Stand Alone Stan

by Phillip Mann

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

Synopsis

Britannia, 1993. In a world where the Roman legionaries never left Britain a man can walk from the walls of York - or Eburacum - to the southern seas without leaving the shade of the greenwood, inhabited by wildcats, wolves and bears, as well as the descendants of the folk who built Stonehenge. Solar-powered air cars journey along straight roads that connect them to the Roman settlements - and link them to the cities of a global empire. When a jealous feud forced three young people into the forest, they discovered an older Britain, where the rules of rational Rome no longer applied. But now their sanctuary has been besieged and they are once more on the run. Their destination this time is Stand Alone Stan, a community built around an ancient standing stone high on the Yorkshire Moors. And it is here that their paths must, at last, diverge, and we begin to suspect the very different destinies that await them. Stand Alone Stan is the second volume of A Land Fit for Heroes.

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 284

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 sewer-men, 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 did 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.

We are deep in the wild wood.

Coll, Angus and Miranda walked in silence, heads tucked down into their cloaks, stepping round the puddles and soft ooze that had formed in the forest path under the trees. The only sounds were the squelching of their footsteps and the sudden splatter of water drops as the wind stirred the high trees and the leaves tipped.

Each of them was lost in a private world of thought and hardly regarded the dark path they trod. For each of them, the hope and energy and feeling of purpose with which they had set out in the early morning had gradually wilted before the savage memory of the attack on their village. This memory would not rest. It needed to be faced and accepted. Each in their own way had been shocked by the violence they had witnessed: each felt damaged by it, dirtied by it, challenged by it.

Miranda held the box containing the friendly protective skull close to her breasts. The skull had been Bella’s gift to her before the inn was burned. Bella had guessed rightly that Miranda would feel lonely and abandoned without the familiar routine of the inn or the warm arms of Gwydion, and it was her own finely honed intuition and good common sense which led her, despite the rush and hurry of clearing the inn, to reach into the niche above the door of Miranda’s room, pull out the skull, dust it off and hand it to Miranda. ‘Take this. Gwydion’ll find a box for it. I reckon old Polly’s taken a shine to you and won’t be needed to look after this room in five minutes or so. She’ll keep you safe no matter what.’ Miranda had taken the skull of Bella’s great-grandmother, and she kissed Bella in gratitude.

As she tucked the skull into its box and cushioned it with twists of rosemary and rolled-up balls of lemon balm, she was aware how strange she had become. What had happened to the conventional girl who had been a star pupil at the Eburacum Poly? Who was this bright-eyed pagan who took comfort in the skull of a woman who had been dead some forty years? No matter. Miranda the realist was as strong now as Miranda the romantic and she took comfort where she could, no matter how strange.

So now, as Miranda walked along, she held the box close and tried to imagine that old Polly was walking with her. Even so, she could not keep at bay the loneliness. ‘Is this what life is all about?’ she thought miserably. ‘No sooner do you feel comfort than it is whisked away.’ She remembered some boys she had once seen on the streets of Eburacum; they were teasing a dog, tying a bone to a length of string and dangling it before its slavering jaws. She had seen the dog jump and bark and bite the air.

Miranda shivered. Her feet felt damp. The rain had worked its way through a seam in her cloak and water trickled down her neck. There was an itching on her back and face and thighs where the nettle-stings were healing. Almost giddy with the memory, she saw again the arrival of the storm-troopers and the near-panic in Bella’s eyes as she thrust the nettles into Miranda’s face. Again she heard Bella scream, ‘Rub yourself. Rub yourself with the nettles. Sting your face and arms. Lift up your skirt, sting your legs, sting the inside of your thighs.’

‘Why …’

‘Just do it. They rape. They kill. They’ll be here.’

Miranda remembered the kicking-down of the doors, the torture of the prisoners with wire, the ferocity of Gwydion as he whistled like a bird before the face of the blinded captain and then killed the Roman officer with a single blow. Then there was the burning of the village and … so much more. So much. So much. Miranda became weary with memory.

For the hundredth time she glanced round, hoping she would see the tall figure of Gwydion, striding to overtake them. But there was only the dismal path, with the impressions where they had stepped which were slowly filling with water. Gradually, with the rhythm of her walk, Miranda began to feel curiously detached from her life as though she had no control over events. She was being swept along. She was more the watcher than the one who was enduring. The past was already darkening and the future was no more than a bend in a lane before her.

