by John Brunner
X
Yanderman ducked under the door flap of the Duke’s tent and saluted. The Duke leaned back so that his chair—as always—creaked with his weight, and smiled in the depths of his enormous beard.
“Well, Yan? What do you think of our progress so far?”
Yanderman ignored the question. He said curtly, “Ampier died in the night—did you know?”
“Of course. I was informed directly it happened; I’d given instructions.”
“Have you seen the body?”
“No.”
Yanderman shuddered. “I saw it. They were carrying it out for burning as I came by. He looked as though he’d simply rotted to death. He was completely covered in that filthy green mould.”
Duke Paul nodded. “So they told me. Obviously the beak of the thing he killed was infected, and poisoned his wound. The medics said they could find nothing that would stop the mould growing without killing the sufferer, so I ordered the burning of everything Ampier had touched—his bandages, the blanket he was wrapped in, his clothes, even the tent where he lay dying. And told all his attendants to burn their clothes and scrub themselves from head to foot with good strong soap. Does that answer what you were going to say?”
Yanderman took a chair. “I guess so,” he agreed, feeling conscious relief that the Duke had been so thorough. “But I’m afraid the death is having a bad effect on the men.”
“We mustn’t let it,” the Duke countered briskly. “We must keep them busy.”
“They’re busy already,” Yanderman pointed out. “With reconnaissance parties surveying the boundary of the barrenland, the fact-finding teams compiling data on the things that have been killed over the years by the people of Lagwich, and arms practice—in fact, I ought to be out-drilling my company right now, but I told Stadham to look after it.”
“Why?”
“So I could come and warn you about the way the men are being affected by Ampier’s death,” Yanderman explained with forced patience.
“Go on.”
“It’s probably contact with the townsfolk that’s doing it,” Yanderman said. “That, and the latrine rumours that were on their rounds even before we got here. Granny Jassy is doing a roaring trade in charms, too, despite all I can do to make the purchasers look foolish.”
“I don’t see much help for that.” The Duke frowned. “But contact with the townsfolk could be cut off if necessary. What strikes you as so bad about it?”
“They have small minds in Lagwich. They feel it necessary to brag about themselves to counter the natural boasting of our men about Esberg. So they magnify the danger of the things from the barrenland beyond all measure. You’ve heard them—you’ve talked to Malling and Rost and their other ‘wise men’.” Yanderman put a fine ring of sarcasm into the last words. “But you can’t cut off contact now, I’m afraid. It would be very bad for the men who’ve been too occupied so far to take time off and go into the town. The townsfolk seem to be treating our arrival as something like the visit of a marrying expedition, and they’re showing our men the best time they can and positively urging them to court the local girls.”
Duke Paul grunted. “Yes, I’d realised that,” he said. “I’ve been hoping that something pretty savage and large might come out of the barrenland so we could deal with it. It was a good idea of your lieutenant’s to bring that carcass into camp and peg it up for the men to look at. But there’s a psychological difference between just seeing a carcass, which could have been killed by an accident, and actually vanquishing a dangerous monster.”
“Especially since Ampier died of the encounter he had with a thing,” Yanderman agreed.
“Ye-es.” The Duke ran his fingers through his beard. A fat, buzzing fly which had somehow got in through the door-flap soared lazily past him. He swiped at it, but missed. “By the way, how was that thing killed—the one Stadham found?”
“I don’t know.” Yanderman shrugged. “One of the townsfolk must have tackled it, I guess. I didn’t think to inquire. I suppose I could ask around if you think it’s important.”
“Not really.” Duke Paul stared at the swinging canvas of the tent wall. “It just put me in mind of a possible way of—ah—arranging for a suitably savage beast to be killed in plain sight of some of the men. What would you say the chances are of going secretly to some of the more venturesome people in Lagwich and persuading them to guide a few picked men into the barrenland to find a thing and drive it towards the camp to be killed?”
