He strode in, dashed water over himself, and sat wrapped in his cloak, legs stretched out in front of him. Thinking. He was thinking of Al·Ith. It seemed to him now that he had had offered to him a treasury of thoughts and experience he could have used, availed himself of — but he had let the opportunity go past. How much she knew! How much she had taught him — and now it was all gone. For his heart told him most finally that when she returned for her six-monthly sojourns their relations would not be at all the same. No, of course not. He had been forced to marry Al·Ith, and had hated it, and had come to love her, and now could not do without her — oh, he was not grumbling, one did not complain or grumble at the ordinances of the Providers who of course knew best — but when he had married this other woman, presumably it would all happen again in some way or another. So he could not expect, not ever again, Al·Ith to come cantering up the hill along the road from the mountains, so that the two of them could live their marriage in the pavilion. All that was over.
Would he have two women in the pavilion, two wives? He could not imagine that. Al·Ith was not Dabeeb, born to adapt and present herself for every new need and occasion. And there was this savage woman, this queen … there had been no word at all from them as to how he was to go about the new marriage.
It occurred to him that what Dabeeb had said, when announcing the message from the unknown small boy was: Al·Ith was to spend half of every year with her son. Up to this very moment, he had believed this would mean that Al·Ith would return to his Zone, here. And he knew that that was how Al·Ith had seen it. Yet perhaps that was not what had been meant at all? At the thought that his son was to be taken away from him to spend six months in Zone Three, he was struck and ravaged by a violent jealousy, a no that possessed him entirely … but one did not say no to such ukases.
The thought came to him that this was a way to enable Arusi to learn all the airs and graces of Zone Three, and thus equip him to teach Zone Four what it could … Ben Ata was sitting there, all fierce black concentration, wrestling with his thoughts new and old, when the tent flap was pulled back, and a couple of soldiers who had been on a raiding party thrust into the tent a young woman who was panting, scratching, and as vicious as a wild cat that had its paws tied together.
The soldiers were grinning, as was obligatory. They stood with arms folded just inside the tent flap, waiting for him to be pleased with them. He put a smile on his face, thanked them, added some of the necessary winks, leers, and knowing looks, and tossed them some coins he had in his robe’s pockets for just such occasions.
The young woman had fallen on the floor of the tent and was unable to right herself. The soldiers went. He thought, first of all, that she must be uncomfortable, if not in pain. He was about to throw her skins to lie on, and even to cut her bonds, when he realized that this was an occasion of moral crisis. It was his right to rape this girl. Worse, it was his duty. Whether he wanted to or not. He had never not wanted to before — or rather, he had not thought about it. Now he was thinking about it, remembering drearily how these girls of Zone Five were always so dusty and gritty to the touch. And he thought, too, of Al·Ith, of Dabeeb, and the woman of the night his son was born.
Lust was in fact flickering and licking its lips — but not very much.
He realized the girl was not struggling.
He glanced quickly at her, and away. She was a splendid girl, tall, large, with masses of bright yellow hair bound back from her face. Her eyes were the fierce bright grey of Zone Five women. She had strong long limbs. She wore trousers of rough skin, and a tight jacket of fur.
While he postponed a direct gaze at her, she looked at him calmly with her unafraid eyes, and waited.
The idea of raping this wild creature, who reminded him of a hunting hawk, quite revolted him, whether his soldier’s honour was involved or not. On the other hand he had to do something. If he loosened her bonds she would run away and that would make him a figure of fun throughout the army. He looked covertly, for fear of being observed to show weakness, to see if her bonds were too tight. They did not seem to be cutting into her wrists or ankles.
As he was not sure what to do, he went on sitting there, wrapped in his black garment, staring straight out of the tent flap, which the soldiers had forgotten to fasten, into a very dark night. A soft scented breeze flowed into the tent and stirred — though he was not looking at her directly — the girl’s flowing hair.
He was again thinking of Al·Ith, who had taken his old heart out of his body, and who had not given him anything in its place. How was he going to live, a half-man, not a soldier, not a man of peace, not a husband since he was bereft of her, not properly even a father, since it seemed there was at least a possibility of his losing his son to Zone Three for half of every year … these messages from the Providers … it was not that they were ambiguous, but that you had to wait for events to interpret them.
Who was he? What was he going to do?
It occurred to him that this was how poor Al·Ith had been made to think and suffer as she sat in her palace waiting for his soldiers to come and bring her down by force, to him. She had known that her life, her ways of thinking, her rights, her habits — everything — were about to be torn apart, destroyed, re-framed and re-assembled by some barbarian, and there was nothing she had been able to do about it.
And there was nothing he, Ben Ata, could do about it.
Al·Ith had been savaged — yes, he was quite willing and able to use the word now — by him, the barbarian, and he was now going to have to be the same with a dirty primitive queen … it occurred to Ben Ata that in the comer of his eye, where the girl was, he was seeing something he had not before taken in. Still only half looking at her, he turned his head slightly, and noted that on those magnificent arms were heavy gold bracelets, on the legs barbaric but beautiful gold ornaments, set with all kinds of coloured stones, on the fingers rings, of gold again and one in particular, so heavy and ornate that it could only announce some position of power or prestige, and around the girl’s strong white neck hung a massive sigil or seal or symbol on a gold chain.
