Beyond the Burning Lands (16 page)

I wondered how he would get a message to me, but in fact he did not try. When his business was finished—they bought several lengths of cloth in dull blues and browns—the bundles were tied up again and they and Hans dropped back through the hole.

I felt a keen disappointment at his departure. Later I reflected that this must have been a scouting trip. Greene and the rest would be hiding nearby, ready to attack at the right moment.

Jan came to me, smiling. “I am glad the peddler arrived at this time. Our Ladies will have new dresses for the Celebration of Summer.”

I said: “They will look beautiful in them, I am sure.”

He said approvingly: “You speak fine words, Luke. You will do us much honor at the feast.”

“If I am still here.”

He laughed. “Of course! If you are still here.”

•  •  •

I was wakened when my arm was touched by a hand that reached between the bars of the cage. As I jerked upright there was an urgent whisper:

“Captain! It is I. Hans.”

It was very dark, the waning moon hidden by clouds. I peered and saw the blur of his figure. I said, also whispering:

“Where are the others?”

“There are none.”

“But Greene, Edmund . . .”

“They went on, thinking you lost. Captain, I have two knives. Take one. We must cut the ropes and get you out.”

He handed me a knife and we set to work. It was harder than one would have thought. The ropes were deeply embedded in the corners of the cage. It was necessary to saw awkwardly at them and the darkness did not help. Nor did the fact that the knife slipped and cut the base of my thumb. This was painful, but the greater nuisance was that my hands became slippery with blood.

There was a cough from inside Jan's hut and we hunched into immobility. When nothing more happened, Hans began hacking away again. I tried one of the bars; it seemed as firmly held as ever. I whispered:

“We are getting nowhere.”

“Patience, Captain. We will in time.”

“Listen,” I said. “I am not sure this is necessary.”

I told him, speaking softly through the bars, of the messenger who had gone to Cymru's court for ransom. He would soon be back. If we were discovered in this attempt at escape they might call off the deal. And they might kill him—their ways were not predictable.

He heard me out, and said: “There will be no ransom.”

“But they have agreed it.”

“They were deceiving you. I have spoken to villagers in this region. In a day or two these people hold a feast . . .”

“They have told me of it.”

“But not all, I think. The women rule here. There is an ancient custom of the tribe. Twice a year they sacrifice. At one time it was a young man from among themselves. He was turned loose in the forest, hobbled so that he could not run, and the women hunted him. When they caught him he was tied to a stake and spit-roasted over a fire. Then eaten. The custom changed. The women grew too fat and idle even to hunt a shackled man. They let their men bring a victim from outside the village. So twice a year they run and make their capture. It is a point of honor to travel great distances—because of that the nearby villages do not fear them. They took you for this purpose.”

I could not believe him. I thought of Jan and the others, reciting their poems to me, and looking for approval. I said:

“But they have been friendly . . .”

“A farmer is kind to his cattle if he wants them to come fat to the knife.”

“But the ransom!”

“They wear no jewels or adornments. They despise them. This is well known. It is true of their women also. I was told not to waste my time offering them brightly colored cloths.”

Realizing this small truth convinced me of the larger one. I had been a fool not to see it. They had bargained with me as an amusement only, and all their seeming friendship had been a mocking lie. I remembered saying to Jan that he could trust me to make up the rest of the ransom. He had laughed as he agreed. Rage swelled in me. In that moment I would have thrown my life away just to have my hands around his throat.

Hans said: “A strand has parted. Keep on.”

I turned my fury into a renewed onslaught against the ropes. I cut myself again but paid it no heed. We sawed away and gradually, strand by strand, the ropes yielded.

Hans whispered: “Now, Captain! Push, and I'll pull.”

I strained against the bars. They gave slightly, and then resisted. I put all my strength into forcing them. Suddenly, with a loud cracking noise, the whole side of the cage gave way and collapsed with Hans underneath it and me on top.

