2

The Valley of Centaurs

The journey of Zayin, the soldier—Talk of the centaur-myth on the Syrian plains—In the Taurus mountains—Man-horses or horse-men?

“Call yourselves soldiers!” Zayin jeered. “I’ve collected eggs in the farmyard from creatures with more guts than you! I’ve seen them clip wool from animals with as much sense! Why I bring a dismal pack like you along with me I don’t know—I’d be better off by myself or with a dog on a lead!”

Zayin was in his element. Eldest brother of Nun, Aleph, and Beth, he had always been a leader and he felt it his due that he should now be leading the army of Gebal. And to be many days’ march away from home, far away from everywhere on the Syrian plains, followed by his men who looked unquestioningly to him to lead them on—what more could a soldier want?

His little army, now standing round him with blank faces, were satisfied, too, in their own way. They were enjoying this speech from their commander. There was no pleasure and precious little sense in marching over the empty interior with nothing but dry bread in their packs, not knowing whether a day’s march would find water or not. But their comfort was that they had a leader who seemed to be sure of what he was doing, and could spur them on by strong and scornful words when they felt faint-hearted.

The expedition had started off happily enough up the coast from Gebal. So long as they had the high mountain on one side and the sea on the other the men of Gebal were content. The watercourses that cut the coastal strip into sections were dry, or shallow and easy to ford; the few fishing villages were honored to accommodate the Giblite soldiers and provide them with food for their next day’s march. But then they had come to a place where the mountain range fell away. A wind from the interior seemed to be eternally blowing through the drafty gap: there was no longer the snug feeling of being enclosed by the mountains. The inhabitants of the miserable villages of black stone were sullen and suspicious. When Zayin turned inland, and the friendly sound of the sea receded, the men wondered uneasily what strange destination they were headed for. But, as long as their leader knew, it was not theirs to worry.

But, in fact, Zayin had little idea where they were going. It was simply not in his nature to worry. He was a soldier and a leader because it suited him and he liked it; Gebal had an army because every little state had to have an army; the soldiers were soldiers because they could not stick to any other job, and the King had sent them on this expedition partly because they had been behaving so badly at home, and partly—well, there had to be expeditions. There had been times in the history of Gebal, so their annals told them, when they knew exactly who their neighbors were and just what their relations with them should be. But now new rulers were rising in Egypt, or some said the old ones were coming back, and in the North and East entirely new nations were coming into being. Zayin’s army had been sent to see what it could see.

He remembered the King’s words: “We live in a time of change. The birds of the air tell me that Babylon is not what it was, and that Egypt is ruled by a woman, and who knows what barbarians may next appear from the North? Go, Commander of Swords, take your men who do nothing but play dice and trouble slave girls, go and find out what in the name of Horus is happening in the world.” So he had gone.

He felt differently from his men about leaving the coast and turning into the interior. The mountains made him feel shut in and the fretting of the sea irritated him, but the wind from over the endless plains gave him a feeling of freedom. No obstacles now between here and Babylon! And if he journeyed on and on, all the nations of the flat world lay before him.

So Zayin was happy, but all the same his military experience made him cautious. It was a very little army of foot soldiers that he led, merely a reconnaissance patrol, compared with the great masses of men that Pharaoh could send on his expeditionary forces, or with the well-drilled battalions of Assyria. He had watched from observation points in the mountains as these had passed along the broad valley beyond the range, filling it like a tide with spearmen, chariots, and baggage trains, or strung out through a defile in an endless line. The Giblite troop was not sufficient to carry all before them like that. Old men remembered when chariotry had been quartered on Gebal, but now he had none. It was not for him to sweep up to the gates of Babylon. They would have to avoid all but the smallest towns, where they could frighten the inhabitants into giving them food and shelter.

