Avram Davidson - The Scarlet Fig - Or, Slowly Through a Land of Stone, Book Three of the Vergil Magus Series

However. Caniacus was just then not just there; there was a two or a three of the Masked Men in the caffile, and he preferred much to ride with them, exchanging soft syllables … or, likelier: subtle gestures … of their own kenning only. So.

“What place is that, Benninaly?”

A silence.

A surprise.

An answer. “That is the rough place;” rather it seemed a name by the way spoken rather than merely a description. So …

“What is ‘The Rough Place’, Benninaly?”

“We take to the left by the next great rock” was in no way an obvious answer to his question, but he knew that the man Benninaly would not take bother and make effort to speak, who was commonly silent (not that by now they were not all commonly silent and had been so for the endurance of many days), if it were not a thing of some importance, and the hump or peak rising somewhat to the left of the center of the horizon — probably the reason for their taking the next turn left by the great rock — was abound to be connected in some way with The Rough Place.

And neither did Vergil plague his companions with other questions, as, they might be so: “Do we go presently thither?” or, “Do we go past there?” or “Is it, then, a landmark?” And certainly he never, did silence follow the spare questions which he did ask, rankle with such sharp and nudging words, such as, “I asked you a question, do you not desire to answer it?” or, even worse, “Why do you not desire to answer?” Courtesy forevented, and for that matter, so did common sense; for he rather thought that a man or woman of such a cast of mind and behavior was not destined by Fate to live long enough to transverse the desert. And he desired to live that long.

And longer.

Vergil would save his further questions, if he had further questions, for night-tide round the small fire: and if he were to feel too tired to ask them, it was likely that the other would feel too tired to be asked.

If the answer were important, he would be bound to find it out.

“The Rough Place!” As though these journies o’er the land of stone could be smooth!

The order of the caravan. First came the leaders of the caffile, mounted on the best of horses, then came the merchants riding on the best of mules ( best in either case referring to capacity for the journey and not for sleek of looks), and then came the sumpter-mules and the shabby pack-horses fated never to plod across another desert but to be sold for slaughter by the knacker’s men; horse-flesh was not bad (the Northishfolk had a disdain again the eating of horses’ flesh but then Northishfolk worshipped horses, or so it was said; however the Hyperboreans — who lived very far north indeed: beyond the very upwell of the North Wind — sacrificed asses to Apollo … did they then farce them into sausages, like the Alpenese?) Thereafter came the camels (there were no cameleopards) and if there were women in the caravan they rode the camels upon a sort of platform enclosed in a small tent; and if there were no women, then let the camels carry less and if a horse foundered, then might the camels carry what the horse had been carrying (be sure, many a silent squabble with signs and gestures, depending on whose horse — or whose camel; but there was precedent and custom in such matters, and the dispute never came to blows: furthermore, who had excess energy for blows?). After that came the soldiers of the rear-guard, mounted as they might be mounted, for each was hired along with his mount. And after them, the folk afoot, too poor to have or to hire any beast, thankful just for the safety of the caravan and knowing that it would never stop nor stay for any illness or weariness of theirs.

And after that, a space, and after that the dog … a dog who seemingly lived on little more than nothing, for few were the scraps which came his way at fooding times … brought along largely because he would sometimes start up a quail lost from its flock-of-passage: at what time see how swift the slings and stones appeared. Or sometimes he might bark or bell and give notice of strangers.

And after the dog, although sometimes alongside the dog, was a man with an ass — not to be sacrificed to Apollo — panniers on the ass, and in the man’s hands a sort of shovel or spade or scoop: to gather up such dried dung as he might find. And did the dung of this caravan, in this intense and fearful heat (though at night: frightful cold), dry fast enow to be used for the same day’s fire? no it did not, what the man chiefly gathered up was the dung of the caravan which had passed last before … did the cur eat of it first, e’en the hungriest cur might not eat it all: how plentifully the camel-beast, with ever-arrogant face lifting up his tail, might plash the place with its abundant scat and skiting; also the horses and the mules. The experienced carvaneer could easily read these droppings, moist or sere: and the tale of the apt Athenian who had deduced that “there had passed by a caravan of such and such a number of beasts and of such and such a sort … as follows … inclusive a gravid she-camel laded with barley and oil of sinsamin, et cœtera, et cœtera ” … lo, this tale was known even to the very boys not yet old enough to pay the wee fee of two stivers at the baths.

But even so, passing by and through these pits and piles and mounds of stone as bright (as dull) as so much molten wax coagulated into odd, grotesque, and phantastic shape, the man with the, as it might be, spade, was at some pains to gather up some, at least, fresh droppings: for dried dung made a smokeless fire, fairly smokeless, and, although one might not have thought so, this was not always desired. Sometimes, as of these times, what was wanted was a smoke and a bitter smoke, and a rank one, curling low. It kept the flies away ( flies? in the stony desert? Oh yes! large and small and black or greeny-gold); and, it was believed (so why should it be doubted?), also it kept off and away things which might come a-prowl, at least until the time of the glimmering false dawn, who knows and who might count or reckon the ephrits or ghouls or the larvæ of the unsettled and indignant dead, such as shadows of those who might have died in the desert, and no caffile stopped for to aid them, or even to cast a few handsful of dust upon their corses as a sort of pro forma or pseudo-burial.

Not enough smoke . Benninaly commonly signed and gestured at the nighttime halt. “This is the land of the basilisk and the cockatrisk; more smoke, there, you. More smoke.” Even though the dog growled not (save, a-times, a grumble and a mumble in his sleep) and the capon they had brought along with them to smell out such things seemed to notice nought: More smoke there, you. More smoke.

Life had taught Vergil many things, some of them of easy acquisition, some recondite or arcane, even occulted, occluded; some of them scarcely to be capable of description. Some, however, were plain enough so that when Vergil asked a second time, What is ‘The Rough Place,’ Benninaly, his lips did not move, nor his throat, merely he had asked it in his heart. And, after a long pause, Benninaly, nothing showing of his face but his unmuffled eyes, reddled with the dust, had said, “We take to the left by the next great rock.” He did not add the word road, for it was mostly only a road by rhetorical device, as the Parthians saying robber of wheat-straw when they meant amber , or as the Northismen said orme-path for the muckle sea in which, twas said, the great sea-orme splashed and spouted, ere it crushed the coracles atween its fangs. Yet twas not in its entirety a device rhetorical to call it a road. Though underneath the thin dust seemed to lie now one immensity of solid stone, yet upon that stony surface lay a sort of a faint line, not quite a track: but certainly a trace. And though he could not perceive it now beneath, as he was riding over it, yet, given a rise for them to pass across, he could see it both before and behind, though very faint; reminding him faintly of a stretch-mark upon the body of a woman who has born child.