Beyond the Burning Lands

by John Christopher

  “And do you not find it,” I asked, “this knowledge which you prize?”

  “In part,” he said. “I find others things, too. Things I do not desire but must accept. There is still cheating and deceiving.”

  I nodded. “And I am not surprised that you tire of it. I would not care to spend so much time playing tricks in the dark on sweating commoners. But you cannot be kept to it.”

  “I am bound.”

  The frown was more a look of pain. I pressed his arm again.

  “Bonds can be loosened. When I come back.”

  • • •

  We rode north in good weather with fitful sunshine breaking through the clouds. We were twenty-three in number: Greene with his groom, a Sergeant called Bristow, sixteen troopers, Edmund, Hans and myself. And the peddler. He had exchanged his pack horse for one of my brother’s chargers. He called this a favor, praising the mount he had left behind, but I guessed he reckoned to do well out of the trade. I had looked at his old horse and not thought much of it; and he had already admitted that the land of the Wilsh could not match ours in beasts.

  The thaw had continued. Snow still lay in a few sheltered patches but for the most part the grass was fast growing and hawthorn bushes beginning to be green. In places shepherds had brought out their flocks. A boy near the limit of Winchester territory left his sheep on the hillside and raced down to stand on a piece of broken stone wall and watch our passing. He stared after us for a long time; until the curve of the hill came between us. I guessed he would go back to his beasts with a heart heavy with longing, and my own felt lighter for the assurance that we were on our way—that strange and wonderful things lay ahead, and gloom and sorrow and misery fell farther behind with every step our horses trod.

  It was some fifty miles from Winchester to the edge of the Burning Lands as a bird flies. But our way, of course, was less direct and Greene was in no hurry. He was a tall man, alert in bearing, given to noisy mirth in drink but with a cool mind in action. He put wax on his mustache and had a trick of rolling the ends into small tight spears. As he said, we should need their best from our horses later so there was no sense in flogging them at the start. And they had been in the city stables all winter and needed to get used to the fields.

  We spent the first night in Andover lands, at a village where they looked at us with fear and suspicion until Greene produced silver for our lodging. After that they swarmed about us and poured ale. We took a pot each for politeness’ sake but though they pressed us would have no more. We were on service and under discipline, as Greene told them. Though even the heavy ale-drinkers among the men found this small hardship: the ale was thin, ill-tasting stuff. The food was not much better and the straw thick with fleas. We woke before first light, the men scratching and cursing.

  From there we rode across the hills and came down in the afternoon to Marlborough, which lies as Salisbury does in a valley, but a deeper one. The town stood under Oxford sovereignty but was so far distant—more than thirty miles of hilly country—that it could almost be said to be independent. They acknowledged Oxford’s Prince but their own Captain General lived in princely style and they paid only a token tax.

  They struck me as dour, unfriendly people. The commoners watched our passage through their streets in silence, whereas in Winchester the sight of any troop of horse would have raised a cheer. The soldiers were as sullen and Stokes, the Captain General, was a glowering, taciturn man. He listened with evident disapproval to Greene’s account of our mission. Even if the thing were possible, which he doubted, he saw no sense in it.

  That night when they feasted us they unbent somewhat, but not much. Their eyes watched us and each other. I thought I understood them better then, because though the Great Hall was hung with lamps they were scarcely wanted: so bright was the glow that came in at the windows. The hills rose above the town and above the hills the sky was red, a heavy crimson from which now and then spouted gouts of orange flame. Seeing this I realized that darkness, which they never truly knew, could be a comforting and friendly thing. They lived their lives under this ominous light and it was small wonder they were soured by it. And there were ugly sounds as well—distant foreboding rumblings as the earth growled in pain.

  • • •

  North of Marlborough there were no roads and the going was hard. We were climbing, too, at times so steeply that we had to dismount and lead our horses. We reached a crest at last and saw what lay before us.

  The volcanoes spanned the horizon in a jagged line from the northeast to the southwest. Some burned and some lay quiet. Before and between them was a landscape of desolation and horror, where rivers of smoking liquid rock crawled through a wilderness of black and gray in which was no living thing. Merely looking at it was enough to cast the spirit down.