So it was that they had turned north up the Syrian plain, and every day’s march was like the one before, rolling empty country littered with rocks that made every step uncomfortable. Beyond each rise you felt something must lie on the other side, but it never did. The men straggled over the rough plain, picked wild flowers and put them in their helmets, and did nothing but grumble when the time came to bivouac at night.

But an advance scout had just returned to say that he had sighted a town in the distance, and it was the difficulty of getting some sense out of his report that had provoked Zayin into his outburst at the troops.

“You say this town is right ahead? How far ahead?” Zayin questioned the scout.

“Who can tell, sir? The sun lights it, like a ship on the flat sea. It may be a day’s march, may be an hour. There’s no knowing on this cursed plain.”

“Well, then, how big is it? Is it a great city, or just another wretched village of the plains?” Zayin persisted.

“Same thing, isn’t it, sir?” the man replied. “Can’t tell till you get there. Remember that clump of rocks yesterday? Some swore it was the walls of Babylon, one fellow said it was a few packs of wool dropped by an ass. I bet them anything they liked it was a clump of rocks, and most of them owe me their next week’s ration, though I don’t suppose—”

“Never mind your bets,” Zayin interrupted. He turned to the troops. “Listen, you rabble of fishermen! There’s a habitation ahead. We don’t know how far or how big it is, thanks to the efficiency of our advance guard. We’re going to find out. But remember this. They don’t know how strong we are either. For all they know we’re the vanguard of Pharaoh’s thousands. If we march up in a smart and soldierly manner with an air of confidence, they’ll bow in the dust before us and it’ll be feasting and soft beds for all of you tonight. If you straggle up like a parcel of tinkers they’ll set the dogs on you and the children will pelt you with stones. So just try and look like soldiers for once. All right?”

A surly sergeant spoke: “Aren’t we going to put them to the sword?” Some of the men grunted approval, Zayin looked at them and smiled.

“Thirsty for blood, are you, you dogs? Not today though. For me, I’d rather get a comfortable night’s rest under a good roof by peaceful means than wade in blood for the fun of it. Make yourselves at home—but even at home you don’t burn down your father’s house and slaughter your grandmother just because you need exercise—or do you? It wouldn’t surprise me with some of you.”

This raised a laugh at the expense of the troublemakers. They re-formed ranks and marched off in good order. After they had breasted a couple of rises the township came into sight, first a cluster of cones on the horizon. They marched on through the afternoon, the soldiers muttering bets as to how many cooking pots awaited them with appetizing suppers. Every now and then it would disappear as they advanced into a hollow, and each time it came into sight again it seemed a little nearer.

It was two hours before they got to it, and when they did they were not greatly impressed. A huddle of mud-built beehives, perhaps a hundred in number. But still, it was civilization of a sort. And coming out toward them was a party of men dressed in saffron robes. As Zayin had predicted, it was the elders approaching to make peace. “Come on, then, men!” called Zayin. “Close ranks! Square your shields! Spears erect! Swing those arms!” The soldiers swaggered with martial vigor, Zayin strode out in front, and the white-bearded, saffron-robed elders prostrated themselves in the dust before him.

“Halt!” cried Zayin, and with a clash of arms the battalion came to a more or less simultaneous stop.

Later that evening Zayin was reclining at ease in the living-room of one of the beehive huts. It was clean, and good smells were coming from a cooking pot near by. The headman of the village, who had not ceased from murmuring, “Welcome, welcome,” ever since they had arrived, was squatting opposite him. Zayin had been relieved to find that they had a language in common that served well enough for conversation.

“I don’t suppose you have guests like us very often, old man?” asked Zayin.

“Oh, welcome, welcome!” answered the old one eagerly. “Your words are indeed true and full of wisdom. And yet armies come and armies go not infrequently over these plains. Only yesterday it seems we had a great multitude of spears passing by!”

Zayin sat up with a jerk. “Yesterday? What multitude?” This might be serious news for him and his small army.

“Yesterday, did I say?” the old man went on hurriedly. “Oh, it may have been a month back, a year, who knows? Nothing much happens between the passing of armies. It seems like yesterday.”

