Greybeard

  I sighed. What could I do against evil on a scale this gargantuan? Just by looking it in the face, taking it in, I was at least registering it, something very few Germans were doing. I could see, not blind, I – and my old brain must take full advantage of that.

  I crept into another part of the camp, looking furtively for another hiding spot, knowing full well my danger. Suddenly, female screams rang out, followed by laughter from the orcs nearest me.

  ‘It’s beginning, brother,’ one nudged another. Without the iron-fist leadership of their absent king, it seemed that they were engaging in forbidden play.

  I soon located the tent from whence the screams emerged, and peeped under a loose flap of canvas (like all the other tents it had been erected in ramshackle fashion). As I suspected, a young German woman was being held down by several plague-orcs, while the others lined up to take turns raping her. One of them had clearly just put his load in her, and it was probably now beyond my power to save her from the virus they sought to infect her with…but still, I was going to try.

  I should note that, although the bowstring twanged within me, I acted more for my own sake than for hers, for I was learning to read faces better, and one look at hers told me she had gone with one of them willingly, of her own accord, expecting a spark of fake romance she didn’t seem able to kindle from (much nicer) German men. Let’s say I felt for her, at best, a contempt mingled with pity – but that doesn’t explain my actions.

  The queue was out of the tent, and there was a small atrium, into which I crept, hiding behind a flap of the canvas. It was a near-perfect spot for my unpremeditated act of clubbing the first orc to enter with a Millwall Brick to the head. He went down, and as soon as the next went in I did likewise. Soon there was barely room to move inside the atrium for the pile of unconscious bodies.

  Then a dusky head peered out to see why the queue had slacked off. Such a howl of anguish he let out! I cursed myself for not wearing Dazzle that day. I clubbed the howling goblin, but naturally too late to avoid a melee. I don’t remember all the details, but I know when they did get me to the ground the blonde wench spat at me, not from Stockholm syndrome, either, but through lumping me via my very maleness in with her rapists. As they held me, shaking, I silently contemplated how stupid and arrogant her face looked, even covered in the tainted sperm of subhuman monsters.

  It was hardly the stuff of knights and damsels.

  * * *

  Their tortures mirrored the Stasi. I was allowed no sleep that night – buckets of dirty water or urine thrown over me if it looked as if I were nodding off. They even force-fed me some unnamed medication…not LSD, but it fucked with my head. Joints and sinews felt painful, as if clogged with grit.

  ‘I suppose you want the Polizei?’ sneered the orc who appeared in nominal charge of the proceedings. ‘Let me tell you…Polizei won’t help. Won’t touch us, won’t touch us. They would take our side against a robber like you. No, we won’t give you the leniency of turning you over to the law, ho ho.’

  ‘Would they care about all your raping?’

  ‘No.’

  He was undoubtedly right. Why would the cops bother? Too much trouble, and they had been well-trained. No police would or could save me. And they would only lock me up if they did rescue me. I must wait for the right moment, if possible, and save myself. As for the girl…

  For the next part of their entertainment they brought in a savage, ill-treated dog, purchased from a vanload of passing gypsies. They laughed as they tried to make the dog bite my genitals. But vicious and starved though the beast was, he wouldn’t do as he was told, and instead turned on one of the orcs. So they killed the dog, then beat me with a stick until my back was bloody. I hoped none of them, in their viral state, touched the blood. I knew they planned to infect me at some point, but hoped to find a way of escape before they did so. Still, even if they infected me, I would make what remained of my life worthwhile, and take as many of them with me as possible.

  Their next jape was trying to make me fuck the girl. They stripped both of us and made us lie in the springtime mud. She was a mockery of the May Bride. They dragged me on top of her and said they would shoot me if I didn’t ‘put it in’, as she whimpered underneath. It had been two or three years since I had last had an erection, so it wouldn’t have been possible in any case, but I kicked and struggled so hard to get off (I didn’t know if a man could contract HIV from a woman’s fluids, and had no desire to find out) that they had to knock me unconscious with their rifle butts.

