“What are you doing here, boy?” snapped the taller.

Conrad swallowed hard and tried to make his garb of miscellaneous castoffs look dignified. He said, “I’m the best soapmaker in Lagwich. I’m tired of the place and I want to join the Duke’s army.”

“He wants to join it-hear that?” Guffawing, the shorter guard elbowed his companion in the ribs. “Makes a change, doesn’t it? Well, he can have my place any time he asks!”

“Shut up!” the tall one snapped. Addressing Conrad again, and emphasizing his words with waves of his gun-muzzle, he said, “Listen, boy-you picked a bad day. You take that sack right back to the town and be grateful you’re near home.”

Finding a moment’s worth of boldness deep inside him, Conrad stood his ground. He said, “What’s wrong? Has something bad happened at the camp?”

The guards exchanged glances. After a pause, the shorter one said, “No business of yours, boy. And you’re lucky, like my friend told you. Now get on your way.”

Still Conrad hesitated. The tall guard lost patience and barked at him. “Move, or you’ll never move again!”

So something was very wrong indeed. Slowly Conrad raised his sack to his shoulder, sick with disappointment. He moved away as the guards directed, but not back towards Lagwich-vaguely in the direction of the soap-vats. He wouldn’t be able to face returning to the town till he’d digested the bitter pill of this setback.

Suddenly there was a shrill and distant blast on a horn, and he tensed, taking it for Waygan’s danger signal. But the sound hadn’t come from Lagwich-there was a man dimly visible at the nearest gate of the camp, blowing on a shiny metal bugle. The noise made Conrad’s scalp prickle.

But at least it got rid of the two outpost guards. At the first note they had shouldered their guns and headed incontinently for the camp.

At the sight of their retreating backs, Conrad felt a fresh stiffening of his resolution. Was he to let a couple of chance-encountered soldiers undo all his hopes? Not in a lifetime! He was going to stay out here in sight of the camp, watching and waiting for things to return to normal, then seize a favourable opening to get the ear of-of Yanderman, perhaps, who would remember him from their first meeting. Of course: that was the way to get a hearing. He should have thought of it at once.

He looked about for a convenient vantage point from which he could keep an eye on events, and settled in the shade of a tree on top of a rise not far away. Peering down, he could make out that there was some turmoil in the camp-men going and coming, officers shouting orders so fiercely that their voices, though not their words, drifted up to him.

Vindictively he hoped that whatever was going on the man with the black mustachios whom he’d seen in Idris’s kitchen was right in line for the biggest trouble. Then he made a moody correction. He didn’t care about the man with mustachios. He didn’t care about Idris, either, or anyone else in Lagwich. He was through with them for good and all.

For a long while-at least an hour-nothing much happened down at the camp. The shouted orders ceased; judging by the red and black formation of banners in the centre of the camp-site there was some sort of parade or review in progress. It was distinctly uninteresting to gaze at it from this distance, so Conrad let his attention stray to the sun-hot glimmer of the barrenland stretching over the horizon.

Go to the barrenland …? Was it true that it was the purpose of Duke Paul’s venture to march into the barrenland and empty it of terror? Conrad shivered as he considered that consequence of his decision. Now if the barrenland were as he could picture it in his visions-green and pleasant, full of friendly smiling people in gaudy clothes who commanded such powers as one might only dream of …

His mind drifted off in the familiar half-delightful, half-terrifying manner to which he had been accustomed since childhood, conjuring up the spectacle of an impossible world.

It was only the sudden crackle of gunfire that brought him back to the present. With a start, he swung to look at the camp again. The orderly ranked banners had vanished. From near where they had been a thick column of greasy black smoke was swelling into the air. Shrieks mingled with the shots. The sun glinted on bright metal as on broken water. Gasping, Conrad jumped to his feet.

And the nearest gate of the camp flung open to release a flood of shouting men on the countryside-a mob, less organised than ants whose nest has been disturbed, heedless of their officers, their arms, anything.

Was this the stuff of which Duke Paul’s army was made? Conrad stared in horror, while in the wake of the fleeing men flames leapt up randomly to consume the neat rows of tents.

XII

Up to the very last moment Yanderman thought-hoped-wished fervently that the Duke was going to be able to carry his men with him. Even in the dreadful minutes that followed realisation of failure, he found himself thinking: it might have come off, but for this damned green plague!

“Tell nobody else!” It was easy to say, and impossible to achieve. Within twenty-four hours it had been whispered through the camp: Duke Paul is sick of the mould which killed Ampier!

The medics did their best-shaving the infected area, burning the infected blanket, setting the men to kill flies with swats and sprays-and for a while Yanderman had expected a false alarm. After all, as Duke Paul himself argued, Ampier had been a sick man, badly wounded, weakened by long and free bleeding. A bull of a man like himself would toss off the infection easily.

Not true.

Shaving and antiseptics, first to be tried, failed first. Up till then the Duke had easily been able to disguise his condition-his hair and beard were so dense and matted he could simply comb over the shaven area to hide it. Then the fresh outbreaks rendered that impossible; there had to be bandages, and the staff officers had to know the minimum fact that the Duke was being attended by the medics.

All the strong liquids, all the curative powders, all the ointments, were tried in turn. They slowed the mould. For a night Yanderman would sleep peacefully, thinking the trouble was over because all day the Duke’s head had been free of the creeping evil.

But in the morning, a dozen more patches of the stuff.

They tried, at last, the desperate expedient of cauterisation, burning away the skin with hot irons while the Duke sat in his great chair, impassive except that his knuckles showed very white on his clenched fists. It was while the cauterisation was actually proceeding that they discovered the mould on the whites of his eyes …

Even then Duke Paul would not admit defeat. He still addressed his officers as though his plans were to go ahead; he still disputed with the heartsick Yanderman about the likelihood of people surviving within the barrenland.

Meantime, the news spread as the green mould spread-unstoppably, every advance reflecting a weakening of the infected body. In this case it was the entire army. Granny Jassy was plagued with requests for charms against sickness. Under their breaths at first, then openly, men voiced the opinion that this disease had been visited on the Duke because he planned to invade the barrenland.

If, at that point, the Duke had been able to go out and speak to his men as he would speak before a battle, fill them with the excitement and crazy courage he alone could inspire, the situation could have been saved. But he could not. He was in his tent, alone but for attendant medics and the ever-present secretary Kesford, his shaven, burned head turning into a nauseating mass of green mould.

It was just after midnight when a white-faced soldier called the sleepless Yanderman from bed to see the Duke at once.