Beyond the Burning Lands

FIVE

BEYOND THE BURNING LANDS

IT WAS IN A MOOD of relief and relaxation that we headed north. We rode in a chatter of voices that measured the tenseness there had been before. We reached a river and forded its shallow, tepid waters. Halfway across one of the horses put a foot in a hole, stumbled and fell. This was greeted with a roar of laughter, all the louder as the rider picked himself up, cursing and dripping, and berated his mount’s stupidity. We knew what such a mishap could have meant at the top of the pass and so were glad to see it now. Even the one who had fallen laughed with us in the end.

The desert gave way to a scattering of sickly bushes and shrubs, to thicker undergrowth and at last to the forest edge. The trees looked normal enough at first sight though much twisted in shape; but that might have been due to the blistering breath of wind blowing down from the hot slopes so little distant.

It was necessary to ride through untracked woodland before reaching the route the peddler knew. But it was not so dense as to present any great difficulty and in places opened out into glades bearing only plants and low bushes. These were further advanced in growth than similar ones in the south, and I wondered if the underground fires which fueled the Burning Lands might lie nearer to the surface on this side, tempering the winter for them. I asked the peddler and he agreed it could be so: even much farther north, he said, there were warm pools and springs which bubbled, steaming, out of the earth.

Our talk was interrupted by a cry from one of the men. He had sighted what we soon saw was a wild boar, half grown. Greene called us to the hunt and we pursued it through brush as it ran for cover. It would be good to have a supper of roast pork instead of the salt meat we carried in our pouches but I was not optimistic of our catching the beast, especially lacking hounds.

But it moved more slowly than one would have expected and the ground stayed fairly clear. We ran it down within five minutes, Greene himself leaning from his saddle to drive his sword point in behind its shoulder. The boar died with a single ear-wrenching squeal, and the rest of us rode up to the spot.

The peddler had fallen well behind and we had time to look at the body before he reached us and dismounted. Peering between Bristow and one of the men, he said:

“Well done, Captain! That one looks as though he will provide good eating.”

“Good eating!” Greene echoed in disgust. “Are you blind, man?”

“Blind? I see a fat young porker.”

“Look at the tusks. And those legs!”

The legs showed why he had been easy to run down. The rear ones were all right but those at the front were short and twisted. I had thought there was something funny in his gait; he had scampered more than run. The tusks were doubled, a second set growing behind the first.

“Do you eat tusks?” the peddler asked. “It is true there is not much meat on the forelegs but he has plenty elsewhere.”

Greene stared at him incredulously. “It is a polybeast. Can there be doubt of that?”

“Well?”

“And you would eat it?”

“Why not?” the peddler asked. “Ah, I recall—your Seers forbid it. But you will find no Seer this side of the Burning Lands.”

Greene prodded the boar’s flank with his boot.

“There is no need of a Seer to tell what makes the gorge rise. I would as soon eat carrion.”

“Captain,” the peddler said, “you are in lands where you will find many strange things. And I think if you stay so delicate you may go hungry.”

“Do you say all beasts are like this?”

“Not all; but many, perhaps most, are marked in one way or another.”

I could see how it would be so. In our lands, under the command of the Seers, polybeasts were rooted out wherever they were found. Here, lacking such culling, the broods had proliferated and grown wilder. The only check was nature’s own. I doubted if this one would have grown to maturity, with such legs.

A silence had followed the peddler’s words. He broke it himself, saying:

“And is it not also a rule that the beast be buried? Will you use your swords for spades?”

Greene brushed the spears of his mustache with his finger ends, as though reassuring himself they had not grown double or turned to horns. He said:

“Buried or burned. Sergeant, have the men cut brush to make a pyre.”

While this was done the peddler watched, shaking his head from time to time. I heard him mutter: “They will learn. . . .”

The pyre was completed and, the carcass having been hauled onto it, fired. We resumed our journey. The smell of roasting meat followed us and I saw the peddler sniffing the air regretfully.

• • •

As the day waned Greene looked for shelter. The land was still wooded and we had to detour round the denser patches. Many of the trees were such as would have been uprooted and destroyed at home but Greene did not suggest we should attempt so impossible a task. I saw one whose leaves were not green but a coppery red; yet otherwise it seemed an ordinary beech.

Edmund said: “Those oaks . . .”

“What of them?”

They looked normal to me, though very old. He said:

“The other trees are haphazard but the intervals between the oaks are regular, as though they had been planted.”

