Quest Beyond Time (8 page)

After Mike had unrolled his hang-glider and explained to Woodcat the modifications which needed to be made, he sat down in a comer of Woodcat’s forge to watch.

Whatever Woodcat’s ambitions might be in the warrior line, he was a master of his craft as a metalworker. Mike watched with admiration, as Woodcat carried out the work.

And, at some stage, Mike slept.

When he woke, he was lying on a wooden bed in a strange room. He looked around. The room seemed to be part of the ancient skyscraper. He stood, shook the sleep from his eyes, and went to the room’s only door and opened it. He found himself in a corridor. Again, it looked like part of the ancient building. He was not sure which way to head, when he heard a roar of laughter.

The laughter was Woodcat’s, and Mike moved in the direction of the sound. A wooden door at the end of the corridor looked like the one he had seen in the kitchen the night before, and he opened it and passed through into the next room.

This was the bedroom with the big four-poster bed. But Katrin was not in it.

If the time he had spent in the future had taught Mike anything, it was that danger was everywhere. He ran forward to the door to the kitchen and flung it open.

There was Katrin sitting up to breakfast with Woodcat and Isolde. He chuckled, feeling foolish, but also feeling as if he had been deprived of an opportunity. He had been eager for action in order to prove to Katrin that he was as capable of rescuing her as she was of rescuing him.

She was smiling at him. There was an impish quality to the smile as if she could read his thoughts and emotions, could see the conflict in them of irritation and relief.

Isolde had started ladling porridge into a bowl at the moment he burst through into the room. ‘Sit down and tell this girl to rest another day!’

‘The Sickness is growing in me. I must reach the Island.’

Woodcat put his own bowl out for refilling. ‘Argue with a Murray, woman? You might as well argue with a stone!’

Mike took his bowl of porridge to the table and sat on the low bench. ‘We must get on,’ he said to Isolde. ‘It’s urgent. There are others back at the Clan as well.’

Katrin looked at him with what he took to be surprised approval, and he glowed inside with pleasure. Maybe he would impress her yet.

Woodcat cleared his throat. ‘You know the back road, of course?’

Mike remembered his promise of the night before. ‘We could . . . use a guide.’

Katrin looked at him in surprise. He kicked her under the table. She scowled and kicked him back.

Woodcat took advantage of the pause. ‘Well . . . anything to oblige a Murray . . .’

‘We could get Falla’s boy!’ Isolde said.

‘No, woman. I’ll guide them. If they need a guide let it not be said that a Woodcat refused a Murray!’

Isolde looked from Woodcat to Mike and then back again. She knew that she was somehow the victim of a male conspiracy. ‘Well, no adventures then!’ She looked at Katrin, one woman to another, ‘The moment there looks like being an adventure, you send him home! Adventures aren’t for Little People. They’re for folk like you Murrays,’ and here she looked at Mike, ‘And folk from Other Parts wherever they may be.’

Katrin flicked a look at Mike, and he concentrated on his porridge. She was wondering what had been said while she had been unconscious. Mike felt that kind of talk was best left to the road.

Isolde farewelled them from the round front door. Woodcat had produced four stocky little ponies from somewhere, three to ride and one to act as a packhorse. The packhorse had the modified glider on it, together with a bag of food that Isolde had pressed on them, and another bag besides, one which made strange clanking sounds as the horse moved off. Isolde looked at this bag with a special suspicion, but asked no questions.

After they had ridden perhaps a mile through the fine morning, Woodcat dismounted and untied the mysterious bag from the pack-saddle.

When he opened the bag they saw that it contained his armour. He insisted on putting it on. When he mounted his pony again it was as a miniature knight, setting off on the high road to adventure.

As they rode along, Woodcat told them stories of battles and desperate chances, and loves between knights and ladies which had lasted beyond the grave, and they both enjoyed his stories, though Katrin had felt obliged to tell him he was talking romantic nonsense.

In return, they told Woodcat of their adventures since leaving Clan Murray House, and he was most impressed and kept saying that he wished he had been there with them, and suggesting ruses and strategems they might have employed to get out of trouble in the most heroic and dangerous ways possible.

All in all, they enjoyed themselves.

But from time to time, Katrin swayed in the saddle, and there was an urgency underlying the ride. By Woodcat’s calculations, they would reach the cliffs overlooking the Island on the following morning. They and the ponies could take some rest tonight, but Katrin’s failing health meant that they needed to press onward.

