Noman (13 page)

"Heya, my beauties. Nothing to mind; no one to hurt you. There, beauties, friends now. Friends and comrades."

He touched them as a victorious commander touches his weary men after a battle, transmitting to them his power and his glory. Slowly the Caspians calmed down and allowed him to climb on their backs. There, lithe and barefoot, standing tall, he stepped with expert balance from back to back, his jingling arms outstretched and shining in the sun, and cried out to his admiring followers.

"Heya, bravas! Do you lo-o-ove me?"

Back came the eager cry.

"Wildman! Wildman! Wildman!"

The Caspians were accustomed to the leadership of men, and once they had accepted the Wildman's authority, there was no more need for restraint. The nets were unwound, and the Wildman, mounted on Sky once more, led the herd back to the spiker army camp.

As the men and horses made their way along the high ridge path, they heard the distant sound of singing and laughter. Shortly there came into view below them a great crowd of people, too far off to make out in any detail, advancing slowly across the plain, singing and dancing as they came.

The Wildman called a stop to look.

"What is that?"

No one knew.

"There must be thousands of them."

Shab stepped forward.

"I've heard the Orlans are reforming," he said.

"Those aren't Orlans. There's women there, and children. Listen."

The singing voices drifting up towards them on the warm breeze were both light and deep, and here and there they caught the shrill laughter of children.

"Let me go and find out," said Shab.

"Alone?"

"Better for one man to go. That way I'm just another spiker on the road."

The Wildman thought for a moment, then nodded his approval.

"Do that, Shab. Come back and tell me."

The Wildman rode on towards Spikertown, leading the riderless Caspians after him, and his men strode with him on either side.

As they reached the outskirts of the great camp, the cheering began. The Wildman rode down the broad central street, at the head of the captured herd, and the people roared their approval.

At the heart of the camp, beneath the long canopies, he dismounted and gave orders for the Caspians to be fed and watered. Then he went to his own tent. Pico, his bodyguard, was squatting outside.

"Let no one past, Pico," he said.

Pico had been with him from the start and could read his moods. He was a big man, with long black hair and a thick black beard, a strong man not much given to speaking. He nodded and held the tent flap open and drew it shut once more, after the Wildman had passed through.

When he was alone at last, out of sight of his men, the Wildman's smile faded. He stood for a few moments in utter stillness. Then, with slow movements, he drew off his brightly colored shirt and lay down on the floor, arms outreached, face to the ground. As he lay, he groaned and beat his brow softly on the rough weave of the rug.

Here he lay, neither eating nor drinking, till nightfall.

At last he rose and drank a cup of water and ate a cut of bread; just enough for the basics of life. Then he called Pico to join him in the tent, and he handed the big man his whip.

"Do it, Pico," he said.

"Don't like this, chief."

"Do it for me, Pico."

He knelt before him, and the whip rose and fell, lashing down on the Wildman's bare brown back. A tracery of red weals from earlier whippings striped the skin. The Wildman received the lashes in silence.

When he was finished, Pico handed back the whip, shaking his head.

"What's done is done and won't be undone."

"Same time tomorrow, Pico."

The big man believed the whipping to be an act of atonement for the death of Snakey; but the Wildman sought the punishing sting of pain for so much more than that. He had fallen into a dark place where he felt nothing and no longer loved his life. Surrounded as he was by a vast army, he felt entirely alone. Able to command whatever he desired, he desired nothing. The beautiful youth who had danced on the Caspians' backs, crying out, "Do you love me?" had been playing a part, acting the carefree bandit leader that his followers knew and revered. In himself, when alone, the Wildman felt empty, as if he had been hollowed out. The only true and certain joy left to him was the one he had felt as he had squeezed the life out of Snakey: the wild joy of the kill. It frightened him that this was all he craved. Better to feel nothing than to come alive only through such acts of violence. He was frightened too by his own temper. It exploded suddenly, unpredictably, beyond his control, and was dangerous in its intensity. So for this too, to atone for his minor cruelties, he knelt and was silent beneath the lash.

In the command tent, where he joined his men at last, the talk was all of the Orlan resurgence.

"They have a new Jahan, who they say is even greater than the old one."

