Kiun was quiet. His teeth chattered, and he squirmed weakly in Rumata’s grasp, like a crushed lizard. Then something suddenly fell into the roadside ditch with a splash, and immediately, as if to drown out the splash, he shouted frantically: “Then hang me! Hang me, traitor!”
Rumata took a deep breath and let Kiun go. “I was joking,” he said. “Don’t be scared.”
“Lies, lies …” Kiun mumbled, sobbing. “Lies everywhere!”
“Come on, don’t be mad,” Rumata said. “You’d better pick up what you threw in—it’ll get wet.”
Kiun waited a bit, rocking in place and blubbering, then he pointlessly patted his cloak with the palms of his hands and climbed into the ditch. Rumata waited, hunching wearily in his saddle. That’s how it has to be, he thought; there’s no other way.
Kiun climbed out of the ditch, hiding the bundle underneath his shirt.
“Books, of course,” Rumata said.
Kiun shook his head. “No,” he murmured. “Just one book. My book.”
“And what are you writing about?”
“I’m afraid it wouldn’t interest you, noble don.”
Rumata sighed. “Take the stirrup,” he said. “Let’s go.”
For a long time, they were silent.
“Listen, Kiun,” said Rumata. “I was joking. Don’t be scared of me.”
“What a wonderful world,” Kiun said. “What a merry world. Everybody jokes. And everybody’s jokes are the same. Even noble Rumata’s.”
Rumata was surprised. “You know my name?”
“I do,” Kiun said. “I recognized you by the circlet on your head. I was so glad to meet you on the road …”
Ah, of course, that’s what he meant when he called me a traitor, thought Rumata. He said, “You see, I thought you were a spy. I always kill spies.”
“A spy,” repeated Kiun. “Yes, of course. In our times it’s so easy and rewarding to be a spy. Our eagle, the noble Don Reba, is interested in what the king’s subjects say and think. I wish I could be a spy. A rank-and-file informer at the Gray Joy Inn. How lovely, how respectable! At six o’clock I come to the bar and sit down at my table. The proprietor rushes toward me with my first pint. I can drink however much I want, the beer is paid for by Don Reba— or rather, it isn’t paid for at all. I sit there, sip my beer, and listen. Sometimes I pretend to write down conversations, and the frightened little people hurry to me with offers of friendship and money. Their eyes express only the things I want: doglike devotion, fearful awe, and delightful impotent hatred. I can grope girls with impunity and fondle wives in front of their husbands—big burly men—and they’ll only giggle obsequiously. What beautiful reasoning, noble don, is it not? I heard it from a fifteen-year-old boy, a student of the Patriotic School.”
“And what did you tell him?” asked Rumata curiously.
“What could I tell him? He wouldn’t have understood. So I told him that when Waga the Wheel’s men catch an informant, they rip his belly open and fill his insides with pepper. And drunken soldiers stuff the informant into a sack and drown him in an outhouse. And this was gospel truth, but he didn’t believe me. He said that wasn’t covered in school. Then I took out some paper and wrote down our conversation. I needed it for my book, but he, poor thing, decided that it was for a report, and he wet himself from fright.”
The lights of Skeleton Baco’s inn flashed through the bushes ahead. Kiun stumbled and went quiet. “What’s wrong?” asked Rumata.
“It’s a gray patrol,” muttered Kiun.
“So what?” said Rumata. “Listen to another bit of reasoning, worthy Kiun. We love and value these simple, rough boys, our gray fighting beasts. We need them. From now on, a commoner better keep his tongue in his mouth, unless he wants it to dangle out on the gallows!” He roared with laughter, because it was so well put—in the finest tradition of the gray barracks.
Kiun shuddered and drew his head into his shoulders.
“A commoner’s tongue should know its place. God gave the commoner a tongue not for making fine speeches but for licking the boots of his master, who has been placed above him since time immemorial.”
The saddled horses of the gray patrol were tied to the hitching post in front of the tavern. Husky, avid swearing came through the open window. There was a clatter of dice. In the door, blocking the way with his monstrous belly, stood Skeleton Baco himself, in a ragged leather jacket with the sleeves rolled up. In his hairy paw was a cleaver—clearly he had been chopping dog meat for the soup, gotten sweaty, and come out to catch his breath. A dejected-looking gray storm trooper was sitting on the front steps, his battle-ax between his knees. The ax handle was pulling his mug off to one side. He was clearly feeling the effects of drink. Noticing the rider, he pulled himself together and bellowed huskily, “S-Stop! Who goes there? You, no-obility!”
