The Brave Free Men Page 5

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Down from the Wildlands drove the Iridixn, and across the splendid forests of Canton Whearn. For a period the wind died completely; to pass the time Etzwane watched forest birds through the binoculars: undulating air-anenomes, pale green flickers, black and lavender dragon-birds … Late in the afternoon the wind came in a sudden rush; the Iridixn spun down the slot to the junction city Pelmonte.

  At Pelmonte water of the river Fahalusra, diverted by flumes, provided power for six huge lumber mills. Logs floating down the Fahalusra from the forests were cleaned, trimmed, ripped into planks by saws of sintered iron-web. In seasoning yards the lumber dried in clamps, underwent surfacing, impregnation with oils, stains, and special ointments, then was either loaded aboard barges or cut to patterns for far assembly. Etzwane had visited Pelmonte twice before as a Pink-Black-Azure-Deep Greener; he well remembered the redolence of raw sap, resin, varnish and smoke which permeated the air. The City Superintendent gave Etzwane an earnest welcome.

  The Roguskhoi were well-known in North Whearn; for years the lumbermen had kept a watch along the Fahalusra, turning back dozens of minor incursions, using cross-bows and pikes, which in the forests were weapons more advantageous than the thrown scimitar of the Roguskhoi.

  Recently the Roguskhoi had been attacking by night and in larger bands; the Whears had been driven back beyond the Fahalusra, to their great disturbance. Nowhere in Shant had Etzwane found so much zeal. The women had been sent south; the militia drilled daily. “Take this message to the Anome!” declared the Superintendent. “Tell him to send weapons! Our pikes and cross-bows are futile in the open country; we need energy-darts, flashing lights, death-horns, and dire contrivances. If the Anome in his power and genius will provide our weapons, we will use them!”

  Etzwane could find no words. The Anome, insofar as the office had meaning, was himself: a man with neither power or genius. What to say to these brave people? They should not be deceived; they deserved the truth. He said: “There are no weapons. At Garwiy the best technists of Shant are hard at work. They must be designed, tested, produced. The Anome can only do all he can.”

  The Chief Superintendent, a tall harsh-faced man, cried out: “Why so tardy? He has known of the Roguskhoi for many years; why is he not ready with the means to protect us?”

  “For years the Anome hoped for peace,” said Etzwane. “He negotiated, he thought to contain. The Roguskhoi of course have no ears for persuasion.”

  “This again is no subtle or refined deduction; anyone could have seen it from the first. Now we must fight and we have none of the tools! The Anome, whatever his reasons — softness, indecisiveness, fear — has betrayed us. I say this; you may report my words; the Anome can take my head, nevertheless it is the simple wicked truth.”

  Etzwane gave a curt nod. “Your candor does you credit. I will tell you a secret. The Anome who so diligently hoped for peace is Anome no longer. Another man has assumed the burden and now must do everything at once. Your remarks are precisely to the point.”

  “I am overjoyed to hear this!” cried the Chief Superintendent. “But in the meantime what shall we do? We have men and skill and the energy of outrage. We cannot throw ourselves away; we want to give our best: what shall we do?”

  “If your cross-bows kill Roguskhoi, build bigger cross-bows, with greater range,” said Etzwane. He remembered the Roguskhoi encampment high in the Hwan. “Build gliders: one-, two- and six-man carriers; train flyers. Send to Haghead and Azume; demand their best gliders. Take these apart and use the pieces for patterns. For fabric and film send to Hinthe, Marestiy, Purple Stone; require their best in the name of the Anome. For cordage obtain the finest from Cathriy and Frill. In Ferriy the iron workers must set out new tanks; even though they lose their secrets, they must train new men … Call on the resources of all Shant in the name of the Anome.”

  From Pelmonte the Iridixn floated at speed to Luthe; from Luthe into Bleke a passenger barge towed the Iridixn down the Alfeis River against the sea-wind. From Bleke back into Luthe the Iridixn drove ahead of a long-keeled coracle, which followed the river as the dolly followed the slot. From Luthe to Eye of the East in Esterland, whence Etzwane took sailing packet to Morningshore and Ilwiy, this last canton actually in the territory assigned to Aun Sharah. Etzwane, however, thought to inspect conditions so that he might have a gauge by which to check Aun Sharah’s care and accuracy.

