To Conquer Chaos, Page 3

  And stoned him to make him wake.

  Out here, beyond the town’s land, no one cared what he did, and he liked that side of the task. What he detested about it was that his vats were sited much nearer the barrenland than the town itself. Things came from the barrenland, and usually they were dangerous. There had never yet been an emergency for him to cope with, but he had a dreadfully active imagination.

  Consequently, when the red and black waving thing came in sight at the bend of the path which curved around the barrenland he jumped to his feet in fright, letting the carving fall. He dived for the bow and arrows he kept propped against a handy rock, fitted an arrow clumsily to the string, and only then looked again to see what had appeared.

  He relaxed, tempted to laugh at himself. What he had seen from the corner of his eye proved to be a length of black and red cloth flying from a pole in the hands of a rider with several companions. He thought of the marrying expeditions which he had sometimes seen come from other towns to look for wives. They rode like this, with some flag or banner, and all done up in their finery. Yet marrying expeditions were a spring-time affair, and it was now high summer, and anyway although these men were very well clad they were not as gorgeous as the would-be bridegrooms he had seen …

  He waited uncertainly, clasping his bow, while the newcomers reined their horses and conferred. One of them dismounted, raised both hands to show they were empty, and walked to within easy speaking distance. Conrad had a little trouble following his pronunciation, but the sense of his words was clear.

  “Greetings! My name is Jervis Yanderman and these are my men. We come in peace. Are you from the village whose smoke we can see yonder?”

  Slightly nettled, Conrad gave his own name. “But that’s no village!” he added. “It’s a prosperous town of many hundred inhabitants and a guard of sixty strong men.” He added the last phrase just in case the strangers were less peaceful than Yanderman claimed. “And the name of the town is Lagwich.”

  Not that I have any particular liking for the place, he glossed under his breath.

  “It’s near the barrenland?” Yanderman said.

  “Closer than any other town, they tell me. But we have a strong palisade and a deep ditch with a bridge, and we live safe enough from any danger.”

  Yanderman seemed pleased. Looking at him, Conrad decided that he differed in many ways from anyone he had ever seen before. He was bigger than average in all directions—though Conrad’s work involved humping heavy loads and had added muscle to his arms and shoulders, Yanderman was heavier-set as well as being a handspan taller. His companions seemed bigger again, as well as Conrad could judge from this distance.

  But it wasn’t his size which was most impressive about Yanderman. It was his thoughtful, relaxed way of moving, as if he were at home in any country he visited, even this one where he was admittedly a stranger. Conrad’s heart began to pound with excitement. It would be a very important occasion, the arrival of these outsiders in Lagwich!

  He said, “And you? Are you from Hawgley?” He named the most distant town from which marrying expeditions sometimes came to Lagwich.

  Yanderman shook his head. “From Esberg—fourteen days’ journey south of here.”

  Conrad felt his mouth fall open. He knew it was foolish-looking, but he couldn’t help it. Sometimes, sitting by the soap-vats, he had wondered how big the world was, and had come to the conclusion that it must be quite small, because the people of his visions seemed so ready to leave it and go to look at others. But if you could travel fourteen whole days and find no end to it, the world couldn’t be as small as that after all. Unless—

  He grew aware that Yanderman had said something else which he had failed to catch, and apologised for his lapse of attention.

  “We’d like to go to your—town,” Yanderman repeated. “To talk with its lord, or governor, or whatever you call him.”

  Conrad looked dubious. “I could take you to the five wise men,” he said after a pause. “Indeed, they’ll certainly wish to see you. I don’t believe anyone has ever come to Lagwich from further away than Hawgley, so this is a great occasion for us.”

  “Will you guide us to these—ah—wise men?”

  “Surely!”

  He wondered for a moment about leaving his soap—whether he ought not to collect a load to take with him. But he dared not risk keeping these important visitors waiting while he did so. He pointed in the direction of the town and set off at once, Yanderman walking beside him and the horsemen following, one of them leading Yanderman’s mount.

