by Adam Roberts
Tighe shook his head sorrowfully. I do not understand’, he said, ‘why we must go through the Meshwood.’
‘The Otre are on the far side.’
‘But why must we march with the army? Can we not fly with our kites?’
At this Ati laughed hard. ‘You are especially ignorant for a kite-boy,’ he said. ‘You are a turd for a brain. The winds do not flow that way, not along the wall. We cannot fly east – up, down, wallwards, awaywall, yes. But east, west, is hard to fly. Unpredictable.’ He laughed again. ‘A kite-pilot must know these things!’
Tighe blushed and bowed his head; and then, with a sudden access of energy, he bundled into Ati and pushed him to the ground. The two of them wrestled together, laughing, until one of the other kite-boys, Chemler, slapped them on the back to break them up.
They marched out in line a little later that morning. Waldea strode along at the back.
To begin with the line was straight and marched purposefully in order. Tighe walked ahead of Ati and behind Ravielre. But after an hour or two the discipline began to erode. The ledges they trod were broad and people began hurrying forward to chat to people ahead of them, or stopped to pick things off the ledge. They passed a single doorway, as empty as all the others on the march path, and several kite-boys scurried inside. Tighe waited by the opening; there was something evil-smelling about the opening that he didn’t like.
‘Come out of there!’ bellowed Waldea from behind. ‘Keep the line! Kite-pilots, keep discipline!’
They marched all through the day as the sun rose on their right. Tighe’s bad foot pulsed with pain. Ravielre chattered incessantly in the morning; and then, when the sun crept over the fifty, he fell silent. He began picking pebbles out of the dust and throwing them as far as he could out into space.
‘You should stop that,’ said Tighe. ‘You might hit kite, or calabash.’
‘There’s no kites flying, idiot-boy,’ Ravielre snapped. ‘You are stupid.’ Then he grumbled to himself, and burst out with, ‘When we go to war they’ll be throwing more than stones at us. Fucking barbarian.’ He tossed the next few stones over his shoulder at Tighe, but because he wasn’t aiming they flew wide. Then he fell silent again.
Eventually, as the sun climbed higher and higher, the train of boys and girls came within sight of the Meshwood.
It was enormous. At first it was only a dark blur in the distance; then, as they came closer, it resolved itself into a vast excrescence, reaching upwall and downwall as far as could be seen. It bulged out from the face of the wall hundreds of yards in some places, a rippling mass like the surface of troubled water in a sink at which somebody washes, ripples frozen in time and enlarged to enormous proportions. It was also a colour that Tighe had never seen before; a green so dark as to be almost blue-black, a much heavier shade than the green of grass.
As they came closer still the shape seemed to billow out into the sky. And then it superseded the sky altogether.
Tighe was overcome by the shape, the darkness that bulged from the worldwall. He was exhausted by the march; hungry and sore, and this shape seemed to give material expression to his own unease. By the way the other kite-boys stalled and meandered, the way they hung their heads, he could see they were also unnerved by the shape. But Ravielre seemed to straighten himself, to push out his legs like a goat stretching in the morning. Tighe understood the forced quality of the jollity, but valued it none the less. The fact of it was more important than its artificiality. He responded to it, as did the others.
Ravielre turned abruptly and poked his fingers sharply at the back of Ati’s head. ‘You’re touched.’ Ati started laughing. ‘You’re touched,’ said Ravielre, prodding somebody else. ‘You too. You.’ He came up to Tighe. ‘Hey, I know a question we never asked you in camp,’ he said. ‘You ever had a woman?’
‘Yes,’ said Tighe immediately. But his stomach clenched at the question. The kite-boys shrieked, pranced up and down. Several were running cumbrously about now, shouldering their kite-spars or carrying them under one arm, playing the game of tag, reaching out to touch their fellows, ducking to avoid the touch. From further back along the path came a booming order from Waldea, ‘Keep order, keep the path.’
‘You’re tagged.’
‘Kite-boys, keep the path!’ Waldea boomed.
