“Don’t take on so, gentlemen! Take a look at Egert. He’s not trembling with rage. He’s ill, after all, and what do you suppose the name of his illness might be?”
Egert could scarcely pry open his lips to force out a pitiful, “Shut up.”
Karver was heartened. “Well, well. You’re blind, gentlemen. I beg your pardon, but you are as blind as a bunch of moles.”
Taking advantage of the fact that Lagan and Dron, perplexed, had released his arms, Karver rushed over and drenched Egert yet again, almost emptying the puddle.
The heads of the curious sprouted out of the windows and doors of the Faithful Shield like mushrooms sticking out of a basket.
“Oh, but he’s drunk!” Bonifor cried out in a panic. “How can you? He’s a guard!”
“Egert is no longer a guard!” snapped Karver. “His honor is as besmirched as his coat.”
Egert then raised his eyes and met Karver’s glare.
He was so impossibly observant, this friend and vassal of his. The long years of taking second place had taught him to watch and bide his time.
Now, having guessed, he hit the target squarely. He won, he was victorious, and in his severe eyes, fixed on Egert, Egert read the entire long history of their faithful friendship.
You were always braver than me, said Karver’s eyes. You were always stronger and more fortunate, and how was I repaid for my faithfulness and patience? Remember, I tolerated the most caustic and wicked jests; I endured them by rights; I practically rejoiced in your mockery! Life is fickle; now I am braver than you, Egert, and it is only right that now you should …
“What? Are you out of your mind, Karver?” several voices cried out at once.
… It is only right that now you, Egert, should occupy that place to which your cowardice has committed you.
“This means a duel, Egert!” Dron enunciated the words hoarsely. “You must challenge him!”
Egert saw his friend blink. Somewhere in the depths of his consciousness, a stray thought flew past: What if he had miscalculated after all? What if Egert did challenge him? What if there was a duel?
“This means a duel.… A duel, Egert … Challenge…” Voices floated in the air around Egert’s head. “Call him out. This hour or tomorrow, whatever you want. At dawn by the bridge … Duel … duel … duel…”
And then Egert experienced that symptom of fear about which Feta had been silent during their conversation: His fear increased at every mention of the word duel.
Karver saw this and understood. His eyes, fastened on Egert, flared with an awareness of his complete and utter safety.
Duel … Duel … Duel …
Somewhere deep in Egert’s soul, the former Lieutenant Soll thrashed about, ranting with impotent rage, commanding him to draw his sword and trace a line in the dirt in front of Karver’s legs, but fear had already mastered the onetime lieutenant; it had broken him, paralyzed him, and was now forcing him into the most shameful of all crimes for a man: the refusal to fight.
Egert took a step backwards. The gloomy sky spun over his head like an insane carousel. Someone gasped, someone gave a warning shout, and then Lieutenant Egert Soll turned around and ran away.
That very same evening, leaving his coat, which was caked in mud, at his ancestral home, and taking with him only a small traveling bag, Egert abandoned his hometown, persecuted by an intolerable terror and an even more oppressive shame.
* * *
Far from Kavarren, a merry party took place in the square of a large city.
In the middle of the square stood the statue of a man in a hooded robe, with his face half-hidden by a rocky hood. Sacred Spirit Lash was carved on the pedestal; until recently the people of this city approached the sculpture only to bow in respect or—especially in the old times—to place presents at the statue’s feet.
But times change and, apparently, change swiftly. The world gets weaker; people become impudent. A half dozen young people, undoubtedly students, had managed to put a colorful female skirt on the statue, and now the most insolent of these puny adolescents had attached a jaunty frilled cap on the head of the Sacred Spirit. Even worse, a mustache was painted on the upper lip of the sculpture with a piece of coal. A man in a gray hooded robe stood in the shade, in a narrow passage between two walls, unnoticed. It was too late to prevent the disgrace, the blasphemy taking place; he could only observe it now.
