Arslan (42 page)

Authors: M. J. Engh

Tags: #Fantasy, #SciFi-Masterwork, #War, #Politics, #Science Fiction

BOOK: Arslan

10.47Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

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 carcasses 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 shining 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 pass 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 investiture, 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 passing—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 lust, 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.