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‘We believe they are not conceiving.’
A silence. The wind was not shrieking now. It was a low wail. The animals that were making a circle all around lifted their muzzles to sniff the air: soon the wind would be gone, and their nightly ordeal over.
‘And you, the people?’
They all nodded, slowly. ‘We believe that we are the same.’
‘You mean, that you begin to feel in yourselves what the animals feel?’
‘Yes, Al·Ith.’
And now they sat quiet for a long time. They looked into each other’s faces, questioning, confirming, allowing their eyes to meet, and to part, letting what each felt pass from one to another, until they all were feeling and understanding as one.
While this went on, the soldier was motionless. Later, in the camps, he was to say that ‘up there’ they had vicious drugs and used them unscrupulously.
The wind had dropped. It was silent. In a swept sky the stars glittered cold. But wisps of cloud were forming in the east, over the borders with Zone Four.
One of the girls spoke up at last. ‘Al·Ith, some of us have been wondering if this new Order from the Providers has something to do with this sadness of ours.’
Al·Ith nodded.
‘None of us remember anything like it,’ said the old man.
Al·Ith said, ‘The Memories speak of such a time. But it was so long ago the historians knew nothing about it.’
‘And what happened?’ asked Jarnti, suddenly finding his tongue.
‘We were invaded,’ said Al·Ith. ‘By Zone Four. Is there nothing in your history? Your tales?’
At this Jarnti wagged his pointed beard at them, grinning — triumphant.
‘Is there nothing you can tell us?’ asked Al·Ith.
He smirked at the women, one after another, and then his head fell forward.
‘Al·Ith,’ said a girl who had been sitting, letting her tears run, ‘Al·Ith, what are you going to do with such men?’
‘Perhaps Ben Ata won’t be so bad,’ said another.
‘This man is the commander of all the armies,’ said Al·Ith, and could not prevent herself shuddering.
‘This man? This?’
Their horror and shock made itself felt in Jarnti, and he would have punished them if he could. He did manage to raise his head and glare, but he was shaking and weak.
‘He is going to have to get back to the camp at the foothills,’ said Al·Ith.
Two of the young men glanced at each other, and then rose. They grasped Jarnti under the armpits, hauled him to his feet, and began walking him up and down. He staggered and protested, but complied, in the end, for his brain, clear all this time, told him it was necessary.
This scene is known as ‘Jarnti’s Walk,’ and gives much opportunity for humour to our artists and tellers.
‘I don’t see that there is anything we can do?’ asked Al·Ith of the others. ‘If this is an old disease, nothing is known of it in our medicine. If it is a new disease, our doctors will shortly come to terms with it. But if it is a malady of the heart, then the Providers will know what to do.’
A silence.
‘Have already known what to do,’ she said, smiling, though not pleasantly. ‘Please tell everyone on the plain that I came here tonight and we talked, and what we thought together.’
We will, they said. Then they all rose to their feet, and went with her through the herds. A young girl called three horses, who came and stood willingly, waiting, while the young man put Jarnti on one, and Al·Ith mounted another, and the girl herself got on a third. The animals crowded around Al·Ith on her horse, and called to her as the three rode past.
Out on the plain, headed back towards the camp, the grasses were now standing up grey in a dim light, and the eastern sky was aflame.
Jarnti had come awake, and was sitting straight and soldierly on his horse.
‘Madam,’ he asked, ‘how do you people talk to your animals?’
‘Do you not talk to yours?’
‘No.’
‘You stay with them. You watch them. You put your hands on them and feel how they feel. You look into their eyes. You listen to the tones of their cries and their calling to each other. You make sure that when they begin to understand that you understand them, you do not miss the first tones of what they say to you. For if you do not hear, then they will not trouble to try again. Soon you will feel what they are feeling, and you will know what they are thinking, even if they do not tell you themselves.’
Jarnti said nothing for a while. They had now left the herds behind.
‘Of course we watch them and take notice of how they look, if they are ill or something like that.’
‘There are none among you who know how to feel with your animals?’
‘Some of us are good with animals, yes.’
