Fellowship of the Talisman

by Clifford D. Simak

  “Stay here!” Duncan yelled at Conrad. “A dragon! Stay here.”

  He wrenched himself free of Conrad’s clutching hand, leaped forward, sword rasping from its sheath. Beneath him one foot skidded on the slippery underwater rock and as he tried to right himself, the other foot also slipped and he went down upon his back, the water closing over him.

  He tried to rise, feeling a sense of blind panic washing over him, and slipped again. A shrill scream split the silence and he saw that the dragon, gripping Beauty with its two taloned feet, was beating its wings frantically to lift itself.

  Daniel, rearing high, had seized the dragon’s neck with his teeth and was hanging on. As Duncan watched, the struggling dragon lifted Daniel off his feet and then sank down again. To one side Duncan saw the flash of Diane’s sword. As she swung, a second dragon, seeking to avoid the blow, slithered sideways, almost crashing into the water.

  The sweep of one of its wings knocked Diane off her feet.

  Conrad was running toward Daniel and as Duncan watched, he launched himself into the air, his one good arm reaching out. The arm encircled the dragon’s neck and the dragon sprawled in the water, unable to beat its way to safety with Conrad’s added weight.

  Beauty had ceased her screaming. Her limp body, released by the dragon, bobbed in the water, which was being thrashed into foam by the dragon’s struggles to escape. Tiny leaped at the dragon’s throat, his head making a slashing motion. The dragon stiffened, tried frantically to hump itself out of the water, and then collapsed and lay still. The dragon that had attacked Diane was beating its way upward. Diane had regained her feet.

  There was a sound of wings above him, and looking up, Duncan saw that the air seemed full of dragons circling swiftly in upon them, heading for the kill. And this, he knew, was the end of it; this was where the journey ended. His company, beaten down by the long night of travel, caught in the open no more than a hundred feet from the safety of the wailing island, could not stand against such an attack. Bitterness flared so deeply within him that he tasted gall inside his mouth. Roaring out a challenge that had no words, a berserker roar of hate, he lifted his sword arm high, running forward to take his stand with the others of the band.

  From overhead, above the circling dragons, somewhere in the deep blueness of the sky, came the sudden clatter of driving hoofs, a wild bugling and the baying of a hundred hunting hounds.

  The dragons broke their circling, milling wildly as they sought to get away, and down through them, scattering them, came the Wild Huntsman on his neighing charger whose pounding hoofs struck sparks in the air. The horse and huntsman swooped so low that for a moment Duncan caught sight of his face, eyes glowing wildly under bushy brows, beard blowing back across his shoulder in the wind of his own charge. Then the horse, with frenzied hoofs, was climbing into the blue again, the Huntsman flourishing his horn in hand. The dragons were fleeing wildly from the hunting dogs that bayed them down the sky.

  The rest of his band, Duncan saw, was lunging through the water toward the safety of the island, Diane dragging a limp and struggling Andrew, Conrad plunging steadily ahead on his own.

  Duncan waded out and seized Beauty. When he touched her he knew that she was dead. Her body floated and he towed her to shore. There he sat down and laid her head across his lap. He put down a hesitant hand and stroked her, pulled gently at her long and silky ears. No more, he thought, the little mincing feet, dancing along the trail ahead of him. The least and the humblest of them all and now it had come to this.

  A soft nose nuzzled his shoulder and he turned his head. Daniel snorted softly at him. He reached up a hand to stroke the horse. “We’ve lost her, boy,” he said. “We have lost our Beauty.”

  30

  Duncan was walking down a woodland path when he met the giant. It was early spring and all the trees had the soft, green-yellow, lacy look they have when the leaves first start unfurling from the buds, and there were many flowers — the floor of the woods carpeted with flowers of every hue — little flowers that nodded at Duncan as he went past, as if they had seen him and wanted to say hello. The woods were a friendly place, fairly open, with a lot of space for light and air, not one of your thick, somber, even threatening woods that all the time is closing in as if they meant to trap the traveler.

  Duncan didn’t know where the woods were, he didn’t know where he had started from nor where he might be going; it was enough that he was there. He walked in the present moment only and that, he thought, was good. He had no past to be remorseful over, he had no future he must fear.

  And then the giant came into sight and each of them walked forward until they confronted one another. The path was narrow and there was not room for the both of them. To pass by one another the both of them, or at least one of them, must step aside. But neither of them did. They stopped, facing one another, Duncan glaring up at the giant, the giant glaring down at him.

  Then the giant reached down with an enormous hand, lifted him, and shook him. He shook him lustily. Duncan’s head snapped back and forth and his legs were jerking every which way. His arms did not move because the giant’s great fist was holding them tightly in its grasp.

  And the giant was saying, “Wake up, my lord. Wake up. There is someone here to see you.”

  Duncan tried to crawl back into the dream again. “Leave me be,” he mumbled. But the giant said, “Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.” And the funny thing about it was that it was not the giant’s voice that was speaking, but another grating voice that he thought he recognized. It seemed to him it must be Scratch’s voice. The shaking kept right on, someone shaking his shoulder rather violently.

