The Winter Plain

by Jo Bannister

  “I can keep going tomorrow,” said Paul, evading her declaration, “after that I don’t know. I’ll show you how to use the map. The vital thing is to keep them moving towards Leshkas. Don’t let them turn back. We’re more than half way there but it’s against the wind; it would be quicker to go back to Chad but it would be a fast trip to nowhere. They would die, Shah – you must make them understand that. When I can’t hold them they’ll want to turn back, and you must stop them.”

  “Paul – Paul, slow down. What are you talking about, me and them? Where are you thinking of being?”

  A tiny tremor ran through him like a chill zephyr. “Shah, I don’t know. It’s bad. I had my jacket off to get a proper look; I nearly passed out trying to get it on again. If it goes gangrenous —”

  “Itzhak will put it right. You should have let him see to it before.”

  “No.”

  “He’s really very clever, you know. Give him a pocketful of coloured potions and he’ll fix anything from a broken leg to a childbed fever.”

  “Shah, this isn’t a broken leg. It’s infected. Poisoned. It’s getting worse by the hour, and if it keeps on getting worse the bastard’s going to kill me, there’s nothing I can do about it. No, Shah, don’t turn away, listen to me, please. It’s important that you know what to do. If it goes black and stinking it’s over. Out here there’s no help, nothing to be done – you don’t waste precious time bathing my fevered brow and telling one another I’ll be better in the morning.”

  “For God’s sake, Paul,” Shah cried, “what are you saying?”

  “That when I can’t keep up any more you leave me. I mean it, Shah. If this doesn’t get better of its own accord I’m dead whatever you do. I don’t want you and all of them dead around me. That’s what it would come to, you can’t live in this wilderness for ever, it won’t let you, and there’s no point, no bloody point, no point at all —”

  “Don’t talk like that,” she said angrily. “It won’t happen. It won’t. I’m not leaving you. It’s not going to come to that.”

  Paul was not listening. A little choking laugh bubbled in his throat. “I should have known this job would go sour on me. It started bad and it got worse. The king, the boy – Harry Jess – Chad – Chad. Yes, well, maybe this is as good a place as any to call it a day. You can’t follow a thing like that. Once you’ve destroyed an entire city state single-handed, dying is the only decent thing to do. After that anything else has to be anticlimax.”

  His voice, which had grown increasingly frail as he spoke, ran up like a reed on the last syllables. Shah felt his body go suddenly slack against her and he slid through her arms to the cold rocks.

  Lockwood kept the late watch. It was not strictly necessary, but it was as well to watch the stove and listen for the camels, and to know if the weather was breaking up. Also, it was the only way any of the travellers could be alone, to stay wakeful while the others slept. Paradoxically, in this vast and lonely desert claustrophobia born of close contact with a few individuals in largely unchanging circumstances in a totally monotonous landscape was as real a problem as the cold and privation.

  But there was little enough consolation for the keeper of the quiet vigil that night. The air in the dim tent, already thick with breathing, was also heavy with foreboding and fractured with tragedy. There was no peace in it, no solace, only a grey fog of almost tactile despair. There was no doubt in any of their minds of the gravity of the situation. Even as they slept their brows were furrowed with the knowledge, their fingers half-seen by stove-light twitching with the deep understanding that would not let them rest. The truth was too simple to be escaped: Paul’s condition was critical, and if he died the others would probably not survive. Except the damned camels, Lockwood thought darkly, that would keep padding along through the worst of the weather until the smell of growing things brought them strolling out of the desert, with only their halters to show that once people had travelled with them but had proved less fitted than they to endure the northern wastes.

  Roused from his gloomy contemplation by a movement too deliberate for a restive sleeper, he saw a crouching figure detach itself from the humpy carpet of sleeping-bags and resolve itself as Paul, his bulky bandaged arm strapped across his chest. They nodded to one another. Paul asked for Lockwood’s knife. The soldier, wondering, slid it slowly from its sheath.

  Paul took it without comment, felt the edge of the broad blade, then slipped it into the stove to rest among the little humming flames. Then he began to speak.