  When I came to, I and the woman were both tied to stakes. My immediate thought was that they were going to burn us alive, but I calmed slightly on seeing no wood beneath me. The camp was free of faggots in more ways than one, I thought wryly, and grinned rigidly at my own lame joke, so desperate to relax had I become.

  She stared at me, and I had the feeling she was more afraid of me than of the orcs.

  ‘We’re in a bit of a pickle,’ I breathed harshly.

  ‘Someone will look for us,’ she said in German, trying to convince herself this was so.

  ‘No they won’t,’ I snapped. ‘The system won’t touch them. We’re alone, young lady. Utterly alone.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ she sobbed. ‘You horrible old man.’

  ‘The only way to get out is to do it ourselves. I’m going to try and saw through the rope using friction.’ I began to do so. She looked at me mutely, with wide eyes.

  ‘You won’t get out that way,’ she gasped. ‘You fool. Why are you even bothering?’ But she was wrong. The stake behind me was rough, and the rope was fraying. It felt like I would have it in ten or fifteen minutes if no orcs came in, and kept sawing away, ignoring a slew of disparaging outbursts from the girl, who seemed to genuinely hate me for some reason. I told myself she was just scared, taking her fears out on me, and resolved to tolerate her off-the-rails comportment.

  Amazingly, I managed to get the rope loose before the ingress of an orc. I had it, and then the woman was whining in my ear, ‘Aren’t you going to free me, too?’

  ‘Yes, just keep quiet,’ I hissed. I looked around for a tool to saw through the rope quicker, and that was my undoing, for by the time I had ascertained there was no such tool in the tent, and set to work to simply untie the knots, the ingress I had feared occurred. A goblin patrol entered, and I was collared and hauled away to another tent, while the woman shrieked, ‘It wasn’t me, it was him! I didn’t want to escape, honestly!’ But the orcs were having none of it, and I suspected she was in for a vicious flogging. Meanwhile, I was secured in a smaller tent on the other side of the camp so that I couldn’t communicate with her. I thought I was in for a beating myself, and was right.

  I won’t bore you with the further tortures they inflicted on me. They weren’t very imaginative, really, and my description above, somewhat amplified, will suffice for the second session as well. The great news of interest was the announcement that they would be injecting me with AIDS-tainted blood that very night, in what they called a ‘religious ritual’…possibly menstrual blood from the German wench herself, they added, laughing.

  Despair hit – the dark night of the soul.

  To be rendered inoperative before my revenge was complete.

  But no, I wasn’t going to stomach it.

  Had to do something, but what?

  Then it came to me with a wave of desperation (or perhaps my Self only made the information available now, having gotten me to see certain necessary things)…I would use the same tactic I had against the invaders at the Paderborn Hauptbahnhof back in February…the tactic of Odin, chief of Germanic gods.

  And, by the gods, my nose grew sharper. I could smell Django (not his real name), one of my chief interrogators, like a kind of pestilential contamination, as he walked past the torture tent to the mess hall. I knew him as one of the most voracious eaters in camp, one who made eating pastime as well as pleasure, and no doubt he would be in the hall for some time, calling for a fine white wine
to wash down his gumbo.

  I croaked and beckoned to Reemer, my other chief interrogator, and rasped: ‘I’m ready for rehab.’ For I had heard it whispered that that is what would end my tortures. Perhaps it was a code for death. But I had something else in mind.

  Reemer walked right up to my face and scoffed.

  ‘So, old man. You think you are ready for rehab.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bullshit. I think you want to join us. Share in the spoils, no? But we are religious people. Spoils not important. You are heathen, philistine. We are chosen of God. How will you join us?’

  ‘I don’t want to join. I know I will never be chosen of God, not even if you inject me with the wasting disease. What I want is to serve you. I will be your loyal servant. Do your bidding in the world of men. The non-chosen, I mean. I could be of great value to you.’

  ‘Perhaps. But we keep you on chain, no?’

  ‘Of course. I understand I will be under constant surveillance.’

