The Scar

1

The walls of the crowded tavern were shaken from the boom of drunken voices. After solemn mutual toasts, after good-natured but pointed jests, after cheerful scuffles, it was now time to dance on the table. They were dancing with a pair of maidservants who, although as sober as their work required, were flushed and giddy from the glitter of epaulets; from all the gleaming buttons, scabbards, and ribbons; from the passionate glances directed at them; and from their efforts to please the gentlemen of the guards. Glasses and jugs tumbled to the floor. Silver forks twisted into fanciful arabesques, crushed by nimble heels. The maidservants’ full skirts fanned through the air like decks of cards in the hands of a gambler, and their happy squeals rang in the ears of the onlookers. The landlady of the tavern, a wise, gaunt old woman who only occasionally stuck her nose out from her refuge in the kitchen, knew that there was nothing to worry about: the guards were rich and generous, and the damages would be recouped with interest, and more important, the popularity of the establishment would increase a thousandfold after this evening.

After dancing, the revelers calmed down, the din of voices quieted just a bit, and the maidservants, panting and adjusting their clothing, refilled the jugs that had escaped being smashed and brought new glasses from the kitchen. Now, having returned to their senses, both girls bashfully lowered their eyelashes, ashamed at how freely they had behaved. At the same time, an ardent, chimerical hope for something vague, something entirely unfeasible smoldered within the soul of each girl, and whenever a dusty boot brushed against one of their tiny feet as if by accident, that hope flared up and imbued their youthful faces and tender necks with color.

The girls were named Ita and Feta, so it was only natural that the befuddled carousers kept confusing their names; moreover, many of the guards could no longer manage their tongues and thus were scarcely able to compliment the girls further. The impassioned glances were fading, and together with them the girlish hopes for something unrealizable were slowly diminishing, when a heavy battle dagger suddenly slammed into the doorjamb right above Ita’s head.

The room became quiet immediately, so quiet that the landlady stuck her inflamed purple nose out of her kitchen. The revelers looked around in mute amazement, as if they expected to see the menacing Spirit Lash on the smoke-fouled ceiling. Bewildered, at first Ita just opened her mouth, but then, finally realizing what had happened, she dropped an empty jug on the floor.

In the tense silence, a heavy chair scraped back from one of the tables. Trampling the fragments of the broken jug under his boots, a man unhurriedly approached the girl. The knife sheath on his belt was empty, but soon the sinister weapon was extracted from the doorjamb and slid back into its place. The man took a piece of gold from a fat purse.

“Take it, girl. Would you like to earn more?”

The tavern exploded with shouts and laughter. The gentlemen guards—those who were still in any condition to move—joyfully clapped one another on the shoulders and backs, rejoicing at the bold and fortunate amusement thought up by their comrade.

“That’s Egert! Bravo, Egert! A daring brute, upon my word! Well, do it again!”

The owner of the dagger smiled. When he smiled, a dimple appeared on his right cheek near the corner of his mouth.

Ita helplessly clenched her fists, unable to take her eyes off that dimple. “But, Lord Egert, you can’t just … Lord Egert!”

“What, are you afraid?” Egert, a lieutenant of the regiment, asked smoothly, and Ita broke out in a sweat before the gaze of his clear gray blue eyes.

“But!”

“Stand with your back to the door.”

“But, Master Egert, you’ve all been drinking so heavily!”

“What! Don’t you trust me?”

Ita’s feathery eyelashes fluttered repeatedly. The spectators crawled onto the tables in order to see better: even the truly drunk ones sobered up for the sake of such a spectacle. The landlady, more than a bit agitated now, stood frozen in the kitchen doorway with a mop held motionless at her side.

Egert turned to the guards. “Knives! Daggers! Whatever you have!”

Within a minute, he was bristling like a porcupine.

“You’re drunk, Egert,” Dron, another lieutenant, let the words drop as if by accident.

A swarthy young man peeled himself from the crowd of guards. “Really? He hasn’t drunk all that much. Why, it’d barely wet a bedbug’s knees, the amount he’s drunk! How can he be drunk?”

Egert burst out laughing. “True! Feta, wine!”

Feta obeyed: not immediately, but slowly and mechanically, and simply because she would not dare to disobey the request of a customer.

“But, but,” stammered Ita, watching as a gurgling waterfall of wine tumbled down Egert’s throat.

“Not a word,” he spat, wiping his lips. “Stand back, everyone.”

“Oh, he is drunk!” The shout came from among the gathering of spectators. “He’s going to kill the girl, the idiot!”

A small brawl ensued, but it was soon quieted. Apparently, the heckler had been dealt with.

“I’ll give you a coin for each throw,” explained a teetering Egert to Ita. “One coin per shot. Stay where you are!”

The girl, who had been slowly trying to withdraw from the oak door, fearfully staggered back to her previous position.

“One, two…” Egert took the first throwing knife that came to hand from the mass of weapons. “No, this is so boring. Karver!”

The swarthy youth appeared next to him as if he had been awaiting this summons.

“Candles. Put candles in her hands and one on her head.”

“No!” Ita burst into tears. For a moment, the silence was broken only by her distressed sobs.

“How about this?” An extraordinary thought, it seemed, had dawned on Egert. “For each throw, I’ll give you a kiss.”

Ita slowly raised her tearstained eyes, but the few seconds of procrastination were enough.

“Let me!” Feta pushed her friend out of the way, stood in front of the door, and took the lit candles from the hands of Karver, who was snickering.

The blades clipped the quivering flames ten times, they entered the wood directly over the girl’s head another two times, and they passed within a fingerbreadth of her temple yet three more times. Lieutenant Egert Soll kissed the lowly maidservant Feta a total of fifteen times.

Everyone considered it well played except for Ita. She fled to the kitchen to sob. Feta’s eyes were lowered, and the skillful hands of the lieutenant rested on her waist. The landlady looked on sorrowfully, yet with understanding. It soon became obvious that Feta was feverish and swooning from passion. Somewhat uneasy, Lord Soll decided to take her to her room; he was not gone for very long, but once he returned, he encountered the rapturous, somewhat envious looks of his comrades.

The night was already well past its peak when the company finally quit the welcoming establishment. Lieutenant Dron spoke to Egert’s swaying back. “All the mothers in the district scare their daughters with stories of Lieutenant Soll. You truly are a rascal.”

Someone chuckled.

“That merchant Vapa, you know, that rich man who bought the empty house on the embankment? Well, he just brought in a young wife from the provinces, and guess what: He’s already been informed by the local gossips that he should fear neither pestilence nor ruin, but a young guard by the name of Soll.”

Everyone laughed except for Karver. He frowned at the mention of the merchant’s wife, gritted his teeth, and said, “That’s what I thought. Someone let it slip in all innocence, and now the merchant doesn’t sleep a wink. He guards her.” He crossly tossed his head. Obviously, the merchant’s wife had long occupied his thoughts, but her jealous husband had managed to disoblige him by his very existence.

Wobbling, Egert stopped, and the blissful vacancy of drunkenness on his face gradually gave way to interest. “Are you lying?”

“If I were lying?” reluctantly responded Karver. The conversation seemed oppressive to him.

The whole company gradually sobered up enough to consider the situation; someone chuckled at the thought of intrigue.

Egert drew his sword from its sheath, his renowned sword of ancient design, and holding its narrow edge close to his face, he solemnly pronounced, “I vow that the merchant shall not protect himself, not from pestilence, not from ruin, and definitely not from—”

His last words were drowned out by an outburst of laughter. Karver’s face darkened, and he hunched his head down into his shoulders.

The glorious city of Kavarren was as ancient as it was militaristic. In no other city did there live, side by side, so many renowned descendants of venerable houses; in no other city did there grow such an assortment of family trees. Nowhere else were valor and military skill so highly valued: the only thing Kavarren valued as highly as prowess with a blade and bravery in battle was skill in breeding and training boars, whose fights were the primary entertainment in the city.

Any House in Kavarren could, if necessary, withstand the onslaught of hundreds of troops. The walls of every manor were surpassingly strong and thick, the unassailable, narrow windows cut in these walls loomed darkly, and a multitude of steel spikes protruded here and there on both gates and doors. An entire arsenal, consisting of myriad types of weapons, was carefully deposited in the vault of each house, and above each roof a banner, adorned with fringe, waved proudly. On the exterior side of the gates, each house boasted a coat of arms, one sight of which might put an entire army to flight from fear of the numerous claws and teeth, the fiery eyes and the ferociously grinning jaws therein. The city was surrounded by a fortress wall, and the gates were protected by such forbidding engravings that even Khars, Protector of Warriors, would either lose his head or flee for his life should he choose to attack Kavarren.

But most of all, Kavarren was proud of its elite force, the regiment of guards. As soon as a son was born into one of the esteemed families, his father would immediately strive for the rosy-cheeked babe’s enrollment in these glorious military ranks. Not a single holiday passed by without a military parade to show off the prowess of this regiment; on the days without a parade, the streets of this peaceful city were constantly patrolled, the pubs prospered, and although mothers constantly and severely appealed to their daughters to be prudent, duels occurred occasionally. These duels were long discussed by the town gossips with both satisfaction and pleasure.

However, the guards were renowned not only for their debaucheries and adventures. The regiment’s history was full of victories during the internecine wars that had broken out entirely too often in the past. The present-day guards, the descendants of the famous warriors of old, frequently displayed their military skill in skirmishes with the wicked, well-armed bands of highwaymen who occasionally flooded the surrounding forests. All the respectable men of the city spent their youths in the saddle with a weapon in hand.

However, the most terrible event in the history of the city was by no means some war or siege, but the Black Plague, which appeared in Kavarren many decades ago and in the course of three days cut the number of townspeople nearly in two. Walls and fortifications and sharp steel proved powerless against the Plague. The old men of Kavarren, who lived through the Plague in their childhoods, enjoyed recounting the terrible story to their grandsons; however, the young men were quite capable of ignoring all these horrors, possessing that happy talent of youth that allows admonitions heard but a moment ago with their right ears to instantly fly out their left.

Egert Soll was the flesh of the flesh of his native Kavarren; he was a true son and embodiment of its heroism. If he had died suddenly at the age of twenty and a half years, he would have been lauded as the very spirit of Kavarren; it must be said, however, that in his attractive, blond head there were absolutely no thoughts of death.

If anything, Egert did not believe in death: this from the man who managed to kill two men in duels! Both incidents were discussed widely, but inasmuch as they were both questions of honor and all the rules of dueling had been strictly adhered to, the townspeople soon began to talk of Egert with respect, rather than with any sort of condemnation. Tales of Egert’s other victories, in which his opponents escaped with mere wounds or mutilation, simply served as textbook examples for the city’s young boys and adolescents.

However, as time went on, Egert fought fewer and fewer duels, not because his combative vehemence had been exhausted, but because there were fewer volunteers willing to throw themselves on his family sword. Egert was a devoted student of swordplay; the blade became his sole plaything at the age of thirteen when his father ceremoniously presented him with the family heirloom in lieu of his childhood practice sword.

It is no wonder that Egert had very few to balance out his abundance of friends. Friends met with him in every tavern, friends followed at his heels in packs and involuntarily became the witnesses and participants in his impetuous amusements.

A worshipper of all kinds of danger, he recognized the distinctive charm of dancing on the razor’s edge. Once, on a dare, he scaled the exterior wall of the fire tower, the highest building in the city, and rang the bell three times, inducing by this action a fair bit of alarm among the townsfolk. Lieutenant Dron, who had entered into this bet with Egert, was required to kiss the first woman he encountered, and that woman turned out to be an old spinster, the aunt of the mayor—oh, what a scandal!

Another time, a guard by the name of Lagan had to pay up; he lost a bet when Egert, in full view of everyone, saddled a hefty, reddish brown bull, which was furious but completely stupefied at such impudence. Clenching a horse bridle in his teeth, Lagan hauled Egert on his shoulders from the city gates to his own house.

But mostly the cost of these larks fell to Karver.

They had been inseparable since childhood. Karver clung to Egert and loved him like a brother. Not especially handsome but not hideous, not especially strong but not a weakling; Karver always lost in comparison with Egert and yet at the same time basked in the reflection of his glory. From an early age, he conscientiously worked for the right to be called the friend of such a prominent young man, enduring at times both humiliations and mockery.

He wanted to be just like Egert; he wanted it so fervently that slowly, imperceptibly even to himself, he began to take on his friend’s habits, his mannerisms, his swagger, even his voice. He learned to swim and walk on ropes, and Heaven only knows what that cost him. He learned to laugh aloud at his own spills into muddy puddles; he did not cry when blows, accurately thrown by a young Egert, left bruises on his shoulders and knees. His magnificent friend valued his dedication and loved Karver in his own way; this, however, did not keep him from forgetting about the existence of his friend if he did not see him with his own eyes even for a day. Once, when he was fourteen years old, Karver decided to test his friend: He said he was ill, and did not show his face among his comrades for an entire week. He sat at home, reverently waiting for Egert to remember him, which of course Egert did not: he was distracted by numerous amusements, games, and outings. Egert did not know, of course, that Karver sat silently by his window for all seven days of his voluntary seclusion nor that, despising himself, he once broke out into hot, spiteful, angry tears. Suffering from solitude, Karver vowed he would break with Egert forever, but then he broke down and went to see him, and he was met with such sincere joy that he immediately forgot the insult.

Little changed as they grew up. Timid Karver’s love affairs all fell apart, usually when Egert instructed him in the ways of love by leading girls whom Karver found attractive away from him right under his nose. Karver sighed and forgave, regarding his own humiliation as a sacrifice for friendship.

Egert was wont to require the same daring of those around him as he himself possessed, and he did his best to mock those who fell short of his expectations. He was especially unforgiving to Karver; once in late autumn, when the river Kava, which skirted the town, froze over for the first time, Egert proposed a contest to see who could run over it, from bank to bank, the quickest. All his friends quickly pretended to have important business to attend to, sicknesses and infirmities, but Karver, who showed up as he usually did just to be at hand, received such a contemptuous sneer and such a scathing, vile rebuke that he flushed from his ears to his heels. Within an inch of crying, he consented to Egert’s suggestion.

Of course, Egert, who was taller and heavier, easily skimmed across the slick ice to the opposite bank as the fish in the gloomy depths gaped at him in astonishment. Of course, Karver got scared at the crucial moment and froze, intending to go back, and with a cry he dropped into a newly made, gleaming black opening in the ice, magnanimously affording Egert the chance to save him and by that act earn himself yet more laurels.

Interestingly enough, he was sincerely grateful to Egert for dragging him out of the icy water.

Mothers of grown daughters winced at the name of Egert Soll; fathers of adolescent sons put him up as an example for the youths. Cuckolds scowled darkly upon meeting Egert in the street, and yet for all that, they hailed him politely. The mayor forgave him his intrigues and debauches and ignored any complaints lodged against Egert because an event that had occurred during the boar-fighting season still lived in his memory.

Egert’s father, like many in Kavarren, raised fighting boars. This was considered a sophisticated and honorable art. The black boars from the House of Soll were exceptionally savage and bloodthirsty; only the dark red, brindled boars from the House of the mayor were able to rival them in competition. There was never a contest but that in the finale these eternal rivals would meet, and the victory in these battles fluctuated between the two Houses, until one fine summer day, the champion of the mayor, a crimson, brindled specimen called Ryk, went wild and charged his way through the tilting yard.

Having gutted his adversary, a black beauty by the name of Khars, the maddened boar dashed into the grandstand. His own brindled comrade, who happened to be in his path and who gave way with his belly completely shredded to pieces, delayed the lunatic boar for a short moment, but the mayor, who by tradition was sitting in the first row, only had time to let out a heartrending scream and, scooping up his wife, jump to his feet on the velvet-covered stand.

No one knows how this bloody drama might have ended; many of those who came that day to feast their eyes upon the contests, the mayor and his wife among them, may have met the same sad fate as the handsome Khars, for Ryk, nurtured in ferocity from his days as a piglet, had apparently decided that his day had finally come. The wretch was mistaken: this was not his day, but Egert Soll’s, who appeared in the middle of the action before the public in the back rows even understood what was happening.

Egert bellowed insults, most offensive to a boar, at Ryk while a blindingly bright piece of fabric, which later turned out to be the wrap that covered the naked shoulders of one of the more extravagant ladies in town, whirled without ceasing in his left hand. Ryk hesitated for all of a second, but this second was sufficient for the fearless Egert, who having jumped within a hairsbreadth of the boar, thrust his dagger, won on a bet, beneath the shoulder blade of the crimson-colored lunatic.

The stunned mayor presented the most generous of all possible gifts to the House of Soll: all the dark-red, brindled boars contained within his enclosures were instantly roasted and eaten, though it is true that their meat turned out to be tough and sinewy. Egert sat at the head of the table while his father swallowed tears of affection and pride; now the ebony beauties of the Solls would have no equal in town. The elder Soll felt that his impending old age promised to be peaceful and comfortable, for there was no doubt that his son was the best of all the sons of the city.

Egert’s mother was not at that feast. She often kept to her bed and did not enjoy noisy crowds of people. At one time, she had been a strong and healthy woman; she had taken to her bed soon after Egert killed his first opponent in a duel. It sometimes occurred to Egert that his mother avoided him and that she was nearly afraid of him. However, he always managed to drive away such strange or unpleasant thoughts.

One clear, sunny day—actually, it was the first real spring day of the year—an agreeable new acquaintance befell the merchant Vapa, who was strolling along the embankment with his young wife near at hand.

This new acquaintance, who seemed to Vapa such an exceedingly distinguished young man, was, curiously enough, Lord Karver Ott. What was remarkable about this meeting was that the young guard was promenading in the company of his sister, a girl of uncommon proportions with a high, magnificent bust and humbly lowered gray blue eyes.

The girl was named Bertina. As a foursome—Karver alongside Vapa and Bertina next to the beautiful Senia, the young wife of the merchant—they nonchalantly sauntered back and forth along the embankment.

Vapa was astonished and simultaneously moved; it was the first time one of these “cursed aristocrats” had shown him such warm regard. Senia stole a passing glance at Karver’s youthful face and then immediately lowered her eyes, as though fearful of what the punishment might be for even a single forbidden glance.

They passed by a group of guards, picturesquely stationed along a parapet. Casting a wary glance at them, Senia discovered that the young men were not chatting away as they usually did. Instead, they all stood with their backs facing the embankment and their hands held to their mouths; from time to time they trembled strangely, as if they were all suddenly stricken by one and the same ailment.

“What’s wrong with them?” she wondered to Bertina.

But Bertina merely shook her head sorrowfully and shrugged her shoulders.

Anxiously shifting his gaze from the guards to his sister and then from his sister to Senia, Karver spoke suddenly in a lowered voice. “Ah, believe me, there is such a strong tradition of debauchery in this city! Bertina is an innocent girl; it is so hard to choose friends for her when one is wary of all the pernicious influences. Oh, how good it would be if Bertina could become friends with Mistress Senia.”

With these last words, a sigh slipped out of him.

The foursome turned and began to walk on the opposite side of the embankment; the guards on the parapet were now fewer, but those who remained stubbornly watched the river: all but one who was sitting squarely on the cobblestone pavement and having some sort of fit.

“They’re drunk, as usual,” Karver noted in condemnation. The one who was sitting raised his clouded eyes and then doubled over, unable to control the laughter that pulled at his chest.

On the following day, Karver and his sister called upon Vapa. Bertina confessed to Senia that she did not know a thing about embroidering silk.

On the third day, Senia, who was intolerably bored from whiling away her days in solitude, asked her husband to allow her to meet with Bertina more often: this would undoubtedly amuse them both, and furthermore Karver’s sister had asked Senia to give her lessons in embroidery.

On the fourth day, Bertina presented herself. She was guarded by her faithful brother, who was unaccountably sullen, and as soon as he had greeted them and deposited his sister, he bowed his apologies and left. The merchant sat down to go over his accounts while Senia led her guest upstairs to her own rooms.

A canary chirped in an ornamental cage. Needles and delicate linen were extracted from a basket. Bertina’s fingers, far too stiff and coarse, refused to comply with the task, but the girl seemed to be trying her best.

“Dearest,” said Senia thoughtfully in the middle of the lesson, “is it really true that you are completely innocent?”

Bertina pricked herself with a needle and put her finger in her mouth.

“Don’t be embarrassed.” Senia smiled. “It seems to me that we can be completely open with each other. So are you really, well, you know what I mean?”

Bertina raised her gray eyes to Senia, who saw with amazement that those eyes were unimaginably sorrowful. “Ah, Senia, that is such a sad tale.”

“I thought as much!” the wife of Vapa exclaimed. “He seduced you and then dropped you, didn’t he?”

Bertina shook her head and again sighed heavily.

The room was silent for a short time and then from the street came the sound of friendly laughter from two dozen young throats.

