Fall; or, Dodge in Hell

by Neal Stephenson

  Intent as she was on looking after Swab, Prim paid little note when Corvus flew in from one of his reconnaissance sweeps and summoned Mard. But when they finally knotted the bandages round Swab’s wounds and made sure she had all the water she desired—and she had become very thirsty—Prim looked round and saw that Mard and Corvus were both absent.

  They took turns carrying Swab the rest of the way to the Overstrike. Whoever wasn’t carrying her carried water or other supplies. The hike seemed to last an eternity, but the sight of Corvus circling overhead gave them some comfort that all was well at their destination and that they were not being hotly pursued.

  They found Mard sitting bareheaded out in the open sun before the dark grin of the Overstrike. His sword was across his knees. On the ground next to him was a rag stained with fresh blood, which he’d apparently been wiping from the blade—for that was glittering clean. But he seemed to have finished with that task and was now just staring out over the distant sea. A short ways before him, just downslope, was a great deal of blood, painting the slope with a ramifying pattern as it discovered paths between stones. Lying unclaimed on the ground, considerably farther away, was a cutlass whose blade—as Lyne verified by picking it up and turning it this way and that in the sun—bore no trace of gore. “Mard must have kicked it away,” he explained.

  As they came closer, giving the blood lake a wide berth, they saw that Mard was shivering violently. Prim went to him and knelt down. Lyne, out of a nervous habit, turned and looked back. But from here they had a clear view of the ground below for at least a bow-shot, and Corvus was still patrolling farther out. Fern kept trudging up the slope, breathing heavily and sweating freely with Swab on her back, trying to get her into the shade of the Overstrike.

  “I know that swordfights are part of what one signs up for,” Mard remarked, in a low voice, “but that was so different from everything I trained for as to be another thing altogether.”

  “But it—your training—worked, did it not?” she asked. “Lyne said you kicked his sword away. How did it end up on the ground in the first place?”

  “I would like to be able to say that I executed a clever disarm as I was taught, but really I have no idea. And it’s as likely he kicked it by accident as that I did on purpose.”

  “Let’s get into the shade,” she suggested. She stood up and extended her hand. After a few more moments of gazing out at nothing in particular, he met her gaze—but only for an instant—and reached up and took her hand. She gave him a tug—mostly symbolic, for he was quite capable of standing up by himself. He let go of her hand and wiped his on his pant leg as if worried it still had blood on it. Side by side they walked up the slope until they passed into the shade of the Overstrike, whereupon they had to wait for a few moments as their eyes adjusted.

  Lyne had gone up before them and was squatting there, bow across his knees, gazing outward. Farther in, Fern had lain Swab down on the flattest place she could find and was trying once again to satisfy her thirst. Querc was tearing about the place full of nervous energy. It was obvious that something had upset her, so Prim got her to stop moving by firmly embracing her and hanging on for a spell.

  “I came up to get something for Pick, and he was just there, looking at the sample case.”

  “The Beedle?”

  “Yes. All I could think of was my family, and all the Beedle fights they used to talk about. I tried for the longest time to scream for help, but I was just frozen—he hadn’t seen me yet. Then he noticed me, and took a step in my direction, and I pulled this out.” She patted the hilt of a long knife sheathed at her hip. “That made him pause for a minute. If he’d come after me I don’t know what I’d have done. But then Mard came running in. He stopped at the edge of the dark and drew his sword. That spooked the Beedle. He drew out his sword and ran at Mard. Mard backed out into the light and they fought each other.”

  52

  Pick, as the sole member of the Quest who did not seem injured, shocked, or distracted, had taken it upon himself to come up with a plan. They all collected near where Swab lay so that they could talk about it. Everything about the manner in which Pick spoke of this plan seemed to indicate that he thought highly of it, “given the circumstances.” But no one could understand what he was proposing.

