John Bowman's Cave

by Erron Adams

  During the course of the afternoon the shock value of the initial revolt wore off; the rebels encountered mounting resistance. It took several of Keemon’s machine-gun led assaults to break the loyalist back. By evening, the cop had exhausted all the ammunition he’d brought from Animarl, but with that price he’d pushed the loyalists to the City gates. Sheltering behind upturned carts, they traded crossbow bolt volleys with their attackers while Oyen and Denaren weighed their options.

  One of the Guards leant back and pushed both feet against the limbs of a crossbow. His hands drew the ratchet into place. He passed the primed weapon to Oyen, smiling grimly. “I myself never learnt to shoot the hand bow. A patient skill, I’m told. Shoot straight friend, this is all we have!”

  Oyen took the crossbow and grunted, then turned to Denaren.

  “How long have we got?”

  Denaren aimed, fired, slid back behind the cart. “If we stay, not long.”

  “Yes, that’s how I see it. Our men are scattered all over the city. Keemon caught us sleeping!”

  “Too true. But I’m loathe to give up Kasina Nabir to him just yet. This isn’t the way we’d planned things.”

  Oyen nodded. How right Denaren was. They’d intended a quiet night-time exodus that included themselves, Yalnita, Caylen, the Outlander, and a select band of Guards. Now they were fighting for the right to leave at all.

  He looked behind them towards the gates. On either side, along the city walls, rebels were pressing loyalist defenders back inch by inch. Whenever a rebel fell wounded, those behind threw him over the inner parapet and pushed on. Keemon had put his main efforts into this pincer move aimed at sealing the exit. He evidently wanted the loyalist leaders as much as victory itself.

  Oyen looked back to Denaren. “We can't hold here. It’s time to go.”

  Denaren nodded.

  ***

  Chapter 24

  A World Of Water,

  A Face Of Light

  I wish for you that moment when you look up

  and find someone watching you, as if you were a candle;

  as if you were the only light in a world of darkness.

  - Anon.

  Bowman crouched and looked out over the small boat's stern, watching the lights of Kasina Nabir melt away. Beside him, Caylen mirrored his vigil. Bowman looked at her, bit his lip. Somewhere back there her Rory brother sheltered under one darkness while another hunted him. The only one of the Rory who ever really took her in, who’d treated her as a true sister. Bowman had noted, when they'd said their farewells, the way she softened as Oyen stroked her hair. If any other man had touched her like that, I'd… he thought. Hell, what would I do? More importantly, why would I do it? He shrugged and turned back to the shore. Be quick, be safe, my friend. No Heroics.

  Yalnita crouched at the midships tiller, steering awkwardly by the frost of stars drifting clouds kept smudging out. The last-quarter moon had just begun to climb above the sea's horizon. A fretful breeze blew their small sail into the roundness of hope, then spilled it into anguished waiting.

  As they sailed out through the entrance of the bay, where the slips of land on either side curled round like lips that almost met, a Kasina shore patrol came alongside. Its leader shouted for the stranger's vessel to land, or be fired on. When Yalnita ignored the command he called for his crossbowers to fan out along the bank and take aim. From their vantage higher up, the open boat was like a beetle flipped on its back.

  Bowman threw himself on top of Caylen. He thought again of his father - in his cups and reminiscing - recounting times he'd sheltered from strafing planes under barbed wire, there being nothing else in the bare land to hide him. You'd try to tuck your arse up underneath your helmet, but of course it wouldn't all fit in, and a nerve would start twitching, and you'd pray ‘Oh god not there anywhere but there let it be quick not there!’ The old man had laughed because he could, momentarily, drunk and miles and years removed from the horror of cringing under his raw spine as cannon shells thudded closer.