I saw it was true. Once one had the knack of picking them out it could be seen that they formed two lines between which, by accident, we rode. The avenue led up the slope of a hill. Greene reined his horse, and said:

“Over there.”

We saw where he was pointing. There was scrub where the avenue of oaks ended and beyond the scrub the remains of a building, big enough to have been a palace. I said:

“It might serve for the night.”

He said: “It belongs to the ancient days, I would say—before the Disaster. Much of it is in ruins.”

His voice had an edge of doubt. I said:

“I do not think any Spirits will have lingered there all this time.” I looked at the sky where clouds which had been gathering all day were still more ominous. “And even if the roof only partly holds we may be glad of the shelter.”

Greene looked as though my words pleased him. I had a sudden feeling that where matters were uncertain he might seek reassurance, and take it even from one as young and inexperienced as I. The confidence of his outward show did not go very deep. I put the thought away, as something for Peter to know. He would not have given him command of this mission had he known it before.

We rode up to the house. It was very large, almost as big as the palace in Winchester. It was built of gray stone which had weathered but kept its structure; though one end had fallen, most of the rest was intact. A terrace in front had a double flight of broad steps. We tethered our horses below, leaving a guard, and walked up.

There was a doorway, twice a man’s height and of breadth to match. The door itself lay where it had fallen; it was of good wood and well carved. In the hall we surprised wild fowl which fled with screeches and flapping wings. There were signs that larger animals had been there but we saw none. Furniture which carried the stamp of skilled craftsmen was warped and rotted by weather, gnawed by rodents. On the walls hung paintings in ornate frames, some unrecognizable but others showing figures of men and women in strange dress.

We walked through rooms which were large and high-ceilinged. All were far advanced in decay. In one, tapestries were hung from the wall though several had fallen or been dragged down. These also were most finely worked. The majority were too dilapidated and faded to tell what they had shown but on one which had escaped the worst there was a battle scene. Edmund and I stared at it. He said:

“So the ancients did not do all their fighting with machines. These have swords not unlike our own.”

“And armor. But heavier than I would care to fight in. Look at that helmet and the breastplate! It would surely take a farm horse to bear it, not a charger. And if you fell you would have your head sliced off while you were thinking how to rise.”

Edmund looked about him. “This has been a fine place in its time. A Prince must have lived here.”

He, unlike I, had been born to the magnificence of a palace. What he said was true.

“But how?” he asked. “There is no city near, not even a village. Where did his warriors live?”

“Perhaps he had none.”

“Then how defend himself?”

“By the Spirits, maybe.”

Edmund looked at me. He said with a note of scorn:

“Maybe. They abandoned him in the end, it seems, but after all, that is their way.”

Greene and Bristow were giving orders for the night. Hans was already seeking a place for me to sleep. I saw him dragging away one of the fallen tapestries to provide me with a bed, and hoped it was less damp than some I had seen. But the suspicion was unworthy. I knew already that I had never had a servant as intelligent or as careful of my wishes.

I said: “Since we have nothing to do we may as well explore upstairs.”

The staircase like the floor of the hall was marble. A crack had opened between two steps but otherwise, apart from dirt which had blown in and here and there sprouted blades of grass, it seemed undamaged, though many of the wooden balusters had broken or fallen away. Halfway up it turned on itself and split, forming a double flight to the next floor. We reached a broad wooden landing with many doors. Some had fallen and others hung from broken hinges; some were closed.

There were fewer signs of damage by animals—only small rodents would have been likely to climb the stairs—but much of decay from weather. In the first two rooms we looked at, the ceilings had fallen in heaps of cracked and moldering plaster, covering floor and furniture. In one there was a gaping hole through which one saw another room above, and past that a patch of shattered roof. We turned to others which were in less ruinous condition.

Light was draining out of the sky as the day drew to a close. The wind blew in through naked frames and tugged at a loose strip of paper on the wall. Soon—next year if not this—it would have ripped it free. I pulled at it myself and tore it off; then felt regret. There had been splendor here. The elements were doing their work of destruction in their own good time and needed no help.

Edmund called: “Luke!”

He had opened one of the closed doors and was standing just inside. It was a room which had been more protected than most. The ceiling was almost intact and both windows had glass in them.

