The Embalmer's Apprentice by Lyra

Chapter 42

Warning for animal death. It's a hunting trip, after all.

Chapter 42

After a couple of uneventful days, Lord Roitaheru made good on his threat of taking me hunting (as a fellow hunter, apparently, but that didn't make it much less intimidating.) I said that it was not at all necessary to include me, but he insisted that it was customary to take one's guests on a hunting trip. I pleaded ignorance. As a result, I was subjected to an afternoon of target practice under the watchful eyes of Lord Roitaheru himself. Part of me wondered whether he had given the same lessons to Lord Herucalmo, many decades ago, and told myself to feel honoured. The other part cursed these noblemen and their customs while I struggled with the bow. Although I had been given (supposedly) an exercise bow, strung less powerfully than the regular hunting bows, it still put up a fight in my inexperienced hands. Lord Roitaheru had a lot to say about my bad posture, the weakness of my pull, the way I stuck out my elbow and my lamentable lack of accuracy. Nonetheless, he was in excellent spirits at the end of the lesson. I, meanwhile, could barely move my shoulders.

But they took me along regardless - equipped with a horse from Lord Roitaheru's stables, a leather cuirass from the armoury, a hunting knife from Lord Roitaheru's collection, and the light bow and gear that I had practiced with yesterday. The other members of our hunting party were the lords Herucalmo and Laurilyo and a gaggle of their retainers, Captain Gohenor of the palace guard with two promising young soldiers and a small host of guards to look after us. Additionally, there were servants to look after the horses and tents and the animals, and local scouts who knew where the animals could be expected to hide. We left just after sunrise, while it was still reasonably cool, and rode up into the mountains, where I was told it would be less hot than the city below even in the afternoon. We passed rows upon rows of vines. Then the vinyards gave way to steep slopes where the only growth were stunted olive trees and pines, some thorny scrubs, and coarse mountain grass amid the sharp rocks.

"These mountains are the wealth of Umbar," Lord Roitaheru explained grandly. "Not so much because of the silver in them, but mostly because they make it rain." On the other side of the mountains, I was told, there were vast deserts, but on the coastal side, it rained regularly enough to farm successfully and harvest plentifully. I could see the fields from up here, large rectangles between thin lines that were the irrigation channels: golden wheat, different types of green, gourds between their twines that were large enough to recognise even from up here.
"What sort of beast will we be hunting up here?" I asked. In spite of the reasonable temperatures, our surroundings didn't look like the sort of environment that invited lots of animals. Not the kind you wanted to encounter, anyway.
"Leopards, if we're lucky," Lord Roitaheru promptly said, and then laughed at the face I made. "Not likely. They're usually smart enough to avoid hunters, unless they're very hungry. At this season, they usually aren't. No, there's a type of red deer that we're most likely to find. And goats. Or sheep. Don't worry about the leopards. Mind your step though. There are vipers here, and scorpions."
For the time being, however, I only saw small birds much like nuthatches, and lizards that scuttled away as we came too close.

By the early afternoon, we reached a stony patch of relatively level ground that, aside from offering room enough for the tents, also had a small natural spring that could provide us with water, and thus would be our campsite. We sat in the shade of an impressive rock formation for refreshment. Then, the hunters and their scouts went onwards, while the servants stayed behind to set up the tents and the guards stayed to make sure no animals or outcasts raided our provisions. I wouldn't have minded staying behind, either; I didn't feel that I would have much to contribute to the hunt. But Lord Roitaheru insisted that I belong to the hunting party. "Don't worry, you don't have to shoot anything," he said. "Just watch and learn."

So I crept after the scouts and the hunters, trying to make no noise as we left the path (which had already been narrow) and followed tracks that I would never have recognised as such. Everything was dust and lose rocks and glaring sunlight. I wondered why I had to be here, rather than sitting in the shade back at the campsite, or making myself useful by helping to put up tents. I felt very much out of place. What business did I have to follow these nobles at their sport? If I wasn't even required to shoot anything - which was just as well, because I could barely lift my arms after yesterday's training session - then why was I there? Watch and learn, Lord Roitaheru had said, but to what purpose? So they could test me on it later, and laugh at my incompetence? I couldn't say I was keen on that. Not that I had any say in the matter, of course. I resigned myself to being attentive, just in case, and also as inobtrusive as I could, hoping that they would more or less forget me.

