Travellers #2

by Jack Lasenby

  Behind, light leaps in black windows and doors. Misshapen shadows appear and vanish: ten thousand armed dwarfs flying with reflected lamps. I run under the apple tree, knocking aside the over-ripe fruit, spitting at the thought of its rotten taste.

  Aspects and vistas of reflections open. Whichever way I look it is down long echoes, a duplicity of mirrors, reflections of Sodomah’s beautiful face which changes into a shrivelled old head of either man or woman, hairless, mouth puckered, hungry-eyed.

  Tumult behind. Torches and cries of pursuit. I burst through scented flowerbeds and perfumed shrubs, confront the hedge of iron thorns. Light licks off the armoured spikes.

  “Urgsh!” Taur’s voice. The dogs’ barking. Eyes closed, arms over them, I throw myself naked upon the thorns. Staggering, bleeding, find myself between Jak and Jess, and Taur is there snatching my pack.

  Overhead the red-flowered trees ignite, twisting pillars of fire that leap in swords of flame. Throw myself under the greatest tree. Fingers dig frantic. A nail tears. Sparks drill my back. The air stinks. Hair burning. The leather cord! Rip it from the ground. The green stone dolphin around my neck, I follow Taur’s voice, “Urgsh!” into the crescent lake.

  The red swords leap and clash, tinge the sapphire water bloody. I weaken. Taur emerges, dumps our packs, returns and drags me out on the far side, red water spilling from our bodies, and I see the wounds of the iron thorns have disappeared.

  “Which way?” But Taur is already trotting, still carrying my pack on top of his. My hands clutching their necks, Jak and Jess drag me after him, not back into the desert but east, inland. Sand chimes, rings beneath our feet, then there is just my laboured breathing, the dogs’ panting. “Urgsh!” says Taur.

  We came to a rivulet that dwindled and died amongst sand. It appeared again, grew in volume as we followed up towards its beginning in the mountains. I scoured myself all over with handfuls of sand, drew the old tunic over my stinging skin. A lurid glow declined west.

  At first light Taur pointed behind. In the direction of Dene, a shaft of smoke lifted a tall tower, nodding as if it spotted us. Far to the north across the desert, a thin scrawl snaked up the air. The sun leapt brazen into the sky, the signals tottered and faded, but I knew we had barely escaped Squint-face and the Salt Men.

  The river climbed through rising country. We looked down and saw the back of the great dune above the crescent lake, the long level of the desert. Through the burning madness of that day we sheltered under a cliff. As we started again towards evening, Taur pointed, and I saw dust rising like smoke, imagined a file of dots ascending the back of the dune. By morning they would be in Dene. Squint-face would order the Salt Men to cast a circle about the crescent lake, pick up our tracks.

  All night we travelled. When morning came we kept on between huge ridges of stone, toppled boulders the size of hills. I plaited flax hats to replace those which had dried and cracked unused at Dene. As we travelled upstream, away from the sun’s power, the rivulet grew and spread across its ancient bed to become a broad opal-coloured river.

  After the garden of deceptions, it did not seem odd, a river that grew larger as it climbed towards its source. It deepened, and we saw the large silver fish we had eaten in rivers to the north. I leapt on one with my spear, Taur beside me. The dogs fastened their teeth, backed, and helped drag it out. We ate well and dried the remainder of the pink flesh during the day’s heat.

  As we marched, distant snow peaks jostled behind the shoulders of the nearer ridges, peering down at us like heads of ice giants. I thought of the mountain that ate the sun, and wondered if we climbed towards that frozen land.

  Much bigger now, the river divided into two strands separated by a plain of shingle, one strand clear water, the other – along the northern side of the valley – an even deeper iridescent opal – greenish-blue. For a moment I thought of them as mirrors reflecting each other, shuddered, and put the image out of mind. Each river now carried many times more water than their combined volume downstream.

  The wound in my side healed, but our soft feet blistered, left blood on the stones. I wrapped Taur’s and then mine with strips of cloth. When Jak and Jess whimpered, I made little bags, tying them around their paws with wisps of flax. Although they held them up and chewed at them, we made better time.