“Absolutely nil,” Yanderman stated emphatically. “The townsfolk do not—repeat not—set foot on the barrenland. Most of them, for all their high-flown talk about their bravery, stay as well clear of it as possible. Which in turn puts me in mind of what else I was going to mention to you.
“Now that the townsfolk have made up their minds what the purpose of the expedition is, the men are getting the news from the worst possible source.”
The Duke blinked. He placed his hands on the arms of his chair as though about to jerk to his feet. He snapped, “What do you mean by that, Yan?”
Yanderman stared levelly at his chief. “Well … At first they were suspicious over in Lagwich, thinking we must be on a mission of conquest, for all our peaceful asseverations. They’ve recovered from that idea by this time. Now they’re beginning to suspect the truth, and naturally they’re passing it on to the soldiery.”
“What do you think the truth is, Yan?” The Duke spoke low.
“That you mean to march into, and probably across, the barrenland—and to hell with its population of devils and monsters.”
“And they’re telling the men this?”
Yanderman confirmed with a nod, feeling a momentary relief. From the Duke’s tone it seemed he was astonished, and that—he hoped—implied the story wasn’t true after all.
But the Duke stood up and started to walk back and forth on the woven-reed mats forming the floor. After a brief silence he said, “And what do you think of the plan, youself?”
“I?” Yanderman tautened. “I think it’s grandiose and—and ridiculous.”
“Why?” The Duke rounded on him. “The barrenland is a living sore on the face of the country, isn’t it? It’s been here far too long. Something should be done about it—and the first thing is to find out its true nature. Till the old fool Rost showed us his ‘devil’ I’d had nothing more in mind than the scouting of its confines and the gathering of folksay about it. But if there are people living within the barrenland, Yan, isn’t it about time someone went to the poor bastards’ rescue?”
“Living within the—? Oh, I see what you mean. Hmmm!” Yanderman rubbed his chin and cogitated for a while. At last, however, he shook his head. “It’s a conceivable explanation, but I’m not sold on it. I’m more inclined to think, despite what the local people say, that Rost’s ‘devil’ wandered into the barrenland from outside and then stumbled back again. And … what do you think your chances are of getting the men to march with you, anyway?”
“Excellent.” The Duke answered crisply. “I didn’t pick the riffraff of Esberg to make this trip, but the best and bravest men I could find. I chose you also, Yan—remember that.”
“That’s precisely my point,” Yanderman said. “Forgive me for being blunt. If you’d been heading for a battlefield, you wouldn’t have picked me for anything more demanding than supervising commissariat—correct? But this isn’t a straightforward military operation. It’s unique, unprecedented, and calculated to play hob with everyday ideas. My honest belief is that on the order to march half the men will immediately mutiny and lay down their arms, and the other half will use their comrades’ desertion as an excuse for refusing to go. Now they’ve heard the fables rife in Lagwich.”
Duke Paul was quite motionless, his gaze riveted on Yanderman. Now at last he spoke, his voice as soft and steady as before.
“Do you trust my judgment, Yan? If you don’t, why did you consent to come along in the first place?”
A bead of sweat
trickled unpleasantly down Yanderman’s nose. He answered, “I’ll grant this—that if anyone walks the world who could lead this army into hell, it’s yourself. I just don’t want to see you discount the men’s present mood.”
“You’ve left me no room to do that,” Duke Paul grunted. “I’ll make sure they get accustomed to the idea—somehow.”
“Ah—it might help if they were given some hints as to the practicability of the project,” Yanderman suggested, feeling a sort of helplessness as though he had been hanging by fingertips over a precipice and hadn’t noticed till now that exhaustion had finally loosed his grip. “How are you going to take two thousand men across land without food, fuel or water?”
