This poor man had obviously secretly admired and imitated Si'Wren's beliefs, what little he could learn of her without arousing the suspicion of his comrades-at-arms, without her ever even knowing of it, and for only this, upon being finally discovered or found out somehow in the matter, he had been miserably and wretchedly set upon without her knowing of that either.
Now he lay buried under a monumental cairn of broken slate, the enormous flat slabs of irregularly-shaped rock heaped up over his mortal remains as by the hand of the Invisible God himself, never to know with what grief that she, who had once been his shining example, his supreme inspiration and witness before the Invisible God, or with what intense longing and remorse that she, the one whom he had adored from a distance, would eventually suffer as a result of his decision to follow her in her beliefs.
Never had he attempted to speak to Si'Wren, to impose himself upon her. He had evidently not so much as dreamed of taking it upon himself to actually approach her, she -Si'Wren- the silent, literate female scribe for whom he had no doubt secretly harbored such tender-hearted sentiments of closely shared spiritual beliefs that he must have felt at times as if his own soul were being rent asunder as he trespassed unsuspected upon such starkly forbidden spiritual territory.
She could only guess how he must have felt, seeing how he dared not presume himself upon her, lest any -including herself, for all he knew- should object with a most self-righteous, vainglorious, and presumptuous offendedness such as nearly all of humanity was so fond of imitating and out-doing one-another in feigning. Would that he had intruded, that she might have shown him otherwise!
Perhaps, he might even had ventured to court her as well, to which she would not have objected, but rejoiced. But he -a common foot soldier- had not so much as dared.
Certain others might have objected, if only out of spite, but not she. Moreover, could she not write? Was she not in a position to petition the very Emperor himself, personally, on any affair she deemed fit? Surely Emperor Euphrates would have given her to him, and kept both in his service lest he lose Si'Wren's valuable services as Royal Scribe.
Now, it was too late to tell this slain foot soldier how miserably she felt. Perhaps he, like Habrunt, could have redeemed her vow. Perhaps not. He undoubtedly could not read, and seeing she was sworn never to speak, their love would have been something to marvel at, even to themselves, all their days together.
How awful it now seemed, that now, he would never know that she should come so soon to mourn and lament him, with his body not yet even cold! That she should so soon bury him with her own fingers, and here remain weeping uncontrollably, her face buried in her hands, kneeling over his grave like the beloved wife of many years that she should have been.
Nay, more than a wife, a spiritual sister also.
Reflecting upon such an unfamiliar notion of spiritual kinship, Si'Wren, an orphan from her earliest recollection, bent down low again suddenly, before she could collapse from grief, and wept even more bitterly at her fate.
This man, whom she had never been privileged to meet face-to-face in life, lay now at the center of all her attentions, hopelessly beyond her reach. How she longed that she might but one single time, have revealed to him what his unintentional self-sacrifice meant to her. And now, with what grief she must regard his brave act and cruel fate, all merely for imitating her beliefs!
Who had he been? Would that she had been his wife! Seeing all would have known that she could not speak, and that he could neither read nor write, yet would they have remained but strangers to the world only, but never in each others' eyes.
To think how he had finally found what was, to himself and her alone, in this awful, accursed paradise, the true meaning of spiritual life. That he had found it through the notorious persecutions and back-bitings of others, preying viciously upon her nonidolatrous beliefs.
For others had hated her, she knew, and talked behind her back. It was by means of such spiteful, privily expressed hatred that the details of her God had been so published abroad as to eventually reach his ears. Others in their malice had spoken against Si'Wren for her beliefs, but in their restless evil had only served God's good.
This was how, she was certain, that this lone man, this common foot soldier, hearing of how evil she supposedly was, had dared to question that spirit of unthinking hatred, and eventually believed also, and paid the ultimate price for his beliefs while she had gone on about her own business, blissfully unaware of his peril while she in her lofty station had remained perfectly immune to all reproach.
This thought tore at her as nothing else. Now, she would suffer also, for the sake of his memory and what he had believed and suffered and died for. At least, she had made sure his cairn, that the largest of wild beasts might never violate the grave. That little, she could and had done for he who never knew her.
There was something between them now, spanning the spiritual chasm like a bridge of their two kindred souls. She would mourn him forever in the secret places of her heart. It was like gruel without milk and fruit which, if one consumed nothing else, would eventually lose its slight taste of bitterness and ground husks, and become at least indifferent to the palate. Nay, worse. For the rest of her life, she would mourn this stranger long after she had left behind this desolate far-away place, in which he must forever remain buried.
But henceforth she would feel closer to him in her heart, than to any living person or location. She could not forget the memory of this place, though she might never return.
She rose up finally, looking cautiously about her. It was evening. The thickening mists were rolling over the land, spilling their whiteness across the hills into unseen, hidden valleys. Such beauty—such emptiness. The gentle wind had a lonely, desolate sound.
The last of her tears had already dried, but she wept anew when she finally turned to remount her horse for the journey back to camp.
She rode back to the campfire burning in front of Emperor Euphrates' splendid tent, and near his tent was her own, where she halted and dismounted drearily. Merely going through the motions, she groomed down the stallion and staked him to a long tether rope so that he might graze, roll on his back, or do practically whatever he pleased with some measure of freedom.
