Half a Sky: The Coscuin Chronicles Book 2

by R. A. Lafferty

  Dana dangled atop the stockade wall. Other men had gone up ropes and were atop the wall also, but the stallion did not notice them. The beast knew which man was the Man. The more-than-animal came at Dana in a frenzied howling rush, very fast; thirty or forty miles an hour. And Dana felt fear.

  “But it works both ways, Old Stud,” he called loudly, for he always used his voice as one of his weapons in battle. He felt the wave of fear bounce back from the rampaging animal.

  Dana had felt this answering fear before: he had felt it in his first knife-fight with Judas Revanche; he had felt it in his confrontations and in his duel to the death with Ifreann Chortovitch the Son of the Devil. The fear that fuels the second courage will pour out from each antagonist equally.

  Crashing the fence, the stallion leapt high. It could reach Dana on his perch, reach him with the slashing teeth and cudgel fore-hoofs that had so savaged the top of that timbered wall.

  But at the moment of crash, Dana leapt high, up and over the hoofs and the teeth. He landed heavily behind the animal from his twenty-five foot drop. He landed and rolled, for he knew the ways of rearing murderous stallions. And the beast, as expected, flung itself backwards to pin the rolling Dana under its ton of high-impact weight.

  But Dana was caught under only by heel and ankle, and they too tough to be shattered on the churned-up, hoof-deep, loose earth. Then it became a question of who was rolling on which.

  Dana chopped the beast. Axe-like hand blows to the ganache, the lower jaw, can take considerable of the slashing bite out of a stallion. They are like blows to the throat of a man. They also stole the voice, muted the stallion's screaming roar for a while; they even delayed the gnashing teeth.

  In such combat Dana was like a worm with many a turn in him. He was onto the belly of the great animal, seeming to hold it as one wrestler might hold another in the pin. And now he had voice advantage which he never relinquished again.

  “Thou etalon, thou garanyon, thou stail; be thyself quiet,” he ordered. “How is it that thyself does not know of our kinship or my mastery?” Often one can master with the voice alone.

  But the stallion had a neck on him like an old King Saurian, like a great earth-shaking reptile. It was back with its savage teeth, seeking and wounding Dana, allowing no hiding-place anywhere on itself.

  Dana thrashed about like a snake or an eel, avoiding greater wound by the sharp incisors and by the high-crowned grinding teeth that are almost like canines in fighting stallions. When the animal heaved itself to its feet, Dana clung to its belly. Then around the belly and onto the back when the head on its stretched neck sought him on the under-side. And Dana was up onto the long neck itself when it swung up and around to have him from atop. Dana dug into the mane, into the high crine with hands and heels, and still delivered stunning blows to the head and lower jaw.

  “Thyself are like a spoiled child,” he chided the beast. “Thyself must recognize me, must do no spoil either to me or to thyself.” The Irish use the familiar form in talking to horses, believing them to be close cousins of men. Dana always called the giant fellow tu-sa, thyself.

  But then the big fellow reared and flung himself backwards, whip-swinging like a mountainous giant flail. He stunned himself with the hammer-blow of his own neck and head on the earth, but Dana was out from under too quickly for him.

  “Thou'rt too fat and heavy in the withers and loins for such manoeuvre, my cousin,” Dana admonished the animal. “Thou'rt too slow with the whipping of thy own body, too cumbrous in thy backlash. ‘Twould be good enough for riding the mares or the girls, but a fighting man or stallion must be like the very lightning.”

  The stallion was like the very lightning then; not for nothing was he the most fierce of the stallions ever. He was stunned and crazy lightning, but he struck. He was a recovering, rising, erecting lightning-bolt coming out of the ground, felling Dana with a fore-hoof that was a thunderbolt instantaneous with its own lightning strike. Then, gathering like a blinding cloud, high in the air, the animal came down in a five-pronged strike, four exploding hooves and the screaming gnashing mouth. Nor did Dana escape him.

