Then, still watching the cave, he did what had been the furthest thing from his mind a minute ago. He laughed. He leaned forward and put both hands on his knees and he laughed. But his laughter had a strained feel to it, as though it might crack if he asked too much more of it. He straightened up and turned away from the cave. What now, Eddie? Are you afraid of the dark? Caught your leg on a branch and thought somebody’d grabbed you? At any rate, you lasted longer in there than Frankie. He must have skipped out to join Markis.
Then Edric realized what he had already seen without seeing it.
While he was running for the cave mouth, the rock on which Markis had been sitting had been in plain view. But it was deserted. He turned to the rock now. He walked a full circle around it, though he could see from the back of it no one was there. Markis’s pack and crossbow sat at the base of the stone. Must have gone to take a leak. And I guess he was too scared to piss unless Frankie went with him.
Edric wiped a damp sleeve across his brow and sighed. It was then his eyes strayed back to Markis’s crossbow and he noticed the strangest thing about it. It was loaded. It wasn’t leaning against the pack or rock either but lying in the grass. As though Markis had dropped it suddenly. But why had he loaded it? Edric stooped and retrieved the weapon. He felt no compulsion to unload it.
Edric glanced around. That's when he noticed the man standing between the trees not twenty paces away. The figure wore a dark cloak with the hood pulled over his head and had his back turned to Edric and the mouth of the cave. At first the cloak startled Edric, but then he remembered how Markis had been pulling his out of his pack as Edric had stepped into the cave.
All at once the figure began to move; shuffling slowly off in the other direction.
"Markis?" Edric called and started after him. "Markis," he said, "Wait up."
The man in front of him continued to move away. "Markis, I'm sorry about what I said."
Still the figure did not turn towards him.
Edric halted and looked back. The mist had swallowed the cave and the rock on which they had laid their gear. He was in an anonymous, unknown part of the woods; his vision a little shrinking island in the gloom, being slowly devoured by the gathering dark and mist. But that was not the only thing which troubled him. He looked back at the figure. It moved with a lethargic, lurching pace. Was he hurt? But why did he not answer? Was he in shock?
Edric was no stranger to the horrors of war. He had seen men staggering off the battlefield, their hands pressed against their bellies to keep their insides from pressing through the horrid wounds there. Their faces death-pale. Eyes open but unseeing. Walking wounded. Walking dead was more like it. He was no longer sure he wanted Markis to turn around. If this thing before him really was Markis. The figure stopped walking. Edric leveled the crossbow in one hand and stepped forward. He stopped a few paces behind the man. Edric did not know if he wanted to know what was the matter with him, but he knew knowing, seeing even, was better than guessing. "Markis," he whispered.
The thing turned around.
It turned on him with a speed he could not have guessed it possessed after its slow shamble through the trees. He looked right into its face, if only for a second. But that was all he needed to see to know he'd been wrong. He'd been better off not knowing.
Death; that is what he thought he was looking at. Not just a dead man, but Death itself. The face and body were indeed of a man but the face wore a death-mask like he had seen on so many faces. But then again, those faces had all been lying still on blood-soaked grass or in caskets. Not standing before him. The features were pale and stiff. The eyes were open. Far too wide open. The mouth was open too, but at such a lopsided angle he knew the jaw must be broken, hanging like a door on a ruined hinge. And from the open mouth came a terrible, bloodless scream.
Edric started back, gripping the crossbow now with both hands. The thing came on, the same shambling walk, but this time its steps were much quicker. Edric realized the corpse-thing was not screaming. He was.
His heel struck a root and he pitched backward. Whether it was only a reflex caused by the fall or whether he knew in this moment it was his last chance, his hand tightened on the trigger and the bolt slammed forward into the thing's chest and he saw it fall back even as he came down hard on his back.
Edric bounced back to his feet. The figure lay on its back, the bolt half-buried in its chest. Seeing it lying there, Edric was gripped with sudden remorse. What had he done? His nerves had gotten the best of him. The face had been an expression of agony, but to think he had just seen a walking corpse was absurd. The gloom accounted for the ashen appearance of the skin. He stepped towards the figure and then froze. Something was happening. The thing was moving again.
