The Sleeping Army Awakes

Part 93 Tripple wrapped sandwiches

The guests from the ceremony, strolled from the mine in too a leisurely fashion for most witnesses, and had proceeded, calmly and unhurriedly, to drift towards the marquees. The Mík thought that it gave them  an opportunity to show a good example to everybody that undue haste was unnecessary. Most of  the non-Mík contingent weren't paying any attention to how exemplary the behaviour of the Mík was. Those that did notice how carefully and sedately the Mík moved, were simply exasperated, thinking that the Mík were just lazy or possibly just plain stupid.

Neither venue had opened yet. It was taking so much longer to prepare things than anticipated, because the long suffering staff had been forced to use plastic implements to attempt to chops everything. It was lucky that some of the food that they had brought had been pre-prepared and it was mostly the salad stuff that had to be cut up

There were twice as many people waiting outside the Zeli Corp tent as the Scrivener one, because Sir Percy's tenants feared being seen as disloyal, and they suspected that if they were seen entering the wrong tent then they would suffer some terrible, though totally imaginary, retribution from Zeli Corp.

"They turn you out of your home if they find you in the wrong tent!" Zena confided to her neighbour Danka. "And they leave you to be eaten by wolves!" 

 "And they say that there are covert cameras and V-drones everywhere!"  Danka replied, looking around herself.

"Let me assure you madam that there aren't actually any covert cameras!" Tomas Veselý refuted in a calm voice. He didn't know the ladies concerned but he recognised rising hysteria when he heard it. "because Samuel Wellington would not permit any of them any where near and neither would I."

"That still leaves the Skidges!" Danka stated triumphantly.

"Didn't you hear that wolves ate Mr Kelp?" Zena asked, silently noting that for once she was one up on her friend. "Skidges are grounded!"

"So that still leaves the wolves!" Danka said ominously, not wishing to be bested. 

"In actual fact the wolves are not presently anywhere in the vicinity" Samuel informed them. "They have other plans today that include feasts... but don't include weddings. Plans that I could not approve of. But they do not understand that Sleeping Army cannot protect them beyond hills. " 

The guests were waiting, assembled, in what could only loosely be referred to as, queues, outside the entrances to the tents. These were not the orderly lines of people that the marquee managers were used to at weddings. Their normal clientele were usually well fed executives in no real hurry to eat and these had always arrived in vehicles; rather than being forced to walk for kilometres without having eaten any breakfasts as their present guests had. 

The crowd were irritable and restless, because few of them had been brave enough to attend the ceremony, that would have involved going underground, but most had arrived in time to do so, so they had been left to their own devices and had been bored for hours and there had been no entertainment laid on; and though no actual fights broke out,  there was a palpable tension in the air. 

Initially the queue at the Scrivener marquee had been shorter and less unruly than Sir Percy's because of the large contingent of Mík it contained; hence some of Sir Percy's tenants over-came any reservations they had felt, because  they were ungry and they reasoned, that if there were fewer people to eat the food, then as a consequence, the ratio of food to guests would be much more favourable; so they joined that one despite their misgivings.

The marquees had virtually identical layouts as if the managers had read the same magazines on how to organise weddings. The food was being arranged in each one, as buffets on long white double damask covered, trestle tables.  The waiting crowds were beginning to see the food being laid out and they could smell the aroma of cooked chicken, so they became even more impatient and they started jostling for the best position, to be first to sample the food.