The Pleasure of Memory (4 page)

An arrow whistled past his head and buried itself into the heart of a young sapling a few yards ahead with a portentous crack. Beam cursed and doubled into his flight. The ground again dropped steeply, again pitching him sickeningly forward. Another arrow seared past, this one close enough to feel the wind in its wake. It was all the inspiration he needed.

Just as predicted, the forest deserted him. He exploded out of the trees and into full sunlight like diving into a wall of fire. He was blind as birth and running full bore down a hill toward the terrible noise. The sound was thunderous here, the air cool and thick. The path was rocky and wet and falling away far too dramatically for his feet to keep up.

His legs continued pedaling even after the ground vanished beneath them. He clawed at the wind rushing past him. Somewhere in the distance, he heard a man screaming.

He hit the water like it was a wall.

The icy river boiled him along its frothing bed. He grabbed the air in fits as the current dragged him through the gravel and boulders. He hit a poorly placed log and heard the grisly crunch of ribs breaking even over the roar of the water. The impact knocked the wind clean out of him, and with it his fight. And as the river took him, he suffered a moment of revelation as tiny as a spark and as big as the sun. This was it, wasn’t it? He was finished. Done. This was how it all ended. This was the last slug off the bottle.

The revelation brought him closer to relief than regret. His only request as he surrendered his fate to the Gods of Pentyrfal was a small one: Please, Lords, carry my body far downstream, well beyond the ravaging hands of the savages. He couldn’t bear the thought of meeting Provareun in the next life with the remnants of his manhood in his hand.

∞

The darkness grudgingly dissipated. Beam felt himself drifting up toward the light. He wanted to resist it, wanted to remain there in the warmth of his oblivion, but could find no purchase to do so.

The ground beneath his face felt fleshy and infirm. His legs ached with cold, though his fingers dug into something warm and wet. Then the coughing erupted, wet and compelling, and unrelenting. The water poured from him. The fit seized him completely, reducing his entire world to the essential fight for oxygen, creatively tempered by the driving pain of broken ribs.

When he finally found his breath, he pushed himself up onto an elbow and pushed the wet hair back from his face. He was blind in his left eye, and considering how viciously it was throbbing, he doubted he’d be seeing out of it any too soon. He tried to push the focus into his working eye, but the sunlight was boiling up from the river’s surface like liquid silver.

He was marooned on the bank like a wrecked ship, his head and shoulders reefed in the mud. His trunk was up on the mud, partially sheltered beneath a mangle of spiky snakegrass, while his legs bobbed numbly in the icy current.

He dropped his face to his forearm. As he waited for sight to return, he ran a finger under his lips and found teeth. They were still there, all of them. That was something anyway. A toothless smile would only double the humiliation of begging for his life.

An arrow sliced into the mud beside him.

He recoiled from it, tumbling back into the river as a result. The white water dragged him back to its breast and keelhauled him along its rocky bed as the shore bobbed tragically past just a few yards beyond his grip. He eventually managed to seize a passing boulder and swung around to the downstream side of it. His knees ground deep into the sharp gravel built up behind it while white water roared along both sides of him.

“Bastards!” he yelled. The words sprayed the rock red.

In response to his challenge, a volley of arrows pelted the water around him, though they were quickly lost to the current.

He hugged into the boulder, pressing his face into the sun-heated rock as he tried not to scream. He cursed himself for not just dying back there on the road and being done with it. He should’ve stood his ground and died in the warm sunlight like a man, just him, Gerd, and a gentle breeze.

Another arrow ricocheted off the rock above him. He struggled to hold his ground. The crossbow strapped across his back bit into his ribs as the current twisted him back and forth. The pain crushed him. He pulled tighter into the rock and fought to stay calm. It was a fool’s dream to think he could maintain his position much longer. He needed a plan.

He steadied himself against the pain he couldn’t avoid, and then slowly worked his way up the boulder. The climb was worse than he could have feared. Once his broken ribs settled enough to let him breathe, he peered over the edge of the rock and studied his route through his one working eye.

