A. Bertram Chandler - Dawn of Nothing

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DAWN OF NOTHING

BY A. BERTRAM CHANDLER

The Great God ARP was a little understood diety. But it was a time of little

understanding, save in one house where the old was studied.

Illustrated by Cartier

Perhaps it was the wind that deflected the arrow ever so slightly. Perhaps it was that old Maluph,

Master Fletcher to the People of Bart, had let his craftsman's hand shake a little in the fashioning of this

one shaft. Perhaps it was that Enery, Bart's chief huntsman, had taken aim and let fly too hastily.

But Enery himself had another explanation. He was to blame—but his culpability was more than a

mere matter of aim too quickly and carelessly taken, of bow insufficiently bent. He was to blame

because, last night, he had deliberately neglected the worship of ARP. And ARP the Watchful, ARP the

All-Seeing, had overlooked neither the slight nor the quarrel between Enery and Pardi, Hereditary

Warden of the God, that had preceded it. He had watched, with divine disapproval, the deliberate

abstention from the propitiatory rites of the Shielded Light, the Extinguished Fire. And so ARP, Guider of

the Missile, had signified his extreme displeasure by withdrawing his benign influence from the feathered

shafts in Enery's quiver.

The stag, a short length of arrow protruding from its flank, sprang high into the air. The hunter hastily

snatched another arrow from his quiver, fitted notch to bowspring, drew back swiftly to his right ear. But

he was too late. Scarcely had the animal's feet touched earth, before it had bolted into the forest. The

sound of its passage through the undergrowth diminished, faded fast, as trees and shrubs and bushes

were interposed between the hunter and his quarry.

Enery returned the arrow to his quiver, slung the long six-foot bow over his shoulder. His right hand

went down to the knife in the sheath at his right side. His thigh muscles tensed as he fell into the runner's

crouch, started to follow the stag. Then he remembered.

"Great ARP, your pardon," he muttered. And, standing alone in the sunlit field at the forest's verge,

he went through the daylight ritual. Through ringed thumbs and forefingers he stared solemnly at the

cloudless sky. Still looking up, he brought his hands down from his face, clapped them sharply five times.

And, his face passive, he thought: But why, oh ARP, must your wardens always be such fools! Take

to yourself men and we will respect them and respect you all the more ...

He was careful to keep his bearded lips motionless. ARP sees all, hears all, but the thoughts of men

are a mystery to him. Thus it was that the Ancients fell.

Enery, having slipped with practised ease through the brief rites, took up the chase. The trail was

easy to follow. The stag had been bleeding copiously. ARP or no ARP the arrow could not have been

badly aimed. The hunter found himself regretting the time that he had wasted at the forest edge. As he ran

he remembered his bitter argument with Pardi, the warden—the quarrel during which he had asserted

that ARP was a fit God for women and children and fat, priestly men, but no deity for the warrior or the

hunter. He would never have gone so far had he not been sure that the grizzled Bart secretly agreed with

him: Bart, as Chief, would find it impolitic to challenge the theocratic power so intimately bound up with

his own, lest, by so doing, he weaken his own authority. He had no objections should others do so. He

had even been known to protect heretics from the wrath of the followers of ARP —his protection

consisting of a plea, for tolerance, the invocation of the vague yet universally respected principle known

as the Magnic Charter. And if the heretic had been, like Enery, a strong limn armed, his heresy had gone

unpunished.

It was a pity that most of such heretics had been married men whose wives had bleated tearfully for a

return to the flock of Pardi.

A briar tendril curled around the hunter's ankle, brought him crashing heavily down. Luckily for him

the bushes broke his fall. He scrambled to his feet, bleeding from a score of scratches—his scanty

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A. Bertram Chandler - Dawn of Nothing

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