His comrades-in-arms looked askance at him; the official story was that he was grievously in love. His comrades discussed the possible objects of this unfortunate passion, and most of the more astute assumed that the cold and splendid Toria, fiancée of the slain student, had captured the heart of the lieutenant. Only Karver took no part at all in these discussions; he merely observed silently from a distance.
Turning away from the road, they galloped to the edge of a deep gully; clods of earth showered down into the chasm from under the hooves of the horses. The captain hollered out a command. Egert flinched, catching sight of a log, polished so there was not a single knot, that extended from one edge of the ravine to the other.
Once, on a dare, Egert had danced in the very middle of this beam, directly over the deepest part of the ravine. Every time Egert’s feet had trod on the smooth, slippery surface, his soul had been transfixed by an all-encompassing rapture at the proximity of danger and an awareness of his own courage. Not satisfied with this risk alone, he compelled others to risk themselves; using his power as a lieutenant and the magical impact of the word
coward,
he arranged a fight on the log. Someone had slipped, fallen to the bottom of the ravine, and broken his leg. Egert did not remember the name of that poor bastard, but from that time on, the man did not walk very well and had to be forced from the regiment.
Egert recalled all this in the second it took for the guards to dismount next to the log at the command of the captain.
They formed a line. The captain put the youngest, most inexperienced guards to the side, and Lieutenant Dron, who had been declared the instructor of the youths, proceeded to explain to them the essence of the test with an air of importance. Meanwhile the captain, not wishing to lose a single minute, commanded the others to begin.
The requirement was simple: Cross to the far side and wait there for the others. The young sword-bearers, who had been brought on maneuvers expressly for such small services, were to lead the horses back to the camp. Egert numbly handed his reins to an adolescent who was gazing up at him in adoration.
In strict order, one after the other, the guards overcame the obstacle, some with bravado, some with badly concealed nervousness, some running, some with anxious, mincing steps. Egert brought up the rear of the column, watching as the boots of his comrades intrepidly trampled the smooth trunk of the log. He tried with all his might to figure out where this clammy feeling in his chest and this painful weakness in his knees came from.
Having never before experienced real terror in the face of danger, Egert did not immediately understand that he was simply afraid, so intensely afraid that his legs became weak and his stomach cramped painfully.
The line of guards on the near side of the ravine slowly diminished. The youths who had passed though the ordeal for the first time thronged joyfully on the opposite side, yelling encouragement to those who were treading on the beam. Egert’s turn got closer. The squires, who had long since fulfilled their duty of stabling the horses, had returned; they now waited for the rare opportunity of seeing a new feat of Lieutenant Soll.
Karver, who was last in line before Egert, stepped out onto the log. At first he walked carelessly, even flippantly, but somewhere near the middle, he missed a step and, nervously throwing his arms out to the side, finished his passage. The former Egert Soll would not have let this opportunity to whistle condescendingly at his friend’s back pass, but this Egert, who was now expected to step out onto the log, could only take a deep breath.
All the guards were drawn up on the opposite bank, and all, to a man, were watching Egert inquisitively.
He forced himself to step forward. Dear Heaven, why are my knees shaking so!
His boot was planted unsteadily on the very edge of the beam. It was impossible to cross over to the opposite side. The beam was smooth; his legs would certainly slip off it; in the best-case scenario, Egert would falter, but in the worst case …
They were all waiting. The beginning of Egert’s stunt was already quite unusual.
Licking his dry lips, he took a step and staggered, waving his hands in the air. On the far side, they laughed, assuming that he was adroitly feigning clumsiness.
He took yet another half step and caught a clear glimpse of the floor of the ravine and of the sharp rocks at its bottom, and of his own mutilated body, dashed upon the rocks.
And then, raising melancholy eyes to the path laid out before him over the abyss, he made a decision.
He decided, and he jumped backwards quickly, grasping at his chest with a few theatrical gestures. He jerked as if he were having a convulsion, staggering and deftly jumping down off the log; then he fell to the ground as though dead.