The river upstream was a storm of boiling white froth raging through a battleground of boulders and mangled trees. The insanity ran on for hundreds of yards before disappearing into an oppressive cloak of mist. From that spectral vapor arose the gruesome head of the waterfall. It towered above the spray like a timeless wave, a screaming wall of violence that might throw itself down on him at any moment. Atop the waterfall, on the right side of the river, was a broken arch of stone. It stabbed out across the head of the falls like a natural bridge that had long ago surrendered itself to the river. That was where he fell.

His vision abruptly fogged over. He risked his security long enough to splash the blood from his working eye, then returned his surveillance to the waterfall.

There they were. The Vaemyn. They were standing on the tongue of rock in their muddy green cloaks. He could see their pale faces watching him from within those dark hoods. They looked more civilian than warrior, bearing no evidence of armor or mail. They might’ve just been rangers, or nomads, or just simple herders out grazing their goats in the Nolandian Plains.

Moron! Of course, they’d disguise their assassins as civilians! He should’ve goddamned well expected it. He cursed himself an idiot. Blunders of misjudgment like this were going to kill him one day.

They watched him from that cliff above the falls as casually as if they were at a horse race. One particularly large savage was pointing at him. Gerd’s face bullied its way into Beam’s head, his sorry four-tooth grin rising up unsolicited and unappreciated. Beam could still hear the poor old bum’s harried voice insisting there couldn’t possibly be savages in the Nolands.

You believe it now, don’t you, Gerd? They both believed it now.

He again splashed the blood from his eye. He sucked up a mouthful of water and swished it around before spitting the bloody fluid back into the river. When he looked upstream again, the warriors were gone.

Calina help him! They were coming!

He looked over toward the nearest bank, which was only a dozen feet away to his left. It was the opposite side of the river from where he’d taken his dive. Another dozen paces further up from the bank stood the edge of the forest. It towered over him like a dark cliff face. That would have to be his escape.

Carefully adjusting his position, he looked across the river at the opposing bank, the side he’d fled from, the side where he was confident the savages would deliver themselves shortly. That shore was nearly two hundred feet away beneath the shade of an equally oppressive forest. The water separating him from it was a riot of boulders and raving white water. The bastards would never be able to cross here. They’d have to go further downstream, maybe another mile or more, until they found a calmer, narrower neck. That little inconvenience might buy him a chance.

The thought made him laugh. A chance! Sure, about the same chance a worm has of holding a fish’s mouth open. He turned back to the closer bank. The water was calmer here, shallower. It might actually work. So he considered his trajectory, made his plan, steadied himself for the beating he was about to take, and shoved off from the security of his rock.

The river forced him a dozen yards downstream for every one he managed to kick and fight toward shore. His fractured ribs kicked him at every move. The mud and river brambles raced wildly by as the river swept him northward. Security was so close and yet so ridiculously out of reach. Yet, just as he thought he’d never make those last few precious inches to land, gravel materialize under his knees.

He clawed at the mud and grass, and forced his way up onto the bank. His soaked leathers were like iron splints against his cold muscles. Once ashore, he somehow willed himself to his feet and slogged his way uphill toward the forest. He didn’t make a dozen steps before the weight of his wounds brought him down. He crawled the last few yards to the trees.

A colossal oak stood like a sentry at the forest’s edge. Towering hundreds of feet over the river, it looked as if were single handedly holding back the cavernous darkness emanating from the trees beyond. He crawled around behind it and collapsed into the coarse bark. Once settled, he closed his eyes and willed back the pain and the fear. He mumbled another calming chant, though he had no faith it’d help. He thought of poor Gerd rotting back there in the rut of that two-track, his eyes glazing over in the sun. He thought of the savages chasing him through the tombs. He thought of that endless trip from the Vaemysh scrubs to the Old Forest Road that he’d been so callously forced to abandon. He thought of the wind and the grain, of the endless sky, of music and cold mead, of a dance with a dark haired girl with teeth like ivory who…

Beam’s head snapped forward. The damaged ribs slugged his chest. He smothered a cry and seized his side, and then he cursed himself thoroughly. As if things weren’t dire enough, he’d damned near fallen asleep. As he waited for his ribs to stop screaming, he watched the gloom hunkering down so threateningly in the black forest before him. The ground was nearly invisible in the darkness. It was a terrifying sight for someone with the confinement dread. He wondered if he should take some of his tonic before making his flight, but quickly decided against it. There was no time for the vomiting ritual the medicine induced. He’d just have to man up and hope for the best.