“The guards,” Senia muttered, going to the window. “They are laughing again. What are they always laughing for?”

Bertina let out a sob.

Senia turned away from the window and sat next to her. “I see. Was he, your beloved, was he a guard?”

“If only,” whispered Bertina. “The guards are tender and honorable, the guards are faithful and manly, the guards…”

Senia pursed her lips incredulously. “I highly doubt the guards are faithful. I think it is more likely that your beloved is called Egert Soll, isn’t that so?”

Bertina jumped slightly on the cushions. The room again became quiet.

“Dear one,” began Senia in a whisper, “you know you can tell me. Have you ever experienced, well, you know, they say that women can also experience, um, pleasure. Do you understand what I mean?” Senia blushed; such candor made her uneasy.

Bertina again raised her eyes, but this time they were astonished. “But, my dear, you’re married!”

“Yes, that’s just it!” Senia abruptly stood up, entirely out of humor. Forcing the words out between her teeth, she said, “I am married. So I am.”

Her guest slowly set aside her embroidery.

Their conversation went on for about an hour. Bertina talked and talked, but her voice never gave out: on the contrary, it discovered an almost musical quality as she progressed. She closed her eyes and tenderly stroked the back of the chair; she practically cooed at one point. Senia, unable to move, stared at her with widened eyes; she could only breathe and from time to time lick her parched lips.

“And all that really happens?” she asked finally in a shaking, choked-up voice.

Bertina slowly, solemnly nodded.

“And I’ll never experience it?” Senia murmured, paralyzed by distress.

Bertina stood up. She took a deep breath as if she were planning to plunge into cold water. She tugged at the front of her dress, and two round, padded sacks fell, one after the other, onto the floor.

Senia’s breath caught in her throat, and she could not scream.

The dress slid from Bertina like skin from a snake. Muscular shoulders, a wide chest covered in curly hair, and a stomach with well-defined ridges of muscle were revealed from beneath the dress.

When the dress slipped even lower, Senia covered her eyes with her hands.

“If you scream,” whispered the voice of the man who had been Bertina, “your very own husband will…”

Senia did not hear the rest; she simply fainted.

Of course, Egert would not take advantage of the helplessness of a languishing woman. Of course, he quickly managed to bring Senia back to consciousness. And of course, their confidential conversation quickly resumed, though it was now of a decidedly different quality.

“You promise?” asked Senia, shaking from head to toe.

“Upon my word as a guard.”

“You! You’re a guard?”

“How can you ask! I’m Egert Soll!”

“But—”

“Only with your consent.”

“But—”

“One word, and I’ll go.”

“But—”

“Should I go?”

“No!”

On the first floor, the merchant Vapa was frowning angrily; his accounts just would not add up. The two dozen guards standing below the windows of his home got bored and decided to wander off.

The needlework basket had long since tumbled to the floor, spilling colorful tangles of thread. The caged canary was silent, astonished.

“Oh. Glorious Heaven!” gasped Senia, embracing Egert’s neck with her arms. He was silent; he no longer had the ability to speak.

The poor little bird was beginning to get frightened. Its cage, which hung over the bed, was swaying, rhythmically and vigorously. An ancient clock emitted a majestic series of chimes, and then it did so yet again, and again.

“Oh! Good Spirits! Glorious Heaven!” Senia did not know to whom else to pray; she was almost ready to burst from trying not to cry out at the top of her lungs.

The merchant Vapa rubbed his hands contentedly: the mistakes had been corrected, and a careless scribe would soon lose his position. And how good it was that Senia had become friends with the sister of Lord Karver! For a whole day she had been neither seen nor heard; she did not fidget in front of him, or pester him, or ask to go out walking. The merchant smirked suddenly, thinking he might even have time to go out and visit his mistress.

He raised himself up, intending to escape the confines of his armchair, but he winced at a pain in his back and remained seated.

Lurching slightly, Egert Soll peered out the window toward the embankment. Naked and enervated, he stood in the window aperture and regarded his comrades with scorn. The merchant Vapa jumped and winced. Cursed guards! What did they have to laugh about so?

A few minutes later, Senia and Bertina came downstairs. It seemed to Vapa that his wife was not herself, as if the lesson in embroidery had exhausted her. Saying good-bye, she looked into Bertina’s eyes with special tenderness.

“You’ll come again, yes?”

“Without fail,” breathed the girl, “I have not yet mastered this … stitch, dearest Senia.”

The merchant sneered contemptuously. These women are so sentimental.

“I’ll cut out the tongue,” Egert told his friends in the pub, “of anyone who gossips. Is that clear?”

There was no doubt to anyone that he would do so if the secret of the merchant’s wife Senia became gossip in the town. They all remembered their hereditary blades and their family honor, and they held their tongues.

They winked at Karver and shook his hand because it was clear to them that he had played a significant role in this whole affair. The congratulations, it seemed, afforded him little joy; heedless of the reflection of Egert’s glory that fell to him, his “brother,” Karver first got extremely drunk and then silently slipped away.

Spring broke forth with driving rains; muddy currents coursed through the steep, cobbled alleyways, and the children of cooks and shopkeepers launched wooden shoes with canvas sails attached to them off to sea while the young aristocrats peered at them from high, oriel windows with quiet envy.

One morning, a simple highway coach drove up to the inn the Noble Sword, which was located near the center of Kavarren. The coachman, going against the usual habit of his kind, did not rush to open the door of the coach, but instead sat indifferently on the driver’s box; apparently, the passengers were not his masters, but nothing more than renters. The carriage door swung open on its own and a young man, slight and lean, kicked open the running board so he could step down.

Outsiders were not all that rare in Kavarren, and it is possible that the arrival of the coach would have gone unnoticed had not Egert Soll and his friends been whiling away the hours at the Faithful Shield, a tavern opposite the inn.

“Take a look at that one!” said Karver, who was sitting by the window of the tavern.

Two or three heads turned in the direction he was looking; the other gentlemen were far too engrossed in their conversation or their wine.

“I say, check it out!” Karver nudged Egert, who was sitting next to him, in the side.

Egert glanced over. By this time, the young man had already jumped down onto the wet cobblestones and was offering his hand to someone unseen, someone still inside the coach. The youth was dressed all in dark colors, and Egert instantly felt that there was some sort of oddity in the figure of the young stranger, but he was not sure what.

“He’s not carrying a sword,” said Karver.

Only then did Egert see that the stranger was unarmed, that he was not even wearing any empty baldrics, and that on his thin belt there was no sign of a dagger, not even a kitchen knife. Egert looked at him more intently; the stranger’s clothes seemed extremely formal, but if they made up a uniform, it was in no way military.

“He’s a student,” explained Karver. “Definitely a student.”

In the meantime, the student, having conferred with the person who still remained inside the coach, went to pay the coachman, who still did not display a single sign of obeisance; obviously, in addition to not being the coach’s owner, the student was not wealthy.

“I suppose,” drawled Egert through his teeth, “students, like women, don’t wear swords?”

Karver snickered.

Egert smirked disdainfully and was about to turn his back on the window when a girl, leaning on the arm of the student, emerged from the carriage. All sound in the tavern immediately ceased.

Her face was anxious, pale from exhaustion, and doleful from the rain, but even this could not spoil it. It was a perfect face, almost as if it were finely cut from marble; only, whereas a marble statue’s white, dead eyes would have stared dully, this girl’s dark, tranquil eyes gleamed lustrously without the slightest shade of coyness.

Like her companion, the newly arrived girl was dressed simply. However, her simple traveling dress was unable to hide either her elegant figure or the lightness and suppleness of her movements. The girl jumped down onto the cobblestones next to the youth. He said something, causing the soft lips of his tired companion to quirk in a small smile and her eyes to become even more penetrating and vivid.

“That’s beyond belief,” murmured Egert.

The driver touched the reins. The two arrivals leapt back to escape from being splattered with the watery mud thrown up by the wheels. Then the young man hauled a large bundle up onto his shoulder, and the visitors entered the premises of the Noble Sword hand in hand. The door, carved with entwined monograms, closed behind them.

In the tavern, everyone started talking at once; for a moment Egert held his peace, unresponsive to the questioning glances of his friends. Then he pulled Karver to the side. “I need to know who they are.”

He stood up, prepared, as usual, to do a service for his friend. Egert watched as Karver, hopping over puddles, rushed across the street to the Noble Sword; the carved door slammed shut yet again, and nearly a quarter of an hour passed before Egert’s sidekick returned.

“Yes, he’s a student. Evidently, they’re staying for about a week.” Karver fell silent, waiting with satisfaction for his friend’s questions.

“And the girl?” Egert nearly spit the words out.

Karver smirked strangely. “She is neither his sister nor his aunt, as I had hoped. She is the fiancée of that boy and, it seems, the wedding is not far off!”

Egert was silent; Karver’s report, although not completely unexpected, piqued and almost outraged him.

“It goes against nature,” said one of the guards. “A complete misalliance.”

They all boisterously agreed.

“Do you know what I’ve heard?” interjected Karver as if in wonder. “I’ve heard that all students are castrated so they can’t be distracted by earthly pleasures, and so they fully consign themselves to their studies. Was that all a lie?”

“It seems it is a lie,” muttered Lieutenant Dron, sounding disappointed. He knocked over his forgotten wineglass.

“If he doesn’t carry a sword, he might as well be a eunuch,” said Egert quietly. They all turned in his direction. A predatory and insolent sneer stalked over Egert’s face. “What use does a eunuch have for a woman, anyway? Especially a woman like that!”

He stood up, and all his friends respectfully made way for him. Having tossed a few gold coins at the innkeeper, enough to pay for the entire company, Lieutenant Egert Soll walked out into the rain.

That very same evening, the young man and his companion were dining on the first floor of the Noble Sword; their meal was quite modest until the innkeeper, grinning widely, came over and placed a wicker basket bristling with bottle necks on the table in front of them.

“Master and mistress, compliments of Lord Soll!”

With these words, and with a meaningful smile, the innkeeper bowed himself away.

Egert, who had made himself comfortable in a far corner of the dining room, saw how the student and the lovely young woman glanced at each other in surprise. After a long deliberation, the cloth covering the basket was whipped away and joyful wonder blossomed on the faces of the pair leaning over the gifts, which was no real surprise, as the viands and wines had been selected with impeccable taste.

However, bewilderment soon replaced joy; after saying something heated to his companion, the student hopped up and ran off after the innkeeper to find out who exactly this generous benefactor, this Lord Soll, was.

Egert drained his mug to the dregs, stood up leisurely, and made his way through the room to the girl, who had been left alone. As he walked, he purposefully avoided looking at her, fearing disenchantment. For what if this beauty, when seen too close, turned out not to be as beautiful?

The dining room was half-empty. A few guests were eating and a well-behaved group of townsfolk were whiling away their time in amiable drunkenness. The Noble Sword had the reputation for being a calm, decorous establishment; the innkeeper carefully guarded against boisterous carousals and brawls. Delaying the moment of meeting the beautiful lady, Egert noticed a new face among the guests. Apparently, this tall, middle-aged traveler had arrived very recently because Egert did not know him by sight.

Having finally come to within a hairsbreadth of his goal, Egert mentally prepared himself to gaze upon the fiancée of the student.

Oh yes, she was magnificent. Her face no longer seemed so tired, and her cheeks, smooth as alabaster, had gained a bit of color. Now that he was close, he could distinguish small, previously unnoticed details, such as a constellation of tiny beauty marks on her long, proud neck and the unusually steep, bold sweep of her eyelashes.

Egert stood and gazed at her. The girl slowly raised her head and, for the first time, Egert met the gaze of her serious, slightly aloof eyes.

“Good day,” said Egert, and he sat down in the spot vacated by the student. “Does the lady object to the company of a humble worshipper of beauty?”

The girl did not become confused or frightened; she only seemed somewhat taken aback. “Excuse me, you are?”

“My name is Egert Soll.” He stood, gave a short bow, and again sat down.

“Ah.” It seemed she was about to smile. “If that is so, then we should thank you.”

“Not at all!” Egert seemed dismayed. “It is we, the humble citizens of Kavarren, who should thank you for the honor you have bestowed upon us—” He had to pause and fill his lungs with air to finish the florid phrase. “—bestowed upon us, by favoring us with your presence. How long may we shower you with hospitality?”

The girl smiled, and at that moment, Egert wanted nothing more than for that smile to never leave her face.

“You are very obliging. We will be here for a week, perhaps a bit longer.”

With a proprietary gesture, Egert produced the first bottle from the basket and adroitly uncorked it. “Please allow me to fulfill the duties of hospitality and offer you some wine. Do you have any relatives in Kavarren, or perhaps some friends?”

She managed to shake her head no, but just then the student returned and the girl smiled at him, and her smile was so joyful that it completely overshadowed the smile she had just given Egert. Egert noticed this and an unpleasant feeling slid into his soul, a feeling that almost resembled jealousy.

“Dinar, this is the Lord Soll who so generously presented us with all these marvels. Lord Soll, allow me to introduce my fiancé, Dinar.”

The student nodded to Egert, but he did not offer his hand, which was lucky because Egert would die before shaking that bony paw, unaccustomed to weapons and stained with what appeared to be darkened spots of ink. Up close, the student seemed even more despicable and awkward, and Egert felt like crying out to Heaven at the grievous wrong of allowing both the student and his wondrous companion to sit at the same table.

However, at the moment, the beauty and Egert were the only ones sitting at the table. As there were only two chairs, the student could only hover nearby.

Paying him not even the slightest bit of attention, Egert again turned to the girl. “Pardon me, but I don’t even know your name.”

The girl and the discomforted student shared a look, directed at Egert, who was lounging in his chair. The girl answered as if by rote. “My name is Toria.”

Egert repeated her name as if he were examining the taste of it. In the meantime, the student had come to his senses and dragged a third chair, which had been lying vacant nearby, to the table.

“You have neither relatives nor friends here.” Raising himself up a bit, Egert bent over Toria’s wineglass, and his hand, in a seemingly natural fashion, touched hers. “Or rather, you didn’t have any, but now the entire city, I believe, will want to make your acquaintance. Are you simply traveling for pleasure?”

The student, frowning slightly, took a glass from the serving girl and poured himself some wine. Egert smirked with the corners of his lips because the noble beverage hardly filled a third of the student’s glass.

“We are traveling,” confirmed the girl in a slightly restrained manner, “but not for pleasure. Here in Kavarren, many centuries ago, lived a man who interests us from an academic point of view. He was a mage, an archmage, and we are hoping that he left some sign of himself in the ancient archives, manuscripts, and chronicles.”

With every word, she became even more passionate, forgetting her momentary consternation. Some moldy papers were dearer to her, apparently, than her own brothers would be: at the word archive her voice trembled with reverence. Egert raised his glass. It was all the same to him what evoked enthusiasm in the woman, just so long as it gave fire to her eyes and flush to her cheeks.

“A toast to travelers who search for manuscripts! But I don’t think there ever were any chronicles in Kavarren, and there certainly aren’t now.”

The student puffed out his lips. Without any expression, he said, “There is an extensive historical library in Kavarren, in the Town Hall. Is this news to you?”

Egert refused to trouble himself by entering into conversation with him. Toria, it would seem, was able to appreciate good wine; her eyes had closed with delight after the very first sip. To afford her more opportunities for pleasure, Egert took the next bottle out of the basket.

“Note this wine; it is the pride of Kavarren’s wine cellars, the offspring of southern vineyards, Serenade Muscatel. Would you like to try it?”

As he once again filled her glass, he inhaled the scent that emanated from her. It was the scent of a perfume, of insistent tart herbs and flowers. Then, caressing her warm, twitching hand, he put a tiny slice of rare brisket on her plate. The student sullenly twisted the bottle cork in his long fingers.

“So, what is it about this lucky fellow that interests you even after so many centuries?” asked Egert with an engaging smile. “If only I were in his place.”

She willingly proceeded to tell him the long and entirely uninteresting history of the mage, who founded some kind of order and called them an army. Egert did not understand immediately that she was talking about the Sacred Spirit Lash, to whom some people somewhere, he supposed, really did pay homage.

“Yes, and after he died, his followers claimed he was a god. Historians think that in the end of his life the great mage went mad, and his insanity infected the Order. Can you believe that they’re still sitting around waiting for the End of Time?”

Egert listened to Toria, and the girl’s words flowed past his ears, but her voice, her sweet, uncommon voice, fascinated him. Her velvet lips opened smoothly, allowing her white teeth to flash through; Egert broke out into a sweat, imagining the kiss these spectacular lips could give.

He wished that the girl would talk forever, but she paused, having glanced in passing at the student. He was sitting with his cockles raised like a wounded bird and was looking at her reproachfully.

“I beg you to continue,” said Egert ingratiatingly. “I find this extremely interesting. So this Order of Lash still exists?” The student glared eloquently at Toria and then raised his eyes to the ceiling. Egert was not blind; he had no problem reading in this action the student’s utmost contempt for his academic knowledge. However, to take notice of the behavior of this ratty, pitiful student was beneath his dignity.

Toria smiled in embarrassment. “I would be quite happy to talk to you about it, but we are very tired from the road, so I suppose it is time for us to go.” She stood up smoothly, leaving her glass of wine unfinished.

“Mistress Toria!” Egert jumped up with her. “Perhaps it may be that you will allow me to fulfill my duties as a host tomorrow? If you are really interested in the local sights of interest, I am considered an expert on them, the best in the entire city.”

Egert considered Kavarren’s sights of interest to consist mainly of taverns and the paddocks of the fighting boars, but the credulous Toria was taken in by his utterly unartful trap. “Is that so?”

The student groaned heavily.

Not paying him the slightest attention, Egert nodded energetically. “Without a doubt. Will you permit me to know your plans for tomorrow?”

“They have yet to be determined,” the youth answered morosely. Peering at him through narrowed eyes, Egert noted with amusement that students were capable of becoming angry.

“Mistress Toria”—Egert turned to the girl as if there had never been a student born into the world—“tomorrow I ask that you plan for a sightseeing tour, dinner at the finest establishment in Kavarren, and an evening excursion on a boat. The Kava is an extremely picturesque little river, did you notice?”

She somehow seemed to deflate. Her eyes darkened and now they seemed like twin pits beneath a troubled sky.

Egert smiled as charmingly, as sincerely, and as vulnerably as he could. “I didn’t understand half your tale. I would truly like to ask you a few questions about this, um, gentleman, who gave the world the Order of Lash. And to show my gratitude for the tale, I, your humble servant, will arrange everything for your pleasure. Everything that you require will be laid at your feet. Until tomorrow!”

He bowed and left; the tall, middle-aged guest followed his exit with a weary gaze.

The custodian of the Town Hall delayed and shook his head for a long time: the book depositories were in a useless state; a large portion of the books had been destroyed in a fire, which had occurred about thirty years ago. He worried that a beam might very well fall on the heads of the young people. The researchers, however, were adamant, and in the end they were allowed access to the treasures they wished to see.

Of those treasures, however, there remained only pitiful crumbs: those very few that the fire had spared had become fat with an entire generation of rats. Raking through the rubbish and litter, the researchers kept exploding into exclamations of despair. Egert, appearing in the book depository with an enormous bouquet of roses, found the young couple just at the moment when, amidst the general ruin, they finally found a corner that had survived more or less intact.

They completely ignored Egert’s arrival. The student was hanging somewhere under the ceiling, swaying on a broken-down stepladder; Toria was craning her neck to watch him, and in her pose Egert saw something akin to worship. Tufts of spiderwebs were tangled in her hair, but her eyes were shining and her soft lips were half-open with delight as she listened to the student, who spoke without ceasing.

He was bursting with words like a fountain bursts with water. Reading out incomprehensible passages from a book, he interpreted them for Toria in the same breath. Long, outlandish names rolled off his tongue while he floridly reasoned out runic texts, and from time to time he switched over into some language that Egert did not know. The girl took a heavy, dusty volume from his hand, and her tender fingers caressed its binding so reverently that Egert experienced a moment of irrational jealousy toward the book.

He stood there for nearly half an hour without being honored by so much as a single glance. Annoyed, he placed the bouquet in the nearest corner and left. His wounded pride pricked unpleasantly at his soul.

The young guests returned to the inn just in time for supper, but once that was over Toria did not leave her room, nor did she answer the courteous note Egert sent her.

On the following day, the custodian of the Town Hall had an appointment with the beneficent Lord Soll, and so the young researchers, who turned up for their books, received a bewildering refusal: it was entirely impossible today; the stairs were under repairs; the keys were under guard. The student and Toria, astonished, were forced to return to the inn. Egert sat in the dining room the entire day, but still Toria did not descend the stairs.

It rained all night long. The rain drenched the student, who departed for the Town Hall in the morning and again returned defeated. It was well after dinner when the clouds finally dispersed and the sun began to peek down upon the drenched city; the young couple, having been so inactive for the past two days, decided to go out for a walk.

