I read the signs. She had ambushed the mue when he was near the vine. Bushes were flattened and torn; a heavy boulder had been jerked out of its earth-pocket. It would have happened the day before, perhaps when he came back from the pooi. He could have been careless from distress, wondering why he had not changed to man-beautiful.
Or he might have lifted the rose-colored rock to find his treasure gone, and come storming out ready to attack the first thing that moved.
Either way, I was guilty.
Her mouth was agape, the teeth dry. I noticed one of the great stabbers in the lower jaw had broken off long before, leaving a blackened stump in a pus-pocket that must have caused her agony. I believe it had never occurred to me before that a black wolf like any other sentient thing could suffer. The other long tooth of the lower jaw was brown with dry blood.
I climbed the tulip tree. There were blood-smears all the way. I did not think the mue could have lost so much and still be living, but I called to him: “I’ve come back. I’m bringing it back to you. I took it but I’m bringing it back.” I mounted a thick branch above his nest and compelled myself to look down. The yellow ants must have formed their column on the opposite side of the trunk, or surely I would have seen them sooner.
He was human. Knowing that, I was wondering for a while how much of my schooling had been lies on top of lies.
I alone remember him. You may remember what I’ve written, a book-thing for leisure talk. But as I wnte this now I am the only one who even knows of him except Nickie and Dion, for I’ve never told any others, except one person who is dead, how it was that I won my golden horn.
8
I returned to my cliffside cave, and the day passed over me. Right or wrong, for good or evil, the golden horn was mine.
I recall a half-hour blazing with the knowledge that I, myself, redhead Davy, was alive. I had to throw off my clothes, pinch, slap, stare at every astonishing part of my hundred and fifteen pounds of sensitive beef. I slapped my palm on a sun-hot rock for the mere joy of being able to. I rolled on the grass, I ran up the ledge into the woods so that I might make love to a tree-trunk and cry a little. I flung a stone high, and laughed to hear it tumble far in the leaves.
I would not be going to Levannon on a spirited roan, with three attendants, and serving-maids spreading their knees for me at every inn. But I would go.
With my horn, I dared that day to learn a little. Humility came later: when I play nowadays I know I can only touch the fringes of an Old-Time art beside which the best music of our day is the chirping of sparrows. But before my lips grew sore that first day I did learn by trial and error how to find a melody I’d known since I was a child. I think “Londonderry Air” was the first music I knew, sung to me by dear fat Sister Carnation. Curiosity drove me on past ordinary fatigue. I found the notes; my ear told me I was playing them true.
Thanks to the great dictionary, I know that my horn is what was known in Old Time as a “French horn.” The valve mechanism can be kept in repair by modern workmen — I had a little work done on it at Old City; the horn itself we could never duplicate in this age. I have been playing it now for about fourteen years, and I sometimes wonder if a horn-player of Old Time would consider me a promising beginner.
When I quit my studies that day in the woods, the afternoon was nearly spent. I made a belated meal from the left-over bacon and half-loaf of oat bread. Then I scooped a pocket in the earth rather far from my cave, and buried the sack there with my horn wrapped in the gray moss. Only memory marked the spot, for I knew I would be returning very soon. I was going away from Skoar; that, I felt now, was certain as sunrise. But this one night I must return to the city.
I had cut a length of fishline for my luck-charm, but found the cord unpleasantly rough at my neck, so again I put the charm in the sack, along with the horn. And forgot I had done so — you might remember that. Later, when it was important to me, to save me I couldn’t recollect if I had put the charm in the sack or continued to wear it a while longer in spite of the chafing. If you exist, your memory has probably goofed you the same way. If you don’t exist, why don’t you give me a breakdown on that too?
Everything looked simpler to me that evening, when I had buried my horn. I was not daydreaming nor building my fortunes on a chip of the moon. I just wanted Emmia.
I hid again in the brush near the stockade, and after I heard the change of guards — they were late — I crept close to the palings and continued to wait, for I was sure I hadn’t heard the new guard march down the street in the usual way. And I must have been more exhausted than I knew, for I fell stupidly asleep.
I’d never done it before in such a dangerous spot, and haven’t since. But I did then. When I came to myself it was night, with a pallor of early moonlight in the east. Now I had no way of guessing about the guard until I heard him, and waited another dreary while. A pig wandered along the avenue inside the stockade, passing private remarks to his gut about the low quality of the street garbage. Nobody shied a rock at him, as a guard would almost certainly have done to keep off dull times. Sick of waiting, I took a chance and climbed.
The guard let me scramble over and down on the city side. Then I heard his quick step behind me and a bang on the head toppled me. As I rolled over his expensive cowhide boot was churning my belly. “Where you from, bond-servant?” My gray loin-rag told him that about me — we were required to wear them, as slaves wear black ones and freemen white; only the nobility is allowed to wear a loin-rag or britches of interesting color.
“I work at the Bull-and-Iron. Lost my way.”
“Likely tell. They never teach you to say ‘sir’?” Lamplight from down the street showed me a tight skinny face set in the sour look that means a man won’t heed anything you say because his mind was all made up about everything long ago when you weren’t around. He fingered his club; his boot was hurting me. “Kay, let’s see your pass.”
Anyone entering or leaving Skoar at night had to have a pass with the stamp of the City Council, unless he was a uniformed soldier of the garrison, a priest, or a member of the upper nobility with a shoulder-tattoo to prove it. Of course freemen and the lower nobility — (Misters like Old Jon and such-like) — didn’t go off down the roads after dark except in large armed groups with torchlight and foofaraw to keep off wolf and tiger, but there were enough of those traveling groups — caravans they’re called — to keep the City Council happy stamping things. However — oh, in the spring after the weather settled to sweet starry nights, and hunting beasts were unlikely to come near human settlements because food was easy elsewhere, boys with their wenches would be slipping over the palisade all the time. Scare-screwing, the kids called it. I never heard of such parties getting killed and eaten, but maybe it does something for a girl if she can imagine that with a boy on top of her. And the guards were expected, almost officially, to look the other way, for as I wrote a while back, even the Church admits that breeding must be encouraged, especially among the working classes. On June mornings the grass just outside the stockade was apt to be squashed flat as a battlefield, which in a way it was.
“A’n’t got a pass, sir. You know how it is.”
“Don’t give me that. You know everybody got to have a pass now, with a war on.”