The lazy, irritating drone of the fly started again, and it buzzed up from the place where it had landed on the Duke’s night-couch. Again the Duke swiped at it and missed. He said, “The barrenland is three hundred miles around. So its diameter isn’t much over a hundred. If there’s anything there, it’s at the centre, one may presume. We’ll carry maximum loads a day’s march from the edge, transfer the unconsumed portion to those who are going on and send back part of the column. We’ll continue like this and come to the middle with a party of a few score, hand-picked, who can make it back to the outside world without further support on minimum rations and forced marches.”
“A few score? To cope with whatever hell’s brood we may find?”
“I’m convinced that people are still living in the barrenland!” the Duke snapped. “Think it out, Yan! We’ve learned from clues dropped by Granny Jassy that part at least of the barrenland was created deliberately, to serve as a quarantine area around some source of danger in the middle—correct?”
Yanderman shrugged and nodded.
“In that case, we don’t have to think of the barrenland as a natural desert with no resources at all. We’ve established that there are streams flowing out from it, which are drinkable when they emerge, so we’ll manage for water—our worst single problem. Fuel—well, this isn’t a long march, is it? A slow one, certainly, but it’s summer! And consider this, too.” He leaned on the corner of his big table.
“We know beyond doubt that the things from the barrenland are coming in smaller numbers than they used to. I’m sure this isn’t accident. If they were spawning and breeding in the barrenland, you’d expect them to multiply! No, I suspect that there are people living in the middle of the barrenland: a party of volunteers—or their descendants, by now—charged with preventing the things’ access.” Again he swiped at the annoying fly, missing it the third time. “And the diminishing plague of things here at Lagwich is a measure of their relative success.”
His eyes blazed at Yanderman, who moved uncomfortably on his chair. Foolish or not, it was a grand design to re-establish contact with such heroes. And hearing Duke Paul speak of it was enough, surely, to convert the most cautious audience. Maybe it could be done. It would certainly be magnificently audacious to try it …
The Duke’s hand flashed through the air and closed this time around the fly, squashing it. He glanced down at his palm before wiping off the messy remains, and in that pose he stiffened. Yanderman looked at his handsome profile, and likewise froze.
After a moment, he said, “Sir …” His voice sounded peculiarly cracked and squeaky.
“Yes?” The Duke didn’t look up.
“Sir, there’s a patch of green among your hair!” Yanderman leapt to his feet and came close. “It looks like the mould which was on Ampier!”
The Duke nodded and held out his hand with the fly on it. Yanderman tore his eyes away from the deadly fuzz he had seen on his chiefs head and examined the insect. On its hairy legs, quite distinctly visible, was more of the same green mould.
Two and two came together in Yanderman’s mind. The fly had circled the Duke’s night-couch—on which Ampier had been laid! He strode over to it and whipped aside the cushions.
There, perhaps where a drop of Ampier’s blood had fallen: there, where at night the Duke’s head rested, was a smear of the alien greenness, concealed to the casual glance by seeming to form part of the pattern on a multi-coloured blanket, but now blazing out at Yanderman so fiercely he felt its shape imprinted on his very brain, like a branding-iron.
“Bring me a medic,” the Duke said after a small eternity. “And—Yan! Tell nobody else! Do you understand? Tell nobody else!”
XI
“Of course I believe you, even if no one else does!” Idris insisted. But a little imp of doubt rode snickering on the words, and Conrad’s heart sank.
“No, you don’t,” he said. “You think this is just another of my stories. I’ve told you so many tales you think I can’t keep my life and my dreams apart any longer.”
In her eyes he could read that his guess was correct, but he had no chance to hear her confirm or deny it, for at that moment the kitchen door of the house, which she had been holding ajar while speaking to him, was snatched fully open.
“Idris!” Her mother’s bony-knuckled hand fell on the girl’s shoulder and pulled her back. “If I’d known you were talking to Conrad I wouldn’t have let you come to the door!”
Past the woman’s acid face Conrad saw the interior of the kitchen. There was a man standing there, legs astraddle on the tiled floor—tall, brawny, finely dressed, watching the scene with some curiosity.
