Now, as he walked abroad, in woods or within the palisaded village, he heard, almost as the echo of his footsteps: Bear: Bear. Bear: Bear. Where? There! There: Bear! And the taunt of other seasons was gone. Awe there might be, or not. Perhaps respect, perhaps none. Sometimes, unsought: fear. Hatred? Also. By no means always. By no means. But … scorn? Contempt? Nevermore. He was now the weight, if not the height, of any full man; and solid all the way through. He did not walk quite as a man walked, toes down first or heels down first, but placing his sole down firmly and flatly. His eyes were fierce, and those few who met them and had scorned him as boy, as “bear’s bastard,” son of a mad mother and a father no one knew, found them by no means forgetful. Snow fell unheeded on his sleek head and shag breast and limbs. Mostly he wore but one sole garment, and this was the folded skin of a bear. And it was sometimes said, of nights, and when mouth was pressed close to ear, that on occasion he would unfold the bearskin and crawl inside of it and then indeed go on all four limbs, snout swaying from side to side: beware!
Bear! Bear! Bear!
But to no one did he say anything when he met them, him or her, though were it her, his gaze might change somewhat, be less unseeing, less aloof. But he said no word. And he said no word when, quite suddenly, and without any alarm, save that two great clouds of birds swung circling back and forth, and some cried Wolf! and some sang Ware! and — whilst he had turned and with steady step, stalked towards his hut — quite suddenly before he could reach it the streets were filled with kingsmen; and the multitude of them was like the swarming of lemmings: although lemmings do not carry spears, lemmings do not surround a man as they surrounded Arnten. They marched him, slowly, down the ways between the houses, houses in row after row, gaping and staring and low-murmuring people in row upon row. And in the great open place where the common-fire burned, huddled all in wolfskins, face all reddled as with the rust of dying iron, and in patches, angry, suffering, in pain, and half-mad … at least half …
This one bowed himself forward a half-bow, said, his voice not weak, though hollow, “Kinsman …”
A whisper went through the crowd, as a low wind goes through trees. And again the Orfas spoke: “Kinsman’s son …” he said this time. Still Arnten said nothing. The frozen wind whipped round the arms and legs of his bearskin, and the king seemed to observe, to take note of this.
A third time he spoke. “Son of my half-brother’s son” — again the murmur-whisper of the folk — Orfas drew back his meager lips and the folk hissed as he showed his teeth, whimpered as he rose a palm’s breath on his litter, cried, howled, howled, “Bear …”
Arnten said, “Wolf.”
Abrupt, sat the king down. Silence for a moment. Said the king: “Withdraw the curse on iron.”
Arnten said nothing. He knew he could no more withdraw the curse on iron than he could fly, but none would believe him; he could in no way better his case by denying he had that power: therefore if they would not believe, then let them fear. He was again a captive? No words denying his own puissance would free him. Therefore no words such would he utter.
Said the king: “See you not how the people suffer from not having iron weaponry to seek their meat? Curse me, you kinsman, as your father cursed me, having sought the kingship, too, but no more curse iron!”
Arnten said nothing. He knew the king believed he held his father’s might, knew the king believed his father had cursed iron to destroy the Orfas-King, to draw the teeth of the kingly wolf and leave him with rust alone when the barbar-folk, armed with weapons of iron in full good health, came sailing and came swarming across the all-circling sea. And Arnten knew that it is far better to be feared and hated without cause than to be scorned and condemned with or without cause. If Orfas was so far from full sharp of wits as to magnify, and publicly, one whom he might easily have slain —
“Name what reward you will, and here, publicly, I vow you shall have it: But withdraw the curse on iron!”
Thick a croak overhead and some distance so, Arnten heard a raven mutter, “The man-wolf, the iron-man, the rust-sick: weak …”, and in that instant he understood, he saw, he felt the strength of his knowledge within him. He thought, “I shall repeat those words, and so confound him — ”
He opened his mouth, but, “Do you put on your wolfskin and do I put on my bearskin, and let us then and thus contend: half brother of my father’s father: Is it wolf? or is it only dog?” were the words he said. And marveled at them, hearing.