  “Given the circumstances,” Lyne repeated. “Given the circumstances. We are trapped in a waterless, foodless hellhole at the arse end of the world, being hunted by Beedles, and there is no one to help us. So, what you’re saying is that, given those circumstances, this is a better plan than just dying of thirst or being murdered.”

  “If you have some other suggestion,” said Corvus, “now’s the time to pipe up.”

  After some moments went by without anyone’s piping up, Corvus said, “Right! Settled.”

  “The most excellent plan I can think of,” said Lyne, “is not to get talked into Quests by mysterious giant talking ravens.” He shared this with Fern, Mard, and Prim after Corvus had flown away to reconnoiter and Pick and Querc had taken turns going down the rope into the huge mysterious crack. Swab had been quiet of late. Fern was sitting by her side, holding her hand, perhaps trying to ascertain whether she was alive or dead. Prim looked at them, trying not to be obvious, and saw that Fern had begun to unwind the bandage. It was no longer doing service. Swab had stopped bleeding, for the place where the arrow had gone in was now dissolving into chaos and no longer supplied with blood. Fern had, however, been following the conversation, and now spoke.

  “As I understand matters,” she said, “I have lost more than any of you. My keelsloop is gone. Of my three crew, Rett is dead. Two are wounded, and one of those absconded with my longboat. If you don’t mind, I’ll be the judge of whether going on this Quest was worth it. And I’m all in still.”

  “How can you be?” Prim asked, in a tone of gentle curiosity. Of course she knew from her reading of old Quest stories that there was fighting and blood. But to observe the consequences of a single arrow fired into a single body had forever changed the way she would think about such adventures. Fern had seen worse in the last day, and various clues about her, her ship, and her crew had suggested that this was far from her first scrap.

  “This happens all the time anyway,” Fern said, her voice quiet but severe. She flicked her eyes down at her suffering partner. “Perhaps not to those of you who live in castles on Calla. But I have seen it all before. I have not before—not in a thousand falls of sailing the sea—seen a giant talking raven who can transform himself into a man and hold forth with authority on the Before Times. To be called into such doings is a gift that has never been given to me before and will not come again. I have seen wonders already that no one to my knowledge—and I have lived long and journeyed far—has ever seen or spoken of. Young as you are and living on a veiled island where magical beings are apparently of little note, you do not understand this. You must think,” Fern said, rising to her feet, “of the arrow that Swab took for us, and how, having taken it, and understanding its barbed nature, she agreed that it was better to shove it all the way through than to reverse its direction. That is where we are all poised now in respect of this Quest. To surrender is to pull out the arrow backward: no better and probably worse than to push through.”

  Fern bent close, cocking her ear toward the lips of Swab, and listened to words that no one else could hear. After some time she nodded her head, then turned her face to Swab, brushed back her hair, and kissed her. Fern then got up on one knee and pulled Swab’s good arm up across her shoulders. With a great effort she stood up. As Swab felt herself being lifted, her legs stirred and she got her feet on the ground, taking some small portion of her weight. On the side that had been struck by the arrow, the entirety of the shoulder and the arm attached to it had dissolved into chaos, and most of that no longer clung to her body, nor did it make any pretense of hewing to the form of a normal soul, but was dispersing like smoke.

  Fern trudged with slow heavy footfalls up the last few yards
of slope to the brink of the fault. She crested the slope and descended a few paces, planting her feet with caution that became more evident as the adamant sloped away beneath her and the surface became cleaner and slicker. When she had gone as far as she dared, she bent her knees and her back, and carefully let Swab down so that she was sitting on the smooth adamant, using her remaining arm to prop herself upright. For a little while then they stayed together, Fern squatting next to her stricken partner and embracing her as if her heavy arms could hold in the chaos that had once been Swab but was now escaping from her form. Finally, before it was too late, Swab shoved off with her good hand, and began sliding into the fault. Unable to remain upright, she flopped sideways, rolled lazily over, slid, picked up some speed, rolled over twice more, and was gone.

