The horrors of Hattin suddenly returned to him. In his mind, he knew them to be distant. Yet the sprawl and stench of death left in its wake, and the shouts of the terror-stricken and the dying, seemed all at once to assault him – and with them the horrid possibility that he was, of his own free will, walking back into their midst. That, somehow, they had become an inseparable part of him, and could never be left behind.
The figure jolted him back to the present.
It had appeared without warning. There had been no approach, no gradual reveal. It was simply there, directly ahead, a hundred yards or so distant. Just standing. At first, he could not make out any details. It was evidently a man, tall but somewhat hunched, its head bowed, its back turned to him. As he drew closer, his progress still painfully slow, he saw that it appeared to have its arms wrapped about itself. It was leaning slightly to one side, as if drunk or in pain. The clothes, he could now see, were ragged. Bloody. No, not simply ragged – slashed. And wet. And the figure itself – absurd as it clearly was in this place – seemed to be shivering. Though the distance between them would seem to have been too great to allow such a thing, he swore he could also hear the chattering of its teeth.
A wave of something akin to repulsion passed over him. It was not just the strangeness of the encounter – of this man in the desert, dripping wet and clutching himself with cold, wrong though that was. It was the creeping certainty that this was merely the prologue to something far worse.
Suddenly, he was mere yards away. Close enough, now, to see the cuts and slashes in the figure’s bloody garments, and the exposed wounds beneath. Some were as shallow and neat as parted lips. Others were so deep that great ragged flaps of flesh hung loose, and what should have been inside spilled out. But none were bleeding. Not any more. Instead of the glistening red of fresh meat, the exposed tissue was grey as ash, the blood blackened, the skin pallid. The dead flesh of a corpse.
At precisely the same moment this realisation struck, he recognised who it was. Immediately, as if awoken out of a slumber by his own terrible thought, it gave a jerk, and twitched its head, and with a horrid, lopsided gait, began to turn.
The long-dead, milky eyes of Gilbert de Gaillon stared blankly at him, blue-black lips curled back, the elongated teeth in the shrunken gums chattering incessantly.
There had been so many times in his life when he had wished he could restore de Gaillon to the life of which he had been so cruelly robbed. Now that wish had been granted, and it was an abomination. The thing that had once been a wise and noble friend twitched, and stumped awkwardly towards him, one part-denuded arm outstretched, flaps of blue-grey skin hanging, jaw gaping open as if to articulate words. But all that came from the cavernous, wet hole was a gurgling, wheezing groan, and a string of black drool.
Gisburne could not speak or shout. But in his head, he heard his own voice, struck through with horror and revulsion, repeating over and over: He belongs dead. He belongs dead. He belongs dead...
Everything merged, became confused. For a moment it seemed he was looking out through the corpse’s eyes. Far away, on the horizon, was a horse. Black. Riderless. Nyght. The stallion whinnied and shook his head. If he could only get to him... He tried to cry out – used all the force he could muster – but all that would come was a feeble whisper.
Then, the first of the things rose out of the sand.
Black and shiny, its insectoid limbs thrust out of the hot desert. They unfurled like spiked, obsidian blooms just yards from him, their quill-points planted upon its pale, shifting surface in a splayed circle. Then came another. And another. Seven black, bunched things in all – each unfolding with the same halting, mechanical motion, the same horrid, dry rattle. Then, within each ring of arched, protruding legs, the trickling sand heaved and bellied up. The mounds parted and fell away, and the huge armoured creatures lifted themselves free of the cascading sand.
They were scorpions. But they were also men. Great, gangling arachnids, each the size of a cow, but within them – merged into each black, articulated monstrosity – a strange approximation of human features, somehow blurred and imprecise, as if realised by an intelligence that only half understood what it was attempting to replicate.
They stood as if frozen for a moment, and then, suddenly, were hurtling towards him, legs clacking like dry bones, weird mouthparts gnashing and glinting.