Coll, the newly named who only a few hours earlier had been called Viti, was struggling with guilt. He knew that the attack on the village had come solely because of him. He was the wanted one. He was the last surviving son of the Ulysses line, one of the most powerful families in the entire Roman world. He was the one who had turned renegade. He could imagine the hatred. What would his father or the authorities not do to catch him? In his mind’s eye Coll could see his father’s face, unyielding as stone, as he heard the words of his spies and ordered the storm-troopers to attack the village. For Coll was under no illusions. He had grown up among the luxury and cruelty of the elite of the Roman world.

Now, one side of him wanted to slip away under the trees, away from Miranda and Angus, and find his way back to Eburacum and there deliver himself up to the Roman authorities or perhaps kill himself in sight of the gates of the city. What stopped him was simply the realization that such an act would render useless and meaningless the sacrifice of so many people in the village; people among whom were those he had known as friends.

No. His way was onwards or not at all. Hard as it was.

But this stoic attitude merely strengthened his feeling of helplessness. He had not chosen this path for his life. ‘Why me?’ he thought for the hundredth time and for the hundredth time there was no answer. There was only what was. And so he stumped along and thought about revenge. He thought about safety, too. In front of him walked Miranda for whom he felt things he could not name. He wanted to protect her though he knew she wanted none of his protection. And in front of her walked Angus, for whom he felt a fondness even though Angus had once tried to kill him. So many people had been put at risk by him! ‘I hope,’ thought Coll to himself, ‘that Lyf got it right. I hope whatever body they dressed up to look like me and burned convinces the soldiers. Perhaps they’ll stop looking for me. Perhaps we’ll all be safer. Perhaps I’ll be forgotten. Perhaps … Perhaps my father will retire to the estates in the North and let everything else go hang. I hope so.’

Angus, for his part, found himself talking to himself in his head. This was a habit he had fallen into during his time working with Damon up the tall trees. He could hear a dialogue. One voice was angry. Those mother-fuckers had no right to come killing and raping. The just state would make them pay.’

The other voice was more resigned. ‘Justice is a delusion. Only the wealthy have justice. There is no justice for the powerless.’

‘Don’t the people they raped and killed have rights?’

‘None at all as far as the Romans are concerned.’

‘But they are people. Men and women. Like we are all, men and women.’

‘Not to the Romans, and the Romans have the power.’

‘So, is power everything?’

‘Everything. To the materialist mind.’

‘Bah. That must be changed. The weak must be given a sword. Those cruel bastards must be taught a lesson.’

… And so his dialogue went on. Occasionally he kicked at stones on the path as his stubborn, untutored, grasping and brilliant brain struggled with ideas such as justice and equality: concepts for which he had no frame of reference, except for his brief period of life in the village.

Once as they walked they heard the sound of drumming. It seemed to come from a great way off and from high above them. They all stopped.

‘Now we’ve heard that before,’ said Angus, ‘and we never came to harm.’

‘No, I don’t think it’s threatening,’ said Coll.

‘I find it a comforting sound,’ said Miranda.

At about midday the rain lifted and a pale sun shone down into the forest. The smell in the air changed as mist rose from the ground. They made camp under a giant sycamore. Its large leaves had protected much of the ground from the soaking rain

and the soil near the trunk was quite dry. They lit a fire and began cooking some of the food provided by Bella.

They had no sooner started to eat when Coll, who had the sharpest ears of all, paused and stood up.

‘Shh. Someone’s coming,’ he whispered and they all froze and stared out from their shelter.

An old man leading a donkey came into sight round a bend in the path.

‘Cormac!’ called Angus, in astonishment, and the old man halted and then peered about. This was Cormac the Singer, Cormac the Insulter, Cormac the Teller who had entertained them at Bella’s Inn. They all remembered that night for to each of them Cormac had offered a special message which mingled hope with fear.

They came out to greet him from under the sycamore and stood in the narrow lane.

‘Hello you three. So they’ve turned you loose again, have they, to cause more havoc?’

‘Have you heard what happened to the village?’ asked Miranda and Cormac nodded.