Twitching in a heap of last year’s leaves, Egert feverishly tried to remember the symptoms of the horrible illnesses about which he had once heard: falling sickness, seizures. It would be good if he could froth at the mouth, but his mouth was as dry as an abandoned well. He was just going to have to make up for the lack of symptoms with inconceivably violent convulsions of his body.
The astonishment and laughter on the other side of the ravine changed into cries of horror; the first to reach him was that adolescent to whom Egert had entrusted his stallion. Glorious Heaven! Egert’s ears burned from shame and mortification, but there was no choice, so he flopped like a fish out of water; he wheezed and gasped while the captain, Karver, and Dron surrounded him on all sides. For about ten minutes, they tried to bring him to his senses, but it was all in vain; clenching his teeth and rolling his eyes back into his skull, Egert assiduously portrayed a dying man, except that a man who was really dying in this situation would have gone cold and turned blue, whereas Egert was hot and red from the unparalleled, fiery shame.
Alarmed by the unexpected illness of Lieutenant Soll, the captain sent him back to town straightaway. He would have accompanied him, but Egert managed to refuse. The captain thought to himself that even in this grave illness, Egert displayed an uncommon bravery.
* * *
Egert’s father worked himself up into a lather no less intense than the captain’s. No sooner had Egert pulled off his boots and collapsed into his couch than a knock, polite yet adamant, came at his door. The elder Soll and a short, hollow-seeming man in a smock that extended down to his ankles, a doctor, appeared on the threshold.
Egert had no other option but to force out a report of his indisposition and to hand himself over for examination.
The doctor tapped him thoroughly with a hammer; he probed, listened, and nearly sniffed Egert all over, and then he peered inquisitively into Egert’s eyes for a long moment, extending his lower eyelid for this purpose. Still gritting his teeth, Egert gave answers to extremely detailed questions, a few of which forced him to blush: No, not ill. No. No. Clear. Every morning. Wounds? Perhaps a few trifling scratches. The gash on your cheek? An unfortunate incident; nothing to worry about.
The elder Soll was nervous; he rubbed his hands together so torturously that they threatened to be chafed until they bled. Wishing to peer down Egert’s throat, the physician nearly ripped out his tongue. Then he dried his hands on a snow-white handkerchief, and letting out a sigh, recommended the usual remedy of doctors who have come up against a brick wall: bloodletting.
Soon a large copper basin was delivered to the room. The leech opened a black valise and set out scalpels and lancets, gleaming like a fine spring day, on the clean tablecloth. Small round jars clanked in the little bag, and the old first maid dragged out fresh linen.
All these preparations drove Egert into a desolate, black anxiety; he began to think that it might be better if he returned to the maneuvers. His father, heartened that there was some way to help his stricken son, solicitously assisted him in taking off his shirt.
The preparations were finished. However, when Egert saw the businesslike blade in the inexorable healer’s hand, it became very clear that bloodletting would not do.
“Oh, my son!” muttered his father perplexedly. “Glorious Heaven, you really are very ill.”
Cowering in the corner with a heavy candlestick held in front of him, Egert breathed heavily. “I don’t want it! Leave me in peace.”
The old first maid pensively chewed her lips. A pale, middle-aged woman stood at the threshold of the room. It was Egert’s mother.
Looking around at those present and then taking another appraising glance at Egert, who was naked to his waist, his round muscles protruding prominently, straining against his fair skin, the doctor dolefully shrugged his shoulders. “Alas, gentlemen.”
The instruments were returned to the valise. The bewildered elder Soll vainly tried to extract an explanation from the physician about the meaning of his
alas.
Did it mean that Egert’s illness was already too far advanced?
Having gathered his things, the doctor glanced at Egert once more, shook his head, and announced, appealing more to the boars on the tapestries than to the Soll family, “The young man, humph, he is extremely healthy. Yes, masters. But if something is troubling the young man, it is not a medical problem, kind masters. Not medical.”
* * *
Glorious Heaven! Stalwart Khars, Protector of Warriors, how could you allow this?
