A Company of Heroes Book One: The Stonecutter

by Ron Miller

  She crawls entirely onto the shore and stumbles, half-erect, half on her hands and knees, well away from the water. She collapses once again. The forest groans as its vertical masts stir together in the breeze and midnight stalks down from the clouds. Her eyes close and she begins to feel a warming numbness crawling up from her fingertips and toes, as though those limbs are gradually dissolving. A seductive drowsiness blankets her and she gratefully wraps herself in it.

  Something like an alarm must have been ringing in her subconscious for a long time. She answers it like a dreamer being aroused from a deep sleep. She forces open a leaden eyelid and realizes, I’m letting myself die! It is a disagreeable realization. Death is altogether too pleasant a sensation, she realizes; it came too easily and is much too welcome. She stirs and sees a pit only a few feet from her head, a velvet blackness against the carbon black of the boulders around her. When she forces herself to move toward it, she nearly screams from the pain in her leg. Dragging herself into the hole, she lets herself slide down its gentle slope. It is filled nearly to the brim with leaves and pine needles that have sifted down from the surrounding trees. She burrows into them. A sweet, resiny, earthen odor fills her head. The deeper she digs into the pit, the warmer she feels. Finally, she stops. Surrounded by the natural warmth of the mouldering vegetation, blanketed from the freezing air by its soft layers, she drifts into a fragrant sleep.

  It is well into the following day when she crawls from her sanctuary, like a hedgehog emerging into the spring from its winter’s hibernation. She looks like a freshly exhumed potato. Stretching a dozen aching joints and muscles, Bronwyn reviews her situation, which is a depressing thing to do. She has lost her only friend as well all of the food and supplies he had been carrying, to say nothing of the spare clothing in her pack. She has only a vague idea of where she is or the direction in which she has to continue. Her only remaining possessions are the clothes on her back ‘such as they are) and the leather satchel containing the letters, which is still securely strapped to her chest. She takes an anxious moment to check this and is relieved to find the packets still dry and safe.

  Well, now what? It is at least a lovely day; the pewter light of the winter sun is filling the rocky bowl like a sweet, clear syrup. Its rays are warming but the air is still cold. Seeing that the rim of the cirque is not far away, she decides to postpone any additional worrying until she has climbed out of at least one depression. Once on the rim, she hopes she will have raised both body and spirit. There is a nearly vertical stone wall before her, but even before reaching it she can see a narrow path snaking up its face, reaching the parapet after a couple of tight switchbacks.

  She has limped only a dozen yards up the path when a Guard steps out of a crevice. His dull black captain’s uniform had hidden him within the shadow. Now he looks like a scorpion blocking her path, brandishing his saber like a stinger. She can see that the man has suffered no better than she has. She finds this gratifying. His plumed shako is gone, as are his cape and gun. One black boot has been shredded from ankle to knee. A sleeve is nearly torn free at the shoulder and its epaulet is missing. Blood trickles down the back of that hand and his black-mustachioed face is colorful with bruises and smears of green slime and dried blood.

  “Well,” he says, “Princess Bronwyn, I presume?”

  “Let me pass,” she orders, mustering as much royal dignity as she can. It either isn’t much or, more likely, the man simply isn’t impressed by a bedraggled and powerless young girl.

  “Make it simple, Princess: just give me the package. It’s all I want. I have no orders to hurt you.”

  “What about my friend?”

  “What about him? He killed four of my men yesterday; he is supposed to have killed another in the City. The man is a criminal, a murderer. And we didn’t kill him. You must’ve seen what happened. The wall collapsed. He died in the landslide. Give me the package.”

  “No, I won’t!”

  “Give it to me, Princess, and I’ll leave you unharmed.”

  “Yes, you’d leave me to die out here!”

  “That’s up to Musrum. But I’m not going to ask you again: give me the package! I don’t want to hurt you!”

  “It’s the only way you’ll get it.”

