King Dog

by Le Guin, Ursula K.

  He and Tassalil leave by the inner door; the others bow. A silence while they regroup about the fire.

  KIDA: That is the man who, on a jewelled throne, in a golden city, a powerful, rich, beloved king, tried to get rid of his kingship — give it away, gamble it away, anything, so that he could go hunting in the woods. And now having lost it all, he stands here, a fugitive with lice in his shirt, and says he’ll win his kingdom back! He’s beyond me.

  BATASH: He is beyond us all.

  ROMOND: At the top, you have to look down. At the bottom, you have to look up.

  KIDA: He looks neither up nor down, I think. He stands aside.

  BATASH: He is my king. He has come back. He is beyond our questioning. Lice in his shirt or not, he is the king!

  Very angry, the old man moves away.

  KIDA: Is he mad or sane?

  ROMOND: Sane, I think, but a gambler. For the highest stakes. — Why did he kneel down to Shiros?

  KIDA: Why, she’s the heir, she’ll be queen after him.

  ROMOND: Queen of what? The kingdom he lost? What did he kneel to in her?

  KIDA: He’s been driven into hope. As Harish into despair.

  Batash comes back to them, his indignation having found words.

  BATASH: We are the lice in his shirt. And I am glad, I’m honored to be the king’s louse! You’ve never understood him, Kida, you never will. He’s a man who does his duty. It’s as plain as that. Good night, my lords.

  Batash goes stiffly out.

  KIDA: Good night, my lord Batash. (To Romond) If only that were plain!

  ROMOND: To the clear heart all things are clear.

  KIDA: And all things simple to the simple mind.

  In the Anteroom of the Queen’s Rooms in Jogen Fort. It is morning, bright on the snowy steeps out the deep narrow window. A barber, using a formidable straight razor of iron, is shaving Ashthera’s head to the scalp. The queen, Romond, Bolhan, and a couple of others are there: this is a ceremony, albeit a private one. As Ashthera comes up dripping and shaven from the rinse, Bolhan stares savagely, with misery.

  BOLHAN: Dutiful Ashthera! Like a plucked chicken. What good does that do Fezat?

  ASHTHERA: None.

  TASSALIL: How did he die, Ashthera?

  ASHTHERA: (indicates his lower belly) A lance here, they said. I never saw him. We were retreating. We couldn’t bury him, or any of them. Where is the altar-place of Jogen?

  TASSALIL: Under the round-tower. There’s only the Old Goddess here.

  ASHTHERA: Any stone dropped in any pool makes the same circle.

  TASSALIL: I’ll bring the oil and grain.

  She goes out. Ashthera puts on a clean shirt: white, and not unlike the priests’ clothing in the Temple in Aremgar.

  ASHTHERA: Will you sacrifice with me, Bolhan?

  BOLHAN: I’ve given the Goddess enough. My health, two years of my life, my money, my brother. Oil and grain aren’t what she eats! Nor barber’s sweepings either.

  The barber and his little son are sweeping up the haircuttings with care and reverence, and putting them in a carved box, in what is clearly a ceremonial act. Ashthera nods to Bolhan without reproof, and goes out, followed by Romond.

  The Altar-Place of Jogen.

  The basement of a tower: a circular, vaulted room without windows. A bowl of fire on the altar is the only light. The altar stone is massive and phallic; behind it stands a carved wooden figure two or three feet high, very old, cracked, blackened. It is in the same dancing posture as the tapestry figure in the Inner Room of the Palace in Aremgar, and holds the Sun and the Moon; but this figure is female, not androgynous. It is crude, sinister, and powerful. Between the incurving wall and the altar stand Romond, Batash, Kida, fifteen or twenty women and men of Jogen, and Tassalil. Ashthera, officiating as priest, offers ceremonial wooden vessels of grain and oil. His face in the flickering light of the fire is grave, calm, and wet with tears.

  ASHTHERA: My brother! Fezat my brother! Go now. Go free!

  He pours out the oil on the fire, which flares and steadies. He speaks the ritual words with solemnity and intensity:

  Let the boat go from shore.

