Journeyman: The Force of the Gods: Part I (31 page)

Some wore long tunics of skin or woven wool, some wore shorter ones with woollen trousers, though there seemed to be no distinction in attire between the males and the females. Most of them wore roughly-made leather boots, except the children, who straggled behind the adults on bare feet.

They seemed curious as to who the two strangers were. However, to Peter’s surprise, they were
no more than that
: no other attention was paid to Peter or Atlosreg by anyone as they deposited their weapons, baskets of fruits and other vegetative foodstuffs, and, finally, carried by five older men each, two large animals which resembled cows, all on the ground.

Peter was fascinated, from anthropological and proto-historical points of view, in witnessing what looked like the open of an ages-old ritual surrounding the taking of the evening meal. While not reverential in what they did next, they were respectful and careful. One of the older men – the men all looked older, now he thought about it – took out a slightly leaf-shaped knife and knelt over the first of the two animals, and began to butcher it.

At the same time, a few other men carried a number of large faggots of wood to the fire pit, walking past Atlosreg and Peter as though they weren’t there, and deposited them therein, and then walked away. Then two people, an elderly couple, stepped forward, and in unison each held short staves in the air and made identical movements with them. Immediately, the wood started to burn.

Peter stared with rapt interest, watching the scene. Now he was here among the people, albeit as a blatant outsider, he could barely remember what he was here to do. He just wanted to watch everything and learn all about what these people did, what they were about.

Atlosreg, however, seemed to have other ideas: he tapped Peter on the shoulder and motioned for both of them to move back a short way. Reluctantly, Peter did so, Atlosreg leading the way to some people he seemed to know. They spoke, in the same language Peter had heard him speak earlier. When Peter caught up, Atlosreg looked between him and the people he had led him to. He seemed excited at the presence of a particular old woman.

Peter didn’t have to wonder who this woman was, because suddenly Atlosreg was speaking.

He looked straight at Peter. ‘This is my sister, Bhlota. I did not know she would still be alive…’ He trailed off, looking slightly tearful. Bhlota looked at Peter, full of curiosity. She had the same eyes as Atlosreg, but a much more worn face: if Peter had been told to guess how old she was, he might have ventured somewhere in the region of two hundred and sixty or so, but it was obvious that she couldn’t be. She was probably younger than Atlosreg was. He didn’t ask; he didn’t know how much of a
faux pas
it would have been to do so.

There wasn’t any way he knew to greet her, so he settled for carefully saying her name and respectfully bowing his head.

‘
Teloqai ne niseros dongwa
,’ Atlosreg said to her, inclining his head to indicate Peter. Peter looked at them both, and Atlosreg, sensing his disadvantage, translated what he had said: ‘I told her you don’t speak our language.’

‘Aah.’

Bhlota looked between Peter and Atlosreg and spoke. ‘
Welts juwn es weskain kum naserme
?’

Atlosreg smiled, and looked at Peter. ‘She wants to know if we will be eating with them.’

Peter smiled too, feeling very touched at being invited. ‘Yes, if that’s alright.’ He looked at Bhlota and said ‘thank you.’

‘
Jai
,’ said Atlosreg to her. ‘
Qe seqoa “moitmos.”
’

She looked at Peter. ‘
Cratos.
’

They all stood together, Atlosreg and his sister and her family –
his
family, Peter supposed – and Peter himself, among the rest of the village folk, as the two bovine-looking animals were cut up and placed over the now-impressive fire to cook. There were people talking amongst themselves, but most of them were quiet: cooking, it seemed, was something of a solemn affair.

In fact, it appeared to Peter that there was a lot of solemnity in these people. But then, he supposed, life was serious business to them; there was more at stake and less to achieve. Finding and cooking food was a daily achievement, and one which couldn’t be taken lightly because of the kind of achievement is was.

After some time, when the meat was cooked, it was divided among everyone, and once everyone had their share they all sat down circles which, as far as Peter could tell, represented the households of this village.

Food was given to people in their bare hands, along with some rough, doughy sort of flatbread and a fruit which Peter couldn’t quite identify – it looked like a small apple, and he was somewhat nervous about trying it. The meat, on the other hand, looked and smelled delicious. The piece he had been given was like a healthy-sized steak, and when he tasted it he was suddenly surprised it hadn’t been hunted to extinction: it was like something between beef and venison in how rich, tender, and

The atmosphere went from solemn to jovial as soon as they started – this was the time to enjoy the fruits of the day’s labour, and enjoy it they did, with people occasionally standing and talking: telling jokes, from what Peter could gather, or stories, or singing songs. It was the atmosphere of a party or barbecue.

Something, however, was bothering Peter. The atmosphere had shifted from early evening to night time, but there was something about it that was off. At first, he couldn’t tell what it was, but after they had finished eating and the fire had started to die down, he realized what was wrong.

‘Atlas,’ he leaned in, whispering. ‘The sun isn’t setting.’

‘No. It never has, and it never will.’

That was peculiar, and it poked like a stick into a wasp’s nest: his head was buzzing with questions which he wasn’t sure whether or not he should ask. Or whether or not the answers would be known to whomever he might ask.

He located the sun in the sky and stared at it. The longer he looked, the more details seemed to resolve in his vision: flames and flares and even clouds; dark spots, light spots… it seemed a little familiar. In fact, it reminded him of something he had read about when he had been younger, excursing into astronomy and cosmology: a brown dwarf.

As best he could remember, brown dwarfs were a hypothetical middle-ground between gas giants and small stars: bodies with a high enough mass of hydrogen to achieve some small self-sustaining thermonuclear reaction, but not quite high enough to achieve ‘proper’ fusion and nucleosynthesis of heavier elements. It was hot enough to glow, but not to shine.

