by Jeffrey Ford
Slowly, those who had not succumbed to the disease began to show, and by each of them I was told of at least one person they knew who had caught the sleep through the night and could not be awakened. When a good number of them had gathered, and it seemed there were no more coming, I raised my voice and begged for silence.
“By now,” I said, “I think it is evident that Below has sent us more than an explosion. He means for us all to sleep to death. We could take the chance and hope that our loved ones will awaken, but knowing the Master, I would not count on that.”
Both men and women began to shed tears, and the children gazed up at their parents with faces filled with confusion. It was these looks that gave me the courage to go on and make my proposal.
“Time is so crucial now. We must leave today for the Well-Built City. Our only hope is to find Below and somehow force him to divulge an antidote for this illness he has sent. All we can do is pray there is some cure for it.”
“And how do you expect to get him to cooperate,” yelled Miley Mac from the middle of the crowd. “We all remember him. We suffered as much as you did.”
“I don’t know,” I said, “but if we do nothing, I’m afraid that both we and our settlement are finished.”
“I’d rather wrestle the Devil himself,” said Jensen.
“Agreed,” I said.
“It could pass,” said Hester Lon but with so little conviction that the very tone of her words proved my point.
“We haven’t time to debate. I’m going. Will anyone else come?” My request was met with silence. The good citizens of Wenau had lost their nerve in the face of tragedy. None of them looked me in the eye.
“I need a horse and a gun,” I said, not quite believing the madness I was suggesting.
“I’ve got a horse you can take,” said a voice from the crowd.
Someone else made an offer of weapons and another volunteered his hunting dog.
“Now, who will go with me?” I asked.
Not one of them spoke or stepped forward.
I waited for some time, thinking the silence might draw a few of them out. My spirits lifted as I saw Jensen take a step forward. But as he moved toward me, I noticed his eyes rolling back into his head. His lids closed, he uttered a low grunt and fell to the ground. Some ran from him, knowing he had the disease, while others gathered around to try to help. By the time I got to his side, he was lightly snoring.
From those who had offered provisions for my journey to the ruins, I secured a promise that they would deliver them to my home at dusk. My plan was to travel by cover of night in case Below had spies or assassins watching us. Paranoia, a constant companion from our days in the Well-Built City, moved freely among us again, draping a friendly arm over our shoulders.
On my walk home, I watched the sky for a glint of metal and constantly scanned the underbrush and tree line for sudden movement. Whereas Below had sent the citizens of Wenau to sleep, he had also infected the place with a disease of opposing symptoms that transformed its usual repose into an atmosphere of nervous, jangling tension. I spoke aloud to myself for a sense of company, saying, “If you think you are scared now, Cley, wait until you are out on the plains and in the forests by yourself at night, riding toward the heart of this evil.”
A wild turkey broke through some tall grass to my left just then, and I leaped to the side and gave a short scream. The bird stood there for a moment and looked quizzically at me before retreating. That stare with which the creature sized me up, as if to say, “Cley, you are a ridiculous specimen,” made me laugh out loud. Here I was, the self-appointed champion of Wenau, about to start on a quest to slay the dragon. I pushed on toward home, while in my mind I looked forward to the day when I could again sit with Jensen by the side of the river, drinking field beer.
You can imagine my reluctance to sleep that afternoon, but, having had none through the night, I knew I would need to rest. At first, I was overtired and found it difficult to relax. The uncertainty of the future came to me in a variety of morbid and terrifying thoughts, not the least of which was my failure to succeed. Eventually, though, I fell warily into a dream of the green veil. In it, Drachton Below stood in the center of the marketplace, surrounded by the supine forms of all the inhabitants of Wenau. All were fast asleep and their faces were covered by scraps of a green material. A yellow mist curled around him as he beckoned to me.
“Your turn, Cley,” he said, and flung a handful of sparkling dust in my direction. The cloud moved like a swarm, and I was amazed to see that it was composed of tiny metallic birds. They swept into my eyes, blinding me. I fought as best I could against the weariness that descended. As I fell to the ground, I heard the Master’s voice.