People were frightened after seeing what the students had done. Respectable and quiet people hurried away from the square. A pious old woman threw a rotten turnip at the impudent youngsters, but she missed, and the turnip splattered on the statue’s shoulder; the crowd began to laugh.
The man in the hooded robe looked around. More curiosity seekers were gathering, more merry faces appeared; a cute girl dressed as a servant looked out of a window, giggling in her fist. A prosperous-looking merchant was laughing and pointing. The apprentices stopped and observed this scene with interest. Things were bad, very bad; the servants of Lash were never liked. But to be openly laughed at? Several years ago it was impossible to imagine. Remaining unnoticed, he returned to the alley and waited for the guards in red-and-white uniforms marching toward him. He waved his hand urgently to attract the patrol.
The officer in charge obeyed unwillingly. He approached the man in the gray robe and met his eyes: “What is it?”
“Lash was insulted,” said the robed man in a voice that would make even killers feel fear. “This is blasphemy! Witnesses should be considered to be accomplices.”
Passersby stepped aside, making room for the patrol. The merry laughter and noise continued in the square, the pranksters and onlookers unaware of the oncoming soldiers. In but a moment, arrests would be made. All of a sudden, “Oink, oink!” was heard.
It came from one of the students sitting on a roof and giving signal to retreat. The young scoundrels rushed in different directions and were lost in the darkness of the side streets. The horrified idlers hurried away at the sight of the uniforms: a wet nurse with a baby, a flower girl, an old grinder … The guards, however, did not hurry to catch anyone: the scene of the Sacred Spirit in a skirt, mustache, and cap horrified them. Swords were raised, the cloth was slashed and thrown to the ground, and the statue of the Spirit Lash was quickly freed of the rags and the mustache.
The square was deserted. Windows were slammed shut. The guards turned around; the man in the robe had disappeared as if he had been swallowed by the cobblestones that paved the square.
The guards exchanged glances and continued their patrol, looking more gloomy and stepping heavier than usual. Meanwhile, the man in the gray robe, hiding his face with the hood, moved away. People bowed to him and hurried to disappear from the road—but this respect did not deceive him.
“Oink, oink.” The collectors returned yesterday from the suburbs—it was shameful to see what the peasants dared to offer now as gifts to the Order of Lash. Corn and turnips instead of silk, spices, and golden jewelry.
“Oink, oink.” Soon, very soon, they will be taught a severe lesson. And they will beg, but it will be too late.
3
Night was coming on quickly beyond the foggy window. The coach mournfully slouched over the bumps in the road, and Egert cowered in the corner and stared blankly at the gray, perpetually monotonous wayside disappearing behind him.
Three weeks had passed from the day, or more accurately from the night, of his flight from Kavarren; the feeling of the end of the world and of the end of life that had then overwhelmed Egert and had ripped him away from his home, his city, his uniform, and his own skin—that dreadful, agonizing feeling had now dulled, and Egert simply sat in the dusty corner of the coach, his fist tucked beneath his chin, looking out the window and trying not to think about anything.
His bag would not fit on the baggage rack, so it now crouched between his legs, keeping him from tucking them under the seat below him. The entire baggage compartment was full of bundles and hampers that belonged to a traveling merc
hant. This merchant, a bilious and sinewy old man, was now sitting across from Egert. Egert knew very well that he had the right to displace the merchant’s goods in behalf of his own bag, but he could not force himself to say a single word in his own defense.
The seat next to the old man was occupied by a pretty, young, and somewhat timid person: to all appearances, a maiden who had prematurely flown the coop of her father’s nest in order to set out in search of work, a husband, and adventure. Having initially taken an interest in Egert, but having received not even the slightest encouragement from him, the poor girl was now aggrievedly tracing her little finger along the glass of the window.
To the side of Egert sat a dejected person of indeterminate age with a bluish gray nose that hung like a drop and short, ink-stained fingers. Egert privately identified him as a wandering scribe.
The hulk of the coach was swaying smoothly, the merchant was snoozing with his face resting against the windowframe, the young lady was unsuccessfully trying to catch a troublesome fly, the scribe was staring off into space, and Egert, whose back was aching and whose legs were swollen from his uncomfortable posture, was thinking about the past and the future.
