The Fall of Chance

by McGowan, Terry

  Unt didn’t argue. They just sat and talked for hours. At first he’d been wary of a hidden pitfall in the Wizard’s request. Then, after he’d run through the day-to-day business, he’d struggled for things to say. The Wizard wanted to hear about his future plans but he didn’t have any. His only plan was to let the Wizard die and he’d make his mind up after, but he could hardly tell him that.

  He found himself making up projects. He couldn’t think what to start with, but he started to imagine what he would do if he were going to stay and then things came easy. The Wizard listened enthusiastically throughout, cutting in with questions and giving advice. It didn’t seem to matter what the project was; the Wizard had an unusually positive attitude toward everything.

  Before he knew it, what started out as a difficult and uncomfortable monologue had stretched into hours of the best conversation the two of them had ever shared. The fire had gone out and Unt finally had a chance to clean it.

  “It’s amazing what builds up,” said the Wizard as Unt took repeated shovel-loads of ash outside.

  “It’s long overdue,” said Unt.

  “That it is,” the Wizard agreed.

  When the fire was cleaned, Unt built a new one and set it going. The oven-heat had finally disappeared and the night chill was setting in.

  “How are those steaks getting on?” asked the Wizard.

  Unt checked. “They’re ready.”

  “Good,” said the Wizard. “Get to work doing them justice, then.”

  Unt made the steaks with roast potatoes, onions and green beans.

  “Excellent,” said the Wizard as he tucked in. “Nice and rare.”

  They had beer with the meal and more afterward. The discussion moved from work on to general small-talk. The Wizard’s history was still off-limits but Unt spoke at length about his previous life. The Wizard had to push at first but Unt soon found himself talking warmly about it.

  “You’re a good boy,” said the Wizard, shifting backwards on the bed. “Like I’ve always said, they were fools to get rid of you.”

  “That’s not what you’ve always said,” laughed Unt.

  The Wizard laughed too. “No, I suppose not.” He dragged his legs onto the bed.

  “Thank you, Unt. This has been a lovely change,” he said. “But now all this effort’s getting the best of me. I think I’ll turn in for the night.”

  “I’ll do the same shortly,” said Unt but the Wizard was already lying back and on his way to sleep.

  Unt cleared away the waste and watched the Wizard as he slept. There was a rare air of contentment about him that made Unt smile.

  * * * *

  Unt woke again in the night. It had become more a force of habit now than because anything triggered it. The Wizard was in his accustomed place, not moving.

  Unt had long since stopped panicking at the lack of signs of breathing. Many times over the last month thinking this was the end only to check and find him breathing imperceptibly. This time, though, he sensed it might be different.

  He walked over softly. He was prepared. He knew the previous day’s revival was not a sign of improvement but rather, the opposite.

  “Unt,” the Wizard’s voice made him jump. The Wizard made a low gurgle that was a laugh. “You creep so quietly a man might take you for an assassin.”

  “I just wanted to check on you,” said Unt.

  “Check I hadn’t snuffed it, you mean.”

  Unt started to object but the Wizard signalled him to be quiet. “It’s all right, Unt. I’m glad you’re awake. I want to talk to you.”

  “Talk in the morning.”

  “No, I’ve waited too long already. I have to talk now.” He put up a hand to stop Unt interrupting. “I should have been more open with you, Unt and now I’m running out of time.”

  He coughed desperately. “I’m running out of breath too,” he said. “I don’t think I can manage to say what I want to say. When I’m gone, read my diary. That will tell you all you need to know.”

  Unt didn’t tell him it was gone.

  “I wanted to leave it all behind, you know,” the Wizard went on. “I wanted to forget what they did to me. It worked too, for a time, and I was happy being alone.

  “Now though, with the end approaching, I’m glad you came along. I wanted to live on my own but I wouldn’t want to die alone. I’m not asking for a confessor. I’m well at peace with myself. It’s just enough to have someone to talk to.”

  Unt made all the right noises. He told him he wasn’t dying yet, that he didn’t have to worry and all the other necessary platitudes. They sounded empty as he said them and he knew they weren’t convincing but they needed to be said, all the same.

  His mind kept running to his own situation and he let it go there. The Wizard spoke to Unt like a man would to his son. Unt wondered what his own father might have said to him if he’d had the chance to say it. Mostly, though, he thought about the future, not the past. He looked around this desperate, stinking husk of a home. He saw his own future there and didn’t like it.

  One day, he too would be dying in a lonely place, waiting for death to come. The Wizard had said he was glad to have Unt here at this moment but that was just luck. Like as not, when Unt’s time came, it would be just him, alone. His passing would go unmarked. Unt had no delusional desires for monuments erected in his honour but he wanted better than this.

  The Wizard had slipped while he wasn’t watching. He was very close to the end. Only a jolt from the old man caught his attention. His lips moved meagrely. Words seemed coiled, ready to come out, but they died there. The Wizard was gone. Whatever he had wanted to say, important or not, he’d never say it now.

