6. One Way into Orgoreyn

The cook, who was always at the house very early, woke me up; I sleep sound, and he had to shake me and say in my ear, "Wake up, wake up, Lord Estraven, there's a runner come from the King's House!" At last I understood him, and confused by sleep and urgency got up in haste and went to the door of my room, where the messenger waited, and so I entered stark naked and stupid as a newborn child into my exile.

Reading the paper the runner gave me I said in my mind that I had looked for this, though not so soon. But when I must watch the man nail that damned paper on the door of the house, then I felt as if he might as well be driving the nails into my eyes, and I turned from him and stood blank and bereft, undone with pain, which I had not looked for.

That fit past, I saw to what must be done, and by Ninth Hour striking on the gongs was gone from the Palace. There was nothing to keep me long. I took what I could take. As for properties and banked monies, I could not raise cash from them without endangering the men I dealt with, and the better friends they were to me the worse their danger. I wrote to my old kemmering Ashe how he might get the profit of certain valuable things to keep for our sons' use, but told him not to try to send me money, for Tibe would have the border watched. I could not sign the letter. To call anyone by telephone would be to send them to jail, and I hurried to be gone before some friend should come in innocence to see me, and lose his money and his freedom as a reward for his friendship.

I set off west through the city. I stopped at a street-crossing and thought, Why should I not go east, across the mountains and the plains back to Kerm Land, a poor man afoot, and so come home to Estre where I was born, that stone house on a bitter mountainside: why not go home? Three times or four I stopped thus and looked back. Each time I saw among the indifferent street-faces one that might be the spy sent to see me out of Erhenrang, and each time I thought of the folly of trying to go home. As well kill myself. I was born to live in exile, it appeared, and my one way home was by way of dying. So I went on westward and turned back no more.

The three days' grace I had would see me, given no mishap, at farthest to Kuseben on the Gulf, eighty-five miles. Most exiles have had a night's warning of the Order of their Exile and so a chance to take passage on a ship down the Sess before the shipmasters are liable to punishment for giving aid. Such courtesy was not in Tibe's vein. No shipmaster would dare take me now; they all knew me at the Port, I having built it for Argaven. No landboat would let me ride, and to the land border from Erhenrang is four hundred miles. I had no choice but Kuseben afoot.

The cook had seen that. I had sent him off at once, but leaving, he had set out all the ready food he could find done up in a packet as fuel for my three days' run. That kindness saved me, and also saved my courage, for whenever on the road I ate of that fruit and bread I thought, "There's one man thinks me no traitor; for he gave me this."

It is hard, I found, to be called traitor. Strange how hard it is, for it's an easy name to call another man; a name that sticks, that fits, that convinces. I was half convinced myself.

I came to Kuseben at dusk of the third day, anxious and footsore, for these last years in Erhenrang I had gone all to grease and luxury and had lost my wind for walking; and there waiting for me at the gate of the little town was Ashe.

Seven years we were kemmerings, and had two sons. Being of his flesh born they had his name Foreth rem ir Osboth, and were reared in that Clanhearth. Three years ago he had gone to Orgny Fastness and he wore now the gold chain of a Celibate of the Foretellers. We had not seen each other those three years, yet seeing his face in the twilight under the arch of stone I felt the old habit of our love as if it had been broken yesterday, and knew the faithfulness in him that had sent him to share my ruin. And feeling that unavailing bond close on me anew, I was angry; for Ashe's love had always forced me to act against my heart.

I went on past him. If I must be cruel no need to hide it, pretending kindness. "Therem," he called after me, and followed. I went fast down the steep streets of Kuseben towards the wharves. A south wind was blowing up from the sea, rustling the black trees of the gardens, and through that warm stormy summer dusk I hastened from him as from a murderer. He caught up with me, for I was too footsore to keep up my pace. He said, "Therem, I'll go with you."

I made no answer.

"Ten years ago in this month of Tuwa we took oath—"

"And three years ago you broke it, leaving me, which was a wise choice."

"I never broke the vow we swore, Therem."

"True. There was none to break. It was a false vow, a second vow. You know it; you knew it then. The only true vow of faithfulness I ever swore was not spoken, nor could it be spoken, and the man I swore it to is dead and the promise broken, long ago. You owe me nothing, nor I you. Let me go."

As I spoke my anger and bitterness turned from Ashe against myself and my own life, which lay behind me like a broken promise. But Ashe did not know this, and the tears stood in his eyes. He said, "Will you take this, Therem? I owe you nothing, but I love you well." He held a little packet out to me.

"No. I have money, Ashe. Let me go. I must go alone." I went on, and he did not follow me. But my brother's shadow followed me. I had done ill to speak of him. I had done ill in all things.

I found no luck waiting for me at the harbor. No ship from Orgoreyn lay in port that I might board and so be off Karhide's ground by midnight, as I was bound to be. Few men were on the wharves and those few all hurrying homeward; the one I found to speak to, a fisherman mending the engine of his boat, looked once at me and turned his back unspeaking. At that I was afraid. The man knew me; he would not have known unwarned. Tibe had sent his hirelings to forestall me and keep me in Karhide till my time ran out. I had been busy with pain and rage, but not with fear, till now; I had not thought that the Order of Exile might be mere pretext for my execution. Once Sixth Hour struck I was fair game for Tibe's men, and none could cry Murder, but only Justice done.

I sat down on a ballast-sack of sand there in the windy glare and darkness of the port. The sea slapped and sucked at the pilings, and fishing-boats jogged at their moorings, and out at the end of the long pier burned a lamp. I sat and stared at the light and past it at darkness over the sea. Some rise to present danger, not I. My gift is forethought. Threatened closely I grow stupid, and sit on a bag of sand wondering if a man could swim to Orgoreyn. The ice has been out of Charisune Gulf for a month or two, one might stay alive a while in the water. It is a hundred and fifty miles to the Orgota shore. I do not know how to swim. When I looked away from the sea and back up the streets of Kuseben I found myself looking for Ashe in hopes he still was following me. Having come to that, shame pushed me out of stupor, and I was able to think.

Bribery or violence was my choice if I dealt with that fisherman still at work in his boat in the inner dock: a faulty engine seemed not worth either. Theft, then. But the engines of fishing craft are locked. To bypass the locked circuit, start the engine, steer the boat out of dock under the pier-lamps and so off to Orgoreyn, having never run a motorboat, seemed a silly desperate venture. I had not run a boat but rowed one on Icefoot Lake in Kerm; and there was a rowboat tied up in the outer dock between two launches. No sooner seen than stolen. I ran out the pier under the staring lamps, hopped into the boat, untied the painter, shipped the oars and rowed out onto the swelling harbor-water where the lights slipped and dazzled on black waves. When I was pretty well away I stopped rowing to reset the thole of one oar, for it was not working smoothly and I had, though I hoped to be picked up next day by an Orgota patrol Or fisherman, a good bit of rowing to do. As I bent to the oarlock a weakness ran all through my body. I thought I would faint, and crouched back in a heap on the thwart. It was the sickness of cowardice overcoming me. But I had not known my cowardice lay so heavy in my belly. I lifted my eyes and saw two figures on the pier's end like two jumping black twigs in the distant electric glare across the water, and then I began to think that my paralysis was not an effect of terror, but of a gun at extreme range.