by Wilf Jones
‘Smoke! Look: must be someone home.’
He was so eager for news he nudged his reluctant horse to a canter. Sirrah wearily matched them.
‘Steady on Seth,’ Tregar called, ‘There is someone home but we don’t know who. Let’s be a bit more careful, eh?’
‘Sorry Tregar, ‘appen your right. Shall we go through t’ trees: it’ll be harder to see us coming.’
Though there was smoke billowing from the chimney, black and evil smelling, there was no sign outside of man or beast. The building was of grey flint much like the houses in town though this was only a single storey. The black painted front door was locked and very solid and so they took a little path around the side of the house to reach the back door. It was ajar. They halted, hesitating.
‘I’ve baked it black, he he he,’ came a deranged and possibly female voice from inside the kitchen. ‘I ‘ave: ‘ssoverdone. What d’you say to that, ragamuffin? Nice and crunchy?’
‘Whaaaat?’ said another voice, ‘Th’art mad. It’s bad enough I tell thee… Never liked it anyroad. Sticks to yer teeth. What d’yer say: black? Black? Tsch, never liked it.’
‘Mad? Y’cheeky bugger. I’ll say I’m mad: mad as a pancake. A black pancake; he he!’ Racking coughs followed, presumably after an attempt to eat whatever she had cooked. ‘Could be alright wi’ a bit o’ salt. And tea! Yes, a nice cup o’tea. It would.’
‘Oh you’re proper mad you. What d’yer think yer doin’, baking it black like that? You’d never eat it, not now.’
Tregar and Seth stood amazed and uncertain by the open door. Trying not to be seen, Tregar peeped inside and saw a man and a woman of middle age. The man sat at the table and the woman was peeling potatoes at the sink. There was a foul, charred smell in the room. As she peeled, the woman carefully dropped the peelings into a cooking pot but allowed the potatoes to fall on the floor. Whatever had burned lay in cindered remains on the table and the man was poking it about with a grubby finger.
‘Who’re you?’ the woman said, pointing at Tregar. ‘You can’t go anywhere without ‘em poppin’ up. Snooping here, snooping there. Every night! Like they owned it! Pasty faces the lot o’them. Go on, go away. How many times ‘ave I to tell you?’’
She didn’t want a reply. Tregar was about to speak but the woman picked up a potato and threw it at him, fetching him a quite a whack on the ear. He ducked out of the door quick.
‘Gone again,’ she yelled after him, ‘popping in, popping out. If they’d just keep still. Bloody spooks, slavering over my cooking.’
Tregar had seen and heard enough. Rubbing at his ear, he walked back again to the front of the house. Seth followed.
‘What do you make o’ them then, Tregar?’ he said.
‘Well, she nearly made mincemeat out of me,’ Tregar answered with a grin, ‘Madness. Mad as – as pancakes, the both of them. If I had more time I’d try to help. Maybe in a few weeks. But I’d like to know just what she meant by ‘spooks’. Who do ye think she was talking about? Something very strange is happening hereabouts, though I can’t see those two making any sense of it. Well Seth, do ye prefer this to town?’
‘Not likely, but then I can’t say I’m keen on either.’
In the end they spent the night in a barn, both wary of empty houses, and as a result they didn’t discover the answer to the riddle. For the past week the people of Hannaydale had been plagued by strange manifestations. They began shortly after nightfall: ghostly visions that took the shapes of men and women. There was a smell of death about them, their faces were pallid, and yet they were quite animated. Dozens of them simply walked through the walls and through the furniture of people’s homes to confront anyone they found within. They clustered in kitchens to terrify the cooks, they invaded living rooms to scare the children, they made a racket in bedrooms to wake those sleeping. They spied on everything and everyone, taking especial delight in embarrassing their victims at moments of defecation or lovemaking. They gathered in numbers to laugh and to giggle at young boys and girls surprised naked as they prepared for bed.
They were a strange and evil crew and no one in Hannaydale could abide them. The teachers and the doctors and the aldermen and the priests all struggled to give them a name, fought over definitions and floundered when called to explain or reassure.