  He opened one eye and saw Scratch bending over him. He opened the other eye and saw that he was lying flat upon his back, with a projection of rock hanging over him.

  “You’re awake now,” said Scratch. “Stay awake. Don’t fall back to sleep.”

  The demon squatted back upon his heels, but he did not make a move to leave. Scratch stayed there, watching him.

  Duncan pulled himself to a sitting position, lifted a fist to rub his eyes. He was on a small bench of stone with another outcropping of stone extending over him. Beyond the outcrop the sun was shining brightly and almost at his feet he saw the water of the fen. A little distance off Conrad lay huddled on one side, with a sleeping Tiny squeezed very close against him. Andrew was on his back, with his mouth wide open, snoring.

  Duncan started to get up and then sat back, faint with the panic that had flooded over him. He had gone to sleep, he realized, perhaps all of them had fallen into exhausted sleep, with no proper precautions taken. No guard had been set, no one had spied out the land. They must have simply fallen down and slept. And that, he knew, was inexcusable of him, a failure as a leader.

  He asked in a weak voice, “Is everything all right?”

  “Everything’s all right,” said Scratch. “I stood the watch while my companions slept.”

  “But you were tired as well.”

  Scratch shook his head. “Not tired. A demon does not know fatigue. But there are people waiting, sire. Otherwise I’d not have wakened you.”

  “Who’s waiting?”

  “Some old women. Rather nice old women.”

  Duncan groaned and rose to his feet.

  “Thank you, Scratch,” he said.

  Where the slab on which he had been lying ended, a path began, and he stepped out onto it. As soon as he left the protection of the overhanging ledge of stone the pressure and the weight of the wailing struck him, although there was no wailing now. And if there were no wailing, he asked himself rather numbly, how could there be weight and pressure? Almost instantly he had the answer — not the pressure of the wailing, but the pressure and the weight of the world’s misery flowing in upon this place, flowing in to be exorcised, to be canceled by the wailing. The pressure seemed so great that momentarily he staggered under it and became, as well, aware of the sadness of it, an all-encompassing sadness that damped every o
ther feeling, that set the joy of life at naught, that made one numb with the enormity of the hate and terror in the world.

  The women that Scratch had mentioned were standing, the three of them, just up the path that led from the fen’s edge into the island’s height. They were dressed in flowing gowns that came down to their ankles, very simple gowns, with no frills or ruffles on them, that once had been white but now were rather grimy.

  They carried baskets on their arms, standing there together, awaiting him. He squared his shoulders against the pressure of the misery and marched up the path to face them.

  When they were face-to-face they stood silent for a moment, he and the three of them, looking one another over.

  They were no longer young, he saw; it had been a long time since they had been young, if ever. They had the look of women who never had been young. Yet they were not hags, despite the wrinkles on their faces. The wrinkles, rather, gave them dignity, and there was about them a calmness that was at odds with the concentrated misery pouring in upon this place.

  Then one of them spoke, the one who stood slightly in the forefront of the three.

  “Young man,” she asked, “can you be the one who did violence on our dragons?”

  The question was so unexpected and the implication so incongruous that Duncan laughed involuntarily. The laugh was short and harsh, little better than a bark.

  “You should not have,” the woman said. “You have badly frightened them. They have not as yet returned and we are very worried of them. I believe you killed one of them, as well.”

  “Not until it had done its best to kill us,” said Duncan sharply. “Not until it had killed little Beauty.”

  “Beauty?” asked the woman.

  “A burro, ma’am.”

  “Only a burro?”

  “One of my company,” said Duncan. “There is a horse and dog as well, and they also are of our company. Not pets, not animals, but truly part of us.”

  “Also a demon,” said the woman, “an ugly clubfooted demon that challenged us and threatened us with his weapon when we came down the path.”

  “The demon also,” said Duncan. “He, likewise, is one of us. And, if you will, with us also is a witch, a goblin and a hermit who thinks he is a soldier of the Lord.”

  The woman shook her head. “I have never heard the like,” she said. “And who, may I ask, are you?”

  “Ma’am, I am Duncan of the House of Standish.”

  “Of Standish House? Then why are you not at Standish House rather than out here in the fen harassing inoffensive dragons?”

  “Madam,” he said evenly, “I can’t imagine how you fail to know, but since you don’t, I’ll tell you. Your inoffensive dragons are the most bloodthirsty raveners I have ever happened on. Further I will tell you that while we had the right good will to harass them handsomely, it was not we who really did the job. We were too worn out from the crossing of the fen to do it creditably. It was the Wild Huntsman who put the run on them.”

  They looked at one another, questions in their faces.

  “I told you,” said one of the others who stood behind the one who had been speaking. “I told you I heard the Huntsman and the baying of his hounds. But you said that I was wrong. You said the Huntsman had not the hardihood to approach this island, to interfere with us and the work that we are doing.”

  “Your work,” said Duncan, “is something in which I have some interest. You are the wailers for the world?”

  “Young Standish,” said the spokeswoman, “this is something with which you should not concern yourself. The mysteries in which we are engaged is not a subject to be pondered by mortals. It is bad enough that your earthly feet have violated the sacred soil on which you stand.”

