"part4" - читать интересную книгу автора (Keith Brooke - Lord of Stone)
|
- The Book of the World, ch.2, v.47. |
| As runner, he guided the advance Section of thirty UPP militia men along the road to Pigeon Ravine. Despite hurrying, it was still dark by the time they arrived. They bunched up at the bottleneck as Bligh explained the position to the officer in charge. When they arrived tonight the defences would be almost back to full strength and by morning the rest of the 182nd Company of the UPP would come to relieve what remained of the 34th LAs. They were as quiet as possible, but the passage of thirty men at night can never be completely silent. As they followed the road down past the crag and along the fringe of no-man's land, Bligh heard an indistinct 'phut' from nearby and seconds later a crimson flare lit up the valley. The Army must have posted listeners near to the road, knowing reinforcements would have to come this way. A distant thud was followed by the metal crash of a mortar bomb going off nearby. The reinforcements scattered as another landed in their midst and a clatter of rifles rose up. Bligh hit the ground and instantly his gun was at his shoulder and he let off two shots at where he thought the listeners might be concealed. Then, as the flare began to fade, he leapt to his feet and ran. The rough ground of the valley bottom was treacherous in the dark, but it would be safer than the road at the moment. In this respect he was fortunate, as the UPP soldiers would have to stick to the track, not knowing the territory. Another flare went up and the firing, which had abated slightly, came again with renewed vigour. Bligh ducked but continued to run. It was no good firing back: the Army were dug in and Bligh was exposed. All he could do was flee. It seemed to take forever, but it could only have been a minute or so before he was back on the road, slowing to a jog as it rose out of the valley. A group of soldiers was waiting a short distance up the road, hiding behind a cluster of boulders, not aware that they were safely out of range. "It's okay up here," said Bligh, struggling for breath. "How many are missing?" They waited for as long as they dared but when there were still seven men missing they assumed the worst. Gloomily, they continued on their way. They knew by the sound of gunfire when they were near to the LA sector. The Army must have signalled up the Line that reinforcements had passed through the bottleneck and their colleagues were attacking before they could get established. They spread out in the rough ground near the trench and directed their fire into no-man's land. Once, a bullet whistled off the rocks Bligh was using for cover and he feared someone had located him by his muzzle flash, but the shot was not repeated. Eventually, the fighting abated and with a weary sense of victory, Bligh led his reinforcements down into the trench and handed Domenech's orders over to Captain Elliam. |
| As the rest of the 182nd Company of the UPP arrived in the early hours the survivors of the 34th LAs were told that their Company was to be broken up. After the fighting, Bligh's Guard of ten had been reduced to himself, Bernie Rayner, Wink Hawley, Sandy Brigg and Oori Campion. Along with three survivors of another Guard they were to be drafted in to reinforce the 16th LAs on the plain. "What do they do?" asked Wink. "Are they at the Front?" "I don't know," said Rayner. "Don't even have a precise location for them ... " A fine, dry snow hung in the air as they marched out and Bligh found breathing painful because of the cold. "I will not be missing this," said Sandy Brigg, waving a hand at the darkness. Bligh was not so certain. As the road fell away from the Ephedreal Hills, he began to feel exposed and vulnerable. He searched the dawn greyness to either side but could see no farther than a few yards. The snow had turned to a thick misty rain, and the road was topped with several inches of slippery mud. Before long his damp clothes began to chafe on his skin. At a junction, Rayner halted his seven men and they watched as the rest of the Company took the fork towards Comeras. Bligh thought of Madeleine and her little room and wished he was going with them. He had no more stomach for this war. The road they followed instead was a muddy track, wheel-ruts incised deeply into its soft surface, obscured pot-holes a frequent cause of cursing. Eventually, Rayner called them to a halt and suggested that they take shelter in a ruined barn that loomed darkly at the roadside. They waited until full daylight, with water dripping all around and the smell of damp faeces in their noses. The rain had stopped now and they emerged to the wet-earth smell of early Spring. Bligh looked around and saw fields with self-seeded corn sprouting inches high from the mud, a clump of cherry trees breaking into flower, tiny violets growing from the walls of the barn. Some kind of magpie was chattering from the cherry trees, sounding like a child's imitation of a machine gun. They marched in their ragged manner for three hours, stopping to question suppliers and a Land Party runner of the whereabouts of the 16th LAs. Eventually they were lucky. "The 16th?" said a tall Traian, at the head of a party of suppliers returning from the Line. "That's us." The 16th were covering the supplies runs for much of the Comeran Plain. Their base was an old farmhouse, complete with roof, window shutters, doors, floorboards. It seemed to Bligh to be slightly corrupt to have such comfortable accommodation so close to the Front. Their commander, Captain Ivoro, knew nothing of his reinforcements. "The orders were hurried," explained Rayner. "Our Company suffered heavy losses at Pigeon Ravine and we've been redeployed." "Pigeon Ravine, eh? I heard about that. You'd better settle yourselves then. You'll spread the load, I suppose." He grinned, suddenly. "I've even got a job for you tonight: you can take our lunatic back to Comeras and dump him on the healers at Command." Later, Bligh went to mix with his new Company. He soon found that many were from the region around Dona-Jez and that he knew some of their families. When he mentioned that Madeleine Palmes was in Comeras, Salas Benjennery, a middle-aged man with silvery hair and long-lashed brown eyes, said he had taught at the school with her, before the revolution. "I am glad she has found someone other than Hammad Fulke," he said. "Fulke was healer to the patricians, he visited the Citadel often. He was on the other side." Bligh wished he could just forget about Madeleine's former lover. "No, Friend," said another, Alyk Ammar. "He gave it all up when we took Dona-Jez. Even a - " He was interrupted by a sudden torrent of abuse from another room. "You have seen our good Lord?" he said to Bligh. Bligh shook his head and so the two led him out into the corridor and down to the door of another room. It opened as they approached and a soldier backed out, yelling at someone within. "I told him he's being moved out tonight," the soldier said, turning to Benjennery. "He didn't like it." "What's wrong with him?" asked Bligh. Benjennery grunted. "The mental fracture of our times," he said. "He hears voices in his head. He claims that the Lord of Stone, or sometimes the Lords of Soul or Water, are pushing Their way into his head. 'Out of the mayhem the Lords will arise, riding the bodies of innocents, leading mankind to a new Creation.'" Bligh recognised the quote from the Elementalist Book of the World. "He was always simple," Benjennery continued, "but he could at least fire a rifle and serve the cause. He has been this way since last week. Even when he's not violent he's a burden." Bligh pushed open the door and went inside the room. He had expected a man his own size, with protruding jaw and bulging eyes - the traditional jibbering fool. Instead, a small man sat on a window ledge, peering out through the gap between the wooden shutters. His hair was straight and unevenly cut, his back slightly hunched. He looked incapable of aggression. "Hello," said Bligh tentatively. The man turned and Bligh realised that he was a mere boy, perhaps fifteen years old. His face was marred by eruptions of acne and one eye was partly closed and swollen. "I'm new here." "I'm not," said the boy, staring without embarrassment at Bligh. "What's your name?" "Gaspar Sech." "What were you looking at?" Bligh wandered deeper into the bare room, keeping a safe distance from the boy. Sech's eyes followed him relentlessly. "I was listening," said Sech. "I'm hungry but they don't feed me any more." Bligh handed him a piece of cheese from his pocket. Sech held it up to the light and examined it closely before putting it in his own pocket. Bligh felt a terrible weight, seeing how the war could damage one so young. He sensed Salas Benjennery coming to stand beside him. "You were listening to the Lords, weren't you, Sech?" he said. "Which one was it today? Fire? Air? Flux?" He sounded nervous, as if something was not right. Gaspar Sech just looked at him. Eventually the boy said to Bligh, "What does he mean? I'm hungry, can I have some food?" Benjennery turned to Bligh and said, "He's refused food for two days now. He hasn't said anything that makes any sense for even longer. What did you do?" "I'll get him something," said Bligh. He found the Company supplies in an airy cellar and took some bread and a flask of water back to Sech. The boy ate greedily and then drank the flask dry. At dusk, Captain Ivoro found Bligh and Bernie Rayner sitting outside on the wood pile. "I was going to send you back with the fool," he said. "He seems well enough to me," said Bligh. "That's what I mean," said Ivoro. "You'll win a reputation as a healer if you're not careful. You're taking supplies to the Front instead." Over the next week, Bligh got to know his new Company a little better. Apart from the newcomers, they were all native Traians. Most came from the north but a few were from Anasty and the coast. Gaspar Sech was soon back on the supply runs doing his share of the work. It did not take long for Bligh's compassion to fade under the onslaught of Sech's favouritism. The boy would bring him pieces of food and glittering fragments of quartz, he would march by his side and recite muddled proverbs and litanies. "The fire that I breathe, the ground that I drink upon, the thoughts that warm me ... " "You healed me," he said one day, "and in return I am to follow you to the ends of all the worlds and I am to serve you and bring you favour and fortune." When they were put on two days' leave and Sech was left behind with the Company, Bligh felt a tremendous sensation of relief. |
|
When Madeleine saw Bligh with Salas Benjennery, she rushed out
under the bar and hugged them both. Bligh wondered bitterly whether
she would have kept her distance if they had not already been
to the public baths.
"We're serving together in the 16th," said Benjennery
later, as they perched on an old stone trough by the town's Assembly
House, enjoying the unseasonal warmth of the evening. "How
do you cope here, Madeleine? This place is dangerous for a young
woman living alone ... anything could happen. You must be careful."
Madeleine glanced at Bligh and said, "I've been here for
some time now. I can defend myself." Bligh sensed that there
was something wrong, but when he had asked earlier, she would
only say, "Later, love. It doesn't matter."
Now, she said to Benjennery, "You're quiet. You were always
the romantic one. Back at the school you would tell us tales of
magic and wonder. Has all that gone now?"
Benjennery shook his head sadly. "I'm no story-teller,"
he explained to Bligh. "I am a historian. I would collect
anecdotes from the old people of Dona-Jez. In some instances the
stories had been passed down for generations: they would tell
of healers who could cure a deadly illness with the touch of a
hand, of seers who plotted the course of dynasties. Even my parents'
generation possessed a greater sense of the wonderful than we
do today. There's no room for magic in a modern life, there's
no room for the soul."
Bligh thought of the UPP posters and their adoption and corruption
of traditional religious symbols. Across the street a queue had
formed at a church. He nodded towards it and said, "The people
don't seem to agree."
"Salas is right," said Madeleine, and Bligh felt chastised.
"Magic is being pushed aside. People no longer believe in
miracles, they want motor wagons and radios and cinema pictures."
"It is a modern, secular world," said Benjennery. "And
is it not an improvement?"
They looked around at the broken buildings, the shabby soldiers,
the people dressed in rags. "This is not how a world without
God has to be," said Bligh. "This is only one alternative."
But he knew he was outnumbered.
Later, after they had parted company with Salas Benjennery, Bligh
pressed Madeleine about what had been bothering her. "I was
questioned by the police three days ago," she said. "Not
the police we used to have, these were the People's Police of
the UPP. They are armed bullies who roam the streets in search
of 'agents' and 'anti-revolutionary forces'. They thought my papers
might be false. They wanted to know why I was here and not in
Dona-Jez, working for the revolution. When I told them about you
and that you were in the Landworkers' Alliance, I thought they
were going to ... I ... "
They had stopped outside the house that held Madeleine's room.
She was crying now, and Bligh held her tight until she had stopped.
"What did they do?" he asked softly.
"Nothing," said Madeleine. "Only questions. I'm
lucky they didn't keep me - " she laughed bitterly "
- I'm lucky they didn't find me attractive enough to keep."
Bligh felt sick. He kissed Madeleine's hair and let her cry herself
out. He felt helpless. "Go back to Dona-Jez," he said,
after a time. "Get away from all this." He swallowed.
"Get away from me. Before everything goes horribly
wrong and it's too late to put things right." He was crying
too, now. "Get away from me, Madeleine. Just ... get away."
He released her and pushed her towards the door of the house.
"Go," he hissed. And then he turned and ran away
into the night. |
|
- from The Lords Give ... aphorisms. |
| Apart from a furious thunder burst in the early afternoon, the rest of the day remained sunny and dry. Large lakes of mud acquired a pale crust which, by dusk, had developed a tracery of cracks. Dark, steaming footprints cut broken lines across the dried mud, where soldiers had passed in the afternoon. When Bligh woke from the rare luxury of a three hour sleep, sunlight was beginning to lose its grip on the world and the shadows were taking over. He sensed immediately that there was a new atmosphere, here in the vicinity of the reserve trench. The familiar, short-tempered weariness had been transformed into an air of excitement, of anticipation. Relief would come tomorrow evening, he remembered. He soon learnt that there was more to it than tomorrow's relief. "Tonight we celebrate," said Cabo Dona-Santen. "I have had men out all afternoon, up and down the Line, trading with our neighbours. Now we have some drink, some decent food. There is fuel for a fire." Bligh had noticed a pyre being built, in the shelter of a broken wall. "Tonight we celebrate," he repeated dumbly. It seemed a strange idea, more foreign than anything else he had come across in his time in Trace. He looked around at the mud, the decay, the sheer desolation of it all, and wondered whatever could there be to celebrate? "Can we do it? Can we do it?" sang Gaspar Sech, bounding up to join Dona-Santen and Bligh. Bligh found his youthful energy intensely irritating. "Do what?" he asked. "The Prayer of the Body," said Sech, giving him a sly glance before returning his attention to Dona-Santen. "Oh, we'll most certainly be doing it," said Dona-Santen. "But - " "I can do it!" Dona-Santen turned back to Bligh. "We have no priest to mediate the Prayer," he said. "And no sensitive to take his place. Some people wouldn't see the importance, but it does matter. The boy says he went to a Church charity school before the war and that he can mediate for us. What do you think?" Bligh shrugged. "I'm a lapsed Jahvean," he said. "I'm hardly the man ... " So Dona-Santen took the decision himself. He put his hands on Sech's shoulders, turned him around and gave him a gentle push in the back. "Go and ask Captain Ivoro," he said. As he was in reserve, Bligh did not have to stand Twilight duty. Instead, he stood in the open and looked out towards the Line. If he tried hard enough, he could distinguish the boundary between sky and ground. Somewhere over that gentle rise were their own trenches and, a little farther, the trenches of the Army. The field guns were quiet for now, and even the rifles only cracked occasionally. Bligh wondered if it might be some kind of national holiday, still perversely respected in this episode from hell. He went down to the trench to look for Wink Hawley, and when the two returned the fire had been lit and a number of soldiers were gathered around. "These things give me the creeps," said Wink, "even though I was born an Elementalist and expect to die one." "You believe in it all?" Bligh had never considered Wink to be a particularly religious man. "There's more to the religion than mere belief," said Wink. "Especially here in Trace. You go to church, you learn the scriptures in school ... it becomes a part of you whether you believe or not. It's an element of my experience, it dictated a large part of what I could and could not do for the first seventeen years of my life. No, I suppose I don't believe in it - not as a fundamental truth - but it's made me what I am." Just then he turned to look at Bligh and the fire lit the twisted, scarred side of his face a fiery salmon pink. Bligh looked away. He did not want to think about what Wink had just said. He did not want to apply it to himself. From around the fire, the soldiers cheered as a cork was drawn noisily from a bottle. There were more men here than could be accounted for by the thirty or so in Bligh's reserve Section. Particularly when many had chosen to stay away, either through religious difference or for their own private reasons. Some of the men had slipped away from the forward trenches, presumably those who were not actually meant to be on guard or patrol duty. But there were also many faces new to Bligh. Word must have spread to neighbouring Companies, through the afternoon's trading for food and drink. "It does, however, have its compensations," said Wink, as they went up and filled their flasks from a huge clay wine jug and then helped themselves to some of the bread and dried meat cakes that had been spread out across a tarpaulin on the mud. After a few minutes of idle talk, the eastern sky flickered and the ground shook with the distant rumble of artillery explosions. "Let's hope they stay clear of us tonight," said Alyk Ammar, a bearded young man with a peasant scarf tied around his head and the fingers of one hand looped around the necks of three bottles of beer. During one of the lulls in the distant fighting, the gathering's attention suddenly focused on those around the fire. Gaspar Sech was there, flanked on one side by Cabo Dona-Santen and on the other by Madeleine's former colleague, the silver-haired Salas Benjennery. The boy's face was already awash with sweat and his eyes were glassy and rolled up to show the whites. He was swaying back and forth and humming. "They believed him then," said Bligh softly. Nothing seemed to happen for a long time, and Bligh grew bored. At the same time, however, he was unable to look away from the fire, the boy, the rolled back whites of his eyes. Bligh stretched his back and rolled his head and shoulders in an effort to loosen the tension that had seized his unmoving form. He felt angry when Sech mimicked this action. He had not realised the boy was watching him. He took a drink from his flask and followed the satisfying course it took, across the back of his throat and down, down, to sizzle in the pit of his stomach. He felt the heat expanding within his body and he reached out and touched the cool stone of the wall for reassurance. For a moment it was as if his hand had merged with the wall and he could not wrench it away. With a grunt he managed to free it and then he stared at his palms, confused. He shook his head, drank some more wine. The boy was moaning now. The two by his side took up the noise. Dona-Santen looked awkward about it, but Salas Benjennery looked thrilled. Bligh remembered their conversation in Comeras about the death of magic in a modern, secular world. It seemed that Benjennery would do what he could to slow down that process. Bligh shifted uncomfortably and Wink nodded at him and then said, "Seems pretty intense tonight." Bligh rubbed his eyes with the back of his wrist. The smoke was making them hurt. Sech suddenly yelped and threw himself down on his hands and knees before the fire. He was still for a moment, and then he started to squirm in the mud, crying out over and over, something like, "Bubububub!" After a minute or so, the crowd joined in with the call and the rhythm became a steady, pounding pulse that seemed to resonate with the very flesh. Bligh felt the ground beginning to shift beneath his feet and then Gaspar Sech tipped his head up and his eyes rolled back down from under their lids as he looked directly at him. "No!" cried Bligh, dragging the word out into an awful bellow. "No!" The ground was snatched from under him and suddenly he was naked, running across the smooth flank of a mountain. Cold night air was cutting across him, making his body hair stand on end, making his genitals shrivel, and his rotten feet slapped painfully on the bare rock, cleansed with each slippery footstep. From all around, people stared at him, their eyes bulging in their faces, their heads looming over him, voices chattering. With each cat-like bound, he felt stronger, his muscles gliding smoothly over one another. He felt the power, felt the crowd's frenzied need. He felt capable of almost anything and so he ran and ran until he left it all behind and he felt as if he was floating, drifting in a sea of darkness. He felt warm and comfortable. He wanted to stay like this forever. He was unaware of what was happening for a time that could have been forever, for all that he cared. But then he realised that - somewhere in this sea of darkness - he did care, and he began to struggle, to fight whatever it was that was making him feel this way. The dream had never gone this far before and he thought that he must have become lost in its depths, but then he saw the faces, the mountain, and he started to run again. He looked up and the soldiers were all around him, pushing and barging to get a better view. Their eyes bulged making them look like the people in his dream and he pushed his way to his feet and out past them, away from the fire and the pressure of their stares. All around, the sky was a flickering horror of artillery fire but he had to run, had to escape. After another age he found himself sloshing about in the mud and mouldering bodies of no-man's land. He slowed himself so that the sound of his struggling feet would not draw the attention of sniper fire or enemy patrols and he realised that his feet were still bare and he could feel the very essence of the mud and gore with each slow step - the varying degrees of softness and firmness, the lumps that may have been stones or shell fragments or pieces of bone. When he reached the ruined cottages, he scrambled up over their rubble gratefully. Suddenly he was aware of the night air biting into his skin and he cowered down amongst the debris and wondered what he could do now. As he waited, his senses gradually recovered, but his shivering body grew steadily colder. He wrapped his long arms about himself and closed his eyes and when he opened them he thought he was in the dream again. A gruesome distorted face was peering at him, inches from his own, one twisted side a fiery contortion of flickering flames and scars. "Wink," he gasped, and then he realised that there were rowdy soldiers all around and he was slumped against a broken wall. Wink Hawley had a tight grip on Bligh's arm, and when he spoke his voice was tight with tension. "You felt it too," he said. "Hmm?" Bligh's mind was still unclear. Was this still the dream? "You blacked out for a moment," said Wink. "But you felt it, didn't you? You heard the calling of the Lords ... They've chosen us, can't you feel it?" There were tears in his one eye and now his grip was hurting Bligh's arm with its intensity. "I felt nothing," said Bligh. "Nothing." Voices were raised now, and they both looked across to the fire. Gaspar Sech was being pushed roughly aside by some of the soldiers and he was being subjected to a torrent of abuse. "You're no good," Cabo Dona-Santen told him drunkenly. "You can't do it. You lied to me!" The boy did not seem to care. He let them push him from the fire and as the soldiers turned away he looked up at Bligh and Wink Hawley and smiled. |
| When they marched into Comeras the following night Bligh felt terrible. All day he had been suffering shooting pains in his arms and legs and Salas Benjennery told him with a hint of glee that it was most probably rheumatic fever and he would need the attentions of a healer if he was to avoid hospitalisation. Then he had laughed and said, "Of course, Friend, to be healed one requires an element of faith and ... " Then he had clapped Bligh on the shoulder and finished, "Captain Ivoro keeps some aspirin. A poor substitute for faith but I suppose it's your only choice." The pain-killer had helped and now he just felt stiff. The Company split up when they reached the main street of Comeras and Bligh found himself alone. Everyone was accustomed to not including him in their plans when they were on leave, so now he wondered what he should do. Madeleine would have gone by now, he thought. He could not remember why, but he felt certain that she must have had good reason. Had they rowed? He thought not. He peered around in the darkness. It was near to midnight now, but there were still people passing along the pavements or wandering down the middle of the street. Soldiers, mainly, and weary-looking women who were probably prostitutes. Across the road, he noticed one of these women staring at him. He had never been with a prostitute before. He had always assumed that the taint of commerce would steal his passion and make it a waste of time. Now, though, he stared hard at the woman. She was old, maybe forty, but she had held her figure and she stood proudly. He felt himself coming alive for the first time in days. He straightened and took a step, and then he noticed that it was not only the woman looking at him, but a couple standing nearby. Suddenly scared, he glanced back over his shoulder and just down the pavement a group of soldiers were watching, too. Instead of moving towards the woman, as he had planned, he stood, rooted to the spot. He felt the blood pumping through his body, thumping in his groin and his chest and his head. He felt dizzy and he had to move in order to avoid falling. Suddenly he was walking, out in the middle of the street. Now others turned to stare and he felt their eyes pushing at him, trying to knock him to the floor. He started to run and the eyes followed. Down a side street, across a square, he ran, and the throbbing in his body transformed itself into the heaving of his lungs as he pushed his exhausted limbs ever harder. When he stopped, he realised that he had come to the little crooked house where Madeleine had rented a room. "Gone," he muttered, unaware that he was speaking aloud. He pushed his way through the door and climbed the stairs. He did not consider the possibility that someone else may have taken the room and he would be barging in on them, he just wanted to see it again. One last time. He barged into the door, harder than he had intended, and it swung open with a loud crash. She was still there. She woke with a stifled scream and sat up, clutching the blanket across her chest. "Bligh," she gasped. "I didn't ... " She climbed out of the bed, wearing only Bligh's old shirt. "Love," she said, still startled. "I'll put on some water for your bath. You must be desperate." He reached, dumbly, for her as she passed within reach, but she danced away from his clumsy hands and went out onto the landing for her water. He looked around the room and struggled to straighten his mind. He saw her bag lying on the floor and realised that she had removed her things from the shelf and the top of the chest of drawers. "You're leaving?" he said, as she returned. "Yes." She poured a jug of water into the iron tub and turned to go for some more. "You wanted me to, remember?" He did not know what she was talking about. "And anyway," she continued. "I lost my job." She had not been looking directly at him, but now for a moment she glanced up and he realised she was upset. "It's because you're in the LA," she said. "Mr Caur said he couldn't take the chance. Not with the police as they are. The UPP have been saying the LA is an anti-revolutionary force because it is resisting integration. Oh, Bligh ... I didn't know what to do." Bligh moved towards Madeleine. She let him stroke her arm, and then she started to remove his clothes. He watched her expression and realised how she was repelled by him when he was like this: the smell, the filth, the lice. He pulled away and removed the rest of his clothes by himself. "I'm going tomorrow," she said. "By train. Or at least, I was planning to leave tomorrow. But I can stay, if you want." He took her roughly and pulled her towards him. "Why?" he hissed angrily. His head was pounding and when he saw the distress on her face he felt a perverse satisfaction. "Be ... because you ... " She tried to pull away, to escape his embrace, but as she turned he managed to push her and she tumbled onto the bed. "Bligh!" she cried, as he lay down beside her and forced his mouth onto her neck. "Bligh ... " Her lips tasted sweet but she kept her teeth clamped tightly together, resisting his tongue. She tried to squirm across the bed, but he had a hold of her arm and now his leg was spread across her hips. Ignoring her soft cries, Bligh rolled over on top and clumsily tried to enter her. He could not manage it. Despite the angry pounding in his body, he was not stiff enough to penetrate. He pressed against her, nevertheless, in some gruesome pretence at passion. Pulling back for a moment, he looked down at her tear-streaked face. Her eyes stared up into his and he saw that she was frightened, and his anger grew again. The next time he opened his own tearful eyes, he saw that her fear had been replaced by a look of pity. Then she reached down and guided him into the right position and, only partly erect, he was inside her at last. |
|
Afterwards, they lay in the darkness. Bligh felt sick and tired
and confused. His anger had retreated but he could still feel
it smouldering within. Madeleine lay awake all the time with one
hand placed on his heaving chest, staring at him. He wished she
would stop. He wished she had stopped him earlier - she was strong
enough, he knew. Just at that moment he hated her, with all the
intensity his enfeebled condition would allow. But more, he felt
that same deep loathing towards himself. He feared what he had
become, what he felt this terrible, dark longing in his chest
could make him become.
