The first
birds of the morning were just beginning to chirp when Jeris came out of the
hut where she’d spent the night and started down the path towards the valley.
The hut had been draughty, with a floor of
hard-packed earth and logs for walls, with lots of chinks to let the mountain wind
in. It had been an abandoned trader’s storehouse, not a dwelling, and a heap of
coal still lay against the far wall to testify to its purpose. Jeris had had
only her cloak to wrap around her for warmth and her bag to act as a pillow,
but she hadn’t complained. There was nobody to complain to, and no point
complaining; she was here of her own free will, and had known what to expect.
At least, she’d thought, as she’d wriggled
round trying to find a less hideously uncomfortable position on the floor, she’d
not been compelled to spend the night in the open, on the mountain slopes,
though she’d have done that too, if necessary. Even more fortunately, she could
spend the night here alone with no fear of being attacked. After all, that was
why she could come here at all – the war was over.
Down in the valley, she would be in the Enemy’s
territory, and she could now go there with no consequences at all, because the
war was over.
The morning sun was a wash of gold on the
peaks, but the path at her feet was sunk in heavy purple shadow, and Jeris kept
her eyes on it. She had no desire to twist an ankle, or, worse, break a leg.
Even though the war was over, it was still possible to lie on the mountainside
until she died of hunger or exposure, and she’d come too far already for that.
A little while later she came to a chasm
splitting the slope. Far below, there was a gurgling of water, and she saw the
morning light reflecting on spray as the rushing mountain stream pounded on
rocks. There had once been a bridge here, but someone – from which side she
couldn’t tell, nor did it matter now – had destroyed it. The ruined ends stuck
out from either side, like amputated fingers that were still trying to meet.
Someone had since laid a simple log of wood across the broken centre, and she
crossed over that, crawling on all fours because she could not trust her balance.
She was not athletic, and had had no experience in this kind of thing.
Far behind her, the streets of the cities
must still be filled with rejoicing at the end of the war, and the manner in
which it had ended, but Jeris had no interest in that. She had much more
important things on her mind. If asked, she would have said she was on a
pilgrimage, but it was even more than that.
It was almost noon, and she was well down
the mountain, before she came to the first enemy village. It was deserted, the
doors of the houses left open, the patches of flowers outside already wilted
and drooping. There was a small temple, inside which she could see the idol of
one of the enemy’s rude gods. She did not enter, but drank from the fountain
outside the temple. The enemy’s temples always had a spring or a fountain
nearby, and these would never be poisoned, so the water was safe. After that
she sat on the steps to eat a little of the food in her bag. There was very
little food left, but then she hadn’t that much further to go.
It was mid afternoon, and she had almost
reached the valley, when she came to the second enemy village. This was also
the first time she saw one of the enemy. She had, of course, seen the prisoners
who had been paraded in chains through the streets of the city, with the populace
jeering and pelting them with stones and refuse; but this was the first time
she’d seen one of the enemy during her journey, and in their territory besides.
The war was over, though, and the enemy was just sitting on the side of the
path, on a rock, staring at her with no expression at all.
Goblins, or orcs, her people called them,
and other names beside. The enemy on the rock was a young male, immensely
sturdy of build and twice as broad as one of the men of Jeris’ own people,
though a head shorter. His high cheekbones made his face so broad that his eyes
looked tiny, and his neck was so thickly muscled it seemed as wide as his head.
But his mouth hung slackly, and when Jeris stopped to look at him, he merely
stared as though through her. When she, obeying a sudden impulse, snapped her
finger next to his ear, he turned his head slowly towards the sound, but made
no other movement at all.
She left him sitting there and went down to
the village.
This village was much larger than the
previous one, almost a town. Here, there were some of the enemy, and for the
first time Jeris realised how utter, total and devastating her own peoples’
victory had been. She saw more of the men, some stumbling around, some merely
sitting by the side of the street, staring with vacant eyes. A woman knelt by
one young man, a woman who by any standards – even by those of Jeris’ own
people – would have been pretty – and she was spooning food from a bowl into
his mouth with one hand while wiping away what he dribbled out with the other.
