The travelers had been expected to arrive in R’shael at a certain hour, and when they failed to appear a party of five men had ridden out to look for them. All that the searchers discovered were some fresh footprints in the sand, leading to the bridge. As the detectives scouted around for further evidence, one of them, who had strayed farthest from the gulch, became aware that an uncanny silence was pressing heavily all around and he could no longer hear the voices of his companions. Seized with inexplicable terror, he stared wildly about, calling their names, but they had vanished without a sound, without leaving any trace, and their horses had disappeared also. He saw only the bridge over the gulch, swaying slightly as if someone or something had recently trodden upon it. The man found himself entirely alone, yet he guessed, with a sickening lurch of his guts, that he was not. Jabbering with fright, he began to run, and he did not stop until he had reached the village.
The villagers had placed marked stones across the turnoff to the ravine as a warning to approaching travelers. Since that time, no human being had ventured near that haunted place.
Avoiding the bridge, Jarred and his comrades detoured around the head of the gulch. As the lads rode across a tract of spinifex, a sand fox appeared right in front of the hooves of their steeds. It ran away for a short distance, then turned and watched them from its amber eyes. The boys traveled on, whereupon the creature ran toward them again and darted away as before.
“He is trying to distract us from our path,” said Nasim. “I’ll warrant his lair is nearby. This is the season for cubs. There will be a litter in there.”
When the riders approached a rocky outcrop, a second fox appeared. Her ruff bristled and she bared her teeth menacingly.
“There’s his wife,” said Jarred’s friend Yaadosh. He was two years older than Jarred, deep chested and coarse featured, with massive shoulders.
Someone yelled, “Ho, Jarred, hit it with your slingshot!” but the youth paid him no heed. Three of the lads began to whoop and wave their arms. The two sand foxes crouched, ready to spring, ears flattened to their delicate heads. It was clear they were mortally afraid yet driven by desperation as they glanced rapidly from side to side in an effort to calculate which of their tormentors would attack first. One boy jumped down from the saddle, scooped up a handful of stones, and began to throw them at the vixen. She lunged at him, and he swung rapidly back onto his mount.
“I’ll fix you!” muttered the stone-thrower, pulling a hand catapult out of his saddlebag.
“Leave off!” Jarred shouted. “Let them be!”
Next moment he had ridden swiftly past the stone-throwing youth and cuffed him across the side of the head before galloping away. Indignantly, the thrower clapped his heels to his horse’s flanks and charged off in pursuit. The others followed.
After they arrived at the Hen’s Nest and jumped off their horses’ backs, there was a brief scuffle between Jarred and the stone-thrower; then the matter was quickly forgotten.
“We shall take turns to keep watch for spies,” proclaimed Tsafrir, a thickset fellow. The senior member of the group, older by ten years than Jarred, he had seen almost thirty cycles of the sun. His looks belied his age, and people thought of him as “one of the youths.” “Quoll,” he said, addressing Michaiah, the cousin of Yaadosh, by his nickname, “take the old miser’s spyglass and climb that tussocky ridge. From such a height you will be able to see if anyone is coming this way from the village.”
Reverently Michaiah grasped the spyglass in his hands. It was the only instrument of its kind in R’shael, and it belonged to formidable old Saeed, the headman. Saeed was extremely careful with his valuable treasure and would entrust it only to the care of a chosen few. The village youths were not among those few; therefore, they had covertly “borrowed” the item from its owner, with the intention of returning it before he noticed its absence.
In the western skies, the sun was liquefying in rivers of iridescent pink and gold, the usual splendor of a desert sunset, by the time the boys finished devising and practicing their tactics for winning the football game. Wishing to be home before the creatures of the night emerged from their lairs, the boys flung themselves into their saddles and galloped homeward, their horses’ hooves kicking up puffs of dust from the bare and sun-baked ground.
It was not until they had almost reached the village that Tsafrir shouted, “Halt!” and they reined in, wheeling to form a circle around their unofficial leader. Tsafrir was the eldest and had once traveled beyond the borders of Ashqalêth; this, combined with his native good sense, lent him authority.
