Ancient Echoes

by Robert Holdstock

  Our boat was shown to us, our boatman was an older man – Four Cuts – who would take us to the far shore, returning the vessel when we were safely landed. Such boats were at a premium, it seemed, and we were given instructions on how to signal in the future should we need to be returned.

  We would stay the night and depart first thing in the morning.

  William’s need to urinate came upon him astonishingly quickly, as we dozed by a smouldering fire-glow and listened to the mastication of fish-gum. The young girl’s eyes sparkled as she watched me, but she had been warned away from me and did no more than occasionally spit into her round hat and sigh. When William slipped from the lodge she half sat up, but seemed more concerned that her parents shouldn’t see him go.

  In fact, Five Cuts was awake also, watching me from a position on his side. I could not fathom that gaze, but I was glad we were leaving the next day.

  * * *

  The girl was shaking me awake. She had kindled the fire and was holding out a shallow dish of very meaty fish and vegetables. There was no one else in the hut, and I noticed that my pack had gone, as had William’s. What was happening?

  I was still bleary in the head, probably from the combination of unexpected manual labour and my intake of a thinner, more palatable version of the syrup that had accompanied the chicken and fish meal of the previous evening.

  I wasn’t hungry, tried to be polite, then saw that the girl had tears in her eyes. At first I thought they were for me, but sudden angry voices outside, and her quick, nervous glance, told me otherwise.

  Where was my friend? Where was the young rogue?

  I splashed cold water on my face and with the trembling girl following, stepped out into the bleak dawn. My host and hostess were by the lake, and the boatman was waiting for me. I could see the packs stowed at the front of the blunt-nosed vessel, and a small breeze was catching in the half-sail.

  I walked down to the shore, aware that this was an angry community, now, that we had outstayed our welcome. There was no sign of Ethne or William, no warmth among the people who had gathered on the beach.

  ‘Where is he?’ I asked. Five Cuts indicated the boat. I was to get aboard. Everything was stowed, I could see … packs, harpoons, two dull-scaled, smoked fish, a bag of fleshy fish gum …

  ‘I’m not going without him …’

  ‘Get aboard!’

  I refused, turning back to the village, determined to find my friend, but William was there before me, two hundred paces distant, walking across the bridge over the ditch, walking straight to the boat, walking stiffly …

  As I made an attempt to go and meet him, the old woman, the headwoman, dragged me back.

  ‘Get in the boat!’

  Her words, incomprehensible in themselves, were charged with meaning.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I called to my friend. He smiled at me, but it was a thin gesture, and he seemed in pain. He was wearing his leather shirt, but was naked and fully revealed below, holding his heavy trousers over his arm, holding them to his side as he kept in a straight line towards the boat.

  What have you been up to, you dog – as if I need to ask …

  There was something wrong. Behind him, Two Cuts appeared, striding over the bridge, pacing down towards the beach and the boat; in his hands, five harpoons. On his face: anger, terrible anger.

  I don’t know how or why the thought occurred to me, but I realized suddenly that this was a walking race between two men, the wrong-doer and the wronged. It was something about the deliberateness of the pace; either could have run, but each walked, and each walked with increasing desperation, the furious man behind struggling, it seemed to me, to get into harpoon range.

  ‘Come on! Make a run for it, we’ll get off-shore and row until we drop!’

  As if he understood me, William Finebeard shook his head. He was close, now, and he was in pain, I could see that so clearly now. There was blood on the backs and insides of his slim legs. He made eyes at me, a look that said, ‘Get aboard,’ and a look that said, ‘Don’t interfere …’ Behind him, Two Cuts had raised a harpoon above his shoulder, still walking. I started to run, determined to interfere if I could, but a powerful slap to my face stunned me. The old woman danced around before me, slapped me again, turned me round and kicked me so hard that I stumbled towards the bobbing boat.

