by Sylvia Kelso
Therkon was staring up at the next impasse. His hood was back, his shoulders bowed. He looked as tired, as disheartened, as near the end of his resources as I felt. The only comfort that remained, perhaps, was to share our misery.
I took a step closer. I did not have to ask, Do you see anything? It was his turn to lead: he knew I would wait for a suggestion. That when he found it, he would speak.
I stood still, close behind him. Then, without thought, almost without volition, I leant my head against him, somewhere between his shoulderblades. And like the most water-hearted child, half-whispered, “Will we ever get out of this?”
I felt his breath catch. His muscles clamped. I was past caring if he took offense. But in a moment, the tension changed. He drew in a long breath and spoke.
“We will get out.” His head lifted, ever so slightly. “We will find a way. However long it takes.” Softly, so softly, with that steel-cored resolution I had heard on Aspis’ deck. “We will come through, my lady. We will not let ourselves be stopped.”
For the sake of Azo, and Verrith, and Deoren. And the Empress. And Dhasdein. And Iskarda.
And perhaps, for Nouip, and Frotha, and the Isles, as well.
I leant my head a little harder and shut my eyes. He set himself to sustain my weight. It seemed natural to slide both arms around him, as round a tree, a column, a support. But trees do not have their own hands, that closed, warm and firm however grazed and bruised, over mine.
Two can only guess how long it was before we both shifted, drawing breath again. And he let go, and I stood back, and he turned about and said quietly, “For today, this is far enough.”
We mixed flour with water from our bottles, added salt to the paste and ate it raw. We drank half the remaining water. Then we curled up at the boulder foot, on the only half-flat place in sight, and he put his arms around me, and I fitted myself into his side as if he were one of my fathers, an uncle, a friend like Tanekhet. I was far too tired even to have listened, had Two brought up thoughts of anything else.
* * * *
It took a good hour to unkink next morning. But as I sipped the last breakfast water, Therkon, trying to tie his hair back, turned sharply and said, “The sun.”
It had topped a skyline behind us, and the overcast had not yet come right down. Light streamed over the boulder-field, sharpening the salients with rose and gold-leaf, deepening the shadows to cobalt and velvet grey. Highlighting the western horizon, between the right-hand cliffs and jagged spines of range crest, opening a ragged but golden-edged door of celestially pale sky.
And suddenly Therkon grabbed my arm.
“Under the wall there! By the hedgehog.” We had christened the massif in exasperation the day before. “Do you see there, Chaeris?” He almost shook me. “It’s a gap!”
A slot, a mere crevice, at that distance. But if nothing more, it offered a goal. A possibility. A hope.
We were half the day getting there, struggling over the same old obstacles in the same maddening way. Tired out, now, bellies starting to rumble. Bruised, as well as weary. But struggling on, between awareness that we had little resources left, and the lure of that chance.
We reached the foot of our landmark buttress with hope stopping our throats. Both of us stared upward. Neither of us dared to say, It is a low spot. We just scrabbled and scrambled yet again, up between two more enormous boulders to the flattened third between. Panting, rising, to stand on top.
Then I yelled. Therkon whooped. We held on to each other and laughed like maniacs.
Because ahead of us, long slopes of ling, shields of pocked,
naked rock stretched down and out and round to our left about the prow of the massif. And beyond that, rugged, sometimes wooded hills fell green and russet and occasionally golden toward a half-world of shimmering blue sea.
* * * *
“Oh,” Therkon said.
“The Mother blight and blast it!” I cried. “From top to foot!”
We had near broken our necks scrambling cavalierly over the last downhill boulders, we had found water on the first open rocks. There was fuel in the adjoining ling. We mixed flour and water in slapdash proportions till one lot would hold as cakes, and then we ate, sprawled out in what passed for midday sun.
Lumbering afoot again, we found what the rock-shields had hidden. Our first unskirtable cliff.