And all the time, Madeleine watched him in the shadows.
In the morning, she attempted conversation but soon gave up.
She was trying so hard, but it was only having a negative effect
on Bligh. Soon, he was out on the street without a word of goodbye.
He did not know what had happened last night, he felt that he
had been a passenger in his own body for weeks and he did not
know where reality ended and his own distorted imagination took
over. All he knew was that he never expected to see Madeleine
again. |
|
- The Book of Confirmation, p.273. |
|
Rayner was wrong.
On the night before the Festival, the 16th LAs marched back into
Comeras. They had spent the intervening twelve days holding a
sector of the Line a few miles out on the Comeran Plain. In that
time, Bligh felt himself coming alive again. It was as if he had
been buried to the neck in trench mud and at last he had managed
to grab a handhold and pull himself clear.
This sector was only forty yards from the enemy Line. The trench
was deep and narrow in order to minimise the chance of a well
thrown hand grenade finding its target. The mud and water at the
bottom was deep and smelt like an open sewer, but the squalor
of the trench was preferable to exposing yourself to sniper fire
out in the open. Life in this sector passed in a state of constant
alertness. The Company successfully held off two night-time assaults
and failed in one of their own. They lost eight men in the failed
assault, none of them from Bligh's Section, which had remained
in the reserve trench throughout. Standing Twilights, he had watched
as some of the bodies were dragged back to lie festering in the
trench until they could be disposed of the following night.
The ceaseless struggle for vigilance - the constant fear for
his life - pulled Bligh through.
The talk, as they marched away from the Front was of the latest
UPP news-sheet. There were two main items of news, if The Voice
could be trusted. The first provoked both anger and dismay. The
UPP were saying that some of the Cooperatives, including the Landworkers'
Alliance, showed signs of becoming a counter-revolutionary factor.
They were resisting moves to unify the forces of progress and
there was the suggestion that within the Syndicates and the Cooperatives
there were shady figures who favoured a settlement with the Government
and a return to the days when Cooperative and Syndicate bosses
had 'lived hand in pocket' with the patrician land-owners. It
was blatant propaganda, an indication of behind-the-scenes manoeuvring
for influence in the coalition of revolutionary factions, and
it was clearly done without thought to the effect on the men at
the Front.
The second item of news went some way towards softening the blow
of the first. Talks had been held with the ambassador of Feorea,
Trace's biggest neighbour to the north. Nothing concrete had emerged,
the report stated, but the simple fact of the report itself was
enough to stir excited rumours of desperately needed arms supplies
and international pressure being put on Queen Minna and her Government
to concede the defeat which, of course, was inevitable. These
new weapons from Feorea - which, as rumour consolidated rumour,
rapidly acquired the status of accepted fact - would be enough
for the revolutionary militias to launch a major assault on the
Government all along the Line. "Who needs Minna to concede?"
the reasoning went. "We already hold over half of the country
and, with these new arms, it is only a matter of time now ...
"
As he marched, Bligh wondered what he would do if he saw Madeleine.
The day and a half of his previous leave in Comeras was remote
from him now. He could remember some sort of row, something unpleasant
that passed between them, but he did not think too hard about
the detail. More clearly, he could recall the feeling as he had
left her room the next morning: the feeling that he would never
see her again. He realised that their relationship had probably
come to an end, and that he did not really understand why, or
even if he wanted it to be like that.
Before the Company split up, Captain Ivoro reminded his men of
the delicacy of their situation and that they should not go out
of their way to reveal that they fought with the Landworkers'
Alliance. One or two of the soldiers even went as far as to remove
their Alliance neck scarves.
With Wink Hawley, Oori Campion and Salas Benjennery, Bligh went
first to the public baths, where they lingered in the steam rooms
and the communal tubs, telling stories and arguing politics. Later,
they went to a bar and filled themselves with liqueurs and wine
and the local yeasty sweetbreads.
There was a new atmosphere to the town already. Stalls and marquees
were being set up, their support-posts locked into sockets in
the cobbles that Bligh had never noticed before. Boards were being
put up, too, across any street level windows that did not have
shutters already, and a number of side streets and alleyways were
being blocked off with heavy tarpaulin screens.
"You're going to be around for all this?" said Wink,
at one point.
Bligh did not know what to make of it. When the fairs had passed
through Stenhoer in his boyhood they were a strange and mystical
world, forbidden to the boys of the school. Since leaving Wederia,
Bligh's experience had broadened but he still felt that boyish
attraction to the forbidden. He shrugged and said something noncommittal.
"But what about the cats?" said Wink. "Surely
you'd stop at that ... "
Bligh wondered what he meant. He sensed that his friend was more
disturbed about this Festival than he would admit. "It's
your religion," he pointed out.
"That's what scares me," Wink said softly, and turned
away to answer a question from Salas Benjennery.
As darkness fell, however, Wink remained with his three colleagues.
Bligh had never seen Comeras so crowded. The air was full of
cries, laughter, the clashing, pounding beat of music. The people
were dressed in their gayest outfits, their gaunt, half-starved
features standing out in stark contrast, making them look like
ghosts or gruesome chimeras. Groups of soldiers roamed, singing
drunkenly, slouching over their women.
Pontoons were moored in the river, platforms placed precariously
across them so that the crowds could walk from bank to bank. Powerful
pumps had been anchored farther downstream, flinging water into
the air in a series of graceful curves and spouts, all lit by
brightly coloured floating torches and beacons which seemed to
be magically kept alight despite the water that regularly swamped
them. Bligh marvelled at the extravagance of it all, when everyday
life in the town was so harsh. He wondered at the sacrifices made
for this one night of celebration.
"This is the tribute to the Lord of Water," said Salas
Benjennery, as the group paused at a trinket stall in the middle
of the river. "The town is divided into the six Astral Houses
of the Lords. It is an acknowledgement, a call to the heavens
to say that we are ready for Them to walk among us once again.
Ready to be saved from the eternal cycle of life and death."
Just then, a soldier who had been scouring the stall turned and
Bligh saw that it was Bernie Rayner. He nodded and raised his
eyebrows as Rayner joined them.
"You can't get away from it," explained Rayner. "So
I decided to come and get something for my boys. Something to
show them how even the spiritual and the sacred can be so readily
trivialised."
"This is not trivialisation," said Benjennery. "This
is the people themselves rising up to celebrate. These trinkets,
this coming together ... it is a far higher expression of the
human need for the divine than any be-robed priest's judgement
or gloomy rote-learning of The Book of the World. This
is magic happening. You cannot get more spiritual than
this!"
Rayner raised his hands to fend off the stall holder, who had
sensed a potential sale. "No," he said. "This is
not tacky enough, my dear. I'll find worse elsewhere tonight,
I feel sure."
They drank more liqueurs at a marquee set up in a street dedicated
to the Lord of Soul, and teased each other for not going in to
one of the many shielded areas to consult a seer or an astrologer
or a whore. A little while later, they found an entire marquee
devoted to the Lord of Air. Inside, what was called a gallery
of scent had been constructed: a series of areas with particular
perfumes somehow confined to their own spaces and not mingling
and mixing as Bligh felt sure would be their natural tendency.
They passed through snow flowers and that indefinable smell of
a mountain stream, heady barrages of orchid and musk, and finally
the more subtle, almost undetectable flavours of the narcotic
clouds which clung to the senses and made you see angels and magnificent
birds, numbing blurs and angry colour splashes. Next, they spent
some time and many shillings in the street dedicated to the Lord
of Flux, losing their back pay on card games and gambling machines,
while Rayner looked on and assured them that the odds were stacked
heavily against them and Benjennery insisted that it was the mystical
workings of chance and flux, @alone, that influenced the outcome.
The atmosphere was quite intoxicating, so much so that Bligh
barely noticed the change in Wink Hawley when they reached an
open area devoted to the Lord of Fire. A single, central pyre
was built up to almost the height of the nearby buildings and
around it there were troughs of coloured fire, statues that spouted
great gouts of flame at unnerving, irregular intervals. At one
of these, a man stood, dodging out of the way as flames leapt
towards him, taunting the statues with rude gestures and comical
remarks. His partner was working the crowd for shillings and pennies
of appreciation.
"How could they?" muttered Wink, as they paused at
the far side of the arena of fire.
"They net them at the nest," said Salas Benjennery,
misunderstanding.
Before them there was a raised beam and along it, their feet
bound to the wood, were twelve huge lammergeiers. Old Man of the
Mountain, young Erin Panniker had called them. Bligh remembered
another name for them - Bird with Fire for a Face - and he saw
how appropriate that was: from a strong, dark body there emerged
a creamy head with a blaze of orange - more vivid than any of
the fiery displays of the Festival - at the throat, and tiny,
black, pin-pricked eyes with irises of the same fierce orange.
"The things can't move," said Wink.
"Come on," said Bligh, putting a hand on his friend's
back. "There are worse things than this."
They left the field of fire and stopped briefly at a stall selling
meat cakes and pies. "We've seen all but Lord of Stone,"
said Bligh. "Where's he then? We've got to do them all."
He was feeling more than a little drunk by now. Spending most
of his time on leave with Madeleine, he had not grown accustomed
to the drinking sprees the other soldiers pursued.
"Oh, there is time for that," said Salas Benjennery,
grinning.
Something in the way he spoke made Bligh cautious. He glanced
at Rayner, who said, "The climax of the night: the stone
cat run. I'm not waiting for that, myself. I'm not a one for needless
barbarism."
Just then, a shout rose above the general excited clamour of
the night and Bligh sensed that something was wrong. Looking around,
he quickly saw that Wink Hawley was missing. Remembering Wink's
distress at the Fire displays, he automatically turned to look
back down the street to where the shouting had arisen. "Come
on," he snapped at his friends. "It's Wink!"
They started to run, Bligh wishing he had not abandoned his sturdy
old rifle at the warehouse barracks. They rounded the last corner
and saw that the open area was in chaos. People were running about,
more than could be accounted for simply by the high spirits of
the night. As Bligh watched, several great black shapes banked
and swooped, scattering people in their path, rising up over the
huge pyre and the troughs and spouts of flame. The birds were
clearly confused: they were not creatures of the night and so
they lingered by the light of the fires, muddled and, perhaps,
amused by all these running, shouting people who they could scatter
with one graceful stoop.
"What's the excitement?" said Wink Hawley, appearing
from the shadows.
"The birds are free," said Rayner, giving Wink one
of his knowing looks. "Well," he added, "I'll give
you this, my friend: you've really stirred things up tonight."
Even as he spoke, the last of the birds disappeared into the shadows
of a boarded-up side street.
As they wandered off again, no one wanting to talk directly about
what they all assumed Wink had done, Bligh noticed that the crowds
were growing thinner and a number of the stalls and marquees were
being dismantled. If it had not been for the magnificent effort
of creating such a festival in the depths of wartime, Bligh would
have wondered what all the excitement had been about. The festivities
had been little more than were put on at any number of coastal
towns in Feorea or Marland over the course of a Summer.
They entered the main street again, and here Bligh could see
where much of the crowd had gathered. A mass of faces was pressed
to the upper windows of the houses and shops along here, bodies
hanging out over balconies and clinging part-way up the stone
frontages of shops. Ahead, there was a crowd, mostly of young
men, thronging the street, shouting and cheering and stamping
their feet in some shambolic, drunken order.
"Ah," said Salas Benjennery. "Now, we see, it
is time for the Lord of Stone ... "
It was impossible to get through the crowd. The jostling and
shouting, the heat of the massed bodies, all made Bligh feel dizzy
and disorientated.
He did not want to be here, he realised.
He spotted Bernie Rayner forging a path through the mass and,
desperate, he followed, knowing that Rayner would not stay for
this either, if he could help it.
He kept sight of Rayner for a time, then lost contact in the
chaos. Moments later, he spotted his friend's back and lunged,
panicking towards him. Gaining ground rapidly, he threw himself
forward and grabbed Rayner's shoulder, but the man turned and
it was someone he had never met before, yelling abuse at him even
as his whole face was lit up with a fervent excitement.
Bligh looked around in growing confusion, sensing that he had
moved close to the heart of the crowd.
Bodies pressed against him from all sides, arms and shoulders
and heads striking him and knocking him off balance, making it
impossible to stand still and get his bearings.
A short time later, Bligh found himself jammed up against a wall.
He found a handhold and heaved himself up, using the surrounding
bodies as stepping stones to raise himself above the mass. He
managed to hook a hand over the railing of a crowded balcony and
now he could look down at the seething mosaic of people. A short
distance along the street, there was a platform with a set of
heavy cages in place and some men clustered around. Inside the
cages were four stone cats; through the shouting and laughter
Bligh thought he could hear the hissing and snarling as one of
the beasts threw itself furiously at the end of its cage, shaking
the entire platform. Bligh felt sick and trapped now. He did not
want to be here.
Then he saw why the cat was so agitated: the roof of its cage
was being steadily lowered, trapping it against the floor until
finally it could not move. The crowd gave a mighty roar as some
men on the platform reached in through the criss-cross bars of
the cage.
Bligh looked at the people on the balcony and a large woman whose
face was jammed close to his own turned to him and smiled a drunken
smile. "What are they doing?" he yelled over the noise
of the crowd.
She smiled more broadly, and now her eyes reflected the flickering
of a nearby torch. "They're tying his balls so he's not so
fast," she said, and turned away again.
Bligh looked back to the platform and the cage roof was being
raised again. The cat had become quieter, and Bligh could see
a leather harness bound across its rear quarters and extending
down each of its hind legs. Two of the others already had their
testicles bound up in this manner, and the fourth was now being
pinned down in its cage.
Someone pushed Bligh and he lost his grip on the balcony. He
landed spreadeagled on the crowd and hands reached up and pushed
him, bouncing him along on a sea of humanity, until eventually
a hand grabbed him and hauled him to the ground.
"Bligh," said a voice he remembered. "I knew you'd
be here."
He felt a surge of euphoria on recognising Sadiq Phelim. It seemed
that all emotions were amplified to extraordinary levels in the
incandescent atmosphere of this crowd. "Sadiq!" he yelled.
"What's happening?"
"Everything." His voice was quiet, but Bligh heard
it easily. He realised that Sadiq was with friends. "This
is Alderas Aldivine," said Sadiq, louder now, nodding to
a tall thin man who was being lifted off his feet by the press
of the crowd. "And Pozas Cantera." A rotund man, sheened
with sweat and looking edgy. The crowd was shifting now, and they
had a little more room to move, or at least to hold their ground.
"And I understand you've come across Merc," he said,
nodding towards Merc Domenech, who stood there with a quiet smile
on his face, studying Bligh closely.
"Join with us," said Domenech. "It is about to
happen."
"What?" said Bligh. "No ... no." He felt
confused, but suddenly he knew he did not want to stay with this
peculiar group of men.
Yet still he felt drawn to them, he felt a tingling in his head,
a strange desire. He felt that the electricity of the crowd was
being channelled through this group, setting his mind alight,
sending all sorts of odd, intrusive thoughts tumbling through
his brain.
"Come on. We're special - can't you feel it?"
demanded Domenech.
"No!" Bligh cried, and turned and started to struggle,
bouncing off bodies and pushing angry people aside, fleeing from
the beating in his head and the crazed look on Merc Domenech's
face.
Just as he thought he might break free, a horn blew from behind
and drums started to beat from the balconies and the upper storey
windows, a pulse that matched his own pounding heartbeat, driving
it to thump louder, faster.
He stopped running as he felt dizziness threatening to swamp
him, and then, as he looked back down the street, he realised
that the crowd had thinned and the stone cat cages were open.
It took him several seconds to spot the cats in the shadows of
the street, and when he found their dusky forms he saw that they
had covered almost half the distance towards him. They were running
with a staggering lope, but despite their handicaps their pace
and agility was frightening. Already, an old man had been swiped
with a heavy paw and was being dragged up onto a balcony beyond
the reach of one of the cats.
Bligh's senses cleared in a sudden rush. He turned and ran. He
was one of the last men here. He ducked into the mouth of a side
street and instantly he was floundering against a huge tarpaulin
which had been drawn across the opening and bound into place through
steel hoops in the walls. Now, he realised why the boards and
shuttering had gone up during the day. The cats were being restricted
to certain areas of the town.
And so, he realised, was he.
He ran, until each heavy breath tore at his chest and his heart
thudded heavily, finding its panicked echo in his gut and his
head. As he ran, he was stripped of all thoughts except survival.
He became nothing, a machine of bone and aching muscle, a single,
isolated unit of fear.
Each side street and alleyway was blocked until, finally, he
found a passage that was clear and he darted along it, running
with a group of young Comerans, leaving them behind as they lingered
to drink from their clay bottles of wine. Every so often he looked
behind, but there was no sign of the four cats, only people, running
in every direction, playing a game of chance which would have
served the Lord of Flux proudly. And above him, all the time,
there were people shouting and cheering from their balconies and
windows, driving him on despite the doubts in his mind.
He had lost track of time when he came across Domenech again.
He stayed in the shadows and watched as Domenech strode around
in energetic circles, brandishing a long sword in the air, demanding
that he be obeyed.
His group of followers had grown, now, although he had lost Sadiq
and the man called Alderas Aldivine. Domenech grabbed someone
from his crowd and Bligh saw that it was poor old Wink Hawley,
looking bemused and slightly embarrassed. Somewhere in the shadows,
the fool Gaspar Sech was prancing about, singing one of his mad
little songs until Domenech turned and cuffed him across the back
of his head and he ran whimpering into the crowd.
"It's time!" cried Domenech, to Hawley and to his followers.
"They're getting tired now: it's time we hunt the beasts
that hunt us!" The crowd roared in answer and an echo
rose from the onlookers high above. Wink Hawley shrugged Domenech's
hands off his shoulders and turned with a muttered curse, starting
to run away from the crowd.
