Half a Sky: The Coscuin Chronicles Book 2

by R. A. Lafferty

  Dana lay in real fear, unable to wake, unable to sleep in proper fashion; he was delirious and dizzy and full of dread.

  Then it broke apart in a noise like cliffs shattering and whole mountains whooping and falling down. The whole tambo inn shook and sounded, and the enormously loud and crude presence had entered with clattering bloody laughter and minor breaking of glass and tearing of wood. The much louder and grosser reality broke its own ghost to pieces and sent it over the hills to its own place.

  Dana sat up and laughed somewhat sourly, somewhat unpleasantly, yet with a returned gusto. Something unliked but lively had returned. Ifreann was alive; and Dana was not afraid of him alive. He wasn't even afraid of him risen from the dead, now that he thought of it. The very enormity and coarseness of the arrival had put it all back into context.

  Dana had whipped this giant creature once; he had whipped him more than once; he had left him for dead. And he'd leave him for dead again one of these days, and he'd make sure that the thing was triply dead.

  It was Ifreann himself in the inn; and O'Boyle, who seemed to be again in his employ, was with him. The two of them made a boisterous ado of it, demanding to be fed and bedded (it was quite late in the night now); and of course they were cared for in that hospitality house.

  In the middle of the noise of their supper, a lady, the lady who would take Dana to the Condor, had risen and tongue-lashed them severely and told them to shut up. She may have had some effect. Ifreann could always recognize another elemental force, and this lady was such. But he noised it up again after a little while; so Dana called out in high and carrying thunder for him to close his bloody mouth and let them all sleep.

  “It is the Dana!” Ifreann howled. “I will be in in a very little bit and we shall see whose bloody mouth is closed.” And after a short while Ifreann and O'Boyle came into the room where the four unfamilied men slept.

  “Hullo, Dana,” he said mildly, but still with a boom in his voice. “Have you not even a candle to offer the Son of Darkness?”

  Dana raised a candle from the floor (there was still floor light from the wood fire). Damisa the Leopard reached out a flame and lit it. He had not got the flame from the wood fire, but neither Ifreann nor O'Boyle noticed that he had not. Ifreann set the candle on a sideboard there. This big creature would never sleep in the dark. He turned the inadequate Spanish man out of his cot and onto the floor, and lay down in his place.

  Dana rose in anger and turned Ifreann out onto the floor. “Take your own bed again,” he told the frightened man. “He will not bother you.” And to Ifreann he said, “you will leave him in peace. He is a good man, which you would not understand. You two are the late arrivals and you two will sleep on the floor.”

  Ifreann stretched out pleasurably on the floor where he was, but O'Boyle argued.

  “I will have me a bed,” he said. “I will have the bed of one of you.”

  “You will not have mine,” Damisa said. “You have traveled with me and you know me. You will not have that of the Indio. You will not have that of Dana. And Dana will not permit you to have the bed of the other man; neither will I. If the giant could not take it, you cannot.”

  O'Boyle lay down on the floor grumbling. Ah, he'd slept on plenty of harder places than that floor. It was just that he was a man who tested the ambient at every encounter.

  “Dana, I lay for three days in the foot-hills where you had left me, and I lay for six months in a pest-house in Krakow,” Ifreann said conversationally after Dana believed he had drifted off into snorting sleep. “I was out of my wits and in a hellish delirium most of that time, and I projected some of that delirium onto you. I'll not forgive you for any of it, Dana. It is to the death between us forever. The pleasure of your company is a rare thing I admit, and I intend to enjoy it in Hell forever. When I do kill you, and I will kill you, I will be sure that you are out of grace at the time. I'm unable to weigh you at the moment, yet you're easy enough to weigh for any man or devil who is rested and in his wits. If you are not out of it now, I will wait a little. The only sure thing about you is that you fall from this grace often; the only sure thing about me is that I'll slay you when I'm sure that you're fair fallen. It may be that I'll kill thee at the coming dawn.”

  The lady was shaking Dana, and Damisa the Leopard was already on his feet.