  “I can’t remember how often, in response to some small threatened iniquity, I’ve shot back with ‘Over my dead body’ – ‘I’d die first’. I expect you have too. Well, I have news for you. We exaggerated. When it actually comes to it, when it stares you in the eyes and beckons, most things are preferable to death. That’s the position we’re in now, you and I; yes, the others too, because without wishing to brag I can’t see any of you long surviving me, but we two in particular – me for obvious reasons and you because you are my choice.

  “The irony of it is that where I come from a simple infection like this wouldn’t cause a moment’s anxiety. They’d clean it up, drain it out, pump it full of antibiotics and be very annoyed if it wasn’t better inside forty-eight hours. You don’t believe me. Hell, I don’t blame you. Anyway, it’s immaterial: I’m too far from home and too sick, and there are no antibiotics here.

  “You’re a general, you know about improvisation: it’s the art of using what you’ve got instead of what you’d like to give you the result you want. What I have in my favour are you, that knife, this stove and the ice-cold. Under the terms of my improvisation you’re the surgeon, that’s your scalpel, the stove serves as a sterilising unit and the cold will, hopefully, both reduce the risk of further infection and improve my chances of not bleeding to death. I suggest we do it early, as soon as it’s light.”

  Lockwood was staring at him, the hairs crawling on the back of his neck and up his forearms. “Do what?”

  Paul smiled wearily. His face was terribly drawn but there was a kind of peace in it, a calm Lockwood had seen before in men who had suffered, who had the end in sight, and the end was bad and still they could cope and knew they could. It seemed to the soldier that nothing in life must be so bad that men could not triumph over it, if only in the dignity with which they yielded defeat; and nothing so bad that the circumstances could not arise in which it would come as a relief. He thought Paul was there now. After a long spell of weighty responsibility illness had obliged him to pass on the burden; the measures he contemplated were his only shield now against death, but death itself might kindly supervene. All of this was out of Paul’s hands and so off his conscience; whatever happened he would endure because there was no alternative. There was consolation of a kind in that. He said, “Take the bugger off.”

  “Dear God, Paul,” whispered Lockwood, “do you know what you’re saying?”

  “Lockwood, the bastard’s killing me. It’s not just that it hurts, it’s the infection. If it’s not gangrenous now it’s going to be, and that doesn’t get better. It creeps through you like a corrupt tide, killing by inches.” He reached over and turned the knife in the fire. “I told Shah I could keep going tomorrow and so I can, but I’ll be a lot sicker tomorrow night than I am now. My chances of surviving surgery are better now than they’ll ever be: if you put it off too long there’ll be no point. I told you, I want to live: I can take any amount of pain if I’m fighting a battle I can possibly win. I suggest you pick it apart at the elbow, it’ll be easier than trying to cut through the bone.”

  Grief haunting his eyes, the memory of his own part in the tragedy rising in his throat like bile, all Lockwood could think of to say was, “Why me?”

  Paul raised an eyebrow. Some of the tension had gone out of him now he had got Lockwood to accept the need for what he was proposing. “Who else? Itzhak may have more medical skill, but given a job like this he’d hesitate and I don’t want anybody h
esitating while I’m bleeding. Shah could do it, but it takes physical strength as well as courage to sever a limb and speed is important. The same applies to the boy, but there’s a better reason for not asking him. In time he’ll forget that he cost me my arm – it was, after all, more or less an accident. But he’d never escape the horror of hacking off the damn thing himself. Which leaves you.”

  “And am I immune to horror?”

  “No. But you’re not going to see anything you haven’t seen before.”

  Shah said very softly behind him, “Paul, there has to be some other way.”

  Both men started. Paul’s heart leapt within him like a startled animal, and the prospect of having to fight again the ground already won from Lockwood made him surly. “Do you suppose that if there was you’d think of it and I wouldn’t?”

  She touched his shoulder, edged up beside him. “Think what it is you’re saying. You’re an engineer, and you’re talking of cutting off you right hand. What else have you tried? – I don’t believe you’ve even let Itzhak see it.”

  “Damn you, woman, do you think I don’t know I’m going to be a cripple for the rest of my life?”

  “What about Itzhak?” interposed Lockwood. “He did a good job on Edmund.”

