They rose as one as Ali drew near. The largest animal raised its head and bared its canines; the fur on its back rose, and it growled, a deep, feral sound that vibrated through my bones. I snatched up my sword and dashed after her.
Then, an amazing thing happened: the wolves tore off into the forest, scattering and yelping as if the ferocity of my charge had panicked them. I knew better than to credit this, and stopped next to Ali, letting the tip of my sword fall onto an old paving stone, perplexed. She grabbed the wrist of my free hand and raised it; I uncurled my fingers to reveal the strange egg she’d tossed to me.
“It makes a sound they don’t like,” Ali said. “One we can’t hear. Now put it in your pocket and stay close to me.”
I did as she asked, then stumbled after her into the forest. For the next two hours I checked all sides; but I seldom saw the wolves, save when one would trot across the trail ahead or behind. However, I heard the crunch of leaves and the snap of twigs on both sides of the road as the pack paced us. Still, they kept their distance, as Ali had said they would, never coming closer than twenty metres, which seemed to be the range of that strange egg.
My obsession with the wolves was distracting, and it wasn’t until an hour or so later that I realized my upper body was covered with hundreds of mosquito bites. When Ali noticed me scratching, we stopped and she began unbuttoning her shirt; I turned and pretended to scan the forest for the wolves.
“Here,” she said, tossing me the vest-like garment she’d been wearing to conceal her breasts.
Though it didn’t protect my shoulders and arms, it was better than nothing. I laced it up, only it was small on me, and impossible to close the gap at the front. When I’d finished, Ali said, “Let’s go.”
I shook my head.
She stared at me, frowning.
“How did you know about this?” I pulled the egg from my pocket. “Who told you how to get it out of the post?”
“An Angel,” she said wearily, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world. “As I told you.”
Yesterday, I thought her answer absurd; now, I wasn’t so sure. I asked her about the second thing that had been bothering me: why she hadn’t used the same process to liberate an egg for herself.
“If we had two,” she said, “you might wander off, thinking yourself safe. This way we have to stick together.”
In my desperation to make some small amends, I had promised myself I would protect Ali to the best of my abilities. She had recognized this, and knew I would do my best to keep the egg close to her. She was using my guilt—so that she might be nearby to protect me. I had known this on some level, but couldn’t admit it to myself: everything she had done since Ignatius’s death had been to prepare herself to be my bodyguard. I felt foolish. And not a little unmanned. Worse, though, I felt a profound sadness that the one small thing I had tried to do to atone for my sins had meant nothing to her.
It took us not a week, but ten days to make the journey. The reasons were varied.
Perhaps the biggest delays occurred because we’d lost half our food with my backpack, so we had to ration what Ali had, and it quickly became apparent that to have enough energy to march a reasonable distance each day, we’d have to find alternatives. Ali knew something about setting snares, and we managed to catch a squirrel and two chipmunks—but that required an entire day. So we fashioned spears from fallen branches and tried our luck at fishing. It took us another full day, through trial and error, to learn both the concentration and patience required to catch our first fish. But after that it became much easier, and an hour’s work each day yielded at least one trout, smallmouth bass, or darado, all of which were plentiful in the rivers we crossed.
As I had feared, none of the bridges on the Old Road were extant; indeed, at least two had been torn down purposefully, for we found stones stacked on the shore instead of having fallen into the river as they would have had the bridge collapsed on its own. The scattered stones were worn by many years of rain, and whether natural decay or human intent had brought the bridges down, their destruction had taken place a long time ago. The lack of bridges meant fording the rivers, and four times we had to leave the road and push a significant distance through chaparral before finding a shallows to cross.