  Let the ship go from shore.

  Let the soul go from shore.

  Let the river of one shore carry him to you.

  Romond watches, interested, intent, detached as always. Tassalil watches, her face full of hate and anger as she stares at the figure of the Goddess. Ashthera at last turns to them, his expression tranquil. Tassalil turns and hurries out of the room without waiting for him.

  Images of Winter in Jogen.

  A hunt on the snow-covered high hills: the hunters knee-deep in snow — the bear glimpsed running.

  A group of women are working and singing a monotonous spinning-song in the great hall of the fort. Ashthera and Shiros laugh at a kitten who is facing up, puffing and spitting, to an inquisitive hound-puppy.

  A bright, icy day in the courtyard of the fort; various occupations and activities are in full swing. In a relatively clear corner, Ashthera is giving Hantammad a lesson in swordsmanship. Chickens run squawking, pigs grunt, one of the guard dogs barks incessantly. Kartari, the man who came in wounded with Ashthera, stands on a crutch beside Romond watching the demonstration of parry and lunge.

  KARTARI: I never saw anybody use a sword like that. As if he shut his eyes and let the sword do the seeing. Nobody’s ever touched him.

  ROMOND: (watching fascinated) I believe it.

  In the hail of Jogen, on a winter night, snow thuds at the shutters of the slit-windows. At the fireside, Romond is telling a story to a large circle of listeners, men, women, children.

  ROMOND: So he’s sailing along through the air like a bird, pleased with himself as he can be, when all of a sudden something makes him turn around and look over his shoulder —

  In the shadows, Bolhan and Harish Ashed are drinking. Bolhan whistles a dreary little tune between his teeth; Harish sits sodden, staring, in despair. Snow at the windows. Snow blowing on the wind in the darkness outside the walls.

  The Hall of Jogen.

  Later on in the same evening, the circle at the fire has been reduced to the king and queen, Romond, Batash, Kartari, and a few women, who are spinning, as is the queen.

  BATASH: Where did you learn those tales of yours, Traveller? Where’s the land you lived in, before you set out on your travels? West of here?

  ROMOND: Not west. Not east. Too far to say, too far to remember.

  ASHTHERA: Across the river no one can cross.

  He smiles, watching Romond. One of Shiros’s kittens is sleeping on his knee.

  ONE OF THE WOMEN: Is it a country of magicians?

  ROMOND: Magic’s in the eye that sees. The mind’s art is knowledge. But they’d seem magicians here: people who live two hundred years, who have no illnesses, who never go hungry, who never have wars.

  KARTARI: Do such gods praise any gods?

  ROMOND: Not with altars or sacrifice.

  TASSALIL: How, then?

  ROMOND: Perhaps with — by upholding the idea of truth, the idea of justice —

  TASSALIL: That old story. By righteous action God is praised. So much the worse for your people, who have so much happiness and waste it! What’s cold and hunger and sickness and fear of death, what’s war, even, if one could be free of soul? But to endure all that and to give praise for it — that’s slavery. That’s the betrayal.

  Ashthera is watching her gravely. His hair has grown out about two months’ worth, a crewcut effect. She speaks to all of them, but always to him.

  TASSALIL: I want to say this, once, before spring comes, and I see my husband go, and my home destroyed, and my children the servants of foreigners. I’ll be silent then, but I’ll speak now. No god deserves one grain of sacrifice, one word of praise. Let the Dancer dance, and make and unmake the worlds, what’s that to me? What do I see of the dance but lies defeating truth, and injustice given power, and cruelty triumphing over courage? What god wor
th worship would let a child die frightened and in pain? What god would let Kammin defeat Ashthera? I will not dance that dance. I will not ask for mercy or for justice. I will praise the one thing worth praising: our love, our fidelity, ours, not the gods. We don’t live forever, not even two hundred years, forty or fifty years and we die — and that’s what I praise, our mortal love. We love because we die. In our death is our freedom.

  After a long pause Ashthera answers.

  ASHTHERA: I can’t answer you with comfort. I lost that along with truth.

