‘If Shabis could make me a learner general – did you know that, Griot? I and others of Shabis’s – pets, we were learner generals. But they called us general.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Griot quietly, but hurt: he found it so hard to accept that he had made so small an impression on Dann at a time when Dann had been everything for him.
‘So, how about it, Griot? I suppose I am General Dann, if you say I am, but you should be a general too, General Griot.’
‘I’d like to be captain,’ said Griot, remembering the handsome young captain Dann who was in his memory still as something to aim for.
‘Then we’ll have to be careful no one gets promoted above captain,’ said Dann. ‘We are making up this army from scratch, aren’t we, Griot? So we can say what goes. General Dann and Captain Griot. Why not?’ And he laughed gently, looking through the bright light at Griot with eyes that watered; he wanted Griot to laugh with him. There was something gentle and tentative about all this, and Griot found himself wanting to walk round the table, lift Dann up and carry him back to his bed. Dann was trembling. His hand shook.
‘I am going to address the soldiers,’ he said, and Griot heard another item on Dann’s mental list ticked off.
‘Yes, I think you should,’ said Griot. ‘They are pretty disturbed.’
‘Yes. The sooner the better. And at some point we must talk about the Centre … it’s all right, I’m not going to burn it down. I’m not saying I don’t want to.’ He lifted his head and sniffed, as Ruff might have done – as Ruff did, too, because Dann did. Griot allowed the smell of the Centre, which he usually shut away from him, in his mind, to enter, and wrinkled up his nose, as Dann was doing. A dank grey smell, and now it had a hint of burning in it, too.
‘Dann, there is something I found out about the Centre and you’d be interested …’
Dann waved this away. ‘Call the soldiers,’ he said.
Griot went out, looking back to see Dann sitting blinking there in the light, which was about to slide away and leave him in shadow. The snow dog put his head on Dann’s thighs and Dann stroked it. ‘Ruff,’ he said, and he said it passionately, ‘you’re my friend, Ruff. Yes, you’re my friend.’
And I am not, Griot said to himself. I am not.
Soon a thousand soldiers stood at ease on the space called the parade ground, or the square, between the main Centre buildings and the camp of shed and huts. Too small a space, but there was nowhere for it to expand. On one side of the camp were the cliffs of the Middle Sea and on the other the marshes began. The camp could expand only one way, along the edge of the Middle Sea, and it was, and too fast. On the north side of the Centre its walls were sinking into wet. Between them and the cliffs were the roads needed to bring the crops and the animals from their pastures, and the fish catches from the sea.
Dann stood at ease, wearing the old gown he slept in – lived in, these days. Beside him sat Ruff, his head as high as Dann’s chest. Opposite Ruff sat the phalanx of snow dogs, with their minders, one to a dog. The animals were very white and they glistened in the gloomy scene. Behind the snow dogs were the soldiers. They were of every kind and colour. The majority were stocky, strong, solid people, probably Thores, or of Thores stock, but there were many Kharabs, tall and thin, and mixes of people from all along the coasts, from the wars; they were still coming in every day. The presence of people from the River Towns, so far south, was evidenced by the ranks of shiny very black faces, and there was even a little platoon of Albs, with skin like Leta’s or modified shades of it. The hair was of all kinds. Not one of them had Leta’s pale hair, like light. All colours, all sizes, and hair long and black, like Dann’s, to the tight close curls of the River Towns, and the many shades of brown from the East. There were all kinds of clothes. Some still wore the rags they had arrived in. Griot simply could not get enough clothes for them, of any sort, let alone standard clothes that would make a uniform. Despairing, Griot had bought fleece cloth from Tundra and dyed it red, and every soldier, no matter what he wore under it, had over his or her shoulder a red woolly blanket, needed on most days of the year, chilly, cold, always damp. Without these red blankets they would have nothing to identify them. Throw them away and they would be a rabble.
Dann stood there, silent, for a while, smiling, letting them have a good look at him. Then he said, ‘I am sure you know that I have been ill.’ He waited, watching those faces, which would show – what? Derisive smiles? Impatience? No, they all stood and waited, serious, attentive.
‘Yes, I have been very ill.’ He waited. ‘I was ill from the poppy.’ Now a different silence gripped the soldiers. A seabird speeding along the cliff edge cut the silence with its wings. It screamed and another answered from where it floated far out beyond the cliffs.
‘When I was young I was captured by a gang of dealers in poppy and ganja – I was forced to take poppy and I was very ill then. I have the scars of the poppy on me – as I think you must know.’
Silence; a deep and powerful attention.
Dann had picked up a red fleece on his way out to the square and had held it in his hand, and now he shifted it into his arms and stood sheltering it, like a child: like something young that needed protecting. There was a breath of sympathy from the soldiers, a sigh.
‘So I know very well how poppy gets a grip on you.
‘It had a grip on me.
‘It still has a grip on me.
‘I do not believe that this will be the last time it makes me – ill.’
Between each quiet, and almost casual, statement Dann waited, and took his time looking over the faces. Not a sound.
‘Griot – where are you?’
Griot stepped out from the doorway that led to Dann’s room and came forward to stand in front of Dann, where he saluted and, at Dann’s gesture, stood beside him.
‘You all know Griot. This is Captain Griot. That is what you will call him. Now, I am speaking for Captain Griot and for myself, General Dann. If any one of you, any one wearing the red fleece, catches me with poppy, it will be your duty to arrest me and take me at once to Captain Griot – or anyone else who is in command. You will take no notice of anything I say or do when under the influence of poppy. This is my order. You will arrest me.’
He paused a long time here. Ruff, standing between Griot and Dann, looked up at Griot’s face and at Dann’s, and then barked softly.
A ripple of laughter.
‘Yes, and Ruff says so too. And now for you. If any one of you is found with poppy, in the camp, let alone smoking it, you will be arrested and severely punished.’
Here a tension communicated itself from Griot to Dann, who said, ‘The degree of punishment has not yet been decided. It will be announced.’
A movement of unease through the soldiers.
‘You will remember, I am sure, that you chose to come here, to the Centre. No one forced you. No one stops you from leaving. But while you are here, you will obey orders. And now, look to Captain Griot for orders and for what you need. I am not well yet and I shall rest, though I am sure I will be well soon. Captain, dismiss them.’
Dann retired back to the great hall and Griot’s working table, where Griot joined him, with the snow dog.
Dann sat carefully, disposing his so thinly covered bones among the folds of his Sahar robe, which had been Mara’s, though Griot did not know this.
Griot waited and, when Dann said nothing, asked, ‘And how are you proposing to punish, sir?’
‘I thought we could dismiss any soldier caught with poppy.’
‘No,