And he left them with a salute; he thought they would like that.
What he was thinking—whether he should be thinking it or not—was that it wouldn’t be a bad thing to have Leta, and the facilities she and the girls provided, in Tundra. He could see nothing wrong with that. He could not understand why she was behaving as if she had committed some crime or other. Obviously there was something here he didn’t understand—he kept arriving at this conclusion again and again from various points of view. But there was that woman of his; what would he feel if she were one of Leta’s girls? Yes, he could see he wouldn’t like that. But she did have other men, he knew. He was always so busy and she got lonely; he didn’t blame her. There he was again—there was something missing in him. When someone is confronted with the self accusation there is something missing in me, it is like arriving at the end of a journey to find you have left behind names of contacts, or special clothes, something important, which it is generally agreed you must have. ‘Well, but I’m doing all right, surely? I can’t be so bad.’
Anyway, he knew Dann wouldn’t hear of it, if he suggested putting Leta and her girls in some convenient house. Here was another problem he must postpone.
Griot found Dann sitting with Tamar just outside the door where Ruff could be glimpsed, asleep, with Ali on guard.
‘Time you two were in bed,’ said Griot in a low voice, so as not to disturb the snow dog. Ali smiled and raised his hand, meaning, Thank you for removing Dann and Tamar, who shouldn’t be here.
Griot saw them into their beds, checked the sentries and went to his own.
Next evening, he walked through the interior courts—he was always coming on new places he hadn’t seen, the Centre was so vast. Now he was stopping easily and without precautions, to talk to Kira’s soldiers. Everywhere the black blankets lay about anyhow, in corners, or on the earth near the soldiers who were well warmed by the fires. But in Dann’s army (or Griot’s) the soldiers treated their blankets as precious, and looked after them, keeping them clean, mending them if they tore.
On this night Griot sent a rumour whispering through Kira’s soldiers, ‘There will be red blankets for honest soldiers who ask for them, in Tundra.’
And now, on the night of the new moon, it really was time to leave.
Four soldiers brought a box for Ruff, with long handles, and the animal was lifted into it. They all, Dann, Griot, Tamar and Ali, fetched their bundles and, with Ruff in his box, left the Centre for ever.
Dann stood on the east–west road to look back. Through the great gates he could see the entrance to the secret place, from where water was oozing over that part of the courtyard.
The guides for the journey across the marshes were waiting at intervals along the track. Their own guide was a woman who had been one of Griot’s best agents, often travelling back and forth across the marshes, and she knew the ponds and the meres, the slimes and quagmires and quicksands. She went in front, then Griot, then the snow dog in his litter, and behind him Dann, Tamar and Ali. They could see each other as dark shapes on heavier, wet dark. The moon was a fitful shred of white and, when it did appear, illuminating the edges of hurrying black cloud, it did not reach down to the night of the marshes.
Just before they had stepped from the track to the marsh path a shape with the black blanket across its face sidled up to Tamar and handed her a package. In it was a hideous wooden figurine filched from a museum, that had long sharp splinters of wood in its heart. They had been told not to talk, but when the group halted on the edge of a rushy place where the guide hesitated, Tamar whispered to Dann, ‘Hate is a very funny thing. Why do Kira and Rhea hate me so much? When they look at me their eyes are like knives. I don’t hate them but I’m so afraid of them.’ In the dark her frightened little face could hardly be seen. Dann took the figurine she was showing him and threw it into a pool.
‘I suppose you could say, not funnier than love,’ whispered Dann.
Ali, just behind them, exclaimed his disapproval.
Tamar put her hand into Dann’s, and her voice was high and afraid, ‘Dann, Dann…’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Dann. ‘But don’t listen to me. I didn’t mean it.’
‘I think you did mean it,’ whispered Tamar.
‘We’re moving,’ said Ali.