  * * * *

  Unt sat down in front of the body, just looking at it. He didn’t know what to do. It seemed too important to just carry on but he didn’t see what ceremony he could add to the situation. Rigor mortis would set in soon and he didn’t want to be around when that happened. He didn’t want to sleep in a cabin with a corpse, in fact, he didn’t know if he could stop at all.

  He decided to take a walk around the compound to clear his head. He stepped outside into the first grey hint of morning. The early birds, rising in advance of the dawn, were already proclaiming a new day. Unt smiled at the too-neat metaphor but it was true, this really was a new beginning.

  He shut his eyes and listened to the birdsong. There was a reason why people spoke about it in poetry. Each shrill little tremble lifted the spirits a notch. It rescued him from the reverse side of the die, the sense of abandonment that was drawing in.

  Resuming his walk, he looked at all the little buildings as though they were new things. The hoarfrost covered them with a prickled skin of white. It seemed to emphasise their static nature, as though they were stood at attention, awaiting inspection.

  This camp was the Wizard’s legacy: a grand achievement and a total waste. It underlined how much one man could accomplish if he put his mind to it and it also said how all that effort meant nothing to anybody else. Unt could assume inheritance over all of this but it was worthless to him. If his future was to live in isolation, it would be a place of his own making, not this.

  * * * *

  He decided to bury the corpse. Leaving it to rot would be too uncaring and burning would be too grand a gesture. Burying seemed the best thing. It satisfied the ghost of propriety that tugged at Unt even though no-one was there to judge him. He would bury the Wizard among the place he had made. When it fell down, it would fall down around him and he could keep it with him forever.

  He was reluctant to start but the body in the cabin spurred him on. He soon found that digging was difficult. The ground was tough as steel and the motivation wasn’t there. It was one of those chores that takes longer because it is a burden and the desire to make the effort is missing.

  Several times, he was tempted to give in and take the burning option but he persevered. By the time evening was coming around again, he had scratched a shallow grave deep
enough to cover the body in. He wanted to leave it at that but he thought of the stores he’d buried last week. He’d gone further down for them and the Wizard deserved at least as good as that.

  He was working by moonlight by the time he’d finished and he wanted to sleep. Unt dragged the corpse out of the cabin and along the ground. He had to hold it close while he dragged it and the head was pressing against his chest. His arms were crossed across the Wizard’s ribs and all he could feel was bones.

  He dropped the Wizard into his grave and the body landed awkwardly. The head, arms and legs were all twisted and askew, not like the serene look he’d been hoping for. He could have jumped down and rearranged it but he didn’t want to do that.

  He stood over the body in its hole, thinking he should say something. “Goodbye,” he said at last. There wasn’t more to say. He started shovelling the soil back to fill in the grave, beginning with the legs and working up. It seemed wrong to throw soil over his face so he let the stuff piled on the legs spill over until it was slowly covered. Once the corpse was entirely hidden from view, the grave became just another hole and it was easier to work on. Finally, he was finished.

  He went back to the cabin for one last night and slept in his accustomed place by the fire. The place had a strange mix of a presence that wasn’t there and an absence that wasn’t missing. He was glad of the exhaustion that would put him to sleep.

  Before that sleep came, he just lay looking at the bed. The Wizard had died there, the same place Unt might have died had the Wizard been unable to save him. There were such thin divides in the world.

  23. Pathfinder

  Unt was going to be prepared for his next journey. He hadn’t been given much of a chance when he was thrown into exile. He’d been without food, proper clothing, or skills and now he had all three.

  He was a man now, too. Less than a year had elapsed but his compressed experience had been metamorphic. He had a man’s strength, toughness and mental fortitude.

  He rose, fed himself and thought up an inventory of what he would need. It was an easy temptation to take as much as he could carry but he needed to balance provisions with mobility. It would be pointless to carry so much he couldn’t walk.

  The Wizard had a great sack with straps that could be worn on the back. Unt could carry a lot of weight like that and then he’d see what he could carry in his hands. He put a change of clothes at the bottom, a piece of canvas for making a tent on top and between those, he packed food. There was a lot of cured meat available and as meat contained a lot of energy, meat and bread were what he packed most of.

  He had a few skins for carrying water and he tied them to his belt along with the Wizard’s knife, compass and tinder box. He then added two coils of rope.

  The Wizard had helped him to make his own fur cloaks and he took one of the thinnest. It might not be the warmest but once he was moving, too much warmth would stifle him.

  He looped a bow and a bag of arrows over his left shoulder, trapping them between his back and the great sack. The last thing he took was the Wizard’s spear. It would serve double duty as protection and a walking stick. Satisfied, he went to step out of the cabin for the last time.

  Just before he did, on a whim, he had a leaf through the Wizard’s library. He was thinking to keep the blue book and he wondered if there was any other lore worth salvaging.

  As he opened one volume, a piece of paper fell out. It was worn and battered and Unt was careful as he unfolded it. There was writing on it, faint but legible and Unt took it out into the light to read:

  Dear Master Wes Hardy,

  I have received your letter of inquiry and can report that we have received a woman matching your description. Regretfully, however, I must inform you that this lady reached us in poor health and passed on shortly after. No child was with her.

