by John Barnes
It grew worse with time, and the poisoned-looking trees and grass gave way to dead ones, and then to sour dirt, and then the sour dirt became dry ash. The river beside them crept downward in a thick translucent ooze. When the air was not bitter and dry it was sour and damp; whatever life there might be watched from ledges and crevices invisibly.
"The nature of a ruler is the nature of a land," Cedric said. "You might think with Waldo gone—"
"It's better than it was last year," Euripides said.
Just before sunset they came to what they thought were the ruins of the first village. There was not a building with a wall standing altogether straight, or a door that did more than lean against its frame, or anything that moved in the dusty square. But as they passed, there were rustlings and scrapings. The villagers were coming out.
Though their faces were old, they were young, mostly, perhaps because their parents had starved to save them, perhaps because they were more immune to despair and so had not decided to die quite yet. They wore rags, and stared.
Calliope dismounted and approached the oldest of them, a man who might have been forty, and said, directly and firmly, "I am Calliope, Queen of Overhill, and I am here to take possession and to expel the Usurper and all his forces." Behind her, in the ashy breeze, the Raven and Rooster flag that one of Pseudolus's troopers had sewn for her fluttered and flapped a moment.
She had expected anything from great rejoicing to bitter railing, but not that the man would burst into tears and sink to the ground. Calliope bent to lift him, and said, "It's all right, it's all right, stand up, please . . ."
He stood and bowed, finally, and murmured, "I am one of the few in this country old enough to recall that flag, Majesty, or to even know what a queen is. But the others will learn."
That night they ate field rations again, plus dressed meat from gazebo shot earlier in the day, and though the troops might have thought it no better than middling for on the march, to the villagers it was a feast. Calliope moved among them, asking here, picking up a story there, coming to understand. Many in the village had traveled, to sell what little the mines yielded (mainly proscenium, and a few semiprecious stones, samnites and smithereens, chiefly) or to serve in Waldo's forced labor battalions. Overhill was all much like this, "bled down to nothing to build his army for the war on the Kingdom, and now thrown away as a husk," one woman said. "It's as if it's not enough to shake all the wealth of the world out of Overhill, he wants to make sure that no one will ever come here again."
In the morning, they found they had volunteers, most of whom did not seem fit to march a single furuncle, but they selected a few of the strongest. They could be armed only with staffs and clubs, but that did not seem to trouble them. They kept pace, and they were quiet on march, Cedric noted, and after a while he added to his notes that their faces were set in grimaces of hate, and then that every so often a smile—very different from the grimace—would creep across their faces, and finally at the last stop of the day he noted that they seemed to be getting taller and stronger with every furuncle they marched.
In the course of their first full day in the kingdom, the Army of the West passed through eleven more villages and towns along the road to Oppidum Optimum—Cedric's diary, and the notes Calliope began to keep with an eye toward putting Overhill back in order, both agree on that. They found fresh recruits at each one, and by the day's end their numbers, in addition to the eighty or so men Captain Pseudolus had supplied, were up to between 650 (Cedric's number) and 825 (Calliope's).
Late in the evening they captured a crumbled, rusting, and useless arsenal, from which they retrieved nothing of value except some escree blades, and took, without fighting, an army granary, guarded by one sickly sergeant and seven of the made men. They quietly beheaded the made men, and the sergeant seemed to recover, but later that night he died in a thrashing fit, his eyes wide with horror.
When they opened the bursting silos—filled by extortion from the starving farmers, years back when some corners of Overhill had still grown wheat, barley, or flan—much of it had rotted. Yet there was enough still good to replenish rations, and by late that night, when Cedric and Calliope at last laid down their pens and went to bed, heads full of plans and decisions and questions, it was clear that this diversion should get far enough to get Waldo's attention. Beyond that all hopes were wild—and abundant.
The following morning, they found that four thousand new would-be recruits for the Army of the West had arrived in the night.
5
Matters Begin to Reverse, and Favorable Endings Are Pointed To
When at last he wrote the brief Memoirs of which we have a fragment, Amatus passed over the battle on Long River Road with a few brief sentences. Robber Baron: The Rise of the Thunder Family from Terror of the North to the Kingdom's Most Respected Barony, which purports to be by Deacon Dick Thunder, contains a lengthy account, but its authorship is fraudulent, it is plain that parts of it were collected from people who were not eyewitnesses, and it contains outrageous lies.
So our best guide is probably Amatus's description, which agrees with the equally brief report filed by Captain (Acting General) Palaestrio, with such details as the purported Thunder biography can supply; but the reader must remember that he or she has been warned, and has only herself or himself to blame if she or he ends up believing in things which did not happen.
Amatus picked his ground fairly far up into the foothills. As the Army of the North prepared, from the way the new King stared into space with some frequency, others assumed he was working on strategy, but Psyche knew.
"Look here, Majesty, stop mooning about Calliope, who will be just fine, and get down to working out your disposition of forces," she said, laying a hot plate of breakfast before him.