As if they were afraid to walk very far away from the inn, the student and his fiancée turned back and forth several times along the drying street, completely unaware of how many attentive eyes kept watch over them through the windows of the Faithful Shield. One noted that the student watched over his fiancée far better than the merchant Vapa watched over his wife; another noted that the wife of the merchant could not hold a candle to the visiting beauty; yet another began to laugh.

Then Karver appeared in the path of the two promenaders.

The spectators, glued to the windows of the Faithful Shield, watched as Karver, as if by chance, grazed the student’s shoulder and then bowed apologetically, almost to the ground; the student bowed as well, and Karver joyfully started a conversation with him, and after asking most humbly for Toria’s permission, led the young man to the opposite side of the street. Waving his arms about, he had herded the student still farther along the street, almost to the corner, when Egert emerged from the doors of the tavern.

Toria answered Egert’s formal greeting with a polite yet reserved nod. She did not seem bewildered or fearful; her eyes, as detached as before, looked at Egert attentively, fearlessly, and with patient inquisitiveness.

“Well, you’re a cunning one, aren’t you,” said Egert with rough reproach. “You made a promise, you did. I waited for the continuation of your tale, and you never came down even once!”

She sighed. “Tell the truth. You’re not the least bit interested in that.”

“Me?” erupted Egert.

Toria looked over her shoulder, searching for her fiancé; catching that tense glance, Egert scowled and began speaking in a low voice.

“What is the point of your seclusion? Are you really preparing yourself for the role of the humble wife, and for such a tyrannical little husband? What’s so terrible about a little conversation, or perhaps a stroll? What’s wrong with having dinner together, or taking a boat ride? But perhaps I’ve offended you somehow. Or maybe you don’t belong to yourself?”

She turned away from him; Egert feasted his eyes on her profile.

“You are so persistent,” she said reprovingly.

“And what would you have me do?” Egert marveled sincerely. “The most beautiful woman in the world is visiting my town.”

“Thank you. You have peculiar notions of hospitality. But I must leave you.” Toria took a step in the direction where the garrulous Karver had ensnared the student.

Egert grew angry. “You are going to chase after that man? You?”

Flushing, Toria took another step.

Egert blocked her path. “You are like a precious jewel that has chosen a rotten hunk of wood as her setting. Use your eyes! You were born to rule; you are a queen, a goddess, but you—”

The student escaped from the corner; he was red faced and disheveled, as if he had been scuffling, and it seemed likely that something unpleasant had happened between him and Karver, who leapt after him, shouting for the whole street to hear.

“Sir, you aren’t even married yet and already you’re playing the cuckold! If the woman wants to talk to a man in the street, a man who is pleasing to her, that is no reason for hysterics!”

An artisan passing by burst out laughing. The gray-haired guest, who had just exited the doors of the inn, slowly turned his head toward the group. Lieutenant Dron and the eternally gloomy Lagan emerged onto the front steps of the Faithful Shield.

The student flushed from red to purple; he turned toward Karver as if about to strike him, but then he thought better of it. He turned back and hurried over to the perplexed Toria. He took her forcefully by the hand. “Let’s go.”

Their route of escape, however, had already been blocked off by Egert. Gazing straight into Toria’s eyes, he asked softly, “Are you so submissive as to allow this … this creature to lead you away to the gray, spiritless life he has prepared for you?”

Karver shouted at the student, “But you still have time, sir, to fit yourself for horns! Not a week will pass after your happy little wedding before they adorn your learned brow!”

The student had begun to shake slightly; not even Toria’s hand, which was holding his wrist in a viselike grip, could restrain this shaking.

“Lord Soll, please allow us to pass.”

“In the event that a man should whip out his sword, you, sir, will be able to poke him with your horns,” continued Karver. “This should give you with a certain advantage.”

The student, as though blind, leapt forward right into Egert. Egert’s iron-hard chest repelled him back to his former position.

“What would you call that combat maneuver, master student?” asked Karver. “The Pouncing Pupil? Do they teach that at the university?”

“Lord Soll,” said Toria softly, looking Egert straight in the eye, “it seemed to me that you were an honorable man.”

Over the course of his, admittedly not very long, life, Egert had had sufficient occasion to study women; he had seen numerous coquettes, whose Be gone! meant Come to me, my love and whose Foul rogue! meant We must talk about this later. Married women in the company of their spouses had demonstrated their disinterest and then, once the two of them were alone, had thrown themselves on his neck. Egert knew and could read many shades of meaning, but in the eyes of Toria he read not only complete indifference to the splendor of his manliness, but also the furious power of antagonism, of rejection.

Lieutenant Egert Soll was cut to the quick. In front of the entire regiment sitting in the Faithful Shield, a student, almost a eunuch, someone who did not even carry weapons, had been chosen over him, a man who had heretofore never known defeat.

Unwillingly stepping to the side, he gritted his teeth and snarled, “Well, my sincerest congratulations! An aristocrat in the embrace of a sniveling bookworm: what a splendid couple! But perhaps your learned spouse is just a screen behind which you hide your many lovers?”

Drawn by the noise in the street, the maidservants and guests were peering out the windows of the inn.

The student released Toria’s hand. Ignoring her beseeching look, he drew a deep line in front of Egert’s boots with the dusty toe of his shoe: the traditional challenge to a duel.

Egert laughed condescendingly. “What? I don’t brawl with women! You, my dear sir, don’t even have any weapons!”

Drawing his hand back, the student quickly and audibly slapped Egert across his face.

The excited crowd—guards, guests of the inn, chambermaids, servants, and casual passersby—filled the rear courtyard of the Noble Sword; Karver was there, practically crawling out of his skin, hurrying to clear a space amidst them for the combatants.

Some kind soul had lent the student his sword, but in his hands even that decent blade looked ridiculous, like knight’s armor at a grocer’s stand. His fiancée seemed ready to break down into tears for the first time since Egert had met her. Toria’s cheeks, white as a shroud, were covered in irregular splotches; their jagged pattern concealed her beauty. Biting her lips, she threw herself at the spectators by turns.

“Stop this, you! Merciful Heaven, Dinar! Stop them, someone!”

To stop an honorably proclaimed duel was unlawful and also foolish: all the residents of Kavarren had imbibed that notion with their mother’s milk. They simply watched Toria with sympathy and curiosity, and many of the women envied her silently: Just think, to be the reason for a duel!

One chambermaid decided, with sincere goodwill, to comfort the poor girl. Throwing off her arms, Toria, despairing of being able to stop Dinar, decided to leave. But she returned almost immediately, as if on a leash. The crowd parted before her, politely giving way, silently acknowledging her right to watch all the details of the fight. Toria leaned against the wheel of a carriage and remained frozen there as if overtaken by stupor.

The adversaries were ready. They stood opposite each other, enemy against enemy. Egert grinned derisively: there was nothing better than love, except a duel. True, his rival was entirely worthless. Just look at how he wheezes, trying to stand in the correct position! It was apparent that he had taken a fencing lesson or two, but not enough to do him any good.

Egert cast his eyes over the faces in the crowd, searching for Toria. Would she watch? Would she finally understand that she had favored a tiny stream from an overflowing sink over a thundering waterfall? Would she repent?

Instead of Toria, Egert met the eyes of the middle-aged guest, that gray-haired man whose head rose above the crowd like a pine tree towering over an orchard. The guest’s gaze, steadfast but expressionless, displeased Egert; he tossed his head and flicked his sword at the student like a stern master flicking a switch.

“Hup, now!”

The student recoiled involuntarily, and the crowd burst into laughter.

“Lay into him, Egert!”

Egert grinned widely. “This is nothing more than a small lesson in good manners.”

The student narrowed his eyes, bent his knees as though he were in a fencing class, and sprang forward recklessly, as if he intended to chop Egert up into cabbage. Within a second, he was looking around in amazement, searching for his opponent, while Egert, appearing behind his back, reminded the student of himself with a delicate jab just below his spine.

“Try not to get distracted, now!”

The student whirled around as though stung. Egert bowed politely and retreated a step.

“All is not lost, lad! Gather your strength and give it another shot. The lesson is just beginning!”

The student stood as rigidly as a mast; the tip of his blade was not pointed at the eyes of his opponent, as it should, but rather at the sky. He lunged awkwardly, managing to hit Egert’s sword, but then the student’s blade swung wide. Its tip hit the sand, and he was barely able to keep his grip on the hilt. The spectators began to applaud. Egert, however, was already bored with this game. He could fence for a hundred hours without rest, if only his hopelessly feeble adversary would not fight so tiresomely.

Egert knew seventeen defenses and twenty-seven attack maneuvers. The entire allure of the sport consisted of connecting these maneuvers so that they created a mosaic tapestry that he wove with his sword, then scattered and reassembled anew. Egert was unable, afterwards, to repeat many of the improvisations that resulted from this weaving: they were born from inspiration, like verse, and they were usually crowned with a wound, if not death. Alas, with this student before him, even with a sword, Egert was limited to using one particular maneuver, a maneuver so simple and vulgar that it resembled smoked herring.

Turning away from yet another clumsy attack, carelessly fending off strong yet inaccurate blows, Egert turned his head in search of Toria. Once he saw her pallid, almost vacant face in the crowd, he mounted his own attack, and the student did not even have time to understand what was happening. Egert dramatically held the tip of his blade near the student’s chest, and the audience yelled out rapturously. Only the tall, gray-haired boarder maintained his calm.

This was repeated again and again. The student could have died ten times already, but Lord Soll prolonged the game, playing with the youth like a cat plays with a mouse. The student thrashed about, brandishing his sword. Pebbles skittered away from under his dusty shoes, but his enemy was like a shadow, ever-present and untouchable.

Egert’s intentionally pedantic, toxic voice never ceased admonishing the student. “So! Ah-ha! Like this! Why do you squirm so, like a snake in a frying pan? Again! And again! Ha! Yes, you are a lazy, indolent pupil! You must be punished! Now!”

Every cry of now was followed by a small jab. The student’s coat, lacerated in several places, hung in rags, and sweat poured down his drawn face.

The combatants once again stood facing each other. The student was worn out and bewildered, while Egert was not even out of breath. Looking into his opponent’s desolate, hate-filled eyes, Egert sensed his own power, an idle, unhurried power that did not even need to be used, only enjoyed.

“Are you afraid?” he asked in a whisper, and in the same breath he read the answer in the student’s eyes: Yes, he was afraid. Terror stood in front of Egert, whose sword was like a serpent’s sting pointed at the poor man’s chest. Egert’s opponent was defenseless against him; he was no longer an opponent, but a victim, and rage had long since given way to anxiety and the desire to ask for mercy, if only his pride would allow it.

“Should I show you mercy?” Egert smiled with just the corner of his mouth. He felt the student’s terror on his skin, and this feeling sweetly thrilled his nerves: all the more so since, in the depths of his soul, Egert had already decided not to penalize the boy too harshly.

“Should I show mercy? Well?”

Despair and terror forced the student into a new, hopeless attack. At the exact same moment, Egert’s boot came down in a puddle, forsaken by the rain, and lost its solid connection to the ground. The legs of the magnificent Egert splayed apart like the limbs of a newborn colt. He barely kept his balance, and the student’s sword grazed the guard’s shoulder, slicing off his epaulet. That proud military affectation hung by a thread, like a dead spider, and the crowd—that cursed crowd, always on the side of the victor—broke out into delighted howls.

“Ha, Egert! He got a hit!”

“Keep at it! Keep at it! He’ll fall back!”

“Bravo, student! Teach him a lesson! Thrash him!”

When guards who had been observed in some villainy or cowardice, or who had been convicted of treason, were expelled from the regiment, they suffered a shameful punishment: Their epaulets were publicly shorn from their shoulders. Without knowing it, the student had brought great shame upon Egert, who saw his comrades exchanging glances, smirking and whispering amongst themselves—for shame!

Everything further transpired instantaneously, in the space of a breath.

Forgetting himself in his fury, Egert sprang forward. The student, absurdly throwing up his sword, leapt forward to meet him—and froze, his astonished eyes staring into the guard’s. Egert’s family sword blossomed from his back; it was not lustrous as usual, but dark red, almost black. Standing for a second more, the student fell down as awkwardly as he had fought. The crowd became quiet; a blind man would have thought that there was not a single soul in the back courtyard of the tavern. The student slumped heavily onto the trampled dirt, and Egert’s unmercifully long blade slipped out of his chest like a snake.

“He impaled himself,” said Lieutenant Dron loudly.

Egert stood, his blood-soaked sword lowered down toward the ground, and stared dully at the form in front of him. The crowd shuffled slightly, letting Toria through.

She walked carefully, as if on a wire. Paying no heed to Egert, she approached the youth on tiptoe, as though she were afraid to wake him. “Dinar?”

The young man did not answer.

“Dinar?”

The crowd dispersed, averting their eyes. A reddish black stain crept out from under the lad’s dark coat. The innkeeper sniveled in a low voice, “Oh, these duels! Young blood is hot, everyone knows it. What should I do now? Well, what am I going to do?”

Egert spit to get rid of a metallic taste in his mouth. Glorious Heaven, why did it go so wrong?

“Dinar!” Toria gazed pleadingly into the young man’s face.

The courtyard emptied slowly; as he was leaving, the tall gray-haired boarder cast a glance in the direction of Egert, a glance that was intent yet incomprehensible.

The student was buried quickly, but with all the proper decorum, at the city’s expense. The city was flush with gossip for a week. Toria addressed a complaint to the mayor. He received her, but only so that he could express his condolences and lift his hands in dismay: the duel proceeded according to all the proper rules, and although it is extremely unfortunate that the youth died, did not he himself challenge Lord Soll? Alas, my dear lady, this unfortunate incident can in no way be called a murder. Lord Soll is not under arrest. He fought on the field of honor, and he too might have been killed. And if the deceased gentleman student did not carry weapons and did not know how to wield them, well then, this misfortune falls to the student and is in no way the fault of Lieutenant Soll.…

Four days had passed from the day of the duel, three from the day of the burial. In the gray early morning, Toria abandoned the city.

The week of her stay in Kavarren lay on her face in black, funereal shadows. The student’s bundle dragged on her arm as she plodded out to the carriage waiting by the entrance; her eyes, extinguished, ringed with dark shadows, watched the ground as she walked, which is why she did not immediately recognize the man who courteously lowered the running board of the coach.

Someone’s hand helped her cast the bundle onto the seat. Mechanically offering thanks, Toria raised her eyes and came face-to-face with Egert Soll.

Egert had been watching over the fiancée of the student he killed, though he himself did not know why. It is possible that he wanted to apologize and to express his sympathy, but it is more likely that he entertained certain vague hopes in regards to Toria. As a worshipper of risk and danger, he was accustomed to taking a relaxed approach to death, his own and others’. Should not the victor have a right to count on an allotment of the relinquished inheritance of his vanquished foe? What could be more natural?

Then Toria met Egert’s gaze.

He was prepared for a display of wrath, despair, or hatred, and he had fortified himself with words appropriate to the situation. He even intended to accept a slap in the face from her hand, but what he saw in Toria’s splendid yet heartbroken eyes repelled him backwards like a blow from a steel-clad fist.

The girl looked at Egert with bleak disgust completely lacking in malice, as one might look at vermin. There was no hatred in her, but it seemed as though she might vomit at any moment.

Egert did not remember the route he took as he walked—or did he run?—away, his eyes downcast so that he might never again see or meet or remember such a gaze.

The next day, he was sitting in the Faithful Shield, gloomy, despondent, and full of malice. Karver was hovering next to him, happily chatting away about boars and women: the seasonal boar fights were not far off. Would his father enter Handsome, Butcher, or the young Battle? Incidentally, the lovely Dilia, wife of the captain, had asked about Egert, and it would be quite dangerous to neglect her; she would get her revenge. And why on earth should Egert, who was the center of attention in the city this week, spoil the bright days of such a remarkable life with despondency?

Egert instinctively noticed a certain pleasant agitation in the voice of his friend. It seemed that in the depths of his soul, Karver rejoiced in the knowledge that, although he was victorious in the field of battle, Egert had come in second in the field of love and was therefore equal to other mortals. It is possible that, in judging him this way, Egert wrongly accused Karver in his mind, but that was neither here nor there: the chatter of his friend wearied Egert. With the nail of his index finger, he carved out a furrow in the blackened tabletop. Yes, he agreed with everything Karver had to say, but for Heaven’s sake, let him shut up for a minute and give his lieutenant the opportunity to finish his mug in peace!

Just then the door opened, thrusting a waft of cool air and a ray of light into the stuffy tavern. The newcomer stood on the threshold and, after looking around to be sure he had the right place, he entered.

Egert recognized him. He was that strange gray-haired man who had been staying at the Noble Sword for the last ten days. Walking past the guards, he pulled out the chair at a vacant table nearby and heavily lowered himself into the seat.

Not knowing exactly why, Egert watched him out of the corner of his eye in the feeble light of the crowded tavern. It was the first time he managed to get a close look at the stranger’s face.

The age of the grizzled boarder was impossible to determine: he could have been anywhere from forty to ninety years old. Two deep, vertical lines intersected his cheeks and lost themselves in the corners of his chapped lips. His long, thin, yellow nose flared continually, as if it were about to fly away. His eyes, clear and set far apart, seemed completely unconcerned with the world around him. Examining him, Egert saw his large, leathery eyelids, devoid of eyelashes, twitch slightly.

The innkeeper brought the stranger a mug of wine and was about to move off when the stranger unexpectedly stopped him.

“Just a minute, dearest. Don’t you see, I’ve no one to drink with. I understand that you are busy, but all I require is a little company. I want to drink to the glorious guards, the destroyers of the defenseless.”

The innkeeper flinched: he understood quite well to whom this toast was directed. Muttering apologies under his breath, the kindly soul scuttled off, and just in time, for Egert too had heard the words that were meant for him.

Unhurriedly placing his mug back on the table, he looked the stranger right in the eyes. As before, they were calm, even indifferent, as though someone else entirely had spoken that disastrous toast.

“And just whom are you drinking to, my dear sir? Whom do you name so?”

“You,” the stranger said, undaunted. “I name you, Egert Soll. You are right to go pale.”

“Pale?” Egert stood up. He was in his cups, but far from drunk. “What the—” The words strained through his teeth. “I am afraid that someone may come tomorrow wishing to call me the destroyer of feeble old men.”

The stranger’s face changed oddly. Egert suddenly understood that he was smiling.

“A man chooses who he will be, what his reputation will be. Why don’t you slaughter, let’s say, women with that sword of yours? Or ten-year-old children? It’s possible they might have more success against you than your last victim did.”

Egert was rendered speechless; at a loss, he turned toward Karver. But Karver, who was usually so sharp of tongue, was now, for some reason, wrapped in silence. The customers of the tavern, the innkeeper, who had retreated to the kitchen doorway, and a small, snot-nosed scullion were all keeping their heads down as if they sensed that something extraordinary was about to happen.

“What do you want from me?” Egert forced out, looking into those large, limpid eyes with hatred. “Why are you trying to provoke me into drawing my sword?”

As before, the stranger stretched his long, dry mouth into a smile. His eyes remained cold. “I also have a sword. But I thought you preferred those who don’t carry weapons, eh, Soll?”

With great difficulty, Egert forced himself to unclench his fingers, which were fastened to the hilt of his sword.

“Do you like easy victims?” The stranger asked soulfully. “Victims who exude terror? That sweet feeling of power, eh, Soll?”

“He’s a madman,” Karver said quietly, as if confused. “Egert, let’s go, yeah?”

Egert drew a deep breath. The stranger’s words affected him deeply, painfully, and far more strongly than he liked. “It is your good fortune,” he uttered with difficulty, “that you could be my grandfather. And I don’t fight with old men, is that clear?”

“It’s clear.” The stranger again raised his mug, and turning to Egert, to Karver, and to all those who were listening to their conversation with bated breath, he declared, “I drink to Lieutenant Soll, the embodiment of cowardice, hiding behind a mask of valor.”

However, he did not manage to drink his toast, because Egert’s sword, flying out of its scabbard, knocked the mug out of his hand. The silver cup bounced along the stone floor and then stopped in a dark red pool of spilled wine.

“Splendid.” The stranger contentedly wiped his wet fingers on his napkin, and his enormous nostrils swelled. “Do you have enough courage to take the next step?”

Egert lowered his sword; its tip rasped along the stones, drawing a curvy line at the feet of the stranger.

“Good.” The grizzled boarder of the Noble Sword was satisfied, although his gaze, as before, remained entirely indifferent. “Only, I will not fight in a tavern. Name the place and time.”

“By the bridge beyond the city gates,” Egert forced himself to squeeze the words out. “Tomorrow at dawn.”