  ‘No, I mean…really keep you on leash, ha ha. Perhaps two metres long or so. You leave camp on leash, like a dog. Polizei will not interfere, I tell you. We are chosen of God.’

  ‘Yes, of course. But as your loyal servant, I will not fail to chastise you when you stray from the true path of God, either as a collective or as individuals. In this regard, Brother Django was perfectly right to point the finger at your unseemly behaviour, and I…’

  As I had predicted, his eyes bulged out and he struck me hard in the face, almost knocking me unconscious.

  ‘You…dare…criticise the chosen of God? Your tortures will be multiplied…and you will not be allowed the freedom of the leash. Do you understand me, white devil? And by the way…where is Brother Django, as I wish to have a word with him on a private matter…’

  Excellent…having sowed the seeds of doubt, I told him Django was on the opposite side of camp, ‘rallying the courage of his brothers’. At these words his face grew ominous, doubtless fearing a coup concealed from view. I knew that by the time he had finished his search, for which I had misdirected him, he would have accrued followers ready to take his side in the coming struggle. The thralls were running for their blades.

  And very shortly after his departure, a stench announced the ingress of Django himself. He arched his eyebrows in the Western fashion as he entered, and I told him what had happened, that I feared the return of Reemer, and that I adulated him, Django, who should have been the one in command when the king was away. That he was right to chastise others (which earned me a smack in the face); that he was an excellent brother, and zealous, and surely was in the king’s good graces; in fact I knew he was; and that he was the one to defend the pragmatic hierarchy of the camp against the coming coup. I could sense some sure but creaky thinking going on behind those upraised eyeballs.

  It was then that Reemer re-entered, angry because Django wasn’t in the mess hall. Upon seeing his rival there (I had smelt out the correct sliver of tension) his eyes did the opposite of what I had expected – they seemed to suck into his head, as if consulting with the brain as to whether they had really seen what was apparently there in front of them.

  ‘So, it seems you are in league!’

  ‘I only seek to serve all the Chosen,’ I protested, wondering faintly whether I was laying it on too thick.

  ‘That’s right,’ nodded Django. ‘He has served…though, perhaps, without meaning to,’ he added significantly.

  ‘What does that mean?’ demanded Reemer.

  ‘I think you can guess that, my friend.’

  ‘Oh! How can I guess what a clever man like you is thinking…you, who always have the ear of the king.’

  ‘If I do it is because I am loyal.’

  ‘You show your loyalty by plotting behind his back?’

  ‘Plotting? No, it is you who are plotting. The whole camp knows it.’

  ‘How dare you!’

  ‘You are too big for your boots. It’s time to cut you down to size!’ And before the other could blink he grabbed a piece of wood from the ground and drove it with considerable force into the side of Reemer’s head. The wood was damp and rotten at the business end, however, and crumbled in a shower of dusty flakes, some of which went in my eye, temporarily depriving me of the spectacle I could hear unfolding – a grappling and thumping and coming to blows. It was exciting to be a witness to this significant political struggle.

  Exciting but also dangerous. For the heads now peeping in the entrance as my eyes cleared were yelling manically, undoubtedly calculating in their wild way which side to take. Soon the camp was riven into armed factions, and all-out civil war had erupted. My plan had succeeded beyond expectation, and now I must get out before I was killed in the chaos. I pulled my ropes against the pole, but to no avail. It was then that I first smelled smoke, which soon became visible as it snaked into the tent from somewhere close by. Soon I could feel the undulating heat on my eyebrows, and began, uncharacteristically, to panic.

  ‘Set me free,’ I yelled to the nearest savage, ‘and I’ll help you defeat your opponent!’ I don’t know whether he took in my words or just the general tone; either way he sneered at me in just the approved manner before bolting from the tent along with his allies and adversaries. I was alone, in a tent about to catch fire.

  Not alone for long, however. Another head poked through the gap and screamed, ‘Burn in hell, philistine!’, before tugging the tent to a state of collapse, presumably in order to hasten my demise.