  “Itzhak did a good job of carrying out my instructions on Edmund. Look, I know you mean well, and I know that in your experience Itzhak is a skilled and knowledgeable healer. But where I come from his special skills are mere principles of first aid, and I’ve had more experience of first aid than most people.”

  “All right,” said Shah, “I’ll accept that. Then what about Elaine?”

  “What about Elaine?”

  “Who’s Elaine?” asked Lockwood.

  “You told me,” pursued Shah, “that the women of Elaine’s convent ran a hospital. Maybe they have some of this – penicillin. Let’s go there.”

  “They wouldn’t even see me.”

  “They’ll bloody well see me! Listen, Paul, this is not just your problem. If you die we’re all in deep, deep trouble. Even if you survive, it’s going to be many days before you’re fit to travel. I don’t know if we can afford to stay out here that long. Have we enough supplies – for ourselves, for the camels? If you delay us much longer our only option may be to turn round and head back to Chad.”

  Shocked eyes flared in the dim light. Lockwood flinched from what seemed to him a cruelly selfish response. Paul recognised the deeper blackmail. “Shah, I told you —”

  “I know. But if you’re going to be sweating in a litter, caught between pain and drax, it’s not going to be your decision, it’s going to be ours. You think you’re going to wake up tomorrow fit and well, only a little sore where the arm used to be? Grow up, Paul. You’ve lost control of the situation, and with one hand you’re never going to snatch it back.”

  “What do you want of me?” he whispered in quiet anguish. “I didn’t want this, but I can’t ignore it. If I don’t tackle it now it’s going to kill me, and I don’t want to die that way. Lockwood! You know it has to be done. Shah? You damn cowards, must I do the thing myself?” Before either of them guessed his purpose Paul had Lockwood’s knife, its steel blade dull red from the fire.

  Shah, who was nearer, grabbed his left wrist in both her hands, slowing his impetus yet knowing herself unequal to his feverish strength. “Help me!” she cried, waking the last remaining sleepers, and Lockwood swung.

  With Paul crumpled senseless across her lap Shah carefully picked the roasting blade from his unresisting fingers. Lockwood looked at him with remorse. “I couldn’t think what else to do,” he mumbled.

  Shah touched his hand briefly. “You did fine. Now we must act quickly, before he wakes.”

  Itzhak harnessed Emir while Edmund furnished a kind of litter from one of the panniers. Shah and Lockwood pored over map and compass. “The state he’s in,” Shah explained, “I have to travel. I don’t know how fast that beast will go if I ask him, but I mean to find out. I should get there by mid-day; I’d expect you to arrive sometime the following morning. There’s no point in you breaking your necks: once I get him there I’ll only be sitting around waiting, maybe arguing some. I’ll take the compass but leave you the map. Let Calipha follow Emir at her own pace; she won’t lose his trail. Me? No, I won’t get lost. Help me get him in the litter.”

  Lockwood lifted Paul in his arms like a child and carried him

  out to the waiting camel.

  Chapter Four

  Though Shah never forgot that journey – for the rest of her life strange, trivial sensations and meaningless incidents would bring the images flooding back: a texture of wool like camel’s wool, a bitter frosty night, a particular thready wind, and momentarily she was again on Emir’s back, the steady rhythm of his trot sending the chiaroscuro desert pouring past her while the spangled sky wheeled slowly above – a surprisingly short period of time blunted the detail. Much later she found herself mistress of a small but classically formed regret that she could not relive the episode in all its terrible glory but from the comfortable rostrum of retrospection. At the time every frantic minute of it that she got behind her was another small victory.

  It was colder than she had allowed for. With the coming of summer and the shortening of night, the sun rose in those days considerably earlier than the travellers. The worst cramps which held the few dark hours in a chilly vice had eased their grip before Shah habitually quit her sleeping-bag. Now the only radiance came from stellar pin-pricks light years away (Paul said: God knew what he meant) and there was no heat. The wind was an icy spear, thin, long and sharp, piercing her thickest clothes, lancing her flesh.