He was running now. His legs were like lead, aching and slow, but would not move faster. The things were gaining – he could hear them uttering a strange scree scree scree as their legs pounded the sand – but he did not dare look back. Not even when he felt them at his back, saw their glistening limbs flash about him. He knew only that he had to protect what he clutched to his chest. That was all that mattered. But he realised, then – in a moment of confused panic – that he had no idea what it was. It shifted and moved against him. Then he looked down, and saw it. Cradled in his arms like a baby was de Gaillon’s head, eyes wide, jaws snapping, a strange, strangled cry issuing from its tattered throat.
He screamed. There was no sound, but he knew he screamed. Then the world broke apart and he was plunged into edgeless, formless black, filled with colliding voices shouting over and over in endless repetition like a thousand lost souls, their words overlapping and incomprehensible – the ravings of madmen. Febrile fragments of images flashed and swirled in the churning, inky void, thrusting themselves at him before being swallowed up again: stick-thin figures shaking spears; a dancing pattern of fresh gore; huge, amorphous creatures with hunched backs and horns; tiny hands, red with the sheen of blood; flapping, eyeless birds as black as oil. And faces – hundreds of bellowing, idiot faces, pushing in at him – everyone he had ever known, taunting, laughing, screaming.
XLIII
THE FIRST THING he saw was a handprint of blood.
His eyes could barely focus; his head swam. But it was there, in the flickering half-light, stamped upon rock. He blinked, frowned at it. Where he was, he couldn’t tell. But he knew he was drifting in and out of consciousness. The dream – the nightmare – had been a taste of Hell. While it had persisted, it seemed a perpetual torment, something from which there would be no escape. His heart still pounded at the memory of it – at the lingering belief in its reality. But now he knew that was not real. And he knew this was.
Thank God.
Through the indistinct haze, he now saw that there were others like it – small imprints of hands, some no bigger than a child’s – all in faded colours. And around these, appearing to dance in procession across the uneven surface of the rock, strange little stick figures. Men. Animals. Other things he could only half identify.
They swirled. The room – if room it was – began to spin. He was dimly aware of flames licking at the periphery of his vision. Of a shadow moving over him. A shape, drawing closer. He tried to lift his head, and all turned to black.
XLIV
PAIN. IT SHOT through him, jolted him awake. A stabbing in his side. There was a sound, like bellows – a loud, almost musical wheezing. It was a moment before he realised it was his own breathing. His teeth chattered, his whole body shook. He lacked the strength to stop it – felt distant from himself, disconnected.
He tried to open his eyes. They resisted, felt glued together. Moving his tongue, he could feel it rasp against his palate. The inside of his mouth was bone dry and tasted of woodsmoke.
At his back, now, he felt a hand, supporting him, firmly but gently. Something hot touched his cracked lips. A scalding, salty liquid was spooned into his mouth. It burnt his tongue, but as it flowed down his throat its effect was instant – flooding into his muscles, reviving him like a potion. He sucked at it eagerly.
Then the hot liquor flowed too fast and made him choke. He spluttered convulsively and passed out with the pain.
XLV
A POP. BURNT flesh. He could smell it. A red-hot needle on his cheek. A hand swiped at it. Not his. His eyes rolled, would not focus. He felt himself going again – trie
d to hold on by counting the dancing men on the wall. They slid sideways and upward and out of sight, and exhaustion plunged him back into oblivion.
XLVI
A CAVE. IT was a cave. He knew it before he opened his eyes this time – must have somehow worked it out during his brief spells of wakefulness. He didn’t know how, but the realisation gave him hope. He was connecting things – piecing the world back together again.
When he awoke, his whole face was burning. Urging his swollen eyes to open, he blinked away the sticky rheum, and the flames filled his vision. He was lying on his side, hunched around a small rock, his head only inches from the glowing, cracking logs of a fire. His nose and cheeks were roasting in the fierce heat. He flexed, rolled onto his back, away from the flames. The simple movement felt like a boot in the ribs.