  But he wasn’t using his brain, if indeed he had one – for when the huge main tent pole went down, so did the one I was attached to, and I was able to crawl the length of the prostrate pole, freeing my bonds at the end of it. My arms were still tied, but I had the use of my legs. Strength came back into them, despite the intense pins and needles that tried and failed to bring me to earth again.

  I stumbled out of the wreckage of the tent, and into bedlam. I can’t remember the full details of my flight from the camp, although the sight of the unfortunate girl being trampled to death by escaping orcs is something I will never forget. A sad spectacle.

  I also remember the last hurdle, when I launched a running headbutt into a screaming orc, knocking him flat and trampling his body, using it as a drawbridge to flee the burning palace. In spite of my danger, and the carnage I had witnessed, my chief concern was that the forest around the camp would catch alight. It was an ancient forest, one of the few extensive tracts of woodland left in Germany, and indeed in all of Western Europe.

  But I was free, had attained escape velocity. I felt I was the only man alive on earth. Lungs burned as I ran down a forest path. Where would it lead me? It mattered not. All roads were one to Greybeard. Tributaries of the one river, as Tolkien had it. But to what end did my freedom point? There was no ducking out of it now – my escape had been enabled by a higher power, of that I was sure. I was the instrument of gods, gods who wished to free Europe from its malaise. This was no longer about personal revenge, that was only my fuel rather than my destination. Just where my destination was, we would see. Berlin, where a certain politician lurked, hunched in shadow?

  I remembered one Ulrike Meinhof, left-wing would-be revolutionary who in the 70s had dismissed her native West Germany as the ‘Strawberry Reich’. Her cadre had been friends with Amon Düül II, a band I never cared much for, however, there was more than a grain of truth in what she had said. By now, the ‘strawberry’ was completely rotten, and it was more a ‘mouldy jam Reich’, which I was here to scrape off, so others could butter the bread afresh. But what would happen to me, though?

  I almost didn’t care, was becoming increasingly detached from my body, viewing it merely as an instrument, not of value in itself.

  The instrument must be kept in shape, however, so I headed to the nearest AIDS clinic.

  * * *

  I had noticed several open cuts on my body. There was also something resembling a bloodstain on my clothing from the fight for the exit, and I doubted
not that it was Orcblut.

  An unsympathetic nurse informed me how long a blood test would take to be processed, and in any case I couldn’t be treated without a state-issued health card, or something along those lines. I told her I was stateless, a refugee, but she scoffed, and subjected me to withering remarks. She told me to wait and she would ask someone’s advice, but I crept into the hallway and as expected heard her phoning the cops.

  I hurried away, deciding it was time to create a new body, one that would resemble the (possibly dying) physical one, but which would, in a sense, be indestructible.

  I felt instinctively I could do it. It was all that was needed.

  7

  Doubling Up

  June

  Again I found myself standing before the towering statue of Arminius. This time I had arranged to meet someone there, someone who should see it. I knew she must bear the seed of the next generation; but not by me, and neither by the two charlatans pursuing her. She had no claim to judgment in the matter, and so Greybeard must exert his magic will, steering her all unbeknownst in righteous directions. By signs and subtle means it would be done. Greybeard the matchmaker, the horse breeder…though I had yet to find the other half of the equation.

  When she arrived, it was as if her subconscious had already sensed my intention. She spoke disparagingly now of both suitors, wondering aloud what she had ever seen in either of them.

  I pretended not to listen as she told me how volunteers had paid for the Leper Camp to be rebuilt after the fire – this time as something genuinely resembling a palace, all planning fast-tracked.

  As for Greybeard, someone had sighted him fleeing the inferno, and he was even more a figure of legend, said to have started the blaze with beams from his very eyes.

  And as for the Lügenpresse, some journalists were claiming the Leper King was a good religious man, while others fretted over his ‘anti-semitism’…but none cared about his scheme to destroy Europe. It was left to an old hippy to care about that, a hippy who was about to break his husk.