The Bellringer

by William Timothy Murray

  Robby paused, halfway through the barrows, hesitant and once more filled with a bewildering dread. He realized that, for all his pride and bravado, he had been afraid of coming out here ever since he agreed to do so. Perhaps that was why he let things get to him back at the stream, why he had convinced himself, even momentarily, that he saw and heard such strange things near the bridge, giving in to the fear that he sought to hide from Ullin and his father. And he was disappointed that he could be so spooked and nervous.

  The air swirled around the mounds and came up behind him, interrupting his thoughts and nudging him along. He walked on, hearing only his own footfalls softly echoing from the grassy sides of the barrows. In spite of his resolution to put childish fears aside, the quietness of the place and the cool green of the mounds on either side of him, peaceful and brooding, had their way. He longed to climb one of them, to have a look around, to come up for air, so to speak. But he dared not. He had no desire to linger. And there, straight ahead, framed by the walls of the barrows, was Haven Hill, rising steep and stark, topped with the ancient battlements of Tulith Attis. All this only renewed Robby's pensiveness, as if his surroundings crowded and pressed around him. It was a feeling of closeness like when one's collar was buttoned too tight.

  He hurried on and was soon away from the barrows, now giving his attention to the Hill, its abrupt slope jutting up on one side and tapering away out of sight farther south. High atop the hill, Robby could make out huge stones, covered in ivy and brush, and he wondered what power could have overthrown such a defense. The sun suddenly and completely disappeared into dark clouds. The wind blew steadily with sudden, powerful gusts, and Robby hunched against the buffeting, pressing forward along the path. Before he realized it, he was at the base of Haven Hill, directly beneath the summit of Tulith Attis, and the battlements high atop the sheer side of the hill loomed over him. Here the path forked, one way leading south, the other way north, each along the base of the hilltop fortress.

  This he did not expect, nor did he remember seeing any sign of another road on the maps. Now he wished he had brought one along, after all. Both roads looked equally disused and both disappeared a short distance away to his right and to his left as they passed around the hill before him. No sign of house or trail of chimney smoke or footprints or bent weeds showed him which way to go, which way would lead to Ashlord's place. He remembered from the map that the main road led around the north side of Haven Hill and ended at a bridge.

  "Well," he thought, "that shouldn't be too far off, and, since I shan't go any farther than that, I might as well try that way first. If I find nothing, I'll turn back and try the other way."

  Turning his back on the south way, Robby started off northward as the first big drops of rain began clicking on the weeds and stones. He quickly pulled his cloak from his shoulder pack and threw it on, keeping the pack beneath it. The cloak would help some if it rained little, but was too light to be of much use in a downpour. "Better than nothing, though," he said aloud as he fastened it on.

  The road hugged the base of the hill that rose steeply to Robby's right as he passed around it. From his point of view, the battlements high above leaned over him, ready to tumble down at any moment, it seemed, and in several places the ivy and brush had not yet taken hold of the walls and parapets, and he could see the gaps made into them for archers and other defenders to do their work. Robby passed other enormous stone blocks, vine-covered and cracked, alongside or even in the middle of the pathway, as if they had come loose and fallen, or had been cast down from the ramparts above, half buried where they crashed. On this side of the hill the way wound downward, still keeping to the foot of the fortress, but soon he could no longer see the top for the trees that grew there, great oaks and mighty poplars with sprawling limbs. The rain began in earnest, and the wind bent the trees, tearing off leaves and scattering them in the air around him. He pulled on his hood and strained to see any path that might lead off to some house, but as he kept on he could see no sign of one. He was now entering the rim of a dim forest, it was nearly as dark as night, and everywhere branches tossed this way and that noisily. Lightning flashed above him and instantly cracked sharply through the air. He briefly halted, gritting his teeth, but then continued on, the rain turning cold and hard, adding its noise to all the rest. Several times the heavy gush of raindrops fooled him into thinking someone was behind him, and he whirled around to see who it was, but no one was ever there. He reached for his dagger, his only weapon, but found that it was gone: he had left it, he realized, on the bridge at Weepingbrook, the stream's name no longer escaping him. He would just have to pick it up on the way back home.