As we were scrambling free there were sounds of movement from the hut. My eyes were more accustomed to the dark and I saw a figure come out and thought I recognized Jan. My anger had cooled and thoughts of escape were stronger than desire for revenge. We must get to the hole and down the tree. But he had seen what was happening. He gave a yell for help and ran, not in our direction but to the hole.

We could hear others moving, responding to the alarm. In a few moments they would be swarming round us. Even if Jan did not manage to delay us long enough for them to catch us up here, they would be down the tree and after us almost immediately. And they knew the tracks through the forest as I knew the alleyways of Winchester, and were trained and expert runners.

But slight as the chance was, we must try for it. I started to run, then realized Hans was not following. I cried: “This way!” but he was bending over something: a small pack. I did not know what he was doing, except that it must be a waste of time. I went back and tried to grab his arm.

“Come on!”

He shook himself free. There was a smell of oil and he had something in his hands: a tinderbox. Flint sparked against steel and the tinder caught. He thrust a wad of oily rag at it. It flamed, and he tossed it as far as he could toward one of the huts. As it arced, burning, through the air, he lit another wad and threw it in the opposite direction. A new and different cry of alarm came from Jan and the figures that were tumbling from the huts. Fire shot up where the first missile had landed. They ran toward it, and then broke in confusion as a second fire started behind them.

Hans said: “Now, Captain!”

We ran for the hole, which was no longer guarded. I heard shouts but did not look back. Hans had climbed the tree by means of the spikes in its side which the men of the Sky People used, but he had brought a rope with him and made it fast at the top. He wanted me to descend first but obeyed when I ordered him to go. As he slid down I could take in something of the scene. The moss had caught over a wide area in both places where the burning rags had landed. Figures were dashing about and trying to douse the flames with blankets. Then Hans jerked at the rope and I took it in my hands and dropped.

Above us a red circle glowed and opened out, and was followed by another. Bits of burning moss dropped like shooting stars. In their light I could see something of the ground: the kitchens at which the men had cooked food and the spring-fed pool from which they took water. And a pit, a little longer than a man, heaped with charcoal, with blocks at either end that had rounded, lengthwise grooves in them. Grooves in which a stake might rest and be turned like a spit. Sickness and anger rose in me again. I looked up and rejoiced at the spreading fire. The cries were thinner but more anguished. I rejoiced at that, too.

Only when we were clear of the forest, whose whole heart seemed to be consumed in a conflagration that crimsoned the sky like the flaming mountains of the Burning Lands, did I remember the children trapped in it with the rest. Then I felt only sickness, and no more anger.

•  •  •

I pieced together from Hans the manner in which he had gone about my rescue. I was not missed from the camp until morning, the guard having changed shortly after I spoke to the one on duty. Then Greene instituted a search for me, and closely questioned the people of the village. They claimed to know nothing and when the place had been ransacked it was plain I was not there. Greene searched two more days before abandoning me as lost and taking the troop onward toward the Burning Lands.

Hans, being only a servant and a dwarf besides, could not dispute the decision, but the next night slipped away, taking gold from my pack which, together with the rest of my gear and my sword belt, I had left behind. His only idea then was to make a search of his own, with little notion of how to set about it. But at a village he met a peddler and gave him a good price for his mule and goods and cloak. A peddler could travel anywhere and pick up news.

It was not long before he heard of the Sky People and of their twice-yearly expeditions in search of a victim. Very likely the people in the first village could have told Greene, but had not done so for fear of reprisals from one side or the other. It was safer to know nothing. Hans learned roughly where the village lay and headed for it. The nearer he came the more information he could glean. It was in a village at the edge of the forest that he learned that the Sky People did all their cooking on the ground because the moss they used dried quickly and when dry burned easily: these villagers themselves used it as tinder. In the tree-village no flame was permitted: the moss kept them warm enough even in winter to have no need of fires. Because of this he had brought the tinderbox and oily rags with him.

