by Whyte, Jack
The rope was wet and hard, tearing at my hands which felt as though they were on fire before I was halfway down, but the rough hemp was far less harsh on me than was the cliff face beneath my knees and elbows. The descent seemed to take more time than I had thought possible, but I reached the bottom without injury, apart from scrapes and bruises to elbows and knees and one long, shallow cut on my right arm caused by a tiny snag of rock I had not noticed soon enough. Taking care to stay well clear of the frightening hole in the ground, I crossed to Mordechai, who was, as I had thought, deeply unconscious. When I placed my fingers beneath the points of his jaw, however, as Lucanus had taught me, I found his pulse strong and regular. Relieved, I turned to where the rope's end lay, and began to widen the noose. There was not as much rope to spare as I had thought, but there was enough. I grasped Mordechai by the shoulders and attempted to raise him up to where I could slip the noose over his head and secure it around his chest beneath his shoulders, but I must have twisted his shattered leg, because even in his deep sleep he moaned and heaved in protest. I knew then that I would have to splint that leg before doing anything else.
I diverted myself momentarily from the unpleasant task ahead of me by leaning forward and gazing down into the awful hole that gaped beside Mordechai. Fascinated, I picked up a large stone fragment and dropped it straight down, listening for the sound of its fall. I heard nothing, and remained there for long moments, contemplating what that meant before I turned, shuddering, back to my task. I worked quickly then, taking advantage of the fact that my companion was so deeply unconscious. I straightened the leg—a grim procedure marked by creaks and snapping, grinding sounds and much welling blood—by pulling on the ankle against the leverage of my own foot lodged in the side of Mordechai's crotch. He moaned again, three times, though still unconscious, and each time I felt sick. As soon as the leg was straight, I cleaned the worst of the blood from my hands before splinting the rough-set bones and binding everything tightly with the woollen strips I had prepared. Rainwater oozed from them as I tied the knots. That done, I reached again for the noose at the end of the rope, but the movement remained incomplete. As my hand stretched out, the air about me exploded in blinding light and I saw a ball of dazzling, unearthly brilliance flash down the cliff, pass in front of me and vanish upwards, streaking faster than my eyes could follow up the other face. Simultaneously, the walls of rock around me seemed to crack asunder, the sound, a solid, concussive impact, deafening me and throwing me aside so that I fell sprawling over Mordechai and into darkness.
I could not have been senseless for long, perhaps mere moments, for when I opened my eyes again, the daylight seemed as before, but my head was ringing with strange noises and my nostrils were filled with an alien scent. That something momentous had occurred I had no doubt, but I had no idea what it was. I touched my head and found that I had cut myself, in all probability when I had banged my head against the ground or the cliff wall. When I examined my fingers, they were coated with blood, but some of it, I knew, was Mordechai's, so how much was my own I had no way of telling. And then I saw the markings on the wall in front of me, a vertical black streak, a handspan wide, ascending with perfect regularity where the ball of fire had passed. Astonished, I turned my head to look behind me, but there was no similar marking on the other wall, down which the ball had flashed. Unknowing what to think, I turned to Mordechai. He had not moved. His leg lay flat, tightly splinted and bound. I had finished that, I thought, and was about to—
The rope had vanished.
I leapt to my feet and rushed to search for it, peering vainly up at the towering wall above me, and there, hanging down less than the height of a man from the edge above, I saw the noose, twisting slightly as it dangled. I knew what had happened now—my knees gave way and I slumped to the ground. A lightning strike had terrified my horse into running, and as he ran, the rope had travelled with him. He had not gone far, I could see, but far enough to condemn me to death with my injured companion. I felt tears mingle with the rain on my upturned face.
Sometime in the course of the following hour, Germanicus returned to search for me, creeping forward daintily until he could look down, as greatly shamefaced as any horse could be, to where I sat huddled, looking up at him. Had he been smart enough, he might have kicked the rope back down to me, but he was no more than a horse, and soon he wandered off again in search of grazing.
It was growing dark when I heard and identified a tiny, alien sound as the chattering of Mordechai's teeth, and the recognition of it helped me pull my scattered wits together again. The others, I knew, would come seeking me at daybreak, and would have little trouble finding us. The sight of my armour piled at the side of the path would send them this way. I knew, too, that I would survive the night, but Mordechai's survival was another matter altogether, and I knew the achievement of it must become my primary concern. Gritting my teeth against the certain knowledge of his dreadful sickness, I dragged him closer to the cliff face, unfastened the warm blanket from against my ribs—I had forgotten its existence completely until then—and spread it over him. Miraculously, it was still dry, thanks mainly to the waterproofing wax scraped over both its surfaces, and the heat of my body. I then added my cloak on top of that and crept beneath both layers to lie beside him, so that we might share our bodies' warmth. Mordechai remained motionless throughout all of this, breathing deeply and regularly, and I felt some confidence that, if I could keep him warm through the night, he would live until morning.
