The Great Fetish

4

As Muphrid rose on the eleventh of Napoleon, Marko Prokopiu, carrying his bag, came to the central square, where the caravan was mustering. Having no mount, he would have to buy a seat on a camel to Niok.

The caravan conductor, a swart Arabistani, stood at the center of a knot of travelers, assigning them their places and collecting fares. Among the passengers, Marko recognized Boert Halran. Halran had, besides his own luggage, a large hand cart on which stood four huge jugs. A pair of workmen leaned against the wheels of the cart.

Four archers in well-oiled hauberks of chain mail squatted on their heels, holding the reins of their horses. These men were supposed to protect the caravan from robbers and wild beasts. Because of the protection they afforded, the conductor collected fares even from those who had their own mounts or vehicles for the privilege of accompanying the rest.

“All right,” said the conductor to Halran. “I’ll hang these four jugs on one of my camels and give you a seat on another. Can you manage a camel?”

“Yes.”

“Then let me see, who shall take the other seat of old Mutasim? … You!” The conductor addressed Marko. “Do you wish a seat too?”

“Yes,” said Marko. “To Niok.”

“Can you drive a camel?” . “I’ve never tried.”

“Then you can’t. You shall take the back seat on this beast. I ought to charge you extra fare because of your weight, but I’m in a generous mood.”

Halran looked quizzically at Marko. “You seem to be my fate, my sanguinary young friend. Have you ever traveled by camel?”

“No, sir.”

“You have much to learn, then. Strap your bag on here.”

Boert Halran showed Marko how to stow himself and his gear aboard their beast. Then he went to help the two workmen, the conductor, and the caravan dispatcher to manhandle the jars off the cart and sling them on the next camel astern. When this had been done, he came back and climbed into the front seat on Marko’s camel.

The caravan dispatcher looked at the big vertical sun dial, which rose out of the ornamental fountain at the center of the square. “Only fifteen minutes late,” said he to the conductor. “If I live long enough, I shall get a caravan off on time yet.”

The dispatcher smote a gong near the sun dial with a long-handled mallet. The conductor shouted orders. With a chorus of snorts and moans, the camels rose. Marko, forewarned, held the handhold in front of him and so was not thrown off, although one other passenger was. The camel behind Marko’s rose, laden with the four amphorae of stupa gum.

Marko’s saddle was part of an elaborate structure, which fitted around the camel’s forward hump, with a gap in the middle through which the shaggy apex of the hump projected. Behind the hump was one seat, on which Marko sat. Forward was another, on which sat Boert Halran with his feet resting on the back of the camel’s neck.

The caravan consisted mainly of thirty-two camels, carrying riders or loads. There were also a wagon pulled by two camels, a carriage drawn by a pair of horses, two other horses with riders, and the four mounted archers. The camels had little sticks tied to their tails with flags to indicate ownership.

“Go!” cried the conductor, whose name was Slim Qadir. The procession formed as mounts and vehicles took their places in the line, which crawled out of the main square of Thine.

They plodded out of the square, through the streets, and along the west road. They passed through the avenue of stupas that Jorgi the First had planted many years before. These were mere saplings compared to those of the Borsja Peninsula, none being over twelve feet in diameter.

As the caravan climbed towards the Pindo Hills, a northward continuation of the Skudran and Zetskan hills, the trees became smaller and sparser. Their place was taken by the crowding, bamboolike kackinsoni. The sky clouded over; the rain began. They sloshed through the Borgo Pass, between the volcanoes Elikon and Parnasso, and down the long slope towards the Saar.

On the following day after siesta, Marko saw the Saar for the first time. The sandy soil stretched away to the horizon, sparsely covered with patches of phosphor grass and little bat-veiled fungi. Here and there rose a clump of the onion-mushroom, Scallionis. Slim Qadir warned his party that the local variety, although it looked just like other onion-mushrooms, was deadly poisonous. When they got closer to the Medranian Sea, the onion-mushrooms would become safely edible again.

Hours ticked slowly past as they jounced across the vast waste. Its aridity was due to the long spur of hills, which the Equatorial Range thrust northward from the spine of the Borsja Peninsula. The Skudran and Zetskan and Pindo hills were links in this chain, which wrung most of the moisture out of the prevailing northeasterly winds in passing over them.

The terrain varied from hour to hour. Sometimes it was fiat or gently rolling sandy country with scattered fungi and spiny shrubs. Sometimes there were lifeless dunes. They passed jagged outcrops of rock and clumps of low, steep-sided hills, and sometimes a group of smoking volcanic cones. Little life was to be seen, save an occasional herd of dromsors, slender running lizards something like a reptilian ostrich in shape, or a flock of batlike tersors flying overhead.

