King and Emperor thatc-3

by Harry Harrison

  He walked towards him, tried to speak sardonically, to say, “You brought us by a weary road.” The words would not come out. He lifted the dipper, rinsed the dust from his mouth, felt it swirl across his throat. The urge to swallow, constricting, almost overpowering. He would show them who was master, of himself at least. He spat the water on the ground, spoke his piece.

  No understanding. The eyes had widened when he spat out the water, but just a furrowed brow when he spoke. He was speaking the wrong language. Shef tried again in his simple Arabic.

  “You took our woman.”

  The greybeard nodded.

  “Now you must give her up.”

  “First you must tell me something. Do you not need water?”

  Shef lifted the dipper, looked at the water in it, threw it on the ground. “I drink when I choose. Not when my body chooses.”

  A slight ripple from the listening men. “Tell me then. What is that you wear on your breast?”

  Shef looked down at the sign of his god, the pole-ladder of Rig. This was like the scene he had undergone long ago when first he met Thorvin. More was meant than was being said.

  “In my language it is a ladder. In the language of my god and the Way I follow, it is a kraki. I met a man once who called it a graduale.”

  They were listening now, very intently. Solomon was at his side, ready to translate. Shef waved him back. He must not lose the intimate contact, even if all the two could speak was mangled Arabic.

  “Who called it that?”

  “It was the emperor Bruno.”

  “You were close to him? He was your friend?”

  “I was as close to him as I am to you. But he was not my friend. I have had his sword at my throat. They tell me he is close to me again, now.”

  “He knows about the graduale.” The greybeard seemed to be talking to himself. He looked up again. “Stranger, do you know of the Lance he carries?”

  “I gave it to him. Or he took it from me.”

  “Maybe, then, you would take something from him?”

  “Willingly.”

  The tension in the air seemed to drain. Shef turned and saw that his men were on their feet again, weapons raised, looking as if they might be able to resist attack, or even, as they reckoned the limited odds against them, begin one.

  “We will return your woman. And feed you and your men. But before you return”—Shef's flesh shrank at the thought of retracing their steps, downhill or up—“first you must pass a test. Or fail it. Either is the same to me. But to pass it might be good for you, and for the world. Tell me, your god, whose sign you bear: do you love him?”

  Shef could not help the grin from spreading across his face. “Only an idiot would love the gods of my people. They are there, that is all I know. If I could escape them, I would.” His grin faded. “There are some gods I hate and fear.”

  “Wise,” said the greybeard. “Wiser than your woman. Wiser than the Jew at your side.”

  He called an order, men began to bring out bread, cheese, what looked like skins of wine. Slowly Shef's men sheathed or uncocked their weapons, looked questioningly at their lord. But Shef had seen Svandis coming limpingly towards him, wearing only the slashed and blood-stained tatters of her white dress.

  To the Jewish scholars and counselors of the city-state of Septimania, the departure of their colleague Solomon—off in the mountains somewhere, escorting the king of the barbarians on some pointless chase—came as a relief. Doubt was already strong as to whether Solomon had been wise in bringing the strangers to them. Yet it could be represented as a service to the Caliph, their nominal overlord, to revictual and resupply men who had once been his allies, and who were at any rate enemies of the Christians now pressing so close. Nevertheless one matter at least was outstanding, a worry to both prince and council.

  The affair of the young Arab Mu'atiyah. It was clear that he was a subject of the Caliph Abd er-Rahman: as indeed were they, the Jews of Septimania, at least in theory. Did they not pay to the Caliph the kharaj and the jizya, the land-tax and the poll-tax? And did they not guard their gates against his enemies and those of his Faith, the Christians and the Franks? It was true that that guard did not extend in any way to limiting trade with their near-neighbors, true too that the tax payments were made according to calculations done by the council itself, which would not have passed muster with the Caliph's own tax-collectors, none of whom any longer courted embarrassment by appearing in the city. Nevertheless—so said the majority on the council—there was no precedent for imprisoning the young man merely to prevent his return to his master.

  As the council debated, the old prince watched his learned men, stroking his beard. He knew what Solomon would have said, had he been here. That the Arab would immediately flee to his master and report that the Jews had made common cause with the barbarians, the polytheists, that they were providing a base for a hostile fleet which had fled from contact with the Greeks and now planned its own attacks on the peaceful countryside. Little of that was true, but that was how it would be presented, and how it would be believed.

  In any of the Christian dukedoms or princedoms of the border country, such a matter would have been the simplest thing in the world. Ten words, and the Arab would disappear. If he ever were inquired about, polite regret and ignorance would be expressed. And the baron or duke or prince would have thought no more about it than about pruning his roses.

  In a Jewish community, that was not possible. Not even desirable. Benjamin ha-Nasi approved of what his wise men would decide, though he knew it would be a mistake. A mistake in the short term. In the long term the fortress of the Jews, the place where they had kept their identity in the long centuries of flight and persecution, was the Torah and the Law. As long as they held to that, history had taught them, they would survive—as a people if not as individuals. If they abandoned it, they might thrive for a while. Then they would merge with the sea around them, become indistinguishable from the lawless, unprincipled, superstitious believers in Christ, their false Messiah.

