A silence.
‘Have already known what to do,’ she said, smiling, though not pleasantly. ‘Please tell everyone on the plain that I came here tonight and we talked, and what we thought together.’
We will, they said. Then they all rose to their feet, and went with her through the herds. A young girl called three horses, who came and stood willingly, waiting, while the young man put Jarnti on one, and Al·Ith mounted another, and the girl herself got on a third. The animals crowded around Al·Ith on her horse, and called to her as the three rode past.
Out on the plain, headed back towards the camp, the grasses were now standing up grey in a dim light, and the eastern sky was aflame.
Jarnti had come awake, and was sitting straight and soldierly on his horse.
‘Madam,’ he asked, ‘how do you people talk to your animals?’
‘Do you not talk to yours?’
‘No.’
‘You stay with them. You watch them. You put your hands on them and feel how they feel. You look into their eyes. You listen to the tones of their cries and their calling to each other. You make sure that when they begin to understand that you understand them, you do not miss the first tones of what they say to you. For if you do not hear, then they will not trouble to try again. Soon you will feel what they are feeling, and you will know what they are thinking, even if they do not tell you themselves.’
Jarnti said nothing for a while. They had now left the herds behind.
‘Of course we watch them and take notice of how they look, if they are ill or something like that.’
‘There are none among you who know how to feel with your animals?’
‘Some of us are good with animals, yes.’
Al·Ith did not seem inclined to say any more.
‘Perhaps we are too impatient,’ said Jarnti.
Neither Al·Ith nor the girl said anything to this. They trotted on towards the foothills. Now the great peaks of the high lands were pink and shining from the wild morning sky.
‘Madam,’ he said, blustering, because he did not know how to be on an equality with her, or with anyone, ‘when you are with us, can you teach some of the soldiers who are in charge of the horses this way of yours?’
She was silent. Then: ‘Do you know that I am never called anything but Al·Ith? Do you understand that I have never been called Madam, or anything like it before?’
Now he was silent.
‘Well, will you?’ he asked gruffly.
‘I will if I can,’ she said at last.
He was struggling with himself to express gratitude, pleasure. Nothing came out.
They were more than halfway between the herds and the camp.
Jarnti put his heels into his horse suddenly, and it neighed and bucked. Then it stood still.
The two women stopped too.
‘Did you want to go on ahead?’ asked the girl.
He was sullen.
‘He won’t carry you now,’ she said, and slid off her horse. Jarnti got down from his. ‘Now get on mine.’ He did so. She soothed the bewildered horse he had kicked, and mounted it.
‘Think that you want to go on in front of us,’ said the girl.
He had an ashamed, embarrassed look. He went red.
‘I’m afraid you will have to put up with us,’ said Al·Ith at last.
When they were in sight of the camp, she jumped down from her horse. It at once turned and began cantering back towards the herds. Jarnti got off his. And this one too cantered back. He was standing looking in admiration at the lovely girl on her horse, who was turning around to go.
‘If you ever come to Zone Four,’ he shouted at her, ‘let me know.’
She gave a long look of commiseration at Al·Ith, and remarked, ‘Luckily for me I am not a queen.’ And she sped off across the plain with the two other horses neighing and tossing up their heels on either side of her.
Al·Ith and Jarnti walked towards the camp with the sunrise at their backs.
Long before they reached the camp, the smell of burning meat was strong on the air.
Al·Ith did not say anything, but her face spoke.
‘Do you not kill animals?’ he asked, unwillingly but forced to by his curiosity.
‘Only if it is essential. There are plenty of other foods.’
‘Like those horrible berries of yours,’ he said, trying to be good-humoured.
In the camp they had killed a deer. Jarnti did not eat any of it.
As soon as the meal was over, the horses were saddled, all but Al·Ith’s. She stood watching the beasts adjust their mouths and their teeth uncomfortably as the bit went in.
She vaulted onto her horse, and whispered to it. Jarnti watched her, uneasy.
‘What did you say to it?’ he asked.
‘That I am his friend.’
And again she led the way forward, into the east, back across the plain.
They rode to one side of the herds they had been with in the night, but far enough off to see them as a darkness on the plain.
Jarnti was riding just behind Al·Ith.
Now he was remembering the conversation around the fire last night, the tone of it, the ease of it. He yearned for it — or something in it, for he had never known that quality of easy intimacy. Except, he was saying to himself, with a girl, sometimes, after a good screw.
He said, almost wistfully, to Al·Ith, ‘Can you feel that the animals out there are sad?’ For she was looking continually towards them, and her face was concerned.
‘Can’t you?’ she asked.
He saw she was weeping, steadily, as she rode.
He was furious. He was irritated. He felt altogether excluded from something he had a right to.
Behind them clattered the company of soldiers.
A long way in front was the frontier. Suddenly she leaned down to whisper to the horse and it sped forward. Jarnti and the company broke into speed after her. They were shouting at her. She did not have the shield that would protect her from the — to her — deadly atmosphere of Zone Four. She rode like the wild winds that scoured the plains every night until early dawn, and her long hair swept out behind her, and tears ran steadily down her face.