And they did forget - or at least, ignore - me, for the time being. I managed not to slip on the rocks, I managed to remain silent, and they were intent on sneaking up on a herd of deer, smaller and darker than the reddish deer I knew from Yôzayân. They knew what they were doing; they barely needed to exchange signals to take different positions and release their arrows at the same time. The bowstrings twanged in unison. Two deer lay dead before I had even realised what was happening; another, fleeing, took an arrow to the haunch. It tried to escape with the rest of the herd, but it stumbled on its injured leg and tumbled down a ravine, coming to lie on a narrow ledge between the ravine and the even steeper slope underneath.
"Should we send someone to recover it?" Lord Laurilyo asked, sounding doubtful.
"Maybe later," Lord Roitaheru said. "I'm afraid it's lost, though. That slope is looking treacherous."
I could see the deer twitching sadly, unable to get back to its feet or even just raise its head.
"Someone should release it, at least," I heard myself say.
Captain Gohenor said, "Waste of a good arrow. It won't last long, anyway. But go ahead, dispatch it if you must."
That wasn't what I had meant, and of course my attempts went awry. One arrow disappeared into thin air as I shot it over the edge of the slope; the other broke on the rocks next to the poor animal. It was one of Captain Gohenor's young soldiers who finally shot an arrow deep into the deer's trembling chest. It crumpled in on itself, dead.
"Waste of three good arrows," Captain Gohenor said, shaking his head.

I was ashamed and determined to make up for my blunder. "I'll recover the last one, at least," I promised. "And the deer." And I started down the ravine before I could think better of it.
It hadn't looked too bad from up there, but Lord Roitaheru had been right: it was treacherous. The stiff quiver hanging from my hip obstructed one leg, and the seemingly solid rock field was moving under my feet; several times, I sank knee-deep into the sharp rocks, and more than once the rocks simply slid a fair distance down the ravine, taking me with them. The mountain walls were ringing with the grinding and clanging of the shifting rocks. I realised that my helpless sliding movement might well turn into an incontrollable rock slide that would easily drag me over the edge of the slope. I would end like the deer - not with an arrow in my haunch and another in my chest, that is, but as a broken body at the foot of a steep slope. I tried to figure out how I felt about the prospect, and couldn't make up my mind.

At last I reached the ledge, battered and struggling for breath. From down here, the ravine looked far more forbidding than it had from above; scrambling back up would be hard work. The ledge I was on offered no way out: it went on a little both ways, but then it ended in sheer rock walls on either side. Cautiously, I risked a glance over the edge. The slope went down all the way to the distant vinyards. There were no footholds worth mentioning, although the occasional tuft of vegetation suggested that there must be cracks in the steep walls. At any rate, climbing down there was out of the question. I would have to brave the ravine again. I felt light-headed already.
Still, I would somehow have to finish what I had started. So I squatted down by the deer. Its head lay at an awkward angle; it had clearly broken its neck in the fall, and what had looked like a struggle to get back up from above had more likely been the final spasms of death. Waste of an arrow indeed.

I looked up again. The hunting party were waiting for me in grave silence. I could picture the disapproval on their faces without seeing them. This was no way of redeeming myself in their eyes. I had wanted to show that I wasn't entirely useless, but instead, I was slowing them down with a dangerous and useless fool's errand. Infuriating. I cursed myself while I removed the arrows with the same motion I had been taught yesterday. Pulling them out of muscle and skin was rather tougher than pulling them out of a straw target. I wiped the congealing blood off the tips and stuffed the arrows into my quiver. I retrieved the broken arrow, too; the tip and the fletching might still be salvageable. Then, with a final look upwards, I heaved the body of the deer onto my shoulders. Considering how lightly these animals moved on their thin legs, it was surprisingly heavy. It would make the climb even more difficult than it already was. How stupid I had been. I should've listened to the experienced hunters. And yet, if I set it back down and scrambled up the ravine without my load, I would feel like even more of a fool. It would make my failure complete.