He couldn’t feel his hands and feet, and momentary panic gripped him. He tried to move his legs. They answered – still part of him, but numbed and insensible with cold. His feet were ice, his head fire. Every inch in between ached – but that, too was good. It was no longer the raw agony of fresh injury. It was the dull pain of healing flesh.
He took a moment to gather himself, letting his eyes rove around the dark interior. The chamber was the size of a monk’s cell, but longer, and easily high enough to stand in. A bear cave, perhaps. But also a cave of men, long ago. Their marks – some faded, some obscured by green moulds or centuries of soot – were everywhere visible through the thick haze of smoke. Parts of his delirious dream flashed back and made him shudder. It sparked off a wave of uncontrollable shivering. He remembered that it was still winter.
As he looked, he realised that the rock on the cave floor, near his chest – a pitted, roughly egg-shaped stone about the size of a human head – had lichen and moss upon it. It had only recently been placed there. He wondered at its purpose. Only gradually did he understand it was to prevent him rolling into the fire as he slept.
Someone had taken care of him. But it was makeshift. His body was swaddled in dirty blankets which, even against the smoke, had the acrid smell of aged damp. But whoever they were, they had kept him alive. His torso – the part that he could feel – was cold and clammy with sweat. He knew now he had to move, get the blood flowing back into his limbs, and learn the extent of the damage inflicted upon him. He struggled to free his hands, extended them toward the flames and forced the paralysed claws of his fingers to flex.
As they returned to life, he shuffled sideways, raising himself up gingerly, bit by bit, into a sitting position against the cave wall. He put his fingers to a spot on his cheek that stung with the fierce anger of a fresh burn. There was a tiny, crusty pit in the flesh. Something had popped in the fire – a stone or pocket of sap – and hit him there.
Now, from where he sat, he could see a sliver of daylight at the cave’s mouth. It was just beyond a bend obscuring most of the opening from view. The height of the cave also dipped there. An occupant of the cave could see out whilst still remaining hidden, and anyone entering would have to stoop low to get in. He noted, too, that the smoke did not flow out of the cave mouth, but was pulled towards him by an inward draught, presumably to escape via some fissure above. A natural chimney. If the fissure was long and the ground above it thick with foliage, the smoke would also be dispersed. One could perhaps hide here for months without being detected. He began to appreciate the wisdom of the ancient men who had once made this their fortress.
The smoke caught in his throat; he tried to resist coughing, but could not. Excruciating pain stabbed his side. It was something he’d known before. He hawked up deep, gritting his teeth against the pain that it caused, and spat on the ground, looking for fresh blood. It was clear. That was good. It probably wouldn’t kill him, then. Just give him weeks of pain before it healed.
There came a crackle of dead wood being crushed underfoot. The rock chamber baffled his senses; made it seem, for a moment, that the sound came from behind him, deeper within the cave. Then a shadow passed across the meagre slit of daylight at the cave’s mouth. Human, a bow across its shoulder. By instinct, his hand went to his sword, but grasped nothing but rotted leaf mould and bits of ancient animal bones. For the first time in his life, there was no sword by his side. No knife. No weapon of any kind. Except... He grasped the rock with stiff fingers, heaved it to his shoulder and, with his back flat against the wall, ignoring the pain, pushed himself up on unsteady legs. The uneven surface of the rock grazed the flesh as his backbone ran hard against it.
A crouched, hooded silhouette turned the corner. He rested the rock on his collarbone – not certain he could even lift it in his current state, but determined to do so no matter what pain ensued. The figure straightened, its face now lit by fire.
Mélisande.
She gave a wry smile. “Don’t start what you can’t finish,” she said.
He let go the breath he was holding – it almost turned to a laugh of relief – and with it the rock. It thumped to the ground and tumbled towards the fire. He slumped as if the stone had taken all his tension with it, allowing himself to slide slowly back down, his back still against the cave wall. He winced as he felt a familiar stab of pain in his chest.
