The peddler had fallen well behind and we had time to look at the body before he reached us and dismounted. Peering between Bristow and one of the men, he said:
“Well done, Captain! That one looks as though he will provide good eating.”
“Good eating!” Greene echoed in disgust. “Are you blind, man?”
“Blind? I see a fat young porker.”
“Look at the tusks. And those legs!”
The legs showed why he had been easy to run down. The rear ones were all right but those at the front were short and twisted. I had thought there was something funny in his gait; he had scampered more than run. The tusks were doubled, a second set growing behind the first.
“Do you eat tusks?” the peddler asked. “It is true there is not much meat on the forelegs but he has plenty elsewhere.”
Greene stared at him incredulously. “It is a polybeast. Can there be doubt of that?”
“Well?”
“And you would eat it?”
“Why not?” the peddler asked. “Ah, I recall—your Seers forbid it. But you will find no Seer this side of the Burning Lands.”
Greene prodded the boar’s flank with his boot.
“There is no need of a Seer to tell what makes the gorge rise. I would as soon eat carrion.”
“Captain,” the peddler said, “you are in lands where you will find many strange things. And I think if you stay so delicate you may go hungry.”
“Do you say all beasts are like this?”
“Not all; but many, perhaps most, are marked in one way or another.”
I could see how it would be so. In our lands, under the command of the Seers, polybeasts were rooted out wherever they were found. Here, lacking such culling, the broods had proliferated and grown wilder. The only check was nature’s own. I doubted if this one would have grown to maturity, with such legs.
A silence had followed the peddler’s words. He broke it himself, saying:
“And is it not also a rule that the beast be buried? Will you use your swords for spades?”
Greene brushed the spears of his mustache with his finger ends, as though reassuring himself they had not grown double or turned to horns. He said:
“Buried or burned. Sergeant, have the men cut brush to make a pyre.”
While this was done the peddler watched, shaking his head from time to time. I heard him mutter: “They will learn. . . .”
The pyre was completed and, the carcass having been hauled onto it, fired. We resumed our journey. The smell of roasting meat followed us and I saw the peddler sniffing the air regretfully.
• • •
As the day waned Greene looked for shelter. The land was still wooded and we had to detour round the denser patches. Many of the trees were such as would have been uprooted and destroyed at home but Greene did not suggest we should attempt so impossible a task. I saw one whose leaves were not green but a coppery red; yet otherwise it seemed an ordinary beech.
Edmund said: “Those oaks . . .”
“What of them?”
They looked normal to me, though very old. He said:
“The other trees are haphazard but the intervals between the oaks are regular, as though they had been planted.”
I saw it was true. Once one had the knack of picking them out it could be seen that they formed two lines between which, by accident, we rode. The avenue led up the slope of a hill. Greene reined his horse, and said:
“Over there.”
We saw where he was pointing. There was scrub where the avenue of oaks ended and beyond the scrub the remains of a building, big enough to have been a palace. I said:
“It might serve for the night.”
He said: “It belongs to the ancient days, I would say—before the Disaster. Much of it is in ruins.”
His voice had an edge of doubt. I said:
“I do not think any Spirits will have lingered there all this time.” I looked at the sky where clouds which had been gathering all day were still more ominous. “And even if the roof only partly holds we may be glad of the shelter.”
Greene looked as though my words pleased him. I had a sudden feeling that where matters were uncertain he might seek reassurance, and take it even from one as young and inexperienced as I. The confidence of his outward show did not go very deep. I put the thought away, as something for Peter to know. He would not have given him command of this mission had he known it before.
We rode up to the house. It was very large, almost as big as the palace in Winchester. It was built of gray stone which had weathered but kept its structure; though one end had fallen, most of the rest was intact. A terrace in front had a double flight of broad steps. We tethered our horses below, leaving a guard, and walked up.
There was a doorway, twice a man’s height and of breadth to match. The door itself lay where it had fallen; it was of good wood and well carved. In the hall we surprised wild fowl which fled with screeches and flapping wings. There were signs that larger animals had been there but we saw none. Furniture which carried the stamp of skilled craftsmen was warped and rotted by weather, gnawed by rodents. On the walls hung paintings in ornate frames, some unrecognizable but others showing figures of men and women in strange dress.
We walked through rooms which were large and high-ceilinged. All were far advanced in decay. In one, tapestries were hung from the wall though several had fallen or been dragged down. These also were most finely worked. The majority were too dilapidated and faded to tell what they had shown but on one which had escaped the worst there was a battle scene. Edmund and I stared at it. He said:
“So the ancients did not do all their fighting with machines. These have swords not unlike our own.”
“And armor. But heavier than I would care to fight in. Look at that helmet and the breastplate! It would surely take a farm horse to bear it, not a charger. And if you fell you would have your head sliced off while you were thinking how to rise.”
Edmund looked about him. “This has been a fine place in its time. A Prince must have lived here.”
He, unlike I, had been born to the magnificence of a palace. What he said was true.
“But how?” he asked. “There is no city near, not even a village. Where did his warriors live?”
“Perhaps he had none.”
“Then how defend himself?”
“By the Spirits, maybe.”
Edmund looked at me. He said with a note of scorn:
“Maybe. They abandoned him in the end, it seems, but after all, that is their way.”
Greene and Bristow were giving orders for the night. Hans was already seeking a place for me to sleep. I saw him dragging away one of the fallen tapestries to provide me with a bed, and hoped it was less damp than some I had seen. But the suspicion was unworthy. I knew already that I had never had a servant as intelligent or as careful of my wishes.
I said: “Since we have nothing to do we may as well explore upstairs.”
The staircase like the floor of the hall was marble. A crack had opened between two steps but otherwise, apart from dirt which had blown in and here and there sprouted blades of grass, it seemed undamaged, though many of the wooden balusters had broken or fallen away. Halfway up it turned on itself and split, forming a double flight to the next floor. We reached a broad wooden landing with many doors. Some had fallen and others hung from broken hinges; some were closed.
There were fewer signs of damage by animals—only small rodents would have been likely to climb the stairs—but much of decay from weather. In the first two rooms we looked at, the ceilings had fallen in heaps of cracked and moldering plaster, covering floor and furniture. In one there was a gaping hole through which one saw another room above, and past that a patch of shattered roof. We turned to others which were in less ruinous condition.