Guardians Of The Keep

CHAPTER 13

West. I scribbled a message for Philomena, saying I’d received word of Gerick and was taking two companions to investigate. While Nellia helped Kellea pack food from the larder, and Paulo readied the horses, I changed into riding clothes, found us blankets and supplies, and rummaged through Gerick’s wardrobe for a heavy cloak and thick gloves for Paulo. I dared not bring soldiers along: Kellea was risking her life by using sorcery in the Four Realms.

Within two hours of Kellea’s declaration, Paulo, Kellea, and I rode into the night.

The moon was full and newly risen, its blue-white light so bright on the snow that we cast long shadows ahead of ourselves. Only the ring of hoofbeats on the frozen road and the occasional howl of a wolf broke the silence. We rode hard. By the time the moon shadows had shifted to lie long on the road behind us, the barren heath had yielded to more substantial hills, dotted with pine and oak scrub. Ahead of us lay a dark line that looked like the edge of the world-the Forest of Tennebar, an immensity of trees that stretched to north and south, and well beyond the rugged borderlands to the west, deep into Valleor.

Why Valleor? I could not shake the nagging suspicion that Darzid was taking Gerick to the Zhid. Yet, as far as I knew, the only way to take Gerick to Gondai was across D’Arnath’s Bridge. And the Exiles’ Gate-the fiery chamber where my brother had died and Karon had restored the Bridge-lay not in Valleor, but in the high mountains of southwestern Leire, many days’ journey from here. Were more of the empty-eyed warriors hiding in the wretched places of this world, feeding off of our misery?

Our heads were nodding, and we were about to lose the light of the setting moon, so we halted at the edge of Tennebar. The trees gave us some protection from the bitter wind that gusted from the north.

Kellea had taken the last watch. She woke Paulo and me shortly after dawn. Within moments we headed into the forest, eating bread and cheese as we rode. Tennebar stretched for leagues in every direction, its vast expanse scored by wide logging trails, as its tall, straight pines were much prized for building. The sun glittered on the frosty branches. Rabbits and foxes, startled by our passing, scampered across the sparkling snow, almost invisible in their winter white fur.

By midday we were climbing the first slopes of the Cerran Brae, the low range of forested peaks that formed the natural boundary between Leire and Valleor. As the way grew steeper, the road split. A wide wagon road angled south to cross the Cerran Brae by way of Cer Feil-the South Pass. From there one could descend into the valley of the Uker River and travel south to Yurevan or Xerema or angle northwest across the Vallorean Spine to Vanesta. The northern fork was a more direct route to Vanesta, but less traveled, for Cer Dis-the North Pass-was narrow and steep, reputed to be a haven for bandits. Traders generally stayed with the safer, if longer, southern route.

Kellea dismounted and walked a few steps along each branch of the road. For each way, she found a spot bare of snow, crouched down, and picked up a handful of damp dirt from the road, letting it fall through her fingers. When she returned and remounted, she led us north toward Cer Dis.

Night fell. We forged onward, able to follow the narrowing track for a while in the dappled moonlight. But as the way became steeper, Paulo worried about the horses’ footing in the inky shadows, so, despite my chafing, we made camp. Clouds rolled in, smothering the moon and stars. Late that night, at the end of my watch, it began to snow.

The next day was a blur of misery. The light never advanced beyond dawn gray, and the air grew colder as we climbed higher. We led the horses up the steep switchbacks, each turn looking exactly the same as the one before, each made more treacherous by the lightly falling snow. Every time we saw a break in the trees on the forested ridge above us and thought that at last we were nearing the end of the ascent, we would find yet another step in the contour of the land, another slope to be traversed.

By mid-afternoon we were above the tree line, climbing a rocky defile that did little to shelter us from the bitter wind and stinging snow. The light, such as it was, was going. We were exhausted, but we dared not stop. I wasn’t sure we could survive a night in such an exposed place, and I cursed my stupidity at setting out, two women and a boy on an unfamiliar road in the middle of winter.

