Furnaces of Forge (The Land's Tale) (23 page)

‘Tomorrow won’t be a moment too soon!’ Edith spat.

‘True, my dear, true,’ agreed Hazlitt. ‘The disappearance of your lunch has made you prickly. Would you like some of mine while you wait? Here, have my sausage.’

After lunch, Hazlitt and Edith sent their prisoners to the kitchen tent, closely guarded by the hounds. It didn’t take long before Kevin, out of boredom and the habit of a lifetime, began tidying up. He unpacked everything, made shelves and cupboards out of the empty boxes and started putting things away. There was a lot of stuff that didn’t belong in a kitchen, and these things Kevin neatly placed in a corner. Before long, the tent looked as neat as the little kitchen in the cave in the High Mountains.

While Kevin was sorting and stacking, Crimson decided to explore the small plateau. The Mix had ended, and she zipped her fire jacket and left the tent. Chaos and Strike followed her out. Chaos had taken a particular dislike to Crimson and his eyes never left her for a moment. She had no doubt that, given the slightest chance, the hound would happily tear her apart.

Hazlitt and Edith were sitting at their small table under the awning, writing. Hazlitt waved and smiled. A shiver went down Crimson’s spine. She found Hazlitt’s facade more chilling than Edith’s open arrogance and hostility.

Crimson walked to the side of the plateau. It was only a stone’s throw from the pavilion. She glanced back. She could still see Hazlitt and Edith. She peered over the edge. Several metres below, the Salvation River foamed and roared, then straightened and continued south-west.

Crimson continued her way round the perimeter. The cliffs and the rushing river below were the same on the south. From her vantage point, she saw now how the rocky plateau had pushed the river slightly off its course, forcing it to go round in a small bow. She remembered looking down at the Salvation River when she first crossed Bourne Bridge, and seeing it crash through the gorge beneath her. They were not very far from Bourne Bridge and the river still had all its frightening power. Even if they managed to get away from the dogs and climb down these cliffs, they would never survive the river.

Standing behind the band of trees, Crimson glanced in the direction of the pavilion and realised she was hidden from the view of the camp. She was sure that Hazlitt and Edith had come to the same conclusion as she now did: being out of sight would do her no good. And besides, Chaos sat nearby, staring at her with undisguised malice.

Crimson walked back along the western side of the plateau. The wall of the ravine on this side wasn’t too steep, but the opposite wall rose almost vertically. A few trees and saplings grew along the bottom, next to the stream, which was too wide to jump and moving much too fast to swim across.

As she neared the front of the plateau, where they had first entered, the slope below her became a gentle incline. On the other side of ther stream, the ground flattened and melded with the grassy plain beyond. Looking back, she could see the pavilion a couple of hundred metres away.

The only way out of the camp was the way they came in. ‘Even if we managed to sneak off the plateau,’ she thought, ‘we wouldn’t make it very far.’ From where she stood, the vast plain of Myrmidia stretched flat and clear, kilometre after kilometre. They could walk for more than an hour and still be seen from the camp.

Despondent, Crimson headed back to the kitchen tent. She pushed open the flap and stepped inside. Kevin had found a bit of cloth and was dusting everything within reach. Crimson couldn’t help but smile as she looked around. If there was a prize for ‘Finding a Place for Everything and Keeping Everything in its Place’, she wasn’t sure who would win, Brian or Kevin.

Then she saw something that Kevin had stowed neatly in the corner. An idea began to take shape. ‘At least,’ she thought, ‘it might be worth a try.’

‘Kevin, can you swim?’

Crimson’s question, coming out of the blue, caught Kevin by surprise. ‘Well, ah, yes – sort of. I mean, I can but not very well.’

‘How well is “not very well”?’

‘I can paddle around for a few minutes. But then I start to sort of sink,’ Kevin admitted.

‘We’ll just have to think of another way across, then,’ said Crimson. ‘I have an idea . . .’ And she told Kevin what she had in mind.

‘The hounds following you will make an awful din,’ he said when she’d finished.

‘That’s what I’m counting on,’ said Crimson. ‘With luck, the other two will hear the noise and run to see what’s happening.’

‘What if they don’t?’

‘Then we’ll have two very unpleasant dogs to deal with.’

