Falconer's Quest

by T. Davis Bunn

  “A-Amelia.” She broke over shaping the word. “Mama sent you?”

  “Aye, that she did.” Where was Byron? Falconer’s chipping had revealed a lighter colored and harder stone beneath the first layer. Another chip, and the dagger blade broke off an inch from the haft. He resisted the urge to shout and rage at the obstinate lock. “Byron!”

  “Here.”

  “Good job, excellent.” Falconer gripped the pike, his hands fitting comfortably around the wooden haft. “All right. Go back and stand at the base of the stairs. If you hear anyone coming, you give us a shout.”

  “W-why aren’t there any guards?”

  “My friends caused a bit of a diversion. Go on, now. Kitty!”

  “Yes?”

  “Stand well back of the door, lass.” Falconer stepped back himself. The pike was tipped with a steel arrow eight inches long and shaped like a nine-pointed star. He took aim not at the stone, which he feared would break this blade as well. Instead, he aimed for the lock itself. He braced himself against the opposite wall and pushed off as hard as he could.

  The blow resounded through the tunnel like the booming of a great drum. Falconer retreated and rammed it again. A third time. Over and over, the booms pounding and echoing through the stone corridor. He was roaring now, giving the attack every bit of energy he could summon, hoping and praying there was no one around to hear the din he was making.

  The lock exploded from the wood, punching a hole through the door. Puffing hard, Falconer dropped the pike with a clatter, gripped the hole with both hands, and tore the door open. “Lass?”

  A filthy little waif with matted blond hair crouched beside the rear wall.

  Falconer swiped at his face and forced his voice down to as gentle a rumble as he could manage. “There’s nothing to fear from me, Kitty.”

  She whimpered and crouched more tightly still.

  “Remember what I told you? Your mother sent me. Amelia Henning. She’s waiting for you, sweet little darling.” Falconer reached out one hand. “Now you just come and let me get you free of this hole.”

  Chapter 32

  Falconer lifted her quickly into his arms, and they scrambled up the winding stone stairs and into the starless night. The storm thrummed in the air above the parapets, with dust falling in a constant fitful stream. Neither of Falconer’s charges seemed to notice at all. Byron sobbed great tearless breaths of air. He gripped Falconer’s arm with both hands and stumbled on faltering legs. The girl clung limpetlike to his neck and whimpered continually.

  Falconer found the rope by finding the door. He unlashed the rope, an action made awkward because Kitty refused to release him. He handed the rope to Byron. “Follow this to the wall. Climb.”

  Byron started forward, asking yet another of his oneword questions as he moved. “Climb?”

  “Our way to safety lies up and over the wall. It’s not far to the top. But you’ll have to do it yourself.”

  Byron arr ived at the wall and looked up with an expression lost to the gloom. Falconer understood. “I can’t manage you and the lass both.”

  From somewhere beyond the gloom, a voice shouted words in Arabic. Byron stiffened in panic. Falconer urged, “Hurry, now.”

  Byron’s panic granted him the required strength. Falconer watched him scrabble up the wall. There were more voices now. Falconer did not know if they were raising an alarm or if it was soldiers returning from the fire. Perhaps keener eyes than his own had managed to pierce the dark and spot their escape. He gripped the rope and hissed, “Hold me tight as you can.”

  Kitty clutched him with all the strength she could muster, arms and legs both.

  Falconer gripped the rope and began to climb. He found the going easier than he had dared hope, for the half-ruined stones offered ample stepping points. Even so, when he reached the ramparts he was puffing hard and his limbs had gone rubbery. “Byron?”

  “Here.”

  “Find us a hook or bar or…Wait, I have one.” Falconer had to kneel this time, and even so his weariness and the girl’s weight almost pulled him prone. He lashed the rope’s end to an iron hook imbedded in the stone. Rust flaked off in his grip. He tested it with his full weight, then handed it to Byron. “Let yourself over and down.”

  “I…I…”

  “A friend awaits us. His name is Bernard. Hurry.”