Bligh wished he knew what was happening. He wished he could understand
the strange excitement that was threatening to overtake him. He
felt that he could be so easily submerged.
He shrank back into the shadows as Domenech led the crowd past
him, along the street. Part of him wanted to follow. He felt that
he could control these puppets just as Domenech did, he felt the
potential of power if only he would use it.
He held himself back, resisted the temptation.
Minutes after Domenech had left, Bligh saw a stone cat dragging
itself along in the shadows of the street. Immediately, there
were yells from a balcony above, and bottles and stones were hurled
down at the distraught animal. The beast was no longer the fierce,
skittish creature that had leapt from its cage in the main street
of Comeras. Now, it limped along, dragging its hind feet and giving
little anguished whimpers as its harness dragged at its balls
and its rear legs.
Bligh did not know what to do, but as he dithered there was a
cry from a nearby side street and a crowd of young men raced out
at the cat, brandishing swords and clubs and broken bottles. Instantly
the cat yelped and leapt, twisting into the air, turning as it
landed, and raced away down the street, still able in its pain
to flee this bloodthirsty mob.
Bligh turned away, unable to watch. He headed in the direction
he had seen Wink Hawley take, hoping desperately that his friend
could help him.
Some time later, he heard a shout from above, different from
all the other shouts. It was Wink, leaning over a balcony and
beckoning, Bernie Rayner by his side. Bligh peered up at the group
on the balcony and for a moment he thought he saw Madeleine in
the shadows, but then he spotted Slowly Skett and young Erin Panniker
and he knew that his mind was fooling him. He looked at Wink again,
who may not have been Wink, and wanted desperately to grab his
hand and be hauled out of the madness of the street, the madness
of the stone cat run.
He turned and started to trot away, aware of a dull ache in the
pit of his belly, a fire in his groin. After a few seconds, his
trot turned into a headlong run and his whole body was alight
with pain, but he knew he must run, as every cell of his being
was infused with the most desperate animal fear.
He heard the roar from the onlookers in the buildings, the baying
for blood. He heard the roar of a crowd behind him and he knew
he must somehow run even harder, even faster.
He emerged in the open space where the tall pyre still burnt
for the Lord of Fire and the statues still gouted irregular jets
of flame. He turned, in the centre of this open area and waved
his hands, taunting the crowd. He felt them respond, even before
he heard their cheers and cries. He shouted Traian obscenities
at them, his use of the language having broadened with his time
in the trenches. They yelled back at him and he felt again that
he could lead them, control them. He felt it with a certainty
that he had never felt about anything before. He could make them
do whatever he wanted: they would worship him before he was through,
if that was his choice.
He turned and ran again. His feelings frightened him. He felt
sure that at some point on this mad night he had finally crossed
the boundary into the land of pure insanity.
Off another wide street, Bligh found an angled shutter, an access
point to the cellar of a drinking house. He pulled at the hasp
with no sense of hope and one door swung upwards. Surprised, he
straightened and peered about himself. He was shielded from the
view of the overhanging balconies above. The street was wide here,
and he felt sure that no one on the other side would see what
he was doing.
He stepped into the darkness, found a foothold and entered the
cellar, dragging the door over behind him.
He waited in the darkness for some time, not quite sure what
he was doing but savouring the coolness and the calm that was
returning to his body. Perhaps he was not insane after all: perhaps
this mania overtook everyone who became a part of the stone cat
run. Already, his head seemed clearer and his thoughts felt as
if they were his own.
All that remained was a nagging feeling that he was being watched.
After a short time he moved back to the cellar's entrance and
found that he could see through a gap between the two wooden shutters.
There were people in the street again, roaming aimlessly. The
night seemed to be dying now, the excitement dissipating.
Then, after a time, he recognised the form of Merc Domenech,
still leading his band of followers. They numbered more than forty
by now, but their spirits seemed lower, despite Domenech's commands
and encouragement. As they drew closer, passing in the street,
Bligh saw the sword that Domenech was still carrying aloft. As
it glinted in the torchlight, Bligh felt sure, for a moment, that
its blade was red with blood. And then they were gone, away down
the street, and there were just the small knots of men, trudging
about dispiritedly.
Bligh pulled away from his viewpoint and sat on the top step,
peering into the shadows, and then he saw the dusky shadow, hunched
up by the far wall between two wine barrels and a heap of old
rags. Before, he had simply taken it for another pile of rags,
but now he could see its sandy, lightly specked coat, the black
folds of its mouth, the dark tuft at the end of its tail which
it flicked, restlessly, back and forth.
"How long have you been here?" he said softly, but
the beast did not reply.
He moved, carefully, down the steps and settled against one wall,
where he could keep a watchful eye over the stone cat and wonder
what to do. He fell asleep almost instantly, for when he opened
his eyes there was sunlight slanting in through the crack between
the shutters and the cat had gone.
Now, he wondered if he had imagined it all, but later in the
day he discovered that only three of the released stone cats had
been cornered and gored the previous night. The fourth had disappeared.
"Surprising that more didn't get away," Salas Benjennery
told him. "So much of the town has been damaged by the war,
it's impossible to block off escape routes now."
Bligh wandered back through the streets of Comeras, feeling shabby
and worn. The effects of the previous day's drinking had not taken
long to manifest themselves and his head pounded with each pace
and his mouth felt dry and rough, like the dusty cobbles of the
street.
All around, it was as if it was just another day in Comeras.
All that remained of the Festival were the posters and an increase
in litter and smashed bottles which did not look at all out of
place in this war-battered town.
Back at the barracks, most of the Company was gathered.
Bernie Rayner greeted him with his usual knowing look and brief
shake of the head. He was the only one who did not look as if
he had been awake and drunk for all of the previous night. "Good
morning, my lovey," he said, with irritating good humour.
"I think you might need some sleep this morning. We've got
new orders. We're moving out this afternoon. We're taking a train,
going south of Caspe."
That name - Caspe - sent a visible shudder through all those
within hearing. The fields around Caspe had been the scene of
the bloodiest fighting of the entire war. It could mean only one
thing: that the forces of the revolution were going for another
big push, in the hope of bursting through the strong Army lines
of the region and storming the heartlands of Trace. Success would
win the war, but it was a success that had exceeded their grasp
at every attempt so far. |
|
We worshipped Him well on this dying day.' - from the diary of an un-named soldier. |
|
They disembarked at a small town called Huesja. In this place
there was not a single building with more than three walls standing,
save for the little huts of corrugated tin and sandbags put up
by the militias to serve as stores and a simple command post.
Domenech was already there when the Company arrived, but he was
far too busy mixing with the Generals to bother Bligh or Wink.
The Company camped down in the rubble until orders eventually
came for them to march out.
It was still light as they approached the battleground.
From a slight rise, Bligh could look out over the fields. The
ground appeared level from this distance and there was not a single
tree or building in view. It looked like some deserted quagmire
from one of the Spiritualist paintings of the last century. A
swamp which would draw the innocent down into the depths of hell
and eternal damnation. But this was no deserted wasteland, Bligh
knew. There was not a sign of life, yet hidden in the trenches,
the foxholes and the dug-outs, there was a cancerous mass of humanity,
just waiting for the order to move.
They stopped a short way down the slope, to let a Company of
cavalry pass. Their horses were protected by chain-link armour
with steel plates over the head and eyes. Over it all, they wore
fine linen mandilions with tassels and ribbons, all in the red
and gold colours of the Unification Party of the People. It was
a scene from another age, Bligh thought. These animals and their
riders would not last a minute when shrapnel and bullets filled
the air. He looked away.
When darkness fell, they marched two abreast, stumbling over
the mud and debris and always keeping in sight of the man ahead.
It had been a dry day but, almost inevitably, the Spring rains
started as they reached the battlefield proper and progress became
painfully slow.
Eventually, they came to a halt and word was passed back from
Domenech that they were to take shelter until dawn. Bligh settled,
as best he could, in a crowded trench, which had been made by
linking shell-hole to shell-hole.
During the remaining hours of darkness, Bernie Rayner worked
his way round the Section, spreading words of encouragement and
reassurance, ensuring that everyone knew that ten minutes into
the dawn barrage they were to leave shelter and advance as a second
thrust behind the troops of the forward trenches.
"How could we not be knowing that?" snapped Sandy Brigg,
when Rayner reminded him of their orders. "It is not the
thing you forget, Friend. Not the thing you forget."
Back in Huesja, each man had been issued with 150 rounds of good
ammunition and a strap of five hand grenades to sling across the
shoulder. Bligh had refused a new rifle; he felt that he knew
the foibles of his own, he knew when it was too hot and when it
would jam and he was able to load it by feel and memory. Now was
not the time for change.
He wiped that old rifle obsessively, terrified that in the rain
and the mud he might lose his grip on it and find himself alone
and unarmed in the middle of the fighting. Brigg did the same
with a light machine gun he had acquired: unlike the heavy trench
guns Bligh had seen before, this gun was compact enough to fire
from the shoulder, although only for a man of Brigg's strength
and experience.
In the distance, the sky became edged with pink and the clouds
overhead took on a lighter shade of grey. There was no sign of
the rain abating and already the trench was half filled with stinking
brown water.
They waited and waited. "It must be soon!" cursed Oori
Campion, usually the last man to let his frustration show. But
the most propitious timing had been set by UPP seers and so daylight
was almost full before, finally, the shelling began.
As if they had been waiting all along for the militia guns to
open negotiations, the Army artillery answered immediately and
Bligh hugged the trench wall as shells began to slam into the
ground all around and burst in the air overhead.
Within seconds Sandy Brigg had caught some shrapnel which opened
up his scalp so that his skull showed through. He wanted to carry
on, but he couldn't see a thing through the blood and Cabo Dona-Santen
managed to persuade him to lie low in the trench until he could
be evacuated. Oori Campion crawled over to take Brigg's machine
gun and tried, helplessly to follow his colleague's confused instructions.
Eventually, Campion dumped it in the mud in favour of his rifle,
all the time assuring Brigg that he understood how to use his
new weapon.
Bligh checked his watch, sure that the barrage had lasted more
than ten minutes.
"Okay," said Rayner and Dona-Santen together. "Time
to move," Rayner finished.
Bligh struggled up through the mud of the trench and crouched
in the open. His senses were being bombarded from every possible
perspective: the light of artillery flashes, the numbing noise
of the barrage, the smell of burnt powder and faeces and mud.
He looked down and there was a hand protruding from the ground,
its skin green and puckered.
"Come on! Come on! Come on!" urged Dona-Santen, scurrying
about the Section, slapping men on the back and waving his hands.
Bligh began to move, dragging his feet through mud that tried
to suck him down with each step. He covered the thirty yards to
the forward trench, but he did not know how long it took. In the
distance, he could see the first wave of men advancing. He had
no idea if they were meant to be that far ahead or not.
Just before the trench, he came across the first of today's corpses:
a body torn almost in two; another with its stomach and chest
blown away, the young man's face staring at the sky in apparent
confusion. In Pigeon Ravine death was clean, the result of a single,
stray bullet. Here it was a fierce, distorting end.
Duckboards had been placed as bridges over the trench and Bligh
staggered across, convinced that he would lose his balance and
plunge headlong into the yellow water on either side.
He made it, and paused for breath behind the bloated hulk of
a dead mule. Just then he heard a sudden whistle and a shell thudded
into the ground only feet away. He waited for the explosion, but
none came. He moved on, leaping from shell-hole to shell-hole,
using the muddy craters for cover from the flying shrapnel.
After a short time, he came across Bernie Rayner huddled in a
fresh crater, his face whiter than a sheet of his writing paper.
Rayner looked up and recognition passed slowly across his features.
"Have you been hit?" said Bligh, urgently.
Rayner opened his mouth, then swallowed, and started again. "I've
got the shakes, lovey," he said, and managed a brief smile.
"I'll be all right." Bligh scrambled out of the shell-hole
and hurried forward. He never saw Rayner again.
His progress grew more and more slow. Hauling his boots through
the sucking mud, scrambling over the fallen, the moaning wounded
and the dead. He stopped about fifty yards short of the enemy
trenches, trying to ignore the bodies all around. He wondered
why the barrage was still going on. If they advanced any further
they would be blown away by their own shells.
Ahead there was the burnt-out skeleton of a motor wagon, rising
from the mud. He cowered in its lee with two other soldiers and
another tangled corpse for company. They waited for several minutes,
debating what they should do, and then Bligh saw a section of
the enemy trench being stormed by the militia and he leapt from
cover and made a ten yard dash for the security of a deep crater.
Peering up from the lip of his shelter, Bligh spotted Merc Domenech
a short distance away. He was standing upright in the open, his
eyes bulging, and he was waving a sword in the air. All around
him there was a hail of bullets and shrapnel, with shells droning
and crashing overhead, but he simply stood there, disregarding
all precaution. He was shouting, and somehow his words carried
through the din. "Come on!" he yelled. "Advance!
Advance!"
Domenech took a couple of paces and then reached down into the
mud. He dragged a man up by the scruff of his jacket and hit him
with the side of his sword. "Advance!" he screamed.
Bligh was incensed. He clambered out of his shell-hole and stood
defiantly upright like Merc Domenech. All around, bullets whistled
and shrapnel sang. He took a step and then another. Somewhere
nearby, a portable radio crackled music incongruously from its
resting place in the mud.
Domenech glanced across triumphantly and Bligh felt like a hooked
fish. He felt something click inside his head and suddenly he
felt invincible, as if nothing would dare strike him down. Domenech
turned and charged through the mud, directly at the Army defences.
Bligh waved his gun in the air and gave a mighty bellow and then
began to follow.
The next thing he knew was opening his eyes and seeing the world
through a hazy red blur. He felt a terrible, dull ache in his
left leg and when he reached down he felt the damp heat of his
own torn flesh. He had fallen into the shelter of another shell-hole
and he realised that his face was half-submerged in the slowly
rising water. With an awkward wriggle, he dragged his head clear.
He wondered how many men would die out here, not from the battle
but by drowning as the shell-holes filled up around them. He did
not know how long he had been unconscious, only that the deafening
boom of the fighting had moved on into the distance and that rising
above it were the anguished wails, the sobbing, the dull moans,
of the wounded and the dying. And somewhere, amidst it all, the
radio played faintly on. |
|
- The Book of the World, ch.39, v.24. |
|
The ability to walk returned with surprising speed.
With the beds so close together, he soon learnt that he could
support himself with bed-ends on either side and drag his lame
leg along as he went.
One time, he found the old healer sitting with his knees tucked
up to his chin in the hospital garden. "You're walking well
now," he greeted Bligh cheerily.
"I'm not on morphine any more," Bligh said. "I
couldn't think straight when I was on that stuff."
"You never were," said the healer, pulling himself
to his feet and studying Bligh's progress critically. "You
only ever had aspirin here, my son."
"But ... " Bligh was confused again. "The dreams.
I was seeing things even awake."
"Hallucinations, my son. You were traumatised by what you
saw, and by the indignities suffered by your poor body. The spiritual
wound is often greater than the physical. That is why my colleagues
and I have established the profession of healing. Tell me, are
you still seeing these stone cats and fire people? Does your mother
visit you in your dreams?"
Bligh felt naked before this seeing old man. "I see nothing,"
he said, trying to close up again. He felt more like himself,
in defence.
The healer smiled. "You'll be leaving, I presume?"
Bligh nodded, although he had not given the matter a thought
until now.
"You have a lot ahead of you, I think. No! Don't look so
horrified: I am a healer, not a seer or an astrologer. I cannot
tell you your future, or at least, no more than any other with
average talents could. You are a troubled young man, anybody can
see that much. Please - " he stepped forward and kissed Bligh
on the cheek in the Feorean manner " - let us part on good
terms. I am a happy man to have learnt that you have a faith of
sorts - no one could recover so quickly without a source of spiritual
sustenance. Let us leave it at that."
Bligh watched the old man turn and head back into the hospital.
He felt numb. He did not know what he should be thinking.
He left later the same day.
He wandered, without a plan, down the hilly street that led from
the hospital. He had never looked up to the horizon before, but
now he did and he could see the cool blue of the Cyanic Sea a
few miles away in the distance. For a moment, he imagined that
he could taste the salt on the breeze, but it was his mind playing
tricks again, calling up memories of his first visits to the coast
after he had left the Jahvean school. It had been a novelty then,
such a vast expanse of greyish blue. He had stripped off his clothes
and waded out, marvelling at the steady slope of the sand beneath
his feet, discovering for the first time the awesome power of
the waves. Somehow, the slope must continue downwards like this,
he had realised, and he could almost understand the scale implied
by depths of half a mile, a mile, or more, of the great ocean
trenches. He had reached little more than waist deep when the
sea's power finally grew too great and he was knocked sideways
and had to struggle to master his body's buoyancy and paddle back
to the shore.
Passerat was different to the small towns of the north of Trace,
or the inland ruins like Comeras. The houses were low and moulded
to the contours of the land. From one side a house might be three
storeys high, from farther up the hill it would be only one. Each
had its own garden, with vines and avocados and small citrus groves.
Passerat was a sprawling settlement and Bligh had to stop frequently
to rest his weakened body. He wondered where the town hid its
refugees and its poor, and he realised that it would be a long
time before the revolution could ever, really, be won in places
such as this.
He thought he might find somewhere to stay for the night, and
maybe the next day he would be in a better position to think about
his future. He sat on a wall by a deep railway cutting and searched
through his pockets. His money had gone, along with his Landworkers'
Alliance papers, his passport, the crumpled photograph he always
carried of his mother as a gay young thing with feathers in her
hair and breasts in danger of spilling out of the flimsy construction
of her evening dress. He had often wondered why she should choose
such a picture to give to her son to remember her by. It must
have said something about how she saw herself, or how she wanted
to see herself, but what it was he did not know.
He had nothing.
He did not feel that he could move any farther. Suddenly he felt
completely blank, as if he had been stripped of everything that
had been him. His mind would not stay still and he could
no longer recall that photograph, or the details of his papers.
He felt as if his past had been wiped away by the simple actions
of whoever had robbed him as he lay ill in hospital.
He looked around but took nothing in. He was an empty vessel,
a blank template waiting to be completed. He was no longer ...
no longer ... He gave up. He could no longer recall even his name.
He stood and wandered off along the street. He came across a
small passenger platform by the railway, with stone troughs which
had once been planted with travellers' herbs, cast iron benches
overgrown with bindweed, a rusting drinking fountain which he
soon found was out of order. The station house was one of the
few ruined buildings he had seen in Passerat; two walls stood,
almost undamaged, but the other two had been reduced to rubble.