  From Ilwiy Etzwane returned to Eye of the East, again by ship. The gap in the balloon-way between Ilwiy and Eye of the East was one of several which must be closed as soon as possible! Likewise the long-planned link between Brassei in Elphine and Maschein in Maseach. The distance in each case was not great — perhaps two hundred miles — yet the balloon-way route between, in each case, extended more than sixteen hundred miles. Another loop might well be extended from Brassei west to Pagane, then through Irreale to Ferghaz at the far north of Gitanesq, then southeast through Fenesq to Garwiy. The isolated cantons Haviosq, Fordume and Parthe had small need for balloon-way service now, true, but what of the future?

  From Eye of the East the Iridixn drove back to Pelmonte, then swung out along the Great Southern Line, through those wild cantons fronting on the Salt Bog. In each canton Etzwane found a different situation, a different point of view. In Dithibel the women who owned and managed all shops refused to leave the mountain areas, out of the certain knowledge that the men would loot their stocks. At the town Houvannah Etzwane, hoarse with rage, cried: “Do you then encourage rape? Have you no sense of perspective?”

  “A rape is soon; a loss of goods is long,” stated the Matriarch. “Never fear, we have pungent remedies against either nuisance.” But she craftily refused to spell out the remedies, merely hinting that “bad ones will rue the day. The thieves, for instance, will find themselves without fingers!”

  In Burazhesq Etzwane encountered a pacifist sect, the Aglustids, whose members wore only garments fashioned from their own hair, which they argued to be natural, organic, and deleterious to no other living organism. The Aglustids celebrated vitality in its every aspect, and would eat no animal flesh, no vegetable seed or kernel, or nut, and fruit only when the seed might be planted and afforded a chance to exist. The Aglustids argued that the Roguskhoi, more fecund than man, produced more life and were hence to be preferred. They called for passive resistance to ‘the Anome’s war’. “If the Anome wants war, let the Anome fight,” was their slogan, and wearing their garments of matted hair they paraded through the streets of Manfred, chanting and wailing.

  Etzwane was at a loss as to how to deal with them. To temporize went against the grain of his temperament. Still, in what direction should he act? To take the heads of so many tattered wretches was an intolerable idea: on the other hand, why should they be allowed to indulge themselves in recalcitrance while better men suffered for the common good?

  In the end Etzwane threw up his hands in disgust and went his way into Shker, where he encountered a condition once more new and distinct, though with haunting echoes of the situation in Burazhesq. The Shker were diabolists, worshiping a pantheon of demons known as golse. They espoused an intricate and saturnine cosmology, whose precepts were based on a syllogism, thus:

  Wickedness prevails throughout Durdane.

  The golse are evidently more powerful than their beneficent adversaries.

  Therefore it becomes the part of simple logic to appease and glorify the golse.

  The Roguskhoi were held to be avatars of the golse and creatures to be revered. Arriving at the town Banily, Etzwane learned that none of the Anome’s orders had been heeded, much less acted upon. The Vay of Shker said with doleful fatalism: “The Anome may well take our heads; still we cannot range ourselves against creatures so sublime in their evil. Our women go willingly to them; we offer food and wine to their appetites; we make no resistance to their magnificent horror.”

  “This must stop,” declared Etzwane.

  “Never! It is the law of our
lives! Must we jeopardize our future simply for your irrational whims?”

  Once more Etzwane shook his head in bafflement and went on into Canton Glaiy: a region somewhat primitive, inhabited by a backward folk. They offered him no problems: the regions near the Hwan were uninhabited save for a few feudal clans, who knew nothing of the Anome’s instructions. Their relationship with the Roguskhoi was not unequal; whenever possible they waylaid and killed single Roguskhoi, in order to obtain the precious metal in bludgeon and scimitar.

  At the principal town, Orgala, Etzwane taxed the three High Judges with their failure to commission a militia; the Judges merely laughed. “Any time you wish a band of able men for your purposes, give us two hour’s notice. Until you can provide weapons and definite orders, why should we inconvenience ourselves? The emergency may pass.”

  Etzwane could not dispute the logic of the remarks. “Very well,” he said. “See that when the time comes you are able to perform as promised … Where is Camp Three, the balloon-way’s work agency?”

