“Where is the witch?”
Again I told him the truth. Though we did not use that term, I understood his meaning.
“She was within.”
“Well enough.” Now he did turn away and make his report to the others, and they spoke for some time among themselves.
I felt very weak and tired and wished I could drop to the ground. My head hurt still, as if the assault of sound upon my ears had injured something far inside my skull, and the despair of my captivity was a leaden cloak about me. Yet I held as well as I could to my resolve to keep my pride.
He faced me again, this time looking me up and down searchingly. In his beard his thick lips grinned in some ways like those men who had first taken me.
“You are no farm wench, not with mail on your back. I am thinking we have caught us a prize. But more of that later.”
So I was allowed a respite, for at his orders I was left on the river bank, where their boats clustered and men were still leaping ashore. To my eyes they seemed as many as the stalks of grain in the fields, and there was no end to them. How could our small force have hoped to halt them even for an instant, any more than a single pebble might halt the flow of a spring flood.
There I also saw what had happened to our men. Some had fallen in battle. Those were the lucky ones. For the rest – no, I shall try to hold the doors of memory against what happened to them. I believed now the invaders were not humans but demons.
I think they took pains for me to see all this in order to break me. But in that they judged me wrong, for it stiffened rather than bent me to any will of theirs. It is not how a man dies, but how he bears that final act that has meaning. And the same is true for a woman of the dales. In me grew a coldness like the steel from the Waste, twice-forged and stronger than any other thing in our world. I swore that Dame Math was right, and I must contrive to make my own passing count against the enemy.
But it seemed they now forgot me. I was still bound, and they made the rope fast to one of the boat-chains. Men came and looked at me from time to time as if I were a prisoned beast. Their hands were on my hair and my face, and they jabbered at me in their own tongue, doubtless warning of much I would certainly rue. But none did more than that. It was coming night, and they had set up a line of campfires and were driving in sheep and cattle, slaughtering some of them.
A mounted party had gone down-dale in pursuit of our people. I besought the Flame that those fleeing had won the rugged land where their guides could lead them by routes only dalesmen knew.
Once I saw a small party return, heard women screaming for a while, and knew that some of our people had been run down. I tried to close my ears, shut off thought. This was that place of Outer Darkness come to earth, that place to which evil crawls and from which it issues forth again-and to that evil there is no end.
I tried to plan my own ending before they could turn to me for amusement. The river-could I hurl myself into the waters there? If I could edge along the chain to which my rope had been tied, surely there was a chance.
Toross – dully I wondered what had become of him. I had not seen his body with those others. Perhaps he had escaped at the last. If so, I could still find a small, unfrozen part in me that wished him well. Oddly at that thought his face was vivid in my mind, as sharp as if he stood before my eyes. Within my mail and under my jerkin something was warm.
The gryphon. That unlucky bauble which had doomed me to this state. The gryphon was growing ever warmer, almost like a brand laid to my skin. From it flooded not only that heat, but something else, a strength, a belief in myself against all the evidence that reason provided for my outer eye and ear. It was like some calm voice assuring me that there was a way out, and that my delivery was at hand, though I knew this could not be.
Fear became a small, far-off thing, easy to put aside. My sight was more acute, my hearing keener. My hearing – !
Even through the clamor of the camp I detected that sound. There was something coming-down-river!
How I knew this, I could not have told. But I knew I must be ready. Perhaps I was only dazed by fatigue, by my fear and despair. Yet I was as certain of this rescue as I was that I still lived and breathed.
“Joisan!” A thread of whisper, but to my alerted ears so near a shout, I feared all the camp might hear it.
I was afraid to answer aloud, but I turned my head a fraction in the direction from which they had come, hoping the gesture would signal my recognition.
“Edge – this – way – “ The words came from the river. “If – you – can – “
Tortuous and slow were my efforts to obey. I kept watch on all about me, my back to where that voice whispered, lest I somehow betray this hope. Now I felt wet hands reach up to mine, the swing of a knife against the rope. That fell away, my stiffened hands were caught and held; my rescuer was half in the water. “Slip over!” he ordered.
I wore mail and the dragging skirt. I could not hope to swim so burdened. Yet it would be better to meet death cleanly. Now I waited as a party of the invaders tramped along the path. They did not glance in my direction. Then I rolled over and down into the water, felt hands catch and drag me even as I gulped air and went under.
We were in the grip of the current where the stream ran the swiftest, and my struggles would not surface me for long. I choked and thought this was the end. Still that other fought for me, with what poor aid I could give. We came against a rock where he clung and held my head above the flood.
His face was close to mine, and it was no surprise to see that Toross held me so.
“Let me go. You have given me clean death, kinsman. For that I thank you – “
“I give you life!” he replied, and there was stark determination in his face. “Hold you here, Joisan!” He set my hands to the rock and I held. He crawled and pulled himself up into the air, and then by main force, for I had little strength left, dragged me up beside him. By fortune we had come across the river into rough pastureland, downstream from the ruins of Ithkrypt, and between us and the western hills was now the full invader force. Toross was shivering, and I saw he had stripped to his linen undershirt, his mail gone. There was a raw slash across his cheek where blood welled.
“Up!” He caught my arm, pulling at me. My long skirt, so water-soaked, was like a trap about my legs, and the mail was a deadweight upon me. But I stumbled forward, unable to believe that we had actually achieved this much and that the alarm for my escape had not yet sounded.
Thus we reached some rocks and fell, rather than dropped, behind them. I fumbled with the lacings of my mail, wanting to be rid of that, but Toross caught my hands.
“No, you may need that yet. We are far from out of the dragon’s jaws.”
Of that I needed no reminding. I had no weapon, and, as far as I could see, Toross carried none except the knife. Perhaps he had found a sword too weighty for that swim. We were reduced to that single blade and perhaps stones snatched from the ground if we were cornered.
“We must take the hills.” In the growing dark he gestured up-slope. “And try to work our way around those butchers to join our people. But we had better wait for full dark.”
Something in me urged action, to get as far from those fires, the noise across the river, as we could. Yet what he said made sense. To draw upon one’s patience was a new ordeal, I now discovered.
“How – how did you come alive from the river battle?” I asked.