Escape to the Wild Wood

by Phillip Mann

Genres: Science Fiction; Alien Contact; Dystopian; Genetic Engineering

Synopsis

Britannia is a land of forests - it is said a man can walk from the walls of Eboracum to the southern sea without leaving the shade of the greenwood - inhabited by wildcats, wolves and bears, as well as by the descendants of the folk who built Stonehenge. Traversing the forests, linking the Roman cities, are the straight Roman roads on which solar-powered aircars travel from the far north of Britain to expressways that link with London, Rome, Constantinople and beyond. In this world Rome never fell to the Barbarians, the legions never left Britain and now, in the late twentieth century, Rome is the capital of a vast global civilisation. Outside Eboracum, (or York as we know it), and dominating the city, is the Battle Dome, a vast hemisphere enclosing the artificial landscapes where the Games - as brutal, deadly and colourful as ever - are held. Here the destinies of three young people come together when a jealous feud forces them to flee the Dome and take refuge in the forest. There, Viti, Miranda, and Angus discover that the older Britain that has endured for two millennia, where the assumptions of rational Romans and city-dwellers no longer apply. And it is there they find they must learn new lessons about their world - if they are to survive. This first volume of A Land Fit for Heroes is a superb, lyrical novel of cultures clashing in a wonderfully evoked alternate world, filled with magic, wonder and haunting sense of place.

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 223

Sample

Welcome to the Earth.

But it is not quite the Earth which you and I know, though viewed from the moon you could not tell the difference. This world belongs in one of those parallel universes which exist, infinite in quantity, yet each in its own discrete time-shell, just slightly out of temporal phase with our own world and with each other.

This world, which we are now approaching, is displaced from our own by a mere twelve seconds. But that short time is sufficient to make this world wholly different from our own while yet remaining, in some ways, quite familiar. For instance, the hills and rivers and plains are largely the same, but the men and women who inhabit them are different. Their history and customs too are different, but in subtle and strange ways.

In this world the Roman legions never quit Britannia. Far from it. The Roman legions marched on and, after stamping their mark on Britannia, conquered the rest of the world. Wherever they trod they established their social systems, their laws and their military organization.

Though for a while Roma tottered before the northern tribes, it nevertheless survived to become the capital city of a vast eclectic civilization. Roma became renowned as a great seat of learning; as a cultural melting-pot and place in the sun for all races; as a home of good food, rare spices and fine red wine; as the place for hot gossip, love, philosophy and lust; as the centre of fabulous, profligate wealth and awesome world-rattling power.

Which is all well and good, but this book is not much concerned with Roma, or with the rest of the world come to that, but with just one small corner in the distant north-east of the moist and wooded province of Britannia.

When military resistance in Britannia ended with the defeat of the Celtic tribes, the province prospered. The Romans built their roads throughout the length and breadth of the country and ruled in the neat cities, small towns and military camps. Gradually they created an organized society based on urban living.

In the early days after the conquest, the political leader of this society, the Praefectus Comitum as he was called, was appointed from Roma. But soon this position was filled by members of the great aristocratic, military families that settled in Britannia and began to call that province home. These families controlled vast estates and enjoyed almost unlimited power. Their privilege was supported by two classes in the population: the Citizens and the Soldiers. These two classes were mainly drawn from native families who, in the early days, forsook the tribal life and accepted the pax Romana with relish. They became ‘civilized’. As the decades stretched into centuries and the centuries ticked past, Roman rule began to seem like a law of nature. Given material comforts, security and a guaranteed place in society, the Citizens were hardly aware of the strict rules and regulations and limits under which they lived. Thus the clerks and sewermen, the cooks, cleaners, nurses, gardeners and candlestick-makers who made civilized life possible for the Roman military aristocracy hardly ever questioned their condition. As for the Soldiers, they were not encouraged to think about anything other than a pride in service and a delight in efficiency. They controlled the roads and the city gates.

