A Mist of Grit and Splinters

by Graydon Saunders

  Ophidiform graul have six eyes, in heads that are long, but not especially snake-like, being more deep than wide. Snake jaws are not constructed to make rending bites while ophidiform graul jaws are meant to take bites out of anything regularly occurring in the world. There is one pair of eyes on the side of the head, set far back so that the field of vision reaches past the back of the head; those eyes follow the pattern of simiform graul eyes in having many small pupils scattered over their surface. Those eyes depart from the pattern of simiform graul eyes in being visibly a spherical section a decimetre or more across, so that the red and yellow of the numerous irises resembles an egg coated in hammered flakes of copper and gold. Another pair of eyes are set close and forward in deep sockets on top of the head, providing binocular vision forward, and a third pair behind an armoured eyelid in the roof of the mouth, so that sight of prey is not lost as the deep jaws gape. These eyes are large, but not so large as the main eyes. The four prey-eyes have each a single hexastellate pupil which will shine different colours depending on the angle and nature of any incident light.

  Where simiform graul have counter-wavy strips of hard material in both jaws rather than any distinct teeth, ophidiform graul have definite and distinct teeth inside the shearing surfaces of their upper and lower jaw armour. These grow on dental bars possessed of a degree of articulation and are optional of use in biting. The five pairs of prominent fangs, three upper and two lower, are venomous, with the specific venom of each tooth varying across individual graul. The records of the First Commonweal tally more than five hundred varieties and assert the tally incomplete before noting many of the venoms have no known medical treatment. Though it has been customarily said ophidiform graul look like an attempt to make a giant armoured snake with rending jaws, with perhaps a dash of crocodile, ophidiform graul are well able to sustain an upright posture which places the poll of their tipped-down heads some four metres above the ground and frees their arms for work. When ophidiform graul are nervous they prefer to open their mouths to a width providing all four forward facing eyes a clear view, a thing which anyone simiform standing before them may in their turn view clearly. Sometimes an especially nervous ophidiform graul will tip their dental bars in and out with a sharp clack sound.

  It is not then the easiest thing to maintain one’s composure in the presence of ophidiform graul. Youth, unfamiliarity, and numbers do not contribute ease to the circumstances.

  These, who were so clearly concerned for their fate, were not so difficult as another group might have been. They did not immediately understand where they were, or why; the clerks of the Peace-gesith explained that we had mistaken them for citizens of the Commonweal, persons to whom we had specific obligations, and, aware that we could not speak to them for a time, had moved them to a more secure place than the Land below the Edge. We had expected a battle there, as it had proved to be. All through this careful conversation, the young graul watched the Captain with great intensity of concern. The four simiform graul come from the Army of the Western Hills watched the Captain with as much intent but with other concern.

  I had, and the Captain had, no more than the colour parties of our battalions with us; the First’s banners were required to watch the Southern Edge and the lower stretches of Edge Creek, while the Second’s were not yet operational. It was not necessary that I should be there at all, but I had been at the Armoury and was exceedingly curious for any news of the First Commonweal, such as we had expected to get.

  What we got instead was the Peace-gesith’s fylstan, appointed for the specific purpose of caring for these graul, apologizing and explaining carefully that as non-Commonweal persons, these graul could leave if they wished, and that we would set them on any of our borders from which they should care to depart.

  The response to that was brief consultation among the group of graul and a reversion to the most basic form of graul language by one of them. That form of language is entirely composed of signs. It was used to ask questions directed to the Captain. I am told that graul can sense each other’s limb movements at tens of metres distance even underwater or in an absolute darkness, so that visibility of signs is not the constraint on utility it would be for an another ilk of persons. The questions amounted to wanting to know how many other graul there were, and whom they served.

  The Captain explained by signs that there were few graul in this Commonweal, and that ‘served’ did not apply as these may have meant it by the original meaning of the signs. The clerk knowledgeable about graul languages conveyed the whole thing to the fylstan, and that became a discussion about what ‘served’ might mean here and the propriety of comprehensive explanations to non-citizens.

  Throughout this whole process, which can be described more quickly than it happened, the four graul from the Army of the Western Hills were casting baleful glances at the Captain with some of the glances rising to the level of staring. The Independents Fire and Shadow had taken note of this as it started. Shadow was at that time assigned as a support to the First Battalion and mustered with the First’s Colour Party. Their presence was thus a matter of a duty at which the Captain had bid them be. Fire was present out of a desire to visit Shadow, and being senior in authority in the Wapentake it was not seen why they should not be present if they wished. It was not very long before Fire moved up to stand at the Captain’s left hand, and Shadow to Fire’s left, just as you would close up ranks when fighting with weapons. None of us were armed in any degree but the motion is unmistakable. This did not improve the mood of those four graul, but it did increase their circumspection.