  “Come along, boy Dana,” she said. “The dawn is coming quickly now. The big devil is asleep and so were you. Come quickly. It's three days’ travel to the condor's nest.”

  Dana went out with her and Damisa to the common room. Big Ifreann still talked in his sleep, or in his careless state of inattention: “It is I and thou, Dana, and the wonderful blood in the gutters. Did I not promise you a particularly enjoyable springtime in Paris? Did I not promise you excellent shooting in the Eastern Marches in the autumn? And did I not produce both, did I not, Dana?”

  Dana closed the door on the sleeping, talking, devil giant. He breakfasted with the lady and with Damisa the Leopard. She had packs made of their own baggage and of hers. They shouldered these and went out on the three day's road to the condor's nest.

  V

  MY SHIP AND MY BRIDE

  The way of a ship in the sea,

  The way of a man with a maid.

   — Proverbs

  It was mid-morning of the first day before Dana thought to ask the lady her name. By that time they had traveled seven miles or two leguas, two old Spanish leagues.

  “I am Dama Valiente Tirana,” she said. “This is all of my name that we will use.”

  “Had you not a husband at table last night?” Dana asked. “Where is he?”

  “Like myself, he is an early riser,” Valiente said. “He goes on errand down to Guayaquil. I go to the mountains. But we are never really separated, we two.”

  It is possible that the lady was a great beauty. There is no way of telling. A lady is a great beauty when one hears someone say of her ‘She is a great beauty,’ otherwise not. Dana had not heard this of her yet, but he suspected it. She was somewhat older than Dana.

  “Yes, I am older than you, boy Dana,” she said. (It wasn't so much that Dana met seeress after seeress on his travels; it was more that he had a transparent head on him and his thoughts and his unspoken words were easily read through it.) “I have a son near who is already come to man's estate,” she said. “He is within five years of your own age. You will meet him I suppose, if neither of you is chopped down first.”

  “On which mountain does the Condor nest anyhow, Dame Valiente?”

  “You will not need to know the names of the mountains, young Dana.”

  “But I do know their names. I ask the names of mountains just as I ask the names of persons; I'll not be stranger to them. There is Cayambe the volcano of which it is said that it has the only spot on earth where both the latitude and the temperature may be zero. There is Cotopaxi who is even higher, but less elegant; and Pinchincha which is not quite so high but seems more fiery. And there's Chimborazo there which is tallest of all.”

  “Yes, it is on one of them that he nests, Dana.”

  “But on which one, Valiente? Which of the four bulls is it?”

  “There are only three bulls. It isn't Chimborazo which has no fire at all in it. It is the tallest, but it is a buey (steer) mountain, not a toro (bull) mountain. For this reason its high reaches are not grazed by the mountain heifers and cows, and it is for this reason that we leave it out of consideration here. It is one of the other three, Dana, one of the three bull mountains. We play little games up here when we fight and scheme; we call people and places by code names. The name of the mountain is simply The Condor's Nest.”

  It was mid-afternoon of the first day before they had the devil to pay. It was through a bit of foolishness on the part of Dana Coscuin and Damisa the Leopard that they had to pay him now, but he would have collected first payment quite soon in any case. There was a vault between facing cliffs there, and a path went around the northwest-most, and the left-mo
st of them.

  “It is a foot-way around there like a winding stairway, Lady Valiant Tyrant,” Dana said. “You go up that steep stairway, Valiente. Damisa and myself have an inclination to climb up the face of this cliff here. We will meet you above luego.”

  “Englishers do not understand the shadings of luego,” Valiente smiled. “Your wish could mean that we meet next in Heaven. I'd meet you sooner than that and not so far above. If you two must be fools, then be quick fools. Meet me above pronto.”

  Dana started up the face of the cliff, and Damisa followed him. Both were strong men of great stamina in arms and legs and trunk. Both had good and well-educated hands and feet for things of this sort, and both were old ardent partisans of cliff-climbing and spire-climbing. The height of this first section was more than a hundred and fifty feet and less than a hundred and ninety; it led to a sort of revetment with a set-back behind.

