Peter Beagle - The Line Between

«I am Soukyan," I offered, but to that he made no response. He clearly knew the country, for he led me directly to a fast–flowing stream, and then to a pool lower down, where the water gathered and swirled. We cleaned ourselves there, though it took us a long time, so mucky we were; and afterward, naked–new as raw carrots, we lay in the sun and talked for a while. I told truth, for the most part, leaving out only some minor details of that place —things I had good reason not to think about just then — and he … ah, well, what he told me of his life, of how he came to hail me from that dungheap, was such a stew of lies and the odd honesty that I've never studied out the right of it yet, no more than I have ever learned his own name. The truth is not in him, and I would be dearly disappointed if it should show its poor face now. He was there — leave it at that. He was there at the particular moment when I needed a friend, however fraudulent. It has happened so since.

«So," he said at last, stretching himself in the sun. «And what's to be done with you now?» — for all the world as though he had all the disposing of me and my future. «If you fancy that your followers have forsaken you, merely because we once stank our way past them, I'd greatly enjoy to have the writing of your will. They will run behind you until you die — they will never return to their masters without you, or whatever's left of you. On that you have my word.»

«I know that well enough," said I, trying my best to appear as knowledgeable as he. «But perhaps I am not to be taken so easily.» The old man snorted with as much contempt as I have ever heard in a single exhalation of breath, and rolled to his feet, deceptively, alarmingly graceful. He crouched naked on his haunches, facing me, studying me, smiling with pointed teeth.

«Without me, you die," he said, quite quietly. «You know it and I know it. Say it back to me.» I only stared, and he snapped, «Say it back. Without me?»

And I said it, because I knew it was true. «Without you, I would be dead.» The old

man nodded approvingly. The yellow glint was stronger in the gray eyes.

«Now," he said. «I have my own purposes, my own small annoyance to manage. I could deal with it myself, as I've done many a time — never think otherwise — but it suits me to share roads with you for a little. It suits me.» He was studying me as closely as I have ever been considered, even by those at that place, and I could not guess what he saw. «It suits me," he said for a third time. «We may yet prove of some use to each other.»

«We may, or we may not," I said, more than a bit sharply, for I was annoyed at the condescension in his glance. «I may seem a gormless boy to you, but I know this country, and I know how to handle myself.» The first claim was a lie; of the second, all I can say is that I believed it then. I went on, probably more belligerent for my fear: «Indeed, I may well owe you my life, and I will repay you as I can, my word on it. But as to whether we should ally ourselves … sir, I hope only to put the width of the world between myself and those who seek me — I have no plans beyond that. Of what your own plans, your own desires may be, you will have to inform me, for I have no notion at all.»

He seemed to approve my boldness; at any rate, he laughed that short, yapping laugh of his and said, «For the moment, my plans run with yours. We're dried enough — dress yourself, so, and we'll be off and gone while our little friends are still puzzling over how we could have slipped their grasp. They'll riddle it out quickly enough, but we'll have the heels of them a while yet.» And I could not help finding comfort in noticing that «your followers» had now become «our little friends.»

So we ourselves were allies of a sort, united by common interests, whatever they were. Having no goal, nor any vision of a life beyond flight, I had no real choice but to go where he led, since on my own the only question would have been whether I should be caught before I stumbled into a swamp and got eaten by a lourijakh. For all his age, he marched along with an air of absolute serenity, no matter if we were beating our way through some near–impenetrable thornwood or crossing high barrens in the deepest night. Wherever he was bound — which was only one of the things he did not share with me — we encountered few other travelers on our way to it. An old lone wizard making his lamisetha; a couple of deserters from someone's army, who wanted to sell us their uniforms; a little band of prospectors, too busy quarreling over the exact location of a legendary hidden drast mine to pay overmuch attention to us. I think there was a water witch as well, but at this reach it is hard to be entirely sure.

By now I would not have trusted my woodcraft for half a minute, but it was obvious from our first day together that my new friend had enough of that for the pair of us. Every night, before we slept — turn and turn about, always one on watch — and every morning, before anything at all, he prowled the area in a wide, constantly shifting radius, clearly going by his nose as much as his sight and hearing. Most of the time he was out of my view, but on occasion I would hear a kind of whuffling snort, usually followed by a low, disdainful grunt. In his own time he'd come trotting

jauntily up from the brushy hollow or the dry ravine, shaking his dusty white hair in the moonlight, to say, «Two weeks, near enough, and not up with us yet? Not taking advantage of my years and your inexperience to pounce on us in the dark hours and pull us apart like a couple of boiled chickens? Indeed, I begin to lose respect for our legendary entourage — as stupid as the rest, they are, after all.» And what he meant by the rest, I could not imagine then.

Respect the Hunters or no, he never slackened our pace, nor ever grew careless in covering our tracks. We were angling eastward, into the first folds of the Skagats — the Burnt Hills, your people call them, I believe. At the time I had no name at all for them, nor for any other feature of this new landscape. For all the teachings I had absorbed at that place, for all the sly secret knowledge that was the true foundation of the great house, for all the wicked wisdom that I would shed even today, if I could, as a snake scours itself free of its skin against a stone … nevertheless, then I knew next to nothing of the actual world in which that knowledge moved. We were deliberately kept quite ignorant, you see, in certain ways.

He ridiculed me constantly about that. I see him still, cross–legged across the night's fire from me, jabbing out with a longnailed forefinger, demanding, «And you mean to sit there and tell me that you've never heard of the Mildasi people, or the Achali? You know the lineage, the lovers, and the true fate of every queen who ever ruled in Fors — you know the deep cause of the Fishermen's Rebellion, and what really came of it — you know the entire history of the Old Arrangement, which cannot be written — but you have absolutely no inkling where Byrnarik Bay's to be found, nor the Northern Barrens, nor can you so much as guess at the course of the Susathi. Well, you've had such an education as never was, that's all I can say. And it's worthless to us, all of it worthless, nothing but a waste of head–space, taking up room that could have been better occupied if you'd been taught to read track, steal a horse or shoot a bow. Worthless.»

«I can shoot a bow," I told him once. «My father taught me.»

«Oh, indeed? I must remember to stand behind you when you loose off.» There was a deal more of that as we journeyed on. I found it tedious most often, and sometimes hurtful; but there was a benefit, too, because he began taking it on himself to instruct me in the nature and fabric of this new world — and this new life, as well — as though I were visiting from the most foreign of faroff lands. Which, in ways even he could not have known, I was.