In such a community Nigh’s office was no sinecure. Another in his place might well have been oppressed with a sense of his responsibilities. But Nigh, gliding back from Hawkon’s house to make his report to the Old One, carried an all but blank mind. He had heard the voices; he had more than surmised the embraces; and these things had for the while excited him, making him grin in a troubled fashion, and roll his eyes, and bite his knuckles. But now, already, it was all forgotten. He was empty. His feet took him where, after a tour of the squat, they always took him. His lean curving shadow strode with him. He was an oldish man, in years not far short of thirty; he stooped; he breathed with the noise of a dog breathing. So much miscellaneous stuff had been poured through this sieve, so much hearsay and history, so much malice, so many bleeding scraps of his people’s life, that of himself there was little left. Nature had made him sickly, and so a prey to fear; habit had made him furtive and cruel; his mental life at its meagre best was an obscene phantasmagoria; what else there was of him eludes our scrutiny, being so small a spark so deeply hidden. Stooping, moving slantwise, and pawing the air in front of him as though he pulled at a rope, he carried his emptiness into the presence of his master the Old One, into that great house, that veritable nest of houses (for were there not three separate rooms of it?) where Koor lived and ruled, served by his woman and protected by Hasta the wise eunuch.
Koor’s squat—they had but one word to express the two things, the individual house and the encampment as a whole—was constructed on the same principle as Hawkon’s and all others in the community; and though much bigger than his, its size, when considered in relation to the number of people it accommodated, was not impressive. Nor was the interior worthy of the majesty it contained. It was unbeautiful and unsavoury, or would have been considered so by such a woman as Flint, that fastidious one. Yet no one outside the household entered it without something of awe and fear: the awe of mysterious and complex origin, the fear more definite and rational The large outer part, in which the Old One received such members of the family as were permitted to visit him, had been the scene of many an orgy, many a conference, many a judgement. Its mud floor was strewn with dead leaves, pebbles, and decaying grass; its walls were hung with animal skins imperfectly cured. At all seasons a fire burned or smouldered in the middle of the floor, the smoke escaping where it could. This was the tribal hearth, a symbol of great power, as well as a practical convenience to Koor, who in his old age suffered greatly from the cold. Near the fire, but not too near, he would sit, the Old One, with Hasta at hand, Nigh within reach, and perhaps one wife, supposedly the most devoted, squatting vigilant and adoring behind him. All other women, on these public occasions, were huddled away out of sight and left to meditate on their own unimportance.
Koor, today, was in a genial mood. His greeting was affable. He stopped munching, tore with his teeth a strip off the piece of meat he was engaged in eating, and handed it to Nigh with a grunt. Nigh received it eagerly, and the next few minutes were spent happily by father and son, while Hasta looked hungrily on. The last morsel swallowed, Koor’s manner changed. He eyed his tale-bearer sharply, and uttered a single interrogative noise that was like a threat.
‘Ugh?’ said Koor.
‘There is nothing,’ answered Nigh. He seemed to plead with the old man. For, as always, he felt guilty and afraid, fancying that on his rounds he must have seen and forgotten a hundred misdemeanours. ‘There is nothing.’
‘What of that one?’ Koor’s eyes shone with inquisitorial lust. ‘He stays?’
Nigh was at a loss. His glance fell. His hands fluttered. ‘That one? Is it . . . is it . . . is it the young Hawkon?’
Raising his eyes fearfully he received a quick cruel blow in the face from his father’s fist. He cowered, screaming with fear. He whimpered, and then was silent.
‘The name must not be spoken,’ remarked Hasta mildly. ‘The name must not be spoken, or that one will hear us. Tell the father, O Nigh, what you have seen and heard of that one.’
‘I saw him and heard him. He is with his woman.’
‘He stays?’ asked Koor again.
‘Yes. He is with his woman.’ He had already forgotten Koor’s castigation of him in recalling this earlier grievance, that Hawkon had a woman. ‘He stays.’
‘He does not go?’ There is nothing like making sure. But Koor’s question meant more than that.
‘If he goes, others go. There are comrades.’
‘If they go,’ said Koor . . . and was silent.