  I resisted still, and looked back in time to see Two Cuts fling the harpoon. William screamed out and staggered, but stayed upright, his face contorting in pain. He reached behind him and snapped the shaft – God, that must have been agony! – and kept on coming.

  The point had struck him in the middle of the back. He ought to have been dead.

  ‘I’m going to help him!’ I said, but Five Cuts took my arm in a vice-like grip and practically threw me into the boat, where the boatman held me down by the shoulder. A few seconds later, with Two Cuts close enough to whisper in his ear, William walked a path through the red skirts and black cloaks of the villagers, splashed heavily into the lake water and fell forwards into my waiting arms. I hauled him into the wooden hull, and felt the tug of movement as wind took the sail and the boatman used his long paddle to push away from the shallows.

  If I was aware of this, it was from the edge of my vision. I was still recoiling in shock at the sight of the forest of broken harpoon shafts that grew like spines from my young friend’s back. There were seventeen in all, all cut through so they would break easily, all firmly embedded.

  What I didn’t understand, as we pulled away, was why the angry partner of the eldest daughter had not finished the job. He had had a clear chance to do so.

  Already, Two Cuts was walking back to his hut, the remaining harpoons cast aside, his body as stiff and lithe as a wildcat’s. Behind him, young Thimuth followed, head bowed, though she glanced back quickly towards the lake, and I raised a hand to her.

  The boatman was silent, guiding the small vessel out across the deeps, his attention fixed on catching the shifting, impulsive breeze.

  William was breathing hard, face down on the floor of the boat, head slightly turned towards me. I tried to comfort him and he smiled, then met my gaze and winked – I think it was a wink – but there was something about him that said, ‘It was worth it.’

  We were well off-shore now and I started to remove his heavy shirt, thinking that the sooner I cut the harpoon heads out of him the better his chances; although the boatman was silent and remote from us, he was from a culture where such wounds must surely have been frequent, and might have practical suggestions.

  William stopped me, eased himself onto his side, grimacing with pain as he did so, then relaxing, taking his weight on his shoulder. His eyes were watery, his mouth slack, but by sign and suggestion he told me what had happened. And why, in fact, he was still alive.

  William and Ethne loved each other, having met on the young man’s previous visit to the icon hunters. They shared a magic that must have existed from the earliest of times: the magic of recognition, the chemistry of passion.

  Two Cuts was not bonded to her yet, but it was a match that had been agreed within the small community. When the fisherman had found the lovers in the forest – he had heard her cry in the night, her cry of pleasure – both lives were forfeit, or only William’s, provided he undertook the Walk to the Shore. If he agreed to the Walk to the Shore, then the girl would be spared, free to live her life, free of all shunning, all punishment, all scorn. It was the way of these people, and a cruel one for the man involved.

  Two hours before dawn, William Finebeard and Two Cuts had begun the walk to the shore, Two Cuts following at a distance of two harpoon throws behind the man he was challenging, free to launch up to twenty of the thin fish-stickers, free to kill if he could get close enough, required to lose honourably if the man he pursued outpaced him.

  They had walked from the ridge, down through the pines, and along the shore. If at any time William had broken into a run, the girl’s life was lost. If he had fallen, his own li
fe was lost. It was as simple, as brutal as that, and for four hours he had walked the walk of his life, despite the fact that Two Cuts’ aim was impeccable, and each time he’d thrown a spear, the blade, a long, thin piece of bone, the teeth re-curved, had found its mark.

  Finebeard grinned and pulled me close. He murmured my name, then repeated it. And what he indicated to me then was the thought that had puzzled me as well. He said, ‘He could have killed me. But he didn’t. He thinks he’s driven me away. But he hasn’t. I love her, Jack. This is something that perhaps you can’t understand …’

  I wanted to say to him, oh yes I do. There are some things that never change. He had been prepared to lose his life to save the girl’s. He had run that risk so that he could go back again.