  He threw off his hood so as to peer around more easily, and trudged on, rain streaming down his face, the roadway now muddy and filled with water running down from the fortress slopes in little streams every few yards. The darkness of the storm deepened, and he could see that the road straightened ahead, and he saw some vague lines which, as the road once again leveled, became the outline of an old stone bridge.

  "Oh, good grief! Ashlord must live around on the other side."

  Robby turned to go back, then stopped, looking at the bridge.

  "I don't know when I'll be along this way again, so I might as well take a look," he shrugged and proceeded onto the bridge.

  It was a carefully laid structure, larger and longer than he had first thought. As he approached, he saw that the stone curbs that lined each side were above his waist, and the width of the bridge was twice that of the road itself. He could not see to the other side where it entered the gloom of the Boggy Wood. As he cautiously stepped onto the bridge, he felt it must have been built on tall stone arches, such as he had seen in some of Mr. Broadweed's picture books, for the bridge was the most massively built structure Robby had ever seen, with the exception of the looming fortress itself. Keeping to one side, he moved around brush and limbs that littered its surface. Several times, he stopped to lean over the side to have a look below. The bridge seemed to stretch over a deep ravine, wider than the river Bentwide and so deep he could not see the bottom in the darkness of the storm. He kept moving, and kept trying to see over the side; but even with the flashing light, he could not make out what was below, seeing only the tops of trees, no river or stream. Passing what he thought was halfway, he continued on carefully toward the other side to see where the bridge ended, thinking at first that part of it perhaps had fallen away. But as he neared, he saw that the far wood had encroached onto the end of the bridge. There, a large tree had fallen onto the bridge, and through its rotting branches grew an immense tangle of vines covered with black thorns that glistened ominously in the rain. Robby stared at the natural barrier, trying to look beyond it into the forest itself.

  Making out nothing through the thorny brambles that covered that end of the bridge, he shrugged again and turned around to go back the way he had come. As he neared the middle of the bridge, something moved into the roadway ahead and Robby stopped, blinking rain from his eyes in an effort to make it out. Whatever it was, it was low to the ground, crouching, and Robby instinctively tensed, balling his fists. Perhaps it was only some leafy branch, blown down by the storm, and he edged nearer. Another form appeared to one side and behind the first one. In spite of the storm's noise, he heard a sound, a low guttural noise that sent the hair up on the back of his neck. Lightning flashed and cracked, and he could see them briefly and clearly, another loping into view during the brilliant moment.

  "Wolves!" he breathed, backing away quickly. This was what his father had warned about, and now, without his knife, he was defenseless. In vain, Robby looked for a stick or branch but saw a loose stone, the size of his fist, and picked it up as he continued to back away. The wolves seemed reluctant to enter the bridge and did so slowly, snarling as they came, their heads down below their hunched shoulders, miserable and hungry-looking in the cold rain. Robby saw two more join in at their rear.

  "Begone!" Robby called out suddenly, wavi
ng his arms. It did not work. On came the animals, and Robby continued backing up until he could feel the thorns clawing at him from behind, moving in the wind and slashing at his cloak like hundreds of thin arms tipped with talons. Now the lead wolf was within ten yards, and Robby had nowhere to go. Lightning flashed again, and Robby saw a small opening in the vines, low down, that appeared to run under a great branch of the fallen tree. Turning around, he saw that one of the wolves had jumped up onto the stone curb to his left and was quickly approaching. Just as the beast was readying to leap at him, Robby threw the stone with all his might and turned to scramble under the vines. The rock hit the wolf squarely in the head, sending him sideways in pain, and, losing its footing, it fell yelping off the bridge, its cry cut short by the beast's impact far below. The other wolves moved in as Robby crawled under the trunk, the thorns he pushed through clawing and digging into his cloak, holding him back. Pulling hard, he heard the fabric rip and more yelping as thorns whipped back and into the eyes of one of the wolves and pierced the ear of another as they hurled themselves snarling and biting at Robby's feet. This sent them into a frenzy of snapping and biting at each other, starting an incredible fight among themselves. Robby continued to scramble away as fast as he could manage, jerking and pulling through the thorns, heedless of the cuts and gashes they inflicted, trying to shield his face and eyes from the barbs. Suddenly he was free of the vines and stumbled into some clear ground on the other side of the bridge. He got to his feet and charged on through the thick brush until, between the rain and the darkness and his own panic, he could no longer tell where he was, much less which way he should go.