  When we ate the last of the silver fish, Taur shot a deer the dogs brought down off a bushy ridge and across the shingle. Again we fed well, drying the rest of the meat shaved thin and draped on rocks in the scalding sun. That night we continued by moonlight, walking on a crust of sand which broke beneath us, sending up a fine powder. It cracked my skin and fissured the dogs’ pads. In other places loose gravel shifted under our feet like quicksand.

  I wondered had Dene existed? Was Sodomah a dream? How in that house of mirrors had she disguised herself? Why had I not seen the dream for what it was?

  And I thought how powerful, the carnal hunger. There had been no end but exhaustion to my appetite. Each night, kissing, shaping her breasts, curving fingers along the line of a shoulder, her naked rump. Each night I was drawn into her body again.

  “Who was Sodomah?”

  With roars and gestures, Taur told me she was a Salt Woman, an ally of Squint-face, or a slave.

  “Why did you suspect her?”

  Taur pointed at the ground. “Grawgh.” Somebody leaving Dene. Footprints leading back into the desert. A messenger sent north to Squint-face, to tell him we were there.

  “Gaw!” Taur shook his shaggy head. “You talk of Dene as if you were there a long time. It was only a couple of nights.”

  Taur was jealous, I knew. I would get no sense out of him on the subject of Sodomah. “But the garden, the house of mirrors?”

  “Gaw.” Again Taur shook his head. I dreamt it, he told me.

  “You saw the fountains, streams, flowers?”

  “Gaw.”

  “It was what I’ve dreamed about since leaving the Hawk Cliffs, a place where we could settle and raise crops and animals. We could have been Farmers and Gardeners.”

  Taur kept walking. “You imagined it all. Like Sodomah.”

  “Why are you lying” I shouted.

  Taur shook his head, and walked on.

  “But I saw her. She was beautiful.”

  Taur stopped. “You saw what you wanted to see.” As if they held a cup, he raised his hands to his lips. “Urp!” He swallowed. “Argrawgh. The drug helped.”

  “Drug?”

  “What you drank, the stuff the old crone called wine.”

  “You’re just jealous.” As I said the words, I realised how childish they sounded. “You wish you’d seen everything I saw.”

  “I saw a crone, and three old Salt Men crippled by ancient wounds. A tumbled wall, one dying tree, and a trickle of dirty water from a sand-choked well. Urgsh!” said Taur, “perhaps what you saw was true for you. And what I saw was my truth.”

  I stared at him. “How can truth be different”

  “Gwoar.” He shook his head. “But this much I know.” Taur thought for a moment. “Arg. Argaw.”

  “Hagar?’

  He nodded. “Argaw! Her story. About the crone who lusted after the young hunter and strangled her daughter.”

  “Yes?”

  “Argawgh. Sodomah,” Taur said. He tried again. “Sodomah was the crone. She drugged you, made you fall in love with her. You thought she was Tara.”

  A thrill of anger stiffened my arm, but Taur turned and strode on. Over his shoulder he said, “Urgsh! There was a meaning to the story. A warning against your betrayal by a woman. Old Hagar understood your weakness.”

  “Oh, shut up!” I was grateful to Taur for saving us from Squint-face, annoyed he was right, most of all annoyed with myself.

  Taur grinned and marched on beside the opal river. Jak and Jess behind him. I had trouble keeping up. Once at a crossing they had to wait for me when the river lifted me off my feet, swept me downstream. Taur knew I would be angry if he offered to sw
im back and help me, sat there with Jak and Jess, grinning to himself.

  I caught up, and he tramped ahead again. “Garawgh!” he bellowed into the rumble of the opal river, “Garawgh aw garaw urf!” Singing the old Travellers’ song I had taught him. I suspected he was adding words of his own that told of my stupidity. Jak and Jess looked up at his yells and shouts, grinning as if they enjoyed the joke, too.

  I let them draw ahead. I would travel separately. Taur could take Jak and Jess, if that’s what they wanted. Then I remembered the time crossing the mountains, when I hid from Hagar. How she had packed the camp, loaded the donkeys, and moved on without me. What if Taur, Jak, and Jess did the same now? How childish I was! Squint-face on our tracks again, and I was being angry with Taur.

  Nevertheless, when we hid from the sun and rested, I found some shade away from the others. I slept, exhausted by the long march, and dreamt of Sodomah. Woke stiff with desire. Only a few days from Dene, yet already I was taunted by memories of the phantom body that had visited me by dark. Between remembered images of the phantom, I kept seeing the crone head screaming on the pillow, reflections all around. Was Hagar’s story a warning, as Taur said?