Solemnly, Si'Wren dipped out her portion from the pot over the fire, pointedly ignoring the Emperor's personal bodyguards and everyone else around her. She retired to her personal tent to eat, and immediately remembered that she must first tie something over the entrance to replace the missing tent flap, or risk another complaint of coquettishness from a certain one of the Captains of Fifty. In mute observance of this she soon had a coarse-woven wool blanket tied up over the entrance. Later, she could get another animal hide from one of the camp skinners.
The brave and fearless souls of the camp, mighty men of old, fearsome warriors all, must not have their valiant spirits inflamed with uncontrollable lust at the carnal sight of a mere maid consuming her food.
* * *
The next morning, she arose and stepped out of her tent, ducking past the makeshift blanket. Still as much asleep as awake, she squinted and blinked uncertainly in the morning light. Merely going through the motions, she made tea, and cleansed her eyes and face with it's clear amber fluid. Then she made gruel and mixed it with some fruit pulp and goat's milk.
After this, she surveyed her surroundings, struck by the uncultivated beauty and wild appearance of the land.
Somewhere in the dense nearby forest, she heard the scream of some fierce monster. The ferocity and bestiality of the sound chilled her blood and sent shivers up and down her spine even as a host of lesser animals took up a warning cry, broadcasting an alarm of the unseen predator's passage through their midst.
She could not identify the repeatedly screaming animal with anything from her memory, for she had never in her life heard such a terrible sound. Eventually, it began to move farther away from the camp, as it's terrible cries gradually diminished into the distance. For a long time, she could still occasionally hear it's banshee screams as it prowled somewhere beneath the high canopy of deep forest. Many of the soldiers, she noticed, seemed greatly discomfited by the savagery of the sound, clutching their weapons tightly as they looked anxiously in its direction.
Si'Wren could not help shivering again when she chanced to hear it one last time, far in the distance, through some quirk of the gentle wind across the uneven land. In spite of the undulations of the terrain, it had continued -day after day- to slope progressively upwards ahead of the expedition as the royal procession had made more or less steady progress to the northwest, marching ever deeper into the wilds.
Blocked by a series of steep ridges looming ever before them, the entire royal expedition had been encamped in the same place these past few days, while the scouts searched for a way to go on.
Hunting parties went out daily for provisions to restock their marching fare. Others found honey, and gathered fruits, berries, nuts, and roots, with armed guards always standing at the ready.
In camp, those assigned to the Chief Cook worked at preparing, drying, preserving, and packing away the food for the next portion of their long and uncertain journey.
* * *
"Today, we march," said Borla, watching her closely as Si'Wren emerged from her tent with her empty wooden porridge bowl and set it down. Si'Wren was unaware of the way he watched her, and she had not bothered to braid her hair in the usual manner as was her custom, in accession to her Emperor's wishes of the night just past. Momentarily, Borla stared at her as if he had never seen a woman before in his entire life and could no longer control the direction of his eyes.
To this remark, Si'Wren nodded with a thoughtlessly off-handed look of such distraction and unconcern that she must have somehow greatly vexed Borla, for he suddenly rounded on her in what must have been a masterfully concealed fit of anger as he regarded her expressionlessly.
"Highness," Borla bit off tersely, "of what can this doctrine of the Invisible God of our Junior Scribe consist of—but nothing; like himself! If her beliefs were to become adopted by others, it is possible that eventually all idols would be destroyed, much gain from the lucre of their sale lost, and their hearts turned to such nonsense as I cannot possibly imagine!"
Borla had his lips drawn back into a sneer now as his brow also became fretted into a terrible frown and he paused to await an answer.
When Emperor Euphrates made no immediately reply, Borla turned to survey Si'Wren boldly, and went on in an even more irritable and sarcastic vein;
"To follow such blind madness is tantamount to treason! Why, it would serve as well if we were to cast out all law and reason and let the people decide for themselves what laws to follow. Come to think of it, they do that enough already. Thou alone art law, oh mighty Emperor. Would thou give thy glory to another?"
He waited, and finally Emperor Euphrates shrugged.
"The girl is sworn to silence," Emperor Euphrates replied. "How many can she possibly convert anyways, if she be thus bound by her own word to this god?"
Borla seemed to mull this over, but somehow failed to find enough honey in his Emperor's words to nullify the bitterness of his mounting irritation with Si'Wren's beliefs.
Si'Wren watched him implacably, but gave no sign of a response. Neither did she volunteer to hand over any of her writing tablets used earlier to explain the Invisible God to her Emperor.
"What are we to make of this Invisible God," Borla went on in a biting, petulant tone of voice, "who permits himself to be worshiped, and preached to others, by a single, silent disciple sworn never to speak in a world deafened by the ceaseless praise of idols?"
This much was true, Si'Wren reflected. Silent was she, and silent would she remain.
As Borla went on, ranting over the stupidity of worshiping that which could only be seen through the eye of inner reasoning, Si'Wren thought of the Patriarch Noah, whom they were seeking, who apparently shared her beliefs in some measure, and in light of the fact that she must not speak, Si'Wren found herself reflecting upon the interesting truth which Borla had proposed and it's apparent absurdity.
How did one worship the unseeable? Sometimes the surest way Si'Wren had of knowing the Invisible God to be the true God was by reflecting upon how foolish it was to think of worshiping dumb idols. But perhaps there was another way to show Borla the truth.