  How Falconer made it down that wall, with the girl clinging to him and his legs as weak as water, he had no idea. Nonetheless he did, and at the base there was Bernard. The young man hefted Byron onto the donkey, then tried to pull Kitty away. But the girl began wailing and Bernard relented. He guided Falconer over to the horse and used his back as a support while Falconer heaved himself into the saddle. Bernard slipped the reins into one of Falconer’s hands and a waterskin into the other. Falconer settled Kitty so that most of her weight was taken by the horse. She loosened her grip enough to glance about, and then to drink. Then her eyes closed and her head disappeared onto Falconer’s shoulder. He could not tell if she was asleep, only that her whimpers grew fewer and softer.

  They held to a straight, easterly course. The streets remained mostly empty. A few people rushed past, all headed toward the dimming glow behind them. Falconer felt enormously exposed. He knew those who passed would not help but notice them. A young man led two beasts. One, a donkey, held a bearded man dressed in rags and prison grime. The other, a horse, held an equally filthy young girl who looked to be a Westerner with hair that might be blond beneath its matting of dirt, who clung desperately to a tall stranger dressed in black. No, their only hope lay in leaving the city well behind.

  The storm began to abate. The tightly wrapped awnings of shuttered businesses stopped drumming out their angry beat. As the wind’s noise died, Falconer could hear a rising swell of voices behind them. The entire city seemed drawn to the havoc around the port.

  Falconer recognized their turn by the stench. It was precisely as Nebo had described, a smell so vile not even a desert storm could mask it. Falconer drank from the waterskin, then spoke for the first time since their journey began. “Here. We turn here.”

  Bernard wordlessly turned the beasts south.

  They entered the quarter occupied by the city’s butchers and skinners and tanners. It was the same in every desert city Falconer had ever known. These people had not just their own quarter but their own wells, market, temples, and taverns. Anyone who noticed the group’s passage would be loath to report anything to soldiers, most of whom would pay gold not to enter. Or so Falconer hoped.

  Neither of Falconer’s charges gave any sign they even noticed the stench. Or the direction. Which was very good, for Falconer could not risk explaining what they had planned.

  The tanners’ quarter ended by a broad, shallow lake. To the south and east rose hills, a jagged silhouette against the gradually clearing sky. Beyond the hills, Falconer knew, rose the newer part of Tunis. To the south and west was a flat, empty wasteland that stretched on for hundreds of miles.

  The southern city wall had long been robbed of stones to be used for houses and corrals. Only one watchtower remained of the former parapet, and it rose from the desert like a ragged thumb. Without instructions from Falconer, Bernard left the road and headed toward the moonlit mound.

  Figures separated themselves from the tower’s silhouette and started toward them. Falconer recognized the bowlegged shape of Soap, who led a donkey that held one of the former slaves. Next came the tall, lean form of Wadi, who led two more mules piled high with provisions. Another of the whalers walked. Nebo led two more mules carrying the last freed man.

  The walking man came in close enough for Falconer to recognize the whaler called Randall Sands. He peered at Falconer’s charges a moment, then asked, “This them?”

  “Aye.” Falconer’s voice sounded low and ragged as the last trailing wind.

  “So you broke into the dungeon and freed them both.” Sands’ teeth flashed through his beard. “Glad you’re on our side, mate.”
/>   Nebo pulled his mules around. “Dawn comes soon.”

  “We go,” Falconer agreed.

  They passed the tower and headed away from both the city and the road. South by west. Away from people and water and food and the sea.

  Into the wasteland.

  Chapter 33

  The desert held a multitude of moods, all of them distinctly their own. The wind rose again soon after dawn, blasting the travelers with the tail of the storm’s final assault. Falconer quickly helped those new to the desert to fit burnooses and accepted Wadi’s assurance that this storm would not last. They forced the animals to kneel in the sand, then shielded themselves behind the beasts as best they could. No one complained. Falconer leaned his head against the mule and slept through the heat and the wind, easy in mind and body for the first time since scaling the fortress wall. Even the wind was his friend now, even the biting grime.