Was that what this was? If it was, then it was no wonder the place was dead and cold – they didn’t even have a proper sun. His after-dinner contentment waned away as he was once again filled with a slow, quiet feeling of utter disgust at the state of the world he was in.

He looked way, feeling weak. He wanted to walk. After excusing himself – and Atlosreg translating for him – he stood up and walked away from the village. He didn’t want to leave, he just wanted to be walking, moving around. He wanted to feel a little more alive than realizing how dead Werosain was made him feel.

There wasn’t far he could walk, since he didn’t know his way around anywhere here, but that was fine: he walked a little further down in the direction he and Atlosreg had been walking when they were on the way to the village, and then back after a few minutes, and then looped around the village. Eventually, he rejoined Atlosreg and his family.

‘Are you alright?’ Atlosreg shocked Peter by showing concern – not merely expressing it in actions, but in words.

‘Yeah,’ Peter replied. ‘Just feel a little strange is all.’

‘I understand.’

The fire had almost died, the wood being all spent but for a few warm embers still smouldering in the middle. The place was getting quiet, everyone was tired. A few people were drinking some liquid from a bowl which was being passed around, and when it reached Atlosreg he took a gulp and offered it to Peter.

‘Try it.’

He did. It tasted sweet and floral like mead, but had a slightly more acidic tone to it. Maybe it was a melomel, made with some local fruit. He enjoyed it, but he doubted very much that the rest of the people still there would appreciate it if he kept the bowl, so he reluctantly passed it on.

Eventually, there was only Peter, Atlosreg and Bhlota left; the rest of the village – and even the rest of Bhlota’s family – had returned to their respective homes to sleep. Peter had mainly been sat there with the two of them, listening to them jabbering away about whatever it was they were jabbering away about. There was only very little he could understand: while he had learned how to read their language as transcribed into Latin writing, he hadn’t ever had an opportunity to learn how to speak or understand it as a living, spoken language. This was something he would, when he had the opportunity, have to change. It would be interesting to be able to speak to these people for himself.

With the sun still being in the sky, it was difficult to sense what time it was, but to him it felt like about two o’clock in the morning.

When, at last, Bhlota left, Peter realized that he and Atlosreg didn’t have anywhere to sleep. He looked at Atlosreg, puzzled, but Atlosreg didn’t seem all that concerned. Or else maybe he hadn’t realized.

After a moment, Peter decided he would have to ask. ‘Where are we going to sleep?’

‘Sometimes houses are left for when people come to visit. I asked Bhlota, she said there’s one over there.’ He pointed, and Peter looked across to where he was indicating. It was one of the tipi-like houses, with a piece of skin draped over the doorway. ‘So we can go over there and get some rest now.’

That sounded like a good plan to Peter. ‘That’s a good idea,’ he said. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m buggered.’

Atlosreg sighed and nodded. ‘Buggered.’

Peter laughed, and they walked over into the small house. There wasn’t much inside, other than three beds which appeared to be made from something like flattened bags of straw. The cloth looked rough, but when he sat on one it felt rather soft. The bed itself was firm, which was how he preferred it.

He was grateful for the bed, and after taking off his boots and jacket and shirt, lay down. He was asleep within seconds.

It was a surprisingly restful night, considering the events of the day, and Peter slept deeply and soundly right through to the morning, when he was awoken by Atlosreg tapping his shoulder.

‘Peter,’ he said with a gentleness of which Peter hadn’t thought him capable. ‘Peter, time to wake up. There is work to do.’

Slowly and wistfully, Peter sat up and put his shirt and boots back on. ‘What work?’ He said.

Atlosreg held the hide flap open, exposing to Peter the bustle of morning activity outside.

‘Food to be found and caught, wood to cut down.’

‘Right.’

There wasn’t much to do in the way of getting ready; he was pretty much ready once he had got himself dressed and picked up his satchel, which he had already done.

Peter was very interested to go out looking for food and wood with the rest of them, not just because it would be an opportunity for him to use the skills he had gained when he had been on trial; it would also mean he was being included in the village’s practices, which to him felt like he had been accepted, at least on some level.

All the people were on their way out of the village, and Peter and Atlosreg joined on the end of the line of people who were walking away to where their various duties lay. Some were going away to look after farms where either animals, grain, or fruits were grown; others were going off in other directions toward where there was a forest to gather wood, and another small group went looking for whatever else they might find: wild fruits or animals, chert nodules or exposed metal ores from which tools and weapons could be made.

Once he started paying attention, Peter noticed that there was an almost industrial quality to the way things were arranged: each group was highly skilled at what they did, and within each group was a hierarchy resembling those he had seen on Earth. Atlosreg explained as they walked that the groups’ duties rotated from one year to the next, so as to preserve all the skills which had been developed over the many generations, and also to ensure that every person had a full range within those skills. As such, were a group to be separated, for whatever reason, from the rest of the village, that group would be able to survive.

The whole thing impressed Peter a lot. So much so, in fact, that he found himself distracted by pangs of pre-emptive remorse at the prospect of ending this world. They were so primitive and had so little to work with that it just didn’t seem right to end it all for them. On the other hand, however, it was exactly that they had had so little to work with which had resulted in them being in such a primitive – and stagnant too, Peter suspected – state of civilization. He had to remind himself that he hadn’t actually travelled backward in time, and when he realized people just like these villagers had been the progenitors of his own civilization, he felt cold inside.

He pushed the thought out of his mind, at least for the time being. It wouldn’t do to start thinking of them as being dead, especially having seen them being so obviously and happily alive the previous night. He did pity them, though, and he wished there was something he could do to restore them to a world which would be welcoming and hospitable to them. But some things are even outside the power of a magician.