I said: “You saved my life, Hans.”

“I am your servant, Captain.”

I shook my head. “No longer. Henceforth you are a warrior.”

“A dwarf.”

“That makes no difference.”

“It will in southern lands, in Winchester.”

“Leave that to me,” I said. “I will see to it.”

•  •  •

We traveled on foot, having too little gold left to buy horses; we sold the mule also to buy food. And extra boots. Because that was the way we crossed the pass through the Burning Lands, carrying water-soaked boots, three pairs each, on strings around our necks, and putting fresh ones on as those we were wearing began to roast our feet. We ran as fast as we could over the smoking black sand, with the boots unlaced so that we spent as little time as possible changing them. I was a near thing, even so. The soles of our last pair were crisped and each step an agony by the time we could discard them and walk, limping and barefoot, down the slope into the valley of black rock.

We bought new boots not in Marlborough but at a village outside. I avoided cities and did not make myself known as we journeyed south. The pigeons would have flown with news of my return and, childishly perhaps, I wished to keep it as a surprise. Fortunately no one would take us for anything but vagrants in the ragged clothes we wore.

So at last we came into the Itchen Valley and saw St Catherine's Hill, bushy-topped with trees, and a score of other familiar sights; and then the city itself, not towered and domed like Cymru's, but strong and lovely behind its walls. We came to the West Gate and the guard challenged us. I saw his commander on the step above him: a Captain called Barnes whom I knew well.

I cried to him: “Greetings, John!”

He stared at me.

“Do you not know me? It is Luke. Brought back from the dead by this warrior dwarf of mine!”

He took a step forward but did not speak. Had I changed so much that he could not recognize me, I wondered: not even my voice? I said:

“Will you let me pass to go to my brother?”

“I will do better than that,” he said. He raised his hand.

“Guard, arrest this traitor!”

W
HEN I WAS FIRST TAKEN
down to the palace dungeons there was a drunken man in the next cell. In between singing and shouting insults at the jailers he demanded to know my name and the reason for my imprisonment. I did not answer him; as far as the latter was concerned I could not. To my own questions Barnes had only replied that I would be told what was necessary when it pleased the Prince to do so.

Later the drunkard was taken away, in a final flurry of oaths and objections, leaving me isolated: my cell was one of a block of four and the other three were empty. I wondered if they had done it from fear that I might use even so unlikely an instrument as that to further my supposedly treasonous activities. It was a relief to be free of the din the drunkard made but the silence that followed, broken only by a drip of water down the wall of the cell, soon became still more oppressive.

The cell was some nine feet square, stone flagged, with an iron grating and a bucket in one corner and a heap of straw in another. Chains were attached to iron stakes that were driven in between the granite blocks that made up the walls. It was some consolation that I had been left free to move about. The walls were unpromising surfaces on which to leave messages but previous dwellers here had done their best. I read “Jesus Saves,” presumably written by a Christian because that was the name of their god, and a man's name, Roger Anderson. The letters were crude but a quarter of an inch deep. It must have taken months of patient carving.

I thought how unconcernedly in the past I had heard of this or that person being sent to the dungeons. While I was jousting, or talking with Edmund and Martin, or just lying idle in the sun, Roger Anderson had been crouched in these clammy depths, scratching with a piece of metal, perhaps a nail, against hard stone. And outside at this moment the world went on—people gossiped and laughed, loved and fought—as indifferent to my fate as I had been to his.

An iron grille over the door provided light, coming in the first place from a small window, also barred, high up in the passage. It was little to start with and faded into blackness with evening. I had no way of telling time. The monotony was only broken when a jailer, carrying a lantern, brought a jug of water and half a loaf of stale bread. I asked him what o'clock it was but he did not answer. He slammed and locked the door behind him, and the flicker of light went away with his footsteps until the next door cut it off. I drank from the jug but felt no hunger. Rats got to the loaf in the night and devoured all but a crust.