I began the cumbersome ascent. The sharp rocks threatened to crush my ankles - at least, that's what it felt like - and grazed my shins and knees. It would have been easier without the additional load - aside from the weight, I also had to use at least one hand, and occasionally both, to keep it in place. Once or twice I very nearly landed flat on my face when the rocks I was standing on slid away underneath me. I was reminded of the humiliation of convicted traitors, dragged through the streets on their knees under the yoke of shame. That probably felt much the same. The thought didn't exactly make things easier. I tried to tell myself that I had brought this upon myself and that it was just punishment for my stupidity, but I resented it all the same. It was all I could do not to curse out loud. I crossed the final stretch back up towards the path in an undignified crawl. Lord Herucalmo held out his hand, and when I took it, pulled me up to my feet. The two soldiers relieved me of my burden. Nobody wanted their arrows back. Lord Roitaheru was shaking his head at me.
"You were right, Lord," I said in a desperate attempt at making light of the whole thing. "The slope is treacherous."
"If I had wanted it that badly," he said grimly, "I would have sent a servant."

The rest of the deer had gotten safely away in the meantime, of course. As a result, we spent what felt like hours sneaking through the mountains at a painfully slow pace, freezing at every sign of the scouts, but we couldn't find them or any of their kind again. Nobody said so, but I knew they were blaming me and my delay. The sun was beginning to sink when the scouts found some wild sheep, at least. They were deftly making their way across a mountain wall that looked too steep to climb, like a consolation prize - or a challenge. Only one of them was directly killed by the arrows of the more ambitious hunter; some others more likely misjudged their steps in their surprise at our attack, and plunged down from the wall, there to die of arrows that caught them before they had recovered their footing. Most got away, but it was no matter; they day was saved, at least to some extent, and there was noisy chatting and the one or other song as we made our way back to the campsite. I trotted behind the others, ashamed and miserable.

While we had been gone, the servants had put up various tents and filled pots and buckets with water from the spring. They had also already retrieved and prepared the deer, but I joined them as they took the sheep some way away from the camp for further processing. It was clear that we wouldn't be able to use so much meat in one evening, so I was interested in how they would preserve the surplus. Flies were buzzing around us, and although the night would doubtlessly be cold, it was still too warm to store meat without taking precautions. Perhaps, I thought, it would be relevant to my work. I also felt that I had to serve some kind of purpose, to justify my presence. An additional pair of hands surely wouldn't hurt, even though they had to tell me what to do at first (and seemed reluctant about it).

So I spent the first part of the evening gutting and draining sheep under the watchful eyes of the Umbarian servants. I probably needed twice as long as they did, and of course the process had nothing whatsoever to do with the methods we used in embalming, but I felt a little better afterwards: at least I had done something useful. My hands were smeared to the elbow with blood, however, and Lord Roitaheru duly ordered me to bathe when I returned to the camp with the servants. I thought he was joking, but they had actually prepared a bathtub in one of the tents. Halfway through my soak, a guard came in to take a look at my legs and leave some healing unguents at my disposal. Apparently Lord Roitaheru was worried that I had hurt myself. He wasn't wrong - there was plenty of bruising and the occasional graze - but it was nothing serious, so I was almost amused. At least, I thought, he seemed to be more worried than angry, or else he would have let me suffer in silence.