Rumata, jutting out his chin, rode past without a single look. “… and if a commoner’s tongue licks the wrong boot,” he said loudly, “then it should be removed altogether, for it is said: ‘Thy tongue is my enemy.’”
Kiun, hiding behind the horse’s croup, was taking long strides by his side. Out of the corner of his eye, Rumata saw his bald patch glistening with sweat.
“I said stop!” roared the storm trooper.
They could hear him stumbling down the stairs, rattling his ax, cursing God, Satan, and those noble scum in one breath.
About five men, thought Rumata. Drunk butchers. Piece of cake.
They passed the inn and turned toward the forest.
“I can walk faster if you like,” Kiun said in an unnaturally steady voice.
“Nonsense!” Rumata said, reining in his stallion. “It’d be dull to ride so far without a single fight. Don’t you ever want to fight, Kiun? It’s all talk and talk …”
“No,” said Kiun. “I never want to fight.”
“That’s just the trouble,” Rumata muttered, turning the stallion around and slowly pulling on his gloves.
Two horsemen jumped out from beyond the bend, coming to a sudden halt when they saw him. “Hey you, noble don!” one of them shouted. “Come on, show us your traveling papers!”
“Boors!” Rumata said icily. “You’re illiterate, what would you do with them?”
He nudged his stallion with his knees and trotted toward the storm troopers. They’re chickening out, he thought. Hesitating. Come on, at least a couple of blows! No … no luck. How I’d like to let out some of the hatred that’s accumulated over the past twenty-four hours, but it looks like I’ll have no luck. Let us remain humane, forgive everyone, and be calm like the gods. Let them slaughter and desecrate, we’ll be calm like the gods. The gods need not hurry, they have eternity ahead.
He rode right up to them. The storm troopers raised their axes uncertainly and backed up.
“Well?” said Rumata.
“What’s this, eh?” said the first storm trooper in confusion. “Is this the noble Don Rumata, eh?”
The second storm trooper immediately turned his horse around and galloped away at full speed. The first one kept backing up, his ax lowered. “Beg your pardon, noble don,” he was saying rapidly. “Didn’t recognize you. Just a mistake. Affairs of state, mistakes do happen. The boys drank a bit much, they’re burning with zeal …” He started to ride away sideways. “As you know, it’s a difficult time … We’re hunting down fugitive literates. We wouldn’t like you to be displeased with us, noble don …”
Rumata turned his back to him.
“Have a good journey, noble don!” said the storm trooper with relief.
When he left, Rumata called softly. “Kiun!”
No one answered.
“Hey, Kiun!”
And again no one answered. Listening carefully, Rumata could make out the rustling of bushes through the whine of the mosquitoes. Kiun was hurrying west through the fields, toward the border with Irukan. And that’s that, thought Rumata. That’s it for that conversation. That’s how it always is. A careful probing, a wary exchange of cryptic p
arables. Whole weeks are wasted in trite chatter with all sorts of scum, but when you meet a real man there’s no time to talk. You have to protect him, save him, send him out of danger, and he leaves you without even knowing whether he was dealing with a friend or a capricious ass. And you don’t learn much about him either. His wishes, his talents, what he lives for …
He thought of Arkanar in the evening: the solid stone houses on the main streets, the friendly lantern above the entrance to the tavern, the complacent, well-fed shopkeepers drinking beer at clean tables and arguing that the world isn’t bad at all—the price of bread is falling, the price of armor is rising, conspiracies are quickly discovered, sorcerers and suspicious bookworms are hanged on the gallows, the king is, as usual, great and wise, while Don Reba is infinitely clever and always on his guard. “The things they come up with! The world is round! For all I care it’s square, just don’t stir things up!” “Literacy, literacy is the source of it all, my brothers! First they tell us money can’t buy happiness, then they say peasants are people, too, and it only gets worse—offensive verses, then rioting.” “Hang them all, my brothers! You know what I’d do? I’d ask them straight out: Can you read? Off to the gallows! Write verses? Off to the gallows! Know your multiplication tables? Off to the gallows, you know too much!” “Bina, honey, three more pints and a serving of rabbit stew!” Meanwhile, squat, red-faced young men, with heavy axes on their right shoulders, pound the cobblestones— thump, thump, thump—with their hobnailed boots. “My brothers! Here they come, our defenders! Would they let it happen? Not on your life! And my boy, my boy … he’s on the right flank! Seems like only yesterday I was flogging him! Yes, my brothers, these are no troubled times! The throne is strong, prosperity reigns, there’s inviolable peace and justice. Hurray for the gray troops! Hurray for Don Reba! Glory to the king! Oh, my brothers, how wonderful life has become!”
