by R. J. Grieve
Vesarion, fighting on his own on the opposite side of the clearing against several opponents at once, caught a brief glimpse of Sareth as she delivered the fatal blow and saw something in her face that he stored for later thought. He had no time now to consider anything other than survival, because his attackers were attempting the same thing that they had with Eimer – encirclement. He was forced to keep backing and turning in order to keep them in front of him, and Bethro, almost hysterical with fright, kept getting in his way. One of the Turog would spring forward and engage him, trading swift, hard blows, while the others filtered around him like a silent, incoming tide. His senses heightened by fear, Vesarion whirled to face first one, then the other, his sword flashing in the sunlight, but he knew he could not for long keep all five of them at bay. Backing into Bethro yet again, he cast a glance over his shoulder and saw an opening.
“Quick, Bethro! – Run!” he roared.
Bethro, not at all quick-witted under stress, said blankly: “Where?”
“Anywhere, you fool!” thundered Vesarion. “Just run!”
Finally, spotting the gap, Bethro took off, followed hotly by his hard-pressed protector.
Fat and indolent the Keeper of Antiquities might be, but when properly motivated, he could produce a quite remarkable speed, and a group of murderous, shrieking Turog on his tail was all the motivation he needed.
With all the grace of a runaway bull, Bethro crashed through the undergrowth, breaking through branches, or letting the more pliable ones snap back with a whack on Vesarion just behind.
Twice, Vesarion had to briefly stop in his flight to fight a rearguard action, but Ferron’s description of the Turog proved correct – they were strong but not swift and gradually the two men began to pull ahead.
Vesarion’s long strides fairly flew over the ground, catching up with Bethro’s form blundering along ahead of him.
“They’re still behind us,” he gasped as he drew level. “They are nothing if not persistent. We must either find some way of shaking them off, or a place where I can fight them where they can’t get behind me.”
Bethro did not reply, not having enough breath to do so. His face was an alarming shade of scarlet and was running with sweat, but still he kept going.
Vesarion shot ahead of him, searching the terrain, but luck was against him. A short distance further brought him to the edge of a deep ravine. He braked abruptly, sending a shower of small stones over the cliff face. Peering over, he could see that the cliff bulged outwards, its grey, scree-covered surface dotted with small bushes and stunted trees clinging precariously to the steep gradient, before dropping sheer to the river below. It clearly offered no hope of succour and he turned away, deciding it was somewhere to be avoided. However, he had reckoned without Bethro. Although the pursuing Turog were now out of sight, their yells and snarls, echoing through the forest, clearly signalled that they had not given up and Bethro had no intention of stopping until they had. He came charging towards Vesarion, oblivious to warning shouts, and only came to a teetering halt on the very brink of the void. But his forward momentum was not so easily checked. Wildly he flailed his arms, seeking something to help him recover his balance and unfortunately what he found was Vesarion’s belt. His companion was a tall man but the self-indulgent librarian was heavier and together they started to slide over the cliff.
“Let go!” cried Vesarion, too late.
But Bethro did not let go. The two were over the rim by now and were sliding amongst the scree and loose stones down the overhanging bulge. Vesarion knew from his previous inspection that once they reached the edge of the overhang, nothing would save them. All that awaited was a terrifying fall through thin air until they crashed into the rocky bed of the river far below. An event that would, without doubt, finish them both.
Desperately, he grabbed at the small trees and bushes as they skidded past. For a moment he managed to catch hold of a bush, briefly checking their fall, but with a sickening lurch, it uprooted and they began to slide again. Once more, when they brushed past a stunted young pine tree, his arm shot out and he managed to hook his hand over its slender, twisted trunk. With a shoulder-wrenching jerk, their descent was arrested. Bethro was still dangling from the belt, both eyes tight shut, his weight causing the belt to dig into Vesarion’s middle so deeply that it was almost cutting him in two.
“Bethro,” Vesarion croaked, short of breath and his mouth full of grit. “Bethro, open your eyes.”
“Nooooooo!” wailed the terrified librarian. “I’m going to die!”