  It should be understood that it is difficult to discuss these subjects in the language historical to graul. ‘Citizen’ renders as ‘those belonging to’ in a propertarian sense without nuance. ‘Serve’ cannot be understood even as ‘obedient’; the idea is somewhere in the vicinity of ‘die to fulfill the purposes of’ and carries the implication that such death is the sole route to joy. The responsive question from the strange graul, “What is the duty of citizens?” took the Captain hours to answer when to a Commonweal person ‘lawfulness and prosperity’ is a sufficient answer. The Commonweal person has had seven years of school education, an education to which their thorpe or gean must deliver them literate, numerate, and calculating. The Commonweal person understands in a general way what the Shape of Peace is and does, and this must not be explained to a stranger. Explaining — without explaining a battle-standard — what the Captain serves, and how, presents a similar degree of difficulty. Articulating any sort of honest and permissible answer to either question in less than a day is properly considered to be an accomplishment.

  Ophidiform graul express bafflement by facing one another and dropping their jaws in steps. The most emphatic bafflement goes from slightly open to the full gape in four or five steps. There was a great deal of this gesture at the beginning of the explanation. At the end, there were no more expressions of bafflement.

  One of the graul who had been silent the whole while reared up higher, pointed their snout directly at the Peace-gesith’s fylstan, and signed. The Captain’s translation in the focus was Must we leave?; the clerk said it as ‘Does your strength require that we depart?’.

  The fylstan had the Captain render “Those who stay do not depart thereafter, nor may you know aforehand all you accept,” which took past another hour and resulted in my needing to reassure the First’s Colour Party. The Captain spent most of that hour standing in the midst of a ring of ophidiform graul, most of whom were lying flat and sometimes rolling over on their backs to free their arms for signing. It was a large and coiling discussion, but no-one’s snout came within two metres of the Captain.

  The displeasure of the four simiform graul from the Army of the Western Hills increased thereafter, as the strange ophidiform graul held what anyone would recognize as a vote. The vote had no dissent. So did these strange graul request entry to the Second Commonweal.

  D-Day Minus 1145

  Year of Peace
543, Floréal, Twenty-eighth Day (Spring)

  Clerk of the Peace-gesith

  These will be my fellow-citizens. I should treat them with that dignity, and indeed wish to treat them so. Which is not to say I needed not to hide a smile or six conducting them up to the Shape of Peace.

  Ophidiform graul are eight to the barge-load, and transport would have been some difficulty to arrange. The graul had asked if there were dangerous things in the water, somewhat doubtfully, being accustomed to the open sea and being neither knowledgable of rivers nor inclined to rate anything in fresh water of much concern.

  There being nothing of any particular note, the graul all offered to swim; I would need a barge, but one passenger and an expectation among the graul to not go on ahead where they might cause consternation were not difficult things to arrange. The first part of the trip was passed in a discussion of aquatic hazards which passed briefly over swans. They knew about swans, and felt swans scarcely grounds for concern. Swans cannot dive under the water, and their beaks reach deeper than their wings can. ‘Raspy, but drownable’ would summarize their view of swans.

  Discussion of hazards shifted to several hours on the subject of ranching ducks. The large flightless dabbling ducks the ilk of Creeks call greenheads are more dangerous than they are tasty, but tasty enough that they are still sometimes eaten. Being dabbling ducks, these also cannot dive, and to ophidiform graul are entirely vulnerable. The conversation reminds that ophidiform graul keep their powers of speech behind their nostrils; said powers are why they have obvious external nostrils at all, and a ridge at the tip of the snout, to keep water aside. They converse quite happily so low in the water it is as speaking to a sinuous wake.

  The locks impressed. It was a decorous and careful slithering up the launching ramp and along the tow paths every time. It left the paving flatter and the occasional bollard somewhat polished, points upon which I saw no need to remark. Ophidiform graul need not breathe whatsoever, and were content to wait on the bottom of the queuing pond while the barge I was on passed through the locks. As an unadorned practice this violates several of the Lug-gesith’s regulations, and the first instance lead to the remainder of the trip being undertaken with four buoys so the graul could properly mark their submerged location. After the barge I was on cleared the locks, the graul would rise from the water straight up, well above the barge side, before tipping their heads down to look carefully where to place the buoys aboard the barge. The buoys went aboard with great delicacy and care each time, their anchor chains neatly coiled.

  The West Wetcreek does not freeze; I recall only that there is an explanation, and not what that explanation might be, or if the explanation attends on specific consequences for the life in that watercourse. Nor am I in any way conversant with the contents of that watercourse, and could not answer a variety of questions. Nor could the barge crew identify four of the nine specimens of fish hauled to the surface. I needs must request patience; these are the first ophidiform graul in the Second Commonweal, and if there are to be detailed surveys of the depths of watercourses, it may be that they shall need to perform them.

  That produced another discussion; they already knew there was a need to become literate, but had not known there was a written form of the language they knew, or that we possessed texts in that language. I could show them a chart; the barge necessarily had some. I could tell them the word for sextant, and that spherical trigonometry is a discipline of mathematics, but not more than this. My own work is difficult to explain to those not yet citizens; describing it as checking bills of lading, to be neutral between the parties, is not false of fact but omits everything important.

  Still, I think they understood, and the idea that they might wish to engage in trade, and the idea of relative advantage, I believe they all understood. It is not difficult to suppose those whose entire youth was spent wandering as fish in the Bad Old Days should find themselves uncomprehending of exchange, and yet this time it would be supposed falsely.

