Balefires

by David Drake

  The captain was waiting when I opened my eyes. "Sleep well?" he asked.

  I winced. "And yourself?"

  He turned his palms up."It was bad enough when I only dreamed of drowning. Though it looks as if that too may come today."

  I glanced at the sky. It marched solidly with black cumuli though the wind was still for the nonce.

  "We'll not set out today," I said.

  "Really? You're bosun now, you know, and I'll take your word for it-but theDominator seems to be making ready."

  I nodded."The Admiral wants some sea room," I guessed."Remember, we've no proper harbor here and the fiver can't be beached. He'll try to keep her bow to the storm with the oars and take no chance of her being pounded to pieces against the shore. Though for my own part, I'd worry more that the wallowing slut's keel would split and spill me in the middle of it."

  A messenger bore out my prediction within the hour and theDominator put out alone. The storm refused to break, however, and she rode a half-mile out on a smooth sea while the sultry heat grew more and more oppressive. The water was so calm that Antiopas and I, sitting in the bows of theFlyer, could see the channel in the sea bottom as a straight dark streak in the green.

  "Where do you suppose it leads?" he asked.

  "Where does a mountain lead?" I replied with a shrug.

  Antiopas persisted. "This end leads to the pier," he said. "At least that far; the other end…"

  He was voicing thoughts that had occurred to me also. "The drains," I said. "I suppose they have to lead somewhere."

  Neither of us spoke for a while. When I did, I deliberately avoided what both of us were thinking of.

  "Pity the baggars below decks on her," I said, thumbing toward the penteres.

  "Pity the all of us, damned to this voyage," Antiopas replied and fumbled in his pouch."Do you suppose there is any value to this?"he continued, bringing out the octopus figure.

  I took a closer look at the little idol, hefting it in my hand. "Just glass," I answered. "Not very pretty, the Gods know. Besides, I don't much like the idea of carrying other people's Gods around. Why don't we just drop it over the side and be done?"

  "Images of Gods," Antiopas corrected me. "A stone is not the God but the symbol of the God."

  Then why go to temples if the Gods aren't there? I thought but said nothing and watched the play of light within the figurine. The glass was so smooth that it slipped in my grasp and a tiny drop of blood formed where one of the arms pricked me.

  "Castor!"Antiopas swore, "TheDominator 's moving; she's heading in. Now what under heaven for?"

  I looked up from the idol. The surface had been roiled by the fiver's oars and there was another patch of foam far beyond her, almost on the horizon from where we sat though much nearer the penteres. I rose and pointed to it without speaking.

  Antiopas stood too, and his face had gone white. One part of my mind remembered the little brown men telling us how these seas could rise in minutes, horizon to horizon, and sweep everything beneath them. Still I felt no fear, neither of that nor of what I knew in truth was approaching. The idol burned in my palm.

  All along the shore men were staring in confusion at theDominator, whose battle-gong was clanging. As we watched, the sea darkened in front of the penteres and there was another splash of foam.

  "That's no wave-" Antiopas began and broke off in horror to stare at the figurine in my hand. "Herakles who purged the world," he whispered, "be with us now."

  Some started to run then but I think only the two of us realized what was coming. The crew of theService was readying the catapult on her forecastle. Although the Admiral must have realized by then that theDominator was not the quarry, the great fiver continued to cut through the sea pursuing now instead of fleeing.

  The third time it arose it was half the distance between the shore and the swiftly approachingDominator. The sacklike body squirmed-Gods, it was huge!-to bring one slit-pupiled eye around to glare at us. Then it dived with another spurt of foam.

  Someone had fired theService' s catapult before joining the rout. The bolt glanced off the waves, probably useless even if better aimed. Men were streaming away from the shore, their shouts drowning the thunder of the penteres' drummer hammering out the strokes as the bronze prow boiled through the glassy sea. There were only two men on her deck now, the helmsman and the Admiral himself. Even as I watched the helmsman dived overboard and the Admiral took the wheel. Probably the crew had no idea of what was happening; their only view was through the oarslots and ventilator gratings.