  Bloody stupid really: barbed wire fence, what were we thinking? Only gave them a line to follow…

  Bowman looked up from where he lay over Caylen. The patrol leader had raised his arm to give the signal to fire. As the arm came down a cloud bank drifted across the moon and Yalnita banked hard towards shore. The salvo went wide in the sudden dark, the bolts' staccato 'trop - trop - trop' in the water sounding several feet from the stern of their craft. Curses, shouts and furiously worked crossbow winches could be heard onshore, but it was too late for the Kasina. The fickle breeze lifted again and Yalnita slipped the little boat through the bay’s mouth like a rock pool fish on the ebb tide.

  Later, the cloud vanished, the breeze dropped and they mostly drifted. Caylen sulked beside Bowman, saying how it wasn't right to run. She went on and on, getting no comfort from her thinking, and from him, no rise to her angry lure. Eventually he shifted close beside her. What might have maddened him at any other time seemed now a thing in need of comfort. Letting go hardness, he sighed, and pulled her head of icy hair onto his shoulder.

  As he felt her rigid anger slacken, he leant back to the stars, and sensed a lightness in which he knew that every world had such a place, at the very centre of not-wanting, of just-being, with every innate need fully met, where the soul lulled in a gentle sea.

  He closed his eyes, knowing that she’d done the same, knowing that for now there was no more that could be done. The harsh-edged morning would wake them in this nut-shell of a boat. So what? For now, it was the world, their world. It bobbed lightly whenever waves lapped up from the undulating sea and slapped reassuringly against its wooden sides. Above them, the infinitely perforated canopy of night rusted silver light flakes on the water.

  ***

  When Bowman woke the two women were leaning over the prow towards land.

  “Yes, now I see it,” Caylen said.

  Bowman scrambled forward “See what?”

  “Melen Darit, where I’m heading,” Yalnita answered.

  “You’re heading? What about us?”

  “I'm dropping you just short of there. I'll go into the city for provisions. It’s a long way home to Grealding and there's not much to eat in between.”

  “What about weapons? Can you get us bows?”

  “Weapons we already have,” said Yalnita, kicking back an old sail at her feet. Several short swords and knives glinted in the sun. “And there's some food to take with you, but I'll go into Darit for more, and for any information I can glean about what’s happened at the Palace.”

  Bowman squinted to see the city’s outlines. It occupied a clifftop directly above the breaking sea, unlike Kasina Nabir’s placid bay location.

  “What’s the story with this Melen Darit?” he asked. “Is it another Kasina city?”

  “Not quite. The original settlers yes, but being just as close to Margun's Sword as to Nabir itself, there's been a lot of trade over time with the Eastern Rory. Some even say Daritians are in contact with Jindi living along the Sword. Anyway, despite the Kasina’s attempts to control them, they’re an independent lot.”

  “So they’re friendly to Rory?”

  “Perhaps, to Rory they know. Any strangers, however, are treated with suspicion. Which is why I’m going in alone; the three of us would stand out.”

  "You mean I’d stand out…"

  Yalnita smiled and without speaking turned the boat a quarter circle away from the city in their sights. A short hour later she left them on a rocky beach.

  ***

  Bowman burrowed in the dune beside Caylen. “What's up?” he asked, and his gaze followed her nod towards the rocky outcrop where they’d first landed. Something moved about on the sand above the rocks. Sword grass partially obscured his view. He gently parted the razor-sharp leaves, and cursed.

  A group of Kasina Guards were searching the higher shore, thrusting spears into the sand where Caylen and Bowman's footprints had survived the morning tide. A shout signified that
one had found it. The others came running.

  Caylen clutched his arm in futile anger, and his guts groaned. The Guards were rummaging through their cache of food and weapons. The unmistakable figure of Keemon strutted above the prize. The cop turned and shouted something to a Guard on horseback. The man gave a signal and a mounted troop came up.

  Bowman rolled on his back and shut his eyes. “Well, that does it, now we're really fucked!. Two short swords and food for three days, no spare boots for the ten-day trek ahead of us. Checkmate!”

  She kicked him. “Stop moaning. At least they haven't found us, yet! Let's get moving, it's over if we stay here.”

  “Where? And how? Caylen, they've got horses, for Christ’s sake! Have a look where we’re heading: there’s hardly a tree to hide behind. We'll be spotted as soon as we start.”