Al·Ith did not seem inclined to say any more.
‘Perhaps we are too impatient,’ said Jarnti.
Neither Al·Ith nor the girl said anything to this. They trotted on towards the foothills. Now the great peaks of the high lands were pink and shining from the wild morning sky.
‘Madam,’ he said, blustering, because he did not know how to be on an equality with her, or with anyone, ‘when you are with us, can you teach some of the soldiers who are in charge of the horses this way of yours?’
She was silent. Then: ‘Do you know that I am never called anything but Al·Ith? Do you understand that I have never been called Madam, or anything like it before?’
Now he was silent.
‘Well, will you?’ he asked gruffly.
‘I will if I can,’ she said at last.
He was struggling with himself to express gratitude, pleasure. Nothing came out.
They were more than halfway between the herds and the camp.
Jarnti put his heels into his horse suddenly, and it neighed and bucked. Then it stood still.
The two women stopped too.
‘Did you want to go on ahead?’ asked the girl.
He was sullen.
‘He won’t carry you now,’ she said, and slid off her horse. Jarnti got down from his. ‘Now get on mine.’ He did so. She soothed the bewildered horse he had kicked, and mounted it.
‘Think that you want to go on in front of us,’ said the girl.
He had an ashamed, embarrassed look. He went red.
‘I’m afraid you will have to put up with us,’ said Al·Ith at last.
When they were in sight of the camp, she jumped down from her horse. It at once turned and began cantering back towards the herds. Jarnti got off his. And this one too cantered back. He was standing looking in admiration at the lovely girl on her horse, who was turning around to go.
‘If you ever come to Zone Four,’ he shouted at her, ‘let me know.’
She gave a long look of commiseration at Al·Ith, and remarked, ‘Luckily for me I am not a queen.’ And she sped off across the plain with the two other horses neighing and tossing up their heels on either side of her.
Al·Ith and Jarnti walked towards the camp with the sunrise at their backs.
Long before they reached the camp, the smell of burning meat was strong on the air.
Al·Ith did not say anything, but her face spoke.
‘Do you not kill animals?’ he asked, unwillingly but forced to by his curiosity.
‘Only if it is essential. There are plenty of other foods.’
‘Like those horrible berries of yours,’ he said, trying to be good-humoured.
In the camp they had killed a deer. Jarnti did not eat any of it.
As soon as the meal was over, the horses were saddled, all but Al·Ith’s. She stood watching the beasts adjust their mouths and their teeth uncomfortably as the bit went in.
She vaulted onto her horse, and whispered to it. Jarnti watched her, uneasy.
‘What did you say to it?’ he asked.
‘That I am his friend.’
And again she led the way forward, into the east, back across the plain.
They rode to one side of the herds they had been with in the night, but far enough off to see them as a darkness on the plain.
Jarnti was riding just behind Al·Ith.
Now he was remembering the conversation around the fire last night, the tone of it, the ease of it. He yearned for it — or something in it, for he had never known that quality of easy intimacy. Except, he was saying to himself, with a girl, sometimes, after a good screw.
He said, almost wistfully, to Al·Ith, ‘Can you feel that the animals out there are sad?’ For she was looking continually towards them, and her face was concerned.
‘Can’t you?’ she asked.
He saw she was weeping, steadily, as she rode.
He was furious. He was irritated. He felt altogether excluded from something he had a right to.
Behind them clattered the company of soldiers.
A long way in front was the frontier. Suddenly she leaned down to whisper to the horse and it sped forward. Jarnti and the company broke into speed after her. They were shouting at her. She did not have the shield that would protect her from the — to her — deadly atmosphere of Zone Four. She rode like the wild winds that scoured the plains every night until early dawn, and her long hair swept out behind her, and tears ran steadily down her face.
It was not for miles that Jarnti came up with her — one of the soldiers had thrown the shield to him, and he had caught it, and was now riding almost neck and neck with her.
