The Wanderer's Tale (21 page)

Crouching on the floor at the cavemouth, Wodeman laughed hoarsely. ‘You’ve changed your tune. “
Harmless fun!
” According to what a little bird told me, you were wetting yourself at the Grey Dog during the winnowing.’

‘Only because of those bloody hedgehogs.’ Methuselech smiled. ‘Tell me, do
you
believe in Skaane? If you do, how come you’re sitting so close to the mouth of the cave? Aren’t you worried he might suddenly appear and grab you?’

The sorcerer chuckled strangely. ‘I don’t believe any giant Ogre-God would want to harm
me
. And even if I did, I doubt this cave would be much protection against it. No, I question Skaane’s existence, but that is still no reason to mock. Hill giants may have a barbarous reputation, but they are all, like us, children of Erce.’

‘You have to understand that Erce exists in countless forms,’ Finwald joined in, enthusiastic all of a sudden, ‘depending on how the primitives interpret it. For some tribes it is a bison, a wolf, a tree, or even the sun. It all hinges on the environment or needs of the tribe concerned. For your people, Methuselech, Erce is Uassise, Bringer of Gardens, and Shirraq, the Great Sand Elemental, who leads the traveller—’

‘Ordure.’

‘Ordure notwithstanding,’ Finwald insisted, ‘I have read much on the subject.’

‘And you believe in it?’

‘Of course not; it is a load of ordure. Cuna is the only way.’

A snort from the cave mouth drew their attention. Wodeman glared towards them, looking Finwald straight in the eye.

‘You put too much faith in your bits of paper, priest. Whatever Erce is, he certainly cannot be imprisoned by leather-bound parchment. Erce can only be perceived by those close to him, those who live
in
him, those whose senses have not become fogged by ritual incense and darkness. You and your brethren are so inward-looking you have even less perception of the real world than a bunch of Aescal farmers.’

‘That was a bit cheap, wasn’t it?’ Nibulus put in, unexpectedly.

Surprisingly, Wodeman backed down a little. Aescal farmers were, indeed, a little fogged, but it could be due to all the gin they drank. Because Nordwas was a divided community, this had bred disillusionment and malaise in its citizens. Some followed the way of the Peladane, others inclined towards Cuna, but there was more than a hint of the old ways in many of the population still. Hence their age-old veneration of a kind of hefty Venus figure: a lumpen female deity of bygone days, whose living embodiment could still be seen in just about every wide-buttocked fifteen-year-old farmer’s daughter in Wyda-Aescaland.

As the sorcerer squatted upon his haunches on the floor of a stony cave high up in these lonely mountains, Gapp saw how his eyes glimmered like blood in the flickering firelight.

‘You know what
we
call those fine horses of yours, Peladane?’ he suddenly asked.

‘Loef,’ Nibulus replied without hesitation. ‘It means “Faithful”.’ This much of Torca at least he did know, and he sat back, rather proud of himself.

‘It means “congregation”,’ Wodeman corrected him, ‘or, to put it another way, “faithful idiots”. We use the same word to describe their owners, too,
and
also the Lightbearers; you’re all one and the same to us, herded into your stable-like temples like cattle, faithfully awaiting salvation like idiots . . .’

He trailed off, knowing by their quiet indignation that he had now gone too far.

Yet it seemed to Gapp that he did not talk of his religion with the fiery fanaticism of a zealot. Instead his was a quiet, confident faith that needed no ardour; a faith that came to him as naturally as water fed a spring, air stirred a breeze or heat sprang from a flame.

Appa leaned closer to the fire, staring into the red tongues of flame gradually consuming the crackling wood. He spoke up in a trance-like voice, as if seeing things far away in time and space. Gapp could not be sure whether he was talking to them, to himself, or to some ‘other’.

‘Cuna has a purpose for each of us,’ he said, ‘and it is up to the individual to decide which path to follow. Freedom and Law are honoured side by side; without the first, a man has no mind of his own; and without the second, coexistence is impossible. Chance and Fate too must be honoured. So our way is also one of Balance. But the way of Cuna is not the easiest; it may be beset by an unending succession of tests, distractions or terrible hardships, even death. But one cannot follow Cuna only in times of peace, and set him aside when some other code seems preferable. Believe me, the true Lightbearer is the strongest one of all.’