She saw Jeris, leapt to her feet, and disappeared into an alley between two
houses.
All around, Jeris could feel watching eyes,
as she walked down the street. The silence was total, the normal noises of a
village having stopped, and she felt as though the entire place was holding its breath waiting for her to leave. Once, she looked over her shoulder. At the far
end of the street behind her, she saw a small knot of women, standing together,
watching her. As soon as they saw her turn around, they scattered like
disturbed ants.
She went to the temple, washed her face and
hands in the fountain, and drank some water. She was suddenly far from hungry
and had no desire to touch what remained of the food in her bag. There was an
old priest standing beside the temple. Jeris saw his white hair and wispy
beard, and thought his age might have protected him, so she went to see if she
could talk to him. But he was just as slack-jawed and empty-eyed as all the
other men she’d seen.
It was at that moment that something hit
her. It was a sharp blow on the leg, a searing pain just above the knee, and
sent her stumbling back with a cry. She just managed to keep her balance as the
child came at her again, the sharp piece of broken wood in his hand raised to
strike once more.
Someone screamed something, a single word.
It was, naturally, in the enemy’s language, so she couldn’t understand, but the
message was clear. An instant later, a woman had thrown herself out of a house
and clutched the child in her arms, pulling him away though he struggled. The
woman pulled the piece of wood out of his hand and threw it away, looking up at
Jeris with fear-filled eyes.
“No hurt him,” she said in Jeris’ language,
though the words were so thickly accented they were almost undecipherable.
Jeris’ people said the enemy didn’t have mouths capable of handling human
speech. “He young, no understand.”
Jeris didn’t say anything for a moment. She
looked at her leg. There was a small spot of blood on the cloth, but it didn’t
seem to be spreading, and the pain had already diminished to a dull ache. Maybe
it would hurt again later, but for now it would be all right.
The woman had pushed the boy inside, and
now she stood, looking fearfully at Jeris, her back defensively to the door. “You
please not punish?”
“I’m not interested in punishing anyone,”
Jeris said slowly and clearly. “But I need to meet your High Chieftainess, the
Kw’an. I don’t know where she is. So I need a guide. Do you understand?”
“Kw’an?”
“The Kw’an, yes,” Jeris repeated. “I’ve
come to your country to meet her and her Council. I need someone to take me to
her.”
For a long moment the enemy woman looked at
Jeris, and then abruptly nodded, head jerking like a pecking bird. “My daughter
go.”
******************************************
They reached
the enemy capital the next morning. The guide, a young girl with a distinct
facial resemblance to the boy who’d attacked Jeris, had spoken not a word the
whole way, not even in response to questions. Jeris didn’t know if it was
because she didn’t speak Jeris’ language or because she didn’t want to answer.
But when Jeris had offered her the food remaining in her bag, she’d turned away
and refused to touch a morsel of it.
If the village had been bad, the city was
much, much worse. The Enemy had not been defeated so much as destroyed. The
streets were almost deserted except for a few hurrying women, some of them with
children in tow – and, of course, except for the silent, slumped shapes of men,
sitting where the attack had taken them, or where it had led them to wander. Eventually,
what remained of their families might make arrangements to carry them back
home, or maybe the Kw’an would have some kind of hospice set up where they might
live out their lives. For now, they were just inanimate lumps of flesh and bone
and destroyed minds.
The Kw’an’s palace was a nondescript building
opposite a temple, and the guide pointed to it and walked away without a
further word. Jeris tidied herself up as much as she could at the temple spring
before she crossed to the door of the palace, where a woman guard was standing
watching her.