But where the city walls ended, the wild wood began. Still, in the forests and moors and swamps which surrounded the Roman towns, life continued pretty much as it had for centuries: as it had since before the coming of the Celts and the earlier generations of men who built Stonehenge, yea back even unto the time of giants. In the different regions of what the Romans called Britannia, the old, green and ever youthful spirits of tree, glade and river maintained their dignity and held sway among the people who lived close to the soil. To those who lived in the vast forests, their ancestors, almost as old as the hills, could be heard whispering in the trees and among the bubbling streams.

At nightfall they murmured together in the shadows of the long barrows. Even so, golden lads and lasses made love in the meadows and on the hilltops and in the quiet places behind the barrows, and never thought about grave-dust.

To the ancient Roman families and the Citizens and Soldiers who served them, these woodlanders were primitive savages who could be tolerated because they posed no threat.

Christianity sprang up in some quarters but nowhere did it become as great a political force as it achieved in our world. Indeed, where it did survive, Christianity took its place as one sect among many, each of which celebrated in its own special way the sacrifice of a man or woman who chose death in order that humankind might be saved. These various creeds rubbed shoulders with older religions of earth and sky and of the Great Mother.

And all races and creeds walked the Roman roads.

We come to the present.

Throughout the world, Roman rationalism and Roman law are reaching their limits. They have become a kind of prison of the spirit, and that spirit, in some quarters at least, is now rattling its chains and shaking its bars. At the same time, ecstatic forces are bubbling up, lava-like and threatening to destroy the Roman order as surely as Vesuvius destroyed Pompeii.

Of course, on a day-to-day level, nothing seems very different. The sun rises and sets as it always has. The moon waxes and wanes and heaves the seas round the world. Spring follows winter and is itself followed by summer and autumn until winter comes again. But deep change is inevitable and remorseless. It is a law of Nature, there as here.

Shortly we will join this world …

… but for the moment we are drifting slowly above the vast wild woods of the north of Britannia. We are a few miles east and a bit north of the great city of Eburacum which in this world is the capital city of Britannia. In our world this area is known as the Vale of Pickering in the county of Yorkshire and the great city is called York. The time is mid-afternoon and the season springtime. After a bright warm day, the sun’s rays fall slanting into the forest, lighting up the tumbling dust and pollen and the dancing insects in a golden haze.

The forest is an overwhelming presence. It stretches as far as the eye can see, sometimes bright with the pale green of new leaves, sometimes sombre. Holly and hazel trees are much in evidence, their fruits praised by man and bird. Yew trees, ancient by any human standard, brood in the shadows of the taller trees. Willows with their steep branches mark the courses of streams and reach across to join with the common alder, while stands of beech and oak provide a contrast of shape and colour and presence. The forest is rich and mysterious. When the winds blow the canopy stirs and the branches flex and groan and scrape – the forest is a single creature then, a mighty green organism, which measures its time by season and century.

From time to time we drift over stout hedges of clipped hawthorn and hazel and sometimes holly trees. These trees are a barrier. They hold back the mighty forest and protect small villages. Each village is roughly circular and the houses are packed tightly together but with sufficient room for small gardens and fruit trees. Many of the tall trees close to the village have had their branches chopped back to allow the daylight in. But not so the favoured oak trees. They loom high beyond the hedge and cast their shadows into the enclosures. In autumn the roofs of the houses patter with falling acorns which block the gutters.

The houses are made of wood and brick and lath. The roofs are tiled. Many of the houses are built to a circular pattern and rise above the ground on stilts. Beneath them is room for animals. The houses have small windows and high chimneys from which blue wood-smoke rises. Outside the front doors are clumps of rosemary, thyme, lemon balm and mint. Fences define small allotments where turnips grow beside winter sprouts and where the picked-out stumps of autumn crops lie mouldering.

Spring ploughing is well under way and in some places early rye and barley, planted in the autumn, are already pushing their bright green spears up through the dark soil. Piles of damp vegetation, rotting marigold leaves, soiled pea-straw and the sodden tangle from ditch bottoms are heaped up at the sides of the fields ready for the compost bins.