The stranger took out his purse, extracted a coin from it, and laid it on the table next to the wine-stained napkin. He nodded to the innkeeper and started for the door; Egert just had time to throw words at his back, “Who will be your seconds?”

The boarder of the Noble Sword stopped in the doorway. Over his shoulder he said, “I have no need of seconds. Bring someone for yourself.”

Lowering his head under the lintel, the stranger left. The heavy door swung shut.

A good half of all the duels in Kavarren took place by the bridge beyond the city gates. The choice warranted itself: walking only a few steps from the road, duelists found themselves in an unpopulated place, concealed from the road by a wall of old spruces; furthermore, in the early morning dueling hour, the road and bridge were still so deserted that they seemed long since abandoned.

The combatants got to the bridge at almost the same time. Egert arrived a bit in advance of the grizzled stranger, and he stared into the dark water while he waited.

The cloudy spring river carried swollen shards of wood, clumps of river grass, and lifeless shreds of last fall’s leaves in its current. Here and there small whirlpools eddied around stones, and Egert liked to peer into the very depths of their black funnels: they reminded him of the intoxicating sensation of danger. The railing of the bridge was completely rotten, but Egert leaned against it with his entire body as if tempting fate.

His adversary finally mounted the bridge, and it seemed to Egert that he was quite out of breath. At this moment, the stranger appeared truly old, much older than Egert’s father, and Egert was stunned: Would there really be a duel? But meeting those eyes, cold and clear as ice, he immediately forgot that thought.

“Where is your friend?” asked the stranger.

Egert had been beyond stern when he forbade Karver to accompany him. If his opponent chose to defy the rules and forgo a second, why on earth should he, Egert, behave any differently?

“And if I should suddenly attack you with a dishonorable maneuver?” asked the grizzled man, not taking his eyes off Egert.

Egert sneered. He could have said that he had little fear of pushy old men and their dishonorable ways, that he had little use for empty chatter, and that he had conquered numerous opponents in his short life, but he saved his breath, contenting himself with this eloquent sneer.

Without uttering another word, the duelists left the road. Egert walked in front, carelessly exposing his back to his opponent, by which action he meant to shame the stranger, to demonstrate his complete dismissal of any villainy. They passed by the spruce grove and came out into a clearing, circular like an arena and tramped down by the boots of countless generations of Kavarren’s duelists.

It was damp there from the river. Removing his uniform jacket with its firmly sewn epaulets, Egert regretfully thought that the spring this year had been extremely cold and long, and that the outing he had planned for the day after tomorrow would have to be deferred until the days became warmer. The dew weighed the grass down to the ground and rolled down the tree trunks in large drops. It seemed as though the trees were weeping for someone. Egert’s well-made boots were also covered in drops of dew.

The adversaries stood opposite each other. Egert realized with amazement that for the first time in his entire dueling experience he was contending with a rival about whom, all else being even, nothing was known. However, this did not bother Egert at all: he was about to learn everything he needed to know.

They both drew their swords: Egert indolently, his opponent calmly and indifferently, like everything else he did. The stranger did not hurry to attack; he simply stood and looked Egert in the eyes. The tip of his sword also looked Egert in the eyes, intently, seriously, and just by the way the stranger stood in his pose, Egert understood that this time he would have need of all seventeen of his defenses.

Wishing to test his opponent, he embarked upon a trial attack, which was repelled leisurely. Egert tried another, and in similar fashion the stranger deliberately repulsed the rather cunning strike that consummated Egert’s short, newly minted combination.

“Congratulations,” muttered Egert, “you’re not bad for your age.” His next combination was artfully composed and brilliantly executed, but the grizzled stranger just as dispassionately fended off the entire series.

Not without pleasure, Egert realized that his opponent was worthy of his attention and that his victory would not be easy, but that would make it all the more honorable. In the depths of his soul he bitterly repented that there were no spectators around who could appreciate his brilliant improvisations, but at that very moment the stranger attacked.

Egert was barely able to turn the attack aside; all seventeen of his defenses were wiped out as he impotently switched from one to the next. Blows fell upon him one after the other, unexpected, insidious, unrelentingly intense, and as he furiously defended against them, Egert saw steel very close to his face more than once.

Then, just as suddenly, the attack stopped. The stranger retreated a step as if he wished to better examine Egert from head to toe.

Egert was breathing heavily, his wet hair was sticking to his temples, trickles of sweat were pouring down his back, and his sword arm was ringing like a copper bell.

“Not bad,” he gasped, looking into those clear eyes. “Well, you never said you were—what are you, a fencing master gone into retirement?”

With these words he sprang forward and, had there been any witnesses to this battle, they would have confirmed without reservation that the swordsman Egert had never before produced anything like these magnificent combinations.

He hopped like a grasshopper, simultaneously attacking from the right and left, from above and below, planning out his moves twenty steps in advance; he was fast and technically flawless; he was at the peak of his form—and yet, he did not achieve a single success, however small.

It was as if all his blows came up against a stone wall. A bull calf might feel something similar the first time he contended with an oak tree. Not a single combination unwound to its finish; his opponent, as if he knew Egert’s thoughts in advance, turned all his plans inside out, passing into counterattack, and Egert felt the stranger’s blade touch his chest, his stomach, his face. Egert recognized, finally, the game of cat and mouse that he himself had played with the student; it was crystal clear that Egert could have been killed a good ten times, but for some reason he remained among the living.

“Interesting,” he wheezed, retreating two steps. “I’d like to know to whom you sold your soul … for this…”

“Are you afraid?” asked the stranger. These were his first words since the beginning of the fight.

Egert studied this indifferent old man endowed with unprecedented strength; he studied his rugged, lined face and enormous, cold, lashless eyes. The stranger was not even breathing hard: his breath, just like his voice and his gaze, remained even.

“Are you afraid?”

“No,” Egert responded contemptuously, and as Glorious Heaven was his witness, it was the purest truth. Even in the face of inevitable death, Egert did not experience trepidation.

The stranger understood this; his lips elongated the way they had in the tavern. “Well…”

Ringing, their blades crossed. The stranger performed a subtle circular motion with his blade, and Egert shrieked in pain as his wrist bent backwards. His fingers opened of their own accord, and his hereditary sword flew through the steel gray sky in an arc, thudded into a pile of last year’s leaves, and sank from sight.

Clutching his injured wrist, Egert retreated, not meeting his opponent’s eyes. He was mortified that the feeble old man could have quickly disarmed him in the very first minute of the battle by this maneuver, and that the battle they had just had was nothing more than a farce, a game, like suicide chess.

The stranger looked at him calmly, without speaking.

“Are you just going to stand there?” asked Egert, outraged but not frightened. “What comes next?”

The stranger remained silent, and Egert realized that his own bravery and scorn of death were a weapon he could use to debase his conqueror.

“Well, go ahead and kill me,” he laughed. “What else can you do to me? I’m not some abject student who trembles in the face of death. You want to see the truth of it? Strike me!”

Something changed in the stranger’s face. He stepped forward, and Egert was shocked to realize that the other man really did want to strike him down.

Killing an unarmed man was, to Egert’s eyes, the greatest possible infamy. He smirked as scornfully as he could. The vanquisher lifted his blade. Not turning his eyes away, Egert gazed intrepidly at the naked edge near his face.

“Well?”

The stranger struck.

Egert saw how the steel edge of the sword swept through the air like the shining blade of a fan. He awaited the blow and death, but instead he felt a sharp pain on his cheek.

Not understanding what had happened, he raised his hand to his face. Warm liquid flowed down his chin. The cuff of his shirt was immediately stained with blood. In passing, Egert gave thanks that he had taken off his coat and thus saved it from being ruined.

He raised his eyes toward the stranger, and saw his back. He was sheathing his sword in its scabbard as he walked leisurely away.

“Hey!” shouted Egert, scrambling to his feet like a fool. “Don’t you have anything else to say, you long-toothed louse?”

But the grizzled boarder of the Noble Sword did not look back. And so he left, without turning around a single time.

Pressing a kerchief to his cheek, he picked up his family sword and tossed his coat over his shoulder. Egert was wholeheartedly grateful that he had come to the duel without Karver. A whipping was a whipping, even if the hoary stranger had been as skilled with a blade as Khars, Protector of Warriors. All the same, he was not Khars. The Protector of Warriors valued tradition; there was no way that he would have ended a duel in such a strange and absurd way.

Dragging himself to the shore of the river, Egert got on all fours and peered into the dark, perpetually rippling mirror of the water. A long, deep gash, reflected in the water, loomed on the cheek of Egert Soll. It ran from his cheekbone to his chin. At the sight of it, the reflection pursed its lips incredulously. A few warm, red drops fell and dissolved into the cold water.

2

When he returned to town, Egert really did not want to meet any of his acquaintances, which is probably exactly why he found Karver, who was extremely overwrought, at the first intersection.

“That graybeard returned to the inn as whole as a full moon. I was wondering … What’s that on your face?”

“A cat scratched me,” Egert spat through his teeth.

“Ah,” drawled Karver ruefully. “I was thinking about going down to the bridge.”

“What, to consign my cold, dead body to the ground?” Egert tried to stifle his irritation. The deep gash on his cheek had stopped bleeding, but it burned as if it were a red-hot rod resting against his face.

“Well,” drawled Karver equivocally and in the same breath added, lowering his voice. “The old man; he left right away. He already had his horse saddled.”

“What do I care? One less madman in town,” Egert hissed.

“I told you that right away.” Karver shook his head soberly. “A lunatic, you know? You could see it in his eyes. There was something completely deranged in those eyes, did you notice?”

It was obvious that Karver was not at all averse to discussing lunatics in general and the stranger in particular. Of course, he wanted to be privy to the details of the duel, and the next words out of his mouth would almost certainly have been an invitation to the tavern, but for the present, bitter disappointment awaited Karver. Without appeasing his curiosity even the slightest bit, Egert hurriedly, and somewhat dryly, said his good-byes.

The Soll family emblem that graced the iron-bound gates had been created to evoke pride in the family’s friends and terror in their enemies. The belligerent animal that was depicted there did not have a name, but it was furnished with a forked tongue, steel jaws, and two swords held in razor-sharp talons.

Dragging his feet with difficulty, Egert walked up to the high entrance, where a servant stood ready to accept the cloak and sword of the young gentleman, but on that unhappy morning Egert had one but not the other; therefore, the young gentleman simply nodded in answer to the deep, deferential bow of the servant.

Egert’s room, like nearly all the rooms in the Soll family manor, was decorated with tapestries that depicted various species of fighting boars. A few sentimental novels, interspersed with textbooks on hunting, languished on the small bookcase; Egert had never opened either the novels or the textbooks. A portrait hung on the wall between two narrow windows. The portrait was of Egert’s mother when she was young and beautiful; she was holding a curly-haired blond child snuggled in her lap. The artist, who had painted the picture fifteen years ago at the behest of the elder Soll, was nothing more than a fawning toady: Egert’s mother was excessively beautiful, with a beauty that was not her own, and the child was simply the embodiment of all that was good and wholesome. The eyes were too blue, the little cheeks were too sweetly chubby, and the little dimple on the chin was too cutely appealing. It seemed that at any moment this wondrous child might take flight and dissolve into the ether.

Egert approached the mirror that stood on the bureau next to his bed. His eyes were no longer blue; they were gray, like an overcast sky. Egert stretched his lips reluctantly: the dimple was gone as if it had never been, but the wound snaked across his cheek, long, stinging, and bloody.

At his summons the old first maid, who had long ago been entrusted with all the workings of the house, appeared. She groaned, chewed her lips, brought out a jar of ointment, and applied it to the wound. The pain subsided. With the help of another servant, Egert got his boots off, divested himself of his coat, and overcome, fell into his couch. He was exhausted.

It came time for dinner, but Egert did not descend to the dining room; instead, he informed his mother that he had already eaten at the tavern. Truthfully, he did want to go to the tavern; he already regretted the fact that he had not stayed and had a few drinks with Karver. He even stood up, planning to go out, but then he paused and sat down again.

Very soon his head started to spin. Then the blond boy in the portrait, that delightful boy with the clean cheeks, unstained by a sword, nodded his head and smiled meaningfully.

Evening was drawing close; the hour had arrived when the day was not yet dead but the night was not yet born. Beyond the window the sky faded. Shadows crept out of the corners, and the room transformed. Studying the muzzles of the boars on the tapestries, still visible in the twilight, Egert felt a faint, vague uneasiness.

He cautiously paid heed to this awkward, uncomfortable, tenacious feeling. It was as if there was an expectation, an expectation of something that had neither form nor name, something shadowy but inescapable. The boars bared their teeth at him; the fair-haired boy, snuggled in the lap of his mother, smiled; the edge of the valance over the bed quivered sluggishly; and Egert suddenly felt cold in his warm couch.

He stood up, trying to free himself from the unpleasant, uncertain anxiety. He wanted to call for someone, but then he thought better of the idea. He sat down again, agonizingly trying to identify the cause of his anxiety and to determine where the threat was coming from. He sprang up again to go into his drawing room and there, to his joy, was a servant bringing in lighted candles. An ancient, many-armed candelabrum was standing on the table, the room was brightly lit, the twilight had already given way to night, and Egert immediately forgot about the strange sensation that had swept over him at the juncture between day and night.

That night he slept without dreams.

Far from Kavarren, in a room filled with harsh incense, two people talked, their hands resting on a tabletop of polished wood. One set of hands was senile, with long nervous fingers, and the other young, white and strong, with a tattoo on the wrist:

“The mage refused, Your Lordship.”

“I am disappointed, my brother. You failed to persuade him.”

“This mage is a proud man. Money is not important to him—perhaps he is well-to-do. He does not need power, and he did not want to be introduced to our Secret. He did not believe us.”

“You failed me, my brother.”

“We tried … we did everything we could … but … but we failed, Your Lordship,” the younger man replied, and his voice audibly cracked. “But we will find another way. We will manage without the mage.”

The old man kept silent for a long while. The gray mane of his hair hid his face; clever, sharp eyes looked from under the white eyebrows.

“I rely on you, my brother,” he said finally, and his thin fingers were bound into the locks of his hair. “We cannot be delayed any longer. The world gets older; people become impudent. Our brotherhood is losing influence.”

“Fragile peace will be changed by a new one,” the young man said confidently.

“Fragile peace will be changed by a new one,” echoed the old man. “You have to hurry, Fagirra. The End of Time is on the threshold.”

After leaving the room, the man with the tattoo walked along the rock terrace and stood for some time, inhaling the smoky air the city. Then he pulled the gray hood onto his head, nodded to the guards at the gate, and found his way to a bustling street via a dark lane. Two women with baskets, returning from the market, bowed stiffly to him and hurried to the other side of the street.

He walked, wrapped in his hooded robe with his face covered. When he stared at someone’s back the person would shudder, look back, bow, or dive into the crowd. But people seemed to bow with less respect than before, and some people did not bow at all—they looked at him sullenly, and the young ones—some of them even glared at him with naked challenge. The lesson will have to be severe, he thought with a sigh. Cruelty will be necessary. He walked on.

He came to a small river shining in the sun under the humpbacked bridge in a deserted section of the city. A poor man, still as a statue, sat close by. His dry hand projected like a dead branch, vainly expecting alms.

The man in the hooded robe slowed his steps, almost completely hidden in the shade.

A passerby emerged at the opposite end of the lane. How could this village fellow have strayed there—perhaps he was lost, perhaps someone gave him bad directions? He looked every inch a young merchant from the suburbs who had sold off his goods and was so happy with life that he glanced kindly at the poor man.

“Take a coin, drink to my luck.…”

“Thank you,” answered the poor man slowly.

Suddenly the beggar’s hand gripped the wrist of the merchant with surprising force. A broad-shouldered, red-faced confederate emerged from an alleyway and caught the purse, which was snatched from the passerby’s waist seconds earlier by the poor man. The merchant tried to shout, but the bulky fellow threw a rope around his neck.

Everything ended very rapidly. The body of the unlucky merchant, “relieved” of purse, tobacco pouch, and thin neckkerchief, was packed into a bag—not to be distinguished from hundreds of other bags, which were in abundance in the commercial streets. The bulky fellow and beggar, breathing heavily, finished their job when a shadow appeared on the road.

Both raised their eyes and started back in horror.

The gray-robed man smiled from under the hood. In his hand—with the tattoo on the wrist—coins tinkled.

“Tail, Nutty, be moderately greedy,” said the man in a soft voice that made the killers tremble. “I require your assistance.”

A week went by, and the city thankfully forgot about the tragic incident associated with the name of Egert Soll. Grass began to grow on the student’s grave, it was announced that a new arena for the boar fights would be erected on the shore of the Kava river, and the captain of the guards, the husband of the beautiful Dilia, proclaimed that there would be a parade before the guards set out into the countryside for their upcoming drills, which were pompously termed military field maneuvers.

The maneuvers took place every year. They were implemented to remind the gentlemen of the guards that they were not simply a riotous assembly of carousers and duelists, but a military unit. Egert loved these drills because they naturally afforded him the chance to boast of his prowess, and he always looked forward to their approach.

This time he was not looking forward to them.

His wound had scabbed over; it almost did not hurt anymore. His manservant had caught the trick of shaving Egert with special care: hair on one’s cheeks and chin was considered incompatible with aristocratic birth, so Egert did not consider, even for a moment, hiding his wound with a beard. Little by little, those around him became accustomed to his new appearance, and he himself often forgot to think about his wound, but with every passing day the strange anxiety, which had taken up residence in his soul, grew steadily, until it began to turn into a flurry of alarm.

During the day he felt tolerably well, but as soon as darkness settled in, the alarm unaccountably crept out of shadowy corners and chased him home, where at the command of the young master, his servant brought almost all the candles in the house into his rooms. However, even though Egert’s rooms blazed with light like a ballroom, at times it still seemed to him that the boars, their eyes full of blood, might trot right out of the tapestries.

One evening he found a means of combating this strange affliction: He ordered his servant to turn down the bed before sunset. He lay down, and although he did not succeed in falling asleep right away, Egert stubbornly refused to open his clenched eyes. Finally, he slid into slumber and then into a dream.

Glorious Heaven, it would have been better to stand on guard the whole night.

In the desolate predawn hour a dream came to him. He had already had many dreams that night, simple, ordinary, more or less pleasant dreams: women, horses, acquaintances, cockroaches. Waking up, he forgot his dreams sooner than he realized he had dreamed; this time he awoke in the middle of the night, his sweaty nightshirt molded to his body, shaking like a puppy left out in the rain.

It was likely influenced by some long-forgotten tale about the incursion of the black plague that arose from the furthest reaches of his memory, one of those horrible tales of the elders, about which he had laughed when he was still an adolescent. In his dream he saw a strange creature in a blackened, shapeless garment mounting the terraced steps of his house, its face muffled with rags blackened with pitch. In the hands of this visitant there was a tool that resembled a pitchfork, with extremely long, inverted tines; it was like an enormous bird claw, clutched tight with spasms. The manor was empty. The visitant climbed to the drawing room, where the lid of the harpsichord was thrown up, the candles were burnt down to their stubs, and Egert’s mother sat with her hands resting on the keys: yellow, desiccated, dead hands. The visitant lifted up his pitchfork, and Mother toppled to the side like a wooden figurine. The pitch-covered creature raked the dead body with his tool like a gardener rakes up last year’s leaves.

Egert could not remain in the dark for a second longer: Don’t remember that dream, forget, forget! He lit a candle; then, burning himself, he lit another. The portrait gathered shape out of the darkness: a blond boy in the lap of a woman. Egert froze for a second, peering into the face of his young mother, as if begging for protection like a child. A cricket sang somewhere nearby; the dead hours of night stood beyond the window. Egert clutched the candelabrum to his chest and stepped closer to the portrait, and in the twinkling of an eye, the face of the woman in the portrait twitched with a dreadful malice, turned blue, broke into a grin.…

With a scream he awoke for a second time, this time in truth. Beyond the windows was the same old night, deep, sultry, and clammy.

He lit the candles with trembling hands. Shuffling his bare feet, he drifted around the room from corner to corner, clutching his shivering shoulders with his hands. What if this were yet another dream? What if he was doomed until the end of his years to live in ghastly dreams and to awake only to exchange one nightmare for another? What would happen tomorrow? What dreams would tomorrow bring?

Dawn found him lying in his couch, doubled up, haggard, and trembling.

A few days later, it was his turn to do his duty on night patrol. He rejoiced; since that unforgettable dream, the very sight of his bed was disagreeable to him. It was far better to spend the night in the saddle with his weapons at hand than to struggle against the treacherous desire to leave the candles burning until morning!

There were five of them on guard: Egert who, as a lieutenant, was the leader of the patrol; Karver; Lagan; and two very young guards, about sixteen years old.

