by Paul Park
In the shadow of a boulder up ahead, Colonel Aspe sat with some officers and antinomials. He was eating grapes and spitting out the seeds while the others argued. It was a peculiar kind of argument. The captain of his regiment, a bandy-legged southerner with a round head and false teeth, was angry. He pointed and swore at the antinomials, but his accent was thick, and his teeth clattered when he spoke. “Schob. Thamn you. Fwerk,” he said, but nobody could understand him. And so he shook his fist, and looked up at his orderly standing near, and relapsed into his native language, all spitting sounds and growls.
The orderly saluted stiffly and translated. “He says it was for you, loping the ridge. For you kept. No. Colonel’s orders; he was telling you. I tell you! Scrape that shit off the rocks!” He gestured towards the enemy soldiers above their heads. “Now what you do here? What are you? Where you go?”
One of the antinomials was a wide man with a shaved head and a flat, white, masklike face. He wore sunglasses, and his skin after weeks in the sun seemed to be getting paler as the others burned and tanned, bleaching like shell or bone. He turned his face away and then he smiled, humming an inquisitive little tune. He didn’t understand.
The southerners glared at him, the captain spitting and cursing while his orderly clicked his heels and translated. “You bastard, please!” he said. “Cowardly shithead! Cannibal! Why not ridge? You, on ridge.” He saluted.
“He’s saying,” said the colonel’s adjutant, “that you were supposed to follow the hills. He says those were your orders. He says if you had followed orders, we wouldn’t be stuck here in the valley with those fellows above us.”
“Supposed,” said the antinomial thoughtfully. “Supposed to do.” He frowned, and the tune he was humming changed.
The colonel smiled. “Suggested, my brother.” He sang a little song in his harsh voice.
“Hot there,” said the antinomial, putting words together with difficulty. And he coated them with humming, which made them hard to understand. “Too hot up there. No water. I come along the river.”
“Besides,” said the adjutant, dapper and smooth. “I don’t understand the fuss. We’re not stuck here. We can ride right through. Argon’s at the monastery.”
The southern captain started to spit and growl. His orderly translated, saluting. “Fool! You are fool! Sir!” He gestured towards the bridge above their heads, and the helmets of the enemy soldiers. “They kill us here. Too . . .” He put his palms an inch apart, indicating “narrow.”
The antinomial looked at him with scorn. “Slaves are afraid of death,” he said. “Only slaves.” He got to his feet and started walking towards the road, but the colonel laughed and sang a song that made him turn around.
“Maybe you should let him go through, sir,” said the adjutant. “We need a scout.”
“Not him,” replied Aspe. “Get me fodder.” He squinted down the river road, where the army stretched and coiled for a mile or more. “Starbridges. Who’s on the elephant? Read me their flags.”
His adjutant lifted a pair of field glasses. Above the carriage on the elephant’s back rose a pair of fluttering white ensigns. “Thanakar and Micum Starbridge,” he said.
“I’ve never heard of them.”
“Transport corps,” said his adjutant. “One’s a doctor. You shouldn’t waste him, sir.”
“Is he brave?”
“Of course.” A list of obligations was sewn onto each flag. “Fourth degree, both of them. They were born under the same sign.”
“Fourth degree?”
“Up to and including loss of life.”
“Good. That’s handy. What about obedience?”
“You can see it. It’s that red crescent on the commissar’s flag. The doctor doesn’t have it. He’s a . . . cynic, it says. He believes in . . . nothing.”
The colonel frowned. “He sounds like a fool.”
“No, sir. You can see from here. Fifth degree intelligence. It’s that triangle right at the top of the flag.”
But Aspe was no longer listening. He was singing for his horse, and it lifted its head where it was drinking by the river. Then it neighed and came running, and Aspe seized one of its horns as it ran past and swung himself up into the saddle. When he reached the road he spurred it to a gallop, even though that part of the valley was crowded with animals, and men standing and sitting, and waiting for something to happen. Men scattered in front of him, leaping for safety off the shoulders of the road, rolling in the dirt out of reach of his flying hooves.
