John Bowman's Cave

by Erron Adams

  “You give me little incentive to say.”

  “Then you die, anyway!” The Kasina's eyes narrowed as his aim tightened on the spot above Bowman's nose.

  Playing desperately for time, Bowman spluttered, “All right! I'm John Bowman, an Outlander.”

  But it only stayed the execution a moment before the Guard's mouth hardened. “Cursed Outlander, on your way to the White Lands,” he said and renewed his aim.

  Bowman lived through a combination of his own belated survival instinct and Yalnita's near-miraculous thirty yard shot through intervening foliage. As he dived to one side, her shaft slammed into the Kasina's leather shoulder plate, sending the crossbow's bolt a little wide. It grazed the face of its target and sang on through the forest like a maddened hornet.

  The sting of it instantly grounded Bowman. Coming back to earth he lunged for the sword so readily abandoned and whirled on his attacker. Terror galvanized him. He felt a primal resolve that he'd only felt once before, when the pistol-wielding cop had climbed his arm above the gigantic maw that marked an entrance to this world.

  With no time to reload, the Guard discarded the crossbow and lay both hands around the haft of his sword. He looked about and saw a loose ring of Rory advancing on him. There was no way out now, this Outlander had sent his one chance sprawling. So be it, both would die of that trap, defiant Guard and sneaking Outlander alike.

  Yalnita's shot had just pierced the leather, and mined the shoulder muscle to a bare half-inch, no crippling blow though he could feel the broadhead chewing flesh as he raised his sword above Bowman. Snarling with effort and anger he brought the long blade down. Its whooshing arc was unimpeded by the arrival of several more arrows, all but one of which glanced from the burnished leather armour.

  But Roop's shaft had been aimed at the strip of lower back flesh that had opened to him as the Guard hefted his sword overhead, lifting the short armour coat that covered his upper body as he did. The arrow sliced deep into liver, a mortal wound at any time, though not quick enough, of itself, to save Bowman from the weapon descending on him now. Its impact caused the Kasina to wince, however, and delayed the blade’s course momentarily.

  Death's details slowed for Bowman. He saw stars through the black patchwork of forest canopy, moonlit grass on the hill behind the Guard, the long fine line of the plunging blade, hairs in its owner's nose - all the myriad brush strokes of the canvas came alive and moved in a torpid choreography.

  He was vaguely aware of moving closer to his partner, up and under the warrior's chest, and of his short sword performing a mirror arc to its counterpart, burying itself in exposed flesh above a man's navel.

  And there the dream sequence disintegrated. In an instinctive reflex the great body above him hunched and recoiled from the blow. The broadsword cartwheeled away from loose fingers. A gust of horrified breath swept down Bowman's spine as the Guard clamped his weakened hands on Bowman's shoulders. Their shocked faces locked as the warrior sunk, penitent-like to his knees. Blood trickled from a corner of his mouth. He looked up and smiled faintly.

  “You have killed me, Outlander.”

  His torso wobbled once, twice, his hands began to slide from Bowman's shoulders. Bowman gripped them, trying to stay the fall. His gut clenched and in his head an imp ran, screeching the never-ending refrain “you killed a man... you killed a man…you killed…”

  “I am sorry,” he said. “I am truly, truly sorry.”

  “So am I, John Bowman,” said the Kasina, and he leant sideways to the ground.

  ***

  “Are you hurt?”

  The voice had travelled a long distance, circling the walls of the moment that held Bowman, till it found a chink to slip through. Slowly he turned towards the chink. Yalnita's lightly-downed face filled it as she squeezed in, bringing the world with her. A slight breeze - tantalizing as a wind shift under trees on a burning summer's day, almost refreshing, that would never quite do the job but was welcome anyway - touched his face. He tilted his head back to catch it edge on, to feel it lift and carry off some of the sick dread of what he'd done. Then it was gone, and he was there with her.

  “Yes... I, yes.”

  Having summed the situation, Oyen had already taken off downhill to where his sister lay, Lowery tending her.

