by Tuson, Mark
Something else had changed, as well. It took Peter a moment to realize, but Atlosreg now looked to be about the same age as Peter himself. The only things not to were his eyes.
They walked out briskly, Peter imitating Atlosreg’s rapid gait. After some minutes of marching, they reached the high wooden palisades which formed the perimeter. Two guards were stood at a gate, one on either side, looking very official and important as they stopped Atlosreg and Peter, saying something Peter couldn’t understand. Atlosreg responded, motioning once or twice toward Peter. This must have satisfied whatever reason they had for stopping them: they let them pass.
For ten minutes, the two of them marched side-by-side through the Werosaian countryside. The first two were terrifying for Peter, who marched straight, holding his head high and not daring to breathe.
After this, he started to calm down, and even started thinking this might be an opportunity to take notice of what the land looked like. Apart from the red sky and the resulting anaemic quality to the light, there appeared at first glance to be no sun in the sky, just an endless background of red, graduating toward a slightly darker shade of red at the horizon. After a few moments of staring around the area of sky he could see without turning his head significantly, he finally noticed that there was a sun after all: an ever-so-slightly paler disc hanging low in the sky, far off to his left. It appeared to be maybe ten or fifteen times the size, in the sky, of the Sun he was accustomed to seeing.
The land itself was dry and cracked, with odd weeds which superficially resembled some kind of grass poking out hither and yon. There were hills visible off in the distance, and trees dotted sparsely about the landscape.
There seemed to be no other features Peter could see, and it struck him how desperate this place really was: a world which had already been dead when it was created, the only thing left for it do during its entire existence being to rot and decay. He felt chills shimmer down his spine, like so many shards of glass, each one cutting deep into him and exposing more flesh for the next.
When they were both sure that they were outside the Militia’s range of sight, they stopped, and Atlosreg removed the spells he had put on them to change their respective appearance.
‘There is a village around here. Between those hills.’ He pointed at two hills in the distance. ‘About an hour’s walk, unless you want to run and get there faster?’
‘Wait a sec,’ said Peter, taking out his wand. ‘We can run there in about ten minutes if it’s an hour’s walk.’ He took his turn to cast spells on each of them: the combination of spells he had used when he was running away from the Werosaian forces near Blackpool: speed, stamina, heightened reflexes and more efficient respiration. To cast on both of them took about ten seconds.
‘Will you be alright running?’ Said Peter.
Atlosreg chuckled; a rare thing, which in itself was a little frightening. ‘Follow me.’ And he set off, momentarily moving fast enough to make Peter wonder if he had a hope of keeping up, before remembering the spells he had cast a matter of seconds ago and setting off himself.
Even though he was running at what was probably a little under twenty miles per hour, the effort Peter was exerting to maintain that pace felt more like that of a leisurely jog. As he followed Atlosreg across the dry, cool land, he ceased to notice the deadness of it: scrolling by, the whole thing seemed to merge into a continuous loop of dead earth.
The thoughts drifting through his mind were dark and depressing; realizations of how grim it really was drove him past merely wanting to be sick straight into wishing he could vanish into his own nihilistic realm of calm surreality. He and Atlosreg had been in Werosain for less than an hour – more like half – and between them they had already killed half a dozen people and infiltrated a military installation. It didn’t feel right in any way, and Peter started to have doubts concerning whether or not he would be capable of committing such a vast a magnificent act of destruction as calling an end to this world, if he had had misgivings about something as insignificant – by comparison – as killing a few enemy militias. He supposed time would tell: they weren’t here to call an end to the place just yet.
One other thing concerned Peter greatly, and that was whether, given the guard at the Army’s compound, and how they would surely be looking for Atlosreg and himself by now, they would be able to get home. He didn’t much like the idea of being killed here, and he liked the idea of being stuck here for the rest of his life even less.