  A ton of animal was on Dana in the form of four cudgels, and that mouth, too big to belong to any horse, had Dana by the head.

  Dana was swung high in the air then, a whipping swing intended to break his neck; most of his head was in the stallion's mouth. It was the animal's round, but it wasn't the final round. Dana rode the whipping with neck unbroke and with throat not too deeply torn. Dana might yet lose an eye or an ear; his whole skull might still be crushed. But Dana would not crush easily.

  A very strong hand of Dana, and a great wrist, dug into the stallion's mouth where the long back jaws gaped a little space from the Dana-head, then fingers that could crush a wolf's head were a-grip of the soft palate, the velum, the glottis of the great horse; and Dana was choking the animal from inside its own throat.

  The beast gagged Dana out as though he were a ball of phlegm. Then it rose in the air again with striking hooves cocked; yet it did not rise screaming this time nor so like lightning as before.

  Dana was out and beyond, and then he was upon the beast again. High on the neck of it once more, he seized the moment and knew that the tide had turned in his favor. At this same instant, half a dozen men left their viewing perches on the fence, also sensing the turn of the battle, and went hurriedly to bring another creature.

  “'twas a great round thyself fought,” Dana praised the beast sincerely. “Thou'rt a champion indeed and I was wrong to misdoubt thy lightning. But it is finished with now. Give over, cousin. I've no wish to punish thyself more.”

  Dana was no more than half-blinded with blood and he was unbroken in major bone. He had been savaged by horses before. After all, each great cudgel that had hammered him had been no more than five-hundredweight of itself. Though terribly bruised and lamed, he was less slowed by it all than he would be on the following day.

  The animal reared and pitched ten dozen times yet, and flung itself down again and again. But Dana was somewhere a-mount the animal every time it rose again. Dana was the punishing burr that would not be shook out.

  Another hour did it. Dana rode the tired animal to a stand-still, riding on the back now and not on the neck. The animal reached around and nikkered Dana's legs with his teeth, but he did not really bite him more. A respect and friendship had developed between them.

  Dana rode and instructed the animal for another half hour then, moving him with his heels into the flanks, guiding and turning him with a hand on the side of his neck.

  “I'll have thee shod,” Dana told him. “And then I will give thyself to a lady.”

  There had been another neighing screaming in the distance for some while, and now it had come very close. The big stallion was very uneasy with it. He shook, not really with fear, but with confusion, not understanding what his role would be now.

  “Be thyself at all ease,” Dana told him. “The custom is broken.”

  Dana leapt to the earth and walked towards the big staked gate. He walked painfully now, much more difficultly than he rode. But he could not let himself stiffen up. There was still another ordeal for him to face that night. The stallion followed him in friendship, biting him gently and in companionable fashion on the shoulders, but not biting him to blood or hardly to bruise.

  With great turmoil the large gate had swung open. Another stallion, larger and younger than the old one, louder of voice, was in the gateway, partly restrained by twenty men with twenty ropes looped about him. One of these men was more avid then the others; he'd like to have tried this new king stallion himself. But the young stallion sounded and stood, with no regard at all for the men but only for the father stallion. The twenty looped ropes were slashed and pulled away from him. Then the young devil gathered himself into a surging charge at the father stallion, breathing fire literally.

  The young stallion had liked to feed on the sulphurous weeds of the methane swamps, and now his breath glowed fi
re-like in the star-lit dark. Such glowing breath on dark nights is sometimes seen even from horses that are not particularly savage.

  It was a screaming humping charge then. The old stallion stood ready and steady, still the king of all the horses on Basse-Terre and full of heart, for all his weariness.

  But Dana was between the thundering wild one and the old king.

  “Stad!” Dana thundered with his own thunder, “Stop!” And the young stallion reared high, braking with his great hind legs, plowing deep furrows with his hind hoofs. Then he was down on four legs again and almost nose to nose with Dana Coscuin, both of them fire-eyed and taut.

  “Stad!” Dana thundered again as the younger animal made to move against the both of them. The young beast stood angrily still at the command. (All horses understand Irish. It was the language they used anciently, back when horses still spoke with tongues.)