  The peddler reined his horse between Greene’s and mine. He pointed west of north.

  “Those peaks are dead and have been for years. The pass lies between them.”

  “How far?” Greene asked.

  “Two miles, say, to the place where the pass begins.”

  “And the pass itself—another three?”

  “About that.”

  “With a mile in which the ground is hot.”

  The peddler shook his head. “It is hot all the way. Or warm at least. But for a mile it smokes and you cannot put your hand to it.”

  Greene patted the water skin on his saddle bow.

  “We must hope these things work. It will do us little good to get through with crippled horses. But delay serves no purpose.” He rose, turning in the saddle. “You have been sniveling for warmth all winter. Forward now, and get your bellies full!”

  We kept well clear of the smoking rivers. The shoes of our horses struck sparks from hard black rock. They had been heavily shod before we left the city but would not want much traveling on a surface like this to have fresh need of a farrier. In places there were pools of water and these too steamed. One of them, away to our right, spouted high with a noise like a thousand kettles screaming together. Although up to now there had been talking and joking among the men, they rode here in silence.

  The pass, rising between two black cones, looked an easy one, though as naked and dark and arid as everything else. We stopped and fitted the leather boots over the legs of the horses. This had been practiced and they endured it patiently. The boots had been cunningly made by the dwarfs, with grease inside to ease their friction, but they must hamper the animals. Small pipes led from the water-skins to the top of each boot, from where containing rings of perforated metal would allow the water to trickle down. All this had been carefully designed, but of course no one had used it yet to ride over smoldering earth.

  We led the horses first, this being our best way of judging the heat. The surface was at times hard rock, at others loose and powdery. Reaching down one could feel the warmth. The dust was like sand but large-granuled and black.

  Gradually we began to feel it with our feet as well; no more than a glow under the sole at first but the glow increased and became discomfort. I put my fingers to the heel of my boot and quickly drew them back. Greene said:

  “I think this is where we make our dash. Mount and release the tap on the waterskin. Stay in single file and keep a distance to avoid fouling the man in front. Do not fall too far behind him, either! Delay adds delay, and Sergeant Bristow brings up the rear. He will not be pleased if he is kept waiting.”

  Greene led, followed by his groom and the peddler. Edmund and I came next; then the men and last the Sergeant. Greene signaled an order to trot, then canter, finally gallop. Some of the horses whinnied—from nervousness, I hoped, rather than discomfort. My own, a bay called Garance, was quiet except for the snorting of her breath and the dull thudding of her hooves.

  The ground was loose and became looser. It smoked only in patches but the patches were more and more frequent. Drops of water, flung from the horses’ legs, steamed as they touched the black sand. Above on either side loomed the ha
rsh black peaks from which this stone vomit had poured—and might again, since volcanoes could wake suddenly after long years of sleeping.

  I felt Garance stumble and recover. If a horse were to fall there would be a turmoil which might be disastrous for all behind, since the track here was too narrow for one to pass another. She had lost ground and I spurred her to make it up. Not that she required much spurring; I guessed she was feeling the heat by now.

  It was a long mile. The pass was unvarying and seemed endless. The tiny trickles of water would surely do little against this vast oven we must gallop over. I tried to shut my mind to such thoughts, concentrating on my own mount and that one in front. I got too near and sand, thrown up by the horse’s legs, weirdly cased in leather, stung my face.

  Then from ahead Greene’s voice called “Halt!” I pulled Garance in near him; the pass was wider and we could assemble. The ground no longer smoked; at least not here though higher up one saw white plumes lifting. Greene dismounted, knelt and pressed a hand into the dust. Straightening himself he said to the peddler:

  “It does not get hot again, lower down?” The peddler shook his head. Greene spoke to us all: “Then get these things off before we cripple the beasts. We are through.”

  Only then did I look ahead and see that the pass ran downhill to a desert plain like the one we had left behind. But beyond the plain there was a forest, the trees stark yet but with branches budding green.

  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 l
arge, 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.”