He climbed in over the debris. It would provide shelter of a fashion,
he thought. He was too tired to look further. |
|
- Black Paul. |
| "I fought in the war!" he had cried from the platform. The policemen had simply stared down at him from the train as it pulled away. "I was hit at Huesja!" But by then they were out of earshot and he had only an audience of embarrassed passengers who had left the train at this station voluntarily. Now, he limped along a dusty street. They had literally thrown him from the train, despite his protestations, and his whole body had been jarred. It seemed that he was in a large town. Modern terraces of housing, with crudely plastered walls and visible steel skeletons lined either side of the road, taking over from the older shops and the cattle market which had been clustered close to the station. Occasionally, a motor wagon would thunder past him, but more often there would be bicycles and horse carts, loaded with goods, or rattling along unburdened. One time, he rested outside a wrecked school building which was vaguely familiar. He peered through the flowers and weeds to a school yard with a rusty water pump at one end. The windows had been boarded over, but when the boards had been damaged the building had been left for the elements to enter. He shook his head and gave up. He no longer understood the workings of his own mind. His memories were returning in an unfocused jumble, as if they were memories of what he had been told instead of the true record of his experience. He did not know where his own mind ended and the rest of the world flooded in: the boundary was vague, indefinable. He walked on, and eventually tram-lines appeared in the road. Mindful of his experience on the train, he did not try to ride any of the trams, although they often stopped tantalisingly close and he would have welcomed the chance to rest. He wanted to stop and give up, but that was countered by a deepset desire, a need to keep moving. That was his own, he thought, it was a feeling he recognised as a genuine part of himself. He first heard the crowd as a distant rumble which could have been waves on a beach, except the Cyanic Sea never produced big enough waves. Drawing closer, he recognised it as the sound of conversation, laughter, an occasional chanting and singing of religious songs. He seemed to be walking parallel to the sound and so, when he came to an alleyway between two shops, he went down it. The shade was welcome. He had not realised what a hot, dry day it was. He felt that there must be a lot that he had not noticed. In a moment of clarity, he realised that he must still be suffering what the healer had called the 'spiritual wound' of the war. It was affecting his head in a way which was dizzying, unnerving. People were standing on the pavement at the mouth of the alleyway, but they were short enough for Bligh to see over their heads. In the street, there was a mass of people. There were old men and women and children, but the core of the procession consisted of soldiers. They were marching at a good pace, and Bligh wondered if it was some kind of victory parade. But when he looked at their faces he realised that it was not. They were brash and boisterous, but behind the facade these people looked grimly determined. They carried banners with words Bligh could not read and chanted slogans that his muddled mind could not make out. He saw that they wore the arm badges and neck scarves of the Unification Party of the People, and he remembered that he had fought with the UPP, as well as with the Landworkers' Alliance. Some of the onlookers cheered the march as it passed, but others yelled angry words and shook fists in the air. Bligh did not understand. Was this not the revolution? He pushed past the people blocking his way and for a moment he was isolated, standing uncertainly in the empty space between the spectators and the procession. Suddenly it seemed that all the angry shouting and grim looks of defiance were turned on him alone and he wanted to be anywhere but where he now stood. He took a step, dragging his lame leg behind him. Another step, and he was anonymous within the crowd of marchers, straining to keep pace, fearful of being left behind, in the open again. As his body struggled to find the rhythm of the march, he realised that there was something happening, back along the street. He looked and he saw first one or two, and then larger groups leaving the pavement and joining the march, just as he had done. When the procession reached a kink in the street, and Bligh looked back for the last time, he saw that there were now only a few standing on the pavement and shouting, and the procession was getting confused as so many joined its number. He first spotted Domenech shortly after he had realised that the crowd was marching through the old quarter of Anasty. The silhouette on the sky-line - rows of stone archways, one on top of the other, the top row broken and uneven - had been nagging away at him for some time when suddenly he realised that it was the Arena and so this must be the capital of Trace. He must have been ejected from the train at one of the many suburban stations he had noticed on his first visit to Anasty. Domenech was in a small group at the head of the march, glimpsed occasionally in the distance. The column came to a huge square, with statues and empty fountains, along with bomb craters and the black blots left by huge fires. All the buildings, as they had passed through this part of the city, showed signs of the fighting: bullet scars or holes in the masonry or entire buildings collapsed into rubble. The crowd, swelling out behind Domenech's party, filled the square with ease. They stood and sat, exhausted from the walking. A trace of uncertainty seemed to have overtaken the crowd: the march was over, what next? Before them there was a building with a wide sweep of stone steps leading up to stocky columns bearing heavy stone lintels. Its windows were tall and narrow, like giant archers' loopholes from a medieval castle, and the building spread out along one entire side of the square. "Storm the Citadel!" someone nearby began to chant, but no one took up the call. It was then that a small knot of men mounted the steps and, gratefully, the crowd rose up and closed in on them, anticipating something Bligh could not imagine. As he looked, he distinguished the figure of Merc Domenech on the steps, and by his side a dark-skinned man, who he was sure he knew. As the crowd pressed forward, Bligh spotted a youth, prancing about at the fringe of the group and the name Gaspar Sech came to his mind. And there was another next to the man he now remembered was called Sadiq, a man he had seen in Comeras, who Sadiq had called something like All Divine. He felt his mind twisting, as memories rushed out to grab him and demand his attention. He knew these people, yet still he did not know what they were doing. He felt his vision beginning to darken and he felt dizzy. The next time he was aware of what was happening, he was heaving himself through the crowd and people were turning and looking at him, then drawing away in deference. He was not in control, he knew that much. His body was working, his mouth spewing words that were not his own, but all the time he was detached, seeing everything from a distance. He sensed the sheer feeling of power, as people fell away before him and for an instant he enjoyed that experience. Then he saw the look in their eyes and he felt the weight of their demands upon him. He sensed the overbearing mass of their need, their longing for him. He stopped, and immediately all those faces turned away and the crowd pressed crushingly around him once again. He was close to the men on the steps now, he realised, and just then, Domenech seemed to sense that something had stirred, momentarily, in the crowd, for his gaze swept out across them. Bligh ducked down, and finally released his breath when Domenech's eyes had danced past his own without a sign of recognition. He did not know what he had expected, or why he hid. He felt muddled again, confused. And then, Merc Domenech took a megaphone from one of his attendants and began to speak. "Friends," he said, the word that had rallied a revolution. He hesitated, and Bligh thought that he was lost, struck dumb before such a vast crowd. But just as it seemed he had waited too long, he repeated that word - "Friends," - and a sense of relief and jubilation passed visibly across the crowd. "We have come a long way. We have emerged from the darkest days of the rule of King Elleo and his Council of Fear. We have emerged from the weakness of Queen Minna and all those who took advantage of her favour. We have risen through the fearsome carnage of four years of fighting. Our walk of the last six days is little in comparison with the progress of the people, the freeing of our nation. But Friends - " he raised his hands and turned his head slowly to survey the crowd before him " - the road to true emancipation still lies ahead of us. "It has been said, in recent months, that this was the Final Battle, the mayhem from which the Lords will arise. It is not, Friends. It is not. The Six will not truly walk among us until the revolution has fully triumphed! "We beat them in the streets of our holy capital. We beat them at Huesja, Comeras, Enas and Seleterra. We drove them back from the Great Plain until they were begging for our mercy. And then, what did we do? One more push and we would have had Minna and her Generals in our grasp, but instead we stopped. And why did we stop? I'll tell you, Friends. I'll tell you: it was because those who finally supplied us with the arms we had ordered two years ago were frightened. They did not want us to win outright - it might have inspired their own underclass. So they exerted their influence. Now, those who led us to the brink of victory are having talks with Minna and her Generals. Now, they make concessions to the defeated, on our behalf. Friends!" His voice boomed around the square, so that Bligh thought it possible that he no longer needed the megaphone. Domenech was leaning forward, as if into a wind, and his chin was thrust out arrogantly. He was challenging the crowd, daring them. Bligh found his intensity disturbing. "Friends! We fought the war ... we won the war - " now he punctuated each phrase with a stab of his right fist, and the crowd responded in frightening unison " - and now we must win this bloody stalemate!" The square erupted in a mass of jumping, chanting humanity. Fists jabbed the air, and firecrackers crackled over the animal roar. Bligh stood firm, as men and women to either side, in front of him, behind him, danced and shook and screamed in his ears. He folded his arms across his chest, and somehow he did not move. Over the gyrating arms and heads in front of him, he saw Sadiq Phelim and Alderas Aldivine hugging Domenech while the fool, Gaspar Sech, raised his hands to the crowd as if they were acclaiming him alone. A delegation was coming down the steps from the Citadel's entrance. Ten soldiers in new uniforms with the insignia of the Unification Party of the People, followed by an older man in a more ornate version of the same uniform. Now, Bligh recalled how officers and men had been impossible to distinguish when he had joined the Landworkers' Alliance militia. Words were exchanged, on the steps of the Citadel. Domenech looked excited, invigorated; the old officer looked tired and pressurised. They started to head up the steps together, and then Domenech hesitated and said something to Sadiq. Seconds later Sadiq brought him the megaphone and Domenech raised his hands to the crowd and spoke again. "Friends!" he boomed. "I am going to negotiate with our members of the Transitional Government. I - " he punched the air again with his free hand " - am ... going ... in - ... side!" The crowd erupted, on cue again, and still Bligh stood firm, arms folded. He felt something beating inside his head. Part of it was fear - he knew that and he was willing to recognise it. Part of it was the personal resentment he had felt towards Domenech before - the man's harsh cynicism, the way he could manipulate his own copious charisma, the way he had singled Bligh out during the war. But there was something deeper. The two of them were opposites. Domenech took visible pleasure in his ability to control people, to influence them, but Bligh found his own thoughts difficult enough to understand: he wanted power only over himself - he still could not understand the impulse to control others. He was moving with the crowd now. He did not know how long he had been lost in thought and his body working under its own guidance. He was down in the square and, looking over the heads of those around him, he sensed a new atmosphere to the rally. He smelt fear for the first time since he had been at the Front. Panic. Bodies crushed against him and he was almost knocked to the ground. Anyone so unfortunate would surely be crushed to death underfoot. In the mouth of a nearby street that fed onto the square, a convoy of motor wagons had pulled up. From their open backs, troops descended and started driving their rifle butts into the faces and bodies of anyone within range. Angry shouts responded and Bligh saw a man pick up a piece of rubble from a broken building and hurl it at the troops. That was when the soldiers opened fire, first into the air, but within seconds their rifles were lowered. Bligh saw the man who had thrown the first rock bend over double and then look up at the troops with eyes wide. He could only have been twenty yards from Bligh. He toppled slowly forwards and that was the signal for the crowd to finally enter the realm of chaos. Bligh fought against the surge, but his leg handicapped him and it was all he could do to stay upright. At one point he was back on the steps, and he saw Sadiq and the others huddled in the entrance to the Citadel, looking down. Later, he would swear that he saw the UPP leader and Domenech looking out from a window in the Government building and that Domenech had been nodding slowly and saying something to the older man. Then Bligh was down in the square again, hobbling hurriedly away, suddenly in the open and fearful of being targeted by someone with a gun. He realised now that it was not only the soldiers firing from the wagons that he should fear - there had been soldiers in the rally, too, and some were firing back. He made it to the edge of the square, and worked his way over a mass of debris until he came to a doorway in the one remaining wall at the back of a fallen building. Out on a small street, he paused to recover his breath and rest his leg. There was fresh blood on the small dressing he still wore. He steadied his nerves and then made himself look at the wound. The damage was not great and he fastened his trousers with relief. He knew that he must get away from this place, away from Anasty all together. He had to keep moving, as he always had. It would give him time to think. |
| He rode a goods train out of Anasty. Years ago, he had seen children doing this for fun: leaping up onto a wagon as the train left the station, and dropping off again after a few minutes. It had not looked difficult. He watched the first train, as it passed within inches of his reach. It looked much faster, this close, and he could not summon the courage to reach out and pull himself up. He sat in the undergrowth just beyond the station for some time afterwards, cursing himself for his cowardice. Then there was a rumble and a piercing hoot and hot metal was passing in front of him again. He stood with an arm out, hesitated, and then he grabbed a handhold. His whole body jerked as the train snatched him from the ground, but he held on. His second hand found a grip just as his foot finally found its target on a small step and his lame leg swung up behind him. He clung on, in that position, for some time, feeling as scared as he had ever felt in a barrage or under sniper fire. When he opened his eyes the train had picked up speed. He had no idea where it was headed. What if these goods were intended for export, and the train rolled directly onto one of those big Feorean ferries? He stopped himself and focused on immediate priorities: he could not stay in this position for long, clinging to a hand-rail on the outside of a locked wagon. He saw that the shelf where his feet were resting extended along the side of the carriage. There were handholds, too, after a fashion. If he could edge about fifteen feet along, then he could swing round to the sheltered junction between it and the next one in line. There was bound to be some more reliable form of support there. He reached out to his right and grabbed a metal ring that had been rattling against the side of the carriage and then his left hand moved to the position his right had held. With the upper half of his body now tipped towards the rear of the train, he shuffled his feet along the narrow shelf. He waited, for a few seconds, in his new position, and then reached out again for a new handhold. It was hard work, and he had to stop often to recover his breath and his nerve, but he persisted. As he drew close to the end of his carriage, he saw that next in line was an open wagon, loaded with crates and all covered with ropes and tarpaulins which flapped in the wind. He would be able to settle there for the journey, if he made it that far. Just as he reached the end of the carriage and his right hand fumbled around the corner a voice snapped out, over the roar of the rushing air and the train on the track. "What're you doing?" it said. "Just what do you think you're doing?" |
| The challenge had come from a vagrant perched on the next wagon. Bligh, with no choice in the matter - he could hardly retreat along the carriage side again - found his handhold, moved his left hand and upper body along and then swung his good leg around onto a flimsy metal shield covering the carriage's coupling with its neighbour. "That won't hold your weight," said the voice. "Not if we goes over a bump." Bligh looked up at the man. He was probably only in his forties, but his hair had turned a premature white and his face was pitted with lines and dirt. He was wearing a ripped coat, tied up with string at the waist, and he sat with his feet tucked under his legs on an exposed crate, the tarpaulin turned back neatly around him. With a sudden, agile movement, the man leapt to his feet and then reached down to help Bligh across onto his wagon. "The name's Black Paul," he said. "But they all calls me Black Paul." He grinned a grin of yellow, gapped teeth and sweet, festering breath and returned to his perch. "Bligh." They were passing through a grove of low trees now, with drifts of creamy blossom and the waxy green leaves of citrus trees. Once, they had been carefully trained along heavy wire supports that were strung between regularly positioned poles. Now, they grew chaotically, although they gave the impression that someone was trying to reassert their authority over the wild, with new yellow ties binding them to the wires again, in places. Black Paul did not say much; he just kept taking the occasional pull at a small bottle he kept in his coat pocket, turning away from Bligh to do so. Bligh felt uncomfortable, as the silence between them grew. Eventually, he said, "Where does it go? The train?" He did not really care. Black Paul looked at him thoughtfully. After a time, he said, "You've not been on the road for long, then? I can tell a man's not been on the road long, see. A man's been doing it for a time, he doesn't jump a carriage half way along it and then tries to climb the side likes you did. A man, he jumps on an open like this, and he looks at a timetable before he jumps, he does. So as he knows just where the beauty's taking him." Bligh shrugged. "I didn't know there were timetables," he said lamely. "I've never done this before. Last time I went on a passenger train and I was thrown off by the Police. Before then I was fighting." "Phah!" Black Paul snorted, and then took another pull from his bottle. "Men don't fight, I say. It gets them hurt, it does." He shook his head and gave Bligh a disapproving look. "It was in the war," said Bligh, humbled by the tramp's disapproval. "I was with the Landworkers' Alliance, against the Government. I was wounded at Huesja." "War?" said Black Paul, arching white eyebrows and fixing Bligh with crystalline blue eyes. "War, eh? I said fighting gets you hurt." "The war," said Bligh, helplessly. "The Civil War." Black Paul looked blank, and it was several minutes before Bligh realised that he may have been leading him on, teasing him. They passed, without talking, through a small town. They did not stop at the station, although the train slowed down and Black Paul waved cheerily at people as they waited for a passenger train to come along. Just as they left the town, Black Paul turned to Bligh and said, "Now we lies low, or it's jail or a kicking, depending on the yard marshal's mood." He reached up for the tarpaulin and pulled it down to cover the two of them and, just as he had finished, the train squealed to a sharp stop. Voices shouted from nearby and Bligh made as if to pull up a corner of the covers and take a look but Black Paul hissed, "Don't you dare, or I'll bite you real hard, I will." After a few minutes the wagon jolted and moved on the track and then there was a sudden thud that almost made Bligh cry out in fright. After they had been travelling for a short time again, Black Paul struggled with the tarpaulin and rolled it up neatly, clear of their perch. Now, there was a new carriage facing them and the train was heading in the other direction, back through the station, with the same people waiting for their trains and Black Paul waving at them once again. "If you'd read your timetables," he said. "Then you'd know the stops and when to hide your head." With a sinking feeling, Bligh began to think that they would end up back in Anasty. He watched countryside passing by that he was sure he recognised. He did not dare ask Black Paul for confirmation. He had not yet received a straight answer from the tramp. Then they passed over a brick bridge that must have been more than a mile long and Bligh knew that they could no longer be retracing their route from the capital. Below them, a flood plain spread out, with shining ribbons of river and tributary, silver in the sunlight, separated by vast reedbeds and islands of grazing meadow or regimented willow coppice. Without his watch, Bligh had only a poor idea of the passing of time. The sun was quite low when the train pulled into another yard, and Black Paul had covered them with tarpaulin once again. "It's Pettahrat," he said quite amicably, as they waited in the dark. "As you'd be knowing if you'd studied your timetables. We waits a while and then they'll be gone." Bligh surprised himself by sleeping for a time. When he opened his eyes there were stars and a half moon overhead and Black Paul was standing on the track telling him to get down and help fix the covers again. "You've got to be tidy," he explained, as he fastened the last rope. Then he added, slyly, "Even if you're God's son." He cackled and Bligh shuddered as he realised he must have been talking in his dreams and he could not remember a thing. "No," he said quietly. "I'm not." "I knows that, see," said Black Paul, and suddenly Bligh felt an overwhelming affection for the man. "Jah'veh only has one Son, see, and when He comes He won't be travelling on no freight wagons with old Black Paul. Not a chance." Shaking his head, he turned and began to walk away. Uncertainly, Bligh followed and caught him up in the street outside the yard. "I suppose you'll be wanting a place to lay your bones," said Black Paul as they walked. "And you'll be wanting old Black Paul to show you where." Bligh said nothing. Walking by Black Paul's side was answer enough, he felt. They passed by countless ruined buildings, some of them with walls enough that Bligh felt sure they could shelter within for the night. At one point he said so and Black Paul replied, "Too dangerous, see. Some of them's just waiting to fall down. Move too sudden and you might just get buried before you's ready for it." In the end, they found a church with candles burning in the porch and the door propped open with a brick. By the entrance there was a stack of blankets and a bucket with water and a tray of stale bread crusts. Copying Black Paul, Bligh took a blanket, a wooden beaker of water and a piece of bread and went into the still warmth of the church itself. Outside, it had been turning cold, but Bligh had barely noticed. He was accustomed to the chill and discomfort of sleeping outdoors - he had expected no more. The central aisle of the church was occupied by sleeping children and adults who could have been their parents or grandparents. Bligh followed Black Paul past the sleeping bodies and lay his blanket on the floor before the altar. Before sleeping, Black Paul knelt and mumbled a prayer Bligh recognised from his school days. "They may be unholy pagans," Black Paul said afterwards, when neither could sleep, "but this is a church, at least - it's holy ground. It has the Lord Jah'veh's blessing despite the Elementalist perversions." Bligh did not care. It was dry, and warmer than outside. That was what mattered. |
| "People have closed up," said Black Paul, as they waited in the town's small square, early the next morning. "Have you noticed that, then? They don't talk any more, not like you and me. When there was fighting to be done there was fighting talk to be done, too. Do you see what I'm meaning?" "I remember," said Bligh, thoughtfully. He looked around at the shabby men who waited with them, hoping for work. A few weeks ago these men would have been in uniform, but already they had returned to a civilian life of hardship and unemployment. He had not thought a war could end so abruptly. He had always privately thought that the struggle in Trace would be a perpetual one, killing the men of the land as quickly as they could be replaced. No longer was there optimistic talk of equality and redistribution, no longer did people seem to believe that everyone could have a share of the nation's wealth. Now, what mattered was earning a few shillings and simply surviving. Now, people had turned away from equality and back to the safe ground of the Church. After a long wait, a small group of officials turned up, one of them a priest. They looked at the assembled men, as if they were eyeing up beasts at a market. With brief gestures, they selected less than half and drove off, leaving the chosen ones in the charge of three burly foremen. Black Paul was resigned to this. "About one day in five," he said, as they walked away. "They looks at me and they sees my white hair and they thinks I'm too old to work hard." They left the town that day. Black Paul had a feeling that they would not be any luckier if they tried again the next day. As they walked out along a dusty road, motor wagons and horse-drawn carriages occasionally passing them by, Black Paul took a drink from his bottle and then, surprisingly, held it out. Bligh felt touched, but he was wary of its contents. Surreptitiously, he sniffed at it as he raised it to his lips, then took a small sip. It was only water. He smiled and returned it to Black Paul. They travelled together for most of the next three weeks, rarely staying in any one town for more than two or three days. It was a hard way of life, but Bligh felt suited to it and he felt fitness returning as each day passed. Occasionally they found work and would meet up again in the evening, exhausted but with a few shillings in their pockets. Bligh's first job was in a vast factory, gathering balls of fluff from behind trap doors in the base of a weaving machine that was two storeys high. It was a deceptively tricky job, with the dusty atmosphere, the deafening roar of the machines and the stifling heat all conspiring to numb the senses and induce a mindless sense of automation. After his second day, Bligh learnt that people rarely held that job for more than a month, as it was so easy to let the concentration lapse and lose a finger, or worse, in the machinery. "You lose a day's pay," he was told. "Because they have to close down the line and retrieve the pieces." He was relieved, that night, when Black Paul grumpily said they should move out the next day. Black Paul had found no work at all in their three days in town, while Bligh had worked clearing rubble for the day before securing the job at the linen factory. "I've read it in the timetables," Black Paul said, "so we've got to go." Bligh had learnt that where Black Paul was concerned there was no disobeying the timetables. They had become some kind of holy document for the tramp, edging over into his beliefs so that they even entered his nightly prayers from time to time. One morning, they stood together in the central square of a small town called Abeyat, on the fringe of the Great Plain. Bligh had felt uneasy when he had seen the central plains spreading out before his perch on a goods wagon. He had not wanted to be back in this region so soon after the final battle of the war. It had felt wrong. The crowd of men was thicker than usual this morning and Bligh held little hope of a day's work. Between them, they had less than two shillings left, unless Black Paul had been lying about his money, as Bligh suspected. To one side of the square there was a long queue waiting for the distribution of bread. Bligh watched, detached, as an old woman bustled to the head of the queue saying she was a war widow with a sick sister and so she could not wait. A young soldier beat her away with the butt of his rifle and sent her to the back of the line to wait her turn. Nearby, there were children begging, something Bligh had never noticed in Trace before. One of them was a young boy with only one leg. Black Paul tutted and muttered something Bligh could not hear, and then strolled over to the boy and gave him their last shilling and a few pennies. The boy gave a whoop of delight and raced away on a leg and a crooked stick, pursued by some friends and a mangy dog carrying a bone. Black Paul looked at Bligh and shrugged apologetically, but Bligh did not mind. They could always get bread and water at a church, if they became desperate. As it turned out, he did not have to worry. Two long wagons appeared in the square, ridden by the priests in their flowing carmine robes. "The Lord's work," said Black Paul, as he climbed up onto one of the wagons with Bligh, but he would say no more. The priests made them sing hymns as they headed out of town. Bligh did not know the words or the tune, but he moved his lips in case his driver should turn around and decide to throw him off for not joining in. Black Paul simply sat, staring out at the countryside. "Nature's jealous of her scars," he said, after a time. "See?" He waved a hand at the rutted, cratered fields, now overgrown with grass and great crimson drifts of poppies and fireweed. "She covers them over so quickly, but you knows they're there." The trenches were mostly dry now, in the late Spring heat. They were only soft at the bottom, where the duckboards were absent or broken. Weeds grew from gaps in the sand bags and struggled from the depths of the trenches, up towards the light. At first, Bligh thought they grew from the bodies, too, but they were merely forcing their way between arms and legs and through gaps in the torn torsos. In places, the corpses lay three deep. In others they were buried in mud that had set and they had to be eased out carefully with picks and shovels. Complete corpses were placed in the wagons that had carried the labour gangs to the battlefields. Limbs, heads, scraps of uniform, were put in a large wooden crate marked with the sign of the Six and muttered over by the priests. By the end of the day, they had cleared only a small area of the field and the stench of rotting flesh had become ingrained on Bligh's clothing and on his mind. "There will be more work tomorrow," said a smiling priest, as he drove the exhausted labour gang back to Abeyat. "And the day after ... " |
For private non-commercial use only. Not to be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author's consent.