  We were in deep waters, and the boat tossed, although a brisker wind was carrying us forward nicely. As I held William’s hand, I thought he started to laugh. I smiled and leaned towards him, only to realize that he was weeping, though whether he cried with the pain of his wounded body, or that from his broken heart, I couldn’t tell.

  I stroked his face and he looked at me with glistening eyes, then held his hand to me, thrusting the fingers to me, and the odour was familiar, an aroma that in different times would have been erotic and arousing, but which now seemed a fading memory of a hopeless love.

  He brought the hand to his mouth and kissed it, smiling, hugging his fingers as he hugged a memory of the elder sister. Then he closed his eyes and sighed, and the sigh was like a song, fading on the wind. And shortly after this, the breath went from him.

  20

  The boatman was guiding the craft to a muddy shore among the trees, but as I looked into the distance I saw, about a mile away, a white stone tower, half obscured by green. It was an image all too familiar to me, and I urged the man to tack slightly, to sail along the shore to a place where I felt certain Greenface had once ventured, though whether she would have returned to the place – she and Greyface had seemed afraid of the tower – was an argument I suppressed for the moment.

  The solemn man agreed, but pushed me back, as if to say, Sit down! Now!

  I clutched my stomach and held onto the rough wood and blackened leather of the hull. The lake was so wide that in its middle the waves had rocked us like the sea, and I was feeling sick. But I soon recovered when I noticed the beached boat, the same boat, as I understood it from our captain’s gestures, that days before had been given to Greenface.

  We came onto the mudflats and reedbeds below the ruins, crumbling walls spreading out along the shore and up the wooded hill, the white tower most prominent of all. The boatman helped me with the corpse of William Finebeard, dragging it through the reeds to higher, drier ground, where five small horses were grazing, though they scattered at our approach. Before I could express any thanks, the man had passed me a small leather bag, which from its feel contained a liquid. He indicated that I should rub this unguent into the wounds on William’s body, and I said, ‘He’s dead. It’ll do no good. The man is dead.’

  The boatman raised his eyebrows, kicked the body, then turned and waded back to the tethered craft, pushing off from the mud and catching the wind.

  A moment later a hand with a vice-like grip grasped my ankle.

  Too stunned to feel pleasure for a moment, I looked down at the anguished face of my friend, twisting up from the earth. He was making exaggerated licking motions with his lips, trying to smile.

  ‘Christ! I thought you’d died. I wept tears for you!’

  I found water and moistened his mouth. He was in severe pain, now, and befuddled as he surfaced from the coma. But he was alive! And I was overjoyed – and if I’m honest, relieved – I no longer felt so alone again. My guide was back.

  All thought of Greenface had fled for the moment. And if I was aware that the woman had been afraid of these white towers, then I had either forgotten, or suppressed the concern, because it was to the base of the tower that I dragged the revivified and groaning carcase. I fetched the packs, the harpoons, the fish gum and dried fish and then began to ease the man’s jacket off, aware that his back and legs were caked with drying blood and that he was in a terrible state.

  As the heavy cloth of his shirt came away, so I saw the reason that he had survived. Before the Walk to the Shore, he had turned the bone cuirass around to cover his back – I discovered later that he’d had an inkling of what would lie in store for him if he’d been caught with Ethne and had prepared accordingly – and though fifteen of the bone harpoons had penetrated his flesh to the depth of half an inch, their full power frustrated by this crude defence, only two had struck deeply. I was moderately certain that no vital organ had been hit, although clearly one of the strikes had severed a major vein, accounting for the massive blood loss.

  Most of the bone blades dropped out when tugged; four had gone deep enough for the teeth to need to be cut free. I poured the boatman’s unguent onto the cuts and rubbed it in, while my fair-bearded friend howled again. There must have been iodine in the dressing liquid, since his back turned yellow, but any characteristic smell was overwhelmed by the pungent aroma of the preparation’s main ingredient.

  Fish, of course.