“Who has the spyglass?” he demanded.
“Caracal used it last,” cried Gamliel.
“I did not!” shouted Yaadosh. “’Twas Gecko!”
Tsafrir’s brother Nasim, nicknamed “Gecko,” denied the accusation, and a vociferous argument ensued. At length, Tsafrir signaled for silence, calling out, “Hold your noise!”
The youths glared soberly at one another. They were only too aware that the wrath of Saeed, which would most certainly descend on them should any harm come to the precious spyglass, would be fearsome indeed. Dire punishments would be inflicted. Already, dusk was drawing her mourning veils across the desert, and soon the hour would arrive when nocturnal creatures would begin to roam. Of these oddities it was best not to think.
The lads faced a dilemma. Should they return to the village without the spyglass, to endure the ire of Saeed and all the elders, or should they go back to retrieve the instrument and risk the perils of the night?
“It’s clear the spyglass has been left behind,” declared Tsafrir. “We shall draw straws. He who loses the draw shall go back to fetch it.” He dismounted, unsheathed his dagger, and cut off a few strands of spinifex from a tussock that straggled near his feet.
The lads shifted uneasily in their saddles. Terror was rising in their throats. It would be impossible to refuse to go back into the desert, should that lot fall to any one of them. To exhibit cowardice was to be dishonored for a lifetime. As Tsafrir arranged the grass stems in his hand, the youths avoided one another’s gaze, swallowed copiously, and swiped at the sudden beads of sweat that started from their foreheads. No one spoke.
Tsafrir proffered the stalks to the nearest lad, but as he did so, Jarred said, “Tarry! I will go.”
The young man considered himself under an obligation to undertake perilous tasks in place of his friends. After all, he was the only one with immunity. Why should he let his comrades risk their lives on a venture that could do him no harm? What’s more, by facing dangerous situations, he was able, for a short while, to quiet the worm of self-doubt that gnawed at his viscera: it was a fact that he was no coward, but being unassailable, he could never truly prove it.
Without waiting for a response, he wheeled his horse around and galloped away in the direction of the Hen’s Nest. Taken by surprise, his comrades sat staring after him, gaping. The strands of grass dropped from Tsafrir’s fingers. Among the nearby thornbushes, small birds chimed like wind-struck shards of glass. Far away, a sand fox barked.
“In the darkness, he will not be able to find anything,” said Gamliel uneasily.
“The moon will be almost full tonight,” replied Michaiah, “and it will rise early.”
“Should we wait here?” questioned Nasim as the skies darkened and the sunset’s glory began to fade from the west.
Tsafrir shook his head. “If we delay, our families will become anxious. Let us return home and playact as if nought untoward has occurred. Gecko, when we arrive at the village you must tell Jarred’s mother he has accompanied me to my house and will be returning late. This is purely a matter of courtesy,” he subjoined, mindful of masculine dignity. “It’s not as if grown men should be required to explain their whereabouts to their mothers. You must reassure her that he will come home soon.”
Now the lads met one another’s eyes. They read there: He may never come home.
All save for big Yaadosh, who proclaimed loud
ly, “I daresay the Fates have taken Jarred into their protection. For some reason he always escapes harm.”
But no one took much notice of his words as they trailed homeward with many a backward glance.
Away across the dunes and the baked red slabs of rock galloped Jarred. Wings of sand spurted from the hooves of his horse, which kicked aside rolling basketries of dry pigweed. They flew over tussocks of spinifex and stunted bushes. The sheer pale blue of the sky had deepened to sumptuous indigo, buttoned all over with silver stars.
A light was moving along the flank of a dune, beside Jarred, yet nobody accompanied it. The light stopped for a while beside the dune’s highest point, then went on again, moving at unnatural speed. Jarred’s heart pounded as he raced on.
The desert teemed with eldritch manifestations. Thick smoke was arising from a circular sand hill. The fume went straight up like a pillar before spreading out like a mushroom at the top. Momentarily the cloud thinned, revealing two rows of white birds lined up on each side of the mound. They had the shoulders and heads of dogs. A great rattling noise arose; then a voice growled, “Get ye hence!” and the birds flew off.