Once they were well into the Saar, Slim Qadir forbade cooking fires. “Robbers,” he explained. “Zaki Riadhi’s band lurks in these hills.”

“Oh, mercy!” said Halran. “I hope we shall not encounter them.”

North of the L-shaped peninsula of Vizantia lay the Khlifate of Arabistan, including not only the base of the peninsula but also the great offshore island of Mahrib. The territory of the Khlifate extended southward along the shores of the Medranian Sea to take in the whole Saar. Under the feeble and disorderly goveminent of the Khlif, Yubali the Third, the Saar was for practical purposes not governed at all.

During the first days after leaving Thine, Marko learned how to manage a camel. He also tried to engage Boert Halran in conversation. Although a man who did not make friends easily, he felt such a wealth of mutual interests with Halran that he had no hesitation in talking to him. In fact, Marko became positively garrulous, babbling openly about his ideas of man and the universe.

Halran, normally a much less inhibited person, remained aloof and taciturn. The philosopher’s attitude became so marked that Marko, realizing, finally said:

“Dr. Halran, have I been—ah—have I been boring you? Have I offended you in some way? I know I’m just—just a backwoods bumpkin—”

“No, sir,” said Halran. “I find you, yourself, a personable and likable young man. It is your bloodthirsty social ethos that I take exception to.” “Oh? Why, I wouldn’t harm you!” “You do not understand. You are proceeding to Anglonia, where murder is the most serious crime on the calendar, with the avowed intention of killing this fugitive pair. When you have done so, the law will take you and hang you. Because you have associated with me, it might be proved that I had knowledge of your designs. In that event, the law is likely to throw me into prison for the rest of my life as well.”

“But you are not asked to take any part in this deed!”

“Nevertheless, I shall be what our law calls an accessory before the fact. By merely keeping silent and failing to turn you over to the law to imprison or deport, I incur part of your guilt. Now do you see what a difficult position you place me in? For all I know, you may decide your only security lies in killing everyone having knowledge of your intentions, and split my skull with that frightful cleaver.”

Marko was shocked. “I didn’t know that! I’m—I don’t know what to say. I wouldn’t antagonize you for anything.”

“Well, you see how things look to others.” “I know. I have never understood how other people’s minds work. But look, doesn’t an Anglonian whose wife has been stolen have any recourse? Is he expected to say merely, ‘Yes, sir, thank you, sir, is there anything else, sir?’ “

Halran shrugged. “In the first place, our law does not class people as property. So, as one can only steal property, one cannot ‘steal’ a wife or husband. And the mere fact that one’s mate prefers somebody else does not constitute damage.”

“Not damage? Isn’t breaking up a home and family damage?”

“Well, if she were kept against her will, your life with her would be unhappy anyway, so is it not better to let her go? If you .can show actual damage—say from loss of her services as housekeeper—you can recover that amount by a suit at law. But our courts are slow and expensive, and the amount awarded is usually trivial.”

“But your loss of honor—”

“Honor is a subjective, intangible loss. Therefore our laws take no cognizance of it.”

“One might say,” said Marko, “that most Anglonians have so little honor that it isn’t worth bothering about. If you’ll excuse my saying so. Isn’t there some maxim about the law’s not taking account of trifles?”

Halran laughed, throwing back his head. “I believe there is. However, we do think we have, by eliminating all these subjective and sentimental considerations like ‘honor’ and ‘purity,’ attained a degree of rationality in our legal system surpassed by no other nation.”

“It may be rational, but how about the results? Many people are naturally lustful and polygamous. So we set up a strict barrier of custom and law to restrain these impulses. You say, what harm does it do to indulge them, and let people do as they please?

“As a result, you Anglonians trade mates every year, and your children grow up a feckless, irresponsible lot from always changing parents and never having any consistent rules to obey. We have a saying, ‘Distrust three things: a wild onion-mushroom, a quiet volcano, and an Anglonian’s word.’ “

“Oh, we are not so bad as that. Wait until you have visited Anglonia before you condemn us.”

“I shall be most interested to see it, sir.”

“For instance,” said Halran, “I have been married to the same woman for fifteen years, and each of us had been married only twice before we met each other. True, our friends do regard us as a trifle quaint.”

“Well, Anglonians shouldn’t go marrying Vizantians and then revert to the Anglonian moral standard. We don’t stand for that sort of thing. Petronela knew I expected to be her first, last, and only man—”

“What reason have you to believe you were her first? No normal Anglonian girl marries before she has accumulated some experience.‘1

“Good gods!” groaned Marko. “I never thought’ of that!”

This discussion went on for several days. Finally Marko said: “Sir, I still think it my duty to kill the guilty part. But I don’t wish either to be hanged myself —I’m not really brave, I fear—or to get you into trouble. So I’ve given up the idea of killing them, at least unless they return to Vizantia, where it would be legal.”