Careware: if you like this novel, give some money to Oxfam or Greenpeace.
|
- The Book of the World, ch.2, v.47. |
| As runner, he guided the advance Section of thirty UPP militia men along the road to Pigeon Ravine. Despite hurrying, it was still dark by the time they arrived. They bunched up at the bottleneck as Bligh explained the position to the officer in charge. When they arrived tonight the defences would be almost back to full strength and by morning the rest of the 182nd Company of the UPP would come to relieve what remained of the 34th LAs. They were as quiet as possible, but the passage of thirty men at night can never be completely silent. As they followed the road down past the crag and along the fringe of no-man's land, Bligh heard an indistinct 'phut' from nearby and seconds later a crimson flare lit up the valley. The Army must have posted listeners near to the road, knowing reinforcements would have to come this way. A distant thud was followed by the metal crash of a mortar bomb going off nearby. The reinforcements scattered as another landed in their midst and a clatter of rifles rose up. Bligh hit the ground and instantly his gun was at his shoulder and he let off two shots at where he thought the listeners might be concealed. Then, as the flare began to fade, he leapt to his feet and ran. The rough ground of the valley bottom was treacherous in the dark, but it would be safer than the road at the moment. In this respect he was fortunate, as the UPP soldiers would have to stick to the track, not knowing the territory. Another flare went up and the firing, which had abated slightly, came again with renewed vigour. Bligh ducked but continued to run. It was no good firing back: the Army were dug in and Bligh was exposed. All he could do was flee. It seemed to take forever, but it could only have been a minute or so before he was back on the road, slowing to a jog as it rose out of the valley. A group of soldiers was waiting a short distance up the road, hiding behind a cluster of boulders, not aware that they were safely out of range. "It's okay up here," said Bligh, struggling for breath. "How many are missing?" They waited for as long as they dared but when there were still seven men missing they assumed the worst. Gloomily, they continued on their way. They knew by the sound of gunfire when they were near to the LA sector. The Army must have signalled up the Line that reinforcements had passed through the bottleneck and their colleagues were attacking before they could get established. They spread out in the rough ground near the trench and directed their fire into no-man's land. Once, a bullet whistled off the rocks Bligh was using for cover and he feared someone had located him by his muzzle flash, but the shot was not repeated. Eventually, the fighting abated and with a weary sense of victory, Bligh led his reinforcements down into the trench and handed Domenech's orders over to Captain Elliam. |
| As the rest of the 182nd Company of the UPP arrived in the early hours the survivors of the 34th LAs were told that their Company was to be broken up. After the fighting, Bligh's Guard of ten had been reduced to himself, Bernie Rayner, Wink Hawley, Sandy Brigg and Oori Campion. Along with three survivors of another Guard they were to be drafted in to reinforce the 16th LAs on the plain. "What do they do?" asked Wink. "Are they at the Front?" "I don't know," said Rayner. "Don't even have a precise location for them ... " A fine, dry snow hung in the air as they marched out and Bligh found breathing painful because of the cold. "I will not be missing this," said Sandy Brigg, waving a hand at the darkness. Bligh was not so certain. As the road fell away from the Ephedreal Hills, he began to feel exposed and vulnerable. He searched the dawn greyness to either side but could see no farther than a few yards. The snow had turned to a thick misty rain, and the road was topped with several inches of slippery mud. Before long his damp clothes began to chafe on his skin. At a junction, Rayner halted his seven men and they watched as the rest of the Company took the fork towards Comeras. Bligh thought of Madeleine and her little room and wished he was going with them. He had no more stomach for this war. The road they followed instead was a muddy track, wheel-ruts incised deeply into its soft surface, obscured pot-holes a frequent cause of cursing. Eventually, Rayner called them to a halt and suggested that they take shelter in a ruined barn that loomed darkly at the roadside. They waited until full daylight, with water dripping all around and the smell of damp faeces in their noses. The rain had stopped now and they emerged to the wet-earth smell of early Spring. Bligh looked around and saw fields with self-seeded corn sprouting inches high from the mud, a clump of cherry trees breaking into flower, tiny violets growing from the walls of the barn. Some kind of magpie was chattering from the cherry trees, sounding like a child's imitation of a machine gun. They marched in their ragged manner for three hours, stopping to question suppliers and a Land Party runner of the whereabouts of the 16th LAs. Eventually they were lucky. "The 16th?" said a tall Traian, at the head of a party of suppliers returning from the Line. "That's us." The 16th were covering the supplies runs for much of the Comeran Plain. Their base was an old farmhouse, complete with roof, window shutters, doors, floorboards. It seemed to Bligh to be slightly corrupt to have such comfortable accommodation so close to the Front. Their commander, Captain Ivoro, knew nothing of his reinforcements. "The orders were hurried," explained Rayner. "Our Company suffered heavy losses at Pigeon Ravine and we've been redeployed." "Pigeon Ravine, eh? I heard about that. You'd better settle yourselves then. You'll spread the load, I suppose." He grinned, suddenly. "I've even got a job for you tonight: you can take our lunatic back to Comeras and dump him on the healers at Command." Later, Bligh went to mix with his new Company. He soon found that many were from the region around Dona-Jez and that he knew some of their families. When he mentioned that Madeleine Palmes was in Comeras, Salas Benjennery, a middle-aged man with silvery hair and long-lashed brown eyes, said he had taught at the school with her, before the revolution. "I am glad she has found someone other than Hammad Fulke," he said. "Fulke was healer to the patricians, he visited the Citadel often. He was on the other side." Bligh wished he could just forget about Madeleine's former lover. "No, Friend," said another, Alyk Ammar. "He gave it all up when we took Dona-Jez. Even a - " He was interrupted by a sudden torrent of abuse from another room. "You have seen our good Lord?" he said to Bligh. Bligh shook his head and so the two led him out into the corridor and down to the door of another room. It opened as they approached and a soldier backed out, yelling at someone within. "I told him he's being moved out tonight," the soldier said, turning to Benjennery. "He didn't like it." "What's wrong with him?" asked Bligh. Benjennery grunted. "The mental fracture of our times," he said. "He hears voices in his head. He claims that the Lord of Stone, or sometimes the Lords of Soul or Water, are pushing Their way into his head. 'Out of the mayhem the Lords will arise, riding the bodies of innocents, leading mankind to a new Creation.'" Bligh recognised the quote from the Elementalist Book of the World. "He was always simple," Benjennery continued, "but he could at least fire a rifle and serve the cause. He has been this way since last week. Even when he's not violent he's a burden." Bligh pushed open the door and went inside the room. He had expected a man his own size, with protruding jaw and bulging eyes - the traditional jibbering fool. Instead, a small man sat on a window ledge, peering out through the gap between the wooden shutters. His hair was straight and unevenly cut, his back slightly hunched. He looked incapable of aggression. "Hello," said Bligh tentatively. The man turned and Bligh realised that he was a mere boy, perhaps fifteen years old. His face was marred by eruptions of acne and one eye was partly closed and swollen. "I'm new here." "I'm not," said the boy, staring without embarrassment at Bligh. "What's your name?" "Gaspar Sech." "What were you looking at?" Bligh wandered deeper into the bare room, keeping a safe distance from the boy. Sech's eyes followed him relentlessly. "I was listening," said Sech. "I'm hungry but they don't feed me any more." Bligh handed him a piece of cheese from his pocket. Sech held it up to the light and examined it closely before putting it in his own pocket. Bligh felt a terrible weight, seeing how the war could damage one so young. He sensed Salas Benjennery coming to stand beside him. "You were listening to the Lords, weren't you, Sech?" he said. "Which one was it today? Fire? Air? Flux?" He sounded nervous, as if something was not right. Gaspar Sech just looked at him. Eventually the boy said to Bligh, "What does he mean? I'm hungry, can I have some food?" Benjennery turned to Bligh and said, "He's refused food for two days now. He hasn't said anything that makes any sense for even longer. What did you do?" "I'll get him something," said Bligh. He found the Company supplies in an airy cellar and took some bread and a flask of water back to Sech. The boy ate greedily and then drank the flask dry. At dusk, Captain Ivoro found Bligh and Bernie Rayner sitting outside on the wood pile. "I was going to send you back with the fool," he said. "He seems well enough to me," said Bligh. "That's what I mean," said Ivoro. "You'll win a reputation as a healer if you're not careful. You're taking supplies to the Front instead." Over the next week, Bligh got to know his new Company a little better. Apart from the newcomers, they were all native Traians. Most came from the north but a few were from Anasty and the coast. Gaspar Sech was soon back on the supply runs doing his share of the work. It did not take long for Bligh's compassion to fade under the onslaught of Sech's favouritism. The boy would bring him pieces of food and glittering fragments of quartz, he would march by his side and recite muddled proverbs and litanies. "The fire that I breathe, the ground that I drink upon, the thoughts that warm me ... " "You healed me," he said one day, "and in return I am to follow you to the ends of all the worlds and I am to serve you and bring you favour and fortune." When they were put on two days' leave and Sech was left behind with the Company, Bligh felt a tremendous sensation of relief. |
|
When Madeleine saw Bligh with Salas Benjennery, she rushed out
under the bar and hugged them both. Bligh wondered bitterly whether
she would have kept her distance if they had not already been
to the public baths.
"We're serving together in the 16th," said Benjennery
later, as they perched on an old stone trough by the town's Assembly
House, enjoying the unseasonal warmth of the evening. "How
do you cope here, Madeleine? This place is dangerous for a young
woman living alone ... anything could happen. You must be careful."
Madeleine glanced at Bligh and said, "I've been here for
some time now. I can defend myself." Bligh sensed that there
was something wrong, but when he had asked earlier, she would
only say, "Later, love. It doesn't matter."
Now, she said to Benjennery, "You're quiet. You were always
the romantic one. Back at the school you would tell us tales of
magic and wonder. Has all that gone now?"
Benjennery shook his head sadly. "I'm no story-teller,"
he explained to Bligh. "I am a historian. I would collect
anecdotes from the old people of Dona-Jez. In some instances the
stories had been passed down for generations: they would tell
of healers who could cure a deadly illness with the touch of a
hand, of seers who plotted the course of dynasties. Even my parents'
generation possessed a greater sense of the wonderful than we
do today. There's no room for magic in a modern life, there's
no room for the soul."
Bligh thought of the UPP posters and their adoption and corruption
of traditional religious symbols. Across the street a queue had
formed at a church. He nodded towards it and said, "The people
don't seem to agree."
"Salas is right," said Madeleine, and Bligh felt chastised.
"Magic is being pushed aside. People no longer believe in
miracles, they want motor wagons and radios and cinema pictures."
"It is a modern, secular world," said Benjennery. "And
is it not an improvement?"
They looked around at the broken buildings, the shabby soldiers,
the people dressed in rags. "This is not how a world without
God has to be," said Bligh. "This is only one alternative."
But he knew he was outnumbered.
Later, after they had parted company with Salas Benjennery, Bligh
pressed Madeleine about what had been bothering her. "I was
questioned by the police three days ago," she said. "Not
the police we used to have, these were the People's Police of
the UPP. They are armed bullies who roam the streets in search
of 'agents' and 'anti-revolutionary forces'. They thought my papers
might be false. They wanted to know why I was here and not in
Dona-Jez, working for the revolution. When I told them about you
and that you were in the Landworkers' Alliance, I thought they
were going to ... I ... "
They had stopped outside the house that held Madeleine's room.
She was crying now, and Bligh held her tight until she had stopped.
"What did they do?" he asked softly.
"Nothing," said Madeleine. "Only questions. I'm
lucky they didn't keep me - " she laughed bitterly "
- I'm lucky they didn't find me attractive enough to keep."
Bligh felt sick. He kissed Madeleine's hair and let her cry herself
out. He felt helpless. "Go back to Dona-Jez," he said,
after a time. "Get away from all this." He swallowed.
"Get away from me. Before everything goes horribly
wrong and it's too late to put things right." He was crying
too, now. "Get away from me, Madeleine. Just ... get away."
He released her and pushed her towards the door of the house.
"Go," he hissed. And then he turned and ran away
into the night. |
|
- from The Lords Give ... aphorisms. |
| Apart from a furious thunder burst in the early afternoon, the rest of the day remained sunny and dry. Large lakes of mud acquired a pale crust which, by dusk, had developed a tracery of cracks. Dark, steaming footprints cut broken lines across the dried mud, where soldiers had passed in the afternoon. When Bligh woke from the rare luxury of a three hour sleep, sunlight was beginning to lose its grip on the world and the shadows were taking over. He sensed immediately that there was a new atmosphere, here in the vicinity of the reserve trench. The familiar, short-tempered weariness had been transformed into an air of excitement, of anticipation. Relief would come tomorrow evening, he remembered. He soon learnt that there was more to it than tomorrow's relief. "Tonight we celebrate," said Cabo Dona-Santen. "I have had men out all afternoon, up and down the Line, trading with our neighbours. Now we have some drink, some decent food. There is fuel for a fire." Bligh had noticed a pyre being built, in the shelter of a broken wall. "Tonight we celebrate," he repeated dumbly. It seemed a strange idea, more foreign than anything else he had come across in his time in Trace. He looked around at the mud, the decay, the sheer desolation of it all, and wondered whatever could there be to celebrate? "Can we do it? Can we do it?" sang Gaspar Sech, bounding up to join Dona-Santen and Bligh. Bligh found his youthful energy intensely irritating. "Do what?" he asked. "The Prayer of the Body," said Sech, giving him a sly glance before returning his attention to Dona-Santen. "Oh, we'll most certainly be doing it," said Dona-Santen. "But - " "I can do it!" Dona-Santen turned back to Bligh. "We have no priest to mediate the Prayer," he said. "And no sensitive to take his place. Some people wouldn't see the importance, but it does matter. The boy says he went to a Church charity school before the war and that he can mediate for us. What do you think?" Bligh shrugged. "I'm a lapsed Jahvean," he said. "I'm hardly the man ... " So Dona-Santen took the decision himself. He put his hands on Sech's shoulders, turned him around and gave him a gentle push in the back. "Go and ask Captain Ivoro," he said. As he was in reserve, Bligh did not have to stand Twilight duty. Instead, he stood in the open and looked out towards the Line. If he tried hard enough, he could distinguish the boundary between sky and ground. Somewhere over that gentle rise were their own trenches and, a little farther, the trenches of the Army. The field guns were quiet for now, and even the rifles only cracked occasionally. Bligh wondered if it might be some kind of national holiday, still perversely respected in this episode from hell. He went down to the trench to look for Wink Hawley, and when the two returned the fire had been lit and a number of soldiers were gathered around. "These things give me the creeps," said Wink, "even though I was born an Elementalist and expect to die one." "You believe in it all?" Bligh had never considered Wink to be a particularly religious man. "There's more to the religion than mere belief," said Wink. "Especially here in Trace. You go to church, you learn the scriptures in school ... it becomes a part of you whether you believe or not. It's an element of my experience, it dictated a large part of what I could and could not do for the first seventeen years of my life. No, I suppose I don't believe in it - not as a fundamental truth - but it's made me what I am." Just then he turned to look at Bligh and the fire lit the twisted, scarred side of his face a fiery salmon pink. Bligh looked away. He did not want to think about what Wink had just said. He did not want to apply it to himself. From around the fire, the soldiers cheered as a cork was drawn noisily from a bottle. There were more men here than could be accounted for by the thirty or so in Bligh's reserve Section. Particularly when many had chosen to stay away, either through religious difference or for their own private reasons. Some of the men had slipped away from the forward trenches, presumably those who were not actually meant to be on guard or patrol duty. But there were also many faces new to Bligh. Word must have spread to neighbouring Companies, through the afternoon's trading for food and drink. "It does, however, have its compensations," said Wink, as they went up and filled their flasks from a huge clay wine jug and then helped themselves to some of the bread and dried meat cakes that had been spread out across a tarpaulin on the mud. After a few minutes of idle talk, the eastern sky flickered and the ground shook with the distant rumble of artillery explosions. "Let's hope they stay clear of us tonight," said Alyk Ammar, a bearded young man with a peasant scarf tied around his head and the fingers of one hand looped around the necks of three bottles of beer. During one of the lulls in the distant fighting, the gathering's attention suddenly focused on those around the fire. Gaspar Sech was there, flanked on one side by Cabo Dona-Santen and on the other by Madeleine's former colleague, the silver-haired Salas Benjennery. The boy's face was already awash with sweat and his eyes were glassy and rolled up to show the whites. He was swaying back and forth and humming. "They believed him then," said Bligh softly. Nothing seemed to happen for a long time, and Bligh grew bored. At the same time, however, he was unable to look away from the fire, the boy, the rolled back whites of his eyes. Bligh stretched his back and rolled his head and shoulders in an effort to loosen the tension that had seized his unmoving form. He felt angry when Sech mimicked this action. He had not realised the boy was watching him. He took a drink from his flask and followed the satisfying course it took, across the back of his throat and down, down, to sizzle in the pit of his stomach. He felt the heat expanding within his body and he reached out and touched the cool stone of the wall for reassurance. For a moment it was as if his hand had merged with the wall and he could not wrench it away. With a grunt he managed to free it and then he stared at his palms, confused. He shook his head, drank some more wine. The boy was moaning now. The two by his side took up the noise. Dona-Santen looked awkward about it, but Salas Benjennery looked thrilled. Bligh remembered their conversation in Comeras about the death of magic in a modern, secular world. It seemed that Benjennery would do what he could to slow down that process. Bligh shifted uncomfortably and Wink nodded at him and then said, "Seems pretty intense tonight." Bligh rubbed his eyes with the back of his wrist. The smoke was making them hurt. Sech suddenly yelped and threw himself down on his hands and knees before the fire. He was still for a moment, and then he started to squirm in the mud, crying out over and over, something like, "Bubububub!" After a minute or so, the crowd joined in with the call and the rhythm became a steady, pounding pulse that seemed to resonate with the very flesh. Bligh felt the ground beginning to shift beneath his feet and then Gaspar Sech tipped his head up and his eyes rolled back down from under their lids as he looked directly at him. "No!" cried Bligh, dragging the word out into an awful bellow. "No!" The ground was snatched from under him and suddenly he was naked, running across the smooth flank of a mountain. Cold night air was cutting across him, making his body hair stand on end, making his genitals shrivel, and his rotten feet slapped painfully on the bare rock, cleansed with each slippery footstep. From all around, people stared at him, their eyes bulging in their faces, their heads looming over him, voices chattering. With each cat-like bound, he felt stronger, his muscles gliding smoothly over one another. He felt the power, felt the crowd's frenzied need. He felt capable of almost anything and so he ran and ran until he left it all behind and he felt as if he was floating, drifting in a sea of darkness. He felt warm and comfortable. He wanted to stay like this forever. He was unaware of what was happening for a time that could have been forever, for all that he cared. But then he realised that - somewhere in this sea of darkness - he did care, and he began to struggle, to fight whatever it was that was making him feel this way. The dream had never gone this far before and he thought that he must have become lost in its depths, but then he saw the faces, the mountain, and he started to run again. He looked up and the soldiers were all around him, pushing and barging to get a better view. Their eyes bulged making them look like the people in his dream and he pushed his way to his feet and out past them, away from the fire and the pressure of their stares. All around, the sky was a flickering horror of artillery fire but he had to run, had to escape. After another age he found himself sloshing about in the mud and mouldering bodies of no-man's land. He slowed himself so that the sound of his struggling feet would not draw the attention of sniper fire or enemy patrols and he realised that his feet were still bare and he could feel the very essence of the mud and gore with each slow step - the varying degrees of softness and firmness, the lumps that may have been stones or shell fragments or pieces of bone. When he reached the ruined cottages, he scrambled up over their rubble gratefully. Suddenly he was aware of the night air biting into his skin and he cowered down amongst the debris and wondered what he could do now. As he waited, his senses gradually recovered, but his shivering body grew steadily colder. He wrapped his long arms about himself and closed his eyes and when he opened them he thought he was in the dream again. A gruesome distorted face was peering at him, inches from his own, one twisted side a fiery contortion of flickering flames and scars. "Wink," he gasped, and then he realised that there were rowdy soldiers all around and he was slumped against a broken wall. Wink Hawley had a tight grip on Bligh's arm, and when he spoke his voice was tight with tension. "You felt it too," he said. "Hmm?" Bligh's mind was still unclear. Was this still the dream? "You blacked out for a moment," said Wink. "But you felt it, didn't you? You heard the calling of the Lords ... They've chosen us, can't you feel it?" There were tears in his one eye and now his grip was hurting Bligh's arm with its intensity. "I felt nothing," said Bligh. "Nothing." Voices were raised now, and they both looked across to the fire. Gaspar Sech was being pushed roughly aside by some of the soldiers and he was being subjected to a torrent of abuse. "You're no good," Cabo Dona-Santen told him drunkenly. "You can't do it. You lied to me!" The boy did not seem to care. He let them push him from the fire and as the soldiers turned away he looked up at Bligh and Wink Hawley and smiled. |
| When they marched into Comeras the following night Bligh felt terrible. All day he had been suffering shooting pains in his arms and legs and Salas Benjennery told him with a hint of glee that it was most probably rheumatic fever and he would need the attentions of a healer if he was to avoid hospitalisation. Then he had laughed and said, "Of course, Friend, to be healed one requires an element of faith and ... " Then he had clapped Bligh on the shoulder and finished, "Captain Ivoro keeps some aspirin. A poor substitute for faith but I suppose it's your only choice." The pain-killer had helped and now he just felt stiff. The Company split up when they reached the main street of Comeras and Bligh found himself alone. Everyone was accustomed to not including him in their plans when they were on leave, so now he wondered what he should do. Madeleine would have gone by now, he thought. He could not remember why, but he felt certain that she must have had good reason. Had they rowed? He thought not. He peered around in the darkness. It was near to midnight now, but there were still people passing along the pavements or wandering down the middle of the street. Soldiers, mainly, and weary-looking women who were probably prostitutes. Across the road, he noticed one of these women staring at him. He had never been with a prostitute before. He had always assumed that the taint of commerce would steal his passion and make it a waste of time. Now, though, he stared hard at the woman. She was old, maybe forty, but she had held her figure and she stood proudly. He felt himself coming alive for the first time in days. He straightened and took a step, and then he noticed that it was not only the woman looking at him, but a couple standing nearby. Suddenly scared, he glanced back over his shoulder and just down the pavement a group of soldiers were watching, too. Instead of moving towards the woman, as he had planned, he stood, rooted to the spot. He felt the blood pumping through his body, thumping in his groin and his chest and his head. He felt dizzy and he had to move in order to avoid falling. Suddenly he was walking, out in the middle of the street. Now others turned to stare and he felt their eyes pushing at him, trying to knock him to the floor. He started to run and the eyes followed. Down a side street, across a square, he ran, and the throbbing in his body transformed itself into the heaving of his lungs as he pushed his exhausted limbs ever harder. When he stopped, he realised that he had come to the little crooked house where Madeleine had rented a room. "Gone," he muttered, unaware that he was speaking aloud. He pushed his way through the door and climbed the stairs. He did not consider the possibility that someone else may have taken the room and he would be barging in on them, he just wanted to see it again. One last time. He barged into the door, harder than he had intended, and it swung open with a loud crash. She was still there. She woke with a stifled scream and sat up, clutching the blanket across her chest. "Bligh," she gasped. "I didn't ... " She climbed out of the bed, wearing only Bligh's old shirt. "Love," she said, still startled. "I'll put on some water for your bath. You must be desperate." He reached, dumbly, for her as she passed within reach, but she danced away from his clumsy hands and went out onto the landing for her water. He looked around the room and struggled to straighten his mind. He saw her bag lying on the floor and realised that she had removed her things from the shelf and the top of the chest of drawers. "You're leaving?" he said, as she returned. "Yes." She poured a jug of water into the iron tub and turned to go for some more. "You wanted me to, remember?" He did not know what she was talking about. "And anyway," she continued. "I lost my job." She had not been looking directly at him, but now for a moment she glanced up and he realised she was upset. "It's because you're in the LA," she said. "Mr Caur said he couldn't take the chance. Not with the police as they are. The UPP have been saying the LA is an anti-revolutionary force because it is resisting integration. Oh, Bligh ... I didn't know what to do." Bligh moved towards Madeleine. She let him stroke her arm, and then she started to remove his clothes. He watched her expression and realised how she was repelled by him when he was like this: the smell, the filth, the lice. He pulled away and removed the rest of his clothes by himself. "I'm going tomorrow," she said. "By train. Or at least, I was planning to leave tomorrow. But I can stay, if you want." He took her roughly and pulled her towards him. "Why?" he hissed angrily. His head was pounding and when he saw the distress on her face he felt a perverse satisfaction. "Be ... because you ... " She tried to pull away, to escape his embrace, but as she turned he managed to push her and she tumbled onto the bed. "Bligh!" she cried, as he lay down beside her and forced his mouth onto her neck. "Bligh ... " Her lips tasted sweet but she kept her teeth clamped tightly together, resisting his tongue. She tried to squirm across the bed, but he had a hold of her arm and now his leg was spread across her hips. Ignoring her soft cries, Bligh rolled over on top and clumsily tried to enter her. He could not manage it. Despite the angry pounding in his body, he was not stiff enough to penetrate. He pressed against her, nevertheless, in some gruesome pretence at passion. Pulling back for a moment, he looked down at her tear-streaked face. Her eyes stared up into his and he saw that she was frightened, and his anger grew again. The next time he opened his own tearful eyes, he saw that her fear had been replaced by a look of pity. Then she reached down and guided him into the right position and, only partly erect, he was inside her at last. |
|
Afterwards, they lay in the darkness. Bligh felt sick and tired
and confused. His anger had retreated but he could still feel
it smouldering within. Madeleine lay awake all the time with one
hand placed on his heaving chest, staring at him. He wished she
would stop. He wished she had stopped him earlier - she was strong
enough, he knew. Just at that moment he hated her, with all the
intensity his enfeebled condition would allow. But more, he felt
that same deep loathing towards himself. He feared what he had
become, what he felt this terrible, dark longing in his chest
could make him become.
