty was to learn all that he could learn and by whatever means and at whatever risks about the Kar-chee and about the dragons.

Duro felt his responsibilities so keenly and weightily that it abated his pleasure in being more-or-less in charge of two older people. He was also unable to forget what had happened the last time he had come down to the caves. The recollection was like a heavy hand upon his stones. He and Lors had agreed to rendezvous as far away from that particular part of the region as possible, but… still…

“We have some caves in our part of Britland,” Cerry said, as she looked about, awed, “but they are not so regular as these. It looks — of course, that would be impossible — but it does look as though they had been dug here! Right through the solid rock…”

Rickar smiled at the absurdity of the suggestion, but Duro nodded his head. “They say that it was so. They say that in the oldest days there were, the days before the old days, that these hills were full of metal”— he spoke the word with awe—”and that the men who were alive then dug these caves with tools of metal to get out the metal that was here.

“And I’ve heard Popa say that when the great land that was before the Devils came split up and parts of it sank, you know — that the whole fore-part of this region was split away and sank, too, and this is what was left after that.”

They lifted torches and peered about them, silent and reverent and almost overwhelmed. Here the walls were far apart and the ceilings high; there, everything narrowed and closed in upon itself. For a long while the passage ran straight as the path of a well-made arrow, then it curved with measured symmetry; now it was level, now it rose up, now it sank. Strange markings were found in the rock from time to time. And once they came upon a place where water dripped from a cleft in the wall and formed a stream which found its way into a deep pool which reflected the light of their torches.

Cerry shivered. In the low voice which had become natural to the three of them, awed by the initial echoes, she said, “I’d be afraid to be here without light… The truth is, I’m afraid to be here, even now—”

“Well go back,” Duro said.

They set up their meager camp in a chamber he showed them, off a short side passage; it was entered from below, and they closed the way up, once they had ascended, by pushing over a shard of broken rock; but not so completely that air couldn’t enter. Then he set up his lamp, a clever and curious thing whereby oil trickled slowly through a series of pierced egg-shells, replenishing the bowl as the small wick consumed the fuel. The light flickered for a few moments, dancing wildly, then it settled down and commenced to burn steadily, if a trifle smokily. They ate lightly, conversed a while in the tones now dared to be raised a trifle louder. Presently the older two became aware that Duro had dropped off to sleep. They laughed, then yawned, then did the same.