Grim-faced, the young man held fast to the back of his swift-moving mare. How many of the curious sights and sounds were glamour’s illusion and how many were real, he could not tell. The confusion disoriented him. Nausea roiled in his stomach.
Away in the shadowy distance, a bonfire suddenly flared, leaping some thirty feet into the air. When Jarred looked again, there was nothing to be seen but vertiginous blackness and afterimages reversed against the eye’s memory. Sweat was coursing in rivers down Jarred’s body, and his breath beat in shallow, rapid gasps.
On reaching the Hen’s Nest, Jarred slid from his mare’s back and let the reins dangle: Bathsheva was loyal and would not stray. She trotted nervously to the tiny spring-fed pool, dipped her long nose, and drank hastily, continually swiveling her ears and lifting her head to glance about. Meanwhile, efficiently and deliberately, the youth quartered the slope of the ridge and the barren ground on which he and his comrades had practiced their game. Thrusting aside apprehension, he conjured in his mind’s eye a grid pattern along which to search so that he might leave no patch unexamined.
The night wind turned chilly and whined peevishly through chinks in the crouching rock formations. The cold knifed through the thin fabric of Jarred’s tunic so that he shivered. Strands of his spice-colored hair escaped from the black ribbon at the nape of his neck and blew across his eyes. The horse stamped nervously and shied at the shadows of passing owls. The moon’s rim budded from the horizon like the lip of a lotus petal, and for an instant it seemed to Jarred, as he scanned back and forth, that the ghost of a star flared dimly beneath a thornbush. Moonlight was reflecting from the convex ribbings of a brass tube. Unhesitatingly he swooped to pick it up. After storing it in his saddlebag, he vaulted astride his skittish steed and set off for home.
But the hour was late, dangerously late, and he was well aware of the fact. The retrieval of the spyglass had taken longer than he had expected. If he did not arrive home soon, his mother and aunt would note his unwonted absence and be driven to distraction. His comrades would be worried; conceivably the whole village would be alerted and a search party hastily convened. Worst of all, vindictive Saeed would be apprised of the reason for Jarred’s delay. If the sly removal of the instrument were to be discovered, the lads would find themselves in no end of strife. Jarred was determined to get home before he was missed, before the alarm was raised. He made up his mind on the spot. He must go quickly, and the quickest route was by way of the abandoned road—the track that crossed the haunted bridge.
As he tugged on the reins, his mare swerved to a halt in a spray of sand. The young man shrugged off his tunic, turned it inside out, and pulled it on again. Wearing one’s clothes reversed was a well-known ward against unseelie wights. It would not provide much of a shield against any truly powerful entity, yet Jarred felt a need to employ every form of protection he could muster. Briefly he touched a fingertip to the hard disk resting against his collarbone beneath the fabric of his clothes. Would the talisman be enough? There was not time to ponder.
He turned his horse’s head toward the bridge. The moon, having opened like a lotus blossom on a slim stem of constellations, softly poured its radiance over the treeless landscape. Silver light, sable shadows. Had the moon possessed eyes—as some said was plausible—those eyes might have gazed upon the vast acreage of the desert as if it were a tabletop across which a horse and rider moved like clockwork figurines.
An inky slash in the ground marked the dry gulch. As Jarred approached the bridge, he began to whistle loudly and tunefully, for whistling was another famous ward against eldritch wights. He slowed his mare to a walking pace. She had crossed the bridge before, in safer days, but any motion upon the wide ribbon of wooden slats set the bridge to shaking and swaying. The horse must be allowed to find her own balance, to gauge the timing of her own footfalls. Fiercely hoping that the talisman would protect them both, Jarred urged her gradually forward.
