After the signing Lord Megiluin invited the principals of the Parley to lunch at his headquarters. They all went, except Hodgekin. He got on his pony and rode off in a rage, declaring that he would seek and seek for Baranithron until he found him, and then – and then they would all see something. Nobody could form any very clear idea of this terrible outcome, but Ferumbras and Ponty Greenbelt and Aldred agreed that Hodgekin’s loyalty to his lost friend was very commendable.
The Men rode back to Bigginton with them, and so Aldred had another chance to talk to Swin. He trotted along beside Aldred’s cantering pony on his black stallion, easily holding up the great standard of the North. He was not inclined to return to the subject of scars and stitchmarks, preferring to ask questions about his previous encounter with the Punchkins and the first journey to Ruminas. He then passed on an encouraging piece of news: Ar had gone back to the City. Erumardil, Swin explained, had been displeased by Ar’s brutal treatment of the poor old Wizard and openly critical of Ar’s intentions. Erum said that he would give no assistance towards the forcible conversion of the Demesne, be the Temple religion never so true. Ar at once realised that all the rest of Megiluin’s party were on Erum’s side rather than his. Without Erum’s support he could do nothing, at least for the moment. So he had mounted his own horse and ridden off in a cold rage, ‘and we’re all of us glad to see the back of him.’
‘Splendid!’ said Aldred. He was going on to speak words of praise of Erum, but an odd little incident then occurred. Melohtar was riding ahead of them, presenting his back, with the shining corslet buckled over his jerkin. Now, as Aldred spoke of Erum, he and Swin saw this back twitch, bumped up a little higher than the regular rise-and-fall of Stirnelach’s trot; and they saw the expression of anxiety, almost of panic, on the face Melohtar suddenly turned round. He reined in sharply. Stirnelach sheered, whoofed protestingly and came to a stand, so that Swin’s and Aldred’s mounts were forced to diverge and to go forward on either side of him. Melohtar clicked his tongue to Stirnelach, who at once moved on. Aldred’s conversation with Swin had been abruptly terminated. He and Swin raised an eyebrow at each other; and Aldred looked down at Sedro, who was still padding along beside his master.
‘He survived that fall, I see,’ Aldred said, ‘but however did you find him again, my lord?’
Melohtar looked fondly down at his beloved pet. A leash ran from his collar to Melohtar’s wrist. Or was it the other way round?
They came back to Bigginton, now once again in the hands of the Big Folk. They ate a fairly good lunch and settled down to a practical discussion. The consequences of what they resolved will soon appear. Amid the talk about the procedures of surveying and road-building, however, there was a question that bothered Aldred persistently. At last, during a lull, he raised his voice:
‘Who’s going to tell our folk? This new Wainroad will cross farmers’ fields, and knock down a fair few houses and barns. Who shall tell them what we’ve decided?’
– And knew the answer, with sick dismay, before he had finished speaking. This was obviously a duty which no-one would relish, which everyone would much prefer to leave to someone else. It needed not the other Punchkins to extol Aldred’s kindness, his businesslike briskness, his power of argument and skill of casting up accounts, for him to recognise that he must be identified, both by the Demesne and himself, as the main author of the plan. He had urged it upon the Council. His urging had prevailed. He had no right to dissociate himself from the least consequence that might follow. The disagreeable responsibility, then, should fall – would rightly and properly fall – on him.
So that was agreed.
And now, insofar as this narrative is a history of the Punchkins, there are only two important developments that remain to be told. Aldred witnessed both of them, and he ought to press on with the telling of them, for this tale is already overlong. He must crave the reader’s indulgence, therefore, for a lingering over the next seven days. For these were notable days, well worth recording in anyone’s diary, days in which Aldred played an important part – grim days, bleak exhausting days, yet filled with an extraordinary interest that made them bearable after all; vivid days, fascinating days which Aldred has not the heart to leave out of his account. If (to labour the point) the reader is asked to excuse this needless personal digression, it is because Aldred’s seven days as Chief Clerk of Compensation have come to seem to him, in retrospect, the most powerfully moulding and educative days of his life.