Even before Wodeman had the chance to sniff in disdain, Nibulus erupted in a snort of contempt: ‘Everything is Wrong unless
I
do it, you mean.’ Appa growled low, but did not make eye contact.

Bolldhe meanwhile had cocooned himself in his bedroll against the night, his back to them all. He seemed about as interested in their reflection as a cow would be in the buzzing of a bluebottle.

Deep within his bedroll, however, he was fully awake and deep in thought. There was truth and fallacy in the dogmas of all three priests here. Finwald was right about Erce; he himself had witnessed so many aspects of the Earth-Spirit, far more than were contained in the pages of the mage-priest’s librams or tomes. But there were so many other religions, too, the countless cults and innumerable ideologies. How could even the wisest man make any sense out of it all?

Often he had tried to relate his life in some way to these various beliefs, but exactly where did he himself stand in relation to Good or Evil? Somehow the neutrality of Wodeman’s Erce seemed more likely to him. He had, after all, always considered himself the eternal lone wolf. Was he, then, as Wodeman had hinted, a child of the Earth-Spirit? Looking at the man, he somehow doubted it, but there was something about his words that rang true.

His gave up thinking about it. He was physically and mentally exhausted, and could no longer think straight. He put it down to travelling so closely with all these religious fanatics, each one of them trying to control his mind. He would have to watch them closely in the days to come.

But for now he just wanted to sleep . . .

It was the dead of night, and a blanket of total silence had descended upon the mountains. There was no wind, no rattle of slithering slate fragments, not the remotest cry of beast or bird. The clouds that cloaked the mountain heights had both deadened any sound there might be and obscured the scant light radiating from the stars and crescent moon above.

Gapp sat alone at the mouth of the cave, staring out into the night in silent contemplation. He had been sitting thus, unmoving and hardly breathing, ever since he had been shaken awake by Paulus, nearly an hour ago, to take over the watch. The silence was so deep he could even hear his own heartbeat, and the darkness so complete he felt as if he might have gone blind. In fact he had been staring into this nothingness for so long now that he was beginning to forget what his companions, and friends back home, looked like, his tired and numbed mind failing to evoke any images of their faces. It was as if he had become all that was left in the universe, everything else having disappeared into the void.

It was a strange feeling, to be sure, just sitting here all alone, high up in a silent world of mountains in the depths of a timeless night, with mountain spirits crowding the edge of his mind, the beat of his heart counting out the seconds of his life, beat after beat after beat. He could not even see the outline of the cave mouth, the only assurance of facing the right way being the occasional, almost imperceptible stirring of air against his face.

He glanced behind him into the depths of the cave, seeing two glowing points of orange, the last embers of the dying campfire. He turned back towards the cave mouth, and was somewhat surprised that he could still see the same glowing points of fire, as if their images had engraved themselves upon the back of his eyes. They would gradually fade, of course, and again he would have nothing to focus on.

Suddenly he stiffened, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. Those points of light were not fading, but were now moving about in front of him. A cold fear rose in him, and he blinked hard. When he opened his eyes again, the lights were gone.

He eased his stiff frame carefully and silently over to the dying fire and blew softly on its embers. He was suddenly very afraid of the night now, stuck up here in this alien cave on the roof of the world. As he coaxed the glowing embers, he assured himself that those two points of light were merely a trick his tired mind was playing on him. Either that or they were eyes belonging to some unnameable horror prowling just outside the cave mouth. The thought frightened him so much that he blew even more urgently on the brightening embers.

He even considered waking up one or two of his companions, but as quickly as this thought occurred to him, he rejected it. What would he tell them: that he had imagined a pair of eyes staring at him, and wanted someone to hold his hand? No, that would definitely not do, so in the meantime he continued to rebuild the fire, carefully and skilfully encouraging the whitening embers, until before long his eyes were greeted by the welcome sight of dancing tongues of flame.

All the while he pushed from his mind the prickling sensation that ran continually from the nape of his neck to the base of his spine, warning him how exposed he was.

Once the fire was alight again and burning merrily, the esquire paused and breathed a sigh of relief. Ten minutes more and he would awaken Methuselech to take over the watch. Then maybe Gapp could sleep peacefully until morning. This night had lasted too long already.

