The War, page 24
And Jedediah Crayes hoped that openness would stay. But in the morning Mordred was the same guarded, stone-faced creature.
What was wrong with him? Jedediah Crayes demanded silently. He could not have suddenly grown afraid of Jedediah Crayes’ company. Or had he? But they had grown accustomed to one another. Mordred had let himself be vulnerable, and Jedediah Crayes had grown used to it, and now he was refusing to be vulnerable any longer.
He sensed that he was very close on the truth—groping on its very edges, even—and held on to that thought. But try as he did, and he tried very hard, he could not find a certain answer.
In disgust he lay back on a limb. Who wanted to ferret out the complex ifs and maybes of someone else’s mind? Send me a group of bandits to arrest, he thought sentimentally, and wondered why he had involved himself in Orden’s silly mess in the first place. It would only reinforce everyone’s opinion that he had an attachment to the country.
Mordred’s wound did appear much better than it had the previous day, and Jedediah Crayes announced that they would flee that night. As veils of darkness gathered over the world, he climbed down from the tree and headed for the Runnicoran camp.
~
Mordred watched the stars growing white and iridescent, but his eyes fixed there so unswervingly scarcely saw them. They were seeing other things—a score of other things, some old, and some newer, all chafing with a pain that lurked close by, and would hurt much more if he let down the shield.
The worst of it was the thought that he must go back again. Perhaps, he thought with awakening sureness, it was because Inspector Dickson was near that he hated the return so much. Also, he knew, it was that he had nothing to distract him, nothing else to concentrate his will upon. But one way or another, the return always meant that the memories surged up, and the wounds reopened.
He did not want to die anymore. He had been sick then, confused with grief and fever and more muddled than he knew. Now, he was ready to fight, to fight against the memories with every weapon he had, to fight because, with his stubborn blood, he would not give up; and whatever it took to keep them out, so be it.
Something scuffled nearby and Jedediah Crayes sprang lightly up into the crook of the tree, carrying with him a wave of pure self-complacency. “Down you get, Mordred Kenhelm.” He offered him a hand, but Mordred brushed it aside; he had already climbed down and up once—without Jedediah Crayes’ knowledge—just to be sure he could. In a tree, arms are as much use as legs, and with his good leg for the odd bit of leverage he managed to swing down with an ease that Jedediah Crayes noted reluctantly.
He was waiting for Mordred at the bottom, though, and would not brook contradiction in helping him to the horse. “The dark mare’s for you,” he said, nodding to the near horse. “Her gaits are easier. Couldn’t spare the time to find a saddle. Can you sit a horse bareback?”
Mordred balked inwardly, and then hurled his doubts aside. “I don’t have a choice,” he said steadily and with a firm shove from Jedediah Crayes launched himself off his left leg onto the horse’s warm, squirming back.
Squirming was the way it felt, wriggling and pulsating as though it were a nest of worms he was astride and not a horse, but after a moment he began to be used to it, and it felt merely like life underneath him; and also the mare herself grew quieter, for he realized she had startled a little when he landed so rudely on her. “Sa, lass,” he murmured, rubbing her neck. “Sa, sa.”
Jedediah Crayes watched him in an unreadable way, his brows twitching together; Mordred was indifferently aware of his gaze. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a good hand with horses?” he said abruptly. Without waiting he leaped on his own and urged it forward under the drooping trees.
“Come,” he said, looking back to see that Mordred was following. “We’ve a ride ahead of us—a ride to make the Flight of Galdeol and Thorgan pale by relation.”
“Then let us ride,” said Mordred, and he was afraid, mostly about his leg, but his fear served only to whet his senses and make him more eager for the danger ahead.
Then the voice rang out behind them. It spoke in Runnicoran, clear and uncompromising. “Who goes in the dark?”
~
Jedediah Crayes had two dozen glib retorts on his tongue for the challenger. But he never spoke them, for a torch pierced the drowsy darkness of the forest, and its long orange fingers groped nearer.