The boys settled down and fell back into a more regular rhythm of step. Tighe marched on, shifting the weight of his crossbeam over his shoulder. Where the skinny bones of his shoulder blades chafed on the wood it was starting to hurt badly. Up ahead the dark mass, like a titanic outcrop of hair, utterly eliminated the line of the worldwall. Behind him Ati was gabbling in a low voice, the tone too quiet and the language too unfamiliar for Tighe to guess what was being said. The titters of the kite-boys behind him gave him some idea, though.
‘What is that?’ he asked, casting the question generally into the air. ‘What is that up ahead?’ He knew the answer, but there was something frightening about the way none of the kite-pilots were talking about it.
The chatter of the kite-boys stopped at this, and the mood fell. Nobody answered him.
Tighe tried concentrating on the ledge ahead of him. The ground was narrower here and had been built outwards by the sappers with unevenly planed boards. They bent and sang under Tighe’s feet. He wondered how many others had marched across this man-made ledge since the sappers had laid it down. He wondered how stable it was. His stomach clenched again and he shuffled over towards the wall, making sure to plant his left foot on God’s good earth.
There was a sharp prod in the back of his head, so hard and unexpected Tighe cried out. ‘Barbarian,’ said Ati, his voice close to Tighe’s ear. ‘You’re so stupid. You’re so know-nothing.’ There was real malice in the voice; not personal animus, Tighe realised, but the fear of the shape ahead infecting Ati’s mood.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Tighe.
‘Sorry is a stupid thing to say,’ snapped Ati. And then, almost immediately, ‘That there, ahead, is the Meshwood. Where the monsters live.’
‘Sorry,’ said Tighe again.
‘We’d better get there before sunset too,’ said Ati, ‘or the big winds at sunset will just push us off the world.’
They made it to the outskirts of the Meshwood by sunset. As the sun disappeared over the top of the wall, they filed off the open ledge. The path led straight into a tangle of branches and shadows. Tighe’s first impression was of broad, thick tree trunks, although unlike trees these trunks were twisted and curled. Platán wood, not regular timber.
The border was sharply distinguished: from open path and grass, with a dusty pathway worn by the passage of the army, the lead kite-boy led them all under the ribcage curve of a series of meshwood tree trunks and they were in a darker place.
There were sentries posted in a small military eyrie at the crossing place from outside to inside, and they made Tighe and the rest of the boys wait until Waldea came up from the rear. As soon as he arrived they started bickering with him, waving their arms and shouting.
‘We’ve had hundreds through in the last few days,’ the guards – three of them – were saying. The enormity of this number had clearly struck them because they kept repeating it. ‘Hundreds – hundreds. Why should you get treated any differently?’
‘I have my orders direct from the War Pope,’ Waldea kept saying. I have a grandbul in my pack.’ He retrieved the paper and flapped it in front of their faces. ‘We’re to bivuoac near the outskirts of the Meshwood tonight.’
‘We have orders too,’ said one guard.
‘Move everybody through deeper into the wood. The path’s clear enough,’ said a second.
‘There’ve been hundreds up along it,’ said the third. ‘It ought to be clearly beaten through by now.’
‘Ah, I should think so,’ said the first.
‘We’re a kite squadron,’ shouted Waldea. ‘Do you see what my boys and girls are carrying on their shoulders? We’re no good in the middle of the fucking Me
shwood.’
‘Oh,’ said one of the guards, as if sorrowful. ‘Hardly a need to swear, I think.’
‘My orders are to wait by the outskirts until we get further instructions. You can’t deny my orders – here’s the grandbul.’
‘Maybe they meant the outskirts of the wood downwall a way,’ said the second guard.
‘We have our orders, you know,’ said the first.
As they quarrelled Tighe unshouldered his crossbeam and peered up the path. It was like being indoors, in that it was murky and felt covered. But there was a strange smell. Tighe tried to picture what a land-lobster looked like. He couldn’t help but shudder.
One of the other boys slapped Tighe on the back of his head. ‘You look like you’ve never seen a forest before.’
‘I never have,’ he said. ‘At least, never so many trees in one place. I’ve seen trees before, of course.’
Ati mimicked his voice. ‘Oh, I’ve seen trees before,’ he said. There was a general laughter, but it was strained. Tighe realised how nervous they all were.
Waldea and the guards were still bickering. With an army so large, clearly, it was hard to keep everybody in harmony. ‘How far,’ Tighe asked the boys behind him, gesturing with his right arm at the wood they had just entered, ‘how far does it go?’