“Come to me,” he said, and I could feel the veil lightly landing on my face. I panicked in my sleep within a sleep, thinking, “I have caught the disease,” and then suddenly came awake to the sound of a dog barking.
I scrabbled out of bed, dressed quickly, and went to the door. Upon opening it, I was greeted by a most unpromising sight. The oldest, saddest-looking gray horse I had ever seen was tied up to the crank handle of my well. The beast’s spine was concave, its tail was a ragged whisk broom, and it kept its head bowed as if in humiliation at the physical state its years had visited upon it. Circling nervously between the well and the tree line was an underfed black dog, whose skeletal anatomy was completely evident through a thin scrim of hide. I had seen likenesses of him in allegorical paintings by the artists of antiquity. He was often depicted with a blind beggar, and was meant to represent Want.
To round out this embarrassment of riches, I discovered a crossbow along with a quiver of twelve arrows lying next to it. A thirteenth arrow was stuck in the ground, spearing a scrap of blue paper with writing on it. I pulled the shaft from the dirt and retrieved the message.
Cley,
Here are the things you requested. The horse, Quismal, is not swift but he is strong. The dog, Wood, has been known to be ferocious on certain occasions. Feed it a scrap of meat and it will follow you for two days. Give it more and it will do your bidding. We would have liked to have given you a rifle, but those who had them thought it would be better to keep them on hand in case of an attack. The crossbow is a well-seasoned weapon. It can kill accurately at one hundred yards. Good luck, Cley. We will never forget you.
Your friends,
The Citizens of Wenau
This note gave me a clear understanding as to my neighbors’ assessment of the potential success of my mission. Perhaps I should have taken this warning, given in to fear with the rest of them, and waited to see what would happen. The unkindest item in the entire inventory had to be the crossbow. How effective could it really be at a hundred yards against the charging wolf-girl, Greta Sykes, or one of the Master’s mechanical monstrosities?
“I might just as well spit in self-defense as fire this old log,” I thought as I leaned over and lifted the weapon. It was more firepower than I possessed, though, so I made the decision to pack it on the horse. I strapped it to the saddlebag along with the quiver, thinking that if things got too horrifying, I could at least impale myself on one of the arrows.
I went back in the house and gathered my supplies: a sack of herbs, the stone knife Ea had given me, some dried meat, a blanket, and, of course, the green veil. Before I closed the door to leave, I took one more look around my small rooms and was filled with a melancholy sense of longing that I might one day return to live out the rest of my life in peace and comfort.
Outside, I called to the dog to come. It continued moving erratically around me in wide circles, its tongue lolling, its eyes suggesting madness. Reaching into my pack, I retrieved a scrap of dried meat and held it out.
“Wood,” I called. “Come, boy.”
The instant the creature saw the meat, it bolted out of its meandering orbit and made straight for me. I had only a second to turn to the side as it leaped into the air to snatch the morsel and nearly two of my fingers. He took his
prize a few feet away and began devouring it, making all manner of unnatural noises. I approached slowly, my hand out.
“Good boy,” I said. “Wood, Wood, Wood,” I sang softly.
The ungrateful wretch growled and lunged for me. At the last moment, I jumped back, and as it passed, I gave it a mighty kick in the rear end. It yelped and ran away into the undergrowth.
By the time I was able to get onto the horse, which took a good measure of struggle, the sun had nearly set. There was still a mere wisp of red light on the western horizon above the treetops. It was going to be a beautiful night, warm enough but with a nice breeze beginning to blow. A few stars had already appeared in the sky directly overhead, and I prayed for a moon so it would not be too dark in the forest.
I had been on a horse maybe once or twice before in my life, and that was as a boy when I lived along the Chottle River. Now it seemed a long way to the ground from where I sat. The poor thing buckled somewhat under my weight, and it stank like death had already taken up residence in its swollen belly.
“Go,” I said, but it didn’t move.