  I worried at what seemed wrong, feeling desire for a young woman’s body which was an old woman’s – or an old man’s, too. Was Sodomah, old and young, two aspects of Tara and Old Hagar? I had been bewitched by sex, self-betrayed by the illusion of beauty, its reflection. And all the time Sodomah had been holding me there in Dene, she was sending messages to Squint-face.

  “At least,” I grunted when we moved on next morning, “I’ve learned something about myself.” I looked quickly at Taur, to see if he was laughing, but he was busy with his pack. A rueful grin tightened my face. It made me feel so much better, I tried laughing, a forced laugh, more of a croak. “Ha! Ha! Ha!” The dogs looked, curious. Jak yapped, and I grinned and ran to catch up to Taur.

  We approached the branching of the two rivers, the main junction in the valley. Ahead a steep mountain. Left, the opal-coloured river, now much larger, changing shades from white through blue to green and darker, ran north-east. And far up its enormous valley, framed between the nearer ridges, a vista of spires and turrets dazzled and gleamed, ice and snow-fields. I thought of the mountain that ate the sun, of the ice-ogre, and wondered was that where it began its immense slide towards the sea. And what would happen when we tried to cross the mountains, because that was now the only way we could go.

  The air so clear it rang. In the heads of the opal river, the peaks seemed about twenty or thirty paces away, gigantic pure white masses, gentle curves and fantastical airy summits against the sky. Taur shook his great head at the distant snow. “Urgsh?” he asked. “Which way?”

  The clear river swung south to our right. Its valley revealed no snow peaks. There seemed a level way along its right bank. We climbed a rock face below the junction of the two valleys. Taur clutched my arm, pointed. Trembling on the morning air that was beginning to shimmer with the first heat, a file of black spots struggled where we had crossed the opal river yesterday.

  “Won’t he ever give up?” I asked and felt ashamed at the complaint in my voice. I was giving in to self-pity. “All right, we’ll get rid of him.” Taur and both dogs looked up at the change in my voice. I laughed.

  “We’re a good day ahead. They’ve got to shelter soon. We’ve got dried meat enough to keep us going.” Already I felt better. “I’ve got an idea.”

  “Grawgh! Good!” Taur grinned. “I suppose you’ve thought of somewhere we’ll be safe, where we can be Farmers and Gardeners?”

  “We’ll lay a false trail,” I said, “up the other branch, shake them off long enough to get ahead. And deeper in the mountains, we should be able to set ambushes, cut down their numbers.”

  “Gurgh!”

  “We escaped the garden, thanks to you,” I told Taur. “We’ll get away again.”

  Jak and Jess leapt. Perhaps it was the hope in my voice. I had ignored them for so long at Dene, they had lost confidence, were just beginning to trust me again.

  “We’re going to beat Squint-face!” Jak barked, and Jess danced on her hind legs.

  Chapter 20

  Into Silence

  Where the opal branch veered north from the junction, we went up its left side. Leaving half-hidden footprints across a sandbank. Calling the dogs through mud by a stagnant pool. Skipping across rocks, but prodding sand between them with our spears. Trying to deceive our pursuers, pretending to hide our tracks. It reminded me of leaving Lake Top with the animals, laying a false trail across the Tungaro River.

  Coming to a long reach of debris, logs, broken stone, I sent Jak and Jess scampering across a tongue of sand upstream, signalled them back over the logs. And here we did conceal our sign. We brushed the sand off feet and paws, picked our way across the stones to a long deep pool. Its surface a series of frozen waves, bucking, piling, reforming. Menacing. On the other side, a rocky bluff stepped into the river. We tied our packs and weapons to flax ropes.

  Taur tensed his arm so the muscles bulged. He tapped them, pointed at the river. His mouth moved. I could not hear but nodded and waded out. The water had a muscly feel. I had long learned the trick of using the river’s strength to help me cross, but this one fought back. Taur lunged past, submerging, coming up, yelling. Twice I was flung back into the bank. A third time I struck out, the rope dragging downstream. Then the fight went out of the river, the current picked me up, swung me across. Hands, knees grounded against a drowned shingle bank below the bluff. No sign of Taur. Had he drowned?

