The Half-Made World (23 page)

The walking wounded shuffled like nervous cattle. A long rope bound them all together by the ankle. The rope was looped loosely round their leader’s arm, in which the rifle sat.

He was a short man, balding, in dusty whites. His weathered face was full of suspicion. He held his rifle badly.

The rifle was a cheaply made thing. Nothing significant inhabited it.

Three black birds went overhead in the silence. Three ugly black crows in a ragged flock, framed in the sky for a long hot moment. They passed behind the red rock.

—Do crows
hunt
, do you think? In packs, like men or dogs? They have a predatory aspect, would you not say? Would you acknowledge them as brothers, my friend?

—Keep an eye on this man, Creedmoor. Be ready to kill if he blinks.

One of the madmen broke the silence with crying. Great snotty echoing sobs into his tangled hobo beard. The leader of the troupe of fools lowered his rifle and turned back to the sobbing man, said gently, “Quiet, William. This man means us no harm.” He turned again to the stranger before him and shrugged. “What do you want, mister? We are on medical business. These are wounded and shell-shocked men and women, from Homburg and Monkton. I’m bringing them to the House Dolorous for healing. We are an
ambulance,
you see? The walking wounded. We are neutral, and harmless. We have no money.”

“Who does? Who does, I ask you, these days?”

“That’s a fine gun at your side, mister, for a poor man.”

“This?” Creedmoor moved his hand slowly to his side. He took the Gun, not by its dark grip, but by the leather of the holster. With the other hand, he unbuckled his belt. He stooped to toss the twisting thing in the dirt. The silver and gold of the Gun’s inlays and the polished darkwood of its grip gleamed in the sun.

Creedmoor kicked it aside into the rocks. Marmion’s voice screamed in his brain, scratched at his skull. He gritted his teeth and ignored it. In the glare and the flies, he hoped no one would notice.

—We must all bear some indignity for the cause. Shut up, will you? Shut up.

The fools’ leader softened. He put down his rifle, leaning it against a rock. “Quiet, William,” he repeated, and the fool stopped his sobbing, looking expectantly at the stranger.

—Bright empty eyes like a bird. Will you look at him. Will you look at what’s been done.

—How dare you.

—Will you stop your whining, please?

Creedmoor extended his open hands and smiled. “That weapon’s a mere precaution, sir. There are bandits in these hills, though I’m not one, and perhaps Agents of the Gun, I’ve heard, about their masters’ wicked business; and every traveler has warned me that the Hillfolk in these parts are savage.”

“The Folk round here keep to themselves, stranger; we’ve seen to that. Agents have no business out here. We are neutral. It’s plain regular bandits that concern me.”

—See, my friend? He’s talking to me, man to man. This is how things are done among decent men. This can be done cleanly. No need to spook these cattle.

“Let’s introduce ourselves. I am widely traveled and well lettered; you, if I am not mistaken, are a man of medicine. We are both civilized men; let’s introduce ourselves accordingly. My name is John. You are?”

South-by-southwest, echoing over the hills, the distant
tump-tump
of an ornithopter. In the hot and torpid air, sound traveled strangely; the noise echoed close round Creedmoor’s head.
Tump-tump-tump
in his ears. All those present looked up; Creedmoor’s eyes alone could pick out the smudge of coal smoke on the horizon. Marmion’s voice screamed in Creedmoor’s mind,

—The Line! Do you hear? The Line! They are close on our heels! Take me up again! Be ready! Be ready!

—
Please
shut up.
I
am in control here.

The fools’ leader shook his head as if to clear the last echoes of the distant machine from the air. He held his hand over his brow, squinting in the sun and flies. He came forward, his hand extended in greeting, and he named himself: Elgin. Creedmoor smiled and didn’t listen. The name was not important. The man was not important. Creedmoor’s plan required the fools, not their leader. All Creedmoor needed was for the man to come closer, out of sight of his charges. Creedmoor said, “I’ve come from Greenbank, Elgin. You’re bound for the hospital? I know the road ahead of you, and you know the road before me. Join me under the shade of this rock here. We can share our stories.”

Under the shadow of the rock they could not be seen. The rest was quick work.

The madmen had wandered a little, but their ankles were roped. Creedmoor rounded them up.

The one with the bright eyes, the one who’d been sobbing into his scraggly beard, the one who went by William, was the least damaged of the procession; his faculties were those of a slow but eager child, and he would not shut up. Would not stop asking where they were going. Would not stop asking what had happened to Mr. Elgin.

—Why doesn’t he just forget him? Has he no sense?

—No, Creedmoor, obviously he does not.

The victims of the Line’s mind-bombs weren’t talkative, in Creedmoor’s experience. Perhaps William had only just barely been caught in the blast. Perhaps he was a medical miracle! That’d be very exciting for the doctors at the Doll House, but for now it was a damn nuisance.

Creedmoor looked him very firmly in the eye—which was rheumy and muddled. “Easy, William, easy. Mr. Elgin had to hand you over to me. He was very sick, do you not recall? Do you not recall it, William? How he stepped on that snake? How his foot swelled up and went black? Yes, William, that’s right, well you may go white. There are
snakes
in these hills. Rattlers, William. William, my friend, stop shuffling: you can stand your left foot on your right, or your right foot on your left, but not both at once. Gravity won’t stand for it. You must choose a foot to put on the earth and take your chances.”