  “Thou'lt not slay thy father,” Dana spoke solidly. “I put an end to that custom now. Thou be new stallion here, but less of a devil one than thyself intended. In this, the old days end right now. Thy noble father will be shod and will become the property of a lady of this place.”

  Dana walked out through the big gate, and the old stallion followed him. The people stood back in recollected fear, but the old king horse was silent and aloof. The gate was closed on the huge young devil stallion. This one screamed and tore the turf all the night long, savaging the top of the fences as his father had done, enjoying himself. He would not admit that the old days had ended. Let any man of the island, even Dana, come back in; and there would be a new story.

  “You told the young devil that you would have the father shod, and then you would give him to a lady,” Celeste said, her own eyes sparking like stars from the excitement of the night. “The Angelene shoes horses as well as weaves. Let her shoe him and then bring him to me for mine.”

  “Not so, light head,” Dana told her. “Angelene Domdaniel will shoe him and she will own him. She is the lady. You are only the belle.”

  “We are already close friends,” Angelene said as she swung herself up on the king stallion. “I have visited him inside the palisade often and ridden him. He is savage only with men and devils. He has always known me the witch-woman just as he now knows you the master. You know that you have other business tonight? You understand ambush?”

  “I know it, I expect it, I understand it,” Dana said.

  “Is there anything I can do for you in it, me being able to see into these things?”

  “Nothing, Angelene, nothing.”

  “With what shall I ready your body then, when it is over with?” Angelene asked with sad, sly humor. “With aloes and myrrh?”

  “Not such, Angelene. Now they draw one neatly, and then use the new formaldehyde and other such compounds. It is all compounds now. The age of simple things is gone, which is part of what has gone wrong with the world.”

  “I know all these new things. I will be your body and tomb woman here, but I'll not want it to be for many years yet.”

  “Worry none about my body tonight, lady. It'll not be much more mangled than it is now. Pray for my soul a little. I'd asked that I not have to kill again. Tonight I may choose to kill for mere effect, and my willfulness worries me.”

  Angelene rode the tall animal down the steep ways towards the Great Thermal Springs near where she had her house and her fabriques. Dana took the higher way, along the edge of the estate named Greenfields, along the edge of the estate named Porte d’Enfer, towards his own House of Dana Cosquin which lay between those two estates. Dana had proved himself. He was both Dana Coq-à-l’âne and Dana Cosquin of the island legends, and that without having left off being Dana Coscuin of Bantry Bay.

  “He'll have nothing but indifferent big murdering men and bully boys now, now that he's not more than a shadow himself, if even that. I have seen the four of them. They are dangerous, but only as four simultaneous animals might be dangerous to me,” Dana reasoned to himself. “He'll not now have four such men as was Judas Revanche. There aren't in the world four such sincere and devoted killers, four such goodly bad men. He'll not have four such men as the one I killed in the hills behind St. Jean de Luz just off the Spanish border. That one was almost more man and more animal than myself. But I have seen these four looking at me in the daytime just past, and I will see them again before they see me.”

  Dana was musing about the four flunkies of Ifreann Chortovitch the Son of the Devil. Dana could, and he would, pick them off one by one; but first he would have his moment and his effect in the middle of them.

  “I assume that they have known the region for some time, and I have known it less than a full day,” Dana reasoned. “I assume also that I am smarter than they are. They appear to be a doltish bunch, too doltish. So it may be that they are unnaturally directed. They are too much alike. Four brothers could not be that much alike. So it may be that they are manifestations and not men. If they are men indeed, yet they may be manipulated as zombies by one mind I have encountered. They look too much alike; they do not seem to think or act of themselves; they have been impressed upon. It's possible that 'tis he who impresses them, even though he's dead. We know from the catechism that both the mind and the will survive death and can still influence.

  “Ah, my enemy, you've become four-formed and eight-handed in reaching for me. I'll show you that I'm a shattering man myself. And the reason your four flunkies look too much alike is that they all look too much like you.”