It was not for miles that Jarnti came up with her — one of the soldiers had thrown the shield to him, and he had caught it, and was now riding almost neck and neck with her.
‘Al·Ith,’ he was shouting, ‘you must have this.’ And held up the shield. It was a long time before she heard him. At last she turned her face towards him, not halting her mad pace in the slightest, and he wilted at the sight of her blanched, agonized face. He held up the shield. She raised her hand to catch it. He hesitated, because it was not a light thing. He remembered how she had thrown the heavy saddle the day before, and he heaved the shield towards her. She caught it with one hand and did not abate her pace at all. They were approaching the frontier. They watched her to see how she would be affected by the sudden change in the density of the air, for they had all been ill to some extent, the day before. She went through the invisible barrier without faltering, though she was pale, and did not seem well. Inside the frontier line were the observation towers, rising up at half-mile distances from each other, bristling with soldiers and armaments. She did not stop. Jarnti and the others fled after her, shouting to the soldiers in the towers not to shoot. She went between the towers without looking at them.
Again they were on the edge of a descent through hills and rocks above a wide plain. When she reached the edge of this escarpment she at last stopped.
They all came to a standstill behind her. She was looking down into a land crowded with forts and encampments.
She jumped down from her horse. Soldiers were running to them from the forts, holding the bridles of fresh horses. The jaded horses of the company were being herded off to recover. But Al·Ith’s did not want to leave her. He shivered and whinnied and wheeled all about Al·Ith, and when the soldiers came to catch him, would not go.
‘Would you
like him as a present, Al·Ith?’ asked Jarnti, and she was pleased and smiled a little, which was all she could manage.
Again she removed the saddle from this fresh horse, and the bridle, and tossed them to the amazed soldiers. And she rode forward and down into Zone Four, with Yori trotting beside her and continually putting up his nose to nuzzle her as they went.
And so Al·Ith made the passage into the Zone we had all heard so much of, speculated about, and had never been in.
Not even with the shield could she feel anything like herself. The air was flat, dispiriting. The landscape seemed to confine and oppress. Everywhere you look, in our own realm, a wild vigour is expressed in the contours of uplands, mountains, a variegated ruggedness. The central plateau where so many of our towns are situated is by no means regular, but is ringed by mountains and broken by ravines and deep river channels. With us the eye is enticed into continual movement, and then is drawn back always to the great snowy peaks that are shaped by the winds and the colours of our skies. And the air tingles in the blood, cold and sharp. But here she looked down into a uniform dull flat, cut by canals and tamed streams that were marked by lines of straight pollarded trees, and dotted regularly by the ordered camps of the military way of life. Towns and villages did not seem any larger than these camps. The sky was a greyish blue and there was a dull shine from the lines of water. A wide low hill near the centre of the scene where there seemed to be something like a park or gardens was all the consolation she could find.
Meanwhile, they were still descending the escarpment.
A turn in the road showed an enormous circular building of grey stone, squatting heavily between canals. It seemed recent, for rocks and earth near it were raw, broken. Her dismay that this might be where she was bound for brought her horse to a faltering stop. The company halted behind her, and she looked back to see a furtive triumph on every face. Jarnti was suppressing a smile as a leader does when he wishes to indicate he would like to join with his juniors in a show of emotion. Then as they remained there, with no sound but the horses shifting their hooves for relief, on the stony road, she saw that she had been mistaken: what she feared was not matched by the particular variety of triumph these captors of hers were showing.
‘When may we expect to reach the king?’ she asked, and Jarnti at once interpreted this as a reminder from her of higher authority. He rebuked his company with a strong look and adjusted his own face to obedience.
All this she watched, understood — and it came to her what a barbarous land this was.
They had imagined she had been intimidated by the sight of the rumoured ‘round fortress of the deadly rays’ as one of our songs described it.
She told herself, not for the first time, or the tenth, that she was not likely to adjust herself quickly to these people with their slavish minds, and to make a test of them, moved her horse on and towards the road that led to the building. At once Jarnti was beside her, and his hand was reaching out for her horse’s head. She stopped. ‘I would like to see into one of the famed round fortresses of your Zone,’ she said.
‘Oh, no, no, you must not, it is forbidden,’ said he, still full of importance.
‘But why? Your weapons are not directed against us, surely?’
‘It is dangerous … ’ but at this moment, around the side of the building came some children running, and in scattering for some game, two of them darted into an open doorway.
‘So I see,’ she said, and rode on, without looking again at Jarnti or at the soldiers.
When nearly at the level of the plain, there were grazing cattle near the road, and a half-grown boy attending them.
Jarnti shouted at the boy to come forward, and the boy was already running towards them, before Jarnti said, ‘You could teach him your ways with the animals,’ and as the boy arrived at the roadside, pale and startled, Jarnti was shouting, ‘Down on your face! Can’t you see who this is we are taking to the king?’
The lad was face down, full length on the grass, and this was no more than a half-minute since he had first been hailed.
