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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
 
summer garment of light skins was not much protection—carefully disentangled the string of his bow from
the sharp thorns. He was almost decided to leave it there—here, with the trees close together and but a
narrow passage through the bushes left by the wounded stag, it was a serious encumbrance. But he did
not want to lose it. There were things in the woods—some said it was the wild dogs, but why should
they do anything so pointless?—that carried off for their own purposes any man-fashioned stick.
So he pushed Olt, hampered by the long how, alert for the frequent bright splashes on leaf and mossy
ground. The trail was growing old. Already great fat-bodied flies were feasting on the spilled blood, rising
with resentful buzz at his approach, falling back again to their meal after his passing. But he dare not
hurry. Even should he keep his rebellious mind from straying from the business on hand, he dare not
hurry. A broken leg, a seriously twisted ankle, could well mean his death. By day there were the packs of
dogs—although they, as a rule, preferred more open country. And both by day and night there were the
tree cats. If he failed to return from this expedition, then Pardi, surely, would attribute his disappearance
to the wrath of ARP.
Come off it! he thought in the vernacular of his people. Even if the warden is sweet on young Lisa
there ain't no need ter think abaht it orl the time, ter let it put yer orf yer stroke. The nwin thing is
ter get that ruddy stag afore them ruddy cats gets 'int first!
Doggedly, he pushed on. The trail became fresher again. There were gouts of blood that had not
been found by the carrion flies. There were bruised and broken stems with the sap still oozing from the
fractured ends. And there was, faint but growing louder, the sound of a heavy body forcing its way
through the forest.
And this sound suddenly ceased.
Enery drew his knife. He pushed on boldly, perhaps a little carelessly. He noticed that the
undergrowth was thinning, that the trees were now sparsely spaced and somehow sickly. But he failed to
draw the obvious conclusion.
The dwelling of the Ancients that had once stood there had long vanished. Perhaps the failure of
ARP's protection had let it he swept away like a dead leaf before a gale. Perhaps the infinitely slow,
infinitely ruthless strength of growing things had leveled its walls over the course of centuries. But although
the building itself was gone, the artificial caverns beneath it remained. And into these, following his quarry,
fell the hunter
It was dark when he recovered consciousness.
In his nostrils was the scent of death, of once hot blood gone cold and stale. Beneath him was some
thing soft yet firm, the carcass of the stag. His exploratory hand touched the antlered head. He was
briefly thankful that he had .not fallen on to those branching, dangerous weapons.
Right above him was a patch of pale light. Silhouetted against it were the leafy branches of trees,
among which glimmered a few dim stars. And there was something scrambling in the aperture, something
that uttered a low mewling sound.
The hunter fumbled in his pouch. He pulled out his flint and steel. He smote the crude wheel with the
palm of his hand. In the light of the sparks the green eyes of the big cat in the opening glowed balefully.
Enery could see no more than a dim outline—but he sensed that it was tensed for a spring.
But it caught. It smoldered at first and then, after more than a little blowing on the part of the
fire-maker, burst into flickering flame. The hunter thrust up his crude, feeble torch. He was just in time.
The big cat snarled, showing its sharp white teeth. It slashed out and down with a razor-clawed fore
paw. It hit the torch, sent scattering a shower of sparks, but did not extinguish the flame. It snarled
again—and there was something of a scream in the ugly sound. There was a frantic scrabbling of the
three uninjured paws as it backed away from the hole. And only a stink of burned fur remained.
"May ARP let you be smitten, you mucking, dirty swine!" shouted Enery. He jumped down from the
carcass of the stag, landed, with a loud crackling, in a pile of dry debris. He tried to drag the stag away
from under the opening, but it was too heavy. It was a pity. It meant that much good meat would be
spoiled.
