He traced his finger along the line of black pawns and said that it was the footpath along the abyss that must be traveled at night. The renegades would let none pass the white trail near the cliff walls; even with twenty armed men, it would be a bloodletting to pass at night. In the folds of the cliffs, the renegades could see in the dark because they knew the lay of it with their eyes closed. Luther placed the kings and queens between the white and black pawns at the top of the board nearest to where Raif lay on his elbows staring at Luther. He said this is where the great Druids rule, the giant rocks that dotted the pass. He described the Druid kings and queens as mountains unto themselves. He said they were exposed to the bitter north winds and forged of a stone so hard that even the renegades had given up hope of hiding upon them.
He placed the bishops at the bottom of the chessboard and said the southern Druids were low and smooth rocks that held no place to hide but whose shadows hid the path to the black trail. Luther put the rooks in the middle of the chessboard. He said the Druids that dotted the center of the mountain were the bad magic; it was here the renegades built their nests to kill those who violated their sacred ground; the Crossing was holy to them. The only spot where the entire length of the southern approach trail can be seen is from the rooks.
Luther had looked into Raif’s eyes, and said, “You need to go alone, Raphael. More than one will never get past the watch in the hide. Let your brothers sleep.”
With his back to the Druid, Raif stretched his neck to look out over the mountain’s broad chest as it rose to the north. He could see in the moonlight the chessboard Luther had laid out for him that Christmas Eve night before the fire and the image he saw was the same one that Luther had burned into his mind’s eye seven years ago. He saw the sheer cliff face to the west soaring for hundreds of feet, and he knew the abyss was waiting to his right. In the moonlight, the Druids looked as if a giant hand had placed them one at a time on the mountainside, choosing grander ones as the pass ascended to the north. The rocks stood defiant and refused to give awe to the staggering cliffs. It was as if the mountain’s peak served them. Luther had told him of the fights in the early days over this pass, of men taking a few steps away from the camp at night to pee and disappearing without a sound. The tales he had begged Luther to tell him lying on the bear rug in front of the fireplace now haunted him as he trekked to the black trail of pawns that ran the edge of the abyss.
Luther had told him the main party of savages would stay hidden and lay for them in the folds of the cliffs. He said they feared the abyss, so Raif kept moving toward the edge. He went into a crawl because he sensed the abyss, the emptiness reaching out to him because the light changed along its contours to an almost blue, as if the abyss swallowed even the moonlight. He reached the edge and stretched out his arm, feeling it dip into the chasm. The sense of nothing sent an electric current of primordial fear racing through his balls. He moved north up the thin path that skirted between the Druid’s side and the edge. Luther told him that the renegades watching from the hide would eye the main trail running along the cliffs and not the footpath along the abyss.
For the next two hours, he took the gambit on Luther’s words and scrambled up the mountain. He reached the gap between the Druids and looked across the breadth of the mountain to the cliffs. He glimpsed the shadows of a fire a few hundred yards across. The renegade camp would be invisible to anyone moving north or south on the trail, but he could see the shadows of the flames dancing on the palisades from where he stood on the edge of the precipice looking directly across. He crossed on his belly across the gap to the shadow of the rooks and waited.
Raif remembered Luther’s eyes fixing on him and saying, “They’ll switch the watch, it’s the switch; that’s the time to move.” Luther told him, “Don’t move until you see them move first; you’ll never spot one in his hide nor can a man sneak up on a hide even if he knew where it lay.”
Luther told him about the time he had wounded a deer and tracked it deep into a ravine. As he’d followed the blood trail, he’d come across an old oak tree that had been hit by lightning. The bark had been blown off the tree. Luther had looked at the piece of bark on the ground and seen it had a leather strap attached to it. He looked into the hollow of the oak and saw it was lined with furs. He sat inside the hollow of the oak and lifted the bark door, shutting it over the opening. Sitting in the darkness, he’d seen two beads of light; he had leaned his head forward and through the two slits he had a clear view down the trail. The slits had been carved for spying and were invisible from the outside because they ran with the creases of the bark. Luther said you could have walked right past it and never known you were inches from a demon.