  Yalnita stood. “Roop, help him. Rain Dog, get the food in their camp. Come back quick as you can, I'll see if any of the horses stayed close,” she said and turned after Oyen.

  Bowman shrugged off Roop and caught her halfway there. “Caylen - Is she all right?”

  Yalnita kept walking, observing him for a long moment.

  “I'm not sure. Let's go and see.”

  ***

  Bowman wasn't sure how long they'd been there, sitting in a quiet circle, eating. He sat there numb and wondered how in a dream he'd killed someone, and that act had made the dream seem even more real. Finally, he shook the useless thinking off and looked around at the others.

  They were in bad shape. On foot, to begin with, as against their foe's undoubtedly horse-mounted pursuit. And the Guards had only carried with them two day's food, evidently not intending a long sojourn from the fort. Meagre as it was, it had been welcome, but he could tell from the way it had been doled out that they'd need to somehow augment their supplies to make it to the Rory hills. The major impediment to that journey lay in the wounds they’d suffered.

  Oyen had escaped unscathed, but in his lap he cradled his sister's head. Caylen had lost blood, and though the bleeding had stopped, she was weakened. That and whatever else the Kasina, and Tohubuho before them, had done. She hadn't eaten, only drunk a little water, rising from exhaustion to clumsily sip, and then slump back.

  Yalnita, Roop and Rain Dog were sullen, though okay.

  Not so, Lowery. They'd dressed the giant's head and staunched the bleeding. Across his chest, however, he wore a diagonal swathe of purple bruises like a tattered regal sash. He winced with every breath. Although the charger hadn't broken any ribs, the injury had been displaced across several in a shocking agglomeration of spoiled blood.

  But the one who would really slow them sat a little apart, clutching his knee. Challa had dispatched the Southernmost Guard at great personal cost. He'd arrived to carry out the killing last of all the group of Rory who'd gone to silence sentries, and his Kasina had been prepared. A bloody fight ensued in which the leather-armoured Guard offered few openings to the Rory short sword, and left Challa with a broken leg and sundry blade wounds to remember him by.

  Bowman's wound - a long, shallow cut to the side of the head where the crossbow bolt had narrowly failed - was trivial in comparison. The bleeding had stopped, and in the heat of larger issues he'd even forgotten to wipe away the dried streaks that ran from it.

  It was his mind that pained him. The Rory quietly discussed their bitter options, but he detached, and kept drifting from their talk to a desert where the whole sky hunted him out of shadow. It burnt away the notion of trees and hurled rocks about as it sought him.

  He'd killed a man, and there was no going back on that. A man had died at the end of his fist, his shoulder had shuddered under the act, something had reached down the long nerves of a dying man's arms and shaken the box another man lived in.

  How different from the tales his youth had fed on, where death sniped or flung grenades from trenches, or crushed entire cities beneath a button; a world where disconnected fingers squeezed life from strangers far removed.

  It was as though something inside you must first die, for you to kill, Bowman realised. Or else it dies afterwards, to allow what's left of you to go on living. Cornered like he was, he'd killed to live, not reckoning any cost beyond that. He thought once more of his father, and of how the older man had despaired of the son’s inability to comprehend the simple facts of desperate survival.

  “Did you ever kill anyone?”

  “I don't know, son.”

  “Oh, come on, you must know!”

  “No. I don't. Those
books you read, and the films. Not like that.”

  One day in a hundred running from battle, firing blindly; one day in a hundred running to battle, firing blindly. The other ninety-eight, sitting and waiting for battle, polishing the blind gun.

  Came back malarial, no teeth, ninety pounds, nightmares tearing sleep and peace from a life that would never after heal.

  Bowman lowered his head to hide the welling in his eyes from the rest of the Pack. How could I not forgive you, father, for your simple fate, and mine? How could I blame you all these dead years for the fear all men share? How could I not understand what had been done to you?

  My heart turned to stone, and now all I have is a name in stone to trace where your face is sealed away forever.

  How could I not forgive you?

