The Madness Season, page 17
The Tekk woman looks at me, amusement telegraphed in her broad, gleaming smile. "Earth-born?" she asks me.
"Is it so obvious?"
"Harosh! The hair," she says, running a hand over her own polished scalp.
"So," The gov'n said thoughtfully. "Bael says ye've come t'trade?" Like my guide, he neither offered his name nor asked for mine. But neither did he guard his people's names with superstitious zeal—one reassuring point, anyway.
I affirmed my purpose in coming, and—when asked—my willingness to comply with the settlement's customs.
"Y'understann," he told me—and I barely did, due to his local accent—"we've n'Tyr in this place. Nor want'ne. That's all'r custom's for, y'see? T'protect's."
"I understand."
He furrowed his brow as if disturbed by my accent, then continued. "So, n'order t'see that no Tyr get in here—or their eyes, y'understann—we'll have t'detain ye t'do a passin. B'fore God, n'all."
My fur did bristle at that. And even though I knew myself human, and the wolf-images had faded from my immediate memory, I couldn't rid myself of the sensation. It wasn't that I had anything against God, as an individual, but ... call it bad memories.
Timefugue beckoned; I concentrated on the present. "Of course."
He gestured toward where Bael stood, behind me. But instead of my guide, two husky guard-types came to where I stood, and flanked me.
"We 'preciate for y'understannin. The God of Earth go with ye."
"And with you," I murmured, as a meaty hand beckoned the way. What have I gotten myself into ?
They led me out of the governor's house—little more than a hut, by Earth standards—and through the streets of the central village. The close-set walls, with roofs that extended well into the street, gave the impression of underground tunnels. Not unlike the interior of the angdatwa, I thought; I wondered if the mimicry was deliberate. All the people were dressed alike; when they saw that I wasn't, they turned hurriedly away and went about their business, eyes carefully averted. Or maybe I was being too sensitive about my dress; maybe they simply found a full head of hair repellent.
In the center of the village, a stone's throw from the nearest of the manor house's walls, stood a solidly built, windowless cabin. A thick plank barred the door shut, a primitive—but alarmingly effective—lock.
I didn't yet know all my limitations, but one thing was certain: any form I changed into was approximately my size. I looked over the thick walls, the steel-reinforced door, the small metal grill which allowed air to circulate within, and thought: Once I enter this prison of theirs, no power of mine can get me out.
But what choice did I have? If I wanted human contact, I would have to play by their rules. And so I ducked—the portal was low, better suited to their height than mine—and allowed myself to be locked inside.
To my surprise, I wasn't alone. Two men were sprawled on either side of a low table, upon which wooden chips had been laid in an intricate pattern. Some kind of game, no doubt. One of them was short and thickset, a typical Cantona somatype. The other was leaner and longer of limb, and gave me hope that the planet, as a whole, housed a wider variety of racial types than the one. The Cantona type was bald, but the leaner man had short brown hair; a far cry from my own graying blond, but comforting nonetheless.
"Y'r welcome," said the shorter man, and the other waved me in. "Make a place," he offered. I slung my burden to the ground and sat where he indicated, by the third side of the small table. My immediate instinct was to assess their behavior for dominance patterns. But that was my wolf-soul speaking; it's hard, after days in an animal body, to reestablish human behavior patterns.
"Outsider?" asked the taller man.
I nodded.
"Y'play?"
"'Fraid not."
"Ah." He nodded and went back to his contemplation of the pieces. After a while he moved one, shifting the geometric pattern slightly. His companion, after some thought, did the same.
"Come t'trade, I see."
I nodded. "You?"
"Same. Doriyek spice, an'assort." He indicated his shorter companion. "Is native, that one. Ungar Dumayesh Ro-Kazzek ... is it Saen?"
"Saen it is," the shorter man agreed.
"Saen Taal. I, am called Degas of the Greedy Hand. Degas is from the Tyr, y'see. Doriyek custom, not t'use more oft than we have to. Th'reference is to m'chips playing, not my prices, by th'way."