  Chapter 3

  The Fortress

  He did not know how far from the bridge he had gone, or if any of the wolves had managed to follow him, but it was not long before his panic gave way to growing alarm at his situation. He sat down on a log to rest and to think. He was on the wrong side of the bridge, in a wood he was warned against. It was raining cold buckets. He was cut, and watery blood ran down his arms and legs. It was dark in the wood under the clouds and would soon be even darker as night fell. Even if he could find his way back to the bridge, there was no telling if the wolves still prowled there. And if he got past them, it was a long walk back around Tulith Attis to the fork in the road. From there who could say how far to Ashlord's house? Robby was beginning to doubt whether Ashlord even lived out here. Who in their right mind would?

  "Ashlord better have some good reason for being so hard to find," he said, standing up. "Well, there's nothing for it but to go back." He looked around and found a large, thick stick and swung it against a tree trunk several times. It didn't break.

  "This will do, I guess. What I wouldn't give for one of Ullin's swords, or even my little knife!"

  The way back toward the bridge was just as hard as the way from it, and he had to skirt several large thorny vines that he did not remember passing previously. Knocking his way through thick bushes with his makeshift cudgel, he felt as if the wood did not want him to return to the bridge. He had the silly but eerie sensation of being watched, and he did not like the way the trees waved their limbs about so freely. After an hour of struggling along, he suddenly found himself at the edge of a steep drop-off. Robby realized that he had gotten off track and was uncertain which way to turn to find the bridge. He could see no more than a few yards through the brambles in either direction. Chancing a fall, he edged down the slope a few feet to try for a better look, and he soon spotted the bridge to his right, much farther away than he imagined it could be. A sharp flash of lightning revealed how massive it was, spanning across three tall arches, below which grew tall oaks that did not even reach the lowest arch. He also saw the unmistakable shapes of several wolves moving about the bridge.

  "Well, that's pretty hopeless," he said. Looking across the ravine and upward, he could make out through the trees the ramparts of the fortress and thought he saw, lower down, some remnants of a wall. It was then he realized that this part of Haven Hill was man-made, an ancient fortress, since ruined by the wear of uncounted years and nearly covered over by time.

  He weighed his options. Hanging about in the woods as night fell was not something he wanted to do. If he could get across this ravine, and move up the other side undetected by the wolves, he might be able to climb that lower wall. Up there might be a way around and back to the other side. He doubted the wolves would be able to climb as well as he, anyway.

  He started down the ravine. By now it was late afternoon, and, even if the sun had been out, Robby would have been in deep shadows. As it was, with rain pouring from black clouds, the light was so dim, and the flashes of lightning so sudden and garish, that Robby strained to see, with moments of brilliantly clear sight followed by brief blindness before his eyes readjusted to the gloom. Several times he missed his footing and slid downwards, once even slipping over the side of a steep overhang only to spill down through the top of a tree, snapping off branches as he fell, and landing against the hard roots. Before he could grab hold of anything, he slipped farther down a muddy slope, tumbling several yards before coming to a sudden stop sideways against a mossy rock. He knew that he most certainly could not climb back the way he had come, so he continued on downward, hoping the way up the other side would be easier. While negotiating a mossy outcrop where rainwater poured downward in hundreds of little waterfalls, he lost both his grip and his footing once more and slid with the slushing water into a bone-chilling and muddy stream at the very bottom of the ravine. The cold flow pushed hard, knocking him off his balance each time he tried to stand.