The kite-girls, a dozen or so of them, kept themselves together as a group. Once the bivouac was set up, a few of the more courageous kite-boys sauntered over to them and tried to talk to them: but it happened under the eye of Waldea and the girls made no sort of response, so they eventually gave up. ‘My father,’ said Ati, to Tighe, as they settled themselves into their pouches to sleep, ‘my father is a carpenter. You know what that is?’
Tighe shook his head; the wood was unfamiliar.
‘It means he worked with wood. This,’ and Ati slapped the stem of meshwood that the pouches were tied to with the flat of his palm, ‘this is poor wood. You’d think it would be possible to build with it, but no.’ He reached down and took hold of one of the smaller limbs of it. It bowed, curved round. ‘No, too spongy, too soft.’ He released it and the branch thrashed back, wobbled eventually settling.
‘Listen, kite-children,’ called Waldea, ‘we have the shelter of the wood now, but we’re near the edge, so we’ll still feel the evening gale. Untie your kite-bundles, and then tie them to a branch. Have a care with that! Then you all must all use your belts to strap yourselves to a trunk of a meshwood tree until the wind dies, and then I’ll call to a couple to take watch.’
They unbuckled their blankets and unfolded them, talking in short, nervous sentences. The thought of spending the dusk outside was frightening. The proper place to be during dusk, when the winds screamed and bustled up and down the wall, was safely inside.
‘I’m frightened,’ hushed Tighe to Ati.
Ati nodded sharply, focusing his attention on tying his belt tightly so that his torso was strapped to a trunk.
Tighe tried to tie himself to a trunk next to Ati, but the wood was so spongy that the belt cut into it. Tighe yanked and the squishy stuff inside tore and pulled apart. He needed an older, drier trunk. Anxiously, because everybody else was strapped in now, he clambered up the steps provided by the trees, stepping past his fellow kite-pilots. Eventually he found an unoccupied stiff, dry trunk. It was next to Mulvaine.
He busied himself with tying himself down and then settled himself. When his breathing had calmed a little, he looked round, and caught Mulvaine’s eye.
‘Hello,’ he said.
‘You Barbarian turd,’ said Mulvaine, without malice.
There was silence. The branches and strands of Meshwood were rustling; the dusk gale was starting up. Tighe chattered to distract himself from his terror.
‘Ati’s father was carpenter,’ he said. ‘My father was a Prince. What was your father?’
Mulvaine glowered at him through the thickening light. ‘You Barbarian turd,’ he said again, but there was no passion in his words. ‘You’re deformed. Your foot is so ugly. No girl would ever fuck with you.’ But this was all said in a desultory manner and Mulvaine lost interest in it soon enough. ‘What was that you were saying?’ he asked. ‘My father.’
‘My pahe, my father, was a Prince. That is like a Pope, for a village, you know.’
Mulvaine breathed contemptuously through his nostrils. ‘Small village nobody. I come from the Imperial City itself. My father was a philosopher.’
‘A what?’
‘A philosopher. A priest of God and a thinker.’
‘Oh.’
The wind was getting up and the conversation died. Tighe braced himself, but it was not as terrible as he thought. There was a thrashing sound from below, and soon the trunks were swaying and jiggling; but somehow the roaring of the wind sounded less intimidating out in the open. Tighe wondered how that could be.
After half an hour or so the winds died, and pretty soon it was quiet and calm. It was now pitch black. Tighe wondered what to do. He could hear Mulvaine moving in the darkness near to him. There was a vague apprehension of shadow.
‘What are you doing?’ he hissed.
‘Unbuckling myself, what do you think, you idiot,’ replied Mulvaine. I want my supper. You think I’m marching all that way and then not eating anything?’
Tighe’s own stomach was shrunken with fear and anticipation. But he was, he realised, hungry too.
A little below and away to the right there was a spark that flared into a flame. As Tighe fumbled with his own belt he watched the orange light swell. Somebody had lit a fire. Mulvaine was already climbing down towards it.
