by Susan Price
With one eye closed, Per lined up the point of his arrow with the chest of the soldier who was facing him. He moved the arrow’s point higher, unthinkingly allowing for the fall of the ground, the distance and the breeze. His body, not his mind, told him he had the aim correct.
He drew up, pulling with his back, and pushing the bow stave forward with his other arm. He kept his head still, and drew and drew back until his fingers on the bowstring touched the corner of his mouth. His arms, his hands, his wrists, his fingers, his shoulders, were all braced against the power of the bow. He adjusted his aim again, allowing for the strain of drawing the bow having shifted it off. Then he straightened his string fingers, loosing the arrow.
The bowstring twanged, loud to his ear, but he knew the Elves wouldn’t hear it. His hand, drawing back, stroked across his cheek. He didn’t change his stance or lower his arms.
For an eye’s blink he glimpsed the arrow against the gray sky as it sped away, but then it vanished. An eye’s blink later, he knew he’d missed. He caught the merest flash of the arrow as it struck the sloping ground short of the Elves and skidded, flat, into the grass. One of the Elves glanced up and around, but then put his hand to his mouth again and looked at his friends.
A bow is no weight to carry. An archer doesn’t stand and wait for his position to be found. Per took up his quiver and moved, slowly at first, but more quickly when he was deeper among the trees. The hounds loped after him.
Per’s ear caught the soft sound of a bow released. One of his cousins had shot, but he heard no other sound, so whoever it had been had probably missed. Good. He was glad they’d been no more successful than him. With Cuddy and Swart on his heels, Per looked for another place to stand.
There was a sound near them, a soft tok! Millington looked around. He thought he’d seen something, a shadow crossing his vision. There was nothing to be seen but short grass when he looked at the spot.
“Hear anything?”
Bates looked at him and then around at the hills, shaking his head.
“Sort of a—I dunno—sort of a little thump.”
“A wild haggis running past,” Saunders said.
Tok!
Millington turned quickly toward the soft sound, but, again, there was nothing to be seen. “Sounds like—like somebody’s throwing little stones at us. Hear it?”
Bates, scanning the surrounding countryside, suddenly fixed his stare on the little patch of woodland above them. He thought he’d seen something move. The rifle in his arms lifted as his grip on it tightened. Then he relaxed.
“There’s animals, wild animals around here, ain’t there? Foxes. That sort of thing.”
“You reckon foxes am throwing little stones at us?” Millington said.
Bates, not knowing whether Millington was being sarcastic or not, grinned vacantly.
“Where are they hiding?” Saunders asked, looking around. “We searched the wood.”
“Somebody could have got in among the trees since,” Millington said. It was almost a question.
Bates pointed the muzzle of his rifle at the trees and put his hand to his rifle’s safety catch. “We could give ’em a burst. Just to make sure. Be a laugh, eh?”
“Shut your mouth, you stupid bugger! You heard the boss. We’m only to fire under orders.”
Bates thought of telling Millington to shut up himself, but then kept quiet and tried to look tough instead. “What’s the matter?” he said. “If there’s anybody in there, they’m only smellies.”
Per’s second shot was from beside a thick, spreading hazel bush, which didn’t give him such a clear view or aim. It was difficult, shooting from a new place each time. It gave him no chance to find the distance and correct his aim. But he drew up and loosed his second arrow.
And saw it—oh, beautiful!—fall into the chest of the middle soldier in a perfect shot. Slowly taking up his quiver, he faded back into the wood and then ran along a path. He came on Ingram, leaning on his tree, his quiver at his feet and his bow in his hand.
Grinning, Ingram put his free arm around Per, thumped his back and kissed his cheek in congratulation.
Together, they fitted new arrows to their strings.
The arrow struck Millington with a deeper, hollower note than the first two had struck the ground. He didn’t see it coming. All the weight of the bow, plus all the speed of the arrow’s flight, struck one small point on his chest and knocked him clean off his feet, toppling him backward down the slope, heels over head. The impact drove the arrow’s broad, barbed iron head and its wooden shaft deep into his chest.