“Now you listen to me, Idle Conrad!” the mother shrilled. “Idris doesn’t want you plaguing her any more, understand? And I don’t want you around here either—my daughter’s meant for someone better than a no-good stewer of soap! If I catch you at this door again except to fetch the ashes, I’ll lay about you with a broomstick, is that clear?”
Yes. It was all too clear to Conrad. It was clear to anyone in Lagwich who had a girl with an ambitious mother and who was not already formally betrothed. That man standing behind Idris there, with a sneer on his face, now lifting a hand to twist his fine black mustachios—that was a prize in the sight of Idris’s mother. All the mothers of the town seemed to regard the arrival of the army as a glorified marrying expedition, and there was already an unspoken competition to be the first to have a daughter pledged to one of the Duke’s soldiery.
Conrad looked at Idris. Idris looked at the Esberg soldier, at her mother, then back at Conrad, and could not meet his eyes. She lowered her gaze to the floor and her cheeks grew red.
Wordlessly, Conrad turned away, and the door was slammed behind him.
The whole universe must be conspiring against him—either that, or he was going out of his mind. He had killed the thing from the barrenland … hadn’t he? Yet when he came back there was no carcass to bear him witness—only the broken vat and the pile of ash, tossed now and scattered by the wind. They had wanted to beat him for tricking them; as it turned out, they were content to laugh, and drove him away to hide by himself and yield to unstoppable weeping.
Was his life ever going to be worth living?
He walked moodily down the streets, kicking at pebbles, dodging out of sight whenever he heard young people approaching. He saw several groups of soldiers on their way to visit with families for the day, proud, overweening, mocking this little town simply by the way they walked.
Arrogant bastards, Conrad thought bitterly. All of them, from their Duke down to the lowliest chowhand, acted as though being born in Esberg made them the next thing to gods.
Maybe it would be better to go to the barrenland—his father had wished him there often enough …
Go to the barrenland?
He stopped in mid-stride. As though the lightning of an idea had welded shut a circuit in his mind, he found himself remembering clues picked up from gossip of the past few days.
Go to the barrenland! Of course! If he was ever to shake the dust of Lagwich from his shoes, he might best do it now, while opportunity offered. The chance might never come again.
Next morning he rose very quietly so as not to disturb his father—who as usual had come home late, full of beer, and who
now snored as though he might never wake. He had gone last evening to the stream and cleansed himself as thoroughly as for a harvest-day. Now he sorted out from the bag which held his entire clothing the least tattered and most presentable garments he owned; some of them dated back to his early teens and were ridiculously tight on his full-grown body, but they would have to serve.
Then he collected from its hiding-place a sack of the fine white soap which he had put away in accordance with his plan to sell soap at the army camp. The plan had come to nothing of course. The loss of two of his vats alone meant that he had no surplus to spare from the town’s requirements; moreover, since the disastrous episode of the disappearing carcass there had been some houses where he could not face calling for ash or grease—the occupants were too ready to lash him with taunts.
But this little batch of good soap wasn’t for sale. It was just evidence of his ability as a soap-maker. He wasn’t sure how to use it—maybe it would be best to march smartly up to the camp and say he wanted to give it to the Duke …
He postponed a decision. He would have to play it by ear.
When he sneaked out of the house, he sensed even through the veil of excitement and tension his decision generated that the mood of the town had changed overnight. He didn’t care any longer what became of Lagwich and its people. But—no doubt of it: something serious was wrong.
Puzzled, he made his way through the streets, more boldly as he discovered that the people up and about so far had their minds on something other than jeering at him. He cast his memory back, hunting a reason. There had been some sort of commotion during the night, he recalled vaguely—shouting in the streets and the tramping of feet—but he’d stirred, half-waking, and assumed it was merely the military police taking a drunk in charge, the sort of thing he’d heard a dozen times in the past few days.
The biggest shock, and the measure of how wrong he’d been about last night’s uproar, came when Waygan forgot to gibe at him as he passed the gate, but called to know if he was going to the army camp.