by John Wyndham
'Is it dark enough now?'
'Yes. It'll be safe if we go carefully,' she told me. 'Can you walk all right? It isn't far.'
I got up, well aware of stiffness and bruises, but not of anything worse. She seemed able to see better in the gloom than I could, and took my hand, to lead the way. We kept to the trees, but I could see fires twinkling on my left, and realized that we were skirting the encampment. We kept on round it until we reached the low cliff that closed the north-west side, and then along the base of that, in the shadow, for fifty yards or so. There she stopped, and laid my hand on one of the rough ladders I had seen against the rock face.
'Follow me,' she whispered, and suddenly whisked upwards.
I climbed more cautiously until I reached the top of the ladder where it rested against a rock ledge. Her arm reached out and helped me in.
'Sit down,' she told me.
The lighter patch through which I had come disappeared. She moved about, looking for something. Presently there were sparks as she used a flint and steel. She blew up the sparks until she was able to light a pair of candles. They were short, fat, burnt with smoky flames, and smelt abominably, but they enabled me to see the surroundings.
The place was a cave about fifteen feet deep and nine wide, cut out of the sandy rock. The entrance was covered by a skin curtain hooked across it. In one corner of the inner end there was a flaw in the roof from which water dripped steadily at about a drop a second. It fell into a wooden bucket; the overflow of the bucket trickled down a groove for the full length of the cave, and out of the entrance. In the other inner corner was a mattress of small branches, with skins and a tattered blanket on it. There were a few bowls and utensils. A blackened fire-hollow near the entrance, empty now, showed an ingenious draught-hole drilled to the outer air. The handles of a few knives and other tools protruded from niches in the walls. A spear, a bow, a leather quiver with a dozen arrows in it, lay close to the brushwood mattress. There was nothing much else.
I thought of the kitchen of the Wenders' cottage. The clean, bright room that had seemed so friendly because it had no texts on the walls. The candles flickered, sent greasy smoke up to the roof, and stank.
Sophie dipped a bowl into the bucket, rummaged a fairly clean bit of rag out of a niche, and brought it across to me. She washed the blood off my face and out of my hair, and examined the cause.
'Just a cut. Not deep,' she said, reassuringly.
I washed my hands in the bowl. She tipped the water into the runnel, rinsed the bowl and put it away.
'You're hungry, David?' she said.
'Very,' I told her. I had had nothing to eat all day except during our one brief stop.
'Stay here. I won't be long,' she instructed, and slipped out under the skin curtain.
I sat looking at the shadows that danced on the rock walls, listening to the plop-plop-plop of the drips. And very likely, I told myself, this is luxury, in the Fringes. 'You've got to have as little as I have . . .' Sophie had said, though it had not been material things that she meant. To escape the forlornness and the squalor I sought Michael's company.
'Where are you? What's been happening?' I asked him.
'We've leaguered for the night,' he told me. 'Too dangerous to go on in the dark.' He tried to give me a picture of the place as he had seen it just before sunset, but it might have been a dozen spots along our route. 'It's been slow going all day — tiring, too. They know their woods, these Fringes people. We've been expecting a real ambush somewhere on the way, but it's been sniping and harassing all the time. We've lost three killed, but had seven wounded — only two of them seriously.'
'But you're still coming on?'
'Yes. The feeling is that now we do have quite a force here for once, it's a chance to give the Fringes something that will keep them quiet for some time to come. Besides, you three are badly wanted. There's a rumour that there are a couple of dozen, perhaps more, of us scattered about Waknuk and surrounding districts, and you have to be brought back to identify them.' He paused a moment there, then he went on in a worried, unhappy mood.
'In point of fact, David, I'm afraid — very much afraid — there is only one.'
'One?'
'Rachel managed to reach me, right at her limit, very faintly. She says something has happened to Mark.'
'They've caught him?'
'No. She thinks not. He'd have let her know if it were that. He's simply stopped. Not a thing from him in over twenty-four hours now.'
