Clifford Simak - All Flesh Is Grass and Other Stories

"Also I have heard of that," said Andrew wrathfully. "I place no credence in it. It all is sophistry."

"Each man to his own belief," said Duncan. "We will not argue it." He said to Meg, "Sorrow, you say. From whom or whence comes this sorrow?"

"I do not know," said Meg. "That is hidden from me. What I do know is that in many places in the world there come these sounds of sorrow. Desolate places, lonely and forsaken places. A wailing for the world."

Duncan sat and listened to the wailing for the world. It seemed to come from some distant place, not necessarily from the fen, although it came across the fen—perhaps, he thought, from some secret place where the miseries and the disappointments of the world came to a common focus. A wailing for all the events that could have been, but did not come to be, for the crusade that never got off to a decent start, leaving Jerusalem still in the hands of infidels; for the Iberian ships that never clove the ocean waves to those ports and the unknown lands that still were waiting for them; for the Europe that still lay stagnant, plowing its worn-out soils with the plows that had been used for centuries, with the peasantry, for the most part, still huddling in dark and noisome hovels; with pools of paganism still remaining, some of them almost within the shadow of the magnificence of churches that had been reared up, with Christian sweat and prayer, to proclaim the glory of the Lord.

An evil force, His Grace had said, that battened and fattened on mankind's misery, that moved upon strategic crisis points to guarantee continuation of the misery. That Evil in the past had struck in many places, at strategic points, and now it had struck in Britain. What factors were there that might make Britain a strategic place to strike? Britain, through all history, had been a place of quiet, a backwater of the world, where there might be local squabbling and some small clash of arms, but an area that had never loomed large in the consideration of the world.

"Fair sir," said Ghost, moving over to him, "I believe I have not done too badly. I have been faithful in my scouting. I have ever told you truth."

"You have been loyal," said Duncan, "although I do not understand your loyalty. There is no reason in the world you should be loyal to me."

"You told me once, however, that you would not invite me to go along with you, although you said you saw no way that you could stop me going. It was not a remark, I know, that was meant to be unkind, but ever since it has rankled in my breast."

"And what do you think that I should say?" asked Duncan. "That given another chance, I would have invited you? I don't know if I can say that, although I can say something else. I am glad you chose to come along."

"You truly mean that, sir?"

"I most sincerely mean it, Ghost."

"Then," said Ghost, "I shall continue with a lighter heart. When would you estimate, sir, we will arrive in Oxenford? I am very anxious to hunt out a reverend doctor there and discuss my case with him."

"At the rate that we've been going, we may never get there."

"You cannot mean that, sir."

"No, I suppose I don't. Someday we will be in Oxenford."

But even as he said it he wondered if they would. They had covered, so far, not too many miles, and if they took too much longer, Bishop Wise might well be dead before the manuscript could be placed into his hands. And should the good bishop not be there, their journey would have been a foolish errand at the best.

It would help, he thought, if they could only know the location of the Horde of Harriers. They must be somewhere in northern Britain, perhaps in congregation for that strange procedure that would bring about their rejuvenation. It certainly must now be time, he thought, for the procedure to begin, for surely they had carved out to its fullest extent that area of desolation designed to protect them from any interference. It might be, he thought, that the Harriers had thrown roadblocks in his path for the simple reason that he was inadvertently heading straight for their congregation, thereby posing that possibility of interference they must guard against. If it could only be known where they were, he and his band could swing wide around them, and the Harriers then might let them be.

He thought back once again along the trail that they had traveled, hoping by doing this to pick up some clue that would be useful in planning their further progress. But in thinking back along their trail, he thought again of Diane and her griffin. And try as hard as he might to see her simply as an incident of their travel, his mind hung back and clung to the memory of her. He tried to rebuild her in his mind, to re-create the memory that he held of her, but he found that he was unable to accomplish this. All that remained was the memory of the axe that she had carried and the griffin she had ridden. What color was her hair? He was astonished to find that he did not know. What color were her eyes? Again he could not say. And the shape of her face, he found, now had quite escaped him. Thinking back, he realized that he had thought of her, had even watched for her, every day since they first had met—which had been just a few days earlier, but which seemed, for some reason, to be much longer ago than it was in actuality.

Why, he wondered, was he so obsessed with her—not knowing in his own mind that he was obsessed with her, but still thinking of her, in idle moments, each day since he had seen her.

"M" lord," said Conrad, "a fog is beginning to roll in. We must keep sharp watch tonight."

What Conrad said was true. In the last few minutes, a fog had risen from the fen high into the air and now was creeping in toward them. From the fen still came, somewhat muffled by the rising, thickening fog, the keening sound—the wailing for the world.

They reached the end of the strand when the sun was well down the western sky, and entered the rift. It was a narrow cleft between two towering walls of rock, as if sometime in the far past a giant, wielding a heavy sword, had cleft the mountain in a single stroke. Blowing sand from the strand had drifted for a short distance into the rift, lying in ripples and low dunes, pocked by the tracks of men and horses, probably made by the Reaver's band. But within a few rods the sand ended and the bottom of the rift was a solid rock. For a short stretch it would be as level as a floor, then would be rough and broken for a time, often almost blocked by slabs of stone that in the past peeled off the rocky walls and tumbled down into the bottom of the cleft. There was no vegetation—no blade of grass, no small shrubs or trees rooted desperately to the walls of solid rock. A steady, relentless wind funneled through the rift, moving from the fen. High in the chasm, the rushing winds howled and wailed, at times shrinking to a whisper, at others rising to a shrill and doleful lamentation.

They took up automatically the order of march they had used since starting from the village—Tiny leading, but staying much closer than he had in open country, with Conrad following, behind Conrad, Beauty and the hermit, going in single file now, for often there was not room for them to walk side by side. Behind the two of them came Duncan, with Daniel close upon his heels, Meg huddled on the horse's back, clutching the saddle to guard against a misstep that might be brought upon Daniel by the uneven footing.

The rift lay in deep twilight. Only for a few moments during the day, when the sun was directly overhead, did any sunlight ever reach the floor. The upper portions of the eastern wall were lighted by the sun, but as the day went on, the shadow crept higher up the wall, with the slice of sunlight growing less and less and the shadow deepening in the lower reaches of the rift.