The square was deserted. Windows were slammed shut. The guards turned around; the man in the robe had disappeared as if he had been swallowed by the cobblestones that paved the square.
The guards exchanged glances and continued their patrol, looking more gloomy and stepping heavier than usual. Meanwhile, the man in the gray robe, hiding his face with the hood, moved away. People bowed to him and hurried to disappear from the road—but this respect did not deceive him.
“Oink, oink.” The collectors returned yesterday from the suburbs—it was shameful to see what the peasants dared to offer now as gifts to the Order of Lash. Corn and turnips instead of silk, spices, and golden jewelry.
“Oink, oink.” Soon, very soon, they will be taught a severe lesson. And they will beg, but it will be too late.
3
Night was coming on quickly beyond the foggy window. The coach mournfully slouched over the bumps in the road, and Egert cowered in the corner and stared blankly at the gray, perpetually monotonous wayside disappearing behind him.
Three weeks had passed from the day, or more accurately from the night, of his flight from Kavarren; the feeling of the end of the world and of the end of life that had then overwhelmed Egert and had ripped him away from his home, his city, his uniform, and his own skin—that dreadful, agonizing feeling had now dulled, and Egert simply sat in the dusty corner of the coach, his fist tucked beneath his chin, looking out the window and trying not to think about anything.
His bag would not fit on the baggage rack, so it now crouched between his legs, keeping him from tucking them under the seat below him. The entire baggage compartment was full of bundles and hampers that belonged to a traveling merchant. This merchant, a bilious and sinewy old man, was now sitting across from Egert. Egert knew very well that he had the right to displace the merchant’s goods in behalf of his own bag, but he could not force himself to say a single word in his own defense.
The seat next to the old man was occupied by a pretty, young, and somewhat timid person: to all appearances, a maiden who had prematurely flown the coop of her father’s nest in order to set out in search of work, a husband, and adventure. Having initially taken an interest in Egert, but having received not even the slightest encouragement from him, the poor girl was now aggrievedly tracing her little finger along the glass of the window.
To the side of Egert sat a dejected person of indeterminate age with a bluish gray nose that hung like a drop and short, ink-stained fingers. Egert privately identified him as a wandering scribe.
The hulk of the coach was swaying smoothly, the merchant was snoozing with his face resting against the windowframe, the young lady was unsuccessfully trying to catch a troublesome fly, the scribe was staring off into space, and Egert, whose back was aching and whose legs were swollen from his uncomfortable posture, was thinking about the past and the future.
Having lived in Kavarren for twenty years and never having gone any considerable distance away from the city, he now had the opportunity to see the world, but this opportunity scared him far more than it pleased him. The world seemed comfortless, a shapeless wasteland of little towns, villages, inns, and roads, along which roamed people: morose, sometimes dangerous, but more often apathetic people who were invariably disagreeable to Egert. Strange people. Egert felt scruffy, haggard, and hunted. Now, covering his eyes in the steadily swaying coach, he once again desperately wished that it would all turn out to be a foolish dream. For a shining moment, he truly believed that he was about to wake up in his bed and that, opening his eyes, he would see the boars on their tapestries. He would summon his manservant, and he would wash his face in clean water over a silver basin. He would be the previous Egert Soll, not this despicable, cowardly vagabond. He believed in this vision so sincerely that his lips cracked open in a smile and his hand went to his cheek as though chasing away slumber.
His fingers stumbled upon the long seam of his scar. Egert flinched and opened his eyes.
The merchant was snoring softly. The girl had finally caught the fly and, clutching the insect in her fist, was listening attentively to the buzzing of the unfortunate captive.
Dear Heaven! Egert’s entire life, his entire happy and dignified life, had shattered into a thousand pieces and escaped into an unimaginable abyss. Behind him there was only shame and pain too dreadful to remember; before him lay a gray, cloudy, queasy uncertainty too dreadful to conceive of. Why?
Egert asked himself this question again and again. At the root of all the misfortune that had befallen him lay the strange cowardice that had suddenly awoken in the soul of a brave man; but why? How was such degeneration possible? Where did this affliction come from?
The duel with the stranger. Egert returned to that duel in his mind’s eye over and over, and every time, he wondered: Was it really possible that a single defeat could break him so? A single, absurd, incidental defeat that occurred without any witnesses?
He clenched his teeth hard and stared out the window, beyond which the damp, somber forest swept out into the far distances.
The hooves of the horses tramped out an even, steady pace. The peddler awoke and unwrapped a bundle containing a hunk of bread and a smoke-cured leg of chicken. Egert turned away; he was hungry. The girl had finally killed the fly and now also reached for her bundle, from which she extracted a roll and a piece of cheese.
The scribe was apparently considering whether or not it was time for him to sup as well, when the previously steady rhythm of the horses’ hooves suddenly became erratic.
The coach started jerking: at first forward, then awkwardly to the side. Up front, the driver screamed something indecipherable but full of terror. The clatter of hooves could be heard from behind and to the side of the coach, and the peddler suddenly went white as chalk. His hand, still clutching the chicken leg, shiny with grease, began to tremble vigorously.
The young girl spun her head from side to side in shock; crumbs from her roll clung to her lips and showed up white against their rosy pink. The scribe gasped. Egert, not understanding what was happening, but sensing that something was not right, pushed his shoulders back into the worn upholstery.
The carriage bounced heavily over something in the road and lost speed so quickly that Egert almost flew forward into the merchant.
“Rein it in!” a man’s voice yelled wickedly from behind the coach. “Rein in! Stop!”
The horses started neighing in panic.
“Glorious Heaven!” groaned the merchant. “No, no!”
“What is it?” asked the maiden faintly.
“Highwaymen,” explained the scribe calmly, as though he were in an office.
Egert’s miserable, timorous heart jumped up into his throat in a single convulsive movement, only to immediately descend into his stomach. He hunkered down onto the seat and firmly squeezed his eyes shut.
The coach shook and then stopped. The driver began to mutter beseechingly, and then he screamed and fell silent. The doors of the coach jerked from the outside.
“Open up!”
A hand reached out and shook Egert by the shoulder. “Young man!”
He forced himself to open his eyes and saw a pale face with wide-open, rapidly blinking eyes hovering over him.
“Young man,” murmured the girl. “Say that you are my husband. Please, it could be true.”
Following the instinct of the weak, who seek the protection of the strong, she grabbed Egert’s hand: thus does a drowning person pluck at a rotten log. Her gaze was full of such entreaty, such a zealous request for aid, that Egert suddenly felt hot all over, as if he had been tossed into a frying pan. His fingers began to fumble at his side, searching for his sword, but they had barely skimmed the hilt when they jerked back as if burned.