Authors: Nicholas Anderson
He was quite
sure of the change now. Thrusting his torch forward, he saw he’d come
nearly to the end of the tunnel and there was light falling in from
above. He rolled onto his belly and used both elbows to propel himself
forward.
Rawl came to the
end of the tunnel. There was a small opening above his head, but he had
trouble twisting his body so that he could get his feet under him. He
extinguished his torch in the damp earth to allow himself more freedom.
Finally he managed, creating little avalanches of dirt around him as he
did. He had only room to crouch in the vertical space at the tunnel’s
end. The opening through which the light came was too small for him to
slip through. Feeling with his hands, he realized the roof above him was
also made of planks. Pushing upward, he shifted the cover aside and stood
up.
He was
surrounded by trees. Something was coming through the underbrush towards
him and he realized he’d left his bow at his feet. He reached for it but
the narrow space did not permit him to bend over and pick it up. Instead
he pushed himself out of the hole and turned towards the sound. Dioji
burst from the bushes and circled around him panting, then disappeared into the
brush again. Rawl breathed a sigh of relief. The dog must have
reached the end of the tunnel and dug and sniffed around until he’d scratched a
ramp in the side of the entryway and then wormed his way under the
trapdoor. That must have been the whimpering followed by silence.
Rawl turned to
give Tipper a hand in getting out of the hole. Standing up for the first
time, Rawl realized he could see over the shrubs to the wall. It was only
30 paces away.
“How did they do
this right under our noses?” he said. “Surely we should have heard
them.”
“They probably
did this before we got here,” Tipper said. He brushed himself off.
“You mean it’s
been here this whole time?”
Tipper
nodded.
“Kind of creepy, huh?”
He called
to Dioji and the dog nearly knocked him over coming to his side.
They started
back towards the wall.
“I know Dane
gave strict orders not to open the gate for any reason until he returns, but
let’s hope our boys on the wall are willing to make an exception,” Tipper
said. “There’s no way I’m climbing back through that again.”
***
A half hour
after Tomka dismissed the
council,
Dane was standing
on the beach, watching his men make the final preparations for their return
voyage. Bax came down from the village with his pack on his
back. Dane stopped him as he made to go up the rope ladder. “My
offer still stands.”
Bax looked at
him. “I told you I’d think about it.” He climbed the ladder to the
deck.
Dane walked
further up the beach and turned back to the
Bloodwake
.
Ahthala, the priestess, stepped up beside him. She stood so long by him
in silence, staring out over the blue-green waters, that when she finally spoke
her voice startled him. “You have seen our soldiers in battle,
King-son. So you know what kind of men they are.” She looked
northwest and was silent again so that Dane thought she had finished. She
turned back to him. “It is not death they fear. It is something
worse.”
Silence rolled
back in on them again like the waves.
“But you are not
a whole man here. I see you left something on the island that is greater
to you than any fear. There is nothing I can say that will induce you to
stay.”
Once more, the
silence stretched. But Dane felt a calmness in this woman’s
presence. The silence did not yawn or wear. He felt no need to
speak to be understood.
“You love her,
don’t you?”
Dane gave no
answer.
“It is
well. Love is the strongest kind of courage. It is the only thing a
man can bear with him into the next life. Whether it is yours to live or
die in the face of this peril you go towards, love will serve you well.
Farewell, King-son, I do not think our paths will cross again. Not on
this plane.”
She turned to
leave.
“You don’t have
to call me that,” Dane said. “My father is not a king.”
She paused for a
moment, her eyes roving over the sand as though seeking something there.
“Then perhaps I was not referring to him.” She began to move away
again.
“Wait,” he
said.
She turned back to
him.
“What does
shriken
mean?”
Her face
changed. She walked quickly back until she stood before him. “Where
did you hear that word?” she asked.
“One of your men
used it.”
She
nodded.
“Please, tell me
what it means.”
“If you have
spent time on that island,” she said, her gaze flickering northwest once more,
“I think you have already begun to learn what it means.” She turned to
leave.
