Ойкумена / Oikumena: Глава 18

Chapter 18. "The Cursed Old House"

Camrad_RIP 23.06.23 в 18:37

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Camrad_RIP 23.06.23 в 18:37

Every good deed starts in the dark. As they used to say in the Wastelands, the first ray of the sun kills a work. If you hadn't done anything good before it came (or at least, you hadn't started), you couldn't do it afterward either. In the argo of the brigades, there was even a special word to define a worthless, empty person, who seems to do something, but still will not make any difference. Literally, it was translated as "midday slacker." All this and more, Lena remembered as the team gathered for the swamp raid. The girl thought it would be scary. In fact, preparations began with disgust and double disgust.

Camrad_RIP 25.06.23 в 19:34

First, Bizo briefly described for the uninitiated (that is, Elena, the soldiers, and Charley) who the "jelly" were and why the marshes were so dangerous. So, according to the alchemist, the swamps were inhabited by small and disgusting creatures, similar to jellyfish, blind and one by one completely harmless. They would have been good for everything except one thing-the creatures were collective predators. Black wasps only banded together when someone disturbed their nest or killed a congener. Jellys attacked anything larger than a piglet. The translucent lumps of jelly quickly formed into a single organism, like balls of mercury merging into a large blob, and they came down on their prey in their entirety. Biso mentioned that the creature, when fully "assembled," could reach the weight of ten "dry barrels," that is, more than a ton. The most disgusting thing was that, as far as the twentieth-century girl understood, the jelly was saturated with oxygen. Therefore, the victim, having been devoured, did not suffocate and often did not even lose consciousness during the very slow digestion process.

Camrad_RIP 25.06.23 в 19:37

Running away from the jelly monster was extremely difficult, and killing it was impossible because you can't hit a jellyfish that has no organs or even blood. Only some alchemical acids and very rare herbs, whose smoke steadily deterred the enemy, saved the day. It was still possible to walk in a special way, avoiding rhythm and using woven swamp skis, bypassing dangerous places, but these tricks had to be learned over the years.

Camrad_RIP 25.06.23 в 19:39

Matrice and Santelli found a better and simpler way. They approached the question from the position of rational knowledge and began to try everything, hoping to find a remedy that would reliably deter the jelly and, at the same time, be somewhat cheaper than the herbs that must be collected twice a year during the waning moon, committing a lot of ridiculous actions in the process. They searched and found it. More precisely, Santelli found it. He pointed out that the Jellys digest and absorb almost everything in a person, but only "almost." And Matrice put the production on stream. A magnificent, very effective substance that reliably repelled transparent death. You just have to coat yourself with it and renew it as it evaporated.

Camrad_RIP 26.06.23 в 13:33

Elena was already sickened by the alchemist's colorful description of the process of digestion of the victim and the thought that she had signed up to go straight into the jelly beast's mouth. Then Santeli, looking like a snide Mickey Mouse, broke the wax seal with his dagger and opened the first jug of the magic potion.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 12:52

Kai did not react in any way; it seems that the improvement in his nose only affected his appearance without adding to his sense of smell. Shena said many words that Lena had never heard before and couldn't even understand the roots. Biso looked at his colleagues with undisguised gloating. Zilber and Einar looked at each other, sighed heavily, and said they would not demand more payment than agreed. But if the brigadier at the end of the campaign did not make them a gift from the heart, in compensation for this ... they will not understand the brigadier and will harbor unkind thoughts in their hearts.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 13:11

The foreman reassured him with the message that at least they wouldn't have to worry about clothes. Everything irreversibly spoiled by the nightmarish smell will be reimbursed at the employer's expense. So time is of the essence. It is time to get smeared, gentlemen travelers.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 13:13

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Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 13:11

What is a trip for Profit?

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 13:13

Before the trip began, Lena knew exactly that it was a danger. It was also pain, injury, and probably death. With very good luck, money, and pleasure. Women, men (for connoisseurs or fighters like Shena). Wine, narcotic elixir, simple gluttony, finally. The girl appreciated what she saw directly - the wounded on Matrice's table, the dead men on the wagons, the tarry men wasting the proceeds.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 17:13

Over the past few days, she had discovered a new aspect of brigade work - careful planning, the procurement of a variety of equipment, and the desire to avoid all sorts of problems by eliminating the very possibility of their occurrence. Now, it turned out that going after Profit was all of the above plus hard work. Unthinkable, exhausting hell of monotonous movement when you no longer care about any danger. You just want to lie down and die because even death seems easier than a few more steps on this road. And a few more. And some more. When there is only fog and puffing Biso behind, a dim sun disk overhead, which is sinking in the clouds, and ahead is Einar's shield, hung on the belt behind the deserter's back.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 17:16

