by Felix Gilman
“Good day to you, sir. Now, now, put that rifle down! I’m no bandit; would a bandit walk out like this, alone, in the midday sun, no gun in his hand? Well, on further consideration, I guess a bandit would try to stop you here, at this narrow ravine, among these occluding rocks, and so I applaud your caution. These are bad times. I suppose the evidence on both sides of the question is finely balanced. I must throw myself on your mercy, on your trust in human nature. I don’t believe a man such as yourself will shoot me. I’ll wait here while you make your mind up.”
The walking wounded shuffled like nervous cattle. A long rope bound them all together by the ankle. The rope was looped loosely round their leader’s arm, in which the rifle sat.
He was a short man, balding, in dusty whites. His weathered face was full of suspicion. He held his rifle badly.
The rifle was a cheaply made thing. Nothing significant inhabited it.
Three black birds went overhead in the silence. Three ugly black crows in a ragged flock, framed in the sky for a long hot moment. They passed behind the red rock.
—Do crows hunt, do you think? In packs, like men or dogs? They have a predatory aspect, would you not say? Would you acknowledge them as brothers, my friend?
—Keep an eye on this man, Creedmoor. Be ready to kill if he blinks.
One of the madmen broke the silence with crying. Great snotty echoing sobs into his tangled hobo beard. The leader of the troupe of fools lowered his rifle and turned back to the sobbing man, said gently, “Quiet, William. This man means us no harm.” He turned again to the stranger before him and shrugged. “What do you want, mister? We are on medical business. These are wounded and shell-shocked men and women, from Homburg and Monkton. I’m bringing them to the House Dolorous for healing. We are an ambulance, you see? The walking wounded. We are neutral, and harmless. We have no money.”
“Who does? Who does, I ask you, these days?”
“That’s a fine gun at your side, mister, for a poor man.”
“This?” Creedmoor moved his hand slowly to his side. He took the Gun, not by its dark grip, but by the leather of the holster. With the other hand, he unbuckled his belt. He stooped to toss the twisting thing in the dirt. The silver and gold of the Gun’s inlays and the polished darkwood of its grip gleamed in the sun.
Creedmoor kicked it aside into the rocks. Marmion’s voice screamed in his brain, scratched at his skull. He gritted his teeth and ignored it. In the glare and the flies, he hoped no one would notice.
—We must all bear some indignity for the cause. Shut up, will you? Shut up.
The fools’ leader softened. He put down his rifle, leaning it against a rock. “Quiet, William,” he repeated, and the fool stopped his sobbing, looking expectantly at the stranger.
—Bright empty eyes like a bird. Will you look at him. Will you look at what’s been done.
—How dare you.
—Will you stop your whining, please?
Creedmoor extended his open hands and smiled. “That weapon’s a mere precaution, sir. There are bandits in these hills, though I’m not one, and perhaps Agents of the Gun, I’ve heard, about their masters’ wicked business; and every traveler has warned me that the Hillfolk in these parts are savage.”
“The Folk round here keep to themselves, stranger; we’ve seen to that. Agents have no business out here. We are neutral. It’s plain regular bandits that concern me.”
—See, my friend? He’s talking to me, man to man. This is how things are done among decent men. This can be done cleanly. No need to spook these cattle.
“Let’s introduce ourselves. I am widely traveled and well lettered; you, if I am not mistaken, are a man of medicine. We are both civilized men; let’s introduce ourselves accordingly. My name is John. You are?”
South-by-southwest, echoing over the hills, the distant tump-tump of an ornithopter. In the hot and torpid air, sound traveled strangely; the noise echoed close round Creedmoor’s head. Tump-tump-tump in his ears. All those present looked up; Creedmoor’s eyes alone could pick out the smudge of coal smoke on the horizon. Marmion’s voice screamed in Creedmoor’s mind,
—The Line! Do you hear? The Line! They are close on our heels! Take me up again! Be ready! Be ready!
—Please shut up. I am in control here.
