The Fellowship of the Talisman (21 page)

He thought of what they'd do next and of the way ahead, and found that he was shuddering away from it. They had made little progress so far, and in making the little that they had, they had run into a lot of trouble. Now they would be traveling without Wulfert's amulet and without it, the trouble might get worse. The amulet, he was convinced, had helped them with the hairless ones, the enchantment and the werewolves, and yet, come to think of it, he knew that he was wrong. The amulet could not have been of help with the hairless ones, for it was not until after their encounter with them that he had acquired it. Although that, he thought, might have been simply happenstance. Certainly the amulet must have been some protection against the enchantment and the werewolves. Perhaps the victory over the hairless ones could be explained by something else—perhaps by Diane and her griffin. The hairless ones, until the last moment, probably had not expected to face Diane and the griffin along with the rest of them. Yes, he said to himself, thinking foggily, that must be the explanation.

And yet, with the amulet or without it, he knew he would go on, by whatever means, under no matter what kind of circumstances. He had no choice; he had fought out the issue that night when he'd lain in the hermit's cave. The long history of his heritage made no other decision possible. And when he went on, the others would go with him—Conrad, because the two of them were close to being brothers, Andrew because of the mad obsession with being a soldier of the Lord. And Meg? There was no reason for Meg to continue with them, no advantage for her to gain, but he was sure she would.

The sun had climbed far up the sky and there was a drowsiness in the air—a soft, warm drowsiness. Duncan found himself nodding, half asleep. He pulled himself erect, drew in great breaths of air to force himself back to wakefulness, and in a few minutes' time was nodding once again. His body ached and his wrists were sore from the chafing of the bonds. His gut was an empty howl of hunger. He craved sleep. If he could only go to sleep, he thought, maybe when he woke the soreness and the ache, perhaps even the sharpness of the hunger, would be gone. But he could not go to sleep, he must not sleep. Not now. Not yet. Later there would come a time for sleep.

Beside him Conrad came to his feet, staring down the slope. He took a half-step forward, as if unsure of himself, then he said, “There she is.”

Duncan forced himself upright and stared down the slope with Conrad. Andrew did not stir. He was doubled over, hands grasping his staff, his head almost to his knees, fast asleep.

At the edge of the forest below them, Duncan saw a faint movement. Then, as he watched, he saw that it was Meg. She was toiling up the hill, bent over, almost crawling. She fell and struggled to her feet and came on again, moving slowly and tortuously.

Conrad was running down the hill. When he reached her he lifted her, cradling her in his arms, leaping up the hill with her. Carefully he laid her down in front of Duncan. When she struggled to sit erect, he helped her, lifting her into a sitting position.

She looked up at them with beady eyes. Her jaws worked and a harsh sound came out of them.

“Dead,” she said.

“Dead?” asked Duncan. “The Reaver's men?”

“All of them,” she whispered in harsh tones. “Laid out on the strand.”

“All of them?”

“All of them. Dead and bloody.”

17

The wind off the fen fluttered the rags that clothed some of the humped figures lying on the sand—not all of them, for it was apparent that some of the dead were hairless ones, and they had no rags to flutter. Huge black birds perched upon the corpses or hopped angrily about among them; and there were other birds as well, although they were not noticeable at first, little birds of the forest and the strand that hopped or ran about, pecking with their vicious little beaks at morsels scattered on the ground or at the pools of black, coagulated blood that lay puddled on the sand. The bodies lay within a small area, as if the Reaver's band had come together to present a solid front to the massed attack, which must have come on them from three sides, giving them no way to escape except into the fen, which would have been death itself. Luggage and saddlebags, pots and pans, blankets, pieces of clothing, drinking mugs, and weapons lay scattered all about. The campfire still smoldered feebly, sending up thin threads of tenuous, finespun smoke. Far up the strand a half dozen horses stood with shot hips and hanging heads. There was no sign of the rest of the horses; by now they could be widely scattered. Against a tumbled pile of firewood lay carelessly stacked saddles, saddle blankets and other harnesses.