For this reason, they ate their lunch in the saddle. They were riding slowly up a hill as they ate, following a road which Woodcat said was safe in this season, the surrounding people being too busy with harvesting their grain to spare any time for their more usual occupation of highway robbery.

They reached the crest of the hill, and saw, on the road ahead of them, a lone figure. He was dressed in a brown robe tied at the waist with a rope. He went barefoot, and a patch on the back of his head was shaven. All that he carried was a staff and a leather satchel.

Mike found him a curious sight. He had seen people like him, or pictures of people like him, but he could not immediately think where. ‘Who’s that?’ he asked.

‘A slave of the Hanged God,’ Katrin replied, her voice betraying a certain contempt. ‘The ones dressed like that wander the roads telling people of him.’

‘Hanged God?’ He had heard them talk of this Hanged God before and not made the connexion. ‘Hanged on a cross?’ He crossed his arms to indicate a standing cross.

‘Yes.’

‘And his slaves bear no weapons?’

‘The Hanged God is not a warrior like our gods,’ Katrin said. ‘I suppose because there’s only one of him and he has no need to fight his brother gods.’ Her disapproval was very clear.

Mike knew where he had seen the clothing before. It was in pictures of St Francis of Assisi, the gentle Christian saint who preached to the birds and wild things. So it was here. It was still here. The faith that his churchgoing grandfather had held to had survived the Bomb.

As they rode down toward the brown-robed figure, two roughly draped shapes burst from the woods at the side of the road and faced him.

‘Wanderers!’ Mike said, recognizing the shambling way of running and the flowing rags of clothing.

They had all reined in.

Mike looked at the others. ‘Hadn’t we better help him?’

Katrin shrugged. ‘If you think so.’

He looked at her, shocked, and then caught the fleeting smile, and realized that she was joking, drawing attention to the change in attitude she saw in him.

‘You’ll keep!’ he said and kicked his pony in the ribs. The others came with him, and they lolloped on their ponies down the hill toward the Franciscan brother and the Wanderers.

But they had not gone far when they saw that something strange was happening at the foot of the hill. The brother had sat down and was motioning the Wanderers to do the same. And they did. The brother was getting things out of his satchel: bread, and a little cheese, and some apples.

By the time his would-be rescuers reached him, the Francisan was blessing the food and dividing it between himself and the two Wanderers.

The brother looked up at them, smiling, and Mike saw with some surprise that he was black. The Franciscan was an Aboriginal. ‘Want to eat?’ he said.

Mike looked at the small quantity of food laid out. ‘You don’t have enough even for three.’

The brother looked at the food, and then nodded his agreement. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It’s hardly enough for two.’ And with that, he divided his own share between the two Wanderers, stood, slung his satchel on his shoulder, and prepared to walk on.

Mike looked at the food in the bag on his saddle bow. He had eaten only half his lunch, and no longer felt hungry. Then he looked at the Wanderers, wolfing down the small meal given them by the brother. He felt the brother’s kindly, amused eyes on him, watching what he would do. Almost angrily, he threw the rest of his lunch to the Wanderers, and rode on.

Woodcat blinked, but was not going to be left behind in the matter of generosity, and he too gave the mutants what remained of his lunch.

Katrin sat on her horse, scowling. ‘You’re fools!’ she said. ‘You don’t give food to an enemy!’ She looked at the brother. He was smiling at her. ‘But these are not fit to call enemy!’ she said, and having thus given herself an excuse for doing what she thought was stupid, she tossed her own food to the Wanderers and rode on.

The brown-robed brother walked alongside them. He introduced himself as Brother John, and listened with interest to their own introductions.

‘A Murray, a Woodcat, and a Mike. Where do you come from, Mike? You’re not a Murray.’

‘I come from Other Parts,’ Mike said.

‘Other Parts, eh? Have they heard the good news in Other Parts?’

The man was so cheerful that Mike could not stop himself from smiling. ‘What good news, Brother?’

‘That God’s son died in your place.’

‘And why would he do that?’

‘So rebels like you could be forgiven. And become his sons and daughters instead of outlaws.’

‘Well, I suppose I have heard something like that,’ Mike allowed. He felt profoundly embarrassed at the line the conversation had taken.

The brother was amused at his embarrassment, and asked, ‘Heard about it? But have you thought about it?’

Mike looked at him with utmost suspicion.

They camped together that night, Woodcat, Katrin, Mike and Brother John. Toward the end of the day Katrin had been swaying in the saddle almost constantly. Brother John had walked alongside her and helped her stay on the pony.