  “So be it,” he answers, quickly lunging for her. Surprised, Bronwyn barely has time to step back beyond his reach. She succeeds at keeping him from grabbing her satchel, but in stepping backwards Bronwyn misses her footing and falls. Instantly the Guard is on her. He kneels across her thighs, pinning her to the path. Her injured knee protests the man’s weight in waves of pain. He holds the point of the saber pressed to her throat. With his free hand, he begins fumbling with the fastenings of the satchel. The soaking they had gotten the evening before has made the leather straps swell and the buckles are almost impossible to unfasten. He abandons that effort and put both hands around the hilt of his weapon. The point presses deeply into the soft depression at the base of her throat.

  “All right, Princess. Unfasten the straps or I’ll pin you to the ground like a butterfly. This is your only chance. Do it now!”

  “No.”

  “I’ve no orders to hurt you, but neither have I orders to bring anything back other than the package,” he replies. “You’ll simply have vanished from the face of the earth. Perhaps it’ll be easier for everyone this way.”

  He raises the point of the sword, ready to skewer her like the last pea on a plate. Then Bronwyn sees something amazing happen: the Guard’s head suddenly turns into a large rock, about the size of a hassock. It is like an amazing magic trick. Almost immediately she realizes that the stone had fallen from above, squashing the Guard’s head as though it had been a ripe eggplant. Before she notices some of the more horrific details, the body topples from her, slumping over the edge of the trail, tumbling disconnectedly the few yards to the floor of the bowl. Still on her back, she turns her gaze upwards and sees mirrorlike far above her the grinning face of Henda.

  CHAPTER V

  A FAMILY REUNION

  The boy scuttles down from the rim of the crater. For a few moments, Bronwyn can hear only the rattling of dislodged pebbles. She has regained her feet, if not her equilibrium, by the time Henda appears around a curve in the path a few yards away.

  “Henda! What in the world are you doing here?”

  His only answer, considering he is mute, is in signs frenzied and incomprehensible to the girl.

  “I don’t know what you mean. How did you get here?”

  Exasperated by her lack of comprehension, Henda takes hold of one of Bronwyn’s sleeves and tugs her not up the trail toward the rim, but back down into the crater.

  “What do you think you’re doing? I’m not going back down there, if that’s what you want. What do you want me to do?”

  But the boy only holds a finger to his crescent lips and pulls her even more urgently. Annoyed, she follows him through the maze of shattered boulders at the center of the cirque until a black pit suddenly gapes in front of her. A moist, cool breath pours from its mouth. Trickles of water from the stream drool in clinquant threads over its polished lips. From somewhere far below she can hear the hollow clucking of the water as it struck an invisible pond or pool. In the spring, when the stream is at full flood, the hole must act like the drain in a dish basin. That last word triggers a memory from her geology studies. It’s a sinkhole! The whole crater is a sinkhole! There must be caverns under these hills and the roof of one that collapsed created the cirque. But why should I go down there? I don’t need a place to hide anymore. The little idiot’s going to get himself killed.

  Henda is already a many yards down a steep semiconical slope of clay that has washed into the opening. He pauses, gesturing to Bronwyn insistently, then continues into the darkness. The princess follows, still hoping to stop him. The clay slope is as smooth as glass. Bronwyn slides down it, sitting half-reclined, braking with her heels, leaving behind a pair of deep furrows like a wagon track. The bottom is re
ached quickly, where she finds Henda waiting for her. Now that she is within the pit, she can see that it is not nearly so black as it had looked from the sunny exterior. The light that funnels from above lights her surroundings well enough for her to see clearly. Where the opening of the pit had looked like a velvet disk from outside, now, seen from the other side as it were, it is a circle almost as dazzling as the sun itself. It is also immensely wet.

  Pools and rivulets of water are everywhere; it rains from pores in the ceiling in a chilly drizzle, and the rocks around her are covered with thick cushions of moss. Once again she feels an urgent tugging at her sleeve. She looks at Henda, puzzlement and grey clay covering her face in equal amounts. The boy nods his head violently, in what is apparently meant to be positive reassurance.

