The Radiant War

Chapter 11a

     The Brigadier had a much easier time entering Carrow.

     The border between Carrow and the Empire was guarded by forts on either side at every road and rail crossing, but the crossings themselves were open and he was able to just walk across with a group of merchants and travellers visiting relatives. He wasn’t even searched for contraband, even though he knew that a great deal of opium crossed the border from Carrow into the Empire, with gold and silver crossing in the other direction. The border was over a thousand miles long, after all, and there were plenty of isolated spots where this kind of illicit trade could take place. Only a stupid smuggler would use one of the busiest roads.

     The road was certainly busy today, he noted, with a long column of people passing him, going from Carrow into the Empire, and this puzzled him. The gossip he'd heard from talking to other travellers told him that Carrow was winning the war. Virtually all the Tweenlands were now in Carrow hands, and only a massive series of trenches, backed by artillery, had prevented the invading army from taking Barcelowe, one of the last large towns before reaching Marboll itself. Barcelowe had, evidently, been wracked by a massive earthquake some weeks earlier, but although the Radiants were all over it, with storms and cursings afflicting the defenders, there had been no earthquakes since. Perhaps the Radiants could only cause one earthquake in each place, the Brigadier mused. If so, it would be the first bit of good news he'd heard in a long time.

     So if Carrow was winning, why were so many people leaving? A casual observer would think that they were the ones fleeing a conquering army. A brief conversation with a Carrow family a couple of days before, in a tavern just west of the border, had given him the answer.

     “We're looking for a better life,” the man of the family had told him. He had been a big man, brawny and muscular, with hard calluses on his hands. The Brigadier took him for a blacksmith, which would explain why he hadn't been pressed into the army. Smithing was a reserved occupation, but that would mean that the Carrow government wouldn’t have just let him go. He must be on the run.

    “There’s no work in the Westlands," the blacksmith added. "No food either, unless you can pay in gold or silver. We’ve had enough. I've got a family to feed, a child to raise.” He’d indicated the half raised donkey sitting beside him at the common room table, trying to pick up hay from the trough sitting on the floor beside it with a hand whose hoof had only partially divided into broad, stubby fingers. It had looked at the Brigadier with its stupid, animal eyes while chewing, with broken strands of straw falling back to the floor around its feet, and its tail had flicked occasionally to drive away the flies that buzzed around its rear end.

     “I'd heard that things were bad in Carrow,” the Brigadier had said. “Helberion took all your best farming lands fifty years ago, left you with nothing but rocky scrublands to grow crops on, but I had no idea they were that bad.”

     “They never used to be. Used to be we got by. Things were never easy, but we got by, but there's been a draught for two years now. Nothing will grow, even in those tracts of good land we've got. There's no pasture for the cattle, no grass for the sheep. Goats are the only livestock we've got these days, and although they’ll eat almost anything, there's precious little meat on their bones.”

     “But surely someone such as yourself, whom I can see just by looking at you is no stranger to hard work, must be able to buy food.”

     He shook his head. “Back when I was the village blacksmith I could pretty much name my own price. I could afford to buy food then, but they took me and put me to work in a munitions factory. Essential war work, they said, but they paid us chickenfeed. Couldn't afford to buy more than a handful of beans a day. That's why we're leaving. They say there's work in the Empire for an honest man with a strong back. Well paid work. We're going to see if it's true."