The Widow and the King

by John Dickinson

  ‘Go!’ it bellowed.

  She ran.

  She ran, veering uphill to the left, where there was an open space among the things. Something flitted there, hunting for her as though it could not see her well. She dodged, stumbled, and ran on. Behind her she heard Chawlin shouting. She heard the sword strike, and she heard him shout again. The hills rang with his cry, and with the force of thunder. There were no words in it that she knew.

  The slope was open ahead of her. She could see to the skyline. It was blue, with a wisp of white silver cloud. Her legs were trembling. She ran on.

  There were people up there, shapes against the sky. They were looking down the hill towards her.

  ‘Help!’ she cried to them. They could not hear her. A hundred yards down the slope behind her Chawlin roared and struck among his enemies. They had left her to get him. They would kill him!

  ‘Help!’ she called to the men above her.

  They were moving, coming down the slope at a cautious jog on the bad footing. There were swords out among them.

  They were so slow!

  ‘Help him!’ she called to them. ‘Help him!’

  Behind her the cry came again, rimmed with fire. He was still fighting.

  Now the first of the Company had almost reached her. She saw the wild-eyed bannerman, Endor, waving a mace two-handed as he plunged on down the hill. She saw Orcrim, calling Close up! Close up! as they scattered on the slope. Ambrose slithered past, sword in hand, a boy among men. Others were pausing in their career, calling to her – was she hurt?

  ‘Help him!’ she yelled at them.

  Arms caught her.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ It was the woman who had been waiting at the rocks. The old chamberlain Hob stood on the slope a few yards away, looking at her.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘There's blood on your arm.’

  The arm was nothing.

  ‘I – I saw them.’

  She had seen its face. The eyes, that had been like water. And yet deep within them there had been something tortured. Something human.

  ‘It wore a crown,’ she whispered.

  The woman nodded. She was still peering at Sophia's arm. She had a pale, calm face. It was almost beautiful, in that place of all places.

  ‘Have you a knife, Hob?’ the woman asked.

  The man drew one from his belt and held it out. Sophia looked at him. He had a sword, armour. What was he doing here?

  ‘Please – go and help him.’

  Hob looked down the slope.

  ‘They've gone,’ he said.

  There was no sound down there, now.

  The knife tore gently into Sophia's bloody sleeve. The cloth dragged at the torn surface of her arm. She winced with pain. She was feeling sick.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’ said the woman suddenly. Sophia knew she was trying to distract her.

  ‘No,’ she said, and clenched her teeth.

  ‘Four days ago, on Talifer's Knoll. Do you remember?’ She remembered darkness, and a voice that woke her. And then something had followed her. One of them.

  ‘Why did you leave me?’ she asked.

  ‘I did not think that thing would attack you, then. But it might well have attacked me, as soon as the enemy knew I was with you. There. I'm sorry if it hurt.’ The sleeve flopped bloodily onto the ground. The woman was lifting Sophia's arm by the elbow, peering at the mass of blood that bubbled thickly from it in three places.

  ‘Is – is it poisoned?’ Sophia asked.

  ‘I do not know. But we should wash it. And we must stop the bleeding. Hob?’

  Hob had picked up the torn sleeve and was knotting it.

  ‘It's long enough. Wait a moment.’

  They placed the knot in the pit of Sophia's elbow and made her bend her arm to keep it in place. Then they tied it, tightly, just above the elbow. She could feel the knot pressing into her arm, stifling the flow of blood to the wound.

  ‘Keep it as high as you can,’ Hob said.

  ‘We'll get you down to the stream. Tell us if you need to rest.’

  She was shaking as they led her, one on either side of her, down the slope again. Her knees were weak and her arm throbbed, and she felt sick. There was something strange about the way the woman moved beside her. She seemed to disappear, twice or three times, and for a few moments it would be only Hob beside her, holding her good arm to keep her steady. Then the woman would appear again, a few yards down the slope, reaching up to her. Sophia wondered if she was dreaming.

  Below them, the men had gathered in a group. There was no sign of the creatures that had hunted her.

