The Scar (11 page)

“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.”