Roland saw the blood dripping from the blade of David’s sword.
“Did you cut him?”
“I was angry,” said David. “It happened before I could stop myself.”
Roland took the sword from David’s hands, plucked a large green leaf from a bush, and used it to clean the blade.
“You must learn to control your impulses,” he said. “A sword wants to be used. It wants to draw blood. That is why it was forged, and it has no other purpose in the world. If you do not control it, then it will control you.”
He handed the sword back to David. “Next time you see that man, don’t just cut him, kill him,” said Roland. “Whatever he may say, he means you no good.”
They walked together to where Scylla stood nibbling upon the grass.
“What did you see back there?” asked David.
“Much the same as you saw, I suspect,” said Roland. He shook his head in mild annoyance at the fact that David had disobeyed his instructions. “Whatever killed those men sucked the flesh from their bones, then left their remains hanging from trees. The forest is filled with bodies, as far as the eye can see. The ground is still wet with blood, but they injured this ‘Beast,’ or whatever it is, before they died. There is a foul substance on the ground, black and putrid, and the tips of some of their spears and swords have been melted by it. If it can be wounded, then it can be killed, but it will take more than a soldier and a boy to do it. This is none of our concern. We ride on.”
“But—” said David. He wasn’t sure what to say. It wasn’t like this in the stories. Soldiers and knights slew dragons and monsters. They weren’t afraid, and they didn’t run away from the threat of death.
Roland was already astride Scylla. His hand was outstretched, waiting for David to take it. “If you have something to say, then say it, David.”
David tried to find the right words. He did not want to offend Roland.
“These men all died, and whatever killed them is still alive, even if it is wounded,” he said. “It will kill again, won’t it? More people will die.”
“Perhaps,” said Roland.
“So shouldn’t something be done?”
“What would you suggest: that we hunt it down with one and a half swords to our names? This life is filled with threats and danger, David. We face those that we have to face, and there will be times when we must make the choice to act for a greater good, even at risk to ourselves, but we do not lay down our lives needlessly. Each of us has only one life to live, and one life to give. There is no glory in throwing it away where there is no hope. Now, come. The twilight grows thicker. We need to find a place to shelter for the night.”
David hesitated for a moment more, then took Roland’s hand and was hoisted into the saddle. He thought of all those dead men, and wondered at the kind of creature that could inflict such harm upon them. The tank still stood in the midst of the battlefield, marooned and alien. Somehow, it had found its way from his world to this one, but without a crew and apparently without even being driven.
As they left it behind, he remembered the visions in the Crooked Man’s pool of spittle, and the words that had been spoken to him: “They don’t miss you one little bit. They’re glad that you’re gone.”
It couldn’t be true, could it? And yet David had seen the way his father doted on Georgie, and the way he looked at Rose and held her hand as they walked, and he guessed at the things they did together when the bedroom door closed each night. What if he found a way to return home and they didn’t want him back? What if they really were happier without him?
But the Crooked Man had told him that he could make things right, that he could restore his mother to him and bring them both home in return for just one small favor. And David wondered what that favor might be, even as Roland spurred Scylla, urging her on.
Meanwhile, far to the west, out of sight and out of hearing, a chorus of triumphant howls rose into the air.
The wolves had found another bridge across the chasm.
XIX. Of Roland’s Tale and the Wolf Scout
ROLAND WAS RELUCTANT to pause for the night, for he was anxious to continue his quest and he was concerned about the wolves that were pursuing David, but Scylla was tiring and David was so exhausted that he could barely hold on to Roland’s waist. Eventually, they came to the ruins of what looked like a church, and there Roland agreed to rest for a few hours. He would not allow a fire, even though it was cold, but he gave David a blanket in which to wrap himself, and he allowed him to sip from a silver flask. The liquid inside burned David’s throat before filling him with warmth. He lay down and stared at the sky. The spire of the church loomed over him, its windows empty as the eyes of the dead.
“The new religion,” said Roland dismissively. “The king tried to make others follow it when he still had the will to do so, and the power to enforce that will. Now that he broods in his castle, his chapels lie empty.”
“What do you believe in?” asked David.
“I believe in those whom I love and trust. All else is foolishness. This god is as empty as his church. His followers choose to attribute all of their good fortune to him, but when he ignores their pleas or leaves them to suffer, they say only that he is beyond their understanding and abandon themselves to his will. What kind of god is that?”
Roland spoke with such anger and bitterness that David wondered if he had once followed the “new religion,” only to turn his back upon it when something bad happened to him. David had felt that way himself at times as he sat in church in the weeks and months after his mother’s death, listening to the priest talking of God and how much He loved his people. He had found it hard to equate the priest’s God with the one who had left his mother to die slowly and painfully.
“And who do you love?” he asked Roland.
But Roland pretended not to hear him.
“Tell me about your home,” he said. “Talk to me of your people. Talk to me of anything but false gods.”
And so David told Roland of his mother and his father, of the sunken garden, of Jonathan Tulvey and his old books, of hearing his mother’s voice and following it into this strange land, and, finally, of Rose and the arrival of Georgie. As he spoke, he could not hide his resentment of Rose and her baby. It made him feel ashamed, and more like a child than he wished to appear in front of Roland.
“That is hard indeed,” said Roland. “So much has been taken from you, but so much has been given too, perhaps.”
He did not say any more, for fear that the boy might think he was preaching to him. Instead, Roland lay back against Scylla’s saddle and told David a tale.
Once upon a time, there was an old king who promised his only son in marriage to a princess in a land far away. He bade his son farewell and entrusted to him a golden cup that had been in his family for many generations. This, he told his son, would be part of his dowry to the princess, and a symbol of the bond between her family and their own. A servant was told to travel with the prince and to care for his every need, and so the two men set out together for the princess’s lands.
After they had traveled for many days, the servant, who was jealous of the prince, stole the goblet from him while he was sleeping and dressed himself in the prince’s finest clothing. When the prince awoke, the servant made him vow, on pain of his own death and the deaths of all those whom he loved, that he would inform no man of what had transpired and told him that in future the prince would serve him in all things. And so the prince became the servant, and the servant the prince, and in that way they came to the castle of the princess.
When they arrived, the false prince was treated with great ceremony and the true prince was given a job herding pigs, for the false prince told the princess that he was a bad and unruly servant and could not be trusted. So her father sent the true prince out to herd swine and sleep in the mud and straw, while the impostor ate the finest food and rested his head on the softest of pillows.
