Ontogeny

Chapter 8a

The ferry turned out to be a fifty foot log raft with a knee high rope barrier around it that was pulled across by a dozen muscular, dark skinned men pulling on a worryingly thin rope. The Helberians had no choice though, unless they preferred a two hundred mile trek through thick, entangling forest, and so they crowded on alongside a herd of twenty oxen and their owner, a skeletally thin woman with a gold collar around her neck. She muttered to herself in her own language for the entire three hours of the crossing while staring at them with her piercing, bright eyes, and the rangers gathered in a small clump on the other side of the ferry, feeling uncomfortable as some instinct warned them that this woman posed a threat they couldn't understand.

Reaching the other side, they climbed back into their horses with considerable relief and continued their journey west. Almost no-one here spoke the language of the northern lands, but fortunately Crane spoke Pennygab, a crude trade dialect used by merchants and travellers over much of the world, and he was usually able to find someone who could understand him. Even so, though, they were in totally unfamiliar territory now. They had to stop to ask directions everywhere they went, a conversation that could take some time as Crane and the local found that even Pennygab came in several dialects and that the same word in different dialects could have completely different meanings.

The Brigadier decided that they needed a local guide, therefore. Someone who knew the area and with whom they could communicate without difficulty. When they stopped for the night, therefore, at a small village consisting of a small cluster of log cabins at a spot where the small forest track they had been following crossed another, he had Crane ask around to see if there was anyone willing to take the job.

Fortunately, they had brought plenty of gold, expecting, correctly as it turned out, that Helberion money wouldn't be exchangeable this far from home, and the soft, yellow metal worked its magic on the villagers, bringing forth a fellow called Sherren Harle who claimed to know the country for five hundred miles around like the back of his hand. He wouldn't have been the Brigadier's first choice, as he later confided to Malone when the local man was out of earshot. He had a crafty, shifty look about him, as if he was constantly trying to think of ways to screw his new employers, but then most of the locals had the same look so that might just have been the way they were down here.

More worrying, though, was his physical appearance. He had a faintly reptilian look to him, with a greenish tinge to his skin that still bore a hint of scales. Reptiles were hardly ever adopted in the northern lands as they were considered to be more than one rung below humans and therefore incapable of becoming fully human, at least unless a higher animal served as an intermediary. Sherren Harle, Crane told them, insisted that his appearance was the result of his having been orphaned before reaching full humanity, although he was adamant that he had a fully human mind.

The rangers were sceptical about that. The man seemed easily distracted and to have trouble understanding basic concepts like hygiene and civilised behaviour. He was in the habit of squatting to pass waste in the presence of other people, even people who were eating, and then prodding the waste with his finger before bringing it up to his nose to smell it. The villagers seemed to brighten at the prospect of being rid of him, and the rangers contemplated with dismay the necessity of enduring his company for who knew how many weeks to come.

Unfortunately, though, they had no choice but to hire him, since nobody else in the village was currently unemployed. If they'd been in a big city they might have had more luck, but the first challenge they faced was to find a big city. They had yet to come across anything like a large road, despite the fact that common sense told them that all they had to do was keep going in a straight line long enough. There were countries, located in deserts, arctic regions and small island archipelagos, that had almost no permanent roads since their landscapes were constantly shifting and being resurfaced, but Mekrol was mainly covered in forest. They had expected that merchants and traders would stick to the same routes, creating recognisable paths that they could find and follow.

"It turns out that the local religion forbids the creation of roads," said Crane after he'd spoken to their new guide for a while. "Everything outside cities is sacred land, and they'll anger the Gods if they leave permanent marks on it."

"So what about farms and cities?" asked Harper.

"They don't have farms. Their whole economy is based on hunter gathering. They go out into the wilderness and take what they need to live on. They get their wood by coppicing, leaving the base of the tree alive to put up new growth, and their livestock is allowed to roam free, only being rounded up when it's time for them to be slaughtered."

"What about their cities?" asked Quill. "Do they have cities, or is it all like this?" He gestured around with his hand to indicate the village.

"They make sacrifices to their Gods for permission to build cities," replied Crane. He spoke a few words to Sherren Harle. "And mines," he continued. "Whenever they absolutely have to leave a mark on the land they appease the Gods with sacrifices."

"But they must have roads," protested Cotton. "If you've got two cities and there's a lot of traffic between them, it's going to leave a trail between the two cities. What do you call that if not a road?"

Crane spoke to their guide again. "He says that if a track starts to form, they take a different route until the ground heals. I suppose a road of sorts would form despite all their best efforts, but it would be miles wide and consist only of a strip of compacted ground on which a different variety of plants grew. Now that I think about it, we've passed several places like that over the past few days. I didn't think anything of it. I'm sorry, Brigadier..." The Brigadier just waved his apology away, though.

"There is one other thing," Crane continued. "Because they get all their food from the wilderness, they claim all the wild animals and wild plants in the country as their country's property. If we go hunting for ourselves, they'll call it poaching and they'll be out for our blood. We have to buy all our food so long as we're in their country."

"Understood," replied the Brigadier. "That won't be a problem."

They were rather amused to learn from their new guide that they'd been travelling in completely the wrong direction to find Barag Tull. Sherren Harle pointed them in the right direction, though, and told them that it was three days journey from their current location. Crane thanked him, and when morning came they set off towards it.

"He's never heard of Parcellius," the tracker told them as they were riding. "He thinks that the King does have a court ontomancer, but he doesn't know anything about him. Whether he's a foreigner, whether he has unique knowledge of ontological matters..."

"Then we'll just have to find out for ourselves," replied the Brigadier. "Hopefully our letters of introduction will get us an audience with the King, and his Majesty will be able to answer our questions."