It was a long night, so dark, and full of the noises of marsh birds and animals, frogs, fishes leaping away from them; lights moved, which could not be the army, forbidden to show lights. Everybody had to step exactly where the person in front had trodden, and on either side sometimes the water lapped close, and their feet squelched in mud. Once a cry told that a soldier had slipped in, and there were splashes and voices as he, or she, was hauled out. This little commotion in the great blackness sent fear through them, knowing how many people there were, all around them, and if so many, silently moving, why not enemies too?
The dawn came when they were in the middle of the marshes, hundreds of people, apparently walking or standing on water, greyish-brown figures on the greyish-green water; the red blankets had been stowed away in bundles. Getting a third of the way across had taken all night and, in the early light, which sent pink reflections rippling across the water, they looked back to where the Centre still loomed. There was a glow of fire and dirty smoke.
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Griot. ‘They make these great fires every night. Well, there’s so much water everywhere, fire won’t get far.’
Dann said, ‘Now we are gone, Kira and Joss will be in our quarters, and they will be safe from the wet for a time.’
‘Time, time,’ said Tamar. ‘Whenever you use the word time, it’s different.’
‘However you measure it, time will swallow the Centre, whether by water or by fire, or both.’
‘It will seem funny without the Centre,’ said Tamar. ‘I’ve been hearing the Centre, the Centre, all my life.’
‘We can make another one,’ said Griot.
‘But it took hundreds of years—thousands—to make the Centre,’ said Dann.
‘We can make a start, then,’ said Griot.
‘A Centre without the sand libraries, without records, without history.’
‘But we’re taking all the scribes and everything they wrote down. It’s a mass of stuff,’ said Griot.
‘The tiniest little part of what there was.’
And on they went, through mists that curled up from the dank waters, stepping as carefully as they had when it was dark. Ali whispered to Tamar that she should let herself be carried, but she only said she was not tired. She was, but she remembered the tales about her mother, and how brave she had been.
They reached an island, a little higher than the marshes, about midday, and there successive batches of the travellers climbed to rest for a few minutes. There wasn’t room for more than a few at a time. The snow dog had not made a sound all night. Tamar visited him. She did get a feeble recognition; his thumping tail acknowledged her, once, twice, but he lay on his side, eyes closed, and was not well.
So it went on that day, the armies of people moving through the marshes. Tamar watched the drowned cities going past, deep in the water. She had heard about them, but not seen them and Ali hadn’t seen them either.
She tugged at Dann’s arm. ‘The people in the cities down there, were they drowned?’
‘No, they would have had plenty of time to leave, as the buildings sank down.’
‘Where did they go?’
‘They couldn’t have gone north, because of the Ice, so it must have been south.’
‘Some went east to my country. There are old tales,’ said Ali.
‘Old tales…that was so long ago.’
‘Long ago,’ said Dann. ‘The cities must have sunk down slowly. They didn’t disappear into the water overnight.’
‘Like the Centre now? The edges going into the water and wet creeping up?’ said Tamar.
‘Just like that. Long, long ago.’
Her face told them the immensities were frighten
ing her, and Dann said, ‘Ali, perhaps it is better for the horrors of the past to be in old tales. Not so bad when it’s a tale and begins, “Our chroniclers tell us…”’
‘I think so,’ said Ali. ‘Children should hear the past as “The storytellers say that…”’
Dann said, ‘Our storytellers relate that once, long, long ago all of Yerrup was prosperous and full of cities and parks and forests and gardens, and everyone was happy; then the Ice appeared and soon the cities were under the Ice.’
And Ali said, ‘And all the people went south and east and found new homes.’
Tamar’s face was bleak, and prim, and small with exhaustion. Ali put his hand on her shoulder and said, ‘Little Tamar, forget the long ago. We are here and we are now, and that is all. We are making a new start.’
When the dark came in again, the land at last lifted, and by the time the light of the sky was draining into the reflections on the water, the armies were standing all along the shores of the marshes, immensities of gleaming water and reeds, where the pathways they had used were now not visible, though they reached right to the mists which they knew were where the Middle Sea and its great cliffs were, and the east–west track running along its edges.