  ‘Oh, Angels,’ whispered the woman beside her.

  There was something on the ground among the men. They were standing around it, looking down at it, talking. It looked like a bit of rotten blanket. As she came down the slope between her two supporters, Orcrim turned away from the group and took a step up towards them. He saw her, and opened his mouth. But he closed it again, as if he did not know what to say.

  The men looked up at her. From their faces, she knew that there was something they had to tell her, but could not. She stepped among them.

  The thing on the ground was Chawlin.

  He was lying, huddled, by a low rock. His face and body were torn, many times, with long, bloody tracks, and a pool of dark blood was growing sticky on the ground under his body. She knelt beside him, and bent her head close to his, closing her eyes to the terrible marks upon it and begging, just begging, to hear the whisper of breath from his lips.

  There was nothing.

  ‘How close is your way to the enemy?’ Orcrim's voice said from somewhere above her.

  ‘We can go from here, or any place that you choose,’ the woman said.

  The voices seemed both distant and too loud. She wanted to shut them out, so that she could hear him breathe.

  ‘Then I would be moving as swiftly as we can.’

  ‘Why now?’ said Ambrose's voice.

  ‘The enemy has struck. Now he must regather his strength, assess the success or failure of his blow, and plan his next attack. Now is the time to move against him.’

  Please, Chawlin, thought Sophia. Please breathe. Please show me you are alive.

  ‘We can't leave him lying like this,’ said Ambrose.

  ‘He was my friend, too.’

  ‘A king should listen to his war-captain,’ said Aun.

  ‘You've had good advice. Take it.’

  ‘We can't dig on this ground anyway,’ said someone else.

  Please, Chawlin! How can you be dead? ‘I'm not a king,’ grumbled Ambrose.

  A hand had fallen upon her shoulder. They wanted her to leave him.

  ‘A cairn, then,’ said Orcrim. ‘You've as much time as it takes us to water the horses, and to cut some poles and levers. Be quick. And no one is to wander off on their own. I want no party less than four strong. We've seen what can happen.’

  They were pulling her away, murmuring in her ear. She let herself be pulled, because she had no strength to stay. She could not see. There was something wrong with her eyes. She put up her arm to wipe them, and found they were stinging with tears. When she had cleared them enough to look back to where he lay, they were already dragging his cloak over his face.

  ‘That's his sword,’ she heard Hob say beside her. ‘Or part of it, broken. He must have backed up to those rocks in the end. Do you think he got any of them?’

  ‘He was hurting them,’ she whispered. ‘I saw it.’

  ‘If he didn't scare them to death,’ Hob said with a forced chuckle. ‘What a shout he raised.’

  ‘It wasn't him,’ she said.

  ‘It was him, but not only him,’ said the woman. ‘I've heard that voice before, or one very like it. It said the last words my husband spoke, when he told Paigan Wulframson how he would end.’

  Hob was silent for a moment, as if the woman had evoked memories that he did not want to recall. Then he said, ‘What's that supposed to mean?’<
br />
  ‘“When the – the fleeing man – turns upon his pursuers, there Michael rides upon his helm.”’

  Sophia knew the text. She knew the words of the Martyr. They read: When the coward knight turns upon his pursuers …

  He isn't a coward, her mind protested.

  Isn't, not wasn't.

  Hob grunted with surprise ‘Didn't do him …’ he began. Then he stopped himself.

  You were going to say, Didn't do him much good, Sophia thought savagely.

  ‘Even Heaven has its price,’ said the woman.

  ‘Do you think we should go on? Orcrim said move in fours, and we barely count as three.’

  They had come to the place where the path dipped into the close cover of the thorns. Less than a half hour ago she had been standing here, alone, and Chawlin had been alive at the streamside.

  We've gone wrong, she thought. We made a mistake. Can't we go back to where we were? Can't we make just a little change, so that he could be alive again? On the hillside above her she could hear the distant clip, clip of stones going into place on the little mound under which they were burying him. Ambrose was up there, stooping now with a stone in his hands. Aun was there, too – the man that Chawlin had said was his old captain. They were sorry, but none of them had loved him.