Some tried to make the case that these invaders were real living creatures. They couldn’t be ghosts, they said. Ghosts were remembrances given form, memories caught up in the trauma of the past, spirits that populate the spaces once occupied by lives long since over, all unaware that the world had moved on and had forsaken them. Ghosts, they insisted, were a sad and insubstantial portion of mankind condemned to a status that allowed for no change and no redemption. Some of the protagonists had become quite philosophical in their argument. These spectres now plaguing the town were far from being sad or forsaken. They had intelligence and will and a determination to interact with each other and with their victims; they were entities alive in all respects bar a physical presence in the world. They had wicked intent. It was obvious, the debate concluded, that these visions were most certainly not ghosts.
But for all the discussion, argument and conclusion not one side or the other could think of anything to do about them. So far nobody had suffered any physical hurt but the Hannay folk, allowed no peace, were in a fractious state and tempers ran high. Some people had been scared witless by the apparitions and the elders were worried about the sanity of many more. Eventually a meeting held in broad daylight on the steps of the Hannayford Town Hall ended with the sad decision to evacuate the town and villages immediately and to send messages to the King. They could only hope that the plague was temporary, and that soon they could return to take up their lives once more.
The spooks were pleased to help them on their way. On the first night of the massed march sleep was disturbed by many appearances. Just before dawn they culminated in spectacular form as hundreds of spectres, dressed for battle, charged at the camp. The ‘ghost’ army struck terror into the hearts and minds of the refugees. Hysteria settled upon them like a swarm of bees and in frantic haste many upped and fled leaving their possessions behind. Those men and women of stronger will staunchly held their ground and were relieved by the timely arrival of the sun whose rays dissolved the visions as though they were a morning mist.
As Tregar and Seth settled in for a good night’s sleep, at the cottage in the orchard the ‘pasty faces’ returned. The couple, far too proud to be driven from their home, determined to weather this storm, played unwilling hosts to at least twenty of the creatures. The wife determined to oust them.
In a frenzy of rage she ran about her house waving a carving knife at the intruders. Time and again she tried to stab the vile things not understanding that the steel could not hurt them. Her efforts and her ranting served only to amuse. They led her a merry dance, screaming in mock terror, shouting out warnings and shrieking with fits of the giggles. It was a scene from the madhouse. The husband, unable to respond to the onslaught but adamant that he would stay his ground, sat in his chair, eyes tight shut with his fingers thrust into his ears.
The noise built to a peak when one of the spectres had the marvellous idea of standing directly in front of the husband’s chair, enticing the wife’s attack. She stabbed and stabbed as the leering ghost laughed in her face and was pleased to see blood at last. Her torment continued all night and would every night until she was there no more.
Ignorant of her plight, in the wholesome light of day, Tregar and Seth set out on a journey to a place known as Moorsend, the intended limit of their reconnaissance. Here the moors turned to craggy fells, precursors of the Francon Heights which themselves were a minor outthrust of the mighty Dedicae massif.
The journey discovered only more of the same lack of life though in truth the population was ever thin in these severe uplands. They stayed the night in a summe
r hut built by shepherds whose sheep were now scattered, and in the morning Tregar again tried his ‘Sight’ to see what it would reveal. He cast out all his memory of recent days and concentrating on the road at his feet urged his mind along it, ever northward. He saw the land rise and fall, brooks and rivers running, heather and fern growing, rocks like frowning brows on the foreheads of hills. He saw no men or women, nor many creatures other than the crows floating on the air like charred smuts of paper as they searched for scarce carrion. At his distant limit the mountains piled up as high as four or five thousand feet and beyond those he could see no more. Halted by distance he widened his search but nothing of importance was revealed. This sinister lack of an enemy seemed worse to him than any sighting could have been, but at least there was nothing to fear for another thirty miles, and that was something. He just hoped that a long journey to the fight, wherever it was, wouldn’t overtire the soldiers before the fighting began.