Si'Wren reached for her water skin, poured out a little water into her cupped palm, and being mindful of Nelatha's long-ago remonstrance that the reflection of water held a suggestion of how one might manage to 'see' the unseeable Invisible God, she held it out to Borla, moving her arm until one of her eyes met his in the tiny reflection of cupped water in her hand.
The very moment their two eyes met in the mirrored bit of out-held water, Borla's reflected eye flashed in alarm as he realized what she had done, and he started with an astonished grunt as if he had been cursed to within an inch of his life, and jerked his head back as if kicked by a horse.
"Agh!" he cried out. "What vile sorcery?!…"
Si'Wren quickly raised the cupped water to her lips as if she had only been drinking it, so as to avoid the risk of offending Emperor Euphrates with the possible idea that she had been casting an evil eye.
Emperor Euphrates seemed to be staring at Borla as if he had suddenly got a burr in his sandal or something, and Borla, unwilling to stoop so low as to risk being mocked over some empty accusation, said nothing. Then, as if thinking better of it, he negligently spat in the dirt at Si'Wren's feet as if she were not the deliberate but only the unintentional target, trading water for water and giving reply to her in such manner as befitted the imagined curse.
Si'Wren stepped back, afraid of political ruin should Borla find the right words to vent his anger upon her. One might as easily have glimpsed the reflection of the sun in any common lily pond, or even a mud puddle. It would only have shown forth all the more clearly, the beautiful symbolism of an Invisible God who created all things, and was above all things. Even the wind, which could be seen in the motion of the clouds and trees and in the waving fields of grain and prairie grass, was of a truth not seen at all. And when the wind blew, did not fire burn so much the more greatly?
Oh, that this supreme, Invisible God, who must be so like water, and fire, and even the wind itself, and who surely hated all stupid idols, might once show himself in all of His eternal glory!
Still Borla paused, no doubt bent upon her destruction for the imagined curse, or at least very real insult, which she had apparently inflicted upon him with a mere handful of water, but it was pointless for him to persecute her merely for so mundane an act as slaking her thirst.
Gaining no satisfaction in any of this, he said to her, "Scribe, thy services are needed. Hand me a tablet."
Obediently, Si'Wren turned to her kit, and fetched out and handed over one of the requested objects to Borla.
Borla took the tablet, which consisted of smooth clay within a split-bamboo frame, and turned it this way and that as he examined it as if cherishing some holy relic in an almost reverent manner.
Then, with a look of perplexity, he turned it face-down and began shaking it vigorously. With a dull series of wet plops, the clay shook loose in a series of irregular pieces and tumbled out onto the ground. He continued shaking it and turning it this way and that and slapping it with his other hand, his dark locks and beard moving rhythmically with the effort until all of the clay had fallen out onto the ground.
Borla observed the empty frame in his hands.
"That's better," said Borla. "No, better yet—" he gripped the frame with it's intact backing tightly in one hand.
He made a fist with his other hand, and with a series of crude punches began knocking out the split-bamboo backing which normally supported the backside of the soft clay in it's sturdy frame.
When all of the pieces of split-bamboo backing were broken loose and had fallen to the ground, he smiled at last, with a dry, irritated look in his eyes which only served to accentuate the haggard fierceness of his deeply lined face, and held up the empty frame to the light.
"Behold, the Invisible God!" declared Borla, as Emperor Euphrates looked on most interestedly, but without comment.
Emboldened by his Emperor's look of curiosity, Borla observed dryly, "Rather looks like an open door. Odd. Most such doors are located in temples, wherein idols are to be found."
Then with a vengeful, jerking motion of his arms, Borla broke the empty frame into pieces, and handed them back to a silent Si'Wren with a curt but formal bow, as he eyed her contemptuously.
Si'Wren took the pieces in her hand, and stood looking back at him without expression.
"Well?" said Borla to her. "I see no thunderbolt."
But Si'Wren made no reply. She was still grief-struck from the events of yesterday, and in spite of all, had never intended the slightest harm to Borla, even after what he had done. Perhaps the Invisible God was more wise than even she suspected, in permitting her to be subjected to such a vow of silence.
After all, what could she possibly have said to Borla? There was no fitting reply; not to him at least.
"I trust, Highness," Borla said, "that the Invisible God can defend us in battle as fittingly as he is able to bury another in the grave. I am told by one of my Captains of Fifty that she brought down neigh unto half the hillside of yonder hillock, to the glory of her Invisible God no doubt, and all for the sake of merely giving an honorable burial to an avowed enemy of thy throne."
Borla paused to look significantly over at Si'Wren, who had frozen with the pieces of her ruined clay frame still in one hand.
"Battle?" said Emperor Euphrates, his interest suddenly piqued.
"Aye, Highness," said Borla. "I am told that campfires were spotted in the distance last night, down in the lowlands whence we came," said Borla. "We are being followed. I regret to be the bearer of bad tidings, but wise counsel must bear in mind the possibility that it could be Kadrug."
Si'Wren's ears pricked at this.
"Kadrug!" exclaimed Emperor Euphrates, looking greatly alarmed."Following me?"
"Aye, and perhaps also—Conabar. It was rumored, you will recall,Highness, that they had sought to join forces."
