Martin Louis Alan Gompertz

“ All that matters is that Sakaeland is now at peace under the strong firm governance which—so long as men are men, not angels—can alone ensure that each man reap what he has sown. The Shaman hold, cleansed of its foul traces, is manned by clean-visaged Sakae bowmen, and straight-mouthed, honest-eyed Henga dispenses simple, unbiassed, soldierly justice in the open sunlight before the gate of the dark passage where John Wrexham and his sappers laboured under the glowing trapdoor. ”

“ I have never seen such good methodical staff work outside a modern force. I could almost forgive Andros his plume of mauve-bound eagle feathers as I listened to his quick, incisive orders given in a cool, level tone, and watched messenger after messenger race down the steps, swing into the saddle, and away out of the gates. The man was not only a born soldier—he was that far rarer being, a born staff officer.
I went up to our quarters, and calling Payindah told him to come with me, leaving my kit to follow with a couple of my men. Wrexham and Forsyth were nowhere to be seen. ”

“ It was a very grave-eyed Aryenis that helped me on with all this paraphernalia of war, quite a different person from the dancing-eyed girl who had chaffed me the day before about not being grown up, different again from the dreamy one who had sat looking into the fire talking of dragons and fairy princesses. But then that is the charm of Aryenis, that she is ever different and yet always the same.
“They fit you well and they suit you, Harilek,” said Paulos. “It does me good to see them out again. I feel the younger for it. We old folk live our lives again in you young people. ”

“ But my cap was bare of crest or favour.
“This is a land as good as Farance, sahib,” said Payindah, looking out over the countryside with its rich soil, its thick masses of trees, and the populous little villages all surrounded by fruit orchards. “It is richer than even the canal districts of the Punjab. And a good folk in it, like unto those of Farance. Brave men and masterful women, and children as stout as those of my own land. One could settle well in such a country.” ”

“ Whether red-gold-haired Aryenis and her grave-eyed father, stalwart Henga and his Sake bowmen, Philos and his pretty wife and blue-eyed baby, crippled Paulos, the fiendish Shamans and the murderous brown Sakae are real living people, I cannot pretend to say, any more than I can tell whether pine-fringed Aornos, the snow-peaks of Saghar Mor, or the gloomy Shaman citadel, with its red-hot trapdoor, exist outside Lake’s brain. ”

“ I have gone to war with many worse, but never, I think, with any better, and I have led good men upon occasion.
Looking back, I called up Payindah.
“We be back in the days of the Emperors,” said I, pointing to the men behind us. “Bows and arrows, men in mail, just the same as thy folk when first they came over the passes into the Punjab.”
“And good days to be in, sahib. This is a man’s war—man to man—not a killing by guns a day’s march away, or fighting like rats in a hole underground. These men of the old sick chief’s are good fighting stuff, too. I know such when I see them.” ”

“ When the chief Shaman considered a prisoner to be of no further use, he was made to pick an arrow from the cloth-swathed sheaf. One does not like to think of the scenes that room must have witnessed. Then, according to the lettering upon it, once outside the gate the tortured wretch might feel the prayed-for point in his heart, or know the lingering death of many hours as he lay crippled among the vultures and the obscene horrors of the place of death. ”

“ We rode up the hillside among the fields and fruit trees and the scattered villages, and every now and then women and children and men at the roadside would wave to Aryenis with cries of joy.
“Look, there are people riding down the road,” she said, as we came round a bend under the mulberries. “I believe—yes, it is—it’s Ziné come to meet me.”
She put her mare into a canter and then into a gallop, and went off like an arrow.
Coming down toward us was a little group of people on horseback. There was a girl in front riding with a tall man on a big roan—big, that is, as the Sakae horses go. ”

“ The dunes were still very high, despite Wrexham’s opinion that they ought to be getting lower. I estimated that the majority of them were little under eighty feet in height most of that day. There was a very slight steaminess in the air as the sun warmed, but as the sky cleared we began to see farther and farther.
Men and beasts alike stepped out briskly, for the downpour had put new life into us all. As we went, we climbed each fresh dune in the hope of seeing a new glimpse of the hills in front, but for a long time saw nothing beyond the desert’s yellow edge. ”

“ Steel-capped, mail-shirted men on rough ponies, tall, bobbed-haired, hawk-faced bowmen in leather jerkins, nodding spear-points and dancing gleam of mail-ringed caps; and behind me, with my trumpeter, Payindah in mail with his anachronistic magazine-rifle slung over his shoulder, his straight Greek features and his wheat-coloured face alive with the joy of coming battle. ”

“ Seeing us in the cave mouth, they crossed the arch. We dropped another rope, and Wrexham, tying it round him, came clambering up the thin projecting seam amid exclamations from the watching men. We introduced him to Kyrlos and Stephnos, and he said a few words in reply to their thanks for helping Aryenis. Then he turned to me.
“They are white folk, all right, then.” He was looking round at the men in the cave. “Upstanding-looking fellows, too. Wonder who they are? Not much like what I’ve seen of the modern Greek, by long chalks.” ”