Some time, long after dark, I fell asleep. When I awoke, hearing the caw of a crow somewhere above, my first conscious thought was that the rain had stopped, and my second was that Mordechai was dead. I could hear only my own breathing. I had no means of knowing when he died. I remember only that when I awoke, he was cold beside me.
Shelagh and Rufio found me as I had thought they would, less than two hours after daybreak. Germanicus was still above me on the hillside, and they threw the rope down to me. I stood with one foot in the noose and held on to the rope with both hands, my blanket and cloak slung over my shoulder, and they pulled me quickly from my prison, simply by making Germanicus walk forward. Before that, however, while Rufio and Shelagh looked on from above, I had tipped Mordechai's body into the abyss by which he had lain, saying a silent prayer as he tumbled over the edge. I did not hear him land, but as I rose up the cliff face I gained some comfort from the thought that it was unlikely, wherever he now lay, that his bones would be gnawed by animals.
When I reached the top of the cliff, Shelagh took one look at me and set Rufio to work gathering fuel higher up the hill. She would not let me ride, but bullied me into walking up the slope until we were among the trees again, where she produced a tinder box and soon had a fire going. As soon as she believed the flames healthy enough to feed themselves, she unloaded the pack roll behind her saddle and brought out dry, clean clothes. Knowing that I, and presumably Mordechai, had spent the night out in the rain, and the entire day, too, she had come prepared to find us dying of exposure.
I stripped naked, shivering too mightily even to think of being modest, let alone concupiscent, and dried myself with my own blanket, and then Shelagh threw another over me, after which she and Rufio took turns pummelling me and chafing me until I grew warm again. I had never thought, even in the midst of the terrible winter that had gone before, that I could be so deeply chilled as I was then. In the meantime, on two stones over the fire she had heated a clay bowl of meat and vegetable stew, made by Liam the day before. It was too hot to hold at first, and as I waited for the chill of the damp grass to cool it, the saliva filled my mouth with agonising pangs of hunger.
While I ate, I told them everything that had transpired, here on this cold hillside, and Rufio groomed my poor horse while I spoke. I noticed Shelagh looking at me strangely and asked her what was wrong. She sniffed and shook her head.
"You're covered in blood, all of it dried. You've a cut on your head, and another on your arm there. You a
re a mess, Commander."
"I know, Shelagh," I said. "But the blood is not all mine. The greater part of it belonged to poor Mordechai. I'll be fine."
"Aye." She looked far from convinced. "Well, do you feel strong enough to travel now? We told Ded we would be back by sunset and here we are, a whole night late and still four to six hours' ride away from Glevum. They'll be waiting for us, ready to go."
"True, they will, but they will wait."
"Aye, and they'll be fretting even now, and will have sent out searchers."
I heaved a great sigh. "You're right, they'll do all of those things, and it would be unfair to prolong their ignorance. But can we take this fire with us? This seems like the first time I've been warm since last summer."
Shelagh shook her head with a fleeting smile. "Not unless you would care to carry it in your helmet. You'll warm up again once we are on the road. Better for you to walk for a while, rather than ride. The exercise will loosen your bones and sinews. Later, when you reach Cambria and find your raiders, you can light a fire to burn the earth."
XXV
Those words of Shelagh's came back to me days later as I sat slouched in my saddle, staring at the prospect ahead of me. To light a fire that would burn the earth here in the high hills of Cambria would require the powers of Vulcan himself. Nothing would burn in this place, for the simple reason that there was nothing to burn. Winter maintained its icy grip and permitted nothing to be seen but rocky cliffs and snow-shrouded, shadowed, treacherous wastes of whiteness. Yet, beside this incontrovertible fact, there was a growing certainty in my mind that I had not the slightest wish to burn anything in Cambria, in spite of all I had said to the contrary in former days.
Dedalus had been sitting quietly beside me as I pondered the sight before me, and now his voice broke into my thoughts, confirming my own opinion of our location but scattering the other, nebulous thoughts I had been mulling over in my head.
"We are too high, here, Cay. They must be below us in another valley, and somehow we have missed them." I nodded, accepting the truth of that in silence as he continued. "Horses could not survive up here in winter. Even had these people been foolish enough to bring the beasts so high into the hills, and even had they done it before the snow fell, they would never be able to keep them alive in such deep drifts."
I turned my head to face him. "I know that, Ded. I came to the same conclusion some time ago. But I have had other, more troubling thoughts upon my mind."
He hawked and spat into the snow. "Aye?" he said eventually. "And you think the higher air up here will clear your head?"
I had to smile at his tone. "Something akin to that," I murmured.
"What's on your mind, then?"
I snatched a deep, slow breath and held it for a time before expelling it through pursed lips, blowing like a horse. "I really can't tell you that here and now, my friend. I've not yet thought the matter through. But I am working on it, and when I have decided what my problem is, and how to phrase it, I'll come to you for your advice." He said nothing, but pouted his own lips and dipped his head eloquently. "In the meantime," I continued, "there's no arguing with you. We are too high. We'll make our way back down into the valley where we left the commissary wagons and camp there tonight. Then we'll head south and west, keeping below the snow line if we can, and see if we can pick up any sign of our quarry in that direction."
