To Conquer Chaos

II

Yanderman stood aside for a moment to let someone else come out of the tent, ducking under the flap that served as a door, and then went inside himself. This was really more of a pavilion than a tent, with flooring of woven rushes put down on the grass, and several pieces of portable furniture spread around. The light came from a wood-gas lamp and made the shadows of the occupants move, big and black, on the hanging walls.

The guard just inside the door saluted. Yanderman acknowledged the gesture, crossed the floor to a spot in front of the Duke’s table, and saluted in his turn.

Grand Duke Paul of Esberg raised his dark eyes from the hand-painted maps on the table before him. He was a massively magnificent man. He had one of the largest heads anyone could recall seeing, thatched above and below with dense black hair and full black beard. His pillar-like neck set into broad shoulders and a barrel chest clad with a shirt of red and black-the Esberg colours-and his legs were thrust into long tan boots. Were he to stand up, he would overtop Yanderman, who was not small, by head and shoulders.

“They just sent to tell me the missing scout is in sight,” he said. “Did you see him?”

“Riding like a madman through the notch in the hills to the north,” Yanderman confirmed. “That’s why I came down.”

“Take a seat. I look forward to learning what’s delayed him so long.” Duke Paul leaned back in his chair, and it creaked slightly under his huge bulk. “I’ve sent also for Granny Jassy, in case she has clues to any puzzles the scout may report.”

Yanderman took a folding chair from a stack in the corner of the tent, and sat down. Beside the Duke his secretary-an ascetic-faced young man called Kesford-pinned a fresh sheet of yellow paper to his writing-board and sharpened the point of his pencil by scraping it half a dozen times on a block of pumice.

It was only a few minutes before Granny Jassy was heard outside, her voice raised shrilly in protest against the way she had been disturbed after the long day’s journey. Chuckling, a soldier told her not to be so sensitive, and the flap-door was thrown back.

A gaunt figure in a shapeless black dress, Granny Jassy walked smartly through the opening. She came to the table in front of the Duke, planted both hands on it palms down, and leaned forward.

“Duke or no Duke!” she said, and pulled her sunken-cheeked face into an alarming scowl. “Duke or no Duke, nobody ought to shove an old weak woman around like this! Any more treatment so disrespectful to my aged bones, and I’ll go home-I will that, though I have to learn to steal horses to do it!”

Duke Paul raised one tufted black eyebrow and said nothing, but waved at the couch on his right where he slept at night. It was soft and had several plump pillows on it. Granny Jassy, still mumbling her opinions about the way she was handled, turned to sit cautiously down on the fattest pillow.

Another few moments, and they brought the scout into the tent. Duke Paul started up with an oath, staring. All the man’s shirt was stiff with blood; his face was pale, though his eyes were bright, and he was leaning for support on a medical auxiliary in green gown and tight black turban. He attempted to salute, but his right arm was disobedient and he had to let it fall back to his side, wincing.

Yanderman stood up. “Move over, Granny,” he said softly. “You may be old, but he’s injured. We’ll give you a chair and lay him on that couch.”

“Up! Down! Move here! Move there!” Granny squawked. “I wish I’d never been taken from my own hearth, that I do.”

But she groaned to her feet and took a chair instead, and the medical auxiliary unrolled a red blanket from the pack on his shoulder to toss over the couch and protect it from the scout’s blood. Clearly the Duke was impatient to hear the man’s news, but he asked no questions till the blood-soaked shirt had been cut away, exposing a gash a hand’s-breadth long and very deep in his shoulder muscles. A girl came into the tent with a big pail of clean water and a package of dressings, and the scout, his eyes blank with exhaustion, endured while the wound was washed, closed with three stitches, and covered.

“Yan!” the Duke said sharply. “In that chest there’s a silver flask. Give him a gill of the liquor from it.”

Yanderman glanced around. The chest the Duke pointed to was behind his table on the ground, the lid lowered but not locked. He found the silver flask and poured a little from it into the cup-shaped lid.