Having lived in Kavarren for twenty years and never having gone any considerable distance away from the city, he now had the opportunity to see the world, but this opportunity scared him far more than it pleased him. The world seemed comfortless, a shapeless wasteland of little towns, villages, inns, and roads, along which roamed people: morose, sometimes dangerous, but more often apathetic people who were invariably disagreeable to Egert. Strange people. Egert felt scruffy, haggard, and hunted. Now, covering his eyes in the steadily swaying coach, he once again desperately wished that it would all turn out to be a foolish dream. For a shining moment, he truly believed that he was about to wake up in his bed and that, opening his eyes, he would see the boars on their tapestries. He would summon his manservant, and he would wash his face in clean water over a silver basin. He would be the previous Egert Soll, not this despicable, cowardly vagabond. He believed in this vision so sincerely that his lips cracked open in a smile and his hand went to his cheek as though chasing away slumber.
His fingers stumbled upon the long seam of his scar. Egert flinched and opened his eyes.
The merchant was snoring softly. The girl had finally caught the fly and, clutching the insect in her fist, was listening attentively to the buzzing of the unfortunate captive.
Dear Heaven! Egert’s entire life, his entire happy and dignified life, had shattered into a thousand pieces and escaped into an unimaginable abyss. Behind him there was only shame and pain too dreadful to remember; before him lay a gray, cloudy, queasy uncertainty too dreadful to conceive of. Why?
Egert asked himself this question again and again. At the root of all the misfortune that had befallen him lay the strange cowardice that had suddenly awoken in the soul of a brave man; but why? How was such degeneration possible? Where did this affliction come from?
The duel with the stranger. Egert returned to that duel in his mind’s eye over and over, and every time, he wondered: Was it really possible that a single defeat could break him so? A single, absurd, incidental defeat that occurred without any witnesses?
He clenched his teeth hard and stared out the window, beyond which the damp, somber forest swept out into the far distances.
The hooves of the horses tramped out an even, steady pace. The peddler awoke and unwrapped a bundle containing a hunk of bread and a smoke-cured leg of chicken. Egert turned away; he was hungry. The girl had finally killed the fly and now also reached for her bundle, from which she extracted a roll and a piece of cheese.
The scribe was apparently considering whether or not it was time for him to sup as well, when the previously steady rhythm of the horses’ hooves suddenly became erratic.
The coach started jerking: at first forward, then awkwardly to the side. Up front, the driver screamed something indecipherable but full of terror. The clatter of hooves could be heard from behind and to the side of the coach, and the peddler suddenly went white as chalk. His hand, still clutching the chicken leg, shiny with grease, began to tremble vigorously.
The young girl spun her head from side to side in shock; crumbs from her roll clung to her lips and showed up white against their rosy pink. The scribe gasped. Egert, not understanding what was happening, but sensing that something was not right, pushed his shoulders back into the worn upholstery.
The carriage bounced heavily over something in the road and lost speed so quickly that Egert almost flew forward into the merchant.
“Rein it in!” a man’s voice yelled wickedly from behind the coach. “Rein in! Stop!”
The horses started neighing in panic.
“Glorious Heaven!” groaned the merchant. “No, no!”
“What is it?” asked the maiden faintly.
“Highwaymen,” explained the scribe calmly, as though he were in an office.
Egert’s miserable, timorous heart jumped up into his throat in a single convulsive movement, only to immediately descend into his stomach. He hunkered down onto the seat and firmly squeezed his eyes shut.
The coach shook and then stopped. The driver began to mutter beseechingly, and then he screamed and fell silent. The doors of the coach jerked from the outside.
“Open up!”
A hand reached out and shook Egert by the shoulder. “Young man!”
He forced himself to open his eyes and saw a pale face with wide-open, rapidly blinking eyes hovering over him.
“Young man,” murmured the girl. “Say that you are my husband. Please, it could be true.”