It was getting up.
As Edric stood there, frozen in terror and disbelief, the thing got to its feet. But it did not rise as a man would, first sitting up and then pushing itself up with its hands. It rose up straight as a board, pivoting on its heels.
Edric turned and ran. He ran heedlessly. He did not know where he was going. Nor did he care. So long as it was away from that thing. A branch struck his face, the needles stinging his skin. Through watering eyes, he looked over his shoulder. The thing had already disappeared in the fog. Edric’s foot caught on a root and he stumbled, rolling down a steep bank into a little, treeless dell. He lay there for a moment in the cool grass, panting. Then he rose to his feet.
He could just make out the form of his crossbow laying a few feet from him. He picked it up, checked it had not been damaged, and straightened up. A scream caught in his throat.
All along the rim of the dell, silent as stones, stood the figures of men and women and children. They were all cloaked like the first man. And they were all watching him. And he found in that moment, when his terror pushed him over the sheer edge of sanity, when he opened his mouth to scream, no scream would come.
All that came was a sort of whimpering exhalation.
And then the end.
IX
Valley of the Shadows
Owen insisted on trying to walk, but found he couldn't put even minimal pressure on his foot. The amount of pain surprised him and troubled Dane. The wound seemed to bother him more than it should have. Also, Dane worried about time. By the time they had made a stretcher with his cloak and the branches, he guessed they'd lost an hour at least. It was well past noon now and they would take much longer getting down than they had coming up. "Let's get moving," he said.
Dane and Bax took the first turn on the stretcher and they started out. Right away they ran into trouble. The first problem was how to traverse the ravine above the falls. The stream was too deep here to wade and they could not carry the stretcher and make their way along the cutbank. Dane sent Joseph and Rem ahead, one on each side of the stream, to find a way down.
Rem returned first from the east side and said he thought they could make it around the ravine and down the falls on that side of the hill. Joseph returned a few minutes later to say there was nothing to the west but a long rim of rocky cliffs for as far as he had scouted.
The men moved east and found themselves moving down an open slope covered with leaf litter. Dane and Bax crouched, shuffling their feet or using their boots like skis to descend the hill, holding the stretcher as still as they could. Occasionally Owen groaned. Dane looked back at him frequently. His face was pale and sweaty and most of the time his eyes were closed. As they went on, his groans increased in frequency and intensity, but what bothered Dane the most was they didn't seem linked to the jostles and jolts of the stretcher as the men worked their way over the rough terrain. Once Dane stumbled and fell to his knees, almost dropping the stretcher and jerking it violently. He glanced back at Owen but Owen seemed not even to have noticed. He lay there breathing shallowly with his eyes half closed. Other times, when they were traveling smoothly over level ground, Owen would grit his teeth and groan or almost scream with pain.
"Something's wrong," Dane
said to no one in particular.
"Oh, really?" Bax said. "What was your first clue, your highness?"
Dane didn't respond. He wondered how quickly a wound could become infected beyond the point of healing. He worried about the foot. He worried about the trap. Who had it been set for? Who had it been set by?
Rem and Joseph took a turn with the stretcher. By now the sun had gone behind the higher hills further west of them. Every time Owen groaned Dane told them to be more gentle and careful.
"We're doing the best we can," Rem snapped.
"I know," Dane said. "I'm sorry." But still he kept up the "Be careful"s.
In the back of his mind he understood himself. He didn't like thinking Owen's increasing pain was something apart from what they were doing with the stretcher, that it was something beyond their control. "I just hope Leech can help him," Dane kept saying to himself. "God, let Leech know what to do."
Dane ran ahead to find the stream again. He wanted to at least stay within hearing of it, to use it as a guide. Then he noticed the smoke, rising out of an inland valley to the northeast of him. He watched it for a moment, wondering what it could mean. When he got back to the others, they were sitting resting. They had also spotted the smoke.