"The old one wasn't so great. I saw him on his knees."

This angered the Wildman.

"Who says the Jahan wasn't great? He was a warlord!"

"I saw him begging on his knees."

"So did I," growled the Wildman. "Every one of us would be on his knees before that one."

They all knew who he meant by "that one," but the name was never spoken aloud. He had been the Wildman's friend. Now he could no longer bear to hear his name.

The Wildman sat with the others for the night meal, but he ate nothing. In the course of the meal, Shab returned. He was tired and dusty, but a beaming smile creased his lean features. In place of his petulant whine, he greeted them all with a ringing laugh.

"Friends!" he cried. "Share the joy!"

They stared at him.

"Have you been at the brandy?"

Shab went to the Wildman and threw his arms round him.

"Chief! Be happy!"

"Get off me!" The Wildman gave Shab a sharp push to get him away. "Don't tell me how I'm to be."

Shab smiled all the more cheerfully. He seemed to have lost all fear of the Wildman's anger.

"Those people we saw, they call themselves the Joyous. They're not soldiers or bandits, they're the followers of the Joy Boy. They're preparing to be gods."

"So they're a flock of fools," growled the Wildman. "I don't need to know any more."

"But chief! The Joy Boy! You must meet him! He made me see things I've never seen before." He turned on the gathered spiker chiefs sitting round the table and extended his arms. "Look! None of you are happy. Don't you want to share the joy?"

At that, the Wildman shot out one arm and seized Shab by the throat and shook him.

"No!" he shouted. "We don't want your fool joy!"

Shab was beyond fear.

"Meet him," he croaked, grinning even as he choked in the Wildman's grip. "Meet the Joy Boy. Find out for yourself."

"The Joy Boy!" The Wildman hurled Shab to the ground in disgust. "You're a bad joke, Shab. You always were."

Shab picked himself up and brushed the dirt off his clothing.

"Maybe I'm a joke," he said. "But I'm the only one here who's laughing."

***

The next day, the Wildman called up fifty of his men to act as his escort, and mounted on Sky, he rode out to see the Joyous for himself. Shab led the way.

As they came close, the Wildman saw the heavily laden supply wagons.

"Bandits," he said. "Just another gang of thieves."

"No," said Shab. "It's all freely given."

"Why would anyone give for nothing?"

"Because they've no need of personal possessions where they're going."

"Where's that?"

"They call it the Great Embrace."

They went on and so entered the outer fringes of the crowd. The Wildman looked with irritable gaze on the singing, dancing groups.

"Cracked," he said. "Funny in the head."

"Happy," said Shab.

Smiling faces called out to them, "Share the joy!"

"So where is he?" the Wildman grumbled. "Where's the chief fool?"

"He'll be in the crowd somewhere."

"In the crowd! There's thousands here. We'll never find him."

"He'll find us."

There was nothing to mark him out, no retinue of servants, no crown or throne, but the Wildman knew it was him at first sight. The Joy Boy was sitting on the ground, leaning back, supported on his elbows, talking and laughing with a crowd of children. When the Wildman rode to a stop before him, he looked up, shading his eyes with one hand, and nodded a friendly greeting as if he had been expecting him.

The Wildman addressed him sharply.

"You're in my territory," he said. "Everyone who crosses my land pays a levy."

"By all means." The youth waved one hand to either side. "Take whatever you want. We don't have much, but you're welcome to all you need."

"I don't take," said the Wildman. "You give."

He meant to establish a relationship of authority between himself as warlord and this plump-cheeked youth. Annoyingly, every time the Joy Boy spoke, all those round him nodded and smiled as if he had said something clever.

"I do give," said the Joy Boy, smiling. "I give the greatest gift that can be given. I give it to you. But do you receive?"

The people round him clapped softly. The Wildman looked away, not liking the sensation of meeting those big dark eyes. He gazed over the heads of the great throng and spoke with an air of indifference.

"I see that your people aren't armed. Move on today, out of my territory, and my men will see you safely on your way."

"And who will see you safely on your way?"

The Wildman chose not to answer this. He didn't like these soft questions, so barbed with presumptions about his needs. He wheeled his Caspian about and signed to his men to begin the journey back to camp.

