The Forever Man: Clan War Page 10

  The Fair-Folk and the worthy humans considered this to be tough but reasonable. Worthy humans such as Milly were always sprouting sayings such as, “Self respect is the fruit of discipline,’ or “Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.”

  After an hour or so of wandering around and asking directions they found the central storage offices.

  Both Nathaniel and Tad were amazed at the vast amounts of bureaucracy that seemed to be generated by the Fair-Folk’s rules. There was an officer for everything. Planting, reaping, preserving. Storage, accommodation, food allowances, maintenance, safety.

  The place reminded the marine of the old Soviet Union that he had studied in history classes. Gray and dour and inefficient. The people worn and listless but alive.

  The central storing offices were run by a goblin and three worthy humans. Tad and Nathaniel were sat opposite a worthy human and they took out their knives. Tad went into his sales pitch, showing the quality of the blades, the leather handles. Promoting the balance and superiority of the craftsmanship.

  When he had finished the worthy human simply said. ‘Cooking knives get five jars of fruit preserve. Military blades under six inches get seven jars.’

  Tad assumed an air of amazement. ‘Of course, worthy human,’ he said. ‘But look at these blades. Bright steel. The best leather handles. Feel how sharp they are.’

  ‘Cooking knives, five jars. Military blades under six inches, seven jars. Take or leave it. I don’t care which.’

  ‘Just give him the blades,’ said Nathaniel.

  Tad, a disappointed look on his face, slid across the selection of knives. The human disappeared into the warehouse and came back with two large sacks.

  ‘Here,’ he said as he placed them onto the table. ‘One hundred and twenty three jars of fruit preserve, assorted.’

  He glanced over their shoulders. There were two more tradesmen waiting.

  ‘Next,’ he flicked his hand at Tad and Nathaniel. ‘Go.’

  The next two traders shuffled up to the desk. ‘Tin plates and mugs. Looking for pickled and preserved vegetables.’

  ‘Tin mugs, two jars of pickled vegetables, assorted. Tin plates, three jars.’ Responded the store man.

  The marine and the dwarf walked out, each carrying a sack.

  ‘Bloody ridiculous,’ fumed Tad. ‘It makes no sense. If I’d offered him some rusty old piece of crap cutlery I would have got the same price as I did for top quality stuff.’

  Nathaniel grinned. ‘Centralized economy. That’s how it works. I don’t know why you’re so chipped off. I mean, we aren’t actually here to trade, are we?’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ argued Tad. ‘It doesn’t make sense. It offends me. Who decides what is worth what?’

  Nate shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Some clueless worthy human. Who cares?’

  Tad sniffed. ‘Idiots.’

  They turned the corner into the street that the guesting barn was in and Tad almost walked straight into someone.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Watch where you’re going,’ the person replied. ‘It’s not a race, you know.’

  Tad froze, staring.

  ‘Janeka?’

  She stared back at him.

  ‘Tad?’ She went down on one knee and threw her arms around the small man. The two of them stood in silence for a while. Holding each other. Then Janeka looked up.

  ‘It can’t be,’ she said. ‘Nathaniel?’

  She stood up and hugged him.

  ‘Jesus, Nate,’ she continued. ‘You look like you haven’t aged a day. Hair’s longer. A few more scars. How is that possible?’

  Nathaniel laughed. ‘Clean living, abstinence and a vegan diet,’ he answered. ‘No, seriously,’ he continued. ‘Is there some place we can talk in private? I can explain.’

  She nodded. ‘I stay with Gramma. It’s just the two of us in the house.’

  ‘Where’s Adalyn?’ Asked Tad.

  Janeka shook her head. ‘Gone. The cancer ate her up some six years back. But Gramma’s still strong. Most people have to share rooms but they all treat Gramma special. Come.’

  They followed Janeka past the guesting barn, through some narrow alleys and, finally, to a small stand-alone house at the end of a short, quiet street.

  ‘Hey,’ said Nathaniel. ‘How come this street isn’t covered in shit and stuff like all of the others?’

  Janeka laughed.