  There was silence for a while. Then Conrad, plucking up his courage, ventured a question. “Tell me—what’s life like where you come from? I wouldn’t seem inquisitive, but here life’s dull and we see no one from outside, unless a marrying expedition comes in spring, or a peddler, or a man seeking gold in the rocks.”

  “Life where I come from?” Yanderman laughed. “Much as it is here, I imagine—only quieter, for we’re further from the barrenland and the things that come from it.”

  Conrad was startled, and did not easily hide his disappointment. He said, “But surely …! Uh—the peddlers who come this way with news regale us with stories of a gay exciting life in distant parts.”

  “That the beer may flow more freely and the pack grow light apace as the tale continues,” Yanderman said, and laughed again. “We receive wanderers like that, and—yes, they tell colorful tales.”

  Conrad bit his lip to stifle the remark which he had almost let slip. He had been about to demand how it was, life being on Yanderman’s assertion much the same even fourteen whole days’ journey away, he could have visions of a bright rich world served by unbelievable powers known to no one in Lagwich, or Hawgley, or anywhere. But he had long ago sworn to himself that he would never bare the secret of his dreams to anyone except Idris—and even to her he had never imparted the wildest tales he could tell.

  It would be far safer to keep silence until he had presented the visitors to the wise men. Maybe later on he would speak to Yanderman again, and the stranger would not be so discreet in his admissions.

  Accordingly, he waited till they turned a bend which brought them in sight of the towns land. Then he raised his arm and indicated the neatly laid-out fields, with men and women working in them and some cattle browsing, and the town itself beyond.

  Lagwich sat on a low, dome-like hill around the foot of which a stream curved in a third of a circle. A ditch had been cut in the side of the hill; above the ditch was a barricade of sharpened stakes planted like prickles in a rampart of dirt and stones, with wooden watchtowers every hundred feet or so around the circumference. At the very top of the hill was a stone fort, and the space between there and the palisade—not very large—was cram-jam tight with buildings of three or four storeys. A blur of dark grey smoke hung over the roofs, fading to light grey as it rose.

  Yanderman glanced up at the elderly man riding behind him and leading his horse. He said, “For where it stands, it’s no mere bunch of huts!”

  Directly they came in view, the people working in the fields had incontinently left their tasks. Accustomed to spring to action on a moment’s notice, they had seized picks, mattocks or anything that came to hand and dashed up to the edge of the path between the fields ready for violence if need be. On seeing that Conrad was accompanying the strangers, however, they paused uncertainly.

  One of them—Waygan, Conrad saw with dismay—shouldered between the rest and sized up the situation. Waygan was the town’s hornman; instead of something he could wield as a weapon, he had snatched up his beloved horn. If someone had asked him why, he would doubtless have said it was so that he could sound an alarm for the townsfolk. Conrad suspected it was more likely because he prized the safety of that horn above the safety of Lagwich itself.

  Admittedly, it was a magnificent object, worth being proud of. It had grown on the chest of a thing that came from the barrenland in his father’s day, and had killed six men in broad dayligh
t before his father slew it and claimed the horn as reward. Only Waygan and his eldest son could now wind it and produce the ear-splitting blast of which it was capable.

  Waygan looked at Conrad. “Well, useless one?” he said.

  Conrad’s heart seemed to hesitate, but he answered boldly and with pride. “I take these distinguished strangers to see the wise men,” he declared. “They come from the south, more distant than Hawgley!”

  A murmur went through the crowd. Waygan pursed his lips and looked at Yanderman, who said curtly, “I’m Jervis Yanderman of Esberg, trusted agent of the Grand Duke Paul, and these are my men.”

  Waygan studied them. What he saw impressed him. He bowed and rubbed his horny hands together. “Welcome to Lagwich, distinguished sir!” he purred. “I trust you’ve not had a false impression of our town from this no-good boy, whose mind is as grimy as his clothes. Come, I’ll escort you myself to our wise men—it’ll be a pleasure.”