  TASSALIL: That lie you suffered for, that lie that brought the war, that wasn’t your lie. You spoke as duty bade you. It was the god’s lie, not yours!

  Ashthera sets the little sleepy cat carefully down on the hearth and strokes it, then stands up. He speaks softly, gazing into the fire; he and Tassalil are utterly concentrated upon each other now.

  ASHTHERA: Peace gets lost when truth does; and happiness I suppose goes with them. But there is joy, Tassalil. I know joy. I learned it first in the forest, alone; and then with you. And sometimes winning at dice, and sometimes this past year, in the war, in defeat. You can’t earn it, you can’t keep it, you fall into it. Joy is the abyss between myself and God. It is the river.

  TASSALIL: In which you drown.

  ASHTHERA: Alone, maybe. But there is... fidelity, you called it. Mortal love. Trust between us. A boat on the river.

  TASSALIL: Yes. You I will trust. Not the god, but you.

  ASHTHERA: Do you trust me, Tassalil? You foresee me dead, everything lost, come spring, when I promised life and hope. If I win my kingdom back, and if I come again to Aremgar, will you come with me then?

  TASSALIL: (bitterly) To the Palace gardens.

  ASHTHERA: They’ll be destroyed. All to do over. You are winter, you are the north, you are the dark. You only know me, you among them all. I am your truth, you said. You are my freedom, Tassalil.

  She does not answer. They stand apart from the others, intensely together but not touching, before the deep, hot light of the fire. A faint clamor of the dogs baying down in the courtyard, and then far off the howling of wolves on the mountainsides. Ashthera lifts his head listening.

  ASHTHERA: The wolves. Her dogs.

  At the Outer Gate of Jogen.

  It is morning in early spring, a bright, windy day of thaw — snow still lying in shadowed places, water running, puddles flashing sunlight, leafbuds on branches. The double outer gate of the fort is standing wide open. Ashthera and a troop of about twenty-five men are outside the gates, ready to go, and the people of the fort are gathered in the courtyard and gateway to see them leave. Ashthera is talking to his brother Bolhan.

  ASHTHERA: If I’m killed, you’ll be regent until Shiros is crowned. I leave you a short, encumbered lease on a roofless house. Live there as kings live, brother!

  Bolhan, hung-over and hangdog, nods; and they embrace. The king turns to Harish Ashed.

  ASHTHERA: Till your wound’s healed, Harish, guard my treasure here.

  They both look up at the window of the gate tower, from which Tassalil, Shiros, and Hantammad watch them.

  ASHTHERA: I don’t think it likely, but if they do mount an attack from Soya —

  HARISH: I can hold the fort.

  Ashthera smiles, embracing Harish. Romond has come forward from the gateway. Ashthera turns cheerfully to him.

  ASHTHERA: Well, goodbye, Traveller!

  ROMOND: I’m coming with you, if I may. My skills in medicine might come in handy.

  Ashthera considers him a little quizzically: not at all mistrustful, but curious as to his motives. When he speaks it is — as always when he speaks to Romond — with a certain caution and respect, yet easily.

  ASHTHERA: This isn’t your war, Romond.

  ROMOND: No, it’s not. But I’ve been in your service over a year now —

  ASHTHERA: Friend, but not servant. Nor subject. I am not your king.

  Romond replies after a slight pause, with a slight smile.

  ROMOND: That’s true.

  ASHTHERA: Come on, then.

  The small troop of armed men set off on foot. Ashthera turns once and unsheathes his sword, holds it up with a flourish and a broad smile, looking up at the gate tower. He sheathes it and goes on. A couple of the dogs of Jogen have broken loose and race excitedly along with the troop as they go down the mountainside. One of the soldiers is whistling ‘What did your Grandmother say,” in the minor.

  Part Four: King Ashthera’s War

  Images of the Guerrilla War.

  The general mood of the imagery of Part Two, King Kammin’s War, was exciting and dramatic, full of action and tension. The guerrilla war goes on for three years, and the images used to show it would be quieter and grimmer, moving into increasing poverty and weariness. People are dominated by landscape — small figures in wide shots.