—They believe everything you tell them.

Something like curiosity crept into his master’s metallic voice, something like amusement. Human weakness was a mystery to them. He answered it:

—Yes.

And he touched William’s shaking shoulder. “The poor man had to go back to town, do you not recall? You were lucky I found you. Could you have drawn the poison from his wound, William? Could you lead these folk? Could you lead them through these hills, these ravines and ditches and yawning canyons, with the snakes, with the big metal birds of the Line in the air? Could you, William? Now don’t cry.
I’m
here to lead you.”

The dull murky eyes. The ruined architecture of the face still had some grandeur. A human face is a beautiful habitation, Creedmoor thought, even when left empty. Solid bone structure. Now a yellow mucus curdled in the pools of William’s eyes and in his stringy beard. Flies dabbled in it and he had no sense to swat them away. He stank; he’d pissed himself. They all had.

The mind-bombs that had done this to them were not the cruelest of the Line’s weapons. Not nearly the cruelest thing in this war; Creedmoor personally had done crueler things, and would again. Still; still. There was a special horror to madness.

The terrible thundering noise of the Line’s mind-bombs bred terror first, then despair, then the mind cracked and what was left was not really human anymore. Of this little group, childlike William was the luckiest. Others were mute, more puppets than men. One old woman at the back was like an ill-natured organ-grinder’s ape. None could string together a sensible adult’s sentence. Something about those husks made Creedmoor sentimental, which made him angry. William’s eyes were wandering up and down Creedmoor’s face, inspecting it with eager confusion, as if trying to read something in its lines and scars. Creedmoor did not know what to feel. The voice spoke in his mind with the finality of a hammer falling:

—You are wasting time.

—You’re the boss. All right. All right.

“All of you ladies and gentlemen,” he called out, “take up your ropes and your bonds. Let us begin again. I know, I know, it’s hot and we’re tired and there are snakes, oh there are
snakes
if we step out of line, do not forget it. But there’s rest at the end of it. The House Dolorous awaits us. One foot in front of the other, ladies and gents.”

Through the rocks and the ravine. This land was broken badly, like a china plate hurled by a
very
angry woman. From cool shadow to the hot sun and back again, again and again. Down in the ravines, the air was still and hot and fly-swarmed. Up above the hot dusty winds fluted the stone into sharp curves—the skyline was quite mad as the red sun set. Creedmoor kept the rope coiled around his left hand and walked in front. He tugged on it—sharply but not unkindly—when his charges showed signs of wandering off. But they balked and went slowly. He didn’t have the knack of it. He was no leader of men, or even of those half men. They were still walking by nightfall.

The ravines were lousy with caves and they camped in one of them. There were yellow old bones piled at the back of it, but whatever wolves or bears or worse had dwelled there were years gone. Faded blue paintings on the rocks—deer, bears, men, the sun, goats, serpents, manticorae—indicated that Hillfolk had once inhabited it, but they seemed to have moved on long ago.

There were scraggly trees and brush out the front—not that that would hide Creedmoor’s sad little party from the forces of the Line. The forces of the Line would not come poking along down the ravine, craning their heads into caves and beating away brush: they would just flood the whole damn thing with choking-gas if they had so much as a notion where Creedmoor was, or send echoes of that terrible annihilating Engine noise.

Creedmoor tied the fools’ rope round a needle of rock at the back of the cave and left them in the darkness. He sat himself against a flat stone at the cave’s mouth, where the air was clear. He unbuckled his belt and placed Marmion on the ground beside him. He let his charges sob at the darkness until the echoes got too loud. When one of the boys got overexcited and started grabbing at the women, Creedmoor banged his fist on the rock and shouted until they cried, but at least they were quiet again. Soon after, they went to sleep.

Creedmoor didn’t sleep. Marmion’s voice in his head saw to that. Creedmoor watched the stars and listened to the scrape and shiver of Marmion’s voice. The Guns talked war in their Lodge. Distant echoes of that talk reached Creedmoor’s ears—incomprehensible fragments—a meaningless murmur of death, defeat, revenge, glory. All across the continent, the echoes of Gun-shot carried the message. The constant distant sounding of Guns was a code, a hideous song. It had thrilled him once, years ago.

—Hudnall is dead.

—Hudnall. Which one?

—The elder. A phalanx of the Line cornered him in Lannon Town not two hours ago. They sealed the main street from both ends and closed in and ground him up.

—Poor old Hudnall.

—He acquitted himself well enough.

—Ah well, that’s all right, then. Who will take his place?

—Someone will come forward.

—We always do, do we not?

Creedmoor removed a slim novel from his pack and opened its scuffed pages to the mark. The beautiful red-haired peasant girl from the green and mists of the old country was facing for the first time her lover, fresh back from the war and wounded, though handsome.

Creedmoor had a vague sort of taste for romantic novels.

He read it by scant starlight. The night-sight was one of the Guns’ gifts to him.

—Pick-Up Wells has died.

—Who?

—Young. A recent recruit. You do not know him and now you will not.

—A bad night for the noble cause, to be sure.

—He succeeded in destroying the dam at Redbill Gorge before he died, but he stupidly let himself be caught in the flood.

—Ah. Good news and bad. The world is most wonderfully full of ups and downs, would you not say?