Working fast—for he heard the cats prowling and crying to each other overhead—he piled the
 
debris high on the body of the animal. He smote his wheel again with the palm of his hand. This time the
tow caught fast and easily. He blew upon the glowing smolder until he had a flame. This he applied to the
bonfire that he had built on top of the dead stag. It roared and crackled into flaming life. The smoke and
flames rushed up through the opening. A draft of colder air came in from somewhere, replacing that lost
by convection. There was no danger of suffocation—and the night-prowling cats would never dare a leap
down through the blaze.
Enery grinned. He was safe for the night. The smell of roasting venison was savory in his nostrils—he
hoped that it would be equally savory in the nostrils of his enemies. He drew his knife and hacked for
himself a large steak, impaled it on a long, pointed stick. He sat down, the meat extended to the fire on
the improvised fork, and waited for his supper to cook.
It was not until he was eating it, some minutes later, that the stench of burning meat drove him away
from the fire, prodded him into an investigation of the place into which he had fallen.
It must have been used as a storeroom of some kind. There were boxes—or what was left of
them—all packed with sheet after sheet of flimsy fabric. Unlike some of the material left—and found now
and again by lucky discoverers—by the Ancients, it was useless for clothing or any kindred purpose. It
was dry and brittle and tore easily. It had been disturbed by rats and other small beasts who had
shredded it and carried it away to their nests. And in one or two of the boxes the rats themselves had
nested. But it burned. Useless it was for anything but that. It burned well.
Enery was disappointed. He had known others who had made similar finds, who had stumbled upon
storehouses of all kinds of useful tools and weapons. He stood there in the light of his flaring fire, tearing
with his teeth at the hunk of meat held in his right hand, holding a sheet of the useless fabric in his left. He
looked at it contemptuously. Its yellowed surface was marred with little black marks. It was neither useful
nor ornamental. He screwed it into a tight ball and cast it on to the fire.
But there must, he told himself, be something of value stored here. He lifted one of the boxes,
intending to tip it over and spill its contents on the floor. But the sides burst as he was starting to do so.
And in the box were still more of the sheets of fabric—but these were themselves boxed in a binding of
some stiffer material. He opened them, looked through them with intolerant ignorance. There was one
that appealed to him. It had pictures in addition to the meaningless little black marks—pictures such as
William, the artist, could never hope to equal. There were men there, strangely clad and bearded. And
there were women, attired as strangely as the men or naked, and with a slender grace that had passed
from the world with the passing of the Ancients. The little black marks may have been meaningless to the
hunter, but the pictures stirred something deep and lost in his nature, were magic casements opening wide
on fairy lands far beyond his limited ken.
Hastily, almost surreptitiously, he stuffed the little box into the pouch at his belt.
There were other little boxes with pictures in them. But these were ugly, meaningless. They were no
more than lines and circles—and the clearest of them seemed to be depictions of fantastic and graceless
constructions. But they might, Enery decided, have some value or interest. He would take them to Bart.
Even though the stag was lost —or most of it—he would not return entirely empty handed.
He slept a little then, stretched out on a bed made of the pieces of flimsy fabric piled high in a
rectangular pile. It was not too uncomfortable. And it was almost his last sleep. He was awakened by a
spasm of violent coughing. His smarting, smoke-filled eyes opened on what, at first, seemed to be the
Hell promised for 'all those who did not follow ARP. The cavern was filled with a ruddy glare, with
scorching heat. The flames had spread from the fire to the dry debris with which the floor was littered.
Enery staggered to his feet. He forgot the little boxes of fabric that he had intended to take out with
him, that lay beside his bed, soon to be consumed by the hungry flames. He remembered his bow that, as
always, had been beside him as he slept. He snatched it up. And, more by instinct than by conscious
volition, he turned his face to the indraught of cold air, started to stumble in the direction from which it
was coming.
The heat of the fire was fierce on his back when he found the door. It was of thick timber, bound
with metal. Long ago, when the Ancients had made it, it had been strong. Now it was rotten, yielded at
the first, preliminary nudge of the hunter's shoulder. And Enery fell out on to the dew-wet grass, used his
 
last reserves of energy to crawl away from the tongues of fire that licked out after him.