‘Compensation’ – that was the key. As Hodgekin had perceived, the Thandorians wanted the Punchkins’ help; foreseeing the difficulties that must accompany their plan, they had brought sackfuls of money, bronze and silver coin, with which to reimburse those Punchkins who would have to be deprived of their houses or lands. For Megiluin and Melohtar a reliable native who could explain the new policy and justify its strained relation to the original Decree, who would serve the necessary orders of eviction or compulsory purchase and pay out the compensation honestly, would be a pricelessly valuable assistant. Melohtar took Aldred aside after lunch. The cash would have to stay in its own wagon at the head of the expedition; Aldred must make a note for each transaction, which must be brought and handed to Melohtar in exchange for the correct amount. Aldred could then hand out the payments, not omitting to warn the payees of the shortness of their remaining leases. Aldred was impressed by the thoroughness with which Melohtar had thought this out, along with a hundred other matters to do with the Road-survey. The remainder of the afternoon and the evening were filled up with preparations. By next morning, as the expedition set out from Bigginton, Aldred was fairly confident that he could do what was required of him.
This new expedition consisted of the following: Lord Melohtar, riding in the lead as Commander; black Sedro, his inseparable companion; Aldred and Mr. Graveldrop, as heralds and explainers; Swin, as military second-in-command and chief escort-rider of the surveying party; Andreg the new Chief Surveyor, his two deputies and their six Men, with three wagons full of instruments, tools and supplies; and a short column of ten guards, whose job was to protect the rest of the party, cater for them, run errands and so on. It would be Aldred’s and Mr. Graveldrop’s task to assuage grievances, avoid conflicts and reduce the likelihood of an attack on the expedition.
On that first day, Day One (with the suitably awe-inspiring capital initials) the expedition set off with a fine flourish of trumpets. The soldiers and the colonists cheered, and the assembled Punchkins gaped in admiration of the Surveyors’ equipment – the silver sighting-tubes and spirit-levels, the two loadstone-pointers that quivered in their engraved brass bowls, the colourful measuring-lines, the clicking yard-wheels and the tall red flags for the Road’s boundaries – big squares of strong canvas fastened to shining steel flagpoles. There were a great many of these, for they were to be positioned in pairs at half-mile intervals all the way down the outer edges of the fifty-yard strips. The first two looked very grand already, lustily flapping and rippling on their twelve-foot pole-lengths, three times taller than the average Punchkin. Aldred’s own admiration had been tinged with puzzlement: why should such very large, stoutly-made and presumably expensive flags be considered necessary? Why need they be so much larger than the painted wooden posts that demarcated the Road itself? There was some extra intention here. Perhaps the Men believed that the imposing flags would help to intimidate the silly rustic folk. Perhaps they were right. It had been evident that the Surveyors were enjoying themselves as they showed off the mysteries of their arcane craft. The admiring Punchkins had watched them bustle about, measure the ground, set up sight-lines, put down markers, take triangulations and so on and so forth. The trumpeting died away, the wagon-wheels rolled and the expedition set off.
At first all went well. The northernmost parts of the North Hundred were mostly common land; the few inhabitants who would be affected by the coming of the new Road, villagers from Bootham or nearby Plestow, were charmed and flattered to be addressed by the Mayor himself, and delighted when they heard about the proposed compensation. Aldred sat in his wagon with a great pad of paper on his knees and the two inkpots, black and red, at his side; he wrote out compensation-orders and the occasional demolition-order, each one to be signed or marked by the property-holder and countersigned by Lord Melohtar himself; he went back and forth at each stopping-point and counted out bronze or silver into the horny palms of the grateful Punchkins; and he too began to have a pleasurable sense of his own importance. On Day Two, however, he began to feel that the task was completely beyond him. The Wainroad had to pass through the outskirts of Moseley, and the first thing to be dealt with was a cluster of five old huts, two barns, a cowshed and a well-built farmhouse. The local Punchkins listened to Mr. Graveldrop’s soothing words; they knew him, and so they allowed the Men to plant the markers and put up the red flags; but as Aldred began to explain to the famer, Mr. Cobnut, what was going to happen to his farm, he was at once surrounded by a circle of angry, suspicious faces. The farmer asked him to say it all again, and when he did say it all again the farmer tore up the eviction-notices, threw the pieces into Aldred’s face, went back into his farmhouse and slammed the door. Aldred stood alone in the muddy yard, the rest of the expedition having already disappeared down the lane. He went on with his next call, he persevered, but things went from bad to worse. Before noon he had twice had the dogs set on him, had been thrust out of gates at the business-end of a pitchfork and had finally been thrown in a duckpond. He gave up his task for the rest of the day; he set off in pursuit of the expedition, and in the evening he had a long talk with Melohtar. It was to be the last of their talks – the last one.
