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I take the liberty of doubting whether the actual occasion impressed itself so dramatically on the soldiers, or even on Al·Ith. The soldiers wanted to ride on, and get away from this land they did not understand, and which continually discomfited them. The commander did not want to be put into the position of taking her advice, but nor did he want to ride for hours into a cold wind.
Which in fact was already making itself felt.
Al·Ith was more herself now than she had been for many weeks. She was seeing that while she mourned in her rooms, there had been other things she should have done! Duties had been neglected. She remembered that messages had come in to her from all over the country, which she had been too absorbed in her fierce thoughts to respond to.
She was seeing in herself disobedience, and the results of it. This made her, now, more gentle with this troop of barbarians, and its small-boy commander.
‘You did not tell me your name,’ she asked.
He hesitated. Then: ‘It is Jarnti.’
‘You command the king’s horses?’
‘I am commander of all his forces. Under the king.’
‘My apologies.’ She sighed, and they all heard it. They thought it weakness. Throughout these experiences with her, they could not help feeling in themselves the triumph that barbarian natures show when faced with weakness; and the need to cringe and crowd together when facing strength.
‘I want to leave you for some hours,’ she said.
At this they all, on a single impulse, and without any indication from their leader, crowded around her. She was inside a ring of captors.
‘I cannot allow it,’ said Jarnti.
‘What were your orders from the king?’ she enquired. She was quiet and patient but they heard subservience.
And a great roar of laughter went up from them all. Long tension exploded in them. They laughed and shouted, and the crags behind them echoed. Birds that had already settled themselves for the night wheeled up into the skies. From the long grasses by the road, animals that had been lying hidden broke away noisily.
What Ben Ata had finally shouted at his commander of all the forces, was: ‘Go and get that — — — and bring her here. I’m for it if I don’t — — ’ For while Al·Ith had been weeping and rebellious in her quarters, he had been raging and cursing up and down the camps of his armies. There was not a soldier who had not heard what his king thought of this enforced marriage, while the camps commiserated with him, drinking, laughing, making up ribald toasts which were repeated from one end of Zone Four to the other.
This scene is another favourite of our storytellers and artists. Al·Ith, on her tired horse, is ringed by the brutal laughing men. The cold wind of the plains is pressing her robe close around her. The commander is leaning over her, his face all animal. She is in danger.
And it is true that she was. Perhaps for the only time.
Now night had fallen. Only in the skies behind them was there any light. The sunset sent up flares high towards the crown of the heavens, and made the snow peaks shine. In front of them lay the now black plain, and scattered over it at vast distances were the lights of villages and settlements. On the plateau behind them that they had travelled over, our villages and towns were crowded: it was a populous and busy land. But now they seemed to stand on the verge of nothingness, the dark. The soldiers’ own country was low and mostly flat, and their towns were never built on hills and ridges. They did not like heights. More: as we shall see, they had been taught to fear them. They had been longing for the moment when they could get off that appalling plateau lifted so high among its towering peaks. They had descended from it and, associating flat lands with habitation, saw only emptiness. Their laughter had panic in it. Terror. It seemed they could not stop themselves laughing. And among them was the small silent figure of Al·Ith, who sat quietly while they rolled about in their saddles, making sounds, as she thought, like frightened animals.
Their laughing had to stop at some point. And when it did nothing had changed. She was still there. They had not impressed her with their noise. The illimitable blackness lay ahead.
‘What was Ben Ata’s order?’ she asked again.
An explosion of sniggers, but the commander directed a glance of reproof towards the offenders, although he had been laughing as hard as any of them.
‘His orders?’ she insisted.
A silence.
‘That you should bring me to him, that was it, I think.’
A silence.
‘You will bring me to him no later than tomorrow.’
She remained where she was. The wind was now howling across the plains so that the horses could hardly keep their footing.
The commander gave a brief order which sounded shamefaced. The posse broke up, riding about on the edge of the plain, to find a camping place. She and the commander sat on their tired horses, watching. But normally he would have been with his men who, used to orders and direction, were at a loss. At length he called out that such a place would do, and they all leapt off their horses.
The beasts, used to the low relaxed air of Zone Four, were exhausted from the high altitudes of this place, and were trembling as they stood.
‘There is water around that spur,’ said Al·Ith. He did not argue, but shouted to the soldiers to lead the horses around the spur to drink. He got off his horse, and so did she. A soldier came to lead both animals with the others to the water. A fire was blazing in a glade between deep rocks. Saddles lay about on the grass at intervals: they would be the men’s pillows.
Jarnti was still beside Al·Ith. He did not know what to do with her.
