K Parker: The Belly of the Bow

The arrow hit him on the right side of his body, two inches or so below the nipple. He knew it would be all right, because his breastplate would have turned the arrow, or at least stopped it penetrating. He took one hand off the shaft of his halberd and tried to tug the thing loose, but it wouldn’t come; also, there was suddenly a great deal of pain, which made him stop concentrating on where he was going. His foot caught in something and suddenly he was watching grass coming straight at him; his forehead hit the ground hard, painfully, and the arrow jarred agonisingly inside him. Someone trod on his back, squeezing all the air out of his chest. He heard it whistle out, and knew then that the arrow had punctured his lung. Quite soon, but not all that soon, the lung would flood with blood (Military Medicine, foundation course, year two of Tripos) and that would be the end of him. Another boot clouted against the side of his head and a great weight landed on his back; there were feet in front of his eyes, but his eyes were growing dark, like the sun setting very quickly. Just a moment , he thought.

Shot , Gorgas thought, and chose another target.

He had six arrows left; he’d be lucky to have time to loose two of them. He felt like a boy in an exam who’s left the easy question till last and suddenly finds he won’t have time to answer it. Four wasted arrows, four opportunities gone by; the twisted-gut string rasped the bloody flesh of his fingers, burning and tearing them as the bone kicked back the desperate load of compression, as the sinew jerked in contraction like an arm punching. He didn’t watch the arrow on its way (at thirty yards, no point; foregone conclusion., This close, he could see their faces, their eyes – they were hardly moving now, they were standing waiting to see what would happen) and instead concentrated on a clean nock for the next arrow, a good fast draw, bustling the bow open to exert that terrible force on bone and sinew – his wrenched muscles and jarred bones, still drawing the monstrous, overpowered hundred-pound composite recurve that was wrecking his body, flaying his fingers.

He reached down to his quiver. It was empty.

Slowly, Gorgas lowered the bow, relaxed sinew and bone, stood and waited to see what would happen.

They broke and ran at fifteen yards’ distance from the line of archers. Between seventeen and fifteen yards’ distance, two hundred and seventy-four of them were killed, in just over three seconds.

‘I think we won,’ muttered the sergeant. ‘Again.’

Gorgas opened his eyes. ‘Good,’ he said.

Nobody was moving. They were watching a little wisp of a line, a hundred or so men, walking gingerly backwards and away from them. ‘Bugger me,’ someone said, ‘there’s more of us than there are of them. We outnumber the bastards.’

‘Makes a pleasant change,’ someone else replied. ‘Can we go home now?’

Someone laughed. ‘You’ll be lucky. First Gorgas’ll make us bury the buggers.’

‘The hell with that. Let some other poor sod do it. I’m sick of burying bloody halberdiers.’

Apart from the conversation, it was very quiet. There wasn’t much noise coming from the thick wedge of bodies – a few moans, some sobbing, but less than they’d come to expect. ‘Shame there’s no use we can put them to,’ someone observed. ‘If anybody could think of something we could make out of dead soldiers, we’d all be rich.’

Someone else laughed nervously. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘it still doesn’t feel like we’ve fought a battle. I mean, you can’t call this proper fighting, can you?’

Gorgas realised that he was on his knees and stood up. It wasn’t easy to do; his back was tensed up into a knot of wrenched, twisted muscle, and he could hardly breathe for the pain. Thirty shots rapid with a hundred-pound bow makes a mess of the human body.

The fact that he felt pain strongly suggested that he was still alive. Pain is as reliable a test for the presence of life as any.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Break camp, form burial details. Once we’ve tidied up, we’re going home.’

He thought about what he had done.

He had committed violent acts against members of his own family; wounding and killing. He had shed blood of his own blood to save his own life, to resolve a difficulty. There had been a time when he’d loved his family; he had come to evil through love. He had used his own kin, flesh and blood, for an evil purpose. He hadn’t wanted to do evil.

As a soldier he had killed – what, hundreds? As a commander of soldiers, he’d arranged the deaths of thousands. He had caused a war that brought an insatiable enemy down on his people, and he’d fought in that war, responsible for the deaths of thousands. He had committed an act of betrayal for his own personal ends, regardless of the consequences for a whole nation.

Mostly, he’d done what he thought was right.

Mostly, he thought of himself as a good man, a decent human being. Apart from the violence against his family (and he claimed mitigation even in that) he’d done violence doing his duty, meaning to help and protect his people.

He had devoted most of his life to trying to help the flesh of his flesh, and in the end all his effort had been wasted, thrown away. He had tried to be a good man, and somehow through good he always came to evil.

Always, at the crucial moment, the fulcrum, the turning point, the moment of loose, the result had been evil, or something that led to evil. It was, to use familiar imagery, like the bending of a bow. Force was applied; on the outside he stretched, seeking to accommodate, while on the inside he was crushed, compressed, compacted in on himself. The old proverb says that a full-drawn bow is nine-tenths broken; a bow is made so that it does best what it does best just before the point is reached at which it must destroy itself and collapse.

He had believed in his family. He had left his home and gone to another country, accepted responsibility for a whole nation. He had come to believe in that nation. Through belief, he had come to evil.

Hitherto, he hadn’t regretted what he’d done. Mostly, he’d done what he thought was right.

He was the belly of the bow.

It had been a long day, and he hurt all over. He wanted to go home, see his wife and children, see his long-lost niece; but first there was something that had to be done. He had to say thank you.

He hadn’t seen Bardas alone since that night at the cottage, and he felt nervous, like a young man hesitating before knocking at his beloved’s door. But Bardas had made him the bow, which implied, if not forgiveness, then at least a willingness to establish diplomatic relations. He would visit his brother, thank him for the bow, say a few words and then leave. He would tell Bardas that Niessa had gone, that Bardas was free to go if he wanted, that anything he could give him or do for him was his for the asking, that he wanted nothing in return. And then he would go home.

‘Come in,’ Bardas said.

The smell inside the room was nauseating. Bardas, noticing Gorgas’ involuntary reaction, grinned and said, ‘That’s the glue. Making bows can be a pretty disgusting business. But we get used to it.’

‘Right,’ Gorgas said. ‘Listen, I just came to thank you. I-’

‘That’s all right,’ Bardas replied. ‘It was the least I could do, considering what you’ve done for me.’

Gorgas didn’t know what to say. ‘Sit down, make yourself at home,’ Bardas was saying. ‘You don’t have to rush off straight away, do you?’

‘No,’ Gorgas said. ‘By the way, we won. The battle. Probably the war.’