to forestall any response- “and count myself humbled because I cannot equal your largesse. The knowledge of hurtloam alone is incomparable bounty, yet you have given more, far more. If you are thus generous in all of your dealings, you will need no songs or tales of mine to honour you, for you will be fabled wherever you are known.”
Linden wanted to protest, No, my lord. You’re the legend here. I’m not like that. But his unanticipated gentleness left her mute. She was too close to tears to find her voice.
If she could have believed in Covenant’s honesty, her gratitude would have been more than she knew how to contain.
Chapter Nine: Along the Last Hills
For three days, Linden, Covenant, and Jeremiah rode into the northwest, hugging the Last Hills as closely as they could without venturing onto terrain that would hamper their gaunt and weary horses. Over her cloak and her old clothes, Linden wore a heavy robe lined with fur which-according to Hand Damelon-had been scavenged from one of Vettalor’s abandoned camps. Her hands she kept swaddled in strips cut from the edge of a blanket: a wider strip she wrapped like a scarf around her mouth and neck. Still the cold was a galling misery, day and night. And during the day, hard sunlight glanced like blades off the crusted snow and ice, forcing her to squint. Her head throbbed mercilessly.
With Covenant and Jeremiah riding nearby, she could not draw on the Staff of Law, even to sustain her abject mount. Instead she carried it quiescent across her lap; clung to the reins and the saddle with her abused hands. Somehow Covenant had endured Berek’s touch. Still she feared that he and Jeremiah would not be able to withstand close proximity to the Staffs power.
They had their own difficulties. Their mounts were restive, hard to control. The beasts shied at every shadow despite their weariness. At times, they made frail attempts to buck. Linden suspected that the horses sensed something in her companions which she could not. On a purely animal level, they were disturbed by the secretive theurgy of their riders.
But Covenant and her son scorned their mounts’ uneasiness. They stayed near Linden at all times, as though they meant to ensure that she did not use her Staff. And they appeared oblivious to the cold; preternaturally immune to the ordinary requirements of flesh and blood. They had refused cloaks and robes, did not wear blankets over their shoulders. Yet they revealed no discomfort. Only Covenant’s seething impatience and Jeremiah’s glum unresponsiveness betrayed their underlying discontent.
They ate the stale bread, tough meat, and dried fruit that Berek had provided: they drank the water and the raw wine. Those simple human needs they retained. And at night, they built campfires which generated enough heat to encourage slumber. As far as Linden knew, however, neither of them slept. Whenever she was roused by cold or nightmares, she saw them still seated, wakeful and silent, beside the fading coals. At daybreak, they were on their feet ahead of her.
They hardly spoke to each other: they seldom addressed her. Nor did she question them, although the throng of her doubts and concerns clouded her horizons in every direction. She and her companions were constrained because they were not alone.
At Berek’s command, Yellinin rode with them, leading a string of six more horses laden with supplies: food, drink, blankets, and firewood, as well as provender for the mounts; as much of Berek’s generosity as the horses’ meagre strength could carry.
The outrider herself said little. Berek had ordered her to ask no questions; and she obeyed with hard-bitten determination, stifling her curiosity and loneliness. She could not have been sure that she would ever see her lord or her comrades again. Yet even when Linden tried practical queries-How far have we ridden today? Do you think that this weather will hold? — Yellinin answered so curtly that Linden’s more personal questions seemed to freeze in her mouth.
At all times, Covenant kept his right hand hidden in his pocket. Linden supposed that he did so in order to conceal his one resemblance to Berek Halfhand. But she felt sure that his caution was wasted. With his awakened senses, Berek must have discerned the truth for himself.
Jeremiah also was a halfhand, although he had lost different fingers. Legends might grow from such small details
By the end of the third day, Linden reached the limit of her endurance. Yellinin’s emotional plight nagged at her like a bad tooth: she was acutely aware of the slow erosion which wore the outrider’s determination down to bereavement. Nor could she ignore the leaden distress of the horses. And the questions that she needed to ask her companions were becoming a form of torment: as bitter as the cold, and as relentless.
In addition, she felt a grinding anxiety for Jeremiah. According to Yellinin, the riders had covered no more than twenty-five leagues when the sun set on the third day. Measured by the necessity of ascending among the Westron Mountains in order to avoid Garroting Deep, their progress was paltry. At this rate, Covenant and Jeremiah would never attain their goal. The horses would not survive: Linden was sure of that. If she could not sustain herself with Earthpower, she herself would fail long before she caught sight of
Her son would be Lord Foul’s prisoner forever.
That night, as she faded shivering toward sleep, she realised that most of her decisions in this time had been inspired by cold; predicated on the brutality of winter. She had chosen to trek toward Berek’s camp because she was freezing and could not think of an alternative. But when she had achieved her aim-horses, blankets, food- she had accomplished nothing. The journey ahead of her was still impossible, just as it had been four days ago. Yellinin and her mounts were giving as much help as their worn flesh allowed, and it was not enough.
Linden had already watched too many innocents suffer and die for her sake.
Now the cold required another decision of her. She had to accept that her choices had been proven inadequate; that the obstacles in her road were not ones which she could surmount. The time had come to admit that she was too weak to carry the burden of Jeremiah’s need, and the Land’s. This winter demanded more strength than she possessed.
Therefore she would have to find a way to trust Covenant.
The next morning, when she struggled out of the scant warmth of her blankets, she learned that two of the horses had died during the night: Covenant’s mount, and Jeremiah’s. Then she could no longer deny the truth. The cold had beaten her. If bearing her companions killed just two horses every three days-and if there were no storms-and if the terrain did not become more demanding-Yellinin’s dogged aid would nonetheless cease to serve any purpose long before the Last Hills merged with the mountains.
Coughing at the bite of ice in her lungs, Linden gathered what warmth she could from the campfire while Berek’s warrior cooked a breakfast of gruel laced with fruit. She took as much time as she needed to eat what she believed would be her last hot meal. For a while, she held her robe open to the flames, hoping that the fur would absorb enough heat to preserve her. Then, when Yellinin had prepared mounts for the riders, and had withdrawn to ready the remaining horses, Linden quietly asked Covenant and Jeremiah to ride ahead without her.
To answer Covenant’s vexation and Jeremiah’s alarm, she explained, “I need a little distance so that I can use my Staff. Don’t worry, I’ll catch up with you.” She could hardly miss their trail through the hard snow. “I want Yellinin to turn back. But convincing her probably won’t be easy. I’ll have to show her that we don’t need her, and for that-”
Linden indicated the Staff with a shrug.
“It’s about time,” muttered Covenant as if he had expected her to make up her mind days ago. “Just don’t trust her. Berek didn’t send her out here to help us. He wants her to warn him if we double back. Hell, he probably has scouts on our trail right now, just in case we kill her and try to take him by surprise.”
Staring at him, Linden felt a slash of yearning for the Thomas Covenant of her memories. Surely he could see that Yellinin was dying to return to her people? But she did not argue. Her suspicions ran too deep. If she challenged him, she would make him wary; and then she would lose any possibility that he might reveal the truth about himself.