‘I have. Everyone knows. Word travels fast on the wind. There’s a song of death going round.’ Cormac said this with a peculiar emphasis as if it were a curse.

‘What kind of a song?’ asked Coll.

‘A song like a stone that is dropped in the water. A song of ripples and widening circles. A song of names and a song of anger. A battle-song too. Now I’m travelling west to offer help. Sometimes a singer can bring ease like no other. Sometimes not.’

‘We thought you were far away. We thought you’d gone to the southern sea,’ said Coll.

‘I changed my mind.’ Cormac offered no further explanation and there was a brief embarrassed pause.

‘I’ve changed my name,’ said Coll. ‘1 am no longer Viti. After what happened in the village, that name is full of pain. I’ve changed it.’

‘And what name have you chosen to replace it?’ The old man’s eyes were suddenly keen.

‘Coll,’ said the dark-haired young Roman.

‘A good name for a singer. But it’ll take more than a name change to wash the Roman shit out of your soul.’

‘I know. But it’s a start.’

‘Everything is a start. Good luck to you.’ Cormac turned to Miranda. ‘And what of you, Miranda? Have you talked to the moon yet?’

‘Have I what?’ asked Miranda, blushing.

‘You heard.’

And indeed she had. Ever since Cormac had sung to her that night at the inn she had felt differently about herself. The moon had become important in a way that she could not understand; the sun too, but especially the moon. One night, with Gwydion on top of her, and his tousled blond hair in her mouth and his arms like living rock holding her, she had opened her eyes at the moment of her climax and had seen the full moon staring down through her window. And it seemed to Miranda that at that moment of greatest release when her body opened, the moon rushed into her. She had never told anyone about this. She felt she had a child in her. A child of the moon: beautiful and peaceful and quiet and strong. But yet she was not pregnant in a physical way. The thought made her dizzy.

‘I’m OK,’ said Miranda, and laughed at how inadequate the words were. ‘Getting there.’

‘And what of the strong man?’ asked Cormac turning to Angus. ‘They say you were like walking death with a gun in each hand when the Romans attacked the village.’

‘I did my bit.’

‘So modest. And have you settled into our world?’

‘No. Not yet. I find your world strange. I find everything strange these days. I don’t know how you manage things.’

‘We rub along.’

‘But how can you stand having things happen like I saw happen, having men killed and women raped? How can you stand it? Why don’t you organize yourselves and fight?’

‘Why don’t we become like the Romans, you mean?’

Angus was not sure that this was what he meant. ‘Well …’

‘I think you have your answer, or at least part of it. Anyway,’ Cormac jerked the reins of his donkey, ‘Aristotle and I have many miles to travel before we’ll bed down for the night. I wish you all well.’ Cormac made to move.

Miranda asked, ‘Are we on the right road for Stand Alone Stan?’

‘You are. You’ve passed the turnings for Berry, Bird and Grindal.’ The three looked at one another in surprise. They had not been aware of any turnings. ‘Remember, keep the hill slope to your right until you come to open land. There you’ll find the path leading up to the Fox. That is where you begin the climb. Make good speed. The wind is shifting round to the north-east again, and that means rain and bluster. Be under shelter tonight.’

As Cormac finished speaking, there came a sigh of the wind in the high trees and the creaking of branches. ‘Good speed to you,’ said the old man and set off down the narrow path. Within a minute he was round one of the bends and gone.

‘Look,’ said Miranda pointing to the ground.

Both Coll and Angus looked. ‘I can’t see anything,’ said Coll.

‘That’s what I mean. Look at our footprints. You can see where Angus has been standing and even my heels have left a mark. But there’s no mark of Cormac or his donkey.’

No more there was. They’d all heard the animal and smelt it and both it and Cormac had been as substantial as the trees which pressed beside the path, but there was no evidence of its walking or of the old man.

‘More bloody trickery,’ said Angus. ‘Honestly, you never know where you are with these people. Come on, let’s get moving like the man said. I’ve been out in the forest in a storm and it’s no joke. So the sooner we get a move on the better.’ Without waiting for reply he picked up his swag and set off.

Thoughtfully, Coll and Miranda followed.