  "Run, you fool!" someone shouted in my ear and it was Antiopas, my captain. But I could not move for it was not yet time, though the God was as fire in my hand.

  "The bench," I whispered, "I should be on the bench."

  "Run!"

  An arm snaked over the side and wrapped about the rail. TheFlyer shuddered as she slid off the beach and continued to slant into the water toward the great weight that was dragging her down. I stared into the water as the ship lurched again and two more arms rippled up, two arms and a chalk-white beak larger than I was.

  Antiopas screamed and slashed with his sword, not at the tentacle that curled toward him but the God in my hand. Then our bow heaved up and disintegrated, hurling us shoreward, as theDominator 's oak and gold and great bronze ram smashed through theFlyer and ground what was beneath her into the mud of the bottom forever.

  We buried our dead-and there were many, for the penteres had crumpled to the mast step-beneath an honest mound with none of the decaying marble to defile them. The gold we gave to the sea, may it lie there forever. Yet still there is that which rots unburied in my mind, and my dreams are ill dreams for a sailor.

  Children Of The Forest

  Many years ago I mentioned that I was a Fortean to a careful reporter who was taping the interview. My several psychiatrist friends were hugely amused when the printed version stated that I was a Freudian. Since then I've been careful to give an explanation of what I mean by the word.

  Charles Fort collected reports of anomalous events from periodicals (largely from scientific journals) and published them in four volumes from 1919 to 1932. These include reports of things which are now accepted as true (for instance, giant squid and ball lightning) but which orthodox science at the time rejected as observer errors; matters which are unexplained but aren't especially controversial (for instance, unconfirmed sightings of astronomical bodies by respectable observers); and utterly bizarre things like a rain of frogs in England or a rain of shaved meat in Kentucky. Fort didn't write about UFOs, but they're part of modern Fortean interests.

  Now-the fact that I'm interested in such things doesn't mean I believe in all of them. There are people who do, just as there are people who believe that disproving a report of spontaneous human combustion disproves all such reports. I consider both groups delusional (and I consider people who think you get real science or real history from a TV show to be deeply ignorant, but that's a slightly different matter).

  One of the most entertaining writers on Forteana (and on natural history generally) was

  Ivan T. Sanderson. He was capable of modifying his data to improve a story, but he was a fine writer and a man of great culture and intelligence.

  One of Sanderson's essays was on wudewasas, woodhouses (yes, that's what the name of the humorist P.G. Wodehouse comes from): the drawings of wild men found in the margins of medieval manuscripts. He speculated that there'd been a European version of the Sasquatch, but that it was man-sized rather than a giant like the wild man of the Northwest United States.

  The likelihood that this is true (or for that matter, the likelihood that Bigfoot is running around Northern California) didn't matter for my purposes. I thought the notion would work for a story, so I wrote "Children of the Forest."

  The form goes back to the fairy tales which I loved of mine even I could read. It's become fashionable to give fairy tales a modern slant or to twist them. I wasn't trying to be clever, but I did t
ry to treat the realities of medieval life and its class structure with the same sort of realism that I'd bring to a story set in Viet Nam.

  When "Children…" was first published in F amp;SF, it brought me two angry letters. (Only one other story of mine from the '70s aroused any comment at all.) I'm not sure what that means, as the letter writers were incensed about completely different aspects of the story (and both were wrong). It may simply indicate that when I'm on, my fiction arouses an emotional reaction in readers.

  If so, well, that's what I'm trying to do.

  When Teller came in from the field, gnarled as his hoe-handle and looking twice his forty years, his wife said, "The cow has gone dry, man." Teller scowled. She had slapped out her words like bolts from a crossbow. He understood them, understood also why she was whetting the black iron blade of their only knife. From his wife, warped and time-blackened by the same years that had destroyed him, Teller turned to his daughter Lena.

  And Lena was a dazzle of sunlight in the darkened hut.