  Release us

  Forgive me…

  ***

  Chapter 12

  Passing The Reins

  They stumbled along in the growing light, Caylen riding on her brother's back, Roop propping Challa where the broken leg dragged. Yalnita had decided they’d head North along the path to where it petered out, a few miles ahead. From there she intended branching right, into the foothills that rolled down from the forking mountain range formed by the Dragonspine to the North and Margun's Sword to the East.

  She guessed the Tohubuho would head in the opposite direction, away from the forbidding terrain and martial danger of the Rory foothills, towards the unaligned farming settlements and Rory 'Solitaires' around Twin's Fall. This marked the geographical limits of the Tohubuho mission in these parts, their purpose being to win and hold the fertile lands between the Dragonspine and the Kasina seaports.

  Yalnita kept looking back along the path to their rear. She expected a rapid response to their ambush to come from Burnt Pines. The Kasina would try to overtake them before they reached Grealding. Ordinarily, the approach of a mounted troop would give sufficient warning to enable the fleet-footed Rory to melt away in the dense forest. But with three of their number indisposed, the Rory wanted haste, too, in a straight line for their home.

  In desperation, her thoughts turned to the superb Kasina mounts that had bounded from the fracas. They needed horses. Two would do: each could carry one of the wounded, and someone able-bodied enough to lead the way home.

  She recognized the poor likelihood of such salvation. Even if they chanced on some of the beasts, Kasina chargers were notoriously hostile to strangers. Trained as hard as their masters, they bonded to them in a pairing that could only be broken by the death of one, or by the deliberate handing over of the horse by its present owner to someone new.

  Damn the odds, she thought. It was the only way. Some of the freed chargers had bolted North. Not used to being riderless in the wild, surely they would gravitate towards the path that led home. If the Rory could only snare one; just one would do. Challa's major impairment was his leg; on horseback it would mean nothing. He could take Caylen and, from here, make Grealding in little more than a day's ride. The rest of them could then return at their own pace, through the wilderness away to their right, the foothills leading up to the mighty back of the world, the Dragonspine.

  Grealding! Home to her and her Pack. The stone fortress that guarded the only realistic approach to the villages of the Rory. In every other direction, treacherous terrain forbade entry to all but mountain sheep.

  But she had no time or use for day-dreaming and narrowed her mind to the path before her.

  ***

  About an hour after they’d started out they rounded a corner in the track and pulled up sharp. The Kasina Guard sent North to ensure the Tohubuho didn't double back and ambush camp, lay slumped against the base of a sapling. Handprints smudged its smooth bark higher up, and dark smears tracked down behind the Guard's back.

  His leather helmet lay on the ground beside him. Two crossbow bolts protruded from his thigh, having entered the gap where armour plates met. He sat in a black pool of blood, his chest jumping with each rasping breath. Around him lay discarded swords and shields like those the Tohubuho carried, and there were long smears of flattened grass where bodies had been dragged away.

  His horse shied at their approach and stood a little distance off. It could go no further, tethered by the bond of loyalty to its fallen master. It pranced and snorted and spun, hurling garlands of saliva and nervous sweat. Rain Dog held his left hand palm-towards the beast and advanced, muttering an incantation.

  Oyen and Yalnita knelt by the guard. Oyen held a water skin to the man's mouth and trickled its contents through swollen lips. Yalnita cursorily inspected the visceral wounds, lifting aside a leather breastplate that now hung by a single fastening. She winced and let it fall back. Looking straight at him, she spoke.

  “You are dying, soldier.”

  He looked at her and smiled. He made to clear his throat and coughed up blood, then wiped the corner of his mouth and waved the reddened fingers at nothing in particular. When he spoke, he gulped air that made deep, wet, slapping sounds inside him.

  “Yes, Rory. So may you be, shortly. But I have eased your way back to your village. Not so many Tohubuho now lie between it and here. It was an unintended service, and it has cost me dearly, as you point out.”

  She brushed hair back from his forehead and looked away.

  He turned painfully towards the horse, which had retreated step for step in time to Rain Dog's advances. “Please treat my mare well. She is called Light Hands and is gentle and courageous.” The Guard clicked his fingers once. The animal turned towards him. Another click and it came, undaunted now, through the parting Rory.