A hundred feet, Two estimated, from top to foot. Not sheer, or even stacked rock like Rack Head, rather a fall of earth-faults and rock outcrops with a brief glacis of scree beneath. Obviously descendable, with care and stubbornness, but one final obstacle we had not thought to meet.
In a while Therkon said, “I think I can get down that.”
“We can both get down it.” Every troublecrew instinct fired to life. “But not in cloaks and packs.”
He opened his mouth. Shut it again. “You mean, drop them over the edge?”
“I mean, lower them on the rope.” We had fifty feet of light line, a final security buy in Jurrick. “I climb halfway down, you put them over. I tie the rope there and lower them the rest.”
“You?”
He broke off. Gave a little grunt. You would think so, it said. And, You have named yourself troublecrew. You will not, you cannot let yourself sit up here and watch me take the risks.
“Have you climbed,” he enquired sternly, rearguard action, “round Iskarda?”
“I have.” Yes, on beginner’s work, with Azo or Verrith or someone else, and a firm hand on the safety rope. But it had to be more than Deoren had ever allowed him.
He gave me a long stare that became resigned halfway through. Then he crouched on his heels and began prospecting the cliff face. “You will at least allow me to work out the way.”
“I’m expecting it,” I said, and unfastened my cloak.
The edge was shaky, old crumbling sandstone under earth and grass, but Two exhumed a score of memories for dealing with bad sandstone in Amberlight. What matter those were from a mine? I persevered, slowly as I could manage, heeding Therkon’s directions. Despite this final hold-up, it was almost bliss to move without a pack.
Astonishingly soon I heard him call, “Far enough, Chaeris.”
“You are near halfway down,” he added, when I looked up. “Find a tie-stay and I will lower.”
We made one drop of it: the two packs, laced together, cloaks bundled between, Hvestang buckled atop. He had carried it on his back the last three days, but he had more sense than to try to wear it now. I settled myself behind a sort of stone-hedge outcrop. When the bundle arrived, I had found a handy belaying rock.
After it all bumped safely among the scree I called, “Now you come down.”
While he was where he could keep at least token guard. We did not have to speak that either. I heard him make a little dry noise before he began to climb.
And when he had settled into my temporary fort, I stood up and stretched sore and bruised limbs in anticipation and added the final caution. “Wait till I’m down.”
It was partly the sandstone. Old, crumbling, and toward the bottom, damp. And partly the weathering that had undercut the cliff so even Therkon did not notice, and partly the chimney, as Two says real climbers call it, that she knew how climbers would descend, and that looked faster than spidering sideways to find the next properly inclined place. It was perhaps twenty-five feet to the bottom. If I told Therkon, he would argue and dispute and demand I tie the rope on, wasting even more time. I braced my boots against one side and my rump against the other and started down.
Fifty heartbeats later the chimney-side gave way.
* * * *
Two recalls everything going very fast though what memory I have is slow. My boot’s sudden sickening slip. The fall’s foresight coursing pure terror in vein and nerve. A sudden gyre of revolving rock and sky and the searing knowledge I would land face down a
nd then a lightning dazzle of white.
The world resumes as if coming awake. Fingers sting. Nails broken, where I must have clawed the stone. Black and white flashes, eyes reclaiming light. Shadow, pattern, place and objects coalescing round me to a frantic, familiar voice.
I managed words, eventually. The world was dizzily remote, and the indrawn breath hurt, but I got out, “All right.”
The voice stopped. Resumed in an undertone. Profanity and prayer mixed. Something touched the upper of my two shoulders. The other seemed bedded into the ground.
“Did I break—”
“Keep still. Dhe fry you, you’ve no business being alive.” His voice shook. Gratitude’s wrath. “I don’t dare move—where do you hurt?”
“Fingers.” I shut my eyes to get the signals clearer. Two had memories of disabling blows, injuries far worse than this, but these damages had been imprinted on my own, original flesh. It had never encountered such a shock.
