John Bowman's Cave

by Erron Adams

  He tried as best he could to remember Oyen’s bow-making instruction. He'd lucked on a sapling of the right thickness, with even a built-in arrow shelf that a small branch, hacked off flush with the mainstem, provided. Less need to match arrows to the bow's strength, a little voice said.

  His mind had thrown in heartily on the exercise; he was in full denial, and retreat.

  He even managed humour at one point, remembering a one-liner as he set about his work: to sculpt an elephant, cut away everything that doesn't look like an elephant, he laughed, and, laying the mental template of a bow along the stave, took up his shortsword.

  In one morning's mindless paring amongst the tall branches of an elm whose dense foliage pillowed round him, cutting off all sight and most sound of the forest floor, he had the bow roughly shaped and sized. He'd even managed to approximate its tillering, pushing the stave against two forking branches with his foot to see which limb bent least, and therefore needed further shaving. The sound of Guards thrashing the bushes below held no menace while he did this, and every time her face flew in and landed on a branch to watch, he saw it off by bending to the task and working faster.

  That first night he came down and lit a small fire, beginning the weapon's rough curing. The next night he did the same, and a bundle of briar stalks joined the bow, him turning them over the slow coals like meat skewers, taking them off occasionally to be straightened, scraping the thin bark back to the stems (white as a young woman's arms) when they were done, then using a small, smooth stone to burnish them straight and brown, nut brown, as a summer's indolent outdoors wandering might effect on milky skin. No time for proper fletching, the little voice told him, so he split the shafts at one end and slid slivers of straight bark between, tying off the splits behind with threads worked from his shirt. At the other end, for broadheads, came flakes of slaty stone he picked up, shaped in the hand with a chipping rock and slipped into a slit like the fletch and similarly tied, the whole glued with still-setting pine resin.

  While it lasted, the work went well, but by the third day of rejecting her his defences failed and the past intruded. Whenever he ran short of things to do, the past gate-crashed his solitude, taunting him with images of their once-settled life. One particular memory came to represent the whole loss: of times they drove in the country, for no better reason than to watch the scenery's rolling carousel. A peace like the quiet of dusk would descend and they'd feel no need for talk. She would sit beside him, softly singing almost-private little songs a child playing happily alone might sing.

  He hadn’t realised how deeply she was woven into him, until now. Everywhere he went, she was. That was comfort, and he knew there was no other place for him to be, ever. It was simple, whole truth, unquestionable as the worth and warmth of winter sun on bare skin.

  The knowledge of having been cast out from such a still centre drove his desperation for some hours until he fell exhausted before it. Alone and defeated, he surrendered. Each time the past returned he fell forward in great vomiting sobs, and it helped a bit, as if the hurt could never be erased, but might be emptied out a little, if the path of the throat be opened, the struggle abandoned.

  That whole third day she mostly stayed away, as though she knew by then it was the manner of a man grieving. As for him, whenever possible he worked, rationalizing that while the pieces of his messy life to now floated down and coalesced, it was something to do, to stay away from accepting what he'd seen, to keep him sane. He was, for now, just another man in his workshop, making something out of it, keeping busy, placing one stone on another to enable the world of feeling to be more easily known.

  But something else was going on, and by the time he'd notched nocks in the briar shafts, he saw it: just a string was needed now, some twisted strands of hemp or bark, spun like Oyen had showed him, and he'd do his best to have her back from those who’d taken her. Whoever she may be.

  Once this penetration occurred, her face burned into him wherever he looked, and the only way to erase its accusation was to complete the task begun. A simple hanging spindle of rock and shirt strip; for string fibre, the inner bark of the silky ash; then tortuous spinning in the treetops, with Oyen's imagined laughter at his faltering efforts to goad him, and that third night by the little fire, plying the lot by hand, timber-hitching it to one end of the bow, in the rough notch; the other end a loop that took some hours, and several cursing undos, to achieve.

  Somewhere near the middle hour of night he stood to appraise his efforts. Despite the knobs and imperfections it curved symmetrically to grip the string at both ends with a settled power. The arrows slid smooth along the shelf as he drew back many times, tempering the timber to his draw point by the mouth. It would do.