'An accident perhaps? Remember Walter Brent — that boy who was killed by a tree? He just stopped like that.'
'It might be. Rachel just doesn't know. She's frightened; it leaves her all alone now. She was right at her limit, and I was almost. Another two or three miles, and we'll be out of touch.'
'It's queer I didn't hear at least your side of this,' I told him.
'Probably while you were knocked out,' he suggested.
'Well, when Petra wakes she'll be able to keep in touch with Rachel,' I reminded him. 'She doesn't seem to have any kind of limit.'
'Yes, of course. I'd forgotten that,' he agreed. 'It will help her a bit.'
A few moments later a hand came under the curtain, pushing a wooden bowl into the cave-mouth. Sophie scrambled in after it, and gave it to me. She trimmed up the disgusting candles and then squatted down on the skin of some unidentifiable animal while I helped myself with a wooden spoon. An odd dish; it appeared to consist of several kinds of shoots, diced meat, and crumbled hard-bread, but the result was not at all bad, and very welcome. I enjoyed it, almost to the last when I was suddenly smitten in a way that sent a whole spoonful cascading down my shirt. Petra was awake again.
I got in a response at once. Petra switched straight from distress to elation. It was nattering, but almost as painful. Evidently she woke Rosalind, for I caught her pattern among the chaos of Michael asking what the hell? and Petra's Sealand friend anxiously protesting.
Presently Petra got a hold of herself, and the turmoil quietened down. There was a sense of all other parties relaxing cautiously.
'Is she safe now? What was all that thunder and lightning about?' Michael inquired.
Petra told us, keeping it down with an obvious effort:
'We thought David was dead. We thought they'd killed him.'
Now I began to catch Rosalind's thoughts, firming into comprehensible shapes out of a sort of swirl. I was humbled, bowled over, happy, and distressed all at the same time. I could not think much more clearly in response, for all I tried. It was Michael who put an end to that.
'This is scarcely decent for third parties,' he observed. 'When you two can disentangle yourselves there are other things to be discussed.' He paused. 'Now,' he continued,' what is the position?'
We sorted it out. Rosalind and Petra were still in the tent where I had last seen them. The spider-man had gone away, leaving a large, pink-eyed, white-haired man in charge of them. I explained my situation.
'Very well,' said Michael. 'You say this spider-man seems to be in some sort of authority, and that he has come forward towards the fighting. You've no idea whether he intends to join in the fighting himself, or whether he is simply making tactical dispositions? You see, if it is the latter he may come back at any time.'
'I've no idea,' I told him.
Rosalind came in abruptly, as near to hysteria as I had known her.
'I'm frightened of him. He's a different kind. Not like us. Not the same sort at all. It would be outrageous — like an animal. I couldn't, ever ... If he tries to take me I shall kill myself. . . .'
Michael threw himself on that like a pail of ice-water.
'You won't do anything so damned silly. You'll kill the spider-man, if necessary.' With an air of having settled that point conclusively he turned his attention elsewhere. At his full range he directed a question to Petra's friend.
'You still think you can reach us?'
The reply came still from a long distance, but clearly and without effort n
ow. It was a calmly confident 'Yes'.
'When?' Michael asked.
There was a pause before the reply, as if for consultation, then:
'In not more than sixteen hours from now,' she told him, just as confidently. Michael's scepticism diminished. For the first time he allowed himself to admit the possibility of her help.
'Then it is a question of ensuring that you three are kept safe for that long,' he told us, meditatively.
'Wait a minute. Just hold on a bit,' I told them.
I looked up at Sophie. The smoky candles gave enough light to show that she was watching my face intently, a little uneasily.
'You were "talking" to that girl?' she said.
'And my sister. They're awake now,' I told her. 'They are in the tent, and being guarded by an albino. It seems odd.'
'Odd?' she inquired.
'Well, one would have thought a woman in charge of them...'
'This is the Fringes,' she reminded me with bitterness.
