by Iliazd
The calash stopped. Without feeling the ground, as though floating on air, Laurence found himself at a glass door, opened it, and made his way in to a hairdresser
The police knew perfectly well that a robbery was in the works, and the party also knew that the police knew. But, since the police didn’t know about the latter fact, and the only comrade who could have warned them went on sleeping under pillows at the hotel near the train station, everything proceeded as planned. On the square at noon, a shipment of bank notes was to arrive from the train station for delivery to the treasury. The delivery appointment had been neither canceled nor delayed, for the police had determined to let the attackers finish off the guards and then to capture the criminals on the spot, which allowed them to resort to summary execution (impossible in cases of preemptive arrest), and such a pleasure was worth sacrificing a few hides
Since he’d wound up at the hairdresser’s, Laurence turned to one of the salesgirls and requested two packages of soap. He received them, turned around, but did not walk away, remaining near the door. He saw that the police had stopped traffic and a procession had appeared: a dray was crawling along incredibly slowly, as though on purpose, surrounded by soldiers and bearing a long box—not a box, but Brother Mocius’s coffin. And when the dray drew up even with the hairdresser’s, an explosion suddenly burst and shattered the hairdresser’s windows. In the unimaginable turmoil that arose, he could make out that the wagon had overturned, someone was running toward it, frequent shots rang out and people were falling, that the crowd first tore at Martinian, then bent him to the ground and trampled on him. Laurence saw how the pavement under the feet of the guardians of public order turned scarlet, and then blood flowed in fine streams in all directions. But he went on loitering, just as rapt, thinking neither of his accomplices nor of their murders. He wanted only to encounter Basilisk, shove him onto his back, and trample him so the little man’s blood would flow in streams just the way Laurence’s blood was flowing
The dray was finally righted, the dead horse was taken out of harness, the sacred coffin was hoisted up. Now people—some military, some not—were already dragging the catafalque across the square to the treasury
Still haunting the shattered door, Laurence swung his arms out and threw a package of soap. It described a magnificent arc in the air and landed on the coffin. And Laurence heard nothing more, but saw the catafalque flung, together with the people attached to it, into the sky. Then the explosion reached him, so powerful, he was amazed the mansions withstood it. The guards were swept clean away, without a trace. The wennies, who jumped out from somewhere, dipped their hands into the smashed coffin. In a moment, they were already running away. Some belated shots rang out in pursuit
And suddenly Laurence beheld the Basilisk on a corner not far away, rearing, coiled, and licking its lips with its forked tongue
Laurence beat his wings once more and threw the second bomb
Now the day of the great hunt was approaching. A break from day-to-day life and a contest in daring, just enough carnage to knock the stuffing from the beasts for a whole year
Hunting small game is a run-of-the-mill task for a highlander. Taking his rifle, he wanders around in solitude from October on into June, dragging home whatever comes his way, but the snow and tracklessness don’t much favor him. In the middle of the year, when it’s customary to shoot rifles only at people, there is no small-game hunting, in general. Only once, after the second full moon, does the populace gather en masse, not excluding the women, to participate in the great hunt. The children sit at home for forty-eight hours, locked up with nothing to eat, and the same lot falls to the goats, driven into their pens
In order to participate in the great hunt, you must possess a quality native to every highlander—the ability to run effortlessly uphill and swiftly make your way through impassable thicket. You need to wield just one very singular weapon—a highland quarterstaff made of ash. You have to know what and when to shout
A flatlander has not the slightest idea how to shout in the mountains. When he’s conversing, a highlander is already deafening. But if he shouts with all the force of his lungs and throat, his cry will carry an extremely long way through the canyons, amplified by its reverberating echo. And since a highlander’s hearing is exceedingly acute, it’s possible, with a favorable wind, to carry on a conversation between the pastureland and the cornfields
Therefore, on the great hunt, it’s no trouble for the most distant hunter, using others to transmit his message, to notify the entire region covered by the hunt about whatever he needs to. Cries, normally throaty and only rarely accompanied by a whistle, which the wind mimics too closely, are, however, of quite different characters and convey, first of all, the nature of the beast a hunter has found. A supplemental cry tells whether the beast itself has been seen or could only be heard moving, whether a hunter happened on just tracks or a hole or a den. Some more cries, and everyone knows, based as often as not on nothing more than tracks, what kind of beast, its age, its notable features…And then it’s already being communicated whether the beast is ambling off or charging directly into battle. There are also briefings as to the hunter’s identity and location. And while the hunt is going after one animal, they flush out others, pursue them, lose them, and find them; when people attack or keep an animal at bay, they perish—for every detail and every human or animal ruse there is a particular tone, such that an observer initiated into the tongue and endowed with an ear can, without seeing anything and attending only to the exchange of shouts, compose a most detailed report on the hunt’s progress and append what each participant accomplished