“ She looked back into the fire and was silent again, the dancing firelight playing across the long curve of her neck and chasing little shadows over the rose of her cheeks, faintly flushed in the glow.
“Do you know what Payindah and Firoz call you now, Aryenis?” I asked after a while.
[202] “No? What is it?”
“‘Shahzadi,’ which in their language means ‘Princess.’ I think they must be observant folk.”
“That is rather nice of them. I like that title. I feel like one sometimes when there are dragons about, and a fairy prince would be useful.” ”

“ Despite the fact that I knew Paulos so slightly, there was something about the old man that called for confidence, that sort of sympathy, of community of understanding, that a character like his calls out at the very first meeting.
“Yes; you are right. There are few women that would not be only too ready to give him much more than friendship should he seek it. And yet he is always very heart-whole or seems to be so. But, with you, I have sometimes thought that his heart is not so secure where Aryenis is concerned.” ”

“ He studied it a minute, and then turned to us. “Greek, and it’s more like the old Greek than what’s on the picture, though not quite the same,” he said. “It runs like this: ‘To those to north, the gate of life; but to those to south, the gate of death.’”
“It seems to be that, all right,” whispered back Wrexham; “this is the south side of the gate, and there are plenty of poor devils who have looked their last on life the last time they looked up at the arrow-slits. There’s a man there under the birds—foul beasts—or rather it was a man some time ago. ”

“ It isn’t only women that want to be told and shown the things they know. Men also sometimes. You see a man may come—probably will come—to disbelieve the things he knows, or thought he knew, unless he’s shown them clearly and repeatedly.”
“And then, O Harilek?”
“And then, Shahzadi, good-bye to happiness. Will you say good-bye to it?”
“Never!” said Aryenis, decisively. “I shall always show you the things you know. I shall just keep your eyes and ears, your mind and your every sense, so full of them that you’ll never have an instant to think of anything or any one except them and me. ”

“ Then, in an open circular space like a great well, still all hewn from the solid rock, we came upon the vanguard of our people, Andros and Alec directing, where, clustered upon a flight of rock-hewn steps, several men strove with hammer and crow to prize open an enormous circular iron door which closed the top of the shaft as a trapdoor does a well. The air was hot, and I could see the sweat on the men’s faces as they worked in the torches’ smoky glare. ”

“ That afternoon I rode out with Milos to look at some of his men, and as we rode he talked to me about his people and about their wonderful cliff-girt land, for Nature, not content with setting the great desert around Sakaeland, had girdled it further with a precipitous wall of cliff, that now higher, now lower, circles the whole country. There being no incentive to make a way down to the desert, none has ever been made, as doubtless would have happened had the surrounding country been fertile instead of being hundreds of miles of trackless sand-dunes. ”

“ It stood at one side of a long hill above the river, and beyond it the hills climbed to meet the lower slopes of Saghar Mor, whose snow-peaks towered above us some twenty-five miles away. They rose in long rolling slopes, covered with ilex and pine, and higher up with thick fir forest and rhododendron groves, aflame in summer with gorgeous scarlet blossoms. Most of the wealthier inhabitants have country villas in the higher hills, where they spend the hottest of the summer months. ”

“ And being so great, all men, whether soldiers or not, took part in it. At the end, when our people were victorious, we three, having no wives or children to call us home, set out on this journey, seeking change of scene and adventure.”
“Are you of those who fight for love of fighting, then? Would you stay here and fight for us with your wondrous weapons, which Aryenis tells me slay at arrow-shot distance with naught but a little noise, killing mailed men as though they were clothed but in silk?”
Forsyth turned to me. ”

“ I helped Aryenis from her mare, and we went up the grey stone steps to the open door with the firelight gleaming in the hall. She checked on the threshold, and I remembered just in time that it is ill fortune for a bride to cross the doorway of her home for the first time on foot. I picked her up in my arms and carried her into the hall, and as I put her down our lips met in the first kiss in our own home, in the firelit hall with the carved timbers, the half-seen trophies, the gleaming wood of floor and chair and settle. ”

“ If life there were ahead, it must lie all on the other side of this great barrier that stretched away on either hand as far as we could see, merging from dead lifeless brown to warmer reds and madders and purples, and then finally to hazy blues as the distance softened the hard outlines. ”

“ Wrexham stayed there till dawn like a Dutchman saving a dyke, getting up at intervals with Firoz to heap more and more sand on to the outer and upper sides of his dam.
“Not bad calculations,” he said, when the growing dawn revealed to us a pool of water—somewhat sandy, but still water—some thirty feet long, as much as three feet wide in places, and nearly a foot deep in the middle of the deepest pool. “I should say there was at least one hundred and fifty gallons there.” ”