The patrol was a traditional part of the nighttime existence of Kavarren. Any shopkeeper would declare without pride that he slept more peacefully when he could hear the clip-clop of hooves and the voices of the sentries beneath his windows. There was rarely anything serious to attend to; there were just not enough nocturnal thieves, and those who did decide to thieve went about their work quietly and apprehensively: the gentlemen of the guards were very serious about their task.

Having received, as was usual, parting words from their captain, the guards set out. Egert and Karver rode in front, and behind them rode Lagan and the two younglings, Ol and Bonifor. Having taken a turn through the streets that surrounded the Town Hall, they made their way toward the city gates. One after another, the lights in the windows went out. The rasps of latching dead bolts and the clatters of shutters swinging shut could be heard from all around. The tavern by the gate was wide awake; the cavalcade hovered in front of the wide oak doors, trying to decide whether or not to stop in for a minute and visit the landlady who ruled over the lovely Ita and Feta. In the end, duty triumphed over temptation and the patrol was about to continue on its way when a drunk, lurching, stumbled out of the doors of the tavern.

In the darkness and in his intoxication, the reveler had neither family nor name: it was impossible to determine whether he was an aristocrat or a commoner. Jauntily whooping, Karver rode his horse toward the drunk. Cantering at nearly full tilt, he raised his steed onto its hind legs right in front of the stupefied drunkard, not touching the poor man, but letting the hot breath of his horse pour over him and thus terrifying him half to death. The guards laughed. Emitting a strange, distressed cry, the drunk sank down onto the pavement, but Karver was satisfied, and he returned to his companions, all the while peering over at Egert. Egert had once taught his friend that particular jest.

They moved on. The town lay in darkness. Only the torches in the hands of the patrol and the rare stars that shone weakly through the openings in the clouds illuminated the black façades of the sleeping houses. They rode silently. The pavement rang out under the hooves of their horses, and Egert, who found it unpleasant to watch the shadows that danced along the street, focused on the worn stones passing by under his horse.

The pavement below him suddenly seemed like a river undergoing the first thaw of the year: the cobblestones thronged without order; they cracked and jutted over one another, raising their jagged edges as if waiting for victims. Egert felt a chill, and he suddenly understood something he had never realized before; he understood and was astounded by his former blindness: the stones of the pavement were hostile, deadly, and dangerous, and a man who fell on them from a height, even if from the back of a horse, would most certainly be doomed.

The cavalcade continued on its way, and Egert’s stallion clip-clopped his hooves along with all the others, but his rider could no longer see anything around him. Squeezing the reins with sweaty palms, Egert Soll, a natural-born horseman, nearly died from the fear of falling off his horse.

The crunch of a broken neck kept repeating in his ears. The stones of the pavement thrust upward lasciviously, as if anticipating the moment when the head of the brave lieutenant would burst like a ripe melon on their burnished edges. An avalanche of sweat rolled down Egert’s back even though the night was brisk, almost cold. In the space of two blocks, he managed to die a thousand times until, finally, his horse began to sense that something was wrong, as if the perturbation of his rider had been transferred to him as well.

The cavalcade whirled around suddenly. The agitated stallion jerked, and this unexpected movement was enough to unseat the celebrated equestrian Egert.

Egert did not understand how it happened. He had long ago forgotten how to fall from a horse; the last time it had happened to him, he was only ten years old. He felt only a momentary horror; then the black sky with its smattering of stars flashed before his eyes and was followed by a painful but, to Egert’s astonishment, nonfatal blow.

He was lying on his side. All he could see in front of him were his horse’s hooves and the torch that had flown from his hand as he fell. It now sputtered in a puddle to his left. He heard astounded questions somewhere in the distance, which caused him to comprehend suddenly what had happened. Egert was thankful for the blessing of being able to pretend he had lost consciousness.

What could possibly cause a lieutenant of the guards, especially Egert Soll, to fall from a horse that was going no faster than a walk? Only death, thought Egert as he lay there, and he wished to die.

“Egert! Hey, help me, Lagan! It’s like he’s dead! What happened?”

He felt someone’s hands grasp him by the shoulders and turn him over so he was facing upward, but he did not give any signs of life.

“The canteen, Bonifor, the canteen, quickly!”

A small stream of water spilled over his face. After waiting a bit longer, he groaned and opened his eyes.

In the light of the torches, he could see Karver, Lagan, Ol, and Bonifor bending over him; their faces were all surprised, and those of the younger guards were still frightened.

“He’s alive,” Ol noted with relief.

“How did this happen to him?” Lagan asked stolidly. “Egert, are you drunk, or what?”

“When we set off for the night, he was sober,” Karver retorted. “Unless, while we were riding, he somehow managed to…”

“While on duty?” asked Lagan good-naturedly.

“Well, he doesn’t smell of drink,” growled Bonifor.

Egert was quite embarrassed to be lying on his back and serving as an object of general interest; besides, the pavement stones, which had waited for their chance, were sticking into his back. Fidgeting, he raised himself up onto his elbow, and at the same time a few hands immediately helped him stand up.

“What’s wrong with you?” Karver asked finally.

Egert did not know what was wrong with him, but he had no plans to give the other guards a detailed account of what had happened.

“I don’t remember,” he lied, trying to make his voice sound as hoarse as possible. “I remember we were riding. Then everything went dark, obscure, and then I was lying on the ground.”

The other guards exchanged looks.

“That’s not good,” said Lagan. “You should go see a doctor.”

Egert did not answer. Suppressing a shiver, he reluctantly climbed back on his horse. The night patrol continued, but until the early morning hours, Egert kept catching inquisitive glances thrown at him by his comrades, as if they were waiting for him to fall from his horse again.

A few days later, the regiment went out on maneuvers.

Their send-off was accompanied by all sorts of pomp: as was customary, the maneuvers were preceded by a parade. Almost the entire population of Kavarren gathered on the embankments; moreover, the heads of the esteemed families appeared with miniature banners of their Houses, and their drawn swords, held up like the batons of bandleaders, served as banner poles. The mayor was robed in a mantle embroidered with heraldic animals. Boys whose names had been entered into the roster of the regiment but who had not yet reached manhood were formed into a column and marched back and forth several times. A fifteen-year-old youth marched at the head of the column while a three-year-old lad in a little uniform with a wooden knife stuck in his belt brought up the hind end. The difference in the length of the strides of these future guards was obvious; the tiny lad was panting heavily, and he foundered a number of times, getting tangled in his baldric. However, he never cried; he was well aware of the honor he had been favored with today.

Finally, the heroes of the day appeared. Led by their captain, the guards solemnly trotted along the street, each on his own sleek, well-groomed horse, and in the right hand of each was his sword, held up in salutation. Bold girls from the crowd jumped out toward the nearest horses, throwing crowns of violets onto the blades of the guards: each of these wreaths signified a girl’s tender, friendly feeling for a guard. The majority of these wreaths fell to the captain, as was proper, but Egert, who was looking pale and not very healthy this morning, also received many. Throwing flowers and flinging up their hats, the crowd spun around them; they accompanied the guards as if the regiment were going to war, even though each knew that after three days it would quietly return, whole and unharmed, to the town.

The citizens remained to celebrate, but the guards passed through the city gates and set out on the high road toward the place where a military encampment had been prepared the week before.

Spring was finally displaying its true glory. Egert sat in his saddle with his back hunched, not at all heartened by the delightful, sunny landscape that stretched out to the right and left of the road. He had spent the night before without sleep; well before midnight, he had been visited by the usual nightmare. Replacing candles in the candelabra as they burned down, he had waited for dawn. The parade did not lift his spirits as expected, but instead brought a new shock: Egert discovered that the very sight of a drawn sword was exceedingly objectionable to him. Glorious Heaven! The sight of a naked blade, which always caresses the hearts of swordsmen and duelists alike, no longer called up sweet thoughts of glory and victory. Gazing at the tapered steel, Egert was stunned; he now thought only of lacerated skin, of exposed bone, of blood, and of pain, after which death would close in.

His comrades-in-arms looked askance at him; the official story was that he was grievously in love. His comrades discussed the possible objects of this unfortunate passion, and most of the more astute assumed that the cold and splendid Toria, fiancée of the slain student, had captured the heart of the lieutenant. Only Karver took no part at all in these discussions; he merely observed silently from a distance.

Turning away from the road, they galloped to the edge of a deep gully; clods of earth showered down into the chasm from under the hooves of the horses. The captain hollered out a command. Egert flinched, catching sight of a log, polished so there was not a single knot, that extended from one edge of the ravine to the other.

Once, on a dare, Egert had danced in the very middle of this beam, directly over the deepest part of the ravine. Every time Egert’s feet had trod on the smooth, slippery surface, his soul had been transfixed by an all-encompassing rapture at the proximity of danger and an awareness of his own courage. Not satisfied with this risk alone, he compelled others to risk themselves; using his power as a lieutenant and the magical impact of the word coward, he arranged a fight on the log. Someone had slipped, fallen to the bottom of the ravine, and broken his leg. Egert did not remember the name of that poor bastard, but from that time on, the man did not walk very well and had to be forced from the regiment.

Egert recalled all this in the second it took for the guards to dismount next to the log at the command of the captain.

They formed a line. The captain put the youngest, most inexperienced guards to the side, and Lieutenant Dron, who had been declared the instructor of the youths, proceeded to explain to them the essence of the test with an air of importance. Meanwhile the captain, not wishing to lose a single minute, commanded the others to begin.

The requirement was simple: Cross to the far side and wait there for the others. The young sword-bearers, who had been brought on maneuvers expressly for such small services, were to lead the horses back to the camp. Egert numbly handed his reins to an adolescent who was gazing up at him in adoration.

In strict order, one after the other, the guards overcame the obstacle, some with bravado, some with badly concealed nervousness, some running, some with anxious, mincing steps. Egert brought up the rear of the column, watching as the boots of his comrades intrepidly trampled the smooth trunk of the log. He tried with all his might to figure out where this clammy feeling in his chest and this painful weakness in his knees came from.

Having never before experienced real terror in the face of danger, Egert did not immediately understand that he was simply afraid, so intensely afraid that his legs became weak and his stomach cramped painfully.

The line of guards on the near side of the ravine slowly diminished. The youths who had passed though the ordeal for the first time thronged joyfully on the opposite side, yelling encouragement to those who were treading on the beam. Egert’s turn got closer. The squires, who had long since fulfilled their duty of stabling the horses, had returned; they now waited for the rare opportunity of seeing a new feat of Lieutenant Soll.

Karver, who was last in line before Egert, stepped out onto the log. At first he walked carelessly, even flippantly, but somewhere near the middle, he missed a step and, nervously throwing his arms out to the side, finished his passage. The former Egert Soll would not have let this opportunity to whistle condescendingly at his friend’s back pass, but this Egert, who was now expected to step out onto the log, could only take a deep breath.

All the guards were drawn up on the opposite bank, and all, to a man, were watching Egert inquisitively.

He forced himself to step forward. Dear Heaven, why are my knees shaking so!

His boot was planted unsteadily on the very edge of the beam. It was impossible to cross over to the opposite side. The beam was smooth; his legs would certainly slip off it; in the best-case scenario, Egert would falter, but in the worst case …

They were all waiting. The beginning of Egert’s stunt was already quite unusual.

Licking his dry lips, he took a step and staggered, waving his hands in the air. On the far side, they laughed, assuming that he was adroitly feigning clumsiness.

He took yet another half step and caught a clear glimpse of the floor of the ravine and of the sharp rocks at its bottom, and of his own mutilated body, dashed upon the rocks.

And then, raising melancholy eyes to the path laid out before him over the abyss, he made a decision.

He decided, and he jumped backwards quickly, grasping at his chest with a few theatrical gestures. He jerked as if he were having a convulsion, staggering and deftly jumping down off the log; then he fell to the ground as though dead.

Twitching in a heap of last year’s leaves, Egert feverishly tried to remember the symptoms of the horrible illnesses about which he had once heard: falling sickness, seizures. It would be good if he could froth at the mouth, but his mouth was as dry as an abandoned well. He was just going to have to make up for the lack of symptoms with inconceivably violent convulsions of his body.

The astonishment and laughter on the other side of the ravine changed into cries of horror; the first to reach him was that adolescent to whom Egert had entrusted his stallion. Glorious Heaven! Egert’s ears burned from shame and mortification, but there was no choice, so he flopped like a fish out of water; he wheezed and gasped while the captain, Karver, and Dron surrounded him on all sides. For about ten minutes, they tried to bring him to his senses, but it was all in vain; clenching his teeth and rolling his eyes back into his skull, Egert assiduously portrayed a dying man, except that a man who was really dying in this situation would have gone cold and turned blue, whereas Egert was hot and red from the unparalleled, fiery shame.

Alarmed by the unexpected illness of Lieutenant Soll, the captain sent him back to town straightaway. He would have accompanied him, but Egert managed to refuse. The captain thought to himself that even in this grave illness, Egert displayed an uncommon bravery.

Egert’s father worked himself up into a lather no less intense than the captain’s. No sooner had Egert pulled off his boots and collapsed into his couch than a knock, polite yet adamant, came at his door. The elder Soll and a short, hollow-seeming man in a smock that extended down to his ankles, a doctor, appeared on the threshold.

Egert had no other option but to force out a report of his indisposition and to hand himself over for examination.

The doctor tapped him thoroughly with a hammer; he probed, listened, and nearly sniffed Egert all over, and then he peered inquisitively into Egert’s eyes for a long moment, extending his lower eyelid for this purpose. Still gritting his teeth, Egert gave answers to extremely detailed questions, a few of which forced him to blush: No, not ill. No. No. Clear. Every morning. Wounds? Perhaps a few trifling scratches. The gash on your cheek? An unfortunate incident; nothing to worry about.

The elder Soll was nervous; he rubbed his hands together so torturously that they threatened to be chafed until they bled. Wishing to peer down Egert’s throat, the physician nearly ripped out his tongue. Then he dried his hands on a snow-white handkerchief, and letting out a sigh, recommended the usual remedy of doctors who have come up against a brick wall: bloodletting.

Soon a large copper basin was delivered to the room. The leech opened a black valise and set out scalpels and lancets, gleaming like a fine spring day, on the clean tablecloth. Small round jars clanked in the little bag, and the old first maid dragged out fresh linen.

All these preparations drove Egert into a desolate, black anxiety; he began to think that it might be better if he returned to the maneuvers. His father, heartened that there was some way to help his stricken son, solicitously assisted him in taking off his shirt.

The preparations were finished. However, when Egert saw the businesslike blade in the inexorable healer’s hand, it became very clear that bloodletting would not do.

“Oh, my son!” muttered his father perplexedly. “Glorious Heaven, you really are very ill.”

Cowering in the corner with a heavy candlestick held in front of him, Egert breathed heavily. “I don’t want it! Leave me in peace.”

The old first maid pensively chewed her lips. A pale, middle-aged woman stood at the threshold of the room. It was Egert’s mother.

Looking around at those present and then taking another appraising glance at Egert, who was naked to his waist, his round muscles protruding prominently, straining against his fair skin, the doctor dolefully shrugged his shoulders. “Alas, gentlemen.”

The instruments were returned to the valise. The bewildered elder Soll vainly tried to extract an explanation from the physician about the meaning of his alas. Did it mean that Egert’s illness was already too far advanced?

Having gathered his things, the doctor glanced at Egert once more, shook his head, and announced, appealing more to the boars on the tapestries than to the Soll family, “The young man, humph, he is extremely healthy. Yes, masters. But if something is troubling the young man, it is not a medical problem, kind masters. Not medical.”

Glorious Heaven! Stalwart Khars, Protector of Warriors, how could you allow this?

Lieutenant Egert Soll was mortally wounded; his stricken sense of self whimpered plaintively. The most extraordinary and distasteful thing was that Egert’s pride had been wounded not from without, but from within.

He stood in front of the mirror for a solid hour, performing his own medical inquest. The same old familiar Egert looked out at him from the depths of the mirror: gray blue eyes, blond hair, and now the scratch that had taken up residence on his cheek. Prodding the wound with his finger, Egert decided that it would scar. Henceforth, Egert Soll would display a distinctive mark. Well, a scar on a man’s face is more a mark of prowess than a defect.

He breathed on the mirror and traced an oblique cross in the circle of mist created by his breath. It was too soon to lose heart; if all the events of recent days were simply caused by an illness, then he knew a surefire way to cure it.

Changing his linen shirt for a silk one and ignoring the pleas of his distraught father, Egert left the house.

All the guards knew that the wife of the captain, the beauty Dilia, graced Lieutenant Soll with her favors. It was a wonder that so far the captain himself knew nothing about it.

His visits to Dilia conferred a twofold pleasure to Egert: delighting in the ardent embraces of the captain’s wife, he also relished the risk and the awareness he had of his own audacity. He especially enjoyed kissing Dilia when he could hear the steps of the captain on the stairs, coming ever closer, closer. Egert understood very well what would happen should the captain, a decent yet jealous man, find his lieutenant in Dilia’s lace-covered bed. The steel nerves of the beauty never succumbed when her perpetually absent, suspicious husband knocked on the door to her bedroom. Egert would laugh and, still laughing, escape out the window, grabbing his clothes from the hook by the fireplace as he went. And never, not even a single time, did that infernal rogue Egert drop so much as a button or a clasp, and not a single sound did he make as he slipped over the windowsill. Silent, Dilia would simultaneously hear a rustle under the window and the heavy steps of her husband as he came to her bed. And strangely, this vigilant husband never caught the scent of another man in his conjugal bed.

His visits to Dilia always encouraged Egert, and so he went to her now, expecting to cure his strange affliction by resting his head on her breast.

The evening was setting in; twilight, as before, discomforted Egert, but the thought of his imminent bliss helped him to overcome his fears. The chambermaid, as usual, was bribed. Dilia, her beauty hidden only by a lacy dressing gown, met Egert with wide-open eyes.

“Heavens, what about the maneuvers?”

However, her astonishment almost immediately gave way to a smile that was both gracious and covetous. The beauty was flattered. Only a true cavalier would secretly slip out of a military camp for the sake of a rendezvous with his beloved!

The chambermaid brought in wine on a tray and fruit in a little bowl decorated with peacock feathers, the emblem of passionate love. Dilia, pleased, spread herself out on the bed like a well-fed cat.

“Oh, Egert. And here I was, ready to think the worst of you!” She smiled delicately. “Your duels mean more to you than your love. I’m quite jealous of your duels, Egert!” The captain’s wife tossed her head so that her dark curls would spread out over the pillow as alluringly as possible. “Just because you killed some student, is that really a reason to neglect your Dilia for so long?”

Trying not to look into the shadowy corners of the bedroom, Egert muttered a sugary compliment. Dilia purred and continued, threading her voice with velvet undertones. “But now, your conduct gives me the chance to forgive you. I know what these maneuvers mean to a guard. You have sacrificed your beloved games and you should be rewarded.” Dilia leaned forward, her lips half-open, and Egert caught the heady scent of roses wafting from her skin. “You should be properly rewarded.”

He took a deep breath; tender little fingers were already struggling with the buttons of his uniform.

“Let my husband sleep in a bunk and be food for mosquitoes, yes, Egert? We have the entire night and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. Isn’t that right, Egert? That scar, it suits you so well. This will be our best time ever.”

She helped him undress or, more accurately, he helped her to undress him. Vanishing into the bed, he felt how her body, smooth as silk, burned like fire. Sliding his palms down her taut sides, Egert shivered: he had stumbled upon something iron, warmed by the beauty’s hot blood.

Dilia burst out into sonorous laughter. “It’s a chastity belt! A little gift from your captain, Egert!”

Before he really had time to understand her words, she shifted and fished a small, steel key out from under a pillow.

For a few minutes, Egert was able to forget about his worries. Chuckling, he listened to the tale of how this enchanted key had been born, fully formed, from a bar of soap. Before his excursion, the captain had decided to take a bath. Dilia, with touching concern, had asked if she could help him. When the cuckold had finally succumbed to the lapping of the warm water and the tender caresses of her soft palms, she slyly plucked the key from the chain that was hanging around the captain’s neck and pressed it into a bar of soap. The captain set off for the maneuvers, clean and satisfied that all would be well at home while he was gone.

The chastity belt fell to the floor with a thud like a small, iron fetus.

There was a breathless silence in the house. The servants had apparently left for the night, and the chambermaid had gone to bed. Caressing the wife of his captain, Egert could not chase away the thought that it took less than two hours to travel from the guards’ field camp to town.

“Egert,” whispered the beauty passionately, and a voluptuous smile revealed her gleaming teeth. “It’s been so long, Egert. Embrace me.”

Egert obediently embraced her, and a poignant wave of passion surged through him. The beauty groaned: Egert’s kiss seemed to reach right down through her. Moving against each other smoothly and rhythmically, they were both about to ascend on the wings of bliss when Egert’s sensitive ear caught the sound of a rustle beyond the door.