It was also smaller and perhaps this had contributed to its preservation. There was dust everywhere but the furniture seemed unharmed and the thick red carpet, except where the moths had taken their meals, was dry and unfaded. Along one wall was a sofa, its covering also moth-scarred but otherwise intact, and several chairs were dotted about. Edmund, gingerly at first, sat in one which had a hooped back supported on wooden struts. I said: “This looks more comfortable,” and headed for one with a high back and sides. It was turned the other way. I pulled it toward me—and stopped in shock.

That which sat in the chair collapsed at my jerk and in a moment was no more than a jumble of bones inside a crumpled heap of cloth, but for one brief instant I had seen it as it had rested for countless years: the upright skeleton with its grinning skull staring out of the window at what had once perhaps been lawn not forest.

Edmund and I looked down in silence. He said:

“Do you think the Disaster killed him?”

“Maybe. But it is more likely he died later. This place was strongly built but the shock that brought down the other part would surely have tumbled him from his chair. Perhaps he lived here afterward, waiting for people to come. Perhaps for years.”

A low table by the chair had an intricately engraved jar of crystal glass, which was empty. Beside it lay an oblong box made of gold. I lifted a lid and found inside small cylinders of a fragile white material packed with dried grass. Or so it seemed, but the smell was not a grass smell; it had a peculiar aromatic richness.

“And this,” Edmund said.

It stood in a corner and I had not seen it because of the shadows there. It was a cabinet of polished wood with a row of metal knobs near the top, containing a square glass screen with darker glass behind it. I knew what it was from a picture I had seen in the Sanctuary: the device by which our ancestors had received moving pictures through the air, across the breadth of the planet and even from the distant Moon. I stared at it in fascination. Under one knob it said BRIGHTNESS, under another CONTRAST. Words which once had meaning. Edmund said:

“A machine.”

“Yes.”

“But you show no horror of it.”

I said quickly: “I did not realize what it was.”

I turned away from the television set. Edmund said:

“You are different since coming back from the Sanctuary. As Martin is since he turned Acolyte.”

I felt the sting of rebuke. We had been the closest of friends and yet I must keep so much from him. Reading my face, he said:

“It does not matter, Luke.”

And I knew that was true. The rebuke was my own, to myself. I would have been jealous if I had thought Edmund put something else before our friendship, but he was not. His smile showed it.

There was a noise on the landing and the peddler came in. He poked about among the contents of the room. Neither the broken skeleton nor the television set got more than cursory glances, but his eyes fastened on the gold box.

“Genuine,” he said, “and heavy!”

He moved to put it in his jacket. I said:

“Leave it.”

His gaze met mine, sharp and calculating. “We’ll split two ways.” He glanced at Edmund. “Three. But let me do the selling. I have contacts.”

“Put it back,” I said.

“But why? That is stupidity. Who owns it?”

I dropped my hand onto my sword hilt. The peddler put down the box, shrugged and went away. We heard him stamp off down the corridor. Edmund said:

“He will slip up here afterward and get it. Or mark the place down for his next trip south.”

“Very likely.”

There would always be greed and meanness and spoiling, and maybe all good things must fall to them in the end; but at least one did not have to take part in it or watch it. In the darkness that was fast deepening, I peered at a picture in a gold frame on the wall. It was small and murky and showed an old and ugly man, but there was something about it, about the patient eyes in the wrinkled face, that caught the heart with its beauty. I read the artist’s name on the brass plate underneath. Even I, knowing little of the craft, could tell that he had been a far greater painter than Margry, this Rembrandt.

When we left I carefully closed the door behind us.

• • •

Our journey continued through several days. We did not find as good a shelter for the night again, but made do. The beasts we saw for the most part kept their distance. Once the peddler took us to a village where he was known and where we could buy food. They accepted our money though the head of the Prince of Winchester on the coins could have meant nothing to them; but silver can always be melted down. The peddler haggled with them on our behalf. They sold us bread and beef, the latter in joints. I wondered what the animals had looked like on the hoof—what sort of hoofs they had, in fact, if they had any—but held my peace, and if Greene had scruples he kept them to himself. After all, who could tell what sort of corn the bread was made from?

The villagers were a rough and dirty lot, poorly fed and clothed in skins. Not all had this protection. I saw an almost naked child, shivering, blue with cold, and gave him a woolen from my pack. Within five minutes one of the men was wearing it. I would have taken it from him and restored it to the child, but Edmund restrained me. The moment we left the child would lose it again. I was not convinced, and he said:

“And be beaten for it, into the bargain. This way he may gain something—a crust of bread thrown to him, maybe, for conscience’s sake.”