The truth came to him suddenly, and he said, ‘You are the queen of Zone Five?’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said.
He laughed. He had not known he was going to, but it was an event so apt, coming so pat and right, so magnificently challenging and even—so he recognised in his innermost self — expected, as if nothing else could have happened, that he could only laugh. And she, in a moment, laughed with him, showing her beautiful strong teeth.
So it was that as the camp came to life all around them in the dawn, what those soldiers heard first who were near the king’s tent, was Ben Ata laughing, and with him, an unknown woman, who, the word went around, was some female soldier caught in the dark of the opposite ridge and flung into the king’s tent for his enjoyment.
‘They are having a good time, those two,’ the soldiers said to each other, half admiringly, half enviously, as is the way of the underdogs. And when, shortly, it became known that it was the queen of the enemy Zone who had been captured, and that she was going to marry their king, their natural and proper disgust that there was not going to be a battle that day turned to feasting and enjoyment.
On the opposing ridges in Zone Four and Zone Five the two armies feasted and danced for a week. They visited each other’s camp, made all kinds of joint forays and sorties and even raiding parties among the unfortunate local populations, for the sheer joy of it — and generally became a good deal better acquainted. For it was a remarkable fact that these two countries had been at war off and on for generations, yet they knew practically nothing about each other.
Meanwhile, what went on in the king’s tent was not as the soldiers’ uproarious imaginations had it.
The queen’s bonds were of course immediately removed, refreshments were brought for her, and another tent, almost as fine as the king’s, was set up near his.
Her attitude and manner were not that of a c
aptive so recently ignominiously flung down like a sack full of captured fowls. Ben Ata, who was after all a soldier before anything else, knew from the start that all was not as it seemed, and before the queen had dismantled her second roast chicken she had most willingly confessed — as was her way she was laughing so hard she could hardly keep her seat on a chair which it was clear was not her most usual form of seating — that she had got herself captured because she wished to meet the king and — it was she who put it forward first — marry him.
Ben Ata learned from her that the methods and habits of his soldiers and sentries and raiding parties were such that her fighting men ‘knew everything they were going to do days before they did it’ — that the discipline, order, martial correctness of his army provoked nothing but derision in his opponents who, in their own eyes at least, did exactly as they liked and when they liked.
‘But if this was the case,’ he most politely enquired, ‘how was it that this war of theirs had not been over long ago?’
‘But why should it have ended?’ enquired the queen, rummaging in her chicken carcasses for titbits and licking her fingers in a way which both shocked and tantalized her bridegroom.
There followed a long and amiable discussion between these two ancient antagonists from which Ben Ata learned a good deal, though he feared she did not … the style, or mode, of their being together was already established, and would not change for some time.
She sat sprawling, and lounging, raising her arms to yawn and stretch, moving and swinging her legs as if the chair she sat on was a stone on a hillside, or perhaps a horse — at any rate, she was quite magnificently unable to subdue her wildness to this strictly sober military tent. She laughed continually, and with the utmost good-nature, at him, his ways of speaking, of thinking — but this became her.
As for him, the more she displayed—as he felt it, flaunted — this careless and sensual confidence of hers, the more he straightened his back, and reminded himself of duty, and self-discipline.
He was able to observe himself in this scene with an eye which he knew was Al·Ith’s—or at least, was her gift to him. Certainly before knowing her he would not have been able to enjoy an inner smile at this situation.
For one thing, he already suspected that he would have done better to rape her at once, as protocol demanded: that this was what she had counted on. For he could not help believing that part of the reason for her wild and exhilarated manner was nervousness and even uncertainty. Possibly — he wouldn’t be at all surprised — contempt of this man. Who, though, she surely could not consider unmanly, for she had already said that she had often watched him at the head of his troops from some hiding place on a hillside or an animal’s hole, and had found him attractive.
Now there was certainly no case for flinging her down and getting it over with, a set of words which, coming to his tongue and finding themselves examined, at once dismissed themselves. Yet she was quite dazzlingly attractive. But he did not know how to behave, now that the natural order of things had been upset. And his own instincts were confused, because he was after all still married to Al·Ith, and that in itself forbade any casual or instant lovemaking with this queen.
He supposed that probably what must happen would be restraint until the marriage itself — which she had announced should take place soon, and there would be a wedding night of the formal kind. But before that, he knew he must prove himself in some way. The queen of Zone Five, he had already been informed, rewarded the victors of certain contests among her soldiers with a night in her tent, and he would be expected to do as well as any of them. And he could already see, from moments when she speculated on his possibilities both militarily and otherwise, with long cool insolent looks of which she was of course unconscious — for she had no self-consciousness at all — that she was doubting him. It was this mien of his: so tight, and orderly, ‘so very Zone Four,’ as she already was putting it.
