Fall; or, Dodge in Hell

by Stephenson, Neal

  And then Prim came to, and it was obvious that she was just sitting around the campfire with other members of the Quest. Several of those were looking at her strangely and she had the sense she’d lost the thread of the conversation.

  “Time for bed,” she said.

  The next day they walked across the stretch of country where the tornado yesterday had snapped off all those trees. The disaster had raised a question in the mind of Pick, who had been debating it with Mard and Lyne: if tempests like that were a frequent occurrence round here, how could there be any forests left standing? Why wasn’t the whole region nothing more than an Asking-like stretch of bare rock?

  Before their theories and speculations on the matter could advance very far, they got to where they could see answers—or at least hints that would point them to answers—with their own eyes. Trees that had fallen yesterday were already dissolving into the wet earth, and green shoots coming up. If it was in the nature of Spring’s creation for living things to die, and for their dead forms to give up the stuff of which they’d been made for the use of new things that were growing, why then Spring had so ordained it that, here, it all happened faster.

  “I wouldn’t say faster,” Pick eventually said, watching as a slender green vine spiraled up the shaft of his stick like a snake ascending a tree. This sort of thing had been fascinating ten minutes ago and was well on its way to becoming a nuisance.

  “Really? How can you say that’s not fast?” Lyne demanded.

  “It’s as fast as it needs to be,” Pick explained. “If all of the vines were behaving thus all of the time, why, every tree standing would be overwhelmed by them in no time. Once the forest has reestablished itself, it settles down.”

  They were interrupted by a squawk from Corvus. Rare for him, he sounded surprised—even alarmed. He had perched on a broken-off side branch projecting from what was left of a big old tree. This bare snag, and the perch, which was about twice a man’s height off the ground, had probably looked safe from above. But in the few moments that Corvus had been resting there, ivy had grown over his talons and lashed his feet in place. He was flapping his wings to no avail. The green tendrils stretched and tore, but the few that didn’t snap drew thickness from those broken, which thinned and withered like twists of smoke from a snuffed candle. They were well on their way to becoming barked branches by the time Burr climbed to a lower bough from which he was able to reach up carefully with his spear and use its edged head to chop through the sturdiest branches. Corvus then burst free, vegetation still flailing from his feet, and flapped about in an ill temper until the clinging vines had withered and he had shaken them off. Burr climbed down in a decisive way as the ivy had become interested in him.

  This was all quite entertaining after a fashion, while it was in process, but when Burr kicked his way free, bringing the performance to an end, and they all glanced down to see new growth spiraling up their legs, they all had in their minds a common daydream of where it might have gone, had things come out slightly differently: Corvus and Burr both lashed to the tree, smothered and strangled by vines that had hardened into wood, asphyxiated, and now food for nourishment of fresh growth.

  Within a very few moments, they were all simply running.

  The leaden sky afforded no clues as to where the sun might be and so they had no sense of direction, and might have run in circles were it not for Corvus and Mab, who knew the way to go. Just as important, they warned of dead ends and stretches of difficult going where they might have faltered long enough for the plants to make a meal out of them. Fallen branches, scattered everywhere, impeded them enough to make things interesting even where the going was level.

  Before they utterly exhausted themselves, they crested a rise and spied below them a blaze of red-orange: the channel of a small river running across their path. The shape of the land had sheltered this from the whirlwind, so it was still covered with mature deciduous trees that were all the colors of flame. They ran down into it and thereby passed out of the swath carved through the wilderness by yesterday’s storm. They kept running anyway, just to be sure, and sloshed across the river and finally stopped in a small clearing. Every one of them stared fixedly at their feet for some while. Or to be precise at the ground around their feet. They were waiting for thin green vines to erupt. When this did not happen, they needed no discussion to agree it was time to put down their burdens and rest.