But now Azo’s training revived. Eyes shut, I tested hands. Arms. Toes in boots. Cautiously, whole feet. Legs. Bruises screamed on a thigh, a hip, the lower shoulder, I wanted to rub six places at once. But bones came first.
Hands would move. Arms. Head—
“Don’t move that!”
“Have to—find out.”
I opened my eyes again. Rock confronted them, inches away. Mossed, lichen-stained, fallen rock. And rock that might this
moment have been cracked apart.
“Everything where you fell . . . Two blew it up.”
“Wha—”
“Two blew it up.” His voice was shaking now too, the hand back on my shoulder as if to confirm I was breathing flesh and blood. “Pieces went up like—chips. You’re mostly on bare dirt.”
“Oh.”
It would make sense later. My head rang, blood was seeping from somewhere into my mouth, but Two insisted that was no more than consequences of a mild impact. I was awake. Therefore I was not concussed. I could sit up if I chose. I took in a whole breath.
The world went round in a black kaleidoscope. I had to keep very still till it came back.
“Think . . . cracked a rib.”
I could just whisper. I heard him spout a new gush of maledictions: I knew he was thinking, what if it’s worse, internal damage, liver, spleen, heart?
“Two says. Inside. All right.”
I heard him move. He had sat back on his heels, shaking too now, down to the indrawn breath.
“Chaeris. You reckless, Dhe-forsaken idiot—”
With a more than human effort, he cut it off. When he spoke again it was, if not the hatchet man, at least an approach to the crown prince.
“You landed on your side. Two says things inside are all right. Does your head hurt? Your neck?”
“Feels . . . all right.” I had to speak in very small sips. “Neck . . . try.”
His breath hissed but he kept quiet. I moved my head a fraction, then carefully, further, to and fro. Tried flexing whole limbs. He first protested and then helped me, eventually, to straighten out. Then, even more carefully, with a pack under my head, to turn on my back.
The cliff was a half-dozen yards behind me, the circle of shattered stone well out in the scree. I had either fallen wide or bounced, and I did not care to find out which. The bruises yowled in flesh’s complaint, there was a gash up the outside of my right arm, that had torn my precious shirt. And with every breath my body informed me more and more clearly: I had cracked or broken at least one rib.
“I don’t dare touch.” Therkon was still kneeling beside me, more frantic now I had him in full view. “Gods, that I never bought physic, even bandages. Poppy syrup . . .”
I think he almost wrung his hands. Then his head went up. His eyes swept wildly once to and fro, and he started to yank at the gear scattered about.
“Let me tie that up.” He meant the gash on my arm. He wrenched clothes from his own pack and I almost flinched at the rip of cloth. Not, I wanted to wail, another new shirt! But he was doing a masterly job of bandaging, spitting orders as he worked. And seeing them carried out.
“Put my cloak over you. Yours under. Put your head on your pack. Drink this. You still have the knives?” He checked that for himself. His other hand shot somewhere behind me, he yanked Hvestang to him as if it were a rotten stick. “Chaeris, you must keep still. Do you hear? You are not to get up, you are not to try to walk.” As if I were truly his troublecrew. He had ordered Deoren about just so. “I will bring help. You are to wait. That is all you are to do.” An anguished check. I could see, What if there are wolves? flash behind his eyes. He said harshly, “If anything comes—you have the knives. But I will be back. On Dhe’s name I swear it. I will be back here by dark.”
He sprang up to buckle Hvestang on. Then of a sudden he plumped back beside me and whipped something from his inner coat pocket, pushing it into my pack. “If you are troublecrew,” he was trying valiantly for lightness, “you should ward this.”
The jewel pouch. I had just time to recognise the shape and shade of it before he dropped a sudden fleeting kiss on my forehead and leapt up like a literal deer. I heard his feet receding, thud and crunch and reckless slither, down the lower slope.
* * * *
Two can reclaim very little of the next few hours. I think,
despite the plaints of minor damage, including what I found was a bitten left cheek, that shock and the previous days’ effort overwhelmed me, and I actually fell asleep. Or at least dozed, roused ever and again by the ribs’ scream when I tried to move naturally, or draw in a full breath.