The strong-smelling spirit seemed to revive the injured man instantly. With a sigh of relief the Duke picked up his chair and carried it closer to the couch.

“Well, Ampier?” he said. “What hit you?”

Yanderman stood silent in the background, listening. He felt he would never cease to wonder at the Duke’s ability to name every man in his army on sight. The medical auxiliary went on with his work unobtrusively, checking the scout’s pulse, folding a sling for his arm, laying another blanket over him for warmth. The girl who had brought the pail of water had slipped away again; she returned some minutes later with a mug of steaming broth and a handful of grapes.

Ampier, propped up on the Duke’s pillows, shook his head. “What name to put to it, sir, is beyond me. It was the strangest thing I ever set eyes on. According to instructions I rode due north by compass, as well as I could, and not long past noon I came in sight of the barrenland. That’s a wonderful thing to behold! On this side, as you may picture it, the grass grows thickish, the rocks boast coats of lichen, there are trees and all manner of plants. In the space of a few yards all is changed. The grass withers, vanishes away, a plantain here and there dots the ground, the stones crop out, dust replaces fertile earth, and from there till the skyline-nothing! I rode along its edge for perhaps a mile, not wishing to exceed my orders by trespassing on the barrenland itself, and-to be candid-much alarmed to find it real and no mere legend.

“Blurry in the east of where I found myself was a stain of smoke upon the sky. Reasoning that man’s the creature who makes fire, I fancied I’d do well to go further and find if a village was there. It would have water, which we’ll need, and perhaps food to sell us. So I spurred for the smoke. But before I was in sight of any habitation, the thing came out from behind a rock and was upon me like a lightning bolt.”

“How was it made?” the Duke demanded. Yanderman leaned forward, because Ampier’s voice was weakening. He saw that there was sweat glistening on the face of the secretary Kesford as he noted down what was said.

“Large-of a boar-pig’s weight, I’d say. But possessed of a long weaving neck, and on the tip of that a thing less like a bird’s hooked bill than like a single great claw with a slash for a mouth beneath it. In colour it was sandy, or tawny, except for this hooked claw-thing, which was white. It could plant its feet on the ground and slash at me upon my horse by using the stretch of this serpent-like neck. I loosed a shot at it, but the slug went wide, and then I strove to cut its neck through with my sword. So swift and flexible was it, though, that I could not, until it sank the claw-beak in me. Then I was able to slash it, and it ran about blindly until it died. The pain was so great I dared not dismount and cut off part of it as witness to my story, but turned and rode fast for the line of march again. My horse foundered under me as I came through the picket-lines; the thing gashed him on the withers, and no man will ride him again.”

Duke Paul ran his fingers through his beard and nodded over the story. Ampier let his head sink back, closing his eyes again. Yanderman glanced around the tent, and noticed that the medical auxiliary had taken up the blood-soaked shirt he had cut from the scout’s body and was turning it over curiously in the light of the lamp.

Yanderman moved closer to him. “What is it you see?” he inquired in low tones.

“That, sir.” The medical auxiliary nodded downwards, holding the cloth stretched in the full beam of the lamp. Yanderman stared.

On the crusting brown blood there was a fine blur of green-like a mould, or mildew. It was alive, for it could be seen to grow, not creeping evenly out over the cloth but seeming to seed itself half an inch or an inch distant from the main part, then to spread at a snail’s pace till the new patch rejoined the original one, then to pause, then to begin again.

“Show the Duke,” Yanderman ordered, and the medical auxiliary did so.

Duke Paul watched the phenomenon curiously for a while. At last he said, “Take that cloth-in a box, or sealed package-to your medical tent. Test all the strong liquids and powders on it till you find one which will check or stop its growth. And watch that the living blood from Ampier’s wound is not infected with it!”

The medical auxiliary saluted and obeyed, vanishing into the night outside. The girl who had come back with the broth fed some of it to the injured scout; then with the help of the guard from the doorway she guided him from the tent and away to his quarters.

Duke Paul directed Kesford to read back what Ampier had told them, to fix it firmly in his mind. Then he turned to Granny Jassy, scowling at the side of the tent.

