Travellers #2 (13 page)

I let them draw ahead. I would travel separately. Taur could take Jak and Jess, if that’s what they wanted. Then I remembered the time crossing the mountains, when I hid from Hagar. How she had packed the camp, loaded the donkeys, and moved on without me. What if Taur, Jak, and Jess did the same now? How childish I was! Squint-face on our tracks again, and I was being angry with Taur.

Nevertheless, when we hid from the sun and rested, I found some shade away from the others. I slept, exhausted by the long march, and dreamt of Sodomah. Woke stiff with desire. Only a few days from Dene, yet already I was taunted by memories of the phantom body that had visited me by dark. Between remembered images of the phantom, I kept seeing the crone head screaming on the pillow, reflections all around. Was Hagar’s story a warning, as Taur said?

I worried at what seemed wrong, feeling desire for a young woman’s body which was an old woman’s – or an old man’s, too. Was Sodomah, old and young, two aspects of Tara and Old Hagar? I had been bewitched by sex, self-betrayed by the illusion of beauty, its reflection. And all the time Sodomah had been holding me there in Dene, she was sending messages to Squint-face.

“At least,” I grunted when we moved on next morning, “I’ve learned something about myself.” I looked quickly at Taur, to see if he was laughing, but he was busy with his pack. A rueful grin tightened my face. It made me feel so much better, I tried laughing, a forced laugh, more of a croak. “Ha! Ha! Ha!” The dogs looked, curious. Jak yapped, and I grinned and ran to catch up to Taur.

We approached the branching of the two rivers, the main junction in the valley. Ahead a steep mountain. Left, the opal-coloured river, now much larger, changing shades from white through blue to green and darker, ran north-east. And far up its enormous valley, framed between the nearer ridges, a vista of spires and turrets dazzled and gleamed, ice and snow-fields. I thought of the mountain that ate the sun, of the ice-ogre, and wondered was that where it began its immense slide towards the sea. And what would happen when we tried to cross the mountains, because that was now the only way we could go.

The air so clear it rang. In the heads of the opal river, the peaks seemed about twenty or thirty paces away, gigantic pure white masses, gentle curves and fantastical airy summits against the sky. Taur shook his great head at the distant snow. “Urgsh?” he asked. “Which way?”

The clear river swung south to our right. Its valley revealed no snow peaks. There seemed a level way along its right bank. We climbed a rock face below the junction of the two valleys. Taur clutched my arm, pointed. Trembling on the morning air that was beginning to shimmer with the first heat, a file of black spots struggled where we had crossed the opal river yesterday.

“Won’t he ever give up?” I asked and felt ashamed at the complaint in my voice. I was giving in to self-pity. “All right, we’ll get rid of him.” Taur and both dogs looked up at the change in my voice. I laughed.

“We’re a good day ahead. They’ve got to shelter soon. We’ve got dried meat enough to keep us going.” Already I felt better. “I’ve got an idea.”

“Grawgh! Good!” Taur grinned. “I suppose you’ve thought of somewhere we’ll be safe, where we can be Farmers and Gardeners?”

“We’ll lay a false trail,” I said, “up the other branch, shake them off long enough to get ahead. And deeper in the
mountains, we should be able to set ambushes, cut down their numbers.”

“Gurgh!”

“We escaped the garden, thanks to you,” I told Taur. “We’ll get away again.”

Jak and Jess leapt. Perhaps it was the hope in my voice. I had ignored them for so long at Dene, they had lost confidence, were just beginning to trust me again.

“We’re going to beat Squint-face!” Jak barked, and Jess danced on her hind legs.

Where the opal branch veered north from the junction, we went up its left side. Leaving half-hidden footprints across a sandbank. Calling the dogs through mud by a stagnant pool. Skipping across rocks, but prodding sand between them with our spears. Trying to deceive our pursuers, pretending to hide our tracks. It reminded me of leaving Lake Top with the animals, laying a false trail across the Tungaro River.

Coming to a long reach of debris, logs, broken stone, I sent Jak and Jess scampering across a tongue of sand upstream, signalled them back over the logs. And here we did conceal our sign. We brushed the sand off feet and paws, picked our way across the stones to a long deep pool. Its surface a series of frozen waves, bucking, piling, reforming. Menacing. On the other side, a rocky bluff stepped into the river. We tied our packs and weapons to flax ropes.