Saunders and Bates swung around and watched him fall and roll in astonishment. They’d heard the sound of something striking, they’d heard Millington’s grunt as breath was knocked from him, and Saunders had glimpsed something blurred in the air—a stone? Or had Millington simply stumbled and fallen?
As Millington rolled, the arrow embedded in his chest struck against the ground, making him cry aloud—and then it snapped off. Saunders and Bates scrambled down to the fallen man, and Bates grabbed his arm, dragging at it, to help him up. They saw the blood staining the front of Millington’s camouflage jacket, but the broken arrow shaft was lost in the grass.
“What you done?” Bates asked.
Saunders’ head snatched around, and he looked up the slope toward the trees.
Tok! Something else hit the ground near them. Alarmed now, Saunders and Bates eyed the grass around them, but saw nothing. “Arrows!” Saunders said, realizing. “Oh God!” He raised his rifle clumsily, fumbling at the safety catch and cutting his fingertips on its sharp edge. Bates stared at him, not having caught what he’d said.
An arrow hit Saunders in the upper arm, tearing through his flesh, spinning him around in a circle and throwing him down.
Bates, seeing both his friends down, bleeding, dead or dying, looked around wildly. He held a rifle in his hands but never gave it another thought. He saw the trees, and ran toward them, to hide. The weight in his arms slowed him down, so he threw the rifle away.
Wat, seeing the Elf running toward him, grinned and held an arrow on his string, letting the Elf come closer and closer until he couldn’t miss. His barbed arrow went right through Bates, from belly to back, knocked him from his feet and tumbled him down the slope.
Saunders, his arm bleeding and burning with pain, raised himself up on his knees. He tried to lift the rifle, but it was a heavy weight on his torn arm—and the safety catch wouldn’t come off, but sliced his fingers instead. There was no one to help him. His friends were dead. Stumbling to his feet, he tried to get away down the hill, slipping and reeling on the steep slope and thin, slick grass.
Cuddy and Swart, seeing the bows raised and hearing the strings hum, were shivering and whimpering with excitement. Ordered to lie at Per’s feet, they quivered, half rose, lay down again, and shifted their haunches in the grass, looking up at Per and making little pouncing motions.
When the Elf ran, Per looked at Ingram, grinned and then crouched between his hounds. He pointed to the running Elf. “Bring him down! Good hounds!”
They pushed themselves from the ground, running as they rose. Per, still crouching, gasped to see their beauty. They leaned with their speed, as silent, almost as fast, as the arrows. Ingram raised his bow over his head. “Run, Elf, run!” He left the trees to join the chase, Per following. Both knew the Elf had no chance of outrunning the hounds.
Per and Ingram were always skittish when they were together. Wat let them go and attended to the real business of killing the fallen Elves.
Saunders, slipping on the steep slope and falling on hands and knees, looked behind and saw the racing hounds coming on him with a rippling motion, their heads stretched forward and black lips stretched back from long white teeth.
In a panic of blood beating in his head, of pounding heart, Saunders tried to scramble
on. His legs had gone weak, his feet slipped. He was hit by a solid, heavy weight, screamed aloud and rolled on his back, his rifle sliding away down the slope. He threw his arms up in front of his face. A hard, bruising, pinching grip closed on his forearm.
Swart overshot the running Elf, leaped in the air and came bounding back up the slope. Cuddy had her teeth in the Elf’s arm, and as he tried to wrench away, her teeth sank deeper. Her tail waved. She loosed her grip and bit again, bit deep for a better grip and, big hound that she was, braced her feet and tried to drag her catch back to Per.
Swart came, filling the sky above Saunders, dripping hot slaver on him, blowing his face full of hot, stinking breath. Biting at his shoulder, at his hands, his face, his leg, wherever there seemed to be a hold, biting and dragging. Saunders screamed like any caught hare. Between them, the big hounds pulled him about on the slippery grass, tearing at him.
Per, slithering down the slope, felt the screams in his own belly and yelled, “Cuddy, foorlet!” Leave it! “Foorlet, Swart, foorlet!”