“Come to the couch, Granny,” he said. “Let’s find out if your strangely stocked mind holds any explanation for this thing which attacked Ampier.”

Grumbling, Granny obeyed. The Duke drew from his pouch a length of silver chain with a crystal ball on the end, as large as a man’s thumbnail, and set it swinging before Granny’s face. Shortly her eyes closed and he was able to begin questioning her. He persisted for an hour-his patience, Yanderman sometimes thought, was inhuman-without extracting any useful information.

The trouble with people like Granny Jassy, Yanderman reflected, was that they didn’t understand the memories which they could call up. Here now, for example, Granny was telling of strange animals, of many colours and in vast numbers, on which people rode as though they served for horses. Yet when pressed more closely, she described them as being wheeled-not animals, then, but machines! However, they went by themselves; for ignorant Granny, that made them animals, for whoever heard of a machine going by itself?

His mind wandered. How was it possible-the invariable question-how was it possible for these tales told by Granny and with less colour and detail by several other people in Esberg to be true memories? Yet it seemed they must be. When Duke Paul decided to base experiments on some of these fantastic tales even Yanderman, whose admiration for the duke was boundless, wondered whether he was wasting his time. He was not; many useful instruments, such as the searchlights guarding the campsite, and even the guns which armed the troops, were derived from old wives’ tales. You might say, of course, that this was a subconscious fitting-together of available facts which any inventor of new devices applied more systematically. You might. The Duke didn’t.

Encouraged, Duke Paul selected another kind of tale for investigation-the tale of a great city three days’ journey north of Esberg, with a million people in it. A ludicrous fantasy!

Yet three days’ journey north the men he sent out came upon mounds and hillocks clothed with greenery, gnawed by time, and dug into them. And there they found, true enough, pieces of worked metal, shards of strong glass, corroded household utensils, and more objects than anyone could have imagined.

And indeed now the proofs were beyond arguing. For ever since they set out on this greatest expedition of all, to see whether the legendary barrenland was real, Granny Jassy had been able to tell them of the terrain ahead-not as it was today, but as it might have been in the weird but consistent world of the old tales, when men lived in the gigantic cities of which the ruins had been discovered, when they flew through the air and even … no, that was imagination, surely! To fly in the air was vaguely conceivable; birds and insects did it. But to fly beyond the air, to other worlds, was ridiculous. And even that absurdity paled beside the ultimate: the story of walking to other worlds than this.

“You look solemn, Yan!” Duke Paul boomed, and Yanderman came back from his musing with a start. Granny Jassy was getting off the couch. The crystal ball on its length of chain had vanished into the Duke’s pouch again. Kesford was going over his notes, correcting his writing so he could read it back tomorrow.

“I am,” Yanderman agreed. “I grow confused with the mixture of certainty and fancy which confronts us-as though somehow a little nightmare had leaked into the waking world.”

“Assuredly a beast such as attacked Ampier smacks of some playful god’s whimsy,” the Duke said. He rubbed his hands together. “Nonetheless he killed it, and lives-or will, providing that green horror on his shirt doesn’t take root in his blood. I confess I held the tales of monsters from the barrenland too lightly, or I’d not have sent out scouts singly. Tomorrow we’ll do otherwise. We’ll send a party of a dozen, fully-armed.”

Yanderman nodded. “I do take it as heartening,” he said, “that men manage to live almost on the edge of the barrenland.”

Duke Paul chuckled. “You noted that! Good, good! Yes, we must gain all the information we can from those best fitted to tell us. Get the exactest details of Ampier’s route, and make straight for this smudge of smoke he fancied he saw. If it proves to be other than a village, go beyond it till you find people.”

Well, that was how one usually received orders from Duke Paul. Yanderman shrugged. “I’ll do so,” he agreed. “I’ll leave directly after dawn.”

He paused, expecting something further. But as far as Duke Paul was concerned the matter was settled. Already he had gone back to his maps, and his head was bowed as though tilted forward by the weight of his enormous beard.