The Scar (2 page)

But most of all, Kavarren was proud of its elite force, the regiment of guards. As soon as a son was born into one of the esteemed families, his father would immediately strive for the rosy-cheeked babe’s enrollment in these glorious military ranks. Not a single holiday passed by without a military parade to show off the prowess of this regiment; on the days without a parade, the streets of this peaceful city were constantly patrolled, the pubs prospered, and although mothers constantly and severely appealed to their daughters to be prudent, duels occurred occasionally. These duels were long discussed by the town gossips with both satisfaction and pleasure.

However, the guards were renowned not only for their debaucheries and adventures. The regiment’s history was full of victories during the internecine wars that had broken out entirely too often in the past. The present-day guards, the descendants of the famous warriors of old, frequently displayed their military skill in skirmishes with the wicked, well-armed bands of highwaymen who occasionally flooded the surrounding forests. All the respectable men of the city spent their youths in the saddle with a weapon in hand.

However, the most terrible event in the history of the city was by no means some war or siege, but the Black Plague, which appeared in Kavarren many decades ago and in the course of three days cut the number of townspeople nearly in two. Walls and fortifications and sharp steel proved powerless against the Plague. The old men of Kavarren, who lived through the Plague in their childhoods, enjoyed recounting the terrible story to their grandsons; however, the young men were quite capable of ignoring all these horrors, possessing that happy talent of youth that allows admonitions heard but a moment ago with their right ears to instantly fly out their left.

Egert Soll was the flesh of the flesh of his native Kavarren; he was a true son and embodiment of its heroism. If he had died suddenly at the age of twenty and a half years, he would have been lauded as the very spirit of Kavarren; it must be said, however, that in his attractive, blond head there were absolutely no thoughts of death.

If anything, Egert did not believe in death: this from the man who managed to kill two men in duels! Both incidents were discussed widely, but inasmuch as they were both questions of honor and all the rules of dueling had been strictly adhered to, the townspeople soon began to talk of Egert with respect, rather than with any sort of condemnation. Tales of Egert’s other victories, in which his opponents escaped with mere wounds or mutilation, simply served as textbook examples for the city’s young boys and adolescents.

However, as time went on, Egert fought fewer and fewer duels, not because his combative vehemence had been exhausted, but because there were fewer volunteers willing to throw themselves on his family sword. Egert was a devoted student of swordplay; the blade became his sole plaything at the age of thirteen when his father ceremoniously presented him with the family heirloom in lieu of his childhood practice sword.

It is no wonder that Egert had very few to balance out his abundance of friends. Friends met with him in every tavern, friends followed at his heels in packs and involuntarily became the witnesses and participants in his impetuous amusements.

A worshipper of all kinds of danger, he recognized the distinctive charm of dancing on the razor’s edge. Once, on a dare, he scaled the exterior wall of the fire tower, the highest building in the city, and rang the bell three times, inducing by this action a fair bit of alarm among the townsfolk. Lieutenant Dron, who had entered into this bet with Egert, was required to kiss the first woman he encountered, and that woman turned out to be an old spinster, the aunt of the mayor—oh, what a scandal!

Another time, a guard by the name of Lagan had to pay up; he lost a bet when Egert, in full view of everyone, saddled a hefty, reddish brown bull, which was furious but completely stupefied at such impudence. Clenching a horse bridle in his teeth, Lagan hauled Egert on his shoulders from the city gates to his own house.

But mostly the cost of these larks fell to Karver.

They had been inseparable since childhood. Karver clung to Egert and loved him like a brother. Not especially handsome but not hideous, not especially strong but not a weakling; Karver always lost in comparison with Egert and yet at the same time basked in the reflection of his glory. From an early age, he conscientiously worked for the right to be called the friend of such a prominent young man, enduring at times both humiliations and mockery.