“Ride,” he snapped to Mordred, and dug in his heels; his mount broke into a flying trot, and then a canter. “Stay right behind me,” he flung back, hoping Mordred heard him. Even a canter was madness in the forest at night, but Jedediah Crayes had spent hours traversing the woods yesterday for a reason, and he knew exactly where he was going. If Mordred could stay directly on his trail, all was well. They could certainly afford no slower a pace, not now when all the light was with their enemies.
They broke loose of the trees into frothing stream-shallows. “Downstream,” Jedediah Crayes barked and swerved the horse right.
They splashed through the water for some hundreds of yards, until Jedediah Crayes felt the bed growing grittier underfoot, and then pebbly, and turned them out onto the bank. To have either horse lose footing or catch a hoof between two stones would be disaster. Still, the shore was clear with moonlight, the trees sparser, and they ran with steady speed alongside the water.
“This should run into the Dirion River,” said Jedediah Crayes above the sound of hooves. “We’ll swim across when we reach it.”
“How far—is the West Gate?” Mordred’s voice sounded strained, either with pain, or exertion, or both.
“The West Gate? We might reach it by dawn. Let’s hope so, because if not, we’ll be a target for all the arrows in the world.”
The pursuit had fallen behind for a little, but it was picking up again. Jedediah Crayes shot a glance down the bank and saw them swooping down, shouting emboldenment to their horses as they caught sight of the two riders ahead of them.
“Oh, drat,” he muttered under his breath, the wry, passionless exclamation reflecting his cool-headed mood. It was going to be a long, hard ride.
The moon was setting when they reached the Dirion River’s vast waters and Jedediah Crayes, knowing that Mordred’s leg must be interfering with his grip on the horse, felt a prickle of concern.
“Can you swim?” he demanded as the water swirled around the horses’ hocks.
“No,” said Mordred, his voice a rough gasp this time.
“Then hold on,” Jedediah Crayes ordered.
Mordred held. There was one doubtful moment when his mare seemed to be foundering under her own weariness and Mordred’s weight, but she gained the far ground, and the four of them came out sodden on the other side at last, and the last sliver of moon sank into the west.
South they galloped, and now the land was clear, though the stars were the only light. The Runnicorans drew closer.
Then something moved on the grey flats, coming out of a dark mass of woods, swinging around in an arc to intercept them from the southeast.
“Oh, bother,” said Jedediah Crayes.
It was a Runnicoran patrol.
CHAPTER 23
DARKNESS SWAM OVER HIM, WEBBED and cloudy and faintly imprisoning. But his mind had broken loose of it, and he knew that he was waking and soon his body would come free as well.
He remembered the moon, and the small, soft-eyed dark mare. “Downstream,” said a terse, snapping voice in his head, and then he remembered the chase, the pain in his leg growing worse and worse until his whole world became two words: Hold on. Crossing the Dirion River, and then—then the patrol racing out of the trees to cut them off. They were hemmed in, trapped.
Jedediah Crayes’ voice, hard, cutting through to him: “Mordred, boy, are you with me?” His own answer, fiercely firm, firmer than he was. The responding order: Stay with me. And then Jedediah Crayes’ horse leaping away in a blur, and Mordred pressing his mare after, spurring her on with every word and physical thrust he had, unable to ever quite catch up, the pain of his leg fading away to less than nothing in the intensity and rush. Passing under the nose of the foremost horse, a blade slicing just above his head—and they were away, racing down the shore, the pursuit stringing out behind them and trying vainly to gather up the lost ground. The horse flew under him like a winged thing, and as light rolled up over the sky, he felt wonderfully free, and at the same time empty of breath, weight, or even life . . .
Gathering their horses in at the West Gate, arrows arcing over their heads, but not at them—aimed at the Runnicorans behind; the gate swinging open, and the world crashing over him again in a great wave of heat and vertigo and noise. He remembered feeling sick with the heat, so sick that he might have vomited; he did not remember whether he had; but he knew he had fallen off the horse, because he remembered the mare’s breath snuffling by his ear, while voices babbled dimly through the noise, which he realized now had been mostly in his own head.
