An angler sucks a jug.
The water seals and gets its hold;
The angler feels and gives a tug.
Above the ice he’s having fits,
Below the ice a long tail flits;
For the river takes it south.
Steeped in the vacuum of her dreams,
A mirror’s empty till
A man rides through it. Once she gleams,
And once she moves, then she is still.
The filament snaps in the light,
But yet she is a lovely sight,
As the river bears her south.
The gold a dragon could not keep
Came to a woman’s hand;
Then thieving kinsmen, diving deep,
Found out a safe in sinking sand.
Dying, they would not tell the place,
Nor does the water yield a trace,
As the river sweeps on south
“Nobly sung,” Piscator applauded, “and I have no doubt the river runs through much history, which could be profitably studied in the non-fishing months, if there were any, which, praise be, there are not.” He nodded to me. “It’s your turn now, sir.”
“I don’t know any songs that’d be suitable,” I said.
Piscator eyed me as though I was a scholar who had flunked his lesson. “If you can’t appropriate anything from better men, as I do half the time, why, put one together yourself, as I do the other half.”
“I can’t do that,” I confessed, feeling my inadequacy. “I tried last night, and — ”
“You did!” Golias, who had been gazing downstream, snapped his face toward me. “What was it about?”
“Oh, nothing much,” I said, wishing that I hadn’t mentioned it. “But last night, when I was taking my watch, the moon set the river mist glowing, and the trees, where they came out of the dark at all, seemed wading in it. You could see a long ways, all soft light and blackness, and you could hear everything from the wings of night hawks to the call of wolves; and yet it was very quiet. I sort of thought I’d pass the time putting it into a poem, but I didn’t get to first base.”
“Why didn’t you just go ahead?” Piscator wanted to know. “Making a song is like tying a fly. Granted the proper materials — and it seems to me that you had them to hand — all that is necessary is skill, which is only to be acquired with diligence.”
“Yeah?” I said, beginning to feel a little peevish. “I sweated at it for hours, and all I turned out was ‘The river is’; and then I never could decide what.”
Golias continued to look at me. “We’ll have to see what comes of that,” he said finally.
Not sure what he meant, I didn’t comment, though nothing came of it that afternoon. We had a pleasant time, and old Piscator turned out to be as good with a rod and line as he thought he was. I never tasted fish to equal those we broiled over coals on the raft that night.
19
Big and Green
THE ONLY SOUR THING about our life on the raft was our relationship to Jones. This troubled us less than it might have for the reason that we inevitably came to take it for granted. If clothes don’t make the man, a man’s status cannot be disregarded. No matter what his potentialities, what he actually does with his time is the index by which he is classified. Lucius put in his time being a donkey, and it became increasingly difficult to think of him as anything else. He could not talk, so we got out of the habit of addressing him. On his part, he felt the chasm of which we were generally oblivious and except at meal times avoided us as much as the limits of the craft permitted.
But though that gave us concern when it crossed our minds, Golias and I were happy. “I hate to think of abandoning ship,” I told him, as we were having an after supper smoke a few days after our meeting with Piscator. “You say we ought to reach the road to the Oracle tomorrow?”
“Some time in the afternoon by my reckoning.” He puffed on his pipe a moment. “It’s not much of a road; just wheel tracks leaving an old landing. We’ll have to keep our eyes skinned.”
“Then how do we get back?”
He shrugged. “The best way we can, but don’t start to worry about that yet. There’s a hatful of parasangs between the river and the Oracle, and, as I believe I’ve told you, the Warlocks are rugged.”
“A mountain range figures to be rugged,” I remarked, “but if a road runs over it, it shouldn’t be too bad a climb.”
“Oh, the terrain is the last thing you worry about in that part of Broceliande,” he informed me.
Some time later he lay down to sleep, leaving me to keep watch for snags and sand bars. At least there had been nothing else to watch out for on preceding nights. For that reason I was caught short when a boat hove into view.