They lit a fire, and sat around it, and ate, and Brother John told them of his Hanged God, and the sacrifice he had made to ransom a rebellious human race, and then brought from his satchel a small flute and played while Woodcat and Katrin sang. Katrin had regained her strength for a time, and she sang sweetly. The last song she sang, she sang alone, and it touched Mike to the centre of his being.

‘They were kings, they were gods, they were masters of time;

They rode on the air, they walked in the cloud;

They called across oceans, their weapons were flame.

Bereft and bereaved is the earth that they left us:

The earth is their shroud.

They were kings, they were gods, they were masters of power;

They rode on the seas, they walked in the deep,

They spoke to the stars, their weapon was fire.

Bereft and bereaved is the earth that they left us:

The earth where they sleep.

They were kings, they were gods, they were masters of air;

They rode on the flames, they leapt to the skies;

Then they struck from the stars with their weapons of fire!

Bereft and bereaved is the earth that they left us:

The earth fills their eyes.’

Mike listened to the song with his face turned from the fire. He did not want Katrin to see his tears. In his mind, he saw the towers and rockets and monuments that his own generation had built. His people had reached for the stars and brought them home. They had dredged deep into the atom and brought power from it. They had stolen fire from the gods, and been destroyed. He wept for them, and for himself.

But there was another part of him that felt like laughing in triumph. Here he sat, in the barbaric future, with a quest to fulfil and a courageous young warrior woman singing beside him. He had Kinship here, and a Covenant to live by, and most of all he had the challenge of a wild new world.

Mike had never felt more desolate and alone.

Mike had never felt more full of life and ready to face it.

They were up at first light, and ate as they saddled the ponies. An edge of the sun was over the horizon as they moved out.

To make better time, they kept to the road, despite Katrin’s protests. Woodcat kept reassuring her that the roads were safe in this season, and she kept looking around, checking to see if they had company.

They were near enough to the coast now to smell the salt in the air, and Mike kept having the feeling that he had been this way before. It was some time before he realized that indeed he had been here before, but in another time when suburbs of red brick and tile had covered these hills. He was faintly surprised at how hilly the region was. He had only travelled this way in motor cars and they had ironed out the differences between hill and valley.

The road took approximately the same route as the highway had done in the past, and Mike knew, almost to the metre, when they would have their first view of the sea.

Then there it was. Where the curves of two hills intersected, there was a patch of blue sea, its top flat, drawn off with the line of the horizon. They paused, and looked, and then moved on.

Soon they were at a crossroads, and Brother John was to leave them. He was moving south, on a road which would finally take him across the Great River and into Vickharn and the country where all people were slaves and had a king.

When he told them of his destination, Woodcat and Katrin both drew their fingers across their closed eyes. For them, Vickham was a place of evil.

‘They have a king.’ Katrin said in warning.

‘And so do I Brother John smiled. ‘And he tells me I must go and tell them of him.’

‘The people there are slaves,’ Katrin said.

‘I’m a slave,’ Brother John replied, ‘and have to go where my king sends me.’ He gestured at one of the three shrines standing at the crossroads.

Mike had been looking at them. On one, was a figure of the Buddha, with what he took to be a prayer wheel beside it. Another was a cross, about three metres high, with the figure of a crowned king nailed to it. The third was a standing stone.

He was distracted by the sudden whistle and thrum of an arrow flying from a bow. He turned fast, ready to drop to the ground, when he saw a bird tumbling from the sky, pierced by an arrow. Katrin was already running toward where it would fall.

She retrieved it, and came back, pulling the arrow from it. The bird’s eyes were already glazing over in death. Then Katrin knelt by her pack, and brought a small bag of grain from it. She went to the standing stone. Mike watched, as she slit the bird open and let some of its blood fall to the ground. Then she scattered the grain upon the blood. Her eyes went to the top of the stone and her lips were moving, and Mike looked away.

He found that Brother John and Woodcat were also at their devotions. John knelt before the Hanged God, his eyes on the image of the crucified king. Woodcat was spinning the prayerwheel, and then his eyes went to the distance, his breathing slowed, and he entered a state of quietness.

Again, Mike looked away. He had been made aware of his difference from his three friends. In the presence of the practice of their three very different faiths, he felt a lack within his own life, as if they had a dimension to theirs which his did not have.

Then they were taking leave of Brother John. At the last moment, the deep-set dark brown eyes locked on his and John said, ‘Think on it, Mike. He died in your place.’

Mike’s eyes went again to the image of the Hanged God. When he looked back, John was already walking toward the south, following his king’s orders.

‘He’ll die there,’ Katrin said quietly. ‘No one ever comes back from Vickharn.’

