The Trials of Lance Eliot (14 page)

“I can't walk. Leave me here.”

Regis shook his head. “Absolutely not. You're coming with us.”

“There's nothing left.”

“Listen to me,” said Regis. “We know you're in agony. You lost your family. You lost your home. You were caged with three strangers and forced to walk leagues through dark and cold to El-knows-where. We know you want to give up. You mustn't. It's hard, old boy, but you mustn't give up.”

“We'll reach Ventus in a few days,” said Tsurugi.

“There are people in Ventus,” I added. “We'll be safe. You won't be alone. There will be beds to sleep in and warm food to eat. It's just a few days away.”

I didn't know it at the time, but Miles was made of sterner stuff than I could have imagined. I wouldn't have lasted a day in his place. He came with us that night, bravely bearing his pack and soaking his sleeves with tears. After the first half hour, Regis tore a piece from his shirt and said, “Here's a handkerchief, old boy. Let me know when you need another.”

That was our third night of marching. The weather had turned bad. A wind—not merely a wind, but a freezing, unrelenting blast of air—tore through the pines and made them roar like a wild sea. In fact, it seemed just like a sea, an endless sea of black pines stretching on to infinity. The moons hung over us, cold and luminous.

No matter how I tried to fill my mind with pleasant thoughts, it kept coming back to the battered copy of Dante's
Inferno
I kept on my shelf in Oxford. As a child, I had thought of hell as a jumble of roaring flames. Dante changed that. The poet had chosen a sea of ice, not a lake of fire, for the devil's final torment. The more I tried not to think about it, the more I thought about it; and the more I thought about it, the more the moons above us seemed like bottomless pools of ice.

At last the wind ceased and the roar died away. The trees were fewer and farther apart, and the sky was brightening. The forest ended at the foot of a great hill. We began to climb, stopping every few minutes to rest, and reached the summit just as the sun began to shine. I gazed with wide eyes at the land before us.

A line of gray mountains stood away to our right. Snow glinted on their peaks. The ground stretched up toward the mountains in a long slope, speckled green and brown with bracken and heather grass. A silver ribbon of water wound across the moor.

“The Arteria,” said Tsurugi.

Regis rubbed his chin. “If that's the Arteria River, then those mountains must make up the Bow.”

“The Bow?” I asked.

“It's a mountain range shaped like an archer's bow. If I remember my geography, Ventus is located in a hollow between two peaks. The Arteria River flows right through the town and down the slope in a westward direction.”

“So east is that way,” I said, pointing toward the mountains. “I suppose it would have to be, since the sun is rising in that direction. That means the river is due north from here. How close is Riku?”

“Roughly north-northwest,” said Tsurugi. “Fifty or sixty leagues.”

“What now?” asked Regis.

“We travel to the river, and follow it east till we reach Ventus.”

“Can we sleep first?” I asked. “I'm exhausted.”

“Not here,” said Tsurugi.

“I can't go on,” I groaned. “I haven't slept in thirty hours and my stomach is empty and my legs feel like jelly.”

“I see an outcrop of rock by the river,” said Regis, shielding his eyes from the sun. “It can't be more than a few hours away. We could set up camp and spend the day. Better still, we could spend the day and the night, and travel tomorrow morning.”

Tsurugi shook his head. “It's dangerous to travel by day.”

“Hang it all,” I exclaimed. “The Nomen must be leagues behind us by now. I support Regis. My toes are bent from all the times I've stubbed them in the dark, and I would rather die than go through another night like the last.”

“I'd like to travel by day,” said Miles. We hushed immediately. It was the first thing he had said since we began our march.

Tsurugi picked up his pack and began to descend the hill. We followed with many groans, dragging our feet across coarse moor grass and tiny white star-flowers. The sun grew hot as we reached the base of the hill. The river seemed a long way off. After pausing for a brief meal, we pressed on, stumbling like drunken men. Time passed. The stone outcrop drew slowly nearer. By the time we arrived, it was all I could do to keep from collapsing.

We made camp in a meadow by the river. Rocks jutted from the ground, shielding us from the wind. I dropped my pack, lay down on the grass and passed out. Reviving a few minutes later, I drank some water, found a blanket, curled up at the base of a rock and plunged back into sleep.

I awoke stiff and cold. It was hard to move. I sat up and looked around. It was three or four o'clock, judging by the position of the sun, and I was alone. Panic swept over me. What had become of the others? Did the Nomen carry them away? What was I going to do?

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” said Regis from behind me.

“Don't sneak up on me like that,” I gasped. “You're going to make my heart fail.”

“Sorry, old boy. I didn't mean to startle you.”

“Where the devil are Tsurugi and Miles?”

“They left to find food. Tsurugi was about to go alone, but changed his mind and took Miles with him.”

“That's odd. They don't seem like the sort who would enjoy each other's company.”

“Maybe they want to talk.”

I scoffed. “I rather doubt that.”

“I hope Miles is holding on,” said Regis. “He's suffering horribly. I'm amazed he hasn't given up.”

“What are we going to do now?”

“Tsurugi told me to wash the clothes. If you'd be so kind to lend me your help, old boy, we'd better start while the sun is still warm.”

My friend, Modern Man is a marvel. He has succeeded in delegating many of his mundane chores to machines. Machines cook his meals, clean his dishes, heat his leftovers—there seems no end to Modern Man's efficiency. However, Modern Man has overlooked the problem with this arrangement. When the machines are removed, Modern Man finds himself utterly incapable of managing without them.

