The Blue Hawk (24 page)

The Mohirrim worked at their bridge with controlled frenzy, despite the ferocious heat. There seemed to be very few shouts of command; each man knew what to do, and did it with the strenuous coordination of a gymnastic dance. As soon as the main bearer ropes were taut they were braced against swaying with angled ropes anchored up and down the clifftop, ready to take the wicker platforms—the bodies of the dismantled wagons—which formed the actual surface of the bridge. While lashing one of these fast, a man lost his hold and tumbled horribly to the boulders fifty feet below. He made no cry as he fell, and his companions above seemed not even to pause in their toil. Last of all, one stout rope was stretched from two structures out of sight behind the clifftops so that it ran six feet above the platforms; but before this was in place a fair-haired woman walked onto the bridge with an orange baby on one arm and a wagon wheel slung from the other shoulder. Two larger orange children followed her, carrying pots and furs.

Miraculously fast though the bridge seemed to spring into being, it must have taken a full two hours to build, and all this time Tron could hear, gradually seeping nearer from beyond the clifftop, the erratic pulse of hooves, harsh cries, and now trumpet calls. He could see no one until they came within two or three feet of the cliff edge, but soon he knew that more was happening than the arrival of these Mohirrim and their crossing the ravine by means of a rope bridge. Farther off men were fighting. The trumpets were the trumpets of the Kingdom. He guessed that the King's first war party must have met a band of the Mohirrim—the ones he had hidden from on his way to the Pass of Gebindrath—and had driven them back, somehow turning them off the road. Now the Mohirrim were in flight, but if they could cross the ravine while their rear guard protected them, they would be able to destroy the bridge and be, for the moment, safe. Hence the frenzy with which they had worked in the full heat of O. For them, all depended on how long their rear guard could hold out.

It was a slow process, crossing. They seemed to do it family by family, first the women and children, carrying everything they could, then the women returning to lead over the laden wagon horses. This was what delayed them, as each horse had to be lashed to the higher rope on a sort of traveling sling; it walked across, but if it missed its footing the rope above would save it. The bridge seemed only strong enough to take one horse at a time, and few of them crossed without at least once trying to back off again. When all of one family's goods and wagon horses were over, their war dog would tread delicately across, followed last of all by the warrior leading his own horse, unburdened, ready for instant battle.

Meanwhile the noise of fighting came steadily nearer, and Tron thought he heard once or twice a shout in a language he could understand. The hunter beside him hissed and turned his head; leaning carefully sideways Tron found a gap through which he could see a place two hundred yards down the opposite cliff where a man was advancing on foot toward the fight, a soldier of the Kingdom with his pointed helmet and leather armor. Something about the way this man moved told Tron that he must be keeping rank with another man out of sight beyond him. He must be the very end of a line of men who were closing in on the Mohirrim. Now another man—the end of a second rank—was visible behind him. There was a cry, a trumpet call, and a clash of metal. The soldiers halted, tense, watching something that was happening farther away from the cliff. The front man raised his shield to cover his throat and lunged with his sword—Tron saw only the dog as it leaped. The man's thrust missed, but his shield caught the snap of the dog's fangs. The man behind him jumped forward to his help. An instant later the head and shoulders of a blue horseman showed, with one arm drawn back for a lance-thrust at someone out of sight. Then that tiny corner of the battle moved away behind the leaves. Tron saw the first soldier get groggily to his feet—the dog must almost have knocked him over the cliff—wipe his forehead with the back of his wrist, and walk on.

There was nothing Tron could do. Even to climb inside the creepers to a point from which he could have seen more of the battle would have been to risk betraying all four of them to the murderous horsemen. Then, as he watched the battle from below, seeing only a few sharp glimpses of fighting men and those distorted by the strange angle of his viewpoint, he realized that this was how he had seen almost all the King's struggle against the priests, a few snatched moments perceived from the quite different plane where Tron lived and moved in the service of the Gods. Though in the final clash with the priests in the Temple he had played his part like a warrior, though with his rational mind he was now anxious that the army of the Kingdom should defeat these raiders, in his soul he felt that it was proper that he should be seeing the fight in this remote manner, like a priest watching the rituals of some other God.

