“What the hell does that mean?”
“Means while the rest of you are eyeballing that clown up there another one sneaked up behind the bluffs and put somebody down.”
Goblin and I glared at the red cliffs. We saw nothing.
“Too late,” One-Eye said. “It’s gone. But I reckon somebody should go collect the spy.”
I believed One-Eye. “Elmo! Get over here.” I explained.
“Beginning to move,” he murmured. “Just when I was hoping they’d forgotten us.”
“Oh, they haven’t,” Goblin said. “They most certainly haven’t.” Again I felt he had something on his mind.
Elmo scanned the ground between us and the bluffs. He knew it well. We all do. One day our lives may depend on our knowing it better than someone hunting us. “Okay,” he told himself. “I see it. I’ll take four men. After I see the Lieutenant.”
The Lieutenant does not come up for alerts. He and two other men camp in the doorway to Darling’s quarters. If ever the enemy reaches Darling, it will be over their bodies.
The flying carpet went away westward. I wondered why it had gone unchallenged by the creatures of the Plain. I went to the menhir that had spoken to me earlier. I asked. Instead of answering, it said, “It begins, Croaker. Mark this day.”
“Yeah. Right.” And I do call that day the beginning, though parts of it started years before. That was the day of the first letter, the day of the Taken, and the day of Tracker and Toadkiller Dog.
The menhir had a final remark. “There are strangers on the Plain.” It would not defend the various flyers for not resisting the Taken.
Elmo returned. I said, “The menhir says we might have more visitors.”
Elmo raised an eyebrow. “You and Silent have the next two watches?”
“Yep.”
“Be careful. Goblin. One-Eye. Come here.” They put their heads together. Then Elmo picked four youngsters and went hunting.
Six
The Plain of Fear
I went up top for my watch. There was no sign of Elmo and his men. The sun was low. The menhir was gone. There was no sound but the voice of the wind.
Silent sat in shadow inside a reef of thousand-coral, dappled by sunlight come through twisted branches. Coral makes good cover. Few of the Plain’s denizens dare its poisons. The watch is always in more danger from native exotica than from our enemies.
I twisted and ducked between deadly spines, joined Silent. He is a long, lean, aging man. His dark eyes seemed focused on dreams that had died. I deposited my weapons. “Anything?”
He shook his head, a single miniscule negative. I arranged the pads I had brought. The coral twisted around us, branches and fans climbing twenty feet high. We could see little but the creek crossing and a few dead menhirs, and the walking trees on the far slope. One tree stood beside the brook, taproot in the water. As though sensing my attention, it began a slow retreat.
The visible Plain is barren. The usual desert life-lichens and scrub brush, snakes and lizards, scorpions and spiders, wild dogs and ground squirrels-is present but scarce. You encounter it mainly when that is inconvenient. Which sums up Plain life generally. You encounter the real strangeness only when that is most inopportune. The Lieutenant claims a man trying to commit suicide here could spend years without becoming uncomfortable.
The predominant colors are reds and browns, rust, ochre, blood and wine-shaded sandstones like the bluffs, with here and there the random stratum of orange. The corals lay down scattered white and pink reefs. True verdance is absent. Both walking trees and scrub plants have leaves a dusty grey-green, in which green exists mainly by acclamation. The menhirs, living and dead, are a stark grey-brown unlike any stone native to the Plain.
A bloated shadow drifted across the wild scree skirting the cliffs. It covered many acres, was too dark to be the shadow of a cloud. “Windwhale?”
Silent nodded.
It cruised the upper air between us and the sun, but I could not spot it. I had not seen one in years. Last time Elmo and I were crossing the Plain with Whisper, on the Lady’s behalf... That long ago? Time does flee, and with little fun in it. “Strange waters under the bridge, my friend. Strange waters under.”
He nodded, but he did not speak. He is Silent.
He has not spoken in all the years I have known him. Nor in the years he has been with the Company. Yet both One-Eye and my predecessor as Annalist say he is quite capable of speech. From hints accumulated over the years, it has become my firm conviction that in his youth, before he signed on, he swore a great oath never to speak. It being the iron law of the Company not to pry into a man’s life before he enlisted, I have been unable to learn anything about the circumstances.
I have seen him come close to speaking, when he was angry enough, or amused enough, but always he caught himself at the last instant. For a long time men made a game of baiting him, trying to get him to break his vow, but most abandoned the effort quickly. Silent had a hundred little ways of discouraging a man, like filling his bedroll with ticks.
Shadows lengthened. Stains of darkness spread. At last Silent rose, stepped over me, returned to the Hole, a darkly clad shadow moving through darkness. A strange man, Silent. Not only does he not talk; he does not gossip. How can you get a handle on a guy like that?
Yet he is one of my oldest and closest friends. Go explain that.
“Well, Croaker.” The voice was as hollow as a ghost’s. I started. Malicious laughter rattled through the coral reef. A menhir had slipped up on me. I turned slightly. It stood square on the path Silent had taken, twelve feet tall and ugly. A runt of its kind.
“Hello, rock.”
Having amused itself at my expense, it now ignored me. Stayed as silent as a stone. Ha-ha.
The menhirs are our principal allies upon the Plain. They interlocute for the other sentient species. They let us know what is happening only when it suits them, however.
“What’s happening with Elmo?” I asked.
Nothing.
Are they magic? I guess not. Otherwise they would not survive inside the nullity Darling radiates. But what are they? Mysteries. Like most of the bizarre creatures out here.
“There are strangers on the Plain.”
“I know. I know.”
Night creatures came out. Dots of luminescence fluttered and swooped above. The windwhale whose shadow I saw came far enough eastward to show me its glimmering underbelly. It would descend soon, trailing tendrils to trap whatever came its way. A breeze rose.
Sagey scents trickled across my nostrils. Air chuckled and whispered and murmured and whistled in the coral. From farther away came the windchimes tinkle of Old Father Tree.
He is unique. First or last of his kind, I do not know. There he stands, twenty feet tall and ten thick, brooding beside the creek, radiating something akin to dread, his roots planted on the geographical center of the Plain. Silent, Goblin, and One-Eye have all tried to unravel his significance. They have gotten nowhere. The scarce wild human tribesmen of the Plain worship him. They say he has been here since the dawn. He does have that timeless feel.
The moon rose. While it lay torpid and pregnant on the horizon I thought I saw something cross it. Taken? Or one of the Plain creatures?
A racket rose round the mouth of the Hole. I groaned. I did not need this. Goblin and One-Eye. For half a minute, uncharitably, I wished they had not come back. “Knock it off. I don’t want to hear that crap.”