Meanwhile, the roads and trails of the dark plains of the Kingdom of Arkanar, lit by the glows of fires and the sparks of torches, are filled with hundreds of wretches running, walking, stumbling, avoiding outposts. They are tormented by mosquitoes, covered in sweat and dust, exhausted, frightened, and desperate, yet hard as steel in their convictions. They’ve been declared outside the law because they are able and willing to heal and teach their sick and ignorant race; because they, like the gods, use clay and stone to create another reality to beautify the life of a race that knows no beauty; because they penetrate the secrets of nature, hoping to put these secrets in the service of their inept race, which is still cowed by ancient superstitions … helpless, kind, impractical, far ahead of their time.
Rumata pulled off his glove and whipped his stallion hard between the ears. “Giddyup, lazybones!” he said in Russian.
It was already midnight when he entered the forest.
No one was quite sure where the strange name came from— the Hiccup Forest. The official version was that three hundred years ago, the troops of Imperial Marshal Totz—later the first king of Arkanar—were hacking their way through the saiva, pursuing the retreating hordes of copper-skinned barbarians, and during rest stops they boiled white tree bark to make a brew that caused uncontrollable hiccups. According to this legend, one day Marshal Totz was making the rounds of the camp and, wrinkling his aristocratic nose, declared, “This is truly insupportable! The whole forest has hiccups and reeks of home brew!” And this was allegedly the source of the strange name.
In any case, it wasn’t quite an ordinary forest. It was full of gigantic trees with hard white trunks, which no longer existed elsewhere in the empire—not in the Duchy of Irukan, and definitely not in the Mercantile Republic of Soan, which had long since used up its timber on ships. It was said that there were many such forests beyond the North Red Ridge in the country of the barbarians, but lots of tales were told about the country of the barbarians.
A road had been cut through the forest two centuries ago. It led to the silver mines and by feudal right belonged to the Barons Pampa, descendants of one of the companions of Marshal Totz. This feudal right cost the kings of Arkanar twelve pounds of pure silver per year, and therefore each successive king, after ascending the throne, gathered an army and went to war with Castle Bau, the seat of the barons. The castle walls were strong, the barons were brave, and each campaign cost thirty pounds of silver. After the return of the defeated army, the king of Arkanar would once again confirm the feudal right of the Barons Pampa, along with their other privileges—picking their noses at the royal table, hunting to the west of Arkanar, and calling princes only by their names, without adding titles and ranks.
The Hiccup Forest was full of dark secrets. During the day, wagons of processed ore trundled south along the road, and at night the road was empty, because few men were brave enough to walk it by starlight. It was said that at night, the Sioux bird—a bird that has never been seen and cannot be seen, since it is no ordinary bird—cried out from the Father-Tree. It was said that huge hairy spiders jumped out of the branches onto the necks of horses and instantly gnawed through their veins, drowning in blood. It was said that the ancient beast Pekh roamed the forest—a creature, covered in scales, that sired offspring every twelve years and dragged behind him twelve tails oozing poisonous sweat. And someone had seen the naked boar Y, cursed by the Holy Míca, crossing the road in broad daylight, grumbling plaintively—a ferocious animal, invulnerable to iron but easily pierced by bone.
Here you could also meet a runaway slave with a tar brand between his shoulder blades—silent and ruthless, like the hairy bloodsucking spider. Or a stooped warlock, collecting secret mushrooms for his magic potions, which could be used to become invisible, turn into various animals, or acquire a second shadow. The night sentries of the fearsome Waga the Wheel also walked this road, as did the fugitives from the silver mines with their black hands and white, transparent faces. Medicine men gathered here for their nightly vigils, and Baron Pampa’s rowdy huntsmen would skewer stolen oxen and roast them whole in the scattered clearings.