After a moment's hesitation I introduced myself. Making up a false name, hoping it would sound legitimate. Using my real one on this planet might come back to haunt me someday.
I was able to get considerably more information out of my companions-in-prison than I had out of my previous Cantona contacts. Apparently it was normal for us to be locked up this way. All visitors were, even those village inhabitants who spent time over the mountains, in "lands that'r not freer Tyr." A gathering would be called within two days, and we would be brought out for "passin on." A high priest of Cantona (their reverence for him bordered on fear, which worried me) would call on God to pass judgment on us, there would be assorted ritual nonsense, and—assuming that we were not some kind of Tyr in disguise—we would be free to go about our business in the settlement for as long as we wanted.
(A loose translation, that; there were two words of religion spoken for every one of information, but I thought I had the gist of it.)
And we would be fed, in the meanwhile. And given "bath stuffs," and every other nicety of Cantona existence—save freedom. That last was for God to grant, and God alone.
It wasn't God that worried me. He had always seemed a reasonable deity, and His laws—though they banned my kind from worship—had always seemed at least marginally rational. But as for what men had been known to do, in His name . . .
As I went to bed that night on the rope cot to which I had been assigned, I wondered if I had gotten in over my head. And comforted myself, as I looked over the solid walls of my prison, and the tiny grating that a starving cat couldn't have squeezed through, that it didn't matter very much whether I had or not, since I damned well couldn't get out of here.
You're committed, Daetrin, whether you like it or not.
* * *
They came to shave us. I should have seen it coming. Degas first, laughing as his light brown fringe fell to the rough cloth which had been laid beneath him. Myself afterward, with considerably less good humor. I noticed that they touched the back of my head more than once, as though searching for something; perhaps there was more to the custom than mere fashion.
I remembered to be bald in the morning.
* * *
The middle of the night. My second night in Cantona. A frenzied banging burst through the bonds of sleep and brought my companions fully awake in an instant. I, having been awake but lost in thought, was equally startled.
"Ungar!" The voice outside was clipped, urgent. "Ungar! Are y'in?"
The Cantona trader sat upright; even in the near-total darkness I could read the tension in his posture.
"Raal—is't you? What's on?"
A scraping sound resonated through the thick-walled cabin. After a moment I recognized it as the bar being lifted from, the door.
Ungar was on his feet by the time the door opened, and Degas a moment later. Two men stood in the portal, outlined against the meager, filtered moonlight of the streets.
"They're commin'," one said, and I heard fear in his voice.
"Hell!" Ungar swore. "How many?"
"Too many. Time for every hand, Cantona. Y'with?"
"But custom—"
"Been waived. Y'with?"
Degas was clearly confused. "Ungar, what—"
"The fields!" Ungar snapped. "Come'n see—or stay'n wait, as y'choose." He turned toward me for a brief, fleeting instant and told me, "And you, too, if y'will. It's ever' hand is valued now."
And then he was gone. As I stared at the empty portal, I began to notice distant sounds: Running.
Yelling. I looked at Degas, and he at me. And then, by unspoken agreement, we left the safe haven of our prison and turned toward the east, the way Ungar had gone. Running, to catch up with him.
By the time we did so, he had joined a band of men spread out along the ditch surrounding the farmlands. Most of the men were half-dressed, as we were, but even so they all wore heavy leather boots that were scarred from extensive wear.
"Here y'are." A bucket was thrust into my hand, and an acrid odor—kerosene?—drifted up to my nostrils. The thruster turned to go, his hand already extended to deliver the next bucket, when he suddenly seemed to notice me for the first time.
"Outsider?"
I nodded.
"Y'first?"
Again I nodded.
"Take't and pour," he instructed. With his free hand he gestured broadly, along the course of the ditch.
Other men with similar buckets were already pouring a thin line down the center of the nearest sections.
"Somewhere where the others aren't, y'see?"