“But what is
it?” Dane asked.
“Not
what is
it
,” she said, turning back to him. “But,
what are they
.”
“What are they
then?”
“What are they,
King-son?” For the first time in their conversation, she looked directly
at him. “They are the reason we do not speak of your island.”
As soon as Tipper and Rawl were
back inside the compound they went in search of Elias and Leech. On their
way, they passed back by the door of the cellar. Rundal and Crane and a
few others were standing there. Rawl heard Rundal say as they passed,
“They’ve given us a sign. Now it’s time for us to take a leap of faith.”
Leech and Elias
agreed about the tunnel: it had to be filled in. But they differed
on the best way to go about it. Elias thought it would suffice to fill in
each end with stones. Leech wanted to dig up the entire tunnel, rip out
the supports, and fill it with earth. In the end, they reached a
compromise. The men would dig up and fill in two paces of the tunnel
length from the outer foot of the wall. The space inside would be blocked
with rocks. They formed a twelve-man crew: four pairs of workers to
gather stones and destroy the tunnel and four bowmen to cover them from the
walls. Before they did this though, Rawl asked them to call an
assembly. The result did not surprise him. Fletcher Dibsy was missing.
Leech dismissed
the assembly and began ordering the work party. It took a little while to
outfit them all with picks and shovels and harness the donkey to a cart to haul
stones, but eventually the four pairs passed under the gate. Each man
stuck with his partner and no pair wandered out of sight from the walls.
They gathered many stones in the clearing to the west of the compound and
brought them back on the cart. The pairs split the work of filling the
tunnel mouth inside the cellar with stones and tearing up the tunnel on the
other side of the wall. By late afternoon the job was complete. The
men filed back through the gate, weary but heartened to have spent the day in a
labor that had a clear purpose and end.
Owen, who was
counting off the men as they returned, called down from the wall as they were
closing the gate. “
Where’s
Crane and Darinson?”
“I thought they
were outside working on the tunnel,” Rawl said.
“And I thought
they were working inside with you,” Paul said.
“When did you
last see them?” Owen asked, coming down from the wall.
“I last saw
them
gathering stones in the field,” Dirk Ridder said.
“That was a couple of hours ago.”
“Has anyone seen
them since?” asked Tipper, who had been working in the cellar with Rawl.
Silence.
Several men shook their heads.
Rawl notified
Elias and Leech and once more the two men called the entire company to assemble
before the south gate. It was worse than they thought. Rundal
Tillman and Gundar Holt were missing, too.
“They weren’t on
the work crew,” Elias said.
“No,” said Fish,
“They were supposed to be on kitchen duty.”
“They didn’t
pass out of the gate,” Owen said. “I counted every man that did.”
“They must have
gone out through the tunnel before we closed it up,” Rawl said.
“We’ll form a
search party,” Leech said. “They couldn’t have wandered far.”
“I don’t think
that will do any good, sir,” said Rawl. “I think they wanted to leave.”
“Wanted to
leave?” Leech said.
“I mean they
deserted, sir,” Rawl said.
“Deserted?
What chance do they think they’ll have of hiding from the enemy outside the
walls?”
“I don’t think
they’re trying to hide,” Rawl said. “I think they want to find them.”
Leech
laughed. “Why on earth…”
“Rundal thinks
they’re a thing to be worshiped. He was talking about it this morning.”
“Worshiped?”
Leech laughed. “Is everyone here losing their minds?”
Elias did not
laugh. “This is not good,” he said, loudly enough for only Rawl and Leech
to hear him. “The dark energies of this island are already strong.
If Rundal and his friends have given themselves to serve them, there’s no
telling what will happen.”
“I’m sorry,”
Rawl said. “I should have said something sooner. I just didn’t
think they’d actually do it.”
“There’s no
helping it,” Elias said. “We’ll just have to think of how to best counter
it.”
***
Rawl followed
the other workers towards the kitchen. Josie came out of the kitchen door
before he got there with a large plate of scraps for the dogs. She knelt
and scratched Dioji’s ears as he ate. Rawl marveled that Dioji, who
snarled when the other dogs came too near his meal, let her do this.