The men were already pulling out their rations from their packs, and eating. The sour powdery smell of dried meat. The reek of spirits.
Jarnti said, with a resentful laugh, ‘Madam, our soldiers seem very interesting to you! Are they so different from your own?’
‘We have no soldiers,’ she said.
This scene, too, is much celebrated among us. The soldiers, illuminated by a blazing fire, are seated on their saddles among the grasses, eating their dried meat and drinking from their flasks. Others are leading back the horses, who have drunk at a stream out of sight behind rocks. Al·Ith stands by Jarnti at the entrance to this little natural fortress. They are watching the horses being closed into a corral that is formed by high rocks. They are hungry, and there is no food for them that night. Al·Ith is gazing at them with pity. Jarnti, towering over the small indomitable figure of our queen, is swaggering and full of bravado.
‘No soldiers?’ said Jarnti, disbelieving. Though of course there had always been rumours to this effect.
‘We have no enemies,’ she remarked. And then added, smiling straight at him, ‘Have you?’
This dumbfounded him.
He could not believe the thoughts her question aroused.
While she was still smiling at him, a soldier came out from the entrance of the little camp and stood at ease close to them.
‘What is he standing there for?’
‘Have you never heard of a sentry?’ he enquired, full of sarcasm.
‘Yes. But no one is going to attack you.’
‘We always post sentries,’ he said.
She shrugged.
Some soldiers were already asleep. The horses drooped and rested behind their rocky barriers.
‘Jarnti, I am going to leave you for some hours,’ she said.
‘I cannot allow you.’
‘If you forbid me, you would be going beyond your orders.’
He was silent.
Here again, a favourite scene. The fire roaring up, showing the sleeping soldiers, the poor horses, and Jarnti, tugging at his beard with both hands in frustrated amazement at Al·Ith, who is smiling at him.
‘Besides,’ he added, ‘you have not eaten.’
She enquired good-humouredly: ‘Do your orders include your forcing me to eat?’
And now he said, confronting her, all trouble and dogged insistence, because of the way he was being turned inside out and upside down by her, and by the situation, ‘Yes, the way I see it, by implication my orders say I should make you eat. And perhaps even sleep, if it comes to that.’
‘Look, Jarnti,’ said she, and went to a low bush that grew not ten paces away. She took some of its fruit. They were lumpy fruits sheathed in papery leaves. She pulled off the leaves. In each were four segments of a white substance. She ate several. The tightness of her mouth showed she was not enjoying them.
‘Don’t eat them unless you want to stay awake,’ she said, but of course he could not resist. He blundered off to the bush, and gathered some for himself, and his mouth twisted up as he tasted the tart crumbly stuff.
‘Jarnti,’ she said, ‘you cannot leave this camp, since you are the commander. Am I correct?’
‘Correct,’ he said, in a clumsy familiarity, which was the only way he knew how to match her friendliness.
‘Well, I am going to walk some miles from here. Since in any case you intend to keep that poor man awake all night for nothing, I suggest you send him with me to make sure I will come back again.’
Jarnti was already feeling the effects of the fruit. He was alert and knew he could not fall off to sleep now.
‘I will leave him on guard and come with you myself,’ he said.
And went to give orders accordingly.
While he did this, Al·Ith walked past the sleeping soldiers to the horses, and gave each one of them, from her palm, a few of the acrid fruits from the bush. Before she had left their little prison they were lifting their heads and their eyes had brightened.
She and Jarnti set off across the blackness of the plain towards the first of the glittering lights.
This scene is always depicted thus: there is a star-crowded sky, a slice of bright moon, and the soldier striding forward made visible and prominent because his chest armour and headpiece and his shield are shining. Beside him Al·Ith is visible only as a dark shadow, but her eyes gleam softly out from her veil.
It could not have been anything like this. The wind was straight in their faces, strong and cold. She wrapped her head completely in her veil, and he had his cloak tight about him and over the lower part of his face; and the shield was held to protect them both from the wind. He had chosen to accompany this queen on no pleasant excursion, and he must have regretted it.
It took three hours to reach the settlement. It was of tents and huts: the herdsmen’s headquarters. They walked through many hundreds of beasts who lifted their heads as they went past, but did not come nearer or move away. The wind was quite enough for them to withstand, and left them no energy for anything else. But as the two came to within calling distance of the first tents, where there was shelter from low scrubby trees, some beasts came nosing towards Al·Ith in the dark, and she spoke to them and held out her hands for them to smell, in greeting.
There were men and women sitting around a small fire outside a tent.
They had lifted their heads, too, sensing the approach of strangers, and Al·Ith called out to them, ‘It is Al·Ith,’ and they called back to her to approach.