  “And yet,” said one of the others, “we are able to forgive you your sacrilege. We extend, symbolically, our hospitality. We have brought you food.”

  She stepped forward and placed the basket that she carried on the path. The other two set their baskets down beside it.

  “You can eat it with no fear,” said the one who had first set down the basket. “There is no poison in it. It is wholesome, solid food. There is enough natural misery in this world. We do not need, of ourselves, to compound it further.”

  “You should be the ones who know,” said Duncan, not realizing until he’d said it how ungracious it must sound.

  They did not answer him and seemed about to go, but he made a motion asking them to stay.

  “One thing,” he said. “Have you by any chance, seen from your vantage point upon the island, any evidence of the Horde of Harriers?”

  They stared at him in wonder, then one of them said, “This is silly, sisters. Certainly he must know about the Horde. This deep in the Desolated Land, he must be well aware of them. So why don’t we answer him?”

  “It can do no harm,” said the spokeswoman. “There is nothing he, nor anyone, can do. The Horde, Sir Duncan, lies just across the fen, on the western shore, a short distance from this place. They must know that you are coming, for they’ve formed into a swarm, although why they should swarm for the likes of you is more than I can understand.”

  “A defensive swarm?” asked Duncan.

  The spokeswoman asked sharply, “How do you know about defensive swarms?”

  Duncan laughed at her.

  “Save your laughter, young man,” she told him. “If you cross that stretch of water to face them your laughter will be out of the other corner of your mouth.”

  “And if we go back,” said Duncan, “your precious dragons will be the death of us.”

  “You’re obnoxious and ill-mannered,” said one of the three, “to speak thus of friends of ours.”

  “Friends of yours?”

  “Why, most certainly,” said one of them. “The dragons are our puppydogs, and without the Horde, through all the centuries, there’d be less misery in the world.”

  “Less misery…” And then he understood. Not a confessional to ease the pain and supply the comfort, not an exorcism of fear and terror, but a reveling in the misery of the world, rolling happily in the distress and sadness as a dog would roll in carrion.

  “Vultures,” he said. “She-vultures.” And was sick of heart.

  Christ, was there anything that was decent left?

  Nan, the banshee, keened for the widow in her humble cottage, for the mother who had lost her child, for the old and weary, for the sick, for the abandoned of the world, and whether the keening was of help or not, it was meant to help. Nan and her sister banshees were the mourners for those who had no others who would mourn for them.

  But these — the wailers for the world, who walled either by themselves or by a more extensive sisterhood or by means of some infernal machine that made modulated wailing sounds — he caught the vision of some great complicated piece of machinery with someone turning a long and heavy crank to produce the wailing — these used the misery of the world; they sucked it in and funneled it to this place where they wanted it to be, and there they luxuriated in it, there they rolled in it and smeared themselves with it, as a hog would bury itself in repulsive filth.

  The three had turned about and were going up the path, and he waved an angry arm at them.

  “Filthy bitches,” he said, but he said it underneath his breath, for it would do no good to yell at them — no harm, perhaps, but no good, either — and they were not the ones he should be concerned about. They were filth that one passed by, filth that one stepped around and tried not to notice. His concern lay beyond this island.

  He stepped forward swiftly and, lifting the baskets one by one, hurled them out into the waters of the fen.

  “We gag upon your hospitality,” he told, between clenched teeth, the women walking up the path. “We need no crusts of bread you toss to us. We damn you all to Hell.”

  Then he turned about and went down the path. Scratch and Conrad were sitting side by side upon the ledge on which they’d slept.

  “Where are the others?
” he asked.

  “The hermit and the witch have gone to bring in Beauty’s pack,” said Scratch. “They spotted it. It had been floating in the water and came to shore just down the beach. There may be something in it still fit to eat.”

  “How are you feeling?” Duncan asked Conrad.

  The big man grinned at him. “The fever’s gone. The arm feels better. Some of the swelling’s down and the pain is not as bad.”

  “Milady,” said Scratch, “went off in that direction.” He made a thumb to show the way she’d gone. “She said something about spying out the land. Before I woke you up. She has been gone for quite some time.”

  Duncan looked at the sky. The sun was halfway down from noon. They had slept a good part of the daylight hours away.

  “You stay here,” he said. “When the others come in keep them here as well. I’ll go and find Diane. That way, you said.”

  The demon nodded, grinning.

  “If there’s anything to eat,” said Duncan, “eat it. We must be on our way. We have no time to lose.”

  “M’lord,” said Conrad, “you plan to beard the Horde?”

  “There’s nothing else to do,” said Duncan. “We have no other choice. We can’t go back and we can’t stay here.

  This island is an abomination.”

  Conrad grinned wolfishly. “I shall be close beside you when we go in,” he said. “I need but one arm to swing a club.”

  “And I as well,” said Scratch. “Snoopy was right in what he said in giving me the pitchfork. Appropriate, he said.

  And it is that. It fits my hands as if it had been made for me.”

  “I’ll see you soon,” said Duncan.

  He found Diane on a small headland that overlooked the fen, back the way they’d come. She was sitting on a small rocky upthrust and turned her head when she heard his step behind her.