Zayin relaxed; this old fool was not to be depended upon for accurate military information.

“Whose army was this, then, Grandfather?” he asked. “What country did they come from?”

“Oh, you are welcome, welcome!” muttered the old man distractedly. “Your lordship would know all these strange tongues and strange nations. I am but a simple villager.”

“Well, say, old muddlehead!” Zayin persisted. “Did they come from the North or the East? Did they speak of Pharaoh or of the Lord of Babylon?”

“By my beard,” answered the old man, “I understood not a word they spoke. But they came from the North.”

“From the North?” Zayin repeated. This was interesting. The North was a zone of mystery and myth wrapped in clouds and darkness. No one knew all the tribes and nations that lived there. South was Egypt and the desert, East was great Babylon, West was the sea and the great kingdom of Crete. But from the North came things and people that were strange and new and frightening.

“Yes, from the North,” affirmed the old man. “And there were creatures among them that had six limbs: four legs like an ass, but much stronger, besides an arm for a spear and an arm for a shield and a human head with a mane like a lion.”

Zayin laughed shortly. “I am a soldier, old man,” he said. “Not a fanciful scribe to write down marvels. I shall believe in your six-limbed man-beasts when I see them.” But at the same time a chill ran down his back. What horrors had these plain-dwellers seen?

“I saw them,” asserted the old man doggedly. “I saw them with these good eyes of mine, and so did many of our village, though we hid at a distance in the desert.”

“They are ignorant and fanciful peasants,” Zayin told himself. “They have looked at their reflections in the water and seen donkeys.”

They continued their supper in silence, and then spoke of other things, but that night Zayin dreamed of warlike man-beasts with four legs and two arms. And next morning he re-formed his troops and marched northward.

After a few more days Zayin became aware one morning of a change in the behavior of his soldiers. Ever since they had launched out into the open plains they had been depressed and uneasy, but now they seemed to be laughing and smiling again, and even singing. Zayin spoke to one of the sergeants marching near him.

“The men seem happy this morning,” he said.

“Sir,” said the sergeant.

“Getting used to the plains, eh?” said Zayin.

“No, sir,” said the sergeant.

“What do you mean, ‘No, sir’?” said Zayin.

“They don’t like the plains, sir,” said the sergeant.

“What’s come over them, then?” asked Zayin.

The sergeant hesitated. “Don’t know, sir,” he said at last. “Some foolishness, I reckon.”

“What is it, man?” Zayin persisted. “Something I don’t know about?”

“Reckon it’s nothing, sir. But it makes ’em happy,” said the sergeant curtly.

Zayin was mystified. “Come on, man, out with it!” he said with some sharpness. “If you know something, or the men know something, it’s your duty to tell me at once.”

The sergeant continued marching, looking straight ahead. “If they see a bit of cloud on the horizon, and it makes ’em sing, it’s nothing to bother you about, sir, to my way of thinking,” he said.

“Cloud?” repeated Zayin. “What’s remarkable about a cloud? We see them every day, don’t we?”

“Nothing remarkable, as I told ’em, sir. Take no notice, I said. If some of them like to think it’s mountains, well, it does no harm, does it?”

“Mountains!” exclaimed Zayin. “Sergeant, if someone’s sighted mountains and not reported the fact to me—there’ll be trouble!”

“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant stolidly. “Just what I said, sir. If it’s mountains the general will want to know. If it’s a bit of a cloud that looks like a mountain he won’t. He’ll be able to tell the difference right enough, when he sees it with his own eyes.”

Zayin was about to explode with anger, but he kept silent. He remembered what he had so often said to his men about believing his own eyes. He strode without speaking to the top of the next rise and halted, scanning the horizon and shading his eyes with his hand. Just above the skyline to the North was a line that might have been a low dark cloud, but he knew that it was not. It was the jagged peak of a range of mountains. And he had the feeling that they must hold the secret of something he wanted to know, and he resolved that he alone would be the one to discover this secret.