Luther had twisted a rook back and forth in front of Raif’s eyes and repeated over and over again, “Wait, wait, wait, with the patience of Job, wait, wait, wait, with the patience of Job, wait, wait, wait . . .” Luther’s words now churned in Raif’s head as he waited in the shadows. The sweat from the climb began to chill on his back, and he did his best to stifle his teeth chattering. His fingers and toes ached from the cold. It inched up his arms and legs and he began to shiver, the shakes rising and ebbing in waves that racked his body. He cursed his teeth for rattling in his mouth, thinking the noise so loud it could be heard a mile away. The more he fought the cold the more he shook. The cold meandered into his mind and clouded his judgment. He took the rifle off his back and hatched a plan to rush the camp. But Luther’s warning echoed in his mind—“wait, wait, wait, with the patience of Job . . .” He lay the rifle on the ground and wrapped himself in his arms, believing the cold was swallowing him. The urge to sleep crept over him, and he told himself he could close his eyes but only for a moment. It was then he felt the rush that only shame brings.
As he lay there holding himself shaking, he knew he was on this mountain because of Edda. He needed the ranch, needed it so that Edda would marry him. Without the ranch, she’d never take him for a husband. What a fool. He had risked the life of his brothers who lay sleeping, thinking he was watching over them, for a girl with curls he’d had noth’n with but a half-dozen snatches of conversation. He had to stifle a laugh at his foolishness and decided to turn around and take his brothers back to the fort when he heard the sound of cold leather stretching.
Raif saw a shadow in the moonlight from the top of one of the rooks. He waited and watched as the figure climbed down the far side of a rook. The figure was enormous and draped in skins, but still he climbed nimbly down the rock. He saw the scout’s breath misting in the moonlight as he angled across the trail toward the camp. He followed him until he saw him kick a lump of thick furs nestled near the fire. The sleeping hump was reluctant to crawl out from the heap of skins and warmth of the fire.
Raif heard a second dull thud to the ass of the next watch as he raced up the path, feeling the emptiness of the abyss to his right and the side of the rook to his left. He could sense the path thinning under his feet as he ascended. The rook’s side was pushing outward and squeezing the path against the emptiness. The trail of the black pawn thinned, and he was forced to put his back and heels to the side of the Druid and move sideways, and realized he’d left the rifle on the ground. It was too late to turn around.
He turned sideways facing the Druid, and moving his feet laterally he inched along the precipice. After another twenty feet, only his toes had purchase on the edge of the trail leaving his heels to hang out over the abyss. He kept moving until the rook’s side jutted out to the very edge. He feared it was a dead-end and began searching with his raised hands to find a grip on the rock’s face. He found a fingertip’s worth of grip on an inch of ledge above him. Taking a deep breath and holding his weight with his fingertips, Raif swung his legs out over the precipice and flailed with his feet for a toehold on the far side. He felt his feet grab on a flat surface. He put his toes on the surface and slid his hands along the ledge above until his hands were even with his feet, and there he clung to the side of the
Druid.
The nothingness reached up for him, forcing the blood to course in great pumps through his heart, the beat thudding in his ears. After another five feet of shimmying with fingers and toes along the rock, he could feel the ledge under his feet widening until it was a long, ascending riser of stone steps. He dropped to his hands and began climbing the steps on all fours until he reached the top of the rook and reached his hand over the jagged edge at the top feeling a drop on the other side. He reached across the gap and placed his hands on both sides. He swung his feet over and dropped into a deep path in the rock, landing on his feet.
He moved through the cut and stopped only for a moment to inspect the markings on the side of the cut, which glowed in the moonlight like snakes. He took off his glove and touched the snakes and felt chiseled grooves like those etched by a stonecutter. After thirty more feet, the cut turned sharply to the right and he sensed the path was leading him to the center of the Druid, to the hide.
