The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s. Brian Aldiss

on! Why are we waiting here, my general?’

      His companion sat up, rubbing his head and saying grumpily, ‘As I will die for you, my lord, when the time comes, so when the time comes must I sleep.’

      But they got to their feet then, and the king forced them to go on, though Jovann would have eaten the cold fish, wrapped in leaves, that he had brought with him for their evening fare. Looking back over the plain of poppies, they heard the clank of a sheep bell as the sheep were ushered towards protection for the night, and they saw the lights of the Turk burning on the forehead of the mountain. These sights and sounds were soon hidden from them as they rounded the shoulders of the new hills and as night brought down its gentle wing upon them.

      Wrapped safe in shadow, the king let his mind wander from the ride, until he imagined he had no wound and his child-wife Simonida was alive again; then said he gently to her, ‘My daughter, you see how the boundaries of our kingdom widen, and how the soldiers and merchants grow as rich as was my grandfather, great Orusah himself. The Bulgars now pay us tribute as far as Bess-Arabia, and the Byzantines are so poor and weak that their cities fall to us every month.’

      And he imagined that she smiled and answered, ‘My sweet lord Vukasan, it is good as you say, but let us establish a state that will make the name Serbia sweet even to those it conquers. Let there be not only executions, but laws; not only swords and armies but books and universities, and peace where we can instil peace.’

      Then did the king smile and stroke her hair, saying, ‘You know that way shall be my way, even as it would be your way or the way of my father and grandfather. We will bring wise men to speak to the people from distant Hilander, on the Mount called Athos, and there shall be artists and masons summoned from Thessaloniki, who work less rudely than our native craftsmen. And we shall start new arts and works with men from Ragusa and Venezia, and even beyond, from the courts of Europe, and the Pope in Rome shall heed us …’

      ‘You dream too largely, my sweet lord. It is not good to do so.’ She had often said it.

      ‘Dreams cannot be too large. Do you know what I dream, my daughter? I dream that one day I may ride into Constantinople and have myself crowned king of Byzantium – Emperor! – while you shall wear no dress but jewels.’

      ‘Then how your subjects will stare at me!’ she said with a laugh, but the sound came faint and unnatural, more like the clink of a horse’s bridle; and he could not see her for shade, so that Jovann said at his elbow, ‘Steady, my lord, as you go, for the way is rocky here.’

      And he answered heavily and confusedly, saying, ‘You are not the companion she was, though I grant you are bolder. What a change has come these last few years! Perhaps you were right in holding I dreamed too largely, for now my dreams are no more and you are gone from me, sweet child of my bed, and all I hear of is the rattle of swords, and for the designing of your jewellery I have exchanged battle plans against the fuming muslim. Ho, then, and hup, or we’ll die before we get to the gates of Constantin’s town!’

      The horse plunged under his sharp-digging stirrup, and he returned to his senses, more tired from the mental journey than the actual one.

      ‘Did I speak to myself then, Jovann?’

      ‘It is my lord’s privilege,’ said the general.

      ‘Did I speak aloud, tell me?’

      ‘My lord, no, on my oath.’ But he knew the man lied to hide his sovereign’s weakness, and bit his lip to keep silence until he had the pleasure of feeling the blood run in the hairs of his beard.

      They followed a vague track, not speaking. At last they heard the noise of a bullock-cart creaking and bumping along, and emerged onto the dusty road that would take them to Sveti Andrej. Now that the trees stood further apart, and their eyes were adjusted to the night journey, they could see the shape of the bullock-cart ahead. He was well awake now, and motioned to Jovann to follow. They rode up to the cart and hailed the driver.

      Deciding they now had no cause to go further, the two bullocks dragging the cart stopped and cropped grass in the middle of the road. With an oath, Jovann jumped to the ground, his sword again ready in his hand. The driver of the cart sprawled face up to the stars with his throat cut. Rags lay under his outspread arm which they examined after a little, and found them to be a peasant woman’s clothes.

      ‘This they dare do, so near to home, to kill one of my peasants for the sake of his wife, so near to home, so near to home!’

      In a storm of anger and weakness, he felt the tears scald from his eyes, and sat on the bank to weep. Jovann joined him, and put an arm about his shoulders, until he stopped for shame. At that, Jovann thrust a jug into his hands.

      ‘The man’s rakija, lord. We might as well profit from it, since he no longer can. Drink it, for we have not many hours’ travel left, and then we will eat the fish and pluck some of the cherries that are growing above our heads.’

      He was secretly angry that Jovann could speak of these trivial matters when the urgency of the situation was so great. But a sort of fear gripped him; he was unnerved by the way the bullock-cart had arrived so punctually to deliver its message of death, and he needed to feel the heat of the rakija as it plunged down his throat. They drank in turns, quaffing out of the jug.

      After a while, the bullocks took the cart off down the road again, creaking and bumping every inch of the way. The two men began to laugh. The king sang a fragment of song:

       ‘How happy are they who dwell in Prilep

       Where the birds nest under every eave

       And the green tree grows.’

      Although he recalled that the Turk now stood at the gates of Prilep, he sang the verse again into the leafy night. He told Jovann stories of the old days to raise his spirits, of how his grandfather Orusan had in his youth leaped across the fissure in the rock on Pelister and would not marry till he found a girl of hot enough breath to do likewise, no, not though five bare-legged maidens lost their life trying; and how he himself had swum underground a vrst in a cold and unknown river in the same region; and of his father’s day-long flight alone in the hills, with Alisto, the Shiptar prince. And then he thought of his little wife dying in Bitola, and was solemn, and reproached himself. They got to their feet and climbed once more stiffly into their saddles, though Jovann took a great bunch of cherries from the tree as they went, pulling half a branch along with him.

      So they rode on through the night, and shivered in their jackets. When dawn leapt over the hills again, they were near to the holy place that the king had mentioned, called Sveti Pantelimon.

      He halted his steed by a side track and said, ‘The way is steep here. I will leave the horses here with you and be back in only an hour, after I have consulted the holy man about the future.’

      But Jovann protested. ‘My lord, we are but two hours’ travel now from the house of your kinsmen at Sveti Andrej. Let us first carry our ill news to them and set their warlike intentions astir, and then we can return here to your holy man tomorrow, after we have rested.’

      But he was set in his course, and said so. ‘Then,’ said the faithful Jovann with a sigh, ‘I will follow after you on foot, leading the horses, that where we may ride we can. Heaven guide you, sweet lord, that you know best.’

      ‘There is no room for doubt of that,’ he said sharply, though in his own head there was room enough.

      Now they climbed amid sharp spurs of rock, on which the first lizards already crawled to sun themselves. Tortoises ambled from their path, and the progress they made was no faster than that of the tortoise, for the track led back and forth about the hillside. The noise grew of a fast mountain stream by which they could guide themselves. When they found it, they saw how it ran deep between two cliffs, and how the path to Sveti Pantelimon followed beside it as man’s paths must ever be slave to those of nature.

      Here, after a brief discussion, the horses were hobbled and left, and the king and Jovann went forward together, the one behind the other because the path