  “No!” I shouted. “Taur! Taur!” I turned to launch myself back.

  No answer. Just the roar of the river. “Taur!”

  “Urgsh! Urgsh!” Taur had swum in below, hidden himself behind a boulder.

  “Idiot!”

  “Graw!” he splashed me. “Graw!” Bumped so I splashed face-down. Taur picked me up, put me on my feet, still laughing. Gently, we drew in the packs on their ropes, looked to the bowstrings and arrows. Jak and Jess had been carried away and came splashing up. We climbed the bluff, footprints drying fast.

  From the top, we looked down at the opal water roiling, gleaming, heaving in the sun, giving no idea of its strength. Squint-face would not expect us to cross there, would lose time casting about for our sign. I hoped the treacherous crossing might cost him some men.

  We slipped into a scrub-covered terrace, bending apart the branches, arranging them behind, and followed it down to the junction. Up the southern arm of the river, we found an easy shingle crossing and followed a level bench before sheltering through the worst of the sun.

  “Might as well carry the meat inside us.” I gave Jak and Jess all they could eat, cooked a huge meal for us. While I sat and wondered how long our trick would deceive Squint-face, Taur slept through the heat. He could just throw himself down and sleep. Always woke fresh and full of energy, wanting to be busy at something. I took longer to wake and get up, and he liked to talk at me then, knowing it made me cross. “Garow, Urgsh?” he would ask until I’d snap, “Oh, shut up!” and, too late, see him grin.

  This evening, Squint-face would reach the junction, follow our tracks up the opal branch. We would get well up the clear branch to the south. If the Salt Men had an accident crossing, we might get ahead as much as two days.

  I woke to Taur whispering to the dogs. We stuffed down the rest of the cooked meat. Before moving on I took a last look up the opal-coloured branch, towards those fretted ice peaks in its head, and wondered again about the sunless land beyond.

  Two nights we climbed, much of the days as well. The high ridges hid the sun. The valley lifted, narrowed up a twisting gorge. Mountainsides sprouted water that slid and feathered over bluffs, spreading wings that sailed through the air and collapsed in sudden cascades. Across one face it pulsed, blew a vertical curtain in a gust, and pulsed again across the slabbed rock. A band of snow ruled a straight line across the highest tops. Somewhere I heard eerie wh
ispers of pipe music like water trickling in the Garden of Dene. I looked at Taur. He looked back, pulled a face. I listened, heard faint music again, and watched Taur.

  “Garough?”

  “Nothing.” He can’t have heard it.

  By now Squint-face must have realised our tracks up the opal river were false. When, one morning, Jak and Jess began checking and looking back, I knew they were probably scenting, even hearing the pursuit. In a strange way it was welcome, like something old and familiar.

  We lost time in a confusion of clefts and knew the Salt Men must be catching up. There was a gorge where the river gouted between black cliffs, and the air billowed a perpetual drizzle of mist. A clammy smell rose from slimy rocks. Red moss covered one wall, green another. We might find a place above to set an ambush. First, though, we had to angle across a sloping face, open to anyone below. Taur and Jak went ahead. I followed, then Jess looking back, snarling, scenting the air. Taur vanished over the top, then Jak. A metallic clink. Jess yelped as an arrow glanced off her leg. Again I heard the sinister music, masked by the river’s roar.

  “Come on, Jess! Good girl!” I dragged her up and over the top. Bow ready, I glared down the face. Nothing moved. The arrow had cut Jess’s leg, enough to make her favour it. She was losing some blood. Upstream, the cliff our side closed vertical against the river. We must cross or be caught. Spreadeagled, Taur was sidling a ledge above the water, nose scraping the rock face. He dropped his pack and weapons on a flat spot, returned to help Jak.

  I took a last look down the face. Jess’s injured leg shivered as I slung her across my shoulders and pack. “Keep still!” She lay inert as I sidled, joined Taur and Jak. Confined here the river was a blade turned vertical and deep, only a few steps across, as much as we could leap with luck – and a good run. Its force through the slot shook the stone walls. Each rock vibrated until the air shrieked.

  Taur swung and threw my pack and weapons across the gap. They skidded smack against his. Jess licked her leg.