Mara and Dann

  And Mara was taken to her prison hut by the guard. She tried to get him to talk to her, but he answered, ‘You will be informed.’

  She was brought food. How could she escape? If she were made a soldier, then perhaps…She was taken for the routine run that afternoon, and again saw the General and his staff on the way back. With normal people, their faces could be read as saying they had never seen or heard of her, but with the Hennes, who knew?

  In the morning she was brought two uniforms, of the kind they all wore: brownish top and trousers, and a brown woollen cap, with a flap in front that could be buttoned back. Two pairs of light bark shoes, clearly not meant for marching in. Some brushwood sticks for her teeth. Soap. A small bag or pouch to be attached at the shoulders to hang at the back. This was the equipment, evidently, for a female soldier, for as well came a bag of rags and a cord to tie them on with. Also, a message from the General, that when she knew she was not pregnant, she must send him the evidence.

  Her guard informed her, ‘You are no longer a prisoner. We shall not be locking this door.’

  She thought of joking, ‘If I am not a prisoner, would it be in order for me to walk out of this camp and go back to the Agres?’ But she knew this poor man’s mental apparatus would be so discommoded he would have to run to the General for instructions.

  In four days she would have some blood to show the General, and meanwhile she would use the time to get what information she could by using her eyes. No one took any notice of her as she wandered about – or so it seemed. She was surprised at the apparent confusion of this camp. Then she saw there were blocks of order, unconnected with the others. A block of tents was neatly set out, with tidy paths between, but this was set at an angle to some rows of sheds, equally well arranged, and both were unrelated to an adjacent little suburb which itself was composed of rows of little boxes. To get from one part to another of this camp – but it was a town, really, since it had been here, clearly, so long – was difficult, for she found herself following the neatest of paths, hoping to achieve the next settlement, but it ended perhaps against the wall of a house, or simply stopped. Storehouses, water tanks, stood here and there, and there was a watchtower in the very centre of the camp, or town, when surely it should have been at its edge?

  Finding herself looking westwards, on a well-used road – the one she had been brought on – she simply began walking, thinking she might not be noticed; but she had not reached the camp’s outskirts before she heard a soft thudding of feet on dust and turned to see a graceful creature, a Neanthes, flying rather than walking, long delicate hands outstretched. ‘You must come back. You are not allowed.’

  They walked back together. Mara said that she wished she could have a writing stick and some writing leaves, to learn more Charad, but the girl replied that learning was not encouraged among the soldiers. ‘And particularly not the Neanthes. They are afraid of us, you see.’ And having reached Mara’s hut, this Neanthes went off, seeming to dance rather than walk, sending Mara a delightful conspiratorial smile.

  On the proper day, Mara sent the General a message that there was blood, and therefore no pregnancy; but back came the Neanthes to say she had been instructed to see the blood with her own eyes. ‘But I could have pricked my finger,’ Mara whispered, and the whisper came back, ‘You see? they’re stupid.’ She ran off to the General with the evidence and brought back the message, ‘You have blood. You are therefore not pregnant. You will begin training tomorrow.’

  The next day she found the new recruits were not all Hennes. On the drill ground were a hundred recruits, males and females, mostly Hennes, with a few Neanthes, but about a third were people Mara had not seen before. They were small, stocky, strong, yellowish, with the knobbly look that Dann had had when he was underfed – and presumably Mara herself. These were Thores, and they had come voluntarily to the camp to join the army where they would be fed: their home province was impoverished because the Hennes had raided it for food recently. It was immediately evident that the tall, long-legged Neanthes could not drill together with the small, short-legged Thores, since the stride of one was twice that of the other, and the new recruits were sorted out into six platoons of Hennes, ten each, three of Thores, and one of Neanthes. Mara was with the Neanthes. She was not as tall, as lithe, or as slender, but she was not very different from their shortest.

