Old Green World (10 page)

“TROOPS!” Albert yelled at the top of his lungs.

Then they came after him. He stood his ground. They were far enough away that he managed to take out two more as they rushed him. That still left three.

They ran at him with amazing speed and strength, given how hungry they looked. They were on him even as he drew his sword. Then he fell on his back, their blows and their smell on him. One grabbed his arm with a yank that he thought would take it out. The other bit at his shoulder, and he felt it through the armor. The mouth reared back, bloodied, its teeth damaged. Albert kicked and managed to hit one and rammed his head into the chest of another. He knew this was all just struggling and delays. There were too many of them, and they attacked with no sense of self-preservation. They started to pull at him. The biting mouth kept coming in at his face. He held his sword in front of him, but the mouth, the face—the face was slicing itself against the blade just to get at Albert.

Suddenly, the mouth fell back. Albert felt some of the weight of the others go away. The other troops had arrived. Aengus had skewered the biter. He finished the biter off and then ran to Albert, leaving his sword in the biter’s chest.

“Are you all right, Al?” Aengus shouted.

“Aengus, your sword. Get your sword. I’m fine,” Albert said to him. He tried hard not to show impatience.

Aengus went back to get it. “I was upset,” he said to Albert when he returned to him. His voice was quavering.

“Worse things are going to happen to us. We have to keep our heads, all right?”

They looked around. The patrol had killed most of the savages. They held one survivor down. “This one is wild. Do we keep him alive for questioning?”

“We can’t let him escape. Let’s hold him down as long as we can. Pile on. Aengus, we need some rope, and we need to get word to the Adepts. The rest of you, get on patrol. We stopped being wary, and it bit us . . .” He trailed off. He began to take in what had happened. He glanced at Richard’s body, but he couldn’t keep his eye on it.

Albert approached the last living savage. The savage frothed at the mouth. His eyes were a luminous green. They all managed, with considerable struggle, to tie him up and then put him face down on the ground. He squirmed and strained against the ropes until they cut into him.

After what felt like hours, Sister Clare tore through a thick cluster of brush. “What’s happened here?” she asked.

“They were too fast. We didn’t hear them until they were on us,” Albert said. “They killed Brother Richard.”

On hearing this, Clare straightened and took on a stance that seemed to indicate determined listening. She quickly turned to where Richard’s body lay, and went to it. She fell to her knees. “You had a job, to protect us from what was in the forest.” Albert couldn’t tell if she was saying this to Richard, or to him. Her voice didn’t sound angry, just tired and disappointed. She stood and walked back to Albert.

“I failed,” Albert said to her.

“Yes.” Clare paused. “But this was a difficult task. This is the forest.” She turned to the bound Baixan and kneeled beside him.

She turned the Baixan over on his back. He writhed and tried to bite at Clare at first, but she put a hand on him and made him still. A moment of quiet extended for several minutes.

The wild tension that inhabited the Baixan suddenly left him. His body relaxed. His eyes changed, becoming a dull brown. When she stepped away, he was calm and nearly asleep.

“Was he under some kind of spell?” Albert asked.

“Close enough. He was in thrall. Take him into camp. Keep watch over him, but take care of him as well. This wasn’t his fault.”

“So whose fault is it, then? Someone is controlling them? Something?”

Clare paused again. Albert could see her study the interior of her mind, cribbing together the right thing to say. “We’ll stay put for a while and bring in reinforcements.” She then walked back to Richard and gently lifted his mangled body. With her back to Albert, she said, “It’s not your fault, either.”

“Are you saying that to convince me, or yourself?”

She turned, carrying Richard, and looked directly at Albert. “He wanted to patrol. We never wanted someone as valuable as Richard to be put in such a risky position. But he insisted. He said he wanted to watch the forest with you.” She then walked back to camp.

+ + +

They stayed in place for several days. Every day, another pack of enthralled Baixans attacked. Each day put more weight on Albert’s shoulders: the weight of the forest, the weight of the threat around them. Albert calculated how many soldiers were needed to protect the camp and put double that number around the perimeter. He had plenty of bored, scared troops who wanted something to do. The Adepts told the soldiers to treat the attackers humanely. Once the savages were broken of their spell, they had no memory of their actions. To a one, they proclaimed themselves peaceful forest-dwellers and showed fear and meekness at the sight of the approaching army. None of them ever showed signs of reversion to savagery. They were kept in camp as briefly as possible.