  When the wind vanished and there was only the heat, they rose to continue their flight. Falconer and Nebo glanced behind, then shared a weary smile at how their trail was now obliterated.

  They rested once at noon and again at midafternoon. Falconer walked now, for the horse’s flanks were lathered in sweat. He had to be very firm with the little girl, refusing her cries to be held. She did not protest in words, nor was he certain she actually understood his explanation that he was too exhausted to hold her. But she remained on the horse only so long as he walked beside her, close enough for her to reach out every now and then to touch his shoulder.

  The sun was a blazing orb directly in front of them. They were no longer walking south, but west now, and a sliver toward north. The heat was all consuming, and they seemed to have moved into a blazing lake of fire. Still they continued on.

  Night came in desert suddenness. Falconer saw no more than the next step and trusted others to guide his feet. The reasons for their forward speed were no longer clear. Instead, a jangle of images came and went in his fevered brain. He was back upon the fortress wall. Then he was down in the dungeon tunnels. He was trapped inside a cell of his own. The sky overhead was filled with a river of sparks. The fire raged to his left, his right. Still they walked.

  The moon rose, though Falconer did not lift his head to study it. The desert beneath his feet became a shade of pewter and felt cool through his boots. They turned and headed north. Falconer knew because the moon’s silver shadow shifted.

  “Wait here.”

  The words were spoken by Wadi. Falconer was too drained to comment over the silent man having spoken twice in the same day. Or perhaps it was not the same day at all. Falconer dropped to the desert floor. He felt as much as saw the girl slip into his lap. Someone handed him a waterskin. Falconer drank, then fitted the nozzle to the girl’s mouth. He realized her lips were chapped and broken. He wanted to tell her to use salve upon them before they blistered. But he was asleep before the words were formed.

  He had scarcely drawn a single breath of slumber before someone was nudging him. He wanted to protest, to beg them to leave him be. But his mind obeyed against his body’s silent protest. He lifted Kitty from his lap into the saddle. She whimpered. He agreed.

  Only then did he realize that he could see her. And not by silvery moonlight.

  Dawn had come.

  A sliver of his mind awoke him enough to understand why Soap and Wadi and Nebo were urging them forward. He saw them force a weakly protesting Byron onto the mule’s saddle blanket. He wanted to tell the man that they had to be hidden before daylight arrived. They were in bandit country. They must find a place out of sight. But he discovered he could not speak. Though his mouth worked, the words did not come. So Falconer did the only thing he could think of. Which was to wind the horse’s reins around his left wrist and begin walking.

  Aimed straight north now, they headed toward hills that rose like ocher teeth. The desert was rock strewn and slanted. The horse stumbled on the rocky slope, but caught itself and did not fall. The stallion whickered a soft protest, no doubt as weary as the men. Falconer tried to remember the last time he had known a decent night’s sleep. Was it two nights ago? Three? It did not matter. He had the strength for one thing only, making the next step. And the one after that.

  They climbed more steeply now. Wadi moved up beside him. Pointed ahead and to the left. Falconer nodded, though he could not truly say he saw what Wadi indicated. His task remained the next step.

  The sun now was strong. When had it risen? How long had they walked in full daylight? Falconer could not say.

  Then the horse neighed, a single sound, and pulled upon the reins so that Falconer realized the beast was moving ahead of him. Which could only mean one of two things. Either the horse smelled water. Or…Falconer could not think of the other reason.

  Then they entered a place of shade. The gloom fell upon Falconer like a wash of comfort and ease. The rock beneath his feet was gone, replaced by sand, whose coolness rose around him and entered his bones. He breathed a great sigh and lifted his gaze. The cave was a hollow running back fifteen full paces. The walls were laced with the strands of ocher and orange and black of a wind-carved grotto. Falconer stood in a stupor of fatigue and watched Wadi pull the lass from the horse. He accepted a waterskin from a man he did not see. He drank. He cast himself down upon the sand.

