Crispin's Army

“Crispin?”

Josie shook Crispin awake. He roused himself, shaking his head.

“Crispin, do you know these two?” Josie asked.

Crispin looked at her blankly for a moment, before taking in the two lifeless figures stretched beside her. Recognition of the two men hit him like a hammer blow, and his mind reeled. Before him were Arne, his dearest comrade, and a younger man, Nold, to whom Crispin had imparted many of his own hunting skills. Both lay face down, a couple of metres apart, with knives clutched tightly in their right hands.

Crispin studied Josie’s face. “What happened?”

“They were going to kill you,” Josie said. “If I hadn’t got up for a pee at the time, we would both be dead now. As it is, we’re alive, and so are they. I had the blaster on the lowest power setting. But we can change that if you wish.”

“These are my friends and fellow-villagers,” said Crispin. “This one is Arne, my closest companion, and this is Nold. I cannot imagine why they would kill me.”

“Because Torfinn told them to, I guess,” said Josie.

“What can he have said to them, I wonder,” mused Crispin.

“We’ll soon know,” Josie observed. “They appear to be stirring already. I think we’ll just relieve them of their knives.” So saying, she stooped, a boot planted over the wrist of each of the two men, and plucked their weapons from their fingers.

Gradually, the two men regained consciousness, and looked up in bewilderment to see Crispin sitting before them, their knives embedded in the earth between his legs.

“Good morning, sleepy heads,” he smiled.

“Crispin?” Arne gasped, his eyes bulging with the sudden recognition of the man before him. “Is it really you?”

Crispin looked askance at Arne. “It is, Arne, it is. Do you mean to tell me you would have killed me without finding out who I was?”

Arne’s expression was a blend of fear and guilt. He remembered again the morning that Crispin left the village. He could still see him, striding out purposefully, but desperately alone, and the world around him had seemed so vast and unpitying. Arne had been so close to running after him, but then he had felt Torfinn’s restraining hand on his shoulder. “He must find his own fate out there,” Torfinn had said, and Arne knew now that the leader had had a particular fate in mind, one of his, Torfinn’s, choosing.

“I think an explanation is in order,” Crispin said.

“We were instructed by Master Torfinn,” Arne explained, “to kill all strangers. Any we found who were dressed as those first strangers were dressed.” He gestured towards Crispin, indicating his Urbian garb. “Forgive us, Crispin.”

Crispin glanced down at his own clothes, realising that he appeared very similar to the men he and Arne had killed. His clothes were in much the same style, his hair was cropped short, and his full beard was replaced by a few days’ stubble. Furthermore, he had swapped his crossbow for laser weapons. He smiled and gave a dismissive wave of his hand, as if to say that such a simple mistake was quite understandable. It was simply another score he would have to settle with Torfinn.

Josie, standing behind Arne and Nold, shifted her weight slightly, and the leaves rustled under her feet. The two hunters started and looked round. They stared at her, slack jawed, astonished not only to see her there, but also dressed as Crispin was.

“This is Josie,” Crispin explained. “She is...” he sought for a word that might explain their relationship, but could find nothing better than the most fundamental appellation of all, “...my woman.”

“So Tana is dead?” said Arne, the unspoken rider being that if Tana were dead, then his own Melissa would be also.

“She may be,” Crispin replied sadly. “The truth is, I don’t know what’s happened to her. But things have changed. There is much to explain to you. But here, take some of this meat. It is very good.”

Three men and one woman settled down to breakfast on the edge of the forest. Then, when they had had their fill, they gathered their things and began walking out across the grassland, following the sun as it progressed across the sky. Crispin talked at length, recounting as much as he could of what had befallen him since he had left Vale, though he carefully skirted round the subject of Melissa’s fate. At times, trying to convey what Urbis was like, it felt to him as if he were trying to explain colour to a blind man.

The most difficult part, however, was explaining that the elders had known for centuries of the existence of Urbis, and that Torfinn had attempted to have Crispin killed to keep him from discovering its existence for himself. A chill went through him as he suddenly considered how many others might have stumbled upon it over the years, and had been summarily dispatched by village elders anxious to preserve the status quo.

All village folk were taught as little children to look on the elders as the source of all wisdom, and as benefactors who had the best interests of the community at heart. It was deemed the greatest possible honour to have a member of one’s family chosen as an elder, and if an elder was required to observe a code of silence with regard to some aspects of his deliberations with his fellow elders, even within the confines of his closest family, the view was taken that there was undoubtedly a good reason for this, and that nothing further needed to be said.

It was this subtle - and sometimes less subtle - indoctrination, passed from parent to child down the generations, which Crispin would now have to overturn, beginning with Arne and Nold as they walked towards Vale. He began to explain about the positive side of life in Urbis, the potential for learning, the greater comfort, the ease of life, the infinitely better health care.

Arne and Nold listened attentively, and for the most part in silence. Crispin offered them very little in the way of hard evidence to support the fantastic story he was telling them, but they had seen the helicopter and used the chainsaws, and now they had experienced the laser weapons.

Little by little, they became convinced of the rightness of what Crispin was saying to them. But the notion of overthrowing the power of the elders was something they still could not come to grips with. Both Arne and Nold recalled the astonishment they and the other villagers had felt when Crispin had dared to defy Torfinn’s command. They predicted that Torfinn would be outraged when Crispin reappeared at Vale, and foresaw for every villager a division of loyalties between their elders on the one hand and a well loved member of the village on the other.