Vesarion spat the grit out of his mouth. “We’re both going to die if you don’t do as you’re told!”
Gingerly, Bethro opened one eye.
“That’s better,” said Vesarion encouragingly. “Just don’t look down.”
So, of course, Bethro looked down. He began to howl again. “Too late! Too late! I looked down!”
Despite his fear, Vesarion was rapidly becoming enraged. “Bethro,” he snarled. “if you don’t pull yourself together, I am going to damn well unbuckle this belt and you can fall off the cliff for all I care.”
In actual fact, the belt was pulled so tight he could not have carried out this threat even if he had wished to – and there were moments when he had been tempted.
But the threat worked, and Bethro looked up.
“This tree cannot hold both of us,” Vesarion declared rapidly. “So you are going to have to find something else to take your weight. Now look to your left. No! Don’t shut your eyes again! Look to your left and you will see an ash sapling just a little above you.”
“What if it gives way!” wailed Bethro.
A shriek from the forest above told Vesarion that their pursuers were almost upon them.
“Quickly. The Turog will be here any moment. There’s no time for this, now catch hold of it.”
Bethro managed to clamp a clammy hand around the stem. It bent a little but seemed well anchored, so summoning up all his courage, he released his hold on Vesarion’s belt and got both hands in a vice-like grip on the sapling.
Vesarion gasped, experiencing the sudden relief of being able to breathe again and looked upwards. They had descended some distance down the bulging overhang and he could no longer see the top. He could only hope that the reverse was also true, for there was utterly nothing he could do about it. He began to hear the sound of snarling coming closer. Then some sort of discussion took place at the edge of the cliff in a harsh, guttural language he could not understand.
He glanced at Bethro, who was also looking up, and had, for once, the good sense not to speak.
The discordant chatter continued, occasionally interspersed by grunting or barking noises, but after a little while it faded, only to come back again as the Turog examined the cliff top once more. A shower of small stones raining past them, alerted the two men to the fact that something was clearly standing on the very edge of the precipice above, looking over. They both flattened themselves against the scree, unaware that they were so coated in grey dust that they were reasonably well camouflaged.
At last, the sounds of activity above began to fade and soon ceased altogether. Silence fell, broken only by the soft moan of the wind through the trees and the distant sound of the river far below them.
“Do you think they’ve gone?” whispered Bethro.
“I think so. Just don’t make too much noise.”
Bethro looked at himself and Vesarion clinging to their tenuous lifelines above the void and realised that things had only marginally improved.
“What do we do now?” he asked.
Eimer, relieved to discover that Sareth had evened the odds, soon made short work of the remaining Turog. He emerged from the fight to discover that apart from Sareth and Iska, he was alone in the glade. There were no Turog, no guards, except for the one that the Turog had killed, and no sign of Vesarion or Bethro.
“What happened?” he asked, like someone awakening from a trance.
“The major
ity of the Turog pursued Ferron and the two guards into the forest in that direction,” advised Sareth, pointing back in the direction they had come. “As for Vesarion? I was...er...a bit busy, so I didn’t see what happened.”
“I did,” volunteered Iska. “He was in danger of being surrounded and Bethro kept getting in his way, so he decided to try to out-distance the Turog. He and Bethro ran off in that direction with five Turog snapping at their heels.”
Eimer bent forward, grasping his knees, still a little out of breath.
“Remind me next time I see Pevorion, to punch him on the nose. Too few Turog to bother us! Ha! Can the man not count?”
But Sareth didn’t smile, instead, looking worried, she tried to return his sword to him.
“I think we should attempt to find Vesarion, brother. I’m concerned that he might be in trouble. You know that Bethro will be of no help to him, in fact, quite the reverse.”
Eimer’s smile faded. “Keep the sword, Sareth. I’ve a feeling you might need it.” He held up the one he had taken from his slain enemy. “It’s quite a good weapon actually, so I suppose it must have thieved it from someone. By the way, accept my compliments – Parrick would be very proud.”
Still she didn’t smile in response but tugged urgently at his sleeve.
