Still no defensive or evasive action was taken. I even saw one soldier casually slash at a ptertha with his sword. In a matter of seconds the four globes had disintegrated, shedding their charges of deadly dust among the enemy, who appeared to be quite uncaring.
If what had happened up to that point was surprising, the aftermath was even more so.
The Chamtethans were in the process of spreading out to form a circle around our inadequate little fortress when I saw the beginnings of a commotion among their ranks. My glasses showed that some of the black-armoured soldiers had fallen. Already! Their comrades were kneeling beside them to render aid and — within the space of several breaths — they too were sprawling and writhing on the ground!
The sergeant came to my side and said, “Sir, the corporal says he can see our lines. What message do you want to send?”
“Wait!” I elevated my glasses slightly to take in the middle distance and after a moment picked out other ptertha weaving and wavering above the grasslands. “Instruct him to inform Captain Kadal that we have encountered a large detachment of the enemy, but that he is to remain where he is. He is not to advance until I send a further command.”
The sergeant was too well disciplined to venture a protest, but his perplexity was evident as he hurried away to transmit my orders. I resumed my surveillance of the Chamtethans. By that time there was a general awareness that something was terribly amiss, evidenced by the manner in which the soldiers were running here and there in panic and confusion. Men who had begun to advance on our position turned and — not understanding that their sole hope of survival lay in fleeing the scene — rejoined the main body of their force. I watched with a clammy coldness in my gut as they too began to stagger and fall.
There were gasps of wonderment from behind me as my own men, even with unaided vision, took in the fact that the Chamtethans were swiftly being destroyed by some awesome and invisible agency. In a frighteningly short space of time every last one of the enemy had gone down, and nothing was moving on the plain save groups ofbluehorns which had begun to graze unconcernedly among the bodies of their masters. (Why is it that all members of the animal kingdom, apart from types of simian, are immune to ptertha poison?)
When 1 had taken my fill of the dread scene I turned and almost laughed aloud as I saw that my men were gazing at me with a mixture of relief, respect and adoration. They had believed themselves doomed, and now — such are the workings of the common soldier’s mind — their gratitude for being spared was being focussed on me, as though their deliverance had been won through some masterly strategy on my part. They seemed to have no thought at all for the wider implications of what had occurred.
Three years earlier Kolcorron had been brought to its knees by a sudden malevolent change in the nature of our age-old foe, the ptertha, and now it appeared that there had been another and greater escalation of the globes’ evil powers. The new form of pterthacosis — for nothing else could have struck down the Chamtethans — which killed a man in seconds instead of hours was a grim portent of dark days ahead of us.
I relayed a message to Kadal, warning him to keep within the forest and to be on the alert for ptertha, then returned to my vigil. The glasses showed some ptertha in groups of two or three drifting on the southerly breeze. We were reasonably safe from them, thanks to the protection of the trees, but I waited for some time and made sure the sky was absolutely clear before giving the order to retrieve our bluehorns and to return to our own lines at maximum speed. DAY 109. It transpires that I was quite wrong about a new and intensified threat from the ptertha.
Leddravohr has arrived at the truth by a characteristically direct method. He had a group of Chamtethan men and women tied to stakes on a patch of open ground, and beside them he placed a group of our own wounded, men who had little hope of recovery. Eventually they were found by drifting ptertha, and the outcome was witnessed through telescopes. The Kolcorronians, in spite of their weakened condition, took two hours to succumb to pterthacosis — but the hapless Chamtethans died almost immediately.
Why does this strange anomaly exist?
One theory I have heard is that the Chamtethans as a race have a certain inherited weakness which renders them highly vulnerable to pterthacosis, but I believe that the real explanation is the much more complicated one advanced by our medical advisors. It depends on there being two distinct varieties of ptertha — the blackish-purple type known of old to Kolcorron, which is highly venomous; and a pink type indigenous to Chamteth, which is harmless or relatively so. (The sighting of a pink globe in this area turns out to have been duplicated many times elsewhere.)
The theory further states that in centuries of warfare against the ptertha, in which millions of the globes have been destroyed, the entire population of Kolcorron has been exposed to microscopic quantities of the toxic dust. This has given us some slight degree of tolerance for the poison, increased our resistance to it, by a mechanism similar to the one which ensures that some diseases can be contracted only once. The Chamtethans, on the other hand, have no resistance whatsoever, and an encounter with a poisonous ptertha is even more catastrophic for them than it is for us.
One experiment which would go a long way towards proving the second theory would be to expose groups of Kolcorronians and Chamtethans to pink ptertha. No doubt Leddravohr will duly arrange for the experiment to be carried out if we enter a region where the pink globes are plentiful.
Dalacott broke off from his reading and glanced at the timepiece strapped to his wrist. It was of the type based on a toughened glass tube, preferred by the military in the absence of a compact and reliable chronometer. The pace beetle inside it was nearing the eighth division of the graduated cane shoot. The time of his final appointment was almost at hand.
He took a further measured sip of his wine and turned to the last entry in the diary. It had been made many days earlier, and after its completion he had abandoned the habit of a lifetime by ceasing to record each day’s activities and thoughts.
In a way that had been a symbolic suicide, preparing him for tonight’s actuality.… DAY 114. The war is over.
The ptertha plague has done our work for us.
In the space of only six days since the purple ptertha made their appearance in Chamteth the plague has raged the length and breadth of the continent, sweeping away its inhabitants in their millions. A swift and casual genocide!
We no longer have to progress on foot, fighting our way yard by yard against a dedicated enemy. Instead, we advance by airship, with our jets on continuous thrust. Travelling in that manner uses up large quantities of power crystals — both in the propulsion tubes and the anti-ptertha cannon — but such considerations are no longer important.
We are the proud possessors of an entire continent of mature brakka and veritable mountains of the green and purple. We share our riches with none. Leddravohr has not rescinded his order to take no prisoners, and the isolated handfuls of bewildered and demoralised Chamtethans we encounter are put to the sword.