The Sound of His Horn (8 page)

Von Eichbrunn and I retired to the back of the butt, where he was greeted in whispers by the other foresters. There, on a broad divan of turf, surrounded by comforting flasks and capacious ice-containers, under a tent of green leaves, the Doctor reclined at ease and I had leisure to observe what was going on.

The guest had had some sport already, for a fallow-buck, newly gralloched, hung from the bough of a birch tree. He had evidently had more practise than game, for I could see three or four empty cartridge cases lying on the turf behind him. His companions were getting their share, also; for at short intervals we heard the brief baying of a hound and shots at varying distances from us beyond the long thicket that bounded our view across the valley.

Our own man seemed to be getting bored. He took out a cigar case and was about to light up when the forester in charge made a sign. The guest's loader handed him his gun and respectfully turned him in the right direction. The boy next to me nudged me and, rising, showed me where I could look over the bank and have a fair view down the glade. A couple of hounds were giving tongue, hunting in our direction; then a red-deer stag came into sight, running easily up the valley. He stopped fifty yards from the butt, a little suspicious, but after snuffing and shaking his head, came on again at a trot, passing at a range of twenty yards from our earthwork. He had been driven neither hard nor far, and he looked quite tame to me--so trusting I would have instinctively lowered my gun had I been shooting. Our guest, however, blazed away. The stag had passed out of my line of vision then and I did not see the effect of the three or four shots our man fired, but, while the other youths leaped out of the butt, I saw the forester in charge retire behind a tree and furtively rewind his crossbow. He then gravely congratulated the guest, and while the boys brought in the stag, he stepped over to von Eichbrunn and chatted.

"Das ist der Letzte,"
I heard him say.
"Jetzt haben wir nur noch the Voegel, dann wollen wir sehen ob's was zu essen gibt."

While some of them disemboweled and hung up the stag, two of the lads busied themselves with iced drink and sandwiches for the guest, who, weary of his exiguous shooting-stool, sank gratefully onto the cool, soft turf of the broad bench at the back of the butt. The lads flattered him outrageously, but, though he replied with a loud geniality and affected heartiness, it was plain that he had not particularly enjoyed his morning. He cheered up and began to show much more interest, however, when the head-boy, taking up and demonstrating to him the curious large-bore gun, began to explain the next part of the programme to him. I could not catch what was being said then, for I had moved aside, not wishing to attract the guest's notice, and was, in any case, more interested in some extraordinary new arrivals in our butt.

They had come quietly out of the bushes behind us and taken up a position on top of the earthwork, concealed by the bushy screen, yet able to watch the glade through the openings in the leaves. They were a young forester carrying a little whip and holding in leash two large creatures which, at first sight of their heads and fore-parts, I took for baboons. But when he allowed them to rise and stretch themselves, I saw that they were boys. Their heads were wholly encased in most life-like masks representing the dog-headed baboon you get in Abyssinia and those parts; the lips were writhed back in a realistic snarl, showing great, strong teeth. A mantle of silky grey hair mingled with golden brown covered their shoulders, backs and breasts and fell nearly to their waists; below that they were stark naked except for the narrow belt round their middles by which the keeper held them in leash. The exposed skin was very brown, but whether from the sun or by natural colouring, I could not guess.

The stout sportsman noticed them and gave a loud grunt of surprise. The keeper leapt down into the butt with them, and slipping them from the leash, set them capering about the space with a few flicks of his whip. They gambolled and postured on all fours and erect, imitating, to the guest's vast amusement, all the less delicate habits and gestures of their originals, and refining on some of the tricks with an ingenuity that put their membership of the human species beyond doubt. The guest guffawed and wobbled with joy, until at a word from the forester in charge, their keeper ordered them to come in, which they did at once, squatting and holding up their muzzles. He then handed them a fine strong net, which they swiftly took between them and threw over their shoulders like a rope.

This had scarcely been done when a bugle note sounded from down the valley. The keeper and his baboon-boys jumped up to their station on the earthwork again; the guest was led to his position at the front of the butt, and I slipped to the vacant loop-hole again to watch the glade.

