The chief laughed aloud. "Her husband. I have been caught like that too."
"I agree, but he did not say he was. He did not speak at all. He only advanced toward her, scowling. She argued with him, retreating step by step, and at last drew a crooked knife. By then she stood very near the fire, and I saw that her back was melting as ice does, running like water into my fire, which leaped in triumph."
"This is a good story. Go on!"
"They spoke more, and he pushed her into the fire. For a moment nothing happened. I tried to stand, steadying myself with my spear. It was hard because I was so ill. As I stood, my little fire burst into a ball of flame that blinded me and singed my hair. When I could see again, both were gone."
The Medjay chief nodded. "Your face has been burned on one side, I see. Your hair is singed, as you say."
"I thought it was a dream," I told him. "Was it?"
He sighed. "You have been touched by a god."
"I looked in the ashes," I told him, "and found these." I showed him two of her bracelets. "Do you like them? I'll give both to you for a good horse. Not just any horse, a good one."
He returned them to me. "I will show you a wonderful horse tomorrow," he promised, "a horse you may have as my gift, if you can ride him." I HAVE NOT yet caught the stallion the Medjay chief showed me as the sun rose; but I have come to know the marks of his hooves, and will track him again in the morning. He is bigger than most, and as brown as a chestnut. There is a light in his eyes. If some god were to transform one of the Medjay warriors, he would be as this stallion is, I think.
He looks at me in fear, and I at him in desire. If he were to seek to master me, I would look at him as he does at me, and he at me as I do at him. Or so I believe. What is the life of a horse but slavery? I would treat him well-if I could. As I am, I cannot even treat myself well.
There is gold in the bag at my belt, but it buys no food here. He crops the fresh green grass. Which of us will tire first?
WHEN I UNROLLED this to read what I had written last night, there was a curved pin of bright gold in it. It melted as I held it in my hand, and was gone. Then I thought the sun had brought a waking dream. It seemed to me that a great lioness paced beside me, and afterward that a tree-tall woman walked there. When I turned to look, there was no one.
Now I write, though there is so little space left. She led me to her temple. There was an antelope there, dead upon her altar, a large one and very fine.
I drank from her spring, cut flesh from the antelope's flank, and cooked it over a fire of brown grass and dried dung. She is Mehit; she sat with me and shared my food. She laughed at me, and her laugh was forgotten gold shaken in a cup. "Can you who caught me not catch a stallion?" She told me that I would never catch him, but that he would catch me. I RODE TODAY, north because I did not know in which way to go and it seemed best. A lively boy driving cattle said that in the city men would fill my hands with gold for my horse. I told him about the lions, and how my horse Ater had come to me for protection.
"Does that name mean something?" he asked.
"Darkness, gloom, ill luck."
"He's not! He's beautiful!"
"He is," I said, "and I am his ill luck."
The city, the boy said, is on a river island. If my own luck is as bad as Ater's, the ship will have passed it already. But where there is a city there are many men, and one may have the blade the river god returned to me.
I WONDER WHERE I got the bridle I have taken from Ater? Did I write of that here? I tied him by the reins, but a moment ago I set him free. Beasts prowl the night-lions and worse. I would rather he escape me than that he fall to such a beast.
There are horses too bad to be ridden. It may be that there are horses too good to be ridden as well.
For a time I heard him not far off. I no longer do. I sit before my little fire, my own protection from the beasts we both fear, with only the baboon for company. He prompts me to write again and again-to write smaller and smaller. There is little fuel for the fire, and so small a fire cannot be a great protection. The lions roar. I have heard them twice. A madman laughs, not far from my fire. THE BABOON LEFT while I read. Who was Mehit, who sat at meat with me? Surely she was a friend, and I wish she were here with me. I am alone with the night, and shivering in a wind that will soon be cold.
35
ATER AND I came to the river. He was no longer afraid, but thought only of mares and of fighting the stallions who held them, of coupling with them, and of protecting them and the foals they would bear. It cannot be right for a man to know every thought of the horse he straddles, yet I knew his.
While I was polishing my shield last night, I remembered a white stallion-the armor I wore, and the lions that roared on either side as I spurred toward my enemy. But most of all the stallion, the swift white stallion of the sun. How fine he was! How strong and beautiful and brave! I did not keep him, and I resolved that I would not keep Ater.
When we reached the river, I dismounted, took away his bridle, and threw it into the water. "You have repaid me for saving you from the lions," I told him. (I had read of it here.) "We're quit, and I will not keep you as a slave. Go in peace."
He watched me with one eye, afraid to believe in freedom.
"Go! Good luck to you!" I slapped his flank. "Find her!"
He trotted for a hundred paces or so before he turned to look back at me. Are we enemies, Latro?
"No!" I shouted. "Friends! Friends forever!"
He stared for a moment, again through the left eye, turned, and trotted away.
A boatman who had been watching me said, "You must be mad to free that animal. I'm going to catch it."
"I am." The point of my spear stopped him before he had taken a step. "Mad indeed! My whole family will tell you when you meet them in the Deadland." Leaning toward him I whispered, "I killed them. Killed them all. My wife. Our children. My own parents, her parents, and our children's parents. All dead! Dead! But I've forgotten it." I laughed, not to impress him but because it had struck me that it might be true. "You must row me to the city on an island. Take me this instant! A great fish means to swallow it. The crocodile told me, and I must warn the people."
I untied the painter and got into his boat. "We go. Or I go. Wouldn't this sail better if it were turned over?"
He hurried to jump in with me. "It's mine. My boat. I'd starve without it."
"Make sail," I told him. When he landed me on this island I gave him a coin, which surprised him no end.
I found a cookshop and ate, not because I was hungry but because I knew it had been long since I had eaten, and I felt weak. I ate bread hot from the pan, steaming, strengthening, and greasy, and a big bowl of fish soup that was at least tolerable. In the market I bought a few fresh dates. These left my hands sticky but were as good, I believe, as any food any man has ever put into his mouth.
When I had finished the last and let a starving cur lick my hands, it occurred to me that I might go to a temple, make some small offering, and pray that I again remember as other men do. Then that I might so visit all the temples in the city, telling the priests about Falcata and asking the help of the gods in reclaiming her.
A man I spoke with recommended the Sun Temple, but it is on the mainland. I resolved to visit it when I left, and returned to the quay, eventually walking all around the island. Several people told me that a large foreign ship had passed that way three days before. One said it had docked for a time, pointing to the place. All agreed that there was no such ship in the docks now. When I inquired about a lofty building not far from the water, I was told it was the temple of Isis. I had already passed one such temple on the southern end of the island without entering, and resolved that I would not thus pass this one.