The Joy Boy called after him.

"Go in peace," he said. "Seek your own peace."

The Wildman went on riding, and his men strode with him on either side, but these last words had done their work. They echoed and reechoed in his brain. Did the Joy Boy know that these same words had been spoken to him long ago? Did the Joy Boy know that it was just this very search for peace that had turned him from a carefree bandit into the lonely self-hating warlord of today?

The more he thought about this, the angrier he became. This pudgy Joy Boy was just another one of the tribe of dreamers who ruined lives with promises that could never be met. Peace! There was no peace in this life. And joy, this joy that he was told on all sides to share, it lasted a few moments, at the most, before turning to ashes.

Suddenly the rage came swelling up from the belly of his misery and burst forth in a howl of refusal.

"No!" he cried. "There is no peace! There is no joy! You're all fools!"

He swung Sky round and cantered back to the Joy Boy. He threw himself to the ground and seized the youth's fleshy neck in his powerful hands and squeezed it and shook.

"Don't tell me what to do!" he shouted. "Don't goop at me with your fish eyes! Don't preach at me! You've got nothing! Nothing!"

The Joy Boy offered no resistance. None of his followers sprang to his defense. After a few moments, the Wildman's anger cooled and he let him go. He wanted very badly to fight, but even he couldn't fight a limp sack like this.

"So don't go smirking about as if you've got the answers to everything," he said, aware that he was beginning to sound sulky. "You've got nothing."

The Joy Boy stood there, massaging his neck, with a puzzled look on his face. At least this was an improvement on the smile.

"You're quite right," he said. "I've got nothing."

"There!" The Wildman shouted out to all the crowd gathered round them. "You hear that? He admits it! He's deceived you. He's got nothing!"

The men and women smiled as he said this and nodded their heads, as if this was well known to them and, more, was exactly what they wanted.

"But I can dance," said the Joy Boy.

"Dance!" The Wildman's voice was heavy with contempt. "What's the good of dancing?"

At the Joy Boy's words, several men in the crowd drew forth musical instruments—flutes, hand drums, small potbellied guitars—and began to play. As the chirpy little melody filled the air, the Joy Boy began to dance.

His dance was like nothing the Wildman had ever seen before. Every part of his body moved as if he were made of rubber. His hips undulated from side to side, his head swooped forward and back like a chicken's, his arms drew spirals in the air, and his legs moved sometimes in a sinuous creeping motion, sometimes in sudden hops. The sight of all this wiggling at once was so absurd that the Wildman burst into laughter. The Joy Boy grinned back as he danced, in no way offended, and as the instruments hit a sustained musical climax, he began to spin.

He spun at an astonishing speed, all on one spot, with his hands on his hips and his elbows flapping like wings. Then the music slowed its pace and his spinning slowed its speed, and there he was, still once more, entirely unruffled, gazing at the Wildman with deep and quizzical eyes. Now, as the music stopped, the Wildman felt no inclination to laugh. He knew that what he had witnessed had been a remarkable display of controlled precision. What was more, he felt within himself an overwhelming urge to be in motion, to reach out his own arms—in short, to dance.

As if sensing this, the musicians started up again, this time with a simple tune that ran to a driving beat. The Joy Boy held out his hands, and people on either side of him clasped his hands and held out their other hand in turn, and very quickly a ring formed. The Wildman found his own hands taken and held, and without ever meaning to, he became part of the dancing ring.

Round they went to the right, stamping to the beat, and then round to the left; then twice round to the right, and twice round to the left, pounding the ground a little faster; then three times each way, faster still. As the tempo of the drums increased, so it seemed natural to stamp harder, and in doing this, the body crouched and leaped with ever more pronounced motions. It was hardly a dance, it was more like a charge, but the Wildman found this accelerating motion took over his body without any act of will. He heard grunts and cries accompanying the stamping beat and found to his surprise that he was uttering them himself, along with everyone else. When the dance reached the very limit of speed and urgency, he shouted aloud at the top of his voice along with all the other dancers, throwing his head back and yelling at the summer sky, the sweat streaming down his cheeks and neck.