Authors: Jeffrey Ford
Funds were eventually raised and an expedition mounted to bring Cley back to his rightful home. As Feskin said, “It was the least we could do, considering how we had for so long spurned his very name.” A young fellow named Horace Watt, whose father had been a personal friend of Cley's, led the expedition. They had already been gone three months and were expected back in two years' time.
When I heard that part of the tale, I had to hold up my hand and stop them. I could not speak at first, understanding how my words might dash their hopes, but finally I found my voice out of a sense of honesty.
“My good people,” I said, “I would love to give you encouragement for your plan, but you must understand that the Beyond is a tremendous expanse. It is a place of continents. Even if they should escape all of its myriad dangers, which I pray they do, how would they possibly hope to find him?”
“Bloodhounds,” said a woman from the back row of desks. “They took with them the best bloodhounds ever born and a few of Cley's items from his home. If he is there, those dogs will find him.”
At hearing her words, I wanted to laugh, but seeing the seriousness of all of my friends' faces, I nodded as if such absurdity sounded reasonable.
“Have no fear, Misrix,” said Feskin. “Cley will be back among us in no time.”
“Very well,” I said.
Someone in the crowd said, “Let's eat,” and the meeting was adjourned.
I gorged myself on pastries and produce, and drank more than I should have of the rum punch. My third stomach had begun to gurgle when one corpulent old man shoved a slice of bloody beef in my face and told me the cow had come from his farm. I almost lost my balance from dizziness. I told him that I never touched red meat.
“Well, in your case, I won't take that as an insult, if you know what I mean,” he said, and patted me on the shoulder.
I spoke to him of the weather instead and found him to be a fine gentleman.
The hours I spent there were the most glorious of my life until our attention was drawn to some commotion in the street. Feskin was immediately at the window.
“It's Lengil,” said the schoolteacher.
“Who is that?” I asked the young lady to my right.
“He is an agitator against your visit. He and a few others do not trust you and want to see you dead,” she said.
“They are mostly the religious who are unable to extend their love beyond the mirror,” said Feskin over his shoulder. “You are to them what they see in their books. I tried to explain it to them, but they will not listen.”
I moved next to the schoolteacher and looked out the window. There was a mob of fifteen or so men carrying rifles and torches.
“Send out the devil's dog,” a voice called from the street.
Those around me appeared nervous.
Feskin turned again to us, and said, “Who will keep them busy until I can get Misrix out the back entrance?”
No one made a move to help, and I did not blame them. Then Emilia pushed her way through the crowd and made for the door. Her mother grabbed after her, but she was already going through the entrance onto the porch.
“Here is the devil's dog,” I heard her yell at them, and somehow I knew that she was holding up the carving I had given her.
The schoolteacher was moving me out of the room through a back hallway, but I could hear the men saying things to her in sheepish voices and Emilia yelling back her replies without fear.
As we came to the end of a dark passage, Feskin said, “You will have to give me a little more time to work on your behalf. We are making real progress, though. We thank you for coming.”
He opened a door at the end of the hall. It led to a field where I had in my previous reconnaissance flights seen the children playing their games in the afternoon.
“A wonderful time,” I told him.
“We will come and see you soon,” he said.
Then I was off, mounting into the clear sky. I circled around to the front of the building at a great height in order to see that Emilia was unharmed. She was still standing her ground, giving the zealots a tongue-lashing. I could not help myself, but unzipped the infernal trousers and extracted my member from this useless second skin of cloth, making a mighty piss of rum punch down on the angry mob. Their torch flames sizzled and turned to smoke in the downpour. Leaving in my wake a fart like a clap of thunder, a message from their angry God, I took wing and sped off through the night sky, feeling for all the world like a mischievous child myself.
I returned to my ruins, but instead of the broken stalk that was the Top of the City, I now see before me a white fort in a clearing of a forest, lying very close to the shore of the inland ocean. The snow is falling, and there is one lone man accompanied by a black dog. He is pounding on a huge oaken door, pleading to be admitted to the company of his own kind.
the walls of this fort
The small, whitewashed room had a single window that let in the dim light of the gray afternoon. On one side of a scarred table, atop which rested a long, green bottle holding a lit candle, sat Cley, the black dog at his feet on the plank floor. Across from him sat Captain Curaswani, a heavyset man with a great white beard and mane of white hair. He was dressed in a rumpled yellow uniform, complete with black buttons and epaulets at the shoulders. Between each of his statements he drew on a pipe, the thin stem of which was nearly as long as his forearm. The bowl of the instrument had been fashioned to resemble the face of a woman, staring up at the ceiling, her mouth a wide, screaming aperture from which puffs of a bluish smoke occasionally issued.
“So,” said the captain, “you are in search of Wenau? I have never heard of it.”
“It's toward the north,” said Cley.
“To be sure,” said the captain. “There are worlds upon worlds toward the north. I suppose you would like to winter here with us?”
“If I may,” said the hunter. “I will do my fair share of the work. You see, I've spent a winter out there in the wilderness, and, without the happenstance of some very lucky occurrences, I know I would have died. As it was, I found a cave with a draft of the earth's heat coming up from below. Still, we almost starved.”
“You and the dog?” asked the captain.
“Wood is his name,” said Cley.
“He seems like a fine fellow,” said the captain, who smiled, smoke leaking out at the corners of his lips. “Of course, you may stay, but I have to tell you two things. At the fort, I am in charge. You must be willing to take orders from me.”
Cley nodded in acceptance of this rule.
“The other is that with the state of things as they are, you may be safer out in the wilderness. I just arrived here, myself, this past autumn. I was dispatched with a group of fifteen soldiers to protect the small contingent of citizens of the western realm, who had come a few years ago to farm and trap and make a monetary gain from the resources of the Beyond.”
