Bearers of the Black Staff - Terry Brooks [42]
Sider smiled. “Well, I don’t know that what I’m doing makes much sense; I’ll give you that. People are strange creatures, and they don’t always have a clear eye toward how things stand.”
“No different out here, my friend.” Inch made a sweeping gesture toward the countryside. “That’s our history, if you think about it. Look at how we got to where we are. The Great Wars killed almost everyone, and those they didn’t kill they left homeless and disconnected. Everyone made new families. Everyone had to band together to survive. It wasn’t easy. Or so the stories that got passed down through the years tell us. It was pretty bad. Pretty terrible.”
He hunched forward. “Here’s what I know from the stories I’ve heard. The end of the Great Wars came in a series of huge explosions that tore up the land and poisoned everything in it for two hundred years. Almost no one survived. Those who did went north or south or hid out in places that escaped the worst of it. Some went underground. Some went deep into the mountains. Some stayed put and got lucky. Others turned into freaks and mutants and worse things than that. But there weren’t many of any kind who made it. Most never got through the first five years.”
He shrugged, looking off into the darkness. “It was a long time ago, Sider, and now it’s just old stories. We live in the here and now, not the past. But the present’s not so good, either. You wanted to know what things are like? All right, I’m going to tell you.”
He paused, as if gathering his thoughts or searching for a starting point. “Well, there’s no good place to begin. For about a hundred years after the end of the Great Wars, people lived like animals. Some still do, but almost everyone did then. They scrapped and clawed to stay alive. They killed each other if they felt threatened. They ate each other, too, I’m told. Food was hard to find, and starvation was an everyday occurrence. Men who hadn’t changed into something else and Men who had, they were all in the same situation. There was no longer anything resembling civilization, nothing of order or moral imperative or a sense of right and wrong. There must have been some who still held those values and tried to practice them, but most gave in to the demands of their environment and became what they needed to become to stay alive.”
“I’d thought that might have been what happened,” Sider said.
“Happened for more than two centuries, and then things started to right themselves. The people who had escaped the worst of the plagues and poisons and firestorms had formed communities that were fortified and protected. Men armed themselves wherever they went, but at least they weren’t afraid to go. Weapons were rudimentary for the most part. There were some flechettes and sprays and other leftovers from before the Great Wars, but most quit working or rusted up. Men forgot how to fix them and then how to use them and then forgot them altogether. The time for that kind of weapon was over. Men began making weapons in the old way, forging blades for swords and spears and javelins, shaping bows out of ash and tying flint to oak shafts for arrows, and they learned how to use them. They formed hunting parties and set watch over their women and children, and they stood up with some success against the predators and ravers that still roamed the land. The difference was that they were beginning to organize themselves.”
“Still wasn’t enough, though, was it?” Sider guessed.
Inch shook his head. “Not by a thirty-foot jump, it wasn’t. There were battles fought all over the landscape, dozens every day, and whole communities were wiped out. Some of the mutants that grew out of the poisonous effects of the Great Wars had evolved into monsters that almost nothing could stop. Some were worse than the agenahls, but most of those couldn’t breed and died out early on. There wasn’t enough food for them, and they weren’t smart enough to avoid eating things infused with poisons and chemicals. But that wasn’t the worst