Paulo was in the lead. He had sharp eyes for the trail and for anything that might be difficult for the horses. I kept my eyes on the too-large, slouch-brimmed hat he’d inherited from Graeme Rowan. It bobbed up and down with the boy’s twisting gait.

About the time the light failed, I realized that Paulo was disappearing downhill. The burning muscles in my legs rejoiced, and I mustered a few words of encouragement for my horse who had plodded along gamely throughout the grueling day. If we could just get down into the trees, find grazing for the horses, build a shelter, make a fire…

Any assumptions that the downhill path would be easier were quickly swept aside. The track was steep, narrow, and icy. We descended another series of switchbacks, scarcely able to see for the snow and the settling gloom. Darzid, Gerick, the search, everything receded in importance. The whole world was reduced to the next step… One foot in front of the other… don’t slip, don’t stumble, don’t imagine what lies down the impossible, dark slope at the end of each steep traverse. Shift the reins to the other hand so your fingers don’t get numb and drop them altogether…

A yelp from in front of me broke my concentration. The slouch-brimmed hat vanished into the murk. Paulo’s horse stopped dead in the track.

“Paulo!” I yelled over the blustering wind. No answer. I picked my way carefully around Paulo’s horse and the packhorse. It was fortunate I took care, for we had come to a set of snow-covered steps that signaled the end of one descent and the reversal of direction that would begin another. It appeared that at least one of the steps had been a false one, carved of snow instead of rock. Slide marks led right off the edge into the dark unknown below the trail.

“Paulo!” I screamed again. In a moment’s lull in the gale, I believed I heard a soft moaning just below me and to the left.

“Holy gods…” Kellea had crept up behind me. “He’s down there.”

Without taking my eyes from the spot where I thought I’d heard him, I told her to get a rope… and to watch her step. She was back in moments.

“One of us has to go down,” I said. “Is there anything to tie the rope to?”

“Only his horse.”

“Can you steady the beast and hold the rope if I go down? You’re likely the stronger.”

“I think so.”

We tied the rope to the horse and to my waist. I forced my frozen fingers to remember the sailors’ knots my friend Jacopo had tried so hard to teach me. When all was as secure as I could make it, I told Kellea to start paying out the rope a little at a time. She murmured to the horse about what a good boy Paulo was and how important it was to hold fast.

I told myself the same and stepped backward over the edge. My boot found no purchase on the steep slope, leaving me sprawling face first in the snowy embankment. Shaking, I held on tight until I was sure the rope was taut and the knots around my waist snug. When my heart was out of my throat and my voice would come out in more than a croak, I started calling for Paulo. “Hold on,” I said. “I’m coming. Make a noise so I can find you.”

The next step down. Better. I found rock. If only I had a little light. I could scarcely see the darker patches where rock and dirt protruded from the snow. Estimating the angle of Paulo’s slide, I tried to stay to one side of his path. I called again, but heard only the wind and the rush of fear in my ears. Down another step. The upper part of the embankment was incredibly steep. I slipped again and got a mouthful of dirt and snow. Was this what it was like to be blind, every step fraught with terror, stomach lurching, not knowing if your destination was within a finger’s breadth or ten leagues away? How could Paulo have survived such a fall? This could be the very edge of the world for all I could see.

Kellea yelled something that was snatched away by the wind.

I stretched for a foothold. Stepped down again, trying to be sure of it. Where was he? “Paulo, help me find you.”

To your right! screamed Kellea, directly into my head.

I moved to the right. Gods, where did the earth go? I flailed about in panic when my hand and foot found only a pitch-black void instead of a solid hillside. No, it was just that a piece of the slope had slumped away, leaving a scooped-out bowl of snow. A darker patch lay on the far side of it, and I heard the faint moan once again.