Waldea had pulled out branches to clear a sort of chimney up through the Meshwood and was now burning the wood as a bonfire. Tighe marvelled at the wastage – even if it wasn’t proper wood, it still seemed extraordinary to burn wood rather than dung. But as the night got chillier he was glad of the heat. The kite-pilots huddled as close to the spitting bonfire as they could.
Waldea made spits of sticks and speared morsels of meat on the end of each of them. Groups of boys and girls cooked themselves supper and then climbed, monkey-like, to seats amongst the meshwood branches to eat. Soon enough everybody had eaten.
After a space of staring silently into the fire, Waldea said, ‘I’m going to sleep now, my children. Be sure you all strap yourselves in tightly before you go to sleep, or the dawn gale may pluck you out of the heart of the Meshwood. I do not say to you, go to sleep immediately. I know how excited you must be in your hearts. Only, do not stay awake too long – it will be a tiring day tomorrow.’
‘Will we go to war tomorrow, Master?’ asked Mulvaine, his voice quavery.
‘Tomorrow will be a day of glory, my children!’ declared Waldea.
He wrapped himself in his blanket and strapped himself to a broad meshwood trunk. One or two of the kite-pilots did the same; but Tighe was too excited to think of sleeping just yet.
The fire was starting to burn down, but it was still fierce enough.
‘War,’ said somebody. ‘Think of it!’
‘The Otre are a terrible people,’ said Mulvaine. He was sitting closest to the fire, poking a stick of platán wood into it and drawing it out to stare at the tamed fire at its end.
‘I heard’, said Tighe, ‘that the Otre cut off the legs and the arms of their pas – of their mothers and fathers, and make them eat their own arms and legs?’
He looked around, hoping for a horrified reaction from the small group of kite-boys and kite-girls around him. But none of them looked impressed at this information.
‘Well,’ said Mulvaine, ‘this is what I heard.’ He looked about him, as if he were about to impart a profound secret and wanted to make sure that nobody else would overhear. The Meshwood was a tangle of shadows in every direction. Tighe didn’t like to look at it. He concentrated his gaze on the fire. Flame wriggling upwards like branches.
‘What did you hear?’ asked Sluvre.
‘I heard that when we fight them tomorrow,
we had best make sure we are not captured by them. Do you know why?’
‘Why? Why?’
‘Because of what they do to their prisoners of war. And do you want to know what they do with their prisoners of war?’
‘What? What?’
Mulvaine leant closer towards the fire, and spoke in a lower voice. ‘They tie you up, in the outskirts of the Meshwood. A place like this perhaps.’
‘Do the claw-caterpils get you, maybe?’ asked Bel, breathless.
‘Worse than that,’ intoned Mulvaine.
This was met with cries of disbelief. Worse than the claw-caterpils? Impossible!
‘They strip you naked,’ said Mulvaine, drawing out each word with a drawling emphasis. ‘Then they tie you down straddling a branch of this platán. Do you see this little bud here?’ He flicked a tiny nubbin, no bigger than a fingernail, growing out of the platán trunk in front of him.
Everybody leaned in to look at the bud.
‘What is it?’ asked somebody.
‘It’s a bud,’ said Mulvaine. ‘A new branch will grow out of it. So they strip you naked and tie you so that your bumhole is exactly over one of these buds.’ There were shouts of disbelief, but Mulvaine raised his voice. ‘It’s true, I heard this from one of the sapper regiment people, and he said they found some Imperial soldiers who had been captured and treated this way. They tie you over the bud and the branch grows up through your bumhole and up your bum! Yes it does!’
There were squeals, shouts of denial, laughter.
‘They feed you a little and they put a wet rag in your mouth morning and evening so you don’t die,’ Mulvaine continued, speaking even louder to be heard over the tumult. ‘And over a week the platán trunk grows up inside you. And over two weeks it grows bigger, and bigger. And eventually it grows and stabs your insides.’ He pounded his fist against the broad trunk beneath him as he said this. ‘It stabs your insides until you die.’
Everybody was silent now. Nobody doubted that this horrific treatment was standard Otre business.
‘This man from the sapper regiment,’ said Mulvaine, dropping his voice, confident now in his command of his audience, ‘he said they found one of the Imperial guides, and he was dead, but a branch of platán was growing out of his mouthl With leaves and everything!’