Thus does white-hot steel suffer when it is tossed into icy water. Egert froze, his skin immediately covered in large beads of sweat.

The captain’s wife, having moaned a few more times in solitude, opened her eyes in astonishment. “Egert?”

He swallowed sticky, viscous spittle. The rustle repeated itself.

“It’s just mice.” Dilia breathed a sigh of relief. “What’s wrong, my love?”

Egert did not know what was wrong with him. The image of the captain, hunkering down in front of the door and peering through the keyhole, arose before his eyes. “I’ll take a look,” gasped Egert. He grabbed a candlestick and hastened to the door.

A small gray mouse skipped backwards but, being somewhat more daring than Lieutenant Soll, did not immediately dash into its hole. Instead it stopped just at the threshold, its inquisitive black eyes glittering up at Egert.

Egert wanted to kill it.

Dilia waited for him with an indulgent grin on her face. “Oh, these guards! Why this whimsy, Egert? Why are you teasing me? Come to me, my lieutenant.”

And again she wrapped her arms around him, but Egert, expertly caressing this swooning, feminine body, remained cold and unresponsive.

Then, bringing her lips right up to his ear, Dilia began to whisper tenderly, “We’re alone, alone in this house. Your captain is now far away, Egert. You don’t hear his steps on the stairs. He’s there in the camp, in his tent, guarding his flock. He’s a stalwart captain; he checks on the sentries every hour. Hold me, my valiant Egert: we have the whole night ahead of us.”

Lulled by her whispers, he finally stopped listening so attentively, and his young passion again took the upper hand. His body found its former strength and tension. It burned. It came back to life. Dilia purred and bit down on his shoulder; Egert sank into her with uncontrollable greed. The sweetest moment was near when the front door banged open; the sounds of furtive footsteps could be heard from below.

The world went dark in front of Egert’s eyes; all his blood, set on fire by passion, rushed away from his face, which gleamed milky white in the half-darkness. Cold sweat dropped onto the delicate skin of the beauty under him. Shivering as if from fever, Egert slithered off her and crawled to the side of the bed.

Subdued voices chattered below. Dishes clinked in the kitchen. It was amazing how sharp Egert’s hearing was at that moment! Again footsteps, a hushed curse, a hiss calling for silence …

“It’s the servants returning,” Dilia explained languorously. “Really, Egert, this isn’t the way to behave toward a woman in love.”

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Egert wrapped his naked arms around his chest. Heaven, why was he such a disgrace! He wanted to flee without looking back, but the thought of running and thereby leaving Dilia at a loss caused his jaw to clench.

“What’s wrong with you, my dear friend?” the captain’s wife asked quietly from behind his back.

He wanted to lash out at himself, beat away this horror, but instead he unclenched his teeth, scarcely feeling the pain in his jaw.

“Egert”—bitter pique slithered into Dilia’s voice—“don’t you love me anymore?”

I’m sick, Egert wanted to say, but then he thought better of it and kept quiet. Heaven, that would be an idiotic thing to do!

“I love you,” he said hoarsely.

The servants below finally settled down, and the house was once again steeped in silence.

“Did I take off my chastity belt for nothing?” Dilia’s words, venomous as a poisoned dart, stabbed Egert’s naked back.

And again, he conquered himself. Cold and clammy, he crawled back under the blanket: Dilia might as well have been lying next to a frog or a newt. The beauty, insulted, pulled back, but Egert drew her to himself with wooden arms.

Miraculously, his body was still strong and voracious. Having twice survived a shock, it still again desired love, like a bonfire, mercilessly doused with water, can still restore itself from a single spark.

Dilia revived as well, meeting him halfway; within a few minutes, the room resounded with lustful growls. Egert was intent on his goal, no longer thinking of pleasure: the sooner he could get this business over with and reclaim whatever small shreds of his former reputation that were left, the better. Only a few seconds remained until the desired end. The entire house was sunk in silence, the town was sleeping, tranquillity covered the entire midnight world, and it seemed there was nothing that could keep Egert from finishing what he had started, when once again the image of the captain, rushing into the room accompanied by Dron and the guards, reared up in his imagination. The picture was so clear and vivid that Egert even saw the streaks of red in their bloodshot eyes, and he could practically feel a rough, gnarled hand seizing the edge of the blanket. Egert winced, imagining the kick that would come next.

He went limp, like a disemboweled carcass. It was all in vain; any further effort on his part was fruitless, and further repetitions of the scene would only be despicable and ludicrous. Egert Soll, the premier lover in town, was doomed to failure.

Dilia began to laugh mockingly.

Egert sprang up, scooped his clothes up into his arms, and dashed to the window. Along the way, he lost half his wardrobe, knocked the tray with wine and fruit onto the floor, and overturned a table. Flying up onto the windowsill, his heart failed him at the sight of the height of the second story, but it was already too late; he could no longer stop himself. Flying through the window with a burst of speed, the magnificent Egert Soll tumbled into a flower bed like a stone, destroying the rhododendrons and earning the eternal damnation of the gardener. Dressing as he fled, getting tangled in a heap of sleeves and trousers, weeping from shame and pain, Egert rushed toward his home, and it was lucky that there were still a few hours left until dawn and no one saw the renowned lieutenant in such a pitiful state.

When they returned to the city, the first thing the guards did was inquire after the health of Lieutenant Soll. With a bitter smile, a pale, haggard Egert assured the messengers who arrived at his house that he was on the mend.

Gossip about his failure with Dilia became the property of wicked tongues the very next day; it was passed on with relish and satisfaction, but in their heart of hearts no one really believed it. They thought it more likely that the infamous captain’s wife was getting revenge for a lovers’ quarrel.

Egert could only find comfort in solitude. He spent days on end either locked away in his room or roaming the deserted streets. It was during one of these rambles that a simple and horrifying thought occurred to him for the first time: What if what was happening to him was not a happenstance or a momentary indisposition? What if this neurosis dragged out even longer, for months, years, forever?

Egert temporarily freed himself from mustering and patrols, he diligently avoided the company of his comrades, it terrified him to think of visiting a woman, and his forgotten sword stood in the corner of his room like a disciplined child. The sighs of the elder Soll could be heard around the entire house. He understood as well as his son that Egert could not go on like this: he either had to get better or leave the regiment.

From time to time, Egert’s mother would appear at the door to her son’s room. Having stood there a few minutes, she would slowly make her way back to her own room. One time, however, encountering Egert in his sitting room, she did not remain silent as usual, but cautiously grasped the collar of his shirt.

“My son, what is wrong with you?” Raising herself up on her toes, she laid a hand on his forehead as if checking him for fever.

The last time she had asked him about anything was about five years ago. He had long ago gotten out of the habit of talking with his mother, and he had forgotten the touch of her tiny, dry fingers on his brow.

“Egert, what happened?”

At a loss, he could not squeeze out a single word.

From that time onward, he began to avoid his mother as well. His solitary outings became bleaker and bleaker until, one day, not even knowing how he got there, Egert stumbled upon the town cemetery.

He had not visited the cemetery since he was a child; fortunately for him, all his relatives and friends were still alive. Egert had never understood why people would want to visit this abode of the dead. Now, passing through the boundary hedge, a shudder coursed through him and he stopped. The cemetery seemed strange to him, frightening, as if it did not belong in this world.

The crippled caretaker peered out of his little hut and then disappeared. Egert shivered. He wanted to leave, but instead he slowly made his way along the paths that wound among the memorials.

The graves of the richer folk were marked with marble while those of the poorer, with granite: small statues, hewn from stone, topped both kinds. Almost all of them depicted forlorn, weary birds perching on the gravestones, according to the tradition of Kavarren.

Egert walked on and on; he had long ago started to feel ill at ease, but he kept reading the partially effaced inscriptions on the headstones as though he were enchanted. It started to rain. The drops flowed along the stone beaks and drooping wings of the birds, and little rivulets ran through the lifeless claws that hooked into the headstones. The day had passed into a gray fog, and from out of that veil, limp marble eagles lurched toward Egert; tiny swallows with raised wings and cranes with lowered necks loomed and then passed. Entire families reposed in these vast enclosures. On one headstone, two nestling doves sat motionlessly. On another, a small, haggard wren bowed its head limply, and the inscription on the stone, inundated with water, compelled Egert to pause:

I shall take wing once more.

Water streamed over Egert’s face. Exhausted, he decided to leave. As he approached the exit, a gray, moist vapor began to rise from the ground.

At the very edge of the cemetery, he stopped.

To the side of the path loomed a fresh grave without a monument, covered with a slick, granite slab. Letters bled through the puddles on the gray slab: DINAR DARRAN.

That was it. No other words, no symbols, no message. But perhaps this is an entirely different person, thought Egert anxiously. Maybe this is another Dinar.

Scarcely aware that his feet were moving, he drew nearer to the grave. Dinar Darran. A carriage by the entrance to the Noble Sword and a girl of strange, perfect beauty. A curved line drawn right in front of Egert’s boots and the formless red splotches on her face: “Dinar!”

Egert flinched. Toria’s voice rang so clearly in his ears, like the crash of shattered glass: “Dinar? Dinar? Dinar!”

A tired stone bird would never alight on this grave.

The caretaker once again leaned out of his hut, staring at Egert in alert astonishment.

Egert turned away from the grave and fled from the cemetery as fast as he could.

Far from Kavarren, in a dark and empty alley, a poor man sat still as a statue. The smell of rotten fish coming from the river was thick in the air.

Steps echoed down the lane, and a young fellow of about seventeen, fat-cheeked and plump as a roll, came into view. Clearly he was lost; it seemed that someone sent him in a wrong direction. After reaching the place where the poor man was seated, the fellow slowed down:

“Hmmm…”

He was confused … or was frightened; there, in the alley, it was quiet and desolate.

“Sir, could you tell me … where I can find the tavern called the One-Eyed Fly?”

The beggar stretched out his palm. The man hesitatingly took out a small coin, put it back, and took out a smaller one: “Here, send your blessings for my mother, she—”

The poor man suddenly caught the wrist of the young fellow in a viselike grip. A beefy fellow appeared behind the back of the unlucky passerby and wound a thick hemp cord tight on his pink neck. The man wheezed.

“Freeze! Guards!”

The young man who was more dead than alive struggled, and suddenly no one was holding him. The rope, which had been stuck around his throat, came loose, the darkness in front of his eyes cleared away, and the man found himself on all fours. Coughing, he removed the rope and realized he was alive, he had been saved.

Footsteps ran away down the alley. The man started to flee from this terrible place, and he almost bumped into a man wearing a gray hooded robe.

“Oh…” From the fire right into the flame; the man with fat cheeks startled back, without knowing where to go.

“Do not be afraid.” The robed man removed the hood, revealing a bright, honest face. “I must have frightened them off. Robbers are afraid of Lash and those who serve him.”

“Th-thanks,” answered the young man, stepping back. Both his knees and elbows were shaking.

“There is nothing to worry about,” the man spoke softly but persistently. “Let’s get away from here. How did you find yourself in this dangerous alley? Let’s go, let’s go…”

The young man did not intend to go anywhere with the man in the hooded robe. Yet somehow he decided to follow him. His feet started to move and, step by step, they walked along uninhabited side streets. Soon they were seated on the rear porch of a small bakery at a secluded table.

“Well, sir, I am a student. No, sir, I only recently began studies at the university. My father works as a public notary, he is an educated man, it goes without saying, and he decided that I should also study science. I was a good student.… Actually, I still am.”

The young man with fat cheeks was deceiving. His father was a modest clerk, and his sisters wore secondhand dresses one after another, because there was never enough money in their family. There was even less hope.

“Dean Luayan? Yes, he is a great mage, great scientist.… Yes, it goes without saying, we are close friends!”

The man in the robe shook his head sadly. The son of the clerk suddenly felt shriveled.

“I mean … I wanted to say … I attend the dean’s lectures every week.”

And I understand nothing, the young student thought.

The robed man put his white hands on the edge of the table—the tattoo on his wrist was visible—and he started to speak. Each of his words was as cold and sharp as an icy asterisk. Each word scolded his listener to the bones.

The fat-cheeked son of a clerk sat leaning on the tabletop. His blue eyes were rounded and resembled the peas on the dress of a fashion-model.

“The end is coming … very soon,” the man in the gray robe said.

“Why?” said the student. “The End of Time … Indeed this has no…” He met the glance of his interlocutor and finished his sentence in a whisper: “… scientific explanation.”

“No one in the world can understand all the sciences.” The man in the hooded robe sounded as if he regretted it. “Even Dean Luayan … by the way, don’t tell him anything about our conversation.”

“But why not?”

The man in the gray robe glared angrily. Soon the table began to tremble, shaking the beer in their mugs. The confusion on the young man’s face was replaced by panic.

“But you do not have to fear.” The man with the tattoo raised the corners of his lips. “If you do everything as it needs to be done, Lash will protect you. Everybody who has faith in us will be saved.”

“I will do everything which has to be done. What about others? Those the Order will not save?”

“The Order will save the ones who deserve it,” the man in the hooded robe responded dryly. “The others will cry bitterly until they die.”

Days passed by. From time to time, a messenger would come from the captain, always carrying the same question: How did Lieutenant Soll feel and was he able to take up his duties once more? The messenger would return, always carrying the same answer: The lieutenant was feeling better, but he could not yet resume his duties.

Karver also came to the house a few times. Each time he was forced to listen to the same excuse, delivered through a servant: The young gentleman, alas, was too weak and could not meet with his old friend.

Kavarren’s guards gradually became accustomed to having their carousals without Egert; at first they were all excited by the tale of his fateful love, but the subject soon withered away of its own accord. The serving girl Feta, who worked in the tavern by the town gates, sighed secretly and wiped her little eyes, but she was soon comforted, for even without the glorious Egert Soll, there were enough splendid gentlemen with epaulets on their shoulders to go around.

Finally, the messenger from the captain asked his eternal question slightly differently: Would Lieutenant Soll ever resume his duties? After hesitating, Egert answered in the affirmative.

He was told to report to a unit that was engaged in mock battles the next day. These engagements, which were of necessity undertaken with blunt weapons, had always seemed ridiculous to Egert: How could one get a taste of danger while holding in one’s hand blunt, toothless steel? Now, just the thought of having to stand face-to-face with an armed opponent was enough to cast Egert into a fit of trembling.

In the morning, after a sleepless night, he sent a servant to the regiment with a message that the illness of Lieutenant Soll had returned, worse than before. The courier was just about to leave the house, but he never managed to pass the threshold, because Egert’s father, stern and full of indignation, ruthlessly intercepted his son’s message.

“My son!” Veins bulged on the temples of the elder Soll as he stood, glowering like a storm cloud, at the entrance to Egert’s room. “My son, the time has come for you to explain.” He took a breath. “I always saw in my son, above all else, a man. What is the meaning of your strange illness? Are you intentionally abandoning your regiment, service in which is the duty of all young men of noble birth? If this is not the case, and I truly hope it is not, then how do you explain your reluctance to appear at training?”

Egert looked at his father, no longer so young or so healthy; he saw the tendons that were drawn tight across his wrinkled neck, the deep creases between the imperiously drawn brows and the indignantly glittering eyes. His father continued, “Glorious Heaven! I’ve been watching you the last few weeks. And if you were not my son, if I hadn’t known you before, I swear to Khars, I’d think that the name of your affliction was cowardice!”

Egert jerked back, as though he had been slapped in the face. His entire existence cried out from grief and insult, but the word had been spoken, and deep in his heart Egert knew that what his father said was true.

“There has never been a coward in the Soll family,” said his father in a constrained whisper. “You must take yourself in hand, otherwise…”

The eldest Soll wanted to say something far too terrible, so terrible that his lips trembled with ire and the vein on his temple throbbed even more vigorously: he wanted to offer the prospect of a paternal curse and expulsion from the family home. However, he decided not to issue this threat and instead repeated meaningfully, “There has never been a coward in the Soll family!”

“Leave him alone.” The words came from behind the enormous back of the elder Soll.

Egert’s mother, a pale woman with perpetually hunched shoulders, did not often take the liberty of interrupting the conversations of men.

“Leave him alone. Whatever may have happened to our son, for the first time in years—”

She stopped short. She wanted to say that for the first time in years, she did not sense in her son the harsh and predatory tendency that frightened her and transformed her own child into something foreign and offensive, but she too decided not to say this aloud and only looked at Egert longingly and sympathetically.

Egert grabbed his sword and left the house in haste.

That day, the mock swordfights went on without Lieutenant Soll because, after exiting the gates of his house, he did not make his way to the regiment. Instead, he wandered the empty streets in the direction of the city gates.

He stopped in front of the tavern; there is no telling what compelled him to turn toward the wide, well-known door.

At that early morning hour, the tavern was empty, but a bent back could be glimpsed among the far-off tables. Egert walked closer. Without unbending, the back crawled along the floor, sweeping and humming a tune without words or melody. When Egert pulled out a chair and sat down, the humming broke off, the back straightened, and the maidservant Feta, red and breathless from happiness, let a shaggy mop fall to the floor.

“Lord Egert!”

Forcing a smile, Egert ordered some wine.

Square spots of sunlight lay on the tables, the floor, and the carved backs of the chairs. A fly buzzed weakly, bumping its brow against the glass of a square window. Chewing on the edge of his mug, Egert stared dully at the carved patterns on the tabletop.

The word had been spoken, and now Egert repeated it to himself, wincing from pain. Cowardice. Glorious Heaven, he was a coward! His heart had already failed him innumerable times, and there were witnesses to his fear, the most important of whom was Lieutenant Soll, the former Lieutenant Soll, a hero and the embodiment of fearlessness!

He stopped chewing on his mug and started in on his fingernails. Cowards were disgusting and despicable. More than once, Egert had observed others being cowards; he had seen the outward signs of their fear: pallor, uncertainty, trembling knees. He now knew how his own cowardice looked. Fear was a monstrosity, worthless and insignificant when viewed from the outside, but when seen from within, it was an executioner, a tormentor of irresistible power.

Egert tossed his head. Was it possible that Karver, for example, experienced something similar when he got scared? Perhaps all people did?

For the tenth time, Feta appeared with a rag in hand, scrubbing away Lord Soll’s table until it shone. Finally, he answered her shy, ingratiating glance.

“Don’t fidget so, you little plover. Take a seat next to me.”

She sat with such alacrity that the oak chair creaked. “What is my lord’s pleasure?”

He recalled how the knives and daggers he had thrown at her had rooted themselves in the lintel above her head; he recalled it and was covered in cold horror.

Groaning compassionately, she immediately responded to his sudden pallor. “Lord Soll, you’ve been ill for so long!”

“Feta,” he asked, lowering his eyes, “are you afraid of anything?”

She smiled happily, deciding that Lord Soll was, apparently, flirting with her. “I’m afraid that someday I might displease Lord Soll and then the landlady would fire me.”

“Indeed,” breathed Egert patiently, “but are you afraid of anything else?”

Feta blinked at him, not understanding.

“Well, darkness, for example,” prompted Egert. “Are you afraid of the dark?”

Feta’s face darkened, as though she was remembering something. She muttered grudgingly, “Yes. But why do you ask, Lord Egert?”

“And heights?” It seemed he had not noticed her question.

“I’m afraid of heights too,” she confessed quietly.

There was an oppressive pause that went on for some time; Feta stared at the table. Just when Egert became sure that he would not hear another word out of her, the girl shivered and whispered, “And, you know, especially thunder, when it goes off without warning. Ita told me that in our village there was one little girl who was killed dead by thunder.…” Her breath faltered. She put her palms to her cheeks and added, blushing painfully, “But what I am most afraid of is … getting pregnant.”

Egert was taken aback; frightened by her own candor, Feta began to babble, as if trying to smooth out the awkwardness with a flood of words.

“I’m afraid of bedbugs, cockroaches, tramps, mute beggars, landladies, and mice. But mice aren’t all that terrifying: I can get over that fear.”

“Get over it?” echoed Egert. “But how do you … What do you feel, when you are scared?”

She smiled tentatively. “Afraid, and everything. Inside, it’s as if everything gets weak and all.” She suddenly blushed hotly, and under the veneer of her inability to explain there remained one more important sign of fear.

“Feta,” asked Egert quietly, “were you afraid when I threw knives at you?”

She shivered as if remembering the best day of her life. “Of course not! I know that Lord Egert has a steady hand.”

The landlady snarled from the kitchen, and Feta, making her apologies, flitted away.

The square patches of sunlight slowly crawled from the table to the floor, then from the floor onto a chair. Egert sat, hunched over, and traced the edge of his empty mug with his finger.

