Valley of the Dead (5 page)

Chapter
8

And ready are they to pass o’er the river,

Because celestial Justice spurs them on,

So that their fear is turned into desire.

Dante,
Inferno
, 3.124-26

It was the middle of the afternoon when they reached the banks of a broad river. The road turned and they followed the river upstream. The water looked too deep, and the current too strong, for them to cross on their own. Dante wondered if they’d be able to follow it on this bank, or whether there was a bridge somewhere, when Radovan explained there was a ferry up ahead they could use to cross.

The ferry boat was a simple one, a large raft that, at the moment, was on the other side of the river. As they got closer, he could see there was a rope across the river. He couldn’t see all the details of it this far away, but from having seen many small ferries that worked this way, he could guess the rope ran through hooks or eyelets on the boat, and by pulling on it, the ferryman could take the boat back and forth across the river. It was a simple and effective arrangement, so long as the river didn’t have a lot of boats traveling on it to snag on the rope, and so long as the traffic needing to cross the river wasn’t too great.

Radovan, Bogdana, and Dante arrived at the crossing. Looking across the river, Dante saw people on the ferry boat. They seemed to be milling around, but they were too far away for Dante to shout to them, or to see exactly what they were doing.

“What if they don’t pull the boat over to our side?” he asked. “They might be afraid of the plague, and won’t be letting more people across. Can we just follow the river up the valley without crossing it?”

“Not easily,” Radovan said. “The terrain gets very rough on this side. It’d slow us down too much, and then we wouldn’t be moving away from the army, but across its path. They’re coming straight west, as we have been. We need to keep straight up the valley as far as we can, to stay ahead of them.”

“Is there another place to cross the river?”

Radovan shook his head. “Not for a long ways. The river’s swollen this time of year, from spring rains and the snow melting up in the mountains. You have to get up higher, near the side of the valley, before the river gets narrow enough to cross. Even then, we’d be risking the horses slipping in the rushing water, maybe hurting themselves. Then we’d be on foot, and that’d be the end of it.”

Dante looked back at the people on the ferry boat. “Well, at least they seem to be pulling it toward us, so maybe we don’t have to worry about that.” He waved to the people on the boat. It seemed strange they didn’t wave back, but they did keep pulling on the rope and working their way closer to their side of the river.

The three of them dismounted to wait. Dante smelled the air. It seemed free of the oppressive scent of smoke that had been following them since yesterday. As Dante looked around, he thought this spot along the river was the closest to peaceful and alive that he had seen so far in this land. All the sounds – the water, the wind in the trees, even the occasional bird – felt normal and right. “Your country is pretty,” he said to both of his companions, trying to make small talk.

“Usually it is,” Radovan agreed. “It is a strange fate, that we deserved to have the living dead infest our land so often, polluting it, making it into a desert.”

Dante nodded and frowned. It was a strange fate, indeed. He could think of many places that deserved such horrors more. “Perhaps it is a test.”

He looked at Bogdana. She had gone off just a ways and was gathering berries off a bush, most of which she was eating as she went. Dante thought how hungry she must be. They hadn’t stopped since leaving the town, and they probably wouldn’t stop again until nightfall, but she needed to eat and rest often in her condition. She caught his eye and took a few steps over to offer some of the berries to him and Radovan.

“A test?” she said. “I don’t know if we will pass. And I’d rather not have such a test, even if I did pass it.”

“I don’t suppose any of us want such things,” Dante said as he ate some of the berries. They were the same kind she’d given him the night before. It seemed quite early in the year for berries, and to be honest, they were so tart as to be barely edible. “But we are tested, nonetheless, all the time.”

She gave him just a hint of a smile as she stepped past him to get more berries from another nearby bush. “What were you, in your country, before you were driven out?”

“I joined the apothecaries’ guild, mostly because the men in my city were required to belong to a guild, if they wanted to hold public office. In a way, I wanted to be a politician.” He looked down. “Then I tried to write books, but couldn’t.” He didn’t know what was more embarrassing: his life, explaining it to some peasant girl, or the wholly inappropriate and mostly unpleasant feeling of being instinctively attracted to her and craving her approval. He watched her without looking up.

“I think you wanted to be a monk once,” she said between mouthfuls of berries.

Dante scowled, but almost smiled in spite of it. She was right; he had thought of joining the Franciscans, to be exact. Again, there was something mostly unpleasant yet somewhat exhilarating about a woman knowing too much about him. “Well, yes, I did, once.”

“I think you did, too,” she said to Radovan.

Dante looked at the younger man, who also discreetly stole glances at the woman, though he mainly watched the approaching ferry boat. “Well, yes, I had thought of it, since I’m not the firstborn. It’s practical, sometimes, even though I suppose it’s funny to say that about that kind of life.”