  Marching about on the dusty drill ground, while a Hennes instructor shouted at them, was boring rather than arduous, but he kept them at it, hour after hour, in the hot sun, while the dust rose up in clouds and they grew thirsty and tired. He was trying to bring them to an extreme of physical exhaustion, but again there was the problem of their differences. The platoons of solid, stolid Hennes showed few signs of fatigue, while the Thores, in any case undernourished, were in a bad way, and the Neanthes were falling and fainting. They could not all do the same drill. It appeared that this problem arose every time with the new recruits, but apparently the Hennes always thought that this time things would be different, and were taken by surprise that what was happening was exactly what always happened.

  From now on the Hennes would begin two hours before the Thores, and then there would be an hour before the Neanthes joined in. And that set the pattern for the month of drilling that was needed to turn Mara and the others into soldiers. She neither liked it nor disliked it. Soldiers had to be trained, and a soldier was what she was now – though not for long, if she could help it.

  Suddenly everything changed. There was a raid to the east one night, and there were prisoners. Mara’s hut was needed and she was ousted from it, and watched while four Thores were hustled in to take her place.

  She was ordered to march north with a company that was to replace watch-guards on the northern frontier. She was expecting to hear something from General Izrak before she left, but there was nothing: she had only been of interest to them for one reason.

  13

  At first they marched through grasslands broken by clumps of thorn trees; but when they camped on the first night they were on the edge of a great plain broken by hills which next day, as they marched down on to it, they could see was no longer the sandy or reddish soil around the Hennes camp, but a dark earth, fibrous, growing sparse, low plants. A wind blew straight from the north into their faces, carrying showers of this earth with it, and soon all the soldiers had tied cloths around their lower faces to breathe through. All that day they marched through low, lumpy hills with an occasional Thores village, and that night they had come up from the plain and were again on a rise, and ahead was a desolation of rough hills and broken ground. This was the last day’s marching. That evening, ahead, stood a line of watchtowers, each on a rise; and around each was a camp, more of a village, since there were huts, not tents, and a great blaze of sunset lit most luridly a flatness between the towers, where earth moved and blew about, seeming to heave, like a creature, and little hills whose tops were briefly lit with a ruddy glow before the sun plunged down and there was an absolute dark; and then into the black overhead the stars came, not glittery and clear, but dim, because of the dusty air.

  The company separated, moving off to different watchtowers. Mara went to the farthest, and to the very top from where the watchfires could be seen burning here and there in the darkness. This was the extreme northern frontier. Ahead was the territory of the Agre Northern General, which stretched as far as Shari, about ten days’ march away. Far away was a line of answering fires, the enemy’s. For all Mara knew, Dann was there – her enemy. Well, it would not be for long – and why did she think that? she questioned herself, most uncomfortably. It was because she had never stayed anywhere for long, had always been moved on by some pressure or danger; but everyone knew that the soldiers sent to the frontiers were sometimes there for years.

  There were two platoons, or twenty soldiers, at this outpost. They were Neanthes and Thores, mixed – the Hennes did not like frontier-watching – and under the command of a Thores woman, Roz, who had been captured as
a child and had never known anything but the army. This outpost was well ordered, efficient, clean, and Mara knew she had been in very much worse situations than this one. Soon, she was in a hut by herself, and was able to be on watch-duty, usually with people she liked. Commander Roz put people together who got on, and she saw to it that her soldiers on the whole did the duties that appealed to them. Mara liked being on watch, so that was what she did. Others collected firewood, fetched water, repaired huts, or cooked. Not that there was much to cook: once a month runners came from the Hennes camp with supplies, but they lived mostly on bread, dried fruit, and vegetables. Sometimes the commander ordered a couple of soldiers to go out and see if they could snare a deer or a couple of birds, but there wasn’t much wildlife now, in the dry season. This was the third dry season since Mara had left the Rock Village.