"No way to do anything about it now," Dane said. "But all of you take a good look at where it's coming from. We'll try to get there tomorrow."
Dane and Bax took the stretcher again. They forged through the gathering dark and swirling eddies of mist. It was full dark when Joseph called out from ahead, "Stop there."
Joseph came trotting back with Wink at his side. "Cliffs ahead. No way down there. I'll check right, you check left," he told Rem.
"No," Dane said, "It's too dark. Go together. We'll wait here."
The two men disappeared into the gloom. Dane sat down by the head of the stretcher and felt Owen's brow with the back of his hand. The man was burning up. Dane took another strip of his shirt and soaked it with water from his canteen and began to pat Owen's forehead with it. Bax leaned back against a boulder only a few feet away but it was hard to see him for the dark. Dane sipped from his canteen while he continued to pat Owen's face with the cloth. Wink nuzzled and licked his master’s face and whined incessantly.
"This job your old man sent us on is a real doozy," Bax said.
Dane did not look at his face, but he could tell by the sound of his voice he was talking into the dark away from him.
"I've got to hand it to him; you two sure knew what you were doing bringing us out here. Why, if I wanted to blunder around like a blind fool in the woods and step on nails I could have stayed at home and done that. Trees I had at home. Nails I had at home. But you know, what we were lacking was some nice sheer cliffs. Like these here; straight down with nothing but more rocks below to break your fall. Or your neck. Yes, sir; if you want to walk right off a cliff in the pitch dark, we've come to the perfect place.” Bax turned towards him. “You'll think she'll cry for me if I buy it out here?"
Dane did not say anything. He placed the folded cloth on Owen's brow and leaned back against a rock. Long moments of silence passed. The only sound was their breathing and the babbling of the stream. The waiting was always the worst part of a mission like this. Made worse by Owen's groans. Made worse still by the fact Dane had to pass the waiting with Bax. There were moments, rare moments, like when Owen was first hurt, which took Bax and Dane out of themselves, which focused them on someone else. Moments where they could work together, if not really get along. But now the waiting and nothing to do but sit here and think about themselves and act like themselves.
"Sell her to me," Dane said suddenly.
He heard Bax shift his weight against the rock. "What's that, you highness?"
He knew Bax had heard him. He only wanted him to repeat it. He spoke clearly, succinctly, slowly, and a little too loudly: "Sell Mara to me."
Bax was silent for a moment. This annoyed Dane more than any response he could have given. "What are you offering?" he finally said.
"Anything you ask."
Bax whistled, but the sound was more derisive than exclamatory. "Don't offend my sensibilities," Bax said. "She's a person, not a piece of property."
Was mocking him the only way Bax had of talking to him? Bax would know how much using this vocabulary, this talking of selling, would bother him with any slave. But did he know how much more it bothered him when speaking of Mara?
"No, your highness, she's not for sale."
"And what's your real reason?"
"Your highness, all your life you've had everything you could ever want. Everything I could ever want. I’m sure you could offer me ten times what she's worth. But I wouldn't take it; because it feels so good to have something you want and to hold it over your head."
"She's a person, not an it," Dane said.
"Oh, don't be upset. I'm not unreasonable. I can't stand to deny you everything, little princeling. I'd be happy to rent her to you."
"Rent her to me?"
"That's right. How long would it take you to take what you wanted from her? A night? An hour? Five minutes?"
"And why do you really keep her around, Bax?" Dane said. "Do you think she can replace Lam? Do you keep her around to pay for what happened to your brother? Do you think her suffering will fix what came of your own stupidity?"
"And what do you know about fixing such things? Was what you did at Loshōn your idea of fixing things? Where was the justice in that?"
Is this why I hate Bax? Dane thought. Why he hates me? Is it because we're so different, or because, deep down inside, we're really just the same?
These were the lowest words these two men could have said to each other and things might have gotten even uglier if something had not happened at that moment to draw them both out of themselves once more. From somewhere out of the valley below them came the most terrible, savage, rage- and pain-filled scream they had ever heard. Dane started and Bax jumped to his feet. The scream rang on and on and then ended on a wail.