  Even the deepest of the wounds had clotted by now, and I was certain it could not have inflicted internal injuries, since it was high up on his shoulder. I washed the rest of his body with cold water, then dressed him as best I could before fetching the mountain-survival bag from my pack and tugging it around his shivering form. I made him as comfortable as possible, placing him face down, and put two of our own harpoons next to his right hand.

  As William slept, I looked at the bag of medicine. The boatman had been prepared for this moment, I realized, prepared to help a wounded man, not a dead one. And it occurred to me, now, that the young and athletic Two Cuts should have clearly been able to overtake the struggling man with ease, on that long walk to freedom.

  He had chosen not to.

  So perhaps there had been no intention to kill the young man, an intriguing element of the duel, a puzzling aspect of the brutal walk.

  I constructed a windbreak and built a fire. Then, clutching the third harpoon and a vegetable knife from my pack, I walked into the treeline and approached the base of the tower itself.

  Now that I examined it closely, the ivory tower was revealed as exactly that – a towering column of shards and lengths of polished bone, broken towards its top to give the illusion, from a distance, of crenellations. It was cold to the touch, almost unnaturally so. It must have had a diameter of fifty yards or more. There were round openings in its walls, high above my head, and I was reminded of pores. I could see vegetation and the dark masses of large nests, tangling and nestling in the spikes and cracks of its shattered rim.

  Why had Greenface seemed so frightened of this silent, shining pillar? Or had I misconstrued the scene? I had been a child, they had been glimpses, I had had a vivid imagination and my stories turned on fear, on chase, on quest, indeed, on the childish yet primal and ever-potent trappings of fairy-tale.

  She had certainly passed back this way, however, and I climbed the wooded hill, away from the tower, looking for signs of the woman but finding none as I explored the fragments of stone and ivory wall that had once reached from high ground to the shore and the tower itself.

  At the top of the hill, leaning against one of the massive pines that crowned the ridge, I looked back to the lake, reassuring myself that all was peaceful and safe down at the shore, where William lay healing. Then I picked my way over the summit of the hill, to see if I could discern a way ahead for us, and my life seemed to stop for a moment, my senses stunned by the vision that was laid out before me.

  From just below the ridge to the high cliffs in the far distance, the whole land was slowly turning, a vast whirlpool of thick forest and white ruins, steadily draining down to a centre that was obscured by mist and shadow. Everywhere, the cliffs were crumbling, sheets and pillars of rock crashing into the dense canopy to be swir
led downwards. And yet, the towers and turrets, the gleaming white walls of castles or shaped outcrops of white rock that were being carried by the turn of the land, seemed from the pattern of the flow to be spreading out from the sinkhole itself, to pass, increasingly battered and broken, to the outer edge of the turning land!

  The earth before me shuddered, shook and groaned as it was both swallowed and recreated – two swirling streams of forest, land and ruin, moving against each other, an entwining spiral.

  I followed the winding path towards the deep cut that separated me from the edge of this whirlpool of forest, aware of the vibration of the hill below me, the increasing sense of instability, the proximity of change, of sudden destruction. Creatures, too, were moving away from the shifting wood. Whether they had come from the centre of the maelstrom or not I couldn’t tell. I heard their movement through the trees, listened to their growls, chatters and cries. Three creatures of enormous size, their skin almost black, and thick like an elephant’s, moved across my path, each towering above the trees, walking on massive legs. The tallest turned to look at me and bellowed. Its head was wide, tapering to a short trunk which flexed like a cat’s tail. Tiny eyes challenged me. It stamped a huge foot against the ground and I felt the tremor.

  It moved away, a creature from the long-gone time of the world, some precursor of the elephant, but almost brontosaurian in its shape and movement. And as it cleared the path, crashing through trees, I glimpsed a slim and furtive human shape.

  Greenface!

  She was watching me. She seemed startled to see me, glanced round nervously, then ran into the cover of the undergrowth. I ran towards her, shouting out. Something struck a tree close by, then I felt a glancing blow on my shoulder and was aware of a shaped stone crashing into the bushes behind me.