He looked up and smiled so sadly that many were glad they could only see half of it. "Was it so obvious? Well, then, sit with me, take notes for me, and we'll get the battle plan set. I confess I have neglected it, but truth to tell it is a simple thing."
Without exactly asking, or not asking, she sent messengers for Thunder and Palaestrio, and the Council of War was under way. As Amatus said, it was a simple thing, now that they knew the secret of the made men. The real men whose souls were so divided up had only wit enough left to follow orders, which Waldo himself would have to give.
Waldo was cunning, but his situation would be impossible. He could not let the Army of the North come down to besiege him, so he must come up to fight it, and in these hills he could only come up the Long River Road. And from the Long River Road, a thousand of the best hands ever laid to an omnibus or festoon were waiting to cut down his men. Thus Amatus's plan amounted only to getting Waldo's army to where the Army of the North could shoot the real men, and staying under cover until Waldo's forces fell apart.
Once they did, Amatus's men carried improvised hand weapons to use in butchering the made men—the lumbermen their axes, the potato farmers sharpened spades, and the fishermen their voltage spikes.
Waldo's one hope had lain in forcing them to fight at night, but again, they had the better of him, for he had to take the offensive after a few days of Deacon Dick Thunder's raiding. Thunder's men would ride up to some village, purchase the houses and property with an IOU drawn on the Royal Treasury, allow people to carry off whatever of their own goods they wanted, carefully (so as not to endanger anyone) burn the village, and then pay a few trusty souls to ride to Waldo's nearest garrison and report the raid. This made it certain Waldo would ride north, for already songs were being sung that he had no power in the North, that his writ stopped at the Winding River, and in the Kingdom, even under a usurper, song today was true tomorrow. Everyone knew that, for it was in the oldest songs.
So Waldo had marched north with his full army, but during the day his men, real and made, were no longer adequate to guard his goblins and undead, and Thunder's men would crash into camp from one side or other, grigs whirling on ropes tied to saddles, to drag tenting off his he
lpless forces, slaying hundreds of goblins and undead at a stroke (and always costing Waldo a few more real men in the attendant shooting). The goblins began to desert down every hole they could find, and the undead, who could not desert, now waited to die more than they waited to feed. Thus, as Waldo neared the positions Amatus had prepared in the hills, since he thought he faced only Thunder and some two hundred riders, it seemed safer to the Usurper to press the attack and try to beat them once and for all, either by daylight or by keeping them engaged until the sun fell.
As simple things are wont to, Amatus's plan worked. Thunder's men, pursued by most of the horsemen of the foe, raced up the road, and as the outlaws passed the arranged marker, omnibuses barked and rang from every rock and tree above. The real men fell dead in droves, and the survivors, catching the load of so many made men upon their souls, plunged from their saddles. Behind them, the advancing army of foot shuddered and began to crumble, but the real men remaining, who had little left of their souls except their fear of Waldo, forced themselves to continue.
Behind Waldo's army, undetected because Waldo had no one fit to scout, grim-faced northern gazebo hunters climbed into the trees, and lumbermen and potato farmers crouched behind bushes and rocks, for though the land was too rugged to march an army through, these men were tougher than the land. At Sceledrus's signal, omnibus fire roared out of the hills behind and above Waldo's main body, and more real men fell. Sceledrus said later that it seemed that many of the real men deliberately stepped out of the press of their soldiers, holding their weapons well to the side and baring their chests to the shot, and died with smiles of relief. And it may well be true, for surely the burden of having their souls so sliced and parceled must have weighed down on them until they were glad to have it lifted by any means, and besides, it is not the sort of lie that Sceledrus was capable of inventing.
Waldo, naturally, rode away swiftly when he saw how it was going, and those of his real men who were not cut down as they fled had left so much of their souls behind in the made men that they could go only a little way before collapsing. The battle had begun halfway through the morning, and before noon Waldo was headed back to the city as swiftly as he could manage, the remnants of his army trailing after as best they could. Late in the day, Thunder's men rode in and set fire to the carts carrying the undead.
When the goblins had failed to appear in any counterattack that night, it was clear Waldo had lost his ally.
In the next few days, the provinces declared for Amatus as fast as the news could spread. The tiny garrisons Waldo had left behind, counting on fear to control the populace, often had as few as five real men, and now that the secret of their nature was out, there would be a brief period of fierce fighting as some local lord, or mayor, or leader of any kind brought firearms to bear upon those, and then a swift slaughter and a burning of the undead. The goblin hunts were rapid and brutal, for there was much to avenge, and indeed goblins were not seen again in many parts of the Kingdom for decades after, because in their victory they had grown careless, allowing their holes to be noticed, so that when the tide turned the goblin holes were sealed forever.
But of what each individual did in the Battle of the Long River Road, all is lost, unless you are willing to believe the outrageous lies in Robber Baron. It seems likely that few of Amatus's men were even hurt, and it is not clear that even one was killed. As they neared the city, those who saw the grand array of Amatus, Psyche at his side, Deacon Dick Thunder and Captain Palaestrio flanking them, and the Hand and Book fluttering overhead, were so moved they spoke often of it all their lives afterward, so much so that no one was ever quite sure how long ago it had happened, since many who were born after had heard their elders tell it so often that they thought they themselves had seen it.
