A few sick got well. Old men and women doddered about cleaning out the wells and gathering a little corn. Babes in the cradle grew up, and with the strangers drifting in, they catered to the caravans from Tehran or Khotan, Samarkand or Kabul. So once more there were caravanserais within the walls, along with bazaars and beast marts and wine booths and bagnios, and even people’s abodes if you looked for them. But all the attar of rose, spikenard, musk, myrrh, and frankincense borne back and forth from the sands to the snow could not sweeten its smell of death.
We spent nearly a month there, prospering well, then set forth again. About three miles beyond the city walls toward Talekan, our caravan was delayed by a sudden panic among the beasts, caused, we thought, by the smell of a leprous beggar on the road. While the baggage wallahs were reloading and roping, I rode my mare Fatima across a rubble-strewn field to the ruins of a considerable court. I was thinking of the kings that had gloried there, very Tiglath-pilesers according to their courtiers, and in their own conceits except for a small, chill doubt that sometimes smote them in the belly more than the brain. My thoughts were arrested by a stirring in the reeds around a broken water tank. Thinking it might be caused by a wild pig, as such animals frequent the long-forsaken abodes of man, good meat to us Christians and unabhorred by many good Mohammedans who gag at the thought of tame pig, I strung my bow.
The movement ceased. Since I had foolishly approached from upwind, it seemed likely the beast had smelled my mare and me and crept away. I could go no further on horseback because of the broken rock, and was at the brink of turning back when I saw Nicolo making toward me on his beautiful dappled Arab stallion Godfrey. His strung bow was handy on his back and his hand grasped a borrowed lance, a favorite arm for swine-hunting in this part of the world.
The fever took me to beat him to the kill. Quickly tieing Fatima to a shrub, I crept behind the ruins of a magnificent marble terrace, my arrow cocked and ready to draw. I hoped to surprise the quarry in what I now perceived was the remains of an aqueduct, rank with growth.
At that moment I discovered that not all the kings had gone.
3
One king remained. In many qualities honored in kings, he was the greatest of all.[17] He was a black-maned lion, weighing a quarter of a ton, so bold that he made his lair within three hundred paces of a caravan road. At night he roamed far and wide, preying on deer, wild boars, and cattle and horses in their arid pastures, and slaughtering helpless sheep with what his fellow monarchs call the divine right of kings. Where most he showed illustrious was in hunting the wild ass, most swift and one of the most beautiful of all created things. He would stalk them, a dun shadow in the scanty grass, until he drew within a stone’s throw; then swift as a stone cast by a sling he rushed upon them. They could outrun him at full tilt, but often he overtook them before they could get their hoofs under them to fly.
Sometimes he stalked and sprang upon a man, only to be perplexed, almost frightened, a sense of something strange and evil clouding his brute brain, that so tall and seemingly such glorious quarry should die before he had half bared his fangs. Ere he had bloodied half the crooked spikes set in his great mauls, the great trophy he had sought had turned into a limp, loose bag of broken bones. Its head that had loomed so high burst apart like an ostrich egg at a glancing lash of his paw. He had no use for the awful fury and blazing power set off within him, and his veins almost burst from the thwarted surging of his blood; and to worry the dead thing made him feel silly in the sight of God.
He had not killed last night, otherwise he would have gorged, lolled back to his lair at dawn, and slept like a swine. All his stratagems had failed, and now his shame and anger as much as his hunger pangs kept him awake. He sprang from the ditch, cleared the terrace in two unbelievable bounds, and rushed upon my mare. She saw him and whirled to fly. Her stout rein broke like thread at her first leap, but death was upon her before she could stretch her legs. It was a death she had seen when a foal on the deserts of Oman, and her most evil dream.
He did not mount her and I did not see the deathblow that he gave her. One instant, they were both in extreme exertion, she to live, he to kill. There was nothing else than that, at this instant; and the ruined palace on the brown desert was its perfect setting. My eyes had never beheld such violence, and started from their sockets. The next instant, she had been hurled down with a broken neck, her killer crouching over her with his great head turning and his blazing eyes seeking some new outlet for his rapturous rage.
As his gaze met mine, I launched my arrow.
The bow and arrow is a weak weapon for such game as this. A Tatar lance or even a Toledo spear would stand me in far better stead should the beast attack me; by crouching under it and holding it firmly, his own furious rush could drive it through him as if it were thrown by a giant. An arrow may kill from a good distance if it strikes the quarry in a vital spot; but the more strong-lived beasts usually lived until inward bleeding overwhelmed their hearts, and in that interim they craved to avenge their death wound. In this case the range was short. The lion was already in his rage like a Northman gone berserk in battle, so his life force was many times magnified and he could fight on and kill after his heart had stopped and his soul had passed. If he retaliated with all his might to the sting of my arrow, I would have no time to launch another. Thus my shooting at him at all had been a most rash act; and my thoughts, flying arrow-swift, told me that this moment, among these ruins, could be my final moment.
Even so, excited strength of my arm and shoulder, pivoted against my loins, had gone into the draw, and the long English bow became a deep inverted D standing for Death. I loosed cleanly and the string thrummed. I saw the shaft in its swift dart and its plunge of half its length in the beast’s side.
He gave forth a short roar and with a sideways lunge of his head he sank his teeth in the shoulder of his dead prey. This action, eloquent of the brute brain, gave me time to snatch another arrow from my sheaf. Then it was as though I had snatched at time and missed. I counted time’s dreadful lack in an instantaneous calculation such as may be the last mental process of thousands of men meeting sudden death. The lion had recognized me as his enemy and directly moved to attack. I saw the movement start and fate had decreed I should live long enough to contemplate it as it was etched on my memory. No wild beast’s action could be more splendid, more beautiful in its perfect functioning, and more declaratory of the glory of God.
During his first bound toward me, he marshaled himself for his charge. You could think of it as girding up his loins, but he could not bear one instant’s delay in joining battle, and the efficiency of the act was a terrible testament to its ferocity. He landed with his head down, his feet under him and already driving at great speed, his tail rammed out. Speed was his extreme compulsion until he could reach me and kill me. He raced against the fury in his heart—as though it would explode unless he could straightway sink his claws and fangs in enemy flesh.[18]
In that little interval not yet ended, I too functioned at the extreme height of my powers. My battle was not with my attacker, but with myself. I had almost no sense of a continuity of events; all seemed one explosion. Only by reaching beyond myself could I perceive the drag of time—that it had not yet gone and I must still strive on. Terror lashed at me to run. Thereby I would not see the fangs and claws as they closed in, and by my living a second or two longer, I might better the chance of an extraneous force, now bearing down upon the scene, moving in my favor. Nor could I abrogate Death by looking him in the face: I could only defy him. I was nocking my arrow now, but except for a stroke of fate I would not have time to draw.