Meanwhile they discussed military matters, each defending his and her way … which in fact defended itself, by the sheer fact that neither side had permanently gained from the other so much as a stone’s throw of territory in all those generations of fighting.
It was becoming evident that if Zone Four had seen the war with Zone Five almost as an obligation, a necessity whose beginnings no one could remember, then Zone Five’s attitude was not dissimilar.
War — of their own kind of course — was a way of life for the queen and her people. It was their means of testing themselves, preserving their honour and self-respect, their chief amusement.
Why then did she want to put an end to it?
About this she was vague, rather carelessly and obviously so, which Ben Ata found amusing, as with a would-be clever child.
It took him some days to put together a picture which satisfied him and which he felt he could rely on.
Zone Four believed Zone Five to be a place of deserts and thin scrub, where a few nomad tribes moved their tents and herds to find sparse food and water. This was because nothing but rocks and sands and scrub could be seen from their side, and they had never seen any other kind of people.
But these sandy wastes were only part of the Zone. Eastward were lush pastures, farmland, villages, and even large towns — a realm that had got rich and soft and could not defend itself against Vahshi and her horsemen. This girl had not inherited her position as leader of her tribe, though she was a chieftain’s daughter, but had fought for it. Under her had been consolidated a federation of tribes who called her queen. The war with Zone Four had continued, as always, but she had seen very quickly that it was foolish to waste resources there: to plunder the farmlands was obviously more sensible. And then, with the farming country brought under and owing allegiance, her bands of ragged men who could live for weeks off the milk of their mares and a few handfuls of dried provisions, terrorized the towns. She had called representatives of every part of Zone Five together in a great palaver or assembly and had had herself crowned queen before them all.
Why should she bother with Zone Four? She looked forward to a reign of plenty, exacting tribute from those maggots of townsmen, and capturing what she needed or had a whim to take.
And where did her marriage with Ben Ata fit into this plan of hers?
Her magnificent grey eyes slid a little, her face put on a look of frank confession, she smiled invitation and seduction … but Ben Ata saw at once that the marriage had no importance for her, except as it could secure her frontier and leave her free.
In the late evenings, when he dismissed her — politely of course — to her tent, he braved her glances of laughing scorn with a self-command he knew would make the subject of all kinds of jests and camp songs when she went back to her own people to arrange the wedding feast.
Then he lay awake in the dark, arms behind his head, thinking. Of this savage girl, with whom he promised himself all kinds of pleasures, the more satisfactory because she would not be expecting them.
Of Al·Ith, whose thoughts seemed to be flowing there around and near him … and there was more than a little anger in him. He knew that he was forever caught up and bound, if not to her, then to her realm, her ways — so that he could never again act without thinking, or be without reflection on his condition. And he did not regret it, not that, yet even now there was a part of him that said she had put a spell on him — and that she must be exulting, knowing his new queen was at this moment laughing at him in her tent.
He could no longer be as he had been, the Ben Ata who had never doubted what he should do; nor could he yet react from any higher or better centre or state. He was in between, and horribly uncertain.
From thinking of Al·Ith, and her unfair and sly enchantments, he thought of the Providers, and for the first time in the way of trying to put himself into their minds … yes, he knew it was foolish and probably even punishable. But he could not stop himself. He believed he was beginning to see the outline of their plans for Zone Five, if not for Zone Three — which was quite beyo
nd him. And he was thinking that ‘if he were in their place’ he certainly wouldn’t let those desert savages ravage and raid and plunder. Vahshi’s gold ornaments, for instance, all had been stolen from the workshops of the cities. The grey furs which set off her blonde beauty so well were not the workmanship of her people, but from the markets she thieved from. All the women of the tribes now swaggered about in gold and precious stones and even the horses wore gold chains and the dogs gold collars. Every group of tents had store tents heaped with silks and fine cottons and robes that the women wore for feasts, though not in their ordinary tent lives, and there were festivals every time there was a raid. The lives of the tent people were now not hard and meagre and self-sufficing, but full of indulgence. Ben Ata had said to the queen that it would not be long before the tribes were as soft and rotten as the people they despised, but those eyes had slid away, in that way of hers, and her smile had been uncertain for only a moment before she had flung back her head and challenged him with: But how, soft? — you’ll see how soft we are!
And it was not long before the wedding feast, when he did see.
The black tents covered what seemed to be miles of the desert, but they were in groups rather apart from each other — solitariness and separation being the ground of their natures, as desert people. There were herds of horses thousands strong. There were platters containing whole sheep or calves, even two or three at a time. It seemed as if the whole valley was one vast offering of food, and Ben Ata and his attendant soldiers were given a reception they could have been undone by. For during the days while the queen had withdrawn to prepare her people for this marriage — and of course Ben Ata knew that the picture they were being given was not at all the same as his — he had been preparing himself for the moment when he would have to outdo her champions. He was a fine horseman, but it was a long time since he had proved this to himself or anyone else. Once no man in his armies could have outwrestled or outfought him — but that was not recently. The finest and most cunning wrestlers and horsemen were called from every part of Zone Four, and Ben Ata put himself in their hands, and between them all he was restored to his youthful skills and strengths.