"A pact made in hell!" said Emperor Euphrates, as if it were a slanderous oath. "I gave orders that their entrails should be brought to me, that I might read of them."
"…to their eternal regret," suffixed Borla decorously, as he stood looking contemplatively across the vista of the lowlands they had already traversed so laboriously.
"Highness," Borla went on, tugging thoughtfully at the fringes of his beard, "if we should run across them before eventide, it might very well become the expedient thing to do that one of my foot soldiers should inspect their entrails with a common sword, ere the day is done."
Borla always kept his beard carefully trimmed a fraction shorter than Emperor Euphrates', out of a canny sense of deference. By this, and other, equally subtle devices, he was left free to maximize his own powers to the fullest possible extent, while at the same time seeming always, ever to be the scrupulously faithful servant and minutely lesser intellect. This flattered Emperor Euphrates in no small wise, a fact of which Borla was well aware, although he took utmost pains not to touch upon it in any false light or pretense.
"Aye!" Emperor Euphrates laughed harshly. "Quite enough ceremony for the occasion, I will grant!"
Emperor Euphrates turned then to Si'Wren, and said, "Scribe, you will study further, to show yourself approved, for I would hear more of this Invisible God."
Si'Wren, marveling at the open-handedness of her powerful rival,Borla, merely bowed to Emperor Euphrates in formal acknowledgment.
Then, in a more engaging tone of voice, Emperor Euphrates went on and said, "Almost, little Si'Wren…" he paused, looking at her wistfully, "…almost, you persuade me to believe in your remarkable Invisible God. Your arguments are—most entertaining."
Si'Wren blinked, and hid her disappointment as she bowed again even lower this time.
As Emperor Euphrates turned away to discuss other matters with Borla and the Captains, Si'Wren looked down at the sticks of her ruined clay frame. The frame was, she could see, beyond saving. She dropped the pieces, and they fell in an irregular criss-cross upon the uneven pile of moist clay lumps, which she regarded for a long, silent moment.
She turned away without a word.
The whole camp was taking down equipment and packing it away as they broke camp for the day's journey. Borla's scouts had finally found a way ahead, through the thick foliage interspersed by broad grasslands, that led up into the mountains, and hopefully down through them again into the distant land of Noah.
Si'Wren inspected her horse's hooves one by one, cleaning and caring for them as she had been taught, while several men took down her tent and camp gear for her and stowed it away on a pack animal.
She always saw personally to the packing of her writing kit. She had a small stack of thin clay tablets in their bamboo frames, three of which went in a durable bamboo box in a saddle bag strapped on her mount, in order to have them ready for use on a moment's notice. Being Scribe was not a responsibility to be taken lightly.
While men and horses formed up into long columns, Si'Wren finished her own preparations and prepared to mount up. She had managed so far to be always ready before the others, lest they complain.
Borla was standing with several of his captains, as they discussed with him the anticipated route and possible obstacles that might be encountered today.
Emperor Euphrates sat on a pile of cushions in front of his tent, before which stood his royal camel bedecked and festooned with all the tassels and ornamentation of it's kingly station.
It was unbecoming that an Emperor should sit on his camel and wait while the common soldiers went about their occasionally lengthy preparations for the march. More fitting, rather, was it that they should all make ready, and then wait on their Emperor until he should mount and give the command to Borla for the day's march to commence. Borla, as was customary, would then loudly pass the word on down the chain-of-command through his Captains of Fifty, and the march would commence.
The order to begin the long grueling day's march should be coming through any time now.
Suddenly, above the general background noise of many voices coordinating their preparations to march, Si'Wren heard from across the camp a distant cry;
"Kaaaadruuuug!"
An icy chill coursed through her body as Si'Wren looked up anxiously, and Borla jerked up his hand savagely to cut off one of his Captains in mid-sentence.
"What was that?!" Borla asked sharply.
Everyone, including Emperor Euphrates, seemed to suddenly be listening, and the entire camp seemed to fall silent, their very ears itching to hear the more clearly that dread outcry again.
"Eeeeeahhhhgh!"
Si'Wren's ears informed her of the shocking indication that someone must have just been brutally murdered, out a little past the screen of trees beyond the far end of camp. All the camp seemed bewildered.
Then the awful cry came again;
"Kadrug!" came the yell of a distant sentry, "and giants!"
Suddenly everyone seemed to be shouting at once. Si'Wren looked around and saw men falling back from the nearest line of trees, their ordered lines breaking up as men and horses fled under a flight of incoming arrows.
Si'Wren took a hesitant step backwards, and froze at the sound of much hoarse shouting from the other end of camp. She turned her head and searched the field, heart pounding, and through the tall grass appeared first speartips, then helmets, and then the heads and shoulders of hostile men advancing in line-abreast formation, swinging flashing bronze swords in ragged unison and driving back Borla's surprised soldiers in a staggering, disorderly retreat.
There came the unfamiliar call of a horn trumpet from yet another direction, and suddenly a troop of horse soldiers came thundering up the path whence Emperor Euphrates's expedition had come, the ground vibrating under uncountable hooves and cutting off their retreat as the invaders plowed recklessly through Borla's shouting and screaming rear-guard.
In mere seconds, all hope of organizing the men was lost, as they were left in a shambles by the concerted charge of the attackers. The clash of steel filled the dust-laden air, together with the desperate cries of the Emperor's men as they tried to rally themselves together against the ruthless attack.