At once, disaster blasted in their faces. As soon as the horse set foot on the bridge, an unearthly laugh issued from underneath the span, and suddenly an ice-cold arm was wrapped around the young man’s middle and he knew that something was riding pillion behind him. In a frenzy of panic, the horse dashed across the bridge. When she reached the other side, she flew across the desert as she had never flown before, until they reached the cultivated fields on the outskirts of the village. Jarred’s efforts to guide the mare into the streets were useless, and without slowing down she sped on past the houses and yards. The youth heard another laugh, this time right behind his ear. Turning for the first time, he saw, at his shoulder, a fleshless skull with eyeless sockets and gleaming teeth. He felt the pressure of the arm tighten around him. Summoning his strength and courage, he dropped his hand to thrust off the arm and discovered it was the ulna of a skeleton.
The bony arm locked about his waist as tightly as a wire noose, and the mare would not slacken her pace. Although he struggled hard, Jarred was unable to break free. He and his grisly passenger rode on past the village and out again into the desert, until at last the mare stumbled and Jarred was thrown violently off.
He lay sprawled on his back in the dust, stunned and gasping for breath, half-blinded by sweat and grime. Presently one of his comrades came riding up and leapt off his horse. “I was watching for you. You went past like the wind,” said Yaadosh. “By the beards of the druids, man! ’Twas as if some nightmare was hunting at your back. Can you get up?”
Jarred nodded and made as if to speak, but he could only utter a croak. Yaadosh hauled him to his feet.
“Are you broken?” the big youth asked.
Jarred shook his head. Another would be scratched, bruised, and bleeding after such a cruel tumble, but, as usual after collisions and other misadventures, he remained unscathed and felt no pain. “Where is Bathsheva?” he said huskily.
“Over there. I’ll fetch her for you.”
Wiping the sweat from his eyes, Jarred stared about, alert to every shadow. Sand eddies whispered. Grasses dipped and nodded in the night wind. After Yaadosh returned leading the mare, Jarred examined her swiftly, expertly, scanning her with hands and eyes.
“Remarkably, she is unhurt, poor thing, but she’s exhausted. I’ll lead her home. Caracal, did you see nothing riding pillion behind me?”
“Not a thing. You were going so fast I saw only a blur.”
“Have you seen anything lurking out here? Anything strange?”
“Only you taking a nap on the ground as if you were out of your wits, with your pate pillowed on a thornbush. Nothing more.”
“That is well.” Jarred checked the saddlebag. Fortunately, the brass cylinder remained safely tucked in. “I brought the spyglass. Has it been missed yet?”
“No.”
“Fortune and victory sit on thy helm, Carac! Then, let us return home with
all speed!”
Both lads vaulted up onto Yaadosh’s horse. As they led the mare home, Yaadosh asked, “Why did you gallop so fast past the village, without stopping?” and Jarred explained what had happened.
“My friend, over the years some of us have suspected you were protected by something powerful,” said Yaadosh after he had heard the tale of the pillion wight. “Never during our boyhood together have we seen you with a scabby knee or a grazed shin. You’ve collected your fair share of dirt, like the rest of us, but never of blood. ’Tis due to that talisman, am I right?”
“You are right,” said Jarred. “Are you saying the others have guessed it too?”
“Of course! How can you keep such a thing secret from your childhood playmates? You have worn it ever since I can remember.”
“They put it on me when I was an infant. I would not wear it, only my father made me promise.”
“Why would you not wear it?”
“’Tis a coward’s way.”
“A man’s honor rests with keeping his word,” said Yaadosh, “especially to his father or mother,” he added, exuding a righteous air. “Besides, do you truly believe any sane man would not take advantage of such a charm if by rights he could?”
“I suppose you are right,” said Jarred, “yet it does not sit well with me to be shielded by gramarye like some weakling who is too feeble to defend himself.”
As the two youths made their way back, Jarred dwelled thoughtfully on Yaadosh’s revelation. Of course, he, Jarred, ought to have expected that his friends would eventually guess his secret. They were a close-knit group, sharing their daily lives, their games and interests. Yet it was clear that even after discovering his secret they accounted him no less a man. Perhaps it was that very bond of fellowship that preserved their esteem. As for jealousy, there had been no sign of it. Jarred’s friends knew he had promised to wear the talisman, a gift from his father, and in the desert village the keeping of promises was held in high regard. To dishonor one’s parents was considered execrable.
The Iron Tree: Book One of The Crowthistle Chronicles Page 2