Taur tensed his arm so the muscles bulged. He tapped them, pointed at the river. His mouth moved. I could not hear but nodded and waded out. The water had a muscly feel. I had long learned the trick of using the river’s strength to help me cross, but this one fought back. Taur lunged past, submerging, coming up, yelling. Twice I was flung back into the bank. A third time I struck out, the rope dragging downstream. Then the fight went out of the river, the current picked me up, swung me across. Hands, knees grounded against a drowned shingle bank below the bluff. No sign of Taur. Had he drowned?

“No!” I shouted. “Taur! Taur!” I turned to launch myself back.

No answer. Just the roar of the river. “Taur!”

“Urgsh! Urgsh!” Taur had swum in below, hidden himself behind a boulder.

“Idiot!”

“Graw!” he splashed me. “Graw!” Bumped so I splashed face-down. Taur picked me up, put me on my feet, still laughing. Gently, we drew in the packs on their ropes, looked to the bowstrings and arrows. Jak and Jess had been carried away and came splashing up. We climbed the bluff, footprints drying fast.

From the top, we looked down at the opal water roiling, gleaming, heaving in the sun, giving no idea of its strength. Squint-face would not expect us to cross there, would lose time casting about for our sign. I hoped the treacherous crossing might cost him some men.

We slipped into a scrub-covered terrace, bending apart the branches, arranging them behind, and followed it down to the junction. Up the southern arm of the river, we found an easy shingle crossing and followed a level bench before sheltering through the worst of the sun.

“Might as well carry the meat inside us.” I gave Jak and Jess all they could eat, cooked a huge meal for us. While I sat and wondered how long our trick would deceive Squint-face, Taur slept through the heat. He could just throw himself down and sleep. Always woke fresh and full of energy, wanting to be busy at something. I took longer to wake and get up, and he liked to talk at me then, knowing it made me cross. “Garow, Urgsh?” he would ask until I’d snap, “Oh, shut up!” and, too late, see him grin.

This evening, Squint-face would reach the junction, follow our tracks up the opal branch. We would get well up the clear branch to the south. If the Salt Men had an accident crossing, we might get ahead as much as two days.

I woke to Taur whispering to the dogs. We stuffed down the rest of the cooked meat. Before moving on I took a last look up the opal-coloured branch, towards those fretted
ice peaks in its head, and wondered again about the sunless land beyond.

Two nights we climbed, much of the days as well. The high ridges hid the sun. The valley lifted, narrowed up a twisting gorge. Mountainsides sprouted water that slid and feathered over bluffs, spreading wings that sailed through the air and collapsed in sudden cascades. Across one face it pulsed, blew a vertical curtain in a gust, and pulsed again across the slabbed rock. A band of snow ruled a straight line across the highest tops. Somewhere I heard eerie whispers of pipe music like water trickling in the Garden of Dene. I looked at Taur. He looked back, pulled a face. I listened, heard faint music again, and watched Taur.

“Garough?”

“Nothing.” He can’t have heard it.

By now Squint-face must have realised our tracks up the opal river were false. When, one morning, Jak and Jess began checking and looking back, I knew they were probably scenting, even hearing the pursuit. In a strange way it was welcome, like something old and familiar.

We lost time in a confusion of clefts and knew the Salt Men must be catching up. There was a gorge where the river gouted between black cliffs, and the air billowed a perpetual drizzle of mist. A clammy smell rose from slimy rocks. Red moss covered one wall, green another. We might find a place above to set an ambush. First, though, we had to angle across a sloping face, open to anyone below. Taur and Jak went ahead. I followed, then Jess looking back, snarling, scenting the air. Taur vanished over the top, then Jak. A metallic clink. Jess yelped as an arrow glanced off her leg. Again I heard the sinister music, masked by the river’s roar.

“Come on, Jess! Good girl!” I dragged her up and over the top. Bow ready, I glared down the face. Nothing moved. The arrow had cut Jess’s leg, enough to make her favour it.
She was losing some blood. Upstream, the cliff our side closed vertical against the river. We must cross or be caught. Spreadeagled, Taur was sidling a ledge above the water, nose scraping the rock face. He dropped his pack and weapons on a flat spot, returned to help Jak.