On Day Three a new approach was tried. Mr. Graveldrop went with a bugler into the middle of Moseley to announce a public meeting in half an hour. Aldred made Mr. Graveldrop re-introduce him to all the villagers and kept a couple of stalwart Men-at-arms, in full Thandorian splendour, close by. He spoke to the assembly. It was of course much easier to persuade them as a crowd than to win them over as individuals. He began to write out his documents all over again, but found the work far too slow. He sent a message to Tolman Strutts in Bigginton, begging him to come and act as his amanuensis. He recruited three young Punchkins to carry his own messages. Tom arrived in the afternoon; he helped to copy out a lot of the new documents; Aldred stayed in the wagon and wrote a letter to Melohtar, explaining all he had done and requesting additional wages for his new staff. By tea-time the postmen and the bugler had all come back, with most of the papers signed, and luckily Swin on Colwine turned up at the same moment. Aldred thrust the mailbag into his hands. Swin turned round and set off again. Everyone collapsed with relief. Their thoughts turned towards tea, but there was no tea, for no-one had provided any. Aldred decided to hire a couple of cooks that evening, when he came to the next village.
And so it went on. At every stage, supported unfailingly by Melohtar through Swin’s carrying of the money and letters, Aldred increased his workload and his staff. Day Four’s tasks were more complicated again, with a variety of dwellings and leases to consider, and a disputed overlap of territories between two villages that were traditionally unfriendly to each other. Aldred sent Tom on to Middleton to engage, at no matter what cost, another pair of writers and a Punchkin-lawyer. He needed more postmen also, for he was having to write or dictate more and more and more messages. Melohtar authorised him to send to Bigginton for more Men and to buy provisions from the depot, whatever he needed to support his own party for the next few days. He also had to make more speeches, as his wagon crawled on through more populous regions; the task of persuading people became more difficult, and he had to keep up the morale of his own employees, and Mr. Graveldrop was not much help. Grimly he battled on, beset with new difficulties at every step of the way, but rapidly gaining experience and wisdom as he was transformed into something like the Lord Secretary of a Department. By the evening of Day Six his tents and cooking-fires, set up in a field outside Oakbarton – the last sizable village before Middleton – had swollen to cater for more than fifty people. Yet his heart sank with despair when he thought that there was but one day left, and his share of the great task still not half finished.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Swin at supper-time. ‘You’ve done the very best you could, and you’ve succeeded far better than Melohtar expected. He thinks highly of you.’
Aldred looked down the meadow. It was the end of April; tomorrow was May-day and there was a breath of summer in the air. Six of his postmen, with girls from the village, were dancing round a bonfire. The music of bells, drums and recorders floated across the field. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘but what about the people? All those of the South Hundred? Even allowing a few days’ grace before the engineers catch up, we’ll never get to them in time.’
Swin swallowed and belched. ‘True,’ he said, ‘but you’ve nothing to reproach yourself for. And your reputation’s going ahead, d’you see? I talk to folk along the Road. Down there in the South Hundred they’ve already got wind of the compensation, so they’re more easy-going. I tell you Melohtar’s delighted. He says he never expected he’d get through without a riot, without even a single flag being torn down! And it’s all thanks to you. I mean, I’m just an errand-boy, nobody ever tells me anything, I don’t really understand what’s going on, but even I’m impressed.’
‘Thank you,’ said Aldred. He went to bed, feeling a bit better, and slept soundly. He was very tired. But in the morning...
