Arslan

But he said no more about women. He still knew how to concentrate on the job in hand, and the job in hand was recuperation.

Maybe I’d built him up to legendary proportions myself, as I’d scolded so many other people for doing. Anyhow it seemed unlike him—unworthy of him—to take so long to get well and have such a hard time of it. Maybe, after all, nature hadn’t given him quite the body to match his will. Because he was trying, trying hard, and it must have been quite a blow to him to find out he couldn’t manipulate or coerce his abused flesh back to health.

There were the setbacks, the dreary plateaus after spurts of improvement, the bruises that wouldn’t heal, the wounds that insisted on festering. The chills lost their regularity but not their strength. Blood appeared in his stool; boils developed on his back. Sanjar was exhausted and frantic with impatience. But Hunt’s leg was knitting nicely. Jack Allard brought him a pair of crutches and told him to get up. He practiced for nearly half an hour downstairs before he undertook the climb to Arslan’s room. It would have been hard to say whether Arslan’s recovery went any faster after that, but at least Sanjar felt better. Now there was somebody else on duty who had the proper regard for his father.

I left them to their own devices. I had other things to tend to. There was quite a little backlog of city and county business building up, aside from the matter of Sanjar. As soon as Hunt was really on his feet, and Arslan was making his first dizzy attempts to stand, I called a meeting of the county board. Just as a precaution, somebody would be keeping an eye on my house. That was a private arrangement. If the KCR involved itself officially at all, it would have to be on the other side. But purely as a friendly gesture to me, a few old members were willing to stand watch over Arslan and his young henchmen.

Effectively, now, there were two governments in Kraft County, and I was at the head of both of them. The KCR functioned first as the county’s real police force (Kraftsville had one policeman on the payroll, who supervised what traffic we had and mediated disputes about barking dogs), secondly as a clearinghouse of information and a postal service. The elected government had gotten into the habit of not recognizing the KCR’s existence, which saved a lot of inconvenience for everybody. It worked out, without much special effort, that very few people were directly involed in both. In Arslan’s day, of course, there hadn’t been any elected government, and we had developed our own personnel and our own methods. With the end of Nizam’s repression, a lot more people were suddenly interested in joining the KCR, and over the years we had enlisted a few recruits; but generally we didn’t welcome those who had found reasons not to join as long as death by torture was one of the occupational hazards. And by and large, with a few exceptions, people who enjoyed politicking and drew votes were a different breed from KCR people. So the organizations had stayed separate, and the KCR had stayed quiet, though it wasn’t secret any more. But now there was a very nice harmony. The initiative usually came from the elected government. Questions would be raised before the board, and if it looked like a KCR matter, somebody would say, “I think this kind of thing would be better handled in the private sector,” and the question would be dismissed.

I personally took care of the KCR budget. Even when we had been fighting for our freedom, our country, and our self-respect, there had been expenses, and now that the thrills and the virtue were mostly gone, people wanted wages. It hadn’t seemed right, or smart, either, to make the KCR over into a paid Mafia. Instead, we had made it over into a mutual-assistance cooperative. Members were paid on the basis of their services and their needs—paid, in kind or in labor, by other members. Our income was in contributions levied on people we figured we had helped.

The budget was a piece of work I would have been glad to get rid of. It was complicated and laborious, and I could have used the time for the duties I’d been elected to. Hunt would have done a good job of it—better than anybody else in the county—and I had been tempted more than once to trust him with it. But I’d made up my mind long since that nobody but myself would ever see that budget. Now I thanked God for that.

The board met on a muggy July afternoon. I left Arslan and Hunt deep in private discussion upstairs, while Sanjar stirred up their dinner, as carefree as a meadowlark. When I got back, the three of them were over in the schoolyard. Arslan, with his head thrown back and his good arm clamped on Sanjar’s young shoulders, was limping laboriously around the ruined west wing.

“Surveying?”

Hunt, a few feet behind the others, smiled humorlessly at me. “When I leave your house, sir,” Arslan said, “I propose to come here.”

“It’s city property.”

“Yes. Who will stop me?”

“Probably a lynch mob.”

He laughed happily. “Haven’t I been lynched?”

“Well, not entirely.” I was looking at Sanjar’s grave little face.

“Let them try. It will be good. But I am more interested in what you will do, sir.”

“I’ll do exactly nothing, unless you give me a specific reason to. I told you you’re not a prisoner. But as long as you stay in Kraft County, you’re subject to Kraft County laws. And outside of my house and yard I can’t offer you any personal protection. I suggest you stay put till you’re ready to leave.”

The black eyebrows, broken now with scars, went up. “To leave?”

“You aren’t staying in Kraftsville indefinitely, are you?”

“Sir,” he said, “I have come back to Kraftsville.” Maybe it was really that straightforward to him, or maybe he was explaining it in simple terms for simple minds.

“You’re crazy. Don’t forget that a crippled general without an army is just a man with a limp.”

He gave me a luminous smile, turning a little to share it with Hunt. “I am not a general, sir. There are no longer generals. Do you understand?”

“I understand that. I don’t think you do.”

“Ah,” he said, and he turned back to the school. “It is still the most defensible site in Kraftsville, and it is unused.” He gave me a sidelong look of amusement. “I am aware that Arslan would not survive long in Kraftsville without—fortification. I propose to fortify your school and to live there. That is all.”

“And what do you propose to live on?”

He shrugged. “We will hunt.”

“Well, you know where I stand. What you do from here on is your business—as long as it isn’t public business.”

“And if I appropriate city property?”

“A lot of other people have been doing it. I won’t interfere on that ground alone. But I’ll use it if I want to interfere for other reasons.”

He nodded soberly. He took a breath and squeezed Sanjar’s shoulder, and they moved on. Hunt gave me a studying look as he trailed past. “I brought the ham in,” he said.

That night Arslan shivered again in his bed. But the next morning he was out behind the house, watching sharply while Sanjar saddled Hunt’s colt. Hunt eyed me—ready to say, if I looked like objecting, “It’s my horse.”

“Where to?” I asked.

Sanjar shot a look at his father before he answered, “It’s for Arslan.”

“Going somewhere, General?” He didn’t look in any shape to ride, but I’d learned not to make bets on what Arslan couldn’t do.

“I need exercise,” he said cheerfully. “Also I wish to see the district.”

“The district’s going to see you, too.”

“It is good for the district to see me.”

“Well, it’s your neck, and Hunt’s horse. But I’m going to wish you luck.”

He laughed. “Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’d like to see you back in good health before they kill you.”

“Good,” he said warmly, but he was talking to Sanjar, who had just finished his job. Arslan took the bridle and began to walk the horse away from the house. It was the first time I’d seen him take more than two steps without help. He went slowly, talking to the horse, his face lined with concentration. Presently they stopped, and Arslan bunched the reins in his hand, and, after several false starts, got his foot into the stirrup. Even from where we stood by the shed, I could see how he gathered himself for a major effort. He swung himself up, but didn’t quite make it into the saddle: hung awkwardly for a moment, half lying on the horse’s neck, and then slipped back