Following the instinct of the weak, who seek the protection of the strong, she grabbed Egert’s hand: thus does a drowning person pluck at a rotten log. Her gaze was full of such entreaty, such a zealous request for aid, that Egert suddenly felt hot all over, as if he had been tossed into a frying pan. His fingers began to fumble at his side, searching for his sword, but they had barely skimmed the hilt when they jerked back as if burned.
“Young man…”
Egert averted his eyes.
The doors jerked again, someone cursed beyond them, and then the light coming in through the dingy little window was cut off by a shadow.
“Step lively! Open up!”
Egert began to shake from the sound of this voice. Terror rolled over him in waves, each new wave far exceeding the one that came before. Cold sweat streamed down his back and sides.
“We need to open the door,” observed the scribe impassively.
The peddler was still clutching the chicken leg in his fist. At the scribe’s words, his eyes shot up to the top of his forehead.
The scribe stretched his hand out toward the door latch; at that very moment the girl, having despaired of securing any help from the young man, caught sight of the dark hollow underneath the opposite bench.
“Just a minute,” said the scribe in a conciliatory tone to those who were waiting outside. “The latch is jammed, just a minute.”
With a dexterous movement, the girl rolled under the bench. The shabby cloth that covered the seat concealed her completely from any passing glance.
Egert did not recall very well what happened next.
Befuddled by terror, his mind suddenly saw a way out, a slender hope for salvation. The hope was, of course, a sham, but Egert’s clouded brain did not understand this; it was overwhelmed with a single, tremendous wish, bordering on insanity: to hide!
He dragged the girl out from under the bench like a hound dragging a fox from its hole. Of course, she struggled; she bit him on the elbow, writhing in his arms, trying to crawl back under the bench, but Egert was stronger. Collapsing from terror, he crawled under the bench and squeezed himself into the darkest corner. Only then did he realize what had happened.
The only reason he did not immediately die from shame was that the door finally swept open and a new wave of fear robbed Egert of the ability to consider his actions. All the pa
ssengers were ordered out of the coach. Through the black shroud that clouded his eyes, Egert first saw massive steel-toed boots step onto the floor of the coach; then a hairy hand descended to the floor, propping up the black beard and blazing eyes of a man who said, “Ha! Indeed, there he is; the little fawn!”
Egert’s mind once again collapsed.
He did not even resist as he was dragged from the coach. The horses were tossing their heads in terror, rolling their eyes at the vast tree trunk that had been laid across the road to intercept their path. The coachman, smiling mournfully, his eyes swollen and streaming with tears, was obligingly allowing himself to be tied up. The baskets and bundles of the merchant were flying from the baggage compartment; a portion of them, disemboweled like rabbit skins at a bazaar, had already tumbled to the ground nearby.
They patted Egert down, but the only loot they got from him was his family sword and the gilded buttons on his jacket. They collected a purse from the scribe. The merchant, trembling and sniveling, watched as they broke open the lock of a potbellied chest. Two of the highwaymen held the girl by her arms; she kept twisting her head from side to side, shifting her gaze from one to the other and pleading inaudibly.
There were five or six bandits, but Egert was in no condition to remember a single face. Having finished their pillage, they divided their loot among their saddlebags and flocked around the coach. They tied the scribe to the merchant, and the driver to the tree trunk lying in the road, but they did not bother to tie Egert up. It was obvious he would not run away: his legs refused to work.
The bandits gathered in a circle and one by one thrust their hands into a cap. Egert dimly realized that they were drawing lots. The black-bearded robber nodded contentedly, and the two who were holding the girl released her elbows. Black-beard took her by the shoulder proprietarily and led her into the coach.
Egert saw her wide eyes and trembling lips. She walked without resisting, only ceaselessly repeating some entreaty directed at her tormentors. Black-beard shoved her into the carriage, while the others expectantly arrayed themselves on the grass surrounding it. The coach teetered; the carriage springs screeched, flexing rhythmically, and a thin, high voice cried out plaintively from within.
The Scar Page 10