He knew the hide had to be somewhere that would allow the scout to spy the main trail. Raif started to question whether he’d missed it and had passed it, when the smell of scat struck his nose. He followed the scent to a hole cut in the rock that was full of shit. He figured they couldn’t bury the scat in the stone so the scouts dropped it into a cut in the stone and reckoned on the wind carrying the scent into the abyss. He passed the scat and ten steps later felt something snag his shoulder. He could see in the moonlight that it was a crude ladder of stick rungs and leather strips. It ran ten feet up the stone wall and he could see skins at the top of the ladder—it was the hide. He had beaten the changing of the watch.
He scaled the ladder and sidled into the fur-lined crow’s nest. A slit cut in the rock formed a window with a vantage point looking straight down to the south. He knew now they had been laying for the brothers. He saw the camp a few hundred yards to the right off the main trail, which glowed in the moonlight, the trail’s crushed stone a shade lighter than the dark rocks of the sheer cliffs. He placed his hand on the stone to turn around and felt again the chisel marks and realized the slit window had been hacked out of the stone. He thought of the biblical Egyptians and he wondered how many thousands of years the renegades had been ambushing along the Crossing.
He thought of Jed and Abner and hoped they were still sleeping and hadn’t tried to follow him. He questioned himself now about not telling them, but Luther had told him it was the job of one man and Jed would have never let him go alone. He looked out at the renegade’s camp again and spotted a short, stout figure draped in skins making its way up the trail toward the rook. Raif watched the scout until the angle of the rock blocked his view, and he guessed rightly that the scout would come along the same chiseled path he had taken but from the opposite side. His pulse quickened, knowing he had a minute to ready himself. He descended to the floor of the path and moved off to hide in the shadows. A moment later he heard the rustle of fur skins as the scout waddled toward him down the path from the far side. The scout was breathing heavily, and Raif thought he might still be sleepy.
Raif waited in the shadows, and despite the cold, the sweat ran into his eyes. He pulled his father’s sword from the scabbard and felt its weight and balance. His hands were still a little numb, but he was warm from the climb and felt he could trust his grip. He waited for the renegade to reach the ladder, but it occurred to him that he didn’t know how to stab a man to death. He had never stabbed anyone and had no idea how he was supposed to keep the scout from yelling out when he stabbed him. Luther had said nothing about how to kill the watch.
He cursed Luther and believed Luther had tricked him and meant for him to die on this mountain, the crazy old coot. The questions rattled in his brain: would the renegade be wearing thick skins? Would the bayonet pierce the thick skins? The doubts rattled around until he heard the rustle of the fur a few feet away. He felt the heft of the handle in his fingers and placed his thumb lengthwise along the top of the blade.
He sank into a crouch and recalled Bibbs’s class and the lines of a play the name of which he couldn’t remember but it was about a soldier: “Keep your good blade bare, and put it home quick; don’t be afraid because I’m at your elbow.”
Only he was alone. He determined to strike like a rattler and drive the blade through the apple of the throat and pin the neck right to the rock. He would use his free forearm to cover the scout’s mouth after he sank the blade.
The shadow elongated across his front and shrank as the scout shuffled closer to the ladder. He could smell a mixture of flowers, bile, and rotting meat. He heard the soft clink of metal strike on wood as the scout reached the ladder. He watched the scout lift the front of his furs near the knees to give his feet liberty to step onto the first rung of the ladder. Raif could see a thick fur hat and couldn’t help thinking that it must be warm. The step caused a grunt of exertion, and Raif crept out of the shadows. The watch turned in time to see only the flashing glint of steel. Raif misjudged the short stature of the savage and struck high, the blade piercing below the nose. It sank swiftly through the flesh but jammed hard into the bones of the face. The force of the strike snapped the head back, slamming it against the rock with a dull thud. The scout collapsed, and Raif threw himself down on top using his left forearm to muffle the gurgling breaths. He cursed himself for missing his target but realized the scout had been knocked senseless by the blow to the head on the wall. He worked the blade back and forth to free it from the bone below the nose. It had been sloppy, but he was pleased at how easily he had been able to overpower the man.