They were reaching the hills Atlosreg had pointed out, and in the space between them was what looked at this distance like a group of piles of sticks. As they came closer to the place, he saw they were actually houses. Some looked like large tipis, around fifteen feet wide at the base and twenty feet tall in the middle; some had vertical walls and more obtusely-angled roofs, though they were still round; some again looked as though the builders had simply made two straight walls out of bundles of branches and then leaned them against one another, forming an invert V shape. At first these basic types of architecture seemed completely alien to him, but after a moment he realized that he had seen buildings like these before, in the dream in which he had seen Rechsdhoubnom first declare himself. This was Palaeolithic architecture, unevolved in spite of all these thousands of years.
‘Bloody hell,’ he said, under his breath.
They stopped about fifty yards away from the closest of these buildings, and Atlosreg signalled Peter to remove the spells he had put on each of them. When he had, Atlosreg spoke.
‘This is where I came from.’
There was a certain wistfulness in Atlosreg’s bearing, as though he was loath to admit he had missed the place, on the principle of having risked his very life to leave this whole world behind. Peter wanted to ask if he was feeling alright, but he had a strong suspicion that if he did, he would very quickly come to regret it.
They continued walking. There weren’t any people around, Peter guessed they must all be at work, doing whatever it was they did. Tending crops, looking after children, whatever. They moved between the houses, toward the centre of the settlement, where there was a circle built of loose stones, holding fragments of wood, charcoal, and ash. Fire must be a communal activity, Peter thought. He could see, further off in the direction they were walking, a slim brook. It couldn’t have been flowing with any force, however; it wasn’t making a sound.
He stopped walking, about ten feet from the circle of stones, and turned slowly on his heel, looking around and taking in his surroundings. It was a dilemma: he couldn’t make up his mind whether he pitied these people and their plight, or hated them for having not made any apparent effort to improve their situation.
Something was slowly fading into audibility, which initially sounded like the brook had started to flow with a little more force. After a few seconds, however, the sound became closer and clearer, and it was obvious that it wasn’t flowing water. It sounded like people walking and talking and laughing. He turned to face the sound, and saw the village’s residents walking toward where he and Atlosreg were standing.
‘They have been hunting,’ Atlosreg observed. ‘It must be evening here.’
Peter frowned. Commenting about the time of day made no sense, other than it felt a little like evening. It didn’t seem like a very astute thing to say, unless there was some more significant meaning behind it, which Peter hadn’t been able to divine. He shrugged inwardly, deciding that if there was some significant meaning, he would find it out sooner or later. Asking would have made him seem stupid, and he wasn’t much in the mood for that.
The people began to approach where they were, near the fire pit at the centre of the village, and as they came closer Peter looked at them. There were all sorts of shapes and sizes of people, just as there were on Earth, though they all had a set of common features: they were well-built, fairly muscular people, with broad shoulders and faces, dark brown hair, and darkish skin; a broadly Mediterranean look, which made no evolutionary sense given the
lack of bright sunshine.
Some wore long tunics of skin or woven wool, some wore shorter ones with woollen trousers, though there seemed to be no distinction in attire between the males and the females. Most of them wore roughly-made leather boots, except the children, who straggled behind the adults on bare feet.
They seemed curious as to who the two strangers were. However, to Peter’s surprise, they were no more than that: no other attention was paid to Peter or Atlosreg by anyone as they deposited their weapons, baskets of fruits and other vegetative foodstuffs, and, finally, carried by five older men each, two large animals which resembled cows, all on the ground.
Peter was fascinated, from anthropological and proto-historical points of view, in witnessing what looked like the open of an ages-old ritual surrounding the taking of the evening meal. While not reverential in what they did next, they were respectful and careful. One of the older men – the men all looked older, now he thought about it – took out a slightly leaf-shaped knife and knelt over the first of the two animals, and began to butcher it.
