Fellowship of the Talisman Page 16

  That must have been the manner in which they came upon us, with me nodding while I should have been a-watch.”

  “So that is how it came about,” rumbled Conrad. “I had wondered briefly on it, but had no time to think any further.

  So you were fast asleep. Why should you have needed sleep? You slept all the night before, slumped in Daniel’s saddle.”

  “That is true, of course,” said Andrew. “But it was not restful sleep. It was not the kind of sleep you judged it to be. Dozing was more like it. Not sound and solid sleep. Although I do not offer that as an extenuation of my failing. It all comes of a certain weakness in me, a weakness of the body. My mind may tell the body to perform, but the body fails. I am of not such stuff as martyrs may be made.”

  “And you also,” said Conrad, “have a mouth that keeps running on.”

  “Think no further on it,” Duncan said. “To each of us our weaknesses. In the end, it turned out all right.”

  “I shall endeavor,” Andrew said, “to recompense for my failure in this instance. I shall try the harder to do my bounden duty as a soldier of the Lord. Henceforth, I swear to you, you may depend upon me in all surety.”

  “If it would make you feel any better,” Conrad said, “I would be delighted to kick you in the rump. That might ease your conscience, which seems to be so sorely smarting.”

  “If you truly would, sir,” said Andrew eagerly, “making certain that it is a lusty kick, with no power in it held back in consideration of me as a companion of the road.”

  He turned around and bent over, hiking up his robe to present his bare and scrawny bottom.

  “Stop this buffoonery,” snapped Duncan. “It is ill behavior in a soldier of the Lord to present his bony ass to his boon companions. Let down your robe and straighten, like a man. Sir Hermit, henceforth I shall expect more propriety of you.”

  Andrew let down his robe and straightened up.

  Conrad said to Duncan, “It might have been better, m’lord, if you had allowed me. There must be something done to stiffen up his spine and make a better soldier of him. And anyhow, a swift kick in the stern never yet has failed to help a malefactor.”

  Duncan held up his hand for silence. “Listen,” he said. “Quiet, all of you, and listen.”

  Faintly, from far away, came the sound of shouting and of screams. At times the sounds gained somewhat in volume and at other times shrank to no more than a whisper in the wind.

  “From the strand,” said Conrad. “It is from the direction of the strand.”

  They listened further. The distant and muffled yelling and screaming kept on. For a time it seemed to stop and then it took up again and finally it did stop and there was nothing to be heard.

  “The Reaver’s men,” said Conrad. “They met up with someone.”

  “Perhaps the hairless ones,” said Andrew.

  They stood for long moments listening, but nothing further happened. The first light of the sun was flushing the east and the birds were chirping in the woods below them.

  “We should know,” said Conrad. “If the fight, if that is what it was, has swept them from the strand, then we could use it safely and make our way through these cursed hills without all the labor that it would be to climb them.”

  “Let me go,” said Andrew. “I shall be very careful. I shall not let them see me. Let me, please, to disclose to you my newfound resolution to be a trustworthy member of this company.”

  “No,” said Duncan. “No, we stay here. We do not move from here. We have no way of knowing what might have happened. And should they come against us, here at least we have a chance to make a stand against them.”

  Meg chirped at Duncan’s elbow. “Then, dear sir, please let me be the one,” she said. “Certainly, if they should come against us you could spare my feeble strength. But I can go and bring back to you a report of what happened with all the shouting and the yelling.”

  “You?” asked Conrad. “You can barely crawl about. All this time with us, you’ve ridden to preserve your little strength.”

  “I can manage it,” protested Meg. “I can go through the underbrush like a scuttling spider. I can use what little magic I still may have left in me. I can get there and back, bringing word.”

  Conrad looked at Duncan questioningly.

  “Maybe,” said Duncan. “Maybe she could do it. Is it, Meg, something that you want to do?”

  “Little enough I have done,” said Meg. “So far I’ve been no more than a burden to you.”

  “We do need to know,” said Duncan. “We could sit on this hilltop for days, not knowing. It is important that we know. But we can’t split up our small force to send another one of us to scout the situation.”

  “If only Ghost were here,” said Conrad.

  “Ghost isn’t here,” said Duncan.

  “Then I may go,” said Meg.

  Duncan nodded and she swiftly scuttled down the hill. For a time they stood and watched her as she darted through the trees, but finally she was lost from view.

  Duncan walked back to a group of stone slabs that at one time had broken off and fallen from the rocky ridge.

  Choosing one of the slabs, he sat down upon it. Conrad seated himself on one side of him and Andrew on the other.

  Silently, the three of them sat in a row. Tiny came ambling around the mass of broken slabs and lay down ponderously in front of Conrad. Down the slope Daniel and Beauty cropped at a patch of scanty grass.

  So here they were, thought Duncan, sitting side by side on a slab of riven stone in a godforsaken wilderness, three adventurers and about as sorry a lot as ever could be found.

  His belly ached with hunger, but he did not mention it to the others, for without a doubt, they were hungry, too, and there was no sense talking of it. Before the day was over, certainly by tomorrow, they would have to find some food. Tiny might be able to pull down a deer if one was to be found, but thinking back on it, Duncan remembered that they had seen no deer nor any other game except occasional rabbits. Tiny could catch rabbits and did, for his own eating, but probably would not be able to catch enough of them to provide food for everyone. Probably there were roots and berries and other provender in the woods that could ease their hunger, but he would not know where to look or what to choose, and be doubted that any of the others did. Perhaps Meg could be of help. As a witch, she might have knowledge of the food provided by the woods, for she would have been concerned with finding certain materials that went into her potions.

  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 th
em, 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.