Tales of the Zodiac - The Goat's Tale (11 page)

My concerns turn out to be valid. Our decision to cross the sea ice has proved to be idiocy of the highest order. Not a day passes where I don’t wake up surprised to be alive. It is an incredible place. Nothing exists here except for coldness. And even coldness is nothing but the absence of warmth. It is the forsaken world of some unhappy god, a creator who has stricken everything – all colour, all energy, all life – from the canvas and forgotten to start again.

The sea ice takes all the hostility of the tundra and distils it into an even purer form of brutality. Where the tundra had changeable weather, the sea ice has unflinching icy winds. Where the tundra was difficult to navigate, the sea ice is impossible. Where the tundra had scarce resources, the sea ice has none.

There is no food. This deficit is not down to any lack of skill on our part; there is not even a hint of food. There are no elusive birds overhead, no well-concealed rabbits, no sprightly deer. There is nothing. Instead, we are forced to make do with the dwindling meat supplies that Morrigan knew to steal from the Burt’s larders. As I eat the stolen food, I become complicit in his dishonesty. Becoming complicit in this dishonesty, a state forced on me by the ordeals of my journey, shows me just how far I have sunk.

Yet it is only that dishonesty that has kept me alive. For the first time in my life, I am confronted with an uncomfortable fact: the world does not conform to my moral code. A man who had thought stealing beneath him would, in my situation, already be dead. This perversion, this reverse karma, this all-or-nothing situation, would wipe out all moral men in the blink of an eye. The key at the bottom of it all, the code by which life should be lived, feels further away from me than ever.

Even this doesn’t trouble me like it once would have done. It is hard to care about such abstract things while the air pummels away at you like white water. Our geography master once told us how the wind can, over time, carve rocks but this claim has scarcely seemed credible until now. Now, I can actually
feel
it happening. Not across years, but across moments. Not across rocks, but across my nose. I no longer know how a normal nose should feel. It is, with the exception of my knee, the most painful part of my anatomy.

My feelings for Morrigan swing from bitter resentment to disgruntled tolerance. He is, on the one hand, the reason we are walking through this whitest of hells and yet, on the other, the only reason I am not yet dead. With each hobbling step I take, I am not sure how thankful I am for this latter blessing. I have begun to find every aspect of his character infuriating: his unceasing smirk, his desire to look on the bright side, the awkward way in which he heaves his clumsy frame across the ice.

But the superficiality of my resentment of him is exposed every time that I’m offered a glimpse of his mortality. For instance, the several times that he has sent his heavy foot plunging through the ice, I have gasped and spun to help him as though it is my own foot that is gone. Indeed, the effect of losing him to the ice would be so devastating that it
might as well
be my own foot. The same is surely true in reverse; our fates are linked. We will live and die together. The reality is that our two bodies might just as well be one. An injury to one of us is an injury to both.

This does not prevent me from brooding upon him. In this most desolate of places, he stands as the only other object that exists and, as is natural when nothing else exists, he bears the full weight of my analysis. I do not know if he feels the same. We barely have the energy to communicate.

Today, as with every day, he lumbers on in front. Every so often, he stops to check I am still there and to ensure that the gap hasn’t widened too much. I can do nothing but hobble on behind him, staring at his stupid black armour, wondering if he could do anything to make himself any more conspicuous. The absence of snow savages from the ice is the only thing we have to be thankful for.

He then reaches a new low. Without warning, he is suddenly set upon by a creature that I would like to describe as a bear. However, it is about twice the size of any bear I have ever seen and, instead of brown, is a dirty cream colour. The beast is so large, so loud, so completely lacking in subtlety, that it quite simply defies belief that it could have ambushed him. If he were not about to die, I would berate him for it. I hobble towards him as fast as I can. A curse, the word ‘fark’, just about reaches me through the chill wind.

The footspeed of the creature across the ice is almost as incredible as the size of it and it only takes an instant before it is upon him. The form it takes as it pounces is akin to a white boulder that has just been hurled from a siege weapon.

I cannot believe the speed with which the man moves. He feints past the beast with such skill that it seems almost magical. He turns more quickly, too. All of a sudden, the beast, a juggernaut that must surely have no concept of defeat, finds itself moving far too fast in the wrong direction, with its opponent behind it.

Its momentum is such that Morrigan has an opportunity to draw his bow and score with two arrows before it has scrambled itself around. I, sprinting, forcing my damaged knee through unbelievable pain, am still too far away to help. The wind, roaring towards me from their direction, means that I will need to be much closer before I can fire an arrow.

The scream of the beast would curdle my blood if it were not already frozen. It takes another two arrows, one to the face, before it is back upon Morrigan. By this time, it has already conceded any advantage it may have had and their second melee proves to be its last. Morrigan, two metres tall and wielding a tremendous greatsword, actually has the range advantage and seems to take half its snout off before it is even close enough to try and hit him again.