Lena had never seen swamps before, only imagined them in movies. It reminded me the most of Infinity Story and Fury Road. It was a sea of mud, alternating with strips of more or less clear water, and the top was covered with a brown-green carpet of tangled vegetation. The grass is common, grass long and short, grass with smooth stems, thorny stems, with shoots that look like daggers or worse. Reeds, reaching to the waist, growing in dense groves and hiding myriads of flies. Lianas, twisting underfoot in treacherous loops, turning into dense balls like bundles of rats' tails. Spiders the size of the palm of my hand lived there, their venom not lethal but leaving behind twisted joints and chronic pain for years to come.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 17:20

Occasionally a gray-green streak glided by, which meant a snake had been spooked. A couple of times, they met small leeches. One Zilber pulled out of his boot, and the creature managed to stick into the skin and inject an anticoagulant, so now "brother-soldier" squelched a boot full of his blood.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 17:22

The brigade walked in a chain and tied together with two ropes. Santélli was first, and Charley was last. At irregular intervals, obeying some reason of his own, Zilber drew from his sack the fine milestones he had brought with him in the cart and marked the way. Every third or fourth one, Biso would call out, leaving a mark to be found later in the fog.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 17:29

"Take a halt," Santelli said quietly, putting aside the pole.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 17:30

Einar looked around to see if the people behind him had heard. In the fumes of the swamp, the yellow lenses of his glasses looked opaque, like the eyes of an underwater monster.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 17:30

Lena was about to throw off the ponjaga, but stopped in time, remembering that the "Vietnamese footlocker" was taped to the frame, which was not to be squished. It was the medicine chest that caused the medic the brunt of her suffering. Elena, absorbed in gathering and express-mastering of the road wisdom, did not think at all about how she would carry both the luggage and the box at the same time. No one, of course, did not think about it for her either, as a person knows better how to encase themselves with equipment. In the end, the box had to be carried over her shoulder on the belt and then, in the second resting place, taped to the ponjaga, on top of everything else. The box was no longer dragging under her arms and hitting her in the side, but her center of gravity was completely displaced behind her, so she had to lean forward and put tension on her lower back. Her back was already aching and cramping despite the corset belt. This was bound to get worse.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 17:36

The girl took a sip of water from the flask. She slid her hand down her thigh, tucking the flask into the braid on her belt, and felt the texture of her skin change. She glanced down and realized that, after hours of walking through thorny thickets, the malignant flora had literally worn away the top layer of skin on her pants. It was as if she'd been sanded down with a big sandpaper and hadn't missed a single crease.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 17:38

Biso, meanwhile, was checking the direction with a cup of water and a steel needle, but he was whispering something over it and throwing grains of salt into the cup. The sight of the alchemist made Lena jealous and inferior. The sorcerer was older than she was (and by far), well-fed, short-legged, and not at all strikingly fit. At the same time, he was moving along the swamp quite briskly, keeping up with the foreman and canting his traveling bag and dragging his traveling bag and the chest with alchemical ingredients by himself.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 17:41

Lena leaned back on the bump, stretching out her heavy, lead-lined feet. The boots had long ago been soaked to the last thread and lint, as had the windings. There were still socks, but the girl decided to wear them at the next resting place. Einar took his shoes off altogether, hanging the tied boots around his neck and yellowing his calloused heels, stiff even to the touch, like goat's hooves. Zilber checked the leech-infected leg, saw that the blood was still dripping in tiny droplets, and whispered a curse. He would have liked to go barefoot, too, but Santelli had expressly forbidden it. Blood in the water was the last thing the brigade needed right now.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 17:42

The swamp was never quiet. All the time, something was squelching, clucking, and squawking. Amphibious creatures rustled, and water splashed under the carpet of densely intertwined grasses, reflecting some incomprehensible underwater life. From time to time, from a distance, the wind brought an eerie sound like a wistful dreary moan. It must be how banshees howl, foretelling one's doom. But the tarred ones paid no attention to the moaning, nor did Charley, apparently judging that everything was going their way, as it should.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 17:45

The background noise was sharply different from anything Lena's ears were used to, which only added to the anxiety. All the time, it seemed as if someone was rustling, sneaking up on her. The haze muffled the sounds, turning them inside out and putting them back in so the footsteps and other noise made by the brigade seemed to swirl around, becoming distorted. It seemed as if an entire battalion was marching in the distance, rattling its armor. Or a column of heavy cavalry was speeding up for a lance strike. Exhausted ears even caught separate words and commands in a half-forgotten language. And involuntarily listening, Lena began to doubt - and whether it's just a quirk of the acoustics?