All was very quiet for some time, then I heard dogs in the distance, more volume and a different note this time. Silence again for a space, then a shot, sounding somewhat faint.

One of the young foresters was standing beside me.

"Da schiesst der Gauleiter los,"
he murmured.

I looked up, not knowing what birds they meant by
Voegel
but expecting something like black game or capercailzie. Another faint shot or two followed, and suddenly the dogs sounded much closer to us. They were driving up our ride, and now I recognised the voices of the boar-hounds, the savage brutes that had flown at the bars of their kennel in rage when we looked at them. I still had my eyes on the tree-tops and was listening for the rush of wings, when the forester nudged me and pointed down the glade.

A figure had come into sight, running hard over the shock grass: a human figure, but fantastically decked. It came on, running for dear life, and the unseen hounds clamoured close behind; there was no mistaking their intention to rend and kill now. The figure held my gaze; it was a tall, long-limbed girl, her head and features concealed by a brilliantly coloured beaked mask, which yet allowed her dark hair to stream out behind. To see her racing up the glade was as astounding as if you had seen one of the bird-headed goddesses of Old Egypt suddenly break from carven stillness into panic flight. A gorget of glossy gold and scarlet feathers covered her breasts; down her arms were fastened pinion feathers of chestnut and iridescent green, and from her waist behind swept out long, curving tail-feathers of brown and gold. These adornments and the yellow shoes she had on her feet were her only dress.

There was none of the tameness of the stag about her; she was terrified and she ran with a speed I could scarcely have bettered myself in the days when I was in training. I saw the desperation in the effort she was making as she tore past our butt and I knew she could not keep up that pace for another hundred yards. She passed beyond my line of vision and then I heard our sportsman fire.

Horrified, I was about to jump up on to the earthwork, but the forester, who had already raised himself so that he could see up the glade, exclaimed in a low voice, "Missed! Here comes the other!"

I looked back and saw another 'bird' running up, this one in white feathers, with a high golden crest and a short, up-cocked fan-tail. She was plumper than the first, not making so good a pace and beginning to show distress, but she made a spurt as the cruel clamour of the dogs swelled out anew behind her, and she swerved very near our butt.

I heaved myself up in the instant that the sportsman fired, and saw something that looked like a web of fine, brilliant yellow filaments--something like the tail of a comet--sweep through the air towards her. The girl bounded and screamed; the web seemed to open out, spreading as if it were carried forward by a great number of small projectiles about its rim, as a circular cast-net is spread, in the throwing, by the little lead weights at its edge. The 'bird' whirled about, slapping at her bare flesh as though stung, and, in doing so, entangled her arms in those fine filaments; she staggered and struggled, evidently smarting from the impact of the projectiles; ran on again a few yards, but with difficulty, for the filaments seemed to be viscous and, though so fine, exceedingly strong; they wrapped about her thighs and knees.

Our forester in charge now blew a cheery note on his little silver horn, and the young keeper slipped his baboon-boys. With loud, yelping cries they bounded down from the butt and raced towards the struggling girl. At the new terror she made the most desperate effort to run on and succeeded in breaking the trammelling threads about her legs, but the boys in a few yards were upon her. They threw her and whisked their net about her, subdued her struggles and rolled her tight and helpless in the meshes.

The guest was now helped out of the butt and the foresters prepared to pursue the first 'bird', whom we could see labouring up between the thinly growing trees towards the head of the valley, her reds and golds conspicuous against the cool green. The keeper called up his baboon-boys for the chase, and another handed the guest his gun, but our sportsman had had enough: he was not built to trot after such a runner, spent though she was. He examined his bag, squirming in the tight net, chuckled and snorted, ejaculated his
'fabelhafts!'
and
'Maerchenhafts!'
with tremendous gusto, but made it perfectly plain that all he was now interested in was luncheon. Von Eichbrunn was unhesitatingly of the same mind.

