The Widow and the King

by John Dickinson

  Ambrose supported one end of a tripod while Hob lashed it roughly to the mule's saddle-bow. Mother had gone to the head of the line, so Ambrose had to hold the mule's bridle with one hand as well. He was thinking that Orcrim would give the order to move in a moment, and that they were not ready. The tripod was heavy. He could not stop it from wavering as he held it, and he could not stop the mule from shifting. Hob was whispering curses as he fought with straps at the saddle.

  Orcrim came down the line and dropped some things onto the ground. ‘Torches for you here, Hob. You mark the back of the line. No one's to get behind you, clear? And you keep my torch in view—’ He broke off, watching. ‘You all set, or not?’

  ‘One more,’ said Hob, turning from the mule. Ambrose could tell that he wanted to shout at Orcrim for harassing him, and Orcrim wanted to shout back at him for being behind. They were on edge, even these two; and the others must know it.

  ‘Hare,’ said Orcrim to the next man up.

  ‘Give a hand, here …’

  It was the tall rider. His name was Hare. He must remember that. Hare. If he could remember their names, then they might be more to him than just the shadows that had hunted him from Chatterfall. He didn't want to think about that any more. He wanted to stop thinking now, if he could. Now they must just do what they had come to do.

  Hare had dropped his reins and was helping Hob with the other tripod. Ambrose was free to steady the mule. It snorted and shifted, and he clung to the bridle and crooned at it, and all the while his mind yelped: Let's go! Let's go!

  ‘Done,’ said Hob at last.

  ‘Good, then,’ said Orcrim. ‘Light torches, and let's be away.’

  And that was the word to move. There was no more waiting; no more preparing. Caw came down the line with a torch already lit. Hob picked two more torches off the ground and lit one from Caw's. The head of the line was already in motion, shambling up to where Mother stood on the open hillside. Ambrose saw Endor walking at his horse's head, bridle in one hand, banner in the other. There was another horse and man on the far side of them. Ambrose saw the bright sun glint on the old metal of mail and spur. He sensed the loom of the brown rocks beyond them. Then horses and men faded into the air of the hillside. The next pair of men and horses was already reaching the same spot, and fading in their turn. He heard Hob swear softly beside him.

  Two by two, the men and horses vanished into the air. Orcrim was gone. Ambrose thought for a moment that he could see the ghost of a torch-flare dancing among the stones where the head of the cavalcade had disappeared. There was Sophia, at the head of one pulling-team. And she too was gone.

  ‘Come on, lad,’ said Hob.

  The horses ahead of them were moving. They were the last in the line – he, and the mule, and Hob with his torch held high. The tripods trailed and clattered over the rocks, and the mule jerked unhappily at the bridle he was holding. Hob had roped the back ends of the poles together to prevent them from splaying all over the place, but they snagged almost at once and Hob had to lift them over a low rock to free them. A gap had opened ahead of them. The last pair of horses was already disappearing. Mother was standing alone on the slope, beckoning urgently.

  ‘Come on,’ said Ambrose between his teeth, and urged the mule upwards towards her. It came in a clatter of hooves and timber. She was already turning, beginning to run, disappearing. For a moment they were alone on the hillside. He looked at Hob, with his torch flaming weakly in his hand under the bright sun. Then the world changed.

  The light faded. The bright thorn slopes were gone. The colours had dulled to the twilight that lurks at dawn. The torch flared out, tinged with green.

  He was standing among the brown rocks that he remembered from his journey out of Develin. Far away, in all directions, he could see the bowl of the Cup like a wall of mountains, sweeping up towards the sky. To his left two great lights like huge stars marked where the head of Capuu lay on the rim of the world. The deep humming that he remembered told upon his ear.

  ‘Go on, go on,’ Hob was saying, in the strange, flat voice of that place.