  Dana followed a meander, a hog-back ridge in the hills. He could not choose exactly the place of the encounter, since it was himself being ambushed, but he could choose the type of the place. They would have to come up to him, and he might be able to break down from them.

  “I haven't your treachery, my enemy,” Dana said silently, “but I have more flexibility than you. The only trap you understand is the dead-fall; you'd be inept at the running snare. You are lacking in human enjoyments and human experience, being what you are. You are lacking in such human enjoyments as hunting foxes, or playing foxes. You'll not understand such pleasure as ‘going to ground,’ even though yourself are now under the ground. You'll not understand about the shrew who was able to eat up four elephants, nor how he did it. ‘Och, one at a time I did it,’ he said. So I will eat up your four elephants tonight. But you cannot even understand the speech of shrews.”

  Dana had always been a very good night-man. Now, and suddenly, he became an incredibly bad night-man. Here and there he stumbled just as an ordinary man might do it in an unfamiliar darkness. Here and there he sent stones rolling down just as an ordinary man might not be able to avoid doing. Here he crackled with sudden sound through brittle thickets, just as an ordinary man might have to do it to make his way in such a rough place. But Dana was not an ordinary man.

  He announced his trail and his going to even the most doltish ears. He had crossed a part of this meandering hog-back during the daytime and evening before, and he pieced the rest of it together with his night-eyes and his night-mind. There were three places they could ambush him on this meander, and the third was best for himself; there were better ways leading down from it than up.

  Timing it well, estimating their place and movement from their own slim sound (they did move rather well and with fair silence, whether they were manifestations or men), Dana forced the third place of encounter on them, it seeming that they forced it on him.

  They erupted up out of the dark and they had Dana boxed in, the tall and shaggy four of them, at a widened place where the high meander made a turn. Dana knew fear then, real quaking fear. There was never such a genuine hero as Dana who knew such quick genuine fear. It was not a lack of confidence in himself. It was part of the sharpening of the senses and the necessary prelude to battle. Besides, there was an unaccountable element, and Dana was upset when there turned up unaccountable elements after he had counted anything: there was a distress flare from the sea clearly visible (to Dana, apparently not to the four looming forms
) from this high hogback ridge.

  The four tall man-forms loomed over Dana: one with a long knife, one with a heavy cudgel, one with a Spanish pistola, one with a flat cudgel. Dana spun round in both real and simulated dismay. He stood then, in attitude of surprise, with his back to the man with the flat cudgel, and his face gaping and darting at the other three.

  And, of course, he was knocked flat on his face by the man with the flat cudgel. Dana had preferred that one.

  The flat cudgel makes a certain faint whistle in the air as it descends, and a man with true night-ears can tune its course just as a bat tunes obstacles and prey with his own night-ears. Dana, estimating it and going with it, took more of the blow on his shoulders and neck than on his head. He was stunned (there'd been no way out of that), but he was less stunned than he seemed.

  And the fear had left him now. It was always prelude to the battle, but it was never part of the battle.

  “Ifreann wants to see you,” said the opposite man, the man with the heavy cudgel who now stood at Dana's head. And he kicked Dana in the mouth.

  So two of them had spoken, one with his flat cudgel, one with mouth and foot. Time for the move when the fourth of them spoke. This enemy, who was now a composite, could not resist triumphant parley; he never had been able to resist it. And, if he controlled the four manifestations here, then he would speak through each of the four.

  “I'll not see him,” Dana mumbled with his mouth in the cooling sod of the meander.

  “You will see him, if we must cut out your eyes and present them to him on stalks which he can hold to make you see him,” said the third man, the man with the long knife, the man who now stood to Dana's left hand as Dana lay face down. The man slashed with the knife on the side of Dana's head, while Dana tried to bury his head in the turf. It may be that the man intended to cut one of the eyes out, if Dana had not jerked and turned his head a bit; or he may not have so intended. But three of the men had spoken in their ways.