'It — oh, I see,' I said awkwardly. 'Well, the point is this: do you think there is any way they can be got out of there before he comes back? It seems to me that now is the time. Once he does come back . . .' I shrugged, keeping my eyes on hers.
She turned her head away and contemplated the candles for some moments. Then she nodded.
'Yes. That would be best for all of us — all of us, except him . . .' she added, half sadly. 'Yes, I think it can be done.'
'Straight away?'
She nodded again. I picked up the spear that lay by the couch, and weighed it in my hand. It was somewhat light, but well balanced. She looked at it, and shook her head.
'You must stay here, David,' she told me.
'But—' I began.
'No. If you were to be seen there would be an alarm. No one will take any notice of me going to his tent, even if they do see me.'
There was sense in that. I laid the spear down, though with reluctance.
'But can you—?'
'Yes,' she said decisively.
She got up and went to one of the niches. From it she pulled out a knife. The broad blade was clean and bright. It looked as if it might once have been part of the kitchen furnishings of a raided farm. She slipped it into the belt of her skirt, leaving only the dark handle protruding. Then she turned and looked at me for a long moment.
'David—' she began, tentatively.
'What?' I asked.
She changed her mind. In a different tone she said:
'Will you tell them no noise? Whatever happens, no sounds at all? Tell them to follow me, and have dark pieces of cloth ready to wrap round themselves. Will you be able to make all that clear to them?'
'Yes,' I told her. 'But I wish you'd let me—'
She shook her head and cut me short.
'No, David. It'd only increase the risk. You don't know the place.'
She pinched out the candles, and unhooked the curtain. For a moment I saw her silhouetted against the paler darkness of the entrance, then she was gone.
I gave her instructions to Rosalind, and we impressed on Petra the necessity for silence. Then there was nothing to do but wait and listen to the steady drip-drip-drip in the darkness.
I could not sit still for long like that. I went to the entrance and put my head out into the night. There were a few cooking fires glowing among the shacks; people moving about, too, for the glows blinked occasionally as figures crossed in front of them. There was a murmur of voices, a slight, composite stir of small movements, a night-bird calling harshly a little distance away, the cry of an animal still farther off. Nothing more.
We were all waiting. A small shapeless surge of excitement escaped for a moment from Petra. No one commented on it.
Then from Rosalind a reassuring 'it's-all-right' shape, but with a curious secondary quality of shock to it. It seemed wiser not to distract their attention now by asking the reason for that.
I listened. There was no alarm; no change in the conglomerate murmur. It seemed a long time until I heard the crunch of grit underfoot, directly below me. The poles of the ladder scraped faintly on the rock edge as the weight came on them. I moved back into the cave out of the way. Rosalind was asking silently, a little doubtfully:
'Is this right? Are you there, David?'
'Yes. Come along up,' I told them.
One figure appeared dimly outlined in the opening. Then another, smaller form, then a third. The opening was blotted out. Presently the candles were alight again.
Rosalind, and Petra; too, watched silently in horrid fascination as Sophie scooped a bowlful of water from the bucket to wash the blood off her arms and clean the knife.
16
The two girls studied one another, curiously and warily. Sophie's eyes travelled over Rosalind, in her russet woollen dress with its brown cross appliqué, and rested for a moment on her leather shoes. She looked down at her own soft moccasins, then at her short, tattered skirt. In the course of her self-inspection she discovered new stains that had not been on her bodice half an hour before. Without any embarrassment she pulled it off and began to soak them out in the cold water. To Rosalind she said:
'You must get rid of that cross. Hers, as well,' she added, glancing at Petra. 'It marks you. We women in the Fringes do not feel that it has served us very well. The men resent it, too. Here.' She took a small, thin-bladed knife from a niche, and held it out.
Rosalind took it, doubtfully. She looked at it, and then down at the cross which had been displayed on every dress she had ever worn. Sophie watched her.
'I used to wear one,' she said. 'It didn't help me, either.'
Rosalind looked at me, still a little doubtfully. I nodded.