Still no lights were to be shown. The armies brought out their red blankets and wrapped themselves, and lay on dry earth among warm aromatic grasses and bushes where insects clicked and sang. Overhead was a deep, starry night and the white splinter of the moon.
The box where Ruff lay was carefully set down, and opened, so that he could crawl out and sniff around a little. Tamar knelt not far from him, so he could come to her if he wanted, and he did creep close and sniff her hand, but seeing Dann standing there, gave a low bark, and seemed glad to go back into his box.
All the army was exhausted, having not slept for a night and a day, and soon the red blankets were absorbed into the dark.
Tamar lay between Dann and Ali and slept at once. In the night she woke and saw that Dann was kneeling by Ruff’s box. When he came back, she could just see his face, and what she saw on it made her put her hand into his.
‘Ruff is afraid of me,’ he said.
Tamar said, ‘I’m not afraid of you.’
‘You should be afraid of—Him. I am.’
‘Who is he, do you know, Dann?’
‘No. Tamar, sometimes when I wake in the morning I don’t know who I am, Dann or—The Other.’
Tamar said fearfully, ‘But Griot knows how to look after you.’
‘Yes, I hope he does.’ Then, after a long silence, ‘Perhaps He won’t come back. I think the Centre made him worse.’ And then, very low, ‘I believe the Centre is a bad place. Well—bad for me, then.’
It was morning, and everywhere hundreds of people were waking, getting up and eating bread, and standing about, letting the sun warm them.
Now the marshes were a dull shine where the earth dipped down from the grasses and bushes. Some grasses stood in rising water, though it could not rise far, because the ground lifted up fast, into high land and rocky hills.
When they all stopped for the midday meal the marshes were out of sight, and people came towards them from everywhere. The people of this part of Tundra, some of them sent ahead by Griot, were welcoming them. And they all wanted to see Dann.
Dann stood still, to be looked at, a tall, too thin, stooping man, his long black hair over his shoulders, his red blanket in his arms.
Griot thought, It’s all right. I knew it would be all right. I don’t know why they love him, but they do. How strange it is…He saw how they came to touch him, some stroking him, or the blanket. ‘We’ve been waiting for you for a long time, General Dann.’ One or two said, ‘Prince, we’ve been waiting for you.’
Dann said, ‘No, that was a long time ago, no princes now, and here is Griot, my captain, who looks after everything.’
But while they had heard of Griot—and how could they not?—it was Dann they wanted, Dann they needed to touch and smile at, through tears, ‘Dann, Dann, you’re here…’
Griot was content: this was how things should be, how he had known they would be. Here was his General, in his right place at the centre of everything.
The first town was a short march away. The army arranged itself into its parts, on the wide hillside, with plenty of room to spread out. Blocks of soldiers, with their officers, and in front went Dann with Tamar, and Griot and Ali, and just behind was Ruff, not in his closed box, but on a litter made of branches, carried by soldiers. There were trees here: parts of Tundra were all forest, and woods. No more reeds now, no more of the mosses and rushes and slimes of the wet.
So they went forward, between lines of townspeople who at first were silent, and then—when they could get a good look at Dann, with the beautiful child, and Griot and Ali, and the great white beast stretched out on his litter, gazing around at them—the cheering began, and it went on.
It went on for weeks, as they travelled over Tundra.
The four sat at their supper in an inn decorated for their arrival in a town in east Tundra, and Dann said to Griot, ‘Well, Captain, are you satisfied now?’
‘This is a wonderful place, Dann—sir. They told me today that the mountain over there is full of iron. The locals didn’t know, but some of our soldiers did. The skills and knowledge we have in our army—it’s a wonderful thing. We can make a wonderful thing of Tundra, sir.’
‘The place is wonderful, Griot. But are we? Have you thought of that?’