  He ran to the top of the little bald hill that overlooked the camp of the Guards. The moon hung low and less than quarter full, a silver thumbnail print in the sky, beckoning.

  He was ready.

  ***

  Chapter 25

  Circling The Moon

  So long as the new moon returns in heaven a bent, beautiful bow, so long will the fascination of archery keep hold in the hearts of men.

  - Maurice Thompson

  “Captain, he's nowhere we’ve looked. And we’ve looked everywhere. Maybe he made a meal for some wolves, or maybe he’s just gone.” The Lieutenant wavered a moment, then plunged on. “It's been three days, sir!”

  The cop smiled thinly but said nothing. He sauntered over to Caylen, tied to the hind legs of their worst-tempered pack horse. It wasn't as though she'd tried to escape, but Keemon salvaged small pleasure from his fruitless search for Bowman each time a new bruise showed on the naked woman. Every time she moved.

  He squatted safe feet from her.

  “What about it bitch, you going to call him in like the old crone says you can? You know he must be near dead out there by now, we got your food back on the beach. If you ask me, he's in trouble. You could save us all a lot of time.”

  “He'll come without my calling, when he's ready. I’ll go when I am. And you'd better be ready for us!”

  The cop sneered. “Oooh, don't talk that way, you'll give me nightmares!” He rose, kicking dirt at the horse's tail, setting off another round of bruising.

  He walked back to the fire, looking over his shoulder at the spectacle of dust and kicking hooves. He laughed.

  Atop the small hill, Bowman looked down on their camp and saw the kicks. He turned side on to Keemon's walking figure and raised the bow.

  From some vantage in the camp below he liked to think it filled the outline of the sliver moon, and as he drew the silver line into a circle she was with him again, a girl in Animarl, scratching a stick of charcoal over paper as she whispered about a Rory secret of great power.

  The sunrock ember impaled on the arrow tip fanned into a glow that traced an arc in the night sky it tracked through, and Bowman’s howl stopped Keemon in mid-stride. The cop looked up to see a shooting star that screamed like a swooping Nightjar as it fell.

  “What the fuck was that?”

  The Lieutenant by him squinted, in anger, in fright, pretending to newly adjust his eyes to the night.

  “Someone's out there, sir. It must be him!”

  “Your genius astounds me, Karel! Now take a detail, get out there and bring him back. The rest of you be on your toes. We don’t want him getting in close.”

  Keemon looked over at Caylen. Her dark eyes glinted, with firelight or moon or thought, he couldn't tell. The animal they'd tied her to had gone calm.

  ***

  Bowman descended the hill. He hadn't gone far when a figure appeared, walking towards him, and he raised the bow with its ready-nocked shaft. Hold it, the little voice told him.

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  The figure came on up, into better light. Its hastily donned clothing hung loose, the hips dropped softly at each step in the manner of a woman carrying a pitcher on her head.

  But Caylen's hands were empty, and she
placed her arms around his neck and put her mouth on his shoulder, breathing softly down his back.

  His mind began to whir; he flew one last time to the tried and true defence of talk.

  “You got away! Did they let you go, or what? I was coming to get you, I…”

  She slapped his cheek softly; he stopped.

  “It was just time to leave,” she said.

  They heard Guards coming.

  “As it is now.”

  ***

  Bowman paced, just inside the perimeter of the small knot of stunted trees they'd holed up in. Four days after their reunion, two days out from the Night Forest, they'd stopped here in the dying evening to peel a pithy sustenance from Paperbark trees.

  “You can live indefinitely on this,” Caylen said, and he cracked a lame joke about it only seeming to be endless.

  The Paperbark Moor was characterized by lack of the very trees that named it, an immense, rolling sea of wind-tossed grass, dotted intermittently with copses such as this. Deer, goats and starving travellers partook of the trees’ meagre food value, and wandering bands of Eastern Rory cropped its dead growth for firewood.