‘Al·Ith,’ he was shouting, ‘you must have this.’ And held up the shield. It was a long time before she heard him. At last she turned her face towards him, not halting her mad pace in the slightest, and he wilted at the sight of her blanched, agonized face. He held up the shield. She raised her hand to catch it. He hesitated, because it was not a light thing. He remembered how she had thrown the heavy saddle the day before, and he heaved the shield towards her. She caught it with one hand and did not abate her pace at all. They were approaching the frontier. They watched her to see how she would be affected by the sudden change in the density of the air, for they had all been ill to some extent, the day before. She went through the invisible barrier without faltering, though she was pale, and did not seem well. Inside the frontier line were the observation towers, rising up at half-mile distances from each other, bristling with soldiers and armaments. She did not stop. Jarnti and the others fled after her, shouting to the soldiers in the towers not to shoot. She went between the towers without looking at them.
Again they were on the edge of a descent through hills and rocks above a wide plain. When she reached the edge of this escarpment she at last stopped.
They all came to a standstill behind her. She was looking down into a land crowded with forts and encampments.
She jumped down from her horse. Soldiers were running to them from the forts, holding the bridles of fresh horses. The jaded horses of the company were being herded off to recover. But Al·Ith’s did not want to leave her. He shivered and whinnied and wheeled all about Al·Ith, and when the soldiers came to catch him, would not go.
‘Would you like him as a present, Al·Ith?’ asked Jarnti, and she was pleased and smiled a little, which was all she could manage.
Again she removed the saddle from this fresh horse, and the bridle, and tossed them to the amazed soldiers. And she rode forward and down into Zone Four, with Yori trotting beside her and continually putting up his nose to nuzzle her as they went.
And so Al·Ith made the passage into the Zone we had all heard so much of, speculated about, and had never been in.
Not even with the shield could she feel anything like herself. The air was flat, dispiriting. The landscape seemed to confine and oppress. Everywhere you look, in our own realm, a wild vigour is expressed in the contours of uplands, mountains, a variegated ruggedness. The central plateau where so many of our towns are situated is by no means regular, but is ringed by mountains and broken by ravines and deep river channels. With us the eye is enticed into continual movement, and then is drawn back always to the great snowy peaks that are shaped by the winds and the colours of our skies. And the air tingles in the blood, cold and sharp. But here she looked down into a uniform dull flat, cut by canals and tamed streams that were marked by lines of straight pollarded trees, and dotted regularly by the ordered camps of the military way of life. Towns and villages did not seem any larger than these camps. The sky was a greyish blue and there was a dull shine from the lines of water. A wide low hill near the centre of the scene where there seemed to be something like a park or gardens was all the consolation she could find.
Meanwhile, they were still descending the escarpment.
A turn in the road showed an enormous circular building of grey stone, squatting heavily between canals. It seemed recent, for rocks and earth near it were raw, broken. Her dismay that this might be where she was bound for brought her horse to a faltering stop. The company halted behind her, and she looked back to see a furtive triumph on every face. Jarnti was suppressing a smile as a leader does when he wishes to indicate he would like to join with his juniors in a show of emotion. Then as they remained there, with no sound but the horses shifting their hooves for relief, on the stony road, she saw that she had been mistaken: what she feared was not matched by the particular variety of triumph these captors of hers were showing.
‘When may we expect to reach the king?’ she asked, and Jarnti at once interpreted this as a reminder from her of higher authority. He rebuked his company with a strong look and adjusted his own face to obedience.
All this she watched, understood — and it came to her what a barbarous land this was.
They had imagined she had been intimidated by the sight of the rumoured ‘round fortress of the deadly rays’ as one of our songs described it.
She told herself, not for the first time, or the tenth, that she was not likely to adjust herself quickly to these people with their slavish minds, and to make a test of them, moved her horse on and towards the road that led to the building. At once Jarnti was beside her, and his hand was reaching out for her horse’s head. She stopped. ‘I would like to see into one of the famed round fortresses of your Zone,’ she said.
‘Oh, no, no, you must not, it is forbidden,’ said he, still full of importance.
‘But why? Your weapons are not directed against us, surely?’
‘It is dangerous … ’ but at this moment, around the side of the building came some children running, and in scattering for some game, two of them darted into an open doorway.