Aengus met the pause with worry and impatience. “I don’t like just sitting here. It feels like we’re a target.”

“You don’t like it when we’re moving in, and you don’t like it when we’re staying still,” Albert said. “This is as good as it gets, Aengus. The only other direction is retreat, and if we’re moved to that, then things will be much worse.”

Twelve days after the first attack, a group from the Old City arrived. Twenty more soldiers from the Green Island, all of whom looked older, stouter, and more grizzled than any soldiers Albert had ever seen. And two Old People: two women, one who was taller than Richard had been, and one who was much shorter. The Old People were accompanied by Niall.

Albert first saw Niall on the horse-cart as it drove toward the camp. They approached from the northwest. Niall sat up front with one of the soldiers, laughing loudly and thumping the soldier on the back. Niall’s robes weren’t different materially from any other Adept’s, but they looked simpler for some reason. They were certainly wrinkled. He wore them loose to accommodate his prodigious belly. He talked to the soldier like he owned the world. He reminded Albert of the laughing Buddha from the sutras back in school.

The cart pulled up to the perimeter; Niall had caught Albert’s eye about fifty feet back. Niall jumped off the cart and approached Albert directly. His head and face were covered with stubble, black as pitch. Albert had never seen eyes like his. They were blue and silver, like full midday sun trapped in ice.
 

“Do they have children in command?” he asked Albert. “Are you the child in command of this world-changing effort? Tell me who you are, and where the important people are staying.”

Albert said nothing. He met Niall’s eye and held his gaze.

Niall returned it, and they stared for a few moments. Then Niall laughed. “I like you,” he said. He walked off.

The Old People in the group were Richard’s sisters. The first sister, Lucy, had wild hair and patchwork robes, nervous tics and desperate, craving eyes. She grieved loudly and heavily, wailing constantly: she could be heard throughout the camp. Susan, the second sister, was quiet, formal, and grave. Her hair hung to the middle of her neck and terminated in a perfectly straight horizontal line. She didn’t look much like Lucy, and neither of them looked much like Richard. She wore an immaculate robe, like Richard had. She alone seemed to keep Lucy in control. At one point, Albert watched Lucy work herself into a fever, barking and shaking, only to be suddenly and totally calmed by just a touch from Susan. They were always together.

Albert patrolled constantly now. He vowed to miss nothing, to meet any savage or animal that came from the woods. Even more Baixans came now, swarms of them, and especially at night. They glowed all over at times, as if the green energy in them had filled to bursting. They came forth from the brush with screams and wails. They seemed not only hungry and desperate, but also possessed with their own mourning.
Maybe they mourn the coming death of Terra Baixa
, Albert thought. They seemed like grief itself, which infuriated Albert. He held his grief and guilt as precious, and hated the thought that these things could also suffer.

Whenever they patrolled with an Adept, Albert would follow her lead and would let the Baixans be sedated and bound. “It’s ridiculous, though. They’ll just come back,” he said to Aengus.

The Adepts had much to occupy them with the death of Richard and were often absent from the patrols. When he patrolled alone with the other troops, Albert ordered all Baixans put to death.

Richard was wrapped from head to toe in a shroud and placed in state, in a glade just adjacent to the camp. He rested there for weeks, but his body didn’t change, and no animals came for him, nor did any savages.

Finally, they held a ceremony. Richard’s family and the Adepts sat with him for a full day and night. The next morning, everyone in camp joined them.

Sister Clare said some words. “Few of you really knew Richard. He was the eldest of the Old People, and he was first to lead us in the ways of the Adept. The Islands are what they are because of what he gave to us. He gave us civilization.”

At that point, Lucy burst out. The Adepts reacted as if this were unexpected, which made Albert wonder if they had been paying attention. “We’re not supposed to be here. We were never supposed to be here. But Richard decided he loved all of . . .
you
. He stopped trying to fix what happened to us, and started trying to turn you all into giant, new versions of us. And here’s where it all ended up, isn’t it? This great legacy.”