“Who is this madman?” asked the doctor.
The elephant took up the whole road. When it saw the black horse coming down on it so fast, it trumpeted in terror and raised its blobby nose to the sky. The commissar stood up in the carriage and prodded it with his spike, distracting it into giving up all plans to flee or die. It just stood there, trembling and sweating, while the colonel reined his horse back on its haunches in the road in front of them. He raised his whip above his head.
The colonel’s voice was harshness without substance, the words like coarse dust in a breath of wind. Thanakar couldn’t hear him. The noise of the army was too thick around them, and the elephant seemed to sweat vibrations of thrumming terror through its pores. Aspe cursed and dismounted stiffly. His knees moved stiffly when he walked. It was as if he were only comfortable on horseback, but he grasped the ladder that hung from the elephant’s back, and swung himself up, and stood on the beast’s head while it bucked and swayed, his gauntlets on his hips.
“Starbridges,” he said. “I need spies. Ride through that notch and tell me what’s behind. I am Aspe.”
Thanakar peered ahead. “You fear an ambush, Colonel?”
“I fear nothing. I welcome an ambush.” Aspe grabbed hold of the elephant’s ear, preparing to descend. “Ride through.”
“With respect, Colonel,” said Thanakar, “if there is an ambush, they won’t spring it for us. They’ll wait for us to say the road is clear.”
Aspe shifted his hand to support himself on the doctor’s flagpole. “Intelligent,” he sneered. “What if I go? They won’t resist trying to kill me.”
“Your life is too valuable to risk,” said the doctor.
“Valuable! But I don’t care if the world is destroyed this instant. Listen to me. Ride through. Take my bugle. If Argon has stones or missiles lined along the cliff, blow an A sharp. If there are soldiers on the other side, blow an E flat.”
“I’m sorry, Colonel. I don’t know how.”
“Barbarian! I’ll do it myself, then. Does this beast know how to walk?”
Goaded, Thanakar grabbed the commissar’s spike and pushed it into the soft flesh around the elephant’s tail. The animal shambled forward, wagging its huge head, Aspe standing on its neck. But when it reached where the colonel’s adjutant stood in a group of officers and men clustered around the colonel’s ensign, it stopped by itself.
“I am going,” Aspe called down. “Pass me my flag.” A man uprooted it and threw it up to him; he caught it and thrust it through the socket in the carriage rail that already held the doctor’s and the commissar’s. It flew above theirs, meaningless red squiggles on a black background.
Aspe shouted orders, some in speech and some in music, and soon the officers were running to their stations, rousing their men. One stood still, a handsome man in a red uniform, a priest, the bishop’s liaison. “Colonel,” he shouted. “The abbot’s body must be recovered. There are certain ceremonies I must perform to free his spirit’s flight to Paradise. You must send men to cut him down.”
The colonel looked up at the abbot’s body, revolving in the last of the sun. “But your Paradise is just a lump of rock,” he said. “I wouldn’t waste the tenth part of a second on that fat carrion. Be thankful that there is no life to come. If there were, he’d rot in hell. Ride on,” he said, and then he paused. “Garin,” he called, and a young boy stepped out of the shadow of a boulder.
“Yes, sir.”
“I left my horse
down by that arch of rock. Strip him and comb him. Give him oats mixed with red wine.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
In front of them the sandstone wall rose like a rampart. The elephant ambled up the road towards the notch where the river ran out. A hundred feet above them, enemy soldiers started to shoot as they came in range. Commissar Micum lit a cigarette, and the sweet marijuana smell was comfortable to Thanakar as he held the elephant to a walk, to pace their bravery. And in a little while, the lower rocks around the Keyhole sheltered them from the soldiers. The rock formations, petrified remnants of old sand dunes, pink and scarlet in the setting sun, blocked their fire. But there were some soldiers on the bridge between the cliffs. They threw down firebombs and bags of what seemed like excrement as the elephant passed underneath.
