is limited to a year at technical college which my father insisted upon. He was a progressive type!”
“More progressive than mine,” I told him. “I know nothing at all of such things. I wish I did. Not that I’ve been called upon to use skills of that sort in the worlds I’ve known. Magic is more the order of the day. Or what we of the twentieth century called magic.”
“My family,” he said with one of his ironical smiles, “has some familiarity with magic, also.”
Count von Bek then proceeded to tell me his family history, going back to the seventeenth century. His ancestors, it seemed, had always possessed the means of travelling between different realms and to different worlds where different rules applied. “There are supposed to be reminiscences in existence,” he added, “but we’ve never come across them, save for one which is very likely a partial fake!” It was because of this that he had sought out the aid of one he called “Satan” in his fight against Hitler. Satan had helped him discover the means through to the Middle Marches and had said that there was some hope he might find there a means of defeating the Chancellor. “But whether this Satan was the same as was cast from Heaven or whether he is a minor deity, an imprisoned godling of some description, I have never been able to decide. Nonetheless, he helped me.”
I was relieved. Von Bek would not, as I had thought he might, require too much in the way of introduction to what had become familiar facts of life for me. This realm, however, seemed to possess little in the way of supernatural marvels, save that it took the existence of other planes for granted. In that respect, I found it reassuring.
Von Bek, who had, as he said, already partly explored the ship, led me down the creaking wooden corridors of what I suppose I had begun to think of as the Baron Captain’s palace and into a small chamber hung with quilted cloth whose workmanship looked too fine to be from this world. Here a wooden table had been prepared. I tasted a piece of salty, powdery cheese, a little hard bread, a sip of what I took to be very thin yogurt, and finally settled for a relatively uncloudy mug of tepid water and the egg of some unknown bird, hard-boiled. Then I followed von Bek through another maze of swaying, narrow gangways, out across a flimsy catwalk stretching between two masts. The thing swayed so violently I grew dizzy and clung hard to the rail. Far below, the people of the ship were going about their business. I saw carts drawn by beasts similar to oxen, heard the cries of women calling from window to window in the ramshackle buildings, saw children playing in the lower rigging while dogs barked at their feet. Everywhere the smoke billowed, obscuring some scenes completely; then, occasionally, the wind would lift everything clear and it was possible to smell clean air from off the vast, glittering marsh through which the
Frowning Shield
ploughed with a kind of cumbersome dignity.
Though flat and predominantly grey-green, the Maaschanheem was magnificent in its way. The clouds hardly ever lifted for very long, yet the light which filtered through them was forever changing, revealing different aspects of the lagoons, marshes and narrow strips of land, the “anchorages” of this nomad people. Flocks of strangely beautiful birds could be seen drifting on the water, or wading through the reeds, sometimes rising in a great dark mass to wheel in the air and stream away towards the invisible horizon. Unlikely-looking animals would scuttle through the grasses or raise enquiring heads from the water. The most astonishing of these for me was something resembling an otter, yet it was larger than most sea-lions. It was called, we learned, nothing more fanciful than a
vaasarhund.
I was learning that the language which I spoke more fluently than von Bek was of Teutonic origin, somewhere between old German, Dutch and to a lesser degree English and Scandinavian.
“More progressive than mine,” I told him. “I know nothing at all of such things. I wish I did. Not that I’ve been called upon to use skills of that sort in the worlds I’ve known. Magic is more the order of the day. Or what we of the twentieth century called magic.”
“My family,” he said with one of his ironical smiles, “has some familiarity with magic, also.”
Count von Bek then proceeded to tell me his family history, going back to the seventeenth century. His ancestors, it seemed, had always possessed the means of travelling between different realms and to different worlds where different rules applied. “There are supposed to be reminiscences in existence,” he added, “but we’ve never come across them, save for one which is very likely a partial fake!” It was because of this that he had sought out the aid of one he called “Satan” in his fight against Hitler. Satan had helped him discover the means through to the Middle Marches and had said that there was some hope he might find there a means of defeating the Chancellor. “But whether this Satan was the same as was cast from Heaven or whether he is a minor deity, an imprisoned godling of some description, I have never been able to decide. Nonetheless, he helped me.”
I was relieved. Von Bek would not, as I had thought he might, require too much in the way of introduction to what had become familiar facts of life for me. This realm, however, seemed to possess little in the way of supernatural marvels, save that it took the existence of other planes for granted. In that respect, I found it reassuring.
Von Bek, who had, as he said, already partly explored the ship, led me down the creaking wooden corridors of what I suppose I had begun to think of as the Baron Captain’s palace and into a small chamber hung with quilted cloth whose workmanship looked too fine to be from this world. Here a wooden table had been prepared. I tasted a piece of salty, powdery cheese, a little hard bread, a sip of what I took to be very thin yogurt, and finally settled for a relatively uncloudy mug of tepid water and the egg of some unknown bird, hard-boiled. Then I followed von Bek through another maze of swaying, narrow gangways, out across a flimsy catwalk stretching between two masts. The thing swayed so violently I grew dizzy and clung hard to the rail. Far below, the people of the ship were going about their business. I saw carts drawn by beasts similar to oxen, heard the cries of women calling from window to window in the ramshackle buildings, saw children playing in the lower rigging while dogs barked at their feet. Everywhere the smoke billowed, obscuring some scenes completely; then, occasionally, the wind would lift everything clear and it was possible to smell clean air from off the vast, glittering marsh through which the
Frowning Shield
ploughed with a kind of cumbersome dignity.
Though flat and predominantly grey-green, the Maaschanheem was magnificent in its way. The clouds hardly ever lifted for very long, yet the light which filtered through them was forever changing, revealing different aspects of the lagoons, marshes and narrow strips of land, the “anchorages” of this nomad people. Flocks of strangely beautiful birds could be seen drifting on the water, or wading through the reeds, sometimes rising in a great dark mass to wheel in the air and stream away towards the invisible horizon. Unlikely-looking animals would scuttle through the grasses or raise enquiring heads from the water. The most astonishing of these for me was something resembling an otter, yet it was larger than most sea-lions. It was called, we learned, nothing more fanciful than a
vaasarhund.
I was learning that the language which I spoke more fluently than von Bek was of Teutonic origin, somewhere between old German, Dutch and to a lesser degree English and Scandinavian.
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