To Conquer Chaos

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 father’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