Feta could not understand him. No one alive could understand him. The ordinary world in which he, by right, was sovereign and master, that warm, dependable world had been wrenched inside out; it now stared hard at Egert through the tips of swords, the jagged edges of stones, medicinal lancets. Shadows dwelled in this new world, and the nighttime visions that had already caused Egert so many sleepless nights in his blazing rooms. In this new world he was insignificant and piteous, as helpless as a fly with its wings ripped off. What would happen when others found out?

The heavy door crashed open. The gentlemen of the guards poured into the tavern, and Karver was among them.

Egert remained sitting where he was, though he did perk up involuntarily, as though he was about to flee. The guards surrounded him instantly. Egert’s ears began to ring from all the boisterous greetings, and his shoulder ached painfully from all the hearty punches.

“Here we were, talking about you!” trumpeted Dron’s voice over all the others. “As they say, ‘You gossip about a wasp, and behold, the wasp takes wing.’”

“They said that you were on the verge of death,” one of the younger guards reported merrily.

“Don’t hold your breath!” laughed Lagan. “We’ll all die sooner. But if you’re sitting in a tavern, that must mean you’re better.”

“He is sitting in a tavern and avoiding his friends,” mourned Karver bitterly, earning a few reproachful glances.

Egert met his friend’s gaze reluctantly, and he was surprised at what he saw there. Karver was watching his masterful friend with a strange expression on his face; it was as though he had just asked a question and was patiently awaiting the answer.

Feta and Ita were already bustling around the new guests. Someone raised his glass to the renewed health of Lieutenant Soll. They drank, but Egert choked on the wine. From the corner of his eye, he could see that Karver had not stopped examining him with that inquisitive gaze.

“What are you, some kind of hermit crab, hiding away all quiet?” asked Lagan cheerfully. “A guard without good company withers and fades like a rose in a chamber pot.”

The young Ol and Bonifor laughed far too loudly for the quality of the joke.

“I swear by my spurs, he must have been writing a novel in letters,” proposed Dron. “Sometimes, I’d pass by on patrol and see that his rooms were lit until morning.”

“Really?” marveled Karver, but the others just clicked their tongues.

“I’d like to know if there’s some beauty to whom Egert devotes these vigils,” drawled one of the guards in a faux romantic voice.

Egert sat in the middle of the joyful din, smiling sourly and uncertainly. Karver’s intent gaze was discomforting him.

“Dilia sends her regards,” Karver remarked carelessly. “She stopped by the tilting yard and, among other things, inquired why the fights were taking place without Egert.”

“By the way, what should we tell the captain?” Dron asked suddenly.

Egert gritted his teeth. More than anything else, he wanted to disappear from this place, but to leave now would be an insult to the general merriment and the guards’ benevolent attitude toward him.

“Wine!” he yelled out to the landlady.

In the course of the next two hours, Egert Soll made the most important discovery of his life: Alcohol, if drunk in sufficient quantities, can suppress both spiritual unrest and fear.

Toward dusk, the crowd of guards, fairly thinned out by this time, spilled out onto the streets and stumbled away from the Faithful Shield. Egert hollered and laughed no less than the others. From time to time he caught the alert glances of Karver from the corner of his eye, but the inebriated Egert no longer cared: he was enjoying the long-awaited awareness, however false, of his own strength, freedom, and daring.

All the townsfolk who came across this gloriously drunken company shrank back toward the curbs, not at all desirous of crossing paths with the gentlemen of the guards. On the embankment, a lamplighter was kindling the streetlights: the revelers nearly knocked his ladder out from under him. Egert roared with laughter. The streetlamps danced in front of his eyes; they circled in a waltz, bowing and curtseying. The thick air of late spring was full of smells, and Egert gathered them in with his nose and mouth, experiencing with every swallow the fragrance of the sun-warmed river, the freshness of grass, wet stone, pitch, someone’s perfume, and even warm manure. Embracing Karver with his left arm and, one by one, all the other guards with his right, he unquestioningly accepted that his illness had left him, and that like any cured invalid, he had the right to an especially intense joy for life.

Opposite the entrance to the Faithful Shield, not far from the place where the student and his fiancée, Toria, had first alighted from their carriage, there was a puddle standing in a pothole. The puddle was as deep as regret and as greasy as a feast day broth. Neither the wind nor the sun had dried up this puddle; though it had shrunk slightly, it had preserved itself from the early spring until the very threshold of summer, and it could be expected that such unusual persistence would help it remain there until the fall.

The puddle caught the fading, evening sky on its black, oily surface. A drunken tailor wobbled on its edge.

That this man was indeed a tailor was clear from the very first glance: a well-thumbed measuring tape was draped around his slender neck in a loose knot, and he was wearing a large canvas apron smeared with chalk. His flaxen hair was mussed into two tufts that sprang up behind his ears. Too young to be a master, the apprentice tailor peered at the puddle and hiccuped quietly.

Karver laughed out loud. The others joined in his laughter, but with that the matter should have ended. The apprentice raised his cloudy eyes and said nothing, and the guards, passing to the side of the puddle, walked toward the doors of the tavern.

Of course, just as Egert was walking by the befuddled tailor, the apprentice lost his balance and took a sweeping step forward. His heavy wooden clog crashed down into the very middle of the puddle, raising a violent fountain of fetid muck, a large part of which landed on Lieutenant Egert Soll.

Egert was doused nearly from head to toe; the dirty grime splattered over his coat and his shirt, his neck and his face. Feeling large, cold globs of mud slither down his cheeks, Egert froze on the spot, unable to take his glassy gaze from the soused apprentice.

The guards surrounded the tailor in a dense ring; while they watched Egert warily, they regarded the lad with curiousity and interest. However, the journeyman was far drunker than Lieutenant Soll and thus far more daring: he was not at all afraid of the gentlemen of the guards, though it is possible that he simply did not notice them. With purely scientific interest, he examined his clog, which had disturbed the surface of the puddle and flung mud at Egert.

“Shove him in, the pig,” Dron advised good-naturedly. Young Bonifor darted forward, anticipating the amusement this entertainment would bring.

“May I do it?”

“This is Egert’s man,” Karver commented dispassionately.

Lieutenant Soll grinned fiercely, took a step toward the tailor, and immediately sobered up. Reality descended upon him, grinding down the spring, freedom, and his newborn courage; Egert faltered from the sudden thought that he would once again exhibit his fear. And indeed, as soon as he thought about fear, a dreary weakness burrowed into his belly. All he had to do was simply extend his hand and seize the lad by the collar, but his hand was drenched in sweat and had no intention of complying.

Great Khars, help me!

Shaking all over from the effort, Egert reached out for the scruff of the apprentice. He grasped the collar of the tailor’s jacket with his damp palm, but at that very second the boy roused himself, throwing off Egert’s hand.

The guards were silent. Egert felt rivulets of cold sweat chasing one another down his back.

“What a pity,” he forced out with great difficulty. “He’s just an idiot, a drunk who accidentally…”

The guards exchanged glances. The apprentice, meanwhile, if not wishing to contradict Egert’s words, then simply desiring to continue his scientific inquiry, deliberately raised his wooden clog over the puddle.

The guards sprang back in time; only Egert, who stood as if transfixed, was inundated with the next, even more plentiful helping of greasy mud. The tailor reeled, maintaining his balance with difficulty. Feasting his eyes on the result of his act, gratified, he smiled like a brewer’s horse.

“He’ll kill him,” observed Dron in an undertone. “Damn!”

Egert’s face, ears, and neck burned under the layer of black slurry. Strike! His reason, his experience, and all his common sense insisted on it. Beat him, teach him a lesson, let them pry you off his unresponsive body! What is wrong with you, Egert? This is past endurance, this is the end, the end of everything, kill him!

The guards were silent. The apprentice smiled drunkenly.

Egert fumbled at the hilt of his sword with a wooden hand. Not this! screamed his better judgment. How can you swing your sword at a defenseless man, at a commoner?

… at a defenseless man, at a defenseless man …

The apprentice raised his foot a third time, now looking Egert straight in the eyes. Apparently, he was so drunk that, regardless of the armed guards surrounding him, he was able to recognize only the pleasure he received from this distinct action: the journey of the muck from the puddle to the face and clothes of a certain gentleman.

The apprentice was still raising his foot a third time, but Lieutenant Dron could no longer contain himself. He darted forward with an inarticulate growl and smashed his fist into the tailor’s chin. The astonished apprentice fell backwards without a single sound, and there he remained, stretched out on the ground, sniveling.

Egert took a deep breath. He stood, covered in mud from head to toe, and ten stunned pairs of eyes watched as the mess dripped from the gold braid of his coat.

Dron was the first to break the silence. “You might have killed him, Egert,” Dron said, by way of excuse. “You’re all wound up. He probably should be killed, but not here, not now. He’s beyond drunk, the moron, but you were about to draw on him, a commoner! Egert, can you hear me?”

Egert stood, staring into the puddle just as the apprentice had when they first encountered him. Thank Heaven, Dron had decided that Egert was paralyzed by a fit of rage!

They were pawing at his wet sleeve.

“Egert, are you out of your mind? Dron is right, you shouldn’t kill him. If you kill them all, there would be no craftsmen left, right? Let’s go, Egert, eh?”

Ol and Bonifor were already waiting at the doors to the tavern, impatiently looking back at the others. Someone took Egert by the arm.

“Just a minute,” muttered Karver.

They all looked at him in surprise.

“Just a minute,” he repeated, louder this time. “Dron, and you, gentlemen—in your opinion, did Lieutenant Soll behave correctly?”

One of them snorted, “What is this nonsense, what are you doing, talking like this about your superior, asking if it was correct or incorrect? If he had acted, this dolt wouldn’t be alive.”

“It would have been improper, had he brutalized the lad,” remarked Dron in a conciliatory manner. “That’s enough, Karver, let it go.”

Then something odd happened. Slipping between the guards, Karver suddenly appeared right in that same spot where the now prostrate tailor had stood before. Bending his knees slightly, Karver struck the puddle with his boot.

It became as quiet as a long-forgotten tomb. A convulsion passed through Egert’s body as fresh grime adhered to his coat, slicking his scarred cheek with new drops and cementing his blond hair into icy tufts.

“But!” one of the guards said stupidly. “Uh, but what…”

“Egert,” Karver asked quietly, “are you just going to stand there?”

His voice seemed at once very near and very far away: it was as if Egert’s ears were stuffed with cotton.

“He is just going to stand there, gentlemen,” Karver promised just as quietly, and once again he doused Egert with stinking slime.

Lagan and Dron grabbed Karver from either side. Without resisting, he allowed them to drag him away from the puddle.

“Don’t take on so, gentlemen! Take a look at Egert. He’s not trembling with rage. He’s ill, after all, and what do you suppose the name of his illness might be?”

Egert could scarcely pry open his lips to force out a pitiful, “Shut up.”

Karver was heartened. “Well, well. You’re blind, gentlemen. I beg your pardon, but you are as blind as a bunch of moles.”

Taking advantage of the fact that Lagan and Dron, perplexed, had released his arms, Karver rushed over and drenched Egert yet again, almost emptying the puddle.

The heads of the curious sprouted out of the windows and doors of the Faithful Shield like mushrooms sticking out of a basket.

“Oh, but he’s drunk!” Bonifor cried out in a panic. “How can you? He’s a guard!”

“Egert is no longer a guard!” snapped Karver. “His honor is as besmirched as his coat.”

Egert then raised his eyes and met Karver’s glare.

He was so impossibly observant, this friend and vassal of his. The long years of taking second place had taught him to watch and bide his time.

Now, having guessed, he hit the target squarely. He won, he was victorious, and in his severe eyes, fixed on Egert, Egert read the entire long history of their faithful friendship.

You were always braver than me, said Karver’s eyes. You were always stronger and more fortunate, and how was I repaid for my faithfulness and patience? Remember, I tolerated the most caustic and wicked jests; I endured them by rights; I practically rejoiced in your mockery! Life is fickle; now I am braver than you, Egert, and it is only right that now you should …

“What? Are you out of your mind, Karver?” several voices cried out at once.

… It is only right that now you, Egert, should occupy that place to which your cowardice has committed you.

“This means a duel, Egert!” Dron enunciated the words hoarsely. “You must challenge him!”

Egert saw his friend blink. Somewhere in the depths of his consciousness, a stray thought flew past: What if he had miscalculated after all? What if Egert did challenge him? What if there was a duel?

“This means a duel.… A duel, Egert … Challenge…” Voices floated in the air around Egert’s head. “Call him out. This hour or tomorrow, whatever you want. At dawn by the bridge … Duel … duel … duel…”

And then Egert experienced that symptom of fear about which Feta had been silent during their conversation: His fear increased at every mention of the word duel.

Karver saw this and understood. His eyes, fastened on Egert, flared with an awareness of his complete and utter safety.

Duel … Duel … Duel …

Somewhere deep in Egert’s soul, the former Lieutenant Soll thrashed about, ranting with impotent rage, commanding him to draw his sword and trace a line in the dirt in front of Karver’s legs, but fear had already mastered the onetime lieutenant; it had broken him, paralyzed him, and was now forcing him into the most shameful of all crimes for a man: the refusal to fight.

Egert took a step backwards. The gloomy sky spun over his head like an insane carousel. Someone gasped, someone gave a warning shout, and then Lieutenant Egert Soll turned around and ran away.

That very same evening, leaving his coat, which was caked in mud, at his ancestral home, and taking with him only a small traveling bag, Egert abandoned his hometown, persecuted by an intolerable terror and an even more oppressive shame.

Far from Kavarren, a merry party took place in the square of a large city.

In the middle of the square stood the statue of a man in a hooded robe, with his face half-hidden by a rocky hood. Sacred Spirit Lash was carved on the pedestal; until recently the people of this city approached the sculpture only to bow in respect or—especially in the old times—to place presents at the statue’s feet.

But times change and, apparently, change swiftly. The world gets weaker; people become impudent. A half dozen young people, undoubtedly students, had managed to put a colorful female skirt on the statue, and now the most insolent of these puny adolescents had attached a jaunty frilled cap on the head of the Sacred Spirit. Even worse, a mustache was painted on the upper lip of the sculpture with a piece of coal. A man in a gray hooded robe stood in the shade, in a narrow passage between two walls, unnoticed. It was too late to prevent the disgrace, the blasphemy taking place; he could only observe it now.

People were frightened after seeing what the students had done. Respectable and quiet people hurried away from the square. A pious old woman threw a rotten turnip at the impudent youngsters, but she missed, and the turnip splattered on the statue’s shoulder; the crowd began to laugh.

The man in the hooded robe looked around. More curiosity seekers were gathering, more merry faces appeared; a cute girl dressed as a servant looked out of a window, giggling in her fist. A prosperous-looking merchant was laughing and pointing. The apprentices stopped and observed this scene with interest. Things were bad, very bad; the servants of Lash were never liked. But to be openly laughed at? Several years ago it was impossible to imagine. Remaining unnoticed, he returned to the alley and waited for the guards in red-and-white uniforms marching toward him. He waved his hand urgently to attract the patrol.

The officer in charge obeyed unwillingly. He approached the man in the gray robe and met his eyes: “What is it?”

“Lash was insulted,” said the robed man in a voice that would make even killers feel fear. “This is blasphemy! Witnesses should be considered to be accomplices.”

Passersby stepped aside, making room for the patrol. The merry laughter and noise continued in the square, the pranksters and onlookers unaware of the oncoming soldiers. In but a moment, arrests would be made. All of a sudden, “Oink, oink!” was heard.

It came from one of the students sitting on a roof and giving signal to retreat. The young scoundrels rushed in different directions and were lost in the darkness of the side streets. The horrified idlers hurried away at the sight of the uniforms: a wet nurse with a baby, a flower girl, an old grinder … The guards, however, did not hurry to catch anyone: the scene of the Sacred Spirit in a skirt, mustache, and cap horrified them. Swords were raised, the cloth was slashed and thrown to the ground, and the statue of the Spirit Lash was quickly freed of the rags and the mustache.

The square was deserted. Windows were slammed shut. The guards turned around; the man in the robe had disappeared as if he had been swallowed by the cobblestones that paved the square.

The guards exchanged glances and continued their patrol, looking more gloomy and stepping heavier than usual. Meanwhile, the man in the gray robe, hiding his face with the hood, moved away. People bowed to him and hurried to disappear from the road—but this respect did not deceive him.

“Oink, oink.” The collectors returned yesterday from the suburbs—it was shameful to see what the peasants dared to offer now as gifts to the Order of Lash. Corn and turnips instead of silk, spices, and golden jewelry.

“Oink, oink.” Soon, very soon, they will be taught a severe lesson. And they will beg, but it will be too late.

3

Night was coming on quickly beyond the foggy window. The coach mournfully slouched over the bumps in the road, and Egert cowered in the corner and stared blankly at the gray, perpetually monotonous wayside disappearing behind him.

Three weeks had passed from the day, or more accurately from the night, of his flight from Kavarren; the feeling of the end of the world and of the end of life that had then overwhelmed Egert and had ripped him away from his home, his city, his uniform, and his own skin—that dreadful, agonizing feeling had now dulled, and Egert simply sat in the dusty corner of the coach, his fist tucked beneath his chin, looking out the window and trying not to think about anything.

His bag would not fit on the baggage rack, so it now crouched between his legs, keeping him from tucking them under the seat below him. The entire baggage compartment was full of bundles and hampers that belonged to a traveling merchant. This merchant, a bilious and sinewy old man, was now sitting across from Egert. Egert knew very well that he had the right to displace the merchant’s goods in behalf of his own bag, but he could not force himself to say a single word in his own defense.

The seat next to the old man was occupied by a pretty, young, and somewhat timid person: to all appearances, a maiden who had prematurely flown the coop of her father’s nest in order to set out in search of work, a husband, and adventure. Having initially taken an interest in Egert, but having received not even the slightest encouragement from him, the poor girl was now aggrievedly tracing her little finger along the glass of the window.

To the side of Egert sat a dejected person of indeterminate age with a bluish gray nose that hung like a drop and short, ink-stained fingers. Egert privately identified him as a wandering scribe.

The hulk of the coach was swaying smoothly, the merchant was snoozing with his face resting against the windowframe, the young lady was unsuccessfully trying to catch a troublesome fly, the scribe was staring off into space, and Egert, whose back was aching and whose legs were swollen from his uncomfortable posture, was thinking about the past and the future.

Having lived in Kavarren for twenty years and never having gone any considerable distance away from the city, he now had the opportunity to see the world, but this opportunity scared him far more than it pleased him. The world seemed comfortless, a shapeless wasteland of little towns, villages, inns, and roads, along which roamed people: morose, sometimes dangerous, but more often apathetic people who were invariably disagreeable to Egert. Strange people. Egert felt scruffy, haggard, and hunted. Now, covering his eyes in the steadily swaying coach, he once again desperately wished that it would all turn out to be a foolish dream. For a shining moment, he truly believed that he was about to wake up in his bed and that, opening his eyes, he would see the boars on their tapestries. He would summon his manservant, and he would wash his face in clean water over a silver basin. He would be the previous Egert Soll, not this despicable, cowardly vagabond. He believed in this vision so sincerely that his lips cracked open in a smile and his hand went to his cheek as though chasing away slumber.

His fingers stumbled upon the long seam of his scar. Egert flinched and opened his eyes.

The merchant was snoring softly. The girl had finally caught the fly and, clutching the insect in her fist, was listening attentively to the buzzing of the unfortunate captive.

Dear Heaven! Egert’s entire life, his entire happy and dignified life, had shattered into a thousand pieces and escaped into an unimaginable abyss. Behind him there was only shame and pain too dreadful to remember; before him lay a gray, cloudy, queasy uncertainty too dreadful to conceive of. Why?

Egert asked himself this question again and again. At the root of all the misfortune that had befallen him lay the strange cowardice that had suddenly awoken in the soul of a brave man; but why? How was such degeneration possible? Where did this affliction come from?

The duel with the stranger. Egert returned to that duel in his mind’s eye over and over, and every time, he wondered: Was it really possible that a single defeat could break him so? A single, absurd, incidental defeat that occurred without any witnesses?

He clenched his teeth hard and stared out the window, beyond which the damp, somber forest swept out into the far distances.

The hooves of the horses tramped out an even, steady pace. The peddler awoke and unwrapped a bundle containing a hunk of bread and a smoke-cured leg of chicken. Egert turned away; he was hungry. The girl had finally killed the fly and now also reached for her bundle, from which she extracted a roll and a piece of cheese.

The scribe was apparently considering whether or not it was time for him to sup as well, when the previously steady rhythm of the horses’ hooves suddenly became erratic.

The coach started jerking: at first forward, then awkwardly to the side. Up front, the driver screamed something indecipherable but full of terror. The clatter of hooves could be heard from behind and to the side of the coach, and the peddler suddenly went white as chalk. His hand, still clutching the chicken leg, shiny with grease, began to tremble vigorously.