I was told that I would share a tent (a different one) with Lord Laurilyo. Looking inside, I found two camp beds with sheepskins and blankets on them, and even a woven carpet on the ground between them. Grandfather, in his tales from the war, had spoken about sleeping on the bare ground with nothing but a bedroll and his cloak. Clearly, I would be more comfortable this night, although my resolution to stear clear of Lord Laurilyo was again being tested. (As it happened, he was perfectly friendly and reasonable and tried - as far as I could tell - to put my mind at ease; he expressed concern for my bruises, and even declared that he wasn't much of a hunter himself, and only came along for the company.)
When darkness had fallen, we feasted on roast deer while the servants fried the offal and boiled the sheeps' blood and the lesser cuts so they wouldn't spoil until tomorrow. The lords and Captain Gohenor were rehashing the day's events by the fire, and I was relieved that my misadventure had already begun to turn into one of those funny hunting stories that nobles seem to love. "There he went - crashing down the ravine - as though his life depended on that one deer!" Laughter all around. I forced a smile and I tried to convince myself that I hadn't ruined their hunting trip through my ignorance after all.

Still, when Lord Roitaheru summoned me a day after we had returned, I was fully expecting a reprimand. Instead, he suggested to go for a walk. We went to the palace garden - a huge enclosed space between the buildings with some kind of secret water supply, as verdant and lush as you could wish - and walked on the trimmed lawn. The air was heavy with humidity, the buzzing of bees and the scents of ripening dates and roses with enormous blossoms. I had not been to the garden before, so it could have been a pleasant place to explore, if I hadn't been so worried about the purpose of this walk.
I was just beginning to chew on my lips when Lord Roitaheru finally spoke. "So. Tell me. What are you so afraid of?"
The question was unexpected, and I wasn't certain what he was getting at, so I tried to deflect it. "Where should I begin, my lord?"
He clapped a heavy hand on my shoulder, and I shrank a little more. "That's exactly what I mean. You walk like a man afraid of everything. Look at how you tuck your head between your shoulders! Your entire body is screaming 'Don't hurt me'."
Guiltily, I tried to straighten my back. "Well, to be honest, Lord, I don't want to be hurt."
He gave a sort of half-grunt at that. "Obviously! But the thing is, Azruhâr, you're not just telling people that you don't want to be hurt. At the same time, you're telling them that you can be hurt with impunity, and that's not the message you want to send, is it?"
"I haven't considered it like that, my lord," I confessed. I wondered whether I would've taken fewer beatings in the past if I had been less humble. I doubted it. I'd been punished often enough for displaying anything remotely like pride or for forgetting my place.

But before I could explain that, Lord Roitaheru was talking again. "Well, clearly you haven't, but I assure you that you should! Right now, you're among friends. But once you start working out there, you'll meet all kinds of people. Including people who will take your plea to not be hurt as an invitation to hurt you, and we can't have that."
I stopped biting my lip for long enough to say, "I am touched by your concern, my lord --"
"Don't be touched. Be unafraid!" I nearly laughed at the impossibility of his command, and perhaps he noticed, because he amended, "Or at the least, stop showing that you're afraid. Confidence, Azruhâr!" He stopped, facing me directly. "Look here. It doesn't matter what you were back in Númenor. Here, you are Númenor. You, like the rest of the community, represent our grand island nation-" he was sounding as if he was quoting something - "and as such, it's your duty to represent it rightly. Númenor is not afraid! Númenor doesn't beg others not to hurt it; others fear to be hurt! That's what you need to keep in mind. You need to project confidence. You have the power and authority of Númenor behind you, and people need to see that when they see you. Instead, they will see fear. Fear and doubt. We can't have that."

I was trying to follow his line of thought. Was he telling me that I wouldn't be able to stay here, since I was afraid? Much though I had hated to come here, it was clear that I couldn't return home, either. I wasn't even certain that I was safe here - out of sight wasn't necessarily out of mind, after all, although Lord Atanacalmo seemed to think that it would suffice - but clearly, it was safer than Yôzayân. If Lord Roitaheru cast me out, then where could I go?
In spite of the impulse to curl up small and start crying, I forced myself to stand more upright and raise my head. "I'm sure I can learn to hide my fear, Lord. I just have to ask you for a little time. You are right; I am afraid of everything. I'll try not to be, if that is needed, but old habits die hard." I felt my lips twitch into an awkward, pleading smile. "Surely I alone will not do too much harm to the reputation of Yôzayân? The rest of you have power and authority enough for two or three men, I am sure."