  Hill Road Landing presented no challenges getting out of the water. It presented me with an exercise of tact; entities twenty-five metres in length do not readily fit in the hostel-yard, and could not enter the hostel itself, for sake of destroyed floors. I was able to explain that I required sleep, and that it would be some hours after dawn before I should be able to proceed again; graul require of their natures little sleep and less rest, and the pressing necessity of rest was a strange thing to them. Much difficulty was saved by a traveller with a mandolin; they had learnt the graul language for the sound of its old poetry, and had knowledge of a number of songs. The graul were content, and the landing-clerk willing, to have the southernmost four mooring places taken up by ophidiform graul, all of them listening with intensity with their heads as close to the singer as they could get them without piling themselves one upon the other.

  It was not until I saw the musician again in daylight that I realized they were an independent. They had the customary single button on their hat in the customary place. An altogether more ornate hat than is customary somewhat obscured it. The Independent Jazz; student of the Independent Disdain, and like their teacher an energy-director and illusion-maker. Also like their teacher, they have questionable taste in feathers.

  I thanked them; the graul were moved so as to sign thanks as individuals, rising out of the water.

  My walking pace was a trouble to the graul; it led to our progress being steady only for myself. It is a strange feeling, to be passing down the road before an intermittent progress of rasping, as though one has become the harbinger of an infrequent advance of gristmills in the old stone style. Still, we caused no delays in traffic, though our passage was not without startlement.

  At the Shape, I was able to leave the graul in the Maintainer’s care, whose fluency in the graul tongue greatly exceeds mine. Citizenship rituals are not frequent, but there have been enough, and there was warning enough; a long handle had been found for the oil-dabber. I went off in some haste to make report.

  We can be sure that these graul are strangers; I could not, myself, though certainly I had listened for mentions or implications of Laurel or an overlord or a mission, of which there had been none. The several independents involved can be so certain.

  “My mind is divided.” The Peace-gesith looks at me no more sharply than they had been. “These will be our fellow-citizens. Yet we see fit to require the ancient and terrible to examine them.”

  “From the Bad Old Days to the Peace is not one step, nor one undulation of the tail.” The Peace-gesith’s tone is no more formal than it was. “Laurel has had five hundred years to lose graul, or to loose graul on the world. It seems plain that these come to us by mischance, and perhaps not from Laurel. Yet if they are from Laurel, and Laurel meant us ill, perhaps their names come to them by Laurel’s intent, and to do to the Shape what we would not desire.”

  I had not considered such a possibility. From the small motions around, no-one but the gesith had. We consider the Shape of Peace reliable of its nature, yet Laurel made the first one, and that knowledge departed with Laurel into the world. To the full-mighty, half-a-thousand years is not too long to plan.

  “My office is informed that no name-magic, enchantment, or ‘cruel intent’ attends on these graul.” The gesith’s voice is even and calm. “Our duty to accept those desiring peace may here be undertaken.”

  D-Day Minus 1066

  Year of Peace 544, Thermidor, Twelfth Day (Summer)

  The Captain

  “Standard-Captain.”

  “General.”

  Chert shouldn’t be here without their pennon. Just the messenger company is risky; of Chert, and of timing.

  Presumably of the concerned persons with Chert.

  Introductions are made; the concerned persons are the Book-gesith, a Line-gesith full fylstan, specially appointed, and two of the gerefan of the province of the West Wetcreek.

  Duty, Captain.

  Captain, Duty. Only a little startlement. O
ur visitors don’t imply a need to do anything right now.

  You have operational control. Since it looks like I’m going to be talking.

  Uniform has operational control. Lollygaggle’s awareness gets wider in the focus.

  No turtles spotted by the watch. Still don’t want to move our visitors closer to the stream. It’s a compact camp. Chert knows better.

  Unless Chert wants to know what the First turns the policy discussion into. Worse ways to get Creek opinion on something.

  Not so careful of the First.

  Chert sends their messenger company across from Uniform and does a little dance with some muttering when they get up next to me. Both standards, both sergeant-majors, that isn’t Chert’s standard-bearer with the pennon-staff, and our visitors all go into a hazy hemisphere together. Chert’s working’s enough that voices won’t carry through it and you can see no more than shapes. No facial expressions.

  Chert would never have been so publicly a sorcerer when there was one Commonweal.

  Uniform and the messenger company shift to close ranks because otherwise there isn’t room. Splitting by quarters. The messenger company shifts latch, which is past politeness.

  There are introductions, then Chert tips a hand at the Book-gesith.

  “Much discussion has taken place with the found graul,” the Book-gesith says. “Having taken up citizenship — ” something moves in the gesith’s face — “they have been granted provisional thorpe tenure of an area of the reclaimed land in the Second Clearance of Lost Creek.” The gesith makes a definite pause. “Though they are energetic and robust persons, they are perhaps too few.

  “Too few and too many,” the Book-gesith goes on. “My comrade is emphatic that their clerk be restored to their work on haulage contracts so soon as might be. Of persons not independents, there is not otherwise anyone outside the Line fluent in the language these graul know.”