‘Well done,’ Shahin said. ‘You’re a fast learner.’ He turned to Martin. ‘If you and the boy can get a dozen of the king’s eagles caged by noon, I’ll take you on as assistant handlers.’
Martin glanced at Javeed. ‘We’d better get to work then.’
The empty cages were stacked nearby. Armed with a pail of rabbit meat and Martin’s imitation of Shahin’s whistling, they strode through the cypress grove, trying to lure the birds down, taking turns to offer their clenched fists as perches. Martin knew that the game wouldn’t make their task impossible – no matter what the real outcome would have been if two inexperienced strangers had sought to round up someone else’s hunting birds! – but nor did it give them an entirely easy ride. The first two birds came to them without much trouble, but the third one they spotted ignored Martin’s whistling for three or four minutes, only to swoop down unexpectedly, knock over the meat pail and return to the trees with an unearned treat in its beak.
Javeed was undeterred; in less than a minute he’d located another bird, and this one turned out to be better behaved. When it landed on Martin’s fist it stared into his face, blinking and examining him curiously. Martin doubted that anyone had side-loaded a golden eagle, so its behaviour could only be surface-deep, but he couldn’t help feeling a degree of affinity for the creature. He was on his way from the biological sphere to the digital, and in his new home this counted as native life.
When the twelve cages were full, Shahin approached them with three burly helpers. ‘Good work! Now we need to get these quickly to the king’s pavilion. He’s determined to set out while the sun is high.’
Each of them carried two cages through the grove. Javeed gripped his pair by wrapping his hands around the bars at the side; the cages were too tall for him to lift them from above. Martin doubted that anyone, let alone a six-year-old, could have borne the torque on their wrists that would have come from trying to carry the cages this way, but Javeed was smart enough not to mistake a game in Zendegi for a lesson in correct load-handling techniques.
Shahin led the way to a grassy field where Kavus’s ‘pavilion’ stood waiting. Its base was a circular platform some fifteen metres wide, constructed from a lattice of woven fibres similar to those used to make the bird cages. In the centre was the royal tent; the fabric of its walls was lavishly embroidered in gold and violet, and the open flap revealed a plushly cushioned and similarly decorated throne.
Spaced around the platform, just in from the rim, were dozens of identical wooden rods, all vertical, standing about two metres tall. Near the base of each rod a length of rope lay coiled on the platform.
Martin and Javeed had not been the only ones busy in the grove; Shahin and the others had already gathered at least thirty eagles, and their cages stood on the ground to one side of the pavilion. Martin started laughing; he couldn’t help himself. A part of him simply couldn’t believe that Kavus’s deranged scheme would succeed for one second, even in Zendegi.
Javeed was annoyed. ‘Don’t, Baba!’ he whispered. ‘You’ll make everyone cross with us.’
Martin said, ‘Sorry. You’re right.’ He glanced at the young man behind him, whose face was glistening with sweat, as if he really did feel the weight of the birds he was carrying. The man remained silent, but frowned slightly, in a manner that seemed to advise caution more than it expressed disapproval. Kavus was not a popular ruler, but the throne itself still commanded respect; only the most experienced generals and learned sages were entitled to question the king’s plans, and then only with the utmost tact and diplomacy. A commoner giggling derisively was beyond the pale, and Martin wasn’t interested in spending the next hour rotting in a dungeon.
They deposited the cages near the others; some of the newly arrived birds fluttered their wings and rose briefly from their perches, as if to protest their treatment. Martin caught himself wondering what they were ‘used to’ – how often they hunted with Shahin and the king, how often they were caged – as if such questions had answers.
Shahin addressed his workers. ‘We’ve brought forty-eight of the king’s finest eagles, as he commanded. Now watch me carefully; this is what you must do next.’
Shahin squatted down and opened one of the cages, reached in and touched the foot of the hooded bird with his leather-clad fist. It moved obligingly onto his hand and let him carry it slowly out of the cage. He walked over to the rim of the pavilion and squatted again to bring the bird close to the ground, then with his other hand he lifted up the rope that was lying coiled near one of the rods. Four strands of rope were anchored to the platform, and between those fixed ends it had been knotted and woven into an elaborate harness. Shahin slipped the harness over the bird, stroking it behind the head to calm it. Then he lowered and tilted his hand, encouraging the bird to step off. The bird took a few steps across the surface, then felt the harness grow taut. It fluttered its wings a few times, irritated by this strange new impediment, then became still, resigned to the vagaries of its fate.
Shahin turned to face them. ‘Don’t stand there idly; follow my example. The king will be here soon!’
Javeed threw himself into the task and Martin left him to it, working separately in order to get the job done quickly but staying close by. Javeed had already grown confident with the birds, in spite of their daunting size, and every time Martin glanced at him he looked focused and assured. Did it matter that real falconry took years of training and that these birds were following a script that simply forbade them from turning feral and scratching someone’s face off? Javeed wasn’t doing any of this in order to go hunting with tribesmen in Kyrgyzstan. The game-tasks still took patience and persistence and, even weightless, the birds demanded fine motor control from their handlers to stop them getting skittish. Martin resolved to stop fretting; Javeed wasn’t in danger of forgetting the stubbornness of flesh-and-blood creatures, the sharpness of real talons, the recalcitrance of the animate world. He shouldn’t start confusing Javeed’s situation with the Proxy’s; it was not his son who would soon be confined to Zendegi.
Shahin and his helpers worked faster than the newcomers; their ‘experience’ made that plausible enough, though it occurred to Martin that at another level it was down to the fact that the birds didn’t need to waste time trying to bluff these non-humans into taking them seriously. In any case, their speed was welcome; Martin had tethered just five birds – three less than an equal share – when Shahin called out to everyone to move aside. The birds were all in place, and the king was approaching.
The royal party arrived on horseback, with the king accompanied by flag-bearers, guards and courtiers. Kavus himself wore a jewelled crown and carried a mace encrusted with rubies; Martin suffered a momentary Liberace flashback.
The riff-raff stayed clear as the king inspected the pavilion and its tethered birds; three advisers walked behind him, offering obsequious praise after every royal remark.
‘I see that the clouds betray a favourable motion of the air,’ Kavus opined. ‘What could be more auspicious?’
‘Lord of the World, your wisdom is greater than that of all your ancestors combined.’
Though lines like that weren’t too far from Ferdowsi, everyone was hamming it up; Martin saw that Javeed was smiling in disbelief at these pompous gits, notwithstanding his earlier dousing of Martin’s own display of disrespect.
‘Would you trust this man to design an aircraft?’ Martin whispered.
‘No way.’
Martin patted his empty money-belt. ‘And I forgot to buy us parachutes.’