  As they ate, Keemon's platoon came up. It hadn’t been hard to track the pair out here; the cop had guessed they’d jump from one sheltering copse to another, all the way to Grealding. It was a matter of checking them one by one, not so hard to do, with twenty mounted Guards at your disposal.

  One of the Guards had come thundering into camp an hour before.

  “Think I’ve found them, sir! A fresh trail.”

  And so it proved. The passage of weary legs through grass was enough for even untrained eyes to follow. Keemon’s Guards spread out around the copse. A scout was sent in, and Bowman sent him out again, trailing a briar shaft from his bleeding thigh.

  Keemon summed the situation with a scornful look, then went in where the man came out. Pulling up short of Bowman’s effective range, he spoke.

  “Take it easy, Bowman, I'm here to make an offer. I'll give you to morning. That way the woman lives. It's you we've come for, but if we have to come in fighting, I can't account for what the men will do to her. Some of them have been a long time away from the bright lights of Kasina. They're getting kind of itchy for some bitchy, if you know what I mean.”

  He waited for an answer.

  “Go back where you came from and live yourself, Keemon.” was all he got.

  “Alright, stubborn bastard, have it your way. We'll wait till morning, just the same. But first, we'll eat some of that deer our hunting party managed yesterday. Mmm! Can ya' taste it?” A short laugh. “In the morning, then, unless your stomach changes your tune.”

  When he'd gone, Bowman went back to where Caylen lay. They were both too tired to even snarl contempt after Keemon.

  “Are you alright?”

  A smile. A nod. A hand squeeze, the black ring on her hand now, a half-jest proposal made on the journey from the Night Forest.

  His unease grew as he saw how poor their chances were. Flight was now impossible; fight, at best, a symbolic delaying tactic. And Keemon's offer had been little more than a taunt: Caylen was expendable, no matter the outcome of the inevitable encounter.

  “What will we do?” he asked the trees, as much as her.

  She rose up and pulled him down. They lay on their backs, she with her eyes closed, he looking up. A patch of sky in the broken foliage showed early stars. Bowman’s mind wandered from the urgent present.

  Someone told him once that people came from stars, that every molecule in your body was formed out of the dust of stars, and one day would be fused in a new star. But that only accounted for the body. What about the spirit? What about the will? What damn fool would come into a life like this willingly, anyway? Perhaps it was a kind of karmic penal colony. He must have been very bad last time, he decided, and caught himself smiling. He looked over at her and she was smiling back. She pulled him in close.

  “This isn't such a bad way to die, together again. It feels alright.”

  “I'm not afraid of death, just its manner, and what might come before it if those Kasina get us alive.”

  She patted her short sword. “They won't have the pleasure of taking my life. That timing and decision rests with me.”

  He looked at her in horror. Dying on your feet was one thing, but suicide? No, there had to be a way out of this, something they hadn’t thought of yet. He rolled on his back again and closed his eyes. Mostly for his own benefit he murmured, “We’ve got till morning to come up with a solution.”

  “I think it’s unlikely they’ll wait till morning,” Caylen answered. He opened his eyes and turned to her.

  She went on. “The more of them we can see, the more we'll kill. Kasina Guards aren't stupid, and Keemon, well, sometimes I almost respect something about him. He's very efficient. Evilly so. Efficiently evil?” She toyed with the definition, but nothing really did justice to the man, and she abandoned the attempt with a shrug.

  Bowman leapt up. Caylen was right. Why would Keemon wait for morning, why would he give them any chance to get away? The Guards would be here when night fell, or soon after.

  From somewhere out there would come the sounds that presaged attack: the betraying crunch of something underfoot, the creaking of a crossbow winch, naked metal brushing aside a branch, even the exaggerated breath of a man trying to impose order on his pounding chest.

  He squeezed the night for sound, and, trying too hard, got only the coursing noise blood made in his own ears. He drew a deep breath and tried to still. He closed his eyes, loaded bow held low in front. As the dark grew, every sound stood out clear as a crisp star. The air sang something just below the reach of human ears, composed of all the tiny percussions movements make, and his skin stretched taut to net the slightest of these.