“Charge,” I said, and drove my heels into its flanks. It passed gas in a long, loud, gurgling stream and then lurched forward like a drunken man put off-balance by the planet’s rotation.
My quest was begun. As we inched our way toward the tree line, the black dog came dashing out of the undergrowth in pursuit as if aware he was an allegory who could not be separated from his blind beggar. I did not consider my chances of success or the insidious ways I might die. Instead, I contemplated Below and his terrible need for control.
3
I traveled all night on that lumbering nag, cowering at every dark form that rustled the fallen leaves or swooped low beneath the canopy overhead. Meanwhile, the black dog disappeared for a half-hour at a time and then, all of a sudden, broke from the undergrowth to my right or left and ran between the slow-moving legs of my mount. Quismal was confused by this and immediately halted in his tracks. I tried driving my heels into his sides to get him going again, but I might as well have been kicking myself. Finally, I discovered that a few kind words whispered into his ear did the job better than any violence. “Onward, noble steed,” I said, or some such nonsense, and sure enough he lurched forward.
The voices of crickets in the breeze became conspiratorial whispers. Even the full moon, which I had been so happy at the start to have as a companion for the journey, began to take on a sinister aspect. We broke into a clearing, and I looked up to stare at its milky brilliance full in the face. The features of its physiognomy were exceptionally clear and struck me as closely resembling Below’s. I thought about the Master, standing atop a high tower, spinning on the heels of his boots to take in the entirety of the puny lives of Wenau. It would have been no surprise to see a giant thumb descending to squash me.
I breathed deeply in an attempt to suppress my fugitive imagination, and it was then that the scents of the forest broke through to calm my fears. From that one inhalation, I was able to distill the aromas of trailing serpent vine, fantail blossom, and the oozing root of tarasthis fern. These were all familiar to me from my daily forays into the woods to search for medicines. Each of them, when dried and ground, was a cure for a different illness—gout, river blindness, acute melancholy—and now just their fragrances were enough to cure me.
I kept to the trail that had been forged in recent years by merchants from Latrobia, but with the first light of morning, I coaxed Quismal into the underbrush, and we headed northwest for the fields of Harakun. I hadn’t seen or heard Wood for over two hours before changing direction and was resigned to the fact that he had most likely found a rabbit to torment instead of myself.
By the time the sun was high in the sky, I was exhausted from having traveled all night. Quismal was damp with perspiration, spluttering and frothing from both ends, and obviously as much in need of rest as I was. When we finally broke clear of the forest and forged the creek that defined the southern boundary of the plain, I found a huge, spreading shemel tree overhanging the water. It was here that I decided to stop for a spell. I tied the horse to a low-hanging branch where he would have access to both water and grass. Retrieving the crossbow and quiver of arrows from the saddle, I chose a spot in the shade for myself and sat down.
I was saddle sore, bleary-eyed, and altogether overjoyed once again to touch down on solid ground. The day was warm, and the ever-present breeze of the plains moved around me, lulling me into a temporary amnesia. I had wanted to try the crossbow at least once before reaching the city, but instead, I lay back and stared up at the sunbeams that found their way through the swaying clusters of star-shaped leaves. The thought of sleep still frightened me, considering the fact that I might have carried the disease away from Wenau with me, but I finally closed my eyes.
I woke sometime later to the sound of barking, and even in my half-cognizance felt a surge of disappointment to think that the dog had found me. Sitting up quickly, I turned around to check on the horse. The faithful Quismal was still where I had docked him, munching grass and swatting jade flies. I cleared my eyes and turned around, trying to get a bead on where the dog was. When I finally spotted him, he had crossed the creek and was standing on the bank some twenty yards away from me, shaking water from his coat. With nose wrinkled back and teeth exposed, he crouched down in front while the hair along the ridge of his back spiked up. His curled tail straightened as he began growling.