The village is crowded with people, for the day’s work is ended and it is a time for talking and drinking in the village square. The air is filled with the smell of cooking. Chickens squawk, pecking beneath tables which have been set up in the sunshine. Children sing and cry. Somewhere there is hammering and an argument breaks out. Elsewhere there is laughter. These are the ‘savages’, as the Romans call them, the woodlanders whose fires burn at Beltane. These men and women are descended from the Celts who invaded Britannia centuries before the Romans, as well as from Vikings and escaped slaves from Africa and the Orient. In their veins flows blood from the earliest inhabitants of the land, the men and women who built the stone circles and forts in the hills. These woodlanders continue a culture already ancient when the Romans came a-calling and which can trace its ancestry, some say, even back to old Atlantis. Nor are they the only inhabitants of the forest.

In the village, spring flowers are sweetening the air as are the pigs which grunt and nuzzle among the oak trees. Cows lumber in the water-meadows outside the village wall. Sheep bleat within fences made of osiers. Bearded goats strain against their leashes, hungry for whatever is beyond their reach. A dog runs from the back of a house and hunkers down in the grass when a voice calls.

Narrow lanes which join the isolated cottages into a network meander from beneath the trees of the forest. The paths are all well trodden and each is just wide enough to allow two pack-horses to scrape by one another. Entry to the village is by means of a gate and this is closed every evening when the sun goes down. The gate is topped with spikes and is sufficiently tall and stoutly built to stop a rutting stag in its tracks or a pack of howling wolves. Beyond the villages the lanes meander away and are lost under the trees, only to re-emerge at the next village.

To the north the vast dappled forest merges with the misty grey and purple of the Moors: the trees give way to bracken and heather. To the east the forest presses right to the edge of the cliffs which border the grey North Sea. There the trees are stunted and wind-burnt, carved into fantastic shapes by the salt breeze. To the south and west the forest laps round the lower slopes of the Wolds and skirts the salt-marshes where the River Ouse becomes tidal. Then it presses south enclosing hill and river beneath its branches. It is said that if you step out under the greenwood just beyond the walls of Eburacum, you need never leave the cover of the forest until you come to the edge of the far southern sea.

This vast tangle of trees and undergrowth is the way the land recovered after the last ice age. The forest is home to wildcats, giant wolves and bears. Even a tiger with long shaggy dappled coat and curving teeth has been seen loping under the fir trees near Kirkdale. There are other creatures too, creatures which are rarely seen unless they want to be seen and which move silently.

But, though the forest teems with life, as we drift above the trees we see only the flutter of birds and the occasional sparkle of sun on water. In the distance we might see the stain of smoke rising above the canopy of leaves, for today is the first day of May and the fires celebrating Beltane are burning.

Abruptly we come to a place where several acres of forest have been cleared. Within this area there is a sharply defined rectangle. Being fanciful, we might imagine that one of the old gods, a Jupiter or a Vulcan say, has used a giant cutter to remove a precise area of forest. The perimeter is defined by high walls of stone and soldiers patrol behind the battlements. There are watch-towers at the corners. Within this cleared area are square fields, long rows of glasshouses, oval ponds where fish are growing, irrigation ditches, graduated water-races and windmills. At the centre of the enclosure are several prefabricated cottages which gather round a central area of green grass which is a playing-field. This small community looks like a village but it is actually a single farm, one of many scattered throughout the province, whose sole purpose is to produce the food demanded by the State. It provides the highest-quality fresh meat and vegetables for consumption in Eburacum and the nearby military camp. Each state farm has a name and a number. Apart from competing in agriculture, the state farms compete in sport and hence the importance given to the central playing-field. Here wrestling contests take place, and races. Two team sports, akin to rugby and cricket, are particularly popular. Just now the rugby posts have been lowered and gardeners are inspecting the damage done over the winter to the central cricket square.

Much of all this might be recognizable to us. Unfamiliar would be the tall pylons which surround the entire farm enclosure and which carry on their tops the black plates of solar-energy cells. Solar energy is widespread and advanced in this world and provides the power for most of the farm.