  “We're not going straight overland, we're going that way.” She pointed further to the West, to where dark clouds fell all the way to earth. “Through the Night Forest. You can't see it for those clouds, but it's there. From what I know it's just shadow and trees. If we can make it that far we've got a good chance, we can lose them in there.”

  Bowman looked at the feature Caylen was talking about. He knew even less about it than she did. In fact, she'd just given all he knew in her description; that and what he could see: a smoky, grey-black pall that stretched skyward from the ground, and that supposedly cloaked a forest.

  He looked back at the Kasina. One of them was already following the tracks that led away from the cache. Caylen was right, they had to leave before the Guards got here, even if it meant breaking cover.

  “Alright. let's go.”

  They scampered down to the bottom of the dunes and entered the plain. Coastal grass tussocks came to their thighs. The sound of surf died away, the salty breeze vanished and the sun blazed down. They crouched low and ran hard, but were never fast enough to outstrip clouds of voracious insects.

  “They won't pick up our trail in this grass, not for a while,” Caylen said as they ran.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “The Kasina are lousy hunters. Good soldiers, but they can’t track.”

  It took them several exhausting hours to reach the Night Forest. They slowed down as its mantle of grey cloud loomed. Drenched in sweat they tentatively entered the coolness and stood just past its perimeter. Fog drifted like visible current through the drowned trees. They closed their eyes and swayed like seaweed, catching their breath.

  Bowman turned and walked back to the edge of cloud. After a moment Caylen followed. They leant against an old pine and looked towards the dunes. Several minutes passed while they rested. Then Caylen's head shot forward.

  "What is it?" Bowman said.

  She pointed."There." At this distance they could just make out the scribble a line of horses made as they plunged down the slopes, their hooves sending clouds of sand drifting. At the top of the dunes a tall figure lowered field glasses, then mounted and followed the excited force. Right across that distance Bowman felt the glinting eyes. He grabbed Caylen’s hand and they leapt into the forest.

  A fair way in they stumbled across a path that offered welcome relief from battling the thick undergrowth. It opened to the sky like a lane of light pointing home. They crept along it, senses on full alert.

  “I don’t like it.” Caylen kept saying. “A path in the Night Forest, this is supposed to be a place no one goes, much less uses regularly.”

  Each time she said it, he asked, “Whose could it be?” but Caylen only shrugged.

  They got the answer when Bowman tripped on a buried arrow. Its broadhead had gone into the ground after burrowing through the path’s carpet of leaves.

  “What the hell?” he said, holding the shaft up for Caylen’s inspection. It bore red and blue bands over the last third just before the place fletching would be, but the arrow had been interred so long all the feathers had completely rotted away.

  “Whose is it?” he asked her.

  She shuddered. “Jindi!”

  It was the third time he’d heard the name now. “Jindi? Just who are they? Not friends of the Rory, I take it?”

  “Sometimes. Yes. Sometimes no. Best avoided, if you have the choice.”

  He looked up from the arrow. “Doesn't matter, they left this here ages ago; they’re long gone,” he said, but it didn’t convince either of them. They went on.

  The path meandered generally North - as far as they could tell by the position of the sun whenever it came out from cloud - the direction of Grealding. After a short time in its comparative light, they started sweating again. Bowman wiped his brow and tried for conversation.

  “It’s so damn eerie here, so quiet, don’t you think?”

  Caylen nodded, scanning either side of the track “Yes.” Then she pulled up and stiffened. Her eyes widened and she turned to him. “What was that?”

  He stopped and cocked an ear. Something had changed. There was a tingling in the air, as before an electrical storm. His skin prickled, its tiny hairs stood proud. He hoped that was all it was: the moment before lightning cracks. But the line of clear blue sky above made that unlikely. He went to ask her what she’d heard, but a sudden commotion – not thunder – stopped him.