  And clip, and clip, and clip. She thought of the soulless stones pressing against his face.

  And now the world crumbled, silently. Its floor gave way in a pouring of dust and left her hanging in its void – empty colours, empty flowers, empty sky. Faces that came and went and spoke without meaning. Her eyes blinked, and opened again, and the colours were still there. A bee the colour of soot rattled lightly among the thorn flowers a yard away. And none of it was worth anything any more, because Chawlin would never be again.

  ‘They'll be bringing the horses down in a minute,’ said Hob.

  ‘It would be safer if we could wait.’

  ‘Can you wait?’ the woman asked.

  ‘Can you wait?’ she said again, and the slightest shake of her hand on Sophia's shoulder told Sophia she was speaking to her.

  ‘It's only dirt,’ she mumbled.

  And thirst. And pain. And the grey, empty ache inside her that would go on for ever.

  Unseen in the streambed below, the waters poured by the rock where the white flowers withered meaninglessly in the sun.

  XVI

  Torch and Tackle

  hey were back at the outcrop of rocks where they had halted that morning. Ambrose was sitting on a boulder with his sword on his knees. Sophia was sitting on the rock beside him. Her arm lay in her lap, bound with the black, bloody cloth that was all that remained of the rag-banner.

  ‘Group the pulling-horses and harness them up,’ Orcrim was saying.

  ‘Hob, you will take charge of them, with the women and you, boy, under his command. Those of you whose horses are not in the pulling-teams can stay with them for the march. Don't try to ride, because the going will be bad …’

  ‘Will you need to ride?’ Ambrose whispered to Sophia. She shook her head.

  He did not know what to say to her. He could see that Orcrim was angry with her, for having slipped away unguarded. So were some of the others. And Sophia was not speaking either. Ambrose gave up searching for words of comfort. There were none. All that mattered was whether they would succeed or fail in what they were trying to do.

  He felt that they were close to the end, but the end was not coming as he had thought it would. Chawlin was dead. It was not Chawlin's quick sword that would finish him. He had seen the things that afternoon, spread out on the slope below him. He had felt his heart crumble as he had run down towards them, waving his sword as though it were a child's stick. He could tell the men around him were nervous, too. Their eyes were down. Hands fidgeted with belts and sword-hilts. They had seen what the enemy could do. And yet they must fight them. The white pebbles were lost. The gaps in the ring must be blocked with iron, and with flesh and blood.

  Ambrose was both glad and ashamed that he had been put back with the horses.

  ‘These things,’ said Orcrim. ‘All right, so we've had a look at them now. What happened was that we came at them, and they made off. Remember that. They ran off. And they lost a man they thought was theirs. And if I understand it right, they'll be scared about the way they lost him. Damned scared, get it? They damned well should be, because when I think about it, it damned well scares me.

  ‘So I want no mistakes. When we get there, every man but Hob is to be between the pulling-team and the pit. You can expect them to come at us. Don't give them an inch. Nothing is to get past us, or round us. We can hammer these things. But if the pulling-horses get the frights, and we lose them in that place, we'll never get them back. And if that means a stone stays flat when it should be up, we might as well not have come.’

  His easy air had vanished. He walked among his sullen men, punching one hand into the other as his voice punched their ears and told them what to think. He glared at Ambrose. He glared at anyone who met his eye. Perhaps he was scared, by something. Maybe it was the thought of angels watching him. Maybe he had been gripped now by what had to be done; and knew that he must make them do it.

  ‘Let's have those horses lined up then,’ said Orcrim.

  The Company broke up, talking in low voices to their beasts and to each other. Ambrose made his way over to his mule and took it by the bridle. It did not want to come. Another hand caught it and drew it forward. It was his mother.

  ‘I looked for the cup,’ he murmured. ‘If he had it, they took it before we reached them.’

  She sighed. ‘All the same, you did well to remember.’

  ‘It was Aun that remembered,’ Ambrose confessed.