  She was often on duty alone on the tower. Regulations said there must always be two on watch; but even when there were, one would usually be asleep. Along this front there had been no fighting, no raid, not even an ‘incident’ for years. A spy was the worst they had to fear. When Mara was on duty the Commander often came up. She was fascinated by Mara, as Mara was with her. She remembered little of her life before her capture, aged eleven, had always been a soldier, had always known where her next meal was coming from, and what she was to wear and do. She was not ‘in’ the army, she was army. She listened to Mara’s tales of her vicissitudes with her hand pressed to her mouth and her eyes wide above it, and she giggled nervously when Mara laughed and said, ‘You don’t believe a word I am saying.’ Whether she did or not, she would say, ‘Tell me about the house with the spiders,’ or how the sky skimmer crashed, or how people lived in the River Towns. She had not been out of the Hennes camp, ever, except on watch-duty, had never heard of sky skimmers. Particularly she wanted to know about the flash floods, and it was pleasant to talk about flowing waters while the dust storms blew from the north.

  Mara stood alone on her tower and listened to the dry whine of the wind around the corners and struts of the old, shaky building, and heard the thud, thud, thud of soil hitting the base of the tower, where it piled on a bad night as high as the shoulders of the Thores soldiers – who cleared it away in the morning – or to the waists of the Neanthes. All around this tower was a thick layer of the blown, dark earth, and as soon as the rains began vegetables would be planted, which would race into maturity, because this was fertile soil. Mara stood with her back to the south lands, or ‘down there,’ and saw the dim lights of the watchfires, that went on for miles east and west and, across a hollow of dark, the answering Agre fires. She listened to the soldiers singing below: the delicate, keening songs of the Neanthes, the Thores songs, whose words, when you listened carefully, were the double-tongued complaints of a subject people afraid to speak openly. On some nights, when the winds were not blowing, these songs seemed to rise like a many-voiced plea along miles of the frontier; and on a still night, threads and shreds of song came from the enemy lines.

  One night, coming off watch-duty, she saw a movement among the heaps of dirt around the base of the tower and, then, a gleam of eyes. She leaped forward and hauled out a terrified wretch who wept and begged as she held her knife at his throat. ‘Be quiet,’ she said. ‘Tell me, what news of the Agre Southern Army? Do you know anything about General Shabis?’ ‘No, I don’t know anything.’ ‘Do you know about Tisitch Dann?’ ‘No, I told you, I don’t know anything.’ ‘Then what is the news along your sector?’ ‘Nothing, only that your army is going to attack Shari.’ ‘Is that what you’re spying down here to find out? Well, you can go back and tell them that it’s nonsense.’ And she let him go to creep back to his lines.

  She told Commander Roz, who wondered if she should report this back to the base when the food runners came next. She decided not to, but said she would organise a reconnaissance. Mara asked if she could go by herself. She showed Roz her old robe, which changed with the light, sometimes becoming colourless, or even invisible and said she would put it on one night when the dust was blowing, and try to overhear what was said at the watch-post opposite. When the Commander saw the garment she felt it – and made a face, as everyone did.

  Mara put it on over the thick underclothes they had, for cold, and ran into the dark. It was a cold night and a noisy one, for the wind buffeted and gusted. She could feel the dust rising about her legs. She crawled the last few yards and lay flat, just outside a circle of firelight. The soldiers around the fire were speaking Charad and Mahondi too, and eating and throwing bones and scraps into the fire, and talking about the boredom of this watching life, and how they longed for their replacements so they could return to Shari. The only thing of interest they said was that General Shabis was coming to take command of the Northern Army and of Shari, and that would be a fine thing. ‘He’s the best of the lot, General Shabis, he won’t let us rot out here.’ Then the talk turned to women.

  Mara had been thinking that she would rise up from her concealment behind some low bushes, and say she was General Shabis’s aide – they would welcome her as one of them, of their army and take her to…She must have been mad to think it. She was a female, alone, and fair game. These were men who had been without women for months. No, if she was going to desert then she must choose a time when she could steal some provisions and some water, and steal through the dark evading their own line of watchfires, then the enemy watchfires and forts, and run like a rabbit to…She did not believe Shabis was anywhere near Shari.