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 17:47

It was said that the swamps were once a convenient plain where all the major battles for the Wastelands took place, which were then still a paradise. Like on Kawanakajima, where Takeda and Uesugi would have their interwar games time after time. Perhaps the cursed swamp captured the souls of the murdered and has not let them go for centuries? Again and again, the ghosts converge in endless battles, reliving the last moments of their lives...

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 18:49

But most frightening, of course, was the realization that at any moment, the green carpet could swell and break up in shreds, releasing a gelatinous tumor driven only by the instinct to devour everything in the world.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 18:50

Ugh, that's disgusting... Lena reached into her bag, without a command, for a bottle of repellent liquid. The stock in the jugs was dispersed into special bottles, five bottles for one person. This should have been enough to spare because the bottles were solid, and the smell was persistent. Unscrewing the cap, Lena grimaced and turned away - though she was partly used to it by now, the smell of concentrated urea mixed with chlorine hurt her nose like a good boxer. Covering her face with her hand, she sprayed herself diligently, trying not to waste too much and, at the same time, treat as many areas as possible. Her stomach was tearing out, sourly lodged somewhere near her throat in a clump of wriggling muscles.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 18:52

"Let's go," said the foreman as he lifted the ponjaga on his back. The tightly rolled blanket and the two burlap rolls were soaked through. The brigadier's beard hung in sad icicles with a few grasses stuck in it. One braid was tucked behind his ear, the other stuck to his sweaty forehead like a schoolgirl in the rain. Combined with the brigadier's bestial appearance, it looked like a surreal kawaii.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 18:54

Lena wiped her wet face with her wet sleeve and only now realized that the water was brackish. It must be true what they said - the marshes are not fed by the main river, which after the Cataclysm went underground, leaving a chain of lakes on the surface, but communicate directly with the sea so the deep springs mix their water with ocean salt.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 18:55

God, when will it end... and will it ever end?

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 18:55

As she tried to stand up, a sharp pain shot through her lower back, as if a chisel had been thrust between her vertebrae. She remembered Grandpa, who had been suffering from sciatica in recent years and had tried everything, from a wool belt to the Kuznetsov applicator. Lena clenched her teeth and decided to let her spine endure this day. Just this day. And then she would definitely be smarter...

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 18:56

The tarred ones passed by the corpse of a taguar that had gotten here. No one knows how, and no one knows why. The ferocious ambush predator, capable of one-on-one killing even an armed man, found an opponent scarier than itself. The beast was left with its head and hind legs completely intact. And the spine between them was stripped down to bare bones with cartilaginous veins. Judging by the fact that the small scavengers had not yet covered the remains, the tarantula had been eaten quite recently.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 18:58

The sun was climbing across the sky like a yellow bug. It had been a warm day, so the swamp slurry was steaming like a bathhouse. At a distance of fifteen or twenty meters, it was impossible to see anything. The fog was a wispy wall behind which ghostly figures glided. It was as if someone was extending whitish fingers toward the people who were walking, which blurred into a haze beneath their gaze. But as soon as she turned away, the fog was again throwing up disembodied tentacles, wriggling between the bumps.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 19:19

Shena fell into a hidden swamp and went right up to her chest into a water well hidden under a false bump. The first safety rope, brand-new, personally tested by Santelli on every inch of it, tore instantly. The fibers came apart like a rotten rag. She was saved by ahlspis, which she managed to deploy as a rescue pole, and a second rope, which was woven on the road Bizo from the grass. With a concerted effort, the lancewoman was pulled back and immediately lavished with stinky essence to replace the one that had washed away in the forced bathtub.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 19:21

The first bottle of decomposed urine ran out. She had to open the second one. Lena decided that now she would make her way to that tree, lie down there, and not go anywhere else, let them drag her, let them beat her, let them deprive her of pay, and let her have to slave for Matrice for the rest of her life, no matter what. She would go no further. But when the cherished point was near, it became clear that there was still a little strength left in her exhausted muscles, like drops of wine left out in a flask of dried pumpkin by a drunkard.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 19:22

All right, forget it. But over by that bump, that's it.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 19:22

That's it.

Camrad_RIP 27.06.23 в 19:22

"Here we are," said the foreman without excitement or emotion.

Camrad_RIP 26.06.23 в 07:47

The Swamp House was not as legendary as, say, the Crystal Cave, the Spring, the Coastal Labyrinth, the Bone Pit, the Golden Garden, or any of the other interesting places whose names are always on everyone's lips in the Gate. But it was known, and some had even tried to get around. No one has succeeded. The "tarred ones" either returned empty-handed or disappeared in their entirety. Gone were those who dared to spend the night within the walls, which for more than four centuries had no way of escaping into the bottomless swamp. And so Santelli decided to take a risk, extracting Profit in a place where previously only death had been found. Or worse. The brigadier did not look mad, so he must have known something special which promised at least a shadow of a chance for success. That was what the brigade would have to find out in the coming hours, for the day was drawing to a close.