I saw. Children were running here and there, their arms filled with bundles of dry brush. A quick glance assured me that the ground nearest the ditch had been stripped of all vegetation, which confirmed my initial impression; we were creating a fire line. For what purpose, I didn't know.
I tried to make myself useful. A sense of urgency was sharp in the air, and along with the acrid fumes it was a heady substance. As I worked alongside the villagers, preparing the shallow ditch to burst into flames at the first presentation of fire, I was oblivious to all things other than my bucket, the stink of my burden, and the disposition of the work force surrounding me. It took me a while to realize that beyond the clatter of tin receptacles and the clipped, nervous chatter of the workers, there was another, more ominous noise, coming down from the mountains.
At last the work was completed, and I stepped back. All about me faces were raised to the hills, eyes anxiously scanning them for any source of movement. A second work force was moving outside the wall, now, and the heads of their oddly-shaped weapons could be seen above the rough wooden planking.
"There they are." A voice that was filled with wonder, fear, and hate drew our attention to the outermost farmlands. And yes, there was movement in the distance. The moon, cloud-veiled, gave us only enough illumination to see that the grasslands were stirring, like earth that had suddenly come to life.
In the darkness we had no sense of color, and could not see the exchange—from the rich green of plant life to the gray and brown and tan of something else —until it was nearly upon us.
I drew in my breath sharply as I realized what was coming, only dimly felt the tugging on my sleeve as a co-worker urged me backward, out of the path of the fire line. Rodents, in some mutated Meyagan manifestation. The number of them was awesome, the sound of their passage like a storm-tossed sea breaking waves against a rocky shore. Similar to rats in their general configuration, but larger and longer legged; malformed, horrible creatures, whose fur grew in random, scraggly patches, whose bodies were emaciated and terrible to behold— who descended like locusts from the shelter of the western mountains and proceeded to lay waste to the farmlands, inch by precious inch. I was stunned, speechless, without the strength to act. Utterly horrified. They devoured the crops as they moved, a mouthful here and a mouthful there, the hinder ranks bounding on their fellows as they sought out their own choice morsels. I could see the labor of months disappearing in minutes, the few surviving shoots of a precious crop crushed beneath the sheer weight of that living blanket.
I turn to the Raayat, a question in my eyes. "An overabundance of herbivores," he explains. Behind me a wolverine claws its cage, and a nearby lynx hisses. "We are doing what must be done to restore balance ..."
The first one struck the wall. Like a shot it resounded, followed by another. And more. And hundreds more, like bursting popcorn, until individual sounds could no longer be distinguished. The fence creaked ominously; its braces bit deep into the earth, then held. A weapon was placed in my hand, but I couldn't bring myself to look at it. Outside the wall a battle was taking place, and I could see the details here and there where distance and elevation permitted.
The mangy horde was three or four deep, and the Cantona warriors waded through them as through a whirlpool. With long, deadly polearms they scythed through the mass of hungry flesh again and again and again, each stroke claiming half a dozen lives from among those who were struggling to breach the defensive wall. But for each one wounded, there were hundreds more; for each one killed, there were thousands. Was it not wholly futile, to do combat with such numbers? But no, after a time I saw that the villagers' defense had a pattern, and a specific purpose: to keep the sheer weight of the rodents'
onslaught from breaking down the fence. Knee-deep in rodents the men waded, and angry teeth gnawed at their boots as they scythed deep into the mounds of flesh that were slowly building up against the outside of the defensive wall. One of the creatures, by treading on the bodies of its fellows, managed to gain enough height to leap over the barrier; it was no sooner inside when a villager cut it down, but already there were more coming. The wall buckled ominously, and all the efforts of the men outside could not lessen the force of the onslaught sufficiently to save it. With a roar it split, a deep V-shaped gouge giving way to the thousands who were pressed up against it. First in one place, then another, as though the wall itself had realized the futility of its existence, and was giving up the fight.
