The Way to Babylon (Different Kingdoms) (22 page)

The doors of the Manse opened and Guillamon came out, closely followed by Gwion and other members of the household. When he saw the bodies littering the square his eyes burned.

‘Make litters. Have them taken inside,’ Guillamon barked. ‘Some of the women heat water and rip bandages.’ People scurried about at his bidding, tearing their eyes away from the carnage. He came over to Ratagan and Riven.

‘Are you much hurt?’

‘I am not, but the Teller here will be dancing no jigs for a while.’ Then Ratagan leaned close. ‘We are brothers now, you and I,’ he said to Riven. ‘I saved your life, and you saved mine.’

The two Myrcans and three Hearthwares trooped wearily into the square with bloody weapons in their hands. Guillamon straightened.

‘Isay, have all the beasts been killed?’

‘We caught the last one just outside the ramparts,’ Isay said through his mask of blood. ‘It lives no more. Three Hearthwares and six others are dead. The wall is breached in three places and there is some damage to the Manse itself. Of the Circle, I cannot yet speak; it will have to wait until the morning.’

The litters arrived, and the dead Hearthware was borne away on one. Riven was lifted gently on to another. Already the Giant corpses were being hauled off, and the blood was being washed from the square.

‘Isay,’ Guillamon said, as Riven was carried into the Manse, ‘take a horse and find the patrols. Tell them to come in. Tell them what has happened here.’

Isay paused long enough for someone to bind up his head, and then ran off. Riven closed his eyes. It had been a long night.

B
Y MORNING, THE
patrols were in, and Riven was in a new room with an early sun flooding through the windows, his collarbone set and bound, his ribs doing their best to stop him breathing. It brought back memories of Beechfield in the early days, except for the view of blue hills out of the window.

Bicker, Ratagan and Guillamon were in the room also. Ratagan’s face was one massive bruise, and his exertions of the night had burst the wound in his leg, which was rebound and propped up on a stool in front of him.

Bicker was standing with his face towards the window.

‘They must have been lurking outside the Circle, waiting for us to go past before they moved. And then they went clear through the outer wall so the guards at the gates would not be alerted.’ He shook his head. ‘Are Rime Giants developing brains?’

Guillamon was inspecting the bandages that encircled Riven’s shoulders in a figure of eight. ‘They knew what they were doing.’ Bicker turned around and stared at him.

‘They knew where the Knight of the Isle slept, and one of their number scaled the Manse to try and get there. He demolished a wall in his trying.’

‘More riddles,’ said Ratagan, his voice thickened by his broken nose.

‘Do you think that someone or something is directing these things?’ Riven asked. He found talking painful.

The older man was thoughtful. He stood with his back to the fireplace. ‘I have a theory, Michael Riven. It is this: that you are Minginish. That would explain much—the weather, the attacks of the beasts. But I also think that you do not belong here. It is not right that you should be sitting inside the world of your own imagination.’ He smiled slightly. ‘For such we are, in your belief. I believe the attack of the Giants—and of the gogwolf—was no mere chance. You are drawing all the destructive power you have unleashed upon yourself, such is the guilt and despair which yet governs you. Now you are in this world, it may be that everything in it will focus upon you and mayhap give the rest of the land a respite. I don’t know. I am only speculating. Perhaps if Minginish kills you, it will live on. Or perhaps it will go down with you, locked in snow and beset by wolves. Or with your death, perhaps we would all simply blink out of existence.’ He shrugged. ‘But that I doubt. This land has existed for longer than you have lived. No, I believe it is in your own heart that the key to this lies.’ He spread his hands to the fire behind him and swayed on the balls of his feet, his blue eyes shrouded.

Riven could not answer Guillamon’s claims. He lay and studied the dark wooden beams of the ceiling. Bicker seemed irritated, and also very tired. He held himself accountable for the deaths of the night before, they knew.

‘Go on, Guillamon,’ he said wearily. ‘There is more. I know by the look in your eyes.’