No moan, no whisper, no hiss, no motion, movement, sign, from any there. Such words might pass between king and one about to die because of king; but by no other one dared they be even heard. Across the space between them he heard the dry sounds the king’s mouth made. After a space of time he saw the king’s face move, twitch, saw the king’s hands clench upon his pelts. Saw a grimace cross the king’s face and change into something which might have been a smile. King Orfas said, “Do you desire, then, to don your bearskin? So. So. So. Be it so.”
His blood roared in his ears as he slipped into his bearskin. He heard the roaring of many waters and of many winds. He stood there, arms out as a bear’s arms are out, saw, though little caring, the king’s mouth moving as the king spoke to his captains. He shambled between the houses of the men, not bothering to observe their awe-struck faces, not deigning to so much as growl at the company of the spearmen who surrounded him. Since it must be so, when it must be so, he would receive the spears as though they were porcupine quills, he would slay his score before he fell.
The spearmen in front and at his side, who had been all the way stepping sidewise and scraping their feet after them, crabwise, now stopped, spears still pointing at him. He heard those behind likewise halt. He had scarcely followed as to where they were going. Now he knew. Here was an old, old and stooping tree, some ways outside the palisade; beneath its roots was a cavity in which and round which generations of children had hid and played: but he had never cared — after once or twice, perhaps once alone and once not — to go there as a boy — it was called “the Bear Cave,” perhaps had even been one, once, before the founders of the village had graven the first furrow and, casting down a woman in it, had furrowed her as well; thus establishing the place as one of human habitation, of crops and all things fertile. It was called “the Bear Cave,” and no phrase containing the word bear was very pleasant to his ears when it came from the lips of other children.
The spearmen, the kingsmen, all the king’s party, had circled this stoop old tree about and at a distance had begun to make campfires. Then up came the king, Orfas himself, carried in his litter-bed. They set it down. He said, “Bear.” He said, “Some might say bastard, I say but Bear. You are indeed Bear? And son of the true Bear? So. Go. Go there. Into there. Down there. To the Bear cave. It is midwinter, it is the time of the bearsleep. Die, then, Bear, Bear’s son, Curser of Iron. Die the Bear death. Sleep the Bear sleep. And as closely as the bearskin girds your body, so closely shall we gird and guard your hole, your grave, the pit from which you shall not emerge till the full winter-sleep be over: For do we but see your snout, Bear-kin, do we see so much as your shadow before the full measure of time be past: then we shall hunt you from your pit, Bear, take you from your skin, Bear; we shall even take from you your other skin, Bear: and we shall smoke it and shall smoke you in the fire, Bear, and then we shall see, the Curser of Iron, bastard son of bastard blood, betrayer, slowly die, slower than iron dies, down, down, hunt you down …”
The Orfas babbled and the Orfas raged and howled. One slow moment as the spearmen tensed, faces drawn, teeth fixed in lower lips, aslant their fearsome eyes begazed him, pale their faces though they so many and he but one; one slow moment only Arnten stood facing the black opening beneath the snowy ledge. He felt no anger, no rage, nor lust; felt no despair. He felt only lassitude … and … oh … it felt right. There he had to go. Sooner or later all men had thereunto to go.
With slow step, paying no further mind to the howling king or to the silent folk, thi
nking of nothing but the inevitable and hence the welcome dark, he shambled forward, he entered into the open grave, he descended down into the pit, and thus to death.
• • •
Darkness and deep time and deep darkness and dark time … Time knows not the darkness and the darkness knows not time. Yet time passes and the darkness, too. Pale yellow suns rolled round and round, and faintly the taste of honey. Ghostly fish leaped in silent streams. Darkness visible, shock ebbing away. And rest. And rest, rest … rest … warm in the darkness and the cold outside, the outside cold … ssswww … breath … ssswww …
Swans flying, long and melancholy their trumpet sounds. Elk trample through the breast-high snow. The hunting cry of the great white ounce, the leopard of the snow. Deep in their nests the snow-white ermine lifted their heads. Somewhere in the snow, the ptarmigan, couching in cold, white upon white, lifted their wings and beat them as they rose upon the snowy air, like a flurry of snowflakes. Mered-delfin made signs to the Orfas-King. Pale as snow, the queen sat upright, alert, silent. Somewhere a milk-white hare made faint tracks in the soft white snow. “Yet another hour or so,” muttered the wolf-king. He was loathe to show himself as yet. It was not his hour of the day.