  Prim watched it all from a respectful distance. Long after she had lost sight of Swab, she saw a faint flare of chaos down in the abyss, and knew for certain that Pick was correct in suggesting that neither Egdod nor Pluto nor El had bothered with putting a bottom on this thing. The Land was built upon mere chaos, and in places you could reach it.

  Another Beedle sniper came up to reconnoiter, but his approach was almost offensively obvious. Lyne shot him and he fell wounded. His companions—for others could be heard, and occasionally seen, farther down the slope—let him lie where he had fallen. Insects came out of nowhere and feasted on his blood.

  Night fell. They lit no fire, lest it dazzle their vision. There was almost nothing to be burned in any case. Prim had worried that the Beedles might come in the night, but the air was so dry and thin in these parts that moon-and-star-light let them see, and shoot at, anything out there in the no-man’s-land below them.

  In Secondel, Beedles had always been under the command of Autochthons. But none were in evidence here. Fern ventured the opinion that a larger flagship would probably be not far off, commanded by an Autochthon, and carrying Beedle marines who would prove more formidable opponents than the scouts and mere galley slaves who had them bottled up at the moment. And indeed when day broke Corvus flew in from scouting and reported that just such a galley had entered the cove, and that reinforcements were climbing the hill, led by an Autochthon.

  “Don’t kill him,” Corvus suggested, when he got a chance for a private word with Prim. “Or anyone, unless you do it like a normal person, by putting an arrow through them or something.”

  “We may have no other choice. We have a day’s water and no food to speak of. Pick’s preparations are taking forever.”

  “Pick and Querc are doing good work,” Corvus said. “Almost ready.”

  “Then why not just get out while we can?”

  “I would like to know what this Autochthon knows.”

  And then, for the second time that Prim had seen, Corvus transformed himself into the shape of a man.

  “Ugh!” he hawked, when the thing was done. “I hate this. It’s why I have you people. But where we go next, wings are worse than useless.” He borrowed clothes from Mard and Lyne, and put a dagger on his belt for appearances’ sake. But for the most part he had no idea what to do with his arms, to say nothing of his hands, and so he strutted about with his thumbs jammed in his belt, just to prevent his upper limbs from flailing.

  The new contingent of Beedles made no effort to be subtle about their approach. Quite the opposite, as it was their habit to intone marching chants (“songs” was not quite the right word) to keep in step on the trail. If their purpose was also to intimidate, then it worked. By the time they drew up along the edge of the no-man’s-land, just out of the range where archery would be of much use, it was perfectly obvious to all the members of the Quest that they could with ease simply run up the slope, protecting themselves with shields, and take the camp with few if any casualties.

  After allowing a few minutes to pass, the sole Autochthon stepped forward, flanked by a couple of shield-bearing Beedles. He had the same fair, fine looks as the officers Prim had met at Secondel. He came up the slope boldly until Lyne and Prim both nocked arrows. Then he stopped, smiled, and displayed empty hands. “I just hate shouting,” he explained.

  “We can hear you,” said Fern. They’d agreed she would speak for them.

  “Thirsty? We have tons of water. Literally tons.”

  “We are fine, thank you.”

  “You’d be the smuggler. Fern.”

  “You may certainly address me as Fern,” she allowed.

  “I am Harrier. Where’s the big crow? He going to peck my eyes out?”

  “Taking his ease in the delicious shade, Harrier.”

  “Is it nice up there? I’m told that if you go too far in, there’s a nasty surprise.”

  “We have used it to bury our dead.”

  “You’ve noticed, then, that El’s military is taking all of this more seriously than the many voyages you have made along this coast in the past,” Harrier said.

  “It had not escaped me.”

  “Perhaps you’re associating with the wrong sorts,” said Harrier. “I’ve admired you from a distance—a frustratingly enormous distance—for years. Our futile pursuits of Silverfin have been a fine training exercise for our crews. No better way to find out which Beedles still have strength to draw oars and which are ready to be . . . reassigned. This time it’s different though.”