“Good!” said Halran. “I congratulate you on your good sense. Then you will yourself return to Vizantia as soon as we attain the other side of the Saar?”

“No, sir. You forget I have a jail sentence hanging over me there. Could a man like myself make a living in Anglonia?”

“Mmm—I suppose you could. There are various possibilities such as mercenary soldier, teacher of Vizantian, and so forth.”

“Besides,” said Marko, “even if I don’t kill Mongamri and my wife, it is my duty to confront them and demand an explanation.”

“What is there to explain, except that she prefers him to you?”

“Well—ah—perhaps Petronela, having come to know Mongamri better, would like to come back to me,” said Marko wistfully.

“Do you learn nothing from one painful experience? I advise you to have nothing to do with them,” said Halran. “A conflict might arise that would eventuate in somebody’s being injured despite your good intentions.”

“Isn’t one even allowed to kill in self-defense?”

“Yes, but the burden of proof is on the slayer. Forget them.”

“I can’t. You have no idea how ashamed I am at giving up my resolution to kill them. I’m a weak, wavering, immoral, dishonorable knave. The least I can do is to find and confront them.”

They rode on. Once he had shelved his homicidal resolution, Marko found Halran perfectly friendly. The little man was not well adjusted to the rigors of caravan travel, having a fastidious dislike of soiling his hands and hating the discomforts of camel riding and sleeping out. On the other hand, he mixed well with the other people and was always organizing them into teams and groups for any purpose that arose, from fetching water to folk singing. His favorite expression was “Let us get organized,” and he could always find some way of making tasks lighter by planning them.

“Indolence,” he told Marko, “is the mother of invention, and I am the laziest philosopher in Anglonia.”

He was also an expert card player. In three days, before the other caravaners learned to be wary of him, he had won half his fare from them in small games.

On the sixth day, the caravan stopped for its siesta at the Oasis of Siwa. The oasis lay in a wide basin, broken by irregular outcrops. From a distance, it was distinguished from the rest of the barren scene by clumps of kackinsoni, whose spearlike leaves added a splotch of green to the otherwise drab, gray-and-buff scene.

Slim Qadir rode his camel up to the water hole and made it lie down, shouting to the others to keep the animals back until some water had been scooped up for the people. There was much noise and confusion, neighing of horses and burbling of camels struggling to get to the water and shouts of their riders and drivers trying to keep them back.

Marko heard Slim Qadir yelling to his guards in Arabistani. Marko knew only a few words, but the intent seemed to be that they should get out to the edges ~ of the oasis to guard the party against surprise attack, instead of flopping down on their bellies to have the first swill of water.

The camel ridden by Halran and Marko, together with the led camel bearing the jugs of stupa gum, were near the tail of the procession. From the back seat, Marko said:

“Hurry, Dr. Halran, or the water will be all muddied.”

“There is plenty of time,” said Halran.

When Marko and Halran were almost the only persons in the caravan still mounted, somebody shouted and pointed. Marko heard the drumming of hoofs. As he turned to look, there came the snapping of many bowstrings and the harsh swish of arrows. The sound of an arrow’s striking flesh caused him to look down to see one embedded in the side of his camel, just below his left foot. The camel started and roared.

A band of mounted men had ridden out from behind the nearest outcrop and now were charging the oasis. They were small dark men on stocky ponies. Besides the usual sheepskins, some wore colored scarves around their heads and other bits of incongruous finery.

The people of the caravan seemed to lose all sense. They rushed about, screaming and trying to climb back on their mounts. Halran emitted a wordless squeak and tugged wildly on Mutasim’s halter.

Marko, however, remained steady. He thought what he ought to do and set about doing it. He drew from its case the steel bow he had taken from the robber near Skiatho and began shooting at the oncoming attackers.

“What shall we do?” cried Halran. “What shall we do? They will kill us! I am terrified!”

“Turn this beast around,” said Marko.

Marko saw his fourth arrow strike one of the Arabistanis, who were now close. Some of them swerved around the oasis, shooting. A few rode right through it, spearing and swording as they went. People shrieked.

Marko continued shooting, squirming about in. his seat to loose arrows wherever he saw a robber. Those that had charged through the oasis circled around and galloped back. In the rear of the charge rode a man on a white horse, clad from head to foot in fine chain mail, with an inlaid steel helmet on his head. Perhaps, thought Marko, Zaki Riadhi himself.

Marko reached for an arrow to try a long shot at the leader of the robbers and glanced at his quiver. This was his last arrow. As he nocked it, he had a glimpse of one of Slim Qadir’s archers lying on the ground while a mounted robber jabbed at him; of another flinging himself on his horse and galloping off into the desert. The fat merchant from Begrat ran past Marko’s camel until a robber’s lance took him in the back and hurled him prone.