And it was daylight, and the danger from the cats—although still to be reckoned with—was greatly
lessened.
After a short rest the hunter began his trudge back to the village of Bart.
"And woes this I 'ear ?" demanded the chief. "My best 'unter back from the chase wiv nuffin'? I tell
yer, Enery, it won't do!"
Enery looked back at his master. He looked at the little eyes, half hidden by the grizzled tangle of hair
and beard. He thought that he detected a twinkle, belying the severity of the chief's tone.
"Sorry, guv'ner," he said. "I got a stag—a big 'un—but 'e fell into one o' them old caves wot the Old
'Uns used ter make. Aht in the woods, it was. I'd chased 'im for miles, too, follered 'is trail, like. 'E was
bleedin"eavy, see? An' I was a bit careless like, an' fell in arter 'im an' laid myself aht. An' when I come
round the 'ole wood was alive wiv bleedin' cats. So I 'ad ter light a fire, see? An' the ole stag ... well, 'e
got burned up."
Pardi interrupted. He was standing beside the chief. At the sound of the high-pitched, womanish
voice Enery looked at the warden with disfavor.
"Thus it is," cried Pardi, "wiv those 'o don't show ARP 'is proper respects. 'E don't guide their arrers,
'E don't. 'E don't put out the fire for 'em—not ! Not even when the fire is a-burning up food for the chief's
own table. 'E don't never forget the unbelievers. 'E lets 'em come 'ome empty-'anded—_ an' larfs."
"Empty-'anded, is it, yer little, sawed-off runt?" demanded the hunter. "Empty-'anded my left foot!
Look, guv'ner! I found this for yer! I brought it back for yer!"
He fumbled in his pouch, fetched out .the little box. Curious, Bart took -it, and his big, clumsy
seeming hands handled it with reverent care.
"A book," he said. "One o' them books wot the Old 'Uns made." He opened it, leafed through it.
"An' picshers !" he cried. "Reel Picshers! I must show young William this. 'E carn't do nuffin like it !" The
deep-set eyes behind the gray, matted hair gleamed lecherously.
"Lemme see! Lemme see!" clamored Pardi, standing on tiptoe to peer over the chief's shoulder.
"Garn ! Yer dirty old man!" growled Bart. "This ain't for the likes o' you. Yer knows as 'ow the
wardens 'as got ter be pure in mind an' body!"
"That ain't nuffin ter do wiv it! This book should be put among the uvver treasures of ARP, for 'Is
safe keeping."
"So the warden of ARP can feast 'is dirty old eyes on it yer mean. No, Pardi, you ain't gettin' it. An' I
ain't keepin' it—more's the pity. This 'ere book is goin' on a long trip termorrer—it's 'igh time that I called
on them two Mack brothers. They're fair batty over things like this, the pair of 'em. An' since my own
smith can't turn out a decent pot or kettle to save 'is life—then your pore old chief 'as got ter go out of 'is
own country to barter for 'em.
"You can go," he concluded. "No, not you, Enery. You stays 'ere an' 'as a sup o' beer along o' me.
An' we'll look at these 'ere picshers, while we 'as the chance."
Two days' riding it was to the Village of Mack. Two days, that is, provided that all went well.
But the rarely used road was in a shocking condition, and all its inequalities had been baked hard by
the late summer sun. This did not delay the dozen young men—led by Enery—of Bart's mounted
bodyguard. They could have made the journey in half the time, but the speed of the party was, of
necessity, slowed to the pace of the chief's gaudily painted caravan. He was an old man, he was fond of
saying, and liked taking his comforts with him. It would have been better if his blacksmith, and not his
youngest wife, had been on the list of comforts. For the rear axle of the cumbersome vehicle broke, and
it took Enery and his companions all of six sweating hours to effect crude and temporary repairs.