All of a sudden, Gapp went cold. It was not a sensation felt externally, but rather from deep inside him, spreading outwards from his heart to his extremities, as if his soul had been plunged into a pool of icy water. His neck-hairs bristled like the hackles of a dog, and the odour of his own sweat wafted up into his dilated nostrils, as panic threatened to overtake him, though still he knew not why.

Then came the growl, so low it was more like an unspoken thought deep inside his mind than a vocal sound. Hardly daring to look, the boy slowly turned and forced himself to behold what lay behind him.

His heart stopped, and his whole body froze. For there, just outside the cave mouth, a whole pack of dark, wolf-like forms now stalked backwards and forwards.

It was like a scene from his darkest nightmare manifesting itself into reality. There were at least a dozen large and shaggy forms out there, with lips curled back to reveal horrendous snarling fangs, and featureless eyes that smouldered like the burning coals of hell. They prowled barely within range of the firelight, like a melee of bestial mountain-spirits whose thick fur, reflected in the flickering flames, took on the hue of running blood.

And beyond them stalked a larger, more evil shape, a creature that was not of wolf-kind, but one which must occasionally seek out their company. This monstrous hunchback form seemed to be covered in poisonous bristles, and in its massive head a pair of glowing eyes fixed on the stricken lowlander with such malevolence that he nearly passed out from fear.

But the paralysis evaporated as soon as he noticed these horrors were eyeing his sleeping companions, as if picking out their targets with cold calculation. He hurled himself at the nearest mound of blankets and frantically tore at the man’s bedroll.

‘WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WE’RE BEING ATTACKED!’ he cried, though his shrill warning was nearly drowned by the sudden ferocious snarling from without.
Pel-Adan
, he prayed,
deliver me from this night!

Immediately there was movement from the back of the cave as Bolldhe flung himself from his bedroll, leapt to his feet and grabbed his axe in one swift, fluid movement, before even he was fully awake.

The next moment Nibulus, Paulus, Methuselech and Wodeman were on their feet, reaching about in bleary-eyed confusion for their weapons. It was only as Gapp leapt to his master’s side to hand him his Greatsword, then scuttle to the back of the cave, that the two mage-priests stirred.

By now the night was filled with noise and fear. The cave echoed with the confusion of men shouting, horses screaming from the side chamber where they had been secured, metal ringing upon stone, and above it all the snarling of their assailants rose in volume and ferocity. A stench of such sickening corruption that it might have come from an overflowing cemetery now wafted in from the hump-backed, abominable monstrosity that ran with the wolves on this night. It stood now on its hind legs and cackled insanely as the frightened humans stumbled over themselves in panic inside the cave.

The other beasts were advancing now, poised to attack, their eyes slitted with malice, powerful shoulders hunched, and hind legs tensed like coiled springs. With a suddenness and a speed that none would have believed possible, they launched themselves into the cave. Claws extended and jaws snapping, they piled headlong into the startled company, hurling them backwards or bowling the slower ones over. A chorus of panic went up as someone trampled through the fire, scattering the burning faggots across the floor in a shower of sparks that lit up the cave in a sudden frenzy of dancing light and illuminated the walls in a furious, moving pattern of orange and black.

The battle lasted only a few moments, but exactly what happened during that time was anybody’s guess. Of all the company Gapp probably had the clearest idea, as he cowered at the back of the cave.

Bolldhe, who retained his sharp wits even after sudden arousal from sleep, met the initial onslaught with the instinctive, swift reactions born of years of experience of sudden night-time raids. He stood his ground until the last moment, then sidestepped with the speed of an adder and in the same movement brought the blunt edge of his axe-head up in a sweep that hurled his startled and yelping adversary back out through the cave mouth.

Nibulus, Paulus and Methuselech, bearing the brunt of the attack, were now all on the ground in a confused tangle of flailing limbs. Nibulus hurled two assailants from him in one mighty lunge, then, free of his armour, scrambled agilely to his feet and brought his blade fully to bear. A fierce light burned in his eyes and, wholly possessed by the thrill of combat, he would not be denied the chance to vent his pent-up anger now after the fiasco of Estrielle’s Stair.