“Kw’an,” Jeris said. The guard nodded
quickly and stepped back, as though Jeris, with her soft body and traveller’s
clothing, her total lack of weapons, frightened this hard-muscled warrior woman
with her heavy spear and her studded armour. But then Jeris’ people’s victory
had earned her the right to inspire such fear.
The Kw’an herself was waiting for Jeris in
the Council Chamber, a round room with seats all around the walls and a large
throne-like seat at the end far from the door. She got up as soon as Jeris entered
and walked towards her, hands clasped together.
“I don’t know who you are or why you’ve
come,” she said. Her command of Jeris’ language was excellent, without a hint
of an accent. “We have surrendered unconditionally, we signed the treaties, and
we have no means of defending ourselves. There is nothing more we can do. Or,”
she added, “have you merely come to gloat? You have that right – we cannot deny
it to you.”
Jeris studied the woman. Even in her soft
flat shoes, she was tall for one of the Enemy, almost as tall as Jeris herself,
broad of frame and still strongly muscled, though she was past middle age. Her
greying hair spilled from beneath the edges of the velvet cap of office she
wore, and the cap itself was worn, the metal ornamentation round its edges tarnished.
Her face was grim with worry.
“Please summon your Council, Your Highness,”
she replied calmly, seating herself and trying not to wince at the pain in her
thighs and calves. “I will tell you everything when they are here, or not at
all.”
******************************************
The
Council had once comprised twenty members, but fully half – the men – were, of
course, missing. The rest arrived in ones and twos, and looked at Jeris with
mingled curiosity and fear. At last the Kw’an nodded.
“They are all here,” she said. “You can
begin.”
Jeris stood up and looked around. “You know
as well as I do how this war has turned out,” she said. “I’m not here to talk
about that, but to tell you some things about what happened on our side. And
then I’ll tell you who I am, and what I came here to do.”
Nobody said anything. She had not expected
them to.
“I’m not going to justify the war,” she
said. “I’m not going to claim that we had to start it to save ourselves from
you. In fact, I’ll admit that a lot of us knew from the start that you had no
reason to attack us, and that you probably never would. But those of us who
knew it had no voice in the government or the Royal Court.
“There the claims were always the same.
Your very existence was a threat to us, an intolerable threat that had to be
crushed before it was too late. There were almost as many you as of us, and
moreover you had the strategic mountain heights from which you could sweep down
on to our helpless plains. Your warriors lusted after our riches and our women,
and so on.” She looked around, and added defiantly, “And, of course, you weren’t
really human. You were something less, worse than apes. You were goblins and
trolls.
“And so the demands for war kept building,
and the people kept being fed tales of how deadly a threat you were, and how
war – war at once, war to total victory – was the only way we could save our
lands, our women, and our children. The only problem was, of course, that such
a war, given that you actually had almost the same numbers and occupied the
mountain heights, would have been terribly costly, and probably ended in defeat
and failure.”
“We already know all this,” one of the
Council said. “Why tell us this again?”
“Quiet,” the Kw’an ordered. “Let her talk.”
“So the Court,” Jeris continued, with a nod
to the Kw’an, “summoned the royal magicians, the astrologers, the psychics, and
the scientists, and anyone else who might be able to think of a way to strike
such a blow that you would be compelled to sue for peace. The magicians took to
their spells and cauldrons, the astrologers to their star charts, the
scientists to their laboratories, and what they did there nobody knows. It didn’t
matter anyway, because none of them came up with anything.
“It was a different matter with the
psychics. They got together and they made their experiments, first in the
abstract and then in reality. By then, the demands for war had become so great
that the Court had started sending raiding parties up into the mountains to
capture some of your outposts, so there were prisoners to experiment on.” She
saw a shudder pass through the Council. “Yes, and you know what they came up
with. It was the Weapon – something they created purely with the power of their
combined minds.