  ‘Gramma don’t allow it. Long drops out the back. Rubbish taken and dumped elsewhere. If you disobey then she comes around to your house and talks at you. Nobody wants that. Even the Orcs treat Gramma with respect. Actually, the goblins are petrified of her and the worthy humans all call her ma’am. Except for Milly, of course.’

  ‘Milly’s still around?’ Asked Nathaniel eagerly.

  Janeka nodded. ‘We’ll talk about that later. Come on.’

  She opened the door and showed them in.

  ‘Gramma,’ she shouted. ‘Visitors.’

  ‘I’s in da kitchen, child. Making tisane.’

  Janeka led the way down the corridor and into the kitchen. It was a fairly large room. Painted bright blue. An open fire in the one wall and a wood stove in the corner. Both were going and the room was as hot as a summer’s day. Gramma was throwing some herbs into a large battered teapot and stirring it with a wooden spoon.

  She looked up at the visitors and froze.

  ‘Lordy be,’ she said. ‘If it ain’t the little big man and the marine.’

  Both Nathaniel and Tad gave the old lady a hug. She took some more mugs from the cupboard and poured tisane for all, sweetening it with honey.

  Then she sat down and stared long and hard at Nathaniel.

  ‘You ain’t aged none,’ she said.

  ‘You look the same as well, Gramma,’ retorted Nate.

  ‘Bullshine,’ Gramma said. ‘I look all of my eighty plus years. You ain’t aged at all. Not a day. Your hair got longer and someone cut you face some. So, it’s true what we thought back then…you is immortal.’

  ‘Not sure, Gramma,’ answered Nathaniel. ‘I went away, but only for a year. When I got back more than twenty years had passed.’

  Gramma raised an eyebrow. ‘Tell me about it, child.’

  So Nathaniel did, and the story took a while in the telling. Tad broke out a bottle of the forbidden uisge and the four of them drank as the story unfolded.

  Nathaniel finished with his return home and Tad’s discovering him at the foot of the standing stone.

  Gramma nodded. ‘I know de story of king Arthur. I tells you, that Guinevere was one conniving bitch.’

  Nate shrugged. ‘I loved her, Gramma.’

  ‘What you know about love?’ Questioned the old lady. ‘You but a child.’

  Gramma poured herself another shot if uisge. ‘You know summat, marine. I’m not sure now if I always knew dat story or if I only always knew it now dat you told it to me.’

  ‘I remember a different story,’ admitted Nathaniel. ‘There was a holy grail and there were knights in armor. Also a sword called Excalibur.’

  Everyone else at the table shook their heads.

  ‘Doesn’t ring any bells,’ said Janeka. ‘The king Arthur that I knew was always king of the picts.’

  ‘Me too,’ admitted Gramma and Tad.

  ‘Well that’s my story, Gramma, now, talk to me about Milly,’ said the marine.

  Janeka looked at her feet and Gramma gave a huge sigh before she spoke.

  ‘That, Nathaniel my boy, is a story that is not as happy as it should be.’

  The marine pulled another bottle of golden spirit from the pocket of his long coat, cracked the seal and re-filled Gramma’s mug.

  ‘Not many are, Gramma,’ said Nathaniel. ‘But they all need to be told, none the less.’

  The old lady nodded her agreement, took a slug of whisky and started to talk.

  ‘When you and Tad left the farm all those years ago, Milly hated you for it,’ said Gramma. ‘
Especially you, Nate. She felt abandoned, betrayed. Alone.’

  ‘She had you guys,’ argued the marine. ‘And I did it for her own good. Life in the wilds was no life for a young girl.’

  ‘Grown-up thinking,’ said Gramma. ‘All dat mean nothing to a little girl. Her parents died, you took her on, you up and left. I’s not blaming you or discussing right or wrong,’ continued Gramma. ‘I’s simply telling a story, so shuts up and listen.’

  ‘Sorry, Gramma. Go ahead.’