A little farther…

The snowy shelf angled outward. I eased onto it, digging in the uphill edge of my boot to make decent footing, scarcely daring to let down my weight in fear it would give way. I crept toward the sprawled figure, unable to determine his position, until I realized that one of his feet was pointed at a totally impossible angle. Oh, curse it all… Even insensible he was holding on, his fingers dug into the snow and the dirt. Probably better if he could stay asleep. He wouldn’t want to feel what it was going to be like to get him up the embankment.

Carefully I scrabbled into the snow at the back of the shelf, trying to make a spot that was fairly level, not at all happy to discover that the outsloping snow lay over out-sloping rock. The snow would have to hold me in. I settled myself into the spot; then, hating every moment of it, I untied the rope.

“We’re going to haul you up, Paulo. Hold on. It’s going to be all right…” Carefully… carefully I knotted the rope about Paulo as snugly as possible. No way to immobilize his leg until we got him up. Then, I gave three hard tugs on the rope. At the first creeping movement, Paulo screamed in agony. Slowly, Kellea, I begged silently.

I’ve known nothing that’s taken so long as it did to drag Paulo up that embankment. After the first scream he never cried out, but I could hear his muffled sobs for a long while. When he at last fell quiet, I prayed that he wasn’t dead. In fate’s crudest perversity, the broken leg was not the one that was already crooked, the one that gave the clumsy twist to his walk and made the children of Dunfarrie call him donkey.

He’s up. Watch for the rope. Soon the rope dangled in front of the ledge. Unfortunately it was just out of reach. Gingerly I shifted forward, outward, until I could grab it and tie it about me. Three tugs and I started to climb, scrabbling upward and eating a good deal of dirt and snow as I went. I didn’t really care, as long as the rope held.

When I crawled over the edge of the path, I lay in the snow panting beside a motionless Paulo. Kellea sat beside me, her head bowed. “We’ve got to get him downhill and get a fire going,” she said, nudging my aching shoulder.

I nodded, and we stumbled to our feet. Together we bundled the limp Paulo in blankets, using our rope to bind one of them tightly about his leg to hold it as still as possible. Then we laid the boy across the saddle and tied him to his horse. Kellea took the lead as we crept down the trail.

The next hour passed in a misery of snow and cold, wind and exhaustion. When Kellea made an abrupt halt and scrabbled about in the snowy hillside on our right, I could do nothing but stand huddled in my cloak, numb, dull, too tired even to ask what she could possibly be doing. To my astonishment, she, her horse, the packhorse, and the spare mount we’d brought for Gerick disappeared abruptly in a direction that couldn’t possibly be right. But I forced my frozen feet to follow… into a cave, deeper and wider than I could reach with my arms, and wonderfully out of the wind. I vowed never again to travel without a Dar’Nethi Finder.

We lifted Paulo down first. Then, while I felt my way carefully with hands and feet, leading the horses a little deeper into the cave where they couldn’t step on us, Kellea worked at starting a fire. She had never learned how to manage it with sorcery. From the mumbled oaths as she worked her balky flint, I guessed that fire-making would be the next thing she learned from the Dar’Nethi swordwoman.

Carrying blankets and what extra clothes I could grab from our packs in the blackness, I crept my way back to Paulo. I bundled him up and wrapped my arms around him, trying to share what little warmth I had, willing Kellea’s flashing sparks to catch whatever she had found to burn. When the first sickly flame split the darkness, long before it provided any warmth, I sobbed silently in gratitude.

The cave looked like a way station for bandits. All manner of odd things lay about: broken crates, a few barrels, a spilled bag of blue-dyed yarn, chewed by generations of vermin. The blackened fire pit lay near the mouth of the cave, filthy with half-charred animal bones and unrecognizable muck. But a good supply of dry firewood was stacked beside it.

Paulo was awake and shivering uncontrollably, eyes glazed with misery, lips bloody from holding back his cries. His skin was pale and clammy. “We’ll soon have you warm,” I said, as Kellea ripped twigs from the larger pieces to feed her hungry flames. Fumbling with a waterskin and my handkerchief, I wiped the dirt and blood from the boy’s mouth.