  “All right, Henda, I’ll see what you’re after, but I’m not going to go into this very far. Understand?”

  Henda nods even more vehemently and pulls her into the darkness. One side of the dome-shaped room they are in has been split, like an inverted bowl broken in a fall. They exit the chamber through this wedge-shaped opening, through which Henda slips like a mouse but which is barely wide enough to admit Bronwyn’s broad shoulders. She feel a momentary panic at a cold embrace of heavy stone that would have chilled even the most agoraphobic. To her relief the passage quickly widens, at the same time, however, it takes a steep turn downwards. She suddenly realizes how rapidly she is becoming committed to this venture: it would mean abandoning Henda if she turns back now. Well, that’d have to be his lookout; she has better things to do and certainly better places to be.

  She knows for a certainty, however, that no matter what she does, the boy would refuse to follow her out. But yet, she is strangely reassured in that Henda seems to know what he is doing, that he is headed for a known destination. His certain urgency pricks her curiosity. She becomes aware of an odd thrumming; not quite yet a full-fledged sound, rather a nearly subliminal throbbing in the air. A waterfall?

  The passage has widened considerably; it is still wedge-shaped, but the base of the triangle has broadened while the apex has lowered. Soon the floor, eroded by a million years of running water, begins to develop a rut in its middle. This eventually becomes a V-shaped gully that mirrors the ceiling above it; the passage in cross-section is now a narrow lozenge-shape. Walking consequently becomes extremely difficult, if not actually hazardous. Bronwyn has to brace her feet on either side of the sloping floor while at the same time the stone is as sleek and white as wet chalk. Every step risks a twists or broken ankle if a foot slips into the narrow cleft.

  To her infinite relief the passage opens into a large chamber. Bronwyn stops, sits on the stump of a broken stalagmite and massages her cramping calves while her injured knee throbs with each heartbeat. Henda plucks at her sleeve, making horrible burbling sounds while trying to hurry her along, and she pushes his hand away.

  “Whatever it is, Henda, it can wait five more minutes.”

  The boy, morosely, sits at her feet to wait, burbling under his breath. As the pins and needles of her knotted muscles gradually withdraw, Bronwyn once again becomes aware of the odd thrumming. It is truly a sound now: a regular, modulated sibilance, rather like the chanting of priests in a church. It seems to come from the walls themselves, as though she were within a seashell listening to the susurration of her own surging blood.

  The chamber in which she finds herself is not broad, but of indeterminate height. Down one convex wall pours a frozen waterfall of pearly calcium carbonate, the glistening mineral leached out of the soil above by percolating waters and redeposited hundreds of feet underground in an ossified imitation of its watery origin. Peering up its fluted cascades, Bronwyn can not see its top. But then, why can I see at all? She stands up and looks around. She realizes that she can clearly see the rock walls and Henda and the crystalline waterfall in a sort of grey phosphorescence, like that of a moonless night in the country. Before it can puzzle her any further, Henda seizes the opportunity presented by her ambulatority, clutches her by the hand and pulls her in a rush around the curve of the fall.

  Here she sees the opening of yet another, larger passage. Bronwyn is well into it before she realizes that it is more than broad and regular, level and smooth-walled: it is artificial. The realization does not come as an immediate shock, as it should have if suddenly noticed. Instead it has been blurred by speed, like a motion picture film that has jumped its sprockets, a painting spread out as it were by the trowel of Henda’s rush. Nevertheless, Bronwyn suddenly begins to no longer wonder at where the boy is taking her, but to whom.

  Before this revelation can manifest itself as reservation she reaches the end of the corridor. A circular stone blocks it as neatly as a cork in a bottle. The stone face is flat and intricately worked with sinuous patterns and angular symbols.

  “I don’t like this,” she tells Henda and begin to hang back, away from what she knows is a door. Who or what needs a door nearly twelve feet high and Musrum knew how thick? Or worse yet, what needs to be kept behind such a door? Henda ignores her, picks up a rock from the floor and begins to beat on the decorated stone. It rang like a drum.