“And what of my father, Arne?” Crispin said softly. “How does he fare?”

Arne looked at the ground, and for a long moment he was silent. “Dirk is dead, Crispin,” he said. “He died peacefully in his sleep, a month or so after you left. It is said that he was heartbroken at losing his son.”

“He and I were never close,” Crispin declared. “I cannot conceive that he would have been heartbroken at my departure.” A thought occurred to him. “He had ambitions towards eldership.”

Arne looked at his friend in wonder, surprised at Crispin’s lack of emotion. Had his experiences in the city so changed him? “It’s true,” he acknowledged. “Your father had hopes of becoming an elder, and Torfinn and the others had looked favourably on him. But after you disobeyed...” His voice trailed away.

“I brought shame on the family,” Crispin completed his sentence for him. “No chance of becoming an elder after that.” He flashed his companion an ironic smile. “No, Arne, if anything broke his heart it was that.”

Arne looked pained. “How can you speak so of your father?” he demanded.

“Because I know what he was like,” Crispin retorted. “And I speak as I think. I have no time for this nonsense of never speaking ill of the dead.” He clapped his hand on Arne’s back. “Now, tell us how things stand in the village. What sort of a welcome can we expect?”

Arne explained to Crispin as best he could the difficulties he and Josie were likely to encounter in the village. He also pointed out that since Crispin’s departure, the village had changed, as indeed had most of the others. Fearing further incursions by the strangers, fortifications had been built. Vale now sheltered behind the strongest stockade its inhabitants could build. It was guarded continuously, and it would be impossible to enter without scrutiny.

Arne suggested that Crispin and Josie should remain hidden, camped somewhere outside the village while he and Nold went in, spoke discreetly to some trusted village folk, and prepared the way for them. Crispin had been warming to the notion of a return to his old home, and conceded only with the greatest reluctance that Arne’s plan was wise, and that such a return would have to be postponed.

A further two days walking brought the foursome at last to within a couple of kilometres of Vale-By-The-Waters.

They moved up the hillside away from the river to where the slope was thickly dotted with broom and some scrubby hazels. Crispin and Josie spent more than the usual amount of time looking for a suitable spot to make camp, as they were aware that this would be no simple overnight stop such as they had become accustomed to. They chose with care a spot which could be made level without too much difficulty, and which could be well camouflaged. The only problem would be with fires, which they would have to refrain from lighting until after dark, and then with the flames carefully screened from view.

When Arne and Nold had assured themselves that Crispin and Josie were as comfortable as possible, they set off on the last short leg to the village. Crispin watched them go, itching to go with them and see once again the little cluster of dwellings that had been his home for so long. He had often dreamed of returning home to a hero’s welcome, but instead, here he was lurking furtively on the fringe, a pariah.

Late in the night, Arne contrived to slip out of the village again unobserved. He returned to Crispin and Josie’s campsite with a woven bag slung over one shoulder. When he had roused the sleeping pair, he drew from the bag a large earthenware dish with a lid tied securely on top of it. Crispin could scarcely contain his delight when Arne untied and removed the lid to reveal a sumptuous mutton pie, and neither he nor Josie needed any prompting to begin making rapid inroads into it.

During the day, Josie and Crispin lay low. Crispin sat watching the comings and goings of villagers along the river bank. They were old friends, people he had grown up with, and he longed to call out to them, greet them and talk to them. He could not believe that they would spurn him. But he knew also the sway of the elders, a yoke they could not easily shed if they wished to continue living in village society. It occurred to him that what had happened to him was no doubt being used in many villages as an object lesson on the importance of obeying the elders in all things.

On the following night, Nold came with food, and reported that he and Arne had spoken briefly to three or four of their hunting companions, intimating that Crispin was returning to Vale, but without giving any indication that he was so close at hand. Crispin could scarcely contain his impatience, and Nold, barely twenty and clearly in awe of the adventurer, found it difficult to tell him he must wait a little longer before he could truly return home.

“I can’t stand it,” Crispin complained when he had departed again. “Just up the path there is my home, my hearth and my warm, comfortable bed. But after all we’ve been through, we’re obliged to sit here on a bare hillside night after night.”

“Patience,” Josie murmured soothingly as she nursed his head in her lap and playfully ran her fingers through his hair. “This will all be behind us soon enough.”

Crispin stood up suddenly and peered into the darkness in the direction that Nold had taken. “Let’s just go and have a look at the old place.”

“Do you think that’s wise?” said Josie.

“No one will spot us on such a dark night,” said Crispin. “Come on, I’m anxious to see what they’ve done to the place.”

“All right,” said Josie dubiously. “But we’d better be careful.”

She pressed a blaster into his hand, and kept a firm grip on her own. They both set their weapons to stun power.

The light of a half moon was adequate to illuminate the trail of flattened grass that marked Nold’s passage down the hillside. They followed it until they reached the flat land along the side of the stream.

They had not gone far when a trio of dark figures emerged from behind a tree, crossbows raised and pointed at Crispin and Josie. They halted.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” said Crispin.

From behind them came a voice Crispin instantly recognised as that of Carrick. “Put down your weapon, Crispin,” he commanded. “Your friend also.”

Crispin and Josie slowly crouched and laid their blasters gently on the grass. They turned around to see Carrick and two other men standing behind them, also with crossbows raised.

“That’s better,” said Carrick. “Now, shall we continue our walk to Vale?”