When I woke fully the passage of time spoke from my stiffened wounds. Even in the warmth of the furs, I could hardly bear to move. Until I craned to read the colour of that distant patch of sea, and realised, with a hop of the pulse, that it was nearing dark.
And Therkon had not come back.
He will come, I promised myself. He said, by dark, and he keeps his word. Even if he doesn’t find help, if he can’t find anything at all, he’ll measure by the sun, and turn back when he knows he must. He’ll be here by dark.
Except if he lost his way. If he tripped, fell, injured himself in the hills, if he did meet a wolf, some other hazard, outlaws, bandits, just an unwary step on an unknown path and he’s lying out there now, truly incapacitated, with a broken leg?
Or unconscious. Unable, if scavengers found him, even to resist.
Impetuous unschooled lunatic, he had left his pack, his cloak, the saddlebags, food, water. If he fell or disabled himself, how would he survive the night?
I did some pungent cursing, envenomed by fright and helplessness. Crazy chivalrous Dhasdeini, to rush off with nothing but an Outland accent, a princely manner, Hvestang and a few coins in his coat. We knew nothing of the south, but Frotha had said “pirates.” What if he walked straight into such hands? And with no ward at all?
It was the worst moment, till then, of my young life. Not simply the physical pains, the friend’s, the more than friend’s loss, the knowledge of failure and mistake. Worst was that so much was my own fault.
If I had not let him go. If I had not tried that chimney. If I had not been so cocksure as to do it without the rope. If I had thought to make him take at least his pack. Amid Two’s more and more frightful scenarios the indictments seared like blazing brands.
But one attempt to push the furs off enforced the bitterest truth of all: I could hardly move. I had two packs and Nouip’s cloak, all our possessions and food as well as the gemstones, and I could not carry them. I could not even totter off down hill to search for him. On the mere chance that he was close, and that I could find him, I could not hazard all that in the dark.
After a while I did get up. Hauled, cursed, battled my impedimenta round me, up against the cliff. Drank more water, warned by Two of the drain that follows wounds and shock. Sacrificed one of my
own shirts, to girdle my ribs, so I could at least trust an unwary breath.
After that, I crawled out to hunt deadwood in the outliers of what would have been our first Phaerean wood. Then with
bitter, bitter guilt I used our flint and tinder to light the first sticks. Settled Verrith’s knives beside me, and braced myself to pray out the night.
* * * *
That is the only time in over seven hundred years of memory for which Two refuses to retrieve anything at all. My fragmentary human recollection tells me that it seemed an eternity, as you might expect. That I wept a great deal of it, as you might also expect. That, even more predictably, every bone and muscle in my body pained, but not so badly as my conscience or my heart.
By the time the sky paled, less predictably, I had a plan. I stirred up the last coals left beyond the packs. Heated my last
water to drink. Pushed, with travail and trial, both packs in against the cliff, tied the last flour and the water bottles up in Nouip’s cloak, made a sling, and got it on my back.
Walking was possible, however the ribs panged. Azo had long since taught me to track, and Therkon’s trail was blatant, skids, heel-prints, crushed tuffets, overturned stones. Downhill straight as water. I cut a withy for staff among the first saplings, and shuffled into the wood.
The trees were writhen and scrawny, from aridity, I thought, as well as wind. The tracks led me among them, except for some reckless bound or spring I could not match. And where he had leapt across the little pool of seep that started a brooklet, I stopped to drink and fill my bottles amid the croziers of new spring fern.
Straightening up, I heard the shout.
Below me. No great distance, perhaps just beyond the wood. A man’s voice, a clear and carrying Halloo.
For one wild instant my heart leaped. And dropped again. Therkon’s voice I would have known anywhere.
But if it was human, it was help, however dubious. I braced both hands on my shirt girdle and produced a breathy wail.