Avram Davidson - Vergil in Averno

“Now, master, certain you suggested that the matter might best be tooken care of by such as hunt truffies, and so it might. Might be tooken care of, that is. But I have learned wisdom from you, and — ”

They were in the yard behind their lodgings; Iohan had swept it clean even before Vergil arrived to look. Who now said, “Flattery is not always wisdom, and I hope you have not learned it from me — ”

The boy merely patted his own curly pate, and said on. “It came to me mind, ser, as truffles are rare, which same reason is one why’m they costly. Truffles are rare, and rarer are the swine as hunts ‘em. And it do follow as rarer yet, the ones as leads such swine on leash. Whereas common swineherds of common swine be. . well. . common. Numerous, as you might say. Therefore.”

Once again, that therefore! But the fellow had reasoned well.

The fellow now carefully spread out a clean and wide cloth of coarse weave on the ground of the yard, opened one of the baskets tied with wisps of straw-grass he must have braided himself and, reaching in a hand, brought out a quantity of loam and leaf mold and broken twigs and shells, which he loosely but carefully emptied. “You have been in the beechwoods, then!” — Vergil.

“Aye, ser master. And” — he gestured to a bale of baskets of a different weave — ”in the chestnut woods as well. And on t’other side of the she-beast be evidence I were in the oaks, too: Where there was mast, I went on master’s business. I hasn’t sense enough to know as there mayn’t be them small creatures in a numerouser quantity, even, in other woods and groves. All as me mind say to me was, if no swine-food on the forest floor, no swineherds, either; and so what sense nor profit for me alone to stoop and squat and pick the fallen twigs up, and leaves and such, in hopes of plucking here a salmandel and there a salmandel…. Hark!” Vergil looked up, listened — nothing unusual. Was Iohan’s hark! like Iohan’s therefore: a usage peculiar to himself? Not quite. “Hark, ser, as what a Sar’cen merchant says to me as I rides upon me way. ‘What has thee there in them baskets, oh son?’ I says, ‘Salmandels, but same is not for sale.’ — He laughs a-scorn, says he, what he wants with sammandal chicks? ‘Sammandal.’ Iohan chuckled at the Saracen’s accent. “And ‘chicks’! He says, what you mayn’t believe, ser, save I tells it you, he says the sammandal (as he calls they) be birds! A four-leg’d bird? So he claim. But he haven’t time to raise they from, as he figure, chicks, the baskets being so small; they need be bigger or their hides ben’t worth the taking for to make sandals as will cross fire. What’s he call such a skin? A bestos. Well. Iohan twisted his face and his brows into an expression of more than mere incredulity, of — almost — concern; reverted to the immense oddity of the Saracen’s notion. “But. . a bird!”

Vergil said, with a smile that slightly acknowledged the antic quality of the idea, “There is a connection, and a fearful one, between them and certain birds — or bird — but it need not concern us now.” And he looked down at the small, small, very small young salamanders, creatures rather resembling lizards in appearance, yet not lizards at all.

Iohan let him look a moment before asking, “Be they of the right sort, ser?”

Vergil assured him that the salamanders were of the right sort. “And of the right size, too. ‘Chicks,’ just so. Of the first year. If they were older and larger, they would not suit. No!” Dim in the daylight, the creatures moved but slowly in the comparative cool of the shadowed yard. “You’ve done well, Iohan. And here’s a silver piece of money for you, too.”

The curly head dipped a bit. “I thank you, ser, you’re very kind. Nor has I forgot a special something for you, neither — I coulda worked a lustrum, full, for Fulgence, nor he’d of give me no present, such — ser. Not but what laboring for him hadn’t had its comic side. But hark!” He drew out a small bell of rustic craftsmanship and rang. Sweet, no one could have called it. An odd gift, still -

“Iohan, I thank you.”

“For when you might want me, ser, as I ben’t near to call: but ring, ser.”

Vergil gravely told him that he would.