Through all of this, the wolf pack tracked us, night and day. I began to distinguish between them, noticing a torn ear on one, the bent tail of another. My memory served me well, and by the fifth day I’d counted twenty distinct individuals in the pack, though I never saw more than half a dozen together at a time, and this only when we emerged from the gloom of the trees into a rare, but welcome, glade. I suppose while the few tracked us, the rest were out hunting smaller prey. Twice I saw unfamiliar wolves who tried to join the hunt, but these interlopers were set upon violently by the pack, and the one that didn’t escape was quickly torn to pieces. Even so, I became accustomed to their presence—at least as much as one can—and after a few days I picked a favourite: the runt, with a pronounced limp, who seemed to eke out an existence on the margins of the pack. When the opportunity presented itself, I tossed him my scraps, and I fancied his tail drooped a tiny bit less at those times. There was one thing, though, that I would never become used to: at night their eerie howling crawled up and down my spine, and deprived me—and Ali, who stirred restlessly beside me—of much-needed sleep.
Shortly after breaking camp on our tenth morning, we crossed the penultimate river on the map, a dried creek bed with a dirty trickle at its centre. As we crossed the thread of water and climbed back onto the Old Road, a gleam of white caught my eye. “Wait,” I said to Ali, but she followed me to the road’s margin anyway. The white was that of bone, and before us were the remains of a man; save for a forearm, the skeleton was whole, although some of the thinner bones had been snapped and most were scored with the teeth marks of large carnivores. All the internal organs and muscles were gone, but here and there ropy threads of dried sinew clung stubbornly to bone. The poor soul’s ankles were shackled and joined by a short, rusting chain.
I reached into my pocket and touched the egg, to convince myself I still had it.
“Let’s go,” Ali said, starting down the road again. After half a dozen steps, she paused, waiting on me.
Ignoring her, I began searching the ground for the man’s missing arm. But it wasn’t anywhere to be found. So I walked back to the river bank and carried back a sizable stone. Ali watched me drag back half a dozen more before she pitched in. It took us the better part of an hour before we had enough to make a decent mound. I placed a small makeshift cross at its head. Father Paul had once told us that God does not hear the prayers of those in a state of mortal sin: He that turneth away his ears from hearing the law, his prayer shall be an abomination. I hoped God might hear mine on his behalf.
We resumed our trek.
By my estimation we were a few kilometres from our goal. For most of the journey we’d been mantled by overarching branches, unable to survey our surroundings, so when we crested the next rise, I suggested I climb the tallest tree adjacent to the roadside and survey the valley ahead. Ali shrugged agreement. So I handed her the egg, and clambered up. I managed to pull myself to a spot where the foliage thinned, and inched my way out onto a branch. When I’d secured my perch, I turned to survey the road before us—
—and almost lost my grip.
In the centre of a broad valley before us, amidst the ruins of a devastated city, stood a tower of colossal proportions. It rose to span the gap between this, the highest of all human Spheres, and the realm of Angels. The size of it took my breath away; and its audacity made me cringe—and fear for the souls of all men. I knew that its construction could serve only one purpose: to provide a bridge across which the Church might launch its attack against Lower Heaven.
The City and Tower
“How far?” Ali asked before my feet even hit the ground.
I was surprised at her question, for I’d expected her to ask about what I’d seen, an
d not how far away it might be. “Five kilometres, perhaps. But we can’t—”
“Five to the tower?”
She knew. As she’d known about the strange posts that fenced in the beasts. If I was to accept that Angels spoke to her, why wouldn’t they tell her about the tower, too? However, as much as the Angels might have vouchsafed to reveal to her, they hadn’t told her everything, for after I nodded affirmation to her question, she asked me to describe what I’d seen. I did so, trying to do credit to the immensity of the structure and its odd conical shape. From base to summit the tower was constructed of diminishing levels of supporting arches, all opening onto interior darkness, giving the impression the tower was hollow inside. Its massive base was ten times larger than the largest building in the city, and an inclined road spiralled up its exterior, like the thread on a fat screw. Specks that were men crawled along that helical road in both directions; more clung to scaffolding that girdled the summit.
It was, I told her, a monument to man’s arrogance and an affront to God.