  “I was taking them there!” Conrad objected. Waygan rounded on him.

  “You!” he snapped. “It was an ill chance that put you in their way, wasn’t it? Do you think fine visitors like these care to keep company with you, stinking of smoke and rancid grease? Get back to your soap-vats! You waste enough of the day in idling as it is!”

  “But—!”

  Conrad appealed with his eyes to the newcomers, but they did not respond; this was no concern of theirs. Several people in the crowd laughed mockingly. He scuffed in the dust with his foot.

  “Come!” Waygan said pompously, and fell in at Yanderman’s side where Conrad had been. When Conrad glanced back a few minutes later, on his lonely and miserable way back to his vats, they were going up the slope to the lowered drawbridge over the town’s ditches, and to his jaundiced eye it seemed that Waygan had grown twice as tall with inflating self-importance.

  V

  “Stuck-up—” Conrad drew and scattered the fire from under his largest vat.

  “Conceited—” He tilted the vat on its foundation of round stones, using a wooden bar as a lever, so that the contents poured down the channels to the setting-pans.

  “Blockhead!” he finished bitterly, and picked up the sack in which he was going to carry back a load of the unusually fine white soap he had boiled up yesterday. With his knife he divided the hard slabs into convenient handful-sized chunks and threw them in the sack as they were cut. He was on the point of turning away when something on the ground caught his eye. Why, it was the carving he had been making when the strangers appeared.

  Some grains of dirt had got embedded in it, but he could remedy that easily enough. He put down the sack, drew his knife again, and did so. Then he turned it over in his hands.

  There was something distinctly odd about it. It would pass for an attempted likeness of Idris, certainly, even though her cheeks were plumper than that and her lips not so fine. Yet, as he raised the knife to widen the lips a little, he found himself hesitating.

  In some unaccountable fashion, it was correct as it was. Not because it looked like Idris, but because it looked like—

  He was suddenly shivering, as though a cold gale of recognition had blown out of memory. This carving looked like one of the people who inhabited his mysterious visions of another and happier world.

  With determination he poised the knife afresh. It wasn’t meant to depict anyone out of a dream. It was meant to depict Idris, who was kind to him, and it was about time he stopped giving in to his impulses to drift off into a fantasy existence. No matter how hard and dull his life was, it was his life, and if he took refuge in imagination every time it got him down he would never be able to tell the Waygans of Lagwich what they could do with their horn—

  Horn!

  He had been so completely absorbed in his musing that he had paid no attention to the thunderous bellow of the sunset horn from the town’s gate when it sounded a few minutes ago. He hadn’t noticed how late it was getting; why, here it was practically full dark!

  He stuffed the carving inside his shirt and fled for the protection of the town, his sack of soap bumping on his back.

  He was just in time. He came panting out of the dusk as Waygan finished sounding the second and final blast, and dashed across the bridge as the hornman also was crossing. He felt the swinging sack bump Waygan on the arm.

  “You!” Waygan said. “Might I not have known?”

  Conrad didn’t answer. He lowered his sack while recovering his breath. In the shadows men tugged on ropes, and the drawbridge rose creaking to the vertical. On its underside it bore foot-long spikes of wood sheathed with copper, which faced any oncoming thing with a virtually unclimbable obstacle.

  “Did you fall asleep over your soap-cooking, stewboy?” Waygan went on. “You look as though you’d have done well to use some of your produce on yourself.”

  “If you’re so clever,” Conrad retorted, “let me see you work all day with grease and wood-ash and come home spotless!”

  “Hah!” Waygan slapped his horn, making it give out a hollow boom. “So you’re ‘working all day’ now, are you? What news! We’ll have to take care that Lagwich isn’t buried under a mountain of soap, shan’t we? No, wait—wait! Don’t be in such a hurry to leave me. While I see you before me, let me tell you not to go and plague the foreigners while they’re here, is that understood? It was bad enough that they should have met you first, instead of someone who could give them a favourable impression of the town. Don’t show your dirty face near them again!”