  “Why is it different?”

  “Because of the young lady. Presumably the one to your left, glaring at me like a true princess, arrow nocked.”

  “What of her?”

  “No idea. You’re not familiar with how the military works, are you? The way it works is that they don’t tell me such things unless I need to know. I’m to bring her in. It has been made clear that I am to do so with the utmost politeness and consideration for her feelings and her personal safety—which is why I’m standing out in the hot sun talking to you instead of simply marching up there behind a shield wall. Nothing was said to me about you, Fern, and so I will be more than happy to convey you, and the young Bufrects for that matter, back to civilization in a cool cabin with a lot of fresh drinking water. Or, you could all die here.”

  “You keep mentioning water, as if it will wash away our resolve,” said Fern. “Since you have so much of it, do you go back to your camp and drink it or bathe in it or pour it over your head or whatever it is you do with such an abundance thereof, and leave us alone to consider matters.”

  “Very well. We march up this hill at nightfall,” said Harrier. “If you make it difficult for us, you’ll be the first one into the crack.” He turned on his heel and walked away, followed by his two Beedles, who scuttled backward, shields high and eyes sharp.

  Pick went through the sample case one drawer at a time, removing tools and instruments, or bits of strange rock, from some drawers and finding ways to secrete them on his person or on Querc’s. Other constituents he wistfully left in their assigned places. Then he closed it up and, with visible effort, turned his back on it. “Go ahead,” he said to Mard and Lyne, “I know you want to.”

  The young men dutifully picked it up between them, carried it up to the brink, and one-two-threed it out into the blackness.

  Then they took turns descending the rope into the fault. The slope became steeper the farther you went down. They went down to the point where it became a nearly vertical cliff. The waning light of the day, filtering down from above, was of little use at such depth. Pick had rocks that glowed in the dark, but their light seemed to penetrate little more than a hand’s breadth.

  Their gathering place was a ledge, about a foot wide, that was not visible until you found it with your feet. They all had to wait there until the last of them—Corvus, still in human form—had descended the rope. The final length of this had been doubled over a peg that Pick had driven into the rock some distance above. When Corvus let go of one end of the rope he was able to pull the whole thing around and off the peg.

  “That should give Harrier some trouble should he decide to follow us!” Pick chortled.

 
No one bothered pointing out the even greater difficulties it would pose for them, should they ever be of a mind to go back. But going back would not have ended well. So they went forward—which meant following the ledge in a direction that took them generally away from the sea. They would all have fallen off the ledge and into the crack in a very short time had Pick not provided a hand rope, fixed to the rock with iron pegs.

  Above, Harrier must have suspected something. Or perhaps he simply grew impatient and broke his promise. For they heard the marching chant of the marines, punctuated by clashing of cutlasses on shields, echoing from the ceiling of the Overstrike even as the faint light of dusk still shone on its dangling skeins of birds’ nests. It was not possible for them to see up to the brink, which was to their advantage, but they heard the march of the Beedles grow very loud and then falter as a demand for silence made its way up and down the line. After that, nothing but indistinct talking, and the occasional tock-tock-tumble of a stone being projected experimentally over the brink.

  “Can they follow us?” Prim—who was second from the rear—asked Corvus, who was behind her. For during her tour of Elkirk she had seen all the different varieties of Beedles that the Autochthons were capable of producing, and she knew that there were many who spent their whole lives down in mines.

  By way of an answer, Corvus leaned back, trusting the hand rope, and shone the faint light of his glow-rock at the ledge behind him.

  There was no ledge behind him.

  Prim’s feet had been upon it only moments before, but now the surface was featureless. Likewise when Corvus passed the next of those iron rope-pegs he was able to draw it out of the stone as if it were thrust into sand. He handed it to Prim, who passed it on up the line. Some time later they went by the same peg again, fixed firmly into the stone. But ahead of them were no sounds of drilling or hammering. Pick, the Lithoplast, was shaping the adamant fore and aft.