  Tranquilly the prince listened to the arguments, conducted as much to allow all members of the council to show their learning as to affect the final decision. Those who were putting the case for continued detention, in the way that Solomon might have done, were doing so passionately but insincerely, according to a convention understood by all. Against them was the deep reluctance of any Jewish community to order imprisonment as a punishment. Freedom to go as one pleased was one of the inheritances from the desert which they shared with the Arabs their cousins. It was the other side of the horror of exile from the community which was the council's ultimate threat against their own.

  The learned Moishe was summing up, and preparing his final peroration. He was the Amoraim, the interpreter of the Mishnah. “And so,” he said, looking round fiercely, “I will now speak of the Halakhah, which is the ultimate conclusion of this matter debated. First it was spoken and passed on from generation to generation, now it is written and fixed for ever. ‘Treat the stranger within your gates as you would your brother, for this you will be thrice blessed.’ ”

  He ended, looking round. If his audience had not been constrained by the dignity of their place and cause, they would have applauded.

  “Well spoken,” said the prince finally. “Truly is it said that the learning of the wise is a wall to the city. And that it is the folly of the unlearned that brings woe upon it.”

  He paused. “And yet, alas, this young man is unlearned, is he not?”

  Moishe spoke up. “By his own account, prince, he is the wonder of the world for learning. In his own way and his own country. And who should condemn the customs of another country, or its wisdom?”

  Just what you were doing this morning, thought Benjamin to himself. When you gave us your opinions on the follies of the ship-barbarians, with their king who tears a book to find out what it is, and asks the price of the paper not of the contents. Nevertheless…

  “I shall do as the feeli
ng of the council directs,” said Benjamin formally. He crooked a finger to his guard-captain. “Release the young man. Give him a mount and the food he needs to reach the Caliph, and escort him to our boundaries. Charge the cost against our next payment of the land-tax to his master.”

  The young Arab, who had squatted at the side of the room listening without understanding to the Hebrew exchanges that would determine his fate, recognized at last the tone and the gesture. He sprang to his feet, eyes blazing. Seemed for a moment as if he meant to burst out in complaint and accusation—as he had done fifty times already in his short captivity—but then thrusting it back in a transparent rush of policy. It was obvious what he meant to do: rush off to make every bitter denunciation to which he could lay his tongue. Revenge himself with words for every slight that had been put upon him, real or fancied, by the barbarians of whom he was so jealous. Jealous of their flying of kites.

  The prince turned his attention to the next case. It was true about the learned, he reflected. They were a strength. And the unlearned were a plague. But worse than both, alas, were the class to whom both the Arab Mu'atiyah and Moishe the learned belonged. The class of clever fools.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Inside the cool stone basement of the best house in the tiny village, the perfecti discussed what must be done, in whispers.

  “He does not speak our language. How can we put him to the test?”

  “He has some Arabic, as do we. That will have to do.”

  “It is irregular. The test must be given in the words of the test.”

  “It is we who make the rules and we who can change them.”

  A third voice broke in to the exchange. “After all, he has already passed the one test. And he passed it without knowing he took it.”

  “You mean the water?”

  “I mean the water. You saw the way his men came over the hill. They were blind with weariness and mad with thirst. They are Northerners from cold lands, and seamen who never walk. The big one was near to death. And the king himself was so dry—we saw it—that he could not speak. Yet he threw the water on the ground.”

  Another voice corroborated the third. “And before that, he took it in his mouth. Then he spat it out. That is one of the tests. To refuse the man water till he can think of nothing else, then to give him it. To see if he can take it into his mouth and yet reject it, as a sign of victory over the body. The temple of the Evil One, prince of this world. That is what the one-eye did.”

  The first voice continued to complain. “He had not had long enough! In our test the man is kept without water for a night and a day.”

  “Sitting motionless in the shade,” replied one of his antagonists. “Our rule says the candidate must be kept till he thinks of nothing else but water. I have seen candidates in better shape than that one when he came over the hill.”

  “In any case,” said a voice that till now had not spoken, but now spoke with the tones of one who gave a decision, “we will proceed with the test. For as we speak, the Emperor's men are tearing stone from stone. Over our holy things and the bodies of our fellows.”

  The gray cowls nodded slowly, in the end without dissent.

  Outside, his feet dangling over the edge of the near-precipice that shut off the little village to the north, Shef sat with his far-seer in his hand. Once he and his men had drunk their fill, it had been possible to look around, to understand the lie of the land. The village perched high on a slope, in what was a mere terrace in a sweep of baking stone and scrub. From high up, more terraces could be seen here and there, each with its little plot of trees and crops. Shef could see how people could live almost at ease up here. His far-seer had caught dozens of scrawny sheep browsing the grass on far hillsides. Sheep meant mutton, and milk and cheese. And one thing the villagers might count on, and that was that they would not be bothered by tax-collectors. Only very tough and determined ones, and such would find far easier pickings elsewhere.