Having seen all they could Tregar decided to return at once to Small Cuttings. Seth brought them back a different and even more desolate route and still they saw no one. After two wearying days, made so much worse by the gloom that fell upon their spirits, they descended thankfully into the home valley.
It was a changed place that greeted them. No longer a hamlet of sturdy grey houses upon green and yellow fields but rather a city of white and khaki canvas and hardly a blade of grass to be seen. The armies had arrived.
‘Well Seth,’ said Tregar, ‘What do ye think your father will say now that the dreaded three thousand are eating his food and trampling his meadows?’
‘Oh, don’t worry about me dad. He keeps his word and he won’t gi’thi any bother. He’ll likely be a great help if he can. Let’s face it, the King has offered him a lot of compensation.’
‘Compensation?’
‘Aye, didn’t tha know? He’s paying well over t’ odds for any food you take and some more besides if he can help the army get on. The way you told him about the armies just takin’ food had him right upset. He didn’t understand. But wi’ compensation, and promise of a fair deal in Ayer, and some transport, well, he comes out of it very well.’
‘I might have guessed.’ Tregar was not best pleased. Was it right that Mador should have to pay to feed armies that protected them all? Where was the patriotism? Tregar was saddened by the King’s acquiescence but at least it showed that Mador knew his man. What was the sense in appealing to higher values when monetary gain carried more weight?
THE SIEGE OF ETERNITY
Francon 3057.7.30
The tall, broad-shouldered man climbed the worn steps to the high battlement. He was cloaked and hooded with heavy black wool and in such surroundings his facelessness made him a mysterious figure. All about him, like an extra cloak, swirled a dirty grey fog: a fog that held the early daylight at bay; a cold fog that somehow weeviled its way into a man’s body, into his head; a fog that distorted perception, that made even the most innocent seem menacing.
The man paused to huddle the folds of his cloak closer to him and to look out into the heavy air. He stood at an angle of the stair where, by some fault of design, the parapet ran lowest, a dangerous place exposing head and shoulders above the protecting stonework but an excellent viewing point. Comfortable even, on a peaceful, sunny day, with the spectacular vista of a perfect U-shaped valley all decked with hanging streams and fertile fans. Today there was no sun and no view. It was not simply that the fog fettered sight. It was as if the mist was an acid that had so eaten away at the landscape that it was hard to believe anything was left.
Suppressing a shudder he continued on his way. He shook off his burden of gloom quite deliberately, picked up his step and even practised a smile. He couldn’t quite stretch to a jaunty stride but he did try. First tour of duty this day and he had important work to do: to raise spirits, a smile perhaps among the men and women of the watch. They were in a dire situation, sitting on the edge of untold disaster, faced by an unseen, unknown enemy and every last one of them suffering from a creeping despair. The reason for that all around them: the castle, the fog, the fear. What could he possibly do to rid them of fear? How was he to give them hope? Soon now they would be called upon to prove their worth in battle and it was his duty to see that they were ready for the challenge. His duty because they were the stalwarts of the House of Sands and he was Jaspar, their Lord.
It was the thought of the responsibility that made him nervous, the apprehension hardly surprising considering how little time he had been given to prepare for such a command. That’s what he told himself. Not that it could be said that Lord Ammel had neglected his son’s training: when young, Jaspar had the best tutors in the country. What Ammel had done was to follow custom. Amongst the nobility of Pars it was normal for future leaders to be given an academic education until adulthood, another fifteen years after that to come to terms with public life, people, work and commerce, and then at the sensible age of thirty-five the responsibility of power as Lord’s Deputy. After that higher office would depend upon the health and energy of the present incumbent. Jaspar was five years short of becoming Deputy when his father died.