And that was the last he remembered.
Where was he now? He knew he had been sleeping a long time; he remembered no dreams, but the darkness behind him felt long and unbroken. He opened his eyes, and saw a distant stone ceiling that looked like it might be cobwebbed.
Without thinking whether it might hurt him, he turned his head to the side. It did not hurt, and he saw a flat grey stone wall that shot up until it met that far-off ceiling with a join of many cobwebs. The floor needed sweeping.
What is the matter with me? he thought. I am turning into Laufeia.
He turned to the other side, and saw rows of rude cots stretching out to the end of a long, bare room, a figure on every one, and more figures, women mostly, moving between them. And then he knew where he was, and he felt tired and a little abandoned.
So, they had brought him to a hospice and left him there. That was all very well; of course Jedediah Crayes had his own things to be doing, but he could not help the abandoned feeling.
“Aye, lad, awake, are we?” An older woman with a sharp chin and a low, throaty voice settled her fingers over his forehead. He squirmed away.
“Hold still, lad.”
He shook his head harder, dislodging her fingers. He resented her calling him “lad.” He disliked everything about her.
“How’s the leg feeling, aye?”
“My leg is fine,” he said stiffly. He had not thought about his leg till now; it gave off a dull ache, but was almost unnoticeable.
“Not hurting none? Now, boy, you can tell it to me.”
“It is fine,” he said between his teeth, hating her more with every second.
She took his mounting fury for pain, and murmured soothingly, patting him on the cheek. He wrenched away again, pressing his face violently into the cot.
“Lass!” he heard the woman calling. “You come see to this boy; I can’t do naught with him.”
Feet patted over the stones and another hand, firm but smaller and much gentler, touched him on the shoulder. “What’s the trouble?” asked the girl, and Mordred knew that she was speaking to him, not the woman.
But he knew her voice, too, a low voice that crooned easily and seemed to have a joyous laughter underneath it. “Mirda,” he said, looking up; and suddenly the world was a little warmer, and he did not feel quite so abandoned.
“I declare, he knows you,” said the woman, and Mordred gave her a look rather like a cat about to hiss.
“It’s all right, Priscilla, you can go,” Mirda said reassuringly but quite adamantly, and the older woman walked away. Mordred sighed and lay back with shut eyes as Mirda settled herself down beside the bed.
“Now, I won’t bother you about how you’re feeling,” said Mirda cheerfully, “because I’m sure you are much more interested in hearing about how you got here. Do you know how long you’ve been sleeping?”
“No,” said Mordred, opening his eyes and watching her as she sat with arms hugging her knees and her guileless blue eyes smiling at him. “How long?”
“A day, more or less. Several men brought you in unconscious, and one of them, a tall man—nearly as tall as you, I daresay—with a hawklike sort of face said to look after you well, and that he would come back in a day or two. You’ve been sleeping ever since, but it must have been a good sleep; you’re looking well.”
Mordred’s heart stirred with a comforted happiness, and a regret for the complaints he had harbored so hastily. He had not been left forgotten at all.
But another thought invaded, and the days loomed up ahead of him like a dark prison corridor. “How long until I can walk?” he asked.
Mirda twitched her shoulders in a small shrug. “They’ll probably let you leave in several days with a crutch. I expect you’ll be able to walk properly in a week, or a little longer. It looks like an old wound.”
He said nothing. She might think whatever she wanted about the wound; he was not going to tell her. He was also not going to use a crutch.
~
Mirda left for other tasks, and the brightness that had lifted Mordred’s spirit with her sunny nature seemed to die with her going. He tossed on the cot, every small thing vexing him: an ache in his back, an ant crawling up the bed frame, someone laughing loudly. There were no windows in the room, and he hated its cold, dreary air, the feeling of ominous enclosure from the eyeless walls.
He heard the woman Priscilla more times than he could count, talking to patients near him and generally managing the ward. No one came near him again, and he was glad; he wanted to be left alone.