  They had lost one of the big packs that they carried on a pole; Mard and Lyne had set it down for a breather and, at the moment when all had decided to run away, found the pole rotted half through and the pack lashed in place by vines. But Fern had been insisting all along that important supplies be distributed evenly among all of the baggage. Thanks to that, the loss was not so damaging to the Quest’s prospects as it might have been.

  They ate a meal, since the day was only half through. A storm moved across higher land a mile away. This made Pick nervous and he insisted they cut their rest short and move on. By the time they had grudgingly repacked and got to their feet, the stream they had easily forded had risen to a torrent that would have swept all but Edda away, had they dared set foot in it.

  They made for higher ground. For a little while it seemed that they were being pursued by the river. They could have made themselves perfectly safe from rising water by scrambling a little distance up one of the low ridges that divided its tributary creeks, but above a certain level they began to notice a lot of lightning-blasted snags that reminded them of the one they had been gawking at shortly before Weaver had been killed. Mard and Lyne—who, free of their big pack, had resumed their old habit of scrambling ahead—made a hasty descent from one such ridge and reported that something strange had happened to them as they approached its top: their hair had stood on end, their fingers had tingled, and—

  “A glowing fringe could be seen around the branches of trees,” Fern said.

  “Yes!” the Bufrect lads said in unison.

  Fern had adopted the mildly stunned expression that came over her when she was dumbfounded by the foolishness of landlubbers. “It is Thingor’s Aura and it is known to mariners,” she announced. “You were wise to descend.”

  Fortunately they did not have to choose between escaping the river’s rise and tangling with Thingor’s Aura. They found a place in between where Pick could squat on his haunches and watch the torrent until he was certain it was beginning to recede. But another day was spent.

  The next morning they moved along the slope of a ridge that was getting in their way until the sky brightened and Corvus descended from it and said he judged it safe to cross over the high ground, provided they stayed well apart and avoided clearings. So they devoted an hour to doing just that. Prim, walking alone as per instructions, took the small risk of going a little higher than she needed to and looking around. Far ahead of them, the ground surged up out of a plateau of dark evergreen forest. It rose like a rampart, and as it did, it shouldered off the cover of the trees and was nothing but brown rock for a while until that was glazed, then frosted, then, above a certain altitude, completely buried in snow. This continued up into the storm’s lower reaches, which obscured its heights. It looked impossible. But map and myth agreed that the Fastness could only be approached along the route that she was surveying now.

  Corvus came flying in from the north. He must have spied Prim on her high perch, for his broad wings narrowed to blades as he banked toward her. “Don’t dillydally,” he said, “this break in the weather won’t last.” He touched down and skipped to a stop on open ground near her.

  “Who’s dillydallying?” she retorted. “I thought you would be scouting the way ahead.”

  This stopped him for a few moments. “It is also wise,” he said finally, “to be mindful of what might be behind. Come on, let’s get moving!” And he took to the air and went careering back and forth along the Quest’s line of advance, flapping and squawking at any stragglers.

  That day neither sky nor forest nor river at
tempted to kill them. But they had now left the bright colors of the deciduous fall behind and entered into that more elevated stretch of evergreen-forested territory. In some places the trees stood well apart, shooting arrow-straight from a fragrant carpet of needles that was soft beneath sore feet.

  They had come to a pass where because of victuals consumed, victuals spoiled by damp, and victuals abandoned while running away, they needed more victuals, and so a day was set aside for hunting and, should the hunt succeed, butchering and dressing of meat. Prim was pressed into service as an archer, and played along despite knowing that if any beast were within range of her skills as a bow-woman, it would be close enough for her to kill it by wishing it were dead.

  It proceeded like any other hunt, with a lot of dull waiting and framing of over-elaborate plans that detonated into chaos at the first contact with reality. A big thing with horns—clearly descended from beasts of burden that had been brought here to tow ore carts and since altered form and personality to live wild—was struck by a shot from Lyne, and in its flight chanced to come near Prim. She drew an arrow and took aim. Then, taking pity on it, she did the thing in her mind that cut off its life. A wolf emerged from the undergrowth, having scented blood and given chase to the wounded beast. Prim thought that one to death straightaway as it was sniffing at the downed prey.