  Conrad jerked his sack on his shoulder again and trudged up the narrow alley away from the gate. He was fuming with rage. He was too used to being disappointed to have thought much about it during the afternoon, but it would have been pleasant to gain some reflected glory from guiding the strangers into the town and taking them to the wise men. And Waygan had done him out of even that meagre reward.

  What was going to become of him? Almost everyone mocked him, and he didn’t see it was his own fault. Possibly it was because his father was as he was, but to shift blame on to a sick man seemed unfair …

  He was getting near home when there was a clatter of running footsteps ahead. By reflex he drew into a shadowed doorway; that sounded like a gang of youths, and sometimes he had been set upon. The youths halted in front of a nearby house and shouted for a friend to come down to them.

  “Come and see the foreigners!” they cried. “Up at Malling’s house! Come and look!”

  Immediately shutters flew open on all sides, and not only the friend they were calling for but many other people poured into the street, pulling coats about them. Conrad hesitated. That Yanderman—he’d seemed pleasant enough, and polite to Conrad despite his appearance. Perhaps even now there might be the chance of a word of thanks for his help, to make the townsfolk think twice before mocking him again.

  He made up his mind, and followed the crowd at a discreet distance.

  Malling was the oldest of the wise men, and his house was one of the five reserved for holders of the office and sited within the stone wall of the fort at the top of the town. The great courtyard was thick with people struggling to get near the house-door where the watchman Gelbay stood with his staff, belabouring the over-eager and ordering them to stand clear.

  Conrad was about to try and work his way through the press when a heavy hand fell on his shoulder and he turned, heart sinking, to look into a gap-toothed face.

  “Why, it’s my useless son, may the things take him to the barrenland!” said his father in a rasping voice. “What d’you think you’re doing here? Get home, you lazy rascal!”

  “Why should I?” Conrad said, jerking free. “Wasn’t I the one who showed the strangers the way to the town?”

  “Oh, hark at the proud cockerel!” his father sneered. “I tell you to go, and that’s reason enough.”

  “When did they let you out of the pillory?” Conrad said, astonished at his own boldness. “Your breath is rank as a privy with the stink of sour beer.”

  His fat
her’s face twisted with wild anger. Then he swung his boot at Conrad’s shin. He usually kicked, rather than hitting out, for one of his hands was wasted with a childhood sickness, and much practice had made the kicks deadly.

  Conrad felt a dazzling stab of pain below his kneecap, and his leg gave way. He went sprawling on the ground.

  “Crawl, then!” said his father triumphantly, and jerked Conrad’s head back on his shoulders by hooking a toe beneath his chin. That hurt, too, though not so badly. “Are you still minded to argue with me?”

  Conrad pulled himself up on his good knee. He saw that a dozen or so youths of his own age, despairing of getting close to the house, had turned to watch the new distraction. Conrad’s father was always good for some amusement, whether it was taunting him in the pillory or egging him on to another fight. One of the youths called out, “Why, it’s Idle Conrad! Did you go to sleep on your feet and fall down there, useless one?”

  “Why not use your soap on yourself?” another put in, and they all squealed with foolish laughter.

  Conrad braced his sound leg under him and launched himself arrow-wise on an upward slant. His head sank in his father’s belly and hurled him back against the crowd beyond. Many people turned, complaining angrily at being pushed.

  “Wish me to the barrenland, would you?” Conrad said between his teeth. Somehow years of frustration had boiled up inside him and turned to pure, clear-headed rage, as the mix in one of his vats would turn to soap of a clean whiteness. “You a father who couldn’t support his family, who begs scraps of bread from his son and barters them for beer so he may wallow in a hog’s stupor till he’s dragged to the pillory! I’ll go to the barrenland if that’s your wish—then you can weep in the streets and no one will pity you!”

  His father made to rush at him, but someone had called for the watchman Gelbay, who came now from his post by the door, brandishing his staff. Conrad waited passively, favouring his hurt leg, for Gelbay was a drinking-crony of his father’s and he could look for no sympathy there.