The arrival of Calliope into Oppidum Optimum was much like Amatus's march to the city in spirit, but meaner and poorer in flesh. After twenty years of Waldo, Overhill was a poisoned waste with people scattered across it, far less hospitable than it had been a thousand years before when settlers had come over to it.
But people dug out what little they had, and Captain Pseudolus's soldiers seized the granaries, so that for the first time in many years there would be grain to plant (if it could live in Overhill) and at least no immediate famine. Most people stayed only long enough to get the grain, salute their new Queen, and return home to get planting under way, but a few from every village stayed with the Army of the West.
So by the time they reached Oppidum Optimum, they had several thousands of people with them, and when they found themselves opposed only by six real men and about eighty made ones, the fight was brief and left pretty much to Pseudolus's forces. In an hour or so the real men were all picked off, and then the job of dealing with the rest was mere butchery.
They had not found an omnibus or festoon in all of Overhill, though it had once been renowned as hunting country, for eliminating those had been Waldo's first project, not from fear of what a rabble with a few of them might do, but merely from a feeling that the ability to defend themselves—however inadequate—was apt to invite a rabble to form.
As the bodies were dragged to the side for burning, Calliope asked, "Why do you suppose anyone ever followed Waldo? Apart from the made men, who hadn't souls of their own, or the goblins or undead, who were only looking for a meal, why would real men enlist? Look how thin and sick his real men were. What did they get from this?"
Cedric nodded. "Majesty, it seems to me that in a sufficiently wretched place, men can always be found who think it is 'realism' to believe that things, as they are, are the only way things can be, and then to look for the soft spot in things as they are. I suppose that accounts for a great part of them; and then there must have been some who cared little how much they were hurt so long as they got the chance to hurt others."
Euripides, beside them, sighed and shuddered. "It's not as if it were ever hard to find a man to do a bad thing."
The ceremonies were ragged, but done with great enthusiasm; the Raven and Rooster was hoisted from every mast in the citadel, except the one atop the Spirit Spire, for temporarily no one could find the door to it.
Three strong men climbed to the famous brass weathercock on its high pole before the gate of the citadel and oiled it and got it working, and in short order the five iron ravens once again circled the brass weathercock, who clutched an upraised spear in his wing so that he always seemed to be guarding against the wind. It was merely a large version of the sort of thing found in toy shops all over the Kingdom (at least before Waldo) but they all cheered madly to see it working.
Calliope made a brief speech formally taking possession, and everyone who was staying went off to see what they might do with the old houses and buildings of the town, for Oppidum Optimum was empty, and Calliope had said that anyone who would put a house back in decent order could have it, and leave it to his or her heirs.
They had reserved the afternoon for Calliope to go up to the room under the base of the Spirit Spire, where her family had been murdered and from which her nurse had smuggled her at the last moment. She was up there a long time. First she climbed the stairs to gently pick up and wrap the bones of her father and her oldest brother, who had been all of sixteen on the day he died. When they were cleared from the steps, she ascended and went through the burst door to the royal chambers.
There she found, first, her oldest sister, who lay, a dry husk of bone, skin, and hair, beside the door. The bones of her arm were shattered and broken, and it took Calliope a moment to realize that the girl of twelve had thrust her own arm as a bar through the hasps of the door. She gathered her up and wrapped her in silk as well, talking softly to the remains.
The chopped bones of her mother and of the brother who had been six were next, and these too she wrapped for burial. The worst was the infant twins, only a year older than Calliope, whom Waldo, with his own hands, had battered to pieces against the wall. There were many pieces, and it was not at once obvious which w
ent with which, but Calliope sorted them patiently, and wrapped them carefully. It was almost dark when she finished, and summoned the porters to carry down the sad packages, light as sticks and paper, into the family tomb.
When Sir John Slitgizzard came around the edge of the steep ledge—almost a trail, in that some long-ago traveler had left a cairn here and there to mark the way—he was surprised to see a bare stone valley, easy to walk through and sheltered from the wind. He had gone no more than a dozen paces before he saw the cave opening, and since it was this mountain from which he had seen the Riddling Beast fly, he was filled at once with hope.
The inside of the cave, however, dashed it immediately, for there was evidence of a great cooking fire, and there were many human bones scattered around. Plainly this was the cave of an ogre, and though Sir John would normally have stuck around to dispose of the creature (it was one of Cedric's most strictly enforced public health measures that any man-at-arms who found an ogre must slay it), he had a mission to fulfill. He was only surprised that the ogre had been able to survive on the mountain with the Riddling Beast, who seemed too good a sort to tolerate ogres.
He was about to go back out into the dry valley when he heard the terrible scraping noise coming in. At once he was crouched behind a rock, drawing and laying out his pismires and omnibus, wishing for his father's old heavy-barreled festoon, for ogres are thick of skull. A moment later something big moved in the doorway—and then Sir John gave a glad cry.