‘I don’t mean to try you, Bicker. We each have our cares at the moment. I am Warden of Ralarth, remember.’ He stared at Bicker until the younger man sat down with a cracked laugh. ‘On with it, then, you old goat; give us the benefit of your wisdom.’

Guillamon pursed his lips for a moment. ‘There is one thing I have not thought of: Riven’s dead wife, whom he—and you, Bicker—say is alive again, probably here in Minginish at this moment. How did this happen? How does someone return from the dead? In my own mind, I believe that no one does. Death is final. But if the characters of Riven’s books—such as we are—are walking a world somewhere, why should his wife not, who has probably figured in his dreams and imaginations more than any of us?’

‘That’s crazy,’ Riven broke in. ‘I don’t believe I’ve created anything. You’re older than my books. Maybe I’ve gone through some sort of door, yes, and maybe somehow my imagination has found a way to tap into this place, but I’m not some god who sits and creates people and places.’

‘Nevertheless, your wife—or a facsimile of her—is alive at this very moment,’ Guillamon said gently. ‘It may be that on her death, her spirit—or your imagination; it could be either—escaped through the door that had been torn open into Minginish. And thus she finds herself here, a creature of two worlds, who can move from one to the other without difficulty, unlike us, who can only move one way through a door.’

‘She didn’t recognise me,’ Riven grated. ‘I saw her at the bothy, and she didn’t know me.’

‘She cannot be your wife,’ Guillamon said. ‘Not truly. As I have said, death is final. But part of her is the woman you knew—perhaps. Perhaps.’

‘Talk bites its own tail after a while,’ Ratagan rumbled, and Guillamon smiled.

‘You have the truth of it, there. But some talk is necessary. I am only sorry that it must by necessity be on painful subjects.’ And here he bowed to Riven. ‘There will be yet more talk, and discussions, and debate, and all of it will be on matters you had thought to hold private. For this I make my apologies in advance, Michael Riven. If there were any other way we would try it—but you are the clue to our ruin and our survival, and thus must become the property of us all. In the meantime, this Rorim is your home.’

Riven nodded. Somehow these people always managed to humble him. There was silence in the room for a few moments. Dust danced in the sun from the windows. They could hear cattle lowing in the Dale.

‘If what you have said this morning is true, then we had best be on our guard, Guillamon,’ Bicker said quietly. ‘Minginish will keep on trying to kill the Teller here.’

‘And the Rorim is between them,’ Ratagan added ominously, scratching his beard. ‘I foresee a busy time ahead.’ Then he grinned. ‘For those of us who are not invalids, that is.’

‘Maybe you should send me back home, to my own world,’ Riven suggested.

Bicker shook his head. ‘We will keep you alive, never fear, but we will have to decide what it is we must do about this. Besides, you will not be fit to travel for several weeks.’

Guillamon came away from the fireplace, suddenly brisk. ‘We have indeed a busy few days in front of us,’ he said. ‘There is the rebuilding and the burying. We cannot make good our losses until Luib and Druim are satisfied with their trainees.’ He looked at Bicker. ‘I am putting Unish on to the training, to try and speed things up. And’—he glanced at Riven—‘our guest here will now be guarded by a Myrcan at all times. Isay has said he will do it. I think he was impressed by your actions in the square last night, Knight of the Isle; though he will never say so, being a Myrcan. I must go. There are duties waiting me.’ And he left quietly.

‘I think I’ll get drunk,’ said Ratagan. He sounded subdued.

‘I think you won’t,’ Bicker retorted. ‘Even a laggard like you can be put to use on this morning.’ He smiled to take the sting out of the comment. ‘Murtach has a Myrcan and six Hearthwares out with him, patrolling the Dale. When he gets back, I want you to get his news, and then pick six others to send out immediately after. Ord can take them.’ He went to Ratagan and examined his face. ‘Can you manage to do that, old friend? It must have been quite a battle.’

‘I have fought easier foes,’ Ratagan admitted. ‘And Riven proved himself to be a soldier of our world as well as of his own. He has a sword, now; I think he should be allowed to keep it.’