'They don't much like insistence on the true image in these parts. Very likely it's dangerous.' I glanced at Sophie.
'It is,' she said. 'It's not only an identification; it's a challenge.'
Rosalind lifted the knife and began, half reluctantly, to pick at the stitches.
I said to Sophie: 'What now? Oughtn't we to try to get as far away as we can before it's light?'
Sophie, still dabbling her bodice, shook her head.
'No. They may find him any time. When they do, there'll be a search. They'll think that you killed him, and then all three of you took to the woods. They'll never think of looking for you here, why should they? But they'll rake the whole neighbourhood for you.'
'You mean we stay here?' I asked her. She nodded.
'For two, perhaps three, days. Then, when they've called off the search, I'll see you clear.'
Rosalind looked up from her unpicking thoughtfully.
'Why are you doing all this for us?' she asked.
I explained to her about Sophie and the spider-man far more quickly than it could have been put into words. It did not seem to satisfy her entirely. She and Sophie went on regarding one another steadily in the flickering light.
Sophie dropped the bodice into the water with a plop. She stood up slowly. She bent towards Rosalind, locks of dark hair dangling down on her naked breasts, her eyes narrowed.
'Damn you,' she said viciously. 'Leave me alone, damn you.'
Rosalind became taut, ready for any movement. I shifted so that I could jump between them if necessary. The tableau held for long seconds. Sophie, uncared for, half naked in her ragged skirt, dangerously poised; Rosalind, in her brown dress with the unpicked left arm of the cross hanging forward, with her bronze hair shining in the candlelight, her fine features upturned, with eyes alert. The crisis passed, and the tension lost pitch. The violence died out of Sophie's eyes, but she did not move. Her mouth twisted a little and she trembled. Harsh and bitter:
'Damn you!' she said again. 'Go on, laugh at me, God damn your lovely face. Laugh at me because I do want him, me!' She gave a queer, choked laugh herself. 'And what's the use? Oh, God, what's the use? If he weren't in love with you, what good would I be to him — like this?'
She clenched her hands to her face and stood for a moment, shaking al
l over, then she turned and flung herself on the brushwood bed.
We stared into the shadowy corner. One moccasin had fallen off. I could see the brown, grubby sole of her foot, and the line of six toes. I turned to Rosalind. Her eyes met mine, contrite and appalled. Instinctively she made to get up. I shook my head, and hesitantly she sank back.
The only sounds in the cave were the hopeless, abandoned sobbing, and plop-plop-plop of the drips.
Petra looked at us, then at the figure on the bed, then at us again, expectantly. When neither of us moved she appeared to decide that the initiative lay with her. She crossed to the bedside and knelt down concernedly beside it. Tentatively she put a hand on the dark hair.
'Don't,' she said. 'Please don't.'
There was a startled catch in the sobbing. A pause, then a brown arm reached out round Petra's shoulders. The sound became a little less desolate ... it no longer tore at one's heart: but it left it bruised and aching. . . .
I awoke reluctantly, stiff and cold from lying on the hard rock floor. Almost immediately there was Michael:
'Did you mean to sleep all day?'
I looked up and saw a chink of daylight beneath the skin curtain.
'What's the time?' I asked him.
'About eight, I'd guess. It's been light for three hours, and we've fought a battle already.'
'What happened?' I inquired.
'We got wind of an ambush, so we sent an outflanking party. It clashed with the reserve force that was waiting to follow up the ambush. Apparently they thought it was our main body; anyway, the result was a rout, at a cost of two or three wounded to us.'
'So now you're coming on?'
'Yes. I suppose they'll rally somewhere, but they've melted away now. No opposition at all.'
That was by no means as one could have wished. I explained our position, and that we certainly could not hope to emerge from the cave in daylight, unseen. On the other hand, if we stayed, and the place were to be captured, it would undoubtedly be searched, and we should be found.
'What about Petra's Sealand friends?' Michael asked. 'Can we really count on them, do you think?'