  ‘Dem early times was tough. Hand to mouth existence, living mainly on potatoes. Constant attack by roving bands of bandits. But the defenses dat you had put together and the system of patrols you set up, dey worked real good. After a year the bandits got to know, don’t attack the farm, it’ll only end badly. Until a man by the name of Curtis O’Reilly. Irishman. He puts his self together a gang of his own and then proceeds to gather all the other bandits together. Collected his self up about sixty of them. One day, just before sun up he hits the farm, but we’s ready ‘cause we had scouts and guards and all dat stuff you told us to do. So Curtis and his merry men, they takes an almighty beating. We killed nigh on fifty of the assholes. But they managed to break into the inner defenses before we beats them back. They killed seven of us and, on the way out, they grabbed Milly. Kidnapped her. Soon as we found out we put together a force of mounted men and went after her. Caught up wid them the next day. Brought them back to the farm, cut their stomachs open and then strung them up by the river to die slowly. People came to watch.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Nathaniel. ‘Bit harsh.’

  Gramma shook her head. ‘No. We was lenient on the mothers. They raped that little girl. Not one or two of them. They all did. She didn’t talk for six months. Walked around like a zombie. Then de Fair-Folk came. With their battle Orcs and goblin archers and trolls and such-stuff. No one ever attacked de farm again. How could they? Them Orcs might be pig-ugly but they can fight like the devil. Wasn’t long and de only bandits in de area was buried under a butt load of soil. They brought order, law and food. Milly loved them for that. They did for her what we humans couldn’t. And they never gone and left her neither. Given choice, dat girl will take the side of the Fair-Folk above her fellow man. She be well and truly a convert. She is a full on worthy human.’

  Nathaniel took a deep breath. ‘I need to see her. To talk to her.’

  Gramma shook her head. ‘No, my child, you do not. For the right or the wrong of it, that little girl hates your guts. If you hadn’t left she wouldn’t have been raped. You see? All the bad crap that happened to her…it be your fault, marine. It be all your fault.’

  Nathaniel Hogan was not yet thirty years of age. Yet he had fought, and conquered the Romans at Hadrian’s Wall. He had become a king. He had been pinned down by sniper fire in the never-ending war in Afghanistan. He had survived the fall of man and traveled across time and space. He had gained immortality and, with it, had taken on a geas that now controlled his life.

  But what Gramma had just told him affected him like nothing that he had experienced before. She was correct, if he had not left, then Milly would have been safe. He had abandoned her to follow some unexplained obsession that kept pulling him north. He could have…he should have, taken her with him.

  ***

  Tad and Nathaniel left early the next morning, just before sunrise. The marine had not seen Milly, but he had promised to pop back in on Janeka and Gramma on his way back – if he did come back.

  Their saddlebags were heavier now that they had over a hundred jars of fruit preserve but they would trade them for something lighter at some stage. Neither of them were that bothered about it. After all, the whole trading thing was merely a cover and a way to enable them to live when they were unable to live off the land itself.

  The two men rode in silence, heading in a vaguely southerly direction. Tad didn’t push the marine for conversation. He knew that he was struggling to come to terms with what Gramma had told him the night before.

  Eventually Tad spoke.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ he said.

  ‘Yes it was,’ replied Nathaniel.

  There was nothing that the little big man could say in return.

  Chapter 22

  Pawah Patenemheb, ambassador to the Fair-Folk and assistant to commander Ammon turned up his concentration and brought the full power of his glamour onto the human sitting opposite him. Waves of coercion boiled off him as his magiks altered human perception. This glamoring ensured that they all saw him as a six foot, blonde, square-jawed, blue-eyed Adonis. As opposed to a four foot high, domed headed, bald, rubber skinned alien.

  The Fair-Folk had still not allowed their true selves to be perceived by the humans. They realized that control was far easier when they looked less alien and more akin to the widely accepted norm of the generic Alpha male cliché.

  As well as changing his visual perception, Pawah was also using his coercion in an attempt to subtly control the human’s mind. To sway him over to his way of thinking.

  But it did little to help. Axel Bainbridge, ex-captain Queen’s guards, was from the sort of English upper-class family that was naturally immune to all forms of mental coercion or blandishments. His rock solid sense of enlightenment, courtesy of Eton, one thousand years of inbreeding and being a member of Her Majesty’s Army, combined to create a man whose self confidence and self belief were as solid and as unmoving as a rock.

