“Absolutely nil,” Yanderman stated emphatically. “The townsfolk do not-repeat not-set foot on the barrenland. Most of them, for all their high-flown talk about their bravery, stay as well clear of it as possible. Which in turn puts me in mind of what else I was going to mention to you.
“Now that the townsfolk have made up their minds what the purpose of the expedition is, the men are getting the news from the worst possible source.”
The Duke blinked. He placed his hands on the arms of his chair as though about to jerk to his feet. He snapped, “What do you mean by that, Yan?”
Yanderman stared levelly at his chief. “Well … At first they were suspicious over in Lagwich, thinking we must be on a mission of conquest, for all our peaceful asseverations. They’ve recovered from that idea by this time. Now they’re beginning to suspect the truth, and naturally they’re passing it on to the soldiery.”
“What do you think the truth is, Yan?” The Duke spoke low.
“That you mean to march into, and probably across, the barrenland-and to hell with its population of devils and monsters.”
“And they’re telling the men this?”
Yanderman confirmed with a nod, feeling a momentary relief. From the Duke’s tone it seemed he was astonished, and that-he hoped-implied the story wasn’t true after all.
But the Duke stood up and started to walk back and forth on the woven-reed mats forming the floor. After a brief silence he said, “And what do you think of the plan, youself?”
“I?” Yanderman tautened. “I think it’s grandiose and-and ridiculous.”
“Why?” The Duke rounded on him. “The barrenland is a living sore on the face of the country, isn’t it? It’s been here far too long. Something should be done about it-and the first thing is to find out its true nature. Till the old fool Rost showed us his ‘devil’ I’d had nothing more in mind than the scouting of its confines and the gathering of folksay about it. But if there are people living within the barrenland, Yan, isn’t it about time someone went to the poor bastards’ rescue?”
“Living within the-? Oh, I see what you mean. Hmmm!” Yanderman rubbed his chin and cogitated for a while. At last, however, he shook his head. “It’s a conceivable explanation, but I’m not sold on it. I’m more inclined to think, despite what the local people say, that Rost’s ‘devil’ wandered into the barrenland from outside and then stumbled back again. And … what do you think your chances are of getting the men to march with you, anyway?”
“Excellent.” The Duke answered crisply. “I didn’t pick the riffraff of Esberg to make this trip, but the best and bravest men I could find. I chose you also, Yan-remember that.”
“That’s precisely my point,” Yanderman said. “Forgive me for being blunt. If you’d been heading for a battlefield, you wouldn’t have picked me for anything more demanding than supervising commissariat-correct? But this isn’t a straightforward military operation. It’s unique, unprecedented, and calculated to play hob with everyday ideas. My honest belief is that on the order to march half the men will immediately mutiny and lay down their arms, and the other half will use their comrades’ desertion as an excuse for refusing to go. Now they’ve heard the fables rife in Lagwich.”
Duke Paul was quite motionless, his gaze riveted on Yanderman. Now at last he spoke, his voice as soft and steady as before.
“Do you trust my judgment, Yan? If you don’t, why did you consent to come along in the first place?”
A bead of sweat trickled unpleasantly down Yanderman’s nose. He answered, “I’ll grant this-that if anyone walks the world who could lead this army into hell, it’s yourself. I just don’t want to see you discount the men’s present mood.”
“You’ve left me no room to do that,” Duke Paul grunted. “I’ll make sure they get accustomed to the idea-somehow.”
“Ah-it might help if they were given some hints as to the practicability of the project,” Yanderman suggested, feeling a sort of helplessness as though he had been hanging by fingertips over a precipice and hadn’t noticed till now that exhaustion had finally loosed his grip. “How are you going to take two thousand men across land without food, fuel or water?”
The lazy, irritating drone of the fly started again, and it buzzed up from the place where it had landed on the Duke’s night-couch. Again the Duke swiped at it and missed. He said, “The barrenland is three hundred miles around. So its diameter isn’t much over a hundred. If there’s anything there, it’s at the centre, one may presume. We’ll carry maximum loads a day’s march from the edge, transfer the unconsumed portion to those who are going on and send back part of the column. We’ll continue like this and come to the middle with a party of a few score, hand-picked, who can make it back to the outside world without further support on minimum rations and forced marches.”
“A few score? To cope with whatever hell’s brood we may find?”
“I’m convinced that people are still living in the barrenland!” the Duke snapped. “Think it out, Yan! We’ve learned from clues dropped by Granny Jassy that part at least of the barrenland was created deliberately, to serve as a quarantine area around some source of danger in the middle-correct?”
Yanderman shrugged and nodded.
“In that case, we don’t have to think of the barrenland as a natural desert with no resources at all. We’ve established that there are streams flowing out from it, which are drinkable when they emerge, so we’ll manage for water-our worst single problem. Fuel-well, this isn’t a long march, is it? A slow one, certainly, but it’s summer! And consider this, too.” He leaned on the corner of his big table.
“We know beyond doubt that the things from the barrenland are coming in smaller numbers than they used to. I’m sure this isn’t accident. If they were spawning and breeding in the barrenland, you’d expect them to multiply! No, I suspect that there are people living in the middle of the barrenland: a party of volunteers-or their descendants, by now-charged with preventing the things’ access.” Again he swiped at the annoying fly, missing it the third time. “And the diminishing plague of things here at Lagwich is a measure of their relative success.”
His eyes blazed at Yanderman, who moved uncomfortably on his chair. Foolish or not, it was a grand design to re-establish contact with such heroes. And hearing Duke Paul speak of it was enough, surely, to convert the most cautious audience. Maybe it could be done. It would certainly be magnificently audacious to try it …
The Duke’s hand flashed through the air and closed this time around the fly, squashing it. He glanced down at his palm before wiping off the messy remains, and in that pose he stiffened. Yanderman looked at his handsome profile, and likewise froze.
After a moment, he said, “Sir …” His voice sounded peculiarly cracked and squeaky.
“Yes?” The Duke didn’t look up.
“Sir, there’s a patch of green among your hair!” Yanderman leapt to his feet and came close. “It looks like the mould which was on Ampier!”
The Duke nodded and held out his hand with the fly on it. Yanderman tore his eyes away from the deadly fuzz he had seen on his chiefs head and examined the insect. On its hairy legs, quite distinctly visible, was more of the same green mould.
Two and two came together in Yanderman’s mind. The fly had circled the Duke’s night-couch-on which Ampier had been laid! He strode over to it and whipped aside the cushions.
There, perhaps where a drop of Ampier’s blood had fallen: there, where at night the Duke’s head rested, was a smear of the alien greenness, concealed to the casual glance by seeming to form part of the pattern on a multi-coloured blanket, but now blazing out at Yanderman so fiercely he felt its shape imprinted on his very brain, like a branding-iron.