  Ahead of Ambrose the company of men and horses toiled up an easy slope. They were shadow-figures, seen in twilight, and the sounds they made were dim. He could see his mother hurrying towards the head of the line, pointing to her right as if that was the way to go. Up there a figure waved a torch, repeating her signal. Men and horses began to turn; but Ambrose could hear no words. The mule snorted and jerked against the bridle. The tripods had snagged again.

  ‘Talk to it,’ came Hob's voice as the man lifted the trailing ends.

  ‘Talk to it.’

  Ambrose crooned, and the mule came. The tripods snagged again. Again they halted for Hob to free them. The gap between them and the rest of the column had widened.

  Hob thumped him on the shoulder as they began to move again.

  ‘I've brought siege engines over marsh, before now, for your father. This is nothing. Just keep moving.’

  Why had he needed to say that?

  Ahead of him the Company went in shadows and torch-flare. He was the last except for Hob. He looked behind him again, and Hob was still there. And Hob had turned, too, to stare at the empty landscape over his shoulder.

  Then he turned back and saw Ambrose watching him.

  ‘Keep going!’ he hissed.

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  The air was heavy. It teased at his senses.

  The tripods snagged, and snagged again. Each time Hob cleared them. Each time they dropped behind the Company, and had to hurry to keep up. The men ahead of them did not look back. How long had they been going? It already seemed like hours. She had said it would not be as long as the last time, but he could not remember how long the last time had been. It had been a dream then, or he was remembering it as if it had been a dream: a few images and the belief that they had lasted a life-time.

  Still the Company trailed ahead of him. Still Hob trudged behind him, looking back over his shoulder. Did he sense that something was following them? Or was this just what the last man did? There was so much he did not know.

  Ahead of them the bright sparks of the torches swayed slowly as the men marched, beckoning, reminding him that there was a world of light beyond this place, from which they had come and to which they would return. Just like that the Flame of Heaven fluttered on every altar in the waking world, to remind men that another world waited for them beyond the lips of death. Below the torchsparks the men and horses walked, wrapped in thick shadows like cloaks that hid their forms. No one looked back at him. He could see no faces.

  Were they truly men, these shapes he walked among? He remembered them drifting in through the gates of Chatterfall like creatures from the pit. The memory seemed much nearer to him than the days of riding with them in bright sun, and camping under the sky. He wondered if those sunlit days had really happened. But surely, if he turned around, he would see Hob walking behind him as he had been only moments before. It would be Hob.

  It would not be some stooping, crouching, Thing that loped along in his wake; closing and reaching for him …

  He would not look round. Of course it would be Hob. It always had been. This awful, creeping feeling that it might not be … He would know if the enemy were close, just as he had known it in the March. It had felt like – what had it felt like? He could not remember. And he could not remember what Hob's face looked like. And he wondered whether the one walking behind him had a face at all.

  He looked round then. And he did not see a face, because the man was also looking behind them. But when he turned back it was still Hob.

  ‘Who's there?’ Ambrose asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ the man said to him.

  His eyes flicked away then, as if he did not want to meet Ambrose's look. Horrible worming thoughts still crawled in Ambrose's mind. A man on the outside could be a monster within. They had said they were proof against the Heron Man – but how could he be sure? The
y had hunted him before now. And beside him, Hob still walked in silence and would not meet his eye.

  What was he thinking?

  Speak to him, for the Angels' sake!

  ‘Hob …’

  ‘What?’ said the man.

  ‘Was it Orcrim who killed Adam diManey?’ (Why that? Why had he blurted out that, of all things?) Hob scowled.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Caw, then?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘He was a friend.’

  ‘Was he? I'm sorry, then.’

  Ambrose decided that he was not going to answer further.

  Hob said, ‘I did.’

  Ambrose stared at him.

  ‘Don't you believe me?’ asked Hob grimly.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He fought us. He wanted to kill. I was among the first into the courtyard, so it was me he went for. If it had been any of the others I'd not have said who did it.’

