Suddenly I sensed a change in his blade, that most sensitive antenna reaching out to touch me. I sensed a change and knew. Now he would kill me. Now I would die.
Was my life all for nothing, then? My hopes gone? My dreams blasted? All my struggles for nothing? All the hopes of my father that I might found a family and let our blood march on down the centuries to come? Was this to be the end, here on this dark moor by starlight?
The ground slanted downward behind me. I found myself on a slight slope, which gave him the greater height, the greatef advantage. What was happening? Where was I? There was no chance to look to right or left now, it was parry and thrust, and then suddenly I felt rather than saw a vast gulf opening behind me. His blade was up, poised for a thrust, and I threw myself back and down, falling backward, hoping to strike the turf and roll, to get away, to escape by any means.
I fell, an impossible distance. My shoulders hit the ground with a thump, and I lost my grip on the sword-cane and it fell from me. I rolled over and tumbled, head over heels into a black, misty yoid. I tried to catch myself but there was nothing on which to lay hold and the slope was impossibly steep. I was falling, into what awful depth I knew not, but over and over I tumbled until suddenly I was brought up with a sickening thud upon some rocks.
How far had I fallen? Perhaps not more than ten or a dozen feet in that first sheer fall, but I must have tumbled down the rest of the slope, sliding, falling, tumbling again for several hundred feet.
A moment I lay still, surrounded by darkness and fog. Then, slowly, I rolled over and tried to push myself up, only to gasp with shock at my torn hands.
I rolled to my knees and stood up. No bones were broken that I could feel. Yet I hurt in every part of my body and my hands were bloody, my face as well.
I must escape … I must somehow get away. There was bound to be a way down and they would come for me. Dumbly, hurt and shamed that I had been so thoroughly beaten, I stumbled away into the mist. I could see nothing but the fog. There was heather around; I knew that because I brushed against it. I was on a moorland or something like. On and on I plodded, stupid with pain and weariness, knowing only that help—if any there was to be—lay far from here. I must get away before the morning light came again.
I tripped and sprawled my length. For a moment I lay, as I was wishing only to stay there, even to die there, but something within me urged me up and on.
Time and again I fell, time and again I got up. Often I lay still for minutes, but always something drove me on. Finally, as day was breaking I came upon a copse choked with brush. Crawling into it, I lay still, more dead than alive. Yet the last thought with me as I lay there was: how could I have lost? How could he have been so much superior?
A long tune I slept, muttering in my half-sleep, crying out as some sore place touched the earth, until at last the cold dawn came and with it awakening.
Cold and wet. There had been the mist, and then the dew, perhaps. I shivered and tried to sit up. My muscles were stiff and heavy, my head was hard to hold up, my eyesight blurred as I stared about. Only the copse, the brush, the fallen leaves, a few broken branches. Groaning, I crawled out and stood cautiously up.
Nothing was about … I was alone. Alone on a vast, wide, unknown land. Yet there was a smell in it of the sea, a smell from the westward.
From among the broken branches I found one that would do for a staff, and I started on. All the morning through I walked. Clouds gathered. The sky was a sullen gray. Rain began to fall. On I went, staggering a little at times, but pushing on.
To where? To a destiny somewhere, a destiny I must fulfill. At last I came to a stream and on its banks I sat down. After resting, I bathed my face, and bathed my bloody, gravel-torn hands. They were a fearful sight, and my face, too, from what I could see of it. Yet gingerly, I washed that, too. Then I drank, and I drank again. Refreshed, I looked around. A few trees bordered the stream, nothing else. At last, fearfully hungry, I got to my feet. Stooping to pick up my staff, I almost fell again.
I started downstream. For some inexplicable reason I was heading for the sea. What awaited me there I did not know, except that to me it symbolized escape. At the sea began all things and ended all things, perhaps. In which direction was I pointed? To another beginning, or to an end? I had no way of knowing. Nevertheless, I continued, because it was in me to go on, to persevere; so it was, and so my whole life long it would be.
The stream wound onward, sometimes through low hills, sometimes higher ones, occasionally on the flat, but steadily it ran down slope, and somewhere ahead was the sea.
Suddenly, a voice. “You, there! What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
It took my eyes a moment to focus, for I’d taken a bad rap on the skull and they functioned not at all well. It was a man, a man in a cart.
“It would seem so,” I said. “I had a fall.”
“Come along then,” he said. “Climb in and I shall take you where we can look. My faith, but you’re bloody! Was it only a fall, then?”
“Only a fall,” I said. “And a little hunger.”
11
He gave me a long, careful look. “You are but a lad,” he said gently. “Have you no home, then?”
“I have none. What I once had is gone and will not be again until I make it of myself.”
“Where are you from?”
The question was not one I wished to answer, so I simply said I had been going toward the sea and had a bad fall in the darkness and the fog. When I described what I could of the place, he nodded and suggested, “Near Hardnose Pass, I have no doubt. There is a rough, wild country yon.”
The pony plodded steadily on. “My cottage is but a little way along,” the driver said, “and you can stay the night if you are so minded. We can have a look at those hands, for they are in fearful shape.”
On and on we went, interminably, it seemed to me. I dozed, awoke, and dozed again. I was awakened by his pulling into the yard of a thatched cottage, a well-built place with stables about and some other animals.
A man came from the stable. “Ben? See to the pony. I will speak with you later.”
Staggering with weariness as I was, I hesitated. To stop here might be to be trapped, although I had come a goodly distance. “I have far to go,” I said, “and must be getting on, although I am obliged for the ride you have given me.”
“What is it? Are you pursued, then?”
“It may be that I am,” I said, “although they be scoundrels who would pursue me. Yet I have no friends, and they have many.”
“You have a friend in me,” he said. “Come in, lad.”
It was warm and pleasant within, a fire on the hearth and a table set with trenchers for our eating. A woman stood looking at us. Her hair was fair with a tinge of red to it and her cheeks were flushed from the fire. “I heard your voices, and there’s a-plenty for both.”
Then she saw my face. “Why, the lad is hurt! Come here to the fire, so we can see!”
She looked carefully at my skinned face and the bruises, and then put warm water in a basin and with a bit of cloth began to sponge off my face and take away the encrusted blood and gravel. After a bit she desisted and cleaned my hands a bit more, although I had washed them in the Esk, for such was the name of the stream.
“Here! Sit up and have a bite, then we’ll get on with it. You must be fairly starved.”
“I am that,” I agreed. “Where is it I am?”
“The village yon is Boot,” the man said. “The hall yonder is empty now for the family is from home to London. Most of them,” he said with a wry glance at his wife.