"I have dipped my hand in blood!" he thought to himself. And looking at his own bloody, hurting hand, in the starlight, he didn't realise whether it was Easu's blood or his own.
"I have dipped my hand in blood! So be it. Let it be my testament."
And he lifted up his hand to the great flashing star, his wounded hand, saying aloud:
"Here! Here is my hand in blood! Take it then. There is blood between us forever."
The blood was between him and his mysterious Lord, forever. Like a sort of pledge, or baptism, or a sacrifice: a bond between them. He was speaking to his mysterious Lord.
"There is blood between us forever," he said to the star.
But the sound of his own hoarse, rather deep voice, reminded him of his surroundings. He looked round. He heard his horse, and called to it. It nickered in the loneliness, still cropping. He started up to see if it was all right, to stroke it and speak to it. The bush was very lonely.
"Hello, you!" he said to it. "In the midst of life we are in death. There's death in the spaces between the stars. But somehow it seems all right. I like it. I like to be lord of Death. Who do they call the lords of Death? I am a lord of Death."
He patted the horse's neck as he talked.
"I can't bear to think of Monica messy with Easu," he said. "But I suppose it's my destiny. I suppose it means I am a lord of death. I hope if I have any children they'll have that look in their eyes, like soldiers from the dark kingdom. I don't want children that aren't warriors. I don't want little love children for my children. When I beget children I want to sow dragon's teeth, and warriors will spring up. Easu hadn't one grain nor spark of a warrior in him. He was absolutely a groping civilian, a bully. That's why he wanted to spoil Monica. She is the wife for a fighting man. So he wanted to spoil her.... Funny, my father isn't a fighting man at all. He's an absolute civilian. So he became a general. And I'm not a civilian. I know the spaces of death between the stars, like spaces in an Egyptian temple. And at the end of life I see the big black door of death, and the infinite black labyrinth beyond. I like to think of going in, and being at home and one of the masters in the black halls of death, when I am dead. I hope I die fighting, and go into the black halls of death as a master: not as a scavenger servant, like Easu, or a sort of butler, like my father. I don't want to be a servant in the black house of death. I want to be a master."