The Last Valley

176 Pages·1959·3.487 MB·English

by  J.B. Pick

The Last Valley

The Last Valley
BY
J. B. Pick
LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY
BOSTON TORONTO
© J. B. PICK I959
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRO­
DUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE
PUBLISHER, EXCEPT BY A REVIEWER WHO MAY QUOTE BRIEF PAS­
SAGES I N A R E VI E W TO B E PRINTED IN A MAGAZINE OR NEWSPAPER.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NO. 60-5370
FIRST AMERICAN EDITION
First published in Great Britain under the title of The Fat Valley.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
When not spurred, no awakening;
When not cornered, no opening through.
This story is placed in southern Germany and the action
runs from September 1637 to March 1638, during the Thirty
Years War.
Chapter One
he smoke moved thickly, in oily ropes, coiling as
T
the wind gave slow shoves. An unhinged door lay
shattered across the threshold, a tom coat thrown
down on it. Stench and ragged black flapping wings struck
at Vogel, one bird after another cawing and beating through
the doorway. His nostrils filled with the sweet fetid smell
of the dead, Vogel covered mouth and nose with his ami
and forced forward, seeing at once a pair of dirty naked
feet, a twisted arm, a gaping mouth. Dead legs, dead
stomachs, dead fingers, but no boots, food or rings. Soldiers
had been before him; there was nothing left for Vogel but
stench, silence and carrion birds.
In the second house a cur turned on him with bared
teeth. He kicked savagely at its protruding ribs and it ran
off in a slinking sideways scurry. The body on the floor had
staring eyes and a swollen neck, and lay in its own filth.
Vogel said aloud “Plague !” as he stumbled from the room
and broke at once into a careful, steady run, thudding away
from this murdered place, for plague was more terrible
than soldiers.
For three days after this his legs dragged along a body
unable to break the habit of survival. He reached the
stage of exhaustion when mind floats so far away from
body that it is no longer tied to body’s habits and looks
through things to the ghosts behind. Vogel’s mind found
ghosts more fearful even than the plague, for they told
him that beyond this world the suffering goes on. A cold
7
8 THE LAST VALLEY
and deadly depression, a sense of leaden futility, weighed
on his spirit.
When on the morning of the fourth day he came to the
end of the pass and gazed down over the valley he thought
himself mad at last.
The valley lay in rich contentment and peace. Orchard
trees rich and succulent with apple and cherry spread
from the village to join the climbing wood. Maize
stood ripening in a myriad strips of field. The meadow
ground was thickly clothed with grass, clover, buttercups
and tart wild strawberry. Crickets scraped their fiddles.
Little homely tracks ran brown and white in the sun,
puffs of soft cloud moved in the blue sky above the craggy
peaks of mountains. The houses of the village, in contrast
to the shattered dwellings in the stricken place he had run
from days before, seemed strong, whole and wholly
impossible.
Vogel’s lips twitched in a thin grimace of pain. Such
valleys once existed, but Vogel had long since killed
memory. A huge lump he could not swallow grew in his
throat and his mouth struggled wildly to salivate. His head
swam, his knees trembled, he closed his eyes and sank down
beside the path. His whole being felt like a hand deadened
with cold in which the blood begins agonisingly to run.
It was a long time before he had the strength to rise;
then, blind to grass and sky, insensitive to the warm flow
of sunshine, deaf to the singing birds and chirping insects,
he began to plod unsteadily down the winding path into
the valley.
With desperate prudence Vogel staggered half-way to
the village before pulling an apple from a laden bough, but
once he felt the real apple against his skin he bit with a
savage lust which weakened him so suddenly that for a full
minute he could not eat, and then he ate too quickly.
Before he could move further, pain gripped him. The apples
churned and bellowed in the cavern of his stomach, and a
terrible battle began there. He lay in the lush grass moan­
THE LAST VALLEY 9
ing and feebly moving his legs, like a dying beetle turned
on its back.
When at last the pain eased he rose, because it was his
habit to rise as soon as he could move. If it had not become
his habit he would years before have been food for birds
too fat already. He felt ill but stronger, and with strength
came caution. To Vogel threat was threat, and harmless,
aimlesss innocence the concealment of threat. Why did
the village look asleep in the full, warm daylight? Was it
asleep—or dead ? He was approaching a huge bam, roofed,
virgin, stuffed with grain. Even a rumour of its existence
would make any captain of mercenaries saddle up and
ride straight as a homing pigeon, licking his chops all the
way. Such a bam could not be real, and if real, a trap.
The village street was wide and well dunged. Cows had
wandered here recently. Where were they now? Vogel
could see, too, where hens had paced and scratched. All
house doors were shut. No eyes peered through window­
holes. The whole place lay like a plump duckling waiting
to be killed, plucked and popped in a pot. Vogel did not
like it. He took a deep breath and crossed to the largest
house.
It did not take him long to break open a shutter, and
even less time to find food, although it had been hidden;
finding food had become his sole function in the world.
Some hours later he was awakened from sleep following
a hearty meal by the sound of horses. He was out of the
house and in among the orchard trees before he had fully
separated dream from reality, and a moment after that
lay flat on his face with a heavy body on his back.
Two troopers, smelling of leather, sweat and horses,
dragged him along the street like a sack of meal. He stood
among soldiers, facing a tall man in a leather jacket and
riding boots, wearing a sword and a battered hat with a
plume in it. Vogel was more disgusted than frightened.
Hunger makes a fool of a man. He had felt warning in the
air and crushed it. He would pay for that stupidity.
10 THE LAST VALLEY
“Plenty of pickings, Captain,” one fellow said, “but not
a soul to be found except this scum.”
“You,” said the Captain. “Where are the others?”
In his mind’s eye Vogel held the picture of this plump
countryside as he stared at the war bitten, hungry, leathery
faces of these human locusts. With an effort he withdrew
attention from sore feet, heavy stomach and the prickling
of sweat to concentrate his gaze on the Captain. An
expression of utter weariness in the cold green eyes gave
him a wild urge to make a suggestion which, if disapproved,
would guarantee his death.
“Wake him up,” the Captain said.
A trooper’s fist caught Vogel on the side of the head,
but as he staggered another trooper lugged him upright.
Vogel was used to such treatment; his head sang but his
mind stayed outside, cool and wary.
“Where are your peasants hiding themselves, and their
cattle?” the Captain said.
“I’m ignorant as a louse,” Vogel said. “I came in after
food; there was nobody here.”
“That won’t do,” the Captain said. “Speak fast. I lost
patience five years ago.”
Vogel cleared his throat, to give courage time to reach
his vocal cords. “Two ears are better than forty,” he said.
The Captain seemed to be taking an interest in Vogel’s
boots, which he had pulled from a dead Swede three weeks
ago. “You can’t make bargains with me,” the Captain
said. “I don’t pay for information. This is a rich village.”
“That’s what I want to talk about,” Vogel said.
The Captain gave him a straight, cold look, then jerked
his head at the troopers. “Stand off,” he said. “Break
open every house and gather all we can use in the big
bam. Nothing in your own saddlebags, understand? That
comes later. You, Korski, three muskets at fifteen paces,
loaded and levelled at this scarecrow. If he runs, blow his
head off.”
The troopers began to scatter, then paused as if at a