Shadow of a Hero

LEGEND

The Shoulder-blade of St Joseph

THERE WAS A man called Paulu, of the clan of Kalaz, being second cousin to the Kas, though his mother was a Bulgar. He came to the Kas and said, ‘See, Lash the Golden is swaggering round our camp. His grandfather killed my grandfather, who was your own grandfather’s brother, by the Iron Gates and threw his body in the river. My grandfather’s spirit moans to me in my dreams, asking how I can endure the shame.’

The Kas Kalaz said, ‘That feud is frozen. I have sworn on the shoulder-blade of St Joseph that while Turk abides on the soil of Varina we will do no harm to Lash.’

Paulu said, ‘Not so. That oath was fulfilled many years ago, when we drove the Turk away. Did not Lash himself know this and flee? Have you re-sworn the oath since he returned?’

‘I have not,’ said the Kas Kalaz.

‘So is the feud frozen, or is it not?’ said Paulu. ‘Tell me, and I will abide by your judgement, for you are the Kas.’

Then the Kas Kalaz looked at him sideways and said nothing, for he too had heard the spirit of his great-uncle moaning in his dreams.

Then Lash the Golden came to Restaur Vax and said, ‘The men of Kalaz look at me with bullets in their eyes, though they have taken oath on the shoulder-blade of St Joseph that our feud is frozen.’

So Restaur Vax took thought and saw what was in the hearts of the Kas and his clan, and gathered his chieftains and said, ‘Selim is come, and Varina is in such peril as she has not seen since the days of the Red Serpent.¹ We have no time for feuds or thoughts of feuds. Let us travel then to Riqui and renew our oaths on the shoulder-blade of St Joseph.’

But the man Paulu, hearing this, went swiftly by night, journeying by goat-paths and the paths of the hunter, and found the priest of Riqui at his midnight prayers and crept up behind him and put a dagger to his throat and said, ‘Do what I say and tell no man, or the manner of your death will be remembered through seven generations.’

He made the priest lie in a chest and closed the lid so that he should not see. Then he took the shoulder-blade of St Joseph from its reliquary and replaced it with that of a dog, which he had found by the way as he travelled, and released the priest and threatened him once more.

The priest knew well that some sacrilege had been committed, but said nothing when the chiefs came to Riqui, for he was afraid. Thus it was that the Kas Kalaz and the other chieftains swore their new oath not on the shoulder-blade of St Joseph but on that of a dog.

When it was finished the man Paulu went to the Kas Kalaz and told him what he had done and asked him again, saying, ‘Tell me, is the feud frozen, or is it not?’

The Kas Kalaz crossed himself, but looked sideways at the man Paulu and said, ‘For myself, I do not know. But let no shame fall on my house.’

¹ Nothing is known about the Red Serpent. This is the only reference to the creature in the surviving literature.