“We must find them, Eimer. We have no horses and night will be upon us in an hour or so. I’m sure you don’t need to be Ferron to follow the trail of five Turog in pursuit of Bethro. It’s just that I’m not sure that Vesarion could handle all five by himself. So we must hurry.”
“What about the guards?” Iska asked.
“We can’t follow everyone,” Eimer replied shortly. “Ferron and the guards will have to fend for themselves.”
The dead guard provided a scabbard for Sareth’s borrowed sword, but as there was nothing they could do for him and time was pressing, they left him where he was, his head resting on the mossy ground as if merely asleep, and hurried into the forest following a trail that even a blind man could not have missed.
For once Bethro and Vesarion were of the same opinion – that with the departure of the Turog their situation had only marginally improved. Vesarion began craning his neck, inspecting the slope for a means of returning to the top, and was forced to admit defeat.
“What do we do?” Bethro asked again in a panicky voice.
“We can’t climb up,” Vesarion said, not mincing matters. “The scree is too loose and the trees and bushes too sparse to offer hope.” He neglected to mention that he had noticed something that Bethro was not aware of. The sapling that the terrified librarian was clinging to was beginning to give up the struggle. A couple of tendrils of root had rather ominously already broken loose.
“It will be dark soon,” resumed Vesarion, “so whatever we are going to do, we’ll have to do it soon. In actual fact, we have only one option. If we cannot go up, we must go down.”
“No!” squeaked Bethro.
“We have no choice. Now, I am going to lower myself down the slope until I reach the edge of the overhang and have a look at what there is below it.”
“Don’t leave me!”
Vesarion gave short shrift to Bethro’s histrionics. “Nonsense. Pull yourself together!”
Spotting some more vegetation a little below him and to the right, Vesarion gauged his trajectory carefully and releasing his hold on the pine tree, slithered down the scree in a cloud of dust and came to a halt amongst some bushes. Proceeding from bush to bush, he managed to descend the overhang until he was able to peer over the edge at the drop below. After a moment’s scrutiny, he called up to Bethro: “It’s not as bad as it looks from above. There is a ledge running beneath the overhang and I think it might be possible to climb down to the river from there. The rock face is much cracked and riven, so it offers many handholds. Now, try to follow the same route that I did and let go of the bush.”
But if he thought that Bethro was going to let go of the one thing in the world that was preventing him from plunging over the cliff, he was much mistaken.
A lengthy and pungent argument ensued, which only ended when Vesarion threatened to descend the cliff by himself and leave Bethro where he was.
A few moments later Bethro arrived at the edge of the overhang, complete with a dust cloud and a miniature landslide of stones. Acutely aware that darkness was rapidly descending, Vesarion found some handholds in a spur of exposed rock and lowered himself onto the ledge, thankful, as he hung by his hands, that he had a good head for heights. With a little assistance and a lot of discussion, the portly librarian succeeded in doing likewise and painfully slowly, working from handhold to handhold, the mismatched duo descended the rocky sides of the gully. As they did so, they left behind the dry scree and sun-baked grey rocks and began to enter the shadow of the ravine where the sun seldom trespassed. The rocks grew cool and damp. Soft green lichens began to appear, making the handholds a little treacherous. Soon they were descending amongst hart’s tongue ferns and clumps of violets, sprouting from mossy crevices, increasing in luxuriance as the river bed approached. When they finally reached the pebbly ground beside the river, Bethro fell on his face in exhaustion and lay like one dead.
Vesarion, covered in dust and with hands grazed from the scree, crossed the pebbles and kneeling beside the river, gratefully splashed his face and hands with the cold, crystal-clear water. When he stood up, he took stock of his surroundings. In the cool depths of the gorge, the lavender light of evening was already falling, soft and secretive, laced with the evening call of birds and the pleasant chuckle of the river as it tumbled over mossy stones. The overhang above them hid much of the forest from view, but it could be seen that the tops of the trees were still alight with the last rays of the setting sun. He looked downstream to discover that the green-skinned walls of the ravine drew together, giving a dark, tunnel-like effect, its narrow confines fully occupied by the river. Upstream seemed to offer more possibilities, as the walls remained further apart, accommodating not only the river but a broad margin of rounded pebbles. He couldn’t see any great distance ahead because the narrow passage twisted and turned, cutting off vision after about a stone’s throw, but it was worth a try.