It was unusual in those times for a man to die at only fifty-three years and in Ammel’s case completely unexpected. He had hunted all day, feasted all night and, as he walked to his bed in the Palace of Ayer that winter morning, barely six months past, he collapsed and was dead. Tregar, walking by his side, found that he could do nothing and though the wizard later explained to Jaspar all he knew about weaknesses of the heart, Jaspar could never really comprehend it. Ammel had been a man renowned for a strength and stamina far exceeding his peers. It was commonly believed, though not properly tested, that his skill with the broad blade was unmatched in all of Pars. This legend gave him an enviable aura of power independent of his position. Jaspar had no such skill and no such aura to help him through and his father’s unexpected death left him wanting.
The Lords of the other seven Houses did their best in the short time left to them at that Winter Court to give Jaspar some clue as to what was expected of him. Mador himself had determined to take him under his wing after the thaw but it wasn’t to be. Disaster struck in the shape of Masachean hordes charging through the melting snow at Aristeth and soon the King had much more to worry about than Jaspar’s lack of training.
It was this lack of training that Mador cited in his decision to keep Sands at Ayer during those earlier troubles: how could the King be certain the army would follow so inexperienced a young man? Mador wouldn’t risk it. Jaspar grimaced at the bitter irony. His inexperience had saved them from a straight fight only to land them in something far worse.
In reality Jaspar was very well equipped for formal warfare. Though he may have lacked certain graces of court, and his skills as a leader were untested, when it came to strategy and tactics he was, without question, a genius. When others were playing at politics Jaspar was playing either the boards or the lists. He was a fine horseman and expert with a lance and often went an hour at the joust before being dumped and trounced, but beside the lists were the Generals’ Boards, miniature fields of battle with soldiers of lead, and there he ruled supreme. A sign of a misspent youth said some, a tiresome fascination said others. His skills certainly earned him the respect of the sergeants and men-at-arms he vanquished and the praise of the grey-haired Masters he bamboozled, but they failed to impress more widely. There were certain courtiers who never failed to point up his deficiencies in other areas. They liked to talk about the problem of his immaturity and indeed of his lack of age: there were no lieutenants and hardly a sergeant younger than Jaspar in the whole of Sands’ army. And while willing to admit to his abilities on the boards they would always make the point that boards were not true terrain and toy soldiers were not real men and women.
Whether these comments were made through jealousy of his position or through simple concern about the House of Sand
s Jaspar was never sure, but he was inclined to believe them completely fair. War games always presumed that opposing pawns had equal powers, would always obey commands and the conflict would be won or lost according to the skills of the general. In real life an army of children might do well by their genius strategist, but would they always do as they were told, and how would they fare in a battle with grown men?
Jaspar looked around him at the wet stone and the gloom and hope seemed to drain away. Governed by fear his army was no better now than an army of children. What could he do to give them strength? Not enough. And how strong was this force hidden by the mists that he must ask them to face? Too strong. Here was his first chance to order a real battle and he knew before he began that already he was on the losing side.
‘Good morning, Sergeant Stretter,’ said Jaspar, raising a somewhat strained smile for the first statue of a man he met, ‘Or am I being overly optimistic?’
‘‘Good’ is not the word I would have chosen, Jas… My Lord. There’s been no change. Not a whisper of a breeze and by crikey it was a cold one last night.’
‘Well, never mind, your watch is nearly done. Have a good breakfast then get your head down. It’ll all seem a bit more bearable when you’ve rested.’
‘Maybe.’
They were both in some doubt about that.
‘It’ll not be long now before they start again.’
‘No, sergeant.’
They were talking about the drums. For almost a week now whatever it was that hemmed them in, hidden up, un-assailable in the mists, had been making its presence clear. At first the drums were used only to greet movement within, to threaten any who sought to leave the castle. There were no voices, no whoops or cries or whistles to accompany the percussions that echoed through the deathly air and clamoured in their ears, only the drums. There were drums that were not quite snare drums as they had a nasty ringing metallic note to them. There were drums that were like bass drums, but they had a turn to the note as if the skin had started slack and become tight. There was something that sounded very like a child’s rattle or the clattering of bones. And there was no music to the way these instruments were used, merely a regular pounding of the bass overlain by the others as and when the players pleased. It was a spasmodic cacophony beat out with malice.