  Ambrose tripped and caught himself. The Company was fading into the brown rocks ahead of them, marked only by the lights they carried. The mule had halted. There was no one else. They were alone. Above him Hob's torch flared with a sickness of green, and the man who held it had killed Adam.

  The killer was facing him, waiting for him to decide what to do.

  ‘I'm sorry if he was your friend,’ Hob said at length. What could he do? Adam was dead. That was wrong and horrible. Aun had asked him how he could forgive it. Hob was not even asking to be forgiven. He remembered only that he had killed a man who would have killed him.

  They must go on, side by side, as if this did not lie between them. It was that or walk alone. It was that or leave undone what they were trying to do. And Hob had not wanted to look at Ambrose. What thoughts had come to him as they walked side by side together?

  They must go on.

  They must.

  Oh, Uncle Adam, staring at his death like a puzzle that was too clever for him!

  Ambrose drew breath.

  ‘Come on,’ he said.

  ‘Or we'll be lost.’

  Hob nodded. Together they lifted the wooden tripods around a low, knife-backed rock and urged the mule on after the distant torches.

  Uncle Adam. He must put it aside.

  ‘Tell me about my father, Hob.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘I want to know something good about him.’

  Talk could be torchlight, too.

  Hob paced in silence for a moment. Then he cleared his throat.

  ‘Well, I'm here, aren't I?’

  ‘For my father?’

  ‘Pearls seem like good things when you haven't got them. But if it was just for a pearl I'd throw mine away and walk out of this place as fast as I could. Manors – well, that's going to be a different job. But your father … If he were alive and could look back, he would have wanted us to do this, for his sake as well as yours. Orcrim knows that. So do I. He was … Well, he was fair – and clever. He never did anything for just one reason. Oh, he was bad as well as good. I knew that …’

  The ground was growing steeper and more broken. Beyond the dull rises, Ambrose could sense other scenes – peaks and valleys of the mountains among which he had grown. Once it was almost as if he was looking out of a window from a dark house and could glimpse a brilliant, blue sky and a ridge that still glittered in its coat of snow. For a moment he felt the cold air on his face and could see the little streams of water that poured down the bare rocks below the snowline, for the snow was melting with the coming of the mountain spring. But the line of horses had gone ahead of them and was plodding on through the barren land. He must follow.

  He must follow, with the man who had killed Uncle Adam.

  Hob stopped to light his second torch from the remains of his first, and to discard the old one. He had fallen silent again, turning over his memories. Ambrose paced beside him at the head of the mule, thinking of Adam diManey, who had been the nearest that he had had to a father in all his childhood. He wondered what he might say to the dead man, if he could.

  Ahead of them – it seemed just a couple of hundred paces – the leading horses and men had paused upon a low rise. They were waiting. In twos and threes the Company came up to them, slowly. Still they waited, looking down to the tail of the group, with Hob, Ambrose and the mule lagging behind it. Ambrose could feel his feet moving heavily, his breath gasping as they climbed the slope to join the others. He was far more weary than a few hours' journey should have made him. Looking around, he saw drawn faces among the men, horses with their heads low. They were like a company that had forcemarched through a long night, each imprisoned with their own thoughts. He saw Sophia, nursing her arm, her foot stumbling lightly as she made her way to sit down. He saw the man Hare, looking dazed. He saw Orcrim come walking among them, speaking as though he was drunk.

  ‘Last stretch,’ Orcrim was saying over and over to the men that he passed. ‘She says it's the last stretch. Keep your hands near your iron and your eyes open. And as we go, there'll be something away to the right of us – something big and alive, she says. Don't mind it. Don't look at it, if you can help. Just keep going. Last stretch …’

  He made his way back to the head of the Company. He seemed to be limping a little.

  ‘Last stretch,’ muttered Hob to himself. ‘If we can trust her.’

  I'm here, aren't I? Ambrose thought.