The brown brother in his brown robe was hurrying south. He began to sing. Mike could hear the lilt of his singing but could not catch the words.

They turned east, and rode toward the sea.

After a while, they could hear the breakers. Soon, the flat sea horizon stretched from edge to edge of their view.

And he saw the Island. It was not large. He could not remember it from his own time, but he felt that it might have been a promontory which in the past five hundred years had been cut off from the mainland. It was cliff-bound and separated from the land by a raging channel of sea.

Mike could understand now why the waterfearing Murrays thought it inaccessible. He knew that skilful and determined sailors could get there by boat. He also knew that a landsman would die trying.

They left the road now and walked their horses up the slope toward the clifftops.

They were within reach of their goal. In a short time it would all be up to Mike’s skill with his hang-glider.

They were almost to the clifftop when Katrin turned in the saddle and drew her breath in sharply.

‘Patchies!’ she said.

They looked back.

Three horsemen were following them. They were a wild-looking crew, long-haired and unwashed, and dressed in thonged-together animal skins. They reminded Mike of pictures he had seen of the Mongol horse nomads who, under the generalship of Genghis Khan, had come close to conquering Europe.

The horsemen moved like a group of half-wild dogs, sniffing, interested, but not yet in pursuit.

‘You going to tell me what Patchies are?’

‘They live on horseback. They wander in tribes. Dangerous.’ Katrin was swaying slightly in the saddle as she spoke.

‘They eat people?’

She shook her head. ‘Mare’s milk. They tap veins in their horses and drink their blood. Raw meat they soften under their saddles.’

‘I don’t think I want to go to dinner at their place.’

They rode to the clifftop, terribly aware of the horse nomads’ eyes on their backs.

‘They going to attack?’

Woodcat shrugged. ‘Sometimes they attack, sometimes not. Who knows what a Patchie might do?’

Katrin looked at Mike, and spoke slowly and seriously, intent that he should understand that she meant what she said. ‘If they attack, and we can’t beat them off, don’t be taken prisoner.’

‘How do I not get taken prisoner?’

‘You die.’

He cleared his throat. ‘Die?’

She nodded.

‘Isn’t that kind of an extreme solution?’

‘I’ve met people who were captured alive by the Patchies and escaped later. They said dying would have been better.’

‘Yeah, well, there could be two opinions about that, you know.’ Mike wished Katrin would not always take things so seriously.

They were at the clifftop now. Woodcat dismounted, and Mike and Katrin did the same.

The Patchies reined in at the bottom of the hill, and watched them.

‘So what do we do now?’ said Mike. ‘Stop here and fight them?’

Woodcat shook his head. ‘No. We put your kite together, and you two fly to the Island.’

‘And leave you by yourself? No way!’ Mike heard the words coming out of his mouth and wished he had not said them, while knowing that what he had said was right. They could not leave the little man to face the Patchies alone.

Katrin nodded her approval of what Mike had said.

Woodcat looked at the Patchies, and then at his friends. ‘Put together the kite.’

The Patchies edged closer. Mike saw that their faces were tattooed in abstract patterns. He decided that the tattoos on their faces did absolutely nothing for their personal appearance.

Woodcat drew his sword. ‘Put the kite together and go, or I’ll cut you both down where you stand!’

There they went again, Mike thought, always taking extreme positions on things.

But Katrin was looking at Woodcat, and asking him a question. She used a voice which suggested that she had learned the question. ‘Have you chosen the day of your death, brother?’

Woodcat’s answer had the same ritual flavour. Katrin’s question had, it seemed, a special answer which fitted it. ‘Today is a good day to die,’ the little man said.

Katrin turned to Mike. ‘We go to the Island.’

Mike could not believe it. Katrin, willing to run out on a friend who had helped them?

‘If we don’t, we’ll have dishonoured him and he’ll have to kill us.’

‘But. . .’

‘Don’t argue about things you don’t understand! Do it!’

Mike looked at Woodcat.

Woodcat said, ‘Mike, hundreds of Murrays, women and men and children, died in the Covenant War. They died so that they’d not have a king, but also to keep us . . . the First Returners . . . free. We pay our debts.’

Mike hesitated, then turned to the packhorse, got the kite off it and started putting it together.

As he worked, the Patchies circled and watched, intrigued at this strange activity. Part of Mike wished they would charge before he finished. He could not get out of his mind the memory of Isolde telling them to keep Woodcat out of adventures. Well, Woodcat was in an adventure up to his neck now, and a dirty and dangerous one it looked like becoming.