‘Just wait and see. A little while and—you’ll see.’
‘Ah, well, that’s all right, then. If you’re satisfied, Griot, then I have to be.’
Time had passed, measured by that tall girl walking down there in the garden, her hand on the head of a white animal who was not Ruff. She had wept so long over the loss of Ruff that a snow pup had been found, and he became her companion.
It was Griot who looked down from his window, where he was calculating the stocks of food in his warehouses. Tundra was prosperous and food was plentiful. In a square not far from here soldiers were drilling, but while they looked like the army that had marched into Tundra, few of the soldiers were the same. The wars in the east, or some of them, had ceased and many soldiers had gone home. But people fleeing from the droughts of the south came to the Northlands, more and more of them, and they took refuge in Tundra, happy to be fed and comfortable in return for becoming soldiers. Tundra did not go in for war. Dann joked that he was called General, and there was an army, but no war. ‘Now, what do you make of that, Captain Griot?’
Griot could have replied, ‘What’s in a name?’ for that is what he felt.
One thing he did secretly fear: that Ali might decide to go home. His country was at peace and a new ruler had sent messages to Ali to return.
Ali was Tamar’s tutor, Dann’s physician and Griot’s adviser in everything: Griot could not imagine doing without him. He had never asked Ali for counsel and failed to get it.
Dann knew of this worry: Dann seemed to sense what everyone was thinking. He told Griot that if Ali left, there were good doctors, Tamar was clever enough to be a tutor herself and she didn’t really need Ali. And why did Griot need advice? He underestimated himself.
‘And there is no need to be anxious, Griot. Ali will never leave me. He says he was my brother in another life.’
‘Easy enough to say that.’
‘He says he knows, he remembers.’
‘We can’t argue with that, then.’
‘Always sensible Griot. But do you know, I like playing with the idea.’
‘I’m surprised, Dann, when you hate the idea of over and over and over again.’
‘But there would be variations, wouldn’t there? Suppose I were reborn as Kulik, whose one idea was to persecute Mara and Dann?’
‘You’re joking, Dann!’
‘Now, would I do that, Griot?’
Leta had come to Tundra, all apologies for herself, and she had been given a building now called the Scho
ol of Medicine, where she and her girls taught healing. The River Towns, it turned out, had a fine tradition of medicine and, as the drought sank them one by one in sand, their doctors were happy to come to Tundra, now famous in the Northlands, and beyond, for its skills.
The scribes and savants who had studied at the tables along the Great Hall in the Centre the material from the secret place had a building where what they had preserved was taught, and kept. Dann spent much of his time there; it was his favourite place. Tamar, too, who was going to be the Director of this College of Learning when she was grown up, which she nearly was.
Everyone entering this place was confronted with a tall, wide white wall, almost blank, and at its top was written,
This great white expanse represents the area of knowledge of the Ancient World. The small black square in the lower right-hand corner represents the amount of knowledge we have. All visitors are asked to reflect for a few moments, asking themselves if they perhaps have information or learning which is not general, and which could be added to our common store. There was once, long ago, a shared culture covering the whole world: remember, we have only fragments of it.
This town had been chosen as capital of all Tundra because it was on a long, wide hill, with plenty of trees and pleasant buildings of mellow yellow brick, which was the colour of the soil of the region.
People came to this town, where there were all kinds of reception places for them, because they wanted to catch a sight of Dann and the girl who would be his successor.
Sometimes Dann would say, using a by now old joke, ‘Yes, Griot, I owe it to you’—and a party of people went off to visit another town: Dann, Griot, the girl, and Ali.
On these occasions Dann was always ready to be seen and do what Griot wanted. He would walk around in public places and stop to talk and listen. He was not ill now, was healthy again, and did not seem much different from the Dann of before going off on his adventure to the Bottom Sea. If you looked closely, though, there was a sheen of grey on the black hair, and his eyes peered out from deeper in his head.
Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog Page 22