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| Henry Lion Oldie
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| Master
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Henry Lion Oldie
Master
"The Great Square has no angles"
Frasimedes of Melkh
Sprained ligaments vibrated under Master’s careful fingers; he worked until the man, lying on a rough wooden bench, groaned and opened his eyes.
When seeing the gloomy, bearded face bent over him, the man shuddered convulsively and closed his eyes again.
"Don't be afraid,” said Master. “The day's over. It's evening now. Don't be afraid and lie still."
He was not used to talking in long phrases, and it cost him a lot of effort.
"You, torturer…" the man muttered.
"Yes, I am,” He agreed. “And a master."
"A master…" It looked like the man tasted the word with his swollen tongue. The word was absolutely out of place here in a small hall with within blackened walls, low ceiling, massive door and no windows.
"Tomorrow you will get whipped,” Master warned. “Hang quiet, don't strain yourself. And scream. It will be easier for you."
"You are going to kill me," cold indifference sounded in the man's voice.
"No, I'm not. Not tomorrow, anyway."
‘I'm talking too much,’ he thought. ‘Maybe I’m growing old…’
The man moved his shoulder, which Master had set in its place, first with caution, then with more confidence.
"Master…" the man whispered, following the stooping figure, which disappeared at the doorway, with his eyes.
The next day he got whipped.
//-- * * * --//
A stocky, sullen youth knelt before a metal tank filled with sand; he methodically punched it with his hands, his fingers wide apart. The sand was damp and caked, and there were pebbles and rusty fragments of metal in it; the youth's fingers were cut all over and bleeding.
Master stood behind him, as the apprentice rocked back and forth, and watched the regular rhythmic movements for some time.
"Don't tense up your shoulder,” He said. “And bypass the stones."
"Oh yeah, bypass,” the youth muttered, while raising his arms for the next blow. “Easy to say… Those damned stones, there are too many of them, like in a…"
Master pushed the frowning lad aside and thrust his hand into the sand with a subtle and well-measured movement. The tank vibrated. When his hand appeared out of the sand, there was a little pebble pressed between his little finger and his palm.
"Easy indeed,” He agreed. “To say it’s easy. Now, the sword."
They walked to the far corner of the yard where two swords were thrust into an oak log. One sword was huge, almost of a man's height; its cross-like hilt was one third of its full length and filled with lead to balance the massive dim blade, with a deep and wide groove. The second sword was a smaller copy of the first one.
Master pulled the large sword out of the log and with unexpected dexterity raised it over his head. Silently the weapon cut the air and a fresh notch appeared on the pole dug into the ground beside the fence.
"Two inches higher," He said.
The youth swung the sword. The upper end of the pole fell down. Master eyed the distance from the cut with drops of resin on it to the notch.
"It's two and a half,” He looked at the youth who was rather upset by his failure. “Don't tense your shoulder!" He slashed at the pole with his sword, without turning towards it. The extra half of an inch fell to the apprentice’s feet.
The youth cast an envious glance at his Master's sword.
"Oh, yeah,” he said reluctantly. “With such a sword…"
Master did not reply. He came up to the pole and made three more notches.
"This is for today. Then you may have your dinner. As for the sword… When you learn to handle it, I’ll give it to you."
The youth flushed and stepped up to the pole, squatting a little, with his legs spread widely apart.
//-- * * * --//
An ointment with an acrid smell was rubbed into the swollen welts, making them sting. The man on the bench hissed from pain like a snake and bit his lower lip.
“Hold on,” He was advised. “It will heal by morning.”
The man turned with difficulty, trying to look at his own back. Only his third attempt was successful; after this, he went limp, and stared at the polished hilt of the whip that lay next to the bench, carefully rolled up.
"How strange,” the man barely moved his dry, chapped lips. “I thought it would be all bloody…"
"Why?" Master was surprised.
"Why, indeed?" the man smiled.
"You can kill with a whip,” Master said in a mentoring tone, as he closed the jar of ointment. “You can bleed a man to death with it. And you can loosen a man's tongue."
"I would loosen mine gladly,” the man sighed. “But I'm afraid my fate won’t improve even after that. Is it my fault that they keep coming to me?"
"Who?" Master lingered in the doorway.
"People. I even moved from the town, but they still came. And each with his own problems. They said that after talking to me, they felt better. But the town seniors complained to the High Priest. They told him that people grew insolent, and started asking unwanted questions, that they follow the heresiarch; an impostor not acknowledged by the Lodge. Meaning me, of course. What kind of a heresiarch am I? I am just a collocutor. One old man had called me so. I lived at his home when I was a kid."
"A collocutor?” Master clanked with the door-bolt. “Well, see you tomorrow… Collocutor."
"See you tomorrow, Master."
//-- * * * --//
The judge's square cap kept sliding down his forehead; it tickled his sweaty cheeks with its tassel, and he had do throw it back with an annoyed gesture.
"Do you plead guilty, you blasphemer, to tempting the simple men and being incited by your immeasurable pride? Do you plead guilty to teaching common folks the forbidden art of composition of verses, or the so called ‘stain-glasses’, which have the power over the Elements and to the attempt of deviating…”
"They are going to kill him,” Master thought suddenly. “It's clear as day; they are going to kill him… Look at the judge – how he is declaiming! The man's really a collocutor, everyone talks freely in his presence, and he listens… Even now he's listening, on the rack… Who will listen to them after they kill him? We are all masters of talking…"
He knew that he was wrong: some people were not masters of talking, and not all who were able to become Masters did so … As for listening, the things were even worse there…
He squatted next to the hearth and put the pincers into the fire. He did not like working with pincers. Too dirty, too many screams and very little sense; nothing but stench. His father had used fingers: you don’t need to heat them, you do not need to work with fire, and you can feel the truth versus mere convulsion… That’s how his father had worked, and taught his son, Master, to work. The same way Master was teaching the lad, who sadly was not his son. But who else needed the skill? The red-faced judge? The scribe? The man under tortures? Oh, the latter needed it least of all. Well, the man will not die today, so there would be time to talk in the evening…
Strange as it was, Master enjoyed knowing that.