  She was six, though neither of her parents could have told a stranger that without an interval of mumbling and dabbing fingers to cracked lips. But there were no strangers. In the dozen years since the Black Death had swept southern Germany, the track that once led to the high road and thence to Stuttgart had merged back into the Forest. The hut was all of civilization, a beehive with two openings in its thatch. Teller now stooped in the doorway; above him was the roof hole that served as chimney for the open fire in the center of the room. By that fire sat Lena, easing another baulk of wood under the porridge pot before looking at her father. Her smile was timid, but the joy underlying it was as real as the blond of her sooty hair. She dared not show Teller the welts beneath her shift, but she knew that her mother would not beat her in his presence.

  "I said, the cow has gone dry," the woman repeated.

  The rasp of iron on stone echoed her words."You know we can't go on until the harvest with three mouths and no milk."

  "Woman, I'll butcher-"

  "You will not." She slid to the floor and faced him, bandy-legged and shorter on her own legs than when sitting on the stool."The meat will rot in a month, we have no salt. Three mouths will not last the summer on the cow's meat, man.

  "Three mouths will not last the summer."

  She was an iron woman, black-faced and blackhearted. She did not look at Lena, who cowered as her mother stepped forward and held out the wood-hafted knife to Teller. He took it, his eyes as blank as the pit of his mouth opening and closing in his beard. "Perhaps… I can hunt more…?"

  "Hoo, coward!"mocked the woman."You're afraid to leave the clearing now for the woods devils, afraid to go out the door to piss in the night!" The reek of the wall across from the pine-straw bedding proved her statement. "You'll not go hunting, man."

  "But-"

  "Kill her. Kill her! " she shrieked, and Lena's clear voice wailed hopelessly as a background to the raucous cries. Teller stared at the weapon as though it were a viper which had crawled into his hand in the night. He flung it from him in a fury of despair, not hearing it clack against the whetstone or theping! of the blade as it parted.

  The woman's brief silence was as complete as if the knife had pierced her heart instead of shattering. She picked up the longest shard, a hand's breadth of iron whose edge still oozed light, and cradled it in her palms. Her voice crooned without meaning, while Teller watched and Lena burrowed her face into the pine needles.

  "We can't all three eat and live to the harvest, man," the woman said calmly. And Teller knew that she was right.

  "Lena," he said, not looking at the girl but instead at his cloak crumpled on the earthen floor. It was steerhide, worn patchily hairless during the years since he had bartered eggs for it from a passing peddler. That one had been the last of the peddlers, nor were there chickens anymore since the woods demons had become bolder.

  "Child," he said again, a little louder but with only kindness in his voice. He lifted the cloak with his left hand, stroked his daughter between the shoulder blades with his right. "Come, we must go for a little journey, you and I."

  The woman backed against the hut wall again. Her eyes and the knife edge had the same hard glitter.

  Lena raised her face to her father's knee; his arm, strong for all its stringiness, lifted her against his chest. The cloak enveloped her and she thrashed her head free. "I'm hot, Papa."

  "No, we'll play a game," Teller said. He hawked and spat cracklingly on the fire before he could continue. "You won't look at the way we go, you'll hide your head. All right, little one?"

  "Yes, Papa." Her curls, smooth as gold smeared with river mud, bobbled as she obediently faced his chest and let him draw the leather about her again.

  "The bow, woman," Teller said. Silently she turned and handed it to him: a short, springy product of his own craftsmanship. With it were the three remaining arrows, straight-shafted with iron heads, but with only tufts remaining of the fletching. His jaw muscles began to work in fury. He thrust the bow back to her, knots of anger dimpling the surface of his bare left arm. "String it! String it, you bitch, or-"

  She stepped away from his rage and quickly obeyed him, tensing the cord without difficulty. The wood was too supple to make a good bow, but a stiffer bowshaft would have snapped the bark string. Teller strode from the hut, not deigning to speak again to his wife.