The young girl spun her head from side to side in shock; crumbs from her roll clung to her lips and showed up white against their rosy pink. The scribe gasped. Egert, not understanding what was happening, but sensing that something was not right, pushed his shoulders back into the worn upholstery.

The carriage bounced heavily over something in the road and lost speed so quickly that Egert almost flew forward into the merchant.

“Rein it in!” a man’s voice yelled wickedly from behind the coach. “Rein in! Stop!”

The horses started neighing in panic.

“Glorious Heaven!” groaned the merchant. “No, no!”

“What is it?” asked the maiden faintly.

“Highwaymen,” explained the scribe calmly, as though he were in an office.

Egert’s miserable, timorous heart jumped up into his throat in a single convulsive movement, only to immediately descend into his stomach. He hunkered down onto the seat and firmly squeezed his eyes shut.

The coach shook and then stopped. The driver began to mutter beseechingly, and then he screamed and fell silent. The doors of the coach jerked from the outside.

“Open up!”

A hand reached out and shook Egert by the shoulder. “Young man!”

He forced himself to open his eyes and saw a pale face with wide-open, rapidly blinking eyes hovering over him.

“Young man,” murmured the girl. “Say that you are my husband. Please, it could be true.”

Following the instinct of the weak, who seek the protection of the strong, she grabbed Egert’s hand: thus does a drowning person pluck at a rotten log. Her gaze was full of such entreaty, such a zealous request for aid, that Egert suddenly felt hot all over, as if he had been tossed into a frying pan. His fingers began to fumble at his side, searching for his sword, but they had barely skimmed the hilt when they jerked back as if burned.

“Young man…”

Egert averted his eyes.

The doors jerked again, someone cursed beyond them, and then the light coming in through the dingy little window was cut off by a shadow.

“Step lively! Open up!”

Egert began to shake from the sound of this voice. Terror rolled over him in waves, each new wave far exceeding the one that came before. Cold sweat streamed down his back and sides.

“We need to open the door,” observed the scribe impassively.

The peddler was still clutching the chicken leg in his fist. At the scribe’s words, his eyes shot up to the top of his forehead.

The scribe stretched his hand out toward the door latch; at that very moment the girl, having despaired of securing any help from the young man, caught sight of the dark hollow underneath the opposite bench.

“Just a minute,” said the scribe in a conciliatory tone to those who were waiting outside. “The latch is jammed, just a minute.”

With a dexterous movement, the girl rolled under the bench. The shabby cloth that covered the seat concealed her completely from any passing glance.

Egert did not recall very well what happened next.

Befuddled by terror, his mind suddenly saw a way out, a slender hope for salvation. The hope was, of course, a sham, but Egert’s clouded brain did not understand this; it was overwhelmed with a single, tremendous wish, bordering on insanity: to hide!

He dragged the girl out from under the bench like a hound dragging a fox from its hole. Of course, she struggled; she bit him on the elbow, writhing in his arms, trying to crawl back under the bench, but Egert was stronger. Collapsing from terror, he crawled under the bench and squeezed himself into the darkest corner. Only then did he realize what had happened.

The only reason he did not immediately die from shame was that the door finally swept open and a new wave of fear robbed Egert of the ability to consider his actions. All the passengers were ordered out of the coach. Through the black shroud that clouded his eyes, Egert first saw massive steel-toed boots step onto the floor of the coach; then a hairy hand descended to the floor, propping up the black beard and blazing eyes of a man who said, “Ha! Indeed, there he is; the little fawn!”

Egert’s mind once again collapsed.

He did not even resist as he was dragged from the coach. The horses were tossing their heads in terror, rolling their eyes at the vast tree trunk that had been laid across the road to intercept their path. The coachman, smiling mournfully, his eyes swollen and streaming with tears, was obligingly allowing himself to be tied up. The baskets and bundles of the merchant were flying from the baggage compartment; a portion of them, disemboweled like rabbit skins at a bazaar, had already tumbled to the ground nearby.

They patted Egert down, but the only loot they got from him was his family sword and the gilded buttons on his jacket. They collected a purse from the scribe. The merchant, trembling and sniveling, watched as they broke open the lock of a potbellied chest. Two of the highwaymen held the girl by her arms; she kept twisting her head from side to side, shifting her gaze from one to the other and pleading inaudibly.

There were five or six bandits, but Egert was in no condition to remember a single face. Having finished their pillage, they divided their loot among their saddlebags and flocked around the coach. They tied the scribe to the merchant, and the driver to the tree trunk lying in the road, but they did not bother to tie Egert up. It was obvious he would not run away: his legs refused to work.

The bandits gathered in a circle and one by one thrust their hands into a cap. Egert dimly realized that they were drawing lots. The black-bearded robber nodded contentedly, and the two who were holding the girl released her elbows. Black-beard took her by the shoulder proprietarily and led her into the coach.

Egert saw her wide eyes and trembling lips. She walked without resisting, only ceaselessly repeating some entreaty directed at her tormentors. Black-beard shoved her into the carriage, while the others expectantly arrayed themselves on the grass surrounding it. The coach teetered; the carriage springs screeched, flexing rhythmically, and a thin, high voice cried out plaintively from within.

The bandits drew lots again and again. Egert lost track of time. His mind began to bifurcate: over and over he flung himself at the bandits, crushing their ribs and snapping their necks, and then he would suddenly realize that he was sprawled out the ground as before, clutching at the grass with cramped fingers and rhythmically rocking back and forth. He was loose, but he was tied hand and foot by this morbid, fiery terror.

And then he once again dissolved; he lost his memory and his ability to reason. Branches were lashing at his face: it seems he was running after all, except that his legs refused to obey him, like in a bad dream, and continually threatened to collapse under him. At that moment, he was tormented by a desire far greater than the pain and fear, the desire to cease to exist, to not be, to have never been born. Who was he now, Glorious Heaven? Who was he after all this? What crime was more dreadful than that which the monstrosity of fear, having taken up residence in his soul against his will and lacerating him from the inside, had already committed?

And once again the darkness came, and everything ended.

The ancient hermit who lived in the mud hut by the stream would occasionally find people in the forest.

Once, on a brisk winter’s morning, he found a young girl, about fourteen, in a thicket. White and hard as a statue, she was propped up against a tree trunk, and in her hands she held an empty basket. The hermit had never found out who she was or what brought her to ruin.

Another time he found a young lady in the forest. She was bloody, covered in bruises and suffering from delirium. He carried her to his little mud hut, but the next day he was forced to bury her as well.

The third time, the hermit’s discovery turned out to be a man.

He was a handsome and strong young man who was far taller and heavier than the hermit himself and thus quite difficult to drag through the forest. Trying to catch his breath, the elder was washing him with water from the river when the foundling groaned and opened his eyes.

The hermit rejoiced: At the very least, he would not have to bury this one! He flung his arms up and bellowed. Deprived of the gift of speech since birth, only thus could he give expression to his feelings.

River weeds trailed across the surface of the little stream. Their dark green tips, stretching out as if in supplication, were trying to sail away along the current, but their roots, bogged down in the obscure, earthy depths, restrained them. Dragonflies hung motionless over the stream, enormous, mindless dragonflies, opalescent as a lady’s finery.

For days on end, Egert Soll sat by the water, watching the trailing weeds and the dragonflies. Now and then he enlivened this spectacle by leaning over the dark mirror of the water and peering at the lean, vagabond scar reflected there. Sparse, sandy brown stubble could not hide the mark.

The hermit did not seem at all dangerous, but Egert still required an entire week to train himself not to shrink back at his approach. The kindhearted elder constructed a bed for his guest out of dried grass and shared his food with him, which consisted of fish, mushrooms, and cakes. Where these latter were baked was a mystery to Egert, but they appeared with enviable constancy. Very little was required of Egert in exchange: the hermit indicated that he should gather brushwood from the opposite shore of the stream or split the firewood that was piled up by the side of the hut. However, it became clear almost immediately that these tasks were beyond Egert.

A flimsy little bridge crossed the stream: three thin boles, lashed together with ropes. The stream only came up to Egert’s waist at this crossing, and the bridge lay only inches above the water, but all the same Egert was afraid to entrust the quivering beams with the weight of his body.

The hermit watched from afar as the strong young man unsuccessfully tried to overcome the obstacles that arose before him. A step, at most two, along the bridge and a disgraceful flight backwards were all he could manage at first. Tying his boots around his neck, Egert tried to ford across the brook, but once again had to retreat because the icy water gave him a cramp in his leg. No one will ever know what the hermit thought about all this, for he was mute and accustomed to keeping his thoughts to himself.

Egert made it across the river the following day. Clutching at the beams with a viselike grip, he crawled across on all fours; only when he reached solid ground did the former guard—soaked, shivering, his heart pounding furiously—decide to open his eyes.

The old man watched all this from his hut, but Egert no longer had the strength to be ashamed. He was a mute witness: the same as the pines, as the sky, as the stream.

Egert had similar problems with splitting the firewood. The stump with its ax planted securely in it instantaneously reminded him of an executioner’s block, of beheading, of death: the wide blade of the ax carried within itself pain, lacerated muscles and tendons, hewed bones, and torrents of blood. Vividly, as if in a vision, Egert saw how the ax would slip from the stump and embed itself into his leg, his knee, how it would chop him into pieces, mutilate him, kill him …

Egert could not take such an awful weapon in his hands. The patient old man did not insist.

Thus, day after day passed by. Sitting by the stream, looking at the water and the dragonflies, Egert frequently remembered everything that had transformed Lieutenant Soll from a splendidly valiant man into an abject, cowardly tramp.

He would have been happier not to remember. He envied the hermit fiercely: it seemed as though he could think about nothing at all for hours on end while an expression of ethereal unconcern and heavenly peace lay on his pitted, sparsely bearded face. Such happiness was inaccessible to Egert, and shame, red-hot as if from the coals of a fire, at times compelled him to beat his head on the ground.

The hermit would withdraw a ways every time he observed in Egert’s eyes the onset of these convulsions of grief, these assaults of shame and despair. He would walk away, and with an attentive yet unintelligible expression on his pocked face, he would watch Egert from afar.

Not only memories tormented Egert: never in all his days had he slept on straw, eaten dried mushrooms, or gone without a change of linen. Egert grew thin and lean, his eyes began to cave in, and his beautiful blond hair became stuck in matted clumps; giving in one day, he cut off his long tresses with the hermit’s knife. His stomach ached and growled from the unfamiliar food. His lips cracked, and his face sagged. He laundered his shirt in the cold stream and at the same time washed himself, an activity that caused the hermit to marvel: Why did the young man bother with these time-consuming and unpleasant formalities?

The first two weeks were the most difficult. With the onset of darkness, when the forest became a den of murmurs and shadows, Egert hid in the mud hut with his head bundled up in the hermit’s burlap sacks like a little boy. Once or twice, a long, plangent howl arose from brush. Stopping up his ears with his palms, Egert shivered until dawn.

However, there were quiet, clear evenings, which Egert ventured to while away together with the silent hermit by a pale campfire, lit near the entrance to the hut. On one of these evenings he raised his head, and there amidst the scatterings of stars, he suddenly saw a familiar constellation.

He was happy until he realized that this constellation repeated the smattering of beauty marks on the neck of a certain woman, a woman whom Egert had known for only a very short time, but whom he could never forget. He grew morbid again because all the memories tied to her name tormented him as much as his affliction.

Then it started to become easier. One day, Egert set off to get some brush, and right as he got to the little bridge, he realized that he had forgotten his rope. He returned to the hut, and surprisingly enough, the complicated and torturous process of fording the stream passed by this time far more easily than usual; in any event, it seemed easier to Egert. Another time, he intentionally returned away from the bridge, and as if he had received an additional charge of bravery, he waded to the other shore almost entirely without the use of his hands, though he was doubled over by the end.

His life became easier from that moment on, though it was still endlessly complicated. An array of fine, precisely defined, and seemingly senseless actions protected him from any imminent danger: to cross over the unsteady little bridge on his way back to the mud hut, he had to touch his palm to a shriveled old tree on the far shore and silently count to twelve. Every evening, he threw three pieces of kindling, one after the other, into the stream to protect himself from nightmares. In this way he gradually overcame himself; he even decided to take up the ax, and with some success he chopped a few logs in front of the surprised and gladdened hermit.

One day, when Egert was, as usual, sitting by the water and asking himself for the hundredth time about the source of the misfortune that had befallen him, the hermit, who until then had never plagued the young man with his company, walked up and put his hand on Egert’s shoulder.

Egert flinched; the hermit felt how his muscles tightened under his threadbare shirt. Egert saw what appeared to be compassion in the old man’s eyes.

He frowned. “What?”

The hermit warily sat down next to him, and he traced a line with his grimy finger down his own cheek from his temple to his chin.

Egert jerked backwards. He involuntarily raised his hand and touched the slanted scar on his cheek.

The elder began to nod, satisfied that he had been understood. Continuing to nod his head, he chafed his skin with his fingernail until a red stripe, similar to Egert’s scar, bled through the sparse gray whiskers on his spotted face.

“Well, what of it?” Egert demanded desolately.

The hermit glanced at Egert and then at the sky. He frowned, shook his fist in front of his own nose, fell back, shut his eyes and again scratched his fingernail down his cheek.

“M-m-m…”

Egert was silent; he did not understand. The hermit smiled sorrowfully, shrugged his shoulders, and returned to his hut.

Every once in a while, the hermit would leave for an entire day and return with a basket full of food, which would have seemed simple and coarse to Lieutenant Soll, yet was delicious from the point of view of the tramp Egert. Egert supposed that the old man visited some place where people lived, and that these people were well disposed toward the ancient hermit.

One beautiful day, Egert summoned up the courage to ask the elder to take him along.

They walked for a long time. The hermit, by some unknown signs, ferreted out a scarcely perceptible path, while Egert firmly pressed the pinkie finger of his left hand into the thumb of his right: it seemed to him that this ploy would spare him the fear of lagging behind and getting lost.

Autumn reigned in the forest, not the earliest autumn, but also not the latest; it had not yet had the chance to grow old and wicked as it progressed toward winter. Egert carefully stepped through the yellow shreds of fallen leaves, which seemed to crunch with a weary sigh each time his foot disturbed them. The trees, besieged by a dreary calm, heavily lowered their half-naked, weakened limbs to the ground, and every fold in their coarse bark reminded Egert of his old scar. Pressing the pinkie of his left hand to the thumb of his right, he followed his mute guide, but was not at all happy when the forest finally ended and an isolated hamlet came into sight.

From somewhere beyond the fence resounded the howls and barks of a pack of dogs, which caused Egert to freeze in place. The hermit turned back and mooed encouragingly at him. From the nearest gate in the fence, two teenage boys were dashing toward them, skipping and hopping as they ran; at the sight of them, Egert involuntarily seized the hermit by his shoulder.

Ten paces away, the boys stopped short, gulping air, their eyes and mouths wide open. Finally, the one who was a bit older gleefully cried out, “Look! Elder Chestnut has picked up a stray!”

The little hamlet was small and solitary. It consisted of twenty-odd farmyards, a little turret with a sundial, and the house of the local wisewoman, which was on the outskirts. Life flowed by there lazily and with regularity. The arrival of Egert did not especially surprise anyone except the children: Chestnut had picked up some young man with a scar, and that was all well and good. At the suggestion that he stay on to work and spend the winter at the hamlet, Egert only sullenly shook his head. To winter where it was warm? What for? To grope for human society? Perhaps he would still return home, to Kavarren, where his father and mother, and his room with its fireplace and tapestries were?

Glorious Heaven, after everything that he had done! He no longer had a home. He no longer had a father or a mother; it was past the time to mourn Lieutenant Soll, whose place in the world was now occupied by a nameless young man with a scar.

Winter turned into one long delirium.

Though accustomed to the cold since childhood, Egert still took ill with the arrival of the first frost. More than once over the course of the long winter, the hermit grieved that it was so difficult to hollow out a grave in the frozen earth.

Egert thrashed about on the straw, gasping and coughing. The old man seemed more of a fatalist than a doctor: he swathed Egert in bast matting and gave him herbal infusions to drink, but after assuring himself that his patient had quieted down and fallen asleep, he went into the forest with a spade, justly reasoning that if he chipped away at the ground little by little, the hole might attain the appropriate depth by the time it was needed.

Egert was unaware of this. Opening his eyes, he saw above him first that solicitous, pocked face, then the gloomy beams of the ceiling, then the honeycombed patterns that had been carved into the mud walls. One day he came to consciousness and saw Toria over him.

“Why are you here?” he wanted to ask. His tongue would not obey him, but he asked the question without parting his lips, mute like the hermit.

She did not answer. She was sitting, her back arched and her head lowered toward her shoulders like a mournful stone bird on someone’s grave.

“Why are you here?” asked Egert again.

She shifted slightly. “And why are you?”

Fierce, burning flames seared his eyes as if a torch had been set to them.

His mother also came. Egert felt her hand on his forehead, but he could not open his eyelids. Then pain and fear overwhelmed him, and he could not recognize her; he could not recall her face.

The hermit shook his head and shuffled off into the forest, carrying the spade under his arm.

However, as luck would have it, the frosts gave way to warmth and Egert Soll was still alive. One warm spring day, weak as a kitten, he made his way to the door of the hut without any help and raised his face—his wasted face that now seemed to consist only of his eyes and the scar—toward the sun.

The hermit waited a few more days and then, sighing and wiping away sweat, he refilled the vacant grave that had cost him so much labor.

The old wisewoman lived on the outskirts of the tiny hamlet. Egert furtively drew a circle on the path, pressed his left pinkie to his right thumb, and knocked on the gate.

He had been preparing himself for this visit for many days. Time and again the hermit had tried to tell him something, poking at his scar with his finger. Finally, gathering up his courage, Egert set out for the hamlet alone in order to visit the wise woman.

Her courtyard was quiet; it seemed the old woman kept no dogs. A spring wind slowly turned an ungainly weathervane on the roof. The weathervane was a greased wheel with shrunken oddments attached to it, scraps that Egert, upon closer inspection, realized were the skins of frogs.

Finally, Egert heard the shuffling of footsteps. He shivered, but he clenched his teeth and remained where he was.

The gate cracked open with a moan, and a prominent, expressive blue eye, like a glass marble, stared hard at Egert. “Ah, the young stray with the scar.”

The gate swung open wider and Egert, overcoming his diffidence, stepped into the yard.

A thatch-roofed hut stood by the fence; on a chain near it—Egert recoiled—sat a wooden beast covered in tar, with curved fangs peeking out of its half-open jaw. Instead of eyes it had black pits. Walking past, Egert broke out into a sweat because he felt a furtive, observant gaze looming in those pits.

“Come in.”

Egert entered the house, which was congested with an abundance of superfluous items that seemed randomly strewn about. It was a dark and mysterious house, and the walls were covered with two layers of dried herbs.

“Why have you come, young man?”

The old crone looked at him with one round eye. The other was closed, and the eyelid had grown into her cheek. Egert knew that the old woman never worked wicked magic on anyone; quite the opposite: she was well loved in the village for her rare abilities to heal. He knew this, and all the same he trembled before that steadfast, wooden stare.

“Why have you come?” repeated the wise woman.

“I wanted to ask you something.” Egert had to force the words out.

Her eye blinked. “Your fate is crooked.”

“Yes.”

The old woman meditatively wiped her nose, which was snubbed like a girl’s. “We’ll see. Let’s take a look at you.”

Casually stretching out her hand, she took a thick candle from a shelf, lit it by rubbing the wick with her fingers, and though the day was quite bright, brought the flame close to Egert’s face.

Egert braced himself. It seemed to him that instead of warmth, cold emanated from the flame.

“Well, aren’t you just a big bird,” said the old woman pensively. “Your aura is mangled, Egert.”

Egert shivered.

“Your scar,” continued the old woman, as if talking to herself, “is a mark. Now, who would mark you like that?”

She put her eye very close to Egert’s face and suddenly sprang back, her blue eye almost pushing its way out of its socket. “By the frog that enlightens me, by the frog that directs me, by the frog that protects me: Get out, get out!”

And with surprising strength she seized a stupefied Egert by the shoulders and pushed him away. “Out! Go, and don’t return! It is not for me to stand against him; I do not have the strength to tussle with him!”

Before he could come to his senses, Egert was already at the gate. His back crashed into the fence.

“Grandmother! Don’t chase me away! I—”

“I’ll set my dog on you!” snapped the sorceress, and—Glorious Heaven!—the wooden beast slowly turned its tar-covered head.

Egert shot out of the gate like a cork. He would have run away without looking back, but his weakened knees buckled and he sank down into the dust of the road like a sack.

“What am I going to do?” he murmured wearily, turning his face toward a dead beetle lying by the wayside.

The gate screeched again, opening slightly. “Search for a great wizard, an archmage. And never again come to this village, you won’t leave alive!”

And the gate slammed shut with a crash.