（外文电子版资料）A. Bertram Chandler - Dawn of Nothing.pdf

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 craftsmans hand shake a little in the fashioning of this one shaft. Perhaps it was that Enery, Barts 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 Enerys 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 animals 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.