As soon as the fire was blazing, I turned to Paulo’s injuries. Kellea knelt beside me, stroking his forehead while I cut away his muddy breeches and leggings. I tried not to let my voice reflect the grim sight I was uncovering. “About time we got you some new clothes, Paulo.” Oh, gods have mercy…

“I’ve brought a few things,” Kellea said quietly over my shoulder. “I’d best get them.”

Kellea’s herbs weren’t going to do much for Paulo. His lower left leg was broken in at least two places that I could see, possibly one more from the way he moaned when I touched his swollen knee. A shard of bone protruded through mangled flesh and sinew above his ankle, and he was bleeding profusely. At the least we had to straighten the breaks and stop the bleeding. Yet, even if we could keep the injury from killing him with sepsis or blood loss, I doubted the limb would ever be usable.

Kellea unrolled a small leather bundle containing a number of paper packets and small tin boxes. Tearing open a packet, she crushed several dark green leaves in her palm, transferred them to Paulo’s tongue, then gave him a sip of wine to wash them down. “This’ll make you sleepy, so it won’t hurt so very much. We’ll give it a little time to work before we see to your leg. Same as we did for Graeme when he was hurt. You remember.”

He nodded ever so slightly.

I tried to blot away some of the blood from his ankle, but when I so much as touched the grotesque wound, he sucked in his breath and his face went even whiter. Little whimpering moans caught at the back of his throat. “Ah, Paulo, I know it’s awful. But we have to press on it a bit to stop the bleeding. Can’t have you leaking all over the blankets.”

While Kellea stoked the fire to roaring and put a pot of water on to boil, I held the ragged remnant of Paulo’s breeches on his wound. First we cleaned the wound with wine and boiled oak bark from Kellea’s packet and forced the bone back inside, and then I held his upper body while Kellea pulled and twisted his poor limb into some semblance of alignment. Gripping my arms, he buried his face in my breast and did his best not to scream. But he couldn’t manage it. His racking sobs tore me to the heart. After a while he fell insensible again and we finished the horrid task as best we could. From a small tin, Kellea extracted an oily yellow paste and spread it onto his torn flesh, then bandaged and splinted his leg with pieces of a broken crate, binding it with lengths of our rope. So pitifully little we could do.

Kellea was almost as pale as the boy when she was done. “It’s far from straight, but I just can’t get it to move any more,” she said. “We’d have to use rope and pulleys to make it right, but even then I’m afraid we’d just do more damage. I’m no surgeon.”

I threw Kellea’s cloak over her shoulders as she dribbled willowbark tea into Paulo’s mouth. Then I moved the horses farther into the deep cave and unsaddled them, giving them a cursory wipe-down with a piece of sacking Paulo kept for that purpose. We couldn’t afford to have them die on us. I dared give them only half a ration of grain from Paulo’s emergency supplies. Who knew how long we’d be here? By the time I had done what I could for the beasts and hauled the rest of our supplies close, Kellea had fallen asleep.

All through the night we took turns watching Paulo and feeding the fire. I forgave the bandits their crimes in thanks for the wood. Paulo shivered and moaned quietly, and I gave him more of the willowbark tea. What on earth were we to do?

At some time, I fell asleep without waking Kellea. When my shoulder was touched lightly, guilt set me apologizing even before I could unglue my eyelids. “Is he all right? I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” I fought my bone-weariness to sit up, but my dream refused to be banished with the opening of my eyes. Paulo lay beside me, his cold hand gripping mine. His face was pinched and pale, but bore a trace of his old grin as he gazed up at the one who knelt on the other side of him.

“This will hurt for a moment,” said the newcomer, his voice quiet, weaving a cocoon of peace and reassurance, “but nothing as to what you’ve done already. Then I’ll be with you, and we’ll take care of it. All right?”

Paulo nodded, a silver knife flashed in the firelight, and Karon’s words of healing scattered embers of enchantment like fireflies through the cave.