The hollow in which the castle of Watho lay, was a cleft in a plain
rather than a valley among hills, for at the top of its steep sides,
both north and south, was a table-land, large and wide. It was covered
with rich grass and flowers, with here and there a wood, the outlying
colony of a great forest. These grassy plains were the finest hunting
grounds in the world. Great herds of small, but fierce cattle, with
humps and shaggy manes, roved about them, also antelopes and gnus, and
the tiny roedeer, while the woods were swarming with wild creatures.
The tables of the castle were mainly supplied from them. The chief of
Watho's huntsmen was a fine fellow, and when Photogen began to outgrow
the training she could give him, she handed him over to Fargu. He with
a will set about teaching him all he knew. He got him pony after pony,
larger and larger as he grew, every one less manageable than that
which had preceded it, and advanced him from pony to horse, and from
horse to horse, until he was equal to anything in that kind which the
country produced. In similar fashion he trained him to the use of bow
and arrow, substituting every three months a stronger bow and longer
arrows; and soon he became, even on horseback, a wonderful archer. He
was but fourteen when he killed his first bull, causing jubilation
among the huntsmen, and, indeed, through all the castle, for there too
he was the favourite. Every day, almost as soon as the sun was up, he
went out hunting, and would in general be out nearly the whole of the
day. But Watho had laid upon Fargu just one commandment, namely, that
Photogen should on no account, whatever the plea, be out until
sundown, or so near it as to wake in him the desire of seeing what was
going to happen; and this commandment Fargu was anxiously careful not
to break; for, although he would not have trembled had a whole herd of
bulls come down upon him, charging at full speed across the level, and
not an arrow left in his quiver, he was more than afraid of his
mistress. When she looked at him in a certain way, he felt, he said,
as if his heart turned to ashes in his breast, and what ran in his
veins was no longer blood, but milk and water. So that, ere long, as
Photogen grew older, Fargu began to tremble, for he found it steadily
growing harder to restrain him. So full of life was he, as Fargu said
to his mistress, much to her content, that he was more like a live
thunderbolt than a human being. He did not know what fear was, and
that not because he did not know danger; for he had had a severe
laceration from the razor-like tusk of a boar--whose spine, however,
he had severed with one blow of his hunting-knife, before Fargu could
reach him with defence. When he would spur his horse into the midst of
a herd of bulls, carrying only his bow and his short sword, or shoot
an arrow into a herd, and go after it as if to reclaim it for a
runaway shaft, arriving in time to follow it with a spear-thrust
before the wounded animal knew which way to charge, Fargu thought with
terror how it would be when he came to know the temptation of the
huddle-spot leopards, and the knife-clawed lynxes, with which the
forest was haunted. For the boy had been so steeped in the sun, from
childhood so saturated with his influence, that he looked upon every
danger from a sovereign height of courage. When, therefore, he was
approaching his sixteenth year, Fargu ventured to beg of Watho that
she would lay her commands upon the youth himself, and release him
from responsibility for him. One might as soon hold a tawny-maned lion
as Photogen, he said. Watho called the youth, and in the presence of
Fargu laid her command upon him never to be out when the rim of the
sun should touch the horizon, accompanying the prohibition with hints
of consequences, none the less awful that they were obscure. Photogen
listened respectfully, but, knowing neither the taste of fear nor the
temptation of the night, her words were but sounds to him.