Part 10 (1/2)
VIII.
The sky was white, perfectly white, the smell of rain strong in the air. The smell of hedges and growing green was sweet. It was deep spring, what some called New Earth.
David sat on Cuthbert's arm, a small engine of destruction with bright golden eyes that glared outward at nothing. The rawhide leash attached to his jesses was looped carelessly about Bert's arm.
Cort stood aside from the two boys, a silent figure in patched leather trousers and a green cotton s.h.i.+rt that had been cinched high with his old, wide infantry belt. The green of his s.h.i.+rt merged with the hedges and the rolling turf of the Back Courts, where the ladies had not yet begun to play at Points.
”Get ready,” Roland whispered to Cuthbert.
”We're ready,” Cuthbert said confidently. ”Aren't we, Davey?”
They spoke the low speech, the language of both scullions and squires; the day when they would be allowed to use their own tongue in the presence of others was still far. ”It's a beautiful day for it. Can you smell the rain? It's-”
Cort abruptly raised the trap in his hands and let the side fall open. The dove was out and up, trying for the sky in a quick, fluttering blast of its wings. Cuthbert pulled the leash, but he was slow; the hawk was already up and his takeoff was awkward. The hawk recovered with a brief twitch of its wings. It struck upward, trudging the air, gaining alt.i.tude over the dove, moving bullet-swift.
Cort walked over to where the boys stood, casually, and swung his huge and twisted fist at Cuthbert's ear. The boy fell over without a sound, although his lips writhed back from his gums. A trickle of blood flowed slowly from his ear and onto the rich green gra.s.s.
”You were slow, maggot,” he said.
Cuthbert was struggling to his feet. ”I cry your pardon, Cort. It's just that I-”
Cort swung again, and Cuthbert fell over again. The blood flowed more swiftly now.
”Speak the High Speech,” he said softly. His voice was flat, with a slight, drunken rasp. ”Speak your Act of Contrition in the speech of civilization for which better men than you will ever be have died, maggot.”
Cuthbert was getting up again. Tears stood brightly in his eyes, but his lips were pressed together in a tight line of hate which did not quiver.
”I grieve,” Cuthbert said in a voice of breathless control. ”I have forgotten the face of my father, whose guns I hope someday to bear.”
”That's right, brat,” Cort said. ”You'll consider what you did wrong, and sharpen your reflections with hunger. No supper. No breakfast.”
”Look!” Roland cried. He pointed up.
The hawk had climbed above the soaring dove. It glided for a moment, its stubby wings outstretched and without movement on the still, white spring air. Then it folded its wings and dropped like a stone. The two bodies came together, and for a moment Roland fancied he could see blood in the air. The hawk gave a brief scream of triumph. The dove fluttered, twisting, to the ground, and Roland ran toward the kill, leaving Cort and the chastened Cuthbert behind him.
The hawk had landed beside its prey and was complacently tearing into its plump white breast. A few feathers seesawed slowly downward.
”David!” the boy yelled, and tossed the hawk a piece of rabbit flesh from his poke. The hawk caught it on the fly, ingested it with an upward shaking of its back and throat, and Roland attempted to re-leash the bird.
The hawk whirled, almost absentmindedly, and ripped skin from Roland's arm in a long, dangling gash. Then it went back to its meal.
With a grunt, Roland looped the leash again, this time catching David's diving, slas.h.i.+ng beak on the leather gauntlet he wore. He gave the hawk another piece of meat, then hooded it. Docilely, David climbed onto his wrist.
He stood up proudly, the hawk on his arm.
”What's this, can ya tell me?” Cort asked, pointing to the dripping slash on Roland's forearm. The boy stationed himself to receive the blow, locking his throat against any possible cry, but no blow fell.
”He struck me,” Roland said.
”You p.i.s.sed him off,” Cort said. ”The hawk does not fear you, boy, and the hawk never will. The hawk is G.o.d's gunslinger.”
Roland merely looked at Cort. He was not an imaginative boy, and if Cort had intended to imply a moral, it was lost on him; he went so far as to believe that it might have been one of the few foolish statements he had ever heard Cort make.
Cuthbert came up behind them and stuck his tongue out at Cort, safely on his blind side. Roland did not smile, but nodded to him.
”Go in now,” Cort said, taking the hawk. He turned and pointed at Cuthbert. ”But remember your reflection, maggot. And your fast. Tonight and tomorrow morning.”