"I see Conabar himself!" declared one of Borla's captains.
"Where?" demanded Borla.
"There, on a horse!" said the captain.
"Give me a spear!" said Borla.
The captain turned and yanked one out of the hands of the nearest guard and handed it over.
Seizing hold of the spear, Borla mounted his horse and began waving it over their heads as he sought to round up the Emperor's men and muster them into some kind of manageable defensive formation.
But it was too late.
"YAAAAAAAAAAA!!!—" The challenging war cry rang out from a thousand throats as Kadrug's forces suddenly charged as one and drove the Emperor's forces backwards across the camp perimeter, mercilessly cutting down everyone and everything that stood in their path.
Si'Wren watched helplessly, cringing as she retreated step by step until she was abruptly brought up short against the heaving flanks of her black stallion. He stamped his hooves and neighed, for the thunder of hooves from the invader's horses was shaking the very earth itself.
Si'Wren had never been in any battle before and never expected to be caught in one, but she had worried about something like this happening ever since their departure for the land of Noah. Breathlessly she looked around, trying to make some sense out of the situation and decide upon the best move to make.
Abruptly she froze in stark terror as a giant fully twice the height of a normal man came striding out of the tall grass behind the Emperor's tent. He carried a shield the size of a cartwheel on one arm, and a spear like a well-pole in his other hand. No one else seemed to even notice him yet.
He walked forward as if in slow-motion, covering fully one-half of the intervening distance between himself and a terrified Si'Wren in two huge strides with his great spear and shield raised to the attack, and stood staring down at her as if trying to make up his mind whether to kill or capture her.
Si'Wren took a step back from her horse, and became paralyzed with fear.
All at once several of Emperor Euphrates' archers looked around, and reacted with blinding speed. One quickly nocked and loosed an arrow from close range, hitting the giant in the right thigh just above the plank-sized metal shin plate on his lower right leg.
"YAAAAAAWWWW!" he howled in a deep ox-bellow of a voice as he staggered in anger and pain.
Swiftly another archer drew and fired, hitting him in the neck. Finally, two more shots hit him in the chest when he let his guard down momentarily, and he let out another outraged yell.
Emperor Euphrates' personal guards finally turned and saw the giant then, and quickly fired their powerful bows, transfixing the staggering giant with several more arrows.
Seeing he had lost all hope of scattering them, the giant came forward in a berserk charge, ignoring his many injuries as he rushed the guards.
Behind his royal bodyguard cowered a fearful Emperor Euphrates with a useless curved and jeweled little dagger in one hand.
The charging giant's spear went through one of the guards, and the other was killed by a single blow of the giant's huge fist.
A brawny archer nocked an arrow, stepped forward, aimed, and fired from point-blank range at full draw, straight into the side of the giant's torso.
At this he let go of his victim and howled as he turned in a demonic rage, pivoting with huge arms outstretched while Si'Wren stood rooted to the spot. The giant stomped forward, towering over Si'Wren as he drew near and began reaching down for her, and as she stepped back involuntarily out of his reach he simply kept on falling headlong until he hit the ground with an earthshaking slam at Si'Wren's feet and lay still, his stubby fingers twitching several times. His great yellowed teeth gnashed reflexively and after a final wheeze he lay utterly motionless.
Si'Wren stood as one frozen, staring down at the dead giant, until she heard several of the archers yell in unison and she turned her head just in time to see a final charge upon the Emperor's tent. Across the camp, Si'Wren gasped at the sight of Borla's crumpled black form being trampled under the hooves of the enemy's rampaging horse soldiers.
Emperor Euphrates' foot soldiers were fleeing for their lives as the mounted foe chased them down and shot them in their backs or cut them mercilessly to ribbons with their bronze swords.
The archer standing beside Si'Wren nocked another arrow, drew, and fired high. Si'Wren watched his arrow sail forth and come down in the midst of the enemy, to penetrate the face of an upraised wicker shield and embed itself in the chest of a raider. The enemy soldier staggered backwards, fighting to maintain his balance with the arrow in his gut.
But too much else was happening for Si'Wren to watch the enemy soldier any further, and she searched wildly for any sign of resistance in the Emperor's men but could not find such.
Suddenly her upturned eyes spied an incoming flight of arrows, and she had barely time to blink before they began raining down. The arrows' whistling sounds filled the air, followed by the sounds of impacts and screams of the fallen all around her.
Thunk! Si'Wren staggered, and stared disbelievingly at the long feathered end of an arrow sticking out of her right shoulder.
Numb with shock, she half-turned, and saw Emperor Euphrates staring sightlessly at her from where he lay fallen, his fat body bristling with arrows. Her blood pounding in her ears, Si'Wren turned and staggered to her horse. Neighing loudly, the stallion reared up, and dropped down again, shaking his mane. He had, she saw, two arrows in his deeply corded neck muscles.
Si'Wren reached out for him as she stumbled forward and almost tumbled beneath his hooves, but fell against his forequarters instead and reached up to seize hold of the coarse black hair of his mane, and tried to pull herself up.
Lacking the necessary strength and coordination, she hung on, not daring to let go for any reason. Turning her head, she saw running enemy soldiers advancing through the camp, with none remaining to oppose them as the Emperor's archers broke ranks and fell back under the flashing bronze swords of the enemy.
