The Complete Soldier Son Trilogy. Robin Hobb

      They went on to discuss our disembarkment there and which jankship my father should book our passage on. Our captain made gentle mock of the big vessels, saying that my father was not interested in their speed but only desired the novelty of the experience and the company of the lovely ladies and elegant gentlemen who preferred such distinctive travel to his own simple ship.

      As my father was laughingly denying this, I became aware of a very unpleasant smell. Manners required that I ignore it, but it quickly quenched my appetite and soon began to make my eyes tear. With every passing moment, the smoky odour grew stronger. I glanced toward the small galley, wondering at first if something had been neglected on the ship’s little oil stove. But no visible smoke was emanating from there. The stench grew stronger. It had the most peculiar effect on me. It was not just that it greatly displeased my nose and irritated my throat. It woke in me a sense of terror, a panic that I could scarcely smother. It was all I could do to stay in my chair. I tried to dab at my streaming eyes discreetly with my napkin. Captain Rhosher grinned at me sympathetically. ‘Ah, that’ll be the sweet aroma of Loggers getting to you, lad. We’ll have thick breathing for the next day or so, until we’re past their operations. They’re burning the trash wood, the green branches and viney stuff, to get it out of the way so the teams can get up and down the hills easier. Makes for a lot of smoke. Still, it’s not as bad as that operation they had going on further down the river two years ago. That company would just set fire to the hillside, and burn off the underbrush. Anything big enough to be left standing, they harvested right away, to beat the worms to it. Fast money, but a terrible lot of waste, that was how I saw it.’

      I nodded at his words, scarcely comprehending them. The end of breakfast could not come too soon for me, and as soon as I politely could, I left the table, foolishly thinking to find fresher air outside.

      As I stepped out onto the deck, an inconceivable sight met my eyes. The day was dimmed by wood smoke hanging low in the air. The lower half of the hillside on the port side of the boat was stripped of life. Every tree of decent size had been cut. The raw stumps were jagged and pale against the scored earth. The remaining saplings and undergrowth were crushed and matted into the earth where the giants had fallen and been dragged over them to the river. Smoke was rising from heaped and smouldering branches; the hearts of the fires burned a dull red. The hillside scene reminded me of a large dead animal overcome by maggots. Men swarmed everywhere on the hillside. Some cut the limbs from the fallen giants. Teamsters guided the harnessed draught horses that dragged the stripped logs down to the river’s edge. The track of their repeated passage had cut a deep muddy furrow in the hill’s flank, and the rainfall of the last few days had made it a stream, dumping into the river that here ran thick with muck. The brown curl of it wavered out into the river’s current like a rivulet of clotting blood. Stripped logs like gnawed bones rested in piles at the river’s edge, or bobbed in the shallows. Men scuttled about on the floating logs with peevees and lengths of chain and rope, corralling the logs into crude rafts. It was carnage, the desecration of a god’s body.

      On the upper half of the hill logging teams ate into the remaining forest like mange spreading on a dog’s back. As I watched, men in the distance shouted triumphantly as an immense tree fell. As it went down, other, smaller trees gave way to its fall, their roots tearing free of the mountain’s flesh as they collapsed under its mammoth weight. Moments after the swaying of branches ceased, men crawled over the fallen tree, bright axes rising and falling as they chopped away the branches.

      I turned aside from the sight, sickened and cold. A terrible premonition washed over me. This was how the whole world would end. No matter how much of the forest’s skin they flayed, it would never be enough for these men. They would continue over the face of the earth, leaving desecration and devastation behind them. They would devour the forest and excrete piles of buildings made of stone wrenched from the earth or from dead trees. They would hammer paths of bare stone between their dwellings, and dirty the rivers and subdue the land until it could recall only the will of man. They could not stop themselves from what they did. They did not see what they did, and even if they saw, they did not know how to stop. They no longer knew what was enough. Men could no longer stop man; it would take the force of a god himself to halt them. But they were mindlessly butchering the only god who might have had the strength to stop them.

      In the distance I heard the shouts of warning and triumph as another forest giant fell. As it went down, a huge flock of birds flew up, cawing in distress and circling the carnage as crows circle a battlefield. My knees buckled and I fell to the deck, clutching at the railing. I coughed in the thick air, gagged on it, and coughed some more. I could not catch my breath, but I do not think it was the smoke alone that choked me. It was grief that tightened my throat.

      One of the deckhands saw me go down. A moment later, there was a rough hand on my shoulder, shaking me and asking me what ailed me. I shook my head, unable to find words to express my distress. A short time later, my father was at my side, and the captain, his napkin still clenched in his hands.

      ‘Nevare? Are you ill?’ my father asked solemnly.

      ‘They’re destroying the world,’ I said vaguely. I closed my eyes at the terrible sight, and forced myself to my feet. ‘I … I don’t feel well,’ I said. Some part of me didn’t wish to shame myself before my father and the captain and crew. Some other part of me didn’t care; the enormity of what I had glimpsed was too monstrous, and suddenly too certain. ‘I think I’ll go back to bed for a while.’

      ‘Prob’ly the stink from all those fires,’ Captain Rhosher said sagely. ‘That smoke’s enough to make anyone sick. You’ll get used to it, lad, in a few hours. Stinks a lot less than Old Thares on an early morning, believe me. We’ll be past it in a day or so, if all those damn log-rafts don’t block our way. A menace to navigation, they are. Time was, good stone was the only thing a rich man would build with. Now they want wood, wood, and more wood. ’Spect they’ll go back to honest stone when this last strip is gone. Then we’ll see the quarries bustle again. Men will do whatever brings in the coin. I’ll be glad when they’ve cut the last timber on that hill and the river can run clear again.’