Although Morrigan’s first slice is not enough to kill the bear, it is certainly enough to take the wind out of its sails. As it strikes out a lazy, half dead claw, Morrigan steps aside and executes it with such ruthlessness that, in any other context, I might feel sorry for it. It slumps down on the ice like a large sack of meat which, I immediately realise, is exactly what it is. My heart is in my mouth. I will never again doubt the man.

A month has passed since we left the sea ice, although it could just as easily be a lifetime. With each day that hobbles by, there is no doubt that we are dying. My mind contains very little other than the all-consuming battle for survival. What little fat I had has faded away to nothing. I am fortunate that whatever the savage woman did to my leg appears to have helped and, although it is no longer as flexible, the pain only comes when it is under great pressure. Morrigan, meanwhile, seems to have changed even more than I. His wasting has become so obvious that I fear that I will wake up one day to find nothing left but his smirk.

Back on land, skirmishes are beginning to take their toll too. Our advantages – weapons, training, health – are slowly diminishing, crushed by the relentlessness of the snow. Each battle that passes (there have been six to date) seems to become more and more equal. This realisation makes us even more cautious, slowing progress further still. Small injuries mount up, the conditions providing no real chance for recovery, and the only positive is that the savages appear only to exist in small families. However, even this limited fortune is nothing more than a reflection of the meagreness of the land.

And the land
is
meagre. A typical meal might vary from nothing at all to a quarter of rabbit. The desperation is such that we have taken to eating virtually anything, be it the bark of a tree or the frozen corpse of an unidentified animal. Cannibalism, although not on the menu yet, does not feel quite as abhorrent as it once did. The pure excitement that surrounds us if we somehow manage to kill three animals in one day shows just how much our concept of joy has altered.

Our concept of temperature has also changed. There are now only two temperatures: that which will kill us and that which won’t. Ideas of comfort, of warmth, of dryness, now just seem to be abstractions, sensations so far from our memories that we are no longer able to remember them. Sometimes, when the snow rises and the wind howls, we can do nothing other than bury ourselves and hope. Reading the weather has become absolutely critical to our survival; it has become necessary to know before we set out for the day, whether it is even worth it. We are picking up this art quickly through sheer necessity. This caution serves only to slow us down more and more. The only shred of consolation is the lengthening of the days, increasing as we advance into both the summer and the north.

Several times over the past millennia, the human race has been faced with complete extinction. Each time it has come back from the brink, bouncing back more resilient than ever. This resilience is, according to the greatest scholars, our defining attribute as a species. In a rare moment of lucidity, my history master once croaked, “There is no natural phenomenon greater than the human spirit in times of adversity.”

Whilst I was obviously able to appreciate the sentiment of this, it is only now when faced with my own death that I truly begin to understand. As the comforts of civilisation ebb from my mind, a new tide washes in and my mindset begins to alter, becoming narrower, sharper. There was once, for instance, a time when my mind was full – full of ambitions, dislikes, hopes, mundane grumblings, things to learn, structures, systems, moral considerations. Now, no less full, it only considers one thing: how to remain alive.

Without conscious effort, the full faculties of my mind have now moved to this one basic function. The sharpness that they bring is remarkable; my eyes notice three-day-old tracks in the snow, my ears can pick out birdsong by species, my nose discerns inadvisable berries or meat, the wind on my face sends news of the weather it brings. It is how I imagine it must feel to be an animal: wary, savage and desperate, honed by necessity to seize any opportunity that nature throws me.

This is exactly how I feel the first time that we take initiative against the savages. Before now, we have never caught them resting; it has always been us responding to them, fighting our way desperately out from ambush. Last night was different. This time, the goat saw the fox coming.

We have taken to walking as much during dusk as possible, aiming to give ourselves an hour to set up camp before darkness falls entirely. We do this because we have learned that not only do we make more progress but that the dusk seems safer to walk in. It also reduces the need for a fire and the exhausting fuel gathering that comes with it.

Last night, the strategy paid off even further. We spotted, tucked away in the nape of two hills, the evening fire and smoke of a savage settlement. The natural cover and shelter of this nape looked to make it a perfect and discrete choice to set up camp. So much so that we almost stumbled into it before we noticed it was already occupied. The shock of encountering any such luck immediately put us on our guard; the idea of hunting them down whilst remaining undetected was entirely foreign to us.

Starving, freezing and desperate, we knew that we had no choice; it would be us or them. We could not repel another ambush and, furthermore, we would probably die without whatever food they had in their camp. The only choice we had was in our method.

And so it was, against my better instincts, that we gambled. We spent the night awake, huddled on the hill above their camp, waiting until just before dawn, to strike at them. As the hour approaches, I am so full with hot-blooded anticipation that the cold feels less than it has for weeks. Finally, we creep down the slope under cover of total blackness.