At the same time, a few other men carried a number of large faggots of wood to the fire pit, walking past Atlosreg and Peter as though they weren’t there, and deposited them therein, and then walked away. Then two people, an elderly couple, stepped forward, and in unison each held short staves in the air and made identical movements with them. Immediately, the wood started to burn.
Peter stared with rapt interest, watching the scene. Now he was here among the people, albeit as a blatant outsider, he could barely remember what he was here to do. He just wanted to watch everything and learn all about what these people did, what they were about.
Atlosreg, however, seemed to have other ideas: he tapped Peter on the shoulder and motioned for both of them to move back a short way. Reluctantly, Peter did so, Atlosreg leading the way to some people he seemed to know. They spoke, in the same language Peter had heard him speak earlier. When Peter caught up, Atlosreg looked between him and the people he had led him to. He seemed excited at the presence of a particular old woman.
Peter didn’t have to wonder who this woman was, because suddenly Atlosreg was speaking.
He looked straight at Peter. ‘This is my sister, Bhlota. I did not know she would still be alive…’ He trailed off, looking slightly tearful. Bhlota looked at Peter, full of curiosity. She had the same eyes as Atlosreg, but a much more worn face: if Peter had been told to guess how old she was, he might have ventured somewhere in the region of two hundred and sixty or so, but it was obvious that she couldn’t be. She was probably younger than Atlosreg was. He didn’t ask; he didn’t know how much of a faux pas it would have been to do so.
There wasn’t any way he knew to greet her, so he settled for carefully saying her name and respectfully bowing his head.
‘Teloqai ne niseros dongwa,’ Atlosreg said to her, inclining his head to indicate Peter. Peter looked at them both, and Atlosreg, sensing his disadvantage, translated what he had said: ‘I told her you don’t speak our language.’
‘Aah.’
Bhlota looked between Peter and Atlosreg and spoke. ‘Welts juwn es weskain kum naserme?’
Atlosreg smiled, and looked at Peter. ‘She wants to know if we will be eating with them.’
Peter smiled too, feeling very touched at being invited. ‘Yes, if that’s alright.’ He looked at Bhlota and said ‘thank you.’
‘Jai,’ said Atlosreg to her. ‘Qe seqoa “moitmos.”’
She looked at Peter. ‘Cratos.’
They all stood together, Atlosreg and his sister and her family – his family, Peter supposed – and Peter himself, among the rest of the village folk, as the two bovine-looking animals were cut up and placed over the now-impressive fire to cook. There were people talking amongst themselves, but most of them were quiet: cooking, it seemed, was something of a solemn affair.
In fact, it appeared to Peter that there was a lot of solemnity in these people. But then, he supposed, life was serious business to them; there was more at stake and less to achieve. Finding and cooking food was a daily achievement, and one which couldn’t be taken lightly because of the kind of achievement is was.
After some time, when the meat was cooked, it was divided among everyone, and once everyone had their share they all sat down circles which, as far as Peter could tell, represented the households of this village.
Food was given to people in their bare hands, along with some rough, doughy sort of flatbread and a fruit which Peter couldn’t quite identify – it looked like a small apple, and he was somewhat nervous about trying it. The meat, on the other hand, looked and smelled delicious. The piece he had been given was like a healthy-sized steak, and when he tasted it he was suddenly surprised it hadn’t been hunted to extinction: it was like something between beef and venison in how rich, tender, and
The atmosphere went from solemn to jovial as soon as they started – this was the time to enjoy the fruits of the day’s labour, and enjoy it they did, with people occasionally standing and talking: telling jokes, from what Peter could gather, or stories, or singing songs. It was the atmosphere of a party or barbecue.
Something, however, was bothering Peter. The atmosphere had shifted from early evening to night time, but there was something about it that was off. At first, he couldn’t tell what it was, but after they had finished eating and the fire had started to die down, he realized what was wrong.
‘Atlas,’ he leaned in, whispering. ‘The sun isn’t setting.’
‘No. It never has, and it never will.’