Camrad_RIP 26.06.23 в 07:46

"Everybody take off your clothes," the tired Santelli handed out commands as if barking. And the first began to unbuckle the straps of the leather cuirass, squelching with swampy sludge and bubbles of someone's caviar. No one questioned; it was clear to everyone that the first thing to do after such a crossing was to check for lurking parasites and other crap.

Camrad_RIP 26.06.23 в 07:29

Lena thought she would feel some embarrassment, maybe hear some slurs, but everyone was exhausted to the point where their naked bodies evoked no emotion. People as people, primary sexual characteristics, and everything else God intended. Or Pantocrator. Except that Charley was a bit of a surprise. The older man, whom Lena would have given a good forty-something, was as thin and wiry as a twenty-year-old. The brether's abs could be scanned and taken as a benchmark for photoshopping the bellies of Hollywood stars. Judging by the scars, the maître had been hacked a lot and hard. And very professionally stitched, including masterful stitching of severed tendons. Except for the last wound, the freshest-looking one. It left a wide pinkish scar across his chest, with distinctive stitches. Lena had seen this before - it meant the wounded man had sewn himself up with the wrong hand.

Camrad_RIP 26.06.23 в 07:22

Another leech was extracted from Zilber's second boot. This time the swamp creeper had no time to get under the pant leg, so the archer, with great pleasure, stomped the creeper into the mush and got into the leather case, pulling the wet bowstring. The brigade collected a dozen ticks from each other, and Lena treated each bite with great care, for some of the symptoms of the local fevers resembled encephalitis. A lone jellyfish climbed into Shena's pram - Lena had expected to see something jellyfish, but the swamp horror resembled a cute yellow-bellied creature with two short legs made of translucent glass with thin black veins. They trampled the creature together and poured a generous amount of urine essence over it. Each traveler had another bottle to examine the house and two for the way back.

Camrad_RIP 26.06.23 в 07:19

The evening crept up quickly and stealthily, like a taguar to its prey. Or something that, in turn, stole the unfortunate cattle, nibbling them like an ice cream stick. The thought of having to spend the night in the house was so obvious that no one even spoke it out loud. Except in the glances that fell on the Santelli, there was a collective mute question - what cunning trick had the foreman come up with this time?

Camrad_RIP 26.06.23 в 07:17

"Put the luggage here," Santelli said curtly. "We'll go on the light. We'll haul it in later."

Camrad_RIP 26.06.23 в 07:14

Lena hung the medical box on a belt over her shoulder. Behind and to her left, Shena clinked steel muffled, pulling on flat-ringed gloves. Next to the lancer, it was... calmer. With Shena behind her, Lena felt as if she were in a warm cocoon of invisible protection.

Camrad_RIP 26.06.23 в 07:13

While the crew looked at each other and took a breath, Lena did not perceive the house as something separate. It was just an object they had finally reached. Now it was time to take a closer look at the house.

Camrad_RIP 26.06.23 в 07:12

The first close look immediately brought to mind the word "colonial." It was unclear why. The house did not have what is usually associated with the proverbial "colonial style." No white walls, columns, or open floor plan let in a refreshing breeze. The house was once three stories high and, judging by visible features, was built around four corner towers with balconies. Most likely, there was even an atrium inside. Now the first floor was almost completely buried in the damp earth, so the house seemed to be about two stories.

Camrad_RIP 26.06.23 в 06:34

And yet, for some reason, the building gave the impression of a country residence. Something light, entertaining, built not for defense and not even for a simple life, but for a pleasant pastime in good company. Too much carving on the eaves. Too thin, decorative shutters - those that have not yet crumbled and decayed in the dirt to a state of semi-liquid chaff. Too wide double doors. Lots of stairs, on whose rotten steps not even a fly would lay its paw now, but in the past, you could walk up them to practically any part of the house. Windows, real ones, not stained-glass windows in lattice frames. In some places, there are even individual nicks of broken glass.

Camrad_RIP 25.06.23 в 19:44

What was most surprising was that the house did not give Lena the impression of something dangerous or threatening. Perhaps, because it was too intact for a structure more than four hundred years old. Just an old house, abandoned by its owners, resisting the oppression of time as best it could.

Camrad_RIP 25.06.23 в 19:41

Except that no one has ever survived a full night here - from dusk to dawn.

Camrad_RIP 25.06.23 в 19:40