  It was a cliff of knobby basalt, very hard, but uneven. It had been extruded by volcano (not really very long ago), then dipped for short thousands of years into the sea to acquire an incrustation of sandstone and limestone and shale, then raised again a mile or two (in even shorter thousands, even hundreds, of years), and weathered off largely to the same hard basalt. It could be climbed by a man with good hands and arms and educated feet, though it leaned inward no more than five degrees. It was a challenge to climb.

  And Dana climbed it, not recklessly at all, but very carefully. He had looked high ahead with his very good eyes and judgement; he had scanned the whole height of it quickly and had set up a more than possible way. The bad spots of it were several, but they were not all that bad. And two of the three of them were below the critical height.

  The critical height was that from which it was sure death to fall.

  And Damisa the Leopard would climb anywhere this young white man would climb. He was taller and leaner than Dana, had a considerably greater span to him, had greater hands and more gripping feet. Damisa had taken off his sandals and hung them about his neck. He went up barefoot, but Dana went shod.

  A spectacular cliff-climber, not the greatest of them but one of the most showy (he is dead now from a fall, and it is hoped that he does not fall forever, he was a vulgar and violent man), had described cliff-climbing somewhat coarsely as a form of sexual assault. It was excessively so for him, and it is so at least slightly to everyone who excels at it. But that isn't the main element for most.

  The main element is simply man-challenge. This endeavor of Dana and Damisa wasn't exceedingly dangerous. Neither of them would court danger for the sake of danger. But it would be strenuous. It was a stimulating test of strength and agility which they knew they could win. It was the matching of strength which was required of them often if they were to remain men with an edge on them. And the rock was very hard. Hard and dependable rock is much better than soft and fissured rock. Its surface and configuration are its true surface and form.

  Dana was quickly past the first and by far the worst of the bad spots. He'd never have tried it if it'd been at any great height. But a fall from it would merely have shaken him, not have injured him really. He was cat-like in his falls.

  “You tricked it, Dana,” Damisa called up to him. “You feinted one way and then went the other. Now it will be alert for me and will not be tricked again.”

  “You'll have no trouble,” Dana called down. “You're a longer man than I am, and you can hump over it direct whether it is alert or not.”

  And so Damisa could and did.

  Dana went past the second of the bad spots with surprising ease. This was just below the critical height. A fall from here would probably cripple him, cat-like though he was, but it would not likely kill him. Dana was a compact man with a certain close-coupled weight. The critical height for him was possibly lower than that for Damisa who was longer and leaner than Dana, and of a spiderish build.

  “Be careful the cliff does not trick you now, Dana,” Damisa called up. “That was too easy. It lulls you. Now it presumes on you and might take you in your carelessness.”

  “I'll never be careless with this fellow,” Dana growled down. “He has just made alliance with old enemies. I feel it in my nape and spine.”

  In truth they had both felt it since they had begun the climb, the gusty and frightening feel of old enemies at their back. But Dana was going upward rapidly, far above the critical height, and he looked as if he would assault the last of the rugged spots without pause. (This last rugged spot was no more than fifty or sixty feet below the safe revetment set-back.)

  “Let us go back down, Dana!” Damisa called sharply and suddenly. “It's as easy down as up for this far of it, and the whole thing goes wrong all at once.”

  There was mountainous laughter from behind them, from the facing cliff across the vault, such laughter as turns the bone-marrow into soup. Only one creature laughs like that. And the echo of that laughter, only a little less mountainous, sounded with its own loud coarseness. At the same time there was the sliding click of shells going into the chambers of two rifles. (It was no more than sixty yards across the vault between the facing cliffs.)

  “There's no going back, Leopard,” Dana grumbled down to him. “Whatever they are, they have their code. If we start back down they'll kill us instantly, do you not know that? It's their way. If we continue up they will make a cruel game of it, but they'll abide by the rules of that game. We can yet win the game they play. It wouldn't be a game to them if we hadn't a chance of winning.”