All this was astonishing to Jarnti, who went with Al·Ith into the firelight, but several paces behind.
At the sight of him, the faces of the fire-watchers showed wonderment.
‘This is Jarnti, from Zone Four,’ said Al·Ith, as if what she was saying was an ordinary thing. ‘He has come to take me to their king.’
Now there was not a soul in our land who did not know how she felt about this marriage, and there were many curious glances into her face and eyes. But she was showing them that this was not her concern now. She stood waiting while rugs were brought from a tent, and when they were spread, she sat down on one and indicated to Jarnti that he should do the same. She told them that Jarnti had not eaten, and he was brought bread and porridge. She indicated that she did not want food. But she accepted a cup of wine, and Jarnti drank off jugs of the stuff. It was mild in taste, but potent. He was showing signs of discomfort if not of illness: the altitude of our plateau had affected him, he had taken too many of the stimulant berries, and he had not eaten. He was cut through and through by the winds that swept over their heads where they all leaned low over their little fire.
This scene, too, is one much depicted.
It always shows Al·Ith, alert and smiling, surrounded by the men and women of the settlement, with her cup of wine in her hand, and beside her Jarnti, drowsy and drugged. Above them the wind has scoured the sky clean and glittering. The little trees are leaning almost to the ground. The herds surround the fireside scene, looking in and wondering, waiting for a glance from their queen.
She said at once: ‘As I rode out from the capital today, and down through the passes, I was stopped by many of you. What is this that they are saying about the animals?’
The spokesman was an old man.
‘What have they told you, Al·Ith?’
‘That there is something wrong.’
‘Al·Ith, we have ourselves sent in messengers to the capital, with information.’
Al·Ith was silent, and then said, ‘I’m very much to blame. Messages came, and I was too much preoccupied with my own trouble to attend.’
Jarnti was sitting with a bent head, half asleep, but at this his head jerked up, and he let out a gruff triumphant laugh, and muttered, ‘Punish her, beat her, you hear? She admits it!’ before his head dropped again. His mouth hung open, and the cup was loose in his hand. One of the girls took it from him gently. He snatched at it, thrust forward his bottom lip and lifted his chin belligerently at her, saw she was pretty, and a female — and would have put his arms around her, but she swiftly moved back as he submerged again in drunkenness.
Al·Ith’s eyes were full of tears. The women first, then the men, seeing this oaf and his ways, saw too what was in store for her — and they were about to raise their voices in lament, keening, but she lifted her hand and stopped them.
‘There is no help for it,’ she said, in a low voice, her lips trembling. ‘We have our orders. And it is clear down in Zone Four they don’t like it any more than we do.’
They looked enquiringly at her and she nodded. ‘Yes. Ben Ata is very angry. So I understood today from something that was said.’
‘Ben Ata … Ben Ata …’ muttered the soldier, his head rolling. ‘He will have the clothes off you before you can get at him with your magic berries and your tricks.’
At this, one of the men rose to his feet and would have dragged Jarnti off, with two hands under his armpits, but Al·Ith raised her hand to stop him.
‘I am more concerned with the animals,’ she said. ‘What was in the messages you sent me?’
‘Nothing definite, Al·Ith. It is only that our animals are disturbed in their minds. They are sorrowful.’
‘This is true everywhere on the plains?’
‘It is true everywhere in our Zone, or so we hear. Were you not told of it up on the plateau?’
‘I have already said that I am much to blame. I was not attending to my duties.’
A silence. The wind was shrieking over them, but not as loud.
Jarnti was slumped, his cup leaning in his hand, blinking at the fire. Really he was listening, since the berries have the effect of preserving attention even while the muscles are slack and disobedient. This conversation was to be retold everywhere through the camps of Zone Four, and not inaccurately, though to them the emphasis must be that the queen of all the land was sitting ‘like a serf’ by the fire. And, of course, that ‘up there’ they spoke of animals as if they were people.
Al·Ith said to the old man, ‘You have asked the animals?’
‘I have been among the herds since it was noticed. Day after day I have been with them. Not one says anything different. They do not know why, but they are sad enough to die. They have lost the zest for living, Al·Ith.’
‘They are conceiving? Giving birth?’
‘They are still giving birth. But you are right to ask if they are conceiving … ’
At this Jarnti let out a muttering, ‘They tell their queen she is right! They dare! Drag them off! Beat them … ’
They ignored him. With compassion now. He was sitting loose and rolling there, his face aflame, and they saw him as worse than their beasts. More than one of the women was weeping, silently, at the fate of their sister, as they watched him.
