both the geometry and the flexibility of his knees. The angle was too sharp and his feet skidded out from beneath him. He went down on his right side in the grass. He was only vaguely aware of Rachel's screams through the thunder in his head. The gray wall of Jack One Eye rose before him. He staggered up, fighting for balance.
Something hit him.
He had the impression of the world turned upside down. A searing pain filled his left shoulder. He knew he was tumbling head over heels, but could do nothing about it. Then he landed hard on his back, the breath bursting from his lungs. He tried to scramble away, as again that gray wall came upon him. Something was wrong with his left arm.
Matthew was struck in the ribs on the left side by a red-hot cannonball that picked him up and flung him like a grainsack. Something grazed by his forehead while he was tumbling—a musket ball, he thought it must be, here on this field of battle— and a red film descended over his eyes. Blood, he thought. Blood. He hit the ground, was dragged and tossed again. His teeth snapped together. I'm going to die, he thought. Right here. This sunny, clear day. I am going to die.
His left arm was already dead. His lungs hitched and gurgled. The mangy gray wall was there in his face again, there with an arrow shaft stuck in it.
He decided, almost calmly, that he would do his own sticking.
'Hey!' he hollered, in a voice that surprised him with its desperate power. 'Hey!' He brought the knife up and stabbed and twisted and wrenched and stabbed and twisted and wrenched, and the beast grunted roared roared breath hot as Hades smelling of decayed meat and rotten teeth stabbed and twisted and wrenched blood red on the gray streaming down a glorious sight die you bastard you bastard you!
Jack One Eye might be huge, but it had not grown to such a ripe old age by being stupid. The stickings had an effect, and the bear backed away from the mosquito.
Matthew was on his knees. In his right hand, the blade was covered with blood. He heard a dripping, pattering sound, and he looked down at the gore falling into the red-stained grass from the twitching fingers of his left hand. He seemed to be burning up from within, yet the fiery pain of shoulder and ribs and forehead was not what made him sob. He had peed in his breeches, and he had brought no other pair.
Jack One Eye circled him to the left. Matthew turned with the beast, dark waves beginning to fill his head. He heard, as if from another world, the sound of a woman—Rachel was her name, Rachel yes Rachel—screaming his name and crying. He saw blood bubbling around the bear's nostrils, and crimson matted the gray fur at its throat. Matthew was near fainting, and he knew when that happened he was dead.
The bear suddenly stood up on its hind legs, to a height of eight feet or more. It opened its broken-toothed mouth. What emerged was a hoarse, thunderous, and soul-shaking roar that brimmed with agony and perhaps the realization of its own mortality. Two snapped arrow shafts were buried in festered flesh at the beast's belly, near a bloody-edged claw wound that must have been delivered by one of its own breed. Matthew also saw that a sizeable bite had been ripped from Jack One Eye's right shoulder, and this ugly wound was green with infection.
It occurred to him, in his haze of pain and the knowledge of his impending departure from this earth, that Jack One Eye was dying too.
The bear fell back down onto its haunches. Ami now Matthew pulled himself up, staggered and fell, pulled himself up again, and shouted, 'Haaaaaaaaaaa!' in the maw of the beast.
After which he fell to the ground once more, into his own blood. Jack One Eye, its nostrils dripping gore, shambled toward him with its jaws open.
Matthew wasn't ready to die yet. Come all this way, to die in a clearing under the sun and God's blue sky? No, not yet.
He came up with the sheer power of desperation and drove the blade under the bear's jaw, giving the knife a violent ripping twist. Jack One Eye gave a single grunt, snorted blood into Matthew's face, and pulled back, taking the imbedded blade with it. Matthew fell on his belly, the pain in his ribs making him curl up like a stomped worm.
Again the bear circled him to the left, shaking its head back and forth in an effort to rid itself of the stinger that had pierced its throat. Banners of blood flew in the air from its nostrils. Even on his belly, Matthew crawled to keep the beast from getting behind him. Suddenly Jack One Eye came in again, and Matthew pulled himself up, throwing his right arm up over his face to protect what was left of his skull.
The movement made the bear turn aside. Jack One Eye backed away, its single orb blinking and glazed. The bear lost its equilibrium for a second and staggered on the edge of falling. It caught itself, then stood less than fifteen feet from Matthew, staring at him with its head lowered and its arrow-stubbled sides heaving. Its gray tongue emerged, licking at the bleeding nostrils.
Matthew pulled himself up to his knees, his right hand clutching his ribs on the left side. It seemed the most important thing in the world to him, to keep his hand pressed there so that his entrails would not stream out.
The world, red-tainted and savage, had dwindled to the single space of distance between man and animal. They stared at each other, measuring pain, blood, life, and death each by their own calculations.
Jack One Eye made no sound. But the ancient, wounded warrior had reached a decision.
It abruptly turned away from Matthew. It began half-loping, half-staggering across the clearing the way it had come, shaking its head back and forth in a vain effort to dislodge the blade. In another moment the beast entered its wilderness again.
And Jack One Eye was gone.
Matthew fell forward onto the bloody battleground, his eyes closed. In his realm of drifting, he thought he heard a high-pitched and piercing cry: Hiyiiiiiiii! Hiyiiiiiiii! Hiyiiiiiiii! The vulture's voice, he thought. The vulture, swooping down upon him.
Tired. So... very... very... tired. Rachel. What... is to... become... of...
The vulture, swooping down.
Screaming Hiyiiiiiiii! Hiyiiiiiiii! Hiyeeeeee!
Matthew felt himself fall away from the earth, toward that distant territory so many explorers had gone to journey through, and from which return was impossible.
thirty-nine
MATTHEW'S FIRST REALIZATION of his descent to Hell was the odor.
It was as strong as demon's sweat and twice as nasty. It entered his nostrils like burning irons, penetrated to the back of his throat, and he was suddenly aware that he was being wracked by a fit of coughing though he had not heard it begin.
When the smell went away and his coughing ended, he tried to open his eyes. The lids were heavy, as if weighted by the coins due Charon for his ferry trip across the Styx. He couldn't open them. He heard now a rising and falling voice that must surely be the first of untold many souls lamenting their scorched fate. The language sounded near Latin, but Latin was God's language. This must be Greek, which was more suitably earthy.
A few more breaths, and Matthew became knowledgeable of the torment of Hell as well as its odor. A fierce, stabbing, white-hot pain had begun to throb at his left shoulder and down the arm. The ribs on that side also began an agonizing complaint. There was a pain at his forehead too, but that was mild compared to the others. Again he tried to open his eyes and again he failed.
Neither could he move, in this state of eternal damnation. He thought he was attempting to move, but he couldn't be sure.
There was so much pain, growing worse by the second, that he decided it was more reasonable to give up and conserve his energy, as surely he would need it when he walked through the brimstone valley. He heard the crackling of a fire—of course, a fire!—and felt an oppressive, terrible heat as if he were being roasted over an inferno.
But now a new feeling began to come over him: anger. It threatened to burst into full-flamed rage, which would put him right at home here.
He had considered himself a Christian and had tried his very best to follow the Godly path. To find himself cast into Hell like this, with no court to hear his case, was a damned and unreasonable sin. He wondered in his increasing fury what it was he'd done that had doomed him. Run with the orphans and young thugs on the Manhattan harbor? Flung a horse-apple at the back of a merchant's head, and stolen a few coins from the dirty