As we arrive, we realise that the camp is probably bigger than we expected. The last footstep from the hill into the valley brings us out directly behind a large skin tent. I have no idea how many of these there are, or even its full size. Morrigan, not known for his stealth, and without even signalling, begins to creep around the perimeter. I, as planned, begin to quietly lay a fire as close to the tent as I can. Whilst I don’t anticipate it will stay lit for long, it is probably the best we can hope for in terms of a distraction.

I have laid so many fires over the last month that I could probably now get one going in the middle of a lake. As such, this act of arson comes quite naturally to me. It catches quicker than even I could have anticipated. From nothing, the skin tent leaps aflame with almost greedy enthusiasm, crackling away, blowing our cover.

There is clearly a sentry on duty who makes a sound that is best described as a yelp. I would imagine it would have been a more comprehensive alarm call if it had not been cut short by Morrigan’s sword cleaving through his face. I hobble around the tent, in the opposite direction to Morrigan, as quickly as I can. With the small aid of the fire and my night eyes, I can establish that there are three tents facing into a central fire pit. Morrigan stands in the pit ambushing the bewildered savages as they rush out. I join him, enjoying the rare advantage of surprise.

The savages that are in the tent currently ablaze are those that find themselves in most of a rush to exit. They do so panicked and unprepared. Morrigan kills all of them whilst I strike down the confused people emerging from the other tents. Approximately ten of them, including all the occupants of the torched tent, are dead before they begin to gather some semblance of an idea as to what is happening.

By this time, a tree next to the tent has also, somehow, caught fire. As the last man out of the burning tent is slain, Morrigan turns to face the other two tents. Now, it becomes more difficult. What men and women are left emerge together, armed and ready, understanding that they have been ambushed. Some of these do not seem especially proficient fighters, rushing in and falling quickly. Their folly is probably our only saving grace, whittling the numbers down to a survivable six against two.

Morrigan, as ever, springs into his almost demonic battle mode. The real darkness about him is that he only ever appears to be truly alive during a battle. Despite his affectation to chivalry, there is something about the act of killing that he seems to actively enjoy. As much as I can carry contempt for this attitude, I am also fully aware that it is probably one of the only reasons that I remain alive. His size and presence during a swordfight, head to toe in black, is something that must truly terrify his opponents.

And he is not our only advantage here today. We have the advantage of planning, of knowledge, of our weaponry, of not being thrown from our beds by fire and sword fighting. This, alongside our desperation and certainty of death, keeps us driving forward and on the front foot. Morrigan, in particular, seems possessed. As we fight on, incapacitating two or maybe three of them, the tree continues to burn aggressively, perhaps welcoming the change from the cold.

The fight, as others before, begins to develop into a pattern: Morrigan engaged with more able and more numerous combatants than myself whilst I fight around the edges, often outnumbered but fighting the younger boys, the skirmishers or the women. Usually, whilst doing this, I am able to keep a tactical overview of the fight, understanding if there is a need to retreat or to assist Morrigan. Necessity, meanwhile, has taught me to incorporate my weaker knee into my fighting style.

On this occasion, however, I find myself isolated and unsure what Morrigan is doing. Somehow, I have ended up facing a much fiercer opponent than I can handle and, as is natural, my attention tunnels only into the act of surviving combat against her. Death burns brightly in this girl’s eyes. Even with two good knees, I wouldn’t stand a chance.

In an instant, we seem to be apart from the main melee and facing off one against one. Morrigan’s screams and grunts sound distant. She is, without doubt, the most adept fighter I have faced since Ram, not anywhere near as powerful as that brute but much quicker, much more precise, screaming with fury as she wields her curved blade towards me. Even the weapon is unusual, clearly of a better quality than most of these savages’.

I find myself forced back, parrying for my life, unable to even remove my eyes to see where Morrigan is. The inferno continues behind me, the flickering light reflected in the girl’s eyes. She is driving me towards it. As the blows pour down upon me, I realise that the only capacity for choice I have is my footwork. I must avoid the flames. Hopefully, then, I can hold out long enough for Morrigan to save me. With each parry, and at the extreme edge of my fighting ability, I try to circle her round to the opposite direction.

By doing this, I place her between the tree and myself. This is about the best I can hope for. I continue to keep my stance low and defensive, trying my best to absorb her blows whilst remaining on the same spot. I can hear faint signs of a struggle coming from behind me. My heart sinks with the knowledge that I must only have seconds remaining; an underpowered combatant can only defend for so long. Without warning, a loud crash sears through the sky. We both hesitate.

