Lord of Janissaries by Jerry Pournelle & Roland J. Green

Author:Jerry Pournelle & Roland J. Green [Pournelle, Jerry & Green, Roland J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781476780795
Amazon: 147678079X
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2015-09-02T04:00:00+00:00

25

The field stank, and from within it came strange sounds: snarls, wild birdsongs unlike any Rick had heard elsewhere, mysterious rustlings of leaves.

“I would go no closer, Lord,” Apelles said. The blue-robed priest gestured expansively. “This hill is safe, but closer the wild things might reach us. Lamils, grickirrer, even the birds. When they have been long within the madweed, they fear nothing, and even a scratch can be death.”

“Necrotic products,” Rick said. He took out his binoculars and examined the field of madweed. It seemed ringed with small rotting corpses; the lamils, which ate madweed pods and died in frenetic convulsions. ODd on joy, one of the mercs said. The stench was overpowering even here, fifty meters from the field.

In front of him were hundreds of acres of madweed, the largest patch anyone in living memory had ever seen. Keeping that patch growing took work; left to itself, madweed grew until choked out by a tough, thorny vine that acted much like a predator, living on the decay of madweed and lamil alike until it produced a tangle of poisonous madweed and thorny vines impenetrable to anything larger than a rabbit. One of the major tasks of Tran farmers was to root out the madweed and destroy it with fire while being careful not to breathe the smoke.

Here they were required to grow it, and they didn’t like the job. That was obvious: from Rick’s hill he could see a dozen mounted men-at-arms watching the field, and he knew there were more nearby.

Rick scanned the field. Peasants wearing leather leggings and aprons and thick leather gloves moved carefully with machetes. They trimmed pathways through the plants. Behind the machete wielders came women and children with hoes to chop out the vines and other weeds. Behind each group of women and children were adolescents armed with spears. Despite the thick leather armor they moved carefully and alertly.

Rick dismounted and moved toward the field. Apelles reluctantly followed.

“Must we get so close?”

“Yes.” The whole damned country is in an uproar over this stuff. I can at least see it up close. Rick contemplated the nearest plant. Three stems formed a triangle nearly ten feet on a side, and rose over six feet high. The ground inside and around the triangle was thickly overgrown with spotted, scaly creeper. There were two dead lamils inside the triangular mass. Another animal, about the size of an Earth rabbit and very much alive, peered at them from the tangled edge of the madweed plant. Its face wore an expression of complete stupidity, almost a cartoon of idiocy. One of Rick’s troops had dubbed it “dumbbunny”; it wasn’t hard to see why.

“Careful,” Apelles whispered. He held his staff like a spear pointed toward the animal. “Back away, slowly.”

The young priest was very serious. Rick slowly drew his pistol and slipped off the safety as he followed instructions. After a moment the dumbbunny wriggled out of sight into the creeper.

“The leaves are not yet strong and the seed pods not yet developed,” Apelles said.

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