And all the time, Madeleine watched him in the shadows.
In the morning, she attempted conversation but soon gave up.
She was trying so hard, but it was only having a negative effect
on Bligh. Soon, he was out on the street without a word of goodbye.
He did not know what had happened last night, he felt that he
had been a passenger in his own body for weeks and he did not
know where reality ended and his own distorted imagination took
over. All he knew was that he never expected to see Madeleine
again. |
|
- The Book of Confirmation, p.273. |
|
Rayner was wrong.
On the night before the Festival, the 16th LAs marched back into
Comeras. They had spent the intervening twelve days holding a
sector of the Line a few miles out on the Comeran Plain. In that
time, Bligh felt himself coming alive again. It was as if he had
been buried to the neck in trench mud and at last he had managed
to grab a handhold and pull himself clear.
This sector was only forty yards from the enemy Line. The trench
was deep and narrow in order to minimise the chance of a well
thrown hand grenade finding its target. The mud and water at the
bottom was deep and smelt like an open sewer, but the squalor
of the trench was preferable to exposing yourself to sniper fire
out in the open. Life in this sector passed in a state of constant
alertness. The Company successfully held off two night-time assaults
and failed in one of their own. They lost eight men in the failed
assault, none of them from Bligh's Section, which had remained
in the reserve trench throughout. Standing Twilights, he had watched
as some of the bodies were dragged back to lie festering in the
trench until they could be disposed of the following night.
The ceaseless struggle for vigilance - the constant fear for
his life - pulled Bligh through.
The talk, as they marched away from the Front was of the latest
UPP news-sheet. There were two main items of news, if The Voice
could be trusted. The first provoked both anger and dismay. The
UPP were saying that some of the Cooperatives, including the Landworkers'
Alliance, showed signs of becoming a counter-revolutionary factor.
They were resisting moves to unify the forces of progress and
there was the suggestion that within the Syndicates and the Cooperatives
there were shady figures who favoured a settlement with the Government
and a return to the days when Cooperative and Syndicate bosses
had 'lived hand in pocket' with the patrician land-owners. It
was blatant propaganda, an indication of behind-the-scenes manoeuvring
for influence in the coalition of revolutionary factions, and
it was clearly done without thought to the effect on the men at
the Front.
The second item of news went some way towards softening the blow
of the first. Talks had been held with the ambassador of Feorea,
Trace's biggest neighbour to the north. Nothing concrete had emerged,
the report stated, but the simple fact of the report itself was
enough to stir excited rumours of desperately needed arms supplies
and international pressure being put on Queen Minna and her Government
to concede the defeat which, of course, was inevitable. These
new weapons from Feorea - which, as rumour consolidated rumour,
rapidly acquired the status of accepted fact - would be enough
for the revolutionary militias to launch a major assault on the
Government all along the Line. "Who needs Minna to concede?"
the reasoning went. "We already hold over half of the country
and, with these new arms, it is only a matter of time now ...
"
As he marched, Bligh wondered what he would do if he saw Madeleine.
The day and a half of his previous leave in Comeras was remote
from him now. He could remember some sort of row, something unpleasant
that passed between them, but he did not think too hard about
the detail. More clearly, he could recall the feeling as he had
left her room the next morning: the feeling that he would never
see her again. He realised that their relationship had probably
come to an end, and that he did not really understand why, or
even if he wanted it to be like that.
Before the Company split up, Captain Ivoro reminded his men of
the delicacy of their situation and that they should not go out
of their way to reveal that they fought with the Landworkers'
Alliance. One or two of the soldiers even went as far as to remove
their Alliance neck scarves.
With Wink Hawley, Oori Campion and Salas Benjennery, Bligh went
first to the public baths, where they lingered in the steam rooms
and the communal tubs, telling stories and arguing politics. Later,
they went to a bar and filled themselves with liqueurs and wine
and the local yeasty sweetbreads.
There was a new atmosphere to the town already. Stalls and marquees
were being set up, their support-posts locked into sockets in
the cobbles that Bligh had never noticed before. Boards were being
put up, too, across any street level windows that did not have
shutters already, and a number of side streets and alleyways were
being blocked off with heavy tarpaulin screens.
"You're going to be around for all this?" said Wink,
at one point.
Bligh did not know what to make of it. When the fairs had passed
through Stenhoer in his boyhood they were a strange and mystical
world, forbidden to the boys of the school. Since leaving Wederia,
Bligh's experience had broadened but he still felt that boyish
attraction to the forbidden. He shrugged and said something noncommittal.
"But what about the cats?" said Wink. "Surely
you'd stop at that ... "
Bligh wondered what he meant. He sensed that his friend was more
disturbed about this Festival than he would admit. "It's
your religion," he pointed out.
"That's what scares me," Wink said softly, and turned
away to answer a question from Salas Benjennery.
As darkness fell, however, Wink remained with his three colleagues.
Bligh had never seen Comeras so crowded. The air was full of
cries, laughter, the clashing, pounding beat of music. The people
were dressed in their gayest outfits, their gaunt, half-starved
features standing out in stark contrast, making them look like
ghosts or gruesome chimeras. Groups of soldiers roamed, singing
drunkenly, slouching over their women.
Pontoons were moored in the river, platforms placed precariously
across them so that the crowds could walk from bank to bank. Powerful
pumps had been anchored farther downstream, flinging water into
the air in a series of graceful curves and spouts, all lit by
brightly coloured floating torches and beacons which seemed to
be magically kept alight despite the water that regularly swamped
them. Bligh marvelled at the extravagance of it all, when everyday
life in the town was so harsh. He wondered at the sacrifices made
for this one night of celebration.
"This is the tribute to the Lord of Water," said Salas
Benjennery, as the group paused at a trinket stall in the middle
of the river. "The town is divided into the six Astral Houses
of the Lords. It is an acknowledgement, a call to the heavens
to say that we are ready for Them to walk among us once again.
Ready to be saved from the eternal cycle of life and death."
Just then, a soldier who had been scouring the stall turned and
Bligh saw that it was Bernie Rayner. He nodded and raised his
eyebrows as Rayner joined them.
"You can't get away from it," explained Rayner. "So
I decided to come and get something for my boys. Something to
show them how even the spiritual and the sacred can be so readily
trivialised."
"This is not trivialisation," said Benjennery. "This
is the people themselves rising up to celebrate. These trinkets,
this coming together ... it is a far higher expression of the
human need for the divine than any be-robed priest's judgement
or gloomy rote-learning of The Book of the World. This
is magic happening. You cannot get more spiritual than
this!"
Rayner raised his hands to fend off the stall holder, who had
sensed a potential sale. "No," he said. "This is
not tacky enough, my dear. I'll find worse elsewhere tonight,
I feel sure."
They drank more liqueurs at a marquee set up in a street dedicated
to the Lord of Soul, and teased each other for not going in to
one of the many shielded areas to consult a seer or an astrologer
or a whore. A little while later, they found an entire marquee
devoted to the Lord of Air. Inside, what was called a gallery
of scent had been constructed: a series of areas with particular
perfumes somehow confined to their own spaces and not mingling
and mixing as Bligh felt sure would be their natural tendency.
They passed through snow flowers and that indefinable smell of
a mountain stream, heady barrages of orchid and musk, and finally
the more subtle, almost undetectable flavours of the narcotic
clouds which clung to the senses and made you see angels and magnificent
birds, numbing blurs and angry colour splashes. Next, they spent
some time and many shillings in the street dedicated to the Lord
of Flux, losing their back pay on card games and gambling machines,
while Rayner looked on and assured them that the odds were stacked
heavily against them and Benjennery insisted that it was the mystical
workings of chance and flux, @alone, that influenced the outcome.
The atmosphere was quite intoxicating, so much so that Bligh
barely noticed the change in Wink Hawley when they reached an
open area devoted to the Lord of Fire. A single, central pyre
was built up to almost the height of the nearby buildings and
around it there were troughs of coloured fire, statues that spouted
great gouts of flame at unnerving, irregular intervals. At one
of these, a man stood, dodging out of the way as flames leapt
towards him, taunting the statues with rude gestures and comical
remarks. His partner was working the crowd for shillings and pennies
of appreciation.
"How could they?" muttered Wink, as they paused at
the far side of the arena of fire.
"They net them at the nest," said Salas Benjennery,
misunderstanding.
Before them there was a raised beam and along it, their feet
bound to the wood, were twelve huge lammergeiers. Old Man of the
Mountain, young Erin Panniker had called them. Bligh remembered
another name for them - Bird with Fire for a Face - and he saw
how appropriate that was: from a strong, dark body there emerged
a creamy head with a blaze of orange - more vivid than any of
the fiery displays of the Festival - at the throat, and tiny,
black, pin-pricked eyes with irises of the same fierce orange.
"The things can't move," said Wink.
"Come on," said Bligh, putting a hand on his friend's
back. "There are worse things than this."
They left the field of fire and stopped briefly at a stall selling
meat cakes and pies. "We've seen all but Lord of Stone,"
said Bligh. "Where's he then? We've got to do them all."
He was feeling more than a little drunk by now. Spending most
of his time on leave with Madeleine, he had not grown accustomed
to the drinking sprees the other soldiers pursued.
"Oh, there is time for that," said Salas Benjennery,
grinning.
Something in the way he spoke made Bligh cautious. He glanced
at Rayner, who said, "The climax of the night: the stone
cat run. I'm not waiting for that, myself. I'm not a one for needless
barbarism."
Just then, a shout rose above the general excited clamour of
the night and Bligh sensed that something was wrong. Looking around,
he quickly saw that Wink Hawley was missing. Remembering Wink's
distress at the Fire displays, he automatically turned to look
back down the street to where the shouting had arisen. "Come
on," he snapped at his friends. "It's Wink!"
They started to run, Bligh wishing he had not abandoned his sturdy
old rifle at the warehouse barracks. They rounded the last corner
and saw that the open area was in chaos. People were running about,
more than could be accounted for simply by the high spirits of
the night. As Bligh watched, several great black shapes banked
and swooped, scattering people in their path, rising up over the
huge pyre and the troughs and spouts of flame. The birds were
clearly confused: they were not creatures of the night and so
they lingered by the light of the fires, muddled and, perhaps,
amused by all these running, shouting people who they could scatter
with one graceful stoop.
"What's the excitement?" said Wink Hawley, appearing
from the shadows.
"The birds are free," said Rayner, giving Wink one
of his knowing looks. "Well," he added, "I'll give
you this, my friend: you've really stirred things up tonight."
Even as he spoke, the last of the birds disappeared into the shadows
of a boarded-up side street.
As they wandered off again, no one wanting to talk directly about
what they all assumed Wink had done, Bligh noticed that the crowds
were growing thinner and a number of the stalls and marquees were
being dismantled. If it had not been for the magnificent effort
of creating such a festival in the depths of wartime, Bligh would
have wondered what all the excitement had been about. The festivities
had been little more than were put on at any number of coastal
towns in Feorea or Marland over the course of a Summer.
They entered the main street again, and here Bligh could see
where much of the crowd had gathered. A mass of faces was pressed
to the upper windows of the houses and shops along here, bodies
hanging out over balconies and clinging part-way up the stone
frontages of shops. Ahead, there was a crowd, mostly of young
men, thronging the street, shouting and cheering and stamping
their feet in some shambolic, drunken order.
"Ah," said Salas Benjennery. "Now, we see, it
is time for the Lord of Stone ... "
It was impossible to get through the crowd. The jostling and
shouting, the heat of the massed bodies, all made Bligh feel dizzy
and disorientated.
He did not want to be here, he realised.
He spotted Bernie Rayner forging a path through the mass and,
desperate, he followed, knowing that Rayner would not stay for
this either, if he could help it.
He kept sight of Rayner for a time, then lost contact in the
chaos. Moments later, he spotted his friend's back and lunged,
panicking towards him. Gaining ground rapidly, he threw himself
forward and grabbed Rayner's shoulder, but the man turned and
it was someone he had never met before, yelling abuse at him even
as his whole face was lit up with a fervent excitement.
Bligh looked around in growing confusion, sensing that he had
moved close to the heart of the crowd.
Bodies pressed against him from all sides, arms and shoulders
and heads striking him and knocking him off balance, making it
impossible to stand still and get his bearings.
A short time later, Bligh found himself jammed up against a wall.
He found a handhold and heaved himself up, using the surrounding
bodies as stepping stones to raise himself above the mass. He
managed to hook a hand over the railing of a crowded balcony and
now he could look down at the seething mosaic of people. A short
distance along the street, there was a platform with a set of
heavy cages in place and some men clustered around. Inside the
cages were four stone cats; through the shouting and laughter
Bligh thought he could hear the hissing and snarling as one of
the beasts threw itself furiously at the end of its cage, shaking
the entire platform. Bligh felt sick and trapped now. He did not
want to be here.
Then he saw why the cat was so agitated: the roof of its cage
was being steadily lowered, trapping it against the floor until
finally it could not move. The crowd gave a mighty roar as some
men on the platform reached in through the criss-cross bars of
the cage.
Bligh looked at the people on the balcony and a large woman whose
face was jammed close to his own turned to him and smiled a drunken
smile. "What are they doing?" he yelled over the noise
of the crowd.
She smiled more broadly, and now her eyes reflected the flickering
of a nearby torch. "They're tying his balls so he's not so
fast," she said, and turned away again.
Bligh looked back to the platform and the cage roof was being
raised again. The cat had become quieter, and Bligh could see
a leather harness bound across its rear quarters and extending
down each of its hind legs. Two of the others already had their
testicles bound up in this manner, and the fourth was now being
pinned down in its cage.
Someone pushed Bligh and he lost his grip on the balcony. He
landed spreadeagled on the crowd and hands reached up and pushed
him, bouncing him along on a sea of humanity, until eventually
a hand grabbed him and hauled him to the ground.
"Bligh," said a voice he remembered. "I knew you'd
be here."
He felt a surge of euphoria on recognising Sadiq Phelim. It seemed
that all emotions were amplified to extraordinary levels in the
incandescent atmosphere of this crowd. "Sadiq!" he yelled.
"What's happening?"
"Everything." His voice was quiet, but Bligh heard
it easily. He realised that Sadiq was with friends. "This
is Alderas Aldivine," said Sadiq, louder now, nodding to
a tall thin man who was being lifted off his feet by the press
of the crowd. "And Pozas Cantera." A rotund man, sheened
with sweat and looking edgy. The crowd was shifting now, and they
had a little more room to move, or at least to hold their ground.
"And I understand you've come across Merc," he said,
nodding towards Merc Domenech, who stood there with a quiet smile
on his face, studying Bligh closely.
"Join with us," said Domenech. "It is about to
happen."
"What?" said Bligh. "No ... no." He felt
confused, but suddenly he knew he did not want to stay with this
peculiar group of men.
Yet still he felt drawn to them, he felt a tingling in his head,
a strange desire. He felt that the electricity of the crowd was
being channelled through this group, setting his mind alight,
sending all sorts of odd, intrusive thoughts tumbling through
his brain.
"Come on. We're special - can't you feel it?"
demanded Domenech.
"No!" Bligh cried, and turned and started to struggle,
bouncing off bodies and pushing angry people aside, fleeing from
the beating in his head and the crazed look on Merc Domenech's
face.
Just as he thought he might break free, a horn blew from behind
and drums started to beat from the balconies and the upper storey
windows, a pulse that matched his own pounding heartbeat, driving
it to thump louder, faster.
He stopped running as he felt dizziness threatening to swamp
him, and then, as he looked back down the street, he realised
that the crowd had thinned and the stone cat cages were open.
It took him several seconds to spot the cats in the shadows of
the street, and when he found their dusky forms he saw that they
had covered almost half the distance towards him. They were running
with a staggering lope, but despite their handicaps their pace
and agility was frightening. Already, an old man had been swiped
with a heavy paw and was being dragged up onto a balcony beyond
the reach of one of the cats.
Bligh's senses cleared in a sudden rush. He turned and ran. He
was one of the last men here. He ducked into the mouth of a side
street and instantly he was floundering against a huge tarpaulin
which had been drawn across the opening and bound into place through
steel hoops in the walls. Now, he realised why the boards and
shuttering had gone up during the day. The cats were being restricted
to certain areas of the town.
And so, he realised, was he.
He ran, until each heavy breath tore at his chest and his heart
thudded heavily, finding its panicked echo in his gut and his
head. As he ran, he was stripped of all thoughts except survival.
He became nothing, a machine of bone and aching muscle, a single,
isolated unit of fear.
Each side street and alleyway was blocked until, finally, he
found a passage that was clear and he darted along it, running
with a group of young Comerans, leaving them behind as they lingered
to drink from their clay bottles of wine. Every so often he looked
behind, but there was no sign of the four cats, only people, running
in every direction, playing a game of chance which would have
served the Lord of Flux proudly. And above him, all the time,
there were people shouting and cheering from their balconies and
windows, driving him on despite the doubts in his mind.
He had lost track of time when he came across Domenech again.
He stayed in the shadows and watched as Domenech strode around
in energetic circles, brandishing a long sword in the air, demanding
that he be obeyed.
His group of followers had grown, now, although he had lost Sadiq
and the man called Alderas Aldivine. Domenech grabbed someone
from his crowd and Bligh saw that it was poor old Wink Hawley,
looking bemused and slightly embarrassed. Somewhere in the shadows,
the fool Gaspar Sech was prancing about, singing one of his mad
little songs until Domenech turned and cuffed him across the back
of his head and he ran whimpering into the crowd.
"It's time!" cried Domenech, to Hawley and to his followers.
"They're getting tired now: it's time we hunt the beasts
that hunt us!" The crowd roared in answer and an echo
rose from the onlookers high above. Wink Hawley shrugged Domenech's
hands off his shoulders and turned with a muttered curse, starting
to run away from the crowd.
Bligh wished he knew what was happening. He wished he could understand
the strange excitement that was threatening to overtake him. He
felt that he could be so easily submerged.