  Dana was onto the third of the rugged spots of the climb. There was no reason why he could not climb it. He had appraised it correctly from below. He had even appraised that there would be unexpected menace at this point. He hadn't expected that the menace would be Ifreann and O'Boyle mordantly laughing from the cliff behind him and with rifles at ready, or had he?

  Oh, this wasn't bad. The devil and at least one of his minions are always behind us, whatever we are doing in this life. It's a thing we live with. There was foot-hold here, and a little lean-in. There was hand-grip for the left hand, very high, a knob just a little too big for gripping by any but a very wide-spread and strong hand. But with that grip firm, or almost firm, one could swing the right leg up a long reach (four feet) and lurch to a better and higher grip with the right hand. And the worst of it would be below one then.

  Dana wished that the rock knob was a little less smooth, that it should be narrower by an inch, or his hand a little wider in its span. The tricky grip would have to take a good part of his weight on the swing up. But he made the grip, the back of his hand vein-bulged and black with the extension, the thumb standing out as sheer corded muscle.

  Then a curious thing happened as Dana concentrated his sight and attention on his strained left hand. His thumb exploded. He watched this almost without comprehension, the thumb bursting into a mass of red gore with gray rock-powder sprinkled over it. After the sight of it, the pain and the first sound hit Dana at the same time. The first sound, that of the rifle shot, seemed to hit him in the back of the head; and its accompaniment, the booming thunder of devil laughter, hit him full in back and body.

  Dana knew that Ifreann had shot, from sixty yards, exactly where he wanted to shoot, not a quarter of an inch off. Remember that; make a note of it and never forget it — Ifreann the Son of the Devil can shoot.

  It was very perilous here. The thumb is a most tactile and sensitive instrument, well directed and well nerved, very well nerved. When even one joint of it is amputated it will scream out as do few joints of the body.

  Dana could not make the grip with his mangled thumb. He hugged the cliff face, dizzy and sick. Damisa the Leopard came up as close as he could below him (there was no passing way here) and gripped him by the ankle. It was for comfort and steadying, not for real aid which Damisa was unable to give. And both of them were a little unnerved by the sound of the ejecting of a shell and the sliding in of another one in Ifreann's rifle.

  “Can you come down, Dana?” Damisa
asked.

  “I cannot come down.”

  “Then we stay here.”

  It wasn't a good prospect, to hang there till they tired and fell. The erupting laughter of Ifreann and the explosive cackle of O'Boyle behind them helped them not at all. Dana was sick to nausea. He was afraid. There isn't any man anywhere who isn't afraid of killing height, not when the height itself quakes and goes dizzy and wrong. It will throw a man then; it will throw the best man.

  Damisa whimpered, but more in frustration and anger than in fear.

  “I'll have the life of one of you for this,” he called back to the antagonists on the cliff behind him.

  “Which?” Ifreann blasted the word like a mountain splitting.

  “Which?” O'Boyle barked like the fierce mastiff he'd become.

  “He'll have yours, O'Boyle,” Dana called with surprising serenity. “And I'll have Ifreann's. That part was decreed from the beginning.”

  Damisa could have left Dana and climbed back down, but Ifreann and O'Boyle would have shot him off the cliff immediately if he'd attempted it. The rules of their game wouldn't allow a contestant to back out of that game. Damisa wouldn't have gone down in any case.

  “God save us now,” Dana said, “so I was taught to pray when I was young. Our only hope is from above, so also I was taught to say when I was a boy.”

  “Calm and steady, Dana,” came the voice from above. “I make a loop and drop it.”

  “It sounds not quite like I'd imagined the voice of God to sound,” Dana mumbled, but he was calmed and steadied by it. “I know that voice now,” he said conversationally to himself and to Damisa, “and I suppose that it does have a touch of God in it. Angelene once told me that this man, dour and looney as he looks, had a bit of God in him, and Angelene could never lie without laughing.”

  The looped rope came down. Dana slipped his right foot into the loop without falling, hooked his right hand around the line, and was hauled up with some scrambling of his left foot and his blasted left hand. It wouldn't be long now, or else it would be forever.