Jarnti was giving her half-pleading, half-commanding looks, and his horse was dancing under him, because of his master’s eagerness to learn her lore.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I don’t think we are likely to learn or teach anything in this way.’
But he had seen himself that he had mishandled the occasion and because of it was red and angry. He shouted, ‘The lady here would like to know if your beasts are well.’
No reply, then a whimper which sounded like, ‘Very well, yes, well, sir.’
Al·Ith slid down from her horse, walked over to the boy, and said, ‘Stand up.’ She made her voice a command, since commands were what he understood. He slowly shivered his way to his feet, and stood, almost collapsing, before her. She waited until she knew he had seen, from his furtive glances, that she was not so frightening, and said, ‘I am from Zone Three. Our animals have not been well. Can you say if you have noticed anything unusual with yours?’
His hands were clenched at his chest, and he was breathing as if he had run several miles. Finally he brought out: ‘Yes, yes, that is, I think so.’
From behind them Jarnti’s voice, jocular and loud: ‘Are they having sorrowful thoughts?’ And the entire company sniggered.
She saw there was nothing that could be done, and said to the boy, ‘Don’t be frightened. Go back to your beasts.’ She waited until he sped off, and she returned to her horse. Again, Jarnti knew he had behaved clumsily, and yet it had been necessary to him, for the sight of her, small, unarmed, standing rather below them near the defenceless and frightened boy, had roused in him a need to show strength, dominance.
She swung herself onto her horse and at once rode on, not looking at them. She felt very low, our poor Al·Ith. This was the worst time of all. Everything in her was hurt by the way the poor boy had been treated: yet these were the ways of this land, and she could not believe then, in that bad hour, that there could be any way of communicating with these louts. And of course she was thinking of what she was going to find when she was led to Ben Ata.
They rode on, through the middle of the day, across the plain, with the ditches and the lines of dull bunchy trees accompanying them all the way. She went first. Yori, the riderless horse, was just behind, with Jarnti, and behind them the company. They were all silent. She had not said anything about the incident of the boy, but they were thinking now that she would be soon with the king, and were not expecting she would give a good report of them. So they were sullen, sulky. There were few people on the roadside, or in the flat boats of the canals, but those who saw the little company go past reported that there was not a smile to be seen: this wedding party was fit for a funeral. And the riderless horse caused rumours to spread that Al·Ith had fallen and was dead, for the slight figure on the leading horse that they did see, had nothing about her to command their attention. She seemed to them a serving woman, or an attendant, in her plain dark blue, with her head in its black veils.
There was a ballad about how the horse of the dead Al·Ith had gone with the troop of soldiers to the king to tell him that there could be no marriage. The horse stood on the threshold of the wedding chamber and neighed three times, Ben Ata, Ben Ata, Ben Ata — and when he came out, said to him:
Cold and dark your wedding bed,
O King, your willing bride is dead.
The realm she rules is cold and dark.
And this was popular, and sung when everyone knew that Al·Ith was not dead, and that the marriage was a fact. That it was not the smoothest of marriages was of course known from the beginning. How? But how do these things get themselves known? The song was always being added to. Here is a verse that came from the married quarters of the army camps:
Brave King, your realm is strong and fine.
Where beasts may mate, then women pine.
I will be your slave, brave King.
Not anywhere with us, or at any time, have such verses as
these been possible, though there were plenty of compassionate and tender ballads made up about Al·Ith. There are some who say that where there is rulership, there has to be criticism of this ribald kind, because no matter the level of the ruler, it is in the nature of the ruled to crave identification of the lowest sort. We say this is not so, and Zone Three proves it. To recognize and celebrate the ordinary, the day-to-day levels of an authority, is not to denigrate it.
Such Zone Four ballads, travelling upwards to us, found themselves transformed as they crossed the frontier. For one thing, there was no need of the inversions, the ambiguities, that are always bred by fear of an arbitrary authority.
We may almost say that a certain type of ballad is impossible with us: the kind that has as its ground or base lamentation, the celebration of loss.
In their Zone the riderless horse gave birth to songs of death and sorrow; in ours to songs about loving friendship.
The road, which cut straight across the plain, and was intersected at about the middle by one running equally straight, began to lift a little to reach the small hill that Al·Ith had seen with relief from the top of the escarpment. The canals were left behind, with their weight of dead water. There were a few ordinary trees, which had not been hacked into lumps and wands. At the top of the hill were gardens, and here the water had been forced into movement, for they rode now beside channels where it ran swiftly, fell from several levels to others, and broke into fountains. The air was lively and cool, and when she saw ahead of her a light pavilion, with coloured springing pillars and arches, she was encouraged. But there was no one to be seen. She was contrasting this empty garden and the apparently deserted pavilion with the friendly amplitude of her own courts, when Jarnti called an order, and the whole company came to a stop. The soldiers jumped off their horses, and surrounded Al·Ith, who, when she got down from her horse, found herself being marched forward in their midst, like a captive of war — and she saw that this was not the first time they had done this, from the ease of their arrangements.