In the depths of the forest, a mile away from the road, beneath an enormous tree that had dried up of old age, stood a lopsided hut made out of enormous logs, surrounded by a blackened picket fence. It had been here since the beginning of time, its door was always shut, and there were crooked idols carved from whole tree trunks around its rotting porch. This hut was the most dangerous place in the Hiccup Forest. It was said that this was the very place to which the ancient Pekh would come every twelve years to deliver his offspring, after which he would immediately crawl beneath the hut and expire, so the hut’s entire cellar was filled with black poison. And when the poison seeped out—that’s when the end would come. It was said that on stormy nights, the idols dug themselves out of the ground, came out onto the road, and signaled to passersby. And it was also said that sometimes the windows shone with unnatural light, sounds resounded through the forest, and a column of smoke reached up from the chimney to the sky.
Not long ago, Irma Kukish, a sober simpleton from the farmstead of Plenitude (in common parlance, Stinkfield) foolishly wandered by the hut at night and peered into the windows. He came home completely incoherent, and after he recovered a little, said that the hut was full of bright light and that a man with his feet on the bench sat behind a crude table and guzzled from a barrel held in one hand. The man’s face hung all the way down to his waist and was spotted all over. It was obvious that this was the Holy Míca himself, before his conversion to the faith, a polygamist, drunkard, and blasphemer. To look at him was to be afraid. A sickly sweet smell wafted out the window, and shadows moved across the trees. People gathered from all over to hear the idiot’s story. And it all ended when the storm troopers came, bent his elbows to his shoulder blades, and hustled him off to the city of Arkanar. But people still talked about the hut, and it was now called nothing but the Drunken Lair.
Rumata made his way through the thicket of giant ferns, dismounted by the Drunken Lair’s porch, and wound his reins around one of the idols. T
he hut was fully lit, the door open and hanging by a hinge, and Father Cabani was sitting behind the table in a state of utter dejection. The room was filled with a powerful odor of spirits, and a huge stein towered on the table between the gnawed bones and pieces of boiled turnips.
“Good evening, Father Cabani,” Rumata said, stepping over the threshold.
“Greetings,” Father Cabani answered, in a raspy voice that sounded like a battle horn.
Rumata came up to the table, spurs jingling. He threw his gloves on the bench and took another look at Father Cabani. Father Cabani was motionless, supporting his drooping face with his hand. His shaggy, graying eyebrows hung down over his cheeks like dry grass over a cliff. With every breath, the nostrils of his coarsely pored nose whistled out air saturated with undigested alcohol.
“I invented it myself!” he said suddenly, raising his right eyebrow with effort and turning a puffy eye toward Rumata. “I did it myself! Why did I do it?” He extracted his right hand from underneath his cheek and shook a hairy finger. “But it’s not my fault. I invented it … and it’s not my fault, eh! That’s right—not my fault. Anyway, we don’t invent a thing, that’s all nonsense!”
Rumata unbuckled his belt and pulled his swords off over his head. “Now, now,” he said.
“The box!” barked Father Cabani and stayed silent for a long time, making strange motions with his cheeks.
Rumata, without taking his eyes off him, threw his dusty-booted feet over the bench and sat, putting his swords down nearby.
“The box …” Father Cabani repeated in a deflated voice. “We only say we invent things. Actually, it was all invented a long time ago. A long time ago, someone invented it all, stuck it in a box, made a hole in the lid, and left. Left to go to sleep … then what? Father Cabani comes in, closes his eyes, sh-shoves his hand into the hole.” Father Cabani looked at his hand. “He g-grabs it! Aha! An invention! This thing here is my invention, he says! And if you don’t believe it, you’re a fool. I shove my hand in—th-that’s one! What is it? Barbed wire! What’s it for? Protecting farmyards from the wolves … I shove my hand in—th-that’s two! What is it? The handiest thing—a meat grinder. What’s it for? Tender minced meat … good job! I shove my hand in—that’s three! What is it? F-Flammable water! What’s it for? Kindling damp wood … eh!”