So the keeper and another forester went off to pursue the runner alone, cheering their baboon-boys on very merrily. A party of serfs was whistled up from the thickets to carry both the dead deer and the netted girl between them on poles, and we all trooped off to the Kranichfels pavilion.

My hopes of seeing the Count von Hackelnberg at the luncheon were disappointed. I did not even see the Gauleiter of Gascony and the rest of his party, for von Eichbrunn drew me away to eat with some of the under foresters in a quiet corner of the garden of the pavilion, while the great men made a very loud party of it inside. The young boys looked a little curiously at me and did not try to converse with me, but from their few quiet remarks I understood that the Count had left the conduct of the morning's shoot to his second in command. He had earlier shown his guests, none of whom had visited Hackelnberg before, his bison and his elks, and had then left them to the amusement we had seen in the valley. The Count, I divined, was too jealous of his game, both animal and human, to enjoy seeing it shot by outsiders. As for such attractions as the bird-shooting, a plentiful supply of fine slave-girls from the Slav lands and the Mediterranean gave the Count material for many ingenious variations in venery with which to entertain the Satraps of the Reich, but his choicest game and his most curious inventions were reserved for his private pleasure.

I asked von Eichbrunn what would be done with the live game. He sniggered. "They'll be served up for dinner tonight!
Ach
--alive and kicking, all right! That was a fine plump pigeon our little man got. It will be a sight worth seeing how he deals with her...."

The luncheon was extensive. The young foresters did themselves very well, and our meal, I suspected, was but a summary of the entertainment inside the pavilion. Von Eichbrunn drank champagne until his English became so slurred that I could no longer converse with him reasonably and I resigned myself to losing the afternoon. There was much I should have liked to do and see. I should have liked to examine one of those filament-throwing cartridges and one of the guns that fired them; I should have liked to talk with the organisers of the drive and to have gone over the ground; but neither talking nor walking was possible.

The boys left us before the Gauleiter's party had finished, but the Doctor lay in the shade another half-hour until a lad came to say that a carriage was going down to the Schloss empty and we could ride back in it if we liked. Sleepy and obstinate from the wine, von Eichbrunn insisted on our going back to the hospital to enjoy a siesta, and I had no choice but to comply. There he obliged me to give my parole that I would not go off without him; so, while he turned in to snore off the effects of his luncheon and the heat and the unwonted exercise, I also lay down in my room and waited as patiently as I could until the evening.

It was after dark when he called to me, and he was in a bilious, peevish mood, so that I exerted myself to mollify and humour him, afraid lest he change his mind about going before we reached the Hall. However, much as he complained of his head and his insides, he seemed keen on the idea--anxious, in fact, lest through his oversleeping we might have missed the fun.

The high windows of the Hall were lit with an orange glow when we came out from the labyrinth of the Schloss and crossed the little park before the great building. People were moving about in the gloom in front of the high main doors, and von Eichbrunn led me with much circumspection round one end of the building, where, behind a buttress, we found a narrow doorway admitting us to a spiral staircase.

We climbed a short distance, then followed an extremely narrow passage faintly lit by a filtering of light through little slits from the Hall. This passage brought us to a small hexagonal chamber in one wall of which, about breast-high, was a round window, unglazed and barred, spokewise with delicate stonework. Obeying the Doctor's nudges, I peeped down through this and found that I had an excellent view of the interior of the great Hall, our window being situated in one of the angles, about thirty feet above the floor.

There was no electricity here, but the Hall was well and richly lit. Ten feet or so from the floor a stone cornice ran all round the walls, and on this, at short, regular intervals, stood more than forty figures which I took at first to be identical statues of silver, each holding a shining pole terminating in a cresset filled with steady yellow flames. When I looked more narrowly, however, I saw the figures breathe and stir slightly: they were girls whose bodies were either coated with a silver paint or cased in a skin of material so smooth and so exactly fitted that each living girl perfectly counterfeited a shining sculpted nude. The combined light of all their torches flooded the hall below and threw a mellow glow upwards to touch the salient carved work of the hammer-beam roof and bint at dark intricacies beyond.