“Shall we?”
Josie asked Rawl, rising and holding her hand out to the targets. She had
already had her supper and Rawl postponed his so he could spend the rest of the
daylight with her on the range.
“Thanks for the
lesson,” Josie said when it was too dark to shoot. She held the bow out
to him.
“Hang on to it,”
Rawl said. “I’ll get a replacement from the armory.”
After piecing
together a supper of leftovers, the best part of which was Josie’s company,
Rawl shuffled off through the dark in the direction of the armory and Josie
returned to the infirmary. Rawl found the door standing open and heard
movement from inside. Peeking around the jamb, he saw, by the light of a
single candle, a cloaked figure rummaging through the shelves. Rawl
rapped one knuckle on the jamb. Elias turned from the shelves to nod at
him.
“Can I help you
find something, sir?”
“I wondered if
we had more rope,” Elias said. He laid a coil of thick rope on the table
by the candle. A few tools also sat on the table. “I need something
thinner,
more supple
.”
Rawl felt the
coarse fibers of the rope on the table. He nodded and stepped to one of
the side walls of the armory, which doubled as a tool shed. There were
several dusty bags of canvas and pelts hung there and Rawl felt around under
them till he found what he wanted. “I think this is the best stuff we
have,” he said, handing the rope to Elias.
The priest
wrapped the end of the cord around his hands several times and gave it a few
sharp tugs. He nodded. “This should do well. Thank you.”
Something seemed
strange in Elias’s mannerisms. He did not seem to Rawl like a man about
to start a project. He seemed like a weary soul eager to end a labor he
has toiled over for a long time.
“Can I help you
with something, sir?”
“No, thank you,”
Elias said. “I’ve taken up enough of your time already.”
“I don’t mind,
sir. I didn’t mind helping with the stone either.”
“Yes, the
stone,” Elias said. The way he said it did not sound to Rawl as if his
words had reminded him of it but as if he had been surprised to hear Rawl speak
of something he had been thinking on a great deal. “The stone worked,
didn’t it?”
“Like a charm,
sir,” Rawl said, slightly cautiously. “Are you sure I can’t give you a
hand with anything?”
“No, thank you,”
Elias said. “This is something I must do alone.”
Rawl forgot why
he had come to the armory in the first place. He nodded to Elias and
left.
But Rawl never
really stopped moving once he left Elias. He went back to the barracks
and tried to sleep but found he could only lie on his side and look at Fletch’s
empty bunk or lie on his other side and think about Fletch’s empty bunk.
He got up and pulled his boots back on and went outside.
He found himself
circling the top of the wall. The sentries on watch nodded to him as he
passed, but he did not stop to talk to any of them. He thought about
Fletch. He thought about Elias. He thought about Fletch. He
thought about Joseph. He thought about Elias. His mind was filled
with a shadowy unrest about the priest. It seemed Elias had said
something to him.
Was it yesterday or the day before?
Something that had not seemed important at the time and that he had not paid
much attention to.
Something, the exact words of which
he had forgotten but the threat of which had grown in his mind like a shadow at
the end of the day.
Only a few months ago, Bailus had led Rawl and
several other young trainees on their first march. It was only a training
exercise, meant to condition them physically and mentally to the demands of
war. The collar of Rawl’s shirt had slipped down so that part of his
boiled leather jerkin chafed on his shoulder and neck. He had not even
noticed it at first, but by the end of the day it had rubbed his skin
raw. Elias’s words were like that now – they had seemed innocuous at
first, but coupled now with the priest’s strange mood and multiplied by the
hours that had passed since, Rawl’s dread had grown instead of diminished.
If only he could remember what the priest had said.
On his second
lap around the wall he passed again through a section on the northeast side
where the gap was largest between the sentries. The moon cast the shadows
of the rampart across the wall-walk here so that this part of the wall was
darker than the others. His eyes were wandering along the conical spiked
tops of the trunks that formed the wall when they spotted something there they
had not seen on his first circuit. A rope had been knotted and wedged
between two of the beams; the other side fell to the ground on the outside of
the wall.