Bicker moved to where Riven lay silent on the bed. ‘Well, Knight of the Isle: would you bear a Drinan-forged sword and lift it in defence of this land that is trying to kill you?’

‘There are worse causes,’ said Riven, and he grasped Bicker’s proffered hand.

What the hell.

NINE

B
ROKEN BONES.
R
IVEN
had vast experience of them. He knew the fracturing of his limbs and joints as well as he could trace the contours of his own face. They ran through him like fault lines, cracking the strata of his memories so that under their pressure images slipped, slid, flaked away.

He was an invalid again, the broken parts of his body imprisoning him within his bed. From it he could see the blue sky beyond the wide windows in his room, empty of everything except cloud and the occasional far-off bird circling the distant hills—eagles, Ratagan had told him. They spun in the sky here as they did back at Camasunary.

He argued to have the bed moved to below the window after a few days, dismissing Bicker’s worries that he would find a Rime Giant in his lap one of these nights, and from then on he could see the southern half of the Rorim and the Circle, and watch the people of this world come and go about their business. He spent untold hours lying there, whilst his collarbone and ribs knitted wearily together again, and he watched the rain come out of the southern sea and roll across the hills in great banners and stacks of cloud, the sun chasing after. Impossible that he was here, that he saw everyday scenes and faces he half recognised or felt he knew. Impossible that they could exist as he had pictured them—impossible that they could not, for now he touched, greeted, smelled and ate with them. Magnificent make-believe characters now dressed in linen and leather, wishing him good morning, riding past his window, returning from the hunt with deer draped across their saddles, sitting cleaning their armour outside the gatehouse or getting drunk in the hall. He had been given a glimpse of the nightmare in the eyes of the Rime Giant as they met his own and
recognised
him. Now he was allowed to live in the dream for a while—to wear a sword, perhaps, to ride a horse, to be the kind of soldier he had always wanted to be. Perhaps. But the best things are better not savoured too long.

I
N THE WEEK
following the attack, the Rorim buried its dead and rebuilt its walls. Bicker and Murtach led patrols of Myrcans and Hearthwares up and down the Dale and the surrounding hills, visiting the villages and hamlets of Ralarth in turn and reassuring their inhabitants. Even so, each time they returned to the Rorim they had a straggling band of people following them on foot—refugees of a sort, fleeing their farms on the higher hills and seeking safety within the long walls of the Circle. They told tales of massed attacks by wolves, or the marauding of solitary Giants. The snow had gone, but the beasts remained. And the harvest had been destroyed. It would not be long before the Dales began to feel the nip of hunger.

Within the Circle, Guillamon soon began to find himself pressed for space as more people sought sanctuary. Those farmers who had always lived there presented him with complaint after complaint. The Circle was common land, in that all men used it freely with the permission of the Warbutt, but daily the herds using it grew. Huts were thrown up by the newcomers, and the Rorim began to resemble a vast, ungainly camp. Eventually, many of the newcomers were moved out by the Hearthwares and settled on the lower slopes of the surrounding hills, not always willingly. Those who stayed were expected to provide more men for the militia that the Myrcans were training in the practice fields to the west of the Rorim. All this Riven learned as he lay helpless in his bed and waited for his bones to knit together. As the slow days passed, he was told of the other attacks which peppered the Dale, the constant raiding of the flocks, the sighting of grypesh—another of his pet monsters—within sight of the Rorim itself. He saw Bicker seldom, for since he had returned to his own world, the dark man had found more and more responsibilities loading themselves on his shoulders as the Warbutt left the daily running of the Rorim to him. And then there was Mira, Dunan’s sister. In the evenings that were left to Bicker, she seemed to occupy much of his time. She was a petite, black-haired girl with pale green eyes who spoke seldom, but whose sharp-featured face lit up when the dark man was with her. And he in turn seemed to shed some of his cares when he was in her company. Riven thought of her as a girl, but in fact had learned that she was older than Bicker. The pair ought to have married years ago, Ratagan maintained, but Bicker had some itches to work out of the soles of his feet first, and she seemed content enough to wait.