...he found himself climbing up a steep hill, in the early-morning mist, slipping and sliding on dewy, tussocky grass. The climb was very difficult but he persevered, feeling that he must reach the summit in time. Presently the mist grew thinner. He was nearly there. Above him, at the summit, stood a dark figure like a scarecrow, with a round head, outstretched arms and a wide cloak like a cone or a tent. He thought, ‘There is the Wizard,’ and approached the figure. But what turned towards him was not the Wizard’s face: it was a turnip crudely carved in the likeness of a head. The eye-sockets were black, and the mouth was stuck with ugly teeth. He thought, ‘I have been made a fool of,’ and turned to go back. But the mist swirled round him again, and the cloak flapped open in the breeze, and a dark opening was revealed, like the entrance into a tent. The interior was dark, utterly black. He was scared of it. He began to retreat backwards down the hill; and he thought, or said aloud, or some other person spoke a comment that seemed to sound in Aldred’s ears as he woke up: His purpose is not cloaked: his cloak is his purpose.
He lay awake for some time, pondering what these words might mean, but then he dozed off, and the dream would soon be lost amid the distractions of another busy day. But at least it was a holiday of the Punchkins: the ale flowed freely, people were generally more available and business was made easier. The wagon moved to the other side of Oakbarton, and then to the north slope of Middlebrow Hill. And as Aldred smoked his pipe in the cool of the evening a quite new thought came to him. Thanks to his work and the ever-flowing coffers of Queen Gauriel, the amount of silver and bronze cash in the Demesne must have increased by some appreciable fraction – a fifth again, perhaps, or a fourth. Yet the amount of wealth of produce, goods, land and so on was the same, or a little less, than it had been a week ago. Might that not be expected to produce some effect? Could one surmise that money had a value of its own, a quality distinct from its weight? Could money lose some of its value? The thought did not see like an urgent worry, if worry there was. Most of the Punchkins seldom had any use for money after all, getting by on barter and the well-established traditional currency of mutual obligations of neighbours. Still, the question had a seductive interest of its own: what might happen? Would the coinage command less respect? Would more of it be demanded? If cash prices, payments in silver and bronze or even gold began to rise, then the more well-to-do Punchkins, especially those who had received compensation for substantial losses, would be worse affected than the poor. Was that it? The subject absorbed Aldred’s mind all evening, so that he had no attention to spare for the festive supper and the maypole dancing.
Enough. Let the reader forget these unimportant matters.
The tale now comes to the first of the two matters that remain to be told.
It was a red dawn. The redness was in the North. The seven days were over and the Surveyors had planted their last flags. The morning was misty again but with a strange intermittent pink glow and a faint, distant, roaring sound. Aldred made his way to Middlebrow Hill and climbed it breathlessly, just as in his dream. He toiled towards the summit, hoping to find a vantage-point above the level of the mist. Punchkins stood before their doors, alert and ill-at-ease, or gathered in small knots at the end of lanes and rows. Trees rustled uneasily, flocks of birds passed overhead and the mist that blew past now smelt strongly of smoke. On the dewy green hilltop stood not Baranithron but the tall single thorn-tree that had always stood there. Its white blossoms were fluttering away in the wind. There was a wooden seat built all round its trunk. Aldred collapsed onto this, panting and feeling sick, striving against faintness and the fire in his aching lungs.
A distant spark – a brief golden glow – pierced through the pinkish-grey mist. A few seconds later, with the slowness of lagging sound, Aldred heard the faint roar: not so faint now: a little louder, a little nearer. Twenty feet away from him one of the tall red flags thrummed and cracked like a whip. The mist was melting and blowing away with unnatural speed, the sky becoming blue overhead, the shapes of the nearer trees and the wooded hills emerging into the sunlight. A small shape rose into the air – slow, birdlike, snakelike, whitish grey, with a silvery gleam reflected from its side. Then it sank down again; and the golden glow was brighter, and the roar came a little sooner, a little louder; and low pillars of smoke were being driven forward, uncurling and billowing into the sky, outrageously challenging the beauty of the dawn, defacing and obscuring it with writhing dun-brown trails. A second time the long silver shape glided into view.