My position facing the tree gives me the tiniest of advantages; I know it is a falling branch before she does. Therefore, my hesitation is almost imperceptibly shorter than hers. Thankfully, with the sharpness of death on my back, this is all the opportunity I need. I instinctively unleash a right boot into her undefended and, crucially, unset midriff. This sends her flying backwards, just a little too early to avoid the burning log. The weight of it smashes her against the snow, expelling a powder puff into the air and extinguishing the flame. She cries out in anguish, trapped.

I look around to Morrigan only in time to see the last man fall. Almost immediately, he drops to his knees in exhaustion. I survey what is left of the scene. Dawn is rising. Nothing moves except the girl, struggling beneath the branch. Conflicted, I move towards her.

It is clear now, in the emerging light of the morning, that she is an adolescent girl, perhaps my own age. Her skin is exceptionally pale, even cast against the snow beneath her. Her hair and eyes, meanwhile, are both as black as blood in the moonlight. As I approach, defiance runs wild in her eyes. She even stops struggling, not wanting me to sense that the branch is an obstacle to her. She hisses and spits something at me in her own language. It sounds nothing like a request for mercy. As a pragmatist, I know that I should kill her.

But it is not so easy. Some semblance of civilisation calls to me from afar. This is not what we do. It is not what knights do. And, if I somehow survive this ordeal, I
will
be a knight. Therefore, I will have to look myself in the eye as one. For me, rules and oaths are not something I can adjust as it suits. The fact remains that I do not have to kill this girl in order to survive.

It is not a matter of emotion. I
could
do it easily, if I wanted. I have no more attachment to her than I have an aversion to murder. I am not even concerned about the fact she is a woman. Instead, it is her defencelessness that stills my hand. I have no doubt that I would try and kill her in battle should the need arise – not that I would be able to – and also that she would not be having this same debate if it were her curved blade at my throat. But isn’t it honour that makes a knight different? The ability to do what is right rather than what is easy? Lost in thought, I hear Morrigan crunching towards me.

“Are they all dead?” he grimaces. The morning light reveals that he is nursing a significant-looking wound to his shoulder. The girl, maintaining her puffed-up pride, spits out yet another venomous-sounding curse to answer him.

“Why haven’t you finished her?” he growls. His usual nonchalance appears to have drained from him. Instead, he seems short tempered and bitter.

“She’s trapped and injured. I’m not going to execute her.”

“Why not?” He snaps back, clearly in pain.

“Chivalry?” I say, not politely. It doesn’t take much to anger me these days.

“Fark chivalry, Goat. We’re on the highway to hell here. We’re already dead. Who gives a shit?”

“I do,” I snap, matching him for temper. It is he who is the good-natured one after all.

“These gwnts would kill us in our sleep if we let them.” He sighs, arm fixed firmly across his shoulder, trying to hold the blood in.

“These people are savages. Mercy is one of the many virtues that sets us apart from them.”

“Us?! Who is the fark is ‘us’?! There is no ‘us’. There is me and you and that’s it. We aren’t farking knights anymore. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but we’re farking dying here. No one gives a gnat’s bollock what we do.”

At this declaration, he draws his dagger and surges forward towards the girl and her wooden prison. Instinctively, I step in his way.

“I care. If we survive, we have to be able to look ourselves in the eye.”

“Look… Goat…” A menacing smile creeps back across his face as he pushes me aside “She can count herself lucky…”

His sentence is interrupted as I push him back. He seems to have forgotten that I will not cow to anyone; his resistance has now inflamed the argument in my eyes. I will ensure that this develops into a problem.

“All this cold’s made me forget what a stubborn prick you were. Always got to win, haven’t you?!” he smirks. Seemingly, something about my feistiness has sparked him back into amusement. However, he continues moving towards the girl, breezing me aside, fully aware that he is too powerful for me to subdue alone.

“Just let me do it. You know it’s for the best as well as I do. Her blood’s on my hands, not yours,” he says, with an air of reconciliation in his voice. I, looming over his shoulder, reach my hand into his gaping shoulder wound and pull hard upon it. He whimpers like a small child.

“Ahaa! Fark! You farking… ahaa!” He rolls around, clearly in a lot of pain. I kick his dagger away. In a flash, I roll the branch off the girl. I am not sure what it is that makes me do this. Perhaps I’ve lost my head. The need to prove a point, for a moment, becomes more important than my life.

The girl jumps up and backs away hesitantly. If she is injured, she hides it well. Impressively, she has full awareness of where her curved blade landed and retrieves it almost immediately. She stands in a ready position, nervously assessing the situation. I join her in this assessment. I am quite prepared to fight her again if she attacks but, by the same coin, I am quite happy to let her run if she feels the need. We have, after all, eliminated her tribe already and the spoils of that victory will keep us alive. Morrigan backs himself up against a tree, clutching his wound. He looks faint and pale in the weak morning light.