  The Judges looked at him curiously. “What will you do at Camp Three?”

  “I have certain orders from the Anome.”

  The Judges looked at each other and shrugged. “Camp Three is twenty-five miles south, along the Salt Bog Road. You plan to use your fine balloon?”

  “Naturally; why should I walk?”

  “No reason, but you must hire a tow of pacers; there is no slot.”

  An hour later Etzwane and Casallo in the Iridixn set forth to the south. The balloon-guys were attached to the ends of a long pole, which counteracted the buoyancy of the balloon. One end of the pole was attached to the backs of two pacers; the other end was supported by a pair of light wheels, with a seat on which the driver rode. At a fast trot the pacers set off down the road, with Casallo adjusting the aspect of the balloon to produce as little strain as possible. The ride was noticeably different from the movement of a balloon on the wind, a rhythmic impulse being communicated up the guys to the balloon.

  The motion and a growing tension (guilt? by dint of no great effort he might have come sooner to Camp Three) put Etzwane into a dour dyspeptic mood. The airy Casallo, with no concerns other than the abatement of his own boredom, brought forth his khitan; assured of his own musicianship and Etzwane’s envious admiration, he attempted a mazurka of the classical repertory which Etzwane knew in a dozen variations. Casallo played the tune woodenly and almost accurately, but on one of the modulations he consistently used an incorrect chord, which presently exasperated Etzwane to a state where he cried out in protest: “No, no, no! If you must pound that instrument, at least use the correct chords!”

  Casallo raised his eyebrows in easy amusement. “My friend, you are hearing the Sunflower Blaze; it is traditionally rendered thus and so; I fear you have no ear for music.”

  “In rough outline, yes. The tune is recognizable, though many times I have heard it played correctly.”

  Casallo languidly extended the khitan. “Be so good as to instruct me, to my vast gratitude.”

  Etzwane snatched the instrument, tuned the thumb-string* which was a pinprick sharp, played the passage correctly, with perhaps unnecessary brilliance. Then, working through a second modulation, he played an inversion of the melody in a new mode; then modulating again, he performed an excited staccato improvisation upon the original strain, more or less in accordance with his mood. He struck a double-handed coda with off-beats on the scratch-box and handed the khitan back to the crestfallen Casallo. “So goes the tune, with an embellishment or two.”

  * The five prime strings of the khitan are named for the fingers of the right hand; the four second-strings have names of unknown significance: Ja, Ka, Si, La.

  Casallo looked from Etzwane to the khitan, which he now somberly hung on a peg, and set about oiling his winches. Etzwane went to stand by the observation window.

  The countryside had become wild, almost hostile: patches of white and black rain-forest stood like islands on a sea of saw-grass. As they traveled south the jungles grew darker and denser, the saw-grass showed patches of rot, and presently gave way to banks of blue-white fleshmolt. Ahead gleamed the Brunai River; the road swung somewhat away and to the west, up and across a volcanic flow of rotten gray rocks, then detoured a vast field of overgrown ruins: the city Matrice, besieged and destroyed by the Palasedrans two thousand years before, now inhabited by the huge blue-black ahulphs of South Glaiy, who conducted their lives in a half-comic, half-horrifying travesty of human urbanity. The ruins of Matrice overlooked a peneplain of a thousand ponds and marshes; here grew the tallest osiers of Shant, in clumps thirty and forty feet tall. The workers of Camp Three cut, peeled, cured and bundled the withe, barged it down the Brunai to Port Palas, whence coastal schooners conveyed it to the balloon factories of Purple Fan.

  Far ahead appeared a dark blot which, through the binoculars, became Camp Three. Within a twenty-foot stockade Etzwane discerned a central compound, a line of work-sheds, a long two-story dormitory. To the left stood a complex of small cottages and administration offices.

  The road forked; the pacer team swung toward the administration offices. A group of men came forward and after a word with the driver tugged the balloon-guys down to sheaves anchored to concrete posts; the pacers, moving forward, drew the Iridixn to the ground.

  Etzwane stepped from the gondola into a world of humidity and heat. Above him Etta, Sassetta and Zael moved through whirling zones of color; the air over the wasteland quivered; mirages could not be differentiated from the myriad sloughs and ponds.

