He had heard people say that it was the most beautiful city in the world. It was immensely old, and for the last thousand years had been very rich. The soft-living, careless people had planted trees and flowers, had reared beautiful buildings, made fountains, when, in Caspar’s opinion, they would have been better employed in looking to their defences and bringing up their boys to be hardy and brave. He’d watched the city for a long while before he finally moved against it; more than once he had entered it on foot and mingled with its people in the streets and markets. They were arrogant in their assurance; buying and selling, eating and drinking and making merry was all that mattered to them.
When, at dawn on a summer morning, now almost four years ago, he and his Five Hundred had swept in, the city had been taken as easily as a peach from a tree.
Kalim, in answer to his remark, smiled, showing his splendid teeth, and said:
“Very gay banners.”
Caspar returned the smile with a ferocious scowl.
“You’re riding behind me again! How many times must I tell you that I want none of that nonsense?” , a Any hint of the formality that hedged kings about roused the same uneasiness in him that the city inspired. He was the leader of the Five Hundred; that he could accept, it was a right he had won, being able to out-ride, out-fight, out-wit and, if necessary, out-fast them all. He expected loyalty and demanded obedience, but lately they had tried to give him more. There’d even been a suggestion that he should wear the crown and call himself King—and that suggestion had not come from the city people, but from the members of the Five Hundred. The idea filled him with horror which was almost’ superstitious. The city rot setting in, he thought. ;
To Kalim he now said:
“Nine times out of ten the man who rides second is plotting against the one ahead I’ “That I should live to hear you say that to me!” Kalim exclaimed. Then he mastered his rage and said, “I’ll tell you something, Caspar: you’re becoming a fearful man.” It was, and he knew it, about as insulting a thing as one member of the Five Hundred could say to another. He hastened to explain.
“Fearfulnot of hurt or of death, but like a child in the dark, fearful of what is not there!”
“What I fear is there, Kalim; I know its face, I know its name. Anything, anything that could tend to make us like them!”
He jerked his thumb towards a group of Jexalians, out for the first time in their summer clothes, standing idly admiring the prismatic colours made by the sunshine in the spray of the fountain.
“You’re still upset about Lakma,” Kalin said shrewdly. Caspar turned in his saddle and looked towards the last riders in the group.
“Upset? Not any longer. I’ve settled him. I hope,” he gave a rueful grin, ‘that I’ve settled that for good and all. I have only ten fingers; Lakma broke one for me.”
“You broke his head,” Kalim said dryly.
Caspar allowed himself a more wholehearted grin as he remembered how, three months earlier, Lakma, one of the Five Hundred and a man of mature age, not a silly boy to be easily persuaded, easily forgiven, had wanted to marry, to take as his legal wife, a girl of the city, a daughter of the defeated ruling family, a princess.
“You want to marry such rubbish!” Caspar had said, in horrified astonishment.
“Take her, use her, such women were made for use; but to stand up in the sun’s eye and mingle your blood with her dregs! Man, have you thought? If you do that, and she bears a boy, he will be entitled to your place in the Five Hundred, to your horse and your sword. A half-breed, with soft straight legs and black eyes!” Nothing more scornful could be said of any man’s potential offspring; the race of which the Five Hundred was at once the remnant and the flower had eyes as blue as a summer sky, and believed that boy babies were born with bowed legs, ready shaped to a horse’s barrel.
“That I will not take, even from you,” Lakma said.
“It is a truth that I will not withdraw.”
“Then we fight,” Lakma said, leaning upon his immemorial rights.
“The weapons to be of your choosing,” Caspar agreed.
They could fight it out on horseback, using staves or swords, or on foot, barehanded. Lakma had chosen a mounted contest with staves, and he approached the conflict with a divided mind. If he won he must be prepared to accept the duties and responsibilities of leadership, a daunting thought; on the other hand the girl, very young, very appealing in her dark, exotic way, had fired his blood. As soon as the fight had begun he had no time for thought at all, for Caspar had fought like a madman; his place as leader was at stake, and so was something, to him equally important—the absolute necessity of preserving, pure and untainted, the blood of his people.
In the end Lakma had taken the crack on the head which had dismounted him, and it was some days before he was in a fit state to speak the ritual words, “You are right. I apologise.” Caspar had relented then, and the errand from which they were now returning had been taken for Lakma’s benefit. A small party of them, led by Caspar, who always took advantage of any excuse to get out of Jexal, had ridden into the desert and hunted until they found four black tents by ,& spring of water that sprang from an outcrop of rock and then ran away and was lost; and in the tents there were three females, not yet mated.
“Take your pick,” Caspar had said, Lakma had chosen the youngest, the most comely, and together they had stood in the Sun’s eye at midday, he had slashed his wrist, the girl’s father had slashed hers, their blood had been mingled and the marriage was made. A sheep had been killed and roasted, and at the feast Lakma had professed himself well pleased with his bride, They were bringing her back now and within a year, with any luck, she’d bear him a son, with blue eyes and red hair, and before he could walk he would be riding on a sheep’s back, getting ready to be a horseman, in time ‘to be one of the Five Hundred.
Now they were clattering across the bridge, so rightly called the Golden Bridge, for, though nobody thought of it nowadays, it was to this bridge across the tumbling river that the city owed its origin and prosperity. The bridge made possible the continuation of the trade
route towards the East, to the fabled landsof India and Cathay. Once a simple, serviceable structure of stone it had been many times enlarged and beautified. This morning the water swollen by the melting of the snow in the mountains was emerald green, marbled with white foam.
“Lakma,” Kalim said with a pretence of resuming a conversation, ‘left marriage too late. Whims multiply with the years.”
Caspar’s scowl returned. He knew what that meant. And in his heart he admitted the Tightness of it; it was ridiculous that he should go about arranging marriages for other men and remaining celibate himself. But marriage demanded intimacy, and he had never attained that, even with his men, even with his grandfather who had reared him. For as long as he could remember he had been self-contained, self-possessed. The idea of going, unclothed, unarmed and submitting himself, even for the briefest space, to the embrace of another human being was repulsive to him. Yet, paradoxically, he regretted not having a son. If now he ever saw a woman whom he could marry—and he simply could not imagine what kind of creature she would be—and she bore him a son, the boy would be handicapped by his youth in comparison with the sons of other members of the Five Hundred; be he never so hardy and bold and worthy of leadership, it would take him years to attain it.
He said, “Kalim, when you find me entertaining a whim, tell me; in blunt terms. Then you can break my finger and I’ll break your head, if I can.”
Kalim gave a little snort of laughter. That was what gave Caspar such an ascendancy, not only over the bodies of the Five Hundred but over their minds as well. He always saw through what was said to what was meant; he always went straight to the point and he never lacked an answer. Even when he was old and feeble—and let that day be long deferred—he would be a man to be reckoned with.
They were now approaching the Palace, an ornate building to which successive kings of Jexal had made additions and alterations. Three hundred years earlier, Alexander had marched through Jexal on his way to India and the Jexalians, following their established policy, had welcomed him. The then reigning king had arranged for one of his sons to go to Greece, ‘to learn the ways of the West’, and that young man, when he returned had set his mark on the Palace, and to less degree on the city.