Gradually the sky darkened. The wind stiffened and moaned in the high trees, dislodging leaves which spun and tumbled and found their way down to the narrow path where the three walked. After a hot summer, the leaves were beginning to curl and dry. The path was in deep gloom and above them they could hear the mighty creaking of branches.

Miranda found herself jumping with every falling acorn. As a girl and now as a woman she had always lived in houses. And houses, by and large, attempted to exclude wild nature. Her only deep experience of the forest was during the trek to the village after the escape from the Battle Dome. Occasionally she had wandered in the forest close to Bella’s Inn, but she had never moved far from the sound of the woodsman’s axe. Gradually the thought crept up on her that the forest was a single vast beast. She felt small and threatened. Finally she could restrain herself no more.

‘I don’t want to go on today. I want to find a safe place for the night. It’s going to rain soon and …’ Even as she spoke the first large cow-eye drops of rain spattered the leaves above them and began to drip down. Then with a gigantic sigh of wind, the rain began to pelt down.

‘I agree,’ said Coll, for though he was now named after a tree, he was not very wise in the ways of the forest, having spent most of his time at Bella’s Inn looking after the animals. He too felt nervous and vulnerable.

In contrast, Angus found the gathering storm exhilarating. He felt fear, as any man will, but it was not a numbing fear which made him want to hide but rather a stimulating fear which made him want to fight. The fury of the wind in the branches and the slashing of the rain provoked ardour in him and touched some deep and primitive depths of his being. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s get out from these oaks.’ He led them off the path and up a slight hill to where there was a natural clearing and there, standing alone, was a holly tree. Angus opened his roll and pulled out the axe he had taken from the mechanical dragon a lifetime ago. He cut away some of the lower branches and revealed a den within the holly tree. It was dry and musty and coated with spiders’ webs. Generations of spiders had lived there undisturbed and the present incumbents made quickly for the darkness. Using the blade of his axe, Angus cleared the cobwebs and then scraped the dry floor to get rid of the litter of prickly dry leaves and twigs. ‘Here. We’ll be safe in here.’

Miranda moved in and squatted down, pretending that she had not seen the spiders. Coll appreciated that the holly tree would protect them from attack for he had not forgotten the wolf tracks he had seen those many months ago. He wondered briefly how wanderers such as Cormac and Lyf – and Gwydion for that matter – coped with the dangers of the forest. And even as the thought was born he realized that those men were as at home in the forest as he had once been in the barracks at the Eburacum Military Academy. As he sat and shivered, he wondered if he would one day feel at home alone in the forest. If this were a question he was asking of the future, he received no answer save the howling of the wind which had suddenly stepped up its ferocity.

Angus alone had slept out in the forest and had encountered some of the forest’s terrors. In his time with Damon, repairing electric systems in the forest, Angus had seen the spoor of wolves and Damon had told him some fearsome tales. They can smell fear,’ Damon had said. ‘They track and devour fear.’ Indeed, it was the old electrician who had instructed Angus to take shelter in a holly tree if ever he was caught out in the open. The holly tree will fight for you,’ he said.

Angus also knew they needed a fire. There was enough dry kindling under the holly tree but they needed stouter branches. He chivvied Coll to his feet and together the two men ran out into the rain. They found a tree that had fallen a year earlier and were able to snap and chop off branches and lug these back to their shelter. While Coll cut and broke the branches into logs, Angus struck a flame and blew on it and soon had a small fire crackling and hissing at the mouth of their den. They were none too soon, either, as an early evening gathered in the clearing.

As she smelt the smoke and saw the flames, Miranda felt her spirits rise. She would survive. ‘We might be here a few days,’ she said, remembering how Bella had once talked about sitting out a storm. That is if this doesn’t let up.’

‘Better go easy on the food then,’ said Coll.

‘I can walk out to a village if needs be,’ said Angus, almost relishing the thought.

They made a simple meal and brewed some herb tea. But none of them was really hungry. They sat and listened to the rain and the howling wind and wrapped their arms round their knees. One by one they fell into a reverie of private thoughts, and this became a dozing which became a fitful sleep.