Not haphazardly, but in a regular disciplined motion that grew smoother and more accomplished with each new return, Fëaruk swooped down and went into a low glide, his mighty wings fully outspread. And as he glided, his jaws spread forth a fan of intense flame, destroying every object that stood below his course. Not without justice, surely, has Fëaruk the White been described as the mightiest of dragons, the hugest of all that have ever weighed down the air or gouged their footprints into the face of Midyard. Full and clear against the poisoned sky he now was seen, his body shimmering with silver sleekness, his ruff and spine-crest glittering, his clawed toes extended, his ribbed wings clouding the daylight. Aldred had not had the dubious privilege of seeing him in Ruminas, on the occasion of his melting the glass dome of the Erumar; but now, in writing this, it strikes Aldred that Fëaruk must have glutted himself on the rock-blood: fully satisfied, for the hour’s need, his craving. There was no shakiness, no hint of panic. Smoothly he rode the air, securely his great wings upheld him, almost jauntily his head snaked out as he banked to turn for another glide. He was enjoying himself. And yet not enjoying sport, but working. Every time he turned round, turned back and swept into a new glide, he returned to the same line. He was adhering to the letter if not to the spirit of the agreement that the Councillors had signed. Every forward sweep was carried out within the boundaries marked by the two lines of flags, within the territory that the Demesne had ceded, and all of whose inhabitants had received, if not full compensation, then at least due notice to quit. Now the reason for the conspicuous flags and the fireproof poles was clear! Stroke by stroke, the course of the new roadway was being seared through the heart of Punchkinland; and though the worm was taking pleasure in his task, and though a swift foreleg and claw might flick out to capture a stray beast or a couple of wretched Punchkins, and then to toss them in, with burning hair and clothes, as a man might toss a small nut or a raisin into his mouth, he continued to burn precisely, thoroughly and with perfect self-control. Bigginton was singed, Plestow and Moseley charred along one side, and Oakbarton, as Aldred now saw, completely engulfed by successive surges of flame. The last of these flicked some way up Middlebrow Hill before Fëaruk passed overhead with a thunder and a turbulence of heated air that lifted Aldred off the seat and flung him to the ground many yards away.
Hot black cinders were falling. The air was full of flying ash and foul-tasting poisonous vapours. Aldred saw his peril. The top of Middlebrow Hill was within Fëaruk’s line. It was necessary to get well beyond the flags before the fire came again. The blue sky was now forgotten like a dream, replaced by a nightmare of bronze and copper pillars, swirling darkness and rainstorms of vicious sparks. Wham! Wham! Wham! came the ear-crushing beat of the dragon’s wings, just as Swin had described it; Aldred scrambled down the hill in terror while Fëaruk came in low, head down, claws out-thrust, wings extended in unbelievable width as of some vast flying pavilion or temple. His great eyes, silver-black and intent below the ridge of the brow, had each an iridescent sparkle within their depths. From his nostrils flared the thin line of white-gold flame, as it appeared head-on, that streamed out on both sides and widened to a sheet, a brilliant fan, a curling, crackling, roaring, dazzling wave. It surged up the side of the Hill. The thorn-tree flared and was consumed. Lower, even lower was the dragon’s pass this time, less than twenty feet above the hilltop. To Aldred, lying on his back, the long grey under-belly seemed to go on for ever. Then there was a deafness, a great ringing silence. Aldred hid himself in a grassy hollow, trying to disappear.
Fëaruk passed again.
The black swath was burnt around the Hill and continued from the other side, as promised, past Middleton, and then between Middleton and Bavorton, and so on towards Bailiwick and the southern border.
Later Aldred heard that the Dyers did put up some resistance to the dragon. Constable Ferumbras, unable to endure this violation, stood stoutly in the dragon’s path with sword in hand. The fire-fan shook and wavered a little as Fëaruk whiffled and chuckled, and then Ferumbras was burned, and the little shower of tiny arrows that the Dyers shot were all incinerated in mid-air. Fëaruk, however, took this act of defiance as a justification for turning aside in his flight, smashing Bailiwick with one blow of his tail, and catching and eating several dozen of the brave Dyers. It was a mere ten minutes’ diversion. Soon, with inexorable purpose and inexhaustible flame, he picked out his correct course and continued to burn southward.
This is the end of Part Six.