  It seemed worthy of note, and quite likely a sign of larger trouble, that even a single wolf had turned up right in the middle of what had been drawn up, with sticks in dirt, as an orderly perimeter of alert hunters. Prim tried calling out the others’ names: Mard, Lyne, Burr. Another wolf came in from the same general direction as the first. She made it die. She could do that all day; she was Death afoot; nothing alive could hurt her unless she suffered it to.

  Camp she could find, and people might need help there, and so that was where she went, breaking into a run as she became certain she was on the right track.

  She was relieved to find that all was well here. Edda was pacing round the campfire in a wide circle. Querc was stoking it to make it blaze up. Pick was limbering up his stick technique to one side and on the other Fern was standing with dagger and cutlass drawn, the dagger in a reversed grip, blade tucked along the bone of the forearm, ready to raise up and stab down. She had not joined the party; to her, hunting was an uncouth procedure carried out in pointless wastelands by half-savage souls whose purpose in the grand scheme of things was to offer meat for sale in waterside markets.

  Burr came into view, backing toward camp one carefully measured pace at a time, wielding his spear with both arms, butt high above his head and blade low, whipping round in great brush-cutting arcs but sometimes vaulting across the top to strike downward. He approached a tree, and Prim gasped in a breath to warn him that it was going to block his spear. The warning would have come too late. And it would have been unnecessary, as it turned out. His hands went on turning and the blade of the spear kept moving in its gyre and the column of smoke that was the spear’s shaft passed through the tree trunk, or perhaps it was the other way round. Neither spear nor tree, at any rate, seemed to take any note of the other’s existence. But when the spearhead intercepted the face of a wolf on Burr’s other side, the results were very material. It had to be a trick of her vision, Prim thought; but a moment later it happened again. “Where are the lads?” asked Fern, who was striding past Prim toward where Burr was embroiled.

  Prim thought she glimpsed a giant raven wheeling above the crowns of the trees. “Watch my back!” she called to Pick, who shouted back “Good idea!” and took after her in a wading and flailing gait.

  Mard and Lyne were not as far off as she had feared. Mard was dragging one leg and wielding the sword of Elshield with one hand. Lyne had a short hunting lance that he used in more of a thrust-and-stab style. They were a bit downslope of Prim. She descended to a clear vantage point, drew an arrow, and shot. She missed, but not by much. Lyne saw the arrow’s fletching and glanced up at her. “This way!” Prim called. Noting another wolf off to one flank, she caused it to stop living, then drew another arrow and managed to shoot one that had chosen to crouch, cringe, and snarl in a location where she could get off a clear shot.

  The sub-pack that had taken after Mard and Lyne was dwindling in numbers and faltering in resolve. Lyne stabbed another, which ran off yelping horribly. Two others turned tail and followed it. Pick came up behind Prim and reported all clear. She dropped her bow, ran down the little slope, and helped Lyne drag Mard up, both his good and his hurt leg simply trailing behind him on the ground. But he seemed to be bleeding much more heavily from his left arm.

  In a short while, all the party had gathered round the fire, which Querc had made so enormous they could hardly come near it. The woods all round were ringing with the cries of wolves. Prim did not speak their language but she guessed its import: “Invaders have come!”

  “It would seem more efficient,” Lyne pointed out, “if we could somehow get Spring’s various creations to understand that we are on Spring’s side and trying to bring about changes that Spring herself would probably approve of.”

  Edda was somewhat preoccupied sewing Mard’s arm up. But she was often at her most conversational while busy with needle and thread.

  “Is it going to make her angry,” Prim asked, “perhaps to the point of going mad again, that we are going to have to fight and hack our way through?”