Si'Wren reached up and slapped hard with the flat of one hand on the flank of her horse. At this, he finally bolted, jerking her bodily off her feet as she clutched desperately onto the lunging stallion's mane with the fingers of both hands.
She felt nothing when she heard the arrow in her shoulder snap off against the stallion's heaving flank. Her feet bounced once on the ground as the stallion lunged forward, and she dropped and bounced her feet again in a coordinated leap and sailed upwards with a sharp two-fisted pull on his black flowing mane, and she twisted her torso and legs upwards with the benefit of the transferred momentum and leverage.
Suddenly she was up and riding, with the black stallion's hooves pounding the earth in a thundering tempo as he carried her swiftly away and left all behind. Si'Wren was so small and light that her horse ran virtually unimpeded, whereas her pursuers were large men equipped with heavy weapons and armor, all of which was a respectable burden for their mounts.
Ignoring the stub-end of the arrow in her numbed shoulder, Si'Wren ducked her head down and dropped her eyes to the neck of her steed, hearing the steady blast of breath from his muzzle as the shafts of two embedded arrows vibrated in a rhythmic blur to the thunder of his galloping hooves.
Small rivulets of blood pulsed redly from the arrows as he maintained his breakneck gallop, and Si'Wren wondered at his unrelenting power in the face of such injuries as his hooves pounded, pounded, pounded the ground tirelessly with the wind whipping his black mane into her bowed face and stinging her eyes to wind tears.
He might be wounded, but her beautiful black was a fearless meteor. A horse could run itself to death for it's master, but Si'Wren only wished to escape her pursuers. But what of the black's injuries?
Knowing she must soon stop or risk his death by overexertion, Si'Wren turned her head to look back and saw many attackers separating themselves from the battle to ride after her, and cold fear filled her soul. She looked ahead again just in time to avoid getting knocked off by a low-lying bough as she entered a copse of trees and quickly became hidden in their depths. There had been many men riding after her. Could she possibly outrun them all?
She had been ready to mount up when the attack came, and she could hear the sound of something slapping lightly and rhythmically on the back flanks of the black stallion, and remembered the pair of leather saddle bags containing her writing kit together with the clay tablets in their sturdy bamboo frames. Little good they would do her now, for no longer could she fight the Evil One with mere clay words, and the Emperor himself was past all saving.
She burst out of the far side of the trees and began to ride up a grassy knoll. The black stallion pounded up the rise and she drew back on the reins at the crest, slowing him to a halt at the top and looking back as she paused and listened to the distant pounding of hooves.
She watched with anxious eyes as they appeared out of the far line of trees below, and as they burst out into the open, the pursuit spied her almost immediately, and shouting wildly they swerved in unison, whipping their mounts in merciless pursuit of her.
She turned and cantered the black stallion down a momentary dip in the land, then urged him up the steeper ground to the next higher rise.
For a brief, fearful moment, she almost fell off her horse as he lurched up the opposite slope, but she clutched his shaggy black mane as she toppled suddenly forward against the back of his neck and hung on with all of her failing strength, slowly righting herself. Momentarily out of their line of sight, she could hear their distant shouts. Triumphant shouts, urging each other on.
Si'Wren raised her eyes and looked beyond to the vista of the distant lowlands, whence she had come so far with her Emperor. Then she dropped her eyes, and noticed for the first time that her dark mantle of hair, left unbraided, had been woven by the wind into a knotted mass of tangles like a black flame.
Seeing that her stallion was also wounded, she doubted if he could carry her for very much longer, and dreaded the prospect of falling into the hands of such men. But which way to turn? Then, despairing of what to do next, she seemed to hear a distant roaring.
A waterfall.
The black stallion's muzzle and forequarters were flecked white with foam, and his neck was streaked with blood. His flanks were heaving from his exertions and injuries. Loathe to go on like this, she turned him and rode down another little dip and then up again to the next higher rise. She was ascending a rising series of gently rolling grassy steppes, interspersed by long wide strips of gently sloping meadows and successive narrow courses of green trees.
Then she came to the last rise, and slowed her horse again.
The muted, distant sound of the waterfall became an open roar as she pulled her horse abruptly to a dead halt barely in time, before she would have plunged over a steep drop-off.
The waterfall upstream descended in a streak of white from the crest above, arcing and fanning out majestically from a high ridge. At the waterfall's base shimmered a wide pool, whence emerged the continuation of the deep fast-flowing stream before her. The undercurrent sucked and churned violently as it passed immediately below her position.
After much hesitation, Si'Wren pulled gently on one of her reins, turning her steed upstream towards the waterfall, as she brought in her heels and pressed lightly against the black's heaving flanks, urging him forward along the edge of the bank, seeking some way to get safely down and across. But the closer she came to the waterfall, the higher and steeper became the bank along which she rode, and the more her mount labored. Already suffering from the arrows in his neck, he was drawing near to a state of total exhaustion.
Then behind her she heard the fresh shouts of her pursuers as they topped the final rise and began to fan out, cutting her off while they surrounded her in a half-circle.
They lusted upon her with evil stares, until the stub-end of the arrow in her chest was seen by several of them and indicated to the others with much arm-pointing. Then their looks were transformed to insolent, harsh contempt. What was her life to them anyways? The sight of her suffering engendered nothing but contempt in their looks. Loftily, they all kept back from her by a distance of several rods, with newcomers doing the same as they arrived, and forming a great semi-circle around her with both ends close to the river banks, effectively cutting off her escape.