  Yes. It was clear that almost any kind of authority could be resisted up here. King or Emperor. Or Church and Emperor.

  In the coldly objective way his mind worked when he was left alone, Shef set himself to considering the information he had been given. One thing he had come to understand about himself during the years of his rule was this. Good or bad, he did not believe all that was told him, even all that he himself saw. But his disbelief meant that he did not need to lie to himself, as so many people, he knew, did all or some of the time. They believed what they needed to. He did not need to believe anything, and could see things the way they were.

  So he did not need to believe Svandis. She had greeted him, and his men, with tears of relief. Then, as he had seen, she had grown ashamed of herself and talked harshly and fiercely to cover what had been her fear. He did not blame her. He had known veteran warriors do the same. And when she told him what had happened, Shef, piecing together what he knew of her history, had understood both her fear and her shame.

  A woman, taken from both sides with her dress whirled over her head. No woman wore anything beneath her dress, whatever she wore over it. A woman with her arms trapped, naked from breast down, could think of nothing but rape. That was why it was an offense in all the Northern codes of law to raise a woman's clothing above her knee. But Svandis had not needed legal prompting to think of rape. She knew all about that. Shef was proud, but not amazed, that she had slashed herself free and killed a man: he had seen her grandfather do the same, starting unarmed and half-drowned against two men who held his arms. She had the blood of Ragnar indeed.

  But the fear had struck deep into her. What she said about her captors was tinged by it. And she said that they were savages, worse than the deepest heathens among the Swedes, cold and heartless. She had heard tales of them from the women in Cordova, she said—and that at least must be true. That in the mountains lived the sect where the men hated all women and the women all men. Where every joy and delight in the world was rejected. “And that is how they are,” Svandis said again and again. “You can see it when they look at you! I stood there when they set me free with my legs bare and my body displayed like a dancing girl. And they looked at me. And then they looked away, all of them, even the mule-drivers. I would rather have heard your men shouting the things they do at women they see. They rape women, and hurt them, but that is because they need them, at least. Here you can see the hate in their eyes.”

  Fear talking, Shef reflected as he sat at ease looking out over the mountains and the passes beneath. Yet there might be something in it. It had a kind of relation to what Solomon had said, after he had consoled Svandis and she had gone to sleep under guard and in the sun. After he had told Solomon what they had said about the test. Solomon had thought for a long time and then approached him, keeping his distance even from his colleague Skaldfinn.

  “Something you should understand,” he said. “Something few know. You may have thought these people are Christians.”

  Shef had nodded. He could see a crucifix on the wall of what seemed a rude church. Folk who walked past it knelt, crossed their breasts.

  “They are not. Or if they are it is of a kind that has no dealings with others. Few even with my people. You see—the followers of Mohammed, the followers of Christ, my people the Jews. They fight each other, they may persecute each other, but they share many things. To Islam, Christ was one of the prophets, to the Christians, their God is also our God, only they have given him a Son. The Mohammedans believe in one Allah as we believe in one Jehovah, like us they will not eat pork or meat which has not been bled. You see? We are—we began—on the same side.

  “These people here are different. They do not believe in our God at all. Or if they do, they reject him.”

  “How can you reject God and reverence the crucifix?”

  “I do not know. But they say—they say that to these people the God of Abraham is the devil, and that they make images of him only to defile them. And they say also”—Solomon's voice dropped even more—“that sin
ce to them God is the devil, that they have made the devil himself their God. They are devil-worshipers. That is the talk of the hills. I do not know how they worship him or with what rites.” Solomon could not be relied on, either, Shef reflected. It was the People of the Book again. At bottom the three great religions that had come out of the East were all religions of the Book. Different books, or the same book with different additions. They despised anyone who did not hold to their book. Called them devil-worshipers. They despised him for a start, he had seen the look in the eyes of the geonim, the scholars of the Law. If they despised him, and the Way, and they despised also this strange sect of the hills—then maybe he and they had something in common. Women-haters, said Svandis. Did he hate women? They had brought him no luck, and he had brought none to them.

  His eye sweeping over far distances, as the haze cleared in the sun, and the far-seer let him probe out to the horizon, Shef saw again and again flashes of bright metal down on the roads, the roads through mountain passes. He remembered what Tolman had said of what he could see at the top of his flight. Metal moving, and on the edge of sight, Tolman said, a great pyre burning.

  His mind emptied, his eye reaching far into space, Shef felt the strange blankness of the waking dream come over him: a better feeling than the last he had had, the dream of the shrouded corpse. This time his father was there.

  “He's loose, you know.” There was still the tone of mirth in his father's voice, of secret knowledge, of cleverness which he knew had no match. With it there was a new tone, of uncertainty, even of fear, as if the god Rig were realizing that he had set something in motion which even he with all his cleverness might not control.

  Shef spoke back to his father, silently, in his mind alone. “I know. I saw you loose him. I saw him climbing the stair. He is mad. Thorvin says he is both father and mother of the monster-brood.” In his new mood of disbelief and defiance, he did not bother to add the question, “Why did you do it?”