All the time the Mohirrim, children, women, and men, were moving with hurried calm across the ravine. The warriors all looked exhausted, and one or two turned before they stepped onto the bridge and shook their weapons at the invisible enemy. The children were quick and obedient, the women more beautiful than any human Tron had ever seen, stepping with the confident pride of queens even when they were burdened with the belongings of their moving households. As the noose closed on the bridgehead, so its progress slowed. The Mohirrim seemed to know exactly what they were about. Tron thought that all but a very few would escape to safety.

But suddenly he heard cries of alarm and warning above his head, and shouts and trumpet calls from the far side of the battle. For once the woman who was at that moment on the bridge turned to look at what was happening farther up the ravine; when she tried to go on, the horse she was leading jibbed; she tugged once at its reins and it began to shy; the bridge bucketed about; the woman drew a knife, leaned past the whirling hooves and slashed through the sling that held it safe to the rope above; unbalanced, it slipped sideways, fell, and with a screaming neigh slithered off the bridge. The woman was already running to the near cliff, and another woman leading her horse onto the bucking platforms.

Beyond them Tron could now see the gleam of O's rays on serried lance-tips. A trumpet blew. The lances lowered out of sight and a cloud of dust surged along the clifftop. Tron saw the people at the cliff edge reel sideways, as if in a wind. The charge was halted, but another trumpet sounded, and there were more lances glittering above rocks, and the pounding of hooves, and the crash of the charge striking home, and once more the trapped Mohirrim were forced sideways along the top of the ravine. Now Tron could see the foremost lancers and the blue warriors struggling on the cliff edge, a jammed mass of men and horses, not ten yards from the bridge. One more charge like that, and the Mohirrim would be cut off from their escape route. The shouts above him rose to screams, then died to sudden silence as a man who had already crossed the bridge ran back almost to the far side, slashed through the top rope, and then, without taking any handhold, the main support ropes. He must have already cut the stay ropes, out of Tron's line of sight, for the bridge swayed wildly to and fro as he hacked at the gap between two wagon platforms, first cutting one side almost through, then turning to slash at the other with all his strength. The second rope parted. The bridge seemed to twitch, flinging the warrior clear, just before the first rope snapped where he had cut it. He was still falling as the bridge flopped back out of sight. Tron heard a shout from above his head, followed by a rhythmic chant as the warriors, safe this side of the ravine, began to haul up the wagon platforms they needed to continue their flight.

Tron turned his eyes to watch the end of the battle. Directly opposite him, framed in an oval of leaves, a fair-haired orange woman stood on the very edge of the cliff with a four-year-old boy in her arms. The slant rays of O flashed from her gold necklaces and the dust storm of the battle rose like a thundercloud behind her. Calmly as a priest performing a common ritual, she kissed the child on his forehead and tossed him over the cliff. He fell without a whimper. She picked up a baby from the ground beside her, kissed it also, took a pace back, then sprang out into the gulf. Her hair began to stream up behind her as she fell out of Tron's sight. A little to one side a half-grown girl put her hands over her eyes and leaped more awkwardly.

Gulping, Tron turned his head away and saw Talatatalatatehalatena peering goggle-eyed between the leaves.

“Ngdie! Ngdie!” whispered the hunter in an appalled voice.

Tron closed his eyes and watched no more. He was not outside this. Each leaping woman, each child tossed toward the flood-scoured boulders, falling and still trusting as it fell, died not only in the ravine but also in the dark cave of his soul. Long before the battle was over he heard fresh shouts above his head, the squeak of axles and the dwindling rumble of hooves. The Mohirrim who had reached safety could leave, but Tron was forced to stay. It was as though he were needed, somehow, to complete the ritual.

Up on the opposite cliff the noises diminished more slowly. Not one warrior of the Mohirrim surrendered. Those too wounded to fight were killed by their comrades. The woman leaped as their men died.