"What the devil was that?" Bax said.
"How should I know," said Dane shortly, but his heart was hammering in his chest. He reached for his bow.
Wink whined louder, then barked.
The scream came again, closer this time. Dane wondered if it was in answer to the first scream or if the creature who had uttered the first shriek could move extremely fast.
Wink bolted into the underbrush. Dane could hear the dog barreling through the bush, but the sound faded quickly.
Bax swore and hurled a stone after the animal, as though he thought this might somehow induce it to return.
And then, floating up through the mist from the valley below them came a new sound. It seemed to come from the same area in which Dane had seen the smoke, although with the echoes and darkness it was impossible to be sure. But the sound itself was unmistakable. It was drumbeats.
"Where are those two idiots?" Bax said.
Where Rem and Joseph were was in the middle of an argument. They had scouted westward first. They had found nothing but a ridge of sheer cliffs. They had followed the cliffs, moving carefully along the brow in the dark, until they butted up against the stream. But here the water was a choked and churning rapid. Even in the darkness they could see the white foam and the roar of the water alone made it clear passing here would be impossible.
They doubled back, swinging out eastward of where they thought Dane and the others were waiting; although, in this dark, unfamiliar forest it was impossible to know exactly how far they'd gone or where they were. Finally, they found a way down, a kind of zigzag switchback between the cliffs. It was hard enough for them to traverse it themselves.
At the foot of the cliffs, the path opened on gently sloping hillsides. Rem continued downhill. "Wait. We should go back now," Joseph said. “They'll be worried about us."
"If they're even still alive," Rem said, pausing but not turning around.
"What do you mean?" Joseph said.
"Think about i
t. That trap Owen stepped in. Somebody had to have set it. Somebody who obviously doesn't want us here."
"And you'd just leave Dane and the others to them?"
"They probably already have them. Anyway, at the rate they're moving it's only a matter of time."
"Then we should hurry back."
"Look, kid. I'm trying to do you a favor here. This is our chance to get away. I feel bad for Owen but there's no sense in letting his misfortune determine all our fates as well."
"And Dane?" Joseph said dryly.
"Dane's a good enough man; maybe that's his problem. He probably wouldn't see the sense in leaving Owen to save the rest of us even if he was here for me to explain it to him."
"You coward," Joseph said.
"You can think of me what you want, but I'm trying to help you. But I won't wait forever."
"You can't leave; it'll take the two of us just to find our way back."
At that moment, the first scream shattered the stillness of the night. Both men started. Joseph shuddered. Rem crouched down as if trying to hide. Rem glanced toward the valley whence the sound had come. "I'm sorry, son, but there's no argument you can use to get me to stick around here."
"How about this argument?" Joseph said.
Rem turned back to him to see that, in the time he had looked away, Joseph had loaded his bow and trained it on him.
Rem laughed. It was only a nervous reaction but it had some of the effect on Joseph he might have hoped for. "You wouldn't shoot a man in cold blood," he said, taking a step back.
"My blood's hot enough," Joseph said.
Rem took another step back. The scream came again.
"How much good do you think your bow will do against that?" Rem said, nodding towards the valley as he took another step back. "Whatever it is, it's not between us and the settlement. Not yet, at least. Now is our chance." With every third word he took a step back. He was just a dim black shape in the fog now.
Joseph watched him take a final step and disappear. Then he heard footsteps hurrying away. The sound quickly faded. Joseph sank down on a rock with a sob. His hands were trembling. He gripped his bow to stop them from shaking. From the valley below, the first drumbeats came rolling up to him. He was not sure he could find his way back to Dane and the others. And even if he could, he was not sure he would like what he found. Rem may have been a coward, but his fears were not unfounded. Joseph knew there was something very bad on the island with them. Hadn't he known it since the day the ship arrived with a dying Ben Cross? He was on the verge of tears when the sound of something crashing towards him snapped him out of his self-pity. Whatever it was, it was moving with far more speed than humanly possible. He brought up his bow.
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