The fools’ leader shook his head as if to clear the last echoes of the distant machine from the air. He held his hand over his brow, squinting in the sun and flies. He came forward, his hand extended in greeting, and he named himself: Elgin. Creedmoor smiled and didn’t listen. The name was not important. The man was not important. Creedmoor’s plan required the fools, not their leader. All Creedmoor needed was for the man to come closer, out of sight of his charges. Creedmoor said, “I’ve come from Greenbank, Elgin. You’re bound for the hospital? I know the road ahead of you, and you know the road before me. Join me under the shade of this rock here. We can share our stories.”
Under the shadow of the rock they could not be seen. The rest was quick work.
The madmen had wandered a little, but their ankles were roped. Creedmoor rounded them up.
The one with the bright eyes, the one who’d been sobbing into his scraggly beard, the one who went by William, was the least damaged of the procession; his faculties were those of a slow but eager child, and he would not shut up. Would not stop asking where they were going. Would not stop asking what had happened to Mr. Elgin.
—Why doesn’t he just forget him? Has he no sense?
—No, Creedmoor, obviously he does not.
The victims of the Line’s mind-bombs weren’t talkative, in Creedmoor’s experience. Perhaps William had only just barely been caught in the blast. Perhaps he was a medical miracle! That’d be very exciting for the doctors at the Doll House, but for now it was a damn nuisance.
Creedmoor looked him very firmly in the eye—which was rheumy and muddled. “Easy, William, easy. Mr. Elgin had to hand you over to me. He was very sick, do you not recall? Do you not recall it, William? How he stepped on that snake? How his foot swelled up and went black? Yes, William, that’s right, well you may go white. There are snakes in these hills. Rattlers, William. William, my friend, stop shuffling: you can stand your left foot on your right, or your right foot on your left, but not both at once. Gravity won’t stand for it. You must choose a foot to put on the earth and take your chances.”
—They believe everything you tell them.
Something like curiosity crept into his master’s metallic voice, something like amusement. Human weakness was a mystery to them. He answered it:
—Yes.
And he touched William’s shaking shoulder. “The poor man had to go back to town, do you not recall? You were lucky I found you. Could you have drawn the poison from his wound, William? Could you lead these folk? Could you lead them through these hills, these ravines and ditches and yawning canyons, with the snakes, with the big metal birds of the Line in the air? Could you, William? Now don’t cry. I’m here to lead you.”
The dull murky eyes. The ruined architecture of the face still had some grandeur. A human face is a beautiful habitation, Creedmoor thought, even when left empty. Solid bone structure. Now a yellow mucus curdled in the pools of William’s eyes and in his stringy beard. Flies dabbled in it and he had no sense to swat them away. He stank; he’d pissed himself. They all had.
The mind-bombs that had done this to them were not the cruelest of the Line’s weapons. Not nearly the cruelest thing in this war; Creedmoor personally had done crueler things, and would again. Still; still. There was a special horror to madness.
The terrible thundering noise of the Line’s mind-bombs bred terror first, then despair, then the mind cracked and what was left was not really human anymore. Of this little group, childlike William was the luckiest. Others were mute, more puppets than men. One old woman at the back was like an ill-natured organ-grinder’s ape. None could string together a sensible adult’s sentence. Something about those husks made Creedmoor sentimen
tal, which made him angry. William’s eyes were wandering up and down Creedmoor’s face, inspecting it with eager confusion, as if trying to read something in its lines and scars. Creedmoor did not know what to feel. The voice spoke in his mind with the finality of a hammer falling:
—You are wasting time.
—You’re the boss. All right. All right.
“All of you ladies and gentlemen,” he called out, “take up your ropes and your bonds. Let us begin again. I know, I know, it’s hot and we’re tired and there are snakes, oh there are snakes if we step out of line, do not forget it. But there’s rest at the end of it. The House Dolorous awaits us. One foot in front of the other, ladies and gents.”
Through the rocks and the ravine. This land was broken badly, like a china plate hurled by a very angry woman. From cool shadow to the hot sun and back again, again and again. Down in the ravines, the air was still and hot and fly-swarmed. Up above the hot dusty winds fluted the stone into sharp curves—the skyline was quite mad as the red sun set. Creedmoor kept the rope coiled around his left hand and walked in front. He tugged on it—sharply but not unkindly—when his charges showed signs of wandering off. But they balked and went slowly. He didn’t have the knack of it. He was no leader of men, or even of those half men. They were still walking by nightfall.