Then their leader finally came cantering up into their midst on his speckled gray steed and lurched through their enclosing line to get a good look at her.
He paraded back and forth on his nervously prancing steed, displaying an aura of wickedness. One look into his heavily lidded, toadlike eyes, so lifeless and sickeningly dead, utterly convinced Si'Wren that this man's soul must surely have already died a long time ago while his body was yet alive.
Then she realized when he pulled at his reins, that he had six fingers on each hand. Surely this must be Kadrug, because if it were Conabar he would have had only five like his dead relation, the late Master Rababull.
It occurred to Si'Wren without even questioning it that Kadrug must be possessed, and she realized that in looking at the six-fingered one, she was looking also upon a combination of the personality of the possessor, a demon, and of the outward man, a vain soul, and she sensed that this great 'free' warrior was but a proud and unknowing slave, indwelt by hideous evil.
Now more than ever, Si'Wren found in this, even in the face of evil, a proof of the righteous, Invisible God. For she could easily see an unmistakable spiritual side to life, wherein evil and good, and all men's souls, truly dwelt. All life within the visible world, like a finger-drawing in the sand, could show only a muted portrayal of that spiritual side. Like sand, or dust, it must eventually be blown away at death, and give place to the true inner self, the spiritual identity, and there would be found in the hearts of mens' souls, either the good and true bedrock, or just so much foul and polluted slippery sand.
Looking into the man's lizard eyes, Si'Wren perceived all of this in a flash, and shuddered. Surely, as Nelatha had said, it must be that all men must die and see the Invisible God someday when they finally came face-to-face with Him.
These were wicked men, lost souls living in sin. Men who forced their evil lusts upon all around themselves. But they would not have their way with her!
Feeling light-headed and drastically weak, she swayed slightly in the saddle as she turned her head and looked out fearfully over the steep drop-off. There was only swift water directly below her, at the outside shoulder of a natural crook in the river's meander.
Directly below, the current ran fast and deep past the near-vertical base of the high bank where it descended almost straight down into the dark water. Just upstream from this was the beginning of the wide clear pool, into which the waterfall thundered in a continuous roar.
She was having considerable difficulty remaining upright in her saddle as she turned her mount away from the edge, and felt her head nod from an involuntary heaviness as she turned to look this way and that.
She realized that she must be quite a sight to them in her present condition, for her horse and her attire were all black, with the slick glistening red of a coating of blood upon the black stallion's muscular, corded neck beneath where the two arrows were embedded, and much blood also upon the front of her tunic where the stub-end of a broken arrow also protruded from her shoulder.
Scores of swords, bows, and spears were to be seen raised on every hand, but no arrows were nocked and no spearheads aimed her way, for she held no weapon herself and represented no threat to them or their leader Kadrug. Indeed, she could only regard herself as a natural target to them. Si'Wren resolved that she must not allow herself to be treated as just another conquest by this lunatic mob and their leader, Kadrug.
What if these, mad with lust, intended to take her?
Kadrug suddenly said loudly, "Who is this woman?"
Then, getting no answer but shrugs from the ranks surrounding them both in an irregular half-arc, he said directly to Si'Wren, "Woman, look at me!"
At this, Si'Wren lifted up her eyes, and regarded him eye to eye, well aware that the men surrounding both herself and Kadrug were no doubt prepared to commit any evil upon her person at the other's slightest word or nod.
"What is this child's fable I hear from those we captured, about a flood that is to destroy the whole world?"
To this, Si'Wren, by now in a state of complete and utter exhaustion, responded neither by word, sign, nor gesture, but only continued to regard him expressionlessly.
Becoming visibly more impatient, he repeated contemptuously to Si'Wren,"I said, What is this talk we hear from our captives of a great flood?Answer me!"
Still Si'Wren said nothing.
The great warrior fumed silently, and exhaled audibly before continuing.
"Just as I thought! Too cowardly to speak. The only flood I see," he gestured contemptuously at the red-stained figures of Si'Wren and her stallion, with his white-spattered and foam-flecked, blood-streaked forequarters, "is the blood of our enemies!"
He waited, and then added impatiently, "Well? What have you to say?"
Suffering increasingly from shock and exhaustion from her wound and the hard ride, Si'Wren's face remained unreadable, and her eyes seemed somehow not to see him at all, even as she regarded him steadily.
Suddenly Kadrug raised his spear and shook it menacingly in Si'Wren's direction. Si'Wren remained frozen, trembling greatly, and when he made a fierce, menacing expression of hideous anger, her eyes widened, but she still remained immobile.
Then, tilting his hoary head back in an imperious look of emboldened masculine hauteur, Kadrug lifted his reins and prodded his horse once with his heels, starting the animal slowly towards her.
At last, Si'Wren moved. Motivated by fear of capture—and worse, she jerked sharply back on her left rein and kicked smartly with her left heel into his still-heaving flank. The black exploded into action, pivoting around towards the unseen bank of the river as Si'Wren dug into his sides with her heels and reached back at the same time to strike her horse's rump a quick sharp slap.