Rawl thought at
first this was the work of some enemy trying to scale the wall and he leaned
over the edge to see the foot of the wall and scoured the tree line. As
he leaned over, he laid his hand on the rope. Its rough fibers were
instantly familiar. Suddenly all the disconnected worries which drifted
in his mind precipitated into one ice-solid awareness that struck him like a slap
in the face. He dropped off the wall and ran in search of his
brother.
He found him in
the kitchen, seated with several men by the hearth, playing a dice game.
“Paul, I need
your help.”
“Alright,” Paul
said without looking up.
“Now,” Rawl
said, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him out of his chair.
“But I’m
winning.”
“Come on,” Rawl
said.
Something in his
brother’s tone must have alerted Paul to the seriousness of the
situation.
“Alright.
I’ll be right back,
guys,” he said over his shoulder.
“What is it?”
Paul asked as soon as they were outside. Rawl’s hand was still wrapped
around his arm.
“It’s Elias,”
Rawl said. “I couldn’t remember what he’d said to me that had me so
worried, but I remember now and I understand. But it may already be too
late.”
“Slow down, Rawl.
What are you talking about?”
“I think Elias
is going to do something awful.”
“How awful?”
“Paul, I think
he’s going to kill himself.”
“How do you know
this?”
“Do you remember
the stone we helped him bury? The one he used to draw the curse out of
Owen?”
Paul
nodded.
“Of course.”
“Well the other
day he told me he thought a man could do the same thing for the island that the
stone did for Owen.”
“What does that
mean?”
“It means he’s
going to try to draw the island’s darkness into himself and then…”
“And then bury
himself alive,” Paul said.
“We have to go
after him,” Rawl said. “But we’re going to need help.”
Rawl burst
through the door of the infirmary. Bailus, who had spent most of the day
sleeping, was awake and going at it with Leech.
“Great,” Bailus
said. “So young Dibsy gets sucked down a rabbit
hole
and Rundal defects with Vick Crane and two of his other cronies. What
account are you going to give of this when Dane returns?”
“I’ll tell him
the truth,” Leech said.
“Lucky he’s your
friend.”
“Lucky nothing.
I only took this post because you went
and bled your fool self unconscious. Dane can’t return soon enough.”
“Dane returning
isn’t going to fix this,” Bailus said.
“Well at least I
only have to keep this post until he does.”
“You shouldn’t
be worried about how long you’ll have to keep your post. You should be
worried about how long you’ll be able to keep your head on your
shoulders. We all should.”
“I liked you
better unconscious,” Leech said.
“Get a room, you
two,” Josie said from Mara’s bedside. “This poor woman’s trying to
sleep.”
Rawl took
Josie’s hand and nodded to the door. As he led her and Paul to the rope,
he told her everything, including his last conversation with Elias in the
armory-tool shed. “As soon as we’re down, pull the rope up. We
wouldn’t want anything from the woods crawling up. I’m on watch next so
you’ll have to find a replacement. Tell them I’m sick in the infirmary.”
Josie just
nodded to all of this. Rawl was surprised she didn’t insist on coming
with them. Paul slung his bow on his back and dropped down the
rope. Rawl followed him.
“Alright,
Josie,” he called when his feet touched down.
Josie appeared
on the wall above them, but instead of pulling up the rope she swung herself
over the wall and started descending. Rawl and Paul backed away from the
wall and dropped their eyes for the sake of modesty.
“I don’t think
she understood what you wanted her to do,” Paul said.
Rawl
sighed. “She understood me just fine.”
When Josie was
down, Paul still seemed confused. “Josie, you were supposed to pull the
rope up.”
As he was
talking, she tied a heavy knot in the end of the rope and tossed the weighted
end up and over the wall. She turned to Paul. “Like that?”
“Yes, except you
were supposed to stay inside.”
“You boys aren’t
the only ones who languish here when the men go out on patrol.”