  The stream was nearly twenty feet wide and no telling how deep, but the current wedged him up against a log that nearly spanned all the way across. Gripping the slippery surface of the log, he inched out into the flow until his feet no longer touched bottom. Breathing hard with cold and fear, he knew he had to keep going. Pulling off his shoulder bag, he put it on top of the log to keep it as dry as possible and slowly made his way across, pushing the bag ahead a little and then, by gripping dead branches, moving forward himself. The water threatened to pull him under, and the log lurched and shifted constantly, but more branches still attached to the log underwater provided some footings here and there. After a long, slow time of it, with many pauses to consider his next hand-hold, he was within five feet of the steep far side. First, he flung his bag onto the bank where it landed safely in some brambles, and he then lunged forward. After swallowing much mud, he pulled himself out and up the bank by grasping at every root and rock he could lay his hands on. Thoroughly soaked, he dragged himself onto a slippery outcrop, turning over onto his back, dizzy and cold, his breath like clouds as he panted.

  The light continued to dim, and the storm roared through the trees, drowning out the sound of the stream. He thought he could see a ledge farther up, but he could not be sure with all of the water streaming off it and down onto him. Toward the bridge, this side of the ravine sharpened its slope until, just before the spanning arches, it was a sheer rock face. Yet the ledge seem to go in that direction, so he carefully began climbing, picking up his bag as he went, moving sideways away from the bridge since that seemed the easiest way up. Stopping often to catch his breath and to study his way, he inched upward, slipping time and time again, checking his fall by clawing at root and rock.

  It was now raining torrents, everywhere water poured into the ravine, and Robby had to keep his eyes shut tight and his head down to shield against the gritty debris that gushed over him. Nearly at the end of his strength, he finally gained the ledge and crawled over it. He then tried to squeeze under the stump of an old, blasted tree where he thought to find some shelter. After his exertions, he was now hot and somewhat thankful for the cool rain. Only moments later, he was shivering, and he realized he had to keep moving, or perhaps never move again. He made himself get up, and he began going along the ledge toward the bridge.

  He had not gone far when the ledge widened out and leveled somewhat so that he
could walk along it without holding onto anything. Several times he had to negotiate around or over fallen rocks and trees, but he now made steady progress. The ledge turned abruptly to the left around an outcrop and into a gash in the sheer rock face. Looking down, he could see the stream only a short distance below, swelling over a waterfall. Looking up, he could only see flat rock where not even moss or ivy had taken hold, disappearing into the gloom above. Gripping what he hoped was a sturdy root, he leaned around the slippery corner, and, much to his surprise, saw a series of flat stones set into the rock like steps, leading down a few yards then back up to an open area almost level with his head. It seemed like the out-jutting of some greater ledge, perhaps, but Robby could see little from his position and started toward it, clinging to roots until he was sure of his footing on the first step. Easily making the other steps from there, he walked upward, passing blocks of stone that rimmed the wall with large, thick, rusty iron rings set into them, as if to hold ropes or chains, though none could be seen. As he wondered at their purpose, the steps took him to the top of a large balcony or landing, of sorts, paved with flat stones. They were coated with thin moss, and through the cracks small oak saplings struggled to root from their acorns. Trying to make out the purpose of this structure, Robby explored it carefully, seeing no way off except the way he had come.

  It was about forty yards, squarish, with three of its sides formed by sheer walls rising upward out of sight. The back wall of the place, directly below the battlements high above, was covered with dead trees and limbs that had fallen from overhead, and were covered with ivy and brush. The opposite side, facing the ravine, dropped straight down and was as sheer and slick as the upward walls. He supposed he would have to backtrack along the ledge the way he had come until he could find a spot to climb down, there to make his way upstream to find a better place to climb out. Robby moved to the back of the landing, looking for some place out of the driving rain. Lightning flashed, briefly revealing the outline of something against the wall. Looking carefully, he could barely make out some broad stone steps leading into the huge pile of brush that had built up against the wall over many years. When the lightning flashed again, he saw a stone archway set into the wall behind the brambly mess.