He wanted to be just like Egert; he wanted it so fervently that slowly, imperceptibly even to himself, he began to take on his friend’s habits, his mannerisms, his swagger, even his voice. He learned to swim and walk on ropes, and Heaven only knows what that cost him. He learned to laugh aloud at his own spills into muddy puddles; he did not cry when blows, accurately thrown by a young Egert, left bruises on his shoulders and knees. His magnificent friend valued his dedication and loved Karver in his own way; this, however, did not keep him from forgetting about the existence of his friend if he did not see him with his own eyes even for a day. Once, when he was fourteen years old, Karver decided to test his friend: He said he was ill, and did not show his face among his comrades for an entire week. He sat at home, reverently waiting for Egert to remember him, which of course Egert did not: he was distracted by numerous amusements, games, and outings. Egert did not know, of course, that Karver sat silently by his window for all seven days of his voluntary seclusion nor that, despising himself, he once broke out into hot, spiteful, angry tears. Suffering from solitude, Karver vowed he would break with Egert forever, but then he broke down and went to see him, and he was met with such sincere joy that he immediately forgot the insult.

Little changed as they grew up. Timid Karver’s love affairs all fell apart, usually when Egert instructed him in the ways of love by leading girls whom Karver found attractive away from him right under his nose. Karver sighed and forgave, regarding his own humiliation as a sacrifice for friendship.

Egert was wont to require the same daring of those around him as he himself possessed, and he did his best to mock those who fell short of his expectations. He was especially unforgiving to Karver; once in late autumn, when the river Kava, which skirted the town, froze over for the first time, Egert proposed a contest to see who could run over it, from bank to bank, the quickest. All his friends quickly pretended to have important business to attend to, sicknesses and infirmities, but Karver, who showed up as he usually did just to be at hand, received such a contemptuous sneer and such a scathing, vile rebuke that he flushed from his ears to his heels. Within an inch of crying, he consented to Egert’s suggestion.

Of course, Egert, who was taller and heavier, easily skimmed across the slick ice to the opposite bank as the fish in the gloomy depths gaped at him in astonishment. Of course, Karver got scared at the crucial moment and froze, intending to go back, and with a cry he dropped into a newly made, gleaming black opening in the ice, magnanimously affording Egert the chance to save him and by that act earn himself yet more laurels.

Interestingly enough, he was sincerely grateful to Egert for dragging him out of the icy water.

Mothers of grown daughters winced at the name of Egert Soll; fathers of adolescent sons put him up as an example for the youths. Cuckolds scowled darkly upon meeting Egert in the street, and yet for all that, they hailed him politely. The mayor forgave him his intrigues and debauches and ignored any complaints lodged against Egert because an event that had occurred during the boar-fighting season still lived in his memory.

Egert’s father, like many in Kavarren, raised fighting boars. This was considered a sophisticated and honorable art. The black boars from the House of Soll were exceptionally savage and bloodthirsty; only the dark red, brindled boars from the House of the mayor were able to rival them in competition. There was never a contest but that in the finale these eternal rivals would meet, and the victory in these battles fluctuated between the two Houses, until one fine summer day, the champion of the mayor, a crimson, brindled specimen called Ryk, went wild and charged his way through the tilting yard.

Having gutted his adversary, a black beauty by the name of Khars, the maddened boar dashed into the grandstand. His own brindled comrade, who happened to be in his path and who gave way with his belly completely shredded to pieces, delayed the lunatic boar for a short moment, but the mayor, who by tradition was sitting in the first row, only had time to let out a heartrending scream and, scooping up his wife, jump to his feet on the velvet-covered stand.

No one knows how this bloody drama might have ended; many of those who came that day to feast their eyes upon the contests, the mayor and his wife among them, may have met the same sad fate as the handsome Khars, for Ryk, nurtured in ferocity from his days as a piglet, had apparently decided that his day had finally come. The wretch was mistaken: this was not his day, but Egert Soll’s, who appeared in the middle of the action before the public in the back rows even understood what was happening.