  ‘But, Captain,’ said Pawah. ‘You must understand, all that we, as the Fair-Folk, do, is for your own good. We provide protection, a market for your wares and freedom from worry.’

  ‘You do nothing of the sort, ambassador,’ retorted Axel. ‘We at the Abbey, protect ourselves. We produce superior products and find no difficulty in trading them for their actual worth. If we allowed ourselves to be enveloped by the Fair-Folk and their restrictive policies, it would devalue our products and services and give us nothing in return.’

  ‘But, captain,’ continued Pawah. ‘I have been told to advise you that we must insist on your full co-operation.’

  ‘Well then ambassador,’ replied Axel. ‘I must advise you, with all due respect, to go screw yourselves.’

  ‘Captain, there is no need for such aggression.’

  ‘I disagree, ambassador. I think that aggression is the only thing that you Fair-Folk understand. Let me lay this out for you. I control an army of six hundred horse, five hundred archers and eight hundred foot. On top of that we maintain a citizen force of another two thousand auxiliaries. All told, about four thousand warriors. Now, I know that, compared to your forces, we are relatively insubstantial, however, if you push us, we will attack you. Eventually you will almost beat us. And I say almost, because aside from my standard forces, I have a force of five hundred guerillas.’

  ‘I am not familiar with that word,’ interrupted the ambassador.

  ‘Well then, let me acquaint you,’ said Axel. ‘If you defeat our conventional army, my guerillas will split into groups of between three and five. A mixture of male and female, young and old. Indistinguishable from the normal population. They are then tasked with destroying anything to do with the Fair-Folk. Food supplies, sabotage of buildings, poisoning water supplies. Forever and ever and ever. You see, we cannot win. But then, ultimately, neither can you.’

  Pawah thought for a while.

  ‘That is not logical. If you simply acceded to our suggestions then all would be fine.’

  ‘Look, ambassador, I am not going to even attempt to explain to you how wrong you are. Suffice to say, be happy with the current status quo. Things are working. We humans are not a logical species, we are driven by things other than mere food and shelter.’

  Pawah shook his head. ‘I disagree. Many of you are.’

  Axel grinned. ‘True. But not all. And you would do well to remember that. I won’t show you out, ambassador,’ finished Axel. ‘After all, you know the way.’

  The ambassador stood up and left the room. Outside, his two b
attle Orc bodyguards walked beside him as he left the building.

  Axel opened one of the desk drawers, took out a cigar and lit from the burning candle on his desktop. The private door to his office opened and his wife, Janice, walked in. He smiled at her, amazed, as he was every day, that this beautiful, bright woman had chosen to stay with him. Over twenty years ago she had come across him, wounded, his face burned, his left eye missing and he on the very verge of death. And she had saved him. They had both been given shelter by the kind professor in charge of the Abbey school that formed the base of what was now one of the biggest occupied towns in England.

  Leadership had passed on to Axel some twelve years ago and the professor, although still sprightly and young for his years, spent most of his time either napping or arguing about anything and everything with father O’Hara, the town priest who, in turn, spent most of his time in a constant state of jovial inebriation.

  ‘The ambassador still giving you a tough time?’ Asked Janice.

  ‘As always,’ agreed Axel. ‘We disturb their sense of order. Also, commander Ammon wants to place an Orc battle group inside the Abbey lands. As well as that he wanted to put one of his worthy humans into my office as an “assistant”. I rejected his offer most forcefully. The ambassador made a few veiled threats but I called his bluff. I’m not sure what worries them so much.’

  ‘I suspect that they think that you may lead some sort of revolution against them,’ ventured Janice.

  Axel snorted. ‘Hardly likely. Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, humanity isn’t ready for it. Say what you like about the Fair-Folk, they have enforced some sort of order into what was an ungovernable world.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Janice. ‘But at what cost? People subsist, but no more than that. The lion’s share of food and materials go to the Fair-Folk and their minions, or to the so-called, worthy humans.’