  They'd be at the edge of the trees now, some might even be inching forward. But he'd hear them. The floor of the copse was covered in tree litter, and the still night's silence was his shield. No matter how good they were, one tiny sound was all he needed.

  He listened to the wires of the air.

  ***

  Long hours later the vigil was rewarded. Just on false dawn a twig broke, not a branch that cracked cleanly in the frosty air and fell, but a muffled break under weight. Bowman took three long jumps through fog towards the sound. Caylen followed.

  Silently she questioned him, arching her brow and pointing with her chin. No, not there, he head-shook back. There, he nodded. He brought his bow up halfway, arrow nocked. She stepped away from him, holding her sword low and to one side.

  The figure walked out of the fog at her, moving closer to get a better view. Caylen snarled and made ready to evade the flying bolt. As the Guard levelled his weapon he picked up Bowman in his peripheral vision, a ghostly figure swimming out of fog to his left. Instinctively he swung the crossbow around in the wraith's direction.

  Too late. The briar shaft struck his left hand, crunching through small bones to pin it to the weapon he could no longer use, or even discard, while it spun him side on to the advancing woman. He shrieked and doubled over.

  She came up at the moment he'd straightened and thrown his useless arm to one side in order to reach across his body with the other arm to grip his sheathed sword's hilt. The clumsy action brushed aside the leather armour plate covering his breastbone, and she took advantage of the sudden exposure to thrust her own blade in that window. Then she stepped back quickly, waiting for the shock and flooding loss to ruin him.

  He staggered backwards, gasping, and sat slowly down like an old man lowering himself into a chair. He looked up at Caylen, his eyes went blank and he gradually keeled sideways.

  As he sank the others came, preceded by their crossbows’ precious, single bolt.

  Bowman found it hard, aiming in the fog, but even harder to see things coming; the first he knew he'd been shot at was a swift tunnel in the air beside his ear.

  “Not him, you idiot, I want him alive. Just the girl.” he
heard Keemon shout.

  “Back, get back, go go go!” he shouted at Caylen, placing his body behind a Paperbark stump and flinging a hasty shot over the head of the nearest advancing figure. He grimaced; only five shafts left from the original eight. This might prove academic, though: Guards were flowing through the trees towards them now.

  A tug at his arm - damn her, why hadn't she gone? “This way, they’re … yeeeow!” she yelped and rolled sideways, gripping the bolt lodged in her thigh.

  Bowman booted her into a clump of ferns, then swung on her assailant.

  The man dropped his crossbow and advanced with a two-handed sword held to one side in a low back sweep. He screamed as he came, the death scream of every soldier forced to lead a charge, the scream meant to simultaneously terrorize and vent terror.

  Bowman's arrow punched through his throat, slashing the carotid artery and ending his bluff. The soldier spun away, clutching at the geyser in his neck with one hand while his sword traced a lazy half circle around his feet. He pulled his hand back to confirm the disaster, and went calm. Placing his sword's hilt on the ground, blade pointing up into his rib cage, he plunged home.

  Other Guards were coming, peering through the fog, firing at Bowman’s legs. He retreated as their bolts slammed into tree trunks or went whooshing past.

  He looked around, tried to count them. At least a dozen, far too many unless he could somehow bluff them back. He edged out from cover and felled the first one he saw, a man who, like his predecessor, had fired his crossbow and was now running forward with his sword.

  Three shafts left. Another wounded Guard down made it two. Another, this time at a distance of a few feet, the arrow entering an eye socket and three quarters exiting behind, killing instantly.

  The Guards pulled back, melting behind fog and trees like a receding nightmare.

  Bowman bent to Caylen. “Can you walk?”

  She put her hand up to him, hissing pain as he raised her. He held her with his right arm, the bow and final arrow in his other hand. He looked to where the nearest Guards had regrouped. At this distance, with the fog, the best they could see of the pair would be glimpses. But it would be enough to know the woman was wounded. All they'd need now was to figure on his stock of ammunition, and they'd be coming again. He could only wonder what was keeping them this long. He dropped the bow.