The Wildwose
by
G.A. Whitfield
The Wildwose
Copyright © 2010 by G. A. Whitfield
Disclaimer:
This work is 100% fiction. All scenes and events within these pages have been an invention of the author's imagination, and to his knowledge never occurred in reality. Any resemblance to the reader's own experiences is purely coincidental. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
The Wildwose
Part I
"A strange madness came upon him. He crept away and fled to the woods, unwilling that any should see his going. Into the forest he went, glad to lie hidden beneath the ash trees. He watched the wild creatures grazing on the pasture of the glades. Sometimes he would follow them, sometimes pass them in his course. He made use of the roots of plants and of grasses, of fruit from trees and of the blackberries in the thicket. He became a Man of the Woods, as if dedicated to the woods. So for a whole summer he stayed hidden in the woods, discovered by none, forgetful of himself and of his own, lurking like a wild thing.” Vita Merlini, Geoffrey of Monmouth, 1150
*****
A soft rain fell gently from the sky, dimming the half-light of early morning and dribbling almost resentfully from the signs which swung creaking in the wind. These chained articles were a part of the quaintness of Main Street, where the small stores sold genuine craft articles. Their business-like frontage was interspersed with the more salubrious adornments of drinking holes and low-cost restaurants.
At the top of the stairs, leading to the Prelate’s monument, stood a young officer bedecked in his new uniform, which was now looking a little bedraggled. Drops of rain dripped constantly from the peak of his cap, onto his nose and into his mouth. Now and then he absent-mindedly cuffed the excess away, his thoughts locked on the approaching column of men.
He watched as the troops marched past and wondered who in their wildest imagination had sent these primped-up soldiers to Wose IV. It was a disaster waiting to happen and, he was sure, a mistake of phenomenal proportions. This planet had an Inspectorate hands-off order, even a Cardinal or two as a protective blanket, and yet somehow this recruitment had been organised, and an off-world command structure designated.
Kombel had always thought politics rather over-rated, a kind of tool for the insecure and ignorant. That anyone should feel that they, in their wisdom, had the overwhelming right to instil their beliefs on others smacked to him more than a little of unrestrained egotism. He himself followed the local religion of peace and acceptance, of democracy and tolerance. It had worked well up until now and there was really no reason to change it.
Even so, the belching exhaust fumes and the tinny sounds of the regimental bands did add a certain carnival atmosphere to the holidays. The local Governor had promised two whole regiments and even Kombel himself had signed up. His family more than a little disappointed in him for the action. However, he could live with that. Wose IV was not the only planet in the galaxy and he meant to see and experience as much as he could.
Truth be told, he was a little worried about the apparent lack of intelligence information sent to the incoming troops. This world was a touchy one, having been close to declarations of heresy on a number of occasions. The patina of respectability was just that, a very thin ice beneath which the local inhabitants skated frenetically. Then of course, there was the Wildwose and that was, without doubt, completely different. A taboo subject which had degenerated into myth, something that the Inspectorate itself had encouraged; dissolution of knowledge. Kombel only hoped that the apparently successful conversion of fact into fiction, would not come back and bite the Inspectorate on its sanctimonious butt. After all, urban legends had been known to have a basis of fact at least, and these Church boys did not want to experience even a little of the reality that was Wose IV, of that Kombel was sure.
*****
The wood-panelled central room was typical of many of those places used by the Officers of the Inspectorate for their rest and recreational activities. A large central table gave enough room for the huge quantity of food and the even greater amount of alcohol, both local and imported.
As it was want to do, the evening had degenerated into the usual fantasy world of bravado and boasting. One group of junior officers were betting on the outcome of a game of Slingshot, where two teams threw their unfortunate companion up into the air towards the panelling, and he, or she, had to find at least some purchase and cling there for the regulation amount of time. Another group had organised a game of Simian, and were racing each other around the walls, clinging to whatever vantage point they could find and hooting and hollering.
Older, more refined officers had retired with dignity and were concentrating on drinking and telling war stories. They had yet to reach the stage of scar comparison, but that was definitely on the agenda.
“Can anyone,” asked a clearly worse for wear Major, “shed some light onto these ridiculous stories? What were they called, ah yes, the Wildwose?”
A young Leftenant sat to one side of the others, flanked by two of the Mess servants, who watched him warily. He stared at the drunken men intently, as though trying to divine which way they would jump this evening. By the frown on his face, it was not looking good.
“Perhaps I can help?” he asked, trying not to force his way into the conversation, but rather to appear as a junior officer should, respectful and effacing.
“And who might you be, Sir?” asked the inebriated Major, “Can’t say I recognise you!”
“My name is Kombel, Sir, Leftenant Barry Kombel. I have been assigned here as a local liaison officer, Sir.”
The Major, one James Wolis, peered foggily at the young man, whose clean-shaven good looks jarred with his own fleshy worldliness, and snorted. “Come on then, boy, tell us all about it!”
Even the Major’s companions baulked a little at his off-handed treatment of the Leftenant, but the young man seemed not to notice.