  There was no guide but the sun, and that was a poor, feeble twinkling through the ranked pines and spruces. It was old growth, save in slashes where age or lightning had brought down a giant and given opportunity to lesser growth. Man had not made serious inroads on this portion of the Forest even before the Plague had stripped away a third of the continent's population. Fear had driven Teller and his wife to flee with their first child, leaving their village for a lonely clearing free from contamination. But there were other fears than that of the Black Death, things only hinted at in a bustling hamlet. In the Forest they became a deeper blackness in the shadows and a heavy padding on moonless nights.

  They were near him now.

  Teller lengthened his stride, refusing to look to the sides or behind him. He was not an intelligent man, but he knew instinctively that if he acknowledged what he felt, he would be lost. He would be unable to move at all, would remain hunched against a tree trunk until either starvation or the demons came for him.

  Lena began humming a little tune. Though off-key, it was recognizable as a lullaby. Teller's wife had never bothered to rock Lena to sleep, but their elder daughter, born before the panicked flight into the wilderness, had absorbed enough of the memories of her babyhood to pass them on to her sister. It was not the Plague that had taken the girl, nor yet the demons. Rather, there had been a general malaise, a wasting fed by seven years in an environment that supported life but did nothing to make life supportable. In the end she had died, perhaps saving Teller the earlier agony of a journey like the one he made now.

  Far enough, he decided. A spruce sapling thrust up from among three adult trees. Though its bole was only a hand's breadth in diameter, the first branches were a full ten feet in the air. It formed a post firmer than that on which Sebastian was martyred.

  "Now, Lena," Teller said as he put the girl down, "you'll wait here by this tree for a while."

  She opened her eyes for the first time since she had left the house with her father. The conifers around her were spearpoints thrust through the earth. Black-green branches shuddered in a breath of wind. The girl screamed, paused, and screamed again.

  Teller panicked at the sound and the open terror of her bright blue gaze. He stopped fumbling at the cord knotted about his waist and struck open-handed, his palm smudging the soot on her cheek. Lena bounced back against the spruce trunk, stunned mentally rather than physically by the blow. She closed her mouth unblinking, then spun to her feet and ran. Teller gulped fear and remorse as he snatched up his bow to follow.

  Lena ran like a startled fawn. She should not have been able to escape a grown man,
but the fearsome shadows came to her aid. When Lena dodged around the scaly bole of a hemlock, Teller, following, was knocked sprawling by a branch. He picked himself up, picked up also the arrows he had scattered as he fell. He nocked the one with the most fletching, though he could not have explained to a questioner what he meant to do with it. "Lena?" he called. The trees drank his voice.

  A rustle and a stutter of light caught his attention, but it was a squirrel's flag tail jerking on a spruce tip. Teller eased the tension on his bowstring.

  There was another sound behind him, and he turned very quickly.

  Lena, trembling in the crease of a giant that had fallen so long ago that the trees growing around it were of nearly equal girth, heard her father blundering nearby. Her frightened whimper was almost a silence itself, no more than the burr of a millipede's feet through the leaf mould in front of her nose. She heard Teller call, then a ghastly double cry that merged with the twang of a bow. No more voices, then, but a grunt and thechock! of something hollow crushing against a tree trunk.

  For a moment, then, there was real silence.

  "Coo-o?"trilled a voice too deep to be birdlike."Coo-o-o?"it repeated, closer now to Lena though unaccompanied by the crackling brush that had heralded her father's progress."Coo?"and it was directly above her. Almost more afraid to look up than not to, Lena slowly turned her head.

  It was leaning over the log to peer down at her, a broad face set with sharp black eyes and a pug nose. The grinning lips were black, the skin pink where it could be glimpsed beneath the fine, russet fur. Lena's hands swung to her mouth and she bit down hard on her knuckles. The creature vaulted soundlessly over the log. It was about the height of Lena's father, but was much deeper in the chest. Palms and soles were bare of the fur that clothed the rest of it. Its right hand reached out and plucked away the arrow that flopped from its left shoulder. A jewel of blood marked the fur at that point, but the creature's torso and long arms were already sticky with blood not its own.