She asked about what lay between us and the tower.
“A city,” I said. “It looks to be uninhabited. Some of the buildings are no more than rubble, and others have only the remnants of broken walls. Many roofs are fallen in, and where they haven’t vegetation has overrun them.”
“If the city is uninhabited, there must be a camp.”
I nodded. “There is a cantonment, with rows of canvas tents. I counted smoke from twenty-three cook fires. It’s impossible to see the design from this distance, but the flags sport the colours of the Holy See.”
“Where does the camp lie?”
“Between us and the city.”
“And the river?”
The map had shown one last river. Yet I hadn’t seen a cut in the trees to betray its presence. Then I realized there would be no gap; where there were trees, the river ran parallel to the Novus Via, then swung towards us as the trees fell back, demarcating the change from forest to the fields circling the city. “Three kilometres from the tower, two from us.” On the other side of the river there were the remnants of a raised aqueduct that once fed the city, and the faint traces of the Old Road to the outskirts of the city. “The road gives unto a cultivated field just outside the encampment.”
She chewed on her bottom lip, the way she always did when considering things.
“There are troops everywhere,” I said, “and men labouring in the field.” She didn’t seem to hear me. “There is no sign of sanctuary.”
She frowned impatiently at me, as if I’d missed the obvious. “Sanctuary, Thomas, is above.”
It took me a moment to grasp her meaning, and when I did I shook my head in disbelief. Ali wanted to secure asylum in Lower Heaven, amongst the Angels. Men never rose to this Sphere—save after death, when the souls of the worthy ascended. Worse, I knew how she intended to get there. “You mean to climb the tower.”
“After sun-off.”
“And when we get to the top, what then? Will there be Angels to welcome us with open arms?”
“I . . . I do not know. I only know that if we are to be safe, that is where we must go.”
It was folly. “We can’t—” My voice faltered. “I cannot.” I was not thinking of the impossibility of making the tower, let alone achieving the summit, or even of the unforgivable blasphemy of entering Lower Heaven uncalled should the opportunity present itself; rather, I thought of my sins. And even though I believed I served the Angels, if I were to be judged now, the outcome wouldn’t be in question. “Lower Heaven,” I whispered in self-abasement, “has no place for me.”
“There is a place for everyone, Thomas,” Ali said, wearily massaging her temples, as if this conversation had made her head ache. “Even me.”
In my concern for my own soul, I’d forgotten the blood on her hands, and that she had as much to fear as I.
She shouldered her pack and set off down the road; to either side, the underbrush rustled as the wolves followed. She knew my guilt would compel me to follow, and in this she was right. But what she didn’t know was that I’d have followed her regardless. Though I could not have told her, and though she would not understood it if I did, I loved her and would have followed her anywhere.
Clutching the egg, I hurried after her, afraid of what she’d have us do, and fearful this would be another black mark upon our souls. Yet, even as I thought this, I felt strangely heartened. If we were to be judged, we would be judged together—and whether for Heaven or Hell, only God would say.
The Unrepentant
We hid in a thicket at the forest’s edge, the row of steles that warded off the wolves a few metres in front of us. Across the river were the tilled fields, and half a kilometre farther the camp began. In the fields, dozens of men methodically dug tubers from the dirt and dropped them into sacks they dragged along furrows. All wore ragged clothes and were unkempt, and when they moved, they shuffled slowly, hobbled by shackles with short chains. It took me a moment to locate the single Garde who, from the shadows of a distant, jury-rigged canvas, had been charged with overseeing the prisoners. He lay on the ground and looked to be asleep. With the chains, and the wolves blocking the only way of escape, I suppose there was little to watch. To our left, the last bridge stood intact; this was an unexpected blessing, for the river was deep and swift in either direction as far as I could see. However, the railing was low, and in crossing there would be no way to conceal ourselves from the men working the fields, or, indeed, from anyone on the periphery of the camp who chose to look in our direction. So we retreated into the forest to wait for sun-off.