That was peculiar, and it poked like a stick into a wasp’s nest: his head was buzzing with questions which he wasn’t sure whether or not he should ask. Or whether or not the answers would be known to whomever he might ask.
He located the sun in the sky and stared at it. The longer he looked, the more details seemed to resolve in his vision: flames and flares and even clouds; dark spots, light spots… it seemed a little familiar. In fact, it reminded him of something he had read about when he had been younger, excursing into astronomy and cosmology: a brown dwarf.
As best he could remember, brown dwarfs were a hypothetical middle-ground between gas giants and small stars: bodies with a high enough mass of hydrogen to achieve some small self-sustaining thermonuclear reaction, but not quite high enough to achieve ‘proper’ fusion and nucleosynthesis of heavier elements. It was hot enough to glow, but not to shine.
Was that what this was? If it was, then it was no wonder the place was dead and cold – they didn’t even have a proper sun. His after-dinner contentment waned away as he was once again filled with a slow, quiet feeling of utter disgust at the state of the world he was in.
He looked way, feeling weak. He wanted to walk. After excusing himself – and Atlosreg translating for him – he stood up and walked away from the village. He didn’t want to leave, he just wanted to be walking, moving around. He wanted to feel a little more alive than realizing how dead Werosain was made him feel.
There wasn’t far he could walk, since he didn’t know his way around anywhere here, but that was fine: he walked a little further down in the direction he and Atlosreg had been walking when they were on the way to the village, and then back after a few minutes, and then looped around the village. Eventually, he rejoined Atlosreg and his family.
‘Are you alright?’ Atlosreg shocked Peter by showing concern – not merely expressing it in actions, but in words.
‘Yeah,’ Peter replied. ‘Just feel a little strange is all.’
‘I understand.’
The fire had almost died, the wood being all spent but for a few warm embers still smouldering in the middle. The place was getting quiet, everyone was tired. A few people were drinking some liquid from a bowl which was being passed around, and when it reached Atlosreg he took a gulp and offered it to Peter.
‘Try it.’
He did. It tasted sweet and floral like mead, but had a slightly more acidic tone to it. Maybe it was a melomel, m
ade with some local fruit. He enjoyed it, but he doubted very much that the rest of the people still there would appreciate it if he kept the bowl, so he reluctantly passed it on.
Eventually, there was only Peter, Atlosreg and Bhlota left; the rest of the village – and even the rest of Bhlota’s family – had returned to their respective homes to sleep. Peter had mainly been sat there with the two of them, listening to them jabbering away about whatever it was they were jabbering away about. There was only very little he could understand: while he had learned how to read their language as transcribed into Latin writing, he hadn’t ever had an opportunity to learn how to speak or understand it as a living, spoken language. This was something he would, when he had the opportunity, have to change. It would be interesting to be able to speak to these people for himself.
With the sun still being in the sky, it was difficult to sense what time it was, but to him it felt like about two o’clock in the morning.
When, at last, Bhlota left, Peter realized that he and Atlosreg didn’t have anywhere to sleep. He looked at Atlosreg, puzzled, but Atlosreg didn’t seem all that concerned. Or else maybe he hadn’t realized.
After a moment, Peter decided he would have to ask. ‘Where are we going to sleep?’
‘Sometimes houses are left for when people come to visit. I asked Bhlota, she said there’s one over there.’ He pointed, and Peter looked across to where he was indicating. It was one of the tipi-like houses, with a piece of skin draped over the doorway. ‘So we can go over there and get some rest now.’
That sounded like a good plan to Peter. ‘That’s a good idea,’ he said. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m buggered.’
Atlosreg sighed and nodded. ‘Buggered.’
Peter laughed, and they walked over into the small house. There wasn’t much inside, other than three beds which appeared to be made from something like flattened bags of straw. The cloth looked rough, but when he sat on one it felt rather soft. The bed itself was firm, which was how he preferred it.