“Very well, Sir,” he agreed, moving his chair closer, “let me tell you about the Wildwose…..”
Part II
“…The colony ship Sentiment was lost, not just vaguely so, but well and truly, world-shatteringly lost. They had suffered malfunctions in almost all of the equipment, had experienced incidents and accidents, until finally their main engines failed. It was then, and only then, that their Captain realised that none of these events were coincidental and had finally called in his arms men to deal with the matter.
It of course had not helped that the complement of the ship were pressed men, or that their cargo was mostly made up of the dregs of labour worlds, prisons and of course the poor. Their venture in itself had been sponsored by a capital risk company, who had seen an easy profit. They themselves went bankrupt at about the same time as the Sentiment dropped out of fold space for the first and last time. In fact, many of their creditors related the disappearance of the company directors alongside that of the craft itself.
Whatever the underlying reasons, the ship’s Captain did at last find the cause of his problems and that was traceable, almost solely, to Gunnery Sergeant Wose. The big man had not been happy at his forced re-enlistment and his grudge had become contagious. For one so obviously intellectually-challenged, an almost supernatural and inherent cunning shone through. He had convinced many of his peers, either through sheer strength of personality, death-threats or promises of wealth, to follow and support him. The culmination of his work was the ship’s current position, in the middle of unknown space, stationary and rapidly running out of options.
Bloodshed was inevitable and the Captain’s frustration took form in a quite barbaric demonstration of violence. The fact that Wose had never e
xpected such a reaction, probably explained why he, and the few surviving men and women from his rebellion, were now chained together awaiting sentencing here in the main hanger.
Captain Bridges was even now trying to understand his more than capable Gunnery Sergeant, but the one thing he could not internalise, was why the man was smiling. It was neither vacuous nor flippant; it was almost beatific in its radiance. The man was simply, genuinely happy and almost orgasmically so. Why though? He was chained, caught, even defeated and the pureblood bastard was grinning. With a dawning realization, a deep sinking feeling, the Captain suddenly knew. Just as the first of the bombs exploded, ripping through his beautiful, yet ill-fated vessel.
Wose was shouting now, pushing his people out of the Hanger space and towards the emergency escape pods. Insanity had taken hold, yet he had deep down a driving sense of survival, and it was this which urged him on. Not in any way did he know where they were, nor whether any habitable planet was nearby. In reality though, he did not really care. His strangely unique logical mindset, dictated his actions, and the next one was to get off the ship. He would deal with whatever arose after that.
Bridges pulled his sidearm free and began firing. Never the best of shots at the most opportune of times, right now he was a disaster. His rounds struck indiscriminately into his Guards and his officers and were more than helpful in aiding Wose’s escape. As the distinctive sound of the pod’s firing was routed to his hearing, so too was the final screaming pain of his ship. More bombs exploded, fuel conduits shearing and ammunition stores angrily boiling out through their retaining walls. The Captain and his ship died together; the knowledge of their final fate was to be lost for centuries, as was the outcome of Wose’s frantic flight.
Luck, strange or otherwise, was with the mutineers and their escape craft found a welcoming environment close by. It was a lush, forested world and boded well for their survival. They cut their way free from the chains via the propitious use of the laser-pistols in their emergency packs and set to making themselves at home.
Wose of course still led, and his own brand of violent command quickly instilled a rigid and unequal discipline on the survivors. As the years passed their technology failed and they had to learn how to live as had their ancestors; hunting and gathering. It was on one of his hunting expeditions that Wose found the natives, who he automatically assumed were of lower standing and lesser intelligence. They were humanoid; their bodies covered in a dense carpeting of hair, and lived in small social family groups. Not only did they hunt, but they also farmed, cultivating local vegetables and what came to be known as herd beasts.
Of course, the Gunnery Sergeant and his men took them to be savages and exploited them ruthlessly. Inter-racial relationships were not the most palatable, but as the years passed, the fruits of these passions were born. It was from such unions that the first problems came and ultimately the Wildwose evolved.
Unnatural as these unions were, they created something new, untapped and as these meldings became more frequent, they also became more dominant as the human gene pool was spread thin.
None would have recognised the survivors from the Sentiment; they had gone native, almost feral and the worst among them was Wose. His men, those who still deigned to talk civilly to each other, called him the Wild Wose as his more basic and brutal self became the dominant and driving force in their lives. Murder, rape, thievery, violence, all rose to predominance as the natives culture was subsumed.
It was Wose’s own son who changed this, who overthrew his father and led his people on their new, yet ancient path. They were now more self-aware, more reasoning and so consciously chose a peaceful co-existence as their prime tenet.
Centuries passed and the intermingling of genes reached its culmination and produced those we now know as the Wildwose. They are a peaceful, benign folk who continue to maintain their original lifestyle and stay well away from the human population on this planet. A second wave of colonisation found this world and claimed it as their own. It is from the historical records of that colony ship, that we learnt of the fickle and tenuous peace that there exists between those who share this planet.