  She lay quite still, and the only bad moment was when a soldier stepped out into the dark a few paces away to pee. She heard the liquid hiss in the dry soil, and saw his face – full of longing as he stared out into the dark, thinking of his home – while the firelight flickered over it. Then he returned to his comrades around the fire. Some wrapped themselves and lay down to sleep. Two kept watch. Behind them on their watchtower others were staring over their heads into the night – to the tower where Mara spent so much of her time. She wriggled back and away and ran home. For her home now was this outpost. She told Commander Roz that General Shabis might or might not be coming to Shari, but she believed it was only hopeful thinking on the soldiers’ part, because Shabis was the kindest of the generals.

  The dry season passed. The lightning danced around the horizons, and the thunder came crashing as the rain fell in rivers out of the sky. In the morning all the land between them and the opposing front was covered in silvery, meandering rivulets, for the soil was so dry that at first it repelled water but then, as the nets of water thickened and glistered, the wet sank in and the soil was a dark, springy sponge. There were flowers jumping up everywhere, bright, frail flowers, and birds running about among them.

  Out went the Commander to plant vegetables, with her soldiers. The sun dragged up clouds of steam. The clear air transmitted the singing from the opposite lines, so that the soldiers along this front answered enemy songs with their own; and for the whole of the first week of the rains it was as if the two armies were serenading each other.

  All the soldiers ran out at night into the rain naked and held up their arms into it and exulted as the streams ran down their bodies. All but Mara. She was afraid to take off her cord of coins, and could not be seen with it. When they teased her about her shyness she said she had been brought up never to show her body to anyone but a husband. This made them laugh at her even more.

  Commander Roz came creeping to Mara’s bed and begged to come in, like a little animal, and when Mara was unwelcoming, she said, ‘Don’t you like me, Mara?’ Mara did like her. She would have liked very much to open her arms to this companion, but she did not dare. If it were known what she wore under her uniform …

  Roz was kneeling by the bed and Mara was holding her hands, and she began talking about her husband, Meryx, whom she was afraid was dead, and how she could not bear anyone to touch her, only him.

  This made Roz love Mara even more, this romantic woman with a dead love, who was so faithful to him and so
pure.

  She went back to the soldiers and told them that Mara was not to be persuaded. The women soldiers, who of course dreamed of a love of their own – and some had found love here on the frontier – and the men soldiers, who might have wives and lovers at home, all admired Mara. She became even more of a lonely and romantic figure, and people envied her.

  What she had told Roz was not far off the truth. While she would not allow herself to think at all of Chelops and his possible – no, probable – death, she often felt Meryx close to her. She had only to summon up his image, when she was alone, or in bed, to feel that he was there. So it could be said that she never thought of Meryx, refused to, and yet he was with her, like a friendly shadow.

  Mara stood on the tower and looked north and thought that she had been here now six months. The soldiers sent out to the watchtowers were supposed to be relieved after six months. The ration-runners came and said nothing had been said about a relieving company. Asked, What’s new? – they replied that there were rumours of a putsch north. But there were always rumours of a putsch somewhere. Mara asked if there was news of General Shabis, but they said ‘everyone’ was saying he and the other generals had quarrelled. Who was everyone? Some spies had said so. Had they heard anything about a tisitch called Dann? One said that he thought there was a General Dann. ‘A general?’ A deputy-general: you know, each general has a little general attached, and he trains him up the way he should go.

  Life at the watch-post became, pleasanter as the rainy season went on. Farmers brought in food, and asked outrageous prices, and were bargained down. Commander Roz was always present at these encounters, for often spies were with them. Mara did manage to extract from a particularly suspect farmer, who asked too many questions, that General Shabis was in Shari. He was there to counter the expected Hennes putsch.

  The rainy season went on but it was patchy. The flowers of the first rain had disappeared but there was a green film over the brown. Rabbits and deer ventured from the hills and made meals for the soldiers. As always in a land where the rains mean life, there was in everyone’s mind a calendar or record of the rainy seasons, thus: last season had been a good one and filled the dams; the one before that had been poor, and the dams were low; before that had been two goodish seasons, but before them a run of bad ones. This one they were in was not really good but could be worse. Now next year – everyone would be waiting to see how that one would turn out.