  Three men came slowly forward: one tall, full-fleshed, with bitter grey eyes; the second stocky, bald, with an enormous chin and jaw; the third somewhat younger, lithe and supple as a lizard, with inappropriate black ringlets and flint-black eyes. They were part with the landscape: harsh humorless men without ease or trust. They wore wide-brimmed hats of bleached saw-grass cord, white tunics, gray trousers, ankle-boots of chumpa*-hide; at their belts hung small cross-bows, shooting gandle-wood splints. Each stared coldly at Etzwane, who could not understand the near-palpable hostility and so for a moment was taken aback. More than ever he felt his youth, his inexperience, and, above all, the precariousness of his position.

  * Chumpa: amphibious creatures of the Salt Bog, cousin to the ahulph, but larger, hairless, and somewhat more sluggish of habit. The chumpa, combining the subtlety and malice of the ahulph with a hysterical obstinacy, were proof against domestication.

  He must assume control. In a neutral voice he said: “I am Gastel Etzwane, executive assistant to the Anome. I speak with the Anome’s voice.”

  The first man gave a slow ambiguous nod, as if at the confirmation of a suspicion. “What brings you here to Camp Three? We are balloon-way people, responsible to balloon-way control.”

  Etzwane, when he sensed hostility, had developed a habit of pausing to inspect the face of his adversary: a tactic which sometimes upset the other’s psychological rhythm and sometimes gave Etzwane time to choose among options. He paused now to consider the face of the man before him, and then chose to ignore the question altogether. “Who are you?”

  “I am the Chief Custodian of Camp Three, Shirge Hillen.”

  “How many men work at Camp Three?”

  “Counting all personnel: two hundred and three.” Hillen’s tone was surly, at the very edge of truculence. He wore a torc with the balloon-way code; the balloon-way had been his life.

  “How many indentured men?”

  “One hundred and ninety.”

  “I want to inspect the camp.”

  The corners of Hillen’s gray lips pulled back. “It is inadvisable. We have hard cases here; this is a camp for recalcitrants. Had you notified us of your coming, we would have taken proper precautions. At this moment I cannot recommend that you make your inspection. I will give you all relevant information in my office. This way, if you please.”

  “I must obey the Anome’s instructions,” said Etzwane in a matter-of-fact voice. �
�By the same token you must obey me or lose your head.” He brought out his pulse-emitter and punched buttons. “Candidly, I do not like your attitude.”

  Hillen gave the brim of his hat a twitch. “What do you want to see?”

  “I’ll start with the work area.” Etzwane looked at the other two men: the one bald and somewhat short, with immensely wide shoulders and long knotted arms which in some particular seemed twisted or deformed. This man’s face was curiously still and composed, as if his thoughts occupied an exalted level. The other man with the black ringlets and black eyes was not ill-favored, save for a long crooked nose, which gave him a devious dangerous look. Etzwane addressed the two together: “What are your functions?”

  Hillen allowed no opportunity for reply. “They are my assistants; I give orders which they carry out.”

  As Etzwane confronted the three men, his purposes underwent a change. Had Shirge Hillen received advance warning of his coming? If so — from whom, to what effect, and why? First, a precaution. Etzwane, turning on his heel, went to where Casallo lounged beside the Iridixn, studying a blade of saw-grass. “Something is very wrong here,” said Etzwane. “Take the balloon aloft; don’t bring it down unless I signal with my left hand. If I’m not back before sunset, cut your guys and trust to the wind.”

  Casallo’s aplomb was disturbed by not so much as a raised eyebrow. “Certainly; indeed; just as you wish.” He turned a glance of supercilious distaste over Etzwane’s shoulder. Etzwane swung around to find Hillen standing with his hand close at his dart-gun, his mouth twitching … Etzwane took a slow step back, to where he could now hold Casallo in view. In a sudden frightening dazzle had come a new realization: Casallo had been assigned to the Iridixn by officials of the balloon-way. Etzwane now could trust no one. He was alone.

  Best to maintain the face of trust; Casallo after all might not be party to the plot. But why had he not warned of Hillen’s hand so close to his dart-gun? Etzwane said in a voice of calm explication: “Be on your guard; if they kill both of us they’d blame one of the workers and who could prove otherwise? Get into the balloon.”