Soon enough his hour would be. The dead bear would be dragged forth and flayed; flayed, the dead boy inside. Let all the people see, let all hope die forever within them that any rule in all of Thule was to be expected save from the House of the Wolf. And then let the long-waiting, long watching, long steadfast, suffering guardians be released from watch and ward. And let them ravage, ravish, break, burn, and bare away. Let all of Thule take heed, let not for a single day, henceforth, suffer any pretender to the vulpine throne.
Mered-delfin made signs to King Orfas. The queen, too, turned her head. “What sounds are these?” she asked. Mered-delfin made signs to his liege and lord the king. “Sounds?” groaned the king. “What …?” He lifted his head. Watched. Hearkened. Many people were now coming. Who had summond them? Who had given orders — Mered-delfin made signs, lifted hands before mouth. “What? Horn? Calling? Who gave orders? Sounding … what horn? No order did I give, and no horn have I heard. Only — ” He lifted a hand for silence which did not altogether come, his face was strained, intent. “ — only this wind do I hear, and — ”
Wind, if wind it was, sounding very strange indeed. He scowled his bewilderment, his concentration. There were many things in that wind, indeed, and many images gathered suddenly in his mind in swift confusion. He seemed to hear the trumpeting of swans, and the bugling of elk, the coughing bark of the snow-white ounce; he seemed to see the ermine lifting their heads like serpents, amid flurries of snowflakes which were simultaneously snowbirds — “Out!” he said, low-voiced, abrupt, more than merely urgent: “out — out — have them take me out of this — Out! What delay is this? Out and out, or — ”
Oh, how many of the folk were now there, standing in the snow! How the kingsmen turned their heads this way and that, unsure if they should maintain their attention as it had been all this while, or if their spearheads should now at once face the multitude of the townsfolk: and meanwhile and at the same time, what winds were these, what sounds, what witcheries?
The litter-bed of King Orfas came swiftly from his tent-house, and the bearers bore down in one straight line for the very center of the encircling guards and watchfires. The guardsmen closed in without present word or order round the figure of their lord. And the people closed in close all around the guards. And so they all — king and king’s household and king’s guards and king’s subjects — closed in from all sides round about that old crook tree: and while the litter-bed of the king was but a few paces away therefrom, the snow at the base of the tree seemed to boil up from between the roots and in one second more, so swiftly that no eye saw the several steps which must have preceded it, there stood there confronting the king, gaunt but huge and with eyes blazing red with rage and arms upraised and talons poised to rake and with teeth and tusk bared to tear —
“The Bear!” all voices cried aloud with one voice. “Not dead, not dead, but risen living from the bear-death, returned hither from the depths below and from the World of the Deads as ever does the true Bear. “The Bear!” rose one great cry from many throats. For the length of that first flurry in which snow fell up instead of down and for the length of that one shout “The Bear!” all stood as though painted on a hide: King: kingsmen: folk: Bear.
And then the scene dissolved into a thousand fragments, and some were fleeing and some had fallen, as though some had gone down into the snow to make obeisance as one does before a king, and as though some of sudden terror and fright had fallen dead; and there was blood, red blood, upon the trodden white blanket of the snow: but as to whose blood it was, or how it had been shed or who had shed it or why: none paused to ask or seek.
Chapter XII
Sometimes the howling of wolves was heard, now nearer and now farther; sometimes the white elks lifted up their snowy heads and spoke to each other, drawing closer, but not fearfully, before any of the men could hear the other sounds. The white elk had been waiting for them in a wide bare place in the forest, a quarter-day’s journey from the township, as the four of them fled: one bear-man, one dead-man, one witchery-man, and one for whom as yet no name had been devised, except the one already his — Corm.
“I had told the tallys in my tallybag,” said Bab witch-uncle; “I counted the notches cut into other sticks by me. I watched the moon and the wheeling stars, and the angle of the sun’s shadows day by day.
“But of course, not I alone did these things. Orfas had powerful witchery in his own tent-house. My calculating showed that a good several days yet remained before we could or should suspect to see thee stir — ”
Whisper after whisper, snow sliding from tree limb, snow falling from elk-hoof and fetlock, snow blowing from one drift to another. “Thee might never have seen me stir at all,” said Arnten, his mouth and face passing swiftly from wonder to grimness to gladness to wonder again; “had not Corm summoned me by All-Caller,” and his eye and every eye went to the great fey horn, swinging in its cover-case of dull red leather against Corm’s side.