Before continuing, Curaswani shook his head and sighed. “It seems that in the relatively brief span they have been here, they have managed, in the time-honored tradition of western realm arrogance and stupidity, to completely incense the local population. By the time I and my men arrived at the fort, there were only five individuals left out of sixty-five. Those who were out on the land retreated here for safety, and, one by one, over the course of the past year, they have been brutally butchered.”
“Who is it you have made an enemy of?” asked Cley.
“The Beshanti, who, when our settlers initially arrived, were a peaceful group. Then our people started grabbing land they shouldn't have, killing game they shouldn't have. Look, Cley, as a military man, I don't mind fighting wars that are unavoidable, but I have an aversion to having my men killed over petty acts of greed.”
“Can't you retreat back to your ship and go home?” asked Cley.
“When we were sent, we had no knowledge as to how bad the situation was. We were merely coming to try to restore order. The ship won't be back until the spring. We're trapped here, and already in the past month, two citizens and one soldier have been diced up within the very confines of the walls of this fort.” The captain set his smoldering pipe down on the table and rubbed his eyes.
“Within the walls?” asked the hunter.
Curaswani laughed. “Not exactly cozy, eh?”
“How?” asked Cley.
“From what I can ascertain from the settlers, the Beshanti have a group of warriors that can somehow physically blend in with their surroundings. You know the lizard, the chameleon? Well, these fellows have the same attribute. The settlers have named them Wraiths after the old tales of angry ghosts. They are reportedly flesh and blood, but I've yet to actually see one. I have, though, seen their work. Two days ago, Private Ornist Heighth had his throat cut and his stomach split open so that his vitals lay in a steaming heap on the ground. It happened in front of two other men. They said a patch of wall came to life, wielding a nine-inch blade. Once the knife was dropped, they could no longer make out any aspect of the attacker.”
“Wraiths,” said the hunter.
“Welcome to Fort Vordor,” said the captain, and gave a mocking salute.
Curaswani showed Cley around the inside of the compound. His quarters were in a low building that was separated from a larger structure housing the barracks and the rest of the living quarters. There were also two outhouses positioned at the southeast corner and the northwest corner of the rectangle. All of this was surrounded by a high wall that had but one egress, the tall oaken doors that were now barred by three thick wooden beams. Along the top of the perimeter wall there was a catwalk on which five or six soldiers stood guard. The two structures and the entirety of the wall had been coated in whitewash.
The captain carried a long-barreled pistol in his belt and a short sword at his side. He limped across the snow-laden enclosure at a weary pace, followed by the hunter and Wood. At the midway point between his quarters and the larger structure, he stopped and called out, “Attention.” Those on the walls and the others in yellow uniforms passing to and fro turned to face him.
“This is Mr. Cley. He will be staying with us for the winter. And his dog, Wood,” said the captain.
From the battlements, the soldiers called down greetings, and the hunter waved to them.
“Back to it,” called Curaswani. The men above turned around to face again the wilderness, while those on the ground continued on their errands.
The captain led Cley into the larger of the structures, a two-story building without windows. They entered a wide room lined with sleeping cots under which were stored the soldiers' individual trunks. Hanging on one wall were a rack of rifles and a rack of pistols. In the back corner there was a small kitchen and a long table for meals.
Passing through the barracks area, they entered a hall with a stairway off to the left. They ascended the steps and entered another dim hallway lined with rooms. The captain opened the first door on his left.
“Here you go,” he said. “It's not exactly comfortable, but when the wind really starts to bite, I think you'll find it better than that cave.”
Cley thanked the captain as he put his bow, the quiver of arrows, and the empty book cover on the bed and sat down. “I haven't slept on a mattress in over a year,” he said.
“Come down in a little while. They will be serving dinner. You'll smell it cooking. Let's hope the aroma cannot be mistaken for anything else. I will issue you a coat and a weapon. You can stand guard tonight,” said Curaswani.
“Yes,” said Cley.
“Can you shoot a rifle?” asked the captain.
“I can drill a swooping demon at a hundred yards,” said the hunter.
“The demons are, luckily, in hibernation now,” said the captain. “Can you drill a ghost at a hundred yards? That seems to be the question.”
“I'll do my best,” said Cley.
“Very good. Since you are an experienced hunter, I'm going to need you to lead a party out into the wilderness for game from time to time.”
“As you wish,” said Cley.
The captain bent over and patted Wood on the head. “If we make it until the spring, it will be something of a miracle. But you, Cley, strike me as one who has witnessed miracles.”
“Indeed, I have,” said the hunter.
Dinner was a venison stew, biscuits, and beer. The soldiers sitting around Cley at the table struck him as being no more than boys. He doubted that some of them had begun shaving yet. Still, the lot of them seemed energetic, strong, and good-natured. They had many questions for the hunter about his experiences in the wilderness, about his strange tattoo. He could sense that he was quite an enigma to themâsomeone who had thrived in a place that, from their limited vantage point, seemed impossible to survive in for any length of time. They were also taken with Wood, calling to him, petting him, and slipping him chunks of meat under the table.
When asked about his earlier life, Cley told them that he had been a midwife in his village before entering the Beyond, and they all laughed good-naturedly at the idea of it. “From one harrowing occupation, staring into the wilderness, to another,” he said.
They asked a hundred questions about the demons they had heard existed to the south, the strange flora and fauna, natural wonders he might have witnessed.
“It seems like a place from a fantastic storybook,” said one fellow, whose name was Weems. He was a tall, blond youth with wide shoulders and biceps that stretched the sleeves of his undershirt.
Perhaps from having lived so long away from people, Cley was reluctant to tell too much about himself. He was sly in his method of turning the questions back upon the soldiers and finding out about their lives.