It was in the afternoon a day or two later that they came to the foothills of the mountains. Zayin gave the order to pitch camp a little earlier than usual: the end of the empty plain was as good a place as any to halt, and exploration of the mountains would have to wait until the next day. But in spite of the day’s long march he felt restless as the soldiers went about their work, erecting the tents and preparing the evening meal. There were still some hours of daylight left, and the feeling that he himself must discover the secret of the mountains was too strong for him. So, calling his under-officers together, he told them to see to the posting of sentinels for the night, and announced he was going alone up the nearest hill. The sergeant who was his right-hand man offered to go with him, but Zayin insisted that no escort was necessary, and set off up the slopes.

It was a pleasant change to be back in the mountains.

Of course, the view from the first low crest revealed only a higher crest beyond. But there would be no harm in going on alone a little farther to see what lay on the other side. He went down to a shallow ravine and scrambled up the other side among great boulders.

To his surprise, when he reached the crest he found that the ground fell away before him even more steeply and swept down to the floor of a broad valley. The setting sun flooded it with light, and shone, too, on innumerable objects in the bottom of the valley, white, brown, and black, that cast long shadows on the green pasture. What were they? Boulders? No, some of them were moving. Men? No, their movements were like those of animals grazing. It was difficult to tell size or shape from that distance. Heedless of the lengthening shadows and of the distance from the camp, Zayin let himself go over the edge of the valley, slipping, sliding, catching at shrubs as he could, sending showers of stones trickling hundreds of feet below him to the bottom. He arrived at the foot of the slope in an avalanche of rocks and soil, uncertain whether he was on his head or his heels, and as he crashed into the bushes that grew there a great creature leaped out of the shadows and bounded snorting across the turf. When it came to the groups in the distance they, too, plunged and tossed and fled away to the other end of the valley.

Zayin picked himself up, shaken and dizzy, and strained his eyes after the retreating creatures. What had the old man of the plains said? That it was “like the running of gazelles and the dancing of young women.” The movement of these beings was indeed a beautiful sight in the evening sun, though all he had seen was their rounded hindquarters and flowing tails. But what of the rest of their bodies. Had he seen a human face and arms? What a fool he had been to disturb them in such a clumsy manner. Whatever they were, they were nervous, timid creatures, easily scared. He must follow them, quietly, and show them that he came in peace.

The valley was much longer than he had thought, and it would soon be quite dark. But Zayin kept on. Soon the foot of the valley walls were in shadow, then the shadow line crept up them and the dusk gathered. The stars came out, and at length Zayin was walking over the smooth turf in darkness. And it seemed that as he walked, the creatures he was looking for returned softly to surround him. He could hear snorts and stamping hooves, and could make out dim shapes, a little darker than the darkness. One, apparently bolder than the rest, was approaching him, step by step. Zayin stood quite still. “Come,” he said quietly. “Come, we are friends.” The creature came nearer in the darkness. Zayin held out his hand until he could feel its breath. His other hand was on his sword, but somehow he felt that the creatures were friendly, whatever they were. But they kept their distance, and they would not speak.

Zayin kept walking. He must find somewhere to spend the night. Through the gloom he thought he could make out a shape that was too square and too big to be an animal. He approached it warily: close to it seemed to be some kind of shelter with one open side. Was there something stirring in it?

“Ho there!” called Zayin, firmly. There was a sudden movement in the darkness.

“You in there!” he called. “Come out so I can see you!” Part of the darkness seemed to bunch itself together and launch itself upon Zayin. He side stepped and lunged with his sword. Whatever it was swerved past him, and as it did so dealt him a powerful blow on his sword arm, making him drop his sword and curse. Then it thundered away into the night, with a sound as of more than two feet. Zayin felt around for his dropped sword, rubbed his aching arm, and decided that these creatures had little sense of hospitality. He went into the shelter, satisfied himself there was nothing there but a pile of soft vegetation, laid his sword on the ground and lay down himself. He was very tired and there was nothing to do but go to sleep like this.