Kevin hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

‘Ready?’ asked Crimson.

Kevin nodded and picked up his water bucket.

‘OK, you first,’ she said.

Kevin stepped out of the tent, Clash and Strike following. Chaos and Spite were lying just outside the tent flap. They watched Kevin but neither made a move. When Crimson didn’t come out, Chaos pushed aside the flap and went into the tent.

It was late afternoon and the sun was less than an hour from slipping down behind the horizon. Kevin headed for the stream, straight into the setting sun. He had only walked a few paces when Edith’s voice rang out.

‘Wait!’ she commanded.

Kevin stopped and slowly turned round.

‘And just where are you going?’ she asked.

‘Water,’ replied Kevin, holding up the bucket. ‘And to have a wash.’

‘I should think so,’ Edith sneered. ‘Don’t be long. I want my dinner in an hour.’

‘Yes, Edith,’ said Kevin and headed to the edge of the camp and down the slope of the ravine to the stream.

At the bottom he turned right and walked along the bank of the stream. The dogs followed a few steps behind. He soon found what he had been looking for and stopped.

Kevin put the bucket down. He reached inside it and took out a coil of rope. Then he knelt on the bank and lowered the bucket into the water. The force of the stream nearly tore the bucket from his hand and he had to use all his strength to draw it from the water. He dragged the bucket on to the grass. Then he sat next to it, his back against a tall but slender sapling, and waited.

A few minutes after Kevin had gone, Crimson left the tent, carrying one of the empty boxes. Chaos stood at the door of the tent, watching as she walked past Hazlitt and Edith to the band of trees at the far end of the plateau. Spite rose to his feet and both hounds loped after Crimson.

Hazlitt put down his pen and watched her out of the corner of his eye as she stopped at the trees and scanned the ground. She picked up a few pieces of wood and placed them in the box. After a minute or two, Hazlitt went back to his writing and, gradually, Crimson moved into the cover of the trees, collecting more dead wood.

Once hidden from view, Crimson undid her fire jacket. Underneath, she was wrapped in coils of rope. Chaos and Spite sat and watched as she unwound the rope and let it fall around her feet until only one coil remained, tied round her waist.

‘It’s one thing watching,’ she said to the hounds, ‘it’s another thing to understand what’s going on.’ They looked at her blankly.

Crimson gathered the rest of the rope and slung it over her shoulder. Chaos cocked his head and looked at her. ‘It’s OK, I’m not going anywhere,’ she said to him. ‘At least, not just yet,’ she added under her breath.

Crimson was at the corner of the plateau, the ravine on one side, the river below on the other. She moved casually to a tree near the cliff top overlooking the river. She knelt and picked up a stick, letting the rope slip from her shoulder. The hounds were staring at her intently. She drew her arm back and threw the stick back past the hounds. ‘Fetch!’ she cried. The dogs ignored the stick sailing over their heads and continued to stare at Crimson.

‘Oh well, worth a try,’ she muttered.

Quickly, she tied the loose end of the rope securely round the tree trunk. She stood facing the hounds, a sheer drop at her back.

‘I hope Kevin’s ready,’ she said to herself. She hoped a lot of things: she hoped she’d tied the rope properly; she hoped the rope wasn’t too long; she hoped she didn’t crash against the cliff. Most of all, she hoped her plan worked. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then hurled herself backwards off the cliff.

Chaos and Spite howled, a savage baying that rang across the plateau. They ran to the spot where Crimson had disappeared. The rope swung back and forth but the inward slope of the cliff hid Crimson from view. Chaos barked in frustration, then began chewing the rope.

At the first howl, Hazlitt and Edith were on their feet, running to the cliff edge. Down by the stream, Clash and Strike heard the howls, the call of the pack after its prey, and their muscles quivered. Then they raced off towards the sound of the hunt. At first they tried to run directly up the wall behind them, but it was too steep and their paws slipped on the mossy rock. After a few unsuccessful tries, they wheeled round and went back to the front of the ravine where the slope became gentler.

As soon as Clash and Strike were out of sight, Kevin tied one end of the rope to the handle of the bucket. With the other end in his teeth, he climbed the sapling. About halfway up, the young tree started to bend. Kevin shifted his weight so that the sapling curved towards the opposite bank. There was still plenty of slack in the rope attached to the bucket on the bank, and so he climbed higher. He was nearly at the top and the sapling formed a smooth arc, but his weight wasn’t enough to make it bend right across the stream.