Vesarion crossed to his companion and shook him by the shoulder.
“Come, Bethro, we will follow the ravine upstream in the hope that we can find somewhere to climb out and return to the forest above. We must try to retrace our steps back to the clearing where we were ambushed and see if we can discover what happened to the others.”
With a groan, reluctantly Bethro sat up and became aware of where he was. “It’s nearly dark.”
“Yes.”
“What do we eat?”
For the first time Vesarion’s lips twitched in amusement. “Nothing,” he declared baldly, taking a certain perverse pleasure in the announcement.
Bethro groaned again.
“Look on the bright side,” his tormentor added, “there’s plenty of water. I think we should lose no time in moving away from this spot because I’m not sure what conclusion the Turog came to when they saw we had gone over the cliff. So, on your feet, please.”
Bethro, becoming inured to Vesarion’s imperious ways, struggled to his feet obediently.
“I’m tired,” he remarked glumly.
His companion, who had chased fugitives, fought off Turog, been pursued through the forest, dragged over a cliff and nearly been cut in half by his own belt, resisted the temptation to inform Bethro that he, too, had experienced better days.
It was Sareth who had the party’s first piece of luck since the ambush. Eimer had been leading them through the forest on the trail of their missing companions, although in truth it hardly merited his tracking abilities. A swathe of undergrowth had been flattened by the stampeding Turog that even Bethro could have followed. It therefore surprised both Sareth and Iska that Eimer kept stopping every so often to search the surrounding forest with his eyes.
Finally, Iska could stand it no longer. �
��What is it?” she demanded. “The trail is perfectly clear.”
Eimer held up his hand to silence her and replied in a low voice: “I’m not certain, but I think we are being followed. Twice I thought I glimpsed something between the trees.”
“Turog?” Sareth asked in a whisper.
“Possibly. I’m not sure. Whatever it is, it’s keeping its distance for now.”
But Eimer’s warning caused Sareth to increase her vigilance and it was this which led to her lucky discovery. Advancing a little ahead of Eimer, she suddenly froze and pointed silently amongst the trees to the west. There, grazing unconcernedly on a patch of sparse grass, were two of the horses, their reins trailing on the ground.
“Don’t startle them,” breathed Sareth. “One is my horse and the other is Ferron’s.”
She made a soft clicking sound with her tongue and the heads of both horses jerked up. They were clearly wary after their fright but when Sareth repeated the noise, her own horse appeared to recognise her and began to amble in her direction, followed a little uncertainly, by its fellow. Soon its velvety muzzle was snuffling at her hand, looking for treats. Eimer, who had caught the bridle of the other horse, said: “Of all the horses that we could have found, Ferron’s is the best, because not only is it carrying a fair amount of provisions but it has his crossbow still attached to the saddle.”
The discovery enabled their search to progress more swiftly. Eimer took Ferron’s horse while his two companions doubled up on Sareth’s. Nevertheless, it was almost dark by the time they arrived at the edge of the ravine. Eimer dismounted and peered over, trying to pierce the gloom that had gathered in the depths of the gorge. After questing about, examining the scuff marks along the rim, he returned to Sareth who was anxiously awaiting his verdict.
“Clearly someone, or something, went over the edge here, and the bad new is that I think it was our friends. Bethro’s trail, which I have been following as clear as daylight, stops here. There are signs that the Turog also arrived and examined the cliff top but they seem to have gone off in that direction,” he said, pointing downstream. “It’s difficult to be sure in this light, but I can see no bodies in the gully, so whatever happened, it looks like they survived.” He saw Sareth let out a breath of relief. “If they did descend into the ravine,” he continued, “they will be trying to find somewhere to climb out, and from the looks of it, they may have to travel some distance.”