Lord Roitaheru laughed, briefly, but then he sobered. "It's not so much about your everyday business," he said, "it's about rumour." He began pacing again, putting an arm over my shoulders to march me forward with him. "You may not be familiar with the history of this place, so I'll explain something to you. In the past, Umbar and its adjacent settlements have regularly been raided by bands from beyond the mountains - and worse. A century ago, we went to war and dealt them a crippling blow and fortified Umbar against future attacks. We gained a reputation for invincibility in those campaigns, and it has served us well! It doesn't hurt that our people live longer and are stronger than the locals, of course. Nobody risks fighting against an opponent who is so obviously superior! That has maintained the peace and safety of Umbar for over a hundred years. We cannot have a single one of us allowing people to suspect that perhaps Númenor is not as all-powerful as they've been told. Who knows what rumours will reach the remnants of those war-bands? Who knows what they will encourage? We would vanquish them again if they were to attack again, but at what price?"

I pondered that. The politics eluded me, so all I could think of saying was, "I knew about the war, actually. My grandfather served in it."
"Did he? Then maybe I knew him! What was his name?"
"Hârukhil, Lord." I was fairly certain that Grandfather had been well beneath Lord Roitaheru's notice, and indeed, he said, "Can't say I remember anyone of that name. But he'll be in the records! I'll look him up later on. Then we'll know what division he was in and what he did, eh?" Lord Roitaheru had brightened significantly. "You know what, that gives me an idea how we can break that unfortunate habit of yours."
I didn't like the sound of that at all. Unfortunate or not, I did not want anything about me to be broken. I'd had quite enough of that. Lord Roitaheru went on, "You can train with the guards for a while. That'll help you build muscle, improve your posture, and give you the confidence that you're lacking, too. I shall speak with Gohenor this very evening - then you can begin your training tomorrow!"

That wasn't as bad as what I'd feared, but it was still intimidating - and undesirable. "My lord, I don't think I'm cut out to be a soldier."
"No need to worry, you don't have to become one. You've got your embalming to do, after all. But some basic training will be exactly the right thing just now, I think!"
"Won't the other recruits see that I'm not invincible, though?"
Lord Roitaheru laughed at that. "They will, but they're all men of Númenor themselves! I'm talking about the palace guard, Azruhâr, not Lotherín's band of Umbarians, of course. No danger in showing weakness in front of them. They've all been there." He was clapping my shoulder in delight. "Yes, I like this very much!"
I had to fight for balance. I'm sure he hadn't intended to hurt me, but he had a powerful grip and a hard hand, and my instinct was to shrink under its pressure. I was glad that he was so enthusiastic, but at the same time, I was afraid what would happen if I couldn't live up to his grand expectations.
"I must warn you that I am not at all warlike," I said cautiously, "and moreover not very strong."

He simply laughed at me. "I would have believed that when you arrived, but after I've seen you climb down and up that ravine? With a damned deer on your back? How many men do you think would've done that, without help - and without complaint? It was completely irresponsible and stupid as well, of course, but at the same time, it was an impressive display of strength. No need to pretend, young man. You're either stronger than you admit, or you've got tenacity enough to make up for it. Either way, you should be fine."
"Captain Gohenor won't like it," I made a final attempt.
"Well, that's his problem," Lord Roitaheru said dryly, as if that wouldn't make it my problem as well. "You'll just have to show him that he's wrong." He was glancing at me sideways, almost mischievously. "Atanacalmo wrote that you're desperate to prove yourself. So it'll be a good challenge for you. Prove yourself. Impress Gohenor. Learn to fight. And above all, stand upright and hold your head up, damn it."
And so, whether or not Captain Gohenor - or I, for that matter - liked it, I was assigned to start training with the recruits of the palace guard.