  Coming to the prone man it bent its long neck down to sniff the blood-soaked hair, then reared up, but stood by at its master's shoulder. The Kasina took the reins and handed them to Yalnita. The charger looked towards her, eyes glaring, defiant breath whooshing from its flicking nostrils. Then it quietened and put its head down, still eyeing her.

  The guard rolled his head to face Oyen. “Thank you for the drink, my friend.” Oyen gripped the man's arm, looked down at his knees and nodded. “First Tohubuho, now Rory,” the Guard went on, “my company has improved, somewhat. May it continue.” Then his gaze wandered again, searching the foliage overhead. The focus of his eyes faded as it found the thing it needed, and his breath descended in gentle steps to stillness.

  Bowman had rarely known death, and had never seen so much of it in one day. It had always seemed an absolute, the complete opposite of everything that was, an instant that wiped everything away. But as he watched the Guard leave, something new opened to him. No matter how violent its onset, death became, not the vanishing point of oblivion through which light was snuffed, but a gradual passing from hard through soft into something so indefinable it could be the rustling of leaves overhead, or part of the thing that moved them.

  And as time ceased for those who died, it wafted between the fingers of those left holding onto death. There had been no moment he could point to as the definite exit; there were no edges in which to neatly hold what had happened here. A man had died, and Bowman watched, and somewhere between the time those eyes had last expressed life and now, lay a mist behind which a man's spirit had slipped away.

  “Challa!” Yalnita's eyes never left the animal at the end of the reins. Roop helped Challa over to her.

  “Yes, Yalnita.”

  She handed the horse's leads to him without speaking. The animal ran through the same behaviour it had shown when the Guard made the handover, then stood still, its eyes now locked on Challa.

  “Take Caylen. Get moving.”

  The pair left at a slow trot, Challa holding the barely conscious Caylen in front of him. The rest of the Rory waited some hours in case a troop of Guards came through, intending to buy time for their departing comrades with an ambush. None came.

  “They mustn't think Caylen worth the cost of pursuit,” Yalnita said when she'd called the Rory back from their vantage points. “That might make sense, if Keemon voiced the same o
pinion of her to Denaren that we overheard.”

  Roop spoke. “At any rate, Challa and Caylen should be near the path's end by now. No Kasina, not even Guards, would venture beyond that.”

  “Why?” Bowman had to ask.

  Rain Dog's look withered him. “Because they'd be killed.”

  “Let's get moving then,” said Yalnita. “We should get to the first of the ravines before the sun's high. Then we'll rest and scout for food. Rain Dog?”

  The hunter frowned. “No soft task, hunting at midday. But animals are plentiful around here, and they're not shy of humans. I'll try.”

  “Good. I want you to take John Bowman.”

  “B... But... Damn the gods, Yalnita! This cow-footed Outlander? Hunting? He'll scare every beast within a day of us with the noise he makes, if they don't smell his strangeness first. No, I won't!”

  She was even in her reply, and smiled as she made it.

  “Show him how to be silent. Show him all you can. If he is to live with us, he must be able to hunt.”

  “If he is to live with us, yes. A good question – why?”

  This time she cut him down sharply. “Rain Dog! That is not your decision to make. And it has been made already.”

  Rain Dog’s voice took on a whine. “But Yalnita, his arm - what use will he be?”

  “I don't expect him to do anything, just watch and learn!” She paused a minute, then her tone changed. “Rain Dog, you are a master hunter. I recognize the honour you do the Outlander by teaching him. But he is also very important to us, for reasons you do not yet know, and I cannot tell you.”

  At this, several pairs of eyes lifted from the ground where they had slunk from the argument. Not the least, Bowman's. Yalnita recognized the price she paid in wresting back control and went on quickly. “It is also an honour for you, therefore. But above all, it is what I, as leader of this Pack, wish you to do.”

  Rain Dog flicked his hand as though to swat at an insect. Then, stung by the impotence of the automatic gesture, he stabbed a finger at Bowman.