He fumbled at the heavy buckle of his weapons belt with stiff, bleeding fingers. The buckle only grudgingly submitted. Once it did, he dragged the quiver and crossbow around his shoulder and dropped them between his legs. A rush of water rolled from the quiver and escaped into the grass between the tree’s thick roots.

Free now from the constraints of that heavy belt, he dug into the neck of his overshirt and reeled out the leather cord hanging around his neck. The cord terminated at a dripping leather pouch with a wet drawstring cinched as tight as a cramp. He fussed with the knot, but between his raw fingertips and the cold-induced tremors, couldn’t work it loose. He was about ready to draw his knife and slash the damned thing open when the cord miraculously gave up its struggle.

He dumped the contents into the grass between his legs. A stream of brown water freed a soggy clump of tobacco, three brown-stained gold coins, and a large red jewel. He snatched up the gem.

This was his prize. This was why he’d spent the last two miserable years crawling through the nine hells. That paltry pack of gold he’d abandoned back on the road with Gerd was nothing. This was the mother lode. If he’d lost this to the river, he’d have unsheathed his knife and ended the savages’ worries once and for all by slitting his own bloody throat.

He held the sparkling crystal between unsteady fingers and raised it to eye level. “Thank the g-gods!” he whispered.

The red gem was the size of a particularly large walnut and carved in the form of an eye with a heavy, sensuous lid. It appeared more liquid than stone, like a glass amulet filled with blood. A ray of sunlight pierced the crystal and bathed his hand in its red glow. The warmth of the light filled his skin and spread pleasantly up his wrist and into his arm and shoulder, penetrating his muscles and sinew before settling into his bones. Wherever the strange warmth spread, the pain faded to silence.

He knew it was a kind of delirium, of course. He was no man’s fool. This was a delusion brought on by his traumatized state. No doubt, he’d taken a concussion and was hosting mild hallucinations. Only fools and savages put their faith in mystics and healing amulets, and he was no man’s fool. He was a man of science.

Nonetheless, it was a very appealing, very well timed delirium, and he took it for the solace it provided.

This little stone was going to bring him a king's ransom back in the civilized realms. Once sold, he’d have enough gold to live out the rest of his days like the noblemen he loathed. Unfortunately, the savages valued it as much as he did. He knew they viewed him as a grave robber, as a dog who swindled the dead for profit, and he couldn’t have agreed more nor cared less. He claimed the gem under the unwritten but time-honored precept of ‘finders, keepers’.

Satisfied his treasure was safe, he packed it and the coins back into the pouch and restored it to the place of security beneath his shirt. Then he leaned his head back into the tree and closed his eyes as the warmth he’d hallucinated while holding the stone dissolved back to the loveless cold of reality.

Time was running out. He couldn’t wait any longer. He had to get up off his ass and run for everything he was worth. So with a deep breath and a muttered prayer, he steadied himself. He braced his hands against the massive roots burrowing into the soil on both sides of him, but just as he was about to make the push to his feet, he spied a lump of brown goo on his thigh. Its oils were oozing most smugly into the wet green leather of his britches.

“My tobacco,” he cursed as he flicked the soggy lump off his leg, “Bloody hell! Is there no limit to the insults?”

More irritated than worried now, he peered around the side of the tree. Across the river, the first of the warriors had arrived. The savage had its cloak thrown back over its shoulder and was already pulling an arrow from the quiver on his back. Beam gave him a point for enthusiasm.

From this closer vantage, he could now see that the savage was wearing chainmail, after all. The mail was sleeveless, in the Vaemysh tradition. He’d woven mud-stained grass through the links to dull the metal. However, one small spot beneath this one’s arm flashed a spike of sunlight back at Beam as he readied his arrow, and the sight of it fully vindicated him. The spark he’d spied back on the road came from this warrior's exposed mail. That was the rip in the squad’s stealth. That was what had betrayed them. He immediately forgave himself. This savage had been the complacent one, not he.