"Good. I'll get the men turned around and moving."
I watched him ride away to where the others waited, and thought again how fortunate I was in my friends. Then, as the waiting ranks broke up in the apparent confusion of reversing their tracks without endangering their mounts either in the deep snow or on the precipitous slope that flanked the narrow ridge we had ascended, I returned to contemplating the unease that lay within me, finding it matched by the desolate yet magnificent panorama of snow-filled gorges and soaring peaks around us.
I had found, quite suddenly, that I had no wish to declare or prosecute any form of war on the Pendragon people, and the belated realisation, within the past few days, had caught me unprepared.
In the dying days of the previous autumn, faced with incontrovertible evidence of invasion and treachery on the part of at least one deviant faction of the Pendragon, my sense of outrage over the wanton slaughter of my men had made my resolution to avenge the attack upon Calibri seem straightforward and necessary. That conviction had remained ever present in me throughout the dreadful winter that followed and had governed my plans for the spring. It had burned bright and clear within my breast throughout the approach to Glevum and the engagement with the aliens quartered there. The change had occurred after that, after my night-long imprisonment with the dying Mordechai in the rain-soaked rock fissure and after my farewell to Shelagh.
I had experienced no epiphany; no sudden revulsion over my course. No new idea had sprung, full-bred, into my mind, nor had any chain of tangible events given rise to my change of heart, although several factors had contributed thereto. The transformation of my thoughts had simply occurred, slowly and unheralded, within my deepest feelings. And radical as it was, the thought had merely emerged within me, and grown with utter conviction over a period of days, that I had no wish to carry warfare into the Pendragon lands. Yet I was gravely troubled by this change of heart, because my reason, arguing in the persona of Commander of Camulod, told me that I must, imperatively, issue warning—clarion, stark and deadly, backed with dire example—of the draconian consequences that would attend any future sallies into Camulod from Cambria. I had spoken to no one of my thoughts, and had ridden silent and brooding ever since Glevum, aware that I provided but ill company to my friends.
"Commander Merlyn! Will you remain behind?"
I turned in the saddle and waved in acknowledgment of Ded's shout, kicking Germanicus into motion to follow my men, and as he ambled forward, picking his way with care, I attempted to focus my thoughts upon the amorphous reasons underlying my new frame of mind.
One common element was real enough and would, I somehow knew, eventually come to overpower all others: the child Arthur, my ward, was heir to Cambria, heir to Pendragon. While he was yet too young to be aware of anything, he would not always be so, and he would, I felt, have but scant cause to thank me later if I stirred enmity between his people and ourselves during his childhood. The fact that Pendragon had spilled first blood would bear little weight were the boy to emerge into manhood inheriting a legacy of hatred and fear where once there had been alliance and amity, generations in the making. That element I could accept without difficulty. There remained only the very real need for some form of retribution and example in this present case—a requirement that I feared might prove troublesome if I adhered to the logic plaguing me at present. I had, when all was said and done, led a force of a thousand men all the way from Camulod in the name of retribution.
Yet there were other influences to my thinking, some of them stark in their simplicity, others more obscure. Mordechai's death had affected me greatly, but not until long after I had been pulled up out of the cleft that was his grave. To be sure, I had felt sadness and pain and deep regret on awakening to find him stiff and cold beneath my blanket, but my physical discomfort and the arrival of Shelagh and Rufio and the need thereafter to win free of that stony sepulchre had kept my mind focused upon other things and dulled complete comprehension of the implications of his death.
Shelagh's commonsense advice to me had been wisely given. I had walked up the slope from the fire she had kindled to the path, hobbling in agony from my stiff and aching muscles. Once on the flatness of the path, however, my anguish had begun to abate. Hobbling along behind Rufio and ahead of Shelagh, who led my horse, I had begun to feel my muscles loosening again, but the ascent of the slippery slope beneath the spot where I had found the hanging man, which called for greater effort from a different set of muscles, had been a purgatory, unmitigated by the fact that my companions had to dismount, too, and lead their horses upward with care.
A short time after that we regained the abandoned colony and found Liam Twistback waiting in his wagon for us, by a fire on the top of the little hill, with two rabbits spitted on sticks over the flames. All of us were hungry and the sounds and sight of broiling meat set our saliva flowing. Fresh bread Liam had, too, baked in the ashes of the fire he had kept burning all night long. When we had assuaged the fiercest of our hunger pangs, we told him of my misadventures and his face grew long in the listening.
"Poor people," he murmured, glancing around at the abandoned encampment beneath. "I feel great pity in my heart for all of them. Ill as they fell, through no fault of their own, they were abandoned by the entire world save this man Mordechai . . . How did you say his last name?"