“At first, not even the King believed that
this Weapon was possible. Everyone thought that the psychics were exaggerating,
or simply making the whole thing up. So the psychics had some prisoners brought
to the Court, and – right in front of the royal throne – did that to them.” She didn’t need to
specify what she meant by ‘that’. “Everyone saw the light of reason, in fact,
everything, vanish from their eyes. When the chains were removed from their
wrists and ankles, they just stood there. The psychics told the guards to put
weapons in their hands, and they still just stood there, as though they’d never held
a sword or a musket before.”
“How do you know all this?” one of the Council
asked.
“I’ll come to that. The point is that at
that moment, everyone realised we’d won the war. The only thing to be decided
was exactly how overwhelming a victory we should have.
“The King, and a good part of the Court, wanted
a total extermination of your people. Everyone, man, woman and child. The
psychics said they could do it, too. But there were some people who objected.
Among them were the royal priests, who said that you, too, were godly
creations, and it would be a sin to wipe you all out. And then there were the
business people, who said that they would miss out on profits if they could no
longer trade with you, which would also mean that the kingdom's tax revenues
would suffer. And then there were...others...who protested, not on religious or
commercial grounds, but simply in outrage and horror that a Weapon like this
should ever even be considered for use.
“So, finally, they reached a compromise.
The psychics would destroy the minds of all of your males who were capable of
bearing arms – that is, anyone who wasn’t a very young child, or a very old
man. Eventually, the children would grow up, and your race would be able to
continue. But that would be in the distant future, and by then we would be much
stronger and be able to deal with any threat that arose. And so,” she said, “it
was done.”
There was a long pause. Jeris looked around
them, from face to face, and walked up to the Kw’an in her big chair.
“You want to know who I am,” she said. “So
I will tell you. My name is Jeris. Princess Jeris. I am the only daughter of
the King of our people. You want to know how I knew what happened in the Court.
I knew because I was in the Court when the prisoners had their minds destroyed.”
She knelt on the floor before the Kw’an. “I begged on my knees in front of the
throne for your people to be spared. The King could not refuse me altogether,
for I am the blood in his veins, the beating of his heart, the singing of breath
in his lungs. He could not refuse me, but he did not spare you either, as you
have seen. I could not succeed in saving your people, but I did what I could.
“Only, of course, I knew it was not enough.
And so I decided what I had to do. I had to come here to speak to you. So I
came here in secret, leaving clues that I had gone quite another way. They will
not look for me here.”
“What do you want?” the Kw’an whispered.
Her lips were white.
“We may have won the war,” Jeris said, “but
we have sown seeds of hate so deep that we will never root them out. On my way
here, I was even attacked by a boy who was maybe four or five years old.” She
pointed to the black splotch of dried blood on her thigh. “That boy, if he
lives, will grow up still filled with hate for my people, and who can blame
him?” She swept her arm around. “Your entire people, a whole nation, reduced to
women trying to feed and clothe and take care of their men, who have not even
the minds of newborn babies any longer; and on top of that to grow food, take
care of the children, repair your buildings and roads and bridges, and somehow
stay alive – why should they not hate us? How could they not? And when you have
become strong enough again, will you not seek revenge?” She paused a moment. “And
when you do, my people will wipe you out. There will be no mercy then.
“So I have come here to offer you an
alternative. You can take your revenge, right now. Take me out of this
building, to the street outside, and do to me what you will. Call your people,
those who can come, here, and let them watch while you kill me, in whatever way
you see fit. Only make sure that whatever you do to me will be enough to reduce
your people’s hatred towards mine.” She smiled a little. “It will be revenge,
too, because, as I said, I am the one my father loves more than anything else
on earth, and I am his only heir.”
The silence in the chamber was so great
that Jeris could barely hear them breathing.
“Well?” she asked. “I am offering you life –
take my life and ensure your people’s survival.”
The silence stretched out further. She
looked around them again.
“Your people’s survival,” she repeated. “Isn’t
that what you want?”
Copyright B Purkayastha 2016
