The Concrete Jungle | Page 5

The translator jabbered at the hetman for a while, and he looked
stricken. Then Nizam beckoned me over. "Easy, old fellow," he said.
"As you say, your excellency."
He rode forward, beckoning me alongside. I felt the need to explain
myself further: "I do not believe one gorgon will do for us. In fact, I do
believe we will do for it!"
"It is not that which concerns me," said the ruler of the small

mountain kingdom. "But go easy on the hetman. The monster was his
wife."
We rode the rest of the way in reflective silence, to the valley where
the monster had built her retreat, the only noises the sighing of wind,
the thudding of hooves, and the jingling of our kits. "There is a cave
halfway up the wall of the valley, here," said the messenger who had
summoned us. "She lives there, coming out at times to drink and forage
for food. The villagers left her meals at first, but in her madness she
slew one of them, and then they stopped."
Such tragic neglect is unknown in England, where the poor victims
of this most hideous ailment are confined in mazed bedlams upon their
diagnosis, blindfolded lest they kill those who nurse them. But what
more can one expect of the half-civilized children of the valley
kingdoms, here on the top of the world?
The execution -- for want of a better word -- proceeded about as
well as such an event can, which is to say that it was harrowing and not
by any means enjoyable in the way that hunting game can be. At the
entrance to the small canyon where the woman had made her lair, we
paused. I detailed Sergeant Singh to ready a squad of rifles; their guns
loaded, they took up positions in the rocks, ready to beat back the
monster should she try to rush us.
Having thus prepared our position, I dismounted and, joining the
Mehtar, steeled myself to enter the valley of death.
I am sure you have read lurid tales of the appalling scenes in which
gorgons are found; charnel houses strewn with calcined bodies, bones
protruding in attitudes of agony from the walls as the madmen and
madwomen who slew them gibber and howl among their victims.
These tales are, I am thankful to say, constructed out of whole cloth by
the fevered imaginations of the degenerate scribblers who write for the
penny dreadfuls. What we found was both less -- and much worse --
than that.
We found a rubble-strewn valley; in one side of it a cave, barely

more than a cleft in the rock face, with a tumbledown awning stretched
across its entrance. An old woman sat under the awning, eyes closed,
humming to herself in an odd singsong. The remains of a fire lay in
front of her, logs burned down to white-caked ashes; she seemed to be
crying, tears trickling down her sunken, wrinkled cheeks.
The Mehtar gestured me to silence, then, in what I only later
recognized as a supremely brave gesture, strode up to the fire. "Good
evening to you, my aunt, and it would please me that you keep your
eyes closed, lest my guards be forced to slay you of an instant," he said.
The woman kept up her low, keening croon -- like a wail of grief
from one who has cried until her throat is raw and will make no more
noise. But her eyes remained obediently shut. The Mehtar crouched
down in front of her.
"Do you know who I am?" he asked gently.
The crooning stopped. "You are the royal one," she said, her voice a
cracked whisper. "They told me you would come."
"Indeed I have," he said, a compassionate tone in his voice. With
one hand he waved me closer. "It is very sad, what you have become."
"It hurts." She wailed quietly, startling the soldiers so that one of
them half-rose to his feet. I signalled him back down urgently as I
approached behind her. "I wanted to see my son one more time . . . "
"It is all right, aunt," he said quietly. "You'll see him soon enough."
He held out a hand to me; I held out the leather bag and he removed the
mirror.