The black neighed and surged powerfully beneath her like a living thing of fire and iron, surging toward the edge of the drop-off in a mighty lunge until the ground suddenly fell away beneath his pounding hooves and he had hurled them both far out into the air, high above the river, rider and horse caught in a terrible rush of the wind of their falling.
They both went down, both Si'Wren and her horse, plunging with a mighty impact and a great, arcing spray of white into the cold, swiftly flowing mountain waters. Si'Wren's submerged ears heard the roar of the waterfall, like a continuous, muted thunder in the rushing river waters, as the horse fought his way to the surface again.
The men all jumped down off their horses and rushed to the edge of the cliff and stared down at the surface of the river, but by the time they could look, the foam of impact had moved far out of bowshot downstream. The black was swimming steadily toward the opposite bank, but at first, the girl was nowhere to be seen.
Still clinging to his mane, Si'Wren finally raised her head from the water and gasped for air, and shook the water from her eyes to find the black swimming powerfully for the other bank even as the swift current swept them further downstream with every breath.
But he was not altogether tireless, and it seemed as if he might sink and go under at any moment. Still gripping his mane with one hand, Si'Wren reached back with the other and quickly untied the paired saddlebags containing her writing kit and clenched them in her free hand to lighten his load.
They were nearing the far shore, while far behind her she could hear a chorus of hoarse voices as the men howled in frustration.
A few shot arrows in her direction, but it was too far for good aim and their shafts did not come down at all close to her. They could no longer reach her, and none dared follow the path she had taken.
Si'Wren felt her grip on his mane slipping, and letting go involuntarily, she was dragged under by the weight of her waterlogged kit with it's heavy clay tablets.
Underwater, she struggled to keep a tight grip on to her slippery leather saddlebags as the river swirled and tumbled her over and over.
Up on the cliff, Kadrug abruptly thrust his sword into the air and shouted in triumph, and as his men waved their flashing bronze swords in the air, a chorus of hoarse voices howled in victory.
Then their leader jeered his derision as he turned away abruptly, and after a final contemptuous look at the river from his followers, they all retreated from the precipice and returned to their horses.
Still deep underwater and unable to hang on any longer, with a curious roaring in her ears, Si'Wren finally resorted to more drastic means and let go of her writing kit, with it's beautifully carved ivory writing sticks, and the precious clay tablets wherein was written everything she knew about her great, Invisible God Who was so much like water. Unburdened by the weight of her kit, she rose to burst at long last through the surface, gasping and straining for the life-giving air.
She quickly realized that she was so near to the far bank that, gasping heavily, she merely let herself drift in closer, and swam a few tired strokes to finally reach it on hands and knees. She dragged herself halfway out of the water and collapsed, and felt the stub-end of the arrow in her shoulder grate on a rock in the soft sloping bank. She rolled halfway over onto her side to avoid doing that again, and lay in the miry clay of the bank.
Clay. She had lost her writing kit, with all that she had written about the Invisible God, but all around her was clay, miry clay, enough clay to fill the whole world with tablets about the Invisible God. And then she realized that she still had every word she had ever preached to her Emperor, written in her heart.
Looking back upstream, she peered up at the far bank, high above the water, where her many pursuers and their leader were no longer visible.
Than she looked around unsteadily, and a little ways downstream on the same side of the river as herself, she saw the black stallion.
He was bogged down in the mud and reeds of a sheltered shallows, his head sagging ever lower as he gradually gave up his fight for life by successive stages, with weaker and weaker struggles. What a sadness, that such a magnificent creature should ever have to die!
Si'Wren turned her head and lifted up her eyes, and shifted her gaze over a little, to look up at the sky just beyond the waterfall, up into the shining white mists of it's far-flung, billowing overspray.
And then she gasped, awestruck, for there in a perfectly stationary arc stretching across the billowing, towering plumes of white mist, she saw a multi-hued sweep of pure jeweled light, arrayed in the most beautiful translucent bow of vivid colors, red above, and purple beneath, with orange-yellow and blue-green streaked through the center of the miraculously motionless curved arc.
Gasping with increasing difficulty for air from her tortured lungs, and still gazing up into the white mists, Si'Wren stared, spellbound, as the bow of colors and the thundering roar of the waterfall slowly faded from her senses.
* * *
And Si'Wren died.
And these were all the years of her life, and she was but seventeen when she died. I, Ibi, have made proper record of it and shall now seal all away in a great stone jar, for a strange and unheard-of thing happens even as I write these words. Water, falling from the sky for almost a solid week! This miraculous thing have I beheld with mine own rheumy and tired old eyes that thought they had seen all that there was to see, and still it falls! The gods harken not unto the lamentations and sacrifices of men. The rivers, the lakes, and the very sea itself, all are tumultuous, swollen, and rising. Great fear has fallen upon all flesh, upon every man, woman, and child, and upon every beast, and fowl of the air, and lowly creeping thing alike. For the space of six days and six nights has this cursed divine waterfall descended from the heavens upon all the formerly dry land.
I go again to pray. Ye gods, why do ye not listen? Perhaps the great Invisible God of Si'Wren, the Holy One Who is like water, will hearken unto my prayers if the other gods will not, and surely tomorrow, on the seventh day, He will rest.
* * *
The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come. - Isaiah 57.
End of Project Gutenberg's Si'Wren of the Patriarchs, by Roland Cheney