In the Keyhole, the rocks closed over their heads in a kind of tunnel. In the last moment before entering, Thanakar looked back towards the army. It had spread and scattered, and tents were going up. But a clump of officers still stood, arguing and staring after them through telescopes, and Thanakar could see bands of antinomials on horseback passing back and forth, and he could see the man with the shaved head and sunglasses standing in front of the rest, a trumpet in his hands.
“Do we have a plan?” he asked.
Aspe leaned backward to pluck the cigarette from the commissar’s lips and puff on it himself. “Long ago,” he said, “my brothers and sisters found a path far beyond what you call civilization. Because of what I am, I can beat these slaves,” he gestured vaguely up ahead, “wherever I meet them, whatever the odds. My way has gone far past strategies and plans. But because I have barbarians in my army, I have to pretend.” He shrugged, expelling smoke from his nostrils. “My brothers and sisters will camp up ahead tonight, if they want. They may hold it for the others in the morning. It is too late for them tonight. They rode all day and need their rest.”
“And us?”
“Look how beautiful it is.” They were in the Keyhole, in a long tunnel of sculptured sandstone, a hundred feet high. It was quieter here inside, and the river ran deep and placid below the road. The colonel pointed back to where a corner of the sun still shone through an arch of rock, making it glow as if translucent. “Look,” he repeated. “Danger gives each moment power, as if it were the only one there ever was. Don’t waste it worrying. It will soon disappear. How can I describe it? It is . . .”
“Transience,” suggested Thanakar.
“Yes. Perhaps.” Aspe sighed. “Often I can’t talk to my own family. I need to talk, sometimes. When I was young I tried to break away from them. But I could never break away.”
“A biter,” said Thanakar.
“Yes. A biter. It wasn’t always so. I was an artist once.” He stripped off his gauntlets and showed them his hands, one flesh, one a claw of steel. “When I lost that, it was as if all the music stayed caught inside, and it could only escape through talking, doing, making, words. I had lost the way to free myself.”
The elephant trudged on in silence for a while. Bullets started to flick around them.
The commissar hadn’t spoken in a long time. He cleared his throat nervously. “I’m very worried about Abu,” he said.
“Wherever he is, it’s bound to be safer than where we are,” replied the doctor.
“I’m very worried. He is so vulnerable.”
“Not half so vulnerable as we are,” said the doctor, looking around for the source of the bullets.
“It’s not good to run off like that. A man has responsibilities. It’s not good.”
“He’ll be all right,” said the doctor anxiously. They were approaching the end of the Keyhole. Through a break in the rocks up ahead, they could see the towers of St. Serpentine, high on the hillside, still in sunlight. They turned a corner and the valley opened up in front of them, ringed with sharp hills. Where the road started to climb up towards the monastery, half a mile in front of them, several hundred soldiers blocked the way.
“If this is an ambush,” murmured the commissar, “it’s the most foolish one I’ve ever seen. Unless those troops are bait.”
Aspe grunted. “Argon Starbridge has guns,” he said. “That I know. There.” He pointed up the road, up past the soldiers, up the hillside to where it disappeared into a tunnel below the monastery gate. A series of terraces were cut into the cliff just where the road disappeared. “There,” he said.
“I can’t see. It’s too far,” said the commissar.
“It’s as plain as day. Field howitzers. You can see the crews.”
“I can’t see it. Where?” The commissar was fumbling with his field glasses.
Aspe grunted. “Let’s go,” he said. “Forward. I want to test the range.”
Thanakar prodded their elephant into a walk again, and they shambled down the road. The enemy soldiers were adventists, drawn in three lines across the road. They carried red-and-white banners, and flags of the phoenix and the rising sun. At about four hundred yards they opened fire.
“Steady,” said Aspe, but it was useless. The bullets made a sucking sound as they hit the elephant; it just stopped and refused to go any farther, though Thanakar stood up and goaded it until it bled. It just stood there, and then it knelt down solemnly. It wouldn’t take another step.