  “Spring isn’t troubled by death,” said Edda. “On the contrary.”

  “Where is she?” Querc inquired. “Did she ever take settled form again? Is she roaming around somewhere?”

  “Probably the Eye of the Storm,” said Edda. “A place in these parts where she went with Eve, when Eve found her, and turned her away from the path of madness.”

  Prim had avoided this until now, but finally forced herself to go and look at Mard’s arm. She had to know how bad it was. She expected wolf bites. Which indeed she saw; but the big wound that Edda was sewing up had been inflicted by a blade.

  “It is a self-inflicted wound,” Mard admitted. “I pivoted round, thinking to help Lyne, and judged poorly the timing of it, and my arm came into the way of my sword already descending.”

  At this news Prim was silent.

  “You know not what to say,” Edda observed. “For such mishaps—though they happen all the time—are never recorded in legends and songs. The hero who falls because of a cramp in his hamstring is not sung of.”

  More might have been said in that vein had Corvus not flown in and let them know that it would now be necessary to abandon nearly everything they had been carrying and run away.

  They had been aware for some time that the howling of the wolves had been noted by other, larger, more solitary beasts; but they were not afraid of those. Several members of the expedition appeared to know that Prim could kill anything. Even if she elected for some reason to withhold that power, it was difficult to imagine anything standing up to Burr. So Prim was inclined for a moment to suppose it was only Corvus’s sense of humor at work. But only for a moment. His startling pronouncement had caused everyone to go still. And in that stillness they sensed the approach of something that seemed to come on like rain, in that it affected the whole of the forest instead of being in any one place. Supposing it was even alive, it must have been too numerous and spread out for even Death to be of much use against it.

  “Mard can’t exactly run,” Lyne objected. For his kinsman had suffered bites to his legs as well as the cut to his arm. But Edda was already knotting a bandage over her unfinished seam. She slung Mard over her back as if he weighed approximately as much as a chicken, and in a few long strides vanished into the forest southbound.

  The threat consisted of insects. From any distance greater than a stone’s throw—not that stones would have been any use—they simply looked like smoke. As Prim saw when they were overtaken by a lobe of that “smoke,” they could take to the air in an ungainly combination of leaping and fluttering, and the wind was their friend. As she learned
when one landed on her arm, they could bite off freckle-sized scoops of flesh.

  Corvus had insisted that they carry nothing but weapons (useless now, important later?) and firebrands, and that they run upwind. They did not have to run for more than an hour before they encountered a rising slope where going was difficult because of undergrowth and low branches. There the insects caught up with them and did damage and made going very disagreeable indeed with their propensity for attacking eyes, ears, noses, and mouths. But before panic consumed them they got deep enough in that Corvus deemed it time to set fires. Those spread downwind with great speed. But upwind the flames advanced slowly enough that outrunning them was possible. That was the good news. The bad news was that they had to run more. This time, at least, they were not inhaling bugs. At length they passed into more open territory that had evidently been burned in the past, so that the flames could not follow in their wake. There they stopped and were rained on all through the night as the storm, having apparently replenished its energies, returned at full strength.

  “Fuck this,” Corvus shouted, when it became light enough to see. “Enough of orderly and well-planned Questing. There’s nothing for it now but to make a run for the cave.”

  “Which cave would that be?” Lyne asked.

  “The one we’re heading for,” Corvus said vaguely. Which would have led to further questions had they not just spent the whole night exposed to the storm.

  They had crawled under a fallen tree whose branches were stiff-arming it just high enough above the ground that they could wriggle under it. This sheltered them from direct laceration by rain and hail but did nothing to keep them dry. If any one thing had saved them it had been the giantess, who made more warmth than all the others put together. Curled up next to Edda during the long hours of the night, Prim had gone into another of those strange dreams in which it seemed to her that Edda was as tall as a tree, and Prim a thing like a squirrel, nestled in the crook of a bough, wet but warm.