  Yours sincerely,

  Fouster Bembridge (Mayor)

  Unt folded the letter and put it inside the blue book which he then put in the sack.

  He went down to the Wizard’s grave. It seemed like the thing he ought to do. The hill below ran down to the reservoir and the mill. It pained him to leave them unfinished but there was no reason to complete the project other than pride and that was something he was keen to abandon.

  Some time in the future, maybe years from now, someone would walk up from the river, into the hill and find a half-built mill. Curious, they’d investigate further up and find an overgrown patch where the trees were just returning and in that patch they’d find the tumbled-down remains of some outworks. They’d see evidence of human habitation with all the tools and trappings.

  If they looked closely, they might even see a narrow length of raised earth and dig down to find the Wizard’s grave. What would these people make of it all? Would they wonder what had become of the people who’d lived here or would they shrug their shoulders, see what was usable and continue on their journey?

  Unt had a desire to go down to the mill and see it one last time, maybe cut his initials in one of the stones, but that wasn’t the way he was going. He was headed west and that meant going up the mountain and down the other side.

  He looked down at the fresh earth where his one-time friend and mentor lay. “See you,” he said and turned away.

  * * * *

  Unt’s decision to go west was based on several factors. Resuming his old hope of going south would have been too much like falling into old habits. It had only been an arbitrary choice to start with so it was easy to give it up.

  He didn’t want to go north either. In the course of getting lost, he doubted he’d come from a northerly heading but choosing it now would seem a kind of symbolic retreat.

  That left a choice between east and west and he chose west for no other reason than following the sun seemed more positive than fighting it.

  Unt knew the terrain for miles around. He and the Wizard had ranged far and wide on their hunting trips. Still, when he got to the top of the mountain, he felt that this was his starting point. Walking with purpose, the familiar territory would be eaten up inside an hour, so stepping from here was the real declaration.

  The mountaintop was covered with trees and the canopy followed the line of the slope so there was no grand view to be had. That didn’t matter; he knew what was before him. He put a hand on the trunk of the highest-standing tree and began his march.

  He strolled on happily until well after midday. He looked back on his old self starting his journey with a mixture of pity and scorn. He had been so naïve back then, he’d actually hoped he might be ok. Then again, what else was a young man supposed to do? The alternative would have been to sit on the side of the road and starve.

  His plan, such as he had one, was to walk from ridge to ridge. He would use the first high viewpoint he found to mark out the next one and he’d walk on from one to the other. He had no idea of intent but he figured that if he kept being able to take a good look around, any places of interest would be visible and he could then make the choice whether he wanted to investigate.

  * * * *

  Unt kept to his plan for eight days straight. He was covering good distances, his supplies were plentiful and he was in high spirits. The frosted ground crunched pleasantly underfoot as he worked his way out of the latest deep gully.

  He was in high-lying country and had encountered three of these narrow valleys running parallel to each other. Each one had steep sides with green-forested banks and a furious little stream at the bottom of it. The recurring terrain was so familiar that Unt felt he was repeating the same loop in time.

  It wasn’t much distance to cover but the steepness of the climb and descent slowed him and finding a crossing place was a recurring problem. It had taken him all day to cross these three valleys and he was going to make camp once he got to the top.

  He was expecting to see the same again. Maybe, miracle of miracles, the next valley might be a little wider and a little shallower than today’s. He hoped for some open ground instead of the re
lentless march of trees. But there was no other valley. There was a precipice.

  The ridge was like the edge of the universe, it just dropped away in a sheer cliff-face that stretched away on either side of him. It was a line between worlds: a land of hills and forests stood behind him but in front was an expanse of flat country that stretched out as far as the horizon. It was the biggest range of open land that Unt had ever seen. It was a sea of land, incomprehensibly vast and there, at its edge, was something even more astounding: the sea itself.

  It lay off to the north, Unt’s right, and he turned himself to look at it. Unt had heard legends of the sea and had heard all about the boundless water that was a gateway to anywhere. It was one thing to know it and another thing to actually see it. It was kind of mundane, just a large grey smudge, but it was the extent of that blankness that was so impressive.

  In the days after his exile, he’d dreamt of the sea. He’d been haunted by Pearson’s recommendation and his advice that it was the portal to anywhere. Now he saw it and its unlimited opportunities were laid out before him. It was hard to judge distances from so grand a scale but anything within eyesight was an achievable goal. He could take it if he wanted it.

  But Unt thought back to the time before his exile. Back then, whenever he’d heard the old stories of the sea, of its adventures and the wonders of distant lands, somehow they’d never held much sway over him. Adventure and uncertainty just didn’t appeal to his character. He’d always been in love with solid things like earth.

  About halfway up the limits of his vision, a broad river rolled limply into the sea, getting wider and more lethargic as it crept toward the ocean. Its mouth made the base of a triangle that pointed inland like a directional marker. That was the way Unt’s heart pointed too.