“Stay here,” said Aspe. He jumped down from the elephant’s back, his boots ringing on the stones. He walked forward down the road a little distance, and from the pouch at his side he produced a copper bugle. Then he raised his arms and shouted out, as if calling for silence, once, twice, three times, and perhaps it was just a trick of the rocks, but his voice seemed to fill the valley and the gunfire lessened. As he put the bugle to his lips, it almost stopped. He started to play a song, full of low notes and deep melancholy, and Thanakar noticed that some of the adventists in front had dropped their weapons, and some were praying, and some knelt down and put their foreheads to the stones. And the sound of the music seemed to carry a long way, for Thanakar thought he heard an echo from behind them, but then he looked back and saw, sitting on an outcropping of rock far above the river and the road, the white-faced antinomial with sunglasses, the sunset gathering around him, and his long trumpet lifted to the sky. Above him, the clouds had caught on fire.
For a long time the two men played, not the same song, but melodies that seemed to catch each other in a sad, loveless embrace. And underneath the music Thanakar could hear the running river, and then he could hear the sound of hoofbeats and a different kind of singing, and in this new sound he recognized for the first time the war song of the antinomials, and it wasn’t wild or harsh or even loud, but instead it seemed to linger somewhere in the sky, pure, bitter, restrained, almost out of earshot, not one song but a thousand, mixing and searching high above them for harmonies among the clouds.
The commissar was studying the enemy through his field glasses. “Incredible,” he said. “They are weeping. You can see the tears.”
Thanakar looked back towards the Keyhole. From a gap in the rocks the first of the antinomials rode out, men and women riding on horseback, jumping over boulders. They rode and turned and mixed in a whirling pattern every moment more complex, because at every moment there were more of them. They wheeled and changed direction, spreading out around them in a spinning circle, the dying elephant at its hub, and then they turned and circled Aspe as he stood with his bugle to his lips. They carried rifles and machetes in scabbards on their saddles, but they never touched them, and if the adventists had opened fire, they could have killed great numbers. But all this time the enemy stood as if paralyzed as the antinomials spun and circled closer and closer, and it got dark. Soon light touched only the topmost towers of the monastery, and the rest of the valley filled with shadows, like a bowl filling up with ashes under the burning sky.
In time, the enemy lit torches and retreated up the road. Then the guns talked from the mountains and spat long streamers of green fire, trying to find the antinomials in their range, b
ut they couldn’t spit far enough. Up the road, they lathered the whole valley with green fire, as if to show that there was no part of it they couldn’t reach. By the light of those unearthly flames, the antinomials dismounted and made camp.
* * *
“He’s not an officer commanding troops. He conjures them, like a magician conjuring demons,” said Thanakar.
“Or angels,” replied the commissar.
“There’s no difference,” said Thanakar airily. “They’re just as difficult to control.”
The two men were sitting outside their own careful tent, at the top of a small slope. They sat in deckchairs, looking down towards the riverside where the antinomials were camped around some bonfires. Tents stood scattered as if at random along the bottom of the valley, half erected, fallen down. A few seemed to have been lit on fire, and people squatted around them warming their hands. From the river came a constant noise of splashing and yelling as men and women, naked in the cooling wind, washed themselves and splashed each other like children. Dogs ran everywhere, little barking dogs from the city temples and huge shaggy brutes picked up along the line of march. They had slunk down from the empty hills wherever the army passed, to run with the antinomials: silent beasts, slinking with their heads close to the ground, stealing food, and boys and girls ran after them, slapping at their shaggy heads and laughing when they tried to bite. There was food enough for everyone that night. As the two Starbridges had looked on, appalled, the antinomials had butchered the dead elephant, gutted it, stripped off its skin, sliced long slabs of meat from its bones, broken the skeleton apart. Thanakar was a good cook, and he had made an excellent meal for the two of them over the primus, white rice and pickled figs, served in lacquer bowls with sprigs of mint. But as they sat in deck chairs looking out over the camp, it was impossible to eat. The smell of roasting flesh rose up everywhere around them, and everywhere people yelled and reeled as if drunk with blood.
