Аврам Дэвидсон - Peregrine - primus

The Child of Abraxas swayed his rump as he ambled away.

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The wizard turned his head, and, over his shoulder said, “Perhaps the first syllable should be assimilated into the second, which would give us manual —a reference, may it not be, to the Hand of Power? A piercing thought . . . More than that, for now, 1 know not. —Did all three of those huntsmen look dark, dark to you?”

Gradually the mists were thinning out, yet still the trees ahead wore coats of gauzy grey. “They did. I was brought to mind of Taprobane, or India extra Gangem.”

Claud said, “Why so far? Are there no dark men in Nubia?

“And is Nubia so much less far?”

An arrow abruptly terminated their geographical discussions. The thwack! which it made in going into the heavy pine tree just ahead of Appledore was emphasized by the thud of the first stone slung, and then by the two next ones—each one hitting a tree near a rider: clearly no mere angry rocks tossed by a rustic, but skillfully aimed and flung by a master slingster.

“Rein up,” said Peregrine. In this narrow defile, hemmed in by high hills and higher cliffs, shrouded in concealing trees, of what use was a sword? —or, for that matter, spears? Before either could be had to hand they might all be dead. Not even flight was to be thought of, for the Abraxas-ass when alive had certainly not been bred for speed, and his swaybacked form blocked the trail; moreover, wattled hurdles filled with boulders might very well crown any number of cols ahead, and once those hurdles be slipped, nothing could have saved them from being crushed beneath the avalanche.

So—“Rein up,” said Peregrine.

Silently, they awaited instructions not long in coming.

“Dismount,” a voice ordered. “And tie your mounts to one tree and then move twenty paces ahead—counting aloud—and so stand still.” They obeyed; Appledore, not choosing to plead the natural slowness of age, with soonest haste. A hairy hand relieved Peregrine of his sword, then the same voice said, very near now, “Who gave you leave to hunt in our hills?”

“By your leave,” said Peregrine, very civilly, “we have done no hunting here at all.”

“By your leave,” the same voice said, in a scoffing tone, “allow' me to point out that the blood is still wet on your garment.”

“Indeed,” conceded Peregrine, “the hunt pressed us close as it passed us by—three wisants and an aurochs—but they were not of our hunting. Four dark men—that is, we saw the faces of three of them; the fourth was muffled about the face, and wound a loud, loud horn. Didn’t you hear it?”

“Heard it we did, and hastened to find who it was, and, do we find it, we shall know that it was you, despite your plea. —But — ‘three wisants and an aurochs’? There are no such great beasts hereabouts, only roe deer and fallow, with now and then a tusky boar. That is a strange tale you tell, and no convincing one.”

“Liars strive to tell convincing tales,” said Peregrine. “Honest men but tell the truth.”

The silence which met his words was broken by another voice. “There is no horn to be found, though, to be sure, they might have cast it away . . . yet I cannot think why they would . . . and more to the point, Caspar, none of the mules and the ass neither, has been sweating. Nor is this one’s knife even a bit bloody. Nor are there signs or say of any carcass, no, not so much as a hare’s.”

There was a sigh. “Turn around, then, if you like,” the first voice said. Peregrine liked. He saw Appledore the very picture of feeble old age and unknowing, and Claud once again appearing slack-jawed and daft: but, most to the point, both seeming quite unharmed. He saw, too, a ruddy man with his. Peregrine’s own sword, a pale man with a spear, and a small and swarthy man with a sling and a pouchful of stones. He also saw a young woman holding a bow at the ready. To her he chose to make his first knee. “Good day, lady,” he said, “and my compliments upon your marksmanship.”

First to speak after this was the sallow slingster, and he spoke to Claud, nearest to him. “Got any spare change?” he asked. Claud, after visibly rolling the matter over in his mind, groped in his purse and handed over a single coin, which the other at once bit into in a manner which indicated long habit, not to say expertise. “And if this were any softer,” he observed, disgustedly, “I could spread it on my bread, instead of drippings.” He held it up and read the inscription, being slightly incommoded by the damage done to it by his own teeth-marks. “ ‘ Sennacherib XXXII, Great King, King of Kings, King of Lower Upper Southeast Central Assyria. One denarius.’ Well, goody. This might just

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suffice to buy a single sesame seed in a buyer’s market. Where’d y’ get it?”

“I stole it from a dragon’s hoard,” said Claud, rather sulkily.

“It must have been a damned small dragon,” said the slingman, after considering the comment.

“It was,” Claud said, simply.

The comment of the ruddy man was even simpler, and was accompanied by a gesture. “Onward,” he said.

t t t t

They were so high up that they could look down and see hawks soaring. The pale man pointed. “Now, that high pinnacle of rock down there,” he said, “or, well, maybe not that one in particular, but one like it . . . overlooking a river such as that—” his gesture took in the winding silver arc, too far away for any vessels to be made out, “—on the one hand, and on the other hand, Bart,” he gestured again, “overlooking that whole entire valley and yonder pass thereunto . . . say it’s as large a yoke of oxing could plow it in a morn’s time—”

“Plow what?” asked red Bart. “The valley? Cas, you are—”

“Not the valley, no the pinnacle as overlooks the valley and the pass and the river, well—”

“Plow the pinnacle? Best not sleep out no more in full moonlight, Cas, it’s done you enough damage, tisk.”

But, doggedly, Cas went on. “Ahind that yon pinnacle is a bit of land about how big, about big enough to be plowed by a yoke of oxing in a morn’s time, so say that’d be for emergency crop, say like in during a siege, say. Or could turn out there to graze such cattle as had been drove up from below. And round about the pinnacle, raise up a great heavy foundation, with the native rock bearing most of the burding. On it sets your ward-house, like it were a castle. And you lets nobody enter said valley or leave said valley or voyage up said river with cargo or voyage down said river with cargo, nor catch no fish in said river, nor plant nor plow no crops in said valley, unlessing they pays unto you a fee. See?”

Bart said, “Cas, you are a mad impractical dreamer.”

“But it will come to it,” his friend argued. “Maybe not in your time and maybe not in my time, but ’twill come to it. Way things are going now,” he said, gloomily. “Man can’t even observe a chicking lay a clutch of eggs, without he wonders whether she’ll be 'llowed to hatch them in peace . . . Way things are going now.”

The girl said, in her husky voice, and Peregrine looked at her, not only for her uncommon comeliness, but because she spoke uncommon seldom, “True for you, and it wasn’t that way in the days of the old time religion, when—”

When first, now, he heard the notes of the hunting-horn. Peregrine thought that some word of hers or something in the air or in the landscape—though landscape and air alike now different, with the mists gone and the sun shining warmly even through the thinner air, and nothing obscured but all lying clean and open had, by trick, reminded him of the earlier morning’s scene. But in only one second more he realized that all had heard it.