Downstream they floated.
The flow of the river slowed, grew sluggish, offering them less hope of early escape from the darkness. The hollow roar of running water diminished to a muttering churgling; men, no longer compelled to shout, spoke with muted voices, and as the days went by they spoke less and less.
They caught fish. They scragged wet flesh from fine-comb bones with knives that were going rusty in the darkness. The rafts knocked together in the darkness, and, as men lay dreaming, that sound translated itself into the restless trunfling of nameless monsters. Men developed sores from lying damp on damp rafts; Gorn complained that his gums were bleeding, but he could have been imagining it.
Downstream they floated.
Blackwood listened to the steady chutter-gutter of water, to the thonk-clonk of rafts knocking against each other. He felt as if they were being mumbled down a long dark throat. He imagined them being digested in the darkness, becoming first blind then toothless then hairless, sores eating through to the bones, until after weeks of hunger and damp there were only twisted bones and gristle on these waterlogged rafts going downstream through the darkness.
Gorn came to Blackwood one day.
'Have you got a tinder box?' he said.
'I have,' said Blackwood. 'And it's dry. But every- thing is damp. There's nothing dry to burn.'
'No,' said Gorn, 'I've been carrying things we could burn. They've been next to my skin for a long time now. Bits of bamboo, small strips of wood. They're dry now.'
'That was a good idea.' i thought so too,' said Gorn. 'Light the fire for me. We'll build it right here, on the raft. The logs are too thick and sodden to catch fire.'
'Then what are you scared of?'
'What?'
'Sorry,' said Blackwood, who had spoken without thinking, i must have been imagining things.'
'No,' said Gorn. 'You're right. I'm afraid. I'm afraid… I may have gone blind in the dark.'
Til light the fire,' said Blackwood.
The first sparks from the tinder box delighted Gorn, for he could see them. But it was hard work lighting the fire. Blackwood persisted till the moment brighter than magic when the spark caught, twisted into flame, flared, hissed, crackled, then burst into a conflagration that set light and shadow leaping in the gloom. Gorn whooped. Men stirred, woke and staggered to their feet. And what a crew they were: sunken eyes, unkempt hair, faces marked by bad dreams and despair. But now, seeing the fire, they cheered.
'Hah!' shouted Gorn. 'Light! Light!'
Then something screamed.
High overhead in the darkness it screamed. It screamed with malevolence in the bowels of the earth. It screamed with pain, with rage, with hatred.
'Out!' yelled Hearst. 'Put the fire out!'
Gorn dashed his arms into the water. With his wet arms he swept the fire over the side of the raft. Men filled their helmets with water and flung it on the burning remnants. There was the hiss of fire relapsing into char. Then everyone waited and listened to the darkness.
There was the sound of wings beating overhead. One 231 set of wings. Two sets of wings. A dozen sets of wings. They were huge. They circled. The rafts bumped and nuzzled each other. Men sat rigid as if skewered. Fingers tightened on weapons. The wings circled, circled, and then ceased to be heard.
After they had no longer heard the wings for a long time, someone ventured to speak…
In the darkness the men began to die. They did not cease breathing straight away, but they slept more than they stayed awake. They ceased to talk. Few of them bothered to fish. Those who did fish caught flesh which tasted strange; exploring fingers found these fish had no eyes. Some were reluctant to eat them, and ate only siege dust and the occasional handful of mouldy food from their packs.
'They'll all be corpses if this goes on,' said Alish. 'We've seen it before.'
'We have indeed,' said Hearst.
They had seen it happen often enough in the Cold West. There, in the snows, a man who gave up the will to live would be dead overnight. Here underground it was not really cold, but if the men did not eat they would die all the same.
Garash and Miphon stayed sane. They settled into a pattern of meditation which absorbed most of their waking moments. If asked what their mumbled chanting was for, they would say they were maintaining the Balance and building their powers. Blackwood, Hearst, Alish and Gorn moved to the raft the wizards were on; the chanting was better than the unbroken ripplerush of the water.
Every so often, Alish and Hearst would rouse themselves to make a tour of the rafts. Alish would try to encourage the men, and Hearst would curse them and kick them, and warn them the Melski would come and cut their throats. Both tried to get the men to talk, sing, move, fish, eat. When Alish and Hearst were on their rounds, Gorn and Blackwood talked to each other. The wizards hardly spoke at all, but did not seem to be disturbed by the men talking.
'Are you enjoying our holiday?' said Gorn one day, when most other subjects of conversation were exhausted.
'I'd rather work than be idle,' said Blackwood. 'And I don't like this dark wet hole.'
'I used to be a great one for dark wet holes myself,' said Gorn. 'The smaller and warmer the better. How about yourself?'
Blackwood said nothing. i knew a man who liked them old,' said Gorn. 'Hard to believe, isn't it? But that was his fancy. We were together the night we sacked a city in the Cold West. It was a city by a river of ice. He had an old one and I had the youngest. I'll always remember that night, you know. He got rich. He found it was always the old women who had treasure hidden in the safest place. They didn't think anyone would touch them, you see. But they were never safe with him. That's something to remember, isn't it? Look for the oldest face, if you want to get rich. Me, I just wanted to ride them.
'So my friend got rich. Then he fell into a crevasse in a glacier, a crevasse being a crack and a glacier being a river of ice, if you know what I mean. He always said he'd like to die wedged tight in a crack, but I don't think that was the sort he meant. There were those who wondered why I risked my life to climb down to his body, but I knew there was more than one set of jewels hidden in his clothing.
'So I went back to Rovac rich. But I could never settle down. I always wanted… the excitement. The moment just before it all starts, when the blood boils, when it sings in your ears. And afterwards… afterwards… the way their mouths gape. When there's a knife at their throats. I wanted another campaign, not a dangerous one, but just something to give us some fun. So I came to Estar with Alish and Hearst.' 'As a bodyguard.'
'Yes,' said Gorn. 'But Hearst was with us, so I knew there'd be action sooner or later. Soon Hearst was planning a war for the prince. It would have been good.'
Gorn sat in silence, reflecting on how good it had been. Images swam in Blackwood's head, roused by the tales Gorn had told him. White flesh on red velvet. Blood staining satin sheets. Hands of mud fingering, mauling, repressing, while screams thrashed and floundered under smothering weight.
He made himself think of other things.
He thought of Estar. Estar in sunlight, and the blue flowers of spring that bell as bright as the sky. He thought of green grass and baked potatoes, bees and birds on the wing, leaves budding and hot roast meat. If only he could have escaped, if only he could have rescued Mystrel and led her away from the madness at Castle Vaunting into the safety of the Penvash Peninsular in the north…
Mystrel…
It was no use thinking of the past. And, his eyes hot, he told himself that revenge could not alter the past. He wept.