  A scant hundred paces behind, horses burst through a curtain that had hidden them, as though a painting came to life when it was unveiled. Bowman went for his short sword, but before it cleared the sheaf Caylen kicked him sideways into the forest. He rolled, came up, and turned to face her. She ran at the lead horse brandishing her own sword and screaming. The beast shied, almost spilling its rider.

  She leapt into the scrub opposite Bowman and kept running. Before the forest swallowed her, she turned and, in mid-stride, blew him a kiss. When she did, her face caught in a shaft of light, and it changed her. The moment of that kiss slowed for all the time it took Bowman to register the transformation.

  He froze in the headlights of a truth too brilliant to behold. Something from his old world, a slice of his life there, had reached across and forced an image before his eyes. He was back in the pub where they had first met, he was looking up to see her looking back, as if she had been watching for a long time, waiting. His knees gave way, he fell face down in the undergrowth.

  As he fell, two horses pulled up by the brush that obscured him.

  “Brilliant, Unconnu! Another moment and we'd have had them both! Why choose to break out before we'd reached them?”

  “The timing is difficult from horseback, Keemon, especially at the speed you insist on. Anyway, we'll have the girl soon enough, and he won't get far out here alone.”

  A chorus of cursing voices in the direction Caylen took indicated her capture. Keemon ordered a detail into the bush to find Bowman, then he and Unconnu moved off to inspect their captive.

  Bowman heard and didn't hear the tide of blood that roared in his ears. The horsemen searching for him passed at a trot. He let them go in one direction, then rose and ran in another, punching through the underbrush that tore at skin and clothing. When he finally fell into a pit that had been covered with small branches, the unintended victim of an animal trap, he lay on his back, chest heaving with more than exertion, and clamped jaws around his rushing breath. The Guards went back to the path, and came past him once more, crashing through nearby brush. Then he was alone.

  It gave him time and space to think in.

  Her. The grown-up, other-world Caylen. He thought back to the girl entering his room in Animarl, holding the book she'd brought as a gift, across her chest.

  Caylen, Caylen, it wasn't possible, he was losing his mind - anything was preferable to what he'd seen in that blown kiss. In that shaft of light a face had formed that couldn't be. Not if he wanted the life he’d put together here in Animarl to last.

  His mind flickered images of all the people he'd known, trying to fit the planes of each face to the pattern. None matched.

  None but the woman, now presumably dead, whom he'd married in an
other world. And every impulse firing on his senses told him it was her.

  ***

  “Call your men back, Keemon, it's almost dark, he won't get far at night. By morning he'll be hungry and half frozen, a good incentive to deal with us. Besides, we've got her, and he knows that. He won't leave her behind.”

  “Your sentiment is touching, for an old crone, Unconnu. What makes you so sure he won't choose freedom?”

  “You fool! What makes men like you so brash and blockheaded? He won't leave because he feels for her the thing they both call love. And the feeling is like-answered. Such attraction makes a powerful force, as substantial as any magic I can conjure. He'll return, count on it.”

  Keemon laughed. “If it's that good why don't you bottle it?” He pointed to the tree where they’d tied Caylen. “Bleed her and put it in your little vials, you could...” his voice trailed as her look of scorn bit. He laughed again and turned to his Lieutenant. “Get them back, we'll start again at first light.”

  ***

  He gouged his way up the side of the pit and out of it. He rolled in mud and rotting things to erase his colour, and his scent. He roamed about, searching for something he could fashion into a more effective weapon than the short sword he had with him.

  Bending to a pool to drink, he caught sight of his wild visage. He let the hand of scooped water go and it shattered the mirror. As the waves subsided it was the face of Cenemis the Migril that he saw. He started and blinked, but the image stayed. His mind went hazy. He was there, and not there. He seemed, in fact, to be everywhere, and everyone, at once. He was Cenemis, the centre of his own story, who knew the mind of every thing and person in that story. Even as he looked, wings grew out of him, down and out, like arms. He shuddered and rose, shaking the last droplets of enchantment from his fingers.

  Thereafter he spent the days laid up in the forks of tall trees, amongst the foliage, hacking at a sapling stave he'd cut and taken with him.