Duncan stopped when he came around the clump of willows, and the others stopped with him, staring at the scene of carnage. Looking at the grotesque scattering of bodies, Duncan felt the bitter taste of bile rising in his throat and hoped he would not vomit, for that would be a disgraceful thing to do. Although he had read in the history scrolls at Standish House the lurid, spine-chilling accounts of battles and the somber, black descriptions of their aftermath, this was the first time he had seen at firsthand the butchery of combat.

It was strange, he thought, that it should affect him so. He had felt nothing like this in the garden skirmish with the hairless ones or in beating off the werewolves. Only a few hours ago he had cleaved the skull of the unsuspecting Robin, and it had been no more than a detail, a necessary job that must be done in the struggle for survival. But this was different. There was nothing personal about this. He was not involved. This was death on a fairly massive scale, the evidence of death and the violence that had brought it on this short stretch of ground between the flatness of the fen and the sharply rising ground.

Here lay the men, he told himself, who had threatened violence and torture to himself and the others with him, and, staring at the small patch of crumpled bodies, he tried to tell himself that he was glad this had happened to them, that it freed him of his fear, that it might even be, in some way, a product of his hatred of them, but he found, surprisingly, that he could not hate the dead.

It was not that he had never known human death before. He had first met it when he was ten or so, when Old Wells had come to his chamber, where he was hiding, and taken him to that great room where his grandfather lay dying. The rest of the family had been there, but he had seen no face clearly except for the hawklike face of the old man who lay upon the bed. Thick, tall lighted tapers stood at the four corners of the bed, as if the old man who lay there might have already died, the flickering light of the tapers doing little to beat back the gloom of death. His Grace had stood beside the bed, draped in his brilliant yet somber robes of office, muttering Latin prayers for the solace and the benediction of the dying man. But it had been his grandfather he had watched, the only one he had really seen, a frail old body surmounted by the fierceness of the hawklike face. And yet despite the desperate fierceness of the face, a shell-like man, a man made out of wax, a waxen replica of a man already gone.

Conrad touched his arm. “M'lord,” he said.

“Yes,” said Duncan. “I am sorry. I was thinking.”

They walked forward slowly, tramping ponderously, and at their approach the large black scavengers, squawking in outrage at this disturbance of their feast, spread their ragged wings and pumped them mightily to lift their heavy bodies. The smaller birds waited for a time in an attempt to brazen out the intrusion, and then they, too, flew away in a blizzard of whirring wings.

White and empty faces, some of them with the eyes already plucked out of them by the ravenous birds, stared uncomprehendingly at them here and there from the heap of tangled bodies.

“The thing that we now must do,” said Conrad, “is find what they have taken from us—your sword, the amulet on which you place so much trust, Daniel's saddles, our blankets, some food for us to eat. And then we can leave this place behind us, thankful that it all is done.”

Duncan stopped and Conrad went ambling on, circumnavigating the area of the dead. Meg scuttled about, humped over, resembling in certain ways the scavengers that had flown away, snatching up items that she found lying on the ground. Andrew stood a little way in the rear, leaning pensively on his staff, his peaked face peering out from beneath the cowl. Tiny trotted at Conrad's heels, snarling softly at the tangled dead.

“M'lord,” said Conrad. “Please come, m'lord.”

Duncan hastened around the heap of dead to reach Conrad's side. He looked down at the body indicated by Conrad's pointing finger. The eyes in the body's head came open and looked up at him.

“The Reaver,” said Conrad. “The son-of-a-bitch still lives. Shall I finish him?”

“There's no need to finish him,” said Duncan. “He's not leaving here. His last hour is upon him.”

The Reaver's mouth worked and words came dribbling out.

“Standish,” he said. “So we meet again.”

“Under somewhat different circumstances than the last time. You were about to skin me.”

“They betrayed me, Standish.” The words ran out and the Reaver closed his eyes. Then the words took up again, but the eyes stayed closed. “They said for me to kill you, but I did not kill you.”