I took a last look down the face. Jess’s injured leg shivered as I slung her across my shoulders and pack. “Keep still!” She lay inert as I sidled, joined Taur and Jak. Confined here the river was a blade turned vertical and deep, only a few steps across, as much as we could leap with luck – and a good run. Its force through the slot shook the stone walls. Each rock vibrated until the air shrieked.

Taur swung and threw my pack and weapons across the gap. They skidded smack against his. Jess licked her leg.

“Gaw, Urgsh!” Taur cleared the gap easily.

“I’ll call you,” I told Jak and Jess. I crouched a couple of times, leapt, almost made it. Swung by my finger tips’ scrabbling, body slammed against the gorge wall. One foot pawed at the weed-greasy stone. A crevice. Shove – let go – flung up my arms – and Taur grabbed my hands, dragged me beside him. Over the bellow of water, Jak howled.

He dived. Taur and I got him by one front paw and an ear, pulled him up together. By the way her mouth moved, Jess was crying. I knelt, held out my arms. “Jess!”

A rainbow formed through the spray off her coat. She curved high towards our waiting hands. At the top of her lovely arc, an arrow transfixed her. Body hunched, belly tucked, eyes rolled white, Jess fell. Into the maelstrom. A shout of triumph below, a clatter of more arrows, tinkling on glassy rocks. I grabbed up several, threw myself out of sight up a cleft behind Taur, Jak bounding ahead, tail erect. I remember thinking he did not realise Jess was dead, and heard the unearthly music.

The cleft narrowed so I had to pass Jak up to Taur. Around us were unstable rock stacks separated by colossal vertical
holes. For thousands of years in flood-time, the sediment-laden river had swirled and drilled those circular gaps. At the top, Taur waited, head cocked.

“Garough?”

“I heard it before.” I could not bring myself to say anything of Jess. Taur hugged me and he, too, said nothing. I edged back, between my feet looked down, saw the Salt Men, tiny, sketching a flimsy web of poles and rope over the dark slot where they killed Jess. Squint-face was urging them to hurry. I fired an arrow, saw a Salt Man stagger. Squint-face posted some men, bows ready, so I dared not show myself again.

We fled up another face of slipped cliffs and shaking stacks and it was there – as we toiled up an exposed stretch – an arrow struck my game leg, the one that dragged when I was a boy. I took a step, fell.

“Urgsh!” Taur worked the arrow out of the wound. I closed my eyes, heard that strange music again. Taur grunted and put the arrow with the others in my quiver. He ripped a strip from his tunic. I gasped as he wound it tight around my leg. Then he was shoving me and my pack ahead of him, half-carried with the impetus of his climb.

Above the narrow gates of the river, I fell by a rock that shook. Taur’s chest and back heaved for breath. I knew they must catch me now. At least I would take some with me. And first I would kill Squint-face.

“Take Jak. Up the river. Through the pass. See what’s on the other side. I’ll hold them back.”

I chanced a look down, saw raging faces tipped up. Eyes flashed. Voices echoed between the cliffs; water spurted thunderous from crack and gap. Dashing a shower of drops from his hair, Squint-face peered. Clear above the brute-brawl of the river, carrying up the slabbed walls of granite came his voice, demonic hate. “Ish!” he called. “Ish!” I slumped face down on the wet rock, remembering how Karly
Campy hated me as a child, thinking how deep an emotion is hate, how it consumes, obsesses.

Jak whined for Jess, would have run back down the cleft, but Taur called him.

My mind came back into the present. “Go, Taur! Save yourself!”

Ignoring my order, Taur took my pack on top of his, half-lifted and dragged me higher between pinnacles and monuments of stone split and trembling at the river’s voice. There was cloud now, solid bulges filling the pass above. What lay beyond? The frozen country of ice and snow, the land of the mountain that ate the sun?

So high the air was bitter. Taur propped me against a great stack. I lay and looked down a steep avenue between snow-capped shafts of stone, a double row of columns. The Salt Men would have to show themselves as they climbed. I laid out all the arrows handy, checked my bow. The string sang. Behind me, Taur panted, tipping out his pack, grunting.