River acoustics are peculiar. At times it’s possible to hear small sounds for incredible distances, while at others you can’t hear two claps of thunder having a knock-down-drag-out just around the bend. That’s the way it was with the steamboat. As far as I was concerned, it had made no sound until just before it came into sight, shooting sparks from its funnels and lighted up like Saturday night.
With the whole river to swim in, there was no reason why the ship couldn’t give us plenty of room; but our helplessness made me nervous. It might be possible to find bottom with a pole and maneuver us to a certain extent; yet if I altered our course, I might be moving us more into the path of the vessel. In the end I decided to depend upon the pilot to spot us and steer around.
I wanted to wake Golias, but it seemed foolish to rouse him to show him a steamship. He would know, of course, that I was doing it for moral support; and it was this that determined me. Even when the boat started to cut across the river toward us, I didn’t say anything, for I knew it was only following the channel. It was therefore only at the last minute that I yelled.
“Hey, you sons of bitches, look where you’re going!”
My shout roused Golias. “Come here and help!” I cried, trying to shove the raft out of danger; but instead of joining me he sprang to where Lucius was shying away at the farthest corner from the onrushing ship.
“It’s too late!” he barked. “Jump for it!”
In the moment it took me to consider his advice I saw him catch Jones by the hind legs and tip him overboard. No doubt he followed an instant later, but I didn’t watch. The boat wasn’t going to miss us, and I was on the side nearest it. I dived, and dived deep.
Luckily river shipping is shallow draft. Ordinarily that would have been more of an underwater swim than I could manage, but the river and the vessel’s engines were collaborating to give me clearance. I was well astern of the boat when I surfaced. Finding myself in no danger, I began treading water, yelling for Golias. He didn’t answer, and the current was sweeping me rapidly away from the zone of the accident. When I had rested my lungs, I commenced working my way toward the west bank.
I had made a mile or so of southing before I got ashore and clawed my way out of the river to the comparative dryness of the bottomlands. Aside from being wet, chilly, and tired, I looked forward to daylight without optimism. I felt sure that my friends would make for the west bank, too, but there certainty ended. I couldn’t be sure Golias had succeeded in staying with Jones. Never having given it a thought, I had no idea how well a jackass could swim. And I couldn’t guess whether they would land above or below me.
When it got light, a thing it took its time about doing, I began my search. The tangled growth of the bottomlands was hard on a naked man. I persisted with little rest, though, and around noon I saw most of the raft hung up on a sand bar not far off shore. It was pleasant to eat again; but once I was aboard I felt the loneliness acutely. There’s hardly such a thing as being lonesome outdoors, but a house or a boat with a cabin — even the raft, as long as it had the wigwam on it — was made for company. By next morning I had the jimjams and decided not to wait any longer.
As Golias hadn’t come by then, I felt sure he would not. My best chance of seeing him again,
as well as the only thing I could think of to do, was to try to find the Oracle. Working the raft over to the bank, I dressed, made myself a food package, belted on Golias’ knife, sailed my fancy, white plumed hat into the river, and set out.
Probably I would have been wiser to plug along down the bank until I came to the old road Golias had mentioned. I was, however, sick of the thick underbrush, squashy footing, rank air, and numerous snakes of the bottomlands. Free of them, I began to climb. At first the ascent was a steady sweep out of the valley, then the ground crumpled into hills.
The next day I ran into grief of a sort that I might have anticipated but had not. Out of the foothills and in the Warlocks proper, I found that I had left summer behind in the valley. Fall had hit early in this high country, and it grew steadily colder as I climbed. Whenever I stopped to rest the chill reached me; and the forest was dismal. Oaks predominating, there were dangling leaves to cackle in the wind; but many branches were bare. Around three, maybe, clouds put the sun out. Then the ceiling started to drop. At worst, a sheltered place to make camp was necessary to survival, and I pushed myself to the limit. Yet hard as I drove myself, I wasn’t keeping warm.