If he had seemed mad before, he now looked positively deranged. I reached slowly down next to me and grabbed the crossbow. “Good boy,” I called to him. He continued growling and barking. I’d had quite enough of the benefit of his presence. He would be nothing but a liability to me when I tried stealthily to navigate the ruins of the city. My hands shaking, I lifted the bow and then grabbed an arrow from the quiver. Continuously speaking to him in as soothing a voice as possible, I tried to pull the weapon’s cord back. I moved the string about three inches and it would go no farther. My knowledge of the operation of crossbows was less than shallow, and having lived a life of relative ease, I didn’t possess half the arm strength of a well-trained soldier. Quickly improvising, I brought my feet up to hold the cross of the bow in place and then, still gripping the string, leaned back. With this technique, I barely managed to hook the cord up over the firing mechanism.
Then Quismal whinnied and snorted, and I looked up to see Wood charging, his teeth bared, his tongue lolling, his eyes fierce. “Harrow’s hindquarters,” I yelled, and reached for an arrow. I had half a mind to forget the ancient weapon and scramble up a tree. He was five feet from me as I fitted the shaft into place along the barrel of the bow. I curled my finger around the trigger, lifted the stock to my shoulder, but as I aimed, I could see that he had already leaped. I gave a very unsoldierlike yelp of fear and, instead of firing, dropped the weapon and fell face first to the ground, covering my head with my hands. To my astonishment, he sailed right over me, snarling like some demonic creature of the Beyond. Before I could grab the bow and spin around, I heard another beastly voice join his with a sharp cry of pain.
In seconds, I was on my feet, the bow up against my shoulder, aiming at two forms that struggled on the ground only a few feet from me. Before I could clearly see what it was Wood had by the neck, I smelled the depraved bile scent of the Latrobian werewolf. Then the silver-gray coat, the half-human haunches and claws came clear to me. Gathering its strength, it stood on its hind legs, lifting Wood with it. With a cry of agony, it spun ferociously back and forth, whipping the dog free of its neck, a piece of which came away in a shower of yellow blood.
I pulled the trigger and the arrow shot out with a force I hadn’t anticipated. The weapon fell from my grip, but still, I was able to follow the progress of the shaft as it caught the monstrosity square in the underside of its chest. There was more yellow liquid, more horrendous bellowing, and though I was frightened beyond measure, I actually cheered and gave a slight jump like a child who has just won a ro
und of split the muggen. It was a momentary victory, for the instant the creature hit the ground, it began loping toward me on all fours.
Wood again came to my rescue, charging from where he had landed in the grass, and leaped onto the werewolf’s back, burying his fangs in the top of its spine. They both went down again, rolling and slashing in the dirt. This gave me the time I needed to lift the bow, pull the string back while holding the cross down with my feet, and affix another arrow.
“Get off, Wood,” I cried as I took aim again. The creature threw the dog down in front of it, struggled to its hind legs where it reached back a massive hand-paw studded with four-inch claws, and took a swing at my protector’s head. That dog was insane, but he wasn’t stupid—he slipped between the werewolf’s legs, free of the blow. I aimed quickly for the chest again, fired, and the jolt of the bow lifted the arrow in its course, sending it directly into the thing’s forehead. The werewolf stumbled forward a few steps on its hind legs and stopped suddenly. It stared at me momentarily with a pitiful gaze, as if recalling its lost humanity, and then its eyes crossed as it fell forward onto the ground. It continued to writhe, growl, spit, and chew the earth until I gathered my wits and bashed the remaining life out of it with the butt of the crossbow.
As soon as I was sure it was dead, I dropped the weapon and walked to the creek where I plunged my own head into the water. When my adrenaline had finally stopped pumping and my heart lost its hummingbird flutter, the real terror set in. I was elated to have come through the encounter with my life, but the face of the vanquished monster told me in no uncertain terms that this was only the beginning. The creature Wood and I had killed was not Greta Sykes, Below’s original beast. It had moved somewhat more clumsily than she. On closer inspection it proved to be a male and had no head-bolts as Greta had. Given Below’s propensity for carrying all projects across the boundary of absurdity, I realized there could be an entire pack of these things guarding the perimeter of the city.