Some tinge of that same color came to Corm’s face. “It bade me do so,” he said, almost faintly. “It spoke to me in clear tones by night and it murmured to me by day. But I feared … till that time just a while before the king and all his folk went rushing out, came a wind, a great wind rushing, and I heard the horn say Sound me and I heard the Bear say Summon me …
“It seemed to me, as I lifted it, heavy and fearful to my lips, as I held it, fearful and heavy at my lips, it seemed to me as my lips trembled and my hands faltered and my fingers fumbled in trying to turn the setting so that I should summon and sound well and call aright, it seemed to me as first my breath sooned in it when first I wound that great fey horn, oh! — that I did hear all manner of creature of sea and air and land, and I struggled, lest I call them all — ”
Roke rubbed one hand, which was still slow to full mending, and said, soft, “It is called by name, All-Caller.”
“Surely thee called the wolf,” said Bab, “else why rushed he there so soon? But,” — seeing that Corm looked abashed, the dark old man, sunk and huddled in his many furs, reached out a hand all gloved in mitt and patted the youngest of the four — “but no matter, that: In fact, twas well, to that: twas good indeed and well indeed that the wolf did see the triumph of the Bear. How so many folk fled so fast,” the old witcherer said, all in mild wonder, nowise gloating. And the snow-whispers sounded as he paused.
Roke rumbled, “And of full surety thee did call the elk. Who did ever see elk so near to mendwelling? Who did ever see even two white elk together, nay, and there we saw four! And who has ever heard, when twas not story-telling time, that elk should kneel for men to mount?”
Arnten’s rumble, containing agreement without words, was deeper than Roke’s. Out of the dark depths of the bearsleep he had heard All-Caller, heard
it as his father’s voice: Arnten! awake! Awake! The wolf and carrion-crow are at thee — awake! awake! Arise! All the voices of the wild world sounding simultaneously in his ears behind his father’s voice, he hearing the sky-trumpet of the swans, the cough of the snowy ounce, wild horses screaming, the fury of the mammont and the chirp and chatter of small bird and bark and bellow of sea-creature, morse and seal, which he had never heard before but knew, but knew — heard also, as though laying bare and in intended concealment, heard the hungry howl of a sick yet still-fierce wolf —
Heard no crow.
Swam up, in fury, through the snow, lashing out at those he had wearily bent before, before the time of and on the way to the bearsleep: they now in full terror before him. Some bleeding, torn. Some falling face-forward before him, spared. Some, shrieking, ran. Kingsmen and townsmen: some, shrieking, ran; some falling face forward very soon before him. He heard the shriek of a frightened hare, the whimper of a sore-sick wolf. Turned to find wolf, turned to slay wolf, saw three men neither fleeing nor falling face forward before him, reared up against them, teeth and claws bared: heard them cry, “Bear! We be yours! Bear.” Saw and heard one of them give one last blast on one great horn —
Heard no crow.
Muttered, now, leaning forward against the snow-soft neck of the elk, “My father said, ‘Crow …’ ” He looked up, and saw a hawk swoop, saw it flurry, feint and pounce in the flurry of snow, saw it pause a moment and then, having missed, begin its ascent again. He whistled, and it paused and hung in the soft grey air. “Saw you any crow, swiftwings?” he called.
“Nay, no crow,” the hawk shreck down to him. “All have gone, me think, to rob the granaries and skim the stinking midden-heaps of men. No skulk, black form defouls sky or land, O get of the Bear.”
“Tis well, swiftwings.” His deep rumble-voice declined into his deep chest, the others looking at him, Roke and Corm in awe, Bab nodding as at the but expected. League after league they paced swiftly through the snow, the elk avoiding the deep-drifted places where even their nimble feet would flounder. “Tis well,” he repeated. “No crow: no spy.” They nodded, understanding now what the bird had said to him, and recollecting what he, Arnten, had told them of what he had realized of the spyings of the crow; all fitting into place with what Bab had told them of Mered-Delfin, Corby-Mered, who had the crow for his medicine-creature.
Ursus of Ultima Thule Page 12