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day and night so as to be in Mainz sooner. The horses soon sickened from lack of
rest, and, when one of them literally died beneath me, we left the survivors with their
dead companion [about whose corpse they displayed not even the slightest
curiosity] and taking our weapons and what little food remained from a theft of the
previ-ous day we proceeded on foot.
The horse had perished just after dawn, so as we walked the heat of the climbing
sun, which was at first balmy, steadily became more oppressive. The empty road
stretching before us offered no prospect of shade beneath roof or tree, while to each
side of us stretched fields of motionless grain.
The clothes I'd taken from the huntsmen, which fitted well enough and were the
garments of a moneyed man, stifled me. I wanted to tear them all off, and go naked,
as I had in the World Below. For the first time since Quitoon and I had left the
blood-red grove together, I wanted to be back in the Ninth Circle, amongst the
troughs and peaks of the garbage. "Was this how it felt?" Quitoon asked me. I cast
him a puzzled glance.
"Being in the fire," he said, by way of explanation, "where you got your scars."
I shook my head, which was throbbing. "Stupid," I muttered.
"What?" There was a hint of threat in the syllable. Though we had argued
innumerable times, often vehemently, our exchanges had never escalated into
violence. I had always been too intimi-dated by him to let that happen. Even a
century of thieving, kill-ing, traveling, eating, and sleeping together had never erased
the sour certainty that under the right stars he would kill me without hesitation.
Today there was just one star in the Heav-ens, but oh how it burned. It was like a
blazing unblinking eye frying our rage in our brain pans as we walked the empty
road.
Had I not felt the fever of its gaze upon me, and the weight of its judgment within
that gaze, I would have muzzled my anger and offered some words of apology to
Quitoon. But not today; today I answered him truthfully.
"I said stupid."
"Meaning me?"
"What do you think? Stupid questions, stupid mind."
"I think the sun's made you crazy, Botch."
We were no longer walking but standing facing one another, no more than an arm's
length apart.
"I'm not crazy," I said.
"Then why would you do something so idiotic as to call me stupid?" His volume
dropped to little more than a whisper. "Unless, of course, you're so tired of the dust
and the heat that you want to be put out of your misery. Is that it, Botch? Are you
tired of life?"
"No. Only of you," I said. "You and your endless, boring talk about machines.
Machines, machines! Who cares what men are making? I don't!"
"Even if the machine changed the world?"
I laughed. "Nothing is going to change this," I said. "Stars. Sun. Roads. Fields. On
and on. World without end."
We stared at one another for a moment, but I did not care to meet his gaze any
longer, for all its golden gleam. I turned back the way we'd come, though the road
was as empty and unprom-ising in that direction as it was in the other. I didn't care. I
had no will to go to Mainz, or see whatever Quitoon thought was so very interesting
there.
"Where are you going?" he said.
"Anywhere. As long as it's away from you."
"You'll die."
"No I won't. I lived before I knew you and I'll live again when I've forgotten you."
"No, Botch. You'll die."
I was six or seven strides from him when with a sudden rush of dread I understood
what he was telling me. I dropped the bag of food I was carrying, and without even
glancing back at him to confirm my fears I turned to my right, and raced for the only
concealment available to me, the corn. As I did so I heard a sound like that of a whip
being cracked, and felt a surge of heat come at me from behind, its force sufficient
to pitch me for-wards. My feet, trapped in those damnable fancy boots, stum-bled
over themselves, and I fell into the shallow ditch that ran between the road and the
field. It was the saving of me. Had I still been standing I would have been struck by
the blast of heat that Quitoon had spewed in my direction.
The heat missed me and found the grain instead. It blackened for an instance, then
bloomed fire, lush orange flames rising against the sky's flawless blue. Had there
been more to devour than the wilted grain I might have been scorched to death there
in the ditch. But the grain was consumed in a heartbeat, and the fire was obliged to
spread in pursuit of further nourishment, racing along the edge of the field in both
directions. A veil of smoke rose from the blackened stubble and under its cover I
crawled along the ditch.
"I thought you were a demon, Botch," I heard Quitoon say. "But look at you. You're
just a worm."
I paused to look back and saw through a shred in the smoke that Quitoon was
standing in the ditch watching me. His ex-pression was one of pure revulsion. I'd
seen the same look on his face before, of course, though not often. He reserved it
only for the most abject and hopeless filth we had encountered on our travels. Now I
was numbered among them in his eyes, which fact stung more than the knowledge
that his gaze could kill me before I had time to draw a final breath.
"Worm!" he called to me. "Prepare to burn."
The next moment would certainly have brought the killing fire, but two things saved
me from it: one, a number of shouts from the direction of the field, from those who
presumably owned it and had come running in the hope of putting out the flames,
and, more fortuitous still, the second, a sudden thicken-ing of the smoke that came
off the burning grain, which closed the opening through which Quitoon had been
watching me, ob-scuring him completely.
I didn't wait for another such chance to come my way. I crawled out of the ditch
under the cover of the ever thickening smoke and ran down the road that would
carry me away from Mainz with all possible speed. I did not look back until I had
put half a mile or more between me and Quitoon, fearing with every step I took that
he would have pursued me.
But no. When I finally allowed my aching lungs some re-spite, and paused to look
back down the road, there was no sign of him. Only a smudge of smoke that
concealed the place where we had made our joyless farewells. From what I could
see the peasants were having very little success stopping Quitoon's fire from
destroying their desiccated crops. The flames had leapt the road and were now
spreading through the grain on the op-posite side.
I continued my retreat, though now I went at a more leisurely pace. I paused only to
take off those crippling boots, which I tossed into the ditch, allowing my demonic
feet the luxury of air and space. It was strange, at first, to be walking a road
bare-footed this way after years of being hobbled. But the simplest pleasures are
always the best, aren't they? And there was little simpler than the ease of walking on
naked soles.
When I had put another quarter mile between myself and Quitoon, I paused again
and took a moment to look back. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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