Roads join up the various state farms into larger units. These cut, straight as ruled lines, through the rough dappled forest. As we move from the wild heart of the forest towards Eburacum and its neighbouring towns, order, planning and a care for economy are becoming more evident. The roads are an assertion: reason over wild Nature; and this is a comforting thought to those who hold that wild Nature ought to be tamed. To the careful observer, however, it is apparent that the vegetation is at its most impenetrable where the forest meets the clipped edge of the roads. It is as though the wild wood is insulating the green glades within from the noisy, peopled roads.

The farm roads join larger highways which cover the entire province, and these in turn link up with the major expressways which lead ultimately to the great cities of the Empire: glittering

Byzantium, vast Roma, marbled Athenae and distant fragrant Xi An, to name but a few.

We drift over one such expressway and notice that it is crowded with vehicles, and all are travelling in the same direction which is away from the city of Eburacum and towards Derventio, the town which we know as Malton. Crowded the road may be, but there is no panic. All the vehicles move down the road at a constant speed, like beads on a string, each vehicle separated from the one in front and the one behind by the same distance.

In appearance the vehicles look like motorized chariots such as we might see at a fairground. But we notice that the wheels on the sides are merely painted disks and that they do not actually touch the ground. The vehicles slide silently, each on its own cushion of air and each held firmly in the magnetic grip of an expressway monitor. Balloons and streamers, thrusting out from the windows, bounce and strain in the breeze. We can hear singing too and laughing and the occasional pop of a champagne cork.

Rising from the median strip in the centre of the road are tall pylons, similar to those found in the state farms except that these are much taller and are capped with twin domes of black and silver. They look like spindly mushrooms and reach well above the highest oak trees in the forest canopy. They are spaced regularly some 200 yards apart. In the breeze they flex and sway as though they are animate and are tasting and filtering the air.

These pylons serve many functions. They receive daylight and convert the sun’s energy into power which is used to manage all the different mechanisms of the road including the highway monitor. The Romans have made transport technology into a high art. Accidents are rare on their roads since speed and proximity are both controlled. When a driver has logged his destination into his vehicle’s controls, he can lie back on the soft fur-covered couches and drink champagne, leaving the tedious business of actually controlling the vehicle to the road monitor. The pylons also radiate energy on a specific wavelength thereby providing a ‘road in the sky’, as it is called, along which special air-vehicles glide at astonishing speeds. The sky-road is narrow, extending little more than twenty feet to either side of the pylons. It does not reach out into the wild wood nor does it need to, for there are land roads a-plenty in Britannia and, as the cliché has it, the shortest distance between two points is the Roman road. In any case, the Romans who rule and the Citizens who serve their needs find little of interest in the wild tribes that blow their horns and beat their drums and light their fires beyond the city walls. Finally, the thin pylons support bright lights which blaze down on the road when dusk falls. All the major roads in Britannia are illuminated in this way, which means that at night-time the whole of the province is covered with a spangled web of bright white lights.

Where are all the vehicles going? Obviously there is something exciting at their destination. The road describes a gentle curve east by north and encounters a major junction. Here traffic streaming up from the south joins with the vehicles arriving from Eburacum. The junction takes the form of a vast roundabout. The majority of vehicles which enter the roundabout select an exit called Battle Street. Those few which do not, continue north. Soon small roads will branch off the expressway. One of these will head east towards Derventio and the coastal fishing towns. Another will drive directly up on to the Moors where snow still lingers in hollows. Its destination is the famous Caligula Detention and Punishment Camp located near the ancient tumuli above the town which we call Rosedale Abbey. The main expressway continues north via Cataractonium to the towns of Caledonia.

However, we follow the vehicles which have turned off down Battle Street. This road becomes smaller and uncharacteristically picturesque weaving back and forth round pretty lakes and manicured lawns and stands of yew and elm. The traffic moves more slowly now. It is reaching its destination: the Battle Dome.

The Battle Dome is a vast hemisphere. It covers many acres and its sides rise sheer and smooth from the tightly packed trees of the wild forest. There are many tall oak and beech trees in the forest, but they cannot match the dome for height. It rises, unblemished and sterile, white and alien, high above the trees and then curves majestically inwards to its apex.