  “Don’t do that!” cries Bronwyn, grabbing at the boy’s arm, wresting the stone from his hand, but it is too late: they have knocked and someone is answering. Grittily grinding like a giant gristmill, the stone begins to withdraw into the wall, revealing a round tunnel almost twice Bronwyn’s height. It is a short passage; a circular portal rather, or perhaps a kind of anteroom. When the stone has been pulled beyond its farther limit, it rolls aside. A fluttering, silvery light pours through the opening and Henda unhesitatingly plunges into it. Bronwyn, stiffening her courage, follows. On the far side of the doorway stands a massively familiar figure.

  “Thud!”

  There is no response from the giant. She turns in confusion and then becomes even more confused. There are Thuds all around her. Thuds everywhere. Dozens of them.

  “Welcome, Princess Bronwyn!” come words in the kind of voice a ton or two of courteous granite might have. One of the giants steps forward and once again she thinks it is her missing friend. But this creature would have made the Thud she knew seem like a toy balloon compared to a dirigible. It has the same pumpkin-like head, and eyes like capers, but while it shares Thud’s general baldness a semicircular fringe of grey hair grew from ear to ear, passing beneath the nearly nonexistent chin. This hair, which looks like stringy lichens hanging from a smooth rock, is woven into scores of long, thick plaits that hung down the creature’s chest for at least a yard. The effect is rather like an inverts Medusa. A robe of grey asbestos, threaded intricately with gold and silver and trimmed with knobs of uncut semiprecious stones, hung from its shoulders. Beneath the robe it wore only a kind of wide apron of some sort of thick grey felt. In one paw-like hand it grasps a pole as large as the bowsprit of a ship.

  “She seems confused,” says the creature. “She is worries about her friend. We should have thought of that. We will take her to him directly; and of course she must accept our apologies!”

  Bronwyn realizes that the “him” the monster is talking about must be Thud, and he is doing so in the present tense.

  “Thud is alive?” she asks.

  “Oh yes! He is quite all right. Does she want to see him?”

  “Yes! Of course! Yes, but...where is this? What is this place? Who are you?”

  “This is impossible and so embarrassing!” the giant says to no one in particular. “Our first visitor in...how long? Never mind! It must be centuries, just centuries. Fellow royalty at that, and how is she treated? The princess must let us beg for her forgiveness!”

  “Well, certainly, of course, yes...but...”

  “No offense?”

  “None! I...”

  “What a relief that is! Oh, yes! Please, then, will the princess do us the unprecedents honor of coming with us? We must first make her comfortable and then all will be explained. This way if she will...”

&nbs
p; The giant, with a swooping gesture, allows the princess to precede him through a doorway excavated to his gargantuan scale. With the exception of three who follow, all of the others remain behind.

  She finds herself now in a large room, definitely a room this time and not a cave, lit by the same sourceless phosphorescence. It is a pleasant, soothing light, but its shadowlessness is disconcerting and flattening, it plays havoc with her sense of depth. The chamber is furnished, more or less, in a kind of High Rustic style, though instead of wood, logs or branches, everything has been fashioned from stalactites, stalagmites and some of the weirder formations that only caverns have the time to create. The furniture looks fluid and is polished to a lustrous translucency. It is very artistic, Bronwyn is sure, but she feel that the artfulness came from the nature of the material itself and not from any skill of the giants. She looks from the furnishings to the giant, then to the attendants who has accompany him. Like the others she has seen, they wear only thick grey aprons, like those of blacksmiths. She is glad she has never seen Thud that nude.

  “May we make so bold as to introduce ourselves?” asks the giant.

  “Please!” says the dazed princess. “You have have the advantage.”

  “We are the princess’ humble and obedient servant, King Ooflool Slagelse, the one hundred and thirty-third.”

  “King? Of what? Oh, I’m sorry, I...”

  “No, not at all! Not at all! We realize perfectly well how few people from the princess’ world know of our kingdom. We rather prefer it that way, so she must not blame herself. Her ignorance is, in fact, very gratifying!”