Early in the afternoon, he heard Priscilla’s voice rise above the half-stillness again. “You there, aye, you, lad. Go see to the young man at the end, and change the dressing on his leg.”
“Ma’am,” muttered a voice that Mordred had never expected to hear in this place and hated beyond any other thing in the world.
“No whining!” Priscilla overrode him firmly. “Go, at once, I tell you.”
The thrashing rage began to well up, slow at first and then dangerously high, and he kept it tightly, carefully covered, lest he lose control. Inspector Dickson appeared beside his bed, face wary, and Mordred let his lip curl up a little. “Come to gloat?” he asked.
He watched the bafflement sink into Inspector Dickson’s face, the comprehension, the growing anger, and felt a hot satisfaction inside.
“I am here to help, not crow,” answered Inspector Dickson in that hard way, his anger held back under a taut, stern mask. Mordred’s fury, eased slightly, boiled afresh.
“So they have put you to work after all? Inspector Wilhelm Dickson, nursemaid to the soldiers. I hope you are not too disappointed that your leisure time in Orden was cut short.”
“Have done!” snapped Inspector Dickson, his calm breaking for a moment. “I wish to be here no more than you wish to have me, and if I had a say in the matter I would be on the other side of the hospice! So hold your fishwife’s tongue and we will part ways the quicker.”
A taunting smile reigned freely over Mordred’s face. “So you can insult as well as gloat. But I forgot, of course you can. You are falling from your former proficiency, are you not? I seem to recall such choice words as ‘murderer’—”
“Have done,” Inspector Dickson ground out roughly through a clenched and tremoring jaw.
Mordred could not stop. He did not want to stop. “Have done? Have I said something untrue? Do tell. Remind me and I will mend it, for Inspector Dickson’s word is beyond reproach and what he assures me must be true.”
“Listen,” spat Inspector Dickson, “I have had enough. Why must you believe me so incapable of good? Why are you so insistent to forget what you owe me? I could have left you to rot, a dozen times. It was not me the werevulture wanted revenge on.”
Overcome with rage, Mordred would have spoken, but Inspector Dickson plunged on. “I suppose I never learned why he wished revenge. Maybe he had a good reason.”
Mordred bit on his lip, forced his trembling to still; for his fury had completely blinded him and the world might have turned upside down for all he knew.
“I have yet to see anything good in you, after all,” said Inspector Dickson, mocking a little in fierce retaliation, knowing he had the upper hand now.
“Then that is two of us,” said Mordred, almost desultorily, and he was bitter because his voice shook with anger and Inspector Dickson would not know it was anger and would scorn him for weakness. Inside him seemed to be a great throbbing, bruising storm, and he was lost in it. His hatred was the only real thing in the world, the only thing left he had to hold to, and yet it was killing him.
“Go,” he said viciously, not caring whether his voice shook or the whole house crumbled around his ears. “If you lay a hand on me I will—I will—” He did not know what he would do, and that was the worst thing yet, and as Inspector Dickson stood there he whirled away and flung his head against the thin mattress, the straw poking through the coarse linen into his hot, dry-eyed face.
Someone touched his leg a long, long time later. He shied like a deer, but it was not Inspector Dickson, only Priscilla.
His whole body ached and trembled as he lay back down again. His jaw hurt. His leg hurt, too, as Priscilla changed the dressings, but it did not matter. He thrust his arm across his eyes and clamped his jaw shut again, despite the rough, dragging pain, because the anger was still there and if he did nothing with it he would go mad.
~
Mordred had three visitors at different times the next day. The shadow of Inspector Dickson was still thick and ugly over his thoughts, and afterwards when he thought of the visitors he could only remember parts, little things which were jewel-like against the haziness of the whole.
The first was Jedediah Crayes. He talked a great deal about many things, from how well Mordred was looking to what had been going on in the war councils—and had to catch himself, before he let slip certain things that would be better for the whole hospice not to hear.
“I stopped by the barracks on my way here,” he mentioned, “and ferreted out your division. Found out someone called Fenris Kenhelm, a thin stripling of a lad, and told him your whereabouts.”