There came a sudden crackling dazzle of lightning and a detonation of thunder. It seemed to come from directly above them and rolled over and round the holly tree. For a few moments everything was lit up starkly and shadows jumped. Coll sprang awake and found himself alone under the tree. Of Miranda and Angus there was no sign. He tried to struggle to his feet but found that he could hardly move. His feet seemed trapped. He looked round in sudden panic, and as he did so noticed that all the branches and leaves around him seemed to glow with a glimmering grey light. He looked at his own flesh and that too seemed to glow, but with an unsteady light. In the clearing outside were many different colours flowing. He blinked, unable to believe his eyes. Again he tried to stand up but something moved against his back, pushing him forwards, and Coll watched in astonishment and horror as a branch from the holly tree wound round him binding him tight. The leaves of holly pricked his arms and face. Part of Coll’s mind screamed that this was not happening, that this could not be happening, but then he felt himself lifted bodily. A branch from higher in the tree bent down and coiled round his waist and lifted. The branches from below pushed and Coll found himself slowly being eased from branch to branch and moved up the tree. He took a deep breath to scream, and as he did so a branch locked round his chest and he scarcely uttered a note for fear that the branch would contract and squeeze his lungs and heart. One branch did grow briefly round his neck but then it let go and sprang away as though conscious of how delicate his life was.

Never in all his fighting days at the Battle Dome had Coll felt such implacable power in a contestant. The strength in the tree was beyond anything Coll could imagine and eventually he stopped testing his muscles against it and just hung there, like a dead fish in a net, and allowed himself to be manipulated up the tree.

The tree had changed too. The holly tree under which they had sheltered had tightly locked branches but this tree seemed more open. He saw branches spring apart to make room for him and then there was movement above him and the luminescence of the branches and leaves grew brighter. A branch from another tree, an oak, broke into the canopy of the holly tree and seized him and lifted, dragging him free. Coll screamed as the sharp holly-leaves raked him and the rough wood scraped over his skin. But the oak brought a great feeling of strength and security. It did not so much grip him as support him and he was able to move his arms and legs.

In the clearing outside the tree, lightning danced and shone as the rain teemed down. Free from the holly tree Coll was able to twist round and look about. Trees crowded close. He could not remember there being so many. He could see a graceful alder tree and a compact blackthorn. There were beech trees and yew and ash all pressed together. Ivy and vines twisted in their branches and the floor of the clearing was bright with the yellow of furze. ‘Hope they don’t drop me down into that,’ thought Coll as the oak tree hoisted him higher.

As he looked down he noticed that each tree, apart from its distinctive shape, had its own pulsing colour which surrounded it like an aura. There was a giant beech tree which flickered with orange lights, and a small blackthorn which had something of purple and something of red in it. The tree which was now lifting him was an old stunted oak, one that had been riven many times by lightning and which yet maintained its vitality. Its colour was a deep and velvet brown which seemed almost an exhalation of the earth itself.

To his astonishment, Coll seemed to be able to see the life of the trees. It was not like our life, so full of thought, and with quick scintillating shifts of mood and emotion. This was a life without moods but with a deep and rough vitality which almost overwhelmed him. He knew, though how he knew he had no idea, that he was almost invisible to the trees. He smelt time and season in their breath. He knew, though again he did not know how he knew, that he was experiencing a new world for which there was no language: that his sense of movement and change was only a metaphor for what was truly happening in his spirit. Awareness was everything at the borderland where unselfconscious life met life which was supremely self-conscious. And so Viti who was now Coll and who would become many things before this life ended hung there and watched as the rough trees handled him, groping in their slow, implacable way to discover some essence in him that they could relish in their natures and hence comprehend in their own way.

The beech tree received him from the oak and he was lifted up to the very canopy of the forest where he could see the wind flowing like a river. And then he was passed down to the reaching branches of a green ash tree and finally to a small tree that he had not noticed before but which he did now. It was a graceful hazel tree. This received him and enclosed him in its many stems like a cloak and for a moment he had a sense of how the tree perceived him. As something so fragile, its like not known since the moment of the tree’s first quickening from seed. As something precious like a bead of light or a pearl. As something so quick in its movements as to be almost invisible. As something soft like opening buds in springtime.

Then, glaringly, like the sudden opening of a furnace door, he saw his entire life, from his earliest days to his present moment, spread before him. How could this be? His mind tried to grasp. He saw his life like a painting that is both a single statement within its frame and yet filled with complexity. For a moment he saw his future and his past as a single design. And th. . .