  He breathed once. And was gone.

  When Falconer awoke, the night was a desert collage. The moon painted the empty reaches with a smooth, silvery brush. The hills were pearl monuments with faces of impenetrable shadow. The wind came and went in regular breaths, as if the earth itself slumbered quietly. Falconer moved to crouch by the saddlebags, and ate and drank his fill. As he started to rise, he noticed that Byron’s eyes were partly open. He regarded Falconer in the manner of one trained to be wary.

  Falconer slipped over and knelt beside him. The man groped his way up slightly, so that he reclined against the cave’s back. Falconer asked, “Have you eaten?”

  “My belly feels tight as a drum.”

  “That is very good. We will need to push hard when we leave. Store up as much now as you possibly can. Especially water.”

  Byron mumbled something, the words almost emerging, then slipping away unformed.

  “Say your piece. I am your father’s friend and ally. Perhaps someday you might choose to see me the same way.” When Byron still did not speak, Falconer went on, “Well, then. When you’re ready. There is something I wish to say to you. Now is as good a time as any. Back in the dungeon I said…well, I said something.”

  Byron’s words were a soft moan. “That all this is my fault.”

  “Aye. And I want to apologize for speaking as I did.”

  “But it’s true.”

  Though Falconer wanted to deny it, to try and ease the evident pain, he could not weave a falsehood into this moment. “Byron, we all make mistakes. I have made errors that make your own vanish like shadows at midnight. No, don’t protest. What I tell you is harsh and cutting truth. But this I know, and this I want to leave with you now. Our Lord can do miracles. If you allow, God will take these misdeeds and the wounds they have caused you and others, and weave them into a cloak of hope and purpose.”

  Byron wiped his eyes. “That is impossible.”

  “No. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but you are wrong. I could give you examples from my own life. But I don’t need to. It has already happened. To you. In the here and now.” Falconer pointed at Kitty. “Had you not been imprisoned, we would never have known of this young one’s abduction. I tremble at the thought of what might have happened to her had we not been drawn in to look for you.”

  Falconer watched Byron’s gaze move over and digest the thought of having aided in her release. “No matter what you carry, no matter how foul the burden, God will heal your wounds and turn your dross to gold. I stand as living testimony of this miraculous power.”

  Falconer rose to his feet. “Come join us, if you have a will.”

  When Byron remained seated against the cave wall, Falc
oner turned and started for where the others sprawled by the entrance. He had the sense that these men had been speaking of him.

  Nebo asked, “The young lass still sleeps?”

  “Aye.”

  “The man, he woke once. He came out and looked at the desert for a time. He ate and he drank. Then he went back and slept.”

  Soap offered, “He’s nothing but skin and rags and bones.”

  Falconer and the others turned at soft footfalls in the cave sand. Byron approached hesitantly. Soap made room on his rocky perch and said, “Come rest yourself, son.”

  When Byron was seated and had been passed the waterskin, Sands the whaler said, “They kept us in a cell for a time. Three months, best I could reckon it. When they let us out, I couldn’t get over a world without walls.”

  “Or chains,” his younger brother said, and rubbed at the sore on his left ankle.

  Falconer hefted the waterskin at Wadi’s feet and drank. Bernard turned to Nebo and said, “Now’s your chance. You may as well speak to him as you did to us. I too seek answers to the questions you formed.”

  Nebo shifted on the bench beside Falconer. “Your manner with the two prisoners. It was…”

  Falconer set the skin down on the earth between their feet. He settled his back against the wall. And waited.

  “Curious,” Nebo finally decided. “The warrior—he plans and fights and leads. Then he gentles two frightened ones he never seen before. They know him not. Yet sound of his voice quiets fears, ease them to rest.”

  Falconer waited until he was certain Nebo was done. “A man can only give to others what he has gained for himself.”

  Nebo drummed deep in his chest, a distinctly African sound of agreement.

  “Most of my life, I lived only with hate and fear. And pain so deep I could not name it,” Falconer added.

  “And you fight,” Nebo said.