  After an initial reluctance to leave his mate Emir was a tower of strength, a warm woolly machine of tireless piston limbs and economical energy. Twice he turned and had to be wheeled back onto his course; ever afterwards he held to the compass-bearing as if the lode were in his head, eating the night with long easy paces like a small constellation. Shah could not be sure if he sensed the urgency of his mission, but she had no doubt that he knew of his precious cargo and sought to make his steps soft on the jarring ice pan.

  Bundled in furs, wedged in the leaping pannier, Paul tossed between semi-consciousness and total oblivion. Sometimes she heard him mumbling brokenly to himself; sometimes weak mewling moans as of an animal dying in a trap reached her, and then she sent out psychic feelers to the margins of his mind, soothing and reassuring like a hand on his brow, until he fell quiet. Once he cried out and the camel’s ears semaphored a moment; then he dropped his head into the swing of his stride, powering along until Shah marvelled at his endurance.

  She stopped briefly after the sun came up and burnt a fuel rod to provide water for the three of them. Emir took a small feed with his, Shah nibbled desultorily on a strip of caribou jerky, but she could get nothing into Paul but water. His skin was cold and clammy, and he received her ministrations like a drowsing man bothered by a fly. Once more she unfurled the fabric of their estate, to examine the threads as if she might find something new to confirm the wisdom of her decision. Yet she did not really doubt it. He had lost too much already: deprived of his last great talent she did not know what would become of him. He would make a graceless, bitter cripple; Shah thought she would sooner see him dead than destroyed to that degree. But she was a long way off giving up on him, and her resolve strengthened even as her physical resources ran down, like sands in a clock. She did not realise how exhausted she was until she came to mount up again and almost could not, standing panting against the woolly shoulder, betrayed by rebel muscles that shook with exertion, too tired even for tears. At the fourth attempt she dragged her aching body aboard Emir’s apparently impervious one, and the camel surged to his feet and addressed his steps once more to the brightening day.

  Back in the stove-lit tent, poring over map and compass, Shah had not doubted for a moment her ability to find the convent. There was after all nothing else out there. Now that very vacancy frightened her. Her o
bjective was a mosquito-bump in the external wastes, a solitary heap of stones days from anywhere, in a wilderness where visibility was seldom good and sometimes non-existent. The compass would give her the general direction, but with no points of reference and no accurate measure of distance her chances of hitting the target were incalculably long. She was counting on her special perception, trusting that as she approached the little community its minds would be as a beacon to her. In the desert, where the only distraction was the proximity of the familiar sprawling mind now subdued and introvert with suffering, she had not doubted her ability to pick up the spreading ripples of mental activity. But suppose she could not – was too far off the line, too far away, too insensitive? Suppose she failed?

  With the sun more than half way to its zenith Shah suddenly found herself grinning and for a moment could not think why. She was no less tired and only marginally less cold, and yet her chapped lips and wind-scoured face were creasing up in this idiot pantomime of delight. Then she realised why. Her subconscious, which was not dulled by bodily exhaustion, had recognised earlier than her conscious mind the advent within its field of new personae. Where there had been just Paul’s frail, disordered emanation and the fuzzy imprecise – or perhaps imprecisely comprehended – emission which was how her mind educed that of the camel, now there was a new element, faint but substantial like the distant bellow of a crowd or the lights of a city beyond the horizon glowing in the sky. A murmur, a susurration, of thoughts like half-heard voices whispered to her like breath, and with gladness and relief swelling her heart she turned Emir’s head through the few degrees that would bring them down on Oracle.

  Like a little city, Paul had said, but she was not prepared for the vista of rose-red pinnacles and domes which lifted from the silver plain, impossibly high, impossibly pink, too exquisitely unlikely even for an hallucination. A desperate traveller, which she undoubtedly was, might have imagined a city wall, a way-post, a solitary well. Only a mad architect could have envisaged that glorious confection of towers, arches and spires stretching like petrified flowers towards the sun. A magnificent insanity reflecting itself narcissistically in its moat of ice, Oracle filled the traveller’s eye from the moment it coalesced out of the morning vapours more than an hour’s ride away. Bending over the pannier, Shah slipped an ungloved hand through the furs and cupped it against Paul’s cold cheek.