“Conscience? In such a one as that?”

“Who knows? And the beating would be well-nigh certain. Have sense, Luke.”

These people were of all kinds—human and polymuf with a few dwarfs—and it was shocking to find that they seemed to make no distinctions: one of the leaders of the tribe had a purple mark covering half his face. But of course they were savages and could not be expected to follow civilized practices. They invited us to stay there that night and I was glad that Greene refused, even though in the end we slept under bushes and awoke in the small hours with rain soaking us.

• • •

Five days after crossing the Burning Lands we were attacked.

We had left the river valley we had followed so long and were heading, west of north, through hilly country. The track passed through a defile which narrowed toward its end. At that point our ears were assailed by a dreadful caterwauling and savages dropped down on us from an overhanging ledge of rock.

They had the advantage of surprise and one of the first half dozen dragged a soldier from his horse before he realized what was happening. They also had superiority in numbers—at least three to one though it was impossible to make anything but a rough guess. But their preponderance ended there. I saw one jump at me and slashed with my sword so that he fell howling. Another, who had first dropped to the ground, came at me from the side and hung gibbering on my horse’s saddle for a moment or two before I chopped him away. Garance reared, and her descending hoof cracked the skull of a third.

The engagement, if one could give it such a name, lasted a very short time—no more than minutes. As soon as they realized we had their measure they fled. Those who had dropped on us ran off down the ravine and the rest, after yowling at us briefly, melted away also, though they were perfectly safe up there from any counterattack. They left a dozen of their fellows behind, some dead, some noisily writhing.

One reason I had felt no alarm even at the launching of the attack was that I had taken them for polymufs. They were nearly naked and I saw that their skins were not white but blue. This blue now was stained with red and examining them one saw that it was not pigmentation but paint, which covered them from their foreheads to the soles of their feet. They were true men. Any polymufs there may have been among them had either not joined the attack or had got away safely.

Their armament was pitiful, consisting of small daggers, the largest less than a foot long. One of our soldiers had been wounded, but although his arm had bled freely the cut was a surface one only. They had not even hamstrung any of the horses which had probably been the greatest risk we ran. I think the horses had frightened them as much as we had.

The peddler made more of all this than was reasonable. I heard later that during the skirmish he had buried his head in his hands against his horse’s neck and might have been our other casualty had the soldiers near him not dealt briskly with his assailants. Now he hymned our bravery and discipline in extravagant terms; one would think our few minutes of parrying and beating off these decorated dervishes was a feat to be compared to the storming of the walls of Petersfield in the teeth of deadly cannon fire. I reminded myself that he had probably never seen warriors in action before but I still found his enthusiasm surprising.

We left the dead and wounded where they lay, presuming that when we had gone their comrades would return and dispose of or aid them as they thought best. Edmund had ridden ahead with Greene and Hans took his place at my side. The dwarf was happy as I had never before seen him, his face glowing. He held his sword up over the pommel of the horse. Blood dripped down the blade and stained the hilt. I said:

“There is a rag in my pouch if you wish to clean it.”

Hans shook his head. “No, Captain.” He gazed at the sword a moment longer and then resheathed it. “I will leave it as it is.”

• • •

In the middle of the next day we reached a village standing on the confluence of two eastward-flowing rivers. The people here were not savages but wore linen clothes, exotic in style and color like the peddler’s. He was known to them and they crowded round us in curiosity and welcome. They fed us well and would take no payment. We were ambassadors to the King and must be given due hospitality.

In fact, as the peddler told us, we were less than ten miles from the city. We set out to cover the last stretch in the early afternoon, resisting the efforts of the villagers to ply us with more cakes and with sweet sticky drinks that even when measured in tiny pots two inches high made one’s head spin a little.

We rode up a valley between hills that drew in on either side and were backed by high mountains. The road ran close by the river and was in good condition, and we saw farms and houses, the latter so painted as to look like the dwellings of dwarfs; but the peddler, when I asked him this, said no—the Wilsh loved color and used as much of it as they could.

And gradually the houses were more numerous and packed closer together. I was riding in the van with Greene, the peddler between us. I saw what was plainly a forge, its fire visible through the open door.

I said: “That is strange, Yews, surely—a forge outside the city?”

He shook his head. “Not outside, Captain. We are in the city now.”

Greene, as astonished as I was, asked: “But where are your walls?”

“There are none.” The peddler smiled. “We have no need of walls.”