  ‘The old looter …’

  Four horses had been picked out and were being fitted with the horse-collars that Orcrim had wrung from Aclete. They were grouped in pairs. Each pair was fastened with short chains to a stout baulk of wood that trailed crosswise behind them. Lengths of rope were being gathered around each pole. Hob was at the nearest, testing the fastenings.

  ‘Seventeen mounts between us, and I've just two that know how to pull,’ he was saying to another rider. ‘And too much rope, not enough chain. And I've a crowd of frisky beasts to keep quiet when the fun starts …’

  ‘Happy to change places,’ said the other man.

  That must have counted as impudence among the Fifteen, for Hob cuffed him gently on the side of the helmet.

  ‘You get yourself torn up a bit first. Do you good. Now, what have we got here?’

  He was eyeing Ambrose and his mule.

  ‘It might pull,’ said Ambrose, hanging onto the bridle. He was glad to be under Hob, who seemed the friendliest of Orcrim's company, and the most ready to treat him as if he were really Lord of Tarceny. He would not have liked to be commanded by Caw. And of course Mother would have hated it.

  ‘Done it before?’ said Hob.

  ‘I don't know; but it's quiet enough.’

  ‘There's only four collars. I've two pullers and two that will do what they're told. And Orcrim will skin me if I hold him up longer. But it could carry some of the levers we've cut – or my rig. Come and give me a hand.’

  Hob's ‘rig’ was a collection of fresh, stout poles, bound together with rope, that lay on the ground not far away.

  ‘What is it?’ said Ambrose, looking down at the pile. He knew the men had been busy cutting and binding it for more than an hour after he had returned, hands sore, from Chawlin's cairn.

  ‘Hob's last stand,’ said Hob. ‘Or a bit of under-craft, if you like.’

  ‘Under-craft?’ said Ambrose sharply.

  ‘Cunning. Using what you know. That's all “undercraft” means. I don't know how a master mason would shift a stone like we are going to, but I've seen enough of sieges and the like to know that we're going to have to pull up, not along. That's why this. Take that end …’

  Ambrose lifted. Three poles came heavily up tog
ether in their hands. Ambrose realized that it was a great tripod, which would be the height of a man when erected. There was another one, and more loose pieces, left on the ground. They dragged it over to where Mother was holding the mule. The beast shifted unhappily, as though it guessed what was coming. Hob gave it a doubtful look.

  ‘I don't think it'll be too much trouble,’ said Ambrose.

  ‘Provided it's with the others.’

  Hob shrugged. ‘It's the same with most of them,’ he said. ‘They'll be fine as long as all the others are behaving, and hell if they get the frights all together. But you give a real war-horse a job he doesn't like and he'll let you know about it.’

  Ambrose glanced over at Stefan. The big horse seemed to be calm enough at the moment. Aun was standing by him, waiting. Ambrose saw the breeze stir stray hairs on the back of his head, and on the horse's mane.

  ‘I'll take him when it starts,’ he said.

  ‘He knows me.’ He looked down at the tripod again. Suddenly he realized where he had seen such a thing before. He had been on Stefan's back, hiding under Aun's cloak. It had loomed at him out of the mist, a great, three-legged thing supporting the ferry-rope that stretched across the river to Develin's shore. It had been made exactly like this – three legs, tied together at the top and roped into a wide triangle at the feet. There had been a man kneeling at its base, working to throw it down so that he could not cross to the castle of lights. That had been Hob.

  Hob was also looking across at Aun's back. His hand was rubbing his jaw.

  ‘Come on,’ he said abruptly.

  ‘Let's get the rest of it over. Hurry, now.’ ‘Two more things,’ Orcrim was saying, with his voice pitched to carry along the line. ‘This place we are going into – I've been there. It's not meant for us. If you go wandering off you may or may not get out by yourself. But you'll never get back in. And you may come out more than a day's march from the rest of us. So stay together. I'll pass torches down the line, so we can see where we all are. It's not dark there, but it's not light either. Stay together.

  ‘The last thing is – look out. We'll not be alone in there. I'm not counting on trouble before we reach the pool, but if they look they may see us coming. And Raymonde's ahead of us, too. Look out for him, and don't count him as a friend.’