It was almost dark in the woods when I reached the first down grade since leaving the foothills. Glad of any relief from the cutting wind on the ridge, I rapidly descended. The way was steep, but there was a deer run, more or less following the course of a brook, to guide me. The stream itself was black with cold water which snarled as it pitched from one level to the next.
The reward for my hurrying was a piece of scenery that gave me the creeps. Just as a house can be far more lonesome than the outdoors, nothing in the woods can be as desolate as a clearing. Above the wan trees fencing this one I could see rocky knobs with the general appearance of warts. Viscous clouds slid across their tops, endless as flowing water. They were nearly as dark and chill looking as the brook.
That stream, which I had eventually crossed, swept around behind me and reappeared as a falls over to my left. Where it did so there was a grassed-over rise resembling a sawed-off Indian mound. Beyond it, which is to say, on the other side of the falls, there was a jumble of boulders.
Those rocks seemed likeliest to offer a sheltered place to camp, and so, although not liking the idea of staying in the vicinity, I approached them. I was in the act of passing the mound when I noticed a hole in the side toward me. Investigating farther, I found first another hole and then a crude doorway. Nobody answered when I called out, so with some misgivings I entered.
At first I only observed that the wind no longer reached me. As my eyes grew used to the dimness, though, I found that the place had other and most unexpected virtues. The faint light supplied by the several air vents showed me a fireplace with a fire all laid. When I got this going, which took time because of my stiff fingers and because I wasn’t handy with flint and steel, I discovered new wonders. There was a balsam bunk in one corner, with a bear robe to use as cover. There was a small supply of food, including part of a ham dangling from the ceiling, a bottle of wine, and a few cooking utensils. Most surprising of all, there was an altar, whose candles supplemented the firelight nicely. By their light I was able to read what was carved on the altar’s base: “The needy are welcome to the High Hermitage.”
I qualified. There was no doubt in my mind that whoever had conceived the practical charity of erecting that wayfarer’s hostel had saved my life. It was an hour or more before the fire and wine could drive the chill from my bones. Meanwhile the wind increased to gale strength; and when I went to the brook for water, I felt snow on my face.
Exhausted by exercise and exposure, I turned in as soon as I had eaten. I was in no hurry to get up in the morning, but full day — another cheerless one — had just found its way into that nick in the Warlocks. The snow hadn’t amounted to much and had drifted clear of the rocks and bare earth near the hollow mound. When I stepped outside after breakfast, therefore, there were no tracks to indicate whence the man I found waiting had come.
“I thought I noticed smoke,” he remarked, “though hard wood doesn’t throw up much you can see on a day like this.”
“No,” I said. I wanted to be polite to him, but I didn’t feel like conversation. He was, and I checked my vision by making sure other things retained their normal hues, a bright green. I don’t mean the clothes he wore, although they were also, but the man’s hide was shamrock colored. So was his hair, which he wore in a Buffalo Bill bob, and his beard. A full grown, green beaver, it sprayed out to cover his chest.
I would have felt better about it if he had been a smaller man. He was some eight feet tall, every inch of him built for speed and power. Moreover, he sported a battle axe with a massive head climaxing five feet of shaft.
“You haven’t seen anybody around, have you?” he asked, when we’d looked each other over.
“There’s been nobody here but myself.” I cleared my throat. “And I’m just about to leave.”
“It would be worth your while to stay,” he said.
I wasn’t sure whether he was suggesting or giving a command and didn’t quite feel like finding out. “What’s going on?”
He had been twirling that huge axe as easily as a policeman twirls a billy. Now he stopped and leaned on it.
“It’s a serious thing to do,” he said, half to himself, “and I wouldn’t do it except under orders; but right here a man is going to be plumbed and sifted.”
I was reasonably certain that he wasn’t talking about me, but I wanted to know it. “How?” I demanded.