Dusk filled the ravine. Tron listened to the sound of the soldiers moving away, calling as if to tell each other that they at least were still alive. His whole instinct was to stay where he was, to let time pass among the vines while the appalling vision faded. He heard the click and scrape of Odah's crutches.

“My brother,” came the calm, sweet voice. “I must perform the ritual for these dead. Will you help me?”

Tron felt his way hesitantly out into the open, looking deliberately away from the place where the blue and orange bodies lay among the boulders. Soon they would all be in the darkest shadows of the ravine. That would be better.

“For the Mohirrim? A ritual?” he said.

“For them. For you. For me. For all who die.”

“I will help, if you think it's right.”

“Good. Will you do the answers?”

Tron nodded. Odah led the way to a flat rock in the middle of the ravine. Tron settled his hawk, hooded, onto a smaller boulder, helped Odah up to stand on the rock he had chosen, and took his place beside him looking southwest into the gold leavings of O's departure. The two hunters stared at them, made little mutters of disapproval, and drifted away like shadows down the ravine.

Odah raised his arms and began. Tron answered. Their voices intertwined, lacing again into the echoes from the cliffs.

Behind them a man heard the sound. His blue-dyed body had been lying between two boulders, with both legs broken, while he waited to go to the place which he called Kwal-Vannor, where warriors who have never wept nor flinched spend their days in loot and slaughter and their evenings in feasting and their nights in the arms of faithful wives. He had been content to wait for death, but at the sound of human voices he raised his head and saw two Paharrim standing among the rocks, making an obscenity close to the dead bodies of the mothers of heroes. He still had two good arrows in his belt, and his bow lay a little way off, unbroken. With great care, completely oblivious of the tearing pain in his legs, he began to drag his body through the boulders.

Odah chanted:

“Let the old man take to Aa

The gift of wisdom

Let the warrior take to Aa

The gift of courage

Let the woman take to Aa

The gift of comfort

Let the child take to Aa

The small gifts of childhood.”

Tron answered:

“These they received from the Gods

These they return.”

Both chanted together:

“These they will find twice over

In the houses of happiness

That Aa has prepared for them

Beyond the dark archway.”

As the last notes went twining away together Tron raised his arms and gazed toward the huge stars that were quickly being born in the black-purple sky. Behind and a little below him, the wounded archer tensed his back against a rock, with his useless legs sprawled anyhow beneath him. He saw the two Paharrim silhouetted against the last bars of daylight in the west, a good target, though the distance was difficult to judge.
Take the boy first, because the cripple will be slow to move away.
The archer drew back the string and aimed along the shaft. Alone, defeated, dying, he still did the deed he was made for.

Tron staggered. The fire seared along his spine from the small of his back. The stars went out.

“Lord Gdu!” he screamed.

He did not feel the shock of his own fall among the boulders.

XVII

In the darkness, falling.

A small child, tossed from the clifftop, helpless, falling and trusting.

A pool whose surface glistens blacker than darkness. Swim? I cannot swim. Spreading arms like a swimmer, into the pool. But that glinting surface covers more darkness too thin to carry down-dragging limbs, leaden with exhaustion.

In the darkness falling, falling and trusting.

A cliff of harsh rock. Stay still! Large as a gauntlet the marigold scorpion creeps from a cranny, tail tensed and pulsing.
Tro-ho-ho-ho-hoonn,
nearer, nearer along the ravine the whooping call of the jackal that can never die. Gripped hard, the scorpion is carved jade in the palm, twisting inward and upward to swing the rock open, a place of hiding while the jackal passes.

A slit of pure black. One blind pace. Another. Hands wavering ahead touch the loosely cloying flutter of cobwebs, touch cloth, touch robes, touch black-gloved fingers, reaching, groping. There's a niche two steps to your left. No. Only rough rock. A handhold, a cranny, a ledge. There is no path for me there, my brothers. Climbing. The cobwebs are creepers. Below, black-gloved fingers grope onward, cheated. Heavily up the unending stairs. The falls are silent, the canyon empty, Alaan speaks no more.