He shrank back into the shadows as Domenech led the crowd past
him, along the street. Part of him wanted to follow. He felt that
he could control these puppets just as Domenech did, he felt the
potential of power if only he would use it.
He held himself back, resisted the temptation.
Minutes after Domenech had left, Bligh saw a stone cat dragging
itself along in the shadows of the street. Immediately, there
were yells from a balcony above, and bottles and stones were hurled
down at the distraught animal. The beast was no longer the fierce,
skittish creature that had leapt from its cage in the main street
of Comeras. Now, it limped along, dragging its hind feet and giving
little anguished whimpers as its harness dragged at its balls
and its rear legs.
Bligh did not know what to do, but as he dithered there was a
cry from a nearby side street and a crowd of young men raced out
at the cat, brandishing swords and clubs and broken bottles. Instantly
the cat yelped and leapt, twisting into the air, turning as it
landed, and raced away down the street, still able in its pain
to flee this bloodthirsty mob.
Bligh turned away, unable to watch. He headed in the direction
he had seen Wink Hawley take, hoping desperately that his friend
could help him.
Some time later, he heard a shout from above, different from
all the other shouts. It was Wink, leaning over a balcony and
beckoning, Bernie Rayner by his side. Bligh peered up at the group
on the balcony and for a moment he thought he saw Madeleine in
the shadows, but then he spotted Slowly Skett and young Erin Panniker
and he knew that his mind was fooling him. He looked at Wink again,
who may not have been Wink, and wanted desperately to grab his
hand and be hauled out of the madness of the street, the madness
of the stone cat run.
He turned and started to trot away, aware of a dull ache in the
pit of his belly, a fire in his groin. After a few seconds, his
trot turned into a headlong run and his whole body was alight
with pain, but he knew he must run, as every cell of his being
was infused with the most desperate animal fear.
He heard the roar from the onlookers in the buildings, the baying
for blood. He heard the roar of a crowd behind him and he knew
he must somehow run even harder, even faster.
He emerged in the open space where the tall pyre still burnt
for the Lord of Fire and the statues still gouted irregular jets
of flame. He turned, in the centre of this open area and waved
his hands, taunting the crowd. He felt them respond, even before
he heard their cheers and cries. He shouted Traian obscenities
at them, his use of the language having broadened with his time
in the trenches. They yelled back at him and he felt again that
he could lead them, control them. He felt it with a certainty
that he had never felt about anything before. He could make them
do whatever he wanted: they would worship him before he was through,
if that was his choice.
He turned and ran again. His feelings frightened him. He felt
sure that at some point on this mad night he had finally crossed
the boundary into the land of pure insanity.
Off another wide street, Bligh found an angled shutter, an access
point to the cellar of a drinking house. He pulled at the hasp
with no sense of hope and one door swung upwards. Surprised, he
straightened and peered about himself. He was shielded from the
view of the overhanging balconies above. The street was wide here,
and he felt sure that no one on the other side would see what
he was doing.
He stepped into the darkness, found a foothold and entered the
cellar, dragging the door over behind him.
He waited in the darkness for some time, not quite sure what
he was doing but savouring the coolness and the calm that was
returning to his body. Perhaps he was not insane after all: perhaps
this mania overtook everyone who became a part of the stone cat
run. Already, his head seemed clearer and his thoughts felt as
if they were his own.
All that remained was a nagging feeling that he was being watched.
After a short time he moved back to the cellar's entrance and
found that he could see through a gap between the two wooden shutters.
There were people in the street again, roaming aimlessly. The
night seemed to be dying now, the excitement dissipating.
Then, after a time, he recognised the form of Merc Domenech,
still leading his band of followers. They numbered more than forty
by now, but their spirits seemed lower, despite Domenech's commands
and encouragement. As they drew closer, passing in the street,
Bligh saw the sword that Domenech was still carrying aloft. As
it glinted in the torchlight, Bligh felt sure, for a moment, that
its blade was red with blood. And then they were gone, away down
the street, and there were just the small knots of men, trudging
about dispiritedly.
Bligh pulled away from his viewpoint and sat on the top step,
peering into the shadows, and then he saw the dusky shadow, hunched
up by the far wall between two wine barrels and a heap of old
rags. Before, he had simply taken it for another pile of rags,
but now he could see its sandy, lightly specked coat, the black
folds of its mouth, the dark tuft at the end of its tail which
it flicked, restlessly, back and forth.
"How long have you been here?" he said softly, but
the beast did not reply.
He moved, carefully, down the steps and settled against one wall,
where he could keep a watchful eye over the stone cat and wonder
what to do. He fell asleep almost instantly, for when he opened
his eyes there was sunlight slanting in through the crack between
the shutters and the cat had gone.
Now, he wondered if he had imagined it all, but later in the
day he discovered that only three of the released stone cats had
been cornered and gored the previous night. The fourth had disappeared.
"Surprising that more didn't get away," Salas Benjennery
told him. "So much of the town has been damaged by the war,
it's impossible to block off escape routes now."
Bligh wandered back through the streets of Comeras, feeling shabby
and worn. The effects of the previous day's drinking had not taken
long to manifest themselves and his head pounded with each pace
and his mouth felt dry and rough, like the dusty cobbles of the
street.
All around, it was as if it was just another day in Comeras.
All that remained of the Festival were the posters and an increase
in litter and smashed bottles which did not look at all out of
place in this war-battered town.
Back at the barracks, most of the Company was gathered.
Bernie Rayner greeted him with his usual knowing look and brief
shake of the head. He was the only one who did not look as if
he had been awake and drunk for all of the previous night. "Good
morning, my lovey," he said, with irritating good humour.
"I think you might need some sleep this morning. We've got
new orders. We're moving out this afternoon. We're taking a train,
going south of Caspe."
That name - Caspe - sent a visible shudder through all those
within hearing. The fields around Caspe had been the scene of
the bloodiest fighting of the entire war. It could mean only one
thing: that the forces of the revolution were going for another
big push, in the hope of bursting through the strong Army lines
of the region and storming the heartlands of Trace. Success would
win the war, but it was a success that had exceeded their grasp
at every attempt so far. |
|
We worshipped Him well on this dying day.' - from the diary of an un-named soldier. |
|
They disembarked at a small town called Huesja. In this place
there was not a single building with more than three walls standing,
save for the little huts of corrugated tin and sandbags put up
by the militias to serve as stores and a simple command post.
Domenech was already there when the Company arrived, but he was
far too busy mixing with the Generals to bother Bligh or Wink.
The Company camped down in the rubble until orders eventually
came for them to march out.
It was still light as they approached the battleground.
From a slight rise, Bligh could look out over the fields. The
ground appeared level from this distance and there was not a single
tree or building in view. It looked like some deserted quagmire
from one of the Spiritualist paintings of the last century. A
swamp which would draw the innocent down into the depths of hell
and eternal damnation. But this was no deserted wasteland, Bligh
knew. There was not a sign of life, yet hidden in the trenches,
the foxholes and the dug-outs, there was a cancerous mass of humanity,
just waiting for the order to move.
They stopped a short way down the slope, to let a Company of
cavalry pass. Their horses were protected by chain-link armour
with steel plates over the head and eyes. Over it all, they wore
fine linen mandilions with tassels and ribbons, all in the red
and gold colours of the Unification Party of the People. It was
a scene from another age, Bligh thought. These animals and their
riders would not last a minute when shrapnel and bullets filled
the air. He looked away.
When darkness fell, they marched two abreast, stumbling over
the mud and debris and always keeping in sight of the man ahead.
It had been a dry day but, almost inevitably, the Spring rains
started as they reached the battlefield proper and progress became
painfully slow.
Eventually, they came to a halt and word was passed back from
Domenech that they were to take shelter until dawn. Bligh settled,
as best he could, in a crowded trench, which had been made by
linking shell-hole to shell-hole.
During the remaining hours of darkness, Bernie Rayner worked
his way round the Section, spreading words of encouragement and
reassurance, ensuring that everyone knew that ten minutes into
the dawn barrage they were to leave shelter and advance as a second
thrust behind the troops of the forward trenches.
"How could we not be knowing that?" snapped Sandy Brigg,
when Rayner reminded him of their orders. "It is not the
thing you forget, Friend. Not the thing you forget."
Back in Huesja, each man had been issued with 150 rounds of good
ammunition and a strap of five hand grenades to sling across the
shoulder. Bligh had refused a new rifle; he felt that he knew
the foibles of his own, he knew when it was too hot and when it
would jam and he was able to load it by feel and memory. Now was
not the time for change.
He wiped that old rifle obsessively, terrified that in the rain
and the mud he might lose his grip on it and find himself alone
and unarmed in the middle of the fighting. Brigg did the same
with a light machine gun he had acquired: unlike the heavy trench
guns Bligh had seen before, this gun was compact enough to fire
from the shoulder, although only for a man of Brigg's strength
and experience.
In the distance, the sky became edged with pink and the clouds
overhead took on a lighter shade of grey. There was no sign of
the rain abating and already the trench was half filled with stinking
brown water.
They waited and waited. "It must be soon!" cursed Oori
Campion, usually the last man to let his frustration show. But
the most propitious timing had been set by UPP seers and so daylight
was almost full before, finally, the shelling began.
As if they had been waiting all along for the militia guns to
open negotiations, the Army artillery answered immediately and
Bligh hugged the trench wall as shells began to slam into the
ground all around and burst in the air overhead.
Within seconds Sandy Brigg had caught some shrapnel which opened
up his scalp so that his skull showed through. He wanted to carry
on, but he couldn't see a thing through the blood and Cabo Dona-Santen
managed to persuade him to lie low in the trench until he could
be evacuated. Oori Campion crawled over to take Brigg's machine
gun and tried, helplessly to follow his colleague's confused instructions.
Eventually, Campion dumped it in the mud in favour of his rifle,
all the time assuring Brigg that he understood how to use his
new weapon.
Bligh checked his watch, sure that the barrage had lasted more
than ten minutes.
"Okay," said Rayner and Dona-Santen together. "Time
to move," Rayner finished.
Bligh struggled up through the mud of the trench and crouched
in the open. His senses were being bombarded from every possible
perspective: the light of artillery flashes, the numbing noise
of the barrage, the smell of burnt powder and faeces and mud.
He looked down and there was a hand protruding from the ground,
its skin green and puckered.
"Come on! Come on! Come on!" urged Dona-Santen, scurrying
about the Section, slapping men on the back and waving his hands.
Bligh began to move, dragging his feet through mud that tried
to suck him down with each step. He covered the thirty yards to
the forward trench, but he did not know how long it took. In the
distance, he could see the first wave of men advancing. He had
no idea if they were meant to be that far ahead or not.
Just before the trench, he came across the first of today's corpses:
a body torn almost in two; another with its stomach and chest
blown away, the young man's face staring at the sky in apparent
confusion. In Pigeon Ravine death was clean, the result of a single,
stray bullet. Here it was a fierce, distorting end.
Duckboards had been placed as bridges over the trench and Bligh
staggered across, convinced that he would lose his balance and
plunge headlong into the yellow water on either side.
He made it, and paused for breath behind the bloated hulk of
a dead mule. Just then he heard a sudden whistle and a shell thudded
into the ground only feet away. He waited for the explosion, but
none came. He moved on, leaping from shell-hole to shell-hole,
using the muddy craters for cover from the flying shrapnel.
After a short time, he came across Bernie Rayner huddled in a
fresh crater, his face whiter than a sheet of his writing paper.
Rayner looked up and recognition passed slowly across his features.
"Have you been hit?" said Bligh, urgently.
Rayner opened his mouth, then swallowed, and started again. "I've
got the shakes, lovey," he said, and managed a brief smile.
"I'll be all right." Bligh scrambled out of the shell-hole
and hurried forward. He never saw Rayner again.
His progress grew more and more slow. Hauling his boots through
the sucking mud, scrambling over the fallen, the moaning wounded
and the dead. He stopped about fifty yards short of the enemy
trenches, trying to ignore the bodies all around. He wondered
why the barrage was still going on. If they advanced any further
they would be blown away by their own shells.
Ahead there was the burnt-out skeleton of a motor wagon, rising
from the mud. He cowered in its lee with two other soldiers and
another tangled corpse for company. They waited for several minutes,
debating what they should do, and then Bligh saw a section of
the enemy trench being stormed by the militia and he leapt from
cover and made a ten yard dash for the security of a deep crater.
Peering up from the lip of his shelter, Bligh spotted Merc Domenech
a short distance away. He was standing upright in the open, his
eyes bulging, and he was waving a sword in the air. All around
him there was a hail of bullets and shrapnel, with shells droning
and crashing overhead, but he simply stood there, disregarding
all precaution. He was shouting, and somehow his words carried
through the din. "Come on!" he yelled. "Advance!
Advance!"
Domenech took a couple of paces and then reached down into the
mud. He dragged a man up by the scruff of his jacket and hit him
with the side of his sword. "Advance!" he screamed.
Bligh was incensed. He clambered out of his shell-hole and stood
defiantly upright like Merc Domenech. All around, bullets whistled
and shrapnel sang. He took a step and then another. Somewhere
nearby, a portable radio crackled music incongruously from its
resting place in the mud.
Domenech glanced across triumphantly and Bligh felt like a hooked
fish. He felt something click inside his head and suddenly he
felt invincible, as if nothing would dare strike him down. Domenech
turned and charged through the mud, directly at the Army defences.
Bligh waved his gun in the air and gave a mighty bellow and then
began to follow.
The next thing he knew was opening his eyes and seeing the world
through a hazy red blur. He felt a terrible, dull ache in his
left leg and when he reached down he felt the damp heat of his
own torn flesh. He had fallen into the shelter of another shell-hole
and he realised that his face was half-submerged in the slowly
rising water. With an awkward wriggle, he dragged his head clear.
He wondered how many men would die out here, not from the battle
but by drowning as the shell-holes filled up around them. He did
not know how long he had been unconscious, only that the deafening
boom of the fighting had moved on into the distance and that rising
above it were the anguished wails, the sobbing, the dull moans,
of the wounded and the dying. And somewhere, amidst it all, the
radio played faintly on. |
|
- The Book of the World, ch.39, v.24. |
|
The ability to walk returned with surprising speed.
With the beds so close together, he soon learnt that he could
support himself with bed-ends on either side and drag his lame
leg along as he went.
One time, he found the old healer sitting with his knees tucked
up to his chin in the hospital garden. "You're walking well
now," he greeted Bligh cheerily.
"I'm not on morphine any more," Bligh said. "I
couldn't think straight when I was on that stuff."
"You never were," said the healer, pulling himself
to his feet and studying Bligh's progress critically. "You
only ever had aspirin here, my son."
"But ... " Bligh was confused again. "The dreams.
I was seeing things even awake."
"Hallucinations, my son. You were traumatised by what you
saw, and by the indignities suffered by your poor body. The spiritual
wound is often greater than the physical. That is why my colleagues
and I have established the profession of healing. Tell me, are
you still seeing these stone cats and fire people? Does your mother
visit you in your dreams?"
Bligh felt naked before this seeing old man. "I see nothing,"
he said, trying to close up again. He felt more like himself,
in defence.
The healer smiled. "You'll be leaving, I presume?"
Bligh nodded, although he had not given the matter a thought
until now.
"You have a lot ahead of you, I think. No! Don't look so
horrified: I am a healer, not a seer or an astrologer. I cannot
tell you your future, or at least, no more than any other with
average talents could. You are a troubled young man, anybody can
see that much. Please - " he stepped forward and kissed Bligh
on the cheek in the Feorean manner " - let us part on good
terms. I am a happy man to have learnt that you have a faith of
sorts - no one could recover so quickly without a source of spiritual
sustenance. Let us leave it at that."
Bligh watched the old man turn and head back into the hospital.
He felt numb. He did not know what he should be thinking.
He left later the same day.
He wandered, without a plan, down the hilly street that led from
the hospital. He had never looked up to the horizon before, but
now he did and he could see the cool blue of the Cyanic Sea a
few miles away in the distance. For a moment, he imagined that
he could taste the salt on the breeze, but it was his mind playing
tricks again, calling up memories of his first visits to the coast
after he had left the Jahvean school. It had been a novelty then,
such a vast expanse of greyish blue. He had stripped off his clothes
and waded out, marvelling at the steady slope of the sand beneath
his feet, discovering for the first time the awesome power of
the waves. Somehow, the slope must continue downwards like this,
he had realised, and he could almost understand the scale implied
by depths of half a mile, a mile, or more, of the great ocean
trenches. He had reached little more than waist deep when the
sea's power finally grew too great and he was knocked sideways
and had to struggle to master his body's buoyancy and paddle back
to the shore.
Passerat was different to the small towns of the north of Trace,
or the inland ruins like Comeras. The houses were low and moulded
to the contours of the land. From one side a house might be three
storeys high, from farther up the hill it would be only one. Each
had its own garden, with vines and avocados and small citrus groves.
Passerat was a sprawling settlement and Bligh had to stop frequently
to rest his weakened body. He wondered where the town hid its
refugees and its poor, and he realised that it would be a long
time before the revolution could ever, really, be won in places
such as this.
He thought he might find somewhere to stay for the night, and
maybe the next day he would be in a better position to think about
his future. He sat on a wall by a deep railway cutting and searched
through his pockets. His money had gone, along with his Landworkers'
Alliance papers, his passport, the crumpled photograph he always
carried of his mother as a gay young thing with feathers in her
hair and breasts in danger of spilling out of the flimsy construction
of her evening dress. He had often wondered why she should choose
such a picture to give to her son to remember her by. It must
have said something about how she saw herself, or how she wanted
to see herself, but what it was he did not know.
He had nothing.
He did not feel that he could move any farther. Suddenly he felt
completely blank, as if he had been stripped of everything that
had been him. His mind would not stay still and he could
no longer recall that photograph, or the details of his papers.
He felt as if his past had been wiped away by the simple actions
of whoever had robbed him as he lay ill in hospital.
He looked around but took nothing in. He was an empty vessel,
a blank template waiting to be completed. He was no longer ...
no longer ... He gave up. He could no longer recall even his name.
He stood and wandered off along the street. He came across a
small passenger platform by the railway, with stone troughs which
had once been planted with travellers' herbs, cast iron benches
overgrown with bindweed, a rusting drinking fountain which he
soon found was out of order. The station house was one of the
few ruined buildings he had seen in Passerat; two walls stood,
almost undamaged, but the other two had been reduced to rubble.