In addition, the beasts, from rabbits to snow leopards, are sorted by degree of importance, and while pursuing a low-level beast, if a higher-level beast is flushed out or its tracks are discovered, it’s customary to give up the first for the sake of hunting the second
The quarry is dragged to one of the stations and divided by the chairman of the great hunt, who has lifetime tenure. The old wenny had been carrying out these duties for many years
And although Ivlita’s absence—God knows where she’d headed off—worried the old man, he could, in view of the approaching full moon, neither send anyone to look for her nor delay the hunt. The highlanders had already spent a whole week hauling firewood from the forest, arranging it along the edges of the glaciers so that, when the wood flared up, it would form a chain of fires along the passes, unbroken as far as possible, stretching down into the valley, crossing over to the opposite slope, and describing a ring from which, until the fires went out, no beast could break free. Wherever water or cliffs broke the chain willy-nilly, ferocious dogs were positioned on the heights, never leaving the places they were left, and on the canyon floor, in the woods, where a forest fire would be unavoidable, women were armed with mallets and battledores for scaring off the beast
Darkness eventually closed in, they set off to light the bonfires, and it was not yet midnight when the range of mountains standing over the unpronounceable hamlet burst into flame. Until morning, the women beat tin plates. Now the sky has turned garnet red, and the men launch a centripetal attack, whooping and ululating. They’re already broadcasting the news that they’ve flushed out a fox over there; here, they’ve encountered turs. The fox was foolish enough to swiftly hide in its den and was dug out alive, while the tur is unsuitable prey for the great hunt. After that, there was no news for a long time, as though the beasts, quitting the canyon in multitudes before the hunt, had escaped this time en masse. A shout from the pastureland guard reported that after the hunters’ descent a pair of stray wolves had crept out of the forest, tried to get away over the ice, but was captured by the dogs. This news didn’t cheer anyone
But now the highlanders had passed through the band of firs and let it be known from all points that they were entering the deciduous forest. Significant, exciting information began to come in. At first a bear, a young one, tried to run away, but was compelled to turn arou
nd and earned a pike in the belly, it died, but mauled the hunter, and he was howling for help. Another hunter who discovered a she-bear with cubs had, evidently, even worse luck, since no messages from him, except for the news that, as he said, a female bear was attacking, had come in
There were lots of bears that day, battles ensued particularly often, once the hunters began to join up in pairs and trios. They had to rejoice that fewer vines would be spoiled that year. But there were almost no deer, only they chanced upon Crucifix once again, which outweighed all other events in importance
Crucifix was the nickname the highlanders had given an old buck (peerless for the size of his antlers) they’d been chasing for many long years, and without success. There were hunts when Crucifix never showed himself, since he’d left for neighboring forests, but after a year or two he would invariably return to tease the hunters. This time, he appeared to one of them out of thin air: the highlander was crossing a meadow in the fog, the mists parted, and the elusive creature stood at something like thirty paces from him. His quarterstaff struck the deer in the side, scratched him, a few drops of water and blood
The real hunt begins only with a deer. You have to run for hours, never stopping, and with enough speed not to lose sight of it for good; to be able to recognize when the beast is about to play a trick by doubling back and letting the hunter pass on ahead; to know where to appoint a rendezvous with fresh reinforcements so that, when you’re completely out of breath, you can hand off the pursuit. In contrast to combat with bears or snow leopards, and to some extent, wolves, this really is a hunt in common, in which success depends on competent leadership and the strictest agreement
When he received word that Crucifix had been detected and was moving north-northeast, toward the upper reaches of the canyon, the chairman at once ordered an end to any other chase in favor of hunting Crucifix. Those occupying outlets from the forest to the east and those attacking from the north were ordered to stop, while the western units had to run, to the point of passing out, at the tail of the beast that had gone uphill, and the southern units were to hurry from the flank to back them up. The deer proceeded without tricks, but very slowly, stopping every minute and letting them catch up, as though some misgivings prevented him from trusting the headwaters of the little river. But was it misgivings? He didn’t turn, and his behavior was so strange that the old man had to question whether the dispatches were accurate. One of the trackers reported that Crucifix must be exhausted, although the loss of blood was minimal. Exhausted, already?
But the wenny’s perplexity gave way to alarm when the shouts conveyed that the deer had allowed a hunter to come so close he could not have missed and would have struck Crucifix in the head with the point of his stick had he not seen the deer carrying the tree of death between his antlers. The tree of death? Didn’t that mean every one of the beast’s pursuers was in peril of perdition? But would anyone really forgo the hunt?