  Ashthera, Romond, a troop of thirty or forty are concealed in thickets, watching the deployment of a troop of mounted enemy soldiers in farmlands. Ashthera’s men look like bandits; Kammin’s men are well fed and in notably trim battle harness. They don’t wear a uniform, but they have a distinctive style of clothing and gear, and they have their breastplate or shield or helmet decorated with the stylized hawk device.

  Night, very dark, so dark one can see only vague bulks and the edges of things: an obscure creeping figure... a knife cutting picket lines... horses nickering and then taking off at a gallop into the dark, while voices shout.

  An autumn day on a farm. Kartari is helping a few peasants, mostly women, load seed-grain onto a farm cart. They work hurriedly, and set off down a rutted lane, tugging at the harness of the oxen to make them hurry. A donkey colt trots after the cart. An old man comes hobbling after them, swearing and shouting.

  OLD PEASANT: Wait!

  PEASANT WOMAN: I thought you wasn’t coming with us, Dad.

  OLD PEASANT: Well, can’t you wait, wait till I get on! I set fire to the barn. They won’t get nothing out of us!

  As he talks with crazy satisfaction, he is hauling himself up onto the cart. The peasants wince and look back at their farm. Smoke is blurring the little barn.

  KARTARI: Well done, Dad!

  The ox-drawn cart jolts on

  Summer: grain fields on fire — the thick gold stand of grain, the line of fire pale in the sunlight, the black waste smoldering. Some of Kammin’s soldiers stand at the edge of the field, staring, helpless.

  In the forest, a guerrilla camp. Romond is bandaging a man’s arm.

  WOUNDED MAN: Aren’t you going to put mud on it?

  ROMOND: No.

  WOUNDED MAN: Back home, we get mud and make a plaster on cuts like that.

  ROMOND: Keeping ’em clean works better. You’ll see.

  The man, a slow sort, looks dubious.

  An officer of King Kammin’s army, in splendid bronze and leather, is riding a good horse beside a stream, in lightly wooded country. The camera draws away from him across the stream. The sound of an arrow: thwish-thock. The man looks around, hunches his shoulders, crouches over slowly, slips out of the saddle almost as if he were doing some kind of trick riding, and lands in a heap. The heap is motionless. The horse does whatever the horse does — waits, or walks, or grazes, or takes fright. Silence. The sound of the stream.

  Rain, pelting down, thick. Hands, grubbing in mud for some kind of roots, digging greedily, desperately shoving whatever is found into a sack.

  King Kammin at the head of mounted troops sets out from the gates of the Palace in Aremgar, on a dark, rainy afternoon.

  Romond is walking in broken hill country, in a forest; he keeps looking around; he stops to check a small pocket compass and looks again at the hills and gorges, worried and puzzled. He pockets the compass and sets off back the way he came. About four yards from him a man comes blundering out of the trees: an armed soldier with the hawk device on his shield, a big man, also lost, looking panicky and exhausted. They stare at each other a moment in shock. The enemy soldier, with
an inarticulate moaning growl, draws his sword and comes heavily at Romond. After a moment of panic indecision Romond backs up while drawing something out of his pocket, some shining object which he hastily points at the soldier. The man stops in his tracks, staring. Very slowly his sword-arm drops; his knees buckle; and suddenly, grotesquely, he topples over. Romond has already stuffed the weapon away. He hurries forward, step ping over the motionless, staring man, and hurries into the woods, muttering as he goes.

  ROMOND: Damn fool, damn fool, damn fool —

  Romond is coming in from this venture to a guerrilla camp hidden in a fold of the hills. Ashthera, very thin and in ragged dented battle gear, but with a joyous smile, comes to greet him.

  ASHTHERA: Where the devil have you been!

  ROMOND: (shamefaced) I got lost —

  In twilight, at the edge of a ditch among spring weeds in flower, lies a hideously wounded, naked corpse. Farther down the ditch, three or four men are playing at dice; the stakes are the dead man’s clothes, sword, and helmet, neatly stacked; the hawk emblem is visible on the helmet. The gamblers’ voices are low: “Three tigers… Ten and ten...“