And I realised we were encircled by giants, upstanding grim grey through the cloud. The stone columns were human giants. I was propped against one. Their eyes moved. I called to warn Taur, but my voice choked. I tried to stand, but my leg buckled. Jak trotted towards me, raised his back leg and pissed on the feet of the largest monster who leaned to looked down the gorge.

At Jak’s casual irreverence, expecting a roar of rage, I screeched an eldritch scrawl across the silence. Jak scraped his back feet hard in a scatter of snow, cut a caper, barked, and I saw the figures were ancient stone, worn, lichen-encrusted. Snow turbaned their heads. The music was their voices, unearthly harmonies, but again Jak ignored them.

Each giant, I now saw, was a column of several enormous blocks reared upon each other. Earless, blank-eyed, round-mouthed guardians they stared and threatened the way we
had come. Mist shifted behind their hollow eyes – like their mouths and nostrils, pipes drilled through the stone heads. A gust of cold air off a snowfield above moaned through the pipes. Unfit to come upon an assembly of fiends in the wilderness, I thought of Jak’s impertinence and screeched again.

“Urgsh?” Taur appeared from behind and looked up at the tallest giant, the one on whose feet Jak had pissed. Put huge hands against its lower block, shoved, and the monster creaked, rocked, and balanced.

“Watch out!”

“Garawgh!” Taur opened his mouth so the mutilated stump showed. Laughed, rolled his eyes, as if at the greatest joke. He knelt and tightened my bandage. “Garawgh, Urgsh!” He flung one arm around my shoulders, rubbed his cheek against mine, and disappeared again. I could hear him at his pack once more.

“Save yourself and Jak! Go while you can! I’ll hold them up.”

Squint-face appeared at the foot of the avenue and climbed between the avenue of stone giants. His men lifted dark faces, teeth flashing at sight of me lying at the top.

Clink! An arrow chipped stone above my head. “Do you want to kill him now?” Squint-face raged, voice distorted among crags.

The Salt Men clustered, unwilling to follow him. I tried but seemed unable to lift my bow. Up the steep slope they edged between the towering columns. By the way they moved – scared but jubilant. One shouted something and pointed. The rest looked up in terror at the stone giants. Squint-face climbed on alone.

A few more steps. He pauses, leans against the feet of the giant figure just below me. Chest rising, falling – I hear him gasp for air. Staring at the green stone dolphin around my neck. Hands twitch, impatient, already reaching out to
snatch it. Scar livid across the side of his face and head. Eyes smoking black. So close, I smell his sweat.

I nock the arrow. Taur and Jak have escaped. “Come on!” I tell myself. If only my shaking hands will draw the bow. But they will not even lift. I stare at the muscles in my arms. Order them to work. Nothing happens. Saliva dribbles from the sagging corner of Squint-face’s disfigured mouth.

“Ish!” he slavers.

And from above the Bull Man leaps. Bellowing. The bull’s mask, its dewlapped cape sweeping to a man’s naked legs. Great horns swinging, the head turns towards me. Bulging eyes roll. “Urgsh!” salutes the Bull Man and charges. Thud! Thud! Thud! Arrows. The bull’s cape studded with feathers, gaudy with blood, but his momentum irresistible. The horns lunge, impale Squint-face, lift, slam hard against the giant’s feet. I hear the bone tips shatter on stone, see the scatter of bloody fragments. Gored, Squint-face screams as the giant’s precarious balance shifts.

“Taur!”

The stone giant stirs, grates, graunches: shifts like the sky collapsing. Past the Bull Man’s great caped shoulder, Squint-face’s eye appears, fixed on my neck. One hand scrabbles into sight. Fingers quiver, clutch towards the green stone dolphin, and at that moment I realise its insignificance, the futility of possession. I see Tara’s face disappearing beneath the sand of her grave, wonder what might have happened had I buried the dolphin with her. And, as I wonder, the Bull Man’s huge thighs stiffen, knees straighten, and his muscles thrust their force through Squint-face into the toppling giant.

So long the stone guardian has waited, it is slow to move. Like a tree falling it leans out over the dark cleft, draws the mountain past. Its tower of boulders leaps, falls, bringing down pinnacles and columns, the avenue of giants, erasing the cleft and everything below, carrying mountainside, river,
Salt Men, Squint-face, and the Bull Man in his grandeur.