The Beyond by Jeffrey Ford

Author:Jeffrey Ford
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media

the walls of this fort

The small, whitewashed room had a single window that let in the dim light of the gray afternoon. On one side of a scarred table, atop which rested a long, green bottle holding a lit candle, sat Cley, the black dog at his feet on the plank floor. Across from him sat Captain Curaswani, a heavyset man with a great white beard and mane of white hair. He was dressed in a rumpled yellow uniform, complete with black buttons and epaulets at the shoulders. Between each of his statements he drew on a pipe, the thin stem of which was nearly as long as his forearm. The bowl of the instrument had been fashioned to resemble the face of a woman, staring up at the ceiling, her mouth a wide, screaming aperture from which puffs of a bluish smoke occasionally issued.

“So,” said the captain, “you are in search of Wenau? I have never heard of it.”

“It’s toward the north,” said Cley.

“To be sure,” said the captain. “There are worlds upon worlds toward the north. I suppose you would like to winter here with us?”

“If I may,” said the hunter. “I will do my fair share of the work. You see, I’ve spent a winter out there in the wilderness, and, without the happenstance of some very lucky occurrences, I know I would have died. As it was, I found a cave with a draft of the earth’s heat coming up from below. Still, we almost starved.”

“You and the dog?” asked the captain.

“Wood is his name,” said Cley.

“He seems like a fine fellow,” said the captain, who smiled, smoke leaking out at the corners of his lips. “Of course, you may stay, but I have to tell you two things. At the fort, I am in charge. You must be willing to take orders from me.”

Cley nodded in acceptance of this rule.

“The other is that with the state of things as they are, you may be safer out in the wilderness. I just arrived here, myself, this past autumn. I was dispatched with a group of fifteen soldiers to protect the small contingent of citizens of the western realm, who had come a few years ago to farm and trap and make a monetary gain from the resources of the Beyond.”

Before continuing, Curaswani shook his head and sighed. “It seems that in the relatively brief span they have been here, they have managed, in the time-honored tradition of western realm arrogance and stupidity, to completely incense the local population. By the time I and my men arrived at the fort, there were only five individuals left out of sixty-five. Those who were out on the land retreated here for safety, and, one by one, over the course of the past year, they have been brutally butchered.”

“Who is it you have made an enemy of?” asked Cley.

“The Beshanti, who, when our settlers initially arrived, were a peaceful group. Then our people started grabbing land they shouldn’t have, killing game they shouldn’t have.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.