Egert bellowed insults, most offensive to a boar, at Ryk while a blindingly bright piece of fabric, which later turned out to be the wrap that covered the naked shoulders of one of the more extravagant ladies in town, whirled without ceasing in his left hand. Ryk hesitated for all of a second, but this second was sufficient for the fearless Egert, who having jumped within a hairsbreadth of the boar, thrust his dagger, won on a bet, beneath the shoulder blade of the crimson-colored lunatic.

The stunned mayor presented the most generous of all possible gifts to the House of Soll: all the dark-red, brindled boars contained within his enclosures were instantly roasted and eaten, though it is true that their meat turned out to be tough and sinewy. Egert sat at the head of the table while his father swallowed tears of affection and pride; now the ebony beauties of the Solls would have no equal in town. The elder Soll felt that his impending old age promised to be peaceful and comfortable, for there was no doubt that his son was the best of all the sons of the city.

Egert’s mother was not at that feast. She often kept to her bed and did not enjoy noisy crowds of people. At one time, she had been a strong and healthy woman; she had taken to her bed soon after Egert killed his first opponent in a duel. It sometimes occurred to Egert that his mother avoided him and that she was nearly afraid of him. However, he always managed to drive away such strange or unpleasant thoughts.

*   *   *

One clear, sunny day—actually, it was the first real spring day of the year—an agreeable new acquaintance befell the merchant Vapa, who was strolling along the embankment with his young wife near at hand.

This new acquaintance, who seemed to Vapa such an exceedingly distinguished young man, was, curiously enough, Lord Karver Ott. What was remarkable about this meeting was that the young guard was promenading in the company of his sister, a girl of uncommon proportions with a high, magnificent bust and humbly lowered gray blue eyes.

The girl was named Bertina. As a foursome—Karver alongside Vapa and Bertina next to the beautiful Senia, the young wife of the merchant—they nonchalantly sauntered back and forth along the embankment.

Vapa was astonished and simultaneously moved; it was the first time one of these “cursed aristocrats” had shown him such warm regard. Senia stole a passing glance at Karver’s youthful face and then immediately lowered her eyes, as though fearful of what the punishment might be for even a single forbidden glance.

They passed by a group of guards, picturesquely stationed along a parapet. Casting a wary glance at them, Senia discovered that the young men were not chatting away as they usually did. Instead, they all stood with their backs facing the embankment and their hands held to their mouths; from time to time they trembled strangely, as if they were all suddenly stricken by one and the same ailment.

“What’s wrong with them?” she wondered to Bertina.

But Bertina merely shook her head sorrowfully and shrugged her shoulders.

Anxiously shifting his gaze from the guards to his sister and then from his sister to Senia, Karver spoke suddenly in a lowered voice. “Ah, believe me, there is such a strong tradition of debauchery in this city! Bertina is an innocent girl; it is so hard to choose friends for her when one is wary of all the pernicious influences. Oh, how good it would be if Bertina could become friends with Mistress Senia.”

With these last words, a sigh slipped out of him.

The foursome turned and began to walk on the opposite side of the embankment; the guards on the parapet were now fewer, but those who remained stubbornly watched the river: all but one who was sitting squarely on the cobblestone pavement and having some sort of fit.

“They’re drunk, as usual,” Karver noted in condemnation. The one who was sitting raised his clouded eyes and then doubled over, unable to control the laughter that pulled at his chest.

*   *   *

On the following day, Karver and his sister called upon Vapa. Bertina confessed to Senia that she did not know a thing about embroidering silk.

On the third day, Senia, who was intolerably bored from whiling away her days in solitude, asked her husband to allow her to meet with Bertina more often: this would undoubtedly amuse them both, and furthermore Karver’s sister had asked Senia to give her lessons in embroidery.

On the fourth day, Bertina presented herself. She was guarded by her faithful brother, who was unaccountably sullen, and as soon as he had greeted them and deposited his sister, he bowed his apologies and left. The merchant sat down to go over his accounts while Senia led her guest upstairs to her own rooms.

A canary chirped in an ornamental cage. Needles and delicate linen were extracted from a basket. Bertina’s fingers, far too stiff and coarse, refused to comply with the task, but the girl seemed to be trying her best.