The ravines were lousy with caves and they camped in one of them. There were yellow old bones piled at the back of it, but whatever wolves or bears or worse had dwelled there were years gone. Faded blue paintings on the rocks—deer, bears, men, the sun, goats, serpents, manticorae—indicated that Hillfolk had once inhabited it, but they seemed to have moved on long ago.
There were scraggly trees and brush out the front—not that that would hide Creedmoor’s sad little party from the forces of the Line. The forces of the Line would not come poking along down the ravine, craning their heads into caves and beating away brush: they would just flood the whole damn thing with choking-gas if they had so much as a notion where Creedmoor was, or send echoes of that terrible annihilating Engine noise.
Creedmoor tied the fools’ rope round a needle of rock at the back of the cave and left them in the darkness. He sat himself against a flat stone at the cave’s mouth, where the air was clear. He unbuckled his belt and placed Marmion on the ground beside him. He let his charges sob at the darkness until the echoes got too loud. When one of the boys got overexcited and started grabbing at the women, Creedmoor banged his fist on the rock and shouted until they cried, but at least they were quiet again. Soon after, they went to sleep.
Creedmoor didn’t sleep. Marmion’s voice in his head saw to that. Creedmoor watched the stars and listened to the scrape and shiver of Marmion’s voice. The Guns talked war in their Lodge. Distant echoes of that talk reached Creedmoor’s ears—incomprehensible fragments—a meaningless murmur of death, defeat, revenge, glory. All across the continent, the echoes of Gun-shot carried the message. The constant distant sounding of Guns was a code, a hideous song. It had thrilled him once, years ago.
—Hudnall is dead.
—Hudnall. Which one?
—The elder. A phalanx of the Line cornered him in Lannon Town not two hours ago. They sealed the main street from both ends and closed in and ground him up.
—Poor old Hudnall.
—He acquitted himself well enough.
—Ah well, that’s all right, then. Who will take his place?
—Someone will come forward.
—We always do, do we not?
Creedmoor removed a slim novel from his pack and opened its scuffed pages to the mark. The beautiful red-haired peasant girl from the green and mists of the old country was facing for the first time her lover, fresh back from the war and wounded, though handsome.
Creedmoor had a vague sort of taste for romantic novels.
He read it by scant starlight. The night-sight was one of the Guns’ gifts to him.
—Pick-Up Wells has died.
—Who?
—Young. A recent recruit. You do not know him and now you will not.
—A bad night for the noble cause, to be sure.
—He succeeded in destroying the dam at Redbill Gorge before he died, but he stupidly let himself be caught in the flood.
—Ah. Good news and bad. The world is most wonderfully full of ups and downs, would you not say?
William came and sat by him like an eager dog. Creedmoor ignored him for as long as he could.
“Mr. Creedmoor?”
“You should sleep, William.”
“Where are we going, Mr. Creedmoor?”
“To the House Dolorous. A romantic name! I believe it comes from a song. I’ll spare you my singing voice. To the Doll House, William. To a house of healing, where perhaps one day you, too, may be healed and whole.”
“Why are you taking us there, Mr. Creedmoor?”
“Because I am a kindly shepherd, William. Because I cannot bear to let injustice stand or suffering be.”
“You feel scared. Is someone chasing after you?”
“Could well be, William.”
“Is there someone talking to you?”
“Don’t we all hear the voice of conscience, William?”
He led them shuffling through the hills and westward. After five days’ trek, they found a well-trodden trail that switchbacked laboriously down into a canyon of red rock. The canyon was deep as the ocean floor, wide and flat as the widest triumphal avenue in Jasper City or Morgan. It wound and curved, following the course of some long-dead waterway. The rock walls were rough, striated, and marked with signs of Folk carving and painting that Creedmoor didn’t have time to inspect, because his master said:
—Faster. Quick. We hear the Enemy’s wings overhead.