And so, night following night, the stench no less than by day, the forges resounding to the hammers’ blows at midnight as at noon, for sundry nights the two went, master and man, from blasted waste to blasted waste; Iohan carrying the baskets, Vergil the rolls and scrolls and a few other items to be used with them. Each part of each waste he had already marked upon a grid-worked chart, and given a number; some were entire squares, others were mere parts thereof, the wastelands not always accommodating themselves to clean geometrical division, but shaped as each section might be, it had its coded equivalent upon the chart. And as they passed along in the semi-lurid gloom, Iohan carefully set down, at Vergil’s word, a single small salamander in each “square”, Vergil marked off each place so “planted” with but a touch of lead upon the gridded chart, and on they went, to do it again. . and again. . and again. . and on and on. . and on…. Sometimes they required the aid of Vergil’s special lamp within its box windowed with lumps of glass like burls (though he had a better way of enhancing light, he chose not, for sundry reasons, to use it, lest, for one, he attract attentions not desired); and sometimes they did not, the light of the natural fires spurting up from far and near often being quite enough.

The wasteland was far from often smooth beneath their feet. At times it was merely uneven, at times there were small holes, other times far from small, gaping and sunken; now and then was encountered such rubble as was left when one works was abandoned, its fire having “gone sick,” died down: timbers too tired or rotten to be moved, iron too rusted for salvage, shreds of rags worn beyond reuse even to test a dye upon. . and other stuff serving only to stumble over, had they not moved cautiously. Nowhere, indeed, did he see any such line as that one said to have been engraved upon a galley slave’s oar washed ashore somewhere in Ultima Thule or akin far-off place beyond ken, Oft was I wearied when I worked at thee, though the thought came to him that such would not be amiss here.

Toward the waning hours of each night so passed and spent, they moved their own wearied bodies to some high place or hill, whence they might spy down upon the wastes. For the most parts all was dark and dim. Sometimes they saw a glowing light, sometimes they saw one argent-pale. Iohan had known the story of the salamander, who had not? Could Iohan have been trusted to select only those in their first year? Possibly not. Therefore Vergil had counseled him — and him, to counsel others: those forest herdsmen of swine — to select, and to select only, the salamanders no bigger than his, Iohan’s, index finger. The young man was stalwart, but he had not reached his full growth yet at all (almost he seemed to be growing from day to day, to have grown a bit, perceptibly, during his absence); who could know, how could Vergil have known, how large the swineherds’ hands might be, or how long their fingers? Suppose any of them to be older or larger, either way to have fingers longer than Iohan’s? If any of them should have index fingers longer than the lad’s, say, as long as Iohan’s next finger, the so-called “digit of infamy,” well, it would still not be too long. Salamanders of such a size would still be within the proper length. So Vergil mused.

For the most part, there below, all was as dark or as dim as when they had walked across those parts, stooping, marking. But as with tired eyes they peered, in other parts, not so. Now and then Iohan gave his master a slight tap on arm or shoulder; pointed. There, then, where he gestured, would be seen some spot of light, like that of a glowworm, though less intermittent, or not at all. Sometimes they saw one golden-bright, sometimes they saw one argent-pale. Sometimes a mere single spot, and this, Vergil knew, was that of a single small salamander that had sought and found some nearby bit of warmth, signaling by its now-glowing presence some fire beneath. This he would mark in the (approximate, if not better) proper space upon the grid-worked chart. This he did regardless. Many a pickle makes a mickle. But what gave him (and Iohan) the greater satisfaction was when a number of such fiery spots was seen, sometimes moving slowly, sometimes swiftly, sometimes appearing, as ‘twere, one glowing mass of fire. . yet different, clean and clear different, from the greater blazes whence were shooting forth the subterranean fires that constituted the real riches of the Very Rich City. . or, even, merely, smoldering. For such sights meant that more than a few small salamanders had found out where a greater heat lay beneath the surface, though that heat be nowhere ordinarily observed above.