Bequin was dressed in work fatigues, a rebreather slung around her neck, and she carried an autopistol. As Midas and Fischig stowed the speeder under the netting, she led me into the crew-bay and waved the weapon in the direction of a thin, filthy man chained to a cargo-loop with cuff restraints. His hair was matted and his clothes, an assemblage of patched rags, were stiff with caked mud. He looked at me with fierce eyes through a shaggy fringe of wet hair.
There were three of them, maybe more/ Bequin told me. 'Came to take a look at us using the ball-trees as moving cover. The others fled, but I brought him down/
'How?' I asked.
She gave me that look which told me not to keep underestimating her.
'Our intruders from last night?' I wondered aloud. Bequin shrugged.
I walked over to face the captive. 'What's your name?'
'He doesn't say much/ Bequin advised. I told her to move away.
'Name?' I asked again.
Nothing. I paused, collected my mind and then sent a gently probe into the shady recesses of his skull.
Tymas Rhizor/ he stammered.
Good. Another gentle push at his slowly yielding mind. The levels of fear and caution were palpable.
'Of Gillan His Acre, Goddes land.'
I switched to speech, without the psychic urge now. 'Gillan's Acre? You mean Gillan's Acre?'
'Seythee Gillan His Acre?'
'Gillan's Acre?'
He nodded. Theesey truth.'
'Proto-Gothic, with generational nuance shift/ Aemos said, coming near. 'Damask was colonised something over five hundred years ago, and was isolated for a lengthy period. The population may not have flourished, but the language has perpetuated vestiges of older linguaforms.'
'So this man is likely to be a native, a settler?'
Aemos nodded. I saw our captive was looking from my face to Aemos's, trying to follow our conversation.
'You were born here, on Damask?'
He frowned.
'Born here?'
Ayeam of Gillan His Acre. Yitt be Goddes land afoor the working.'
I looked round at Aemos. This would take forever. 'I can manage,' Aemos said. 'Ask away.'
Ask him what happened to Gillan's Acre.'
'Preyathee, howcame bye lossen Gillan His Acre?'
His story was painfully simple, and shaped by the ignorance of a man whose kind had worked the poor soil of a lonely edgeworld for generations. The families, as he called them, presumably the clan groups of the original settlers, had worked the land for as long as his memory and the memory of his elders went. There were five farming communities, and two quarries or mines, which provided building materials and fossil fuel in exchange for a share of the crops. They were devout people, dedicated to the nurture of 'Goddes land'… God's land, though there was no doubt that by 'God' they meant the God-Emperor. As little as four years ago, after the time of the last survey from which records we worked, there had been upwards of nine thousand settlers living in the communities of Damask.
Then the mission came. Rhizor reckoned this to have been three years before. A ship brought a small order of ecclesiarchs here from Messina. They intended to establish a retreat and spiritually educate the neglected settlers. There had been thirty priests. He recognised the name Dazzo. Archprieste Dazzo/ he called him. Other off-worlders came too, not priests like Dazzo and his brethren, but men who worked with them. From the way he described them, they sounded like geological surveyors or mining engineers. They concentrated their attentions on the quarries at North Qualm. After about a year, the activity increased. More ships came
and went. Settlers, mostly strong males, were recruited from the farm communities to work the mines, often brutally. The ecclesiarchs didn't seem to mind. As their populations drained, the farming settlements began to fail and die off. No help was given to sustain them. A disease, probably an off-world import, killed many. Then the volcanic activity began, suddenly, without warning. Everyone in the farmsteads was rounded up and pressed into service at the pits as if some great urgency was now driving the task. Rhizor and many like him toiled until they dropped, and later managed to escape, living like animals in the thorn forests.