Another robber rode up alongside Marko’s camel, fumbling with an arrow. As he came abreast, he got it nocked and raised the bow. Marko, who had started to sight on the leader in armor, brought his aim down and released at the near robber. The arrow hit the man in the upper chest, while the. robber’s own arrow hissed past Marko’s head.

The robber dropped his bow, threw out his arms, and fell out of the saddle. The riderless horse trotted past, right under Marko. Marko hesitated, thinking out a plan.

Boert Halran had gotten the riding camel turned around, so that it faced away from the oasis. The burden camel plodded after. Marko hung his bow on the pommel in front of him and leaped off the back of the camel onto that of the horse, which staggered under the impact. He unslung his buckler, drew out his ax, and called up:

“Make all the speed you can. I’ll try to keep off the Arabis.”

Marko gathered up the reins with his shield hand and turned the horse. The robbers were scattered all over the oasis, within and without it. Some were killing the remaining caravaners.

A couple fought Slim Qadir himself, who stoutly swung a scimitar with his back to a clump of kackinsoni until another robber thrust a lance through the clump into Slim’s back. Down he went.

Other robbers rode about in aimless fashion. The arrows had ceased to whiz because the archers, like Marko, had exhausted their quivers.

At the sight of Marko’s camels trotting off, the armored man shouted and pointed. A little knot of horsemen gathered and cantered towards Marko and the camels, opening out into a fine abreast.

Marko kicked his horse’s ribs with the broad, shovel-shaped butt ends of his stirrups. The animal started so suddenly that Marko almost fell off backwards. He guided the horse straight towards the armored man, making practice swings with his ax.

Between Marko and the robber chief, the line of horsemen galloped nearer, swords waving. One, a little ahead of the others, swung a scimitar in a downright cut at Marko’s head. Marko caught the blow with a clang on his buckler, at the same time striking forehand with his ax. The ax cut through the corner of the shield of paxor hide, which the robber lowered to protect his body, and went on into the man’s ribs. The force of the blow, driven by Marko’s massive muscles, hurled the man out of his saddle.

As this rider passed him, Marko struck backhanded at the next one. This time, the ax caught the man between neck and shoulder and sank in a hand’s breadth. As the man toppled from his seat, Marko wrenched his ax out. He had passed through the line of charging horsemen and made for their chief.

Horses often go in directions other than those wished by their riders. Marko’s horse missed the chief, who was also cantering towards him, by a good twelve feet. At that distance, they could only flourish their weapons at each other.

The other riders either had not realized that Marko had cut his way through their line or were unable to turn their mounts to come to their leader’s rescue. They cantered away from Marko and the chief for another hundred feet before they began to pull up and turn.

Marko reined his horse into a tight circle. The chief did the same, and this time they came knee to knee.

Clang-cling! went the curved sword of Zaki Riadhi against Marko’s buckler, and clang! went Marko’s ax against the chief’s shield, which like Marko’s was of sheet steel. Marko struck again at Zaki’s head, covered by a barbute that came down low and almost entirely concealed the robber’s features. Zaki caught the blow on his shield again. Although the ax was driven with enough force to break a man’s arm, Zaki held his buckler at such an angle that Marko’s blow hit it slantwise. The ax twisted out of Marko’s hand. He thought for a horrible moment that he had lost it, but the thong around his wrist held it.

Then a plunge of the horses carried the fighters apart, so that Zaki Riadhi’s next blow cut empty air. Marko turned his horse again and found himself directly in front of Zaki Riadhi just as his groping fingers got a grip on his ax handle.

Unable to reach the rider, Marko struck at the horse and felt his blade bite into the fine animal’s forehead. This was not an honorable blow, but Marko had no time for scruples. The horse fell dead, pitching Zaki Riadhi over its head, almost against Marko’s off leg.

Marko brought his ax down once more on the back of the falling chief’s helmet. The ax sheared through helmet and skull. The helmet flew off, revealing Zaki’s dark, hawk-nosed features. Zaki fell in a heap upon his horse’s head. Blood and brains were spattered across the sand.

In the ten seconds that it had taken Marko to kill the leader of the robbers, the others who had ridden at him had turned their horses around and started back. When Marko faced towards his camels, which were now several hundred paces off, the bandits were in front of him and on both sides. They had not yet had time to close in.

“Out of the way!” roared Marko. He raised his ax, still dripping Zaki’s brains, dug the shovel-stirrups into his horse’s flanks, and plunged forward.

The Arabis gave way before him, circling and yelping but not quite daring to close with a man twice their size, who had stretched three of their number dead on the sand in half a minute. Marko rode through them and off across the Saar after Halran and the camels.