Lieutenant Egert Soll was mortally wounded; his stricken sense of self whimpered plaintively. The most extraordinary and distasteful thing was that Egert’s pride had been wounded not from without, but from within.
He stood in front of the mirror for a solid hour, performing his own medical inquest. The same old familiar Egert looked out at him from the depths of the mirror: gray blue eyes, blond hair, and now the scratch that had taken up residence on his cheek. Prodding the wound with his finger, Egert decided that it would scar. Henceforth, Egert Soll would display a distinctive mark. Well, a scar on a man’s face is more a mark of prowess than a defect.
He breathed on the mirror and traced an oblique cross in the circle of mist created by his breath. It was too soon to lose heart; if all the events of recent days were simply caused by an illness, then he knew a surefire way to cure it.
Changing his linen shirt for a silk one and ignoring the pleas of his distraught father, Egert left the house.
* * *
All the guards knew that the wife of the captain, the beauty Dilia, graced Lieutenant Soll with her favors. It was a wonder that so far the captain himself knew nothing about it.
His visits to Dilia conferred a twofold pleasure to Egert: delighting in the ardent embraces of the captain’s wife, he also relished the risk and the awareness he had of his own audacity. He especially enjoyed kissing Dilia when he could hear the steps of the captain on the stairs, coming ever closer, closer. Egert understood very well what would happen should the captain, a decent yet jealous man, find his lieutenant in Dilia’s lace-covered bed. The steel nerves of the beauty never succumbed when her perpetually absent, suspicious husband knocked on the door to her bedroom. Egert would laugh and, still laughing, escape out the window, grabbing his clothes from the hook by the fireplace as he went. And never, not even a single time, did that infernal rogue Egert drop so much as a button or a clasp, and not a single sound did he make as he slipped over the windowsill. Silent, Dilia would simultaneously hear a rustle under the window and the heavy steps of her husband as he came to her bed. And strangely, this vigilant husband never caught the scent of another man in his conjugal bed.
His visits to Dilia always encouraged Egert, and so he went to her now, expecting to cure his strange affliction by resting his head on her breast.
The evening was setting in; twilight, as before, discomforted Egert, but the thought of his imminent bliss helped him to overcome his fears. The chambermaid, as usual, was bribed. Dilia, her beauty hidden only by a lacy dressing gown, met Egert with wide-open eyes.
“Heavens, what about the maneuvers?”
However, her astonishment almost immediately gave way to a smile that was both gracious and covetous. The beauty was flattered. Only a true cavalier would secretly slip out of a military camp for the sake of a rendezvous with his beloved!
The chambermaid brought in wine on a tray and fruit in a little bowl decorated with peacock feathers, the emblem of passionate love. Dilia, pleased, spread herself out on the bed like a well-fed cat.
“Oh, Egert. And here I was, ready to think the worst of you!” She smiled delicately. “Your duels mean more to you than your love. I’m quite jealous of your duels, Egert!” The captain’s wife tossed her head so that her dark curls would spread out over the pillow as alluringly as possible. “Just because you killed some student, is that really a reason to neglect your Dilia for so long?”
Trying not to look into the shadowy corners of the bedroom, Egert muttered a sugary compliment. Dilia purred and continued, threading her voice with velvet undertones. “But now, your conduct gives me the chance to forgive you. I know what these maneuvers mean to a guard. You have sacrificed your beloved games and you should be rewarded.” Dilia leaned forward, her lips half-open, and Egert caught the heady scent of roses wafting from her skin. “You should be properly rewarded.”
He took a deep breath; tender little fingers were already struggling with the buttons of his uniform.
“Let my husband sleep in a bunk and be food for mosquitoes, yes, Egert? We have the entire night and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. Isn’t that right, Egert? That scar, it suits you so well. This will be our best time ever.”
She helped him undress or, more accurately, he helped her to undress him. Vanishing into the bed, he felt how her body, smooth as silk, burned like fire. Sliding his palms down her taut sides, Egert shivered: he had stumbled upon something iron, warmed by the beauty’s hot blood.
Dilia burst out into sonorous laughter. “It’s a chastity belt! A little gift from your captain, Egert!”