The door squeaked unpleasantly, and a short man, with long arms, shifty eyes and a deep wrinkle between his shaggy eyebrows, pushed himself sideways into the room.
The judge stopped talking and eyed the newcomer.
"Well,” the judge said slowly, “so you are here… Look, executioner, this is your colleague from the Green Citadel. We have called him to come here. He'll work along with you. For they say you are growing old…"
Master straightened up. The short man squinted at him with curiosity, but did not come to greet him. The man looked around, breathing heavily, and then stepped towards the man hanging on the rack. Master blocked his way. The whip unrolled in the stuffy air of the hall. At the last moment Master slightly turned his wrist; the whip twisted around the pincers lying in the fire, and they flew over the row of other instruments right into the face of long-armed man. The latter dexterously caught the pincers by their handles, put them on the table and glanced at Master. Master nodded and walked up to the guest. The long-armed man blinked and suddenly seized Master's shoulder with his whole hand. The challenge was accepted. They froze in their place. Their hands grew swollen and white; drops of sweat covered their faces, but they did not care to wipe them off.
The judge stared at the rivals, the scribe stopped squeaking with his pen, and even the man on the rack seemed to raise his tousled head a bit.
The grip relaxed. Master stepped back and stretched his hand out to the short man. The latter tried to do the same – and stared in horror at his arm which was hanging loose. His shoulder-blades jerked for a few seconds, without any result, and then he bowed shortly and left the room not looking at anybody.
When the door shut behind him, the judge brushed the annoying tassel off yet again and asked, with perplexity filling his rich voice: "What's going on here?"
"He will never work with me,” Master answered calmly. “Never."
The man on the rack chuckled.
//-- * * * --//
"…Father led me to a stub, and the stub was higher than me – I was just a kid then,” Master was recounting, as he sat beside the bench and held an ice bag to Collocutor's burnt side. “Well, he led me there, and there was a crack in the stub. About three feet long if not more. All the way down to the ground. And he drove a wedge in the crack. ‘Seize it,’ he told me, ‘and pull it out with your fingers.’ I clutched at it, but the damned thing didn't even move! ‘Well,’ my father said, ‘when you are done with it, call me.’ I tried to do it for a week; then I called my father. He took the wedge and drove it into the crack once more, deeper this time. And he walked away without a word. When my moustache began to grow, I called my father, took the wedge and drove it into the crack to the very ground. Only a bit was left at the top, just enough to seize with fingers. Then I pulled it out in a jerk and threw it into the bushes. My father wept, and embraced me; he then took an axe out of its cover and threw an ant on the stub. ‘Cut off its head,’ he told me. ‘When you are done, call me.’ And away he went. Such a man my father was. When he was dying, he gave me his sword, the old one, inherited from my grandfather. No one can forge such swords now, they prefer axes… ‘You're a master now,’ my father said to me. ‘I can pass away in peace.’ And he did…"
"A master cannot teach bad things," Collocutor said thoughtfully.
Master sat silent, pondering on the idea.
"He is a good boy,’ he said at last. ‘It's a pity he's not my son… There's strength in him; it’s foolish strength, but he's a good boy. I’m teaching him to wield a sword and an axe, I train his fingers. What good things am I teaching him?"
"Master does not teach bad things,” Collocutor repeated. “Master does not teach good things. Master just teaches. And he cannot do otherwise."
Master stood up and walked to the exit. When he was already at the doorway, a question sounded behind him.
"Is quartering very painful?” Collocutor asked.
"No,” Master answered firmly. “It is not."
//-- * * * --//
The crowd held its breath. He raised his axe. Then he bent down and picked up the head which rolled over the scaffold; pressed its white cheeks carefully with his both hands and looked into the lifeless eyes.
There was joy in the dead eyes; peace and eternity.
"How are you?" Master asked the collocutor in a low voice.
The guards came to their senses and were running towards them.
//-- * * * --//
The wood of the pole scratched Master's naked back, and the ropes tightly tied his hands, covered in cuts. The familiar log lay in the corner of the scaffold; an axe and a sword were stuck in it. Why both? He was tied to a pole; the sword was used for a standing man. But who would undertake the task? Much skill is needed to cut a standing man's head off, especially in public.
He did not want the long-armed fellow to do it.
A stooping, stocky figure in a crimson hood looked surprisingly familiar. He looked at the man’s confident movements, till his eyes began to ache.
The executioner easily pulled the sword out of the log, waited for a moment and also pulled out the axe, with his left hand. Then he approached Master and laid the sword to his feet. Would he use the axe? On a standing man?
Master had no time to finish this thought.
A glittering crescent of the axe flew over him, and he recognized the man in the hood.
"Don't tense your shoulder,” Master said. “Take the sword. It's yours…"
The axe’s blade slid along the pole and the ropes loosened. Master felt the familiar weight of the hilt, as it was slipped into his stiff hand.
"Take it, father. You'll give it to me later. Come on, let's go…"
He jumped down the scaffold, cutting at the spiked helmets and mail covered gloves; but he kept watching, from the corner of his eye, the stocky youth in the crimson hood, who was rhythmically raising the familiar axe. The youth moved well, easy, and his shoulder was relaxed…
It was not a battle.
It was a massacre.
Master cannot teach bad things.
THE END
Translated from Russian by Irena Pevzner & Anna Kimaeva, 2012