“Wash the clothes,” I groaned, waist-deep in icy water with a sodden blanket in my hands. “It sounds so easy.”

“Hush and wash,” said my companion, wrestling with a pair of trousers.

We laid out the laundry to dry in the sun and changed into dry clothes. “Dratted champagne baths,” I muttered, wringing out my underclothes.

“I didn't quite catch that.”

“Never mind. What are we going to do now?”

“We could catch fish.”

“With what? Our hands?”

“Good point, old boy. We could make a fire.”

“I think it would be too dangerous. If the Nomen are near, they would see the smoke.”

“We could dig for roots.”

“What would we do with roots?”

Regis shrugged. “Eat them, I suppose. When I was a boy, I heard tales about knights and hermits who lived off roots and wild honey.”

“I don't see any bees.”

“You're awfully pessimistic. What do you suggest we do?”

“I'm still tired. Maybe we should get some sleep.”

“Excellent thought, old boy. Now then, what did we do with the blankets?”

I struck my forehead with the palm of my hand. “I'm a deuced fool. I washed them in the river. They're soaking wet.”

“Well,” said Regis, stroking his chin with a thoughtful air, “I suppose that leaves us only one alternative.”

“What might that be?”

“We play cards.”

He drew a beaten pack of cards from a pocket, sat down and began to deal them into two piles. Rather than grotesque portraits of royalty, the cards bore images from nature: flowers and flames and raindrops and so forth. Each card was marked with a number.

“I don't know how to play cards,” I said. “I mean, not these cards.”

“Have a seat and I'll teach you a simple game. I won't insist if you'd rather not. I just thought it would help pass the time.”

My friend, there are only three things in the world at which I'm very skilled. Card games are one of them. In my years as an Oxford student, many a night that could have been devoted to profitable study had instead been spent playing bridge and whist with three lads who lived in the flat beneath mine. All of this to say: I was confident of my ability to hold my own against Regis.

I listened as he explained the rules of a game called dealings. It was based on the exchange of cards between two players. The object of the game was to form sets of cards, each of which was valued at a certain number of points. The player with the most points won. A player was never sure of what card he might receive next, making it difficult to decide which cards to keep, which to discard and which to give the other player. Though a little strategy could be helpful, dealings was mostly a game of chance.

Regis won our first game. “That wasn't bad for a beginner,” he said.

“Just you wait, Regis. The day of judgment is at hand.”

He won our second game. “You're getting better,” he said.

“You're cheating.”

“Nonsense. I'm a gambler, old boy. Winning is how I earn my bread.”

“One more game,” I said, steeling myself for battle.

He won our third game. “You're definitely getting better,” he said.

“You're definitely cheating,” I replied, putting down my cards. “I just can't prove it. I suppose it doesn't matter. Dash it, I wish Tsurugi and Miles would come back. I'm beginning to worry about them.”

“I'm sure they're fine. Tsurugi doesn't seem like the sort who'd go and lose himself.”

“I hope you're right,” I said, and yawned. “You know, I might try to sleep under a wet blanket. Evening is coming on, and I'm exhausted.”

“This one seems pretty dry,” he said, prodding a blanket with his finger.

“Only because it's the thinnest.”

“You really are a pessimist. See here, old boy, it's better than nothing.”

“I suppose. Do you mind sleeping back to back?”

“To keep each other warm, you mean?”

“And to share the blanket.”

“Do you snore?”

“I don't think so.”

“All right, no objections.”

We lay down and covered ourselves up. I fell asleep immediately in spite of the wet blanket and hard ground, and as I slept I dreamed a dream. I was lying in my own bed in Oxford, covered with a wonderfully warm, heavy quilt. Then I dreamed that the fabric of the quilt tore and soft down poured out of the rift. Curiously, the down kept pouring and pouring until I began to suffocate.

Then I awoke and realized I was lying under a thick layer of snow.

I scrambled to my feet, brushed away the snow and shouted, “Regis!”

A snowy mound beside me stirred.

“Get up,” I said, pulling him to his feet.

“What time is it?” he mumbled.

“It's too dark to tell.”

“Where are Miles and Tsurugi?”

I looked around. “I can't see them—but then, I can't see much of anything.”

“Should we go looking for them?”

“We would only get lost, and what would happen if they came back and found us gone? No, we need to wait until they get back.”

So we waited. The rocks sheltered us from the wind, so it wasn't nearly as cold as you might think. We found a crevice between two boulders and stuffed our packs into it to keep them dry. I began to feel thirsty, so I ate some snow. It was a mistake. The snow chilled me from inside and didn't quench my thirst.

The wind blew itself out. The snow fell in perfect silence a while longer and then stopped. The landscape had changed from green and brown to white. Far above us the clouds drifted away, and the rising moons made the snow sparkle.

“I'm hungry,” I announced.

“My stomach is shriveling away to nothing,” said Regis. “Let's find something to eat.”

As he struggled to pull the packs out of the crevice in the rocks, I climbed onto a boulder to see whether Tsurugi and Miles were near. To my great joy, I saw two figures plodding toward us.

“They're almost here,” I said.

Regis climbed the boulder and stood beside me, putting a hand on my shoulder to steady himself. “Oi, over here!” he shouted. Leaping to another boulder, he waved his arms and kept shouting.

“They see you,” I said. “No need to wear out your voice.”

The moment we were rejoined by our companions, I knew there was something different about Miles. There had been a look of pain on his face, like the bewildered agony of an injured animal. There was still pain in his expression, but it was of a different kind. It was a calm, patient pain.