In the summer there is rain which drums and froths and sluices down the sides. In the winter there is snow which pelts and freezes and caps the surface of the dome with ice causing a shallow depression. At such times the dome’s lights are switched on providing warmth. The frozen mass melts and comes slithering down the sides in crumpled sheets of snow and slush to land with a thump round the dome’s base. After a few moments the roof of the dome reasserts its true shape with a muffled snap.

For tonight, a clear starbright sky is forecast with perhaps a few degrees of frost to make patterns on the windows. There are no clouds and there is no wind. The trees stand stiff and still while a crescent moon rises to the south above the distant Wolds.

The day is waning and the sun is almost gone. In the light which people call Blind Man’s Holiday, the dome glows a milky blue while part of its surface is stained pink by the last rays of the setting sun.

For the young officers and cadets studying at the Marcus Aurelius Military Academy at Eburacum, tonight was the most important night of the year, for this was the night when the graduation combat took place – a combat for which they had trained all year. The celebration, always held at the end of April or in early May, marked their coming of age as members of the administrative Roman elite, and was one of the main activities associated with that ancient fertility festival, the Reformed Lupercalia. It was reformed only in the sense that the date had been changed. The Lupercalia of old Italia had been held in February: but that date was too cold in the more northern Britannia. Hence the change.

Wherever you looked there were people hurrying about. Fairy lights twinkled and bobbed in the trees while projectors played coloured images over the curved surface of the dome.

The land-vehicles, arriving in their hundreds, glided to a halt under the trees and sank on to their false wheels. They disgorged their passengers before lifting again and moving to a ramp which led down to the vast underground chariot-park.

Flyers from Eburacum and the distant cities of Londinium, Viroconium, Aquae Sulis and Deva swooped in along the charged sky-road and settled in a clearing close to the dome. Men and women emerged wearing fine bright clothes. Many were carrying lanterns while others unfurled multicoloured banners on which were emblazoned insignia. These identified which of the major families the revellers supported. There was the red-on-black banner of the Caesar clan and the white-on-black banner of the Manavia. The Gallica banner was much in evidence in black on gold, as was the Agricola in red on white. Ulysses, green on black, vied with the Severus banner of red on green. And there were many, many more. Everywhere there was colour and pageantry and the buzz of excited voices. Almost everyone attending had at one time been a student at the Eburacum Military Academy and had fought in the Battle Dome. They all carried the swords awarded to them at their graduation and the swords were keenly sharp, for they were not toys and would see action this night.

Attendants wearing the smart maroon uniforms of the Battle Dome staff greeted each of the flyers and took charge of it and guided it down to its parking-place where its battery could be recharged.

A squadron of black beetle-like flyers dipped down to the surface of the dome and passed through a special portal which opened like a small mouth on the dome’s surface. These vehicles, jet-black save for the silver axe device on their under-surfaces, ferried those students from the Military Academy who would fight this evening. Once the black vehicles were inside the dome, the aperture closed.

Shouting taunts and insults, singing battle-hymns and carrying glasses and bottles in their hands, the revellers stepped out on to a moving transit path and were carried towards the dome. The transit path resembled a ruby-red carpet and was called the Blood Path of Honour. It twisted round the boles of the trees and carried the revellers through a low arch and into the Battle Dome proper. Once inside, they stepped off the transit path at a tiled piazza where were tables laden with pig-meat and bull-meat, tripes, wholemeal bread, creamy butter, fruits from Arabia and the South Seas, cakes from Parma shaped like butterflies, steamed mussels with pepper and garlic sauce, braised pheasant, jugged hare, Scotch eggs and a delicacy from Cathay called spiced pangolin. There was a special dark fruit-cake in which gold coins were hidden. Bottles of chilled white wine from Germania, upon which condensation had formed, stood in gleaming ice-water beside bowls of rich red wine from Gallia and Hispania. They were available for the thirsty, as was beer. Following ancient custom, a special brew had been put down for this occasion. Wooden barrels decorated to resemble the bellies of bulls were set up on chocks and the first was broached as the first revellers arrived. Pints were drawn, the froth blown off, and the flavour debated. It was a dark beer, suitable for spring, suitable for the Reformed Lupercalia, and it received its proper accolade: empty pint glasses proffered for more.