The first night they camped by the roadside, several miles short of the Village of Les, in which
settlement they should have spent the night. And nobody got much sleep. One of the rare nocturnal packs
of hunting dogs was on the prowl and laid siege to the encampment. With a fire, and with twelve armed
men, there was little danger. But there was no rest.
 
At the Village of Les there was a brief halt for gossip and refreshment, for the proper repair of the
broken axle by Les' smith. And Les and Bart had to waste an hour or so in gloating over the pictures in
the book.
Perhaps Bart would have stayed there the night, but the other chief obviously desired the trophy that
Enery had brought back from the cavern of the Ancients. He was offering quite fantastically high prices in
fowls and eggs—both of which commodities Bart had in abundance in his own country. And the name of
Les and his people was a byword for thievery and all kinds of dishonesty. So Bart, at last, gave the order
to push on.
Again they would have camped by the road. But the Romans were out—a war party of at least
twenty bucks. Enery saw the dust raised by their ponies' hoofs whilst they were still miles distant. And
when they came sweeping across the undulating plain, at right angles to the road, the hunter and his men
were ready for them. Some—together, with Bart and his wife—had taken cover in a clump of trees.
Others were hiding behind the caravan. As soon as the raiders came within range they were greeted with
a shower of arrows. A lucky shot— an' I didn't pray to Mr. Bleedin' ARP neither, thought
Enery—took their leader in the throat. He fell from his pony, and the animal came to an abrupt standstill,
stood nuzzling the body of its late master.
"'Old yer fire!" shouted Bart to his men. "Don't rile them baskets any more. Let 'em take their chief
away an' they won't be back till they've picked a new 'un !"
And it was so.
And Bart decided, wisely, to keep moving, as fast as possible. To arrive at the Village of the Mack
Brothers in the early hours of the morning was better than not to arrive at all.
The village, save for the watch, seemed to be sleeping when the little procession creaked and
plodded up the one narrow street. The thatched roofs on either side were humped dark and ominous
against the stars. And there were those in the bodyguard who remembered, with a superstitious shudder,
that neither Mack the Elder nor Mack the Younger followed ARP, that they had long held the reputation
of being sorcerers. This, in itself, was nothing—but it was said that the Mack sorceries worked.
Halfway up the street, standing on a slight eminence, was a house larger than the others. And there
was someone awake in this house—someone awake and working. Light streamed through the crevices
of a shuttered window, and there was the sound of metal beating on metal.
Old Bart, perched high on the driving seat of his caravan, gave the order to halt. He threw down the
-reins, and they were caught by one of the bodyguard who had already dismounted. He clambered down
from his seat.
"They're up yet," he growled.
Slowly, ponderously, he stumped to the door of the house. He hammered upon it authoritatively.
Somebody—a small, thin silhouette against the light from within—opened it.
"Bart," said the chief. "Bart, Leader of the People of Bart, to pay 'is respects to Old Mack an' Young
Mack, Chieftains o' the People o' Mack."
The figure in the door turned, shouted back to the interior of the house : "It's Bart, father !"
"This is an odd time to come a visiting !" replied a deep male voice. "All right, Beth. Ask 'im in !"
"But he's got about half a hundred men wi' him !"
"They can't come in. Leave 'em to find some place to sleep."
"Orl right," growled Bart. "Orl of yer find some place ter kip—an' don't let me find any of yer in my
caravan! 'Op it !"
As the huntsman turned to go the chief called him back.
"No, Enery. You stay wiv me. 'Ave yer got the book ?"
"No, guv'ner. You 'ave."
"So I 'ave. An' you'd better leave yer bow an' arrers outside—these 'ere Mack chiefs are rather
fussy."
It was light inside the House of Mack—so much so that theotwo visitors blinked, dazzled. Here were
no crude, tallow candles such as lit the homes in their own village. There were, instead, lamps of brass,
 

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