“With this.” He lifted the axe from the ground and set it down again. While he did so he continued to stare at me, and something he read in my eyes made his green lips twitch. “I doubt,” he said, “if you’d have had the nerve to chop off my head.”
The gratuitous sneer got to my pride. He wasn’t the only one of us that had used a battle axe, though there was no reason for letting him know that I had done so but once.
“Oh, I’ve killed with those things in my day,” I bragged, indicating his weapon.
“You have?” He looked at me some more, then he glanced in the direction whence I had entered the clearing. “He’s not really due yet,” he declared, “but we’d better go behind the chapel to be safe.”
“Who’ll be safe?” I enquired.
“You will.” He wasn’t rough when he took my arm, but I knew I couldn’t pull away from that grip. “Now,” he said, when he had steered me behind the mound, “you seem to know all about battle axes. What would you say if a man invited you to swing one at him?”
I tried to hide my uneasiness behind a laugh. “There’s no hitch to dishing it out with an axe; it’s taking it that hurts.”
“Exactly,” he said, as if admiring my judgment. “Now as long as it’s so easy, chop my head off.”
It did not raise my confidence when he thrust his weapon into my limp hand. On the contrary, I felt more nervous than ever.
“What’s the gag?”
He laughed. “Nobody’s hurting you or even threatening to, but you’re frightened to death, aren’t you?”
Because he was so right, I became angry. While I was trying to think of a retort, he reached for his axe again.
“Very well;” he said, “as long as you’re afraid to behead me, give it here.”
I jumped back. If I surrendered the axe to anybody as crazy as he obviously was, I might be committing suicide.
“Keep away from me, or I’ll let you have it,” I warned. “Stand back, damn you!”
He crowded my retreat along the rear of the hermitage until the brink of the brook was a step behind me. My mind had room for only two convictions. I wasn’t turning the axe over to that green madman, and I wasn’t going to risk pneumonia by getting a soaking on that wintry day. There was but one alternative. Bracing myself, I swung.
My blow, designed to scare him into giving me space, was a sweeping one aimed more or less at his hip. It didn’t catch him there, because he did
a deep knee bend. The heavy bit went through his neck, balked at the strong bone, and then continued. The head bounced off and rolled toward me. Horrified, I kicked it away.
“You asked for it, you hundred proof idiot!”
As I voiced this self-justification, I was glad to have the axe to lean on, but my victim asked no such support. Leaning forward, he picked up his head and dusted the right cheek. Then he stood at ease, holding his head by the hair. The eyes popped open.
“Nervewracking, isn’t it?” I couldn’t have said it, even if I had thought of anything to say. “The only point in this business,” he went on, when I was silent, “is to make you appreciate the man who is coming. As long as you happen to be here, it’s due him for you to know what he has done and is doing. Oh, brace up! I was the one who got hit, remember; and I told you you’d be safe.”
“Yeah,” I admitted, unable to take my eyes from the detached head.
“Suppose it had been otherwise. Suppose you’d bargained to let me hit you back, provided I was able to, and then you had seen me pick up my head.”
My mind stumbled over imagining the horror of such a situation. “That wouldn’t have been a fair bargain, if you knew you’d live, whereas the other fellow’d be killed.”
The head raised its brows. “The point is, I think, not whether a man has been taken advantage of, but simply whether it’s worth while to keep an agreement.”
“What in hell’s the use of an agreement to a guy in two pieces? Dead ones, I mean,” I added as an afterthought.
He lifted his head to the stump of his neck. The blood, which had welled but not spouted, seemed to act as glue to knit the matching parts. After wagging his head a couple of times to test its security, he stared down at me broodingly from his restored height.
“You give yourself away by looking so defiant,” he remarked. “Now I allowed the fellow in question a year to think it over — and it’s astonishing how much sophistry an industrious mind can crowd into a year — but he always came to the same conclusion. I’m expecting him here, and he’s expecting me to behead him.”
Silverlock (Prologue Books) Page 25