Overseeing the food and drink was a master chef dressed in a white jacket, blue checked pants and sporting the traditional chef’s hat. He beamed like a host, his hands on his ample waist, and nothing was too much trouble for him. He was flattered to be called by name, Walter, by the old and young of the Roman military class. At his disposal were carvers and doughmen, brewers and porters. At his nod, waiters hurried between tables to deliver special delicacies or replace dropped forks. Other chefs, his equal in skill but lacking his rank, stood ready to tenderize or crispen or satisfy a sudden whim for an omelette or a crepe. Though the excited Romans might vomit his sauces through over-indulgence, Walter’s eyes only became chill if he saw any of his staff failing in their duty. His dream, like the dream of his father before him, was that the cuisine at the Eburacum Battle Dome be regarded as the best in the world, service befitting the capital city of Britannia.

Beyond the piazza where the food was served were tiers of seats. They reached high up the wall of the dome and appeared to be firmly set on the side of a grassy hill. But the hill was false. It could be trundled on rails round the perimeter of the dome to any location and thus the battlescape could be changed each year. At the very top of the hill was a chalet with high sloping roofs and a wooden balcony which jutted out over the seats below. This building was reserved for the most distinguished guests from other parts of the Empire and for those champions who survived the evening battles.

Some of the revellers, balancing plates and glasses as well as their banners, climbed up to their seats and sat studying the arena. Facing them was a fantastic landscape which had been carefully scaled to the human and compressed into false perspective. It was a landscape which had all the immediacy of a Chinese willow-pattern plate or a medieval morality painting where dark valleys meet aspiring mountains and where caves and rivers and strange rocks offer adventures unimaginable. Each year the battlescape was different, its possibilities limited only by the imagination of the architect and the technical competence of the engineers. For this year, the main design intention was to recreate an Alpine valley.

To the left there was a mountain. Its shoulder joined the side of the dome and its crest, soaring up towards the high curving roof, owed something to the Matterhorn. Its peak appeared snowbound and fleecy clouds drifted round it. Lower down, diminutive pine trees grew round the mountain’s steep slopes and merged with half-sized oak, ash and elm trees at the foothills. The black pine trees were new for this year as also were a ring of monoliths which stood on the grassy meadow at the foot of the mountain. They looked like a newly built Stonehenge and would provide an interesting hazard in the coming battles and contests.

Two rivers tumbled from the mountain’s heights in impressive waterfalls. They meandered when they reached the plain, passing behind the circle of standing stones, and finally fed into a lake which lay half hidden in the distance behind gracious weeping willows.

Beyond the lake were more tree-covered hills. And beyond the hills there was a mistiness in which one could just detect the gaunt shapes of cliffs and romantic canyons … but these disappeared as soon as perceived, hidden behind veils of artificial mist. Here the dome’s architects were working, inventing the battlescape for a year hence.

The artificial grass was bright green round the foothills and on the plain. It had been rolled to a perfect flatness and pulled and teased so that there were no wrinkles which showed where it had been sewn together. Some of the guests wandered out on to the plain and tested the springy turf by stamping and felt its texture between finger and thumb.

The overall visual effect facing the onlookers was of wildness contained. It might have been a dramatic golf course or a museum diorama with heroic implications. It was a toy landscape, a place of derring-do, a land fit for heroes.

Outside the dome the day was giving way to evening and the daylight gradually faded from the sky. The food on the tables was consumed and newcomers dwindled to a few stragglers. While dessert was being taken, musicians assembled at a pavilion near the barbecue pits and set out their instruments. They were all members of a brass band from the walled city of Deva. They struck up some cheerful military airs while the waiters and attendants scurried among the banks of seats collecting plates and glasses. This music was the . . .