Sitting astride the tree and clamping his knees tightly round it, Kevin took the rope from his mouth and draped it over the slender trunk. Slowly, he pulled on the rope, until it went taut. Then he tugged once more.

The bucket lifted from the bank. The sapling bowed under the extra weight and, in one graceful sweep, Kevin was carried to the other side of the stream, the bucket swinging like a pendulum below him. Kevin gradually let out enough of the rope so that the bucket came to rest on the opposite bank. Still holding the tip of the sapling, he slid from the tree on to the bucket.

Balanced on the bucket, Kevin had to fight with all his strength to keep his little bridge across the stream. Crimson would come. He had to hold on until then.

Crimson’s fall had ended with a wrenching jolt. Pain shot through her as the rope tightened around her waist. Her ribs felt as if they were being crushed and her stomach felt as if someone had pushed a knife into it. Every bone seemed to crack and she couldn’t breathe. And then she opened her eyes to see the cliff heading straight for her face.

Just in time, she put her feet out in front of her. Even so, the shock of the impact ran right up through the soles of her feet, through her knees, into her hips and continued from there up to her neck. Pain and lack of air blurred her vision and fogged her brain. She hung limply for a second or two, unable to focus, and then breathed in as deeply as she could. Her vision cleared and her head started working again.

She looked down. The waters of the Salvation rushed a couple of metres below her dangling feet. She could feel the spray from the river as it dashed against the rocks. ‘Good,’ she thought, ‘not too far to drop.’ She looked up. She could hear the howling of the hounds, but all she could see was the rope disappearing across the lip of the rock above her.

Crimson put her feet against the cliff face and pushed. She twisted as she pushed so that she started to swing in an arc. She swung back towards the wall and pushed again, this time more to the side. After a few pushes she was swinging from side to side in a wide arc that took her round the cliff face into the ravine. Abover her, the rope frayed as it scraped against the rock. Strand after strand parted as the rock and Chaos’s teeth cut through the rope.

At the furthest point of her arc, she was near enough to grab on to a rocky outcrop. She pulled herself up enough to take the weight off the rope. She undid the knot and dropped a metre or so to the floor of the ravine beside the stream.

Crimson raced along the bank of the stream. She pushed through branches and brambles and stumbled over rocks, racing to get to Kevin. Above her, she could hear the howls of the dogs. They were getting fainter and she figured that Hazlitt and Edith must have pulled up the rope by now. If she was very lucky, they would assume that she had dropped into the river and been carried away downstream, perhaps even drowned. Even now, they would be hurrying to the other side of the plateau to see if they could spot her in the river.

Of course, once they realised that Kevin was gone they’d know that somehow they’d been tricked. Crimson counted on them taking just a little time to work out how.

She spotted Kevin ahead of her, on the other side of the stream, straining against the tension of the sapling’s supple trunk. In a few strides she was there. She launched herself from the bank and grabbed the slender tree. Hanging from the trunk, she crossed, hand over hand, to the other side.

She dropped to the bank next to Kevin. Though her muscles ached, she immediately helped Kevin keep the tree bowed.

‘OK,’ she said hoarsely.

With one hand, Kevin pulled the rope from the tree. Crimson nodded once and they both let go of the sapling.

It whipped up right and across the stream, quivering until it had shed nearly all its few remaining autumn leaves.

Crimson stuffed the rope into the bucket, filled with a few large rocks and dropped it into the stream, where it sank.

‘Let’s go!’ she said.

≈

‘Quiet!’ commanded Hazlitt. The hounds stopped barking.

‘If she went into the river she’s drowned,’ said Edith.

‘Perhaps,’ he spat, and he grabbed Clash’s collar and pulled the dog roughly until it cowered at his feet. ‘You left the other one!’ he yelled. He picked up a thick piece of wood and hit Clash across the ribs. The hound yelped and tried to escape his grip. Hazlitt’s face contorted with rage. He hit Clash again and then thrust the yelping dog away. Strike knew what was coming and fell on his belly, whining. Hazlitt stood over the hound, raised his stick and dealt Strike a cruel blow across his back.