Then the true battle began. I heard a roar, and a wall of flame raced across my field of vision. The smell of charred flesh was eloquent, telling us of creatures caught in the ditch when the fire line was lighted; I could see grim smiles on the men who were nearest me, an expression without hope or pleasure.
And still they came. There was no end to them, this tidal wave of ravenous animals, and against the wall of flame I could make out the dark, tiny shapes of those creatures who had made it past the fire line.
Most of them were dead, or nearly so, crowded out of the ditch by the thousands who came behind them. But some were alive, and had vaulted through the flame. And as I watched, horrified, more and more of them survived the deadly crossing. Buoyed up on the charred bodies of their fellows, they made their own bridges over the flames—smothering it out entirely, in places, and then advancing in earnest—until the bulk of the horde finally gained the ground they had been seeking: the rich inner lands of the Cantona farming community, the most precious crops of all that the valley contained.
Like locusts they came, and like locusts they devoured. I watched the ground go from green to brown before my eyes, and when the monsters moved on there was nothing but trampled earth remaining. I fought as best I could, and other, more experienced men fought with me on every side, using every tool that the villagers had devised to drive back the invaders—but the sheer mass of our adversary was bound to defeat us in the end. They tore nets, they snapped polearms, and trapped our blades in the currents of their flesh. And finally, when the survivors had eaten their fill and swarmed back the way they had come, through the several gaping holes in the perimeter fence, there was nothing left but a field of pillaged stalks, and the bodies of those thousands who had lost their lives in the plundering.
Dawn was lightening the eastern sky by the time I lowered my weapon and allowed myself the luxury of a few deep breaths. I heard sobbing—women's sobbing—and was dimly aware of a body being carried in from the outermost fields. As they brought him by me, I saw the face of a man who had made the mistake of falling in the path of the invaders; the expression of horror frozen on his face was etched instantly in my memory, and would never leave me.
Danger had blinded me to my own exhaustion, but now the danger had passed, and the hours of exertion caught up with me. My legs trembled, weakly, and then would no longer support me; I fell, and the hands which I thrust out to keep myself from hitting the earth too hard sank deeply into soft mud, sticky with the blood of the conquerors.
There I stayed, oblivious to my surroundings, until the shuddering of my exhaustion eased and I could find the strength to stand. As I moved, an arm fell on my shoulder. I looked up and saw dark eyes, Cantona eyes, in which all hoped had died. He nodded a silent thanks and then said, in voice that was dead from defeat, "Yil need t'be goin back, they tell me. Come. I'll take ye."
I walked dully back to the place of my imprisonment, and somehow managed to get there. Ungar and Degas were already there, collapsed at odd angles across the earthen floor. I was about to fall beside them when my guide put a hand on my shoulder and turned me to face him.
He looked at me for a long, silent minute, as if searching for something. At last he muttered "If you've eyes inya, stranger—and I'm not saying y'do, y'see—but if y'are of the Tyr . . . then now they know.
Now they've seen it, with eyes of their own. May they carry that vision t'their graves."
He spat, then, and closed the door. Or something of that nature. I remained awake long enough to know it was happening, then slipped into a deep and fitful slumber that told me just how damaged I was—for it was the true healing sleep of my kind, dreamless in nature, and therefore without the nightmarish replays that normal sleep might have brought.
Thank God. Thank God.
* * *
Ungar never awoke. Another fatality. By the time we were conscious and about, his skin was already cool to the touch and tinged with the blue of cyanosis. I wondered if they would bother to look into the exact cause of death, or just add it to the list of those others who had been killed by a combination of exhaustion, exposure to the elements, and despair.
In the afternoon, when our food was brought, they came and took his body away. As if to take his place they brought us another traveler, but we neither asked his name nor offered ours. Dinner contained a stew of shredded meats that might have contained some of our raiders; if so, its current form diplomatically disguised it. There was no product of grain to accompany it, and since I couldn't process any meat I pushed the bowl away, knowing that for once they wouldn't question me.
