Stonecrop, the Plains-dweller, waited until the sun rose fully before
he approached the camp. He was cautious. He had never dealt with elves before
and Rem had told him that they are often untrustworthy. He had also said,
however, that the Ortian elves were undoubtedly the best of the lot but that
had just confused him, particularly as they had had the conversation in Ethian,
which he hadn’t entirely mastered yet. His orders were clear though – he needed
to go and find a mad human carried by a group of elves, and bring him back to
the village. And now, after just two days of searching, he had seen the
improvised Imperial banner and so found them.
As soon as he was certain that he was in
the right place he shouted out: he’s heard about elves and arrows and didn’t
want to end up impaled by a keen eyed archer. He shouted in Ethian, as he knew
no Visneorian.
‘Hello!’
Ilex, who was on guard, heard him clearly enough and saw him a few
seconds later, half crouched behind a tamarisk tree. Stonecrop stood up and emerged from the
foliage; Ilex waited. They stood opposite each other and after a few opening
attempts at communication realised that they were mutually incomprehensible.
Stonecrop pointed towards the improvised
flag. Ilex turned back to the tents and shouted at the top of his voice ‘we have a visitor, sir’
Elanus appeared, sleep-befuddled, at the
flap of his tent. He looked across and rubbed his eyes.
‘Who is it?’ he asked.
Ilex did nothing except point at the
plains dweller; Elanus ran over to them, delighted.
‘Greetings, friend![1]’ he said in Visneorian.
‘I
do not speak elf...’ responded Stonecrop in Ethian.
This was a problem; few Ortians under
the age of about nine hundred had felt the need to speak the common tongue of
men and women. Only the key political figures had been taught it – as much out
of habit as anything else. Elanus was far too young and far too unimportant to
have learnt any words of it. The Plains Dwellers would not learn any Elven
tongue on principle. This was going to be a difficult procedure.
After about another minute of confusion
they descended into the universal language of gestures and pointing. Eventually
Elanus remembered that there was someone in his squad who knew some Ethian:
Corporal Betula, an archer old enough to have learned a smattering of the
language. The conversation was basic but allowed them to share enough
information for everyone to work out what was going on.
Elanus took Stonecrop to von Eisen’s
carriage and let him peer inside. After that the Plains Dweller stood for a
long while thinking. He walked round the carriage shaking his head. Elanus knew
that this had been coming.
‘How are we going to get him to your
village, then?’ he asked, exasperated. Betula had a go at translating this.
Stonecrop shrugged, which seemed like a
reasonable enough answer to the Captain. They stood there for a long while, and then
Elanus began to feel hungry. He rubbed his belly and smiled at the Plains
Dweller.
‘Would you like some breakfast?’ he
asked. There was no need for Betula to translate.
***
Stonecrop had never had bacon before and he had to try six or seven
experimental slices before he could confirm that, yes, it was definitely
delicious. Coffee, though, seemed like a very strange thing to force down your
throat – it was as bitter as some of the weeds that Rem fed them when they had
the sweating sickness. Plains Dwellers could eat almost anything in severe
shortages, even wood and soil, but none of them liked to do it if they had
something more tasty available. Coffee was definitely something to add to that
list of undesirable foodstuffs. He half thought to ask for tea, but he’d never
tried that either; it was just something mentioned in the Ethian phrase book
that Rem had bought from a trader and was now using to teach them all the
language. He feared that it might be just as nasty as coffee, which would be a
pity. At the moment he assumed that anything that was consumed by humans must
be good.
He watched as the camp woke up and
hurried around busily. Elanus had set them to cannibalise what they could out of
the carriage and build a litter, so that they could carry the Baron the rest of
the way over the terrain which now had no roads. They had no professional carpenters
with them but over the course of a few hours they manage to fashion a passable
carrying box, into which they could slip the carriage mattress and the sedated
von Eisen. Stonecrop thought that he looked extremely strange, even for a
human. His face seemed in shadow, even in the bright southern sunlight, as if
there was something lurking inside him. Stonecrop shivered in the warm morning
air. He was pleased to see the man securely inside his box again.
The elves packed up rapidly, even
folding their improvised banner up with efficient care and stowing it away in a
large two-person canvas bag. Stonecrop was astonished by their organisation;
nothing ever happened in his village without long discussions, or if Healer Rem
absolutely insisted on it (which happened very rarely and only on spiritual
matters). These elves, however, seemed to be able to read their captain’s mind.
They were almost like ants.
***
It took two days to reach Stonecrop’s village. It was one of about a
dozen that dotted the landscape and made up the bulk of the sedentary Plains
Dwellers. There were others who were semi-nomadic, moving their cows around to
browse where they could, often drifting off into nominally Imperial land. The
best grazing land, however, was here, in a patch of green watered by the Gneum
River, just the beginning of a thin blue line on its long journey framing the
Effaron Desert, under the Wall, through Visnea and then on to Garandos and the
sea.