“Well,” he said through gritted teeth. “You’re the second surprise today...”
She threw down a dead hare and slung a bag off her shoulder. “The first..?”
“That I’m alive.”
Kneeling, she unpacked a bundle of grubby cloth from the bag. “You only realised that today?” She peeled back the folds to reveal half a loaf of bread, an onion, dried fruit, a leather flask, some cheese. To Gisburne – suddenly famished beyond words – it was a feast.
He broke off a chunk of bread, and as he tore at it with his teeth, chewing open mouthed, a slow realisation dawned upon him. He’d had no sense of passing time – had let go his grip on the world entirely. “How long have I been here?”
“Three days,” she said.
Gisburne stared, his mind flooded with questions – gripped with panic at the sense of lost time. He had to put himself back into the world. But what would he find when he got there? What had passed since he had plunged into that freezing water?
Mélisande turned to him, put a hand on each side of his face, studied his eyes intently, turning his head left, then right. She opened his mouth, looked in, closed it, and gave him a light slap on one cheek.
“A little flushed, but you’ll do,” she said, and reached into a vertical split in the rock wall. From it she took a soft leather case, unrolled it, checked a variety of small knives it contained, then tied it up and threw it into her bag. “Sorry if the fire was a little fierce. I didn’t want it to die while I was gone. It’s the devil to get started, with everything so damp.”
“Well, I’ve been marinated and larded – why not cooked?” He watched as she pulled a wineskin from the crack, shook it, and slung it over her shoulder. “How did you get me here? And how did you find this cave?”
“I didn’t,” she said, breaking off a third of the loaf and stuffing that, too, into her bag. “You did. Must’ve dragged yourself here from the river.” She shook her head, her expression a mix of amusement, disbelief and admiration. “You are a tenacious fellow, Guy of Gisburne.” He had no memory of having done so, but knew better than most how the body could fight to protect itself.
She reached into a gap in the rock wall once more, and this time drew out a stoneware bottle. “I followed your trail, then did what I could to hide it. It was bloody, easy to spot in the snow. I scattered it as best I could. A fresh fall of snow finished the task.” Uncorking the bottle, she sniffed at it. “Drink,” she said, and thrust it into his stiff hand. “It’ll help with the pain.”
He took a swig. The liquid hit his throat like fire, the cough it induced racking his chest with new pains. “Christ!” he exclaimed. “When you said it would help with the pain, I thought you meant it would stop it...”
She almost smiled at that. “It’ll also keep the cold at bay.
”
“What is this stuff?”
“It’s called ‘marc’ – strong drink, from my father’s estates. Just don’t get it near the fire; I haven’t nursed you this far to see you go up in flames. And keep the fire going or you’ll freeze. They shouldn’t see the smoke unless they’re looking for it, and they won’t be looking. There’s more wood near the mouth of the cave. And your gear – as much as I could salvage.”
“Sword?” said Gisburne. She nodded. “Helm..?”
“Yes. Nearly all. The bindings broke and your horse threw it off in the forest. Otherwise it might all be half way to Paris by now.”
Gisburne shook his head. Nyght would not go far from his master if he could help it. Although he did not want to think about what fate his horse had suffered. And then there was–
“Galfrid.” He tried to sit up. She pushed him back down.
“Captured,” she said.
“And the box too, then...” Gisburne’s hand went to his neck; the key to the reliquary box still hung around it. With Gisburne half dead at his feet, Tancred had had the chance to take the key, and to finish off his foe. But he had wasted both opportunities. Gisburne felt a grim satisfaction at that. They would never succeed in opening the box, no matter how hard they tried. Not without the key. And that meant he had something they needed. But as the ghoulish face of the White Devil loomed in his mind beside the sweaty, contemptuous visage of Fulke, cool detachment evaporated. He was filled, instead, with overwhelming hatred. His heart pounded, his fingers clenched. He heaved himself to his feet.
“I have to get out there...”
Guy of Gisburne- The Omnibus Page 27