He climbed in over the debris. It would provide shelter of a fashion,
he thought. He was too tired to look further. |
|
- Black Paul. |
| "I fought in the war!" he had cried from the platform. The policemen had simply stared down at him from the train as it pulled away. "I was hit at Huesja!" But by then they were out of earshot and he had only an audience of embarrassed passengers who had left the train at this station voluntarily. Now, he limped along a dusty street. They had literally thrown him from the train, despite his protestations, and his whole body had been jarred. It seemed that he was in a large town. Modern terraces of housing, with crudely plastered walls and visible steel skeletons lined either side of the road, taking over from the older shops and the cattle market which had been clustered close to the station. Occasionally, a motor wagon would thunder past him, but more often there would be bicycles and horse carts, loaded with goods, or rattling along unburdened. One time, he rested outside a wrecked school building which was vaguely familiar. He peered through the flowers and weeds to a school yard with a rusty water pump at one end. The windows had been boarded over, but when the boards had been damaged the building had been left for the elements to enter. He shook his head and gave up. He no longer understood the workings of his own mind. His memories were returning in an unfocused jumble, as if they were memories of what he had been told instead of the true record of his experience. He did not know where his own mind ended and the rest of the world flooded in: the boundary was vague, indefinable. He walked on, and eventually tram-lines appeared in the road. Mindful of his experience on the train, he did not try to ride any of the trams, although they often stopped tantalisingly close and he would have welcomed the chance to rest. He wanted to stop and give up, but that was countered by a deepset desire, a need to keep moving. That was his own, he thought, it was a feeling he recognised as a genuine part of himself. He first heard the crowd as a distant rumble which could have been waves on a beach, except the Cyanic Sea never produced big enough waves. Drawing closer, he recognised it as the sound of conversation, laughter, an occasional chanting and singing of religious songs. He seemed to be walking parallel to the sound and so, when he came to an alleyway between two shops, he went down it. The shade was welcome. He had not realised what a hot, dry day it was. He felt that there must be a lot that he had not noticed. In a moment of clarity, he realised that he must still be suffering what the healer had called the 'spiritual wound' of the war. It was affecting his head in a way which was dizzying, unnerving. People were standing on the pavement at the mouth of the alleyway, but they were short enough for Bligh to see over their heads. In the street, there was a mass of people. There were old men and women and children, but the core of the procession consisted of soldiers. They were marching at a good pace, and Bligh wondered if it was some kind of victory parade. But when he looked at their faces he realised that it was not. They were brash and boisterous, but behind the facade these people looked grimly determined. They carried banners with words Bligh could not read and chanted slogans that his muddled mind could not make out. He saw that they wore the arm badges and neck scarves of the Unification Party of the People, and he remembered that he had fought with the UPP, as well as with the Landworkers' Alliance. Some of the onlookers cheered the march as it passed, but others yelled angry words and shook fists in the air. Bligh did not understand. Was this not the revolution? He pushed past the people blocking his way and for a moment he was isolated, standing uncertainly in the empty space between the spectators and the procession. Suddenly it seemed that all the angry shouting and grim looks of defiance were turned on him alone and he wanted to be anywhere but where he now stood. He took a step, dragging his lame leg behind him. Another step, and he was anonymous within the crowd of marchers, straining to keep pace, fearful of being left behind, in the open again. As his body struggled to find the rhythm of the march, he realised that there was something happening, back along the street. He looked and he saw first one or two, and then larger groups leaving the pavement and joining the march, just as he had done. When the procession reached a kink in the street, and Bligh looked back for the last time, he saw that there were now only a few standing on the pavement and shouting, and the procession was getting confused as so many joined its number. He first spotted Domenech shortly after he had realised that the crowd was marching through the old quarter of Anasty. The silhouette on the sky-line - rows of stone archways, one on top of the other, the top row broken and uneven - had been nagging away at him for some time when suddenly he realised that it was the Arena and so this must be the capital of Trace. He must have been ejected from the train at one of the many suburban stations he had noticed on his first visit to Anasty. Domenech was in a small group at the head of the march, glimpsed occasionally in the distance. The column came to a huge square, with statues and empty fountains, along with bomb craters and the black blots left by huge fires. All the buildings, as they had passed through this part of the city, showed signs of the fighting: bullet scars or holes in the masonry or entire buildings collapsed into rubble. The crowd, swelling out behind Domenech's party, filled the square with ease. They stood and sat, exhausted from the walking. A trace of uncertainty seemed to have overtaken the crowd: the march was over, what next? Before them there was a building with a wide sweep of stone steps leading up to stocky columns bearing heavy stone lintels. Its windows were tall and narrow, like giant archers' loopholes from a medieval castle, and the building spread out along one entire side of the square. "Storm the Citadel!" someone nearby began to chant, but no one took up the call. It was then that a small knot of men mounted the steps and, gratefully, the crowd rose up and closed in on them, anticipating something Bligh could not imagine. As he looked, he distinguished the figure of Merc Domenech on the steps, and by his side a dark-skinned man, who he was sure he knew. As the crowd pressed forward, Bligh spotted a youth, prancing about at the fringe of the group and the name Gaspar Sech came to his mind. And there was another next to the man he now remembered was called Sadiq, a man he had seen in Comeras, who Sadiq had called something like All Divine. He felt his mind twisting, as memories rushed out to grab him and demand his attention. He knew these people, yet still he did not know what they were doing. He felt his vision beginning to darken and he felt dizzy. The next time he was aware of what was happening, he was heaving himself through the crowd and people were turning and looking at him, then drawing away in deference. He was not in control, he knew that much. His body was working, his mouth spewing words that were not his own, but all the time he was detached, seeing everything from a distance. He sensed the sheer feeling of power, as people fell away before him and for an instant he enjoyed that experience. Then he saw the look in their eyes and he felt the weight of their demands upon him. He sensed the overbearing mass of their need, their longing for him. He stopped, and immediately all those faces turned away and the crowd pressed crushingly around him once again. He was close to the men on the steps now, he realised, and just then, Domenech seemed to sense that something had stirred, momentarily, in the crowd, for his gaze swept out across them. Bligh ducked down, and finally released his breath when Domenech's eyes had danced past his own without a sign of recognition. He did not know what he had expected, or why he hid. He felt muddled again, confused. And then, Merc Domenech took a megaphone from one of his attendants and began to speak. "Friends," he said, the word that had rallied a revolution. He hesitated, and Bligh thought that he was lost, struck dumb before such a vast crowd. But just as it seemed he had waited too long, he repeated that word - "Friends," - and a sense of relief and jubilation passed visibly across the crowd. "We have come a long way. We have emerged from the darkest days of the rule of King Elleo and his Council of Fear. We have emerged from the weakness of Queen Minna and all those who took advantage of her favour. We have risen through the fearsome carnage of four years of fighting. Our walk of the last six days is little in comparison with the progress of the people, the freeing of our nation. But Friends - " he raised his hands and turned his head slowly to survey the crowd before him " - the road to true emancipation still lies ahead of us. "It has been said, in recent months, that this was the Final Battle, the mayhem from which the Lords will arise. It is not, Friends. It is not. The Six will not truly walk among us until the revolution has fully triumphed! "We beat them in the streets of our holy capital. We beat them at Huesja, Comeras, Enas and Seleterra. We drove them back from the Great Plain until they were begging for our mercy. And then, what did we do? One more push and we would have had Minna and her Generals in our grasp, but instead we stopped. And why did we stop? I'll tell you, Friends. I'll tell you: it was because those who finally supplied us with the arms we had ordered two years ago were frightened. They did not want us to win outright - it might have inspired their own underclass. So they exerted their influence. Now, those who led us to the brink of victory are having talks with Minna and her Generals. Now, they make concessions to the defeated, on our behalf. Friends!" His voice boomed around the square, so that Bligh thought it possible that he no longer needed the megaphone. Domenech was leaning forward, as if into a wind, and his chin was thrust out arrogantly. He was challenging the crowd, daring them. Bligh found his intensity disturbing. "Friends! We fought the war ... we won the war - " now he punctuated each phrase with a stab of his right fist, and the crowd responded in frightening unison " - and now we must win this bloody stalemate!" The square erupted in a mass of jumping, chanting humanity. Fists jabbed the air, and firecrackers crackled over the animal roar. Bligh stood firm, as men and women to either side, in front of him, behind him, danced and shook and screamed in his ears. He folded his arms across his chest, and somehow he did not move. Over the gyrating arms and heads in front of him, he saw Sadiq Phelim and Alderas Aldivine hugging Domenech while the fool, Gaspar Sech, raised his hands to the crowd as if they were acclaiming him alone. A delegation was coming down the steps from the Citadel's entrance. Ten soldiers in new uniforms with the insignia of the Unification Party of the People, followed by an older man in a more ornate version of the same uniform. Now, Bligh recalled how officers and men had been impossible to distinguish when he had joined the Landworkers' Alliance militia. Words were exchanged, on the steps of the Citadel. Domenech looked excited, invigorated; the old officer looked tired and pressurised. They started to head up the steps together, and then Domenech hesitated and said something to Sadiq. Seconds later Sadiq brought him the megaphone and Domenech raised his hands to the crowd and spoke again. "Friends!" he boomed. "I am going to negotiate with our members of the Transitional Government. I - " he punched the air again with his free hand " - am ... going ... in - ... side!" The crowd erupted, on cue again, and still Bligh stood firm, arms folded. He felt something beating inside his head. Part of it was fear - he knew that and he was willing to recognise it. Part of it was the personal resentment he had felt towards Domenech before - the man's harsh cynicism, the way he could manipulate his own copious charisma, the way he had singled Bligh out during the war. But there was something deeper. The two of them were opposites. Domenech took visible pleasure in his ability to control people, to influence them, but Bligh found his own thoughts difficult enough to understand: he wanted power only over himself - he still could not understand the impulse to control others. He was moving with the crowd now. He did not know how long he had been lost in thought and his body working under its own guidance. He was down in the square and, looking over the heads of those around him, he sensed a new atmosphere to the rally. He smelt fear for the first time since he had been at the Front. Panic. Bodies crushed against him and he was almost knocked to the ground. Anyone so unfortunate would surely be crushed to death underfoot. In the mouth of a nearby street that fed onto the square, a convoy of motor wagons had pulled up. From their open backs, troops descended and started driving their rifle butts into the faces and bodies of anyone within range. Angry shouts responded and Bligh saw a man pick up a piece of rubble from a broken building and hurl it at the troops. That was when the soldiers opened fire, first into the air, but within seconds their rifles were lowered. Bligh saw the man who had thrown the first rock bend over double and then look up at the troops with eyes wide. He could only have been twenty yards from Bligh. He toppled slowly forwards and that was the signal for the crowd to finally enter the realm of chaos. Bligh fought against the surge, but his leg handicapped him and it was all he could do to stay upright. At one point he was back on the steps, and he saw Sadiq and the others huddled in the entrance to the Citadel, looking down. Later, he would swear that he saw the UPP leader and Domenech looking out from a window in the Government building and that Domenech had been nodding slowly and saying something to the older man. Then Bligh was down in the square again, hobbling hurriedly away, suddenly in the open and fearful of being targeted by someone with a gun. He realised now that it was not only the soldiers firing from the wagons that he should fear - there had been soldiers in the rally, too, and some were firing back. He made it to the edge of the square, and worked his way over a mass of debris until he came to a doorway in the one remaining wall at the back of a fallen building. Out on a small street, he paused to recover his breath and rest his leg. There was fresh blood on the small dressing he still wore. He steadied his nerves and then made himself look at the wound. The damage was not great and he fastened his trousers with relief. He knew that he must get away from this place, away from Anasty all together. He had to keep moving, as he always had. It would give him time to think. |
| He rode a goods train out of Anasty. Years ago, he had seen children doing this for fun: leaping up onto a wagon as the train left the station, and dropping off again after a few minutes. It had not looked difficult. He watched the first train, as it passed within inches of his reach. It looked much faster, this close, and he could not summon the courage to reach out and pull himself up. He sat in the undergrowth just beyond the station for some time afterwards, cursing himself for his cowardice. Then there was a rumble and a piercing hoot and hot metal was passing in front of him again. He stood with an arm out, hesitated, and then he grabbed a handhold. His whole body jerked as the train snatched him from the ground, but he held on. His second hand found a grip just as his foot finally found its target on a small step and his lame leg swung up behind him. He clung on, in that position, for some time, feeling as scared as he had ever felt in a barrage or under sniper fire. When he opened his eyes the train had picked up speed. He had no idea where it was headed. What if these goods were intended for export, and the train rolled directly onto one of those big Feorean ferries? He stopped himself and focused on immediate priorities: he could not stay in this position for long, clinging to a hand-rail on the outside of a locked wagon. He saw that the shelf where his feet were resting extended along the side of the carriage. There were handholds, too, after a fashion. If he could edge about fifteen feet along, then he could swing round to the sheltered junction between it and the next one in line. There was bound to be some more reliable form of support there. He reached out to his right and grabbed a metal ring that had been rattling against the side of the carriage and then his left hand moved to the position his right had held. With the upper half of his body now tipped towards the rear of the train, he shuffled his feet along the narrow shelf. He waited, for a few seconds, in his new position, and then reached out again for a new handhold. It was hard work, and he had to stop often to recover his breath and his nerve, but he persisted. As he drew close to the end of his carriage, he saw that next in line was an open wagon, loaded with crates and all covered with ropes and tarpaulins which flapped in the wind. He would be able to settle there for the journey, if he made it that far. Just as he reached the end of the carriage and his right hand fumbled around the corner a voice snapped out, over the roar of the rushing air and the train on the track. "What're you doing?" it said. "Just what do you think you're doing?" |
| The challenge had come from a vagrant perched on the next wagon. Bligh, with no choice in the matter - he could hardly retreat along the carriage side again - found his handhold, moved his left hand and upper body along and then swung his good leg around onto a flimsy metal shield covering the carriage's coupling with its neighbour. "That won't hold your weight," said the voice. "Not if we goes over a bump." Bligh looked up at the man. He was probably only in his forties, but his hair had turned a premature white and his face was pitted with lines and dirt. He was wearing a ripped coat, tied up with string at the waist, and he sat with his feet tucked under his legs on an exposed crate, the tarpaulin turned back neatly around him. With a sudden, agile movement, the man leapt to his feet and then reached down to help Bligh across onto his wagon. "The name's Black Paul," he said. "But they all calls me Black Paul." He grinned a grin of yellow, gapped teeth and sweet, festering breath and returned to his perch. "Bligh." They were passing through a grove of low trees now, with drifts of creamy blossom and the waxy green leaves of citrus trees. Once, they had been carefully trained along heavy wire supports that were strung between regularly positioned poles. Now, they grew chaotically, although they gave the impression that someone was trying to reassert their authority over the wild, with new yellow ties binding them to the wires again, in places. Black Paul did not say much; he just kept taking the occasional pull at a small bottle he kept in his coat pocket, turning away from Bligh to do so. Bligh felt uncomfortable, as the silence between them grew. Eventually, he said, "Where does it go? The train?" He did not really care. Black Paul looked at him thoughtfully. After a time, he said, "You've not been on the road for long, then? I can tell a man's not been on the road long, see. A man's been doing it for a time, he doesn't jump a carriage half way along it and then tries to climb the side likes you did. A man, he jumps on an open like this, and he looks at a timetable before he jumps, he does. So as he knows just where the beauty's taking him." Bligh shrugged. "I didn't know there were timetables," he said lamely. "I've never done this before. Last time I went on a passenger train and I was thrown off by the Police. Before then I was fighting." "Phah!" Black Paul snorted, and then took another pull from his bottle. "Men don't fight, I say. It gets them hurt, it does." He shook his head and gave Bligh a disapproving look. "It was in the war," said Bligh, humbled by the tramp's disapproval. "I was with the Landworkers' Alliance, against the Government. I was wounded at Huesja." "War?" said Black Paul, arching white eyebrows and fixing Bligh with crystalline blue eyes. "War, eh? I said fighting gets you hurt." "The war," said Bligh, helplessly. "The Civil War." Black Paul looked blank, and it was several minutes before Bligh realised that he may have been leading him on, teasing him. They passed, without talking, through a small town. They did not stop at the station, although the train slowed down and Black Paul waved cheerily at people as they waited for a passenger train to come along. Just as they left the town, Black Paul turned to Bligh and said, "Now we lies low, or it's jail or a kicking, depending on the yard marshal's mood." He reached up for the tarpaulin and pulled it down to cover the two of them and, just as he had finished, the train squealed to a sharp stop. Voices shouted from nearby and Bligh made as if to pull up a corner of the covers and take a look but Black Paul hissed, "Don't you dare, or I'll bite you real hard, I will." After a few minutes the wagon jolted and moved on the track and then there was a sudden thud that almost made Bligh cry out in fright. After they had been travelling for a short time again, Black Paul struggled with the tarpaulin and rolled it up neatly, clear of their perch. Now, there was a new carriage facing them and the train was heading in the other direction, back through the station, with the same people waiting for their trains and Black Paul waving at them once again. "If you'd read your timetables," he said. "Then you'd know the stops and when to hide your head." With a sinking feeling, Bligh began to think that they would end up back in Anasty. He watched countryside passing by that he was sure he recognised. He did not dare ask Black Paul for confirmation. He had not yet received a straight answer from the tramp. Then they passed over a brick bridge that must have been more than a mile long and Bligh knew that they could no longer be retracing their route from the capital. Below them, a flood plain spread out, with shining ribbons of river and tributary, silver in the sunlight, separated by vast reedbeds and islands of grazing meadow or regimented willow coppice. Without his watch, Bligh had only a poor idea of the passing of time. The sun was quite low when the train pulled into another yard, and Black Paul had covered them with tarpaulin once again. "It's Pettahrat," he said quite amicably, as they waited in the dark. "As you'd be knowing if you'd studied your timetables. We waits a while and then they'll be gone." Bligh surprised himself by sleeping for a time. When he opened his eyes there were stars and a half moon overhead and Black Paul was standing on the track telling him to get down and help fix the covers again. "You've got to be tidy," he explained, as he fastened the last rope. Then he added, slyly, "Even if you're God's son." He cackled and Bligh shuddered as he realised he must have been talking in his dreams and he could not remember a thing. "No," he said quietly. "I'm not." "I knows that, see," said Black Paul, and suddenly Bligh felt an overwhelming affection for the man. "Jah'veh only has one Son, see, and when He comes He won't be travelling on no freight wagons with old Black Paul. Not a chance." Shaking his head, he turned and began to walk away. Uncertainly, Bligh followed and caught him up in the street outside the yard. "I suppose you'll be wanting a place to lay your bones," said Black Paul as they walked. "And you'll be wanting old Black Paul to show you where." Bligh said nothing. Walking by Black Paul's side was answer enough, he felt. They passed by countless ruined buildings, some of them with walls enough that Bligh felt sure they could shelter within for the night. At one point he said so and Black Paul replied, "Too dangerous, see. Some of them's just waiting to fall down. Move too sudden and you might just get buried before you's ready for it." In the end, they found a church with candles burning in the porch and the door propped open with a brick. By the entrance there was a stack of blankets and a bucket with water and a tray of stale bread crusts. Copying Black Paul, Bligh took a blanket, a wooden beaker of water and a piece of bread and went into the still warmth of the church itself. Outside, it had been turning cold, but Bligh had barely noticed. He was accustomed to the chill and discomfort of sleeping outdoors - he had expected no more. The central aisle of the church was occupied by sleeping children and adults who could have been their parents or grandparents. Bligh followed Black Paul past the sleeping bodies and lay his blanket on the floor before the altar. Before sleeping, Black Paul knelt and mumbled a prayer Bligh recognised from his school days. "They may be unholy pagans," Black Paul said afterwards, when neither could sleep, "but this is a church, at least - it's holy ground. It has the Lord Jah'veh's blessing despite the Elementalist perversions." Bligh did not care. It was dry, and warmer than outside. That was what mattered. |
| "People have closed up," said Black Paul, as they waited in the town's small square, early the next morning. "Have you noticed that, then? They don't talk any more, not like you and me. When there was fighting to be done there was fighting talk to be done, too. Do you see what I'm meaning?" "I remember," said Bligh, thoughtfully. He looked around at the shabby men who waited with them, hoping for work. A few weeks ago these men would have been in uniform, but already they had returned to a civilian life of hardship and unemployment. He had not thought a war could end so abruptly. He had always privately thought that the struggle in Trace would be a perpetual one, killing the men of the land as quickly as they could be replaced. No longer was there optimistic talk of equality and redistribution, no longer did people seem to believe that everyone could have a share of the nation's wealth. Now, what mattered was earning a few shillings and simply surviving. Now, people had turned away from equality and back to the safe ground of the Church. After a long wait, a small group of officials turned up, one of them a priest. They looked at the assembled men, as if they were eyeing up beasts at a market. With brief gestures, they selected less than half and drove off, leaving the chosen ones in the charge of three burly foremen. Black Paul was resigned to this. "About one day in five," he said, as they walked away. "They looks at me and they sees my white hair and they thinks I'm too old to work hard." They left the town that day. Black Paul had a feeling that they would not be any luckier if they tried again the next day. As they walked out along a dusty road, motor wagons and horse-drawn carriages occasionally passing them by, Black Paul took a drink from his bottle and then, surprisingly, held it out. Bligh felt touched, but he was wary of its contents. Surreptitiously, he sniffed at it as he raised it to his lips, then took a small sip. It was only water. He smiled and returned it to Black Paul. They travelled together for most of the next three weeks, rarely staying in any one town for more than two or three days. It was a hard way of life, but Bligh felt suited to it and he felt fitness returning as each day passed. Occasionally they found work and would meet up again in the evening, exhausted but with a few shillings in their pockets. Bligh's first job was in a vast factory, gathering balls of fluff from behind trap doors in the base of a weaving machine that was two storeys high. It was a deceptively tricky job, with the dusty atmosphere, the deafening roar of the machines and the stifling heat all conspiring to numb the senses and induce a mindless sense of automation. After his second day, Bligh learnt that people rarely held that job for more than a month, as it was so easy to let the concentration lapse and lose a finger, or worse, in the machinery. "You lose a day's pay," he was told. "Because they have to close down the line and retrieve the pieces." He was relieved, that night, when Black Paul grumpily said they should move out the next day. Black Paul had found no work at all in their three days in town, while Bligh had worked clearing rubble for the day before securing the job at the linen factory. "I've read it in the timetables," Black Paul said, "so we've got to go." Bligh had learnt that where Black Paul was concerned there was no disobeying the timetables. They had become some kind of holy document for the tramp, edging over into his beliefs so that they even entered his nightly prayers from time to time. One morning, they stood together in the central square of a small town called Abeyat, on the fringe of the Great Plain. Bligh had felt uneasy when he had seen the central plains spreading out before his perch on a goods wagon. He had not wanted to be back in this region so soon after the final battle of the war. It had felt wrong. The crowd of men was thicker than usual this morning and Bligh held little hope of a day's work. Between them, they had less than two shillings left, unless Black Paul had been lying about his money, as Bligh suspected. To one side of the square there was a long queue waiting for the distribution of bread. Bligh watched, detached, as an old woman bustled to the head of the queue saying she was a war widow with a sick sister and so she could not wait. A young soldier beat her away with the butt of his rifle and sent her to the back of the line to wait her turn. Nearby, there were children begging, something Bligh had never noticed in Trace before. One of them was a young boy with only one leg. Black Paul tutted and muttered something Bligh could not hear, and then strolled over to the boy and gave him their last shilling and a few pennies. The boy gave a whoop of delight and raced away on a leg and a crooked stick, pursued by some friends and a mangy dog carrying a bone. Black Paul looked at Bligh and shrugged apologetically, but Bligh did not mind. They could always get bread and water at a church, if they became desperate. As it turned out, he did not have to worry. Two long wagons appeared in the square, ridden by the priests in their flowing carmine robes. "The Lord's work," said Black Paul, as he climbed up onto one of the wagons with Bligh, but he would say no more. The priests made them sing hymns as they headed out of town. Bligh did not know the words or the tune, but he moved his lips in case his driver should turn around and decide to throw him off for not joining in. Black Paul simply sat, staring out at the countryside. "Nature's jealous of her scars," he said, after a time. "See?" He waved a hand at the rutted, cratered fields, now overgrown with grass and great crimson drifts of poppies and fireweed. "She covers them over so quickly, but you knows they're there." The trenches were mostly dry now, in the late Spring heat. They were only soft at the bottom, where the duckboards were absent or broken. Weeds grew from gaps in the sand bags and struggled from the depths of the trenches, up towards the light. At first, Bligh thought they grew from the bodies, too, but they were merely forcing their way between arms and legs and through gaps in the torn torsos. In places, the corpses lay three deep. In others they were buried in mud that had set and they had to be eased out carefully with picks and shovels. Complete corpses were placed in the wagons that had carried the labour gangs to the battlefields. Limbs, heads, scraps of uniform, were put in a large wooden crate marked with the sign of the Six and muttered over by the priests. By the end of the day, they had cleared only a small area of the field and the stench of rotting flesh had become ingrained on Bligh's clothing and on his mind. "There will be more work tomorrow," said a smiling priest, as he drove the exhausted labour gang back to Abeyat. "And the day after ... " |
For private non-commercial use only. Not to be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author's consent.
Careware: if you like this novel, give some money to Oxfam or Greenpeace.
| © 2025 Библиотека RealLib.org (support [a t] reallib.org) |