In the afternoon, they came round a corner and saw the House Dolorous spread out before them, hidden in the canyon, a weird freak of architecture, a huge homely sagging eggshell-blue monstrosity. . . .
A tall wire fence ran from side to side of the canyon, and the House was on the other side of it. The fence had a single gatehouse, a little left of center, with a gleaming brass warning-bell beside it. Half a dozen lazy crows perched on the fence around it.
There was a small group milling about at the gatehouse. Among them, Creedmoor noticed a number of men in white jackets, several of whom had rifles on or near their persons, and he took them to be the House’s guardians. No sign of any mysterious Spirit, of course. There were also a couple of individuals who Creedmoor assumed were newcomers to the House, same as him: a big bald oaf with a simpleton’s face, and an acceptably attractive and intelligent-looking woman in a white dress, with her blond hair tied in a bun. They had a large number of suitcases.
It crossed Creedmoor’s mind for a moment that they might be fellow toilers for the Cause, in which case he’d be extremely unhappy to be dragged halfway across the world to be some other bastard’s backup—but then as he approached, he caught the woman’s eye, and her innocence was obvious, indeed almost touching.
He smiled at her.
The guards took one look at him and raised their rifles.
CHAPTER 14
THE GUARDIAN AT THE GATE
“Steady, gentlemen, steady.”
Creedmoor spread his arms wide so that his dusty coat hung open. He stretched out and wiggled his fingers like a stage magician, but what he produced from his open coat was no rabbit; it was nothing. His belt was empty but for a small silver-clasped knife.
“My name is John Cockle. Hear me out.”
The guards at the gate relaxed a little, but kept their rifles rudely trained in Creedmoor’s direction.
There were four of them. They wore white: white shirts, white slacks, white belts. They had commendably neat hair and clean teeth. Each was in some way wounded—a missing eye, a missing ear, a hunch, half a leg. Their faces were shiny with sweat—Creedmoor imagined them sweltering all day in the guardhouse, going mad with boredom and duty. He favored them with his smile.
He gave a wink,
too, to the blond woman in the white dress with the heavy luggage cases. She was a little too old for his taste, of course, and lacked the rosy-cheeked plumpness he liked, but one could never have too many friends in a strange place. She raised a skeptical eyebrow.
The guards said, “Who are you?”
And, “Where’d you get these people?”
And, “We’re not expecting any John Cockle.”
And, “What do you want?”
He turned back to them and stretched his empty hands even wider.
“I understand your caution, gentlemen. I applaud you, in fact. A man who is not wary out here in these days is a dead man soon enough. A case in point is your poor friend who was leading these men through the wilderness here to be healed; oh, he looked all around for bandits and Hillfolk and bloody-handed Agents, sure enough, but did he look down? He did not. And a snake got his ankle. There in the hot sun I found him, slumped against a red rock, raving.”
The guards spat and swore and angrily kicked at rocks and dust. “Who? One of us? Shit. Who?”
“Mr. Elgin. He clutched my hand as I bent over to hear his last words and told me his name. Poor man. The black swell and the stink of his poor ankle, gentlemen! The flies, and the carrion-eaters overhead, circling!”
He whirled his hands dramatically to indicate the circling of vultures, and watched the guards go pale.
“I knew from a mile off I would see some horror beneath those terrible birds; I was not wrong. I am no doctor, and I could not save him.”
He gingerly lowered a hand, to gesture at a bloodstain on his shirt, courtesy of Kloan, which he’d noticed the guards taking an interest in.
“I bled the wound, but I fear I may have only hastened his end. A blunderer like me is worse than no doctor at all; my respect for your vocation knows no bounds, gentlemen. I’d like you more were you to lower your rifles, mind.”
They didn’t.
“Here!” Creedmoor produced from his coat—moving slowly—the dead man’s papers. He waved them in the air until one of the white-clad men snatched them away. “He clutched my arm and said, Save them. Promise me. I did. I could not in conscience leave these poor creatures out in the wasteland to die. What sort of monster would I be, to do that? What else could I do but to take up their rope and lead them to you?”