The elves lowered the litter down
carefully in the middle of the village, close to the large communal fire. The
children rushed out of their huts to see who was here, but once they saw that
these were strangers they rushed back in again, except for a few who stayed
just outside their doorways, ready to retreat if things got really scary.
Stonecrop went to find Rem, who tended
to wander around the villages, but was usually easy to find. He could remember
when Rem (who had had another, Old-Tongue, name in those days that they never
now used) was a scout and a hunter adept at first aid in the wilderness, one of
several scouts sent out to ensure that the elves didn’t get too close. But then
he had gone to the ruined city with his companions and had come back full of a
new way for the tribe: a way that had come directly from the Grey Wanderer. It
was also a way that asked for peace with the elves of Ortia – creatures who had
been lumped with the other elves as evil and dangerous in the past. It had taken a great deal of talking to
persuade all the people of the value of that.
Rem was teaching some young adult Plains
Dwellers. He was in the middle of a ring of them shouting out Ethian phrases
and getting them to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to them.
‘Are you a turnip?’ he asked one
‘Yes’ came back the eager reply. Rem
shook his head.
‘We’ll bury you next winter, then, shall
we?’ He turned to another.
‘What’s your name?’
An Old-Tongue name formed on the poor
student’s lips. Stonecrop couldn’t see Rem’s face but it was enough to change
the student’s mind.
‘Earthroot’ he spluttered.
‘Good’ said Rem, ‘it’s good’
Stonecrop tapped Rem on the shoulder. He
twisted round on the spot. His eyes flashed grey.
‘You...’ he said, ‘...are they here?’
Stonecrop nodded. Rem’s smiled.
‘We’ll learn more later...’ he said to
his pupils, ‘after eating...’.
The pupils dispersed eagerly. Rem
frowned.
‘Easier to heal than to teach...’
Stonecrop could think of nothing to say
to this. Rem could be a bit daunting.
‘Where are they?’ asked Rem
Stonecrop pointed back in the direction
that he’d come. Rem screwed his eyes up to look for any sign of the visitors,
but he could see nothing.
‘Take me to them, then...’ he said.
There were some clumsy introductions not helped greatly by Betula’s
poor Ethian. This wasn’t a large problem, however, as Rem knew exactly why they
were here. Elanus wondered how he knew what they were bringing or how Stonecrop
had found them so easily, but he wasn’t too concerned. He knew that the Lady
always found a way.
Rem, however, was much more upset. He
demanded that von Eisen should be taken, with great care, out of his litter and
laid down on a raffia hammock out of the sun. The more he looked at the Baron
the less he clearly liked what he saw. After a few minutes of gentle prodding,
rubbing of the patient’s head with powdery substances and a lot of wordless
grumbling, he turned to Betula and hissed at her.
‘Why do you drug him?’
Betula looked terrified, even though Rem
was a good six inches shorter than she. She attempted to translate for Elanus,
but she had to guess at the word ‘drug’.
‘The
healer asks - why did you hurt him?’
Elanus’s let out a startled cry.
‘Is
he in pain, then?’ he asked, tilting his head to examine the supine baron.
Betula had no trouble with this and all
that Rem did in response was to shake his head. Then he thought for a moment.
‘Was he hurting durings all of the
journey?’ he asked
‘Was
he drugged all of the days?’ translated Betula
It was Elanus’s turn to nod. Rem looked
very worried. His brow furrowed as he examined his new patient.
‘Is his suffering physical and mental?’ he
asked
Betula had no idea what that meant; the
two most important words eluded her – so he tried an approximate direct
translation.
‘He
is carnal in his brain. Yes?’
Elanus’s face stiffened with shock. His
next words were almost whispered to his translator.
‘He’s asking about whether the Baron is
thinking about sex? Why would he ask that?’
Betula shrugged – she had no idea what
Rem had really been asking but she didn’t want to reveal her ignorance.
‘Could
it be because humans are always thinking about that, sir?’
This straw was an age old elven canard (concerning
humans) but Elanus grasped at it anyway.
‘Tell
the healer that he may have been having troubling carnal dreams, yes...’ The
elves shared a guilty look that acknowledged that this was completely made up,
but both also knew that they had to find something to say to this strange
question.
‘My captain says that he has a
predicament with meat when nocturnally positioned’
Rem shook his head, but he was smiling.
He spoke very slowly and carefully, but he had to supress his laughter.
‘I’m sure he didn’t say that, elf. Tell
him that you are a very bad translator...’
Betula’s face fell. Rem’s laughter died
on his lips. He nodded at her gravely.
‘...but I am sure that you are a very
good soldier’
She perked up a little but had no idea
if that had been a joke and whether she was meant to translate anything back to
Elanus.
‘Don’t worry’ said Rem, putting her out
of her misery, ‘I’ll look after this man now’
He looked out at the little knot of
Visneorian soldiers.
‘You can all go home’ he shouted out
across the plain. He didn’t wait for a translation before he turned back to
treat his poor patient.
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