It had seemed a good joke to send the hounds after the Elf—Per hadn’t even known if they would chase him. He’d never foreseen that they would worry the Elf like this. He’d run with them himself a hundred times. They’d knocked him down, but the worst they’d ever done was try to lick him into another shape.
Hearing Per’s voice, Cuddy released her hold on the Elf and turned toward him. Swart, his teeth in the Elf’s thigh, didn’t let go but only growled. And Cuddy, having jumped up at Per, flecking him with blood and slaver, dropped back to the ground and bit at the Elf again. Seeing Ingram on the slope above her, she glared at him with white-edged eyes and growled through her mouthful of Elf. Ingram wasn’t fool enough to go any closer and called out warningly when he saw Per reaching for Cuddy’s collar. Per beat both dogs about the ribs with his bow. “Leave it, leave it! Down! Bad! Bad hounds!” Cuddy was the first to loose, and to cower in the grass, putting back her ears. Swart, even when made to loose, kept trying to go back to the Elf, and even growled at Per, who beat him with the bow and drove him off.
Saunders’ face was obscured with blood. Whimpering and coughing, his many wounds burning, he tried to get to his hands and knees. His ripped and bloody hands slipped on the grass, and his shaking legs wouldn’t support him.
His struggles excited Swart, who cast back and forth, longing to get at him, if only Per would let him. Cuddy, though lying in the grass, trembled and looked to Per for permission to spring on the Elf again. Per held his bow poised to threaten Cuddy, and gripped Swart by the collar, though he couldn’t hold the hound if Swart made a real effort to break free. To Ingram, he said, “Kill him!”
But Ingram stood and watched the Elf flounder and choke. Per knew that it wasn’t right. The Elf should be killed fast. That was something Sweet Milk had told him over and over and again: Kill fast. “Take Swart—take him!” If Per let Swart’s collar go, he would be on the Elf.
Ingram pretended he hadn’t heard. He didn’t want to go near Swart until this was over and the big hound was calm.
Wat came down the hill. The knife in his hand was already bloodied from finishing the other Elves. He straddled the third, knelt on his back, pulled back his head and cut his throat. He rose, panting a little from the effort, and stepped back, his hands and sleeves bloody. He looked at Ingram and Per with an expression that asked why they had waited for him to do such a simple thing. And why did he have to do all the hard work?
Per, shamefaced, began hauling Swart away up the hill, and calling Cuddy to follow. “Bad hounds! Bad!”
Wat, following him, said, “Good hounds, good.” Per looked at him. “They did what tha told ’em to do.”
“Good hounds!” Per said, to annoy Wat. “Good girl, good boy!” Cuddy began to bound around him, hanging out her long pink tongue.
They came up by the fallen chain-link fences, picking their way through all the weapons thrown down by Toorkild’s men. There, lonely and alien, stood the Elf-Cart, the strangest thing in the whole landscape. Not far from it were the bundles of clothes with arrows sticking from them that were the dead Elves.
Per stood over the bodies and felt the high spirits of the shooting and the chase collapse. His blood chilled, and he shivered. He had turned a living thing to a lump of dead meat, and this was his own death, foretold in these slumped carcasses. This was how he was going to die, perhaps soon: choking, struggling, humbled. And that night the ghosts would gather to his candle’s shadows, to remind him.
“You should have stayed in Elf-Land,” he told the bodies. This hill would be haunted for years to come. That night, he’d get drunk and share his bed.
Ingram was ranging over the slope and, stooping, pulled an arrow from the grass and brandished it. Per drew his knife and crouched, to cut the arrows from the bodies.
“Leave ’em,” Wat said, waving to call Ingram. “Get horses.”
“Leave all of ’em?” Per asked.
Wat tapped him with his bow stave. “Get horses.”
Per shrugged, dropped his bow and quiver and ran to help Ingram catch the wandering horses. Wat, as the eldest, was in command. If he chose to waste arrows, well, he was the one who’d be blamed when they got back to the tower.
18
16th Side: Windsor to the Dark Tower Came
The two Land Rovers came to a halt on the slope below the tower’s crag. Out of the tower’s gate, and down the crag’s steep path, came a crowd of women and children, led by Isobel, who held out her hands to Windsor, smiling and chattering at him.