“Stop it, Lucy,” Susan said.

“This is supposed to be the time when we speak about our brother, isn’t it?” Lucy said with indignation, her voice rising to a scream. “Right? This is a funeral. So I’m speaking. Funerals are for the living.” She then broke down again in sobs.

There was silence for a little while, and then Susan said, “Thank you for remembering Richard with us.” Niall took Richard’s body. He, the Old Sisters, and the rest of the Adepts marched solemnly into the forest until they were out of sight.

They stayed in place for another day. With Richard’s death, Brother Niall became the Adept in charge of the effort. Albert met with him to discuss resuming the march. Niall tried to bait him a couple of times, calling him “boy,” but Albert met him darkly. They soon turned to business.

“What did his sister Lucy mean, that Richard wanted to make us like the Old People?” Albert asked.

Niall said, “They showed us how to become Adepts. Adepts exist because of the Old People. And everything that followed: agriculture, education, commerce, towns. It all started with the Old People, with Richard. Without him, we would still be like the Baixans are: chaotic, primitive, disorganized, desperate.”

“She said they weren’t supposed to be here. What did that mean?”

Niall, after a short silence: “She was very upset. I’m sure it didn’t mean anything.”

Albert held his tongue for a moment, but only a moment. “Clare, the day Richard died. She said the Baixans were in thrall. What is that, ‘thrall’? Is that what the green glow is about?”

“We call it the Dragon,” Niall said. “It’s an intelligence that controls the Baixans. It turns them against us. It’s more complex than what we should discuss now. Trust me that we’re taking care of it.”

“But what is it? Are they diseased? Is it some kind of forest spirit? Is it an Adept thing? You know it well enough to cure it, don’t you?”

“It’s called the Dragon,” Niall repeated, testily, “and it’s dangerous when you see signs of it. That’s all you need to know.” Then, with cold cynicism: “Why are you asking, anyway? What good does it do you to know? If you know, then you’ll have to think about your responsibility for what’s happening. I know what you children do on patrol.”

Albert looked at him with rage.

“I know everything, boy,” Niall murmured. “Weren’t you in school, next to one of us every day, for a decade? You know, you know it in your bones. I can see you. I can see all of you.”

After a long silence, Albert said, shaking, “I don’t care what you can see. They killed my parents.” Then, with indignation, he said, “And they killed Richard. He was the same as your parent, wasn’t he? You would be out there killing with me, if you cared, if you loved anything. You should thank me.”

Niall pursed his lips for a moment, then put on a false smile and said, with brassy sarcasm: “It’s fine, boy. It’s what we’re here for, right? This is the progress of civilization. We’re going to kill a lot more trees and Baixans before this is all over.

“You’ve asked enough questions. I’ll ask you questions for a change. Tell me how we are going to march your troops forward.”

The next morning, the sisters left with a few soldiers. The troops packed up and set out again, wearier than before they made camp.

It should have been only a day or two more to get to their destination: Lutetia, the Old City of the Baixans. It took longer. There were fewer attacks from Baixans under thrall, but still four or five a day, with up to twenty in each attack. The enthralled Baixans attacked viciously, breaking limbs and wounding soldiers, but they had lost their ability to surprise. The troops had learned to put a phalanx around the Adepts quickly, to separate the savages from each other, to hold them down and tie them together, to leave them tied in the forest.

“Do you think they’ll starve?” Aengus asked.

“I don’t care. I hope so. Why? Are you worried about them?”

“No, of course not,” Aengus said. “I’m tired of this, though. They’re trying to wear us down.”

“I don’t know, I think they’re actually doing us a favor. We’re getting better at this, aren’t we? You can feel when they’re coming, can’t you?”

Aengus paused for a second. “I can. They make sounds well before they get here. A distinctive rustle, back in the woods. I can hear them earlier and earlier.”

“Exactly. We’ve learned to be on our guard. We’ve learned how to work together. We know how to subdue them and win without using more energy than we have to. We’re learning to be less afraid and more at home with this, aren’t we? It’s not wearing us down, just letting us practice. Warming us up.”