“And I'm to feel great charity because of that?”

“They used me, Standish. They used me to kill you. They had no stomach for the job themselves.”

“Who are the ‘they' that you talk about?”

The eyes came open again, staring up at Duncan. “You'll tell me something true?” the Reaver asked. “You'll swear it on the Cross?”

“For a dead man, yes. I'll swear it on the Cross.”

“Is there any treasure? Was there ever any treasure?”

“There is no treasure,” Duncan said. “There never was a treasure.”

The Reaver closed his eyes again. “That's all I needed. I simply had to know. Now you can let that great lout who stands beside you …”

Conrad lifted up his club.

Duncan shook his head at him.

“There's no need,” he said. “There is nothing to be gained.”

“Except the satisfaction.”

“There'd be,” said Duncan, “no satisfaction in it.”

Andrew had moved up to stand beside them. “Some last words should be said,” he told Duncan softly. “Last rites for the dying. I am not equipped nor empowered to do it. But surely some small words …”

The Reaver opened his eyes again, but they did not stay open. The lids simply fluttered, then went shut again.

“Get that sanctimonious bastard out of here,” he muttered, his words so low they could scarcely be heard.

“You're not welcome,” Conrad said to Andrew.

“One last mercy,” whispered the Reaver.

“Yes, what is it, Reaver?”

“Bash in my goddamn head.”

“I would not think of doing it,” said Conrad.

“I lie among my dead. Help me die.”

“You'll die soon enough,” Conrad told him.

Andrew dropped his staff, snatched at the club in Conrad's hand, wrested it from him. The club went up, came down.

Conrad stared in astonishment at his empty hand.

“A final word?” asked Duncan. “This is your last rite?”

“I gave him mercy,” Andrew said, handing back the club.

18

They camped some distance up the strand, out of sight of the huddled dead. Night had closed down and from across the fen came the far-off keening. The wind-blown firelight flickered, reaching to the upsurge of the soaring cliffs, to the rim of the far, flat fen.

The fen was a fearsome place, Duncan told himself, sitting by the fire, fearsome in its far-reaching flatness, in its empty loneliness, a stretch of watery wilderness that reached as far as one could see—not a lake, nor yet a marsh, but a place of many little ponds and sluggish streams, separated with rank-growing marsh grasses and sedges, flecked here and there by small groves of willows and other water-loving shrubs and trees. Dropped in the middle of it, a man would be hard put to find his way safely out.

Conrad, sitting across the fire from Duncan, said, “We came out of it well, m'lord. We not only saved our necks, but got back all of our belongings—your sword, the amulet—plus some other welcome plunder.”

“I'm sorry about Old Cedric,” Duncan said.

“We should have stayed to bury him,” said Andrew. “If not the others, at least Cedric. He deserved that much from us.”

“We would have done him no great favor,” Conrad told the hermit. “No matter hew deep we might have dug his grave, the wolves would have him out of it in a day or two.”

“It was getting late,” said Duncan. “We had only a couple of hours till dark. I wanted to be well up the strand before the sun had set.”

Ghost came floating in. He hovered between them and the fen.

“Well, finally,” said Andrew, considerably disgusted. “Where have you been all this time? We have been in trouble …”

“In trouble I knew you were,” said Ghost. “I came back last night and glimpsed the trouble you were in. I did not show myself, for immaterial as I am, I knew that I, all by myself, could be of no help at all. So immediately I went off in search of Snoopy or perhaps of others of his kind, hoping to summon them to provide what aid they could. But I could not find them …”

“That Snoopy!” Andrew said. “He is as worthless and as irresponsible as you are, yourself. I tell you, he is not one to trust. No good will ever come of him.”

“He helped us the other night,” said Duncan. “At the Jesus of the Hills. He warned us to get out of there. He showed us the way.”

“Well, every now and then,” conceded the hermit, “he may be of some small help. When the notion strikes him. But he's no one to depend on. You'll break your neck if you depend on him. There's a deep sense of mischief in him.”