  They were moving again, all together. After the hours of toiling in the lonely rear, Ambrose had almost forgotten what it was like to hear the clatter of hooves and feet all around him. The sounds had urgency in them – or perhaps it was in his own veins, that were beginning to beat with the thought of action. His sword trailed at his belt. Soon it would be in his hand. And what then?

  The Company poured down a long slope which steepened sharply into a cleft-valley. Images danced in Ambrose's mind of mountains in the living world, beyond these low rocks and rises. He felt that he almost knew them, as if the peaks would be familiar when he saw them, but he was approaching them from a direction that he had never trod before. They were close, close.

  And what was that, away to his right where the cleft opened into a broader valley?

  At first he thought it must be a boulder, strangely shaped, but otherwise the same as any in that land. Then he wondered if it was an old man, sitting in a cloak and hood with his back to them. But it did not have a hood.

  He could see what he thought was long, dark hair falling to the figure's waist as it sat. He supposed it must be a woman. It seemed to be weeping.

  ‘Don't look,’ came the word down the column of armed men. ‘Orcrim says, don't look.’

  Ambrose looked, and kept looking as they straggled past.

  It was impossible to guess how large she was, or how far away. At one moment he thought she must be no taller than his own mother, sitting at a distance of a hundred paces from them. The next he imagined himself walking and walking towards her, mile after mile and watching her grow as he approached until she was the size of a mountain. And whichever way he walked around her, she would always have her back to him.

  And she would never see him. And she would never listen. And she would never, ever, cease from weeping.

  ‘Don't look,’ said Hob.

  Weeping, weeping. A lost child, and all the loss of all the world. Mar and Develin and Bay. Aunt Evalia, dead with her arms around him. And Adam diManey. And he must make peace with the killer.

  ‘Don't stop,’ said Hob urgently, beside him.

  He had made peace. Why?

  Because he must. Because if he did not, he must make a corner in his heart that would be like that, like that. That endless rage and weeping.

  ‘Damn you, come on!’ said Hob. He dragged at the mule and it lumbered forward, leaving Ambrose last of all the Company.

  Like a child in someone's arms over a vast gulf, Ambrose felt completely safe. He looked at the creature that was Beyah. He could hear her: that unending cry that shook the world. B
ut it did not shake his heart. He had made his peace. He would hold to his purpose. All he could do now was beg the dead to forgive him.

  Suddenly, he laughed.

  He was still laughing when he caught up with Hob and the mule. Hob looked at him, frowning, but Ambrose could not explain. As he struggled up out of the cleft, following the line of march, he began to feel elated. And ahead of him were his men, whom he had brought to his place. His banner was black against the sky. Light-headed, he remembered that the moon would be full tonight. And if he lived to see it (and why should he not live?), he could make the moon on his banner full, too. He would remove the stain from it. There would be no more doubting. He could do it if he chose. He could do anything!

  The slope eased. The Mother of the World was hidden behind them in the cleft. The eye of Capuu appeared as they climbed, away on the rim of the world. Before them, the ground continued rising gently for perhaps fifty paces. Then it dropped again among great boulders into what seemed to be a pit. Around the edge of the pit stood a number of upright stones, like sentries, like teeth. Ambrose knew them, for he had seen them in the living world. It seemed a very small place, now that he saw it in all that wide land.

  There was a gap in the ring, directly before them. A number of the standing stones lay headlong on the brown rocks, their bases protruding over small depressions in the ground from which they had been uprooted. One seemed to have disappeared. There was a hole, like the others, very near the edge; but the stone had gone.

  ‘Horses go no further,’ said Orcrim. ‘Get them lined up.’

  Warily, the Company made their way up to the rim of the pit.

  It was not deep. The bouldered slopes dropped little more than the height of a man, to a ragged shore of stone around a pool of dark water. The surface was still. There was no sign that any creature, living or undead, had ever stirred in this place. Peering over, Ambrose felt the weight of an impossible depth beneath the water, sucking him downwards to the heart of the pit. The droning of the Mother of the World poured in his ears like a waterfall.