“Always testing yourselves.” She almost laughed. “Or seeing life as a test. But maybe you’re right. Maybe this is our test. But I think it upsets you, because you didn’t choose it. You think the ones you chose are noble or heroic, but you think this one is evil and dirty and unfair, since you didn’t. Why not pretend you did choose it, if it makes you feel better? Or pretend all the other tests were thrust on you?” Dante thought he heard her laugh at this point.

He heard a loud snap from her direction. He quickly looked up and turned toward her. She was walking toward him, a thick section of a tree branch in her hand. Her snapping it off must have been the sound he’d heard. Her gaze was fixed on a point over his shoulder, then she lifted her chin, indicating for him to turn and look where she was looking.

Dante turned. The ferry was about two-thirds of the way across the river. Though the people on the boat were pulling the rope, Dante could now see their motions were uncoordinated and frenzied, and they were constantly bumping into each other, knocking each other down as they staggered about the raft. He could again hear the low moaning of the dead.

Chapter
9

But all those souls who weary were and naked

Their color changed and gnashed their teeth together,

As soon as they had heard those cruel words.

Dante,
Inferno
, 3.100-102

Radovan drew his sword. “We’ll have to fight them. We need the ferry to cross the river.” He turned to Bogdana and offered his horse’s reins to her. “You should take the horses off a ways and stay with them until it’s done.”

Bogdana looked to the raft, then to the two men. “No.”

Dante drew his own sword. “You should, really. We can’t be having the horses or you hurt.”

She scowled. “I’m not a horse. And I’m not helpless.” She narrowed her eyes and watched the ferry. “How many of them are there?”

“I’d say maybe six or seven,” Radovan said after briefly surveying the boat.

Dante looked closely at the raft’s passengers. “It’s hard to say. They keep moving around and flailing about. I think I count eight.” One of the dead people lurched to one side, thrown off balance by the pushing and shoving of the others, tottered a moment, then fell into the water. He kicked his legs a few times, trying to stay afloat. His head and arms remained above the surface of the water for a few seconds, before he sank out of sight. “Well, maybe only seven.”

“Either way, that’s too many for just the two of you,” Bogdana said. She ignored Dante and Radovan’s commands, and busied herself with snapping the smaller twigs off the large branch she’d broken off for her weapon. It was about as thick as her arm, and slightly longer.

“She has a point,” Dante offered.

Radovan frowned. “They tell us in the army not to fight more than two at a time, or they’ll grab a hold of you, drag you down, and overwhelm you. Seven would be a lot, I suppose.”

Bogdana finished stripping the thick branch, and she swung it at a tree trunk to make sure it wouldn’t break. It made a loud crack, and some bits of bark flew from the tree, but the stick itself remained intact. Dante thought it an odd skill she had, to be able to pick very effective, deadly clubs from among random firewood or branches. “And you two won’t do me any good if you’re dead,” she said. “I’d just have to kill you as well, and I might not be able to, if there were still some of them left standing.”

Dante thought she probably underestimated herself.

Radovan looked to Dante, who nodded. They led their horses a ways off and tied them to trees, then returned to where the ferry would pull up. Dante could hear the young man mutter something. Probably a prayer. Dante was not particularly in the mood, so he simply said, “Let the girl live, Lord, if it is your will.” He added quietly, “And let me do something worthy of her.”

The ferry was quite close. The dead people’s moaning had turned to growls and snarls. Their progress slowed somewhat, as their focus shifted from pulling on the rope to watching and reaching for the live people on the bank. “My armor gives me some protection from the bites,” Radovan said. “Try to keep me in front. Keep her in between us.”

The raft was close enough that some of the dead people tried wading the rest of the way. Two young men near the front tumbled into the water, falling forward then rising up to stand waist deep in the water. Dante and Radovan stepped into the water as the two corpses staggered toward them. Dante was glad Bogdana was still hanging back.

Radovan’s sword was heavy enough that he took the head off the one closest to him. The torso and head made two separate splashes as they hit the water. Dante shivered to think of the head rolling around on the bottom, jaws still snapping, and he wanted to do nothing more than to turn and run. Bogdana was at the edge of his field of vision, just to his right, and the other dead man was making for her. She had her club raised and looked much more ready to fight and kill than Dante felt at that moment. He was fairly sure he couldn’t take the thing’s head off the way Radovan had done, and he didn’t know if a deep cut in the neck was enough to stop one of the monsters, so he thrust upward, under its chin to the top of its head. Dante withdrew his sword and the dead man fell face first into the water and started to drift a little until he brushed up against Dante’s shins. He grimaced and kicked the corpse further out into the stream.

Now all the remaining dead people were clambering off the raft, splashing into the water, which was just over their knees, and setting up a howl as they attacked their would-be prey. Dante could see a dead man and woman were on Radovan, swiping at him as he backed up. A slash from his sword hadn’t connected with them, and had thrown him off balance. Now he was struggling to stay out of their grip and bring his sword back up. A dead woman had gotten too close to Bogdana, and with a shriek, she had brought her club down on the woman’s head, hard enough to crack the dead bone and send the corpse face down into the pink, muddy runoff swirling about their feet.