No time seemed to have passed before he sat up in the morning sunlight and looked around him. Horses! they were grazing on the dewy grass, or just standing looking at him inquisitively.

They were, after all, animals with four legs and curved necks that ate grass like cattle. And yet Zayin could not feel disappointed. He had heard of horses, certainly, and had seen them, harnessed to chariots, when he had watched Pharaoh’s army from the mountains. But he had never been so close to them before, or seen them running free. He was charmed as he watched the colts gamboling in the sun or nudging up to their dams. How much more pleasant their company was than the grumbling soldiers.

But Zayin suddenly felt a twinge, or rather two. A twinge of conscience and a twinge of hunger. He had deserted his army, and he could not stay here and eat grass. He would have to make his way back to the camp.

It took him longer than he had expected to walk back over the floor of the valley, and he could see that climbing the sides would be very much more difficult than sliding down had been. He started the laborious ascent, trying to avoid stretches of loose rock. And then, as he climbed, he noticed a figure descending toward him from above. By the armor he seemed to be one of his soldiers. Zayin stood on a rock and waved, and the figure waved back and continued to come down toward him, almost as recklessly as he had himself done the day before. Soon Zayin was able to recognize the man as the sergeant. He glissaded toward Zayin in a scramble of stones and tried to stand to attention and salute.

“The gods be praised,” the sergeant panted. “You at least are safe, sir!” The man seemed to be at the extreme of exhaustion.

“What’s the matter, man? What’s happened?” Zayin demanded, suddenly very concerned.

“Ah, sir, it was only too true about the monsters! Your army’s scattered. They thought you had fallen into their hands, and without you they were dismayed and panic-stricken when the monsters swept down on them.”

Zayin sat down on the rock, began to say something, and then stopped.

“Sergeant,” he said at last, “I was wrong to leave you. What have you been imagining in my absence?”

“No imagining, sir,” protested the sergeant. “There were monsters.”

Zayin heaved a deep sigh. “Tell me about these monsters, Sergeant,” he said resignedly. “And then tell me what happened to my men.”

“But, sir!” the sergeant protested, “they were the monsters you told us of. Four legs to run and leap on, and two arms to wield spears and bows with. Our men panicked and fled.”

Zayin held his head in his hands. “I, too, have seen, the monsters,” he said at last. “Indeed, I spent the night with them.” The sergeant’s eyes became round. “In the morning,” Zayin continued, “I saw that they were horses. Mere animals like the ass, only bigger and swifter. One of them gave me a passing kick with its heels in the dark. But they can no more wield weapons than I can eat grass.”

The sergeant looked at him wildly. “Then perhaps, sir,” he exclaimed, “you can tell me how I came by this?” He bared his left arm, which had been roughly wrapped in his cloak, and showed Zayin the broken shaft of an arrow that was still imbedded in the flesh.

And at that moment, with his good arm, the sergeant seized his commanding officer and thrust him down behind the rock, flinging himself after him.

“Pardon, sir!” he gasped. “But there’s another lot of ’em!” And he pointed to the valley floor.

Zayin looked down. Galloping apparently straight toward them was a party of four-footed creatures, brandishing bows and spears above human-looking heads. He sat paralyzed behind his rock. Could they climb perhaps, like mountain goats? Even fly? But no, they halted on the level ground beneath him. After all they had not been seen, for no eyes seemed to be directed toward them. He and the sergeant could escape up the hillside again. Keeping low, he twisted round and looked up the steep slope. But, as he looked, a figure appeared, outlined against the sky on a crag, almost immediately above him. Then another and another four-legged, two-armed figures with spears held ready. There was no going forward nor back for them, neither up nor down, and it was only a matter of time before they were seen on the stony hillside.