The stream that flows through the hamlet takes its source not from the glaciers, like others, but from a mercury lake, overflowing in the finest cascade, and forming below the waterfall also something like a lake, but swampy, overgrown with grass, surrounded by bogs and birch copses. Into just this swamp the hunters drove Crucifix, who wasn’t changing his path, but was traveling more and more slowly
At last, the deer ran out to the forest marge near the waterfall and halted. Toward him, cutting between him and the waterfall, ran the eastern unit of hunters. When they saw the elusive creature, they halted, not daring to move another step
The deer’s antlers were tall, taller than he was, in the form of a cross, and no one could comprehend how he could bear such a crooked cross. A bony skeleton tree stretched out on the cross entwined and entangled it with branches covered in rosebuds
And suddenly the deer emitted a call, and a vague rumble was heard in reply, not exactly a thundering, nor a trampling. And no matter how dangerous the sight of death, the implication of the trampling, rapidly dawning on the hunters, was even more dangerous: wisents were moving in
The wisent has become nearly extinct in the mountains, like the snow leopard. Sometimes their herds, reaching a dozen head, still wander in remote northern canyons, and it even happens that herds, after joining together, abandon one canyon for its neighbor in search of better food or fleeing some kind of trouble. They say, however, that in years of great misfortune, the wisents migrate from the northern slope to the southern, increasing the magnitude of the calamity by their incursions. Admittedly, no one remembers the last time this happened
While it’s possible to vanquish a single wisent, what can you do against an avalanche, even with a rifle, not to mention a quarterstaff? Take to your heels? It’s permissible to be cowardly in life, but not on the great hunt, there’s no retreating on the great hunt
When they heard the trampling, the western bunch of hunters also halted. And then they rushed out onto the swale, past the deer, toward their comrades. Everyone waited. You could hear the herd breaking through the forest, getting closer. Each knew: he would be driven back into the swamp or trampled. And the deer?
The animal let out another cry, truly mocking, and disappeared as though it had melted away. And with Crucifix’s exit, the trampling died down instantly, and it became clear to the highlanders that there were no wisents, that it was a trick of the spirits that protected the deer
How much fury and disappointment was in the hunters’ cries! But the wenny, on learning the outcome of the pursuit, did not grow angry, rather, he became even more unsettled. And although he could not forbid the unlucky hunters to fan out over the canyon, killing the pestering bears, and managed to conduct to a successful end a chase after some wild boars spooked from the lower reaches of the canyon, paying for it with an equal number of people, although a lynx turned up as a special bonus among their trophies—the incident with the trampling did not cease worrying him. A deer’s mischief? No, a prophecy of shared perdition! But what kind, from where?
Moonrise put an end to the hunt. Taking advantage of the wonderful night, the highlanders, without flagging, dragged their quarry from all points to the wenny’s station. And when noon arrived, a heap of beastly carcasses was already rising around the chairman’s hut, and a row of human corpses they would have to bury, wrapped, avenged, in the hides of their beastly murderers or of an animal of the same species. If the murderer was absent, and its species likewise missing, the hunter was buried temporarily, until the day of vengeance…
Ivlita heard the exchange of shouts and discerned what was happening. But she, starved, exhausted, did not abandon the glacier on which the dying Jonah lay
At first, she wanted to descend and summon help. Jonah stopped her. He was dying, anyway, since he could neither begin anew his secret pursuit nor give it up. Let Ivlita stay with the dying man, not abandoning him needlessly
Once he’d voiced his request, Jonah spoke no more; she didn’t know whether he couldn’t or wouldn’t. And so he reposed on his side, just as he had fallen, and gazed unblinkingly at Ivlita. She turned her face away, seated next to him, now tracing patterns in the snow with her finger, now staring into the valley, from which, along with fumes, first dusk was ascending, and then night. Were there stars in the sky that night? When day began to break, Ivlita called them to mind, but could no longer find anything…
The hunters’ bonfires reddened the sky so that dawn lost all meaning. The drumbeat rising up from the canyon made waiting for death down below and up above solemnly triumphal to the point of absurdity. But were they hunting below? And here? Were not the fox they were finishing off there and Ivlita one and the same? And Ivlita suddenly realized that the haze creeping over the country was deadly. To stand up, to run, no matter where, if only to keep safe, live a little longer. And, strangest of all, where had her fear of death come from, why did things suddenly matter?
Ivlita jumped up. But the dying man’s hand had latched onto her clothing and literally ossified. She’d have to unclench it…But
Ivlita was in no state to touch Jonah…She wanted to save herself, saw that it was impossible, and froze with a presentiment of impending death
Jonah had held out in silence all day. But when the summons for the completed hunt rebounded along the glacier and the cliffs, he couldn’t, in the end, restrain himself. His first words were barely audible, then grew louder, and, to the degree that night grew deeper, the dying man’s voicing had already turned into a cry. How badly he wanted his friends below to hear him, too. Not despairing for a moment, he struggled furiously to overcome conditions unfavorable to sound, received no answer, and cried out unceasingly
Is it a human being roaring, or a tempest? What kind of person could rage like that? This legless fellow? Closing her eyes and covering her ears, Ivlita wanted to go deaf, but could not. However indifferent she had been to the wind, her skin was ready now to burst under its gusts (or the gusts of words), and she could not imagine bearing the trial any longer. If not for the hand
It didn’t matter what he was shouting about. But his voice was so insolent, so insulting, that Ivlita recalled her father
And indignation took hold of her. Without opening her eyes, she stepped over to the place where the voice exploded from below, and when her foot felt something hard, she began stomping
The voice broke off, but did not fall silent, continuing to thicken. Ivlita stomped, but could not force it to shut up. She weakened and collapsed