Our plan was, of necessity, simple: cross the bridge and make for the city. The fields surrounding the camp offered little concealment; however, there was a series of ditches that skirted field and camp, running to a cluster of crumbling buildings on the margins of the city. We had no idea what was in those ditches, but no one had entered or left them in the time we’d been watching, nor had anyone been working on them, and if they were as deep as they appeared, they would provide ample cover. We’d be exposed as we dashed from one to the next, but we saw no alternative.
We waited, Ali sharpening her blade in that same slow, meticulous way Kite had. From time to time she’d test it on a leaf; once, she drew it delicately across the back of her own arm, drawing a thin line of blood, then looked at me, as if I was somehow to blame.
Long after the men retired from the fields, and the cooking fires were reduced to embers, we made ready to chance the bridge. We fixed a last, cold meal and packed away our gear. Ali tied a rope to her pack, then threw the other end over a stout branch several metres above the ground; hauling on the rope, she hoisted her pack off the ground high enough so the food would be out of reach of the wolves, or any other large animals, then tied the loose end around a second, smaller tree. We wouldn’t need the gear or food for the trip to the tower—but, it would be invaluable should we be forced to return. We kept our swords, which we strapped to our backs.
Around midnight we crept up to the bridge. It was difficult to see anything; all lay in shadow. When, after fifteen minutes, we had detected no movement in the camp, we scuttled across the bridge, throwing ourselves behind a mound of earth to the left of the roadway. For a moment we both held our breaths, listening to see if an alarm would be raised. When none was, Ali touched me lightly on the shoulder—at which, I admit, my foolish heart seemed to flop in my chest—then lifted herself from the ground and began edging to our right, toward the lip of the first ditch.
“Be caught for sure.”
Ali spun around, pulling her sword from its sheath. I reacted, too, albeit more slowly, rolling onto my back, and peering into the shadows at the footing of the bridge.
“There’s other ways. Better ways.” The voice was sonorous, and the words spoken slowly, as if the speaker gave careful consideration to each one.
“Show yourself!” Ali hissed, scrambling back to my side.
Silence. Then the rattle of c
hain as a tall, cadaverous figure shambled from the shadows. His skin was drawn tightly over his face, his cheeks fleshless and collapsed, the contours of his skull pronounced. Even his lips looked shrivelled, drawn back in a permanent grimace over a mouthful of broken and discoloured teeth. “Expect you’re wanting the city.”
“What we want is no business of yours,” Ali said.
“True,” he conceded, then fell silent, staring at us as if we had accosted him.
“You wish something,” I said.
“No,” he answered, lowering his eyes. “Not really.”
“You saw us earlier today, then hid under the bridge, knowing we were waiting for sun-off to cross.”
He contemplated the ground in silence.
“Answer!” Ali said, raising her sword. The emaciated man tried to dance back a step, but his foot caught on a rock, and he sprawled to the muddy ground, scuttling backwards to the edge of the river, eyes wide with fear.
I like to think Ali only wanted to frighten that miserable wretch and had no intention of slaying him, but I’d learned that I was not always the best judge of her intentions. Unwilling to let her add another sin to her burden, I stepped between them. “We won’t harm you,” I said, and then turned to Ali. “Will we?”
She didn’t answer, but after a moment, let her sword down.
“There,” I said, “you see?” I moved towards the man, and he cringed, raising his hands as if to fend off a blow, though he didn’t try to move away. I helped him up, feeling bone beneath the loose folds of skin on his arms. Though he was nearly a metre taller, he couldn’t have weighed much more than me. “I am Thomas,” I said when he’d regained his feet, “and this is Ali.”
The man blinked, looking at both of us, as if taking us in for the first time. Then he seemed to come to himself again. “Samuel,” he said. “Sam to them who know me.”
“You wish to show us a safe way into the city, Samuel?”
The Book of Thomas - Volume One: Heaven Page 20