Within the original Wildwose there was a pagan and spirit worshipping religion; they venerated the trees, rivers, birds and animals. Their shamans claimed to practice an elemental form of magic, yet it seemed of little potency as Wose and his people easily overpowered them. Whether it was pure coincidence, or in reality the human genes helped to connect the shamans to their spirit world or some other heretical channel of energy, that they did so is now without question. The second wave of colonists found this out to their own cost, as their attempted exploitation of the Wildwose met with a fierce and obviously supernatural resistance.
Help was called for and a large force of Church Guard, ably directed by the Inspectorate landed here, with the intention of cleansing the heathens from this world. It was the biggest mistake that the Inspectorate ever made, and explains why they, up until now, have restricted access here.
Their ill-thought actions awoke something within the Wildwose, put them in tune with their spirits is the local take on this, which literally tore the Church forces apart. Those locals who had accepted the Wildwose were untouched, yet others were smeared across the landscape. Even ships in orbit were affected, men whose fingers moved towards the activation sequences for viral bombs, melted before their companions’ eyes. Psychics babbled insanely, blood pouring from their eyes, ears, mouths and fingernails as they died.
The Inspectorate’s perseverance was finally tempered by understanding, not one threatening gesture was made, not one of the Wildwose was threatened and all returned to peace and tranquillity. Humans and Wildwose kept to themselves, although still there are stories of intermingling, of natives who appear almost human and blend in amongst the colonists, watching and waiting.
It is a cardinal yet unspoken rule that the forests belong to the Wildwose and none enter there unbidden. To all who come here, on each and every data pack given to them, is written this rule and that those who break it, do so not only at their own peril, but that of all of the other inhabitants of this planet as well…”
Part III
“Absolute rubbish!” snorted the Major, “As you well know Leftenant, many are the worlds which contain children's’ nightmares of this kind. We are grown men and have nothing to fear from such drivel!”
“I am only trying to warn you Sir, this is the planet where….” he was cut off abruptly as the Major laughed, turning his back on the Leftenant and so dismissing him. Kombel watched the drunken oaf and his cronies as they continued to demonstrate their bravery, boasting now of what they would do to the Wildwose. One even commented on mixing a little blood with them, as he winked craftily and all-knowingly. His response was one of joint disgust from his fellows, but soon his comments were forgotten and their boasts got wilder and wilder.
The Leftenant left, cautioning the two local servants to make sure that the Major and his men got safely back to their billets. He also made sure that they promised him a full and detailed account of the rest of the evening’s discussions. Deep down, he could not shake the premonition of doom he felt, these fools were capable of almost anything of that he was sure.
*****
“Well,” said the Major, feeling the need to expand upon his obvious martial qualities, “I for one don’t believe a word of it. No hairy native is going to tell me what to do, nor where I can and can’t go, and that’s a fact.”
“But, Sir,” commented a pock-faced Captain, whose oily voice matched that of his countenance, “surely if the Leftenant advises caution, we should pay heed. He is after all our locally appointed representative.”
“Captain,” explained Major Wolis, his drunken slurring becoming a little more coherent as he concentrated, “if I say we can do what we like, then it’s true. Take it as an order if you wish!”
“Yet, still … there’s the Wildwose...” continued the Captain, slyly prodding at his drunken
commander.
“Sub-human savages,” snarled the Major in response, now totally succumbing to his alcohol-induced aggressive tendencies, “and I’ll prove it! We’ll go and capture one of them, drag the damned thing back here, and show our boys that they’ve got absolutely nothing to fear, what?”
His bucolic affirmations were greeted by a muted round of applause, followed by further toasts to his sagacity, wisdom and courage. The two servants still watched the officers from near their serving table. They had not been able to totally hear the Major’s conversation, only partial words like sub-human, hairy natives and the like. Tomorrow would be soon enough to report things to the strange Leftenant, tonight they would follow his orders on getting the drunken officers to their beds.
*****
Light flickered through the breeze-lifted leaves, patterning the open area. A man and a boy sat, heads hunched closely together as they studied the corded mechanism before them. An anxious nervousness hung in the boy’s eyes, this was one man he did not want to disappoint, and he gnawed at his lips as he waited for the forthcoming pronouncement.
All of his senses were attuned to the testing and prodding taking place of that which he had built as were the other’s, so neither of them noticed that the local animal population were not acting in their usually energetic fashion, nor that the occasional broken twig, might herald something a little more dangerous than a roving herd beast. Instead they smiled, one at the other in pride and love, and then their world fell apart.
*****
The troopers watched the calm and peaceful scene before them, knowing that such tranquillity would soon be shattered. There in a shadowed glade a father taught his son how to set snares, his rude clothing hiding little of his strangeness; a stoutly muscled body, thick neck and long arms seemed normal, but it was the large head, beetling brows and bright green eyes which gave the first indication of other worldliness. However, that which really gave the game away, which indicated the less than humanness of these two, was the thick, matted hair which covered them from head to foot.