“She’s sorry for everything,” Joe said. “She hopes you’re going to enjoy the meal.” He hadn’t caught everything Isobel had said, but he supposed it would be something like that. She’d certainly said something about “maht,” which he’d at first taken to mean “meat” but had since learned meant any kind of food.
Bryce was looking from his men, climbing out of the Land Rovers with their rifles, to the Sterkarm women and children milling about them. Some of the girls were very pretty, as his men were noticing. The girls, smiling, were reaching out to touch the camouflage sleeves and even touching the rifles, confident that they would be allowed to. Others lifted up small children to see the Land Rovers.
Bryce didn’t know whether or not to be reassured. He didn’t trust the Sterkarms—but he knew them to be protective of their children and women, as most peoples were anywhere, anytime. The fact that he and his men had been invited here, to the tower, into the midst of the women and children, seemed to suggest that the Sterkarms were, for once, acting in good faith. It might be a bluff—but it was a pretty foolhardy bluff if it got your children killed. And Old Man Sterkarm had been keen on aspirin … On the whole, and while trying to stay wary, Bryce believed the Sterkarms when they said they only wanted to talk and make friends again.
He could see Old Toorkild Sterkarm, his head close to the head of the man in the 21st waterproof, the one who spoke such suspiciously good English. Waterproof came over to them, pushing his way through the curious women and children. “If you’ll all come inside,” he said, jerking his thumb toward the tower, “there’s a feast set in the hall—a friendship feast. You’re all invited.”
The 21st men at the Land Rovers started grinning. “A party!” one of them called out, and Bryce said, “Quiet!”
“A friendship feast!” Windsor said, and nodded and smiled at Mrs. Sterkarm. “That sounds splendid!” It was the kind of thing you had to say, even though he had clear memories of how terrible Sterkarm food was. Still, the Sterkarms’ eagerness to make amends was going to make the food a lot tastier this time around. It was gratifying to see them realize that they’d gone too far. If young Sterkarm could be made to apologize too, it’d be better than a meal at a four-star restaurant. “We accept.”
Bryce was startled to hear that but, before he could speak, Joe said, “Don’t mind me saying so, but we’d li
ke it—well, it’d look friendlier if you left your guns outside. We laid—”
“Wait a minute,” Bryce said. “Where are my men? Where is Andrea Mitchell?”
“Inside,” Joe said.
“Let’s see them out here,” Bryce said. “Let’s see that they’re alive and unhurt, and then we’ll talk about going inside.”
Joe’s mind was working harder and faster than he’d needed it to work for years. The strain made his heart beat faster. “They’re hurt.” He saw Bryce and Windsor look alarmed. “Not Andrea. She’s—helping get the food ready. But the men, they got a bit hurt.”
“How much is ‘a bit’?” Bryce said.
“One got bashed on the head.” Joe remembered the axe bashing down. “They all got knocked about a bit. You know how it is. Things got out of hand. People got overexcited. Toorkild’s very sorry. He wasn’t there, or he’d have stopped it.” At the back of Joe’s mind, he knew that these lies were going to get more men hurt but were going to keep Sterkarms from being hurt. He hadn’t time to think about which was more right, or more wrong. “They’re being cared for. Toorkild’s very sorry about it. But if you want to see ’em, you’re going to have to come inside.”
Bryce looked at Windsor. “I don’t like this.”
Windsor tucked his swagger stick under his arm. He saw the risk but hated appearing to be under Bryce’s command.
“We ain’t going to hurt you,” Joe said. “Not with all the women and bairns running about. This is our home. What would we hurt you with, anyway? We left most of our weapons up there, on the hill.”
There was a small child standing right at Windsor’s feet, peering up at him. And the Sterkarms had seen the power of the Elves. They’d seen the Tube made operational again after they’d destroyed it. “We’re going to get nowhere standing out here, pulling faces at each other,” Windsor said. It was undignified, this bickering on the hillside. But strolling into the Sterkarms’ den and making yourself comfortable—well, as comfortable as you could make yourself on Sterkarm furniture—that had a certain panache. To Bryce, he said, “We’ll go in.”