Dante, meanwhile, was approached by two dead children. The last to stumble off the raft, they had waded through the water slowly, since it was nearly up to their waists. They had been a boy and a girl. The girl was the smaller of the two. The boy was larger, strong, maybe about twelve. They looked similar, with the same dark hair and eyes, their skin slightly ruddier than Bogdana’s. Perhaps they had been brother and sister. They were old enough to be betrothed, as Dante had been when he was twelve, but that was more the custom among the aristocracy, and those who hoped for their children or grandchildren to ascend to that class. These people probably never had such aspirations, and now they were dead, they aspired to nothing, other than to kill.

The boy was on him first. Looking into its big, brown eyes, Dante couldn’t help but hesitate. Its gaze registered nothing but an inhuman, animal need, with no recognition of danger or sympathy. But it was still childlike enough to make any normal man pause. Tears welled up and blurred Dante’s vision, the way pity was blurring his cold, rational judgment. The moment allowed the boy-thing to get close enough that Dante’s delayed slash was awkward and had less force, striking the side of its head, driving the thing down, but neither breaking its skull nor cutting through its neck. It and the girl were now both on Dante. The girl tugged at the hem of his frock, while the boy got a hold of his right arm. He grabbed the girl’s long hair with his left hand, pulling her away before she could bite into his thigh or stomach. He tried to pull his right arm away from the boy, but the dead grip was powerful and tenacious. The two children were dragging him down, and for a moment he felt fairly sure he’d be dead soon, too.

Bogdana’s club came down on the boy’s head with a loud crack. His soulless eyes rolled back and somehow looked even more dead. His grip still held Dante’s arm, though now the body felt so much lighter than before. Perhaps the water was buoying him up. Bogdana nudged him with the stick, so he slipped off of Dante, splashed in the water, and floated away.

Dante was left holding the girl’s hair as the thing struggled and growled. He gritted his teeth and pulled her upward as he raised his sword. Radovan walked up next to him. Apparently he had killed the two dead people who had been attacking him. “Go ahead,” he said to Dante quietly. “You have to.”

“No one ever
has
to do anything,” Dante whispered. He could hear the catch in his voice, hear the sniffling in his nose, as he breathed in after saying this. It was embarrassing, and it stung him that his emotions felt more embarrassing than killing children did.

Dante could feel Bogdana move around behind him. She kept her hand on his shoulder and back as she moved, perhaps so he’d know she was there and feel reassured by it. He heard her say something to Radovan, though he couldn’t quite make it out, then he heard the other man splash out of the river. He couldn’t see him, as he kept looking at the girl-thing. Bogdana came around on his left side and drew his dagger.

“It’s all right,” she whispered to him. “You’re right. No one has to do anything. But sometimes things have to happen. We don’t know why. Just look away for a moment. Please.”

Dante glanced from the girl to the dagger. It was a practical, rugged weapon, not a dainty or decorative piece, but Dante had never before thought it looked so ugly and evil. It caught the afternoon sun and he thought it looked like a sliver of cold hate. He wished, for a moment, it would be going into his brain and not the girl’s.

Bogdana gently put her hand on his face, over his eyes. Her hand was every bit as rough and calloused as he would have expected, but the touch was as maternal, loving, and reassuring as any he could remember ever feeling. She gave the slightest push, turning his head to the right. “Hold on to her hair tightly, please.” Dante tightened his grip. “It’s for her good, too. The soldiers will be much less gentle, or she’ll kill others, and cause more evil.”

The growling turned into a kind of high pitched wailing, and Dante could feel the girl thrashing about so hard he didn’t think he could hold on to her. Then the wailing eased down to a wheezing gasp, at the same time as the thrashing dissolved into one, slight, convulsing twitch. Like the boy, she felt strangely light now.

Bogdana’s hand slid down from his face, along his arm, and rested on his hand. “All right,” she whispered. “Let her go now.” Dante didn’t just release his grip, but slowly lowered the girl by the hair into the water. That way there wasn’t a loud splash this time, but more like a wet, accepting embrace, as the water closed over her head and over his hand. Held up now by the water, she felt even lighter still. Then he finally let go, and looked down at the girl’s body as it floated away from them. The water all around them was red and fouled, but where she was floating now it looked clean.

Once this nearly sacramental act was done, Bogdana turned to the physical and practical, bending down to the water to wash off the dagger’s blade. She handed it to Dante, as she put her hand on his. “I’ve done this before,” she said. “So has Radovan. It’s all right to be sad the first time. It’s not just all right, it’s the only right way to be. I could never look at you again if you didn’t feel this way.”

The two of them walked over to where Radovan was untying their horses. Dante thought Bogdana picked words about as well as she picked clubs. He was glad of it, though, as usual, chastened that he was not better with speech.