The moonlight revealed the horribly disfigured face covered in bubbles of air and froth spewing in a torrent out of the nose and mouth. Raif hurried to finish him off and determined that the quickest way was to strike the blade deep into the chest. He ripped back the thick furs until he reached a thin cloth shirt. It was when he placed the point of the knife in the center of the chest that he noticed lumps shrouded in the thin undergarment. He pulled the thin undergarment down from the seam at the neck and engorged breasts spilled out of the cloth. He pulled further, and the moonlight revealed the taut arching skin of a belly stretched in late pregnancy. Raif put his palm on the butt of his blade and as her eyes began to open, he sank it to the hilt in the center of her chest. She sighed softly, a kind of long, breezy hush, and went still. Raif drew forth the blade and crossed the high trail headed straight for the camp.
He crawled within forty yards of the fire and watched. In the fold of the cliff there were six mounds of fur spread out in a semicircle around the fire. He knew the six would be sleeping with their weapons. He crept to within ten feet of the first lump and crouched in the shadows beyond the fire’s illumination. From the darkness, he could see the vapors of breath coursing out of the folds of fur in the firelight. He drew his two pistols. He moved to the first lump of furs with Gabriel’s .45 in his right hand. He placed the muzzle inches from the forehead and raised Jed’s revolver in his left hand. He planned to fire in rapid succession, firing with his right, then his left, around the arc of furs killing all six before they could rise.
He squeezed the trigger and the report of Gabriel’s .45 shattered off the cliff face mixing with the sickening sound of hammer to melon. He moved and discharged Jed’s pistol into the next bundle and then Gabriel’s into a rising wild-eyed face covered in war paint. The fourth sprang from his furs and ran naked into the darkness. Raif fired but couldn’t tell if the shot was true. He swung around to fire the next shot when he saw his planned fifth target rise to his feet and try to raise a long-barreled rifle, but the weapon’s front sight post snagged on furs and he couldn’t free it to level it. Raif’s shot hit him in the stomach and he fell to his knees, dropping the rifle and clutching at his belly. The next shot hit him in the center of his throat.
Raif wheeled, but the sixth savage was up and charging him with a club. As if in a slow dream, Raif could see the details of the club, its perfect round iron ball mounted atop a three-foot shaft of knotte
d wood. He fired with his left, but the round spoiled in the chamber and spit out nothing but a harmless blue flame. He wheeled Gabriel’s pistol, but the club’s iron ball hit above his left eye sending a scorching bolt into his skull. The skin on his face was wrenched apart by what felt like the ragged claw of a predator, and an impulse of animal fear raced through him as he was flung violently backward on his back. Gabriel’s pistol spun out of his hand into the darkness beyond the firelight.
The warrior rose up over him and swung the round ball club again, but Raif rolled away, the metal ball making a sickening clang against the stone of the mountain. Raif reached for the bayonet in his waistband. He leaped to his knees and reared back with the bayonet to strike when the savage that had earlier run off naked raced back out of the night and at full speed lowered his shoulder into Raif’s back. The blow knocked the wind out of him and sent him hurtling forward, his hand and bayonet splashing into the fire. He screamed and pulled his hand from the flames as he struggled to his feet, but he tripped over fur bedding and spilled out on the ground gasping for breath, the blood pouring from the wound blinding his left eye.
He saw the savage who had clubbed him rise up slowly on the far side of the fire still holding the iron club in his left hand. As the warrior moved toward him, Raif saw a twisting black animal horn in his right hand and knew it was the tool that had ripped the flesh from his face. The fire illuminated the warrior’s image, and Raif could see the jagged lines of scars from innumerable battles that ran along his features. He had one lazy eye that looked off into the night, but the other was fixed upon Raif. As he tried to rise again, the naked warrior leveled the long buffalo rifle at him, and he stayed kneeling. The one with the horn began chanting, and Raif became absorbed in his music. The chanting calmed him and he regained his breath, feeling the ground moving beneath him and taking away his impulse to run. He grew calm and dreamed it was morning in the ranch house and he was waking up to the smell of his mother’s cooking when the head of the naked savage exploded in a fine mist that sizzled into the fire like bacon grease. The naked warrior stood tall for a full second as if he was unaware half his crown was missing before toppling over like a new cut board stood on its end.
Angels of North County Page 7