”Yes,” Cuthbert said, stiltedly formal now. ”Thank you for this instructive day.”
”You learn,” Cort said, ”but your tongue has a bad habit of lolling from your stupid mouth when your instructor's back is turned. Mayhap the day will come when it and you will learn their respective places.” He struck Cuthbert again, this time solidly between the eyes and hard enough so that Roland heard a dull thud-the sound a mallet makes when a scullion taps a keg of beer. Cuthbert fell backward onto the lawn, his eyes cloudy and dazed at first. Then they cleared and he stared burningly up at Cort, his usual easy grin nowhere to be seen, his hatred unveiled, a pinp.r.i.c.k as bright as the dove's blood in the center of each eye. He nodded and parted his lips in a scarifying smile that Roland had never seen.
”Then there's hope for you,” Cort said. ”When you think you can, you come for me, maggot.”
”How did you know?” Cuthbert said between his teeth.
Cort turned toward Roland so swiftly that Roland almost fell back a step-and then both of them would have been on the gra.s.s, decorating the new green with their blood. ”I saw it reflected in this maggot's eyes,” he said. ”Remember it, Cuthbert Allgood. Last lesson for today.”
Cuthbert nodded again, the same frightening smile on his face. ”I grieve,” he said. ”I have forgotten the face-”
”Cut that s.h.i.+t,” Cort said, losing interest. He turned to Roland. ”Go on, now. The both of you. If I have to look at your stupid maggot faces any longer I'll puke my guts and lose a good dinner.”
”Come on,” Roland said.
Cuthbert shook his head to clear it and got to his feet. Cort was already walking down the hill in his squat, bowlegged stride, looking powerful and somehow prehistoric. The shaved and grizzled spot at the top of his head glimmered.
”I'll kill the son of a b.i.t.c.h,” Cuthbert said, still smiling. A large goose egg, purple and knotted, was rising mystically on his forehead.
”Not you or me,” Roland said, suddenly bursting into a grin. ”You can have supper in the west kitchen with me. Cook will give us some.”
”He'll tell Cort.”
”He's no friend of Cort's,” Roland said, and then shrugged. ”And what if he did?”
Cuthbert grinned back. ”Sure. Right. I always wanted to know how the world looked when your head was on backwards and upside down.”
They started back together over the green lawns, casting shadows in the fine white springlight.
IX.
The cook in the west kitchen was named Hax. He stood huge in foodstained whites, a man with a crude-oil complexion whose ancestry was a quarter black, a quarter yellow, a quarter from the South Islands, now almost forgotten (the world had moved on), and a quarter G.o.ds-knew-what. He shuffled about three high-ceilinged steamy rooms like a tractor in low gear, wearing huge, Caliph-like slippers. He was one of those quite rare adults who communicate with small children fairly well and who love them all impartially-not in a sugary way but in a business-like fas.h.i.+on that may sometimes entail a hug, in the same way that closing a big business deal may call for a handshake. He even loved the boys who had begun the way of the gun, although they were different from other children-undemonstrative and always slightly dangerous, not in an adult way, but rather as if they were ordinary children with a slight touch of madness-and Bert was not the first of Cort's students whom he had fed on the sly. At this moment he stood in front of his huge, rambling electric stove-one of six working appliances left on the whole estate. It was his personal domain, and he stood there watching the two boys bolt the gravied meat sc.r.a.ps he had produced. Behind, before, and all around, cookboys, scullions, and various underlings rushed through the steaming, humid air, rattling pans, stirring stew, slaving over potatoes and vegetables in nether regions. In the dimly lit pantry alcove, a washerwoman with a doughy, miserable face and hair caught up in a rag splashed water around on the floor with a mop.
One of the scullery boys rushed up with a man from the Guards in tow. ”This man, he wantchoo, Hax.”
”All right.” Hax nodded to the Guard, and he nodded back. ”You boys,” he said. ”Go over to Maggie, she'll give you some pie. Then scat. Don't get me in trouble.”
Later they would both remember he'd said that: Don't get me in trouble. Don't get me in trouble.
They nodded and went over to Maggie, who gave them huge wedges of pie on dinner plates-but gingerly, as if they were wild dogs that might bite her.
”Let's eat it understairs,” Cuthbert said.